“No man was ever eloquent by trying to be eloquent, only by being so.” G.H. Lewes
When I compare Reagan against Obama, the above comment underscores that Reagan’s eloquence naturally results from his substance. Obama’s elegance, well, I don’t find it. His cadence, where he pulls out words (that, is) suggests to me Obama makes it up as he goes. He has nothing really to say and the elegance from circular speech is like a cream puff: too much sugar and air.
“and knowledge……” is what Reagan said… not god of the gaps, not musings from ideas without any reference to things, etc…
He points out, there is a long tradition of warnings unheeded…
Mein Kampf can be seen as a warning… but given the facts and the inability to get people to read things… well, another unheeded warning. Just as what Obama’s mentors and others said would be a warning…
Technically for over five years here I have been doing nothing but warning…
[and in a minute you’re going to be a bit surprised… ]
Now the world war is here… this is so much the same as what was taught to me about what it was to live on the street then… (And has followed that which i reported exactly)
H. G. Wells warned us…
Aldous Huxley warned us as to what his brother and others were making
He said “that the crimes of the Nazis were only possible because of the moral cowardice of so many of us non-Nazis.”
George Kennan warned us in the long telegram and did so quite succinctly (that means short to those guys that hate long posts), after all, it was a telegram. Its alternative title was: The Sources of Soviet Conduct
Over and Over i put up my warnings and even put up others warnings…
What about Freda Utley?
I put her up too… not only that, but I gave credentials, I even linked to her famous books, and so on…
Freda Utley’s father was involved with George Bernard Shaw, the Fabian Society – hey, isn’t a lot of this from that? Of course reading someone who is so close to the sources is a waste of time.
Well, I promised a surprise… [in the next post so this is not too long and gets cut]
People here LOVE Reagan (at least more than at Democratic underground). They respect his ideas, and his lessons, and what he did, and so on. Even now, we are sitting here remembering his warning, though I remember that speech when he gave it.
Reagan warned us that without the knowledge, we could not succeed…
In 1940 she [Freda] expressed her disgust with communism and the Soviet Union in her book The Dream We Lost, later published as Lost Illusions, of which Bertrand Russell wrote the introduction… (the same Bertrand Russell in yesterday’s history lesson on “negative income tax)…
Right now, I ask a favor in feedback…
Have I ever asked such a favor in the past five years?
Will those who have read one of those two books, other than me, let us know if you have. IE. after I introduced them, and linked to where you can get them for free, and so the only reason not to read them is lack of desire, or want… did anyone?
Get ready for another “Damn” Occam…
In the posthumously published, book Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America Ronald Reagan wrote about Utley:
“…many of the intellectuals didn’t want to hear what she had to say. She had impressive academic credentials when she came to the U.S. but publishers and the academy closed doors against her. She understood all too well. She had tried communism and learned its falseness. She said only those ‘who have never fully committed themselves to the communist cause’ can continue to believe in it.”
So here, we are praising Reagan, the cargo cult image we attribute things to, but care not what made the substance under the suit. I wonder if anyone will read her now that they know their Reagan hero did, and that my recommendation was from what Reagan called knowledge.
“I have not pretended to be a Stalinist but have kept my mouth shut about Russia until now. Naturally I have no illusions left–nor had any before they took Arcadi. I am not a Trotskyist as I have become convinced that all dictatorships are much the same and that power corrupts everyone. Without democracy there can be no real socialism. But I fear the world is progressing towards ‘National Socialism’ on the Russian-German model. Little difference between them.” Freda
oh… and guess what? That is what Hilmar von Campe said, that the Huffington post article makes fun of to discredit him. But it IS what we are making since fascism allows ownership and communism doesn’t, so the lesser of two evils is the outcome (or rather a hybrid of both, like china and without knowing where that will lead to. But its leading to war, as it always does)
In the 1950s Utley helped Senator Joseph McCarthy compile his lists of highly placed people suspected of communist sympathies.
Artfldgr: Reagan is not a cargo cult image, although I suppose he is to some people. Many of those who praise him and his words are aware that he did a lot of deep reading and thinking and observing to arrive at them, and a great deal of that reading and thinking and observing most definitely had to do with the left and its methods and the perils of Communism. That’s one of the reasons he called it an “evil empire”–he wasn’t just talking about the movies.
Why do you continue to insult the intelligence of people here? I’m asking that in all seriousness. You keep knocking down a strawman. While it’s true that people don’t have the exact and detailed knowledge of each person you write about, they certainly have enough knowledge that there’s no reason to call their views “cargo cult,” or to insult their intelligence and awareness.
How quickly it has transpired that the video meant as inspiration should now engender nothing more than melancholia. But it was a good two hundred year run.
neo. i sent you my answer by mail.
but now i am sure we wont know..
you just pulled a YUTE moment from my cousin Vinney.
i asked readers to chime in and let me know if they HAD read it. and before they could answer you pipe up and now what?
Q: About a hundred feet. Would you hold this please? (Running a tape measure). Sorry, excuse me, excuse me, sorry, sorry. Okay. This is fifty feet. That’s half the distance. How many fingers am I holding up? (He hold up two fingers.)
Judge: Let the record show that the counselor is holding up two fingers.
Q: Your Honor, please, huh?
J: Oh. Sorry.
I second your comment, neo.
Art, just because we have not read all those works about communism does not mean that we don’t understand that it creates misery wherever it is tried, and that there are many in the USA that believe it just hasn’t been done right yet. For my part, I have hated communism for the better part of my adult life. I lost several good friends during the holding action in Vietnam. I have been to Russia. Even today, the vestiges of communism hold them in a grip that prevents economic progress. I have observed the results of communism in North Korea, Red China, East Germany, Myanamar, and Cuba. I have understood the misery produced in Chile and Argentina when they embraced full on socialism. I know there are many working night and day, dedicating their lives to establishing socialism/communism here in the U.S.
There are times these days when I feel like going postal because things seem so out of control. It would be very satisfying to confront them on a field of battle. But I still have respect for, and belief in, law and order and the peaceful transfer of power. Once that is gone we are really done. It is evident to most here at neo’s place that the MSM and academia have been complicit in moving us further and further to the left. They have co-opted the seemingly reasonable terms of fairness, compassion, and “rights” as their platform for change. Were it not for talk radio, the blogosphere and Fox News, we would be even further along than we are.
We share your angst even if we have not your commanding view of history.
Artfldgr: I was referring to this statement of yours [emphasis mine]:
“So here, we are praising Reagan, the cargo cult image we attribute things to, but care not what made the substance under the suit.”
The implication is that we worship Reagan’s image without caring what the underpinnings of his thought may have been. There’s no evidence for that in most of the commenters on this blog. How do you know how much they care about what made the substance under the suit?
I will grant you that very few if any people here have an encyclopedic and/or photographic memory, and the ability to read at a thousand pages an hour, as you seem to (and I don’t mean that sarcastically; I believe that you have extraordinary abilities in that realm). But short of that, we read, care, and remember all sorts of things.
Nor does the reluctance of some people to read everything you write indicate they don’t care (and know a fair amount) about the “substance under the suit,” not only of Reagan, but of many many things.
That’s what I mean when I talk about strawmen and unsults.
so… out of Occam, Curtis, neo, and anyone else who would be kind enough to turn assumption to a real answer, please let us know:
if you read illusions, or dreams we lost? both by Freda Utley.
How many have actually read gramsci’s nine volumes?
how many actually read cover to cover das capital?
how many read The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB and or The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World or The KGB in Afghanistan
how many read “Dear god i wanted to live”
how many read the hayes tilden book i quote and linked to?
how many have read philip dru?
how many have read Road to Surfdom
how many read the long telegram?
how many have actually read mein kampf?
my (ongoing) premise is that very few if any did read them at all. and that saying so is being truthful, even if NEO thinks its impolite in pc feminism and cant figure out how i know…
Neo says that’s a strawman argument to claim they havent read it (implying they have), and that many of you did read it, but are offended that i claim you havent (and that claiming you didn’t, insults your intelligence)
now, its very easy to lie, and play favorites in this one, so i hope people who Do answer are honest… but other than asking for a comment as to what you thought when you read it, there is no way to check, and i am not asking that. lets try the honor system.
to tell you the truth, the only person who i think has actually taken some time is Occam…. Occam more than once has gone back to books (i can list some from memory), and tried to confirm what i claimed (the most memorable being the Latvian rifle men making the soviet union)
Put it to sleep!
Either everyone/most have read it and my claiming they haven’t, is wrong
or they have not read it, and neos assumption and etiquette lessons are misplaced.
Maybe neo can set up a quiz or something and we can check off what we have or haven’t read on that list.
for some reason when people say X and the real answer is Y, and i report that, and the book and the references… and then they keep spouting X, i think that either they didn’t read it or they read it and are ignoring it.. (outlier odds like Alzheimer i leave out of the assumptive)
Note: i HATE poseurs…
a poseur lies to everyone as a matter of nature.
to defend someone without the facts based on assumptions… often backfires… as its better to get the facts, before you make claims and such.
so, lets see…
i am willing to put my neck on the chopping block neo, even if those that dislike me can lie and cause the blade to fall.
at the very least we will learn a lot… regardless.
Among Reagan’s many attributes one stands out front and center: he was genuinely American in all that being an American means. Remember, we have suffered many fools and knaves in DC over the last 200+ years. We will survive BHO and his motley court of jesters and vagabonds.
While it is true many of our fellow citizens are also fools and naves, I believe they are not the majority. Its still the economy stupid and many of the “47%”, know this administration has taken a bad situation and made it worse. Those in the “47%” who want to stand on their own 2 feet will show up at the polls and vote accordingly.
Be of good cheer.
You do not need a detailed knowledge of the biological process of decay to realize when something is rotten through and through. All that is required is a sense of smell. 😉
how many read The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB and or The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World or The KGB in Afghanistan
Art, I’ve read both of these, and parts of Das Kapital, but in candor my interest flags on trying to read it all. Resistance to reading Marx’s turgid prose is compounded by the impression that reading Capital is as unrewarding as reading a tome on astrology, and for the same reason.
Oh, and I’ve read Mein Kampf as well, and am currently reading Finer’s book on Mussolini.
i answered neo again, but it all got killed.
the shortest version.. since i have handicaps i have developed compensatory skills. some having to do with my deafness, some having to do with aspergers (or the memory and such that goes with it)…
most people don’t realize that forgetting is also a key part of normal relationships and social cohesion. so normal people forget a lot. i cant.. while my memory is not perfect like rain man, it blows away phds here who know me. they remark about it all the time, as they say stuff, and in minutes i am pulling up obscure papers and such that i had memorized over the years.
like a blind man that can navigate a room by his senses (yes, its possible, but not common), or other seemingly unusual things, i ahve had to come up with clues and things that allow me to think my way through situations in which most people dont have to think at all.
given that, and the fact a mistake leads to sociopathic horrors visited on you, and a success means you find a life partner, its life or death with me as to understanding what people say, and the quirkie things that give me clues.
most people havent noticed my surprising consistency over the past four years. but i have noticed their waxings and warnings as i have in my head a series of their comments and responses and so on.
hows this neo. go back to the begining of your blog, and read every post again to make it fresh in your head, with a focus on what people read, not read, commented, or commented later that revealed they didnt act before..
you see.. i have that…
just as i have all that soviet history, American history, novels, books, and so on.
my music memory would freak you out… you can hum a few bars and i know most of the total music catalog of tunes.. i can recite lyrics of thousands of songs from partial sentences.
i have read every scientific American since the very first one.. (a collector loaned them to me a years worth at a time, and it took me a week for each)… i have also read 3 versions of the complete Britannica, and one version of the funken wagnals.. three unabridged dictionaries… yes, i have read dictionaries the way you read books
history is my weak subject… 🙂
all i do is read, as i only have 4 or so friends and maybe see them once or twice a year. the rest of the time i spend working to earn a living, or studying, experimenting and reading.
i only sleep four hours a night, so my days are 20 hours long… imagine if you spent an extra four hours a day trying to cram the most complicated things you can find to keep your head busy..
trade magazines, political tomes, white papers, etc…
i know English, and have taken Spanish, french and learned German when my sister took it (i had a habit of taking peoples textbooks and reading them from cover to cover)… now i am trying to re-learn Latvian.. but due to my wife, i am learning bahasa Indonesian, mandarin, and Cantonese… (though i also have some Japanese, Russian, Slovak, polish, too)
sadly, without friends to talk to, i am not fluent…
i do photography, oils, sculpture, and more… the past year and a half i have learned to cab and cut and identify gemstones… making contacts with people all over the world…
on the side, i create devices for researchers here, and my first real paper will be submitted for publication.
its a new chip design core and allows me to search data and build indexes in one pass in clock time (ie, the time equals the length of the large string). another paper i am writing is for balancing research treatments and a method for generating them for blind studies, but i havent found a partner for that one.
i have devices for detecting snipers before they fire, detecting tungsten in gold bars (too late for that one)…
i also have new biological models for genomics (my phd partner is a geneticist, my son graduated honors in genetics)
by the way.
dont tell anyone…
but i only have a high school diploma
and a certificate..
so all that stuff, is self taught..
and i like athletics.. played hockey, football, gymnastics (vault), fencing.. and like caving, diving, jet skis, water rafting… i miss free climbing…
the point of ALL that, is to say.. i have a lot of skills and abilities that average people could have (some) but dont… and they all come to bear whether i like it or not…
and from ALL that i get my answers and ideas and premises and so on.
and true to form as aspergers, my intent is not to insult, but to inform, help, and so on. in fact its my nature and has gotten me seriously hurt… when i see facts that are wrong, people faking, musings made up, and so on.. and the thing hanging in the balance is totalitarian slavery of my fellow man and the tortured death of thousands to millions. forgive me for getting a bit frustrated and taking it seriously in terms of knowing.
Go ahead. ask anyone who grew up under soviet rule who did not have a state life that was good, what it was like…
by the way, if this state changes, people like me will be loaded into ovens. we prevent equality, and we are not in on the game. so, there is only one final place for me if this all continues.
you may think that your ok, and your probably right, but the infirm, the half deaf, the exceptionally smart but disconnected.. they are not slated for the same ends, are they? and if you read the papers of these people as i have, that would be a VERY clear message.
Occam..
i knew you tried.. and i dont blame you for not getting through it all (your quite correct on it)…
i have only met a few others who have, and ex soviets who were required to.
so i knew you did… but note, most leftists have never read it, and would never get through it even if they tried (you didnt and for good reason)… and so, they are also, following a cargo cult image of something that would be revealed mroe if they could read it and comprehend it.
i also knew you read the mitrokhen thing, as that changes the answers someone will give.
and as i said, a chemist knows when someone is faking chemistry… a historian who knows history very well, and from many places, knows when people are faking it.
and most dont even know they are faking it.
and even better, some of them get offended by answers derived from their own ideological position. like the woman at work who started a light conversaiont and asked me a question, to which i answered honestly… sadly. she was upset that i didnt like that the people who dont commit crimes would leave my neighborhood on holiday, and that would change the demographic for the poor who tend to comit more crimes. she yelled something about being mugged by a CEO who doent pay his taxes. and i never got to ask her: if this point i make isnt so,then why are you and others trying to redistribute wealth there as a cure for that?
they cant even apply what they think they know. so THATS how i know… tons of clues.
to the point that others think i dont. but you know… when you meet a girl in a bar, and your looking into her eyes, and she is a chain smoker, and her saccade (movement of the eye) cant track people walking by smoothly, MAYBE just MAYBE the risk of a schizophrenic is too high to bother.. but would others know?
wouldnt others think me rude for avoiding her or him like the plague? and they too would thik i am rude… but then again, they dont know, and i do.
and just cause they dont know what i am picking up on and know, they also wont sit down, with me and let me show them. they will be rude, shame me, tell me i am insulting, but the end result would be i shouold try to be with the nutjob. i did that once.. she destroyed my career, emptied my bank acounts, took my child, faked her murder nearly putting me in prison for a crime that never happened, brought my son with her to a bank robbery, and then ended up winnign it all under feminism..
guess what? never again will i let someone who doesn’t know, convince me i am wrong and give me self doubt.
they don’t pay the bills for the mistake, do they?
when you get literally destroyed when you make a mistake, you get very good, or you get destroyed over and over…
But just to clarify—I never said or thought that people here had read all, or even some, of the works you have recommended (although I figure that some people have, I would guess a very few have read a very few of the works). I was referring to your saying that people didn’t care about “the substance under [Reagan’s] suit,” and just had a “cargo cult” knowledge of him.
the only post i read before posting this was the last neo post.
neo. i was writing when you posted, and posted before i read it.
now to my post on reading for occam
i put up the stuff thats in my current reading folder, but i have over 150 books on my phone, and over 200 papers…
It’s very hard for me to divulge what I am currently reading. I read lots of things and do it at once. So its not uncommon for me to read 4-8 books at a time… and I always get interrupted that I have to also read something else. So one of those has to do with the internals of the dot net universe of Microsoft.
But I guess, let me give you a list of whats on my phone I read jumping back and forth to make it more interesting and challenging. (I have others to read in the bathroom at home, and on my different computers, not to mention a large collection of books and such too)
Ok.. I just finished the last book of the osprey men at arms series (that I have)..
If anyone is interested in that kind of thing, I highly recommend the series http://www.ospreypublishing.com/
ok the phone list…
Slaves of the Machine
The computational beauty of nature
Electricity and Magnetism
The art of electronics (3rd time reading it)
Basic electromagnetism and materials
Bryston white papers on audiophile electronics
New Mathematical Diversions
Adaptation in natural and artificial systems
Artificial life
Artificial life IV
Artificial life models in software
Bioinformatics (text book)
Topographic surveying
Neural Nets an Intro
Nonlinear system theory
Quantum theory and the brain
30 years of adaptive neural networks
Financial modeling (left over from wallstreet work)
Computational Chemistry
Chinese for Dummies
Computational fluid dynamics
Changing Minds (mit press)
Moths to the Flame
America Alone
Leadership in decline
Militarism by Liebknect
Odysy of a liberal
Pan Americanism
Social justice
The new unhappy lords
War and the private investor
While you slept
some i am reading a second time
others the first
and i bebop all over the place to keep it interesting
neo..
the point on cargo cult is it SEEMS they know them, but when you ask basic questions, they cant answer them…
and i have argued more than once that when someone IS interested, they know more… not less, or thew wrong stuff…
here is basic one, we know that FDR lived in ny, washington slept everywhere, and wilson was from staunton va..
ok.. were was Ronald Reagan born? you have a 1 in 50 chance of guessing. now. if your interested, admired him, and tried to learn things he learned and are a fan, a birthplace would be EASY…
for instance. where was Obama born? or rather where does Obama say he was born. and i bet you can even give the hospital.
if i ask a person who could care less about ballet where was Mikhail Baryshnikov born? i bet you know neo.
ok.. i am not a baseball fan…
so i cant tell you who won the last world series!
but i bet every baseball fan here who really is into it, can tell me.
Since reagan was a REAL anticommunist, you can be sure he read the stuff that REAL anticommunists read. the persons who kind of have a dislike and would rather not have it, are not really anti communists… are they?
so you can supposed that obama wont read 30 years of adaptive neural networks like i do.
however, you will find if you actually do the leg work, and ask and get out there, which i have… that they WILL pretend to if they think that its an important thing, or its part of their local collectives thing. and they will parrot what they learned in the ether, not what they learned in books.
and that is a form of cargo cult behavior
if its the appearance of something and not the actual something, then its cargo cult. and knowing what the public knows and little else IS cargo cult, as that will be the information that will be put forth to convince you they know. when the left does this, and you know otherwise, you call them nuts. when you do it, and the leftist taught something different sees it, they go nuts.
but here i sit between you and i know BOTH sides arguments and stuff… so what do i see? two people arguing over a subject that neither knows but neither also is willing to admit that.
so, its cargo cult, kabuki theater, potemkin, false front, lying, posing, and so on..
ALL of them meaning a minimum knowlege enough to pretend to know that most others with minimum knowlege cant call them to the mat on.
and MOST people cant remember the news from last year, and you think they remember reagan and the facts of that? only if they are interested i him and if so, the surface main stream knowlege is not enough.
which is why presidents make money on books… the interested people buy them. and they read about how George bush blew up frogs with fireworks.. it certainly was not in his speeches.
i dont know why your arguing with me other than you dont want to believe your fellow man is actually like that. but he/she is…
even MORE so today in the self esteemed left liberal melieu where if you dont pretend you know, then your not a revolutionary…
just ask all those kids who are fans of che
i bet they have substantial knowlege and references to back up their love and interest?
no, they have a cargo cult image of people who love che, and have no idea or little idea of what he was like, what he did, etc.. though the love the t-shirt quotes.
by the way… today more people think they know che, than they think they know reagan.
and most people dont read sources, they read summaries… another apologie to madonna, we are living in a cliff notes world..
oh… and affirmative action where you put people who didnt earn the place in place, tends to make a lot more of these people as they feign to make up for what they didnt do, or cant do.
i remember high school
i remember that most of the kids around me didnt know much of much, and didint give a damn.
do you really think that they grew up and changed into erudite geeks who then would make up for the lsot time?
barely any…
this morning i watched a NURSE write a story in a book on the train… she had her RN id… so its a REGISTERED NURSE… not just a home aid… and the title was the unperfect world… the word imperfect was not in her vocabulary.. and without word auto correct, its revealed.
the difference between the people i met and the descriptions people who never met them give me, would make you give pause…
the world is not what someone on the left thinks it is, and converting from that does not erase all that and replace it with something else. does it? nor do the habits of the truth being insulting, or defending others as not ignorant as its the nice thing to do.
given that this is about totalitarianism, world war, and whether people will end up murdered when they dont comply with the state. i really dont feel generous in letting posers piss into the water with bad information…
in fact, that makes them equal to someone in a group who is an enemy who is doing that purposefully to make the group ineffective.
so, on that note.. how effective are we against this game and how far have we gone figuring out why, what, hows and such.
from my view. the ony reason we got farther on the idea that obama is what i said he was before he was even elected is that they have 4 years of crap and they still aren’t quite sure…
even those that love obama cant answer questions about his life… and in fact, their incurious desire to not poison their cargo cult image of him, made sure they avoided every negative thing that would break the facade and crack the glass.
you never changed neo, what happened is that the glazing surface that they presented got cracked, and in between the crack you saw that the substance was lead, not gold as they pretended.
and when you found that out, you abandoned them to something less cargo cult, surface only, potemkin, etc..
people dont change neo…
if they did, psychiatry and psychology would actually be able to show great success and cures, not be happy with a bit of mitigation – instead, drugs dominate the field as they change the brains functions and so DO change the person – and much more successfully than talking… though the idea that it makes them normal, is defunct… though it is a dominant belief.
when i see EVIDENCE of substance and knowledge beyond what everyone knows, then i know someone has an interest… and it goes deeper than remembering the talking points and collective facts.
funny, but once you been scammed a few times, been victim of these games and have it be costly, you learn how wrong you were before you got conned.
bernie madoff had a big surface thing going that seemed like it was good… but how many very intelligent people did not bother to get substance?
a person like me would wonder how he had a positive sheet every year, while you would be convincing me that you know him, and its not surface.
ever hear of Linda Yates?
I bet prior to her finding out, she would say she knew her husband…
Ralphene Brudos wife thought he was strange and followed his rules as to getting things from the freezer
Alice Carignan thought her husband was cheating on her when she found a button from a ladies outfit in the car…
Yates pleaded guilty to 13 murders in Washington state last year.
Brudos is serving a life sentence in Oregon for multiple murders there.
Carignan is in a Minnesota prison for killing women near Minneapolis and is suspected of murders in Washington state
The wives, meanwhile, became the focus of the stark question: How could she not have known?
i can give you lots more examples of people you would assume knew someone.
and all of us only know reagan from his speeches (not all written by him), his media crew, his movies, and so on…
think you know Reagan?
heck. i know TONs about him, but wouldnt make that claim, so i really dont understand how people who know less can make that claim…
oh.. and before you say these women werent with the husbands long… Yates was married 26 years…
so how did they not know?
THEY IGNORED THE CLUES THAT WOULD TELL THEM
In retrospect, Linda Yates told NBC’s “Dateline” last year, there were clues – for instance, who goes on a “hunting trip” wearing cologne, as her husband once said he was doing? But, she said, “He always had answers to everything. Already prepared in his mind, I think.”
i dont ignore the clues that tell me things..
and not only that, if i did, i would be dead several times over…
“The women I hear from are women who have suspicions they just don’t want to believe,” Rule said.
and THATS the point…
you dont want to believe that people think this way and its common, and that they mostly work on substance.
but if that was not so, why buy gucci handbags, shoes with red bottoms, carry a tiny bag from a lingerie store…
becasue they are telegraphing an image they want you to believe..
now.. if women do that every day (and men), i would say presidential people do it to the extreme..
by the way…
we dont know romney either.
Artfldgr: again, I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying.
I never said, nor do I believe, that most people aren’t operating from a very small knowledge base, or even ignorance for quite a few. You keep describing me as much more naive than I am, and I don’t know what you’re basing that on.
I was speaking only of the regular commenters on this blog, and specifically about knowledge of Reagan (I think I’ve tried to point that out in 2 previous comments in this thread). I would say that many of them (not all, of course) also have more knowledge of the work of conservative writers in general, and probably of history, than the average person.
So you are describing me as having a point of view that I don’t have.
Also, by the way, I don’t think I “know” Romney. But I certainly have studied him, read a lot of articles about him, and read a fairly lengthy book about him, “The Real Romney.” I try to learn about things and people before I write about them, but of course there are only a few subjects I’d say I know about in depth (ballet and poetry are two). And even then, there are probably plenty of people who surpass me in their knowledge.
So I don’t relate to what you’re writing about me.
Art, Art, Artfldgr: COOL YOUR JETS.
We here respect your encyclopedic knowledge of certain themes, and your reasoned and informative posts, when you choose to make them so. But you are not to hand out a syllabus and demand we read it all. You are a posting colleague, not a tenured professor of freshmen struggling to understand. Berating those freshman for their failures generally accomplishes naught.
We here have our own funds of knowledge which are quite broad, whether they be financial, medical, biochemical, political, historical, or psychotherapeutic, and that they do not necessarily overlap with yours means little in a negative sense. The voices raised here are complementary, and from that we all get some wisdom and some strength, you hopefully included.
“I’ve read Mein Kampf as well, and am currently reading Finer’s book on Mussolini.”
I read Mein Kampf in high school and reread it within the last 20 years. I’ve read many books about history, particularly on Soviet, Cuban, and modern Chinese history. Yada, yada, yada.
Artfldgr is brilliant. No one here would deny that. His knowledge is encyclopedic. But I doubt anyone who regularly visits this blog needs detailed, continuous history lessons about the utter failures of the left side of the spectrum. We recognize the core issues.
Artfldgr, you need to work on your social skills in between devising counter sniper technology and all your endless list of the things you do that prove you are brilliant.
Artfl is right. I never read The Road to Surfdom. I did listen to the Beachboys. Does that count?
Maybe Art is nothing more than a calculated effort to destroy Neo’s blog.
Could be. The amount of info Art generates is easily assembled by a team or an autistic “genius,” led astray by “voices.”
Sometimes distractions, that is to make the subject other than what the Author intends, are the whole point.
I’m not saying that’s what Art is, but I would like some obective proof. Let’s see some pictures and published studies and historical background and peer review.
We may be getting a smosh posh. The intrinsic value of Art’s comments, his very real convincing individual personality, and his general agreement with our thought processes, keep us from questioning his motive. Maybe his motive is mere distraction like in WWII where Eisenhower saved so many lives by “distracting” the enemy.
Art, provide some objective proof. We demand it.
And don’t just provide a huge list of bullshit.
We want you to be real but you had better get ready.
Curtis,
I harbor no doubts that Artfldgr is an actual person. I work with younger versions on a daily basis during the school year. IMO Artfldgr has 2 issues he needs to work hard to face and overcome. The first issue is a need to be acknowledged by all that he is brilliant and accomplished. Often in cases like this the more he feverishly attempts to convince the world, the less the world listens. They stop listening because he’s putting out too much info too fast. They stop listening because after awhile people grow tired of the some old lecture about his vast knowledge and the listeners utter lack of said knowledge. They stop listening because they do not believe there is a real, sensitive person behind all the words and exaltations. AND, he does not recognize the individuals he is addressing (lecturing) as individuals. They don’t know the minutiae of what he knows and therefore they are second rate minds.
I repeat, Artfldgr, one does not need to know the detailed biological process of decay to recognize when something in rotten through and through. A good sense of smell is adequate.
The other, and most important issue, is a lack of social skills. The things that fit the rest of us like a layer of skin are not yet a part of his camouflage skills. We take in a wide assortment of physical cues, words, inflections, prose style, etc. and form an understanding, imperfect but reliable, to navigate through society. Artfldgr lacks that important attribute. Thus he is stuck in a place where it is the world versus Artfldgr and at best he manages to live his daily life in a DMZ.
Artfldgr who have assimilated much knowledge. Turn your attention to how rational for the most part, intelligent for the most part people here are as they engage is social conversation. You don’t have to be sincere, you merely need to acquire the skills that make it appear you are sincere and respect others just as you want them to respect you. Its not a one way street or a dead end street. Its a freeway with multiple lanes moving in all directions. People can arrive at the same destination through multiple, sometimes convoluted paths. Respect that and you will find respect mirrored back.
I just always skip over his lengthy posts. I assumed most of the others here did, too.
Well! you certainly succeeded in dragging the discussion away from Reagan’s farewell warning, Dodger.
You’re preaching to the choir about Communism on this blog. I really hope you’re visiting the folks at Democratic Underground or the Huffington Post — They’re the ones who NEED the information. SRSLY.
PS: I am currently reading Lasky’s “It Didn’t Start with Watergate,” and I twigged a moderate Republican friend of mine to the Venona files. She still tends to give the liberals the benefit of the doubt.
Neo, I’m glad you posted his speech. I listened to the whole thing, and was quite moved: I didn’t hear it live (and yes, I also remember Rosemary Woods!). I was in my Democrat, fingers-in-ears phase, or I would have heard and recognized the America my parents (Goldwater Republicans) taught me about as a child.
So last night was the first time I ever saw it. I pray that Romney, Ryan, and all patriotic Americans take up the challenge to make the case for the America Way again. That’s the thing Karl Rove & Co. never get: it’s not just about how you win elections, but WHY.
night, night
Progressive corruption is cultural corruption. It is a fundamental change in the constitution of a society. It is sponsored by dreams of instant gratification, including: physical, material, and ego. It appeals to opportunists and the vulnerable. It is a process by which individuals elect to exchange their liberty for submission with benefits.
When did involuntary exploitation and individual discrimination become fashionable?
When did people embrace and seek to normalize behaviors which constitute evolutionary dysfunction? That is behaviors which sabotage the viability of a society.
Our liberal fiscal policies are the least of our concerns.
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Damn.
“No man was ever eloquent by trying to be eloquent, only by being so.” G.H. Lewes
When I compare Reagan against Obama, the above comment underscores that Reagan’s eloquence naturally results from his substance. Obama’s elegance, well, I don’t find it. His cadence, where he pulls out words (that, is) suggests to me Obama makes it up as he goes. He has nothing really to say and the elegance from circular speech is like a cream puff: too much sugar and air.
“and knowledge……” is what Reagan said… not god of the gaps, not musings from ideas without any reference to things, etc…
He points out, there is a long tradition of warnings unheeded…
Mein Kampf can be seen as a warning… but given the facts and the inability to get people to read things… well, another unheeded warning. Just as what Obama’s mentors and others said would be a warning…
Technically for over five years here I have been doing nothing but warning…
[and in a minute you’re going to be a bit surprised… ]
Now the world war is here… this is so much the same as what was taught to me about what it was to live on the street then… (And has followed that which i reported exactly)
H. G. Wells warned us…
Aldous Huxley warned us as to what his brother and others were making
Edward Mandell House warned us at the VERY begining of its modern form… by writing Philip Dru: Administrator… http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8phlp10h.htm
I posted ex Nazi Hilmar von Campe’s warnings…
Huffington post thought it worth taking care of him, what a waste, as no one warned would read him… see the cut up job here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/terry-krepel/hilmar-von-campe-apt-pupi_b_149968.html
He said “that the crimes of the Nazis were only possible because of the moral cowardice of so many of us non-Nazis.”
George Kennan warned us in the long telegram and did so quite succinctly (that means short to those guys that hate long posts), after all, it was a telegram. Its alternative title was: The Sources of Soviet Conduct
Over and Over i put up my warnings and even put up others warnings…
What about Freda Utley?
I put her up too… not only that, but I gave credentials, I even linked to her famous books, and so on…
Freda Utley’s father was involved with George Bernard Shaw, the Fabian Society – hey, isn’t a lot of this from that? Of course reading someone who is so close to the sources is a waste of time.
Well, I promised a surprise… [in the next post so this is not too long and gets cut]
People here LOVE Reagan (at least more than at Democratic underground). They respect his ideas, and his lessons, and what he did, and so on. Even now, we are sitting here remembering his warning, though I remember that speech when he gave it.
Reagan warned us that without the knowledge, we could not succeed…
In 1940 she [Freda] expressed her disgust with communism and the Soviet Union in her book The Dream We Lost, later published as Lost Illusions, of which Bertrand Russell wrote the introduction… (the same Bertrand Russell in yesterday’s history lesson on “negative income tax)…
Right now, I ask a favor in feedback…
Have I ever asked such a favor in the past five years?
Will those who have read one of those two books, other than me, let us know if you have. IE. after I introduced them, and linked to where you can get them for free, and so the only reason not to read them is lack of desire, or want… did anyone?
Get ready for another “Damn” Occam…
In the posthumously published, book Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America Ronald Reagan wrote about Utley:
So here, we are praising Reagan, the cargo cult image we attribute things to, but care not what made the substance under the suit. I wonder if anyone will read her now that they know their Reagan hero did, and that my recommendation was from what Reagan called knowledge.
“I have not pretended to be a Stalinist but have kept my mouth shut about Russia until now. Naturally I have no illusions left–nor had any before they took Arcadi. I am not a Trotskyist as I have become convinced that all dictatorships are much the same and that power corrupts everyone. Without democracy there can be no real socialism. But I fear the world is progressing towards ‘National Socialism’ on the Russian-German model. Little difference between them.” Freda
oh… and guess what? That is what Hilmar von Campe said, that the Huffington post article makes fun of to discredit him. But it IS what we are making since fascism allows ownership and communism doesn’t, so the lesser of two evils is the outcome (or rather a hybrid of both, like china and without knowing where that will lead to. But its leading to war, as it always does)
In the 1950s Utley helped Senator Joseph McCarthy compile his lists of highly placed people suspected of communist sympathies.
Artfldgr: Reagan is not a cargo cult image, although I suppose he is to some people. Many of those who praise him and his words are aware that he did a lot of deep reading and thinking and observing to arrive at them, and a great deal of that reading and thinking and observing most definitely had to do with the left and its methods and the perils of Communism. That’s one of the reasons he called it an “evil empire”–he wasn’t just talking about the movies.
Why do you continue to insult the intelligence of people here? I’m asking that in all seriousness. You keep knocking down a strawman. While it’s true that people don’t have the exact and detailed knowledge of each person you write about, they certainly have enough knowledge that there’s no reason to call their views “cargo cult,” or to insult their intelligence and awareness.
How quickly it has transpired that the video meant as inspiration should now engender nothing more than melancholia. But it was a good two hundred year run.
neo. i sent you my answer by mail.
but now i am sure we wont know..
you just pulled a YUTE moment from my cousin Vinney.
i asked readers to chime in and let me know if they HAD read it. and before they could answer you pipe up and now what?
Q: About a hundred feet. Would you hold this please? (Running a tape measure). Sorry, excuse me, excuse me, sorry, sorry. Okay. This is fifty feet. That’s half the distance. How many fingers am I holding up? (He hold up two fingers.)
Judge: Let the record show that the counselor is holding up two fingers.
Q: Your Honor, please, huh?
J: Oh. Sorry.
I second your comment, neo.
Art, just because we have not read all those works about communism does not mean that we don’t understand that it creates misery wherever it is tried, and that there are many in the USA that believe it just hasn’t been done right yet. For my part, I have hated communism for the better part of my adult life. I lost several good friends during the holding action in Vietnam. I have been to Russia. Even today, the vestiges of communism hold them in a grip that prevents economic progress. I have observed the results of communism in North Korea, Red China, East Germany, Myanamar, and Cuba. I have understood the misery produced in Chile and Argentina when they embraced full on socialism. I know there are many working night and day, dedicating their lives to establishing socialism/communism here in the U.S.
There are times these days when I feel like going postal because things seem so out of control. It would be very satisfying to confront them on a field of battle. But I still have respect for, and belief in, law and order and the peaceful transfer of power. Once that is gone we are really done. It is evident to most here at neo’s place that the MSM and academia have been complicit in moving us further and further to the left. They have co-opted the seemingly reasonable terms of fairness, compassion, and “rights” as their platform for change. Were it not for talk radio, the blogosphere and Fox News, we would be even further along than we are.
We share your angst even if we have not your commanding view of history.
Artfldgr: I was referring to this statement of yours [emphasis mine]:
“So here, we are praising Reagan, the cargo cult image we attribute things to, but care not what made the substance under the suit.”
The implication is that we worship Reagan’s image without caring what the underpinnings of his thought may have been. There’s no evidence for that in most of the commenters on this blog. How do you know how much they care about what made the substance under the suit?
I will grant you that very few if any people here have an encyclopedic and/or photographic memory, and the ability to read at a thousand pages an hour, as you seem to (and I don’t mean that sarcastically; I believe that you have extraordinary abilities in that realm). But short of that, we read, care, and remember all sorts of things.
Nor does the reluctance of some people to read everything you write indicate they don’t care (and know a fair amount) about the “substance under the suit,” not only of Reagan, but of many many things.
That’s what I mean when I talk about strawmen and unsults.
so… out of Occam, Curtis, neo, and anyone else who would be kind enough to turn assumption to a real answer, please let us know:
if you read illusions, or dreams we lost? both by Freda Utley.
How many have actually read gramsci’s nine volumes?
how many actually read cover to cover das capital?
how many read The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB and or The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World or The KGB in Afghanistan
how many read “Dear god i wanted to live”
how many read the hayes tilden book i quote and linked to?
how many have read philip dru?
how many have read Road to Surfdom
how many read the long telegram?
how many have actually read mein kampf?
my (ongoing) premise is that very few if any did read them at all. and that saying so is being truthful, even if NEO thinks its impolite in pc feminism and cant figure out how i know…
Neo says that’s a strawman argument to claim they havent read it (implying they have), and that many of you did read it, but are offended that i claim you havent (and that claiming you didn’t, insults your intelligence)
now, its very easy to lie, and play favorites in this one, so i hope people who Do answer are honest… but other than asking for a comment as to what you thought when you read it, there is no way to check, and i am not asking that. lets try the honor system.
to tell you the truth, the only person who i think has actually taken some time is Occam…. Occam more than once has gone back to books (i can list some from memory), and tried to confirm what i claimed (the most memorable being the Latvian rifle men making the soviet union)
Put it to sleep!
Either everyone/most have read it and my claiming they haven’t, is wrong
or they have not read it, and neos assumption and etiquette lessons are misplaced.
Maybe neo can set up a quiz or something and we can check off what we have or haven’t read on that list.
for some reason when people say X and the real answer is Y, and i report that, and the book and the references… and then they keep spouting X, i think that either they didn’t read it or they read it and are ignoring it.. (outlier odds like Alzheimer i leave out of the assumptive)
Note: i HATE poseurs…
a poseur lies to everyone as a matter of nature.
to defend someone without the facts based on assumptions… often backfires… as its better to get the facts, before you make claims and such.
so, lets see…
i am willing to put my neck on the chopping block neo, even if those that dislike me can lie and cause the blade to fall.
at the very least we will learn a lot… regardless.
Among Reagan’s many attributes one stands out front and center: he was genuinely American in all that being an American means. Remember, we have suffered many fools and knaves in DC over the last 200+ years. We will survive BHO and his motley court of jesters and vagabonds.
While it is true many of our fellow citizens are also fools and naves, I believe they are not the majority. Its still the economy stupid and many of the “47%”, know this administration has taken a bad situation and made it worse. Those in the “47%” who want to stand on their own 2 feet will show up at the polls and vote accordingly.
Be of good cheer.
You do not need a detailed knowledge of the biological process of decay to realize when something is rotten through and through. All that is required is a sense of smell. 😉
how many read The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB and or The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World or The KGB in Afghanistan
Art, I’ve read both of these, and parts of Das Kapital, but in candor my interest flags on trying to read it all. Resistance to reading Marx’s turgid prose is compounded by the impression that reading Capital is as unrewarding as reading a tome on astrology, and for the same reason.
Oh, and I’ve read Mein Kampf as well, and am currently reading Finer’s book on Mussolini.
i answered neo again, but it all got killed.
the shortest version.. since i have handicaps i have developed compensatory skills. some having to do with my deafness, some having to do with aspergers (or the memory and such that goes with it)…
most people don’t realize that forgetting is also a key part of normal relationships and social cohesion. so normal people forget a lot. i cant.. while my memory is not perfect like rain man, it blows away phds here who know me. they remark about it all the time, as they say stuff, and in minutes i am pulling up obscure papers and such that i had memorized over the years.
like a blind man that can navigate a room by his senses (yes, its possible, but not common), or other seemingly unusual things, i ahve had to come up with clues and things that allow me to think my way through situations in which most people dont have to think at all.
given that, and the fact a mistake leads to sociopathic horrors visited on you, and a success means you find a life partner, its life or death with me as to understanding what people say, and the quirkie things that give me clues.
most people havent noticed my surprising consistency over the past four years. but i have noticed their waxings and warnings as i have in my head a series of their comments and responses and so on.
hows this neo. go back to the begining of your blog, and read every post again to make it fresh in your head, with a focus on what people read, not read, commented, or commented later that revealed they didnt act before..
you see.. i have that…
just as i have all that soviet history, American history, novels, books, and so on.
my music memory would freak you out… you can hum a few bars and i know most of the total music catalog of tunes.. i can recite lyrics of thousands of songs from partial sentences.
i have read every scientific American since the very first one.. (a collector loaned them to me a years worth at a time, and it took me a week for each)… i have also read 3 versions of the complete Britannica, and one version of the funken wagnals.. three unabridged dictionaries… yes, i have read dictionaries the way you read books
history is my weak subject… 🙂
all i do is read, as i only have 4 or so friends and maybe see them once or twice a year. the rest of the time i spend working to earn a living, or studying, experimenting and reading.
i only sleep four hours a night, so my days are 20 hours long… imagine if you spent an extra four hours a day trying to cram the most complicated things you can find to keep your head busy..
trade magazines, political tomes, white papers, etc…
i know English, and have taken Spanish, french and learned German when my sister took it (i had a habit of taking peoples textbooks and reading them from cover to cover)… now i am trying to re-learn Latvian.. but due to my wife, i am learning bahasa Indonesian, mandarin, and Cantonese… (though i also have some Japanese, Russian, Slovak, polish, too)
sadly, without friends to talk to, i am not fluent…
i do photography, oils, sculpture, and more… the past year and a half i have learned to cab and cut and identify gemstones… making contacts with people all over the world…
on the side, i create devices for researchers here, and my first real paper will be submitted for publication.
its a new chip design core and allows me to search data and build indexes in one pass in clock time (ie, the time equals the length of the large string). another paper i am writing is for balancing research treatments and a method for generating them for blind studies, but i havent found a partner for that one.
i have devices for detecting snipers before they fire, detecting tungsten in gold bars (too late for that one)…
i also have new biological models for genomics (my phd partner is a geneticist, my son graduated honors in genetics)
by the way.
dont tell anyone…
but i only have a high school diploma
and a certificate..
so all that stuff, is self taught..
and i like athletics.. played hockey, football, gymnastics (vault), fencing.. and like caving, diving, jet skis, water rafting… i miss free climbing…
the point of ALL that, is to say.. i have a lot of skills and abilities that average people could have (some) but dont… and they all come to bear whether i like it or not…
and from ALL that i get my answers and ideas and premises and so on.
and true to form as aspergers, my intent is not to insult, but to inform, help, and so on. in fact its my nature and has gotten me seriously hurt… when i see facts that are wrong, people faking, musings made up, and so on.. and the thing hanging in the balance is totalitarian slavery of my fellow man and the tortured death of thousands to millions. forgive me for getting a bit frustrated and taking it seriously in terms of knowing.
Go ahead. ask anyone who grew up under soviet rule who did not have a state life that was good, what it was like…
by the way, if this state changes, people like me will be loaded into ovens. we prevent equality, and we are not in on the game. so, there is only one final place for me if this all continues.
you may think that your ok, and your probably right, but the infirm, the half deaf, the exceptionally smart but disconnected.. they are not slated for the same ends, are they? and if you read the papers of these people as i have, that would be a VERY clear message.
Occam..
i knew you tried.. and i dont blame you for not getting through it all (your quite correct on it)…
i have only met a few others who have, and ex soviets who were required to.
so i knew you did… but note, most leftists have never read it, and would never get through it even if they tried (you didnt and for good reason)… and so, they are also, following a cargo cult image of something that would be revealed mroe if they could read it and comprehend it.
i also knew you read the mitrokhen thing, as that changes the answers someone will give.
and as i said, a chemist knows when someone is faking chemistry… a historian who knows history very well, and from many places, knows when people are faking it.
and most dont even know they are faking it.
and even better, some of them get offended by answers derived from their own ideological position. like the woman at work who started a light conversaiont and asked me a question, to which i answered honestly… sadly. she was upset that i didnt like that the people who dont commit crimes would leave my neighborhood on holiday, and that would change the demographic for the poor who tend to comit more crimes. she yelled something about being mugged by a CEO who doent pay his taxes. and i never got to ask her: if this point i make isnt so,then why are you and others trying to redistribute wealth there as a cure for that?
they cant even apply what they think they know. so THATS how i know… tons of clues.
to the point that others think i dont. but you know… when you meet a girl in a bar, and your looking into her eyes, and she is a chain smoker, and her saccade (movement of the eye) cant track people walking by smoothly, MAYBE just MAYBE the risk of a schizophrenic is too high to bother.. but would others know?
wouldnt others think me rude for avoiding her or him like the plague? and they too would thik i am rude… but then again, they dont know, and i do.
and just cause they dont know what i am picking up on and know, they also wont sit down, with me and let me show them. they will be rude, shame me, tell me i am insulting, but the end result would be i shouold try to be with the nutjob. i did that once.. she destroyed my career, emptied my bank acounts, took my child, faked her murder nearly putting me in prison for a crime that never happened, brought my son with her to a bank robbery, and then ended up winnign it all under feminism..
guess what? never again will i let someone who doesn’t know, convince me i am wrong and give me self doubt.
they don’t pay the bills for the mistake, do they?
when you get literally destroyed when you make a mistake, you get very good, or you get destroyed over and over…
thanks for the honesty Occam…
Artfldgr: I already explained what I meant in my previous comment.
But just to clarify—I never said or thought that people here had read all, or even some, of the works you have recommended (although I figure that some people have, I would guess a very few have read a very few of the works). I was referring to your saying that people didn’t care about “the substance under [Reagan’s] suit,” and just had a “cargo cult” knowledge of him.
the only post i read before posting this was the last neo post.
neo. i was writing when you posted, and posted before i read it.
now to my post on reading for occam
i put up the stuff thats in my current reading folder, but i have over 150 books on my phone, and over 200 papers…
It’s very hard for me to divulge what I am currently reading. I read lots of things and do it at once. So its not uncommon for me to read 4-8 books at a time… and I always get interrupted that I have to also read something else. So one of those has to do with the internals of the dot net universe of Microsoft.
But I guess, let me give you a list of whats on my phone I read jumping back and forth to make it more interesting and challenging. (I have others to read in the bathroom at home, and on my different computers, not to mention a large collection of books and such too)
Ok.. I just finished the last book of the osprey men at arms series (that I have)..
If anyone is interested in that kind of thing, I highly recommend the series
http://www.ospreypublishing.com/
ok the phone list…
Slaves of the Machine
The computational beauty of nature
Electricity and Magnetism
The art of electronics (3rd time reading it)
Basic electromagnetism and materials
Bryston white papers on audiophile electronics
New Mathematical Diversions
Adaptation in natural and artificial systems
Artificial life
Artificial life IV
Artificial life models in software
Bioinformatics (text book)
Topographic surveying
Neural Nets an Intro
Nonlinear system theory
Quantum theory and the brain
30 years of adaptive neural networks
Financial modeling (left over from wallstreet work)
Computational Chemistry
Chinese for Dummies
Computational fluid dynamics
Changing Minds (mit press)
Moths to the Flame
America Alone
Leadership in decline
Militarism by Liebknect
Odysy of a liberal
Pan Americanism
Social justice
The new unhappy lords
War and the private investor
While you slept
some i am reading a second time
others the first
and i bebop all over the place to keep it interesting
neo..
the point on cargo cult is it SEEMS they know them, but when you ask basic questions, they cant answer them…
and i have argued more than once that when someone IS interested, they know more… not less, or thew wrong stuff…
here is basic one, we know that FDR lived in ny, washington slept everywhere, and wilson was from staunton va..
ok.. were was Ronald Reagan born? you have a 1 in 50 chance of guessing. now. if your interested, admired him, and tried to learn things he learned and are a fan, a birthplace would be EASY…
for instance. where was Obama born? or rather where does Obama say he was born. and i bet you can even give the hospital.
if i ask a person who could care less about ballet where was Mikhail Baryshnikov born? i bet you know neo.
ok.. i am not a baseball fan…
so i cant tell you who won the last world series!
but i bet every baseball fan here who really is into it, can tell me.
Since reagan was a REAL anticommunist, you can be sure he read the stuff that REAL anticommunists read. the persons who kind of have a dislike and would rather not have it, are not really anti communists… are they?
so you can supposed that obama wont read 30 years of adaptive neural networks like i do.
however, you will find if you actually do the leg work, and ask and get out there, which i have… that they WILL pretend to if they think that its an important thing, or its part of their local collectives thing. and they will parrot what they learned in the ether, not what they learned in books.
and that is a form of cargo cult behavior
if its the appearance of something and not the actual something, then its cargo cult. and knowing what the public knows and little else IS cargo cult, as that will be the information that will be put forth to convince you they know. when the left does this, and you know otherwise, you call them nuts. when you do it, and the leftist taught something different sees it, they go nuts.
but here i sit between you and i know BOTH sides arguments and stuff… so what do i see? two people arguing over a subject that neither knows but neither also is willing to admit that.
so, its cargo cult, kabuki theater, potemkin, false front, lying, posing, and so on..
ALL of them meaning a minimum knowlege enough to pretend to know that most others with minimum knowlege cant call them to the mat on.
and MOST people cant remember the news from last year, and you think they remember reagan and the facts of that? only if they are interested i him and if so, the surface main stream knowlege is not enough.
which is why presidents make money on books… the interested people buy them. and they read about how George bush blew up frogs with fireworks.. it certainly was not in his speeches.
i dont know why your arguing with me other than you dont want to believe your fellow man is actually like that. but he/she is…
even MORE so today in the self esteemed left liberal melieu where if you dont pretend you know, then your not a revolutionary…
just ask all those kids who are fans of che
i bet they have substantial knowlege and references to back up their love and interest?
no, they have a cargo cult image of people who love che, and have no idea or little idea of what he was like, what he did, etc.. though the love the t-shirt quotes.
by the way… today more people think they know che, than they think they know reagan.
and most people dont read sources, they read summaries… another apologie to madonna, we are living in a cliff notes world..
oh… and affirmative action where you put people who didnt earn the place in place, tends to make a lot more of these people as they feign to make up for what they didnt do, or cant do.
i remember high school
i remember that most of the kids around me didnt know much of much, and didint give a damn.
do you really think that they grew up and changed into erudite geeks who then would make up for the lsot time?
barely any…
this morning i watched a NURSE write a story in a book on the train… she had her RN id… so its a REGISTERED NURSE… not just a home aid… and the title was the unperfect world… the word imperfect was not in her vocabulary.. and without word auto correct, its revealed.
the difference between the people i met and the descriptions people who never met them give me, would make you give pause…
the world is not what someone on the left thinks it is, and converting from that does not erase all that and replace it with something else. does it? nor do the habits of the truth being insulting, or defending others as not ignorant as its the nice thing to do.
given that this is about totalitarianism, world war, and whether people will end up murdered when they dont comply with the state. i really dont feel generous in letting posers piss into the water with bad information…
in fact, that makes them equal to someone in a group who is an enemy who is doing that purposefully to make the group ineffective.
so, on that note.. how effective are we against this game and how far have we gone figuring out why, what, hows and such.
from my view. the ony reason we got farther on the idea that obama is what i said he was before he was even elected is that they have 4 years of crap and they still aren’t quite sure…
even those that love obama cant answer questions about his life… and in fact, their incurious desire to not poison their cargo cult image of him, made sure they avoided every negative thing that would break the facade and crack the glass.
you never changed neo, what happened is that the glazing surface that they presented got cracked, and in between the crack you saw that the substance was lead, not gold as they pretended.
and when you found that out, you abandoned them to something less cargo cult, surface only, potemkin, etc..
people dont change neo…
if they did, psychiatry and psychology would actually be able to show great success and cures, not be happy with a bit of mitigation – instead, drugs dominate the field as they change the brains functions and so DO change the person – and much more successfully than talking… though the idea that it makes them normal, is defunct… though it is a dominant belief.
when i see EVIDENCE of substance and knowledge beyond what everyone knows, then i know someone has an interest… and it goes deeper than remembering the talking points and collective facts.
funny, but once you been scammed a few times, been victim of these games and have it be costly, you learn how wrong you were before you got conned.
bernie madoff had a big surface thing going that seemed like it was good… but how many very intelligent people did not bother to get substance?
a person like me would wonder how he had a positive sheet every year, while you would be convincing me that you know him, and its not surface.
ever hear of Linda Yates?
I bet prior to her finding out, she would say she knew her husband…
Ralphene Brudos wife thought he was strange and followed his rules as to getting things from the freezer
Alice Carignan thought her husband was cheating on her when she found a button from a ladies outfit in the car…
Yates pleaded guilty to 13 murders in Washington state last year.
Brudos is serving a life sentence in Oregon for multiple murders there.
Carignan is in a Minnesota prison for killing women near Minneapolis and is suspected of murders in Washington state
The wives, meanwhile, became the focus of the stark question: How could she not have known?
i can give you lots more examples of people you would assume knew someone.
and all of us only know reagan from his speeches (not all written by him), his media crew, his movies, and so on…
think you know Reagan?
heck. i know TONs about him, but wouldnt make that claim, so i really dont understand how people who know less can make that claim…
oh.. and before you say these women werent with the husbands long… Yates was married 26 years…
so how did they not know?
THEY IGNORED THE CLUES THAT WOULD TELL THEM
Artfldgr: again, I think you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying.
I never said, nor do I believe, that most people aren’t operating from a very small knowledge base, or even ignorance for quite a few. You keep describing me as much more naive than I am, and I don’t know what you’re basing that on.
I was speaking only of the regular commenters on this blog, and specifically about knowledge of Reagan (I think I’ve tried to point that out in 2 previous comments in this thread). I would say that many of them (not all, of course) also have more knowledge of the work of conservative writers in general, and probably of history, than the average person.
So you are describing me as having a point of view that I don’t have.
Also, by the way, I don’t think I “know” Romney. But I certainly have studied him, read a lot of articles about him, and read a fairly lengthy book about him, “The Real Romney.” I try to learn about things and people before I write about them, but of course there are only a few subjects I’d say I know about in depth (ballet and poetry are two). And even then, there are probably plenty of people who surpass me in their knowledge.
So I don’t relate to what you’re writing about me.
Art, Art, Artfldgr: COOL YOUR JETS.
We here respect your encyclopedic knowledge of certain themes, and your reasoned and informative posts, when you choose to make them so. But you are not to hand out a syllabus and demand we read it all. You are a posting colleague, not a tenured professor of freshmen struggling to understand. Berating those freshman for their failures generally accomplishes naught.
We here have our own funds of knowledge which are quite broad, whether they be financial, medical, biochemical, political, historical, or psychotherapeutic, and that they do not necessarily overlap with yours means little in a negative sense. The voices raised here are complementary, and from that we all get some wisdom and some strength, you hopefully included.
“I’ve read Mein Kampf as well, and am currently reading Finer’s book on Mussolini.”
I read Mein Kampf in high school and reread it within the last 20 years. I’ve read many books about history, particularly on Soviet, Cuban, and modern Chinese history. Yada, yada, yada.
Artfldgr is brilliant. No one here would deny that. His knowledge is encyclopedic. But I doubt anyone who regularly visits this blog needs detailed, continuous history lessons about the utter failures of the left side of the spectrum. We recognize the core issues.
Artfldgr, you need to work on your social skills in between devising counter sniper technology and all your endless list of the things you do that prove you are brilliant.
Artfl is right. I never read The Road to Surfdom. I did listen to the Beachboys. Does that count?
Maybe Art is nothing more than a calculated effort to destroy Neo’s blog.
Could be. The amount of info Art generates is easily assembled by a team or an autistic “genius,” led astray by “voices.”
Sometimes distractions, that is to make the subject other than what the Author intends, are the whole point.
I’m not saying that’s what Art is, but I would like some obective proof. Let’s see some pictures and published studies and historical background and peer review.
We may be getting a smosh posh. The intrinsic value of Art’s comments, his very real convincing individual personality, and his general agreement with our thought processes, keep us from questioning his motive. Maybe his motive is mere distraction like in WWII where Eisenhower saved so many lives by “distracting” the enemy.
Art, provide some objective proof. We demand it.
And don’t just provide a huge list of bullshit.
We want you to be real but you had better get ready.
Curtis,
I harbor no doubts that Artfldgr is an actual person. I work with younger versions on a daily basis during the school year. IMO Artfldgr has 2 issues he needs to work hard to face and overcome. The first issue is a need to be acknowledged by all that he is brilliant and accomplished. Often in cases like this the more he feverishly attempts to convince the world, the less the world listens. They stop listening because he’s putting out too much info too fast. They stop listening because after awhile people grow tired of the some old lecture about his vast knowledge and the listeners utter lack of said knowledge. They stop listening because they do not believe there is a real, sensitive person behind all the words and exaltations. AND, he does not recognize the individuals he is addressing (lecturing) as individuals. They don’t know the minutiae of what he knows and therefore they are second rate minds.
I repeat, Artfldgr, one does not need to know the detailed biological process of decay to recognize when something in rotten through and through. A good sense of smell is adequate.
The other, and most important issue, is a lack of social skills. The things that fit the rest of us like a layer of skin are not yet a part of his camouflage skills. We take in a wide assortment of physical cues, words, inflections, prose style, etc. and form an understanding, imperfect but reliable, to navigate through society. Artfldgr lacks that important attribute. Thus he is stuck in a place where it is the world versus Artfldgr and at best he manages to live his daily life in a DMZ.
Artfldgr who have assimilated much knowledge. Turn your attention to how rational for the most part, intelligent for the most part people here are as they engage is social conversation. You don’t have to be sincere, you merely need to acquire the skills that make it appear you are sincere and respect others just as you want them to respect you. Its not a one way street or a dead end street. Its a freeway with multiple lanes moving in all directions. People can arrive at the same destination through multiple, sometimes convoluted paths. Respect that and you will find respect mirrored back.
I just always skip over his lengthy posts. I assumed most of the others here did, too.
Well! you certainly succeeded in dragging the discussion away from Reagan’s farewell warning, Dodger.
You’re preaching to the choir about Communism on this blog. I really hope you’re visiting the folks at Democratic Underground or the Huffington Post — They’re the ones who NEED the information. SRSLY.
PS: I am currently reading Lasky’s “It Didn’t Start with Watergate,” and I twigged a moderate Republican friend of mine to the Venona files. She still tends to give the liberals the benefit of the doubt.
Neo, I’m glad you posted his speech. I listened to the whole thing, and was quite moved: I didn’t hear it live (and yes, I also remember Rosemary Woods!). I was in my Democrat, fingers-in-ears phase, or I would have heard and recognized the America my parents (Goldwater Republicans) taught me about as a child.
So last night was the first time I ever saw it. I pray that Romney, Ryan, and all patriotic Americans take up the challenge to make the case for the America Way again. That’s the thing Karl Rove & Co. never get: it’s not just about how you win elections, but WHY.
night, night
Progressive corruption is cultural corruption. It is a fundamental change in the constitution of a society. It is sponsored by dreams of instant gratification, including: physical, material, and ego. It appeals to opportunists and the vulnerable. It is a process by which individuals elect to exchange their liberty for submission with benefits.
When did involuntary exploitation and individual discrimination become fashionable?
When did people embrace and seek to normalize behaviors which constitute evolutionary dysfunction? That is behaviors which sabotage the viability of a society.
Our liberal fiscal policies are the least of our concerns.