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

Town Square
403

I think for me, I do not consider myself to be “a Liberal”. I still hold mostly conservative values and socialize in Liberal / Alternative circles.
The most limiting and harmful thing I think I could do to myself would be if I defined myself by the terms others want to place on me.
Here are what I feel to be core conservative values

  • Self reliance
  • Accountability and not blaming others
  • Responsibility, including fiscal responsibility
  • Strength of character

It’s completely possible to hold these values and operate in any social circle - until they demand you support a cause that you do not believe in as the price of remaining in that social circle.
I have stronger conservative values than 70% of Republicans, at the very least. That’s where the disconnect is. I could be against the Gulf War and vote for Obama because I saw the biggest damage being done to the US was the Gulf War - which violated conservative values at a very deep level. Failure to recognize that war as what it was has trained Republicans to not be honest within themselves to the point where now their champion is someone who Regan and Nixon would punch in the face.

It also supported my core values to protest in favor of LGBTQ rights 10 yeas ago, and that leads to an interesting thing about Liberalism. Liberalism is often a pot luck of people who the Republican party just pushed away and wanted to make their mere existence illegal. Why does it bother a Neoconservative if two men get married? That has nothing to do with true conservative values. Same thing with transgender rights. You should only be seeing the genitalia of your patner, so what does it matter what genitalia a complete stranger has under their clothing, and why make it illegal for them to live their life how they want? So that whole thing was my 2nd great transition to Liberal social circles.

The third thing was ironically the far right. I recognize that it was all mostly a misinformation campaign, but I really got into the Oathkeepers, Anonymous and Prepper misinformation around 2012. The funny thing is that they all suddenly just did a complete 180 on policy in both 2016 and again in 2020. Immigration is a great example. The Oathkeepers started out by videotaping police overstepping their boundaries, especially along the border where the border patrol set up checkpoints and required random ID checks within the US. Before that during Bush’s administration they were all about border security, then when Obama came in they did a 180. Then suddenly when Obama left office another 180.

I find it very easy to interact even with feminists. I just don’t blame them for my own problems, lol. I don’t worry too much about other people’s hypocrisy because that would be a full time job. If you and Jordan Peterson, etc make a bit of coin by converting others into the culture of blaming others and refusing to accept personal responsibility - that’s unfortunate but for my own mental health I don’t dwell on it too much or try to “rescue” them. Everyone has their own path to follow. Your path is a circular one that will lead you back to where you started - but that’s your choice.

Yes, outspoken vegans are annoying at times. Yes, so are very outspoken feminists. But so are Republicans. Generally what I observe in my social circles is that it isn’t “cool” to be outspoken in those kinds of ways when everyone is just trying to be sociable. We organize specific meetings and groups for specific topics - so vegans get together and rant about meat eaters, but don’t bring it to the general party, for example. This is in contrast to Republicans who just don’t know when to just shut up. The other week a friend of mine started on his anti-vax monologue during a game and after about 5 minutes of nonstop monologue one of our friends just said “Well, we won’t solve it right now so let’s just move on”, lol.

I think what I would request you to look at, @steljarkos is when you are actually practicing truly conservative values self accountability vs when you are looking for a scapegoat. I don’t have anything invested in whether you listen or not - it’s all up to you.

What is interesting is that even the Dark Ages were not really Dark for everyone. In the age of “Might Makes Right”, those with the might fared pretty well. Feudalism worked out pretty well for the Nobility. Even for the peasants it wasn’t worse than the setup they had before. If we look at the Dark Ages from our time period, yeah - they suck. But a slave of Rome with zero rights getting buggered on the daily by his Roman master might have seen Feudalism as a sweet deal.
I don’t think we will see a breakdown of civilization to the point where we see in post apocalyptic movies and a single strong man holds “might makes right” power through force of arms alone. What I observe in the prepper community is that the Republicans think more weapons will win the day, while Liberals think gardening will. Honestly, it’s far easier to teach a person to shoot a gun than it is to teach them to create or identify safe food in a forest. So my Seattle mushrooming and other Liberal foragers will find food and if Bubbah the gun-toting gorilla follows through on his plan to steal food from the Liberals - he won’t be able to recognize the deadly poisonous plants the liberal collected as a trap, lol. That’s an extreme example, but demonstrates that in the end you can’t discount intelligence as a greater weapon than brute force, and so on up the ladder of social organization. People who are self actualized will be able to build cohesive communities while those who are toxic and / or blame others will destroy communities that allow them in.

Here we have to look at the younger generation, where nonduality seems to be at least an interest among the 20-something crowd. Neo-Darwinian and Atheism was the Liberalism of the 70’s and 80’s and most of that crowd are over 50 and dying off. The Liberalism of the 2020’s is more about the Earth Mother, Gaia, nonduality, Oneness, and so on. No, they haven’t got it worked out yet - but at least they are exploring new territory in areas that might work out well for humanity (and not destroy our biosphere).

404

I feel like this is projection, as you are constantly reducing everything on the left to Marxism, Maoism, etc. I have stated many times in this thread that I distinguish between political party, political philosophy, and political constituency. Here I am criticizing the GOP as a social holon, who has made the Election Lie a prerequisite for their club, and are driving out anyone (even staunch conservatives like Liz Cheney) out of the party.

“DNC embraces their Wickedly Mean Greens like Virtuous Gurus, then claims to be “Moderate”.”

Oh? Is that why Biden won over Bernie? Is that why the Green New Deal stalled in its tracks? Is that why the infrastructure bill got whittled down so much? Moderate Democrats like Manchin, Pelosi, Hickenlooper, etc. are still managing their parties. Moderate Republicans, on the other hand, have been either leaving the GOP, or are being pushed out (Cheney, Ratzinger, Romney) because they refuse to embrace the lies. Which means the extremists have successfully captured the party, and have begun cancelling their own members who do not tow the line. Which is the definition of ethnocentric mythic thinking – if you don’t believe what I believe, evidence be damned, then you are not one of us.

One of the key differences here is, we are willing to criticize those extremists on the left in this group, and we do often. And yet you continue to downplay just how much the GOP as a social holon has been captured by MAGA/Q, evidenced by the party-wide demand that all members kneel to the lie that Donald Trump actually won the election. Never apologize, always double down.

I think every Conservative here on Integral Life (2 that are still around) has said they don’t ascribe to most of or any the “beliefs” you claim they worship. Just as do I think you promote, fund and worship the Muslim Brotherhood’s, ISIS, Taliban, Al Queda, or Chinese activities both here and globally?

And I’ve said many times, these are the worldcentric conservatives who I hope can manage to take their party back, but have largely been pushed out by all the internet conspiracy theories that have come to shape the GOP platform.

Hell, I am glad I get to talk to a conservative such as yourself, who clearly does not subscribe to these batshit beliefs. And I have agreed with many of your criticisms of the left. All I am doing is asking you to take a sober look at the social holon you choose to represent you, and see how far away from reason they have shifted, and inviting you to try taking a more post-ideological view of some of these issues.

Also in the list of boogey men you offered, it’s worth noting that at least half of those are right-wing :slight_smile:

405

The Right sees US as the single greatest primary Actor in the world. Do we step up, as we have in the past to help make the world a better place (all those women in Afgahnistan that were in university, driving cars, building careers, girls unafraid of trafficing is a near at hand example). The Left’s “America is no better and perhaps worse than Uganda or Laos” approach is perhaps the most regressive bullshit going around today.

Whereas I see this as a false choice between two straw men. It’s either “The USA is the greatest county in the world and there are no problems here whatsoever and even if they are they don’t really matter because we are awesome” versus “America is absolute garbage, no better than Uganda or Laos, and should be banished to the dustbin of history.”

(I’d be curious, by the way, whether you think something like gay marriage, a progressive accomplishment, fits into your model of “making the world a better place”. Don’t progressive accomplishments such as civil rights have some role in making America the “greatest primary actor in the world”?)

I’m going to suggest that an integral stance disagrees with both of these straw men. I think a post-ideological view can see that a great deal of individual, social, and cultural progress has been made via the American experiment, and can also see that there is still a great deal more progress to be made. An integral view is not willing to sweep the very real challenges and dysfunctions of our country under the carpet of emotional “exceptionalism”.

An integral view is willing to look at multiple factors — almost the “lines of development” of a civilization — as both independent and interrelated. An integral view is capable of loving the country, while also saying things like, for example, “hey, maybe we shouldn’t have the highest prison population on the planet’”. By taking this sort of multi-faceted approach, we can see that America is ahead in some metrics, and behind in others.

Because a lot of things get lost in the view of “exceptionalism” that says America is “better” or “superior” to others. But that is not what exceptionalism means to me. It doesn’t mean we are better, it means we are the exception — that is, we are one of the very few nation states on the planet whose core identity is not anchored in things like ethnicity, geography, religion, etc., but rather in the nouspheric ideals of justice, liberty, and the democratic process.

But the thing that really annoys me is when conservatives drop the exceptionalism in certain cases. We are the best, but not good enough to be a global leader in climate change. We are the best, but not good enough to have a system of healthcare as accessible/affordable to citizens as other developed nations. We are the best, but not good enough to take a critical look at the many inertias from our history that continue to create suffering for people. We are the best, but not good enough to allow Toni Morrison in our schools, because our children are very fragile and learning about things like slavery and discrimination might make them uncomfortable. We are the best, but not good enough to do anything whatsoever about gun violence in our schools — even after watching kids being murdered in elementary schools — because that is just an unfortunate byproduct of FREEDOM.

406

@FermentedAgave I mean, just accept that you really are just unwilling to see any point of view outside of a very narrow one that is scripted for you by Conservative media and you are the definition of a cult mindset.

You really should apply to the Koch Brothers as a paid Right wing shill. Your posts are little more than cut and paste jobs completely lacking in any real depth or unique perspective. These methods are what I have observed of paid right wing shills over the years. I would suspect you actually are such a paid shill because your posting methods are exactly the same as paid shills, but in here you just look like a fool, so it would be a pretty bad allocation of resources if you are getting paid to shill in here. So my suggestion to you is to show your work in here on your resume to the Koch Brothers Shill HQ and go somewhere and make a living off of what you enjoy doing. as a side benefit you would actually convert other individuals to your cause.

407

You are extremely selective in your examples and inferences on what he means. You take a decidedly sophomoric view when looking “into the Right”, yet an amazingly if not absurdly generous view on your beloved Left. As an example, you define Cheney as a “staunch conservative” victimized by her party (RNC oppressors) and in same paragraph absurdly put Manchin and Pelosi into the same “moderate” category. And of course Pelosi gets your generous and compassionate approval since she has “a tough job managing her party”.

Corey - It’s politics. You’re applying Ice Cream Social fantasy norms to the age old and oft vicious game of big boy human interactions and negotiations. Coincidentally, RNC as political animals and DNC are victims of circumstance.

Oh Corey. You conflate Hannity and Carlson with all of Conservatives, yet do the few Conservatives assume you’re little holon is as shallow as lapping up Maddow/Lemon/Stelzer toxic poison even when your phrasing is identical? No, we assume you are much deeper than this. You do get the benefit of the doubt.

I will say, your riff on creating a self appointed enlightened Integral Transnational Oversight group to peer down upon and guide the UN and every nation to your ideology and enforcement does sound like you have some very extreme Meta Neo views.

This is a perfect example of selective conflation. Conservatives in the US promote and support the most amazing Liberal Democracy humanity has ever seen. We like it, we adore it, we LOVE it and we know the value it brings to the world and humanity. It might have it’s flaws, but it’s BY FAR the best society humanity as ever implimented at scale.
Yet our Illiberal Progressives (used to be call Liberals LOL) cannot sleep until they coincidentally make the US look much more like Stalist USSR or Maoist China.

408

Deflection. I am not talking about audits. We already had audits and legal challenges, and they were virtually all thrown out of court. Often by Trump-appointed judges. In fact, Trump’s crackpot legal team is now having to pay fines for their blatant manipulation of the system.

Why are you so opposed to the idea that your party stop lying about a stolen election and stop making fake internet conspiracy theories the core of the party’s belief system? Surely a “green conservative renaissance” would be capable of enough pluralism to allow people in their party who have different beliefs and are not willing to lie about something so dangerous to our Republic. Surely they would be pluralistic enough to understand why an American treasure like Toni Morrison should not be banned from schools.

409

Yet our Illiberal Progressives (used to be call Liberals LOL) cannot sleep until they coincidentally make the US look much more like Stalist USSR or Maoist China.

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“This is a perfect example of selective conflation.”

No, it’s accurate. Religious theocracies are almost always right-wing, an example of the Auth-Right political compass (which I only place limited stock in, btw). But using that model, you yourself seem to be more of a Lib-Right conservative, who I believe is turning a blind eye to the Auth-Right machinations in your preferred political party (top-down plutocratic rule, dressed up as bottom-up populism).

(The left, btw, has a similar problem — Lib-Left orientations being manipulated by Auth-Left influences. Again, just using this particular heuristic, which I find limiting for a number of reasons.)

Why is it that you continue to compare the entire American left to the worse excesses of Leftism on the world stage (as you just did above!), but the moment I point out that Al Queda, Taliban, and ISIS are all examples of right-wing extremism, you take offense?

410

An example of auth-right inertias that are still snowballing:

Isn’t it just a little bit possible that a cynical political party would lie about something like election fraud, and then use that lie to justify things like, oh I don’t know — suppressing the vote and allowing state representatives to override the democratic election results and declare the winner themselves?

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ABSOLUTELY. It’s great to offer everyone freedom to live as they want without fear of discrimination or reprisal, with the same legal benefits across the board. And wow, what we’ve done with Civil Rights was a beautiful testament to our Liberal Democracy growing and becoming a better nation, leading the world.

And sadly our “Progressives” and Regressed into Power Dominance with their current agenda. :persevere: But don’t worry, the Right will not tarnish our Equality for All nation even if the Regressives don’t get to make the rules except in their states.

Like the Social Welfare state created by Democrats in the 60’s. That has lead to +70% of Black kids being born to single mothers without a father present and disproportionate gencide of the Black unborn. Meanwhile the disproportionately large single black male community has devolved into lost men with the state bureaucracy supplanting them as fathers further perpetuating a vicious ugly cycle.

And I don’t disagree on any of these points but would caveat with “compared to who? compared to what? compared to when?”
Sadly the “whole ball of wax” that you get with our Socialist Democrat Party also has significant downsides - masses of bureaucratic structures detrimental to the Citizens they are tasked to serve, destruction of our independent business people, condemnation to poverty and social dysfunction of the very peoples they claim to be helping, inability to implement anything reasonable without attempting to destroy Rights clearly enumerated in the Constitution (of course without even attempting to amend the Constitution).
I know, it’s tough, but your beloved Regressive Progressives have shown that “it’s never enough, never fast enough”. So at least for the next 6-10 years, the Socialists will be sidelined left hrumphing, gawfawing, wailing into the sky, and concocting Existential Threats one after another while the society continues without their dominance to develop and adopt compromises that are palatable for the nation. Of course with never an acknowledgement of the progress nor the rapidity of the prgress that is enabled by the exceptional Liberal Democracy they claim has failed humanity.

412

That’s a nice Political argument that frankly no one cares to hear it any more than they want to hear your boogieman Election Fraud complaint.

States are passing Election Integrity laws to insure that each legal, registered voter gets to vote once and only once. No ballot harvesting, no ineligible votes cast, no stacks of duplicate unfolded mail-in ballots, no multiple votes with clearly defined criminal penalties. Basic law and order stuff we learned in Civics/Government 101, which has now been replace with Equity and Anti-Racist Racism coursework.

Here are a couple of examples.
Corey is a Citizen of the USA and Colorado and registered to vote in the precinct where he lives - just likes he supposed to do. Corey gets 1 vote that shall be counted and verified as having come from Corey. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Fermented is a resident of the US and Colorado but not a citizen. Fermented can’t register to vote since that would be against the election laws. Fermented can’t vote since that would be illegal and against election laws. Fermented cannot collect a bunch of ballots and turn them in since that would be against election laws. Fermented cannot photocopy ballots and have them get counted multiple times since that would be against election laws, even if he’s a Democrat in a Democratic stronghold. If Fermented gets caught, he gets charged, prosecuted, tried and if convinced with possible jail time, probation and/or fines. If it is shown that Fermented was part of a group planning election fraud, Fermented is charged with Conspiracy along with everyone that he conspired with…
Those are just the really obvious “law and order” examples that I’m sure are somehow “not Integral”, “oppressive”, and all the other horseshit Regressives are saying.

413

…you do realize that conservatives are still actively looking to overturn gay marriage, yeah? And did Boebert’s comments about Omar sound like she’s a servant of “equality”? Sorry, things like banning Toni Morrison from schools, creating state-sponsored vigilante systems, stacking the Supreme Court, and hyper-aggressive gerrymandering does not bode well for “not tarnishing our equality for all nation”.

“Like the Social Welfare state created by Democrats in the 60’s. That has lead to +70% of Black kids being born to single mothers without a father present and disproportionate gencide of the Black unborn.”

Hmm, can you show me the actual mechanisms by which welfare programs single-handedly caused skyrocketing divorce rates and single-parent households? Are we sure that higher divorce rates and smaller marriage rates aren’t associated more with economic class than with ethnicity, and that some ethnic groups are locked into economic conditions due to historic inertias that remain with us today? Are we sure it has nothing to do with multiple other factors, such as members of some groups are incarcerated 5x more frequently than members of other groups, due in no small part to conservative-led moral panics such as the Drug War? Is it possible that complex systemic problems cannot be easily reduced to a single factor?

'That’s a nice Political argument that frankly no one cares to hear it any more than they want to hear your boogieman Election Fraud complaint.

I am having a hard time parsing this sentence, but I think it’s hilarious that you call the “election fraud complaint” a “boogieman”, but won’t call out the actual “boogieman” of Trump’s lies about a stolen election, despite the GOP booting conservatives for not going along with the lie. Because you are only here to play team sports. It’s purely and narrowly ideological. Always double down, never apologize. The other side is always 100% wrong, we are always 100% right. Believe what we believe, or you will be driven out of the party. Such a “green renaissance” there.

Corey is a Citizen of the USA and Colorado and registered to vote in the precinct where he lives - just likes he supposed to do. Corey gets 1 vote that shall be counted and verified as having come from Corey. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Yes, and the good news for you is, that is how it already works!

Fermented is a resident of the US and Colorado but not a citizen. Fermented can’t register to vote since that would be against the election laws. Fermented can’t vote since that would be illegal and against election laws. Fermented cannot collect a bunch of ballots and turn them in since that would be against election laws. Fermented cannot photocopy ballots and have them get counted multiple times since that would be against election laws, even if he’s a Democrat in a Democratic stronghold. If Fermented gets caught, he gets charged, prosecuted, tried and if convinced with possible jail time, probation and/or fines. If it is shown that Fermented was part of a group planning election fraud, Fermented is charged with Conspiracy along with everyone that he conspired with…

Yes, and more good news for you — this is also how it already works! That’s how we know that the majority of the negligible amount of voter fraud we’ve seen has been committed by… wait for it… conservatives.

Remember when the Trump administration filed all those claims of voter fraud, and they were laughed out of the courts? We already have legal processes for this. The claims were dismissed due to lack of evidence, and the attorneys who brought them to court are now being threatened with fines and even disbarment for their attempts to use the justice system to manipulate public opinion. But Trump continued his firehose of lies about the election being stolen from him, which his MAGA personality cult completely bought, leading directly to the January 6th insurrection.

Still feeling insecure because your imagination runs away with itself and you see millions of dead people and illegal immigrants voting for the pinko commie socialists running around in your mind? Then let’s do voter ID! Of course it will need to be 100% free, easy to get (no need to pay for things like birth certificates or SS cards), easy to replace, and automatically sent to all citizens, all of whom are automatically registered when they turn 18. And then we make voting itself as easy as possible – we can follow the lead of states like Oregon who have been doing mail-in voting for years with virtually zero problems.

And while we are at it, we make it a law that state representatives cannot yell “voter fraud!” whenever they want, and override the results of a democratic election. Remember, we already had 147 Republicans vote in the House to overturn the 2020 results, even after the lies were laughed out of court, and now they are implementing laws in certain battleground states to allow them to do the same. Sorry man, this is not protecting our “equal for all nation”.

Personally, I think the GOP should put Mitt Romney up again in 2024, admit to the public that they were wrong about the stolen election, and begin driving the internet conspiracy theories out of their own party. If they did that, I might even vote for a Republican for president, just to give the modern rational wing of the GOP more power (depending on who he was running against, of course. I’d probably vote Romney over Harris, for example, but also likely to vote for, say, Buttigieg over Romney. Not that any of these people represent my own ideals – it would be a “pendulum” vote more than an idealistic vote.)

Hell, I still remember that famous debate with Romney and Obama, when Romney identified Russia as one of America’s greatest geopolitical threats. Obama’s “Go on, Senator…” just seemed so damn cool at the time. I liked Obama (and still do, especially compared with all other presidents in my lifetime!) so I ate that shit up. But as it turned out, Romney was right.

But of course they aren’t going to run someone like Romney, they are going to continue to boo him in airports and run Trump again, or a similar Auth-right strongman like DeSantis. And you’re right, they will probably win, because this country has lost its damn mind :wink:

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If by some miracle something like ranked choice voting was able to pass in a critical threshold of states, allowing multiple parties to have a chance for political viability…

And if integral-leaning folks created a new post-ideological political party – let’s call it an “integral alt-center” party…

And if that party had as its core premise the ideas that:

  1. all reasonable ideological preferences have a true-but-partial piece of the puzzle, and all are missing something important…
  2. when any single ideology is allowed to govern society for too long it inevitably creates imbalance and dysfunction…
  3. when any single ideology is enacted from a purely amber stage in today’s world, it inevitably leads to one humanitarian disaster or another…
  4. we should seek to integrate those partial truths from the right, from the left, from libertarianism, from socialism, etc…
  5. we should endeavor to apply these partial ideological toolkits skillfully/appropriately to particular problems and challenges…

And understands that problems at particular levels of complexity require people at particular levels of development who have the capacity to meet those problems…

And understands that government requires buy-in from people across all developmental stages, but governance itself must come from the highest reasonably available at any given time…

And understands that one of government’s primary duties is to benefit the public welfare and protect the public from the corrupting influence of the plutocratic class…

Would you support a party like that?

415

Sounds great Corey. Based on our discussions I really think we should retune our language regarding our political spectrum discourse.
What you describe is effectively what we have today with our Liberal Democracy/Libertarian Party and Democratic Socialist/Marxist Party jousting with each other, garnering support through communication with the Citizenry, elections, messaging, legal actions.

I think the hard part for Democratic Socialist/Marxist camp is they have adopted a religious zeal regarding their ideologies, their suppositions of others, their justifications which in their minds’ is equivalent to Holy War against everything that actually exists today and anyone that is getting in their way - our economic model, educational model, political model, and on and on.

I like how you’ve framed this new Integral Party. Very heavy on change, change this fucked up mess but light on efficiency, integrity, and Citizen empowerment.

I was with a team that did research energy research that spanned industry, environmental, domestic consumption, global consumption, domestic production, global production and estimated a map of how the global landscape impacts the US.
Before heading to DC we developed our hypotheses, iterated with many interviews from DoE to EPA to Energy Corps. My presumption before continuing in DC was that we would find it hidden/clandestine and highly corrupt. What I found was that within DC is that the trade of influence is THE currency to accomplish anything and everyone in DC is highly adept at influence arbitrage or they wouldn’t be in DC for long.
For a straight forward, share your thoughts, get direct feedback kind of guy I realized that I always saw what I didn’t understand as hidden/clandestine and corrupt.
Key point to this is that before swimming in the stew pot I really had no clue as to what was in the stew. I didn’t know that I knew as much about DC and politics as a 3 year old knows about auto mechanics.
I was also humbled by my lack of Systemic knowledge regarding our political machinery. I also was humbled by the apparent fact that most everything gets done through INFORMAL structures. By the time a lawsuit hits SCOTUS or a Bill hits the floor INCREDIBLE communication has already occurred with literally everyone with any influence.

As an example, let’s look at a Constitutional Ammendment. They’re really hard to get done but the mechanisms are there - nothing is hidden - but nonetheless a very difficult hurdle to clear.
75% of a Constitutional Convention of states - hard. Then look at the Congressional hurdle of 75%. ITS SUPPOSED TO BE HARD and always spans multiple election cycles BY DESIGN.
If the amendment ideas are screwy, I’ll thought out, or simply not agreeable enough to Citizens of the USA then they won’t last through multiple election cycles. This time element gives the Citizenry an opportunity to assess, evaluate, research, consider consequences both for and against the Amendment. And if the Citizens can’t be sold on the idea it won’t pass. And politicians who live and breath influence will know if the Amendment has significant majority support.
So what’s all this mean? It means that as horribly messy, seemingly corrupt, often excruciatingly slow, often surprisingly fast as our political system is its still the very best that humanity has ever devised.
So keep developing ideologies , keep communicating concepts, and be detached from who implements them. The highest form of leadership is when you are completely invisible to both implementation and end results.

I don’t know if any of this resonates but I do appreciate the generative conversations!

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It’s unlikely you will squeeze any pity for Ms. Omar given her Anti-Semitic, Anti-Zionist, and Pro-Radical Islamic statements. I’ve listened to Boebert’s comment that’s OMG so Outrageous but even somewhat crass veiled innuendos are clearly covered by our Bill of Rights. I think your desire to enforce other’s “Internal Quadrants” is EXACTLY what the Bill of Rights was design to stop.

So you’re still whonking the outrage regarding Toni Morrison’s amazing writings potentially being pulled from the educational system in ONE STATE. Can you not get it that we have a multi-layered government with States have specific perviews over many of our administrative functions BY DESIGN? The USA is specifically setup this way so a small group of ideological zealots can’t screw up the entire USA.

And since we’re on Educational materials here’s a bit of stuff being funded by our government and taught in schools. Seems you can get a full up degree in SJW Teaching.

You’re a fan of Thomas Sowell. He even started out early as a Marxist. You should listen to his enlightenment story sometime. He has many only discussions with supporting information regarding Social Welfare as the root cause of Destruction of the black family. Increased incarceration of black men is just an added bonus for the Social Welfare state to use for expansion. They’ve done an amazing job of crushing the life out of most African Americans, but you do have to admire the projection from the Leftist “crusaders”. Personally I would prefer ALL men and women to have equal opportunity to lead powerful meaningful lives, but that’s way beyond the Socialist vision for humanity.

Did you apologize for Hillary making false stolen election claims? Have you apologized for Mr Internet making stolen election campaigns? Corey - it’s just politi-media click bait, Amygdala Hijack garbage. NO ONE CARES. And Election Integrity Laws are on the way. And don’t worry, Dementia and Kackles won’t be taken out of office due to an Election Recall. LOL.

Corey - The boogieman comment comes from you continually whining about something you can do nothing about. You can’t control what Fox News says. You can’t control what State of AZ/PA/Wisc/Florida do. Get a Fox News interview with Hannity. See if Toobin or Stelzer or Maddow will interview Ken. Protest in Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Texas.

That’s how it’s supposed to work. But don’t worry, we’ll get the specifics and penalties clearly published so folks committed election fraud will know that the threat of charges, convictions, jail time, and/or fines is real. Just don’t do it again and you’re fine.

The Socialist/Communist Party had their crack at all the marbles and sort of Biden’ed their pants in their ego-maniacal exuberance.

Again, States have clearly defined responsibilities to which the Federal government is forbidden from usurping. Now other States can sue in SCOTUS if say the Democrats in Maryland or California try something completely f’ed up. It’s to keep a small group of tyrannical nut-jobs from spoiling the best thing the world has ever seen. Spoil California or NY or Oregon and be happy with the mess you’re making.

Yes, Obama and also Bill Clinton were amazing orators with charismatic leadership presence.
I guess if we’re picking completely unrealistic hypothetical examples, I would want Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan or perhaps Eisenhower.

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Oh I didn’t realize they had also refused to concede like Trump did! I didn’t realize they told their supporters “if I lose it’s because they cheated”! It’s fun to imagine what you would say if the totalitarian left had done something like that. The card says moops!

“So you’re still whonking the outrage regarding Toni Morrison’s amazing writings”

Yes, because it shows the hypocrisy of your position that only the left is engaging in censorship, when in reality it shows that conservatives are also acting like fragile snowflakes. Let me guess — it’s really bad when the left does it, but totally understandable for the right. The card says moops!

“ I think your desire to enforce other’s “Internal Quadrants” is EXACTLY what the Bill of Rights was design to stop.”

Lol free speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequence. But really, it just shows who the GOP has become, with folks like Boebert and Greene capturing the rest of the party. Again, claims of a stolen election are a Qanon belief, and the GOP has taken it as a core part of their platform. Which I suppose means Qanon has now fully captured the GOP.

But you’re right, the bill of rights absolutely allows the dumbest members of Congress to say insanely dumb things. Marjorie Taylor Greene absolutely has the right to blame forest fires on Jewish space lasers. It’s just a shame you guys keep electing them anyway!

And it’s weird that you guys keep trying to normalize violent rhetoric as “freeze peach!”

“ You’re a fan of Thomas Sowell. He even started out early as a Marxist.”

Yep, smart guy! I think his analysis here is incomplete, and does not fully take into account the zone 4 and zone 7 factors contributing to differing life conditions for different groups.

“ The Socialist/Communist Party had their crack at all the marbles and sort of Biden’ed their pants in their ego-maniacal exuberance. ”

You keep saying Biden is a socialist. I don’t think that word means what you think it means. What about Trump giving millions of dollars to farmers? Was that a socialist redistribution of wealth? Or does the card say moops?

“ I guess if we’re picking completely unrealistic hypothetical examples, I would want Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan or perhaps Eisenhower.”

Obviously I was talking about scenarios that could actually happen. They could run Romney (and should), but will likely run Trump or Desantis. But you keep playing your fantasy football over there :slight_smile:

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Just wanted to say, I think this is the most insightful thing you’ve said this entire conversation.

This is what our culture has become – getting very worked up about the things we have least control over. And I think it comes from a sense of lack of control that we feel in our own lives, which we project outwards. This is why the most extreme wings of both the right and the left are pushing to control and impose their morality onto other people, and why social media is the perfect platform for this projection to take place. We now anchor our identity in the furthest concentric spheres where we have no actual control. We make objects out of each other’s subjects, because we are unable or unwilling to make objects out of our own subjects.

Imagine if we took even 10% of the passion we feel about other people’s views, and put that passion into our own growth, awakening, and intrapersonal hygiene. We’d probably have fewer people locked into these narrow ideological views, and more people who were capable of criticizing their own tribal and political “teams”.

But it’s way easier to create an account on some disembodied platform somewhere just to tell everyone why their narrow views are wrong, and why our own narrow views are clearly superior.

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Of course Sowell wouldn’t be using Integral jargon, but he goes into Internal Quadrants in quite detail - both intellectually and Harlem teen. You might spend a bit of time with his talks. Correction - Sowell grew up in Harlem. Loury in Chicago South Side.

None the less, Socialist/Communists had all the marbles but seemed to have stalled out under Nancy and Chuckie’s watch. 19 DNC House marbles have announced retirement before the midterms. Last time they retired this many the DNC lost 70 house seats but I think most see the over/under at around 40 House seats.

Biden a Socialist? Brandon doesn’t even know whether or not he’s crapped his diaper unless Jill tells him to check his poopy pants. It’s not just Brandon, but the Whole-Toxic-Ball-of-Wax that the DNC has become that’s Socialist/Communist.

I would love a Desantis/Gabbard ticket. But would die hard Dem’s still consider Tulsi a Democrat or would they want to cancel her out? Google saved Congeniality Harris and Poopy Pants after that debate.
How about a Desantis/Condi Rice ticket? Condi is a bit flawed tho. She might be Chancellor of one of the most well regarded think tanks in the world but an amazingly accomplished black woman that can’t make any of the Identity Hucksters list has to have issues.

Will be interesting to see the DNC+Media’s post-“You’re a Racist” strategy when Black and Hispanic Republicans punch all those DNC challengers’ bus tickets back home for them. Perhaps LeBron James can debate a fellow “slave auction” millionaire to save that Georgia seat from Herschel Walker. Perhaps Biden hit upon the most empowering narrative of all for black Americans with “if you don’t vote Democrat, you ain’t black”. That has a really nice ring to it doesn’t it.

Good synopsis…

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This kind of immature name calling is kinda cringe my friend. You seem to get emotional when someone criticizes your ideology.

“but he goes into Internal Quadrants in quite detail”

Zone 4 can be seen as an “internal quadrant” in a way – it’s a third-person view of 1st-person-plural (an outside view of the cultural LL quadrant). Zone 7 is exterior – it’s a 1st-person view of 3rd-person-plural, or an inside view of the systemic LR quadrant. In case the math is helpful :wink:

These zones are important, because they remind us of things like the fact that, even if we change the actual laws in Zone 8 (the outside of the LR system), there are still karmas and inertias from previous laws and legal paradigms that continue to erode “equal opportunity” for certain groups. You throw a rock into a lake, and the ripples continue long after the rock has sunk to the bottom.

The gift of wokism is that they helped us make object out of these previously unseen zones. The curse of wokism is that they don’t know they are zones, so they misapply the ideas all the time. (“Privilege”, for example, is a perfectly reasonable and even important Zone 7 factor, but gets misused/misapplied all the time in order to label an individual’s Zone-2 interiors as “racist”. That said, a perception of Zone 7 privilege can be conducive to individual shadow work in Zone 2, and collective shadow work in Zone 4.)

Here’s a cheat sheet in case the zones get confusing.

Inhabit-8Zones-2
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Quick breakdown of how racism looks in all 8 zones:

Zone 1 – a phenomenological experience or expression of racism, often correlated with hyper-emotional states (something to keep in mind when we see footage of someone acting like a jackass on the internet – it is entirely possible we are catching them at the worst moment of their lives, due to any number of emotional states/phenomonological motivations. Which doesn’t absolve them from consequences, but allows a bit more space for healthy perspective-taking.)

Zone 2 – what we classically think of as “being racist”. Unconscious biases, prejudices, and ethnocentric narratives.

Zone 3 – racist intersubjective interactions with other people. Pretty cut and dry.

Zone 4 – the various, unseen shared permissions, shared biases, shared taboos, etc. that shape our discourse in Zone 3. You can think of something like an “Overton window” as a zone 4 phenomenon.

Zone 5 – how we reconstruct each other, based only on observable UR traits. What sort of interiors do we assume someone has who looks or acts like THIS? (Our Zone 5 reconstructions are often influenced by our Zone 2 biases)

Zone 6 — the various objective traits, qualities, phenotypes, etc. that we are basing our Zone 6 reconstruction off in the first place. Zone 6 can also describe the actual behaviors produced by racist thoughts in Zone 1, or biases in Zone 2.

Zone 7 — how self-organizing systems shape and influence consciousness. How consciousness in turn engages these systems. Describes the various information flows, communication strategies, etc. Describes a) the mass behavioral and informational patterns that result from current zone 8 laws, policies, and various environmental factors, b) the self-reinforcing systemic inertias that continue to exist from prior zone 8 laws and conditions, and c) how our overall patterns of behavior and communication are shaped by our present and past systems. We can see how seemingly non-discriminatory laws in zone 8 can nonetheless have discriminatory effects upon certain groups. And we can also see how previous discriminatory practices have created generational effects and inertias that continue to limit the average options and freedoms available to members of a particular group.

Zone 8 – the systems themselves, as seen from an objective 3rd-person objective. Actual laws, policies, and procedures that blatantly discriminate based on race. They can be explicitly racist, like slavery, or implicitly racist, like Jim Crow. Either way, this form of systemic racism is by far the easiest to recognize, and for the most part has been eliminated.

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You might try deconstruction of Sowell’s work in terms of your Zones mapping. I do appreciate how it trys to describe interaction and flow between the quadrants, individuals, groups.
Are there refernce materials I could study?

You might be able to position well with new task forces that the House Minority is putting together for likely rapid policy implementation starting 2023. This might be an opportunity to create a bigger Integral tent. Perhaps even influence the policy development.
Task forces already in process: border security, China, US environment, parents Bill of Rights, energy independence, inflation/economy.

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How might you map Douglas Murray’s critique of our culture wars using your Zones map?