The Return to “Reality”: The Greatest Casualty of 9/11
We are still paying the price and there is no end in sight
Anis Shivani
[The attacks]…were the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos…. Minds achieving something in an act that we couldn’t even dream of in music, people rehearsing like mad for 10 years, preparing fanatically for a concert, and then dying, just imagine what happened there. You have people who are that focused on a performance and then 5,000 people are dispatched to the afterlife, in a single moment. I couldn’t do that. By comparison, we composers are nothing. Artists, too, sometimes try to go beyond the limits of what is feasible and conceivable, so that we wake up, so that we open ourselves to another world.”
Karlheinz Stockhausen
One good thing could come from this horror: it could spell the end of the age of irony. For some 30 years—roughly as long as the Twin Towers were upright—the good folks in charge of America’s intellectual life have insisted that nothing was to be believed in or taken seriously. Nothing was real. With a giggle and a smirk, our chattering classes—our columnists and pop culture makers—declared that detachment and personal whimsy were the necessary tools for an oh-so-cool life. Who but a slobbering bumpkin would think, “I feel your pain?” The ironists, seeing through everything, made it difficult for anyone to see anything. The consequence of thinking that nothing is real—apart from prancing around in an air of vain stupidity—is that one will not know the difference between a joke and a menace.
Roger Rosenblatt
In 1998, when Bill Clinton lobbed missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan, it was widely derided as a “wag the dog” phenomenon, war as a diversion from the real.
Earlier wars had suffered from the same criticism, most notably Jean Baudrillard’s assertion that the first Persian Gulf War “did not take place.” The 1990s were the peak of the application of the postmodern prism to political and social reality.
It was the heyday of movies like The Matrix (1999), The Truman Show (1998) and Pleasantville (1998), among numerous other Hollywood productions that questioned the nature of identity and reality.
The Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski (1998) is an exemplary movie of the era whose plot can be said to be about “nothing,” in the sense that no resolution in the conventional sense is sought; it reminds one of the stop-and-go plot movement of anime movies such as Spirited Away (2001) or Your Name (2016), which seem to start over and over again, a Japanese aesthetic disconcerting to Western audiences used to Aristotelian plot development.
The “nothing” is important, as it was often evoked with reference to Seinfeld as well, and much of the irreverent comedy of that era, before the return of politics to comedy in such acts as Chris Rock and Lewis Black, not to mention the politicization of satire on Comedy Central. Art, in general, was emptied of grand narratives, as even faint attempts at meaning came with such an overload of irony that the attempt to “make sense” was futile.
9/11 was the crucial before-and-after event, following which the irony that had been escalating since the formation of the modern American empire in the wake of the Second World War and had reached a crescendo in the 1990s was relegated to oblivion.
At the time it wasn’t clear whether this could actually be accomplished, whether irony was too strongly rooted in the culture to actually be foreshortened, but what stands out at a distance of twenty years is that not only was it possible but in both elite and popular culture it has been fully realized to an extent that would have been inconceivable two decades ago.
This is the single most important change that has occurred in the American polity in these years, and it defines every event of consequence in every area of existence, even personal life to the extent that it is publicly transcribed and made visible.
The move from postmodern irony, with its skepticism toward grand narratives and political teleology (not to mention facile ideology), to a post-postmodern realism, which frees politics from unstable interpretation, has recharged capitalism in a way that would have been unimaginable before it happened.
This is true despite the onslaught of new technologies which earlier would have been theorized as working against realism but which have in fact supported the establishment of precisely the kind of realism that would suggest the impossibility of these devices of communication.
In other words, Facebook, under postmodern theory, should be completely the opposite of the actual entity it has become, namely a force for increased gravitation and solidity, rather than liberation from the technology’s tentacles of self-surveillance and impersonal categorization.
So what exactly have we lost?
Postmodernism posits the assertion of globality or interconnectedness between nations and entities, glancing beyond the “end of history” thesis to provoke further convolutions in capitalism’s international trajectory.
It contests the stable bourgeois subject to a far greater extent than modernism attempted, prioritizing modes of information over the Marxist modes of production as the next great site of resistance.
It establishes simulacra as per Baudrillard to see through events that do not even make an attempt at opacity, empowering deconstructive readings of texts to separate language from reality.
It prefers polyvocality in the Bakhtinian sense over univocality (so that even science is not privileged as under modernity), incorporating the polarities of subject positions in a continuously fluid explanation of change.
It distinguishes new grassroots movements from the old Marxist class conflict heuristic, positioning the other at the center of analysis rather than accepting otherness as a sideshow.
Above all, it refutes, as per Lyotard, the grand narratives of capitalism in favor of more local, individual, intimate and multiple narratives, which might well lead to divergent conclusions.
To a large extent, this state of affairs prevailed not only in the academic world prior to 9/11 but also at the popular level, even if ordinary people did not use postmodernism’s often pretentious language. They had the sense, however, to laugh at patent absurdities, and more often than not they came up with ways to identify absurdities to celebrate, in a way that the old Situationists would very much have appreciated.
The Republicans tried to paint a demonic picture of Bill Clinton by way of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but for the general population a blowjob was just a blowjob, and the president’s shape-shifting identity remained more hypnotic. Clinton remained hugely popular until the end, while the puritan hustling of Newt Gingrich and company came in for sustained derision.
In every respect, the ideals of postmodernism, as outlined above, manifested at a deep level, to the extent that vital centrists in the Arthur Schlesinger mode futilely evoked the unity and faith of the 1950s as ideals worth reviving to counter what they decried as the “Balkanization” of America under the onslaught of identity politics, textual deconstruction, respect for the outré (and unAmerican) other, and general disinterest in establishing a form of global hegemony that made sense at the gut level.
Though Clinton tried to reach for just such an overarching theme, he is generally perceived to have failed, despite it being the era when neoliberal globalization came into its own, from the creation of NAFTA to an infinitely malleable mission for NATO, from the glorification of personal responsibility to the increased punitiveness of the carceral state.
Those who rose to power in the wars that followed 9/11 used to lament that a grand narrative was not available to Americans after the demise of the Soviet Union and that this could well portend the end of the American empire before it had reached its climax.
In many ways this state of affairs was more desirable than the return to “reality” we have lately witnessed. In the absence of ideological coherence, there was widespread skepticism of official narratives, which generally precludes war or other misguided bureaucratic adventures. One of the realms most affected by postmodern skepticism was science, whose advances were taken in stride rather than accepted unquestioningly, such as when Dolly the sheep was cloned or the human genome was decoded.
An important aspect of this was the personalization of science, especially with respect to individuals taking charge of their bodies to an extent that had not been seen in America since the advent of modern medicine.
If there was a positive side to personal responsibility, which often devolved into neoliberal punitiveness under the regime established by Clinton and his successors, then assimilating the body and its processes under a subjective and highly individualized lens was it.
None of this is to say that the wars of empire (presented in the guise of “humanitarian” intervention, such as in Bosnia or Kosovo, or lamented for their absence for precisely the same reason as in Rwanda) did not continue unabated, or that the personal responsibility narrative capitalism latched on to did not create forms of misery that can only be explained as a new serfdom, but there was a sense throughout the 1990s that the ground beneath these formulations was shaky indeed and could not last in perpetuity.
Thus the tremendous hope, felt around the globe at the turn of the millennium, in the shape of promises to redo the entire international order, not to create a new grand narrative but to revel in the pervasiveness of postmodern subjectivity. The local would remain independent, in this idealistic interpretation, free from totalizing myths, which only lead to ruin.
So there would be an empowered international criminal court and concerted efforts on debt forgiveness, but local cultures would be appreciated and preserved, despite the rumblings of a conservative minority resisting what they called “cultural relativism.”
The transformation from postmodern irony to a stable subjectivity often mired in grief and physical limitations happened almost overnight. To go from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, which embodied non-chronological discontinuity in the postmodern vein, to his more recent movies such as Inglorious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012), is to establish a myth of revenge, retribution and just recompense in a universe that actively collaborates with the aggrieved subject.
The Coen brothers went from The Dude’s do-nothing ethics in The Big Lebowski to The Serious Man’s (2009) relentless search for meaning even in the shallows of antiquated mythology. The Lovely Bones (2002), Alice Sebold’s hagiography of a dead teenage girl who finds peace and salvation after being brutally murdered, established a trend in fiction, and after that in memoir, that shows no signs of abating twenty years later.
It doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that Kenneth Lonnergan’s Margaret (released 2011), which encapsulates the transformation of the free-flowing subject into one that self-limits and revels in grief and blame, had such a difficult time getting distributed. It was conceived not long after 9/11 but did not see the light of day, and even then only in truncated form, until the tenth anniversary of the fateful event. It was too truthful, and even today it penetrates the new grand narrative with painful jabs.
The grand narrative that has been resurrected, after the dire lack in the 1990s, is that of the desperate need to return to “normality”—this ideal referent holds true whether it is after 9/11, or the financial crisis, or most recently Covid-19—which is constantly strengthened by way of different forms of fear that threaten to undermine said normality.
Of course, this is a normality that was under severe assault during the postmodern peak from the 1970s to the 1990s (the Reagan years included), taken apart and deconstructed from an anti-patriarchal, anti-nationalist, anti-racist, and often even anti-religious perspective.
Normality is everything that postmodernism undermined, as the recharged stable subject is energized by the need for security. Everyday life, in other words, is reillumined by the transcendent capitalist myth, even as the grand narrative takes care not to indulge in bouts of communitarianism but remains limited to individual responsibility.
What about the rise of new oppositional grassroots movements in the “after” period? It is interesting that Occupy Wall Street was in part prompted by the culture jamming disseminated by the Canadian Adbusters magazine, which was Situationalist spectacle updated for an era of consumerism devastated by heavy student debt and permanent job insecurity.
From these small beginnings it burgeoned into a nationwide movement, but at the same time it gradually became transformed by the same grand narrative that capitalism now prefers, namely that scarcity (which is reflected in insecurity) is the order of the day and that nearly all the battles that had been fought and often won by the labor movement need to be fought all over again.
Thus it is interesting to see millennials and post-millennials pursue the fight for a $15 minimum wage, student debt forgiveness, and Medicare for All as though the Golden Age of American capitalism (roughly from 1945 to 1973, and lasting even later, almost until the end of the Cold War) had not made those realities—a living wage, more or less free college, and affordable health care—already possible.
The same applies to abortion rights, or voting rights, or the fight against police brutality, which the country had moved beyond in many respects. I remember well the relatively enlightened attitude of the police in Los Angeles and San Diego in my earlier years, when the departments were interested in notions of racial equity that seem to have been pushed far into the background now, receding as impossible ideals.
The post-scarcity society, a staple of postmodern theory, has been long forgotten, and it is a tragedy. Young people fall into the trap of taking things as real that have no business being treated as such and vice versa. The idea that a decades-long struggle must be mounted to regain some basic elements of economic equity only lately discarded is a hopeless whim.
Oppositional movements were much better off when they presumed the unreality of the political setup and acted accordingly. Dr. Strangelove (1964), Apocalypse Now (1979), and Brazil (1985) represented the absurdist aesthetic that saturated America in earlier decades, ironically providing the only firm basis upon which to mount opposition, namely from a stance of dismissing the economic base as necessary or relevant.
Contrast this to the overwrought seriousness of a deeply flawed movie like Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007), which accepts the reality of the physical order of capitalist extraction, and the way human beings bend under its will, allowing no room for escape or enlightenment.
Daniel Boorstin’s The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1962) actually held sway throughout the counterculture era and for a couple of decades after its peak. It understands that Baudrillardian simulacra, or the pseudo-event in Boorstin’s terms, drives manufactured democracy or the appearance of vigorous contest in the public sphere (I am intentionally teasing Chomsky’s idea of manufactured consent), while actually hiding the end of ideology—and without explicit ideology there can be no progress, no humanity, no enlightenment.
Postmodernism was more suited to the American political and cultural structure in offering avenues of true contestation, because one should not treat the unreal as real, but it also allowed openings to ideology, which is ironic, given that postmodernism is driven by opposition to grand narratives. What we have now, in the return to reality, is a cover for ideology, except that the ideology has been seized by an oligarchy of media barons, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and overvalued celebrities who freely distribute it while denying that they are ideological.
The reconstruction of “scarcity”—in the form of rationing higher education by way of steep tuition costs, or the segregation and displacement of working-class people in all the important cities through what is euphemistically called “gentrification”—is a big part of this posture, which is presented to the struggling subject as a real and ever-present threat, rather than an impossible occurrence based on society’s actual resources and possibilities.
In a mode of perpetual crisis, emotionally overwrought people delegate rationality to experts, which has been manifest in the resistance to treating the Trump phenomenon as a matter of political give-and-take and instead treating it as a law-and-order crisis best dealt with by experts in the security industry, manifesting in Russiagate and repeated efforts at impeachment.
A postmodern anomaly political scientists struggled with throughout the 1990s was Clinton’s low personal rating combined with high policy approval, a paradox Trump manifested too, except that liberal defenders of authority chose not to make peace with the contradiction this time. Also, Clinton was the last president whose policies were driven by polls, while every president since then has ignored polls in making key policy decisions.
Note too that by the time of the mid-1970s Church Committee investigations into the CIA’s historical misdoings, and the revelations of the FBI’s COINTELPRO and other anti-grassroots programs in the same time period, the national intelligence agencies stood fully discredited; the same was true of the ravenously snooping National Security Agency (NSA) in the 1990s, which was treated with disdain after the end of the Soviet Union amid relentless questioning of its aims and orientation.
Privacy became one of the most important public policy arenas in the 1990s, enhancing postmodernism’s interest in the individual subject’s sphere of authenticity, and it is this value that has been most demolished in the ensuing era.
What are some examples of recruiting willing capitalist subjects to fight fights that are not worth fighting because they are not even real?
The war on terror—in response to the most terrifying and therefore most “real” image capitalism could muster to embody insecurity, namely the collapse of the towers in the mushroom rubble—was the most fantastical idea of all, an illusion so radical as to defy belief other than by the most credulous, except that the entire country bought into this credulity.
While Afghanistan offered to extradite Osama bin Laden even before the start of the war, the U.S. chose to invest 20 years and trillions of dollars of resources into a war with ever-shifting goals and parameters, neatly simulating the pacification strategies of the already discredited Vietnam War.
When Katrina drowned New Orleans, our sense of “reality,” brought home by televised images of devastation, focused our minds on relieving the suffering of the residents of the Ninth Ward and other affected areas of the city, while leaving alone the consumption of fossil fuels and the obvious destruction of ecological spheres everywhere due to this reckless consumption, of which Katrina was a surface manifestation.
When the financial crisis hit, we again believed the experts who told us that irresponsible lending and borrowing under the rubric of subprime mortgages was the culprit, while leaving the guilty financial system, overloaded and impossibly top-heavy, not only alone, but even more empowered than before the crisis.
And finally, in the wake of the Covid pandemic, we have a division in the country between those who give absolute credence to scientists in order to oppose the “vaccine skeptics,” forgetting the modern history of medicine in particular and science in general, which as often as not have been allies of capitalist reductionism, bringing about suffering and misery on a transcendental scale, and also staying focused on immediate and apparently the only “real” tools of alleviation, such as vaccines created in short order, rather than addressing the health crisis that makes populations vulnerable to such pandemics.
Imagine the trillions of dollars (again, rebelling against the false notion of scarcity, which postmodernism had once penetrated) aimed at various forms of stimulus, often benefiting the elite medical establishment, redirected to free and healthy food for the entire country, in addition to rent and debt forgiveness, not to mention universal health care at last.
The form of reality, driven by constant challenges of insecurity and terror, that is the basis of the new grand narrative for capitalism in America, militates against thoughtful action, even deliberation about one’s own interests, which is another way of describing the exploration of common interests.
The subject is solidified into a new singular body with limited goals and needs, never able to escape omnipresent threats which take it farther and farther away from the very normality that is sought.
Tactics of opposition and refuge that were successful in the past, which need to be based on unstinting support for freedom of expression and movement, are reconceptualized as potentially terrorist activities, because they break with the ever-uncertain normality.
The current jargon of authenticity, to borrow Theodor Adorno’s terminology, leads to an imprisoned subjectivity, propelled by despair as the only real value. Every time there is a “new normal,” and there always is, we recede farther into unreality, and the ideology of capitalism becomes all the more shrouded.
The prison is unreal, and the spectacle of misery self-renewing; but how can we who remain inside the cage and accept our punishment know it?
Anis Shivani is the author of numerous critically-acclaimed books of fiction, poetry, and criticism, including, most recently, A History of the Cat in Nine Chapters: A Novel, Karachi Raj: A Novel, Logography: A Poetry Omnibus, and Literary Writing in the 21st Century: Conversations. His political books include Why Did Trump Win?, A Radical Human Rights Solution to the Immigration Problem, and Confronting American Fascism: Essays, 2001-2017. His writing appears widely in literary journals, newspapers, and magazines around the world.
https://collections.lacma.org/node/217412
https://collections.lacma.org/node/186764
https://collections.lacma.org/node/179961
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Here is a message I’ve composed and sent to those in my chat groups admonishing the nuvo cultists of Covidia.. Perhaps you might do the same or similar? It is time we started to speak to them as we do so amongst ourselves. If reason won’t work, perhaps shaming might make a difference? “Ask yourselves this question, you so given to this new fascistic faith of Covidia…. Can you even at your most ambitious ever imagine your high priest Fauci ever standing next to the bed of a vaccine fallen comrade of yours and even mouthing some sympathetic platitudes? He would also not ever do this for you either… For this fascistic insanity considers its own fallen as become enemy, the very moment they falter when struck down by the poison demanded in this cultist initiation. You, your comrades, and your leaders leave behind as already dead those that march… Read more »
144,000 is the quantity of awakened souls required to end this. So many are getting so close. Despite all the horror of this world, small acts of kindness and compassion are so much stronger than cruelty, hate and mallice. Each and every reader (and i include the trolls…otherwise they wouldnt be looking) get that this is all way fucked up. Dig to the utter core of the conundrum. We are endlessly cycled, re-cycled, re-incarnated, fed upon. We were conned to consent to this condition The process/system now at so many generations since the last re-boot (Noah) is now falling apart at the seams, memories of past lives leak in, gender roles, psycopathy, sociopathy are now accumulated to create utter torment we see in so many. “They” require us to consent to a new up-dated, improvedshell, a shell compatible with a hive mind, the final solution, the amalgamation of technology and… Read more »
You know you’re in The Communication Age when every event is interpreted as sending a message to someone, mostly to the government.
So when someone posts video of little Jimmie being injured by tripping over a broken footpath slab – that’s someone “sending a message to the council …..”
The Red Indians might have invented such ‘messaging’. Their smoke signals always messaged “Beware ! The Future Is Coming !”
Ies perhaps you have touched upon something here. Perhaps we are indeed sending messages every day, but not to the puppets but to those who pull the strings.
I mean literally. Here. In this forum.
If I were In Charge I would surely have a minion or two checking in to see what messages are leaking through, what articles are being highlighted, what the chatter is.
While imagining we are working toward “understanding” or “waking people up” perhaps all we’re doing is helping out Mr Global like little drone ants collecting and curating morsels of information.
Dirt files. Seems that every time someone cops a bullet, a dirt file is made available to the mass media to broadcast, to inform us that the victim brought it on himself.
I’m not paranoid about Them reading my mail, looking over my shoulder to note down what i’m watching. But it chills me knowing that in Australia the spooks can now plant ‘terrorist’ stuff, ‘kiddie porn’, ‘compromising material’ on my laptop, anytime they feel like it
The word Mandate / Mandatory has slipped into widespread usage by the Pro-Vax camp A LOT lately. Prior to ‘covid’s’ masks / stranger danger / vaxxes mandates, i mostly ever heard it used by politicians…. never by businesses. I assumed it was a legal term. Thus am puzzled that employers, universities, and so on can claim they can order employees to submit to the ‘covid’ injection .I keep wondering why Australian employers et al are said to have a mandate when the national government doesnt mandate everyone submit to the risky injection.
I came across a post earlier that the CDC has ‘updated’ the definition of ‘vaccination’ so that the ‘covid’ shots can be called vaccinations. Maybe i missed the updating of mandate’s definition.
Maybe aged pensioners are not all really ga-ga. Maybe all the updating of once familiar words is addling our brains ?
Mandate is a trick word. It’s akin to a regulation. A regulation is not a law and neither is a mandate. So not necessarily legally enforceable. The trick they play is to use language to get you to agree to their unlawful, illegitimate terms, under their corrupted court system, using your fictional straw man. The aim is to bamboozle the public. Use words in ways to obfuscate and confuse. Use tests in ways to create a set of false statistics and false diagnoses. Like inventing terms such as post modernism to define a cacophony of nonsense. Like virologists calling adding toxic substances to a Petri dish, isolation. Or calling a virus killed, when it’s already supposedly dead. If they could even find it in the first place. They obfuscate and confuse with language, with NLP and by changing meanings right before your eyes. They use sound bites to replace reason.… Read more »
Wonderful comment Researcher.
In my country we hear the repeated words it is Government policy or Mandatory.
time and time again.
A large case of apples and oranges…. Baudrillard was saying that this was essentially a bombing campaign of terror rather than a war.
I got as far as the Stockhausen quote and very quickly got off.
Postmodernism is better described as “most-modernism,” modernism’s absurdities taken to their logical extremes.
That article may appeal to some and that’s fair enough however for me it’s far too contrived. Shameless verbosity in the most part and no significant conclusions.
It certainly proved to me how much I dislike the word “postmodernism”, it almost always is followed by some conceptual tripe.
Just imho..
Real philosophers are a lot easier to read than journalists trying to decorate their writing with smatters of philosophical concepts that they obviously don’t understand.
“If you dont understand it, you dont understand it” (anon)
Also the author mentions a lot of movies… I don’t watch movies |:
Thank you, that was beautiful. I understand my life a bit better now.
I found this through Cory Morningstar’s FB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YljvDStumWM Rewriting the code of life. Gene-editing technology will allow us to redesign whole organisms A comment below (from one Peter Moriarty) impressed me since it goes right to the root of the latest societal game plan and it is one that has been ferociously demonstrated by the covid manoeuvre: The most dangerous thing of all about this imho, is that our stage for public debate is hosted by and owned by the exact same people who are top level investors in this technology. They will not allow open and vigorous, skepticism based debate, will not allow nay sayers from the realms of either medicine, ethics or theology. And this is the essence of the current political and media management. The vast majority of the population have been bypassed, ignored, treated with the utmost cynicism and contempt. We do not matter to them. Which… Read more »
Farmers do not consult the farmed animals.
not quite true
Humanity will pay the price for the geneticists hubris.
Promises, promises !
Nemesis is the God of Retribution. What’s the God for Hubris ?
How much death & suffering will such False Promises inflict ?
The drive to Control, To Improve Nature. To Conquer Nature.
To become Gods…
The essence of “postmodernism” is summed up in the usual insufferably convoluted terminology by Fredric Jameson: …if “Postmodernism” corresponds to what Raymond Williams meant by his fundamental cultural category, a “structure of feeling” (and one that has become “hegemonic” at that, to use another of Williams’s crucial categories), then it can only enjoy that status by dint of profound collective self-transformation, a reworking and rewriting of an older system. That ensures novelty and gives intellectuals and ideologues fresh and socially useful tasks: something also marked by the new term, with its vague, ominous or exhilarating, promise to get rid of whatever you found confining, unsatisfying, or boring about the modern, modernism, or modernity (however you understand those words): in other words, a very modest or mild apocalypse, the merest sea breeze (that has the additional advantage of having already taken place). But this prodigious rewriting operation — which can lead… Read more »
I was going to add to the above comment but for some reason OffG’s editor seems to be leaving less and less time to alter entered text. Anyway – the above definition of postmodernism signals an apparently endless gravy train for “Leftist” academics to waffle on and on unintelligibly and impotently about anything that comes into their minds.
Right George! Could be why I stopped reading this particular Off-G piece about ten paras. in. Spectacularly incomprehensible post-modernist shite. Tenuredivory hyperwank. Can’t be arsed with it. And the bleedin’ tenuredivories get paid for this, too!
God, but our society needs a serious shake-out, as the Long Descent shoves our faces into the harsh realities of the real world, and such waffling drones – in the beehive sense – get put back to some actually worthwhile and useful work. Or just shoved out of the hive and left to starve, as happens to drones, once the Queen is mated.
Postmodernism is root of all the damage in the education system. The lack of standards, valid examinations, expectations etc can all be traced back to postmodernism. In its essence, postmodernism provides us with a theory that says that portmodernism is not true, what greater bunch of crap could the academics come up with than a theory of the world that states that their theory is by definition wrong? I can make up wrong theories, so why am I not being funded for my amazing intellectual sewage system?
Do tell us why Modernism is to be preferred.
I thought everyone knew that post modernist hyper structuralist quantum methodism was the way to go.
Modernism was striving for the truth, it was ambitious, it involved bettering yourself, it placed value on knowledge, it placed value on better “truth”, it placed value on achievement. It was founded in reality, it therefore recognised differences between people, it recognised merit and teachers had expectations of students. It was also very succesful, resulting in the USA and the technological developments prior to the current techno slump. Basically, it proved its worth. Postmodernism assumes there is no truth, it questions whether there is a reality – you can only be sure that your mind exists. It does not value truth or knowledge, for each is different for each person and/or group. There is no universal anything, there are no rules, there is no merit because there is nothing to learn. It is also divisive: racism against white, male heterosexual group is good, racism against black, male heterosexual group is… Read more »
If PM can be blamed for damaging the ‘education system’ i’m all for it ! But the ‘education system’ isnt damaged. It’s working perfectly as Obedience Training factories. Evidence ? All those who submitted to the dangerous injections went through the ‘education system’.
Singer songwriter Labi Siffre (“It Must Be Love”) said it took him a while to figure out what school was for. And then he figured it was purely there to keep the kids off the street, freeing up their parents to keep the rich folks rich.
It;s very well known that “idle hands do the devil’s work !” So, yes ! It’s to keep them off the streets.
Pre-‘covid the police had dedicated school Truancy Units.
I recall reading in the Weekly Guardian (Aust), before it went over to The Dark Side, that there was a plan to put coppers in UK schools because of truancy, among other things.
I’m betting most criminals were schooled. Schools have a lot to answer for.
(NB:Lord of the Flies is showing on Sydney teevee in about an hour)
When i left ‘The Left’ i took up knitting.
I left ‘The Left’ because they wanted to theorise everything to death instead of revolting.
There were two wings to the Situationist International. Guy Debord – all heady philosophical and theory stuff. And the left-wing, Raoul Vaneigem – canoodling and cavorting, and enjoying making revolution.
In her book Sadie Plant wrote of Vaneigem “Nobody thought it was very funny when Vaneigem went off for holidays when the great events of 1968 began to unfold, and the tension between having fun in the present and saving it up until after the Revolution was an enduring problem which played no small part in the final collapse of the SI.”
Debords books are read by Intellectuals. Vaneigems books are usually stolen.
These days the counter-revolution hides behind ‘vaccine mandate’ as it rolls back even our limited freedom.
Instead of the academic impetus to “Publish or Perish” it should be “Publish at Your Own Peril.” So long as having papers published is required for academics to be taken seriously by other academics, the presses will keep churning out these sleight of hand tomes.
‘A sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.’Can someone get my 5 minutes of life back please?
You gave it five whole minutes? Crikey, you’re tough.
I speed read, got to 1 minute and had to abort.
Perhaps this is a way to wake people up?
Without discussing anything else, the Ivermectin Scandal is a way to confront our people:
https://rumble.com/vdw19d-the-case-for-ivermectin.html
Depends how deep you go into it, if you get into the discussions surrounding the dark horse podcast, you end up more confused than when you started, as two groups of intellectuals get more and more entrenched without agreement. I was left feeling the “intellectual dark web” did the opposite of its self defined goals, and obsfuscated the truth.
At the end of the day Pfizer is patenting it’s own “new” (no doubt expensive) version of ivermectin that has exactly the same mode of action. There’s at least 1 paper showing the effect invitro (of the cheap stuff) reduced viral replication.
It’s not the golden bullet some seem to claim tho.
I don’t know about the Dark Horse Podcast, so thank you for the tip (I think).
Re: Ivermectin (the original one) it might be worth – if you have the time or inclination – looking at the following series of articles, which highlight its use in India:
https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indias-ivermectin-blackout/article_e3db8f46-f942-11eb-9eea-77d5e2519364.html
https://www.thedesertreview.com/news/national/indias-ivermectin-blackout-part-ii/article_a0b6c378-fc78-11eb-83c0-93166952f425.html
https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indias-ivermectin-blackout—part-iii-the-lesson-of-kerala/article_ccecb97e-044e-11ec-9112-2b31ae87887a.html
https://www.thedesertreview.com/opinion/columnists/indias-ivermectin-blackout—part-iv-keralas-vaccinated-surge/article_8a8c481c-09d3-11ec-a51c-fb063e1a3e3b.html
Ever considered the amount of msm coverage of ivermectin of late,albeit in a derogatory manner but lauded in the indy media, is somehow being engineered as a precursor to pfizers magic pills ?
No such thing as bad publicity
I have researched it, a lot of the studies are flawed in one way or another (not necessarily fataly flawed), there’s contradictory studies too, and some pro ivm studies have been retracted, making it a difficult one to confirm from a small sample of the literature. I’m pretty sure it’s effective if taken early, not so much if taken later into severe symptoms, very little evidence for any effectiveness as a prophylactic, that’s not to say it’s not any good, just a severe lack of data. I think it’s an important part of the first response medical armoury for covid, not a silver bullet. Bret Weinstein (linked with the IDW ‘intellectual dark web’) caused a bit of an uproar on his Dark Horse podcast having Malone and a few other non conformists on, youtube pulled it, the IDW group had a big to do about it compromising “sensemaking”, mostly calling… Read more »
Did I wander into the pages of Cahiers Du Cinema by mistake?
Shivani writes:
Deleuze writes:
Another triumphalist tale of the end of neoliberalism, this time from the beloved Graud: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/02/covid-and-the-crisis-of-neoliberalism “Has Covid ended the neoliberal era?” It would be pointless to paste much of this – it’s the usual figure crunching, fear wanking and question begging. Note the by now familiar reference to “war economies” Here we inch towards a dangerously candid admission of convenience: “Even before we knew what would hit us, there was every reason to think that 2020 might be tumultuous. The conflict between China and the US was boiling up.” etc. Thus “even before we knew what would hit us”, things were bad … umm … Would things being bad have anything to do with “what hit us”? After a recap of TINA (“There Is No Alternative”): “By 2020, globalisation and the seasons were very much in question. The economy had morphed from being the answer to being the question.” See… Read more »
The upshot of that lot is a significant admission: The ones behind this lockdown and restrictions were operating “from the top down”. Of course this is obvious but previous obfuscations tended to conceal this.
But the implications should surely cause some deep pondering i.e. that, once again as we always knew but which is now being made explicit, the ones bringing about the “death of neoliberalism” are the rulers i.e. the very ones who favoured neoliberalism for four decades. The implication that they’ve had a change of heart is absurd unless, having run into insurmountable problems, they have figured out a new and “safer” way of maintaining their parasitism.
And as for that “new way”, the appalling hints of future “covids” but on a much expanded scale should surely cause no doubt that something utterly dreadful for the masses is being prepared.
This sentence stood out for me in the (unsurprisingly biassed) article:
“If this was indeed a “new social contract”, it was an alarmingly one-sided affair.”
for which it would be difficult to find a better summary of the past 18 months
First, “depoliticise” stands for deregulate. Later, “politicised top-down” actions (blamed on the Left) get the credit for “stabilising the financial system”.
The expression “fear wank” would have earned an upvote just for that from me.
Unfortunately I was laughing so much I couldn’t read the rest of what you wrote until I becalmed myself. Now I’ve read the rest of your kind summary and analysis I’m giggling again.
Thank you George Mc; I now have a new expression in my little lexicon.
Libertarian Postmodernism: A Reply to Jordan Peterson and the Intellectual Dark Web
Sep 26, 2018
ReasonTV
Reason’s Nick Gillespie defends Foucault, Hayek, and an “incredulity towards metanarratives.”
Full Transcript Available Here:
https://reason.com/video/libertarian-postmodernism-a-reply-to-jor
People of many political persuasions have identified postmodernism as a major threat to civilization. The most notable recent attacks have come from Jordan Peterson and other members of the so-called “Intellectual Dark Web.”
Reason Editor-at-Large Nick Gillespie has a problem with that. He sat down with Zach Weissmueller, video journalist for Reason TV, to discuss and defend postmodernism — a term he says has been widely mischaracterized by its most vociferous critics — from a libertarian perspective.
C.B. Robertson
I Was Wrong About Jordan Peterson (And Vox Day Was Right)
Oct 12, 2018
Was there a politician more convinced of a meta-narrative and less ironic than Tony Blair?
Discuss in relation to the author’s thesis using very long words.
A valid point. The author does stretch the pomo 90s a little. For someone sympathetic to pomo, he also slips into the very un-pomo habit of making binary divisions – in this case of a chronological nature. Then again, I make a similar binary blunder in one of my comments about this article. We are all caged by language.
Remember, though, that governmentally the 90s contained more Major than Blair. It is easy to forget a grey figure who did not attend a university let alone Oxbridge. Major was a canny fellow with a soft spot for the EU. But I do not think he was a walking metanarrative. In fact, he seemed more like a character from a sit-com. After the bombast and certainty of Thatcher, Major struck me as someone who appreciated irony. His father was a music hall performer after all.
What nobody is touching upon is when a mother or father is traumatised by a stressful event it will be in coded in the genes.So as they say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree your offspring will be sensitised to event’s.I might be completely wrong and it’s learned behaviour or could these war mongers be actually trying to destroy yours and your children’s dna?
Traumatise at the very least.
“Meet Nosy” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sZLvifHknw
I love Off-G. Such stimulating material in the article and comments. Just a quick word in defence of Postmodernism (pomo). As a number of you point out, much pomo inspired thought and writing out there is intellectual masturbation that results in some awful, elitist discharge.
Still, if many of the key points of pomo are stripped out, as Shivani does here, you find that pomo is not some aberration of the late 20th century. The ideas have a lineage that goes back far further – Romanticism, Surrealism and Relativism, for instance. Essentially, we are talking about two ways of living in and seeing the world.
One privileges certainty. The other (pun unintended) prefers doubt. One is closed. The other is open. One is packaged. The other is loose.
It is just a shame that all the “dreamer” philosophers – regardless from which century – did not have the mental capacity to produce something that is rooted in the reality we live in.
Two ways of living in the world, really? In what way do postmodern believers live differently to the rest of us? Surely two different states of confusion caused by humanitiy’s intellectual limits.
I agree that both are confused. Some, though, embrace the confusion and see it for what it is: reality.
An acceptable death rate:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-dr-david-martin-canada-role-producing-weaponized-covid-injections-seriously-harmed-killed-many/5755193
Interesting.
As someone who has followed this shit way too long, I’m glad the narrative now includes Canada. Along with the chinese researchers being kicked out of American unis (really sus) at the time, there were some who attempted to flee from Canada, one of whom had live viruses in his gear.
I’ve never seen much mention of that.
It’s an excellent video revealing just how despicable everyone involved in the scamdemic is.
It’s beyond belief that this information has not been acted on, if you are a believer that is. I know that hardly anyone would even consider watching the video. The political correctness factor has been so manipulated that any thought of watching it would give someone diahorrea at the certainty of immediate social exclusion if they did so. It’s uttely terrifying to them. This is the purpose of identity politics and all it is, is calling names!
I like’d the video thought it was “super informative” and did not get diarrhea. 👿
Ah, but I bet you didn’t scuttle off to tesco and bulk buy the, cough, strategic hygienic supplies when lockdown loomed. That odd phenomenon completely mystified me at the time but I think the light has now dawned.
Are you referring to 2/20 when everyone was hoarding toilet paper? Ironically, as it turned out one of the symptoms of COVID was diarrhea.🤡
We are living in society of spectacle nearly everything is choreographed but too many understands it too simplistically and consider events presented to people as either real or fake. The most instructional here is a case of Roman spectacle, a theater of wilderness and pain like gladiators fights, but not many remember that all of that was staged, choreographed planned, who wins and get rich and who dies, and all of that served political ends agitating anxieties or calming anti emperor sentiments as all Roman arenas could pack nearly half of population of Rome of over one million. What million of Romans saw happening on stage with its bloody “reality” was not real with no connection to reality beyond stage, the only event that actually was happening. Spectacle was the only reality and it was manmade shaping people’s attitudes, serving certain policies or used to fighting conflicts among elites. The… Read more »
So Russell took the ending of Salome’s Last Dance from historic sources. Interesting.
You know what’s going on. It’s hard to keep that aspect in mind with a new story every day to get worked up about, even the truth is just another distraction. Here we are in the virtual Colosseum.
I nearly had a stroke reading that.
An excellent article… always a pleasure to see an intellectual stumbling through the ruins of his own philosophy…
reduced to the eternal question.. WHY?
baudrillard saw it ….fukuyama not so much, then again perhaps he was positing the end of history merely for the plebs..
because if you have the baron greenbacks baby.. it’s party time… (with concentration camps and police brutality and castles in NZ)…
NB: dr cherry (hehe) down under has been bleating about the ‘new world order’ and chunnered incoherently (eyes closed and rocking to and fro ) about the requirement of toxic stabs for everyone and their dog forever and ever amen….. she’s obviously read huxleyite and fabian herby wells book.. borrowed it off that dubious andrews character no doubt.. (kindle edition)..
‘quarantine facilities’…
I read the whole essay (I’m not making that up); and my head is still reeling. It has brought into clear focus something I suspected for quite some time: I really am dumber than I look. I understood hardly a word of it – I won’t say nary a word because I did pick up on one thing I already knew: Bill Clinton was the last American president. Indeed, the author makes that quite clear when he notes that Clinton was the last president to pin at least some of his policies to opinion polls. Since Clinton, no one has even made a show of considering the wishes of those who voted them in office. My only consolation is that, though I haven’t seen a single one of the movies he mentions (except for Dr Strangelove, of course – but who hasn’t?), I had at least heard of most of… Read more »
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/incredulity
incredulity:
the quality or state of being incredulous : DISBELIEF
incredulous:
1: unwilling to admit or accept what is offered as true : not credulous : SKEPTICAL
2: expressing incredulity
an incredulous stare
3: INCREDIBLE sense 1
Disbelief:
the act of disbelieving : mental rejection of something as untrue
—
Narrative:
b: a way of presenting or understanding a situation or series of events that reflects and promotes a particular point of view or set of values
Example:
The news is fake. The war is real.
Funny that you should bring up this word. I am far from a grammar NAZI, but the increasingly common use by educated people of “incredulous” to mean “incredible” is a source of irritation to me as the destruction of a very useful word.
I have never viewed the two words as being synonyms; and I don’t intend to change.
Initially, I was going to say “reality diminished radically” as the US entered WWI and continued to drastically dwindle, especially when WW II ended and America assumed the role of Empire. However, some would disagree and say “unreality/reality” goes back much further….. What’s clears is that a “nation-state’s reality” is determined by “the official government scribes,” but this has always been the case, probably since humans became agrarian and developed hierarchical social systems. However I digress, let’s get back to the 21st Century and three significant points cited in the above article: 1. “What we have now, in the return to reality, is a cover for ideology, except that the ideology has been seized by an oligarchy of media barons, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and overvalued celebrities who freely distribute it while denying that they are ideological.” 2. The form of reality, driven by constant challenges of insecurity and terror, that is the basis of the new grand… Read more »
Yes, too little attention has been paid to the misuse of a very powerful tool: the computer. Even though it has long been known that the sale of a BigMac in Oshkosh is recorded at Head Office before the customer has dug his teeth into it. And with digital currency the ID of that custormer will soon be recorded as well.
“Soon the only humans left will be the ones that computers keep as pets” — Claude Shannon.
AI robots will view humans as being too annoying to be a good pet.
No, they’ll like it because of the power trip of turning us off- squish.
Humans are too high-maintenance……
I difficult but entertaining and thought provoking read with some glaring assumptions given credibility as facts . 9/11 American style was a minor on a global scale attack , to which the Patriot Act was the response ? But any attack , false flag or real , would have served the same purpose. Americas attempt at a global empire ended after 1952 with our initial defeat in Korea since rewritten as a draw ? Vietnam better considered Korea part 2 drew a line through Americans ability to create the oft mentioned but unreal and non existent empire as has every invasion and eventual defeat we have suffered since . I Doubt that Baudrillard shared some of the conclusions arrived at by the author of this thoughtful article ?
I find it interesting that the author references film productions multiple times in an article that is – allegedly – a critique of “post modern” reality… Do film characters and situational plots define the glorious heights of human evolution?
Erm… Cultural relativism???
I guess the films are a tangible expression of the Zeitgeist, so any Darwinian loon will believe that the thoughts we are having are the same as those in the films in so far as the thoughts are emanating from the Zeitgeist, being expressed in one of our many selves.
Loony land.
Half of this seems to have been written by one of those random post-modern article generators. The other half shows what a prison a certain sort of Marxist critique is. The writer thinks 9/11 and covid are fake narratives – but believes climate change even though it comes from the same sources and there’s a clear evidence trail that it’s designed fakery? The similarities in the threats (urgent, invisible, never subject to tangible defeat) and the solutions that are offered (massive increase in corporate-state power) escape him? Really? The author can’t seem to admit that the many years spent following every twist in Marxist and post-modern criticism was a waste of his time. Let it go, we’ve all been led down blind alleys. There are meta-narratives, the elite have one that they’ve been following for decades if not centuries. Marxism was an elite project, the left-side of the pyramid designed… Read more »
Or rat catchers will one day study at thousand-year-old universities.
To catch robot rats with smartphone apps… …. … wait a minute?
You sorta made PKD into a 90s grunge lyric there
I like Anis Shivani, and i remember that he was virtually the only person at Counterpunch ever to have explicitly & positively addressed 9/11 truth ideas. Having said that, i got much more out of your short comment than i did from this article. As you say, “following every twist in Marxist and post-modern criticism” is a dead end, and can be just as much a means of detaching from reality as is giving yourself over to spectacle & simulacra.
Still, the final sentence captures the essence of the problem better than any of the words that come before it:
“The prison is unreal, and the spectacle of misery self-renewing; but how can we who remain inside the cage and accept our punishment know it?“
Its obvious that the hidden hand was just that.
It was Smith just telling us that there is a real hidden hand. Everyone thought it was some meta-force. Smith was just being slightly coy about the real force while prepping for the expansion of industrial mercantilism.
Marx was the other side to curtail organic popular movements arising from universal suffrage to ensure the newer “intellectuals” from the lower classes spent the rest of their lives trapped in a maze contradictory unreality while having their movements steered from above.
They ran the same thing with catholism/protestantism when religion was the major lever.
Now vaxxed/non. Divide into 2 and play both ends. Same trick as ever.
One thing I found deeply disturbing about my psychology classes at the college level were the number of academics that subscribed to a Skinnerian behavioral model regarding animals and were as convinced as any religious person as to the ‘otherness’ of animals, only in their case, it was not the unshakable belief that animals were soulless, it was a conviction that animals were no more than mechanical objects.
In hindsight, I don’t think this bodes well for their opinions of humans either.
Wundt thought children had no souls.
The entire society is now little albert.
I’m still not quite on board with the strongest version of masonic puppeteer theory, but sophisticated theory can be a blind alley indeed. My colleague across the table is reading Society of the Spectacle. He has a kabbalah tree of life tattoo. I wish he would leave so I could take my good boy mask off.
Exhilarating!
You have that backwards, post-modernism insists on your right to reject, for example, transgenderism. It is the absolute realists who would force you to accept their ideas. Rejecting the material world is not a typical Satanic move either.
Edwige. Incisive. I’m going to keep the whole comment in my “wisdom” file. Thanks much.
“The ironists, seeing through everything, made it difficult for anyone to see anything. The consequence of thinking that nothing is real—apart from prancing around in an air of vain stupidity—is that one will not know the difference between a joke and a menace.”
What a wise, apt comment.
That “one” doesn’t have a sense of humour
Perhaps he did. Who knows? But it’s certainly hard to laugh at what’s going on right now…
My comic relief of choice is George Carlin. He was on the ball.
A deadly serious man who managed to be funny in ALL circumstances.
Lots of Carlin posts around here… Still relevant after all these years… I’ve been enjoying Bill Burr and Louis CK ‘till a few years ago… also Ricky Gervais and Izard (live)… Now I’m I’m stuck w my own material I’m afraid… mental masturbation
Class Clown and Occupation Fool were among the staples of the parents who hired me to babysit circa mid 70’s and the few of their albums I enjoyed listening to.
Carlin is far greater than he is given credit for. His work is ageless.
Reality ? Yesterday I witnessed two tourists, husband and wife, stop at the open gates of our old historic city centre graveyard. Both put on their little blue masks before entering. WTF.
The graveyard variant.
They were making a post-post-modern statement: we are as you, corpses.
‘We are the Dead’
But really. just listened to that song in forever. The first verse is haunting me now:
Something kinda hit me today
I looked at you and wondered if you saw things my way
People will hold us to blame
It hit me today
We’re taking it hard all the time
Just let it pass us by
Just reply you’ve changed your mind
We’re fighting with the eyes of the blind
Taking it hard…
Great track, but would Mr. B be advising us to get the clotshot if he was not now one of the (physically) dead himself?
Probably.
All the others are doing it, I’m guessing he would have too. Or else a former teenager would come forward 50 years later to accuse him of sexual misdeeds that cannot be proven or refuted at this point in time…
Perhaps the “better safe than sorry” principle that animates so much of the scamdemic’s absurd “public health measures” has prompted the tourists to give more weight to the traditional belief that graveyards express a toxic miasma arising from the decomposing and decomposed residents.
Stripped of the jargon, postmodernism is an ideology that pretends not to be. Purporting to be upstream of politics it can shape the political landscape while posing as a new logic that neutralizes all other logical approaches. What is ideology other than pseudo logic? Ah, postmodernists have an answer: abolish logic, too. You see, if you position yourself as a priori politics you can kill your enemies at arm’s length without ever having to expose your arguments in hand-to-hand combat. After the original brilliant insights, all that remains is a power grab, appealing to those who resent the skills of others which has given academia an off-putting, sour tone of passive aggression. Hardly what you would wish upon anyone during their salad days. No surprise, then, that postmodernism took off when education was opened to all and sundry. The article seems to suggest we are moving past post-postmodernism. I don’t… Read more »
“postmodernists have an answer: abolish logic”.
Logic is patriarchical and racist, haven’t you heard? Do keep up….
Since “education,” like “science,” has almost always been a scam, it is not surprising that, in fact, educational doors are closing – not opening. That is to say, the “real” educational doors – the elite universities which turn out future ruling class elites and water carriers – are only wide open to the select few.
“Education” has become (if not always was) a “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” proposition.
Post-modernism always struck me as an attempt to present emptiness as having content.
I have enjoyed intelligent deconstruction, yet.
Most post modernists are fucking idiots who hide their nakedness in squid ink.
Nothing is true, everything is permitted
That can mean anything.
The sad thing about postmodernism is that it does not answer any questions and it tries to render everything as worthless. It is obvious to any living creature that the world doesn’t work the postmodern way. Postmodernism is philosophy telling us it does not have an answer so is going to give up, mind you most of mankind know that navel gazing is a waste of time anyway, one day philosophy will work that out.
“It prefers polyvocality in the Bakhtinian sense over univocality (so that even science is not privileged as under modernity), incorporating the polarities of subject positions in a continuously fluid explanation of change.”.
Pseuds Corner beckons.
Private Eye. Respect, until they publish something that compels me to cancel my subscription!
Great essay, well said. Posted.
Regarding VAERS … fuck it! It’s largely irrelevant. Reports are skewed, rejected, scrubbed, you name it. Its information value is akin to reports of CV deaths.
Much more importantly, no stats show anything unusual in all-cause mortality, where excess deaths due to vaccination would have to appear. And much more importantly, the gravest danger of the vaccines is the medium- and long-term effect, none of which would be recorded in VAERS anyway.
The medium- and long-term effect being augmented immune response and who the fuck knows what, respectively, such as infertility, aging, cancers, antennas growing out of people’s asses to receive Kill Bill’s instructions, etc.
Bottom line, conclusions made based on VAERS have feet of clay …
Gott im himmel, what am I supposed to get from this article?
Eye-strain?
I know.
If that essay had been on paper, I would have lined the budgie’s cage with it. What spendid jargon the author can spout!
That we should all act like we did in the 90’s and stop taking everything so seriously.
Excellent Vid – Thank you for posting
UK Column News – 8th September 2021 PART ONE Old Age Gets Its Own Tax Raise Privatisation drives separate tax for elderly Health tax disguised as National Insurance — which Bozo previously called ‘regressive’ NHS to get £5.4 billion over three years, before funds are diverted to elderly care. Frontline NHS says it needs £10 billion, on top of a total budget of £120 billion. Brian Gerrish: but you still can’t go and see a GP. Tax burden to rise to record 35% GDP National Insurance rises 2.5% split between individuals and business. Expect more tax rises in future years, says Institute for Fiscal Studies. Mike Robinson: they could have raised income tax but National Insurance puts another 1.25 % on businesses. Alex Thomson: As early as the 1960s, only a couple of decades into the NHS’ existence think tanks and later N.M Rothschild types like Francis Maude started talking… Read more »
Solder, how much does the home office or navel intelligence Zion Brian and GCHQ Tel Aviv Alex Thomson pay you.?
Surely you dont do this pro Establishment shilling for them for free.?
My colleagues comments dont last 1 minute of their U>K codswallop forum.
UK Column News – 8th September 2021 PART TWO Get Your Genes Edited, Learn To Polish Robots Klaus Schwab to Charlie Rose 2015 “4IR doesn’t change what you are doing. It changes you. Genetic editing changes you and affects your identity… it raises legal and ethical implications and we want to be ready for it. There is a fear technology, robots, will replace the workforce…not everyone can be a robot polisher.” 5 things to know about CRISPR and gene editing in the COVID era WEF Article: – https://bit.ly/3tpb2lD International borders, workplaces, homes and maybe even concerts, conferences or other large events could benefit greatly from having tests for COVID-19 (and other diseases) that give gold-standard results within minutes. As CRISPR-based diagnostics pave the way for decentralized testing, the technological disruption will also open the door for accelerated adoption of value-based care models, rather than fee-for-service healthcare. The focus on infectious… Read more »
“I should know; I was lobotomized thirty years ago.”
[Klaus Schwab, Good Housekeeping 2020]
(Fake news, but totally credible…)
Is Uncle Klaus actually a human being? He seems the too-perfect Bond villain, complete with Gert Fröbe accent. All he lacks is a white Persian to stroke – or maybe he had one but he stroked it so much its back went bald and it decided to leg it away. He shares that perfection with Osama Bin Laden (the identikit bogeyman), which leads me to think he is a product of DARPA or some other black-ops outfit. And his flesh seems unusual, like some sort of sloppy latex. Has he ever been exposed to daylight? Been seen to eat, sweat, or excrete in the usual fashion? Is his command post in a defunct volcano; does he have hordes of minions in yellow hard-hats and white boiler-suits doing complicated things with computers and radioactive whatnots?
Just throwing this out there for discussion 🙂
check out his teeth if you can, I’ve a theory, lol, about folks with neat, small, teeth….. : )
Photoshop can help bring out the reality beneath that too-silky latex surface sheen! 😀
Reset,
When one connects an old animal to a young one via their bloodstream the old one is invigorated in some ways. This is research that was in certain journals, but vanished. You know what I always suspect when I look at him, right?
Hadn’t thought of that in his case, but you’re probably right!
Also, his Darth Vader dress suit looks like it came from a costumer rather than a tailor or clothier.
I think he ate the Persian.
Interesting take on postmodernism looking more like political agenda than philosophy or social theory (including critical race theory) describing social reality. The postmodernism is being used now almost exclusively as new manifesto of capitalist party aimed at erasing class struggle and historical process, depoliticizing liberal politics and replacing it with cacophony of separate interests of ad-hoc assemblages and multitudes driven by identity politics of social division into thin slices of Intersectionality, never in position to challenge or threaten power of elites who remain by default beyond reproach of any political debate. Socrates/Plato wrote that nobody can escape philosophy or ideology even if they deny it or are completely unaware of formulation of their ideologies, simply calling it practice which is nothing but recognition of reality of their individual and class interests. Accordingly, globalist oligarchy and their minions officially deny they are driven by any ideology presenting themselves as seekers… Read more »
I love this website and I love this comment section… But I realise that there is a general misunderstanding about where we are and where we come from given a historical context?? The colonial period that took the lands from people, killed them off and entrapped them (modern slavery) within a colonial paradigm is on-going, as it has been ever since then. That we see things discretely and panic only over the latest most obvious fragment of the greater tyranny is silly at best from any view interested in battling this generational scourge. The stealing of land from the aboriginal people is on-going ever since the Northern Germanic Barbarians entered Europe proper and displaced the Romans. Theft of Land across the globe was followed by the downgrading of all populations so captured to a permanent state of serfdom… and still widely the case. Monarchic Governmental Hierarchies were imposed on all captured… Read more »
Any suggestions Jimbo ?
I have myself been making such an effort… And I have done this primarily as I have for many years read and followed many principled thinkers, and though they have increased my awareness tremendously, they have all failed to provide a model of a society we might aspire to. For instance Chomsky in particular and many years ago, though defining himself as an Anarchist, refused to indulge in speculation to an alternative to this Colonial Authoritarian mess we call society. And so has Corbett for that matter. I’ve managed to define a society that suits a principled approach to society at some length. And I’m interested in some way of collecting like minds to work on a large project of modelling a society that would be attractive to our kind. Something that might inspire others to join and perhaps over some later time become something useful, maybe even real? I’ve already… Read more »
I’ve worked in a small group of friends for some time using Whatsapp…
I have found however that most of my effort (if not all of it), is going into educating them on the fundamental principles of free and principled thinking…
I’m making absolutely no headway with my current group in the direction of refining and developing the model. All my effort is wasted mostly (it seems to me), in trying to waken them from indoctrinated slumber.
Solutions? What can one garden variety suburban peasant do? I’ve refused to go to work for the past 2 months since masks were made “compulsory” in the workplace. That’s a hip pocket one man protest that nobody in the real world cares about. I’m not missed at all. I haven’t been to a barber in a year because the last time I went the hysterical barber tried to force me to sign his track and trace register. He tried grabbing me as I darted out of the shop. No joke. I’ve emailed my “local members”. I’ve made posters. I’ve abandoned pretty much all food luxuries. I’ve started growing my own stuff. I’m studying history one old book at a time. I’ve tried to open other’s minds in real life. I don’t “browse” for “things to buy”. I don’t shop online. I go to the supermarket with no mask. I never… Read more »
Pig Swill, you write such beautiful prose! Describes “The Outsider” to perfection.
You are right about the deer oblivious of being stalked. Herd animals find safety in the Law of Large Numbers. But kindly Nature always throws up a few bloodyminded variants from which to regenerate, just in case the Law of Large Numbers fails, or the herd chooses to follow-the-leader over a cliff.
“Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do the wrong thing” — Old Testament.
What I mean by a solution is a common ground alternative people like us that have gone through the mill, have defined our thoughts and reached a degree of sanity can congregate around.
We here and elsewhere are at all times and ceaselessly pointing out the things that are wrong… and we do this again and again….
And by now most of us are aware of the fundamental differences between principled thinking and authoritarian submission and propagation.
So why don’t we then rather than futilely rage against the stupidity that surrounds us, propose and describe a society that we might present firstly to ourselves and each other, and then maybe even later to the stupid masses as an alternative way of thinking and organising that they might consider adopting themselves?
This raging alone to no particular end is well enough… but is it going anywhere?
I have myself been making such an effort… And I have done this primarily as I have for many years read and followed many principled thinkers, and though they have increased my awareness tremendously, they have all failed to provide a model of a society we might aspire to. For instance Chomsky in particular (many years ago), though defining himself as an Anarchist, refused to indulge in speculation to an alternative to this Colonial Authoritarian mess we call society. And so has Corbett for that matter. I’ve managed to define a society that suits a principled approach to society at some length. And I’m interested in some way of collecting like minds to work on a large project of modelling a society that would be attractive to our kind. Something that might inspire others to join and perhaps over some later time become something useful, maybe even real? I’ve already covered… Read more »
maybe the only solutions beget extreme violence, and a public who is fed, clothed and housed will never reach this solution conclusion. not while X Factor and American Idol are on anyway…
Ardern advises not to have have sex with Covid patients during hospital visits.
Maybe a no jab-no sex policy is in the air.
Nothing would surprise me anymore.
Funny, I’m sure it’s never occurred to most people to have sex with patients ill in hospital. I’m sure many of us, in Britain at least, will have experience of rejection due to a slight headache, let alone from someone hospitalised.
Mind you perhaps Ardern and elites of a similar warped mindset recall Jimmy Savile.
Everytime I watch a clip of a politician from
Australia or NZ say something, I’m absolutely stunned. I’m suspecting that something very evil, demented and non human is taking hold there. What other explanation can there be?
I think it’s coming to the norther hemisphere soon…for the winter. In the meantime, such insane things in Australia coming out of politician’s mouths are designed, in my opinion, to add to the confusion, to keep people off balance and most of all to absolutely needle the public towards riot and chaos. Pretty evil alright.
Only the ultra brain dead compliant CAN’T see that society is being viscously needled towards chaos by puppets taking orders from huge orgs, corporations and think tanks. There’s a lot of brain dead compliancy out there. It’ll take a lot of needling to push them over the edge…a lot of needling and a few food shortages, financial rapes, pension losses etc.
Having a “quicky” on an airliner is now a capital offence states side , punishably by years in jail ? The Taliban has won the struggle for hearts and minds as the face diaper for all fettish proves
She has bent the rules (on travel to NZ) for the Google billionare and others.
Blimey, that was hard work. An irrelevant intellectual word salad conflating fictional movie scripts with post-modern agenda driven narratives of the time. How can anyone discuss the failings of post-modern science and then type this nonsense? When Katrina drowned New Orleans… while leaving alone the consumption of fossil fuels and the obvious destruction of ecological spheres everywhere due to thisreckless consumption, of which Katrina was a surface manifestation. Climate science stands only on the plank of post-modern science, models all the way; real science, desperately clinging to falsibility, and the null hypothesis, rejects the CAGW hypothesis. And there is the only real comparrison to the covid pseudo-pandemic, it’s a post-modern model driven fabrication. An agenda driven narrative with only a passing arm-wave at real science, whilst rejecting 80+ years of established immunological biology. We even have a scientific study (in preprint) showing government post-modern pandemic “science” is models all the… Read more »
Under the Australian Federal Criminal Code Act 1995
Section 268.8 – Crimes Against Humanity Murder
A person (the perpetrator) commits an offence if:
(a) the perpetrator causes the death of one or more persons; and
(b) the perpetrator’s conduct is committed intentionally or knowingly as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.
Penalty: Imprisonment for life.
268.9 Crime against humanity–extermination
(1) A person (the perpetrator ) commits an offence if:
(a) the perpetrator causes the death of one or more persons; and
(b) the perpetrator’s conduct constitutes, or takes place as part of, a mass killing of members of a civilian population; and
(c) the perpetrator’s conduct is committed intentionally or knowingly as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.
Penalty: Imprisonment for life.
Do you see where I’m going with this???
I do, and I hope I see where Fauci and Gates are going too.
Why are people not using the law? These are Federal crimes in any country and it can be proven. They can’t even prove this virus exists in humans!! And as they discovered in Alberta, the law doesn’t really care who you are. The lawyers and Judges on the ground just follow the rules. Even if those rules mean incarcerating say a State Premier or a President for example.
Have you filed the suit yet mate?
Home – National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce (covid19evidence.net.au) Note the advise on vents and also the hydrochloroquine and remdisivir, which is deadly
https://www.afp.gov.au/contact-us/report-commonwealth-crime
“Models all the way”.
Furgessin-model Models. With even less explanatory value than “Turtles all the way”.
Capitalism will kill us all
Calm down dear.
You don’t have to trust me, but communism is much worse.
Congressman Larry McDonald (1935-1983)
Best of both worlds… can’t wait!!
Trust me Gabriel you got two dislikes (none off me YET) because you’re wildly wrong. Yet another yank who thinks he’s/she’s on A right wing conservative website that’s actually in Britain and fairly left wing. If Wikipedia can’t get Stalins death toll above 3.3 million (and that’s at a push) and you lot claim communism killed 100 million people with ZERO EVIDENCE then where do your figures come from?! We know capitalism kills 100 million people every 5 years. BUT! YOU! DON’T! CARE! Like all capitalists! Only you matter
It already has. We just don’t know it yet because we’re still in the pre-post-modern mode of perceiving reality.
The word “postmodern” annoyed the fuck out of me when I first heard it. I had always taken “modern” to mean whatever was up to date for any particular time. It therefore made sense to talk about what was “modern” in Ancient Greece or in Medieval Times. From that perspective “postmodern” seemed like nonsense. Which ironically is what it is anyway.
Well, postmodern can only mean one thing. The end of the human race?
More like the end of the common sense.
Yes. From the “there’s no right or wrong; there’s no truth; in fact, there’s no reality as such” 1990s to the “your thoughts have power” 2000s and the preening, me, me, me, self-worship, totally vacuous, Facebook-dominated 2010s, to the “let us physically fill your brain with some toxic magnetic sludge” 2020s… I’d call those logical building blocks.
Just remember: there being no tangible reality to hang your ideologies on is NOT a new idea. It’s been around forever.
Wasn’t the Wag The Dog movie itself a diversion from the real? From what I recall, it’s about a president caught up in a sex scandal who then wages war to distract attention from his personal trouble. But, as Dave McGowan suggested about Bill Clinton, the reality is more like the opposite: the media whipping up all that sleazy personal stuff to distract from foreign policy. According to D McG, Clinton’s policies were so clearly just as warmongering as on the Republican side that the only way you could maintain the Democrats-are-Left image was by pulling out a “blow job shock” which the Right could get all hot and flustered over. The result – unsurprisingly – is that the “scandal” boosted Clinton’s popularity – almost as much as him grooving it up with a sax.
Interesting that people should form their perception of reality around movies. I don’t watch movies. I mean, I’ve seen some, but it was incidental.
I find life’s adventures interesting enough. I have no need for stories invented by some aberrant shitheads.
Movies are an arm of control. Culture creation. It pays sometimes to take a look and see what they’re up to.
Yes and no, man. I guess you should be roughly aware of what the idiots are up to, but submerging too deep in the shit they wade through in their lives is liable to make you stink too, if you catch my drift. I’d rather err on the side of remaining relatively pure and ignorant than vice versa. But I tell you one thing. On the rare occasions I see a bit of TV news or read something the retards write on FB, I’m fucking dumbstruck by the extent of people’s tupidity and, more importantly, detachment from the real reality. I see only a handful of people around the world who I consider to be with it and not necessarily in everything they say. There are a few on this forum, most importantly Paul V … sorry can’t spell his name. In my view, he not only understands what’s going… Read more »
Hollywood is a propaganda machine in its most insidious form I.e. disguised as entertainment.
If you dismiss moving ‘art’ then logically, you must dismiss static art.
A step too far?
The vast majority of movies are not “moving art”. They’re moving, art they’re not. Most of the run of the mill films I’m aware of the existence of are pieces of shit, propaganda, psychological manipulation.
I’ve seen a few films I liked, such as Midnight in Paris and Sweet and Lowdown. I think they’re both Woody Allen movies, but I’m no Allen devotee.
So, your logic doesn’t work. I dismiss no-art, whether moving, stationary, whatever.
I practice the almost completely abstract art of music.
I agree practice is certainly advisable..
No shit, death. I’m playing a solo concert in some church on the weekend. Not only I’m afraid that I’ll won’t be able to resist but tell anybody in the audience who is wearing a mask to take the fucking thing off, which might cause some stir, but also I wouldn’t wanna fuck up the music too bad, just in case that God exists and is listening. Woodshed I shall, then!
excellent… play well my friend…
but never forget.. the devil has the best tunes..
Movies and tv shows are for me a great way to vent… I yell in my apartment and laugh really hard… All positive
I don’t have a TV, man. But I used to have access to one and used to watch this TV show Allo, Allo … it was British from WWII and hilarious … Never watched no other TV show as far as I can remember.
You know what makes me laugh? A walk through the city, looking at all the motherfuckers on streetcars with the muzzles on. Total phantasmagoria! Or fuckheads telling one another that they had an asymptomatic covid! A deadly pandemic of an asymptomatic disease! Such a level of absurdity!
The Brits are definitely the shit… God bless ‘hem I’ll check this one out if I they didn’t already burn the tapes
Check Ken Loach’s ‘Days of Hope’ if you really fancy screaming at the screen. Made in the 70s, depicting the illusion fodder of WWI through General Strike, it even said back then that BBC are state shillers
Don’t conflate art and swill (with apologies to Pi8g Swill). All the arts can be misused.
“him grooving it up with a sax.”
Clinton said in his autobiography two things got him through his difficult teenage years, one was music and the other was… his membership of the Order of Demolay. One doesn’t hear much about one of these in the MSM.
Clinton on Demolay:
“”For sixty-nine years, the Order of DeMolay has prepared young men to become better citizens and leaders for our country. My DeMolay experience gave me the confidence to develop my skills as a speaker, team member, and leader, and then to realize and accomplish my dreams. I will always be thankful for the guidance given to me by my friends in DeMolay. “
Clinton sucks as a sax player. Most high-school kids can play better than him.
There’s another famous pedo that is also known to suck at sax (oh I’m naughty today)
He also questioned the moon landings in the same book, which I found surprising to say the least. Is is a coincidence that Armstrong came out with his ‘hidden truth’ comments after a private chat with Clinton before facing the cameras and coming out with the most singularly weird thing any astronaut has ever said publicly. I sense Clinton is more conflicted than many. Maybe I’m wrong.
He knows well the bargain he struck. Clinton is bright compared with most politicos.
Armstrong’s quote is a gem: “There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those that can remove one of truth’s protective layers.”
Clinton has never struck me as being a dummy.
Can that statement be heard in any available video? (I don’t remember it being included in the Apollo missions docu by the Italian director who also made the great 9/11 one; but maybe I’m simply forgetting…)