Uncle Ken seems to be saying that there is no room for alternate facts in Western civilization. Then why have people been fighting wars over ideology for the last 2000 years? Although many wars were really fought over real estate, the combatants frequently used ideology as an excuse to justify their land grabbing efforts, and I think they actually believed that at some level. Why else would they think that they were destined to rule over "the lesser breeds without the law"? Truth be known, those lesser breeds had the law too, albeit a different law. Even unto this day, the Islamic world is being torn asunder by factionalism while it simultaneously wages war against "The Great Satan". (That's us.) Maybe Old dog is right about waiting to see where Uncle Ken is going with this before passing judgement on it.
I never watched "The Apprentice", but the ads I saw about it seemed to say that it was about this rich prick who enjoys firing his employees. I figured that Trump got so into the role that he became that person in real life. I suppose it's also possible that he always was that way in real life and was just playing himself on the TV show.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Civilized
Is the term Western Civilization still relevant? It seems to me that we now have a Global Civilization, very heavily influenced by WC, that is split between the developed and not-so-developed nations. There are significant exceptions, particularly in the Middle Eastern regions, but it looks like most nations are getting with the program. I'm not exactly sure what Uncle Ken means when he is discussing Western Civilization; is it to be compared to Eastern Civilization? I'd like to know how other factors such as capitalism, culture, and colonial expansion work into his treatise and I look forward to the next installment.
But when I think of civilization I don't think of living in cities which is what the word originally meant, way back when. The global population is becoming increasingly urbanized and a lot of the biggest cities are in distinctly non-Western regions, so now I don't know what to think. Maybe Uncle Ken has some new words I could use, the best words.
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I'm always on the lookout for some good humor and satire and I've found a good source on YouTube. It's a series of short videos from the folks at cracked.com called "Honest Ads." They're not too long, around five minutes or less, and they cover a wide range of subjects. A couple of examples are "Why Presidential Debates Can't Be Honest" and "If Soda Commercials Were Honest." The complete playlist can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_saLI-LH-Vp9cxB3FNJoYXZXRM93UBuf
You guys may not like them, but I do and they provide a little food for thought.
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Trump used to be a TV actor, and those people can play any part that is assigned to them.
He's no actor. The only role he ever plays is Donald J. Trump and he still can't remember his lines; they keep changing from day to day. In fact, none of the White House staff seem to be following the same script. Yesterday Kellyanne Conway was telling an interviewer that no one in the White House is talking about Hillary Clinton anymore, but earlier that same day His Orangeness mentioned Hillary and the election during a press conference with the Norwegian Prime Minister. It seems every time Trump opens his mouth he's got to say something about Hillary. And how can he insist there is no collusion with the Russians if the investigation is still ongoing? What a maroon.
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Since I don't have cable I wasn't able to see Jake Tapper's interview with Stephen Miller, but I was able to listen to an audio stream and I have a different take on it. It sounded to me like Tapper kept interrupting Miller, not letting him finish what he had to say. Quite rudely, I thought. Chris Cuomo did the same thing with Kellyanne Conway today, not letting her finish what she was saying. Are all CNN reporters like that? The folks at MSNBC seem a lot more professional, but they don't get the same level of White House heavyweights that CNN gets. I'm getting the impression that the White House sends folks to CNN because it stirs the pot and makes for higher ratings. There's a real love/'hate thing going on, maybe just to validate the claims of fake news. Oh, well...there will be a new story tomorrow.
But when I think of civilization I don't think of living in cities which is what the word originally meant, way back when. The global population is becoming increasingly urbanized and a lot of the biggest cities are in distinctly non-Western regions, so now I don't know what to think. Maybe Uncle Ken has some new words I could use, the best words.
-----
I'm always on the lookout for some good humor and satire and I've found a good source on YouTube. It's a series of short videos from the folks at cracked.com called "Honest Ads." They're not too long, around five minutes or less, and they cover a wide range of subjects. A couple of examples are "Why Presidential Debates Can't Be Honest" and "If Soda Commercials Were Honest." The complete playlist can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_saLI-LH-Vp9cxB3FNJoYXZXRM93UBuf
You guys may not like them, but I do and they provide a little food for thought.
-----
Trump used to be a TV actor, and those people can play any part that is assigned to them.
He's no actor. The only role he ever plays is Donald J. Trump and he still can't remember his lines; they keep changing from day to day. In fact, none of the White House staff seem to be following the same script. Yesterday Kellyanne Conway was telling an interviewer that no one in the White House is talking about Hillary Clinton anymore, but earlier that same day His Orangeness mentioned Hillary and the election during a press conference with the Norwegian Prime Minister. It seems every time Trump opens his mouth he's got to say something about Hillary. And how can he insist there is no collusion with the Russians if the investigation is still ongoing? What a maroon.
-----
Since I don't have cable I wasn't able to see Jake Tapper's interview with Stephen Miller, but I was able to listen to an audio stream and I have a different take on it. It sounded to me like Tapper kept interrupting Miller, not letting him finish what he had to say. Quite rudely, I thought. Chris Cuomo did the same thing with Kellyanne Conway today, not letting her finish what she was saying. Are all CNN reporters like that? The folks at MSNBC seem a lot more professional, but they don't get the same level of White House heavyweights that CNN gets. I'm getting the impression that the White House sends folks to CNN because it stirs the pot and makes for higher ratings. There's a real love/'hate thing going on, maybe just to validate the claims of fake news. Oh, well...there will be a new story tomorrow.
is you is, or is you isn't? / the path of western civ
Is you is, or is you isn't? You can be is, or you can be isn't, but you can't be both, and you can't be neither, and you can't be something else. That is the canon of western civ. Back in the day the Greeks had all these gods up there in Olympus fornicating and fighting and getting drunk, and who could figure out what was going on? Nobody, and that's why nobody bothered. The earliest Greek philosophers turned against them, and that's an interesting word, Them. If They were always colluding to keep you from the truth for unknown purposes, how could you ever know anything?
So they tossed Them aside and sat on a rock with their legs crossed and their chins on their fists, and they set to thinking. And they did pretty good, they figured a lot of things out that wouldn't be figured out again for a thousand years. But they never wanted to leave that rock or turn their head to look at what was around them. They disdained the real world as some kind of illusion and thought that they could figure out everything from that rock without even turning their heads.
So they were pushovers when the Romans came knocking on the door. The Romans weren't big thinkers and disdained the theoretical and, as you know, they conquered almost all of the known world. But once they conquered you, if you didn't put up a fuss, they were pretty lenient. You didn't have to worship their gods, who were just the Greek gods in more practical clothes, you could keep worshiping your old gods, and hell, the Romans would join right in with you and worship them too, let a thousand gods bloom, it was new age in the old age.
I wasn't quite correct when I said that the Romans didn't want you to worship their gods, they did want lip service, just some little sacrifice some little oath, and then you could head on out to the Sun God's for the rest of the afternoon. It was no big problem for anybody but, the Christians..
Maybe Zeus, or the Sun God didn't mind if you played footsies with other gods, but Jehovah wasn't having any of that shit, no other gods before Me crumb bums, you got that? They came a cropper for that when they found themselves facing a lion with their bare hands and the whole goddamn crowd rooting against them. But they were tough little nuts and they ended up ruling the Roman Empire, and when it fell they converted the barbarians and pretty much ruled Europe until modernity.
They inherited that whole Roman rigmarole of rules and regulations and applied that to their church, monks debating the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin (strangely Wiki has no answer), and everything was pretty much cut and dry, this was so because of this and that. There were a few things that didn't make any sense and they were called miracles and roped off from discussion.
And they didn't disdain the natural world the way some other religions did, indeed it was the creation of God, and a close inspection of it was all to the glory of Him, and just as there could only be one god, there could only be one truth. If you weren't is, you were isn't, if you were is then you weren't isn't, that was it.
That's how we got to have science in the western world, there was no thought that things could never be figured out because maybe Zeus was drunk that day, or They were colluding to make you think that. An electron has a mass of 9.109x10^-31 and that's it. There are no alternate facts and that's a fact Jack. To think otherwise is to disdain the whole of western civ.
I am wondering about Trump's physical too. This won't be his wacky personal doctor, this will be some hotshot military doctor. I wonder how much will be revealed.
So they tossed Them aside and sat on a rock with their legs crossed and their chins on their fists, and they set to thinking. And they did pretty good, they figured a lot of things out that wouldn't be figured out again for a thousand years. But they never wanted to leave that rock or turn their head to look at what was around them. They disdained the real world as some kind of illusion and thought that they could figure out everything from that rock without even turning their heads.
So they were pushovers when the Romans came knocking on the door. The Romans weren't big thinkers and disdained the theoretical and, as you know, they conquered almost all of the known world. But once they conquered you, if you didn't put up a fuss, they were pretty lenient. You didn't have to worship their gods, who were just the Greek gods in more practical clothes, you could keep worshiping your old gods, and hell, the Romans would join right in with you and worship them too, let a thousand gods bloom, it was new age in the old age.
I wasn't quite correct when I said that the Romans didn't want you to worship their gods, they did want lip service, just some little sacrifice some little oath, and then you could head on out to the Sun God's for the rest of the afternoon. It was no big problem for anybody but, the Christians..
Maybe Zeus, or the Sun God didn't mind if you played footsies with other gods, but Jehovah wasn't having any of that shit, no other gods before Me crumb bums, you got that? They came a cropper for that when they found themselves facing a lion with their bare hands and the whole goddamn crowd rooting against them. But they were tough little nuts and they ended up ruling the Roman Empire, and when it fell they converted the barbarians and pretty much ruled Europe until modernity.
They inherited that whole Roman rigmarole of rules and regulations and applied that to their church, monks debating the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin (strangely Wiki has no answer), and everything was pretty much cut and dry, this was so because of this and that. There were a few things that didn't make any sense and they were called miracles and roped off from discussion.
And they didn't disdain the natural world the way some other religions did, indeed it was the creation of God, and a close inspection of it was all to the glory of Him, and just as there could only be one god, there could only be one truth. If you weren't is, you were isn't, if you were is then you weren't isn't, that was it.
That's how we got to have science in the western world, there was no thought that things could never be figured out because maybe Zeus was drunk that day, or They were colluding to make you think that. An electron has a mass of 9.109x10^-31 and that's it. There are no alternate facts and that's a fact Jack. To think otherwise is to disdain the whole of western civ.
I am wondering about Trump's physical too. This won't be his wacky personal doctor, this will be some hotshot military doctor. I wonder how much will be revealed.
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Mortars and False Flags
I couldn't remember the model number of the mortars we had in Berlin, but I looked it up, and the M29 looks almost identical except the base plate was a little different. A mortar is defined as a high angle or indirect fire weapon. That means the barrel is always elevated more than 45 degrees in relation to level ground. With a direct fire weapon, an increase in the angle of elevation moves the round's impact farther down range, all other factors being equal. With indirect fire, it's just the opposite, the higher you elevate the barrel, the closer the round's impact moves towards the gun. Most artillery can fire either direct or indirect, but mortars can only fire indirect. Another distinguishing characteristic is the way mortars are loaded. The round is dropped down the barrel by hand, and the fixed firing pin is located at the bottom end. When the round makes contact with the firing pin, a primer charge is ignited which, in turn ignites propellant charges that are clipped to the stabilizing fins. Those fins are probably what gave Old dog the impression that a mortar round is a rocket, but it's not really. The propellant charges burn all at once, bang, while a rocket carries it's fuel with it and burns it relatively slowly by comparison. The advantage of mortars is that they can shoot over obstacles like hills or trees, and the gun crew does not need see the target. The guy who needs to see the target is the forward observer, and that's all he needs to see. The FO calls in the target location by radio to the fire direction controller, who calculates what the gun crew needs to do to put its rounds in the vicinity of the target. First round hits are rare, and the FO calls in corrections to the FDC, who recalculates and tells the crew to fire another round. They keep doing this until they get a hit, and then fire for effect.
I took the three year option for the same reasons that Old Dog did, but I didn't make such a wise choice of career paths. I wanted to go to Vietnam but, at the time, the only people they had there were Special Forces. Before I could join Special Forces I had to become Airborne (paratroopers) and, before I could become Airborne, I had to become Infantry. By the time I finished basic training, I changed my mind about the whole program and, the only way I could get out of it, was to give up my career choice and remain in the Infantry, which I did. Shortly after I got to Berlin, I heard that they were no longer requiring the two year guys to spend another two years in the active reserve, so I didn't gain a thing by taking the three year option.
I said at the time that I didn't think Trump wasn't trying to win the election. I figured his mission was to give the Republicans a bad name. Some of the pundits were saying the same thing, accusing Trump of running a "false flag campaign". Uncle Ken disagreed, believing that Trump was exactly what he appeared to be. Trump's conduct since he was elected tends to confirm Uncle Ken's opinion, but you never know. Trump used to be a TV actor, and those people can play any part that is assigned to them.
I took the three year option for the same reasons that Old Dog did, but I didn't make such a wise choice of career paths. I wanted to go to Vietnam but, at the time, the only people they had there were Special Forces. Before I could join Special Forces I had to become Airborne (paratroopers) and, before I could become Airborne, I had to become Infantry. By the time I finished basic training, I changed my mind about the whole program and, the only way I could get out of it, was to give up my career choice and remain in the Infantry, which I did. Shortly after I got to Berlin, I heard that they were no longer requiring the two year guys to spend another two years in the active reserve, so I didn't gain a thing by taking the three year option.
I said at the time that I didn't think Trump wasn't trying to win the election. I figured his mission was to give the Republicans a bad name. Some of the pundits were saying the same thing, accusing Trump of running a "false flag campaign". Uncle Ken disagreed, believing that Trump was exactly what he appeared to be. Trump's conduct since he was elected tends to confirm Uncle Ken's opinion, but you never know. Trump used to be a TV actor, and those people can play any part that is assigned to them.
Oops
Post-Truth is an intriguing concept, and that book by Ralph Keyes looks like it would be a good read but I don't know if it's still in print; it was first published in 2004. There are some preview pages available online but I haven't found the compete text, yet, but I'm still looking. One of the first lines was a quote stating Truth has been displaced by "believability." That sounds about right.
Another relevant term of very recent vintage is supplied by none other than Kellyanne Conway, a prime White House mouthpiece. She may have been the first to mention "Alternative Facts," a concept that boggles the mind. I mean, a statement is a fact, or it isn't. But facts and truth are not the same thing, are they? I think truth is determined by an analysis and interpretation of the facts, which can lead to confusing conclusions. You can take a bunch of facts and, depending on how they are interpreted, arrive at numerous conclusions which may or may not be truthful, and that's why lawyers get the big bucks. Facts are never subjective but truth may be; I'm sticking with that notion until something better comes along. Why doesn't court testimony require you to tell "the facts, the whole facts, and nothing but the facts?" It's a subtle distinction, but a distinction none the less, but I am not doing a good job of explaining it and it needs more work, but, there you go. It's all I have at the moment.
-----
Uncle Ken's trip down memory lane about talk show hosts and interviewers reminded me of some of the greats and there were quite a few, folks who could discuss, debate, and even argue without losing their civility. David Susskind, Dick Cavett, and Tom Snyder come to mind, and even David Frost did a good job with Nixon; a good movie was made of that one. But the confrontational style goes way back, too, and I think one of the first practitioners was Joe Pyne, though I haven't seen any of his shows; he died in the 60's and I wasn't paying much attention to that kind of news at the time. But I remember one of his followers, Morton Downey, Jr. That guy could really get the juices flowing and was the most notorious of his time, as I recall.
Somewhere along the line, likely due to the realities of the marketplace, news programs became news as entertainment programs, and Fox got an early start on that. When they became a network they never shied away from controversy; remember how outrageous "Married with Children" seemed at the time? Tongues were wagging, and the more they wagged the higher the ratings. It's seems like it's part of their business plan, where they get higher ratings pissing people off, and folks will always stop and gawk at a train wreck.
I am hoping some good will come of all this; this is the first time in my memory that the basic concept of truth is a topic of general conversation and is being re-examined in the context of current political life. This is something that should have been take care of a long time ago but better late than never.
-----
Since I've never seen a mortar in real life I had to check with my old friend, Mr. Google. According to the time frame I'm guessing it was the M29, please correct me if I'm wrong. I've only seen them in movies, but I was surprised to see that they had such a great range, more than a mile if I'm not mistaken. They're actually little rockets, aren't they?
When I enlisted I had a choice of schools but that was about five years after Mr. Beagles enlisted and I don't know if he had the same deal. If I took a two year hitch I would have been required to also do four years of active reserve duty, which didn't appeal to me so I did the three year deal which meant three years of inactive reserve; my name was on a piece of paper in St. Louis at the records center and it meant nothing, really. I was home free. So, did Mr. Beagles pick a class where he could "blow shit up real good" or did he not have a choice? I can see the appeal of blowing shit up, and lots of guys are enlisting nowadays to do the same but that's a young man's game, and probably a good idea at the time to their way of thinking. You get a little older and you think, hey, a fella could get hurt doing that stuff. No thanks.
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On Friday, the president is scheduled for a thorough medical exam at the Walter Reed Medical Center. If the medical officers performing the prostate exam and colonoscopy are Mexican-American or Muslim, all the better, I think, for a little poetic justice. You take small victories where you can get them.
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Reading Fire and Fury is a bit of a slog and I'm glad I didn't spend any money on it. I don't expect any great insights; the pundits have already covered most of the major topics, the most significant being that the game plan was to not win the presidency. The election victory screwed up all their plans. When Michael Flynn was questioned about all the money he received from the Turkish government, his response was something like "It will only be a problem if we win." Oops.
Another relevant term of very recent vintage is supplied by none other than Kellyanne Conway, a prime White House mouthpiece. She may have been the first to mention "Alternative Facts," a concept that boggles the mind. I mean, a statement is a fact, or it isn't. But facts and truth are not the same thing, are they? I think truth is determined by an analysis and interpretation of the facts, which can lead to confusing conclusions. You can take a bunch of facts and, depending on how they are interpreted, arrive at numerous conclusions which may or may not be truthful, and that's why lawyers get the big bucks. Facts are never subjective but truth may be; I'm sticking with that notion until something better comes along. Why doesn't court testimony require you to tell "the facts, the whole facts, and nothing but the facts?" It's a subtle distinction, but a distinction none the less, but I am not doing a good job of explaining it and it needs more work, but, there you go. It's all I have at the moment.
-----
Uncle Ken's trip down memory lane about talk show hosts and interviewers reminded me of some of the greats and there were quite a few, folks who could discuss, debate, and even argue without losing their civility. David Susskind, Dick Cavett, and Tom Snyder come to mind, and even David Frost did a good job with Nixon; a good movie was made of that one. But the confrontational style goes way back, too, and I think one of the first practitioners was Joe Pyne, though I haven't seen any of his shows; he died in the 60's and I wasn't paying much attention to that kind of news at the time. But I remember one of his followers, Morton Downey, Jr. That guy could really get the juices flowing and was the most notorious of his time, as I recall.
Somewhere along the line, likely due to the realities of the marketplace, news programs became news as entertainment programs, and Fox got an early start on that. When they became a network they never shied away from controversy; remember how outrageous "Married with Children" seemed at the time? Tongues were wagging, and the more they wagged the higher the ratings. It's seems like it's part of their business plan, where they get higher ratings pissing people off, and folks will always stop and gawk at a train wreck.
I am hoping some good will come of all this; this is the first time in my memory that the basic concept of truth is a topic of general conversation and is being re-examined in the context of current political life. This is something that should have been take care of a long time ago but better late than never.
-----
Since I've never seen a mortar in real life I had to check with my old friend, Mr. Google. According to the time frame I'm guessing it was the M29, please correct me if I'm wrong. I've only seen them in movies, but I was surprised to see that they had such a great range, more than a mile if I'm not mistaken. They're actually little rockets, aren't they?
When I enlisted I had a choice of schools but that was about five years after Mr. Beagles enlisted and I don't know if he had the same deal. If I took a two year hitch I would have been required to also do four years of active reserve duty, which didn't appeal to me so I did the three year deal which meant three years of inactive reserve; my name was on a piece of paper in St. Louis at the records center and it meant nothing, really. I was home free. So, did Mr. Beagles pick a class where he could "blow shit up real good" or did he not have a choice? I can see the appeal of blowing shit up, and lots of guys are enlisting nowadays to do the same but that's a young man's game, and probably a good idea at the time to their way of thinking. You get a little older and you think, hey, a fella could get hurt doing that stuff. No thanks.
-----
On Friday, the president is scheduled for a thorough medical exam at the Walter Reed Medical Center. If the medical officers performing the prostate exam and colonoscopy are Mexican-American or Muslim, all the better, I think, for a little poetic justice. You take small victories where you can get them.
-----
Reading Fire and Fury is a bit of a slog and I'm glad I didn't spend any money on it. I don't expect any great insights; the pundits have already covered most of the major topics, the most significant being that the game plan was to not win the presidency. The election victory screwed up all their plans. When Michael Flynn was questioned about all the money he received from the Turkish government, his response was something like "It will only be a problem if we win." Oops.
how to tell the truth
Offhand I am not familiar with the Post Truth Era term. I suppose I could Google it. I generally Google up two or three items in the writing of a post and like Old Dog I generally learn a thing or two in that manner, but I kind of feel like that should be the responsibility of the poster. Oh, here I go.
It turns out it is all over the place. There is a book by that title (hyphenated) by Ralph Keyes, ah and the Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year for 2016. I am sure they are talking about Trump who has taken lying to a whole new bald-faced level, beyond mere deception and into the level of wearing a blue tie and telling everybody it is red, and claiming that those who are calling it blue are a bunch of liars.
Late at night (8 PM) I watch the murder channel. I don't get off on the gore, but I do like the Perry Mason style winnowing of the subjects, and frequently they begin to hone in on the perp because he is changing his story, and at this point they point out that if you tell the truth, that is all you have to remember, whereas if you lie you have to remember every single lie which is much more difficult.
That's why the adults were telling you the same story, outside of like Santa Claus, they were telling you the truth. Most all of what you learned in school was the truth. I hate to see Them making a comeback in Beagles' posts. As long as you believe in some shadowy group that can cloud the truth, you can't believe in anything else really. I think the concept of Them in Beagles' mind, and not any actual Them is what is clouding Beagles' mind so that he doesn't believe anything anymore. Those of us who don't have that affliction can find information, think about it, and tell, pretty much, what is truth and what is false.
Fire and Fury is written by a yellow journalist, and he is loose with his particulars, but so far none of those quoted has denied saying what is ascribed to them, possibly because Wolff says he has tapes to back up what he says. Note, the Trumpists call it a passel of lies, but don't go into details, but none of the specifics are denied. A discerning person, a follower of the logic of Euclid can easily tell who is telling the truth and doesn't throw up his hands and say, golly I don't know who to believe.
And how about that Bannon? Has ever an evil genius risen so quickly and fallen so equally quickly? Much as I watch Fox, I read the Brietbart report regularly and I never got it, some hysteria, some real news, a lot of puff pieces about Bannon, but frankly nothing there. A lot of screwballs made their way into Trumpland, and I didn't see what was so special about him, and apparently neither does anybody else. RIP Sloppy Steve.
It turns out it is all over the place. There is a book by that title (hyphenated) by Ralph Keyes, ah and the Oxford English Dictionary's word of the year for 2016. I am sure they are talking about Trump who has taken lying to a whole new bald-faced level, beyond mere deception and into the level of wearing a blue tie and telling everybody it is red, and claiming that those who are calling it blue are a bunch of liars.
Late at night (8 PM) I watch the murder channel. I don't get off on the gore, but I do like the Perry Mason style winnowing of the subjects, and frequently they begin to hone in on the perp because he is changing his story, and at this point they point out that if you tell the truth, that is all you have to remember, whereas if you lie you have to remember every single lie which is much more difficult.
That's why the adults were telling you the same story, outside of like Santa Claus, they were telling you the truth. Most all of what you learned in school was the truth. I hate to see Them making a comeback in Beagles' posts. As long as you believe in some shadowy group that can cloud the truth, you can't believe in anything else really. I think the concept of Them in Beagles' mind, and not any actual Them is what is clouding Beagles' mind so that he doesn't believe anything anymore. Those of us who don't have that affliction can find information, think about it, and tell, pretty much, what is truth and what is false.
Fire and Fury is written by a yellow journalist, and he is loose with his particulars, but so far none of those quoted has denied saying what is ascribed to them, possibly because Wolff says he has tapes to back up what he says. Note, the Trumpists call it a passel of lies, but don't go into details, but none of the specifics are denied. A discerning person, a follower of the logic of Euclid can easily tell who is telling the truth and doesn't throw up his hands and say, golly I don't know who to believe.
And how about that Bannon? Has ever an evil genius risen so quickly and fallen so equally quickly? Much as I watch Fox, I read the Brietbart report regularly and I never got it, some hysteria, some real news, a lot of puff pieces about Bannon, but frankly nothing there. A lot of screwballs made their way into Trumpland, and I didn't see what was so special about him, and apparently neither does anybody else. RIP Sloppy Steve.
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
The Post Truth Era
My hypothetical wife and I heard somebody on TV the other day mention that we are now living in The Post Truth Era, but neither of us can remember who said it or in what context. The more I think about it, I think I've heard that phrase before, but I can't remember where. Maybe it was right here at The Institute. You know, I wonder if it has always been like that only we didn't know it. When I was a kid, it seemed like all the adults told all the kids the same stories. I believed at the time that it proved that the stories were all true but, looking back at it now, maybe that's just what they wanted us to believe. For that to work, they must have all been in cahoots. Do you suppose they had regular meetings where they agreed what to tell and not tell all of us? How else could they have pulled it off, since there was no internet? The other kids, of course, told different stories but, because their stories were not nearly as consistent, I tended to discount them.
After signing off last night, I looked up "Fire and Fury". I had seen reference to it in newspaper political cartoons for a couple of days, but I didn't know what they were talking about, and now I do. This is another case of "Who do you want to believe?" One guy says one thing, and another guy contradicts him. Maybe one of them is telling the truth, or maybe neither of them are telling the truth. Maybe both of them are telling the truth as they see it, or maybe they both have been lying so long that they wouldn't recognize the truth if they did see it. Maybe I'm getting cynical in my old age, but I'm getting so that I don't believe hardly anything anymore. Then again, maybe that's why they're doing it, to get us all so that we don't believe anything. Then they will be able to do anything they want and nobody will notice. I wish I could figure out what they really want me to do so that I could do the opposite.
After signing off last night, I looked up "Fire and Fury". I had seen reference to it in newspaper political cartoons for a couple of days, but I didn't know what they were talking about, and now I do. This is another case of "Who do you want to believe?" One guy says one thing, and another guy contradicts him. Maybe one of them is telling the truth, or maybe neither of them are telling the truth. Maybe both of them are telling the truth as they see it, or maybe they both have been lying so long that they wouldn't recognize the truth if they did see it. Maybe I'm getting cynical in my old age, but I'm getting so that I don't believe hardly anything anymore. Then again, maybe that's why they're doing it, to get us all so that we don't believe anything. Then they will be able to do anything they want and nobody will notice. I wish I could figure out what they really want me to do so that I could do the opposite.
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