Where (not when) should the conversation start?

 At this point in time, it would seem that leftist politics has gone insane. It looks like they get everything wrong that they can get wrong, and yet it's not always clear what makes this the case. This does not mean, however that the right has gotten everything right, because the right is not exactly backwards of what the left is doing. The right doesn't even have a clear position on all issues, at least the kind of principled reasoning it would ideally prefer to have. 
Why isn't the right Right? Maybe it's because it simply defends the past, no matter how obscure the rationale for various issues are. Like, everyone basically agrees that murder is wrong, but the number of people that believe something is not what makes the belief true or good. We need REASONS. 
Ironically, the left has been giving reasons for their positions, even when their reasoning is suspect or otherwise unconvincing. Like their pushing of the global warming agenda. How do we know their supposed experts haven't been paid off to reach whatever conclusions benefit the increase of power to the United Nations or other communistic institutions? In other words, how do we know their experts aren't biased or coerced? Maybe the only grants that come to scientists to make their studies are provided by those rich and powerful enough to afford the cost. How do we know that the people with scientific credentials haven't already been indoctrinated to support communist ideas and agendas? The university system has been steadily taken over by left wing activists, at least since the days that hippies went to graduate school in order to avoid the draft. 
It is not altogether uncommon for conservatives to read from the left in order to understand their strategies. We do sometimes read books like Saul Alinksy's "Rules for Radicals," but this book is mainly a book on methodology, not on the theory or purpose behind the leftist agenda. We know they engage in the long slow march through the institutions, to systematically revolt from within. And they have infiltrated the intelligence community, the justice department, non-governmental organizations, etc. They obviously manipulate Hollywood and news media and pass off their propaganda points as fact to the gullible masses. But what practically can we do about any of that? Do we honestly have anything to offer to replace them if we were granted the opportunity to do so? I would suspect not, because currently at least, the right is operating from a reactionary position rather than proactive one. We have no robust vision for where our culture should be going. We aren't going to put the genie back in the bottle.
We have to know how to respond to and refute the left's cultural and moral relativism. They, in turn, are trying to overcome what they mistakenly call the Authoritarian Personality. It's not a mistake to say that tradition speaks from moral authority, the mistake comes through implication that their position isn't just another form of authoritarianism.
Without any authority whatsoever, we end up with anarchy, where there is no legitimate authority outside of what physically force declares is right. Do you want to be a Machiavellian? I would hope not, so let's just assume that's not where we want to go, even though the media has us brainwashed into thinking it is. Its also a false position to take when the news media talks up an authoritarian right in the United States. Republicans are by definition a centrist position. Let me explain:
Monarchy is when the authority is rooted in a single person. Democracies assert that authority comes from the masses. They are both forms of authoritarianism as you can see. The question is whether the tyranny comes from a single, god-like person, or if it comes from the untutored masses that don't know what they're even talking about. We have overthrown the monarchy, and we value religious pluralism, so there is no official extreme right to speak of here. Oh sure, there may be a few thousand individuals who would prefer that we had that, but it's not a real force. It's a leftist fantasy to believe in a fascism in America. The extreme positions of fascism and communism were both fought against in the 20th Century. It's over. Americans reject both extremes. Yet there are people with real power that would like us to believe these options are not only real, but a serious threat. The only threat is the real problem created by treating the theories as real things. Academics mostly, that believe Communism is a genuine solution to the imagined problem of a fascist right... they even conflate populism with fascism, when its more likely their own party leaders have more in line with fascism in them than the typical voters on the street level do. Why does the left attack free speech in the university system and on social media? Why are they so afraid of competing ideological frameworks being worked out to what they claim is the absolute truth of their authoritarian position? Why are they after our guns? They say its because we want to get rid of the violence against each other, but we all know they don't want us to be able to defend oursleves when it comes time for the state to come down on us and make us into the next Venezuela. We aren't even allowed to talk about the fact that most gun violence happens with pistols when the guns we need to fight off the police state are sub machine guns. I say let them take our pistols. At least leave us with our 30 ought 6's. We're the ones with the numbers. With enough people and their deer rifles, we can defend ourselves against Stalin's and Mao's forces. 
Historically the compromise Authority rooted in a monarch or it being rooted in illiterate masses is to have a representative democracy, ie a Republic where those with at least some amount of expertise can hash it out amongst themselves what we all will collectively follow. Statecraft, just like everything else, requires both theoretical and practical knowledge beyond what is provided to an average citizen. We need these experts to be trained in how to deal with problems that most of us don't even understand. And we need to be able to trust there are at least some experts available that have our best interests at heart, to fight against the corporate interests that only serve themselves and their globalist buddies. 
Is it sheer ignorance that academics so often overlook the historical realities of communism? It takes a special kind of stupid to believe that communism will ever be a force for good. We have no problem seeing the evils of the Nazi's, but for some reason the dangers of Leninism escape the idiots in the universities. Are they emotionally persuaded by a naïve (hedonistic/materialistic) utilitarian ethos? Are they caught in the grips of a Nietzschean slave morality where they cannot grasp the ideas of the Roman Good since they only view those with greatness as their oppressors?
I do not ask these questions as a way in which to avoid their position. I genuinely want to know how otherwise intelligent people can be persuaded by leftism. I mean, aside from the professionals in the intelligence community who are actively engaged in psyops against the American people... those professionals who don't even have the courage to admit there is a war on between their handlers and the average person. At some point I might look at the methodologies of mind control, but it's kind of beside the point. Why do our own citizens take these jobs in the spy trade when they know they are working for amoral asshats? Is it just out of greed that they work for the enemy of the people? And for those who are funding these propaganda efforts, wouldn't they prefer to belong to their own species and work on behalf of the general welfare? I suppose they could rationalize it to themselves by thinking that SOMEbody has to be in charge, so it might as well be those who have been bred for the job. They likely believe they deserve to exploit the rest of us. A few of them might even have the courage to be honest with themselves where they realize they are straight up evil. True psychopaths like this should be locked away or destroyed rather than be given jobs in government or sitting on boards of international corporations. 
We really need to purge ourselves of the roughly 8,000 people at the top, but until then we need to understand the hundreds of thousands of servants below them that think communism ( or fascism, or crony capitalism- whatever you want to call it at that level ) is a good idea. Then maybe can explain it to the MILLIONS or possibly BILLIONS who have been brainwashed by them into voting Democrat. We don't have to worry about convincing the dead people to change their mind, since their votes go away with the Democrats. But seriously, there are just so many people who have good intentions who are indoctrinated in the university system ( if they get that far ) to think that communism could work, or should work, or would somehow benefit the common man if were finally tried as it was theorized... 
In fairness I do not believe the conservatives have as of yet answered the communist sympathizers' underlying concerns. We do have people who have offered economic responses, Friedman and Hayek possibly, but I confess I know very little about them, yet I doubt they did much in terms of offering a moral response. Libertarians in general do want a free market, but I think fall short of understanding a free society in the political sense. Maybe Rawls and Nozick are a little closer to offering a contemporary discussion of political systems, but again I don't know enough to offer intelligent commentary.
I hope to eventually remedy my lack of education in some vital areas, but life is short and we have to choose our battles. I want to eventually be able to understand what the average leftist really wants, and why they would support evil (from my perspective admittedly) as they do, so I can offer them some alternative to their unwise and ill-informed loyalties. I speak in this way because I know there are those on the other side who speak this way towards me. They see me as the ill-informed one. I wish to honestly address this challenge. I just warn them that I am likely to be less gullible than they are in terms of accepting weak arguments in the Marxist and Freudian traditions concerning things like definitions for human nature and what constitutes a rational world view. I want to offer them a run for their money. 
I'll see you in the blogosphere. I hope we can at least agree this far today, that there is a need for free speech in order to conduct the great dialectic that pushes culture towards ever higher forms of enlightenment and freedom. Without this conversation, there is no other option than to resort to a might makes right scenario. At which point, I'll meet you on the battlefield. Are you prepared for that? 

Competing Truth Claims

 It's a simple truism and becoming a bore to talk about the fact that we live in an era of Fake News. We need to understand where it comes from so we can put it behind us, or at least be done with all of the drama... I am frustrated with the frustration. 
The promise of the Internet is to include more voices in the global conversation, and the people who hate it are those with the most to lose. Those who previously enjoyed a hegemonic control over public dialogue and debate get nervous about the idea that not only are people disagreeing with their official narratives, but they are also daring to ignore their topics completely in favor of what us little people would prefer to talk about. At some level, even if you disagree with what they want you to think, they are still in control since they are determining the topics we are disagreeing about. But to ignore their garbage and instead choose to think our own thoughts really ruffles their feathers. 
We can think a little bit about how the majority of news stations all reporting in lock step the content that all of the rest are covering. A truly gullible soul might just think they all sound the same because they are all reporting on the same truths, but then you compare the words spoken and it starts looking an awful lot like straight up plagiarism. The thing is, they are not all doing their own homework; they are spoon fed the same stories from their corporate overlords and even encouraged to keep the same rhetoric across all platforms. It is more likely to be propaganda plain and simple, because yes, those with positions of power are very much interested in engineering public sentiment about a wide range of topics. It makes us easier to control and predict, which means in turn that they will be able to implement their desired social policies with little to no fanfare or reaction. 
On the other side of things there are what is known as "controlled opposition." These are those corporate news stations that supposedly form the diametrically opposed political stand. The problem is that their arguments tend to be sophomoric and easily refuted by the more mainstream press. There are no real challengers to what the corporations want us to believe. Those who do occasionally show up will end up being disappeared or otherwise deplatformed. The disinvitations to public spaces, the shadow banning in Social Media, the public shaming of unpopular opinions will end up causing you to get fired without a proper hearing. You will lose your friends and family because of your commitment to integrity. Those with power know what they are doing. They have no desire to be right, only to win the argument. They are rhetoricians, not philosophers. Socrates was killed for even being accused of it. How times have changed. 
It is very disturbing to me that so many otherwise rational people will take it on face value whatever the corporate news media reports on, especially since so many of them have no love for corporations generally, yet accept it hook, line, and sinker when the corporations tell them what is true or meaningful or whatever. They listen to the sheer repetition of the bubbleheads on the tv and are mesmerized by it. They accept without any indication of a moment of reflection when they claim that Trump is the one who is lying. All they really know is that he is saying something other than what they want to hear, or something other than what the bubbleheads have programmed them to want to hear. This is not to say that a simple reversal of the corporate position is correct. Remember they have you either way, caught in a trap of unreason and the inability to compromise anywhere. They win because they have controlled our emotions and have us working against each other rather than working together to discover any actual truth that might exist on the subject. Let alone whatever other subjects they are distracting us with by obsessing over the one they are covering. 
We are in a war without ever being told that it was happening to us. No enemy ever declared war on us, at least in any overt fashion. Yet there is a war, to keep us blind and stupid, and compliant in their games. We need to educate ourselves about what they are doing and how to sidestep the landmines they plant. There's a lot more we could be thinking about than what they would ever allow us to realize. They will not allow us the freedom to think if they can help it, and it starts with attacking the rights of free speech. It we cannot speak our own thoughts then we can never think our way into new ideas and conceptual frameworks. This is what they desire- it's what they need in order to keep us subordinate. So long as we continue to fight each other we are not fighting those who are truly to blame. So they stay in power. 
In short, they stay in power because we the people are too lazy to think for ourselves. 

Save Me, Save Us All

I don't like big cities. I don't like the concrete and glass everywhere, and the fact that there are too many people bustling about, so I have chosen to live in a rural area where I have to mow a big yard and put up with the fact that there are no good conversations to be had. I have many subjects that I feel like I need to think about; things that confuse or frustrate me for one reason or another... So I am putting myself out there with a new blog in hopes that someone might be stimulated enough by what I am saying to write me back with a comment. 
The internet is not really that old, and the promise it held in the beginning isn't that long buried under the weight of so-called social media companies. We have to remember that hypertext is magical; if used correctly it could integrate all forms of knowledge and information into something actually digestible by a determined aspirant. Do you remember webrings? People could join with like minded folk with similar projects and achieve more due to creative collaboration and mutual inspiration. Why did we replace that with the more narcissistic platforms that are currently in vogue? Was it ever really our choice? Or did the powers that be decide for us that this is the way we would be using available technologies? 
It doesn't help matters that we live in times of social isolation and the pandemic, or the politicians and pundits in legacy media try to keep everyone confused about what's really going on in the world.
I make this confession that I believe in some conspiracy theories, and actually I would think you'd have to be quite gullible to not think that rich and powerful people get together in smoky rooms to conspire against the common man. Yet no matter how clever these giants of social influence are, for the most part I suspect they are all just trying to hang on to the power they already have, relying on old principles to further their reach into somebody else's business. I don't think it would take all that much on the part of any individuals to collectively upset the apple cart of corrupt and irrational governments. Let us each grow and help each other so we can force the larger social institutions to evolve or die. 
We can do better. We can get back to what works in terms of bringing about true cultural evolution rather than engaging in practices that only bring out the worst in ourselves and each other. I would like to get back to keeping a diary of my thoughts. I want to bring back longform writing and get back to being a serious reader. There's too much to know and learn in this world to let the call go unanswered. Better still, maybe we can make some friends along the way.