"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
This is a Good Idea. Of course. And, also of course, companies and governments (and agents of governments), including such leftard-cowed/pwned Hivemind sources as PC Mag (which has already published multiple denigrations of and dire warnings about the Musk-Twitter takeover) are. . . uncomfortable with paying for a bully pulpit. Screw ’em with a rusty chainsaw.
Charge Companies, Governments to Use Twitter? It is long since past time to do so.
NEVER (as in DO NOT EVER) take “reporting” on ANYTHING about ANY scientific research as anywhere near what the actual research may (or may not) have shown. EVERY Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind “report” on science in the last couple of decades, at least, that I have read has either been grossly inaccurate (because of stupidity–willful or otherwise–in the reporting and editorial staff? Quite often) or a deliberate attempt to deceive for scaremongering purposes. If the topic is at al interesting to you, LOOK UP THE ACTUAL RESEARCH and read the actual paper cited, if available. It is the only way to discover whether the Hivemind “report” is lying to you or not. Well, you could ask your friendly neighborhood scientist to review it for you, I suppose. ? If you know one who is honest and can actually do decent research.
Gather up all your hens’ teeth to pay for the consultation, though.
Note again: I do not like TRump and would not invite him for dinner or even want to be invited to dinner with him. I don’t need to like him to note that he has done more good for common Americans than the last three or four presidents combined. Hate to admit it, but still, facts are facts. The post linked below was written almost nine months ago. I just saw it the other day, and I’ve taken a couple of days to digest it.
“Everyone Is Smart, Except Donald Trump:” Rabbi Dov Fischer
Read the whole thing.
But I REFUSE to be stuck in the middle of them.
There is almost no real news anymore. Almost all that purports to be so is Hivemind propaganda. It’s to the point that such sites as The Onion, Duffleblog, and The Babylon Bee are as reliable (or seemingly more so *sigh*) than “accredited” media sources.
And the so-called “right” end of the spectrum is little more reliable than the so-called “left” end of the media spectrum. While the opinion columnists at Townhall are generally more truthful than front page “news” at the New York Slimes, so-called “news” sites/organs such as Worldnet Daily, Breitbart, The Blaze,and ZeroHedge are all, to varying degrees, propaganda for the putative “right.”
Frankly, I don’t ascribe to Zero Hedge, for example, any more credibility than any other Hivemind “reporting.” Sure, like ABCNBCCBSMSNBCFOX, etc., it is propaganda, but every lie at least has a truthful counter. Zero Hedge can serve as a source of “idiot bait” research. In that, it can also be a “serious” source of info. . . of sorts (about as much as with any other Hivemind organ, give or take), if one really digs. 😉 Also, just like other aspects of the Hivemind (reflecting the biases of every point on Pournelle’s Political Axes), it can serve as a way of checking on what the Hivemind (at least its portion) is trying to obscure, twist, or otherwise outright lie about. Pulling the threads for amusement, if nothing else, can provide a few moments of entertainment, at least, and occasionally, as with other Hivemind elements, the facts it twists can be verified and lead to real and useful information when placed in their original context.
I laugh at the times I took Walter Cronkite seriously (as anything but an effective propagandist).
No comment on the facts of the Texas church shooting from me, but a comment on bad “reporting” from a Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind organ? Yeh. NY Post called the Ruger AR-556 the monstrous coward used an “assault rifle.” Wrong. The Ruger AR-556 is a semi-automatic. Assault rifles, by common definition from the time of the German WWII StG 44 (abbreviation of Sturmgewehr 44, “assault rifle 44”) has been a rifle that allows select fire between semi-automatic (ONE round fired per trigger engagement) and automatic (multiple rounds fired per trigger engagement).
Note that the NYPost writer did not quote any military source in the sentence below. Nope. Paraphrased a “source” and used a blatantly wrong term to refer to the weapon used:
“Texas church killer [killer’s name redacted; I will never speak or write that name] never should have been able to buy his assault rifle, military brass admitted Monday — acknowledging that the Air Force failed to tell the FBI he had been court-martialed for domestic violence.”
Calling the Ruger AR-556 an “assault rifle” is simply stupid. Or disingenuous. Or stupidly disingenuous.
Oh, and the weenie writer also referred to four guns as “a small arsenal.” *feh*
EVIDENCE FOR RUSSIAN INVOLVEMENT IN DNC HACK IS NONEXISTENT
But that won’t stop the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind from “convicting” The Trumpery and Russia.
Because they tend to all “report” the same flat-out lies and skewing of truth into lies, I refer to news media as a hivemind and its minions as podpeople. Oh, and the MEdia” thing with a capital “ME”? Because the real “news” is how it’s all about themselves to themselves and their tribe, and the importance, FIRST and FOREMOST, of their lying tongues. . .
I stopped believing that “network” news (and major “news” papers and magazines, etc.) really reported news when I realized that Walter Cronkite was skewing (lying about, really) reports on the Tet Offensive. . . and that the rest of the media was happily following his distortions. So, since then, the Hivemind has been relegated to the “propaganda folder” for me.
Before the growth of the Internet, that mostly left me with conversations with primary sources, where I could get such. Fortunately, I used to have a wide array of primary sources in the military, business, and politics available in those long ago days of yore . . .
Now, when the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind “reports” something “shocking” that someone has said or done, there is often a video of the actual words/deeds that can be relied on to put the Hivemind lies in perspective. Most people still don’t do their own homework, though, so the weight of the Hivemind lies still has a strong effect on society.
If one follows the narrative of hivemind “reporting” on any given topic, and compares it to what one can determine of the real world, one might be left with the impression that American media gets a daily download from an alien mothership orbiting Uranus. . .
. . .please turn out the lights?
I got a call from a client this A.M. They’ve sold their house/acreage and businesses and are moving to Panama ~September 15. Giving up on the U.S. and just need a lil “exit work” on their tech. Doomsday Preppers? No, just worn down by “gummint bureaucrappy” created and encouraged by Left AND Right (neither of which is either “progressive/liberal” or “conservative”) and fearing more “quantitative easing” and other “feddle gummint meddlin'” in the economy will wipe out their retirement years.
They are not alone in their fears.
One of the most obvious symptoms: A president is–or has been–mostly just emblematic of the direction of the country, but King Putz’s unconstitutional diktats (and recent diktats spewing from the agencies he rules) have certainly demonstrated a complete lack of respect for the rule of law and expanded–thanks to a supine Congress–the powers of the presidency far, far beyond any level seen before (save, perhaps, for the Lincoln Years). Reversal of the Obama Blight will take decades, and many, MANY down-ticket elections of honorable people (though where those can be found, I can’t say), to reverse. . . if it is possible at all, especially given the propaganda machines of the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind and Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries.
For the 2016 presidential race, I could hope for a clear choice between an openly blatant socialist and a genuine conservative, but I’m unsure where we could get one of the latter on the ticket, nowadays. . . Heck, just FINDING one would be a task for Diogenes.
I’ll cite just one example I saw today–there are others today and many, many more every day, but one will do for now–of evidence that the Hivemind is made up of ignorant doofuses. In a USA Today article, reproduced from The Des Moines Register, Hivemind member Jennifer Jacobs wrote,
The Trail of Tears was the name given to the route the Cherokee people walked in the late 1890s when the U.S. government forcefully removed them from their homelands in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee to live in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.
OK, I’ll admit this one is more than a year old, and yes, I just saw it today. That’s more of an indication of how much I avoid USA Today than anything else, but not really germane to my point.
No one–not Jennifer Jacobs, not her editor(s) at the Des Moines Register and certainly not any editorial staff at USA Today–saw anything wrong with that statement. But. *sigh* The Trail of Tears stretched between 1831 and 1838, NOT “the late 1890s,” and the Cherokee were the last of the Five Civilized Tribes to be dispossessed and “relocated” via that “Trail of Tears.” The experiences of the Choctaw, the Seminole, the Creek and the Chickasaw all preceded the Cherokee “relocation” in 1838, and it was a Choctaw leader who, in 1831, first referred to a “trail of tears and death.” (BTW, Alexis de Tocqueville is a primary source witness to the removal of the Choctaw during his stay in Memphis Tennessee in 1831.)
That NO ONE at either Hivemind organ (nor in any of the comments by similarly illiterate readers of USA Today) noticed the egregious error last year or in the year since (well, until my own comment made today) is reason enough to avoid these crap journalism organs, especially since this sort of illiterate content (and illiterate editing) seems to be more and more par for the course in Hivemind organs all around.
Just sayin’.
Oh, yeh, the article’s about a Dhimmicrappic Congresscritter tweeting that the results of a basketball game evoke #trailoftears. *gagamaggot* Yeh, Congresscritter Braley is an ass and a jackwagon, but he’s not a patch on THE prototypical Democrat who is tied in my mind with for the title of worst president of the country’s first 200 years and was a major force bringing about the Trail of Tears: Andrew Jackson, bigot supreme, THE force behind the foundation of the Democratic Party.
BTW, lest someone doubt my quote of the illiterate Jennifer Jacobs, here:
Yesterday, James O’Keefe twitted *heh* about “hidden camera” video of Piers Morgan on gun control. *meh* Yeh, yeh, a few non-committal seconds of Morgan and loads of other nobodies (from the Hivemind left, apparently, though) on the topic.
(*heh* You did catch that, right? “…and loads of other nobodies” :-))