How America Lost Its Mind

There is a looong article in "The Atlantic". Under the above title.  It can however be summarized briefly.  KURT ANDERSEN argues that as many as a majority of Americans have always believed silly things.  From my knowledge of history, I am inclined to agree.  And if you don't know much history, Andersen gives you a grand tour of it.

He attributes this flexibility of belief to the general freedoms that Americans have.  The land of the free is, by extension, the land of freedom to believe anything that you want to.  Again, I think there is something in that.

But towards the end of his article Andersen comes of course to TRUMP.  And you can guess what he thinks of Trump.  Trump has no reality contact at all, according to Andersen. He is mad. Leftist thinking and assumptions and customs and procedures have become so entrenched in public discourse that to blast through it all sounds mad to Andersen -- or at least morally defective.

And from Trump's success he concludes that Americans generally have reached new heights of derangement.  But how to explain that fall? The obvious culprit is the internet, which allows all sorts of craziness to spread without check or hindrance.  And, as a secondary cause, Andersen cherry-picks a few things that some Republicans have said that seem particularly corrupting to the search for truth.  Christianity in particular seems to him a major form of brain-rot.

What he is completely blind to, however, is the total disregard for the truth on the political Left.  And that is not controversial.  The Left themselves tell us that.  They say:  "there is no such thing as right and wrong".  And they live that belief.  Almost any Leftist argument is one big exerise in cherry-picking.  What a Leftist polemicist writes normally sounds right and reasonable  -- until you hear the stuff that the Leftist has omitted from his argument.  Telling only one side of the story is the Leftist specialty.  It is so very common that I get the impression that they can do no other.

Conservative polemic, by contrast, usually START OUT with the Leftist argument and then puts forward contrary information. Conservatives keep trying to refute Leftists with facts -- a quite futile operation.  The fine-honed psychological defence mechanisms of the Left -- denial, projection, compartmentalization etc. -- are only one way that they protect themselves from acknowledging inconvenient facts.

Mostly, they do their best to ensure that they never even hear a conservative presentation in the first place.  I have seen them literally get up and run away from a conservative presentation of facts that Leftists normally omit from their consideration.  And, of course, they make huge efforts to censor or disrupt conservative speech so that they don't have to hear it in the first place.  And if a speaker of conservative arguments can be got at and punished for his speech, they will do that too -- ask James Damore of Google about that.

So the Left do their level best to ensure that the whole truth will never come out.  But that inevitably fails.  There are some channels of communication that let people know how much falsehood there is in Leftist writing. People listen to the mainstream TV channels and mainstram newpapers only to find eventually that none of it could he trusted.  Just one man -- Rupert Murdoch -- has cracked the TV and newspaper bubble.  With Fox news, The New York post and the Wall St Journal, Murdoch has made widely available information that would once not have come to the attention of the general public.  And enough people take in Murdoch's information to use it in everyday discussions.  So even people who themselves absorb no Murdoch input will often hear of it by word of mouth. And there are of course radio talkers and blogs that also evade the Leftist straitjacket on information.

So now that people have a growing awareness that they have been systematically deceived, one must expect a certain cynicism to set in.  People begin to ask the age-old question:  "What is truth?" And the answers to that will often be not very sophisticated.  People will seize on any belief that seems plausible to them. So I agree that we now live in an age of heightened irrationality.  The lying Left have propelled us into it.

And the rise of Trump is explainable in the same way.  His distancing himself from the conventional authorities and calling them a "swamp" coincides very well with how many people have been perceiving all the deception that flow from such authorities.  He offers a way out of the intellectual morass that the Left have created.

And even his manner of speech offers hope.  He speaks  in extremely simple English:  Short sentences using very common words.  He comes across even in his manner of speaking as a plain and simple man -- most unlike the smooth pieties of most media figures.  He really does seem different -- mainly because he is.  And even his famous inattention to detail corresponds with how most Americans operate:  They go for the broad outline with no time for details.

So. Yes.  We do live in times where finding the truth can be a big challenge.  But there is after all a fairly easy way to do it if you have time.  You just have to read both sides of every question.  Do that and you will soon see which side is offering a balanced account of reality.

Also: Reality is the ultimate test of whether your theories are right or wrong.  If they are wrong you will not get the results you expect.  If they are right you may make a big breakthrough, as Trump has done with a couple of hundred thousand new jobs being created every month and a big rise on the stockmarket.  The economy could do with a bit more more "madness" like that.

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Indonesia to bust sanctions on Russia

Indonesia said Tuesday it would trade palm oil, coffee and tea for Russian fighter jets, saying it wanted to capitalise on international sanctions on Moscow as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was due to arrive for a visit.

Indonesia and Russia signed a memorandum of understanding to exchange 11 Russian-made Sukhoi fighters for key commodities in Moscow last week, a spokesman for Indonesia's trade ministry said.

"The idea was proposed last year and some people suggested Indonesia should trade the jets with our main commodities," spokesman Marolop Nainggolan told AFP.

The EU and US have targeted Russia with sanctions for alleged meddling in the US presidential election and its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea.

However, Indonesian Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita has said the sanctions, which have forced Russia to seek new markets to import from, could be good news for Jakarta.

"It's an opportunity which should not be lost from our grasp," he said in Moscow last week.

The deal, to be carried out between Russia's Rostec and PT Perusahaan Perdagangan Indonesia, could be an opening for a further bilateral trade deal that extended to energy and aviation, Lukita said.

The exact timeframe and value of the exchange were not clear.

Details of the barter came as Lavrov was to begin his two-day visit to Southeast Asia's biggest economy later Tuesday.

SOURCE

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Tillerson Says Not to Worry, Pacific Air Forces Ready to 'Fight Tonight'

I think Tillerson is right.  Kim just wants attention but he will not do anything that will draw a major assault on him

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson addressed reporters on his flight to Guam Wednesday, telling them not to worry about Kim Jong Un's latest threat.

Soon after the United Nations issued new sanctions as punishment for North Korea's newest ballistic missile test, a Washington Post report surfaced revealing that the regime now has the ability to miniaturize nuclear weapons to fit on to ICBMs. President Trump issued a warning to North Korea, telling the nation they would face "fire and fury" should they continue to threaten the U.S. Just a few hours after those remarks, North Korea reportedly issued a threat against Guam.

It is all plenty to concern Americans. Yet, Tillerson said North Korea is only making a knee jerk reaction to the new sanctions and suggested Kim Jong Un is all bark, no bite.

"I think Americans should sleep well at night, have no concerns about this particular rhetoric of the last few days," he said.

In fact, Tillerson concluded the president used the exact right tone in his message for North Korea and succeeded in getting his message across.

"In response to that, North Korea's rhetoric is just ratcheted up, louder and louder and more threatening," Tillerson noted. "So I think the president, what the president is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong Un would understand, because he doesn't seem to understand diplomatic language."

However, should North Korea's threats be more than rhetoric, the Pacific Air Forces said they are "ready to fight tonight."

The secretary of state said he has no plans to take Guam off of his schedule.

SOURCE

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ABC settled 'pink slime' lawsuit for $177 million, leaving the beef company feeling 'vindicated'

Disney paid Beef Products Inc. (BPI) $US177 million to settle the 'pink slime' lawsuit that claimed a story ABC ran in 2012 misled viewers and caused hundreds of layoffs.

On Wednesday, Walt Disney Co's quarterly earnings report revealed that the company spent $US177 million "in connection with the settlement of litigation" last quarter.

The case could have resulted in a verdict of as much as $US5.7 billion if BPI had won. In late June, ABC announced it had reached an "amicable resolution" with BPI.

BPI's attorney, Dan Webb, said the settlement "vindicated" the company and its "lean finely textured beef," the product that ABC dubbed "pink slime" in its 2012 reports, according to Hytrek.

"Although we have concluded that continued litigation of this case is not in the company's interests, we remain committed to the vigorous pursuit of truth and the consumer's right to know about the products they purchase," ABC said in a statement.

Lawyers made their opening arguments less than a month ago in a trial that could have resulted in a verdict of as much as $US5.7 billion if BPI had won.

In the suit, BPI alleged that ABC misled viewers by calling its lean finely textured beef "pink slime." LFTB is a common ingredient in beef products and is safe to eat, which ABC noted in its reports. However, even with assurances that the ingredient, made from the trimmings of a cow and treated with ammonia to kill bacteria, wasn't dangerous, the phrase "pink slime" turned off customers, the lawsuit claimed.

"They ignored the proper name," Webb said in his opening argument, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "When you have a major news organisation that is calling the product 'slime,' witnesses will say they can't imagine anything worse. It connotes something disgusting, inedible."

BPI said it had to close three plants and lay off 700 workers because of the "pink slime" backlash.

ABC's attorney argued that the "pink slime" reports brought to light that BPI and other ground-beef producers were using a beef product that most customers were unaware they were eating.

SOURCE

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Note:

I noted recently that I have reposted the comprehensive survey of Nazi docrine that I originally wrote in conjunction with Michael Miller.  At that time, I had not completely reinstated the graphics in the chapter dealing with Nazi gun control.  I have however now done that and you can go directly to that chapter by clicking here

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

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