See new material below- “Next level hatred”, Elon Musk
A neighbor’s NDE, Wendell Krossa
I was just out for my daily walk in the early dark of approaching winter mornings, expelling my usual fake coughs and throat clearings to give pre-notice to local cougars and bears, time to move back into the bush. I want no more adrenaline rushes, like the recent loud surprised grunt and snort that came from the bush on the roadside as I walked around a corner. And then those large cougar paw prints in the soil of our yard just a few weeks back.
I nodded at my neighbor sitting on his porch in the dark as I passed- “Good mornin”. I was about to walk on by as usual but felt an urge to stop and ask about his recent heart operation. So I retraced my steps and turned into his yard.
He gave me some details- It was his second heart attack and this time they went in with stents through his thigh so it was not too invasive. We agreed with my Dad’s late life summary, “Aging is the shits”.
Then I ventured a curiosity- “During your heart attack did you have any sort of out of body experience?” I was just “drawing a bow at a venture” as such experiences are common among heart attack patients.
My pleasant surprise- He responded, stating emphatically, “I am not a religious person, but I saw a great Light”.
Wow. People having these stunning experiences are all around us. My brother-in-law had one. A friend had one. Another acquaintance told us about his. And on and on… Some research estimates about 5-8% of people have had these experiences. That’s 5 to 8 out of every 100 people you know. Most are shy to talk about them as they fear being considered wacky.
Some have remained silent about their experiences for decades because someone hearing of their experience dismissed it as due to “drugs, lack of brain oxygen, hallucinations”, etc. People then remain silent out of fear of being considered weird or crazy. But these experiences offer valuable insights for the rest of us to benefit from in a substitutionary manner, like the diminishment of fear of death.
On the varied hardcore materialist dismissals of these NDE accounts, Dutch cardiologist/scientist, Pim Van Lommel, covers all of them in his excellent general treatment of the NDE phenomenon, “Consciousness Beyond Life”.
If you don’t agree with what is revealed in these experiences, at least remain neutral in your expression and response to anyone sharing such an experience, not dismissive or degrading. That is the advice given to emergency room staff at some hospitals when a patient recovers and wants to share one of these experiences.
Example of wrong response: An elderly man, a former NHL player, once shared his out-of-body experience with several of us. A friend of mine- hardcore dogmatic atheist- poohpoohed the man, mockingly stating, “Oh, I’ve had the same experience when drinking too much”. That was a careless, callous, and thoughtlessly stupid response to someone trying to share something very personal. I was disgusted with my atheist friend. That other man subsequently refused to talk further about his experience.
Continuing with my early morn conversation with my neighbor… I probed my neighbor in regard to some of the common features of such experiences. I asked him about his state of consciousness during the experience. In NDE research, people having these experiences commonly note their state of consciousness as “hyper-lucid, more real than our waking consciousness in this material reality”. He agreed with that.
I then asked him about the most common feature of NDE’s, the realization that the Light or God is “inexpressible unconditional love”. He reacted a bit to that term- “unconditional love”. Nah, he replied.
I took that as his feeling that it was a too religious-like a term and he was firm that he was not religious. So am I.
I agree with his reaction, because I sense a bit of cringe every time I write or speak the term “unconditional”. Like Cyrus on Gutfeld “Ugghing” the term unconditional.
I get that “unconditional’ evokes as sense of something mushy, too religiously soft, weak-kneed in the face of evil- i.e. impractical “turn other cheek” in the face of violence.
What might be a better alternative that communicates the core point- i.e. that deity is absolutely “no conditions reality, none”? There is nothing of religious conditions with the Light, with God. That was also the central insight of Historical Jesus, until Paul buried that with his highly conditional Christ myth.
Religious traditions are all about religious conditions. They cannot be other and still hold dominate sway over populations. No religion has ever communicated the unconditional nature of God to people. No religion has ever liberated human consciousness from the horrific personality-deforming and mind-enslaving burden of divine conditions and threats of consequent punishment and destruction if conditions are not fulfilled. If any religion were to communicate the true nature of deity to people… well, that would spell the end of religious authority and domination.
My neighbor preferred explaining how he felt in terms of “inexplicable bliss, peace”.
He then added that he thinks a lot about his experience, and he desperately wants to have another similar experience. He has already had two heart attacks but nonetheless wants to experience again that Light, peace, and bliss. I told him about the chemical DMT that many are now taking as a quick short cut to a similar experience of things/realms more real than this.
He further added that he had lost all fear of death. Another common outcome of such experiences.
I was glad that I heeded that urge to turn back from my uphill walk and talk to my neighbor. As I told him, everyone of these experiences is a white crow challenging the black crow narrative of consciousness/mind dependent on the material brain and body for its existence, afterlife beliefs, and major religious theologies of tribally judging, dominating, and punishing deity. Most interesting to me personally, they are a direct challenge to Paul’s Christ myth and an affirmation of the central breakthrough insight of Historical Jesus.
More on Tribal life, Wendell Krossa
A few illustrations of Manobo culture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWSk9tmmLCI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btrd_EqNKQ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvZHkYg5j8s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjqmL1QXFfo
I post this below on Christian Parenti’s research with caution (couched in a qualifier) because in another link below someone reviews Parenti’s arguments and exposes his anti-capitalist socialism and climate crisis hysteria that muddies what appears to be otherwise useful insights scattered through his work.
He offers scattered interesting insights such as the rise to prominence of feelings during the 1960s and 1970s. This fed into the development of Woke, he claims. Where the feelings of those identifying as victims take priority as determining standards for final judgments in varied issues. Personal feelings became a prominent determinant of right and wrong, and even criminalization, as we see coming out of the contemporary victim/victimizer dualism. Victims claim to feel upset, triggered, threatened, uncomfortable by the differing opinions and speech of others, even by jokes, and demand such speech be censored, silenced as “dangerous disinformation misinformation”, and even criminalized.
Note especially that these same people are trying to extend the “hate speech” category (“incitement to immediate violence”) out to include the dissenting comment of others, arguing for disagreement as intolerable, and then bullying those who dissent and resist. There is no true inclusion, diversity, or equality in this Wokeism.
This woke hyper-sensitivity may be generational, as Parenti points out, emerging with the Baby Boomer era and lifestyles. My generation. Before, our parents and grandparents could not afford to lay around feeling hypersensitive, touchy, easily offended by mere words, demanding conformity from disagreeing others. They had bigger concerns- to survive, to get out into life and get busy contributing.
There are some useful insights in this Parenti material, despite cautions about his leftist ideological stance.
Post to a discussion group: Jimmy Dore interviews Christian Parenti on the “Cargo Cult of Woke”, Wendell Krossa
This below may offer some insight on the elite impulse to dominate, to re-instate the elite/commoner divide in our societies, and how elites distract commoners from recognizing that “prime divider” as the real issue by keeping commoners fighting among themselves as in “divide and rule”. I am not affirming all he says, just posting this to evoke thought.
“’Woke’ is an elite plot to undermine class solidarity”, says self-admitted leftist Dore.
As Parenti outlines, Wokeness is not just synonymous with identity politics. Woke subculture has spread into all areas, like corporate America where people see themselves as changing the world but not by vertical struggle against political and economic elites but through a horizontal struggle against fellow citizens and workers who violate cultural norms, norms of etiquette, a struggle against people who don’t speak correctly, use the right pronouns, etc. And the belief behind this is that they (through Woke) will change cultural reality.
He continues… Woke also has an intense concern with psychological well-being that became pervasive in the 60s and 70s. Woke divides the working class and distracts from the real issue of elite domination. The real issue of the superrich and powerful state agencies like the CIA (secret and unaccountable) that control the economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYwwnetSOaw
This from one summary of Parenti’s work:
“Eight years ago, the term “woke” was popularized in mainstream culture through Childish Gambino’s hit song, where it signaled an awareness of social injustices, particularly those perpetuated by systemic racism. “Stay woke” meant staying alert to the potential dangers posed by institutional powers. However, in recent years, “woke” has undergone a significant transformation, morphing from a call to consciousness into a shorthand for a new kind of political correctness—one that gives off a radical sheen, but is without true class politics.
“In his latest article for *Catalyst Magazine*, “The Cargo Cult of Woke,” Christian Parenti examines how this shift in meaning reflects broader cultural and political changes. Parenti argues that what we now call “woke” culture is less about genuine social change and more akin to a “cargo cult”—a symbolic performance of radicalism that ultimately serves to reinforce the status quo rather than challenge it. As Parenti writes, “Woke politics is not the politics of emancipation; it is the politics of submission, disguised as resistance.”
Read Parenti’s work here: https://catalyst-journal.com/2024/06/the-cargo-cult-of-woke
My comment on Dore’s interview (this part was posted to a discussion group):
Dore interviews Parenti about the development of Woke, the cult that does not go after elites but rather after fellow citizens who do not speak correctly, who do not use the right and approved words, who do not acknowledge native land rights, who do not speak in the new approved pronouns. Woke zealots go after fellow citizens who do not agree that they will change reality with all this political correctness.
This, agree Dore and Parenti, is all about dividing the working class, keeping us commoners fighting one another.
Parenti says the superrich owning class, works with the secretive intelligence agencies to control societies, to control the economy. The superrich convert their wealth into political power.
Parenti is tracing the history of how the Left in the English world became the cargo cult of Woke that believes “social justice revolution can be achieved through safety-oriented rituals of political etiquette”. He details how post-WW2, the CIA began working with major financing foundations to “manage the left”, meaning the NCL as in “non-communist left”. This was a project that began in post-war Europe and then spread around the world. They (the CIA) worked with the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and other NGOs on this issue.
Their project, says Parenti, involved things like directing inner city black concerns in directions that would make people feel good about their culture and color. The Ford Foundation was significantly involved in this project of working with black communities, in funding left political movements, and out of this comes Wokeness. The goal was to decouple the left from economic issues and to funnel them toward cultural issues, to redirect discontented people away from class issues to focus on cultural issues as in identity issues.
As Jimmy sums up- This comes from way back in the early post-war era and it comes from the top down, from intelligence agencies, state agencies, and NGOs. And its all about elite control of economies and societies. And Parenti, in other material, further traces this elite project to defuse commoner’s potential dissent and access to elite wealth and power, back to the influence of President Madison.
The overall project of contemporary elite promotion of Woke is to promote faction and division in order to prevent commoners from seeking more economic power and control. The elites recognize that commoner discontent will always be there and that poses a threat to elite control of economies and wealth.
A major concern is to prevent the working class from coming together and posing a danger to wealthy elites who control of the economy. It’s a project to keep the citizen factions divided and fighting, to keep social discontent going in that direction.
The elite solution is “divide and rule”.
Glen Greenwald and others have noted this also- i.e. that the real battle in our societies should not be between the left and right positions of citizens/workers, but it should be about commoners against elites.
Elites recognized long ago that worker resentment will always be there, so, according to Parenti, they learned to channel that discontent toward irrelevant things, and this is what Wokeness emerged to become- to channel commoner resentment away from elites and toward distractions in the culture.
The history of this over the post-WW2 era has been about nudging, convening, responding to conditions as they develop across the decades, says Parenti. It was no plan from the beginning to create “Woke” as we know it today, but that is where it ended up going.
Parenti says this all takes off after the 70s following the Church committees and other exposes of illegal CIA involvement in US politics. Now we have the National Endowment for Democracy as the chief CIA front now, doing their dirty work under the guise of democracy.
And this review of Parenti’s work (by someone else) exposes his climate crisis obsession and socialist dreaming. I am not with him on this.
https://spectrejournal.com/false-profits/
This is what really influences climate. This is useful for understanding climate change in its full context, the larger paleoclimate context of the past hundreds of millions of years.
“Is Paleoclimate Cyclic? It’s a Mystery to Me”, Kirby Schlat, Oct. 23, 2024
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/23/its-a-mystery-to-me/
Schlat points to the good research of Henrik Svensmark on cosmic rays summed in his book “The Chilling Stars”. Cosmic rays have a significant influence on climate change because they ionize aerosols and cause cloud formation, reflective cloud that blocks solar radiation and cools the Earth. An active sun and its magnetic field, on the other hand, blocks incoming cosmic rays and prevents cloud formation which then results in warming climate.
Schlat says, “The Story of Climate Change is based on the concept of atmospheric ionization by high energy cosmic rays initiating aerosol and cloud formation. This results in a warming or cooling planet Earth…”
He adds, “Radio observations of exo-galaxies indicate that cosmic rays are galactic plane polarized and are confined to spiral arm structures. This means that during our solar system’s transit through the Milky Way spiral arms the cosmic ray flux will be modulated. High flux levels during spiral arm crossings result in cloudy and cooling climates while lower flux during inter-arm space crossings results in less cloudy and warming climates. These we can call geologic Ice House and Hot House epochs…”
He explains, “As our solar system continues to orbit the galactic center, we appear to encounter the same spiral arms and inter-arm regions again and again…”
“Remember, a Hot House is manifested by inter-arm space crossing during our galactic orbit. Our planet will remain within the cold Sagittarius spiral arm for another 120 million years or so – driving cloudier and cooler climates. We will linger near in-plane within this arm for another 2 to 3 million years driving cloudy and cool climates…
“In about 120 million years we will finally cross the Sagittarius spiral arm. We will exit this Ice House with its periodic glacial ages and enter the next Hot House inter-arm space on our way into the next spiral arm region – the Perseus arm. Round and round we go.”
This from one of the best sources on climate science “co2coalition.org”. This is framed in terms of climate information on Wyoming but varied points below apply to climate worldwide. Another good summary from these top scientists.
“Wyoming and Climate Change: CO2 Should Be Celebrated, Not Captured”. See full report at…
Quotes from the report:
“This report examines the actual and projected effects of the climate on the State of Wyoming in response to proposals to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) through the use of “carbon capture” in order to avert purportedly catastrophic atmospheric warming.
“This research concludes that Wyoming – like the planet – is benefiting from warming that began more than 300 years ago. Efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are unnecessary and exorbitantly expensive and would make no measurable difference in temperature.
“Carbon Dioxide
“Claims that carbon dioxide is a pollutant posing an “existential threat” are contradicted by scientific data. Today’s levels of CO2, while representing a recent increase, are significantly lower than they have been during nearly all of Earth’s history….
“Though elevated compared to the recent past, modern concentrations of CO2 are one-sixth of the average over the last 600 million years. Viewed in this geologic context, we are at near-historically low levels of CO2.
“Temperature…
“Our data analysis shows that high daily temperatures peaked during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s and have been in a 90-year decline. This is confirmed by reviewing the percentage of days that were reported to be hotter than 100°F (37.8°C) by Wyoming temperature stations….
“There has been, however, a beneficial increase in the minimum nighttime temperatures, which has led to a lengthening of the Wyoming growing season….
“In summary, the slight increase of about 1.2°F (0.7°C) in the average temperature in the last 120 years is being driven by reductions in extreme cold rather than increases in extreme heat….
“Precipitation
“Although drought is projected by the most recent National Climate Assessment (NCA4) to worsen because of climate change, the historical data refute this claim….
“Severe Weather
“NCA4 claims an increasing incidence of severe weather is a product of climate change, but scientific data indicate no such trend. According to the World Health Organization’s Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, deaths from natural disasters have plunged more than 90% from a yearly average of 54,000 in the 1920s to 4,500 in the last decade….
“Agriculture
“Contrary to claims of agricultural declines, global food production is greatly outpacing population growth. This boost in agriculture is attributable to modest warming, increasing carbon dioxide (CO2 fertilization effect) and the use of fossil fuel-derived nitrogen fertilizers. Because of a naturally warmer climate and the CO2 produced by the use of fossil fuels, the world currently sustains tenfold the number of people (8.04 billion) than at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (791 million)….
“Greening
“The most significant positive consequence of rising concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide is that of greatly increased plant growth. Global leaf area increased by a stunning 5.4 million km2 from 2000 to 2017. This area is equivalent to the area of the Amazon rainforest.
“The CO2 Coalition was established in 2015 as a non-partisan educational foundation operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code for the purpose of educating thought leaders, policy makers, and the public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide (CO2) to our lives and economy.”
My conclusion from this evidence: There is no “climate crisis” and no need to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies.
“Death Cult De-growthers Want to Put Lipstick on a Pig”, Charles Rotter, Oct. 22, 2024
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/22/death-cult-degrowthers-want-to-put-lipstick-on-a-pig/
Rotter responds to the de-growth arguments of Larry Elliott…
“Degrowth, for the uninitiated, is all about forcing society to shrink economic activity, produce less, consume less, and basically live smaller. Proponents believe this will somehow reverse climate change and save us all from doom. But here’s the real joke: de-growthers think you’ll buy this nonsense if they slap some fresh paint on it. It’s like they’re trying to turn the same rancid stew into gourmet cuisine by adding a sprinkle of parsley.
“Selling Misery as Salvation
“Elliott tries to dress up degrowth as some noble sacrifice for the planet.”
Here Michael Shellenberger notes the desperation of Democrats fearing election loss so resorting to the “Hitler/fascist” smear to discredit their opponent.
Further, their fear of “losing total control” of public news and dominant state narrative (Hilary Clinton) drives their demand for more censorship.
As Shellenberger outlines below, they are now resorting to direct lies, constructing comments attributed to their enemy without verifiable evidence.
“Kamala Harris’ Hitler-Focused Closing Argument Is A Shameful Stain On Her Party: Democrats are the party of mass censorship, the weaponization of the CIA, FBI, and DHS, and the politicization of everything. What does that sound like to you?”, Michael Shellenberger, Oct. 25, 2024
https://www.public.news/p/kamala-harris-hitler-focused-closing
Quotes from link:
“Trump is a fascist who sells out America, says Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in a new advertisement released yesterday. “John Kelly, a four-star Marine general, has told us Trump said, ‘Why aren’t my generals like those of Hitler’s?’” Harris says over images that look like a Republican is holding up a Nazi salute to Trump. “He admires dictators.”…
“All of this is happening against the backdrop of the greatest elite panic since the invention of the Internet, and perhaps the greatest elite panic since the invention of the printing press, which is the war by governments, ruling parties, and global elites on free speech in general and on Elon Musk and X in particular. Over just that last few weeks we saw the world’s most influential philanthropist, Bill Gates, and both of President Barack Obama’s Secretaries of State, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, call for mass censorship and the criminalization of “misinformation.”…
“They view Musk, X, and free speech as an existential threat. And the only way they can address it is by electing Harris and using the power of the US government to do everything in its abundant administrative and legal powers to re-gain control of it.
“As such, part of the accusation of fascism is projection by people like Hillary Clinton, who believe “we lose total control” without government censorship of social media platforms, and who yesterday said that the people who attend Trump’s planned Madison Square Garden rally on Saturday are equivalent to Hitler supporters.
“Seventy percent of Democrats supported government censorship of social media before Musk took over X, and the media have relentlessly attacked Musk for two years as a fascist who uses misinformation to manipulate the public. Now, they are accusing him of trying to take over the government by campaigning for Trump. It’s projection, plain and simple.
“And there is a nefarious dark force inside the censorship demands, too. Around the world, from Europe to Ireland to Australia, we have seen politicians demand censorship even at their own political expense. The main Irish politician advocating censorship has destroyed her political career. It is an important reminder that many and perhaps most politicians do not work for the people or even themselves but rather for powerful interest groups, political parties, and financial interests, often connected to high levels of the Intelligence Community and the news media, which views Musk as a direct threat to their legitimacy and market share.”
Shellenberger notes certain media outlets that play critical roles in this new totalitarian push…
“The Atlantic has become the publication of choice for Democrats and Intelligence Community (IC) intermediaries and an ostensibly “former” CIA employee to demand mass censorship…
Shellenberger argues that we need a new Church Commission to rein in the agencies meddling in US democratic processes, the real “threats to democracy”.
“A Church Committee 2.0 should get to the bottom of US government involvement in censorship, including by DHS, CIA, FBI, NSF, White House, and CDC; the Hunter Biden laptop disinformation effort involving the FBI and CIA, and IC use of entrapment and confidential human sources, including in the January 6 capitol riot and the Governor Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping hoax.”
In another recent post Shellenberger says
“In addition to denigrating their own allies and supporters as low-status oppressors, many woke progressives have become openly venomous. While it is perfectly legitimate for the Left to express pro-Palestine views, the destructive and vindictive impulse of woke ideology… in which shaming and belittling take precedence over actual debate…”
https://www.public.news/p/toxic-femininity-and-wokeism-are
“Toxic Femininity And Wokeism Are Driving Men, Jews, Billionaires, and Muslims Away from Harris to Trump”, Michael Shellenberger, Alex Gutentag, Oct. 26, 2024
Now, more probing of what lies beneath or behind… Wendell Krossa
Elon Musk said some things a while back that sparked this (his comments below). This is prep before I get to Musk’s comment on “next level hatred” coming from the left side of our societies today. What is that? What drives it?
Here are some preparatory thoughts…
At a recent talk overseas, atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen said that 60s Marxists realized they could not bring down Western civilization through a public democratic approach so they decided to try a different approach and go after the thing that drives our civilization- fossil fuels. That, they believed, would be a more effective way to bring down the West and hence their subsequent crusade to demonize CO2 as the new threatening monster or evil that they had to fight and destroy.
And typical of all these apocalyptic crusades, they framed their war against carbon with an apocalyptic narrative because all these “profoundly religious crusades” are driven primarily by apocalyptic themes where you create an exaggerated enemy and threat that makes you feel righteous in attacking and destroying that enemy. You then present yourself as engaged in a noble cause of “saving the world… saving democracy”. You get to portray yourself as heroic. This is virtue-signaling at its highest reach of self-righteousness, justice, and honor. Add that you also get to portray yourself also as “compassionate”. You are saving something critical for everybody else’s survival, you are saving the “oppressed” from their oppressors. You are too wonderful to even be criticized or challenged. How dare you, you “disinformation/misinformation” dissenters.
To set your crusade in motion you must first scare the shit out of people- the commoners that you want to control and use/abuse to support your crusade. So, you first terrorize them with your apocalyptic story, your exaggeration of some enemy that you claim threatens your world, some evil that must be fought. Note the endless embrace of simple-minded tribal dualism as critical in this, Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism brought to play in some this-world situation.
This elite totalitarianism was expressed well by H. L. Mencken (In Defense of Women):
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”.
It’s the same old totalitarian formula of “fear=control”. Fake monsters validate manipulation and control of people.
This is not about picking on my fellow liberals but about trying to understand where it all went wrong. Why so many of our fellow citizens identifying as “liberal/democrat” have abandoned Classic Liberal principles, systems of law, institutions, and now became highly “illiberal”. Former liberals now fighting democracy and freedom and pushing a new totalitarianism that is coming from within our liberal democracies in the form of extreme leftist Woke Progressivism.
Today’s elites use varied state agencies and front programs (i.e. “misinformation/disinformation” laws and programs) to enact their goals. Independent journalists have traced out the main actors involved in such projects.
It all feeds back into one larger narrative and background project- bringing down Western civilization in its current form, especially undermining or overturning the Classic Liberalism that was constructed to protect the freedom and rights of every person, equally. Classic Liberalism was designed to constrain elites from manipulating and controlling common citizens.
Today’s elites are replaying an ancient pattern, pushing for a new collectivism where a small elite will control the collective, and thereby restore the ancient “elite/commoner divide” that has dominated all human societies across history. Elites must establish control over populations of commoners. They cannot tolerate populations of free individuals, equal with elites and still maintain elite domination and control that protects the privileges, wealth, and power of elites. They must stop the commoner threat to that domination and control.
Prominent in the mix, as exposed by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, Elon Musk, and others, elites must control the public narrative and the propagandizing media that promote the elite narrative. Traditionally, elites have tried to keep their programs of manipulation and control secret and divert commoners into fighting one another. See the Christian Parenti material below.
It’s not about smoke-filled rooms where cigar-sucking psychopaths plan this elite domination, but more that elites share the same ideological beliefs and positions, and view themselves as enlightened superiors who must control all other in order to “save the world or democracy”. Save democracy from the commoners who will “abuse” it to constrain elite manipulation and control of resources. Hence, elites frame themselves as righteous heroes set against dangerously ignorant commoners who don’t know what is good for themselves. Elites sincerely believe such nonsense. It’s the potency of a false narrative to blind people.
As always, this site looks past the superficial public presentations of these crusades to try to understand what is behind, what is at the root of it all, as in the fundamental narrative themes driving the elite crusades. This site deals with the deformity in human minds and lives that embrace the primitive myths of “lost paradise, threat of decline to apocalypse, and demand for salvation scheme”. Elites have used this complex of myths from ancient times, Mencken again if you will. This very complex of ideas/beliefs drove and validated Marxism, Nazism, and now drives environmental alarmism. It is now making its way through the political realm in the apocalyptic-scale exaggeration of opponents as irredeemably evil threats to all that is good. You can trace the basic themes of these crusades back to the same old archetypes as ever before.
Insert note/example:
Note how Hollywood functions as elite propaganda media
Start with the Hollywood obsession with apocalypse in its story-telling- the constant incitement of fear of some great threatening enemy/evil that must be conquered and vanquished, exterminated. This pathology deforms the Hero’s Quest.
Hollywood specializes in moralizing, lecturing the public to bow to the hysteria of the climate crusade, to embrace the neo-Marxism of Woke Progressivism, etc.
And they engage the primitive Hellenistic validation of society’s elites as special, superior, better than others (Koester’s “History, Culture and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”). Hollywood elites have constructed an all-year long season of self-congratulatory (virtue-signaling) award shows where the same group of several hundred top elites congratulate themselves with bits of metal and glass, exhibiting how wonderful they are, how superior they are to commoners, and lecturing the public on how bad they are, how they should think and act.
It’s the epitome display of elite narcissistic virtue-signaling. But its all play-acting, not real. These people are not the characters that they play. In fact, behind the scenes we see the real people, just imperfect commoners like the rest of us. The Will Smith slap thing was just a glimpse that erupted unintentionally.
Ricky Gervais in his Golden Globes comments nailed it- You people are the cowardly friends of Epstein, Weinstein, and now Diddy. Cowardly silent, all knowing what was going on behind the scenes but saying nothing to protect victims while endlessly and narcissistically virtue-signaling your compassion in grand public displays. As Jim Carrey admitted after they all applauded Smith- “We are no longer the cool kids”.
Moving along…
My interest in US politics and society is because it illustrates a much larger background thing going on across western liberal democracies- the re-instatement of elite domination over commoners, much of it through Marxist tribal dualism presented in new versions or fronts like Woke Progressivism, and how Western liberals have been deceived by all this.
What the fook is going on? “Madness of crowds” unleashed once again, Wendell Krossa
Intro: Apocalyptic exaggeration and consequent hysteria equals survival fear that produces irrational hatred of some purported evil threat, usually fellow citizens who differ, disagree, and dissent. This does not end well. It may even dangerously shift into the late-stage movement by collapsing crusades toward “exterminate or be exterminated” madness. Pay heed to what Matt Taibbi is exposing about plans for “post-election crackdown”.
This again illustrates my argument, made often here- how the fallacy of apocalyptic distorts reality and leads to dangerous outcomes in societies. The historians I quote as sources have covered this well with the varied examples of Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism. (Historians Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, and others).
When you demonize and dehumanize some opponent, construct the opponent as an irredeemably evil threat/monster, you then scare yourself into irrationality and become willing to embrace “salvation” policies that ruin life “to save the world”, to save your imagined threatened world, the threat that has been hysterically exaggerated all out of proportion to reality. We see this with climate hysteria, and it has now erupted to hysterical extent all over the political arena.
People have created a threatening monster of such exaggerated proportions (typical of apocalyptic narratives) that they now feel obligated to take desperate measures to save their world threatened by the monster that they have created. And the scary thing is that they are sincere in their beliefs. Watch them on media- Joy Reid on MSNBC, Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg on The View, among many others. Hilary Clinton, of course, mamalaing from the background.
First, before affirming Musk’s “next level hatred” let me establish my bona fides as an insider, not an outsider (i.e. keeping it in the family).
From about the mid to late-1970s, I began to grasp more clearly what I had struggled with from childhood, notably during my early 1960s teens- the desire to be free of the meddling, moralizing busybody interventions and control of dominating others, whether parents or other traditional authorities. I began to understand this felt desire for personal freedom generally in terms of “liberalism”, as in the full acceptance, defense, and promotion of equal individual freedoms and rights for everyone, no matter the choices that differing others made (aside from violent assaults where responsible common-sense demands forceful intervention and restraint to protect others).
Over subsequent decades it became clearer that I was wrestling with the political/economic/social system known as Classical Liberalism, something that is somewhat Libertarianish. The “live and let live” thing. You know- Keep government to a minimum. Give people more self-determination, more personal control over their property and lives.
Critical in the mix of my emerging understanding of true liberalism was not just to clarify what I intuitively wanted in terms of personal freedom and self-determination, but to also view differing others as deserving of the same freedoms and rights as full equals, and to protect and promote the same freedoms and rights for all others, just as I wanted for myself. Very much, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. And as some suggest, due to our fundamental oneness, what we do unto others we actually also do unto ourselves. Hmm. Marinate on that. We are all in this life thing together, based on profound and mysterious fundamental realities that we hardly pay any attention to.
Add this element: Essential to treating all others with the same respect that we wish for ourselves, is to avoid ad hominem attacks (attacking persons and their character) and to focus solely on the content of any issues of disagreement among ourselves.
The point here? It has been unsettling to observe over the last decade or so the complete abandonment, even intentional rejection, of the basic principles of Classic Liberalism by so many fellow citizens who until recently identified as “liberals”.
Example: Many of these formerly liberal people, now “highly illiberal”, want censorship of opponents (i.e. a majority of Democrats, some 70% now).
(Insert: Censoring your opponent’s speech is not defending or promoting freedom or “saving democracy”. The true test of belief in and action to protect freedom and save democracy is to protect even offensive speech, upsetting speech, even the enraging speech of opponents. Because (1) who gets to decide what “hate speech” or “disinformation/misinformation” is? And (2) if one side censors the other side, then that will come back to bite the censoring side also. It is best to fight bad speech with good speech in the free public arena.)
Continuing…
The left sector of our societies now frames the different opinions and speech of others as “dangerous disinformation/misinformation”. They claim that opponents are a “threat to democracy” and zealously demonize and dehumanize differing others as “Nazis, fascists, racists, dictators, deplorables”, among many other smears. This is beyond a descent into ugly ad hominem. It is extremist exaggeration of evil and threat- taken to apocalyptic-scale which is into the realm of the “madness of crowds” that we see daily on news media.
I would argue the emergence of apocalyptic-scale hysteria in politics appears to be related (derivative) to the larger background of contemporary apocalyptic hysteria that we have suffered for decades with “climate change crisis” insanity, the ongoing madness of crowds over that. Now infecting politics.
People are beyond hysterical over the monster that they have created to terrorize themselves with and they actually believe the monster is real and is threatening to destroy them. So, with survival impulses incited to desperation, they are moving to the dangerous phase that characterizes collapsing apocalyptic movements- “exterminate or be exterminated”. This is now becoming notably dangerous as Matt Taibbi is documenting the discussions to push for post-election use of force if their side loses, framed as “defending and rescuing democracy”.
So, Arthur Mendel was right (“Vision and Violence”)- apocalyptic is the most violent and destructive idea in history. And interestingly, it dominates Hollywood storytelling and movies. Does that help understand the hysteria and hatred coming from Hollywood liberal types and their political allies?
Insert warning from Matt Taibbi:
“Uh, Oh: New York Times, Washington Post Signal Post-Election Crackdown: Elite anxiety is bleeding into public commentary, suggesting we have more than an election to worry about in the coming weeks”, Matt Taibbi, Oct. 25, 2024
https://www.racket.news/p/uh-oh-new-york-times-washington-post
Continuing…
This hysteria, hatred of differing others, and push toward extermination of threatening others (censoring, silencing, banning, criminalizing), is more noticeable coming from the left side today (formerly my home sector of society), especially through news media. It is expressed in the impulse to instantly pounce on any statement or even a word of an opponent, pull that comment out of its context (note the Charlottesville comments of Trump, for example), twist and distort to frame such comment as the worst of evil and coming from the worst intentions that is possible to attribute to others. Then use that purposefully twisted expression to vilify that opponent, to demonize and dehumanize as much as possible.
This purposeful distortion of the words of opponents is done to present “evidence” that affirms how evil the differing others are. But it is direct and inexcusable lying.
People who have convinced themselves that they face an evil enemy of such grotesque scale as to threaten their life, their entire society, democracy, and all life itself (i.e. commoners using fossil fuels and thereby causing “catastrophic climate change” and inducing the imminent apocalypse), these people will frame to themselves that the emotion they feel toward their threatening enemy is “righteous rage” against evil. While such rage at disagreeing others appears obviously to most others as tribal hatred, those venting such hatred have convincingly framed themselves as heroes in a righteous war against life-threatening evil enemies. Unaware of the psychopathology of left-wing compassion as narcissistic virtue-signaling, the outraged crusaders believe that they are in an existential struggle for survival and salvation, and their heated indignancy is righteous and heroic anger at evil.
All of us are susceptible to the defensive impulse to want to feel good about what we are doing, that we are right, just, and true. Even more, we want to feel heroic due to our inherent impulse to engage some version of the “hero’s quest”.
As with everything, apply the “Test of facts” (Thomas Sowell) to your particular crusade and policies, to your salvation scheme. What are the actual outcomes of your personal “hero’s quest”? Does it affirm Classic Liberal principles, systems of law, and institutions, like the full freedoms and rights of all people, equally? Does your narrative (and related policies) affirm the inclusion of true diversity, the right of others to think and act differently from elite-approved narratives?
Do your beliefs and policies protect all from elite domination, from the elite/commoner divide of societies?
Another element in the mix of understanding “next level hatred”– Many across history have even dragged in the divine for validation of their crusades. Notably, elites across history have tried to hide or validate their power-mongering under the “canopy of the sacred”. Give it the wrapping of ultimate good.
Helmut Koestor presents the Greek version of this as elites during that era presented themselves as embodiments of the divine, as godlike persons. Employing the the long-standing human understanding of God as “Lord/King/Monarch”, and “Judge”. And “Holy” deity as righteously angry at human “sin”.
People similarly validate their anger as “righteous” by appeal to wrathful deity. Note again, Nancy Pelosi venting her outrage at Americans for using fossil fuels, claiming that “Mother Earth was angry” and venting wrath at US commoners through the California wildfires.
This is such infantile mythology, rightly termed “psychopathology”.
These same people even seek to criminalize their opponents, convinced such criminalization is true “justice” for evil sinners.
They further exhibit an ugly spirit of being constantly on the prowl for missteps among their designated enemies by obsessively pouring over their opponent’s speech, over their words, intentionally mis-construing even jokes of opponents, and then unleashing instant condemnation of the differing other’s speech, framed with the worst possible judgment and conclusions. And then following with the effort to ruin and destroy the differing others, and now even toying with the use of state force to stop opponents (again, see Shellenberger, Taibbi, and other’s reporting on this). “Vitriolic hatred gone next level”.
Examples in mainstream media: Note the intentional distortion of the most harmless of comments by opponents as expressions of the most vile evil, backed with claims that such comments come from the worst possible attributable intentions to harm and destroy. Add the arrogance of claims to know the secret motivations and intentions of others.
For example, MSNBC milked days of hysteria over Trump’s obviously sarcastic joke about Hannibal Lector, claiming that Trump was praising the psychopath. Or distorting the Charlottesville comments of Trump as praising White Supremacists, and on and on. The “bloodbath” term in reference to the auto industry.
This continuing frenzy of distorting, demonizing, and dehumanizing opponents comes from what appears, to most of us, to be a place of hatred, resentment, of despising the differing other, of envy… all some of the ugliest features of the human spirit. What happened?
Helpfully, varied journalists and others are now trying to understand this leftist perversion of “compassion”- the “virtue-signaling” claim to be engaged in a righteous battle against evil oppressors and zealously involved in saving oppressed people. But in reality, these people have framed what is so obviously a perversion of the “hero’s quest”, into a consciousness-deforming narrative of extremism that presents itself as a righteous and just battle against intolerable evil.
What Elon Musk expresses below is my observation also, Wendell Krossa (post to a discussion group):
Over the past 8 years, I have been quite stunned by the level of unrestrained hatred coming from my home side over the past decade or so, the liberal left. Hatred that is “next level”. Musk nails the difference here on the attitudes of both sides. (Usually the “bothside-ism” qualifier applies generally to most things, but not here.)
I saw the hatred erupting years ago on mainstream media, notably on my former go-to channel- CNN, where commentators and reporters were no longer presenting neutral commentary or objective news about the other side, but venting unrestrained outrage, commentators red in the face, close to spraying spittle as they rudely shouted over one another on varied panels. Displays of what felt like uninhibited hatred. So also, the late-night comedians, no longer funny but spewing vitriol, humor as vilification. Rob Schneider pointed that out too- that good comedy is something that both sides can laugh at, including the ones being poked fun at. Chevy Chase’s mocking of President Ford’s falls was one example where even Ford joined Chase in his skits of falls.
What is all this now from people who used to claim that they owned tolerance, generosity of spirit, embrace of diversity, love?
Anyway- here is some interesting comment from Elon Musk.
“Elon Musk to upgrade security after left-wing magazine labels him ‘Public Enemy No.2’: Elon Musk endorsed Trump after the first assassination attempt on the former president”, Bradford Betz, Oct. 20, 2024
Quotes:
“Elon Musk said Sunday he planned to upgrade his security after a left-wing German magazine labeled him an enemy of the people…
“I’m like, enemy number 2 of what? Uh, democracy? I mean I’m pro-democracy. I’m literally trying to uphold the Constitution and ensure we have a free and fair election,” Musk said, eliciting applause from the crowd…
“The SpaceX CEO said he was a “little shook” by the “level of vitriolic hatred on the left.”
Here is the point that Musk made that I want to emphasize:
“”They claim they’re tolerant. And yet, they’re incredibly intolerant and spewing hate,” Musk said. “Whereas on the right I see people who tend to regard people on the left as, well, misguided. But they don’t hate them… but the amount of hate coming from the left is like, wow, next level.””