Substack Notes, Vol. 9.2
I will release my special list of Notes regarding the Trump trial in New York-and its verdict-shortly. Enjoy!
George Orwell (1903-1950) once wrote that "history stopped" in 1936.
Truth after that point was drowned out by state propaganda. It was a phenomenon that clearly terrified him.
"I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines.’”
When I first read this quote, which comes from his 1943 essay “Looking back on the Spanish War,” I didn't have any idea what Orwell was talking aboutabout.today
Today, I understand exactly what he was talking about. And that terrifies me.
Holy cow it's embarrassing to be an atheist sometimes looking at these data.
Only 35% of atheists agreed that minors SHOULD NOT be allowed to undergo "gender transition" procedures.
A majority of all Christian denominations and Jews opposed them.
This article encapsulates so many elements of modern insanity… had you presented it to me ten years ago I would’ve said it was an Onion article, for sure.
“The following English words signal NPC dialogue that should immediately set off your BS detector: Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, Science, Resistance, Sustainable, ESG, Expert, Thot Leader, Reimagine, Systemic, Crisis, Unpack, Transformative, Restorative, Progress, Justice, Baseless, Fact Check, and of course any word that ends in -ism or -phobia.”
“[W]hen you make supporting a political movement into a matter of public fashion, in short order that movement will fall out of fashion.”
-Freddie DeBoer
“Secrecy keeps mistakes secret, Secrecy is a disease. It causes a hardening of the arteries of the mind.”
-Daniel Patrick Moynihan
It’s easy to get sick of historical mythology, since the kind peddled by our self-styled aristocrats is so facile and twee. We are beset with small men who LARP as plucky hobbits fighting new-made “Nazis” while actually leveraging immense power to persecute their enemies and oppress their dependents. And of course even in genuinely noble wars like the one the Allies waged, reality is always murkier than the myths we tell about it.
”Never try to convey your idea to the audience – it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it.”
-Andrei Tarkovsky
Ironically, in seeing themselves as white, white people have racialized everyone beyond where we were before Robin DiAngelo and BLM came along.
"If liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals will not do.”
-David Frum
