Timely reprint on Symmetrical Scapegoating
Thinking this morning about Orlov's magnificent 2008 prophecy, showing how the collapse of the US empire would be worse than the Soviet collapse.

One aspect that Orlov missed is Symmetrical Scapegoating, a US invention originally based on the British parliament. Symmetrical Scapegoating breaks the feedback loop between the demons and the humans, so all rebellion against the demons is misdirected against the Horrible Other Team within the humans. The demons are totally out of the loop.

The Soviet system didn't bother with the stageplay of "parties" and "elections", so it was more responsive to real problems than our system.

Rehashing from 2018:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

For many years I've been noting examples of Symmetrical Scapegoating. It's a clever technique. Old-fashioned unilateral scapegoating always fails because a scapegoat BY FUCKING DEFINITION is not the cause of a problem. Ruling tribes are the cause of problems. A ruling tribe will never blame itself for the problem, because that would lead people to remove the ruling tribe.

The defect in unilateral scapegoating is that you have to exterminate the scapegoat group, or at least imprison and disempower the scapegoat group. After the scapegoat is dead, or removed from power which it never had in the first place, the problem remains. People may see the truth.

Symmetrical scapegoating avoids the disappearance defect by dividing the country into two roughly equal groups, each blaming the other for the problem. The ruling tribe is still out of the loop, and the groups will mutually exterminate without any effort by the ruling tribe. Wonderfully efficient.

SS works even better when the groups are blaming each other for PROBLEMS THAT DON'T EXIST, because a PROBLEM THAT DOESN'T EXIST is automatically unsolvable. It remains active and useful until the ruling tribe gets bored and invents a new mythical problem.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

I've omitted the cartoons in the 2018 item; they were focused on 2018 issues that have faded from sight. Demons switch issues FAST to keep the scapegoating strong and fresh. When an issue starts to get stale, the peasants have a chance to stop and think, which might allow them to detect the real source of evil. Can't allow that.

My overall emphasis on PROBLEMS THAT DON'T EXIST is still emphatically valid. See "global warming" and "virus".

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 6:29 AM

  Perfect symmetry
For many years I've been noting examples of Symmetrical Scapegoating. It's a clever technique. Old-fashioned unilateral scapegoating always fails because a scapegoat BY FUCKING DEFINITION is not the cause of a problem. Ruling tribes are the cause of problems. A ruling tribe will never blame itself for the problem, because that would lead people to remove the ruling tribe.

The defect in unilateral scapegoating is that you have to exterminate the scapegoat group, or at least imprison and disempower the scapegoat group. After the scapegoat is dead, or removed from power which it never had in the first place, the problem remains. People may see the truth.

Symmetrical scapegoating avoids the disappearance defect by dividing the country into two roughly equal groups, each blaming the other for the problem. The ruling tribe is still out of the loop, and the groups will mutually exterminate without any effort by the ruling tribe. Wonderfully efficient.

SS works even better when the groups are blaming each other for PROBLEMS THAT DON'T EXIST, because a PROBLEM THAT DOESN'T EXIST is automatically unsolvable. It remains active and useful until the ruling tribe gets bored and invents a new mythical problem.

Previous examples of delusional SS:



and



= = = = =

Now the symmetry is finally perfect!



= = = = =

Footnote 1: In all of these cartoons I gave Danbo the role of stubbornly advocating for ACTUAL SOLUTIONS. One of those solutions (tariff on stuff) may be getting closer to reality if Trump isn't just playing the usual mythical games.

Footnote 2: "BY FUCKING DEFINITION" may not be immediately obvious. Only powerless groups, who can't pose any threat to the ruling tribe, can be blamed for problems. Any group that is strong enough to respond with force and blackmail is not going to be scapegoated, and the ruling tribe obviously won't blame itself.

Update: Just after posting the above, I watched the latest Anglican Unscripted podcast. Kallsen and Conger are discussing a new "report" by some Congressional monstrosity delusionally claiming that the Keystone protests were funded by RussianMeddling.

Good old Orwell. All previous myths must be Rectified to validate the current myth. (Unfortunately Kallsen and Conger believe the myth, which downgrades my respect for their intelligence.)
  ¶ 1:18 AM

  Do they really think this will work?????
Following up on earlier thoughts about the need for fake threats to run bad wars.


Latest output from the strange amateurish Lusitania-generator.

"Foreign Secretary interested in proposals to broadcast information on secret wealth of Putin's circle, as he warns Russia could be single greatest threat to Britain."

First: No reason to think this will have any effect on Russians. They know EU/US/UK is the pure absolute evil aggressor this time, and they also know that Putin is the most competent leader they've had in a lifetime. He's popular for good straightforward reasons.

Second: Even if we knew for sure that it would bother Russians, why announce the propaganda campaign in advance? Why tell everyone that THIS IS IN FACT A DUMB PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN before you start?

= = = = =

Over the last year or so, these Lusitanians have been "rectifying" history and current events in three separate ways. First, they tried rewriting WW1 and WW2 with Russia as the aggressor instead of Germany. Second, they turned out a long series of "aggressions" by Putin in Ukraine and elsewhere. Each of these "attacks" quickly bumped into disproof or total lack of facts, and each quickly disappeared.

(Later sidenote: This is actually good. Now that people have more direct access to real information, warmongers can't get a war cranked up with just one Lusitania. It takes a dozen or more. Hard work!)

Third, a series of personal slams against Putin in Brit media, accusing him of every conceivable crime and "diagnosing" all sorts of diseases. Some of the "diagnoses" echo old-fashioned "diagnoses" of Our Official Enemy (ie hemiplegia as in Napoleon and Hitler), but so far they've missed the universal default "diagnosis". Our Official Enemy always has extreme body odor and unstoppable farts. He stinks and farts all the time. Stink stink stink. Fart fart fart. Ha ha ha. Farty Hitler. Farty Saddam. Farty Stalin. But not Farty Putin just yet, despite the obvious potential of his name. I'm sure they'll get around to it in a few days.

Big question: Do these monstrous juvenile propagandists actually think they're bothering Russians? Or are they doing it for local consumption?

Are they mindlessly locked into the Oppo-Research mode of Western politics, where you toss all sorts of nonsensical mud against The Horrible Otherpartyan without any connection to reality? If so, they're missing the boat. Oppo depends on a well-developed system of Symmetrical Scapegoating. Both parties always commit the same crimes, always maximally destructive to the nation and the world. Because the same evil actions are always "on the record" from the other party, you can always blame the other party for the resulting destruction while you safely continue to create more destruction. Your own partybots will mechanically go along with the daily switchbacks because they're phase-locked into My Party's TV Network. They never watch The Horrible Otherparty Network, so they don't know that the same accusations are being spewed by both networks with different names in the blanks.

Russia never developed Symmetrical Scapegoating. It's always been a one-party system with one-sided propaganda, which means the people have been able to calibrate their BS sensors consistently. If life is going badly, the current leader gets the blame.

So the trick isn't going to work. Why bother? I truly don't get it.

Labels: Metrology, Гром победы

  ¶ 12:33 PM

  Good old symmetrical scapegoating
At some point in late 2016 it looked like the tradition of Symmetrical Scapegoating had disappeared, because the two "sides" in politics were actually seeking DIFFERENT goals for the first time in many decades.

Good old SS is back.

On one "side" we have an idiot Hollywood satan staging a realistic assassination and then blaming Trump when people ON HER OWN "SIDE" find assassination distasteful enough to fire her.

On the other "side", we have Repooflicans blaming Obama for Trump's FAILURE to do his job.

Headline: BREAKING: Obama Holdovers Sabotaged Trump’s Plans

Well, why were those holdovers still there? You supposedly represent a change of leadership, and therefore your JOB, BY FUCKING TAUTOLOGICAL DEFINITION, is to REPLACE the old leadership with new leadership. You made a constant point of saying "You're fired." Now you're blaming the old monsters because YOU didn't fire them.

Perfect symmetry. Griffin is fired by people on her own side and blames Trump. Trump FAILS to fire people on Griffin's side, and blames people on Griffin's side for his failure to fire them.

Meanwhile, outside of the symmetry but even crazier, Hillary blames RUSSIANWIKILEAKS and RUSSIANMEDDLING for the results of HILLARYMEDDLING. The Clintons ACTUALLY meddled and hacked the DNC, preventing DNC from picking Bernie who could have defeated Trump easily.

Means, motive, opportunity. In an all-hacked world, everyone has the means, so that's a null question. Russia's MOTIVE doesn't fit. Russian media clearly and openly wanted to see Bernie win. They didn't trust Trump, and they were right. Why would Russia corrupt the primaries to defeat Bernie? Only the Clinton Mafia had the MOTIVE to defeat Bernie, and only the Clinton Mafia was already in the middle of DNC with the OPPORTUNITY to cheat Bernie.
  ¶ 3:26 PM

  The importance of symmetrical scapegoating
If we can believe various stories, the Youtube suicider was a Persian who had been successful in the world of Youtube videos. When Youtube abruptly cut off her income, she rebelled.

Consistent: Most suicides and acts of mass violence, including riots and revolutions, are triggered by a sudden betrayal. When you work hard toward a goal, with good feedback along the way, and then the feedback SUDDENLY reverses for reasons outside your control, your soul breaks. You have nothing left to lose, so you lose everything.

Contradictory: Her manifesto brings together a set of beliefs that CUT ACROSS all of the Sorosian divisions. Because she's Persian, her overall goals are reasonably consistent and logical. Because she's Persian, her goals are closer to Natural Law than any set of Sorosian goals. Not nearly as close to NL as Sharia, but definitely tending toward that side of the axis.

Because the total pattern is anathema to BOTH sides of our carefully cultivated Symmetrical Scapegoating, her suicide won't start a revolution. BOTH sides will ignore it.

(For clarity: Not starting a revolution is good. All revolutions lead straight to hell. Being ignored by both sides is bad. Both sides are losing a chance to learn something new.)

Labels: Make or break, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 12:52 AM

  More contralateral thoughts
Yet another proposal to counteract big money in politics:

At their heart, political campaigns are no different than any other organization: they need to raise revenues and then spend it to meet their objectives. Organizations are responsive to who pays them, and therefore, the only way to connect politics back to the everyday lives of people is to connect more pocketbooks of voters directly into the revenue model of DC.

This sort of proposal never works. The reformers miss two distinct and separate facts.

1. Big money always funds "both" "parties" because "both" "parties" are the same side. Big corporations understand how Deepstate works, and ESPECIALLY understand how Symmetrical Scapegoating works. Pay "both" "sides" to make meaningless noises at each other. Simultaneously pay "both" "sides" to do the same job. If one "side" is weak at the moment, the "other" "side" will be strong. Job gets done. (This is IDENTICAL to the neural use of paired organs and paired hemispheres! Contralateral and ipsilateral innervation insures that you always have a backup.)

2. These reformers understand the pay side of the pay for value problem but don't understand the value side.

They understand that nobody is paying Deepstate for sanity and non-intervention, so sanity and non-intervention don't happen.

The value side is harder to see because USA STRONG has been ruined since 1920 by the idiotic "Good Government" culture. We have decided that a direct retail connection with politicians is "corruption". We don't like to see citizens paying for pothole repair on their street, or parents paying for their own school. Everything must be handled at the TOP level, and everyone must pay for everything in a perfectly fungible way.

Fungibility is the problem, not the solution. When you KNOW WHAT YOU'RE PAYING FOR, and when you GET WHAT YOU'RE PAYING FOR, politics works. That's real democracy.

So the abovementioned reformers won't achieve anything unless they can break down the universal-funding model to some extent. There are a few basic tasks that must be universal, at least as a floor to insure survival. But even in those tasks, there must be room for paying more to get more. We've applied the universality rule so strictly that we've lost all FEEDBACK.

Universality requires all functions to be controlled by one central lever. The biggest corporations have the power and money to grab the single lever, so they control all functions. With a modular system there is no single lever. Each city or school or neighborhood has levers and knobs for its own local functions, and the local citizens or parents can prevent outsiders like Bloomberg from grabbing hold of the lever. In software this requires a compiler that jealously guards private variables from global interference. At one time we had some words in our compiler (the 10th amendment) which were meant to perform this function, but Genocidal Madman Lincoln, loyally serving NYC, wiped out the compiler along with 1/6 of the people in the country. NYC never allows non-NYC control or possession. Everything must be owned and controlled by NYC.
  ¶ 7:39 AM

  Orlov the pollyanna
Several years ago Dmitri Orlov laid out a dismal scenario. When USA STRONG collapses, it won't collapse 'softly' as Russia did. Russia had a number of advantages. Social cohesion, natural collectiveness, low reliance on money, high reliance on self-sufficient labor.

Russians love Russia unconditionally. Americans don't love America. We love a fast-changing portfolio of vivid delusions.

Thinking about the vector diagram that Polistra drew this morning, the picture gets a lot grimmer.

Russians are not delusional. By nature they are depressive and tragic = REALISTIC. When superpower status went away, normalcy took over fairly smoothly. It was interrupted by Yeltsin stupidly hiring Sachs to impose Goldman, but that didn't work.

Americans are manic. Prone to delusion. The delusion of being an unopposed bully was magnificently intoxicating. Crack plus Flakka. When this needle is yanked out, we will be MAGNIFICENTLY SICK.

When an addict goes into withdrawal, his body fights itself in a dozen ways. If he is internally strong and realistic, he has a chance. Even without resilience, external support and external restraint can carry him through the short period of convulsions.

USA STRONG has blown those chances. We are maximally non-resilient right now. Symmetrical scapegoating has divided us into the R team and D team. All problems are the other team's fault. Simultaneously our youngsters, naturally "fickle inquisitors", have been trained and exercised in the arts of inquisition by universities and Zuckerberg. And we've blown the chance for external support by bombing everyone except Israel.

This doesn't sound like Russia 1990.

This sounds like China 1968.

The delusional and incompetent Great Leap Forward had failed dramatically. China's yoots had been trained in Inquisition by Party education. Madame Mao militarized them and turned them against pretty much everybody. Result: ten years of pure chaos.


41 DAYS SINCE START OF FINAL PURGE.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age, STRONG!

  ¶ 5:14 PM

  Brief reprint from Sept 2019
I was trying to relocate something I'd written about the important role of editors and selectors, and bumped into this.

September 2019.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

The latest development in witch-hunting:

Populism causes measles.

Demonic author Jonathan Kennedy states the claim explicitly and openly. We no longer believe that viruses cause disease. Populists cause disease.

Sprenger and Kremer are watching you joyfully from their home in the 999th circle of Hades, Jonathan Kennedy. You are their most promising student.

= = = = =

Somewhat calmer but still hardass: Where are the editors? In fact viruses do cause disease, and in fact vaccination works. Do you WANT more people to vaccinate? If you really WANT more people to vaccinate, you should SHUT UP demons like Jonathan Kennedy. You shouldn't want your side to be represented by HATEFUL MONSTERS who openly HATE AND REVILE the people you're trying to persuade.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

The preparations for the holocaust were quite open for those who understood where things were going. When you've got people thoroughly divided, totally running in Symmetrical Scapegoating Mode, you don't need to keep everything secret.

The intel end of Deepstate figured this out a long time ago. CIA didn't bother to hide its agents provocateurs, such as the founder of Bitcoin. They openly gave their credentials as "retired" CIA or "retired" FBI. The cultists weren't bothered, because the cultists were already conditioned to blindly obey everything that happened inside the correct brand. People who noticed these things and quit the cult were officially Conspirators and Denialists whose "insane" "ravings" must be ignored by all proper cultists.

A few months later the full truth became genocidally clear. The monsters don't want to persuade. They just want to kill and kill and kill and kill and kill. When you're going to kill all the heretics, you don't care if they recant first. This is the only real difference between Sprenger/Kremer and the modern inquisitors.
  ¶ 11:48 PM

  What happens when weapons go on strike?
Strange dream tonight. I was living in a close-knit community of Deplorables, more or less the Homette court that I use sometimes for Polistra...



The people were going about their business as usual with cardboard protest signs ductaped on top of their heads like comic thought bubbles turned to reality. The signs were about two feet wide, so they didn't interfere too much with daily activities. All the signs blamed Muslims for the problems of Deplorables.



I tried to persuade the folks that their problems were not caused by Muslims. It wasn't Muslims who outsourced your jobs to China. It wasn't Muslims who bankrupted your small business with environmental nonsense. It wasn't Muslims who made your health care the worst and most expensive in the world. It wasn't Muslims who taught your kids that gender is only a construct. It wasn't Muslims who wasted the government's budget on endless wars against Muslims.

They couldn't hear me. The protest signs were too loud.

Point, of course: Group 1 can only be a scapegoat if Group 1 is NOT the actual cause of the problems. The fact that Group 1 is a scapegoat tells you FOR SURE that Group 1 is not in charge, thus not creating the problems.

= = = = =

Muslims are just another weapon/target combo. Al-Qaeda and similar outfits are weapons fired by Deepstate to destroy order and life in Muslim parts of the world. In Europe the weaponizing is even more efficient. We make war against Muslims for no particular purpose except pure evil, and the targeted Muslims who try to escape from the war are turned into weapons against Christians, who are then turned into weapons to pogrom the other Christians. Recycling.

Homosexuals and the 57 other "constructed genders" are weapons fired by Deepstate to make Christians treat homosexuals as targets. Christians are then weaponized against the homosexuals, giving Deepstate a reason to pogrom the other Christians.

Repooflicans are weapons fired at Democrats to make Repooflicans look bad. Even a few Democrats (eg Bernie) are weapon-target combos.

Russia's imaginary "hacking" is a weapon built by Deepstate and placed in the hands of Russia (at least on TV) so we can turn Russia into an actual target.



The weapon/target combo is a fairly new development in the science of tyranny. Symmetrical scapegoating.

= = = = =

What happens if all the weapon/target combos REALIZE that they're being used? What happens if they rip off the ductape and toss the preprinted thought bubbles?

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter

  ¶ 11:48 PM

  Company towns
MindMatters is getting its panties in a wad about Big Tech building new company towns in Nevada.

Company towns aren't automatically a bad thing. They can go two ways.

Social economics companies 100 years ago built beautiful company towns with strong culture and social support. Ponca (Conoco) and Dayton (NCR) were beautiful places .... until the company died or moved elsewhere. The good time lasted for a century.

Mining towns were more typical of Nevada. They were hastily built without any social structure at all, ran wild and rowdy for 20 years, then quickly turned into ghost towns when the silver or gold was exhausted.

Google and Facebook are data miners, and their overall attitude is similar to the fast-growing fast-shrinking Gold Rush.

Social economics was killed in 1975, so we can be sure new company towns won't be like Ponca or Dayton. They will be mining towns.

The real two-way alternative now is between HONESTLY NAMED company towns and HIDDEN company towns. Right now Google and Amazon and Bloomberg exert total uniform absolute power over all cities, while cities pretend to be running their own affairs. Company towns would at least be openly controlled, so the people can KNOW who is destroying them.

See also Symmetrical Scapegoating.

Labels: the broken circle

  ¶ 11:51 PM

  Fairness and Fraser
Eric Anderson at Evolution News lays down a new Fairness Doctrine for scientific discussion. He's writing as 'advice' to one specific scholar at Simon Fraser Univ in BC who is setting up a new institute; but clearly Anderson is advising more generally.

Similarly, don’t burden your lectures and presentations and published papers with unnecessary Darwin-speak. As Joe Friday would demand, “Just the facts ma’am.” You have great substance in the research you’re doing. Stick with that and focus on the actual observed evidence. In your next lecture, rather than saying, “We’re going to examine an amazing molecular machine that nature evolved,” just say, “We’re going to examine an amazing molecular machine found in nature.”

The FCC fairness doctrine forced this type of factual objectivity on radio for 40 years. It worked.

Was it possible to have political comedy without partisan teams? Certainly. The expert comedians of Ignorant did it all the time.

"How did you get to be so stupid?"

"Easy. First I went to Washington...."

Insults aimed at politicians were aimed at ALL POLITICIANS, not Republicans. This is JUST THE FACTS, since there is precisely no difference between D and R.

When the Fairness Doctrine was abolished, it opened the way for Deepstate to create Symmetrical Scapegoating. We insult the PEOPLE on the other team. We never insult ALL POLITICIANS. Therefore ALL POLITICIANS can now get away with mass murder. Therefore they do.

Incidentally, the target of Anderson's advice could also take some advice from Simon Fraser. He explored the area now occupied by BC. He named a river after his logbook-keeper who found the river, but he refused to name a river after himself because he wasn't convinced it was truly a separate river. He refused a knighthood and died poor. JUST THE FACTS.

Labels: epistemology, Trinity House

  ¶ 7:16 AM

  Purpose, not credit
I noted earlier that Austria and Czechia and France are cautiously turning toward nationalism after "shocking" increases in Parliament seats by sane parties.... EVEN THOUGH the presidents are NOT from the sane parties. This is a sign of a FUNCTIONAL GOVERNMENT with NEGATIVE FEEDBACK. When you have real parties and real representation and NEGATIVE FEEDBACK, the ruling party CHANGES COURSE to regain the voters lost to the insurgents.

Via DW, now even Krautland is following the same pattern.

Germany should consider stepping up its border controls, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said on Sunday. "Not that many border points in Germany are permanently occupied," Seehofer told German weekly newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag, adding: "We will now discuss whether that needs to change."

Seehofer also appealed for the suspension of the Schengen Agreement, which allows free movement within the EU bloc. "Internal border checks [between EU member states] must be in place so long as the EU fails to effectively control the external border," he said, adding: "I don't see it being able to do this in the near future."

The insurgent sane party AfD is frustrated:

Andre Poggenburg, head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony, said Seehofer was copying his party with a view to Bavaria’s October regional election: “Horst Seehofer has taken this message from our manifesto word for word.”

Understandable, but you shouldn't get pissed. You should be cheering loudly because your PURPOSE is moving the country forward. Uncool people can't expect to get credit for anything, but uncool CHANGES can sometimes happen when the rulers feel a large enough threat to their power.

If AfD hadn't made the effort to speak for sane Krauts, the insane rulers would simply have continued on the same suicidal path.

= = = = =

Can't happen here. USA STRONG disconnected all negative feedback in 1946. Now we just have differently styled loudspeakers wired to Deepstate. The two loudspeakers are blaming each other for problems but NEVER making the slightest effort to change policies or laws. Symmetrical scapegoating avoids all action.



  ¶ 1:39 AM

  Full-wave rectifier
Kim 3 has just done a classic burnt sacrifice. Uncle Jang was taken out, and with him all the problems of the regime were taken out.

Dumb. Old-fashioned one-sided sacrificing doesn't work well, because people quickly realize the problems are still around after the smoke clears. Best example of all is Jesus. When he was executed, his followers expected the Kingdom of Heaven to arrive. It didn't, so they had to rig up a complex new story that would give him a second try.

Kim 3 needs to learn the modern American technique of Symmetrical Scapegoating. When each half of the population serves as scapegoat for the other half, you never lose the goat. For the half that wears R-shirts, all problems are caused by the current or previous D president. For the half that wears D-shirts, all problems are caused by the current or previous R president. Result: All presidents can keep loyally serving Goldman, can keep taking the same murderous actions over and over and over and over and over and over and over to starve the poor and enrich the super-rich. No president ever needs to blame his own actions or change his own actions.
  ¶ 3:28 AM

  Futility
Polistra's icon above includes a brief quote about futility. The majority of Egyptians are feeling the truth of that quote in deadly form.

Time to bring out the full text again. The audio is here, clipped from a 1938 CBS broadcast just after Hitler took Austria.

Hitler's seizure of Austria demonstrates 3 things:

1. The futility of contracts with dictators.

2. Treaties signed at the point of a sword are useless. This invasion climaxes a series of violations of Versailles by Hitler. The other signatories never made meaningful response.

3. Demonstrates the futility of war as instrument for settling controversy. Twenty years ago we gave our blood, our treasure, to spread democracy across the world. Twenty years later we see the torch of world leadership being seized by Hitler. We cannot deny that Hitler is the leader of Europe. We tremble at what he will do next. We know what will become of religious liberty, both for the Jews and for the Catholics. It just will not exist. We know what will happen ... to other freedoms as well ...

Events are moving rapidly in Europe these days. ... England thought that by substituting the realistic actualities of Chamberlain for the idealism of Eden, it could stem the tide. Just two weeks later, England found it was too late. France thought it could rely on the "Steel Ring" it had placed about Germany. It now faces collapse of that ring. Even Mussolini looked with patronizing friendliness on his imitator; he now finds that the student has outgrown the master.

What does this mean for the average American? Certainly it leads to disillusionment with the instrument of war. We tried to preserve democracy in Europe once by going to war; we now know that war does not work.

[Quoting Emerson] Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist and will appear. Nothing arbitrary, nothing artificial, can endure. Of all forms of government yet conceived, democracy furnishes the most useful agencies for fighting arbitary mismanagement. What we must do is preserve democratic methods in America. No doubt we will be importuned again to spend our resources in a futile effort to correct the failings of Europe. The inevitable law of which Emerson speaks will take care of Europe. What we must do is care for our own. Futility has ever been the nemesis of democracies. Never in the world's history has it been more necessary for democracy to work than here and now.

= = = = =[End quote from Schwellenbach]= = = = =

Futility is the nemesis of any system, not just democracy.

If you want an economic system to continue working, you have to insure that people who follow the system's implicit or explicit recommendations are rewarded. They must be able to feel some small degree of progress, some slight annual improvement. Our economic system has failed. For the last 35 years, productive work has been punished. Productive jobs are disappearing fast. Destructive jobs and counterfeiting (i.e. banking) are lavishly rewarded.

If you want a moral system to work, it's the same. People who follow the precepts must see that evil is occasionally punished. Good actions must at least be respected if not explicitly rewarded. And we're failing there as well. Normal marriage, normal family life, is no longer honored. It's treated with suspicion and contempt. Fashionable counterfeits are lavishly rewarded.

Well then, why don't we have riots or at least alternate political movements? I dunno.

For one thing, our masters have developed a beautiful system of symmetrical scapegoating. If you belong to the Goldman 'R' Team, you know that all the problems in the world are caused by the Goldman 'D' Team. If you belong to the Goldman 'D' Team, you know that all the problems in the world are caused by the Goldman 'R' Team. Just let OUR team get back in power, and we'll fix everything! By God, we'll do things differently! We'll continue 100% of the same policies that the OTHER team pursued, but we'll be wearing OUR team shirts while we pursue the same policies! This will solve all the problems caused by the policies that the OTHER team pursued while wearing THEIR team shirts!

In 2008, it looked like political action might break out of the team system. Occupy and Tea Party were formed to oppose the Wall Street Mafia. Both were INSTANTLY co-opted by the Wall Street Mafia. After roughly 24 hours of real opposition, both have been advocating nothing in particular; both serve as especially loyal troops for the Goldman 'D' Team and Goldman 'R' Team respectively.

Perfect futility. Nothing helps, nothing changes.
  ¶ 5:17 PM

  Bite-size wisdom
Lately I've been including episodes of 'Calling All Detectives' in my bedtime playlist. This was a SHORT and LOW-BUDGET 1948 series. Each episode was just 8 minutes. There was a pause after the first 2, where the station would insert ads.

I think** the stations were also given a question about a detail in the plot, to be asked during the pause. Then the stations could run a contest for best guess afterward, filling out the standard 15 minute slot. This interactive material isn't contained in the clips as recorded on archive.org, but it's implied in each episode.

No music, exactly three sound effects (car accelerating, footsteps, paper rustling) and one actor reading all the parts. Female characters were silent.

Despite the extreme cheapness, the writers were excellent. They packed a full story into 8 minutes, with character development, plot, and moral. Each episode feels like a half hour.

In this episode, the detective is called simultaneously by two high-dollar stamp collectors who are accusing each other of theft. He uses constants and variables expertly, determining that a crooked stamp dealer is playing these two against each other to manipulate prices.

At the end the narrator says:

When two clients accuse each other, always look for the hand of a third party.

Excellent advice. We won't hear this moral today, because the entire world is based on Symmetrical Scapegoating.

Nevertheless, the rule is universal. When you're supposed to argue about a specific question, you know the REAL question is elsewhere. Deepstate uses this trick in every possible subject.

= = = = =

** Footnote on quiz:



I'm convinced that I read about this interactive quiz somewhere, but now I can't find it in online descriptions of the program. The narrator does mention it at the end of each episode.

= = = = =

Later after more listening:

This episode was recorded off the air at WGN, not from the transcription disk. It includes the quiz question and answer, plus a bonus question not related to the program. (What was SS Van Dine's real name?) Prize for the bonus question was $180, about a month's basic wages.

And this one includes a remarkable 'extended conceit'. The case deals with a poet who forced his heirs to speak in rhyme until they figured out the location of the fortune. The executor of the estate was recording them day and night with a wire recorder, so they couldn't break the terms; and the detective had to speak in rhyme as well.

Labels: From rights to duties

  ¶ 12:45 PM

  New thought, hardly new
Even the allegedly sane fact-gatherers are still blaming a specific named "virus" for the holocaust. I was thinking as usual that real viruses, if they could talk, would be rioting and organizing massive class-action lawsuits.

My thoughts a year ago still stand....

= = = = = START REPRINT:



She seems to be having some nasal trouble. What's going on in her nose?



It's a protest!

























= = = = = END REPRINT.

The point, in case it's not obvious, is that we are doing everything possible to make life easy for viruses, all in the name of "eliminating" a virus. At the time when I made this cartoon, I believed the "virus" was probably real but overstated and misbranded.

Since then I've performed the indirect proof, following Ockham as usual. My current feeling is that the named "virus" may or may not exist, but it's an unnecessary entity. Consistently since the start, the "data" pointed to a REBRANDING of deaths. All deaths of old people from medical errors and other causes have been transferred from those columns to the branded "virus" column. Those other columns are empty now. It's like QE.

Here's a new thought. The lack of lawyers and protesters is EXACTLY WHY the holocausters chose to frame a "virus" this time instead of "communists" or "altrightnaziqanon" or "radicalislamicterrorists". Symmetrical scapegoating is getting old, and too many people are figuring how the game works.

Blaming an invisible "pathogen" or "powder" or "vapor" or "spirit" avoids lawyers and protests. More importantly it avoids REALITY CHECKS. When the "problem" is "caused" by an entity that only the priesthood can see and measure, you have NO WAY TO COUNTERACT the fraud.

It's hardly new, of course. Sprenger and Kremer perfected the technique 500 years ago.

Labels: endless hell, Jail mode, Metrology

  ¶ 7:27 AM

  Trilateral symmetry
Snowden's latest completely unsurprising "revelations" are SHOCKINGSHOCKINGSHOCKING to all lovers of In Di Vi Du Al Li Ber Ties.

The Smurf stuff is clinically interesting as a symptom of strange personalities, but the basic facts are 70 years old.

In analyzing this shockshockshock, we have to distinguish technically savvy people from ordinary non-tech people.

Non-tech types can't be blamed. They were unaware of NSA until Snowden started talking. They simply appreciated the fun of having a camera and microphone always available.

Tech types are different. They KNEW that NSA was always MONITORING EVERYTHING PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE. Yet even now they're still shockedshockedshocked by Snowden's "revelation" that NSA is MONITORING EVERYTHING PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE.

Must be a special case of Symmetrical Scapegoating. Having two political teams makes it possible to divide the people into opposite bleachers. If you took the letters off the team jerseys, you'd be unable to distinguish the teams by their actions. Both are running toward the same goal, both are committing the same crimes. But with the R and D letters showing, the R bleacher can blame the crimes on the D team, and the D bleacher can blame the crimes on the R team. Both bleachers are narrowly correct, because both teams are in fact committing the same crimes.

This case seems to involve a three-way symmetry. Both teams are playing for NSA, but nobody wears an NSA jersey. The GOOG bleacher cheers for the NSA team wearing the GOOG letters, and the AAPL bleacher cheers for the NSA team wearing AAPL. Both bleachers loudly boo NSA whenever it's mentioned. That's the one thing they agree on.

37 DAYS SINCE START OF FINAL PURGE.

Labels: defensible spaces

  ¶ 4:16 AM

  Gets it.
Amazingly BBC has published several paragraphs of TRUTH. A brief essay by an Israeli historian observes reality accurately.

The liberal story says that humankind is inevitably marching towards a global society of free markets and democratic politics. Those who willingly join the march of history by opening their borders and liberalising their markets and politics will be rewarded with peace and prosperity. Those who refuse to liberalise and globalise are doomed to failure.

However, since the global financial crisis of 2008, people all over the world have become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story.

Whereas a few years ago Americans and Europeans were still trying to liberalise Iraq and Libya at the point of the gun, they now have second thoughts even about American democracy and European identity. More and more Americans and Europeans are convinced that liberalisation and globalisation are a huge fraud that serves the interests of a tiny elite at the expense of the masses.

Exactly right. Because he's using Euro terminology he misses one USA STRONG detail. Both of our brands adopted globalism as The Only Possible Agenda. The R brand called it Conservatism and the D brand called it Liberalism. This enabled both brands to run their Symmetrical Scapegoating routine, attributing failures of globalism to the OTHER brand. If only WE can get into office and run the same evil under OUR brand, everything will be fine.
  ¶ 1:03 AM

  Depassivation
Common Core involves quite a bit of standardized testing, ultimately to evaluate the schools and teachers. Thus the teachers unions and the educrats hate Common Core for valid if venal reasons. I have no idea why Repooflicans hate Common Core, but they do.

This common contempt for Common Core by mutually exclusive organizations creates a fine opportunity for symmetrical scapegoating.

And sure enough, we've got it. In many places the online testing is performed by small tech startups who saw a fine opportunity for gov't contract profits. Some of these startups weren't ready for the job, and even ETS, the biggest and oldest tester in the country, wasn't ready.

Typical case:

What appears to be a denial of service cyber attack may be responsible for preventing hundreds of thousands of students statewide from logging in and taking the Common Core computerized tests Thursday, according to Oakland Unified School District.

“As far as we know, it was intentional,” Flint added. “The state was subjected to some sort of attack and that’s what caused the system to bog down.” He adds that the state told his district the issue was sabotage on the school server system, although it’s not clear which server system may have been affected.

At the same time, the state department of education says those reports are unfounded. ... “The system was in the process of an upgrade and was coming back online at the time when students were attempting to log onto the system.”

California’s testing vendor is Educational Testing Service or ETS.

Blaming a "cyberattack" for your own failure: opposite of passivation. [Later: No, I guess it's not the opposite. It's a variant of passivation. The "cyberattack" plays the same role as the "unpredictable natural disaster" which "nobody could have possibly expected" in deflecting blame from your own directly created problem.]

ETS really should know better. They've been administering computer-graded tests since the 1950s. Aside from the question of system capacity, they've violated one of the basic rules of testing. Don't change the process in midstream. Don't update your software in the middle of a run. Even if the update doesn't crash, you've invalidated the test by changing ANYTHING during the run.

But everything is OK if you can blame the Christians and the KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH Repoofs KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH. Can't sue us, nyah nyah nyah.
  ¶ 4:48 AM