The Closing of the American Mind
2017 was a spectacular year for intellectual collapse among the political Left, but especially for its subsidiaries on campus. The trauma of Donald Trump’s election victory put this faction into a fugue state in which no opportunity for coercion and persecution of imagined enemies could be missed. The victim-oppressor politics spawned by the critical-theory-for-lunch-bunch has produced an ideology in which “inclusion” means segregated dorms, racially separate graduation ceremonies, and (at Harvard) closing down age-old men’s and women’s voluntary social associations. And “diversity” means as long as you express the exact same ideas we do.
‘Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs.’ If humans disturb the balance of the Earth they will be trampled on and tossed aside. Critics of Gaia theory say they reject it because it is unscientific. The truth is that they fear and hate it because it means that humans can never be other than straw dogs.
-John Gray
And we think we’ve got it bad here.
-Philip K. Dick
“To send someone a book is to commit a burglary—a case of breaking and entering. It is to trample down his solitude, what he holds most sacred, for it is to oblige him to desist from himself in order to think about your thoughts.”
-Cioran
It was an idea. I don't know. Who knows where they fucking come from. Isaac Newton invented gravity cause some asshole hit him in the head with an apple.
-Christopher Moltisanti
We could have had a better future if we’d done the right things when there was still enough time to matter, but we didn’t. That being the case, what kind of future can we expect to get?
There is a standard term in historical studies for that kind of future. That term is “dark age.”
-John Michael Greer, 2016
"The action was one that rewarded itself."
- Scipio Africanus, 218 B.C.
I would rather cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle.
宁在宝马车里哭，也不在自行车上笑
-Ma Nuo
Karl Marx, a visionary, figured out that you can control a slave much better by convincing him he is an employee.
- Taleb
Fear and hatred are very poor advisors.
-The Saker
If you want to scare the monkeys, kill the chicken.
Or maybe he's just a fucking idiot. Historically, that's been the case.
-Tony Soprano
The future to me is utterly unattractive.
-Churchill to his Mother (circa 1896)
The problem I see with throwing your shoes at people is you only get two shots.
-Saint Bif
JR, how did you know it was my birthday?
There are better looking transvestites than that.
yeah, tha’s one pretty ugly whoore.
anyway’s as terrance mackenna once said, “the bigger you build the bonfire, the more darkness is revealed.”
dave’s corralary: “we have no choise in the matter.”
good grief, even my irish relatives are startin’ ta get wise:
Dave,
I think that guy and his buddies are suffering from a collective solipsism, or just circle-jerking, you choose.
well, i think that i’m about the furthest thing from a dualist that ever lived. but i do think that mind is the only thing interested in proving that matter and energy, in which mind is embraced, acctualy do exist. i mean shit, matter and energy sure don’t care weather they exist or not.
yeah, when the fucking micks finally get around to figuring out that there’s a problem….
i wish that i had thought of doing this.
yah, and if they hadn’t gotten their share of german rocket scientists after WWII, they’d probably still be getting pigs drunk and shooting them into the sky with cannons.
i refuse on general principles to watch or listen to the stupid animation bears discuss anything. sorry.
i wonder if JR has given the blog’s management over to his retarded step nephew whilst he’s away on holiday?
it doesn’t take much evaporation over precipitation to end a fairly spectacular civilization, so why are we focusing on a little price rise in the cost of petroleum, the facetious monkey asks his wise colleagues: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-17149812
maybe buy this book and find out: http://www.amazon.com/Too-Smart-our-Own-Good/dp/052176436X
The answer to your question is that drunk pigs are the best way to seed rain clouds.
But Newt says 2 bucks if he becomes Prez I say vote for Stupidity vote for newt
I don’t care
Who’s that dork? Is that Stuart Staniford? What’s that weird accent? I hate those people. That ungrateful twirp should be glad he doesn’t live in Homs.
Anything Stuart Staniford can eat a pig can eat better. hash tag thankyou
stuart staniford eats shit, whoever that is.
whilst bashing that little shit known to his loving parents and GF as “Stu”, he’s always got to try to show that Peak Oil hasn’t yet happened by doing some statistical lying tactic, like showing uncorrected monthly production reports or confusing conventional C& C with “all liquids”, etc. he usually picks TOD to do this hit & run, and then generates about 40 to 50 comments where the rest of the regular commenters attempt to point out that Stu is lying with statistics and tarted-up graphs once again. oh well, we’re all gonna die anyway…
oh, you mean that dork in the video above? that’s not Stuart Staniford, that’s just some Irish dork attempting to educate some other irish. good luck with that.
hey, did Nudge fall into a hole? i wonder if EE and MOU are down there also? could they all be looking to be tanned by that “silence of the lambs” wacko? inquiring minds want to know. maybe we should email them?
“Ever since the Arabs wrested control of their oil resources from the U.S.-dominated international oil cartel and formed an imitative cartel of their own, the U.S. government has decried high oil prices and spent hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to “protect” Saudi Arabia and other Middle East producers in exchange for their efforts to restrain oil prices.”
yeah….i don’t understand the point of the article, as a whole. but i will say, without equivication, that the above has to be one of, no, the, stupidist sentance ever written in the english language.
the us lost control of thier nergy, and thereby, industrial world dominance, by way, primarily, of resource depletion. the arabs didn’t “wrest control” of anything from anybody..someone please tell me how the saudis have worked to restrain oil prices. does this idiot think that the saudis are a “swing producer”, or something like that lieing cocksucker friedman, or sombody like that, might come up with it.
ya know, i’ve hung around her for a long fucking time. but if you want to put stupid shit like this up, with no explanation behind it, then just count me out, please.
Volt is loosing its charge
http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/02/10563905-volt-production-halted-1300-workers-out-of-work
Though with higher gas prices I think they will hit productuion targets
oh oh, raises hand in back, i think i know the answer! the reason that too few in america are buying the volt coal/nukular car is: those buyers are broke. they cannot afford the volt’s price tag, hence they buy the cheaper nissan leaf, if they buy anything electric, high-mileage or new at all. nothing has changed in american auto sales since the 1970s.
But real americans buy american goods even if those cars parts are from somewhere else.
oops, forget about being poor, howz about being dead, like as in extinct?
http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2012/03/02/sea-changes-ocean-acidification-is-worse-than-its-been-for-300-million-years/?hpt=hp_c2
“The newspaper noted that the latest move to fund an anticipated war with Iran follows the Pentagon’s request in January for $82 million “to improve its largest conventional bunker-buster bomb, the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The bomb, officials said, was designed to take out bunkers like those used by Iran to protect its most sensitive nuclear development work.”
dave just calls it “the tool”.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=VAN20120228&articleId=29530
ted’s “the lorax” seems like a timely release…
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/02/gotta-watch-dr-seuss-turns-108/
one of the best zerohedge posts ever, imhcfno:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-extend-and-pretend-coming-end
the comments are especially humorous.
at the ala moana maul in honolulu, which was once the world’s largest indoor shopping mall, one of the original anchor stores, sears, announced it will close in 2013, to be replaced at $500 million expense with a nest of smaller shops. it seems sears was losing money, and the mall owners are looking toward higher-end tourist markets, and not to the loser lower-middle class sears customers, which are largely local customers. they will have to find their craftsman tools and popcorn somewhere else.
i’ve always liked “craftsman” tools. i’ve always thought that they rivaled “snapon” in quality, at maybe 2/3 the cost. i haven’t bought tools in a long time.
“You have to admire the resourcefulness of the vested interests in disguising disaster and pretending that time will alleviate the consequences of their insatiable greed,…”
time heals all wounds.
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.alternet.org%2Fnews%2F144529%3Fpage%3Dentire&h=yAQGNGu3_AQHplo7_gkeoBtm4U_j3OtrOGbPcOml4MWoeEg
The end is Ni!!!
I like the BO foto: http://cryptogon.com/?p=27893
“….and time wounds all heels.”
Good to know ya missed me Doom! How did Big B like the “Lost City of Z?”
Speaking of mysteries, a buddy of mine is about to publish her first big book: http://www.amazon.com/Search-Sacco-Vanzetti-Troubled-Massachusetts/dp/1555537308
It’s been 10+ years in the writing.
so i thought that this was a nice little talk. of course, in my mind change always happens; and “consiuous change” is just silliness.
EE, good to know you’re OK and not getting your skin tanned by some silence of the lambs type. i’ll ask big B if he’s read that book yet and get back to you.
it’s stormin’ up a storm out here. last night was a thunder & lightening light extravanganza show, all at high volume, courtesy of God. today, it’s a wall of water with brown lakes forming in the low spots in the yards. good test of the roof repairs, though.
this might be a decent movie.
“The Putinator”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/NC09Ag01.html
Malthus, a Meal a Day. Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the Food and Love the (Population) Bomb.
http://www.conceptualdevices.com/2011/06/malthus-a-meal-a-day-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-about-the-food-and-love-the-population-bomb/
Dammit dave, that caravan palace is starting to grow on me.
Wanda, on the other hand, I can picture in a brightly lit corner protected by a wire screen a la Bob’s in the “Blues Brothers” flick.
Wonder if Wanda knows ‘Fukushima Mutant’?
Remus, I really like the Malthus, mostly because it is compact and it is labeled.
What one is really doing, of course, is converting a few tens of grams of low-grade fish food a day plus energy from the sun and whatever one uses for the pump system (can be moron solar via PV) into some salad and fish food for humans. The sun might always shine, but there is going to be a sustainable need for that low-grade fish food plus electricity to run the pumps plus wear on the pumps and PV breakdown means eventual replacements plus the usual parasites that must be combatted, assuming the occasional bad fish or lettuce mite is introduced.
In Hawaii, that would translate to imported corn meal and coal/fuel oil to make the juice if no PV installed. Dunno. How about just eating corn flakes instead and forget all that fancy aquaponics shit?
No messy fish guts and scales to deal with, plus Talapia is a shit fish to eat anyway, and old Malthus is gonna cost a lot of corn flakes up front to install. And, you can go on vakay and not have to leave the whole mess in the good hands of the neighbor’s son, who’ll want an expensive Tee shirt in return, minimum, for not fiffn up the system.
Well Doom, it’s always something.
And I always liked Patsy Cline.
if it’s not one thing, it’s another.
fucking march, i’ll be glad when it’s all over and april is here.
april has the birth and death day of adolf hitler, so there’s some good and bad to it, i guess.
i guess the pecking order is russians > germans > jews > palistinians. wonder were americans think they fit in? on top, no doubt.
Hi Doom,
Valid comments on aquaponics.
There was a thread somewhere on the AP forum about making a totally self-powered system. Basically a windmill driving water up to a header tank and gravity feeding down through the beds back to the reservoir the windmill pumps from. That kind of set-up needs about ten times the water storage for when the wind isn’t blowing.
Food is the bigger issue though, so unless you change to vermiponics or breed black soldier flies you are going to need some serious energy input to bring fish meal from Chile.
Chile wishes they had fish meal
Up stream peru pretty much is the world market
don’t feel too sorry for Chile, roach. they still sit on the world’s largest reserves of copper, not to mention a bunch of other metals, like gold. they’ll always have something to trade for food, water, etc.
yarra, i do the math on food here in hawaii all the time. no matter how i calculate it, we come out screwed.
yeah, i have aquaponics in my back yard. most people call it a pond, for some strange reason.
Is that coz is has no edible fish or vegetables in it?
plenty of fish. sometimes thier scraps go into the vegetable garden. it’s funny how that works.
yeah, my system is totally solar powered too. the sun evaporates water, which eventually rains down on the surrounding hillsides. this rain collects into streams wich bring nutrients into my aquaponics system. i don’t have to do shit except catch fish for me and my cats. fucking amazing how i thought of all this shit.
ya, yo’re an iffin genius dave, but what about those cold winter daz when your pond freezes over? you must suffer the inconvenience of having to cut holes in the ice to get your fish. why not pay someone to ship in some coal, or perhaps build a nuke plant nearby? then, you could use the grid to get fancy, modern electricity delivered to your door. using electricity, or perhaps tanks of propane gas, you could place enough heaters around the pond to keep the area warm in winter.
no messy ice to cut or slip on in the winter. all for only $9999.95, + hidden (for now) economic “externalities”.
What Ice? The cold winter daz didn’t arrive in the northeast, no need to chop ice on lots of lakes.
GB, well, maybe you’ll get some ice again next winter. these global warming trends take some time to get established.
Remind me not to eat at Dave’s house….
I may bring a gift, though.
A figjam hat might be appropriate.
whatsamatter? don’t like cats?
Mutant Ninja (sea) Turltes
http://tinyurl.com/7n67gym
I probably should like them – chickens only eat the baby mice.