Elon Musk and Twitter

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Elon Musk and Twitter

A few days ago, Elon Musk bought about 10% of Twitter stock.

That was all over the news.

 

What was not all over the news was that this came from an online discussion (on Twitter) Musk had with Jack Posopeic and Mike Cernovich, with Darren Beatie pushing from Revolver News. They were discussing censorship and told him he should buy Twitter and make it private to straighten it out.

You can see this discussed starting at about 5:00 in the video below:

Episode 1,782 - Elon Musk: War For Twitter; ”Going Medieval” In Pennsylvania Governor Race

RUMBLE.COM

---

We discuss the economy, Elon Musk's Twitter takeover, the border, and more. Our Guests Are: Jack Posobiec, Jason Miller, Darren Beattie, Jake Corman, Boris Epshteyn, John Solomon Stay ahead of the cen

So Musk bought 10%.

That didn't work out well because the Twitter woke goons had a cow and completely disrespected him.

So Musk did like any self-respecting billionaire would do and made a $40+ billion offer to buy all of Twitter and make it private.

You could feel the swoons from the woke crowd...

 

People have been talking about this nonstop since.

 

I, for one, am in wait and see mode. Elon Musk is as eccentric as all get out, so he can do anything at any time. And, as Steve says, all of his financing comes from the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai (this is in the video). How will that be a good thing if Musk buys the whole enchilada?

There are too many unknown unknowns for me to feel one way or the other about this.

Well, it was great to see the access and influence Jack Posopeic, Mike Cernovich and Darren Beatie have with Musk.

And it is lovely to see the woke idiots going nuts on Twitter just when they thought they had consolidated their power.

 

Let's see how this plays out. I have a feeling it's just getting started...

Michael 

 

EDIT: Matt Taibbi has a running summary on Substack of all the official Twitter Files (the dumps) that Elon has authorized to come out. Since there are so many Twitter Files in this thread, I am putting his summary link here. If you don't have time to read them all, this is a good place to check to catch up and see if you missed one.

Capsule Summaries of all Twitter Files Threads to Date, With Links and a Glossary

Enjoy.

M

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If you want to see a very interesting discussion of how this thing with Elon Musk arose and how it is developing, watch the video below.

You will also see what I see every day. I am an avid follower of Steve Bannon's War Room.

Do you remember when I started posting videos of a young black girl who had a YouTube Channel called "Myth of the Coon"? That was Candace Owens and look what she has become in our culture. My interest in Steve Bannon's War Room, and even in this trio of Jack Posopeic, Mike Cernovich and Darren Beatie, is along those lines.

These are the people who will soon be the giants of our culture, especially in the halls of power.

So watch and get a taste of history in the making.

Episode 1,784 – Elon Musk’s Epic Battle For Twitter Posobiec, Cernovich, Beattie

RUMBLE.COM

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We discuss the economy, Twitter, the border, and more. Our Guests Are: Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich, Darren Beattie, Auden Cabello Stay ahead of the censors – Join us warroom.org/join Aired On: 4/14/

From what they are saying, it looks like Elon Musk is on board with the idea of free speech. Let's see. But if he is, this is huge.

 

As a side issue, Steve also discussed what Texas Governor Gregg Abbot is doing on the Texas border against the upcoming invasion. Abbot did his propaganda thing of sending busses of illegal aliens to Washington DC, but he also stumbled across the real deal. He started doing comprehensive "security checks" on all trucks coming across the border at certain points, only allowing 3 or so to get through per hour, and backing them up for miles on the Mexican side. And he's making deals with Mayors and Governors of neighboring Mexican cities and states for them to police against people who want to get into the USA illegally. It's not enough yet to hold back the upcoming invasion, but it's working. Watch it grow...  

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Un-friggin'-believable.

This lady just doesn't see herself.

Michael

[Peter]

17 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

This lady just doesn't see herself.

I tried to determine if either of the speakers realized or were squeamish about what she said but I could not tell. 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

There is good news and bad news with the following video.

Let's start by watching it.

 

So, the bad news first. Tim Poos and his guests were discussing the Matrix-like view of what life will be like if Elon Musk's Neuralink world ever becomes accepted by society at large. Reality is kind of a weird word to describe this since the idea is to hook chips directly into the human brain, then put the user into a virtual reality where they can be and do anything they want while taking care of their bodies out in the real world through feeding tubes and chemicals designed to preserve muscle tone, etc. (Even get a person ripped without the person doing anything except being still.)

How does that sound?

But wait! There's more!

That's not the bad news yet.

Here's the bad news. Now is a good time to ask, why on earth is Elon Musk interested in Twitter?

How about owning a gigantic interactive audience like Twitter's where he can do his own propaganda and covert persuasion experiments to herd people into the Neuralink world he owns?

The only good part of that is the number of woke people who would suddenly leave reality and subsist on bug juice through their feeding tubes.

At any rate, I am divided on Musk getting Twitter. I think it's great he's trashing the hell out of something awful in the world and, according to what he is saying, will turn it into something good. But I do not discount the possibility that he is trying to acquire Twitter to make it something even worse...

One thing is for sure. People who think they are outsmarting him right now have no idea what they are doing. Who honestly believes Musk has not anticipated them, will beat them in one manner or another, and will make a ton load of money doing it (whether government or private money)?

 

Now for the good news. There is a young lady in the video, Brett Cooper, who is probably in her early twenties. When asked about Neuralink and the implications, she found it creepy.

Why?

Because it clashes with her purpose of life.

And where does she look to get that purpose?

Objectivism.

Here's a direct quote. It starts at about 8:52.

When she asks about being "hooked up," she means physically hooked up Matrix-style or something similar.

Quote

BRETT COOPER: I wonder. What would what would the purpose of life then be if we were just hooked up? 

TIM POOL: To fight dragons! 

BRETT COOPER: Obviously!

(crosstalk)

BRETT COOPER: That stresses me out!

IAN CROSSLAND: What do you think is the purpose of life? 

BRETT COOPER: Productivity and work. 

TIM POOL: To what end? 

BRETT COOPER: It's more of a... more of an Objectivist...

(crosstalk)

TIM POOL: Real quick. To what end?

BRETT COOPER: Like how far would I go?

TIM POOL: No. Like if the point of life is productivity and work, to what end? Is it just indefinite work and creation, or is it something where you're going? 

BRETT COOPER: To leave the world a better place than [when] I started [to be] it, or to create something tangible. 

TIM POOL: Can it always be better? 

BRETT COOPER: I think so. 

How friggin' cool is that?

And I bet she came across Rand from her fiction.

As far as our neck of the woods is concerned, Brett is the person who Elon Musk will have to sell his Neuralink world to in order to get his project seamlessly into society at large. There are other sources of resistance (like religions and so on), but coming from the O-Land perspective, sure, Musk might get the dorks to sign on, especially among the older types who will kneejerk gush about John Galt and technology, but with the younger ones, he's going to have one hell of a problem.

And that gives me a lot of hope...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

... sure, Musk might get the dorks to sign on, especially among the older types who will kneejerk gush about John Galt and technology...

Let's not leave this as an abstract statement.

Let's put a little meat on it and give it a concrete. But I will leave it up to you to find the links. They are numerous. I'll just describe the concrete.

 

So... what kind of "older type" would do a "kneejerk gush about John Galt and technology?"

How about Amy Peikoff?

Some time ago, I would tune into her show on BlogTalkRadio (a free big tech resource), Don't Let It Go Unheard. Any would gush about Amazon, how they were offering a cheaper and better service than anyone else, etc. etc. etc. (If you know Rand's writing, you know the drill.) Any also expressed that view when interviewed elsewhere. I remember seeing it. 

The one PREMISE she did not CHECK was the word CONTEXTUAL.

(Sorry for the all caps, but this is important.)

And how did reality treat her?

Did reality forgive her for being ignored?

Heh...

She became part of the management of Parler when President Trump was banned from Twitter and everyone and their brother started migrating to Parler.

Then, what did Amazon do, seeing how Amazon was providing the cloud for Parler?

It made it all go poof.

Poof.

Poof.

Bezos, Amy's John Galt, did that.

(btw - Parler is now back on track, but not growing anywhere near like before. Still, it's growing. And Amy is still there. I wish them well.)

 

So what is the context Amy dropped in all her prior gushing of Amazon and Bezos? Let's set aside the fictional element for a minute. Amy blanked out the fact that, when offered to work for the government to rule others, John Galt not only refused, he exposed the gun pointing at him. Granted, Bezos did a lot of Galt-like stuff in logistics, but he also built Amazon on the back of the CIA.

What could have possibly gone wrong in the story Amy told herself and told the world?

Well, the company she helped head, Parler, could be simply deleted for no good reason whatsoever. And it was, right as it was taking off big.

She also faced a banning from the entire big tech community where she had to go to find a replacement. Meaning, no replacement, either.

That's what happens when surrogate governments come into being like a cartel of Silicon Valley tech billionaires in bed with the US government.

That's one hell of a context, despite all the salvos Rand did against the trust-busters (see Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal). 

A cartel is not a free market. 
A cartel is not a free market.
A cartel is not a free market.

For those who have difficulty with this idea, keep repeating it until it takes.

 

 

This is just like the O-Land types who kneejerked about "free trade" with China.

One thing we can say for sure about people on O-Land when they get like that. They love to leave out context and preach Rand when they get goodies for free from bait-and-switch offerings by organizations with a lot of evil in them. They just blank out the evil, but keep their hand out for the goodies. And then when the real price comes due, they look like poor little pitiful critters who got shafted (which they did).

 

As Brett Cooper above showed, I don't think this will be a problem with younger people coming into Rand's ideas. Hell, they grew up on small electronic screens and, as they get older, they want to live life in reality. They hunger for it. They want to be human. They want their electronics to be an addition to their lives, not a replacement. They want electronics to be fun, not addictive.

To be fair to the older people in O-Land, even the kneejerkers, they did Rand in their youths mostly through reading printed words. Electronic screens for them were TV sets. Even now, I don't think they have any idea of the power of modern-day electronics (social media and otherwise) to affect neuroplasticity and things like that.

Also, I think most don't believe in the evil of centralized power--they think the free market will keep that from coming about unless the one at the top "earns" his or her position. Nor do they believe in the effectiveness of Internet electronics to make centralized power grow to a worldwide level.

Rand taught them that evil was impotent and many believe it.

For a while, I, myself, believed evil was impotent.

I no longer do.

Now I know evil is dangerous and not to be underestimated. It's not just a brainless Drooling Beast. It's a cunning Predator that also makes stuff.

Michael

[ThatGuy]

5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Also, I think most don't believe in the evil of centralized power--they think the free market will keep that from coming about unless the one at the top "earns" his or her position. Nor do they believe in the effectiveness of Internet electronics to make centralized power grow to a worldwide level.

Rand taught them that evil was impotent and many believe it.

For a while, I, myself, believed evil was impotent.

I no longer do.

Now I know evil is dangerous and not to be underestimated. It's not just a brainless Drooling Beast. It's a cunning Predator that also makes stuff.

Those kinds of O'ists always seem to forget, in their rush to defend the likes of Bezos, Bill Gates (and maybe Elon Musk; time will tell) about Robert Stadler, a once-brilliant scientist, and one of Galt's teachers, to boot, turned statist power-luster...

As for Rand teaching the "impotence of evil"...saying that is kind of like saying that sin was created when Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, when it's "the knowledge of good and evil", or that "money is the root of all evil", when it's "the LOVE of money is the root of all evil"...Rand did say, yes, that evil was impotent, but impotent to create. She DID, of course, say that it was able to do one thing: to destroy.

Now, fair enough; as Michael points out, evil people DO have the power to create, as well. Now, it might be said that those evil people are simply using the creations of the "good" people. But again, see Robert Stadler and his real-life counterparts.

One could quibble that it wasn't evil people that Rand was talking about, but the nature of evil itself that is impotent to create (with "evil" being the irrational, while people can be a mix of rational and irrational, holding "mixed premises"). One could also quibble that the "creation" in one context IS destructive in another.  And people, having free will and the ability to go from good to evil, can turn their creations from when they were "good" to evil. (Context.) But even if evil people couldn't or didn't create, evil still must be fought, and still taken seriously. And it doesn't seem as if orgOism is interested in that (unless it's in fighting Trump, of course.) Hand-in-hand with that goes the idea of Dagny saying "We never had to take any of it seriously, did we?", and people thinking that meant that Rand meant that evil would just fail on its own. But Rand was not that naive, and took issue with that interpretation.

From Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q & A
 

Q: In the question period last week [PO7 76; see p. 70], you voiced a strongly pessimistic view of the future. How can you say you’re glad to be old, when one of the most important concepts of Objectivism is that irrationality must never be taken seriously?

A: What in hell gave you that impression? I’ve never even hinted at the idea that one of the most important philosophical concepts is such a childish piece of inaccuracy. The most important parts of my philosophy are my theory of concepts, my ethics, and my discovery in politics that evil—the violation of rights—consists of the initiation of force. The only passage that I can imagine gave you this impression—and if so, it makes me angrier, and hurt—is Dagny’s line to Galt: “We never had to take any of it seriously.” That’s one of the most beautiful passages in my novel qua fiction. But it is light-years away from “Irrationality is never to be taken seriously.”

I’ve written that one problem with Americans is that they don’t believe in the reality of evil. You better take evil and irrationality seriously: not in the sense of regarding it as important—not in the sense of letting it determine the course of your life or your choice of career or other key values—but in the sense of not evading its existence. You should do everything in your power (though not at the price of self-sacrifice) to counteract evil and irrationality, which requires taking it seriously. But that is not the meaning of this line from Atlas Shrugged.

Now, why did I say I’m glad to be old? Because I’m tired of fighting low-grade irrationality. I don’t mind fighting serious, philosophically important instances of irrationality—if there are any left. But I almost feel like Leo in We the Living, who said he could muster the heroic in his soul to fight lions, but not to fight lice. He gave up too early. But I have put up a long fight, and have fought every crucial evil that I have observed. To fight somebody like Carter is boring. I think it’s a fair division of labor if I leave the fight against irrationality to you. [PO8 76]

Mayhew, Robert. Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q & A (p. 166). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[anthony]

"I saw that evil was impotent—that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real—and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it". GS

From this, the "impotence of evil" has a single condition: That "good" men do not assist the evil men, and compromise/sacrifice themselves. On its own unaided, evil has (an evil person has) no longevity, stature and power.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

As for Rand teaching the "impotence of evil"...saying that is kind of like saying that sin was created when Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, when it's "the knowledge of good and evil", or that "money is the root of all evil", when it's "the LOVE of money is the root of all evil"...Rand did say, yes, that evil was impotent, but impotent to create. She DID, of course, say that it was able to do one thing: to destroy.

Now, fair enough; as Michael points out, evil people DO have the power to create, as well. Now, it might be said that those evil people are simply using the creations of the "good" people. But again, see Robert Stadler and his real-life counterparts.

One could quibble that it wasn't evil people that Rand was talking about, but the nature of evil itself that is impotent to create (with "evil" being the irrational, while people can be a mix of rational and irrational, holding "mixed premises").

TG,

I got tired of trying to do all those verbal contortions to make this come out right just so I could say Rand was right.

For me, she fudged here and exaggerated.

The fact is, evil exists and it can be a creative force in its own right. Creative and productive monsters exist.

Here's an example. Way back in the beginning of social media, in the early days, I held a lot of discussions with a close friend of mine (Marc, who sometimes posts here) saying these social media people were designing pure addiction. Pure evil. I mention this because anyone can ask him if this is true. Don't forget, I know a hell of a lot about addiction having lived it several times.

Since then, after the work of people like Nir Eyal and B.J. Fogg of Stanford became popular, one big tech insider after another has admitted to addiction being the main result sought. Many did it on purpose--fully knowing they were doing evil.

They were high-tech. They were creative. They achieved awe-inspiring feats all in the service of evil. And they knew it while they were doing it. That's what they wanted. (Fortunately, their product can also be used for good.)

Google even abolished it's former motto, "Don't Be Evil."

That's just social media. There are countless examples.

 

I get it that one of Rand's themes in AS was that man's mind is the source of all human achievement and she was trying to push this thought to the extreme--to the ultimate goodness, so much goodness that it obliterated evil--but the truth is, man's mind is just like nuclear power. Light up a city with it or blow the city up. If the one wielding his own mind wants to use it for evil, he will. And, with enough effort, concentration and desire, he will achieve great things doing his evil. Ditto for good.

An evil drive is a piss=poor creative motivation for most of us, but for some, it's what they live for. And when they are super-smart, driven and creative, be very, very careful around them.

That's what I now think.

But I don't say Rand was wrong. That turns into a silly propaganda game. So I look at it differently.

Like with many things, her problem was scope. Within certain bounds (let's say something like the actual moments of eureka or creative spark), her thought is correct and insightful. And even then, good is technically not a fundamental part of the process unless one believes in inherent goodness. (Rand could not know it back then, but think neuroscience and modern psychology for a far more accurate way to evaluate this.)

As a universal principle applicable to all humans in all contexts, well... that's where Rand's notion of the impotence of evil doesn't work.

Monsters exist. Demons, so to speak, exist. They can get quite creative and productive. And we must fight them as part of being human.

To use one of Rand's favorite phrases, that is "the given."

Michael

[Peter]

SNL had impersonators portraying President Trump and Elon Musk. I couldn't tell if guest host Lizzo had lost any weight. She did not look quite as big. She has a pretty face but needs to drop about 50 pounds.

[Peter]

How do South Africans feel about having the world's richest man coming from South Africa? What do they think of him? 

[ThatGuy]

10 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

TG,

I got tired of trying to do all those verbal contortions to make this come out right just so I could say Rand was right.

For me, she fudged here and exaggerated.

The fact is, evil exists and it can be a creative force in its own right. Creative and productive monsters exist.

 

 

10 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I get it that one of Rand's themes in AS was that man's mind is the source of all human achievement and she was trying to push this thought to the extreme--to the ultimate goodness, so much goodness that it obliterated evil--but the truth is, man's mind is just like nuclear power. Light up a city with it or blow the city up. If the one wielding his own mind wants to use it for evil, he will. And, with enough effort, concentration and desire, he will achieve great things doing his evil. Ditto for good.

An evil drive is a piss=poor creative motivation for most of us, but for some, it's what they live for. And when they are super-smart, driven and creative, be very, very careful around them.

Oh, I get all all that, which is why I finished my "quibble" remark with the following (with "good" and "evil" people in scare quotes, as if it every person was that binary in their actions, without temptation, free will, or mixed premises...)
 

 

14 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

And people, having free will and the ability to go from good to evil, can turn their creations from when they were "good" to evil. (Context.) But even if evil people couldn't or didn't create, evil still must be fought, and still taken seriously.

 

[anthony]

By what I've seen, everything constructed and created can be perverted to some people's debased ends . Also, anything made can be misused and abused by a user to his or others' harm.

Good?: "For whom? For what purpose?"

E.g. power is great. Manpower is what got us here.

Power and wealth are neutral or good or evil depending on the rationality and character of who's wielding them, his aims and their purpose. "Power" is essential, to do and build things, to make the tools to achieve more. The power of free will. The power of conceptual minds.

Power ... over people - is a distinct category; and what is loosely but normally meant by "power".

It's not "power" in itself that "corrupts", it is power -over others- by an abuser and manipulator. 

 

 

[ThatGuy]

2 hours ago, anthony said:

By what I've seen, everything constructed and created can be perverted to some people's debased ends . Also, anything made can be misused and abused by a user to his or others' harm.

Good?: "For whom? For what purpose?"

E.g. power is great. Manpower is what got us here.

Power and wealth are neutral or good or evil depending on the rationality and character of who's wielding them, his aims and their purpose. "Power" is essential, to do and build things, to make the tools to achieve more. The power of free will. The power of conceptual minds.

Power ... over people - is a distinct category; and what is loosely but normally meant by "power".

It's not "power" in itself that "corrupts", it is power -over others- by an abuser and manipulator. 

 

 

Just saw this online:

"Science is a value only because it expands, enriches and protects man’s life. It is not a value outside that context. Nothing is a value outside that context. And 'man’s life' means the single, specific, irreplaceable lives of individual men."

Ayn Rand; Nathaniel Branden. The virtue of selfishness: a new concept of egoism (Kindle Locations 1491-1492). Signet/New American Library.

[ThatGuy]

Re: issues of context and scope in creation and destruction: I can't help but think that Rand was well aware of the matters in this discussion. After all, the mystery of ATLAS SHRUGGED centered around whether John Galt was a "creator" or "destroyer", out to destroy "the motor of the world". And she DID include Robert Stadler, after all. Plus, her research into the creation of the atomic bomb for her unpublished story, "Top Secret", would have had to inform her of the "mixed premises" involved in the motives of the various "creators" and "destroyers", there. (It's not for nothing that Oppenheimer borrowed from Hindu scripture: "I have become Shiva, Creator and Destroyer."

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

42 minutes ago, ThatGuy said:

Plus, her research into the creation of the atomic bomb for her unpublished story, "Top Secret"...

Peter,

Do you want a Rand quote to throw a monkey-wrench in everything?

Rand's view of nuclear weapons was literally the following:

Quote

... a technical military matter, which civilian voters are not qualified to judge...

In lieu of the alternative, one which we are living with today, a technocratic elite--and worse, that elite in charge of the military, I say, "The hell they aren't."

Nobody gets to put restrictions on what issues people can run on in elections in the USA. That's the whole problem with the 2020 stolen election and modern cancel culture. People tried to restrict what Americans could vote on and say.

That Rand quote comes from her article on Barry Goldwater's election loss, "Check Your Premises: It Is Earlier Than You Think" published in The Objectivist Newsletter: Vol. 3 No. 12 , December, 1964.

I came across this looking up NATO and Ayn Rand. Here is a longer quote for context. She is talking about Goldwater's campaign.

Quote

The only "ideology" that the Republican candidate offered us was like a newspaper consisting of headlines over blank spaces where the facts, the proofs, the explanations should have appeared. The headlines were vague generalities—the worn-out bromides of the past thirty years.
"Big Government Is Bad." Why is it bad? Blank out. "Freedom Is Good." How does it work? Blank out. "Foreign Policy Must Be Firm." What does firmness consist of? Blank out. "The Record Of The Present Administration Is Disastrous." What is that record? Blank out.

Observe also the chaotic make-up of the candidate's ideological newspaper-the lack of any hierarchical order of importance. On page 1, and without any explanatory or ideological headline-a story proposing to sell the TVA (which is not the worst nor the most urgent example of governmental encroachment). Somewhere on page 27-a headline about "Free Enterprise," without any story. On page 1, a story proposing to give the NATO commander permission to use "conventional" nuclear weapons (a technical military matter, which civilian voters are not qualified to judge). On page 28, a headline about "Winning The Cold War," over a blank space. On page 38, a sub-head announcing that the NATO commander possesses a similar permission already and has possessed it for some time past. Et cetera.

All of this added up to a terrifying jumble of floating abstractions and out-of-context, concrete-bound inessentials-an appalling inability to relate abstractions to concretes, or principles to facts-an inability to grasp what constitutes evidence, demonstration, argument, proof-and, consequently, a senseless shuttling between arbitrary assertions and irrelevant trivia, and a loud, daily confession of philosophical impotence.

There was no discussion of capitalism. There was no discussion of statism. There was no discussion of the blatantly vulnerable record of the government's policies in the last thirty years. There was no discussion. There were no issues.

She was right about Goldwater. As a campaigner, he was basically an empty suit spouting platitudes.

 

But she had a blind spot about the Deep State, its nature, and its hold over the American government. Back then it was called "the military-industrial complex," and it ran, starting with the Korean War, on endless unwinnable war for profit.

Want proof of Rand's blind spot?

Here is another direct quote from her 1974 speech to West Point graduates provided in "Philosophy: Who Needs It," The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. III, No. 8, January 14, 1974 (later the lead essay in a book by the same title).

Quote

Something called "the military-industrial complex"—which is a myth or worse—is being blamed for all of this country's troubles.

Well, I agree that the Deep State is not the source of all of America's problems, but it is the source of a hell of a lot of them.

One cannot defeat an enemy one refuses to see.

That is true and even applies to Ayn Rand. I don't like this blind spot in her, but it's there. Ignoring it won't make it go away, nor will it make the Deep State go away.

Michael

[ThatGuy]

1 minute ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

49 minutes ago, ThatGuy said:

Plus, her research into the creation of the atomic bomb for her unpublished story, "Top Secret"...

Peter,

Do you want a Rand quote to throw a monkey-wrench in everything?

Rand's view of nuclear weapons was literally the following:

Quote

... a technical military matter, which civilian voters are not qualified to judge...

In lieu of the alternative, one which we are living with today, a technocratic elite--and worse, that elite in charge of the military, I say, "The hell they aren't."

Hey, even Rand can be wrong, no argument from me. (Well, except that my name ain't Peter...)

(Of course, her premises could do with some checkin';  I'm just doin' the quibbles. Although I didn't originally intend to do the quibles, which is why I originally said "one COULD quibble", but meaning the quibbles are beside the point; the point is that evil exists, and must be dealt with. But then, the quibbles came up, so, when in Rome...but anyway; monkey-wrench away...)

[ThatGuy]

20 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

But she had a blind spot about the Deep State, its nature, and its hold over the American government. Back then it was called "the military-industrial complex," and it ran, starting with the Korean War, on endless unwinnable war for profit.

Want proof of Rand's blind spot?

Here is another direct quote from her 1974 speech to West Point graduates provided in "Philosophy: Who Needs It," The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. III, No. 8, January 14, 1974 (later the lead essay in a book by the same title).

Quote

Something called "the military-industrial complex"—which is a myth or worse—is being blamed for all of this country's troubles.

Well, I agree that the Deep State is not the source of all of America's problems, but it is the source of a hell of a lot of them.

One cannot defeat an enemy one refuses to see.

That is true and even applies to Ayn Rand. I don't like this blind spot in her, but it's there. Ignoring it won't make it go away, nor will it make the Deep State go away.

Michael

I'm glad you brought this up, because, despite my quibbles, it just shows we're on the same page, on this topic, fundamentally. I was taken back when I read Rand's skepticism/denial regarding the "military industrial complex", and also see her blind spot. It comes out pretty clearly in 100 VOICES: AN ORAL HISTORY OF AYN RAND, in the two interviews with the "brass" from West Point, one from the person who invited her, and the other who expressed some concerns about her speech.

Chris Matthew Sciabarra pointed out her "blind spot" on this as well, in AYN RAND: THE RUSSIAN RADICAL:

There were instances, however, where Rand failed to question the structural effects of continued U.S. defense build-ups and police actions. In a speech to West Point cadets, for instance, she argued that “the military-industrial complex” is 'a myth or worse.'"

Sciabarra, Chris Matthew. Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical . Penn State University Press. Kindle Edition.

(Although I thought he may have defended her on this, actually, but that may have been elsewhere, and can't remember the source. It may have been someone else, but the idea of a "nuanced dialectic" reading keeps coming to mind, which makes me think it was Sciabarra...but whoever it was, it failed to convince me.)

[Edit: this is the closest reference I can find on google, at the moment: Roderick Long on Rand and the MIC, while mentioning Sciabarra in the same breath:]

"Because Rand called big business a 'persecuted minority' and dismissed the military-industrial complex as 'a myth or worse,' she is often taken as a naïve apologist for the corporatist elite; but she also condemned the 'type of businessmen who sought special advantages by government action' as the 'actual war profiteers of all mixed economies'; and it's easy to forget that most of the businessmen characters in Rand's novels are statist villains.

"As Chris Sciabarra reminds us, Rand likewise grasped the symbiotic relationship between militarism abroad and neofascist politics at home; in an era when many of her followers are enthusiastic supporters of American military intervention overseas, it's worth remembering that Rand herself opposed US involvement in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam."

 

Ayn Rand's Contribution to the Cause of Freedom

MISES.ORG

---

Roderick Long celebrates Ayn Rand's work and influence in this piece written on the centenary of her birth.

 

[ThatGuy]

38 minutes ago, ThatGuy said:

I'm glad you brought this up, because, despite my quibbles, it just shows we're on the same page, on this topic, fundamentally. I was taken back when I read Rand's skepticism/denial regarding the "military industrial complex", and also see her blind spot. It comes out pretty clearly in 100 VOICES: AN ORAL HISTORY OF AYN RAND, in the two interviews with the "brass" from West Point, one from the person who invited her, and the other who expressed some concerns about her speech.

Chris Matthew Sciabarra pointed out her "blind spot" on this as well, in AYN RAND: THE RUSSIAN RADICAL:

There were instances, however, where Rand failed to question the structural effects of continued U.S. defense build-ups and police actions. In a speech to West Point cadets, for instance, she argued that “the military-industrial complex” is 'a myth or worse.'"

Sciabarra, Chris Matthew. Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical . Penn State University Press. Kindle Edition.

(Although I thought he may have defended her on this, actually, but that may have been elsewhere, and can't remember the source. It may have been someone else, but the idea of a "nuanced dialectic" reading keeps coming to mind, which makes me think it was Sciabarra...but whoever it was, it failed to convince me.)

[Edit: this is the closest reference I can find on google, at the moment: Roderick Long on Rand and the MIC, while mentioning Sciabarra in the same breath:]

"Because Rand called big business a 'persecuted minority' and dismissed the military-industrial complex as 'a myth or worse,' she is often taken as a naïve apologist for the corporatist elite; but she also condemned the 'type of businessmen who sought special advantages by government action' as the 'actual war profiteers of all mixed economies'; and it's easy to forget that most of the businessmen characters in Rand's novels are statist villains.

"As Chris Sciabarra reminds us, Rand likewise grasped the symbiotic relationship between militarism abroad and neofascist politics at home; in an era when many of her followers are enthusiastic supporters of American military intervention overseas, it's worth remembering that Rand herself opposed US involvement in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam."

 

Ayn Rand's Contribution to the Cause of Freedom

MISES.ORG

---

Roderick Long celebrates Ayn Rand's work and influence in this piece written on the centenary of her birth.

 

Ah, found what I was looking for, and it WAS between Roderick Long and Chris Matthew Sciabarra. I actually posted it here, before! ( My memory may be failing me, but fortunately, the search bar here isn't.) Sciabarra does, in fact, "kinda-sorta" defend Rand's remarks about the MIC being a "myth, or worse", putting it in context of her reaction to the Left. (You could say that Sciabarra is the source of many "quibbles" about Rand on  creation and science and good and evil, as well, based on the same passage; then again, his whole M.O. is based on "full context", so it's understandable: )

Sciabarra:

On the broader issue of the “military-industrial complex,” I suspect that, because Rand places this phrase in scare quotes, she’s reacting against the portrait put forth by New Leftists who pinned the blame on “capitalism” rather than its opposite. Rand may also be interpreting “imperialism” narrowly as physical, military conquest, rather than, the kind of “socialism for big business” that was internationalized in the “New Fascism,” which she, herself, saw as the root of much global conflict.

Interestingly, of course, it was not the New Left that first warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex; it was none other than President Dwight D. Eisenhower. And, writing ATLAS SHRUGGED in the era of Ike, Rand herself recognized the incestuous and corrupting relationships among government, business, science, and the military (see, for example, her portrait of “Project X”).

Full "Sciabarra Defense" below:

 

Quote

 

This may be of interest to some people, re Rand and her military industrial complex denial. I found an exchange between Roderick Long and Chris Sciabarra, from 2003, on the rebirthofreason site. (SOLOHQ, at that time).

 

Roderick Long: 
" I have the following question for Chris.

In "Philosophy: Who Needs It," which was (not coincidentally) an address at West Point, Rand says two thing that seem wildly out of keeping with the analysis of neofascist foreign policy that Chris rightly finds in Rand's writings. First, she claims that the United States "has never engaged in military conquest," a historically bizarre statement. Second, she denies the very EXISTENCE of the "military-industrial complex," calling it "a myth or worse." THAT'S the Rand that I'd thought of myself as breaking away from on these issues. So my question for Chris is, how should the relation between those remarks and her critique of neofascism be understood? Was she simply inconsistent, or did she have some intermediate view I've failed to grasp?

 

Sciabarra: 


Roderick raises some very important issues with regard to certain inconsistencies in Rand. He asks about the relationship between her critique of neofascism and her remarks in the essay, “Philosophy: Who Needs It” (where she denies the existence of the “military-industrial complex” and the belief that America ever embarked on imperial conquest). Roderick wonders if Rand was being inconsistent, or if she had “some intermediate view.” Before answering that question, let me present the full passage in question. Rand writes:

“There is a special reason why you, the future leaders of the United States Army, need to be philosophically armed today. You are the target of a special attack by the Kantian-Hegelian-collectivist establishment that dominates our cultural institutions at present. You are the army of the last semi-free country left on earth, yet you are accused of being a tool of imperialism—and ‘imperialism’ is the name given to the foreign policy of this country, which has never engaged in military conquest and has never profited from the two world wars, which she did not initiate, but entered and won. (It was, incidentally, a foolishly overgenerous policy, which made this country waste her wealth on helping both her allies and her former enemies.) Something called ‘the military-industrial complex’—which is a myth or worse—is being blamed for all of this country's troubles. Bloody college hoodlums scream demands that R.O.T.C. units be banned from college campuses. Our defense budget is being attacked, denounced and undercut by people who claim that financial priority should be given to ecological rose gardens and to classes in esthetic self-expression for the residents of the slums.”

A few interesting things about this passage should be noted. First, this was addressed to the graduates of the military academy at West Point in 1974. Rand may have opposed the Vietnam War, but her criticisms were leveled at the political leaders and intellectual architects of that war, not at the troops who fought it. In a letter to Doris Gordon (30 May 1973), Rand once argued: “One is free to disagree with the government of one's country on any issue, including its foreign policy, but one has no right to express one's sympathy with the enemy in wartime, because this amounts to sanctioning the killing of one's countrymen.” So I think that Rand’s comments here should be contextualized by this general attitude toward the U.S. military. I also think that we can’t abstract her comments from her intense opposition to the New Left underpinnings of those who typically protested the Vietnam war (hence, her noting of the conflict between expenditures on defense, a legitimate function of government in Rand’s view, and expenditures on ecology, a tribalist “anti-industrial” movement in Rand’s view).

Still, I think that the passage in question is problematic given her broader views. For example, in “The Roots of War,” Rand clearly recognizes that while “capitalistic imperialism” is a myth, since capitalism as such is based on free trade, the “repressive” elements in the mixed economy will drive statist policies toward conquest of foreign markets. She also recognizes the statist underpinnings of the policies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and endorses Arthur Ekirch’s view of “the spirit of imperialism” that dominated the foreign policies of the “collectivist reformers.”

Rand was also aware of the jingoistic roots of the Spanish-American War (another exercise in the distortion of truth; see my previous message above), which even “conventional” historians view as imperialist. In her notes while writing THE FOUNTAINHEAD, for example, Rand draws from many of the concretes in the life of William Randolph Hearst as she crafts the character of Gail Wynand. She writes on 12 December 1938:

“Hearst started agitating for the Spanish-American War in order to create ‘live’ news. There was a story, unproved, but considered possible: Hearst sent special correspondents to Cuba, one of whom was Frederic Remington, the eminent artist, who drew notable sketches of Spanish cruelty. After a short time Remington sent this telegram from Havana: ‘W. R. Hearst, New York Journal, NY: Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return. Remington.’ This is the answer Hearst is said to have written: ‘Remington, Havana: Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war. W. R. Hearst.’”

On the broader issue of the “military-industrial complex,” I suspect that, because Rand places this phrase in scare quotes, she’s reacting against the portrait put forth by New Leftists who pinned the blame on “capitalism” rather than its opposite. Rand may also be interpreting “imperialism” narrowly as physical, military conquest, rather than, the kind of “socialism for big business” that was internationalized in the “New Fascism,” which she, herself, saw as the root of much global conflict.

Interestingly, of course, it was not the New Left that first warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex; it was none other than President Dwight D. Eisenhower. And, writing ATLAS SHRUGGED in the era of Ike, Rand herself recognized the incestuous and corrupting relationships among government, business, science, and the military (see, for example, her portrait of “Project X”).

It is perhaps ironic that Rand’s fictional critique of this military-industrial-science nexus may have actually inspired some of the rebels of the 1960s student antiwar movement. In his book, IN PRAISE OF DECADENCE, Jeff Riggenbach writes:

“Did the young people of the ‘60s hold a dim view of the ‘military-industrial complex’? Well, they certainly found nothing in ATLAS SHRUGGED that would be likely to make them reconsider that attitude. In fact, if one were to judge the worlds of government, big business, and the scientific establishment purely on the basis of reading ATLAS SHRUGGED, one would have to conclude that almost all big businessmen are parasitic incompetents who owe their profits to special deals worked out for them by politicians, that the scientific establishment is nothing but an arm of government, and that the principal function of government is to employ stolen resources in the invention of loathsome weapons of mass destruction.”

 

 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here are a couple of unintended consequences from what Elon Musk is doing with Twitter.

 

The first is awareness.

The following video on wedding the Potemkin Village concept to Google search results (and Bing's, for that matter) is something we all feel, but nobody really talks about it. Well, now they are talking more and more because Twitter was doing this in the open, not behind closed doors like with Google. And now that Twitter's narrative hold has busted wide open with the general public (thanks Elon), the rest is coming.

TRUTHSTREAM MEDIA: WHERE DID THE REST OF THE INTERNET GO?

Truthstream Media: Where Did the Rest of the Internet Go?

WWW.BITCHUTE.COM

---

Truthstream Media: Where Did the Rest of the Internet Go? Truthstream Media https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zyJB45ewvU&ab_channel=TruthstreamMedia Please help support...

You really need to see this thing, then do it for yourself.

If you want to check reality, that is a great way. (For readers of this post years from now, checking it for yourself should be a lot different. But the video preserves what it looks like now. No faking reality in our neck of the woods.  )

Melissa Dykes (the narrator) literally shows you Google saying it provides you a billion search results for the term "climate change," but only gives you 400 or so if you try to look. But it gets worse. Most of those results go back to the United Nations sources.

She did that with several terms, although she only showed one other (super bowl) and the results have been equally skewed each time.

That's why it feels like the Internet is getting smaller. The people at the top are "controlling the narrative," which ultimately means controlling what information you can get from them.

However, there is a crap-load of other information out there. 

Just like with Twitter, now that this is being exposed, people smell bullshit and big tech is going to pay through the nose. (How's that for wedding metaphors?  )

The Twitter Musk mess is prompting people to see this more and more and, I believe, new search capabilities are going to arise, especially as the tech oligarchs lose political power.

 

The second unintended consequence is money. As usual, lets start with a video. 

Jack Dorsey’s $2.9 Million NFT Auctions For $280!!

 

Jimmy Dore is 100% against NFT's, which is not what I believe. But there is one component of NFT's that can be extremely lucrative for people who know how to make a story and sell it according to human nature (basically take money from fools  ).

The theory is called the "Greater Fool" theory. It means that the increasing valuation of an asset exists only because fools are buying it. And when the final greater fool finally buys it, reality will set in and the price will collapse. 

In other words, some NFT's will only be lucrative so long as fools are buying it. Once the number of fools has been run through, once you run out of fools, the value will collapse.

But I look behind the theory. What this tells me is once the story no longer speaks to fools, the price collapses. 

For example, the story of Twitter was as an all-powerful social monitor, sort of like a principal in a high-school. Elon Musk came along and exposed just how vulnerable Twitter was to being taken over and changing everything. 

Once he did that, all the bullshit at Twitter rose to the surface (both inside and outside of Twitter) and people began to wonder why Twitter had all that power to begin with. Twitter's credibility as a social monitor collapsed and, additionally, Dorsey is no longer leading it. So Dorsey's first tweet NFT price collapsed. The public no longer finds value in the Jack Dorsey Twitter story because it no longer finds value in Jack Dorsey and no longer finds value in Twitter. 

The Twitter legend as a safe space for engineering social change has become a thing only for woke idiots and they don't buy NFT's as their main interest. (As an aside, the Deep State is now going to have to find a different place to wield its covert persuasion bullshit and have it work.)

But that collapse is only Dorsey's NFT.

NFT's in general are now trading at about $2 billion a month just on one platform (OpenSea). I don't know what the full trading volume is. But $2 billion is attractive money. Here's what I see when I look at that: There are a lot of stories out there that people believe in--they believe in them enough to put their money into them. So the market is not the issue, the acceptance of the stories behind each NFT is.

In short, for making money, in the stories that prevail, one investing strategy needs to be used. In stories that tank, the Greater Fool investing strategy needs to be used.

That has become as clear as it can be.

 

There should be more unintended consequences of Musk and Twitter coming as the woke and globalist structure collapses. 

Michael

[ThatGuy]

35 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Rand's view of nuclear weapons was literally the following:

Quote

... a technical military matter, which civilian voters are not qualified to judge...

In lieu of the alternative, one which we are living with today, a technocratic elite--and worse, that elite in charge of the military, I say, "The hell they aren't."

While search for the "Sciabarra Defense" of Rand's military-industrial-complex denial, I came across this quote, as well, similar ro Rand's comments about civilian voters judging military matters:

“One is free to disagree with the government of one's country on any issue, including its foreign policy, but one has no right to express one's sympathy with the enemy in wartime, because this amounts to sanctioning the killing of one's countrymen.”

I'm wondering if the two go hand-in-hand, in her mind...

[ThatGuy]

14 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Well, now they are talking more and more because Twitter was doing this in the open, not behind closed doors like with Google. And now that Twitter's narrative hold has busted wide open with the general public (thanks Elon), the rest is coming.

Shot. Chaser.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Isn't there a court ruling where the president cannot do this?

I think it's even a Supreme Court ruling, but I don't remember exactly.

 

If this tweet ever gets deleted, the tweeter was Adaliab, @Adaliabcomcast1, and the tweet was made on Apr 16, 2022.

 

I recall early in Trump's presidency, he (or his staff) blocked some users and this generated a court case where it was ruled he was no longer allowed to do that. (Something about him being a government official and the public domain.)

Note, this was not just a policy by Twitter. This was a court case.

So why is Biden allowed to block users?

People need to start squawking since this case is so easy.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 4/17/2022 at 2:14 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

And now that Twitter's narrative hold has busted wide open with the general public (thanks Elon), the rest is coming.

TRUTHSTREAM MEDIA: WHERE DID THE REST OF THE INTERNET GO?

Truthstream Media: Where Did the Rest of the Internet Go?

WWW.BITCHUTE.COM

---

Truthstream Media: Where Did the Rest of the Internet Go? Truthstream Media https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zyJB45ewvU&ab_channel=TruthstreamMedia Please help support...

You really need to see this thing, then do it for yourself.

If you want to check reality, that is a great way. (For readers of this post years from now, checking it for yourself should be a lot different. But the video preserves what it looks like now. No faking reality in our neck of the woods.  )

Melissa Dykes (the narrator) literally shows you Google saying it provides you a billion search results for the term "climate change," but only gives you 400 or so if you try to look. But it gets worse. Most of those results go back to the United Nations sources.

She did that with several terms, although she only showed one other (super bowl) and the results have been equally skewed each time.

That's why it feels like the Internet is getting smaller. The people at the top are "controlling the narrative," which ultimately means controlling what information you can get from them.

However, there is a crap-load of other information out there.

Here is the second part to that video Melissa made today.

Or watch it on BitChute.

On the Digital Wall, Part II

WWW.BITCHUTE.COM

---

Please help support us on Patreon, read our goals here: https://www.patreon.com/truthstreammedia Truthstream Can Be Found Here: Our First Film: TheMindsofMen.net Our First Series:...

 

This particular video did not thrill me for the most part. Maybe it was because I was already on board with the message.

But at the end, it blossomed into something really, really special.

Here is the transcript of the end (go to 14:24). Melissa is referring to a wall of curated information that is used as a barrier against the general public accessing all the rest of the information on the Internet. At least that is what the big tech companies are doing right now (Google, Twitter, Facebook, and so on). Yet they are selling this Potemkin Village as the wide open Internet of endless possibilities.

Quote

MELISSA (VO): ... I personally think there's something quite liberating in seeing this wall--in seeing this box for the digital cage that it is--instead of presenting this idea that it's this wide open field, when really it is just this small box. 

Because if that's the level we're at, we're getting much closer to when that's not going to be the case anymore. Because unbalanced systems such as this never stay that way for long, historically speaking. 

Someone's cards are showing and their hand is obviously not very good. It means the emperor is all kinds of naked, guys. All kinds of naked. Okay? Does not have clothes [chuckle]. 

And when you see that going on, it means change is coming.

[Clip from the film Labyrinth: Sarah is before a wall.]

SARAH: That's just wall. There's no way through 

THE WORM: Things are not always what they seem in this place. So you can't take anything for granted.

[Sarah passes through the wall and continues walking.]

SARAH: Hey!

Yup.

Big changes are coming.

A quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln is in order. It's just as true now as it was back in the mid-1800's.

Quote

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

Like I said, big changes are coming.

 

Michael

[Peter]

50 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Like I said, big changes are coming.

In goggle or is that google? I rarely use google but I usually use MSN. So google is unusual, but I occasionally stumble across it, so it doesn't seem relevant. I don't twitter and I don't USE Facebook either. But I have heard the names.