Information Warfare Education, Propaganda, and How to Tell the Difference

Town Square
511

Only if you are in the “barely passing” demographic.
An example was law school admissions when I took the LSAT around 1995. Yes, there were a small percentage of minorities getting into Law Schools with very low scores. All this meant is that in order for me to get in, I could not be “borderline” or just scraping through by luck. Honestly, I would neither want to hire a Lawyer who barely got through law school nor one who got in from affirmative action.
The point being - don’t be in the “barely passing” demographic and affirmative action will never affect you.

You are still missing the point that your burb is filled with people who are armed and basically want to strike out at anything they can. If you are closest it will be you. I don’t think you understand quite how chaos or a breakdown of law and order will work.

Anarchists don’t assume power, lol. In fact Bernie and Trump supporters are slightly anarchists, but just don’t identify as such. There is an element of tearing everything down in people who supported Bernie then jumped over to Trump’s camp. These are the people you really need to watch - because you think they “got your back” when they are in fact emotionally unbalanced.

No, you are completely not reading me correctly. You seem to be unable to read anything except the dialogue imprinted on your brain by the right wing media.
If I were to recommend anything, I would recommend avoiding polarized communities and polarizing thought processes.

Just for shits and giggles, let’s do two basic prepping questions:
1 - Where do you get your water from? A well? This is only common in older suburbs.
2 - Food is being distributed in a location 10 miles away, but not gasoline. Do you have a means of transporting this food back to your family, or are you dependent on gasoline and will have to carry it all on your back? When was the last time you humped 50 pounds for 10 miles?
Point being - half prepped is basically not prepped.

512

Show me ONE SOURCE where anyone on the left saw him as an Icon.
You really do have nothing except straw men. It really is pitiful that your brain operates at such a low thought capacity.

513

Why, in an integral space, would we reduce the word “system” to the Lower Left? Why would we look at the LL in isolation without also looking at correlating and reinforcing factors in the other quadrants? It seems like a purposely narrow analysis that is done to emphasize certain problems and de-emphasize other problems.

Everywhere on the planet, poverty attracts crime. And everywhere on the planet, inescapable poverty brings gang warfare. This is not a “black” issue, or a “white” issue, or a “hispanic” issue, it’s a class issue. Gang violence diminishes as opportunity for economic mobility increases. Violence decreases as community resources increase.

Here’s an idea. How about teaching blacks that it’s wrong to kill? Just a thought.

Do you really think they aren’t taught that it’s wrong to kill? And do you really think all black Americans share responsibility for the tiny minority of blacks who commit crimes? This is why the old “13/50” statistics are misleading and biased. 13% of the population is not responsible for 50% of crimes. It’s more like .0001% of the population is responsible for 50% of crimes, and the rest of the 12.9999% are blamed.

Let me put it this way. As far as I understand, most pedophiles are white men. Something like 90% of convicted sexual offenders are white. Do we lay this at the feet of all white people? Clearly white people need to be taught not to rape children, instead of putting child rapists like Josh Duggar on national television. Why are whites always glamorizing their criminals?

Point being, statistics do not exist in a vacuum, cultures do not exist in a vacuum, individuals do not live in a vacuum. If we want to understand where the violence is coming from then we need to look at all the factors in all eight zones, not just one or two. How do things like red lining decades ago continue to impact individuals, families, and culture today? How does a total lack of property ownership and generational wealth that resulted from past oppression affect an entire community’s social mobility? How do decades of discriminatory interpretations of laws (some groups receiving more severe consequences than other groups, for the same crime) affect a community’s sense of standing in the wider culture? How does generational trauma from past oppression contribute to a culture of resentment, and how does that culture of resentment create feedback loops with a person’s self identity and sense of meaning? How does all of this affect individual mindsets and behaviors?

These are the sorts of questions we should be asking as integralists, while extending basic dignity, compassion, and good faith to various groups of people. It does no good whatsoever to claim “black people aren’t being taught that killing is wrong”.

Want to fix our culture? Then let’s fix the life conditions that are perpetuating our cultural conflicts.

514

I’d have a whole lot more time for BLM if they genuinely cared about blacks. They don’t care about blacks. They’re trolling you and everyone else. They’re no different to any of the other bigots masquerading as anti-bigots. For them, it’s a game, they’re just having fun, cops-and-robbers, doing what trolls do. They interpret the world in terms of shaming opportunities. They are frauds, easy to spot if you understand projection. And it is disappointing to see good people falling for their scam.

As for an example of good (gullible, stupid) people falling for the scam, Fermented’s just-posted article is directly relevant (Will California ever be safe? The affluent look away while their cities burn, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali).

So is this… these clown CEOs are now reaping what they’ve sown. But at least they get to feel virtuous and morally superior for 15 minutes of their virtue-signaling, self-indulgent lives:
https://twitter.com/Quicktake/status/1469418057139474433

515

@corey-devos, as per my reply to Ray, if these were movements authentically motivated by the greater good, then I’d have a whole lot more time for them (heck I used to identify with them until I got to see the light). But they’re not. They’re trolls playing a game of make-believe.

516

I think you are missing the point here. Nobody is really asking you to devote time to BLM. If you feel they are trolling you, then mission successful because you are sufficiently trolled and you do actually seem to spend a lot of time on BLM. I’m not the one who keep bringing them up as topics of conversation - you are.
And if we are thinking in the scam mindset, you are completely missing the bait and switch scam. The damsel needs your help, you get into a conflict with the aggressor, damsel makes off with your wallet and you get a black eye. In this case - the right plays the innocent victim. You stand up for the right and get into a fight with nasty women and big bad blacks. The result is you get egg on your face, lose a part of who you are and the right wing media and politicians dance laughing to the bank with your money.
fermented’s article about California is just more of the same scam. Oh, no California is dangerous. Better move to Texas so we can be the ones to cheat you, lol.
It’s one of the oldest scams known to man and far superior because the gullible rubes don’t even realize what happened and go back again to be scammed again and again.

But again - the result is further division and polarization that is being escalated to violence by the manipulators on both sides, and you are amongst the rubes.

517

@raybennett My issue is less with BLM (they are but a blip on the radar) than with the virtue-signaling mugs that fall for their scam.

518

Hey Steljarkos, thanks for continuing to share your views, these conversations are important if we can keep ourselves from getting swept up by emotional reactions to each other’s perspective. So let’s keep going!

I can understand having some suspicion over the top-down intent that is behind some of these groups. However, at the same time, during BLM, MILLIONS of individuals took to the streets, the vast majority of whom were peaceful, in order to bring more awareness to a suite of systemic problems (some real, some exaggerated by social media). Do you think that these millions of people had ill intent? Or do you think that, on average, they believe they are motivated by the greater good? Or do you think that these millions of people are all responsible for the opportunists who are taking advantage at the fringes, or even at the level of “leadership”?

Hell, I even think that Qanon storming the capitol were guided by their own sense of “greater good”, distorted as it was by an endless stream of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. But the people who are still waiting in the street for the return of JFK Jr. so he can reappoint Trump as President, are doing so because they believe they are motivated by the greater good.

And that’s really the problem, isn’t it? There is no single “greater good”, other than the transcendent sphere of Goodness itself. Instead we have an endless competition of “greater goods” and “lesser evils” that go up and down the spiral and across multiple typologies. Our job as integralists is to find a way to better situate these competing goods and evils so that a sort of meta-goodness can flourish, and so we can relieve the greatest suffering for the greatest number of people (the “integral prime directive”).

519

That’s just the same scam with different players. Doesn’t matter if the setup is BLM or feminists, the bait and switch is the same structure. The right can assign any group in the “aggressor” role - and they do. For example gays want to take away your religious freedom. Vegans won’t let you eat meat without facing their disapproval. Hollywood wants to destroy your childhood icons. All the same bait and switch scam.

520

One word. Culture. It’s their “knowing how to be.” It is very difficult to step beyond one’s culture and see reality as it truly is. Most people believe that they’re for the greater good, but, swept along with their culture, they often become the pitchfork-wielding scolds whom we recognize, from another era, as Puritan fundamentalists.

What we are seeing today is no different to how Germany and “good Germans” were swept along in the tide during the first half of last century.

521

I think many of these folks would argue that they are the ones stepping beyond one’s culture (which they perceive as in many ways still operating on obsolete colonialist code) and making objects out of subjects, inter-subjects, and hyper-objects that people rarely see. And I agree with them! I just don’t agree with their prescriptions and interventions.

Again, this is the problem – multiple groups who believe they have a monopoly on “reality”. But we in integral land know about “the myth of the given” and that there is no single underlying “reality”, and rather that our enactments of “reality” are purely based on our kosmic address (of which our surrounding culture is a part).

“What we are seeing today is no different to how Germany and “good Germans” were swept along in the tide during the first half of last century.”

And of course, many of these folks make the exact same claim about the right, Trumpism, MAGA, Qanon, etc. But I think you just did what you accused the left of doing — comparing people you disagree with to Nazis :wink:

522

Except that I am making the comparison without judgement. I am not condemning anyone as nazis, but merely drawing attention to the fact that we share the same humanity, the same flaws, attributes and predispositions. History repeats, and all that.

523

Agreed on this. I do have 30,000 gallons of water in the swimming pool and a couple cases of food from the Pandemic Scare of 2020. I would guess we could last a month or so before needing to forage.

Maybe I am blind but I’m just not seeing all these Right Wing Extremists communities. Maybe they do exist outside the Leftist narratives but if anyone were privy to their existence I would think it would include me :slight_smile: . Maybe they are “getting ready for the STHF”, but I’m not seeing it. There are lots of Republicans in the neighborhood but to my knowledge every one of them avoids confrontations and extreme situations at all costs. But I also would recommend anarchists to pick a different suburb - too high risk, low reward.

Clearly I don’t understand, but have watched a trash truck load full of made-for-Hollywood Apocalypse movies.

524

Are you totally sure there’s no judgment being snuck in there? Or else, why not say “what we are seeing today is no different to how good Americans were swept along in the tide during the ciivil rights movement of the 1960s”?

You seem to imply that those Germans were supporting a bad thing, and now the left is emulating them, which is also a bad thing. That seems like a judgment to me!

525

oh perhaps there was a little subconscious trolling… just a little :grinning:

526

Speaking of White Male Pedophiles…

527

A new term (for me): “schismogenesis,” which literally means ‘creation of division.’ The concept was framed by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson in the 1930s, studying a society in Papua New Guinea. He described two patterns of schismogenesis between individuals or groups: a dominance-submission pattern (in which each–dominance and submission- escalates according to the escalation of the other), and a pattern of competition (e.g. non-playful rivalry through boasting, while being perhaps a mild form, still has disintegrative effects). Both patterns escalate conflict, both are self-destructive to the parties involved, and left unchecked and without conscious effort to counter these pattern-tendencies, each form causes society to break apart. Schismogenesis has been applied in various fields of study. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/schismogenesis

One way of viewing BLM is that it is the latest form of the dominance-submission pattern, in which the historically submissive group is refusing to continue the pattern. In that regard, this is healthy for society at large, regardless of the woke elements, and is a sign, imo, that “evolution is working.”

As for the competition pattern, more reason to focus on cooperation. Integral emphasizes the importance of considering both the ‘dignities and disasters’ of stages, events, groups etc. Another way of saying this might be that while we can be deeply critical of perspectives/groups different from our own, we also need to be deeply sympathetic; if not empathetic, at least able to “commiserate” with others whose experience and perspectives are different from our own.

528

You have a water filter for that pool water before you drink it, right?

Here you go:
300,000 members https://www.stormfront.org/forum/index.php

https://www.preparedsociety.com/threads/new-war-in-america.25569/

Where I hung out before 2012:
https://www.prepperforums.net/threads/race-wars-coming-to-a-community-near-you-in-the-summer-of-2015.15811/page-4
https://www.prepperforums.net/threads/loretta-lynch-calls-for-blood-and-death.66817/page-2

529

As I posted previously, it’s a steep hill to climb for Blacks even with ending slavery, suffrage, equal rights, affirmative action. Similar but different steep hills to climb for poor whites, women, latinos, intellectually challenged, immigrants, or James trying to get into a top law school.
As @steljarkos so aptly calls it “agency”, having agency over your own life is scary stuff. It’s big boy stuff. Buck stops you you. Many would say that the only way to truly be free, to enjoy your agency, is to embrace the responsibilities required of self same agency. And the responsibility looks like looking at the hill and climbing it, often in the wind, rain, snow, rocks and bad shoes.

But is there any way to develop your own agency without taking responsibility? Without doing the developmental work of putting one for in front of another climbing your won hill?

Is it really for the “greater good” to teach anyone that they are inherently a “victim” or an “oppressor” based on an immutable characteristic? Is teaching a child that they are a victim and lessor than another child compassionate? How is teaching a child that they are an oppressor based on an immutable characteristic not child abuse? Who does any of this help? Other than the expanded Administrative class?

The zero sum game of Wokeism and Equality of Outcome is not of the same lineage as abolishing slavery, suffrage, equal rights, or even affirmative action.

530

The difficulty in you line of reasoning can be expressed quite simply with an analogy.

A woman is raped, and her rapists will rape her again if conditions do not change.

It is ridiculous to tell the woman “develop your own agency, put one foot in front of the other …oh, but don’t do anything to stop the rapes from happening. Don’t challenge the rapists and call them out or try to get them to accept responsibility. Don’t “freak out” and get hysterical.”

We are talking about literal police executions that have gone on for decades. White conservatives refused to allow black men to protest peacefully or even make even the most minor statement by taking a knee during the national anthem. So - now we have escalating violence. Wouldn’t it have been just simpler to not suppress all efforts of the black community to bring attention to the steady stream of police executions? Just a little bit of allowing voice 5 -10 years ago and things might be very different now.