Corporate news outlets never discuss the insatiable U.S. War Machine and the ubiquitous U.S. government propaganda. U.S. warmongering benefits only a tiny # of rich elites and results in senseless destruction overseas, to U.S. citizens and to the U.S. economy.
I've often discussed the importance of speaking up, even if you are the only person in the room with a particular belief or opinion. I've referred to the powerful tendency to sit on your hand and NOT speak up, based on social psychology experiments run by Solomon Asch in the 1950s.
Bret Weinstein has repeatedly spoken up when others dared not. After others blasted him and censored him for speaking out, he has often been proven correct. He discussed the need to speak out in a long-form disussion with Tucker Carlson. I transcribed the following part of that discussion:
[Bret Weinstein] But let's just put it this way, we have a large, global population. Most people have no useful role, through no fault of their own. They have not been given an opportunity in life to find a useful way to contribute. And I wonder if the rent-seeking elites that have horded so much power, are not unhooking our rights because, effectively, they're afraid of some global French Revolution moment as people realize that they've been betrayed and left without good options. Is that what we're seeing?
It certainly feels like we're facing an end-game where important properties that would once have been preserved by all parties because they might need them one day, are now being dispensed with and we're watching our governmental structures and every one of our institutions captured, hollowed out turned into a paradoxical inversion of what it was designed to do. It's not an accident. The thing that worries me most actually, is that whatever is driving this is not composed of diabolical geniuses who at least have some plan for the future, but it's being driven by people who actually do not know what kind of hell they are inviting. They are going to create a kind of chaos from which humanity may well not emerge. And I get the sense that unless they have some remarkable plan that is not obvious, that they are just simply drunk with power and putting everyone including themselves in tremendous jeopardy by taking apart the structures on which we depend.
[Tucker Carlson]: You're you're speaking in in Grand terms that three years ago, I might have laughed at and I'm not laughing at all. And I think you're absolutely right. But you're also choosing as you know, as a 50-ish year-old man, to say this stuff out loud, and to pursue the truth as you find it and then to talk about it? Why did you decide to do that? And how do you think that ends?
[Bret Weinstein] Well, you know, we are all the products of whatever developmental environment produced us. And as I've said, on multiple topics where my family has found itself in very uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous circumstances, because we speak out, I don't think I had a choice. I just, I, I literally cannot understand how I would sleep at night, how I would look at myself in the mirror, if I didn't say what needed to be said.
I heard a very good speech by Bobby Kennedy Jr. Though neither of us are libertarians, he was at the Liberty conference in Memphis. And the last thing he said in that speech struck me to my core, something I've thought often and said almost never. But there are fates far worse than death. And I think, for my part, I have I have lived an incredible life. There's plenty I still want to do and I am not eager to leave this planet any earlier than I have to. I have a marvelous family. I live wonderful place and I've got lots of things on my bucket list. However, humanity is depending on everybody who has a position from which to see what is taking place to grapple with what it might mean, to describe it so that the public understands where their interests are, is depending on us to do what needs to be done if we're to have a chance of delivering a planet to our children and our grandchildren that is worthy of them. If we're going to deliver a system that allows them to live meaningful, healthy lives, we have to speak up.
And I don't know. I don't know how to get people to do that. I'm very hesitant to urge others to put themselves or their families in danger. And I know that everybody's circumstances are different. Some people are struggling to simply to feed a family and keep a roof over their heads. Those people obviously, have a great deal less liberty with respect to standing up and saying what needs to be said.
But this is really, it's what we call in game theory a collective action problem. Everybody responds to their personal well being. If everybody says that's too dangerous to stand up, you know, "I'm not suicidal, I'm I can't do it," then not enough people stand up to change the course of history. Whereas if people somehow put aside the obvious danger, their ability to earn and maybe their lives of saying what needs to be said, then we greatly outnumber those we are pitted against. They are ferociously powerful, but I would also point out this interesting error.
[More . . . ]
Excellent points made in the 6-minute video by Bret and Heather:
FIRE has released it's list of the ten worst censors of 2023:
The 10 Worst Censors of 2023, in alphabetical order, are:
Book censors
California Community Colleges
Florida state officials
Hypocritical university admins
The Marion County Police Dept.
The Mayo Clinic College of Medical Science
Muirlands Middle School
New York state officials
San Francisco State University
The Texas A&M University system
From FIRE:
It’s past time for off-campus censors to get the dishonor they're due," said FIRE Director of Public Advocacy Aaron Terr. “Censors on and off college campuses have run roughshod over Americans' rights for years, and we hope that by throwing shade at them, we can prompt other would-be censors to think twice.Here's more information about those who made FIRE's list.
Most Americans I talk to are clueless. They think that it is sufficient justification to pay dozens of billions of dollars because "Putin bad." They are being led around like sheep. There is a history to this Ukraine War and there was a way to completely avoid this war, as admitted by NATO's Secretary General:
But now Tucker Carlson is about to do what all good corporate media journalists should have done over the past few years: Interview Vladimir Putin. This is truly what real journalists do: They are curious and they go out into the world and they bring back important stories, important interviews.
Tucker has made a statement about why he is doing this interview and it is telling. This statement would not have been necessary had other journalists been doing their jobs.
I have transcribed Tucker's statement below:
We're in Moscow tonight. We're here to interview the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. We'll be doing that soon. There are risks to conducting an interview like this, obviously. So we thought about it carefully over many months. Here's why we're doing it.First, because it's our job. We're in journalism. Our duty is to inform people, two years into war that's reshaping the entire world. Most Americans are not informed. They have no real idea what's happening in this region. Here in Russia, or 600 miles away in Ukraine. What they should know, they're paying for much of it in ways they might not fully yet perceive. The war in Ukraine is a human disaster. It's left hundreds of 1000s of people dead, an entire generation of young Ukrainians. It has depopulated the largest country in Europe.
But the long term effects are even more profound. This war has utterly reshaped the global military and trade alliances, and the sanctions that followed have as well. And in total, they have upended the world economy. The post-WWII economic order, the system that guaranteed prosperity in the West for more than 80 years, is coming apart very fast. And along with it, the dominance of the US dollar. These are not small changes, they are history-altering developments. They will define the lives of our grandchildren.
Most of the world understands this perfectly well. They can see it. Ask anyone in Asia or the Middle East what the future looks like. And yet, the populations of the English speaking countries seem mostly unaware. They think that is nothing has really changed. And they think that because no one has told them the truth. Their media outlets are corrupt. They lie to the readers and viewers. And they do that mostly by omission. For example, since the day the war in Ukraine began, American media outlets have spoken to scores of people from Ukraine and they have done scores of interviews with Ukrainian president Zelensky. We ourselves have put in a request for an interview with Zelensky. We hope he accepts. But the interviews he's already done in the United States are not traditional interviews. They are fawning pep-sessions specifically designed to amplify Zelensky's demand that the US enter more deeply into war in Eastern Europe and pay for it. That is not journalism. It is government propaganda. Propaganda of the ugliest kind. The kind of kills people.
At the same time our politicians and media outlets have been doing this--promoting a foreign leader like he's a new consumer brand--not a single Western journalist has bothered interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict: Vladimir Putin. Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now. You've never heard his voice. That's wrong. Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they're implicated in and we have the right to tell them about it because we are Americans too. Freedom of speech is our birthright. We were born with the right to say what we believe.
That right cannot be taken away no matter who is in the White House. But they're trying anyway. Almost three years ago, the Biden administration illegally spied on our text messages and then leaked the contents to their servants in the news media. They did this in order to stop a Putin interview that we were planning. Last month we're pretty certainly did exactly the same thing once again. But this time we came to Moscow anyway. We are not here because we love Vladimir Putin. We are here because we love the United States. We want it to remain prosperous and free.
We paid for this trip ourselves. We took no money from any government or group. Nor are we charging people to see the interview. It is not behind a paywall. Anyone can watch the entire thing shot live to tape, unedited on our website, tuckercarlson.com. To Elon Musk's his great credit, he has promised not to suppress or block this interview once he posts it on his platform, X. And we're grateful for that. Western governments, by contrast, will certainly do their best to censor this video on other less principal platforms because that's what they do. They are afraid of information they can't control. But you have no reason to be afraid of it. We are not encouraging you to agree with what Putin may say in this interview. But we are urging you to watch it. You should know as much as you can. And then, like a free citizen and not a slave, you can decide for yourself. Thanks
Here's one example of many: The Corporate News Outlet reporters are freaking out because they are sitting on their hands like good well-paid servants, yet someone else is actually doing the work of journalism.
