PierreMenard
7mo ago
the owner of a HVAC company in suburban Michigan whose kind of annoyed by Trump, dislikes immigration, but also dislikes that he tired to repeal Obamacare, but hated that the country was shut down, and like the PPP loan he got.
There are people who like Obamacare? What would be the reasoning? From the business owner POV it seems that they'd be trying to hire less than full-time not to have to pay for health insurance.
If he wanted to spend more on health insurance for his employees, he could have done that prior to Obamacare I think.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
Well that was a mistake. I believe the ideas that Trump support are generally pretty popular.
Most people want their country to keep looking the way it did when they were children and not have 10% new different faces injected + a constant rhetoric that the way they've been living so far is abjectly immoral and they need to change NOW or they're EVIL. It should be a walk in the park for a generally well-presenting, competent-looking man to get ~60% of votes if he signals support toward a program that would support that worldview.
Usually the Republicans end up fielding the least-reptilian-looking investment firm manager who was able to curry enough favors from all the lobbyists to be eligible.
Then the voters say 'Well he probably laughs at plebs like me with his billionaire buddies but at least the country is going to descend into hell 20% slower than the other guy who outright laughs at me and blame me on TV for the country's problems'.
So the Democrats for whatever reason picked Hillary Clinton as replacement for golden goose Obama, and perhaps they had the idea that she was an utterly unlikable candidate so they had to go the extra mile to 'save the election'.
Here there's one measure of incompetency, picking HRC, and then there's one measure of competency, still trying to salvage it. They decided that in order to crush the Republicans, they would throw their entire media machine's support behind the goofiest, least-competent, most ridiculous showbusiness candidate this side of the Atlantic.
Plus they had to let the frustrated voters fantasize a little bit about getting what they want. Isn't that what democracy is for? You field some kooky guy who claims he wants to get you what you want, but he ends up losing to a more 'serious' candidate who has to compromise into getting you nothing that you want or the adults in the media or at the UN - or wherever people think adults are- will get you in trouble.
Then of course you use the worst possible version of the presentation of these ideas to discredit them 'oh yes we tried this in 2016 but that guy was just too goofy, serious people don't believe these things'.
That sounded like a good idea at the time, and the media kept laughing and scoffing that 'nobody is voting for Trump'. That was the plan. Who in their right mind would vote for a clown over serious girlboss HRC?
Then when it didn't work out they cooked up increasingly desperate counter-measures from the media to intelligence agencies, to the Science and health agencies... for a hot fix.
I wonder what the future is even going to look like. Because if you let people like Trump run the trouble is that they can get elected. We want to keep the song and dance of democracy going. And it's been going on pretty nicely with a nice continuity. Nobody's ever using the President's powers for anything that could disturb the general plan. Trump was ultimately the product of that small window in time in which the Internet was still letting unfiltered opinions through and the majority of voters started using the Internet. I'd say the Internet died in 2020 when governments found a reason to swing their weight around.
I think American democracy is going to get harder to maintain and the measures will get even more desperate than now - attempting to lock up top political opponents right before elections - like in these African countries where people vote along tribal lines, and voters risk machete attacks to cast their votes.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
everything, including wars, social unrest, pandemics, the stock market, and inflation
That's not everything. The last 2 are the same thing (the economy). All of these things can be (crudely) controlled.
And somehow the same people who also believe that TPTB are incompetent idiots mismanaging literally everything manage to believe both these things.
It's kind of the paradox. Not that mind-boggling of a belief tho. There are very smart people out there who think that a computer program answering cues can 'become intelligent' and take over the world as well.
Why would not-very-competent people who have a lot of power not use the technology of the day that actually works decently at modelling complicated phenomena to push for certain outcomes?
Do you genuinely believe the covid psy-op was organic? That the blm reversal 'actually you can go outside for police brutality protests' was genuine? That the pivot to Ukraine when the covid thing became too embarrassing was pure coincidence? That the pivot to Israel was also pure coincidence?
Or do you wonder why all these powerful people lied so much? With lies growing larger as time goes?
I don't know what it is to be honest. Were they trying to take out Trump because he really was threatening their system despite their mostly-successful blocking of his policies? Was it a way to cover up the last 30-50 years of failed foreign policy in the Middle-East, or just some kind of test, to see if people were ready to accept 'government says you can't enter this building at this time, thank you for your obedience'?
There is a paradox of competency. Clearly letting in millions of Central and South-Americans is not going to improve the general competency of the country. Planes are gonna start falling off the sky, bridges collapsing, trains derailing, towers getting smashed into...
Who could have predicted that sending gender studies majors to teach Afghans not to be sexist would not work? To be fair, with a few billion dollars and another couple decades I think it would have worked. In the mean time that's a nice way to secure employment for party-loyalists.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
I still like the concept!
PierreMenard
7mo ago
I hate to do this, but this is almost literally a textbook example of a straw man argument. No one outside a few on the far left is advocating open borders. The current argument about the border is whether to raise numbers up a bit or restrict them further, and whether Biden's current manner of dealing with the border is enough. Border patrol agents are still working. People are still getting deported.
The far left doesn't advocate opening borders, the borders are already open. They just attack anybody who wants to do anything about it.
People are still getting deported.
If you deport a thousand people and let in a million, you are still technically 'deporting' people.
The argument boils down to whether Biden should be taking actions that may or may not actually have any effect.
Yes, we get told that arresting gang members would not do anything about crime, until somebody does it and then 'at what cost???'
PierreMenard
7mo ago
Believing the United States should restrict trade and immigration is a luxury belief for Americans
A luxury belief, according to its proponents, is an idea or opinion that confers status on the upper class at little cost, while often supposedly inflicting costs on the lower class, in their view.
Would restricting trade and immigration harm Guatemala or Venezuela? Don't the people of these countries suffer from all their capable people seeking higher wages in the US?
We all have the luxury of being born in a country where a shitty job at a convenience store pays well above what most of the world is making.
Adjusted for cost and quality of living? I've seen interesting discussions between born-in-Africa immigrants and African-Americans, and the natives made a good point that being born in a broken family and broken community makes hustling harder.
American businesses may have the highest wages for the lowest qualifications but they have also perfected the art of destroying the bodies and soul of a people.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
if he doesn't you and the taxpayer are on the hook for 10 years of declining mobility in a retirement home at 8k a month and 5 years of dementia in a 20k a month memory care unit.
Or just bring him home. People pay for these things because they have too much money to know what to do with it.
And you know, maybe the next time a 'deadly' pandemic that's mostly fatal to the very elderly comes around, maybe just don't freak out as much?
PierreMenard
7mo ago
I didn't mean to go too off-track either.
What conservatives are advocating for is deviating not just from the default, but from the status quo, by passing additional immigration and trade restrictions for the express purpose of benefiting a favored class. And that's not exactly an expression of self-agency.
Well then I could say that whatever you're doing now would be even more admirable and self-agentic if you were blind or something, so why not just burn your eyes out?
Leaving the borders swinging wide-open is the national equivalent of blinding yourself in my opinion.
And this isn't just my default; it was the default throughout most of American history. The Constitution says nothing about immigration
I believe that it should have.
and indeed the country didn't make any serious attempts at regulating either until well into the 20th Century.
What about the Naturalization Act of 1790?
The law limited naturalization to "free White person(s) ... of good character", thus excluding Native Americans, indentured servants, enslaved people, free Africans, Pacific Islanders, and non-White Asians.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
Well healthcare costs are over-inflated anyway. Hospital systems, doctors and Big Pharma writing themselves blank checks off the government or third-party insurance.
Multigenerational households consistently make up about 3.8% of all households in the US.
From my personal experience, parents of families with grand-parent help look at least 30% less stressed-out than the ones without. Not necessarily in a same household.
I'd expect multigenerational households to have lower healthcare spending for the elderly: younger relatives can look after them, notice any serious health issues, and social interaction is important for health outcomes.
Instead of promoting obesity to decrease healthcare spending, I think it'd be preferable to promote family unity, as this would also help with the drop in birthrates.
It seems that the West will be a theocracy again or it will stop existing.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
Perhaps what we need is dram shop / over-serving laws but for food.
If somebody looks visibly inebriated, then serving them more alcohol can get you in trouble.
Similarly, if somebody looks visibly overfed, then it should be illegal to give them fattening foods (most products currently sold would qualify). Eateries would have to have a special menu specifically designed to be filling on low calories for these customers.
Another solution if we're willing to exert as much effort preventing obesity as we did covid: The Anti-Gluttony Door in Portugal's Alcobaça Monastery - can't go to the refectory until you need it.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
Well in the hypothetical that was not an option. Whatever hypothetical progressive regulation also gives preferential treatment. For example law firms headed by women/diversity get preferential treatment in court over you, or their costs get partially subsidized by the government, making you less competitive.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
you're poor because immigrants are driving down your wages
So let's build a wall says the right-winger.
No you can't do that says the left-winger, you just can't. You really can't says the left-winger, so the right-winger says, ok we'll jan6 then, and then the left-winger says no, no, no, you really, really, really, can't.
You're afraid to start a business or do anything because of crime?
So let's gather all the gang-members says the El Salvadoran President. But at what cost??? Asks the NYT.
When is the last time a politician or right-wing influencer told someone from West Virginia that they have the power to improve their life by relocating, retraining or abstaining from drugs?
How's 'relocating' working as a strategy generally? Plenty of 'relocated' Americans homeless on the streets of blue cities, not sure what good it does them.
Why is this never a solution to the mysterious problem of 'food deserts' that seems to plague African-Americans, completely unrelated to the spontaneous combustion of businesses in their neighborhoods when Republicans get in power?
Why is this never offered as a solution to racism? There are plenty of countries with way fewer oppressive white people.
I've seen right-wingers advise journalists to learn to code, does that count?
abstaining from drugs
Does the so-called 'War on Drugs' count? I'm all for going Duterte on drugs.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
It may be true for the retirees who reverse-mortgage their house and go on cruises around the world, but if the elderly do what they've done historically, they can be a welcome support in inter-generational homes, helping their children raise more grandchildren.
You'd have to factor the cost of that lost fertility before saying that the elderly are a net cost per year. There are some other benefits that the elderly provide, as outlined in this article.
Elderly people being a net cost on society would just be an additional sign of a sick society. I'd be surprised if a successful grandma who supports children and grand-children 'cost' more to society than a childless woman in her 40s.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
Hypothetically speaking, you're in the state of Washington. They vote in some progressives who decide that established lawyers have to hire assistants in order to train them for the bar exam bypass. The new hypothetical regulation leads to lower profit per case for you, with the same or additional work. Additionally they vote in some new taxes just for the stuff you like to buy.
Do you just take it, give up on some stuff? Do you move to another state and have to leave family and friends behind? Do you retrain for a completely different career that you can still live decently from? Do you complain in a bar with a bunch of your lawyer buddies until you decide that you will take some kind of action to lobby against the new regulations?
Also would actions like jan6, starting a border patrolling militia or targeting open-borders-supporting politicians qualify as 'having agency' for somebody complaining about economic stress from immigration?
On the other hand, I'd say forming a union definitely counts as having agency for (left-wing) workers who feel unfairly treated by their employers.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
I'm not really getting your point here.
Why should I pay more for stuff because some whiny American doesn't want to work for what I'm willing to pay. Those Mexicans are damn glad to get my money, and besides, they do the work and don't complain.
He owns a garage and auto body shop and refuses to pay his employees.
Should he go recruit a bunch of qualified workers in Honduras then? How would you feel if Guatemalans (or Indians, or Poles, or AI...) started offering lawyer services at one half of your rate and you started losing customers?
Would you be upset at your former customers if they told you 'Why should I pay more for stuff because some whiny American doesn't want to work for what I'm willing to pay'?
PierreMenard
7mo ago
Are you in fact endorsing the notion that race and sex are simply social constructs?
They are. Biological constructs are socially defined by groups of scientists and doctors. Everything we can talk about is a social construct. Then we can talk about how social constructs are products of brains which we socially-defined to be biological entities... My point is that if the average overeducated Westerner has trouble grasping the most apparent sexual dysmorphism, then how much more difficult will it be for them to understand the nuances of the boundaries between Jew and goy, when they are a lot more subtle?
To be fair, sexual dysmorphism is mostly important in medical settings these days, for example it would be paradoxical during a shipwreck to have a captain, supposed to go down with the ship, prioritize the evacuation of women and children, while being a woman themselves.
I know it's a very attractive theory, that these hostile, alien people you hate are all secretly conspiring against you, but do you think it is just remotely possible that Jews, like most people, are individuals, and some deeply identify with their co-ethnics and may even be hostile to outsiders, while others are not, and that most don't even give it much thought?
Have you quantified that or is that just a hunch? I'm sure there are perfectly upstanding Jewish people up there, just like there are perfectly upstanding people of any given race, and there are very smart Sub-Saharan Africans, and many African-Americans never commit any violent crime. Yet, there is still data showing that certain human groups are associated with certain traits, behavior, civilizational outcomes, etc.
Or do you sincerely believe that even open-minded Jews who aren't actively conspiring against the goyim have some malignant evolutionary programming deep in their Jew-brains that compels them to do so anyway?
Do I believe that there are personality traits that can be conserved across history in different proportions in different human groups? I do. Do I have evidence, biological correlates of an inheritability? No, I can't say I do. All I see are repeated patterns of behavior across time and space associated with certain outcomes.
Here are a few traits that I could see getting carried with higher than average likelihood in a 'Jewish subspecies' :
- open-mindedness
- affinity with learning languages
- affinity with numbers
- ability to navigate and/or circumvent laws
- ability to negotiate - perhaps a certain kind of empathy to offer a foreigner a deal that works for them
- desire to preserve tradition / tribe / in-group despite living as a minority
- diminutive stature / lack of interest for exercise
- preference for flight over fight
- preference for fungible goods or IOUs over large possessions that cannot easily be transported or traded
I'm not saying all of these hypothetical traits are absolutely necessary to define a member of a Jewish subspecies, but if we could quantify these traits at birth, I would imagine a PCA would cluster Jews away from Europeans based on at least some of these traits.
In adolescence I would definitely expect to see that, as many of these traits can be expected to be completely culturally transmitted or at least culturally reinforced (for example negotiation skills).
I would not say that most of these traits are necessarily malignant, some of these traits can lead to good outcomes in business, which explains that the underlying biological substrate were selected. Perhaps the problem is a matter of geometry. With the right technological substrate, a small software company can grow enormously given that once designed their product can be infinitely replicated at very little cost. Does that mean that their software is much more valuable than a manufacturing company with profit margins constrained by the physical availability of their inputs, etc?
Unfortunately, a population optimized for trading, rent-seeking, usury, etc will have a higher rate of power consolidation than a more diversified population which provides other essential agricultural, defense, manufacturing services..., ie labor. Therefore the first population can quickly hijack the power processes of the second population by ways of resource and influence control, and we end up with American taxpayers supporting Zelensky and Netanyahu's adventures. The problem is not that that population gains control, if they are good at having control, but that they have a different moral system, and different goals than the majority population. An alignment problem.
if Mexicans were literally lobbing rockets into border states, launching terrorist attacks across the border, and openly expressing their desire to destroy the United States
They would. If the US were blockading Mexico, US occupation forces expelled Mexican homeowners to house Americans, killed random Mexican citizens, and subjected them to a thousand other humiliations on a daily basis. See for ex.
Arguably, Israel is a far-right country engaged in ethnic cleansing on thousands of civilians, right now. Yet Jewish Americans can afford the double standard of both demanding more assistance to Israel (above and beyond what they have been getting for decades), and talking down on border-minded Americans who demand 1/100 of what Israel gets away with? We're talking about the most 'privileged' group of Americans, by any metric of wealth, education, political and media representation...
PierreMenard
7mo ago
Are they a separate species?
A separate subspecies perhaps. But the definition of biological boundaries is mostly political these days, just ask any college-educated Westerner what a woman is. It's a 'social construct'.
Or somehow more genetically divergent than any other human ethnicity?
Why would they need to be? Interestingly, the distinction does not need to be fully physiological. It's obviously a combination of underlying physiology and changes acquired during socialization as a member of the tribe.
DEI enthusiasts make largely the same claim about white men, you know: that we need to be removed (or reduced) from positions of power because we have historically used it to benefit our own kind to the detriment of others.
These people would be more credible if they 1 - stopped dating white men 2 - didn't in one way or another depend on white men's generosity for their basic survival. I'm personally not sitting in a Tel-Aviv basement on israeli welfare, so I don't think that criticism would apply to me.
I don't think there is anything wrong with seizing power and working to benefit your own group if your interests align with the interests of those you have power over. Westerns don't really have any reason to spend billions or trillions on defending the borders of Israel and Ukraine (more than their own), but the people in Biden's cabinet do.
I live around and work with plenty of Jews. They all act like me, and no one thinks their holy book says they're supposed to rule over me.
Or perhaps you act like them. Most Westerners don't work 'with plenty of Jews', and most influence they get is from TV, radio, social media, print. They go to church, spend time with their family and they have hobbies that have nothing to do with Jews, and if kept away long enough from all the electromagnetic jewish chatter, they would perhaps wonder why they have to care about terrorism in Israel or what flag is being flown in Ukraine.
no one thinks their holy book says they're supposed to rule over me.
Or possibly they don't tell it to your face because they know that's not serving their interests as well as simply creating a consensus that the interests of the Jews are what you wanted all along. In fact, they do, and there's not much you can do about it. For example : The ADL will not let you get away with expressing the same border policy about your own country that they do about Israel.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
I think one of the most salient arguments of contemporary antisemites is that Jews as a people are a (somewhat) distinct biological entity.
Whatever evolutionary mechanisms brought about the association of white people with 'work ethic', 'politeness' or 'delayed gratification' by the Smithsonian could also explain the discrepancy in behavior between a 'Jewish population' and a Western one.
Genesis 41 essentially describes how a Jew was miraculously able to take over Egypt's economy.
I don't know how prominent this story is in the Jewish scriptures but a vaguely similar situation seems to have developed in Middle-Age England, to the point that the Magna Carta was chartered to curtail the jewish lenders influence on the kings and the country's real estate.
Ingeniously, as the noblemen increasingly turned to the Jewish moneylenders for funds, upon their defaulting of the loans, the king received the parcels of land used as collateral.
From grain to feudal lands to mortgage-backed securities... The problem is still ongoing.
How could somebody believe in underlying mechanisms that would explain HBD and not consider that the same underlying mechanisms would also apply to a population which for thousands of years spread while keeping a somewhat consistent set of moral guidelines they inherited from their ancestor 'Moses'?
"Jews are evil and we should remove them from all positions of power and influence" isn't really a truth proposition.
I think it would just be a healthy starting point for the average organization to consider that individual Jews have an unusual tendency to optimize for consolidating power to their own group's benefit over other considerations that might be beneficial to the organization. Does that make them 'evil'? That would be a subjective consideration.
For those who are just starting to notice that the US government's foreign policy seems to have a lot more to do with the interests of Jewish groups, whether American, Israeli or Ukrainian, wouldn't that be practical advice?
In nominal democracies where the people, who in majority (>95%) are not Jewish, knowing that Jewish leaders or Jewish-allied leaders are sometimes, if not mostly, working against their interest, seems like a somewhat important information.
Similar considerations would apply to say, top 1% Indian immigrants who go out of their way to only interbreed with fellow immigrants and keep their wealth and culture separate from the locals as much as possible.
If in 3 generations the descendants of these IT company founders roughly live the same way as their neighbors, then you're probably clear to work with them, but if they go around pointing to an old book that says that God chose them to rule over every other people and if you disagree you're oppressing them, it's probably a bad idea to put them in charge of your finances and government.
PierreMenard
7mo ago
If we had the influence you ascribe to us, why did we let this happen? Before the canned reply about hubris, golem, etc, that metaphor does not apply so easily when the scale of the influence alleged is as great as this.
Isn't the history of the Jewish people just a long series of such fumbles?
Here's a prominent member, the current US Secretary of Homeland Security. Could this fellow be said to have any influence over immigration flows into the US? Now isn't it surprising to learn that this man's mother fled not one but two separate countries within a lifetime?
His mother, Anita (Gabor),[19] was a Romanian Jew whose family escaped the Holocaust and fled to Cuba in the 1940s[20][21][22] before leaving for the United States after the Cuban Revolution.[20]
With modern technology fueling political developments, I would not be surprised if some set a record at 3 or 4 in this century.
PierreMenard
8mo ago
As infamously expressed by Tim Hunt:
Tim Hunt, an English biochemist who admitted that he has a reputation for being a “chauvinist”, said to the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, South Korea: “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls … three things happen when they are in the lab … You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry.”
Hunt said he was in favour of single-sex labs, adding that he didn’t want to “stand in the way of women”. The 72-year-old, who won the 2001 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, made the remarks when addressing a convention of senior female scientists and science journalists.
It doesn't strike me as a bad idea, but I don't actually want the Science to get any better. Best case scenario seems to me for diversity to cancel the AI apocalypse.
PierreMenard
8mo ago
Here is an example of this type of thinking:
A pilot project aimed at lowering the rate of medical professionals who overreport Black, Latino and Indigenous families to the child welfare system is launching in Michigan, the American Bar Association announced.
"Sometimes children are not safe, and that is when child protection needs to step in — when children aren't safe. It is equally important to remember that removing children from their parents is a last resort because of the trauma associated with being removed from one's family," said Dr. Ann Stacks, director of the Infant Mental Health Program at the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute at Wayne State University and part of Michigan's Stop Overreporting Our People (STOP) initiative. "It is so important to make sure that children aren't being unnecessarily investigated or removed."
My understanding of the issue is that children of all families are overreported to family services, and the lawyer group STOP recognizes that the process is the punishment ; getting investigated by the government is stressful, getting your kids taken away by the government is a nightmare.
Charitably, one can imagine that they are trying to ride the DEI wave to reduce the absolute number of families unfairly targeted by nosy teachers, neighbors, medical workers, etc. Perhaps they are hoping that whatever findings they come up with while trying to reduce the comparative overreporting of 'Black, Latino and Indigenous families' can then be generalized to everybody... Or they simply don't care about the non-'Black, Latino and Indigenous families' that are also suffering through this system.
Another way to resolve the problem of 'overreporting our people' would be to start reporting non-'Black, Latino and Indigenous families' more often to equalize the rates between groups... That would definitely not be a good outcome imo.
PierreMenard
8mo ago
Which 'negative outgroup stereotype' are you referring to? Is MAID not an existing policy? Is drug tolerance not also an existing policy? What bothers you specifically, that I refer to these 2 existing policies and associate them with the people who generally support them, or that I refer to these 2 existing policies in conjunction?
Are we not allowed to talk about specific policies if somebody can hypothetically infer that these policies lead to bad outcomes?
PierreMenard
8mo ago
I consider the whole thing itself as just another aspect of a sick society. It is valuable to go and attempt to rescue some of these poor souls, like a one-man Rittenhouse crusading against urban Covid super-spreaders, but ultimately, it's like bailing out with a spoon.
It's hard to say exactly where charity should be placed, but there does appear to be some more effective approaches to drug containment, namely in El Salvador or the Philippines, we don't necessarily have to throw our hands in the air. 'Aaaah these people are just desperate, no can do, drugs will just keep flowing' Which I suppose would still largely be included in
"solved" in any way that doesn't look like brutally grinding a bunch of unfortunates under society's heel.
Whether your child OD's, cuts their genitals, becomes a girlboss dogmom, a journalist, join the reddit volunteers for Ukraine or immolates themselves for or against Israel... It's all some failure of parenting that's unfortunately incredibly common because overcoming the odds requires some serious skills in this century.
It's cute we can still laugh at the "A|B testing" ravaging our cities like this is all a Sim City game and we can load after the aliens destroyed the map.
PierreMenard
8mo ago
(desperate and not especially well-informed or conscientious) people try without grasping the full consequences of what they're doing.
So we need some kind of public awareness campaign? That would improve the issue? I do believe that some of the issues with the Drug War was that the government was doing fear-mongering and not really providing accurate information, but still. I think a lot of people take it because it's the best they can get. Perhaps if the most desperate of sinners were provided safer high quality drugs then they would not resort to fentanyl? Or perhaps we need to refashion society in such a way that constantly seeking a new high is not a marginally acceptable alternative to being a semi-productive member of society.
Naively a misanthrope might consider it an effective way to get rid of undesirables, but even that makes no sense: its an addiction that reproduces itself for each new doomed-to-die cohort.
Does it really? A lot of these addicts seem to have quite a decent life expectancy, what with all these good samaritans going around with Narcan. The addiction itself is accessory. Desperate people would become addicted to something else if fentanyl and the other street stuff was completely eradicated. They are just a symptom of a sick society and they rightfully pile up in these progressive cities, in front of the very eyeballs that need to connect some dots, but that has not worked so far.
So it's not a coincidence right?
EDIT: nevermind you did write you thought these things were more 'organic'. What kind of evidence would you need to believe that something is not 'organic', but rather 'fake and gay'?
The problem is that we don't know what exactly the goals are and what a 'failure' looks like, what we do see is large organized actions toward certain apparent goals, and they only seem to get bigger. What we may think of a failure may just be another possible path. Perhaps making all the boomers go MAGA was just one more way to get more people dependent on online socialization...
I gave you an example of 'TPTB' influencing various thing such as 'pandemics', 'social unrest', 'wars', which imo passes the bar of 'the idea that "TPTB" can control literally everything'.
But to you it's not valid because it's not 'TPTB can make everyone turn on a dime overnight.' I didn't claim that. They have a measure of control.
Most people don't say 'meteorologists can't predict the weather' because predictions after 5 weeks are generally meaningless. There is a certain level of prediction going on.
I'd say this is analogous to a boulder. If the boulder is big enough, no matter how hard I push it will not budge. If not, I can probably make it nudge forward and backward a little bit. If the boulder is uphill and I try really hard I can probably make it roll down the hill.
Am I able to roll the boulder back uphill? No. Am I able to send that boulder wherever I want? No. Can I make all boulders roll downhill? No.
I do believe that there are people that TPTB can make turn on a dime overnight. Journalists. It only took a few weeks for the coverage to go from 'It's racist to close borders to prevent Asians from bringing him a nothingburger of a cold' to 'Orange man bad for not doing enough to stop the spread of the Black Plague 2.0'.
Obviously the people in charge of these schemes are somewhat competent, but the moving parts are not necessarily. My understanding of those who are made to be 'flexible' in their beliefs is that there is some kind of underlying cognitive weakness. I don't expect these people to make good long-term decisions aside from professionally 'doing what TPTB say to stay on their good side'.
For the ones in charge, I would say the problem is their 'out-of-touchness'. It's hard to tell what being 'in-touch' means, but being a multi-faced sociopath 24/7 probably doesn't help introspection and relating to the common man. Especially if most of your interactions are with lackeys who are only thinking and saying whatever they think you expect them to.
What kind of psychology is at work behind the concurrent media coverage of : 'Glorious underdog desperately needs our support to fight back to the last man in urban guerilla against evil invader'
vs 'Glorious topdog desperately needs out support to invade and suppress evil terrorists fighting to the last man in urban guerilla' ?
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