[ZERO] The 1960s revolution was both anarchic and nihilist. But it was waged against—not from—the establishment. Hippies and the Left either attacked institutions or, in Timothy Leary fashion, chose to "turn on, tune in, drop out" from them.
The current revolution is much different—and far more dangerous—for at least three reasons.
THE ESTABLISHMENT IS THE REVOLUTION
The current Left has no intention of "dropping out." Why would it?
It now controls the very institutions of America that it once mocked and attacked—corporate boardrooms, Wall Street, state and local prosecuting attorneys, most big-city governments, the media, the Pentagon, network and most of cable news, professional sports, Hollywood, music, television, K-12 education, and academia.
In other words, the greatest levers of influence and power—money, education, entertainment, government, the news, and popular culture—are in the hands of the Left. They have transformed legitimate debate over gay marriage into a hate crime. Transgenderism went from a modern manifestation of ancient transvestism or gender dysphoria to a veritable litmus test of whether one was good or evil.
Students have no need to jam administrators’ offices because the latter, themselves, are as radical as the protestors and often lead them on in a top-down fashion. Had they not long ago demonstrated they were perfectly willing to subvert meritocracy, free expression, and equality under the law, they would not be occupying their present positions.
Apple, Google, Facebook, and other tech companies are not 1980s and 1990s "alternative" media geeks and hipsters creating neat gadgets for the people. They are not Steve Jobs and his pugnacious Apple battling the evil Microsoft or IBM, or the Macintosh commercial of 1984 depicting a maverick throwing a hammer into Big Brother’s screen. They are the Orwellian screen.
#1
Yes, I can even smell the marijuana smoke wafting through the air.
But we should have been able to see this coming back in the 60s and 70s. The communists moved among the hippies and pretended they were hippies too. But wary observers could tell the difference. Like with Bill Clinton. Remember how he sat with the hippies, pretended to be one of them, but he did not inhale. That was a dead giveaway but somehow nobody saw it. Jane Fonda was another example. She wanted everybody to think she was hip and it worked. But then she went to North Vietnam and posed on one of their anti-aircraft guns. Real hippies were anti-war but would have been scared shitless in a communist dictatorship like North Vietnam. Wouldn't want to light a joint with all those commie cops standing around. But Jane felt right at home there. Another dead giveaway.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/31/2023 12:44 Comments ||
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#2
In the long run (if there still is one) dopers will be at a disadvantage no matter what connections they have.
Because they are dopers.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/31/2023 12:46 Comments ||
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#3
Yeah, so we should encourage all those Silicon Valley types to drop acid. Tell 'em it'll enhance their creativity, make 'em better programmers. Just beware of the creeps who wear polyester.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/31/2023 12:49 Comments ||
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#4
Micro dose
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/31/2023 13:09 Comments ||
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[FrontPageMag] “We are all beautiful (except white people, they are full of, and made of shit),” Amiri Baraka wrote in ‘A School of Prayer’. This was about the nicest thing that he ever said about white people.
“Come up, black dada / nihilismus. Rape the white girls. Rape / their fathers. Cut the mothers’ throats,” the black nationalist raved in.another poem.
Continued on Page 49
#2
He was an analyst and later vice president for the Austin-based geopolitical intelligence firm Stratfor (founded 1996), where he spent 12 years in total.
He is well known for being a leading expert in the geopolitical field. And it was fucking cold yesterday here when he filmed it. He lives about 30 miles north of me. Check out him on Joe Rogan on Spottify.
#3
Half the "guests" on Joe Rogan are as full of shit as a 150 year old outhouse.
But people lap it up.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/31/2023 11:02 Comments ||
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#4
"Half the "guests" on Joe Rogan are as full of shit as a 150 year old outhouse."
That's the beauty of it. People and ideas you would not otherwise encounter. Of course, it does require one to exercise their own reason and judgment. A rare skill these days.
#5
I don't always agree with Ziehan's analyses - but I listen to / read him because I know that a whole lot of Pentagon and corporate leaders do. It's useful to realize what they are absorbing.
[PJ] Joe Biden was quick to pat himself on the back after the latest numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that the U.S. economy grew by 2.9% in the fourth quarter of 2022 and 2.1% for the entire year.
"Last quarter, our economy grew at a 2.9% annual pace — solid growth, even as we continue to bring inflation down," Biden tweeted. "Our economic plan worked. And it still is."
But according to the Heritage Foundation, the latest report "should have alarm bells ringing, not trumpets sounding."
"That’s because economic growth is slowing down," explains research fellow EJ Antoni. "Even the areas which contributed positively to gross domestic product (GDP) are not necessarily signs of prosperity. For example, business investment grew at only 1.4 percent in the fourth quarter, but that was almost entirely inventory growth. Nonresidential investment, a key driver of future economic growth, was up just 0.7 percent."
"Meanwhile, residential investment fell off a cliff," Antoni continued, "dropping 26.7 percent as consumers were unable to afford the combination of high home prices, high interest rates and falling real incomes. No wonder homeownership affordability has fallen to the lowest level in that metric’s history."
There was a gain in net exports, but that was largely a mirage created by a major slowdown in international trade. "Imports are simply falling faster than exports, which shows up as an increase in GDP."
But probably most concerning to Antoni is the sharp decline in real disposable income in 2022, which exceeded $1 trillion.
"This is the second-largest percentage drop in real disposable income ever, behind only 1932, the worst year of the Great Depression," he observed. "To keep up with inflation, consumers are depleting their savings and burning through the ’stimulus’ checks they received during 2020 and 2021. Credit card debt continues growing, while savings plummeted $1.6 trillion last year, falling below 2009 levels."
"As consumers continue depleting cash reserves and borrowing costs are rising, the growth in consumer spending will keep slowing. Since that accounts for roughly two-thirds of GDP, this doesn’t bode well for the economy," Antoni continued.
So, once again, Biden is counting his chicks before they hatch, and what he wants us to believe is good news may actually be a warning sign that things are about to get really, really bad.
#5
Using the metrics (and honest counting) of the '30s, we were in a depression 2008+. Both times the Socialist used it to expand central government power ever more.
#6
The federal government has devolved to cooking the books in so many areas that I honestly doubt that any sentient, critical thinker has actual confidence in what they say, even behind closed doors.
Media bias and selective editing and the use of partial truth make news reporting feel mostly like propaganda, and equally contrary to most actual truth.
Intuitive and personal experience indicators for me suggest an economic fragility that will shatter this summer, potentially triggered by political/warfare/civil unrest event(s). So I'm bunkering up, and if wrong, the kids inherit a lot more beans and bullets!
#7
The Great Depression was bad for Herbert Hoover but GREAT for Franklin Roosevelt. So another one might actually be good for Biden as long as he can blame it on Trump. It was not good for the country.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/31/2023 13:08 Comments ||
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#8
Bidet is:
A) Late for the turnaround.
B) Not doing anything that will cause a turnaround.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/31/2023 13:11 Comments ||
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#9
we are not completely dependent on USA Govt reports
The ADP company produces a monthly report on total jobs based on their own HR services (especially payroll processing). There are a number of large job placement companies that also provide data.
Over the course of 2021 and 2022, the govt and the non govt reports told the same picture, although with some monthly anomalies.
One of the newest USA sources is the Atlanta Federal Reserve that does a GDP Nowcast. Their latest estimate of the current quarter, that is calendar 2023 Q1, will be available this week.
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/31/2023 14:03 Comments ||
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#10
Yes, the non gummint sources diverge but know where their bred is buttered.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/31/2023 14:21 Comments ||
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[DanielGreenfield] Even after an ‘Atlanta Forest Defender’ shot a Georgia state trooper in the stomach and his comrades set off race riots in the city, the leftist group at the center of it all is still fundraising.
This comes months after the leftists threw Molotov cocktails at police and nearly burned an elderly driver to death. Multiple members of the ‘occupation’ have been arrested on domestic terrorism charges. And yet the IRS and Georgia’s Secretary of State have done nothing.
Even Twitter suspended ‘Scenes from the Atlanta Forest’, an account calling for a “Night of Rage” and “reciprocal violence to be done to the police and their allies”, but the IRS has yet to take action to stop the ‘Atlanta Forest Defenders’ from taking in tax-deductible donations.
In Atlanta, small business owners are sweeping away broken glass and police have recovered explosive devices from some of the rioters. Yet the ‘Atlanta Forest Defenders’ are still raising money through Open Collective: a 501(c)(3) nonprofit fundraising platform that Front Page Magazine had previously exposed for providing fundraising for assorted ecoterrorists including the ‘Just Stop Oil’ vandals who glued themselves to ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earring’ painting.
That is despite the fact that Open Collective’s terms of service prohibit illegal activities.
The Open Collective Foundation has received funding for digital infrastructure grants from the Ford Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society and Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network.
Meanwhile ordinary people have been suffering through another wave of leftist terror.
In November, an elderly man passing by the area was attacked. When he stopped his truck, “these people started coming out of the woods in camouflage stuff and blocked me in.”
Then they set the truck on fire.
“It seemed to me like they were going to burn the truck with me in it.”
Nobody’s fundraising for the man who lost his truck and now suffers from a medical condition, but the IRS is continuing to enable this domestic terrorist campaign. In Atlanta, rioters had marched chanting, “If you build it, we will burn it.” The riots show that they mean it.
A previous affidavit for the arrest of Atlanta Forest Defenders describes them as “participating in actions as part of Defend the Atlanta Forest (DTAF), a group classified by the United States Department of Homeland Security as Domestic Violent Extremists”. It went on to describe a variety of crimes including, “throwing molotov cocktails, rocks and fireworks at uniformed police officers; arson of public buildings” and “shooting metal ball bearings at contractors”.
#1
The Ford Foundation seems to be involved in a lot of violent progressive activities.
Posted by: Bill Greans6336 ||
01/31/2023 12:27 Comments ||
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#2
Yes, and current F150 owners have as much to do with it as current Windows users have to do with Bill Gates. He owns 1% of Microsoft stock and has not written a line of Windows code since Windows 95.
But the usual suspects will screech about it nonetheless.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/31/2023 12:39 Comments ||
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#3
Windows is still a mess whether Gates is coding it or not. Ick.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/31/2023 13:13 Comments ||
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#4
Yes, linsux is so good that Kernighan and Thompson hold their noses.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/31/2023 13:58 Comments ||
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#5
Any time I see Open Society I get pretty sure it is tax payer dollars being piped into NGOs via the Ukrainian embassy.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
01/31/2023 14:47 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.