Just Like Trump, I Avoided Paying Federal Taxes
by Bert Stratton, Oct. 17 2016 (LINK to article)
If America were a genuine nation, its citizens would be sharing with each other, instead of always being on the make, always seeking their own profit and advantage.
In this America is no different from any other country, of course, but why the deception and deceit of nationhood, when truthfulness is what we really need?
It is because the state legitimises itself, its ruling elites and the immense power they wield and abuse by deceitfully posing as a nation it is not.
This is a difficult, painful and frightening truth to recognise and face up to, but the truth it is, and if western civilisation is to have a future extending beyond the next few decades this is what we (especially academics) have to do (LINK).
My Syllabus, My Self
"We would be able to take a course [great thinkers] privately, separated by time but nonetheless plugged into their brains and hearts."
What separates us from past thinkers, is not just time, but also circumstance and world view.
We live in very exceptional times and circumstances, which are changing at an unprecedented pace. Things changed in the past, of course, but rarely at a pace that people noticed. Now the rate of change is quite dizzying, which makes many of us sick (I've just read and commented on the editorial about the millions struggling with pain and missing from the labor market (LINK). But not the author of this piece, who has clearly found a secure and satisfying niche for herself in academia. As have most academics, who, at the centre of things are not subjected to the same centrifugal forces and insecurities that affect those on the periphery.
I hope the author will excuse my critical comment, but academics are the ones most people, including our leaders, look to as authorities in understanding the world, which I see hurtling towards oblivion, while they tinker with and delight in their syllabuses.
http://philosopherkin.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/contrapot.html
Millions of Men Are Missing From the Job Market
by Editorial Board, Oct. 16 2016 (LINK to article)
"Millions of American men are struggling with pain and missing from the labor market . . "
The principal, underlying cause, I suggest, is that we are dealing with people, who struggle with being treated as "human resources" and consumers, rather than as the human beings they actually are.
We are taught that state and economy exist to serve society and people (human beings) at large, but this is simply not true.
Then why do we believe it? Because we are naturally inclined to believe what we are taught by those in authority, who are well served by the state and the existing socio-economic order.
Everyone who is anyone in society, with any power or influence (including our teachers in academia) is well served by the state and status quo, which blinds them to their fundamental flaws. The system is working well for them, so they rationalise and defend it, something their above average intelligence makes them very good at.
This presents such a huge challenge that it is tempting to give up on it and simple to make the most of the current, favourable situation while we can, before the system breaks down, as it eventually must.
However, I think we owe it to our children and grandchildren, who are going to experience the fast approaching breakdown, to at least think about this challenge, even if it does seem insurmountable at the moment: http://philosopherkin.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/civilisation-evolutionary-cul-de-sac.html
Their Dark Fantasies
by Paul Krugman, Oct. 17 2016 (LINK to article)
"the portrait of America Mr. Ryan painted last week was, in its own way, as out of touch with reality as the ranting of Donald Trump"
While Nobel Laureate and NYT columnist, Paul Krugman, is fully in touch with reality, of course.
Being a reasonable man, I suspect that Prof. Krugman would not claim to have a perfect grasp of reality, but a pretty good grasp, nevertheless.
But then, who doesn't believe themselves to have a good grasp of reality? How can we not believe this without going mad?
From an evolutionary perspective, our brains evolved a need to believe in the soundness of its sense of reality. Otherwise, it would not know how to respond to its environment, which would cause it distress. It is comforting to be sure of yourself and your view of reality, and have it confirmed by others, especially to the extent that Prof. Krugman has.
Prof. Krugman's view of reality, I believe, is deeply flawed, as is that of most, probably all, people.
My view of reality is also flawed, of course, but less flawed than most, because based on an evolutionary understanding of my species and its situation. An understanding that is blocked to Prof. Krugman, because a previous generation of academics made a taboo of viewing their own species from a evolutionary perspective, in overreaction to the Nazis having hijacked and abused, for their own evil purposes, the half-baked ideas of social Darwinism: http://unapprovedcomments.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/the-wests-overreaction-to-nazism.html
‘Only White People,’ Said the Little Girl
"And what of the little girl? . . infected by racism before she can even spell the word."
And when it's a white kid being racially discriminated against, as also happens - is that "racial hatred" as well?
The West's liberal elites - in politics, the media and, most authoritatively, academia - have, for decades, been teaching ordinary people that race is just a "social construct", only of importance to bigots and racists. The author has clearly also swallowed these misguided teachings.
Race is NOT a "social construct" (except when you try dividing closely related peoples from the same subcontinent into different races, as the Nazis insanely did), but REAL and important. Not in the way that racial supremacists believe it is, but because central to any deep and meaningful sense of both personal and group, i.e. genuine national, identity.
These liberal elites want everyone to identify with the state as their nation, so that they can lay claim to their tribal loyalty, and obedience. That is why they deny and suppress the reality and importance of race.
It also serves the age-old strategy of “divide and rule”, dividing society into a morally superior, now supposedly unprejudiced, "colour-blind" and xenophilic elite, on the one hand, and the morally inferior, naturally (evolved human nature being what it is) prejudiced, not colour-blind, but xenophobically-inclined masses, on the other, who must submit to the authority of and domination by their "moral superiors".
The Wall Is a Fantasy
by (LINK to article)
"Public sympathy for immigrants . . has been curdled by terrorist attacks in Brussels, Paris and Nice."
Wrong! It's been curdled by the SCALE of immigration and demographic change. No one likes being reduced to an ethnic minority, where traditionally they have been the majority. Naturally, it makes them very unhappy and angry.
But what to do with their anger? At the moment state authority forces them to suppress it, by demonising it as racism and xenophobia, but increasingly people are realising that this is nonsense. Many of Donald Trump's white supports, I suggest, are directing their anger at those responsible for the madness of policies that will soon make them an ethnic minority in the country their forebears founded, namely America's liberal elites, embodied in the Clintons.
"With the rise of Mr. Trump, America’s sense of itself is suddenly less sure."
Wrong again! The rise of Mr. Trump is a consequence of mass poor-world immigration undermining many Americans sense of what it means to be an American. There used to be white America, which was overwhelmingly dominant, alongside black America and a number of other less numerous ethnic minorities. America has now gone global, a mishmash of all humanity, with white Americans on course to become just another ethnic minority, and in which Orwellian newspeak and doublethink is all that holds the country together - but for how long? (LINK)
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