"You can know pretty well how rational people are going to respond to certain circumstances or to certain information that they encounter. So, to determine the response you want you need only control the kind of data or information that they're presented or the kinds of circumstance that they're in; and being rational people they'll do what you want them to do. "
HAPPY FOURTH Y’ALL!!
Did you hear?
BREAKING! Judge issues order on Missouri v. Biden on the 4th of July!
Sooo…GET EXCITED because we won!!
This is some more of the same ole same ole BULLSHIT. The court ruled that the First Amendment is a thing.
Happy Birthday Merica! You should be happy!
You know what that’s like? Thanking your abuser for not hitting both cheeks.
According to Cornell School of Law:
The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition. It forbids Congress from both promoting one religion over others and also restricting an individual’s religious practices. It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely. It also guarantees the right of citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition their government.
The First Amendment has been interpreted by the Court as applying to the entire federal government even though it is only expressly applicable to Congress. Furthermore, the Court has interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as protecting the rights in the First Amendment from interference by state governments.
Remember when They locked the world down and told everyone to wear masks and stand on stickers? Then it felt like you won when you got your freedoms back? This feels pretty much the same to me.
SAME. OLE. BULLSHIT.
Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying. I’m SUPER GLAD that this injunction was granted. Because if it hadn’t been, then…yeah. This would be an entirely different conversation. That we might not be having because, you know, freedom and stuff.
I just don’t feel like this is a win worth cheering about.
Because the only thing we are winning is not losing. Our so called inalienable rights. We should be outraged that the injunction was necessary, not applauding that it was granted.
And rest assured that this does not mean that censorship is no longer happening. See Brave Sasha:
Let’s ask our friends at the UN about abuse, I hear they are experts.
What Is Domestic Abuse?
Domestic abuse, can be defined as a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Abuse is physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person. This includes any behaviors that frighten, intimidate, terrorize, manipulate, hurt, humiliate, blame, injure, or wound someone.
I’m not trying to be all Debbie Downer for the festivities…so let’s wrap it up with the following:
Those closing credit videos are pretty damn close to priceless pieces of perfection for this time, being alive and awake in the time of covid. Muchas gracias, Sarah.
Ah, the problem of the predictability of rational behaviour. Your opening quotation had me laughing with recognition and a couple of quotations myself. Oops, rationality is... well how to put this? Easily made totally irrational because rational logic relies on irrational first premises and easily bi-furcates out into craziness. EG: If the postulate that evolution is the idea of life improving itself then it is easy logic to progress evolution to eugenics as the 'rational' way to help nature improve the human race.
And Taleb explores this irrationality quite well in his excellent book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/242472. (Fascinating how he, like many other so-called 'smart' people who have analysed irrationality and tyranny, were quickly injected! LOL! Is that a caution about being 'too' rational being associated with being 'too' easily hoodwicked by pseudo-rational arguments?)
A few 'rationality' caution quotations:
Martin Luther wrote: “Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom” (Martin Luther, Works, Erlangen Edition v. 16, pp. 142)
And the British 18th century philosopher Thomas de Quincey wrote: 'Here I pause for one moment to exhort the reader never to pay any attention to his understanding when it stands in opposition to any other faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted: and yet the great majority of people trust to nothing else; which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophic purposes.' De Quincey, Thomas. "On The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth" from Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 81. (Originally published in 1823.)
John Ralston Saul has been steadily, lucidly and presciently critical of the elevation of rationality as an imprisoning and deadly process.
"And now that truth is a fact, it is not surprising that facts have become like rabbits, "user friendly," prone to copulation, rapid multiplication and jumping about, to the point where the planet lies metres deep beneath their hopping mass. Nor is it surprising that as a result truth has become as arbitrary as paper money in an inflated economy. The same truth alters endlessly according to the choice of facts. That choice is in the hands of every expert, of every individual who controls a file or signs a letter." Saul, John Ralston. Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West Toronto: Viking 1992, pp. 298-9. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6584.Voltaire_s_Bastards
"The key to the referendum society is that it turns on a mystic evocation of past grievances, gathered together into a churning, aggravated spleen, where they are magnified and isolated from reality. Everything that is not a grievance disappears. This anger is then dovetailed into an heroic solution. Simple, absolute, salvatory. An answer.
...
"The modern referendum, as Napoleon understood when he invented it, is the ideal consummation of the rational as irrational, of the anti-democratic posing as democracy. The complex issues of reality, which democracy can deal with in its own slow, indirect way, are swept aside by single, clear issues, often modelled on single human qualities – either we must have common sense or we must have reason, or we must have memory. It is as if any combining of human qualities is impossible.
...
"Not surprisingly, both the referendum and direct democracy are a happy marriage with corporatism. The complex, real questions are dealt with behind the scenes through efficient "interest mediation" between the different interest groups. As for the citizenry, they are occupied and distracted by the fireworks of their direct involvement on the big questions and their direct relationship with the big people. A simple 'yes' or 'no' and history, they are told, will be changed, as if by a magic wand."
Saul, John Ralston. The Unconscious Civilisation. Concord, Ont.: House of Anansi Press Limited, 1995, p113-4. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1164797.The_Unconscious_Civilization
(Looks look you thrived through the family vacay!)
Where do you find the videos????? They are priceless! Bill O’Reilly sure resembled Dr. Oz in his younger days. As we talked about Wednesday, while the SCOTUS decision was correct, ain’t nothing to cheer about. The ruling class is just going to find something else to take away. In the meantime, my stash of incandescent light bulbs continues to grow.