New York Times Launches Major Offensive against Free Speech

The New York Slime is up in arms against Tucker Carlson, whom they accuse of foisting a false "us-them" narrative. He's waging class war!!! OMG!!! That is just soooo a priori untrue... The upper class loves the lower like a brother!

Segment 3 of Everything Wrong with Tucker (per the Slime): He says,

they want to control you √

they don't care what you think √

they want to control your mind √

they want you to kiss the ring √

they're not sentimental √

they want power √

they hate you √

they want you to know it √

they want to disarm you √

they call you a racist √

Liz Chaney wants to use the awesome power of the national security state to seize your text messages √

They deny biology because the point of the exercise is to humiliate you. X

They legalize weed because they want a passive population X

Now, no one get everything right all the time not even Carlson. He is wrong to say that THEY want to legalize weed in order to make you stupid. THEY have already done that through their 60 year debasement of public educational system. .... Plus allowing advertising on TV (which I might add, the French and the Germans used to not allow).

But just about everything else Tucker says in this segment is correct. The country is divided between the halves and the have nots. The haves really don't give a shit about the have nots. The people in power really don't care about you or about anything else but themselves.

They use the internet not to listen to you but to redirect you into a dead end and/or to tell you want to think and do.

Think: when was the last time you reached a human voice at Comcast? When was the last time you talked to your Congressman? Do you really believe that the robo-letter you got back is anything but a spit in the eye?

Listen to Erich Fromm (1964)

"Our society is becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucracy in which man becomes a small, well-oiled cog in the machinery.... The organization man may be well fed, well amused and well oiled yet he lacks a sense of identity becaues none of his feelings or his thoughts originate within himself; none is authentic. He has no convictions either in politics, religion, philosophy or in love. He lives under the illusion that the. thoughts and feelings which he has acquired by listening to the media of mass communication are his own."

Fromm wrote a half century ago. What he could not foresee is that our rulers would find ways to toss half of the cogs into the waste-bin of a global economy. That the social tools of the Fifties which were used to control *a* working class would now be used to control and debase a non-working class or a class of workers totally bereft of any sense of class identity, in place of which the ruling class perpetuate a wide spectrum of inane cultural and "identity" issues and causes.

One can hear them say: "We at the Times have long advocated the need to heal this country's racial divisions... As Matin Luther King said.... blah blah blah. Where King himself moved from racial issues to the broader issue of political-economy and economic class; the Slime moves in exactly the opposite direction. When was the last time you heard the Slime advocate rent control, single payer health care, free college education, single payer pensions, anything other than some welfare sop that does nothing to redistribute obligations within society -- that is, that will give the ordinary man some of the freedom the elites enjoy precisely because of their wealth?

The Slime is aghast that Carlson should allude to a class war. A class war most definitely exists. It is waged from the top down by the economic- political- and cultural- elites. It exists even among those in the upper ten percent who think they are not at war and who "personally" don't want to be at war... but who cannot but be at war due to their "investment" in the system of which they are but loyal vassals. The Fromm Paradigm applies to them and to all readers of the Slime.

The problem with Tucker Carlson is not the primary social and political facts he cites, but the conclusions he draws from them. Instead of drawing correct socialist opinions, he draws just the opposite in favour of more private enterprise, more autonomy, less social obligation. It is that which IMO opinion make Carlson dangerous.

What in the U.S. are called the liberal left ignore that there is an economic class war and then proceed to distract from that reality by championing a cornucopia of cultural and identity issues. What is called the radical or populist right admit that there is an economic class war and then divert energy onto their own cultural and identity solution. Both the Slime and Carlson peddle false consciousness, althought Carlson's speaks more of the truth in doing so.

The Slime would have you deny the phenomenal reality in which you live. They want you to think that Obambi and Peelousy and Turtle Man, Bezos-the-Bald and Queen Elizabeth really care about you. Absolutely not. Think about it for a second: they do not actually know that you exist. "You" are simply part of a sea of faces they play to, tease, and (mis)lead. Does an actor really care about "his" audience? Of course not; only their adulation and the front door ticket sales.

The Slime's glossy audio-graphic against Carlson is the opening salvo of what they claim is going to be fight against mis-information, extremism and hate on line. The Slime promises that it is going to show us how all these evils lurk and work. They will claim to be defending democracy and the "principles" of free speech on which democracy depends.

Whenever anyone talks about "underlying principles" they are avoiding the thing itself. As Justice Black never tired of pointing out: The way to defend free speech is to abide no abrogation of free speech. Period.

Bear in mind when you read these “analyses” that what you are really seeing is how and in what name the Slime proposes to “moderate” the First Amendment. Howsoever, sophisticated and elaborate this editorial exercise manages to be, in the end it all boils down to a very simple thing: any claim to “control the effects” of free speech (as James Madison put it) -- to combat un-truths, to prevent “extremism,” to ward off foreign interference, to protect the safety of a child or of the nation, to insulate against disturbances against public tranquility or against productive discourse -- any of these things is the age old, tiresome tyrant's attempt to control you and the effect you might have, small though it may, on the course of your society.

Poking the Bear - Follow Up

No sooner predicted than done,

 And not for a one-night stand, either

Which implies a long term war with growing "aims"

And one that could spillover into Russia,

As indeed,

Causing Putin to announce that,

Meanwhile, in Brussels, after joining the sanctions against Russian gas, European capitals express their outrage -- positive outrage -- that Russia would announce gas delivery cut offs. "Bad on you for not giving us what we didn't want!!!!"

Delirium Tremens.

One has to wonder why the Speaker of the House, whose brief does not include the conduct of foreign policy, feels it incumbent on herself to go visit a war zone and indulge Churchillesque Blather.  "Until Victory is Won" is demagogue for "Until the Shop is totally smashed up."

Slime is Spam?

A Social Media giant has determined that the Elite Readership of the New York Slime is GUILTY of spamming HATE OR FAKE news in contravention of it autocratically imposed COMMUNITY STANDARDS

 The post, which has been whited out in true Stalinist fashion, had exerpted comments from the New York Slime's moderated comment sections to an article by Nicholas Cohen whipping up the flames of uptown hysteria at the prospect (unlikely) of a Le Pen election.

 

 Of course the Slime itself saw nothing wrong with the comments (although they refused to publish mine).

All of which goes to show that censorship always, without exception, leads to imbecity and absurdity. It also goes to show that unless your interests in life consists in gurgling babies and Cute Cats doing Adorable Things or "the Game" it is pointless to post anything on social media. If you are not censored your speech WILL be chilled.

"Don't look around...."

Insanity Rules

Two headlines today gave proof that insanity rules in western capitals.

US and allies to hit Russia with new sanctions as outrage over civilian killings grows

Yellen to Warn of ‘Enormous Economic Repercussions’ From Ukraine Invasion

"The Treasury secretary plans to highlight risks of rising food and energy prices at a congressional hearing on Wednesday."

But why -- oh why -- are there “risks of rising food and energy prices”? Did the risk just happen, like a passing cloud perhaps? No. The risk happened because of the sanctions.

Meanwhile, after White House eunuchs walked back Biden's call for regime change, another Biden Mumble walked back the walking back saying that that guy has got to go.

History is too important to be left to humans.

That the Russians have been brutal in their prosecution of wars is undeniable. Whether their brutality is any worse than that of others or than the sanitized techno-brutality of U.S. drone warfare, I leave to another day. War by nature is an exercise in tu quoque. The fact is that Russians have been and are capable of committing atrocities and, therefore, it is more than just possible that they murdered civilians in Bucha. On the other hand, the neatly placed boxes of Russian military rations next to some of the bodies is... well... just a little too neat for my skeptical mind.

As any lawyer can tell you, the fact of a dead body only begins the inquiry. It does not end it. The question remains as to how and why the body was killed. Was there a provocation? Was there a mistake? What was the intent? Was it an action ordered by superiors or was it a spontaneous rampage by enlisted men? In other words, was it a state action for which the state can be sanctioned or was it individual criminal behaviour for which the individuals in question should be punished.

During the last world war, all armies (except Russia) had “war crimes bureaus” whose task it was to investigate alleged and reported war crimes. The complaint would be relayed through a neutral conduit to either the Royal Navy or the Wehrmacht which would then launch an inquiry to look into the matter and issue a report either confirming or denying the claim. The idea was that, after the war, there would be a clearing of claims and repartations would be paid as appropriate. The parties were actually fairly decent about it. Sorry ol' chap. Our bad. See you in Geneva!

The point is that when an atrocity is alleged, the matter needs to be investigated, calmly and well. If a person wants to behave like a rational human being, he refrains from taking responsive action until the allegations are confirmed. Then, as a second step in rationality, he has to weigh the benefits and risks of the proposed retaliation. It is a fact of life that sometimes one cannot retaliate as one would like because the to do so would be too injurious to one's self or to another. In this situation, one is left biting one's lip.

But none of this matters in our ruling capitals. The matter is investigated in the press, with predictable outcomes. It reminds me of the notorious Kadaververwertungsanstalt. See? Look at the picture of those bodies in front of the factory!!! It's OBVIOUS. The Germans are using their own dead soldiers to make soap! Don't deny the facts! The Fiends! As if roasting babies on the spits of their bayonets wasn't bad enough!

Listen carefully to the way our leaders speak. They cry for sanctions and in the same breath refer to “mounting evidence” that “points to” and like phrases. Listen to NATO's Stoltenberg “And we have to gather all the detail so this can be an actual – have a war crimes trial.” In other words, they don't yet have “all the detail”... and without all the detail they can't possibly know if in fact a war crime was committed. They might have suspicions. The suspicions may be well founded. But -- where have we heard it before? -- “suspicion is not guilt.”

I am not denying that an atrocity took place. I am not defending it if it did. I simply do not have all the facts and I am not willing to rely on a press that sensationalizes everything or on a Ukrainian government that is not an “unbiased” observer and that has an obvious interest in creating atrocity propaganda. Of course, Russia denies and attempts to sow doubt. But the fact that Russia sows it does not mean that doubt is not a good thing to start off with. Judiciousness begins with skepticism.

All I am saying is that before our leaders run off half-cocked and impose yet further sanctions which will hurt ordinary working people around the world more than they hurt Putin, they ought at least be forced into cold showers in order to temper their inflamed minds.

Is that too much to ask?