Dueling Realities

steveschneider wrote:

TrapperGus wrote:Steve - as you said yesterday, I will need to think about this a bit before providing a reply.

No response required, I found it therapeutic just to write down that stuff trying to make sense of the lunacy I've seen. I could be way off the mark. Who knows. I'm training a new employee at work and it's kept me super busy so tough to post.

steveschneider wrote:

TrapperGus wrote:Steve - as you said yesterday, I will need to think about this a bit before providing a reply.

No response required, I found it therapeutic just to write down that stuff trying to make sense of the lunacy I've seen. I could be way off the mark. Who knows. I'm training a new employee at work and it's kept me super busy so tough to post.

Oh I most definitely have something to say about the ideas in your post, but want to make sure I take the time to say them correctly, have fun with the training.

It’s called a wealth tax and a progressive income tax and it’s spectacular.

Rocinante wrote:It’s called a wealth tax and a progressive income tax and it’s spectacular.

Right now the US has a regressive tax system when you talk about the people with real money.

steveschneider wrote:

TrapperGus wrote:

I found Ms. Mayer's article to be somewhat below her, and the New Yorker's, standards, with too much conjecture to go with the facts.  I haven't read her book on this, however, she has done earlier articles where she did more research and the language was less inflammatory.

So all that said, the wealthy are not any smarter or any less susceptible to conspiracy theories than anyone else.  Since the Russian Revolution there has been a subset of wealthy people in the world who seem to see everyone who is not wealthy as an enemy and they believe this mass of people, through the power of government, are actively planning on taking away all their wealth and power.  The Koch Family exemplifies this belief system, however they are just the poster child for a whole set of like minded wealthy people.  Ms. Mayer has detailed some of the actions this group of people has taken over the years in her reporting.  It seems that to them, their only defense against the rest of us is to take over the government and change the Constitution so they are protected from us.

edit - one thought about "why" people like the Koch Family believe these ideas is that they are hyper competitive, look at everything in their lives as competitions and believe everyone else in the world is the same.  Thus, if they were of a normal income/wealth level they would be the one's trying to take all the money from the wealthy, and yes there is a very small group who wants to do that, and by that I mean take ALL the money, not just have somewhat higher taxes.

Agree with almost all this take. I read the NPR interview not the New Yorker interview so I can’t speak to your critique of the NYer article.  This is from a 2017 one:

“  “Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he’s said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.” Magerman added, “He thinks society is upside down—that government helps the weak people get strong, and makes the strong people weak by taking their money away, through taxes.”


What drew me to the Mercer Mayer article is I’m currently obsessed with all these school board anti mask rants at school boards and how bonkers these people are. When I hear them speak I believe they believe what they are saying and it’s tough to process because it just sounds so insane. Also, I know people say America has always had its nut jobs/crazy segment of its population but in my opinion not at this level. This is a new level. My question is what’s driving it? My dumb ass hypothesis is that the right just has more billionaires like Mercer that drives special interests, public opinion-research and right wing media. When I watch the clips I notice commonalities in some of the crazy rants, as of late they are calling medical Nazis, they a ruling from the Nuremberg trial that these masks rules violate. Just googled it a d here’s an article that fact checks this claim:


Also, when the capitol bomber (remember him feels like a forgotten story at this point) in his rant he believed refugees from Afghanistan were going to get better healthcare than him. His wife needed certain cancer treatments and his insurance wouldn’t cover it and he was mad that immigrants were getting it. Ben Collins was able to locate the source of this BS to conservative FB groups.


So I’m just trying to understand the new levels of lunacy our culture wars have reached and how detached from reality they are. To wrap up my hypothesis I think it’s just a decades long build up of an information system completely out of my view (Rush Limbaugh in the 90s, Fox News, Onan, Daily Caller etc) that’s pushing horse shit conspiracies to divide the population up, control them, and keep em angry at the press/government/institutions etc. it’s funded by wealthy people so they can avoid taxes and keep the government out of their hair  so they can pollute. To a Mercer or Koch  if democracy collapses or the planet burns it won’t matter because they got theirs and they’ll be dead and gone when that happens. Great people!

Some comments -

Robert Mercer's opinions could have been lifted right off the pages of Atlas Shrugged and they would have sounded the same.  The Objectivist Philosophy is exactly what he said, people are only objects, nothing else.  Rand pulled a huge bait and switch in the premise of her work, equating creators such as architects and inventors with people who make money.  Mercer was an early quint, someone who used math the make money for a hedge fund.  Quints do things such as monitoring stock orders and using that information to buy stocks microseconds before the orders are placed and sell the stocks into the orders at a higher price than they bought them for microseconds before.  He believes that adds value.

As for the values Rand expressed in her work, well there are legions of flaws in her thinking.  The question of organizing society only for the lucky winners is one of them.  This question has been discussed since time began, however when Rand was writing, other than some academics, most people in the Western countries had settled on Jefferson's twisting of John Locke to mean that all humans should have equal political power in order to create the most Just society.  She upended that in her thought, reopening a question which had been settled for centuries in the West.  The arguments, on one side or the other are certainly better argued by Plato & Aristotle (which is why it is called "the Aristocracy") however I have never read them, as it seemed a settled question to me.

The billionaires have been buying the media for years, some of them made their money doing that, like Rupert Murdock (Fox owner), and much of the media is either directly disinforming people, such as the ones you are talking about at school board meetings, or going along with the disinformation con because they get more clicks that way.  So those people believe what they are saying because the media has used propaganda to tie into their emotions and convinced them that black is white. The conservative broadcast media has been doing this ever since Reagan eliminated the 'equal time" rule.  They have had so much time to sharpen their message that they have put thought defenses in place which if you are talking logic to one of the programmed people they will counter reality with still more disinformation that they have been taught.

As far as I'm concerned you are ranting to the choir, much of what you are saying I have been observing as well.

However, we should be careful that we are not being controlled by the information we are reading, as that is always possible.  My best motto is "what you believe, if acted upon, should promote real good for others"

edit - had to remove the links as I am in a 7 day "no link" probation.

TrapperGus wrote:

steveschneider wrote:

Agree with almost all this take. I read the NPR interview not the New Yorker interview so I can’t speak to your critique of the NYer article.  This is from a 2017 one:

“  “Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he’s said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.” Magerman added, “He thinks society is upside down—that government helps the weak people get strong, and makes the strong people weak by taking their money away, through taxes.”


What drew me to the Mercer Mayer article is I’m currently obsessed with all these school board anti mask rants at school boards and how bonkers these people are. When I hear them speak I believe they believe what they are saying and it’s tough to process because it just sounds so insane. Also, I know people say America has always had its nut jobs/crazy segment of its population but in my opinion not at this level. This is a new level. My question is what’s driving it? My dumb ass hypothesis is that the right just has more billionaires like Mercer that drives special interests, public opinion-research and right wing media. When I watch the clips I notice commonalities in some of the crazy rants, as of late they are calling medical Nazis, they a ruling from the Nuremberg trial that these masks rules violate. Just googled it a d here’s an article that fact checks this claim:


Also, when the capitol bomber (remember him feels like a forgotten story at this point) in his rant he believed refugees from Afghanistan were going to get better healthcare than him. His wife needed certain cancer treatments and his insurance wouldn’t cover it and he was mad that immigrants were getting it. Ben Collins was able to locate the source of this BS to conservative FB groups.


So I’m just trying to understand the new levels of lunacy our culture wars have reached and how detached from reality they are. To wrap up my hypothesis I think it’s just a decades long build up of an information system completely out of my view (Rush Limbaugh in the 90s, Fox News, Onan, Daily Caller etc) that’s pushing horse shit conspiracies to divide the population up, control them, and keep em angry at the press/government/institutions etc. it’s funded by wealthy people so they can avoid taxes and keep the government out of their hair  so they can pollute. To a Mercer or Koch  if democracy collapses or the planet burns it won’t matter because they got theirs and they’ll be dead and gone when that happens. Great people!

Some comments -

Robert Mercer's opinions could have been lifted right off the pages of Atlas Shrugged and they would have sounded the same.  The Objectivist Philosophy is exactly what he said, people are only objects, nothing else.  Rand pulled a huge bait and switch in the premise of her work, equating creators such as architects and inventors with people who make money.  Mercer was an early quint, someone who used math the make money for a hedge fund.  Quints do things such as monitoring stock orders and using that information to buy stocks microseconds before the orders are placed and sell the stocks into the orders at a higher price than they bought them for microseconds before.  He believes that adds value.

As for the values Rand expressed in her work, well there are legions of flaws in her thinking.  The question of organizing society only for the lucky winners is one of them.  This question has been discussed since time began, however when Rand was writing, other than some academics, most people in the Western countries had settled on Jefferson's twisting of John Locke to mean that all humans should have equal political power in order to create the most Just society.  She upended that in her thought, reopening a question which had been settled for centuries in the West.  The arguments, on one side or the other are certainly better argued by Plato & Aristotle (which is why it is called "the Aristocracy") however I have never read them, as it seemed a settled question to me.

The billionaires have been buying the media for years, some of them made their money doing that, like Rupert Murdock (Fox owner), and much of the media is either directly disinforming people, such as the ones you are talking about at school board meetings, or going along with the disinformation con because they get more clicks that way.  So those people believe what they are saying because the media has used propaganda to tie into their emotions and convinced them that black is white. The conservative broadcast media has been doing this ever since Reagan eliminated the 'equal time" rule.  They have had so much time to sharpen their message that they have put thought defenses in place which if you are talking logic to one of the programmed people they will counter reality with still more disinformation that they have been taught.

As far as I'm concerned you are ranting to the choir, much of what you are saying I have been observing as well.

However, we should be careful that we are not being controlled by the information we are reading, as that is always possible.  My best motto is "what you believe, if acted upon, should promote real good for others"

edit - had to remove the links as I am in a 7 day "no link" probation.

First gut reaction, never even thought about Ayn Rand being an influence in this all. I remember a long time ago a friend told me to avoid Atlas Shrugged and for some reason I've always glossed over her and have to plead ignorance. But reading what you just wrote I have to assume Gorsuch is influenced by her as well and this is the ideology behind a lot of these people. For instance in Gorsuch ruling on the trucker vs the cargo he ruled in favor of the cargo.

steveschneider wrote:

TrapperGus wrote:

Some comments -

Robert Mercer's opinions could have been lifted right off the pages of Atlas Shrugged and they would have sounded the same.  The Objectivist Philosophy is exactly what he said, people are only objects, nothing else.  Rand pulled a huge bait and switch in the premise of her work, equating creators such as architects and inventors with people who make money.  Mercer was an early quint, someone who used math the make money for a hedge fund.  Quints do things such as monitoring stock orders and using that information to buy stocks microseconds before the orders are placed and sell the stocks into the orders at a higher price than they bought them for microseconds before.  He believes that adds value.

As for the values Rand expressed in her work, well there are legions of flaws in her thinking.  The question of organizing society only for the lucky winners is one of them.  This question has been discussed since time began, however when Rand was writing, other than some academics, most people in the Western countries had settled on Jefferson's twisting of John Locke to mean that all humans should have equal political power in order to create the most Just society.  She upended that in her thought, reopening a question which had been settled for centuries in the West.  The arguments, on one side or the other are certainly better argued by Plato & Aristotle (which is why it is called "the Aristocracy") however I have never read them, as it seemed a settled question to me.

The billionaires have been buying the media for years, some of them made their money doing that, like Rupert Murdock (Fox owner), and much of the media is either directly disinforming people, such as the ones you are talking about at school board meetings, or going along with the disinformation con because they get more clicks that way.  So those people believe what they are saying because the media has used propaganda to tie into their emotions and convinced them that black is white. The conservative broadcast media has been doing this ever since Reagan eliminated the 'equal time" rule.  They have had so much time to sharpen their message that they have put thought defenses in place which if you are talking logic to one of the programmed people they will counter reality with still more disinformation that they have been taught.

As far as I'm concerned you are ranting to the choir, much of what you are saying I have been observing as well.

However, we should be careful that we are not being controlled by the information we are reading, as that is always possible.  My best motto is "what you believe, if acted upon, should promote real good for others"

edit - had to remove the links as I am in a 7 day "no link" probation.

First gut reaction, never even thought about Ayn Rand being an influence in this all. I remember a long time ago a friend told me to avoid Atlas Shrugged and for some reason I've always glossed over her and have to plead ignorance. But reading what you just wrote I have to assume Gorsuch is influenced by her as well and this is the ideology behind a lot of these people. For instance in Gorsuch ruling on the trucker vs the cargo he ruled in favor of the cargo.

Rand's goal, or at least what her marketing said, was to bring about a world where those who the "makers" were on top and those who were the "takers" died. The makers and takers are a direct lift from her writings. It would be disturbing if one of the Justices on the Court is a true believer, as I always think they are near the top intellectually and would see through much of what she said, However Alan Greenspan was one of her disciplines, literally part of her hanger-on's when he was young, so I guess it wouldn't surprise me. The Conservative Justices are first vetted for their support of corporate interests, and then the social stuff is looked at, something the Christian Right is only partly aware of, nine time out of nine, if corporate interest and right wing social interests are fighting each other in the current court the corporate interests will prevail.

TrapperGus wrote:

steveschneider wrote:

Agree with almost all this take. I read the NPR interview not the New Yorker interview so I can’t speak to your critique of the NYer article.  This is from a 2017 one:

“  “Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he’s said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.” Magerman added, “He thinks society is upside down—that government helps the weak people get strong, and makes the strong people weak by taking their money away, through taxes.”


What drew me to the Mercer Mayer article is I’m currently obsessed with all these school board anti mask rants at school boards and how bonkers these people are. When I hear them speak I believe they believe what they are saying and it’s tough to process because it just sounds so insane. Also, I know people say America has always had its nut jobs/crazy segment of its population but in my opinion not at this level. This is a new level. My question is what’s driving it? My dumb ass hypothesis is that the right just has more billionaires like Mercer that drives special interests, public opinion-research and right wing media. When I watch the clips I notice commonalities in some of the crazy rants, as of late they are calling medical Nazis, they a ruling from the Nuremberg trial that these masks rules violate. Just googled it a d here’s an article that fact checks this claim:


Also, when the capitol bomber (remember him feels like a forgotten story at this point) in his rant he believed refugees from Afghanistan were going to get better healthcare than him. His wife needed certain cancer treatments and his insurance wouldn’t cover it and he was mad that immigrants were getting it. Ben Collins was able to locate the source of this BS to conservative FB groups.


So I’m just trying to understand the new levels of lunacy our culture wars have reached and how detached from reality they are. To wrap up my hypothesis I think it’s just a decades long build up of an information system completely out of my view (Rush Limbaugh in the 90s, Fox News, Onan, Daily Caller etc) that’s pushing horse shit conspiracies to divide the population up, control them, and keep em angry at the press/government/institutions etc. it’s funded by wealthy people so they can avoid taxes and keep the government out of their hair  so they can pollute. To a Mercer or Koch  if democracy collapses or the planet burns it won’t matter because they got theirs and they’ll be dead and gone when that happens. Great people!

Some comments -

Robert Mercer's opinions could have been lifted right off the pages of Atlas Shrugged and they would have sounded the same.  The Objectivist Philosophy is exactly what he said, people are only objects, nothing else.  Rand pulled a huge bait and switch in the premise of her work, equating creators such as architects and inventors with people who make money.  Mercer was an early quint, someone who used math the make money for a hedge fund.  Quints do things such as monitoring stock orders and using that information to buy stocks microseconds before the orders are placed and sell the stocks into the orders at a higher price than they bought them for microseconds before.  He believes that adds value.

As for the values Rand expressed in her work, well there are legions of flaws in her thinking.  The question of organizing society only for the lucky winners is one of them.  This question has been discussed since time began, however when Rand was writing, other than some academics, most people in the Western countries had settled on Jefferson's twisting of John Locke to mean that all humans should have equal political power in order to create the most Just society.  She upended that in her thought, reopening a question which had been settled for centuries in the West.  The arguments, on one side or the other are certainly better argued by Plato & Aristotle (which is why it is called "the Aristocracy") however I have never read them, as it seemed a settled question to me.

The billionaires have been buying the media for years, some of them made their money doing that, like Rupert Murdock (Fox owner), and much of the media is either directly disinforming people, such as the ones you are talking about at school board meetings, or going along with the disinformation con because they get more clicks that way.  So those people believe what they are saying because the media has used propaganda to tie into their emotions and convinced them that black is white. The conservative broadcast media has been doing this ever since Reagan eliminated the 'equal time" rule.  They have had so much time to sharpen their message that they have put thought defenses in place which if you are talking logic to one of the programmed people they will counter reality with still more disinformation that they have been taught.

As far as I'm concerned you are ranting to the choir, much of what you are saying I have been observing as well.

However, we should be careful that we are not being controlled by the information we are reading, as that is always possible.  My best motto is "what you believe, if acted upon, should promote real good for others"

edit - had to remove the links as I am in a 7 day "no link" probation.

Back to the crazies for a moment Ben Collins has been doing good tracing the origins of this lunacy back to a lot of FB groups that feature 25k members!



[tw]1431040456364810242?s=21[/tw]

Sounds like the BS starts from one of the right wings nutty conspiracy celebs finds it way to these groups and it mutates into something else. Add in Putin’s Russian troll bots that can help spread misinformation and FB algorithms that can target the information to the right audience and it’s a potent combination.

steveschneider wrote:

Back to the crazies for a moment Ben Collins has been doing good tracing the origins of this lunacy back to a lot of FB groups that feature 25k members!



[tw]1431040456364810242?s=21[/tw]

Sounds like the BS starts from one of the right wings nutty conspiracy celebs finds it way to these groups and it mutates into something else. Add in Putin’s Russian troll bots that can help spread misinformation and FB algorithms that can target the information to the right audience and it’s a potent combination.

The rwnj media has built an infrastructure for spreading disinformation and it started building it when Reagan struck down the equal time rules. Some out in space type of site will publish are report, which will then be quoted by a slightly less out in space site, which will then be quoted by another slightly less out in space site, through several iterations until someone like the New York Post will quote the 10th site which quoted and then Fox will quote the New York Post (both Murdock owned) and tWSJ will quote Fox. The the MSM will start quoting Fox and tWSJ.

This is how we get the media hyperventilating about Biden and the withdrawal from Afghanistan while anyone who is really paying attention knows that Trump's actions are what caused this to happen.

TrapperGus wrote:

steveschneider wrote:

Back to the crazies for a moment Ben Collins has been doing good tracing the origins of this lunacy back to a lot of FB groups that feature 25k members!



[tw]1431040456364810242?s=21[/tw]

Sounds like the BS starts from one of the right wings nutty conspiracy celebs finds it way to these groups and it mutates into something else. Add in Putin’s Russian troll bots that can help spread misinformation and FB algorithms that can target the information to the right audience and it’s a potent combination.

The rwnj media has built an infrastructure for spreading disinformation and it started building it when Reagan struck down the equal time rules. Some out in space type of site will publish are report, which will then be quoted by a slightly less out in space site, which will then be quoted by another slightly less out in space site, through several iterations until someone like the New York Post will quote the 10th site which quoted and then Fox will quote the New York Post (both Murdock owned) and tWSJ will quote Fox. The the MSM will start quoting Fox and tWSJ.

This is how we get the media hyperventilating about Biden and the withdrawal from Afghanistan while anyone who is really paying attention knows that Trump's actions are what caused this to happen.

Non conservative media doesn’t help itself either.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/animal-news/minor-major-issues-emails-show-biden-dog-was-nippier-white-n1277814

Cringeworthy. Also, Jonathan Chait had a good call out the Republican media is always pro GOP cheerleaders. They will pivot with their party. Dems don’t have the same level of funding that goes into the media machine.

The conservative legal group Judicial Watch was originally formed to harass the Clintons and has been at it ever since.  It is one of those sources that create attacks on Democratics which I spoke of.  Fox News asked the Biden Press Secretary about this a couplie of days ago.

In this case we have a non story about a nippy dog which was reported at the time, and once again the rwnj press is pushing it as "something" when it is nothing, and yes, as I said other MSM will pick up the story for "reasons"

Robert Reich
@RBReich
·
Aug 27
What else do you need to know about our rigged economy beyond the fact that Jeff Bezos managed to add $13,000,000,000 to his wealth in a single day during a pandemic?