Update: I just added the above screenshot. To repeat, this blog entry wasn't actually about Ron. That ship has sailed. What I find most interesting about the above is his attack on donkeytale. And yes, Ron is annihilated-banned. He is on a supertroll level way beyond the one I received from maryscott at My Left Wing. Nothing he posts will be allowed in the comments. I'm not looking for any scoop on his big brouhaha with WeinerFace in the hotel bar. That concludes this update from the prepostericity news network.
political death spirals by internet
prelude:
Hey guys! This blog entry actually has nothing to do with Anthony Weiner. I needed a photo for the top. They make the articles look better if by chance they make it to the right side greatest hits widget.
And this also has nothing to do with
"Ron Brynaert who is not a friend of mine." I did notice that Ron has a new diary thingie in which he describes recently meeting with Weiner for an interview in a New York City hotel bar. It is wicked bizarre. It is extremely surreal. So much weird stuff happens on the net. Track it down if you must. If true, it sounded like two verbal abusers were going toe to toe. I will not link to Ron and advise anyone visiting his website to use a proxy.
The Main Blog Entrée:
This is where we have all congregated to have the last bit of free soul extinguished. Have no doubts. This is a criminal society from the top down. Marshall McLuhan shared with us the ultimate warning. He said the medium is the message. What that boils down to is that content no longer matters. The cult of personality and its evoking of authority is all that remains.
The internet was pushed by Habermas as being a potential steering device for positive or negative social change. I am not a big fan of his, but he did nail that point. Wittgenstein said everything can be reduced to a game and he was also correct. There is on the one hand the everyday wonder of nature. There is both a spiritual and material component to existence. The former is not a game. It simply is. Those who don't try to master it are able to live in harmony. They are Rousseau's noble savages. The corollary represents that the more one tries to master social reality, the further one will be removed from experiencing inner tranquility and nature.
There are other corollaries one can surmise from sincerely observing and reflecting on social reality. Some of them are even well-known. For example, there is the saying it's not what you know but who you know which makes all the difference. I suppose a related adage is that it's not who votes which counts, but rather who is doing the counting. Many believe Stalin once said that.
I do not believe that our votes are being illegally processed. If the people want Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nominee, he will win the nomination and then in all likelihood skate easily by any wackadoo nominated from the other side of the political aisle. We shall put other factors to the side such as gerrymandering, the denying of certain people of their right to vote, the lack of voting machines in areas that lean left, etc.. Those are real factors but not the most influential. Our collective problem is much more serious than all that. The problem starts from the moment we are born into this world and then programmed as to how to think and what to think about. As to everything else, e.g. environmental and social justice, those profound topics are left for random nobodies we won't ever see interviewed on CNN.
There is certainly always going to be some resistance with the internet providing each of us with a free publishing service. This had to be the rationale behind Habermas' initial optimism. He could see like McLuhan before him that the computer was going to become a major influence on social reality. What is a medium? In its most simplest and probably most accepted form, it is known as mass media. Its roots are in the Gutenberg printing press. Its roots are in the telephone. While the enclosure acts of the 1300's herded folks into cities ushering in the onset of modernity, the printing press and later the telegraph, radio and cinema truly made the world much smaller. The internet is the accumulation of all the technological advances. It turned the medium as we had known it into a less objectified experience. Picture the change that took place when one could use a remote control to change television channels. Folks no longer had to view commercials. They could see what else was on.
Of course by merely changing the channel, one is still nothing more than a listener object. The internet is fundamentally different. It's the difference between sitting for a lecture with three hundred other students and one with only ten. The latter allows for one to ask questions. It is a more informal setting in which the teacher can see and interact with a manageable student count. We are talking about the fundamental difference between being a couch potato and having the power to discuss and shape the potato's evolving.
While the internet has certainly provided us with the appearance of having greater power and influence, it is offset by the very nature of authority. The ptb's of the previous medium have simply moved a big chunk of their operations from old-school devices such as television and newsprint onto this contraption referred to as social media. It is definitely more messy here. In the olden days, one could perhaps write a letter to the editor. Nowadays one can write up a blog entry and with a little luck, such a creation will reach masses of individuals. Yet, don't bet on it.
There is the illusion that with more options, progressive ideas are more apt to emerge. On the surface, that is what has actually taken place. Anonymous and Occupied Wall Street are two prominent examples. The former has become or was from close to its beginning a honeypot for the Military-Industrial Complex. The latter has transformed itself into the Bernie Sanders Movement.
This is the problem. The medium as explained by Herbert Marcuse will always side with the bad guys whenever there is so-called freedom of expression. He argued that we need to be intolerant of such a rigged game. The first Democratic Party debate is a current example which may help one to see what Marcuse meant. For all intents and purposes, Sanders won the debate. And he will win any future type interactions with Hillary Clinton
a priori based on their past positions.
Hillary won in the way a boxing champion often holds onto the belt despite getting his arse kicked.
We must look beyond what we perceive as the medium (television, radio, cinema, newsprint, internet, et al) and add education to the equation. As much as our conventional definition of medium has much to blame for this horrid mess of a society, core institutions can also be defined as mediums. They form the totality of all that we share. While there are certainly wide rifts between the excellence of one school juxtaposed with a bad one, we all go through the same K-12 cradle to adulthood processing. And processing it is, from those early years of being brainwashed into saying the Pledge of Allegiance all the way through high school.
If one did any research at all, one would find so much real dirt on Hillary. I'm not talking about Breitbart styled attacks. I remember when those same people went after Bill Clinton. Forget all that vast right wing conspiracy chatter talk. It's all fake from both sides. Look at actual Hillary moves. She was against gay marriage in 2013. She voted for the Iraq War. She even remains steadfast against the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall. The only reason Hillary has made so many recent flip-flops is because Bernie caught on as an old-school populist. She changed her mind on the trade pact and Keystone for only one reason: Bernie Sanders.
We have been told to vote for neoliberals because the alternative is a Republican president. The line of thought is akin to Ralph Nader being evil, that if only those fools voting for Ralph had gone for Al Gore, so much of our current mess would look quite different for the better. I do agree with that. I voted for Ralph Nader in a state that Al Gore had in his back pocket. My vote was a protest vote. If GW was competing in Massachusetts, I would have voted for Al, not Ralph. One other time, I voted for Jesse Jackson. I wouldn't be following this election so closely if there were no Bernie or Elizabeth Warren.
This is what I am unwilling to accept. If Hillary is coronated, I will not vote for her. The deal is supposed to be that politics is the art of the possible, thus always make sure to cast your vote for the lesser of two evils. It is too late in the game for our society. Greece has had its drama. England just voted in its version of a lefier-than-thou and he seems to be making big time waves. It should now be our turn. I am not blind as many also aren't and we can see that Hillary in unauthentic, manipulative, and only out for herself. She is part of the 1%. Her ascendancy without a corresponding Democratic Party victory rout across the board will bring us into an immediate gridlock. She cannot help pull that off. She is part and parcel of the establishment. While a Bernie victory doesn't guarantee a nationwide push towards progressivism, it would be a nice start. With Hillary, there is no hope of a political revolution. With Bernie, there is.
The social theorists I read in my college days were quite cynical. Unlike Hillary Clinton, they never needed to evolve. They devoted their whole lives to understanding society and pointing it towards fixing itself. If Hillary wins, and currently it looks good for her, I will wash my hands of all of it. Hillary Clinton is winning because people are stupid. Too many people are weak and never pushed back against their formal indoctrination. I am thoroughly upset with anyone who would vote for Hillary over Bernie. Are we supposed to go for the lesser of two evils or not? A Hillary win over Sanders would be cheating, period.
There's not one bit of difference between the Americans who vote in our politicians and the Good Germans who formed the bedrock for Nazi authoritarianism. If not for the grace of God it's said that I shan't walk in those shoes. Or to take from an episode of Seinfeld, you think you're better than me? Do you really think we are any different from the Germans who enabled Hitler? There are brutal truths to this world and one of them is that America is reprehensible and that includes all of us.
Maybe things need to get worse until people take more responsibility with their votes.
The Democratic Party nomination process this specific year is a litmus test for our collective soul. If Hillary wins, we are truly fucked. That you can bet on.
~~~
Death by Internet:
I stumbled across a tragic story of another unarmed person being assassinated by police. It was a white kid only seventeen.
Michigan teen's family files federal lawsuit over fatal traffic-stop shooting
And interviews with Guilford's father and girlfriend revealed that the teen had become strongly focused on YouTube videos of police encounters, the prosecutor said.
"They said that Deven's focus on these videos was recent, sudden, out of the ordinary, and may have influenced Deven in this traffic stop," Lloyd wrote in the report.
A shallow loser will say the kid had it coming to him. I think a cowardly cop yet again took the easy way out. It's too bad the kid didn't simply hand over his license. That's where the death by internet part comes into it. Deven got fixated on watching confrontations with police. It sounds like he was especially influenced by the ones which show "freedom fighters" asking if they are being detained and if they are free to go. People need to better pick their battles. It's good to be ready to go with a video phone and know your rights. And I am not letting the cop off the hook. There's something in this world called nuance and complexities. Yet, rather than young people being taught critical thinking skills and how to become a responsible adult, they are teaching to the tests.
Hillary's Weight:
I am not sure I should go there, but here goes. I am guessing she is 100 pounds overweight. I would not be concerned with her weight if not for the fact that she is filthy rich with no excuses. It is symbolic of how fat her whole life is beyond her physical body.
From her interview with Jake Tapper:
I am basing the 100 pound number on before and after photos of a
Canadian girl who lost 100 pounds.
They look to be similar. Perhaps the girl weighed a bit more than Hillary. But Hillary hides it. I learned over the Summer into NBA preseason that Jared Sullinger was also able to hide his weight in some kind of body suit. It looked like he was rounding into shape. It was a mirage.
I am going to guess Hillary weighs 200 pounds. The Daily Mail said that girl weighed 223. Hillary looks like she could lose forty pounds and still have forty more to shed.
I lost 25 pounds over the last several months. I want to lose another ten. I did have a tire forming, but it was nowhere close to what Hillary has.
It is difficult to lose weight. It takes tremendous discipline. It takes both an exercise and diet plan. People are so heavy in our country that I hadn't realised how much I had ballooned. I love life. I want to be around for as long as I can. I don't want diabetes or any other health issues that can arise due to not taking care of one's material body. I am not rich and cannot afford a personal trainer, dietitian, and chef. What is Hillary's excuse other than being extremely obese for spirituality?
I guess it all makes sense she is probably the next president. There are a lot of fat fuck faces in this country. The majority of people are brainwashed morons. I wash my hands of them to go with the Democratic Party.
Asians score higher than whites on education levels, SAT scores, hard work, entrepreneurialism and income and are the fastest growing immigrant population. They would seem to be GOP leaning based on these characteristics .