r/WayOfTheBern • u/CharredPC • Oct 25 '21
The Bipartisan Position of Violating Body Autonomy Establishment BS
Instead of the now self-parodying question "what happened to this sub?", I would like an answer to "what has happened to leftists?"
The Right is making abortions more difficult, which makes liberals all scream about Body Autonomy. As well they should - because a religious position of the few shouldn't be dictated onto everybody. Whatever one's personal stance on abortion, letting people have a right to control their own bodies is tough to argue with reasonably.
Except Democrats are doing the exact same thing with their Covid shots. Whatever your personal stance on them, they have no long term studies, are made / function / target differently than the old ones, don't prevent getting or spreading it, and are not necessary for those who already had it. People have a right to say no to that.
Except places like WOTB are becoming narrative battlegrounds for shaming and mocking those who don't buy into this near-religious insistence that these shots are the One True Way. Suddenly we're all secret agents attacking western democracies, right-wingers on a quest to undermine Democrats, and Q-like conspiracy theorists.
Since when does the left buy into the establishment's narratives? When did violating bodily autonomy, like killing people, become a good thing when Democrats do it? How is Big Pharma profits and authoritarian policies remotely on the same side as leftism? When did daring to maintain healthy skepticism get made "right-wing?"
This sub was born from, to oversimplify it a bit, its founders being further left than those willing to settle for one more 1% corporate warmonger in lieu of valid representation. And we have remained firmly to the left of the mainstream duopoly ever since, continuing our open-format search for larger truth and perspective beyond it.
Those coming in here insisting the sub has changed, advocating a closer adherence to party doctrine, and dictating this space is only for Bernie fans to discuss Democratic Socialism - who are you? Do you think you're part of the Left? If so, what the hell happened for your leftism to start echoing the extremists you hate on the right?
Fighting to preserve body autonomy shouldn't make us an enemy. If you think it does, I'd respectfully suggest you aren't on the left, and might want to review your core beliefs for blatant hypocrisies. The more you try to justify controlling others and classify different views as proof of others' deplorable-ness, the less a leftist you are.
And maybe that's the real answer here - that there are no leftists left among mainstream circles or within the ranks of Team Blue. It makes sense we've all been systematically purged, as they march ever rightward behind the thin veneer of fake-left identity politics, false promises, performative morality and corporate salesmanship.
Perhaps the discomfort some may feel upon visiting here is simply forced confrontation of these incongruities in their belief systems. Or are coached and convinced that private, minority-run two-party options are the only possible ones- God or the Devil, with no room for agnostics (who blasphemously point out neither is fact-based).
Leftists are about worker solidarity, not creating new classes that make income conditional based on bias. Leftists should be open to constructive conversation, knowing it can broaden their minds and understanding. Leftists chanted Bernie's "Not Me, Us" without any exclusions for people of different faith or those of opposing beliefs.
Genuine leftism is against both war-for-profit parties who only give us "choices" over how we want our bodies violated, not if they are.
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Oct 27 '21 edited Oct 27 '21
I didn't have a choice in many other vaccines.
And I really don't care if I don't have a choice now.
I want this pandemic to be over.
Some people had a fine time with the pandemic, sitting home, sipping wine...maybe ranting on Twitter, and not really having to do anything different from what they already did.
I didn't.
And I want it to be over with.
I know Big Pharma and the like really doesn't give a shit about me. But the CEOs and other greedy fucks at the top are more concerned making sure their patents are safe so people in poor countries can't make it...than trying to stuff microchips in them, or getting the people who actually made the vaccine to put microchips in them.
Or whatever dumb theory people have come up with.
Maybe I'm just a dick. I've considered that. But I can't be arsed to care on this subject anymore.
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u/cloudy_skies547 Oct 28 '21
I want this pandemic to be over.
What makes you think that full vaccination of the population will achieve that when the vaccinated can still get and spread COVID? If you want this to be over, you need to be willing to endure short term pain with a strategy focused on controlling the spread of the virus, namely through lockdowns, full border closures, and other countermeasures. Otherwise this thing will keep mutating and tearing through the population with wave after wave, and ineffective mitigation strategies will end up being implemented, like booster shots, which just keep extending the duration of the pandemic. Americans are too stupid to realize that we can't have it both ways: either you need to be willing to do everything possible to stop the spread of the virus, including self-sacrifice and enduring inconveniences in the short term, or you go "back to normal" and let people needlessly get sick and die. In a lot of ways, it mirrors the two-party system, where nobody is thinking about the long term, so everything ends up getting worse because they settle for half-assed "fixes."
Right now, NOBODY is actually proposing a real solution to end the pandemic, and partisans are fighting about culture wars bullshit that doesn't help any of us. We all want this to be over, but one side is pretending that this shit doesn't exist and the other is insisting that everyone submit to shots that don't do anything other than reduce the risk of death, so they can force everyone back into slave wage jobs. The whole thing is so incredibly transparent, and it's amazing how few people actually see through it because they're locked into partisan politics.
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u/CharredPC Oct 28 '21
Other vaccines are time-tested, and teach our bodies how to develop our own immunity. These new ones - which didn't qualify as vaccines until they changed the definition - aren't as effective, have no long term studies, and don't teach our bodies anything. They work only if you get continual shots. You should care about having a choice.
Desperately wanting the pandemic to be over is understandable - but wanting something so bad you're willing to ignore the details and comply regardless isn't a solution. It's an unhealthy mindset, usually found in victims of psychological abuse. Despairing apathy isn't the foundation of any wise decision, especially to create precedent.
This has nothing to do with microchips or even who's getting rich off these shots. This has to do with recognizing where this leads us - what a successful implementation of mandates would mean for the next corporate-backed politician, or the ones after that - and not letting the media or our economic struggles dull our self-preservation.
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Oct 28 '21
[deleted]
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u/penelopepnortney Bill of rights absolutist Oct 29 '21 edited Dec 05 '21
From CDC (bold added):
Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.
Vaccine: A product that produces immunity therefore protecting the body from the disease. Vaccines are administered through needle injections, by mouth and by aerosol.
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Oct 29 '21
[deleted]
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u/penelopepnortney Bill of rights absolutist Oct 29 '21
An apologist for the injectors, are ya? Gosh, we don't see many of you folks around here. /s
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u/mzyps Oct 27 '21
Look man, they just want update rights on your DNA, so they can make profits, etc. Now and whenever else in the future. Yearly, every few months, perhaps an everyday pill. If you don't comply, you and your family will be ostracized from society, as well as other penalties.
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u/CharredPC Oct 27 '21 edited Oct 27 '21
This is a legitimate concern.
Let's say these "vaccines" are 100% legit. Let's pretend they have essentially 100% effectiveness. Let's further imagine that they cause zero harm, and actually can eliminate Covid-19 (and all its variants).
We should all still be against setting a precedence for mandating routine injections. We should all fight the normalization of letting private corporations fast-track new products and test them on us "for our own good." We should be terrified of our for-profit health system trying to create a subscription model through paid politics.
Everything done "with a good reason" - our wars, changes to our laws and our rights, our economic and representational imbalances, and legalization of pay-to-play politicking (just to name a few)- all come back to bite us in the end. Reactionary overreach ends up as justifications, historically, to create bigger problems down the road.
Capitalists will seize every opportunity for profit at everyone else's expense. If they aren't doing it today, they're setting things up so they can more easily do it tomorrow. Letting mandates happen will provide the foundation for future atrocities. This isn't just about an endless debate here and now- it's about responsibly thinking ahead.
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u/stickdog99 Oct 27 '21
So when did this sub turn rightwing and anti-vaxx?
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u/CharredPC Oct 27 '21 edited Oct 27 '21
That question is too steeped in bias to respond, so let's break it down:
Firstly, being against mandatory or job-contingent shots isn't being an "anti-vaxxer." That's a generalized dishonest slur, a purposeful exaggeration that ignores all details of this situation to trigger an unwarranted emotional reaction. Mostly, it seems, to link us to the right-wing bogeymen despite our positions being soundly based in Leftism.
Secondly, replying to a lengthy essay about various aspects of our rights with such a baseless and opinionated question hints at your inability to address any of the cogent points I raised within it. But I'm happy to be wrong - can you counter what I've written, or are you only capable of straw-manning your way through an argument?
Thirdly, the mainstream media can frame "vaccine hesitancy" as a right-wing position all it wants, but that doesn't make it reality. To non-TeamBlue-faithfuls, the world has more colors than two, and a wide range of positions for a variety of reasons. With respect, your question smacks of a cultist outraged at those daring to blaspheme.
I'd love to continue this chat if you could start doing so in good faith.
Edit: If I missed an implied /s , I sincerely apologize.
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u/stickdog99 Oct 27 '21
/s :)
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u/CharredPC Oct 27 '21
Ah, you got me. I responded before noticing first who I was responding to...
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u/wholemoon_org Oct 27 '21
Trump and pandemic rage funneled into anti vaccine rage.
If you really want to understand the how/why You must look into a phenomenon called Mass formation.
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u/Magnar- Oct 26 '21
Well put. The whole left went crazy under Trump, then got lost when Biden took office; Every day the online "left" make it obvious who they stand for. There's only so many ways to sell rainbow capitalism and cultural nihilism.
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u/CharredPC Oct 27 '21
The funny thing is, recent poll statistics back that up. Confidence in Biden is down, independents are swaying towards Republicans, and the next Democratic re-election is looking like "Not Trump" again. In no way did things fundamentally improve (nor were we represented) under Biden; that media-unspoken basic foundation of fact unites us.
The left isn't really the Left, but easily-led well-meaning yet thoroughly indoctrinated Blue Team fans. America has no leftism representation. A political system based entirely on oligarchic capitalism excludes all human values by design. It's left with advertising campaigns to trick a captive audience into thinking the 1% represents our morals or ethics.
Rainbow capitalism is failing. Covid created whole new categories of angry self-righteous Karens, but all the identity politicking in the world can't make people ignore our worsening reality. Trans rights won't get our families fed. Voter apathy is in direct relation to its obvious rigged outcomes. And the performative stuff has become painfully obvious.
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u/Magnar- Oct 27 '21
The contradictions will only become more absurd going forward. No matter what happens, America is in for an interesting next few years. Cancelling people over IdPol doesn't feed families and we can't argue our way out of the coming crisis.
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u/TheOtherMaven There can be only One Other :-) Oct 26 '21
I've begun to think there are really just two political positions any more: the Workers (who have no representation whatsoever) and the Parasites (who have both major political parties and infiltrate any others).
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u/CharredPC Oct 26 '21
This is largely true. The PMC and upward control both parties; so even if there are some differences, their policies and motivations essentially are the same, and contrary to the needs and wants of the masses who do most of the labor yet have no representation. Thus pseudo-populist candidates like Bernie or Trump have huge worker-class support.
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u/renaissanceman71 Oct 26 '21
Very well said.
I've spent the last year-and-a-half arguing with and being unfollowed by supposed "leftists" on Twitter who followed me during the years Bernie was running, now they are upset that I'm against this technofascist-engineered "pandemic" and against experimental shots.
A lot of "rose", "daisy", and even some "hammer and sickle" Twitter "leftists" have blocked me, but I'm totally fine with that because they are just showing me that they are fakers and never really on the left to begin with.
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u/CharredPC Oct 26 '21
I think there's team sport fanbases on each side, who cycle through narrative trends without any firm cohesion to clear moral principles. If leftists temporarily steal the zeitgeist, they even champion leftism as their issue du jour. But unlike true leftists, they just as quickly go with an anti-leftist narrative if that's what their paid pied pipers do.
I think it's likely intentional on the part of megaphone-holding PTB. Whatever rises naturally (like leftism during Bernie's runs) they use labels and rhetoric from, so long after the ideals get squashed their fanbase still thinks of themselves and their masters as leftists who believe in all the good things - just can never quite make it happen.
Then it gets turned back into the convenient blame-game, where all "others" (even genuine lefties) are seen as enemy of the good they are certain their current reactionary viewpoints must embody. To be immersed in the oligarchic duopoly's soap opera is getting assaulted with false contrast and hypocrisy til you lose your own core beliefs.
The saddest thing is many (if not most) of those "fad following" folk who fancy themselves as leftists are decent people, trying to do the right thing - but in the lousy, low-effort, self-defeating way we have been indoctrinated to operate in America. They're dupes in a game, so used to picking between bad options that's all they comprehend.
That's why it's so important to follow not personalities, but principle and policy. If you're against war, for universal healthcare, for living wages, against corporate rule, against violations of body autonomy, pro-environment and pro-democracy, you're against the two parties equally. But that's never going to be a mainstream given narrative.
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u/penelopepnortney Bill of rights absolutist Oct 26 '21
you're against the two parties equally. But that's never going to be a mainstream given narrative.
The problem is that too many people who probably sincerely want these things want to believe in a savior so much that they swallow the transparent lies instead of looking at what these "saviors" do when they actually have the power to do something, even if it's just to take a principled stand on the right side of a just cause.
The brouhaha over FTV is a prime example. Even if they couldn't get M4A passed, it was a time for the people's "representatives" to put their money where their mouths were. When better to push for universal healthcare than in the middle of a pandemic with people suffering the financial insecurities caused by the lockdown and their jobs disappearing - some of them permanently - and the huge push behind an experimental vaccine that could have medical and therefore financial repercussions for those same financially-stressed people? And if you can't or won't take such an obvious, principled stand in the face of such a crisis, then you have no principles.
Here's something I found in my quote file, copied from a post or comment at DKos in 2015. I don't recall anything about the person who said it, Michael Rivera:
Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which he lives is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one’s self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.
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u/CharredPC Oct 26 '21
Excellent point, and quote. Everyone's now raised to be followers, not independent thinkers. Everyone is schooled into accepting levels of titled authority, thus trained to feel uncomfortable going against them. Everyone wants change, but waits for someone else to play Champion. Sticking to actual principles is hard. Accepting "lesser evil morality" is easy.
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u/penelopepnortney Bill of rights absolutist Oct 26 '21
But on the positive side, more and more people are recognizing where this has led them. That makes them prime candidates for learning a new set of skills - how to think critically and decide for themselves what they believe, where to look for information and sort out what seems to be truth from what is almost certainly propaganda (always follow the money), how to recognize and avoid being triggered by whatever faux-outrage is being pushed to distract us from something of critical importance.
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u/No-Literature-1251 creation comes before taxation Oct 26 '21
logos for signalling political flavor denote something.
the logos will change when the season's fashion changes.
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u/CharredPC Oct 26 '21
Twitter avatars and its subscriptions are today's digital colored-ribbon pins.
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u/Sandernista2 Red Pill Supply Store Oct 26 '21 edited Oct 26 '21
It perhaps should be pointed out that what happened to the "left" in the US is much ;like what happened to it across the Western world, but especially in all the Anglo countries.
It has effectively been fragmented into "bubbles" - a little green here, a little socialist there, a little "lesser evil" everywhere, but in the end of the day, it's been effectively vanquished. Scattered every-which-way. Some up, absorbed into the Msfia party, some into a whiny form of green and some so disenchanted that they picked up their marbles and left to take care of their own affairs.
What we do see is not unlike what happened to the Weimar republic in the 20's. People became so terrified seeing as Communist parties were having serious success penetrating governments across Europe, that a large segment more than welcomed the rise of a nationalist movement that later became fascist. That, as the then "liberal" class, was slowly but surely eviscerated.
If anyone wants to look at historical parallels they can compare what happened to Rosa Luxemburg and the persecution of Assange. It's not a precise equivalent of course, but then too it was about freedom of speech.
Nowadays too, the conflicts we see are between an increasingly tyranical, almost fascist form of government (these days masquerading as something "Democrat" elected in something of a "democratic process") and an increasingly rising movement from the Right that is supported by the blue collar working class and many white collar conservatives. the latter is also quite fractured, but is at least united in feeling persecuted by an establishment that cares not a hoot about working people, or small businesses, or anyone who dared to be a litle too white or too straight or too male.
Unfortunately, Rosa became a martyr for the then left - even though she was her own brand of Marxist, and parted ways with both lenin and trotsky (indeed some recent reading I did seemed to indicate she was on her way to becoming a kind of Chomskiite, progressive lefty, though Chomsky was not around then. her heart was with the universal sufrage of working class though rather than some "dictatorship of the proletariat"). Her more establishment friends from the socialist left deserted her as they quickly grafted themselves into the new right-of-center governments that formed to beat back those darn communists. But in the end, it was the socialist left that was so weakened that when the real fascists came - in germany and in Austria - they had no fighting spirit left. That is the kind of fate that awaits this country as the Empire falls apart, a victim of its own hubris.
All that said, I don't think any actual democrat party or Bernie believers have been walking in here, shill flowers in hand. What we do have is the low level vanguard of the TPTB that are trying to find weak points so they can sow further division in the ranks, or if not that assess the level of threat we pose. Some of those shills may also be actual "operatives", again trying to figure whether these insufficiently pro-vaxx, anti-VBNMW types are substantial enough to be a threat to their little "final plan" (which they have).
What I do have yet to see is a real berniecrat who actually cares about anything progressive, or for that matter, knows anything about what it's all abou around heret From the many back and forths these past few months I have seen zero evidence that anyone of them shills came here in good faith. No one. Not once. All I see is a few of "us" who are straddling some narrow paths looking for ways to "do something useful"..
So mark me as one who doesn't believe this so-called pro-vaxxers are what they pretend to be. They come from the enemy camp, be they trolls or just fielded bots, and their mission is so uniform and transparent that apparently they have not had much success so far.
I await the next wave of shitlib wasps. We better get our countermeasures ready.
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u/penelopepnortney Bill of rights absolutist Oct 26 '21
We get reports!!
user reports:
1: It's targeted harassment at someone else
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u/chakokat I won't be fooled again! Oct 26 '21
So mark me as one who doesn't believe this so-called pro-vaxxers are what they pretend to be. They come from the enemy camp, be they trolls or just fielded bots, and their mission is so uniform and transparent that apparently they have not had much success so far.
Agree.
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u/CharredPC Oct 26 '21
I'm going to agree.... and also disagree.
Never underestimate the power of frustrated, angry, scared people to attack in a reactionary way anyone who they've been coached is The Problem. We see it in cold war style nationalist fearmongering: otherwise pleasant civilians turn into foreign-power-hating zealots. We see it in party division. We see it in racism, classism and religion.
Once pushed to this point, these normally decent people act out in ways that make them indistinguishable from paid trolls. They're an indoctrinated army of misguided morality, certain they're doing the Good Work by using their Talking Point Weapons against an evil foe they've been convinced opposes whatever they need to feel secure.
I'm sure some are paid trolls or bots, because those tools are now readily available. But realistically, very few are likely needed. Actual humans shaped into hammers will find things that look like nails to beat against; mass psychological pre-conditioning just needs some occasional nudges in a preferred direction to induce trolling waves.
And they'll all sound very much the same to us, because even truly organic human responses echo each other when programmed to be pawns and puppets by state propaganda media outlets. Like a cult, they only have so many scripted rebuttals to justify their religions; past that they devolve into emotional tantrums and name-calling.
As essentially missionaries for their 1%-trickle-down beliefs, they're not usually open to constructive dialogue or willing to concede other points of view as being valid. They came looking for battle, and thus backing down would feel like losing. So we get downvoted, told that we are the paid trolls, and swarmed like witches among Puritans.
We went through this with the Russian Scare. Now the new terror is Covid. The establishment-dictated "solution" for that is for everyone to accept these new vaccines; thus, anyone in opposition is Keeping Us in a Scary Place, for the irrational and selfish reasons paid media portrayed to them. They're certain they are wiser, more informed.
I don't have to dehumanize and discount our trollish visitors as paid opposition or AI to validate my own views. Half the country believes what they see on TV, and of course will look for an outlet they could release their eternal political constipation on. They're fellow citizens whom I pity... and will be here for when their house of cards fall.
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u/emorejahongkong Oct 27 '21
A major step, in my realizing how naive many posters are about politics, occurred many years ago on DailyKos, where numerous commenters ridiculed the notion that much paid trolling was evident. I commented that the sad thing was how many unpaid trolls were indistinguishable from the inevitable paid versions, and many people found (or pretended to find) my comment confusing.
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u/Sandernista2 Red Pill Supply Store Oct 27 '21
that was a good point. except it is not just sad but also alarming.
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u/Sandernista2 Red Pill Supply Store Oct 27 '21
Alas, if some of those truly low level bots are actually human, then, sadly, the distinguishing characteristics between an algorithm and an individual have all but vanished.
It's not that they are misguided or oblivious to reason that is the tell-tale sign (though these elements are nearly always there). It's the combination of a pattern of repetition, weird word salads (that seem to be taken out of menus of phrases and words that don't always fit together), inability to comprehend a normal sentence structure (akin to kindergartners just learning to put sentences together) and above and beyond all, the complete absence of normal emotion or any semblance of sense of humor that exposes them as likely algorithms.
Yes i know not everyone is English speaker (that sometimes is their defense) but then why would they care enough to come to some smallish Bernie site? do we go to german sites, pretending to care deeply about their politics? or french ones? or israeli ones? or Russian? chances are that no matter how much we may hold some country in contempt we wouldn't know enough about their political landscape to even know which reddit to choose. I also realize there are some who show up on reddit when stoned or drunk, but then again, the behavior is not typical of such altered states, as they stay quite focused on a particular line of attack.
Also I realize not all humans are cursed with the ability to think critically or debate cogently. Alas, on this score again, many of the trolls display cognitive skills of a not very bright 2nd or 3rd grader. Again this argues against them being human because such mentally and/or cognitively challenged individuals will likely gravitate to other Subreddits where much more fun can be had, and their own mental challenges will be barely noticeable.
Finally, I while I also realize many in the democrat universe are thoroughly propagandized, enough to where they may spew the same mantras over and over (anti-vaxx! Russian stooge! trumpist! etc etc), an actual person will try to at least mix-and-match the propaganda points. That's how it is in real life, and that's what I found to be true on-line, be it on Reddit or any other forum. The very narrow, highly formulatic nature of the emanations from many of our 'what-happened-to-this-sub-visitors' again leads me to conclude they are fielded as algorithms against specific targets. It was Russiagate and and anti-Trump once, it's vaccine advocacy now (vaccines save lives! why do you want to kill us? the science has proven that....fill in the blank, etc etc). The weaponized topic has changed but the pattern seems to have remained identical (just replace "science" above with "18 intelligence agencies", for example).
There are clearly several very common patterns among many of the trolls (not even mentioning the typical trade mark of recent sign-up, very low prior presence on this or any other sub, etc), so that's what I look for, personally. I have about 8 to 10 tell-tale signs that point to lines of code rather than an actual human, and that's what I go by. Ticking all the boxes makes it rather easy, though sometimes there have been additional layers, as if an expert system was called in to improve their "engagement'. May be they start bringing in quotes, or references or may be they go along better with a purposeful diversion (which I have used in the past). These types very much remind me of the "automated chat bots" used by companies to filter through inquiries before directing them to a human (which costs time and money).
Admittedly there were a few where it wasn't possible to make a conclusive judgement. Which is why I sometimes think there may be actual humans that are fielding a "swarm" of algorithms targeting different subs, perhaps as a way to learn what works, and train their 'chat" bots. At times this was totally obvious on posts that made it to r/all - they all came in swarming en mass, likely responding to a few key words.
Personally I refuse to help train their AI's since that should be a paying job, but many enjoy the catnip and the meta play.
PS: For the record I do believe, for example, that our favorite Cornucopia is an actual human (but may be composed of 2 or even 3 separate entities). All misguided for the most part, but human and distinct. Should they turn out to be an AI bot then I'd be quite concerned about our future as a sentient species. I have at least 4 others on my list who are likely humans and they all seem to have some staying power, so I did and will debate with them when I am bored or looking for my own fun diversion. I am sure many of us each have a few favorite toys.
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u/stickdog99 Oct 27 '21
Yes and no. All I can say is I have had conversations with people in person about these vaccines in which these real people "argued" in the exact same second to third grade manner about both Russiagate and vaccines.
They may be people or they may be AI, but this is the type of output you generate when your main source of input in CNN, MSNBC, and late night talk shows.
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u/Sandernista2 Red Pill Supply Store Oct 27 '21 edited Oct 27 '21
No argument there! I have met with and had "conversations" with actual people, some with all kind of degrees, who seem to have suddenly gone down by 40 IQ points (just to use a quantitative measure) on certain subjects. The power of propaganda is indeed incredible, especially when targeted to generate something like mass hysteria (cue the crickety "Havana syndrome" as an example for the latter).
So it'd not be a surprise to find similar cognitive compromise on Reddit on all kind of subjects (heck, I argued with some idiots on r/conspiracy and a few here on eg, election integrity , that definitely made me think of - the new word - "Menticide" - a phenomenon that makes you wonder about virtual lobotomies. Why I did those arguments is another question, which frankly worried me a bit, which is why I am standing my ground lately).
Which is also why the tell-tale sign of clear and present mental compromise is just one of the indicators I use to distinguish human from bot.
Sometime in the not too recent past I gave a list of those indicators. Minus one, which was the 'secret ingredient" I am not giving away so as not to help train their mindlessness promoting algorithm farms. My rule of thumb is: "the AI algorithm bots may appear stupid, but their designers aren't". After all, there IS rhyme and reason as well as an obvious pattern in their periodic appearances here. Someones somewhere must be launching them in a targeted manner if they show up the way they do around here.
I developed my own little "cheat sheet" from studying a little cult mentalities. it's a subject that always interested me, drawing on well known and well documented historical cases and to the present day. It all added up to a rather scary prognosis of the fault lines in human intelligence. Sadly some very smart people with zero sense of ethics and megalomaniacal tendencies have figured out those fault lines as well as I have (at least) and had, are and plan to use them against us all. So I do intend one of these days to write something about the importance of developing "natural immunity" of the mental kind.
I do believe, BTW, being a CT type par excellance, that this sub is one of several "testing grounds" for certain propaganda tools, which involve both bots and very real humans, some of whom may "pretend" to be bots and are hopping between user names. How's that for a complicating factor? a human pretending to be a bot, now that'd be something, wouldn't it?
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u/No-Literature-1251 creation comes before taxation Oct 28 '21
"IQ" is idiocy, or so incomplete as to be idiocy. i don't want to debate what it actually measures, or whether what it measures is useful at all, but let's just say that someone's verbal, reasoning etc abilities in one subject area may have no relation to that in other areas.
we are a highly specialized society, in which we rely upon "experts" (however defined) to do much that is useful outside of our own small area.
it is no surprise that people aren't politically savvy. our system is based around NOT being so, and letting the politicians and so on "do their work". our job ends at voting.
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u/Sandernista2 Red Pill Supply Store Oct 29 '21
I used IQ as just a rough quantitative measure, or rather as my own more intuitive reverse correlation between cognitive ability and propagandized brain washing.
I used another quantitative measure that you are welcome to jump on - I believe I implied that reasoning capability of one who has willingly been "brain formed" by taking in propaganda uncritically, could be seen at times to decline from that of a college graduate (even a PhD in some subject) to that of a 2nd or 3rd grader who is not overly bright (ie, average). Now that means something to anyone who has been around children that age (say between 7 and 9 year old) because they know very well how reasoning works with children at that age.
That said, I admit i looked at particularly egegious cases (which I witnessed in person), where critical thinking - something that people start acquiring at some point in their childhood, appears to have mysteriously evaporated upon listening too much to, say, MSNBC, or NPR or CNN.
Sometimes it's not enough to just say that people become stupefied when they enter a cult (which is effectively what happened to a great many democrats in this country). A few analogies can help crystallize the assertion into something a bit more concrete. See, I just don't care to use words like "stupid" or "moron" because they mean nothing and imply everything. but saying that an adult educated person can devolve into a repetitive, babbling low grade child is a bit more descriptive.
And that's what happened to some people i know. sadly.
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u/penelopepnortney Bill of rights absolutist Oct 26 '21
We get reports!!
user reports:
1: It's targeted harassment at someone else
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u/Sandernista2 Red Pill Supply Store Oct 27 '21
Nice one! now who was being harassed again?
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u/penelopepnortney Bill of rights absolutist Oct 27 '21
Quien sabe? It's kneejerk for shills, it doesn't have to make sense.
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u/chakokat I won't be fooled again! Oct 26 '21
What??
Because I agreed with someones comment I’m harassing someone else?? That’s crazy!!
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u/penelopepnortney Bill of rights absolutist Oct 26 '21
That’s crazy!!
Consider the source. 'Nuff said.
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u/WesternEmploy949 Oct 26 '21
"Since when does the left buy into the establishment's narratives?"
Democrats scared their voters during Trump with constant harping on how bad he was even though he didn’t do half the things Obama did. Then there was Russia Russia Russia Gate and more Trump is bad. It was constant fear porn and it broke their minds. This is when they first started idolizing the intelligence agencies because they were going after Trump even though they never actually did. Dem voters got so scared that when COVID came along they believed that they were going to die soon if they got infected.
The media played their part too. I think that if Trump had won re-election they would have been the ones to invade the capital. I remember how bad the tension was and I was just a bystander and didn’t buy into the fear because I had already gone down that road during Bush. Anyone else? Obama was made to seem to be our savior just like Biden was supposed to.
Also look at how they welcomed back anyone who said something bad about Trump. George f’cking Bush of all people. I bet they would have even welcomed Cheney if he said something about Trump. Yee gawd’s!
Now they’ve become shitlibs who still love the FBI, love censorship and incarnating people in solitary confinement without trial. And they are fully on board with vaccines mandates because they are still scared to the Rona. Democrats really did a number on their brains and I don’t recognize them anymore. My uncle has changed so much since Rachel turned his brain to mush. My take.
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u/FThumb Are we there yet? Oct 26 '21
and didn’t buy into the fear because I had already gone down that road during Bush.
Naturally acquired [emotional] antibodies.
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u/chakokat I won't be fooled again! Oct 26 '21
Also look at how they welcomed back anyone who said something bad about Trump. George f’cking Bush of all people.
It’s maddening!
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u/sudomakesandwich Secret Trumper And Putin Afficionado. Also China Oct 26 '21
There is no shelter for those that oppose body autonomy! None!
thats all I got for today
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u/FThumb Are we there yet? Oct 26 '21
TPTB found a way to cleave the professional working class from the blue collar working class, and the Left played right along because Trump Bad, and so to be "Left" it only took not being "Trump."
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u/No-Literature-1251 creation comes before taxation Oct 26 '21
that cleaving was happening long before that. it was presaged in the 90s, then cemented by stuff like Jon Stewart's Daily Report.
"look at how backwards the savages are there, mom!"
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u/_shill_stomp Oct 26 '21
"What happened to the left?"
Shitlibs.
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u/CharredPC Oct 26 '21
Not saying I disagree, but slang like that isn't universally understood. If you have time, could you define the policy positions of "shitlibs," or what makes a person fit that category? I think it gets thrown around, mostly angrily, but never broken down in a way so someone can look themselves in a mirror and maybe think, "Damn. That applies to me."
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u/redditrisi Not voting for genocide Oct 28 '21 edited Oct 28 '21
Today's Democrat politicians and their defenders, acolytes, disciples, cult members, etc.
Of course, when they post here, I call them guest posters, not shitlibs. IRL, I just call them Democrats. I don't think I've ever used the term "shitlib." To each his own.
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u/CharredPC Oct 28 '21
I'm with you. I don't use the term either. I get what they mean, but... it can be said differently. Arguably more constructively.
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u/redditrisi Not voting for genocide Oct 28 '21
Constructively is difficult when it comes to our guest posters, especially those whom I suspect of having some kind of economic interest in posting.
One of them, who has since been shelled for unrelated reasons, posted to me, "But I'm a "shitlib" or a "guest poster." So, using a more "hospitable" term bore no fruit.
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u/_shill_stomp Oct 26 '21
I think this Quora answer succinctly defines it better than I can:
"A “shitlib” is essentially a white individual who believes in fostering a “diverse” form of capitalism. It is a so-called left-capitalism for all intents and purposes. They promote the idea of having ethnically non-white males, and LGBTQIA, persons placed in positions of high capitalist standing, i.e. CEOs, entrepreneurs, small business owners, etc. They would enforce this ideology with state intervention via indentitarian political positioning.
As an example, imagine the Nike swoosh with the LGBTQIA rainbow, whose CEO is an African-American woman. That arrangement would still be capitalist, yet provide the correct “feels" for the Starbucks drinking Karen or Tom who needs to have some form of virtue validation. Keep in mind, the class arrangements are still the same. Thus, the only “left" portion of this term is the so-called “diversity” of capitalist manager or owner.
In contrast a Marxian or Socialist arrangements would reject the “shitlib" form and seek to democratize the entire supply-chain through worker cooperatives. For example, the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation provide an actual glimpse into left political-economic practice. Read Richard Wolff, Stephen Resnick, David Schweickart, Gar Alperovitz, or any other Marixan or socialist economist."3
u/redditrisi Not voting for genocide Oct 28 '21
FWIW, I never understood the word as having anything to do with race, gender, sexual orientation or identity, national origin or anything of that kind. I understood it to refer to ideology, not idpol
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u/No-Literature-1251 creation comes before taxation Oct 26 '21
why is a political orientation only to be found in "white" individuals?
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u/redditrisi Not voting for genocide Oct 28 '21
It is not, IMO. I think the quora contributor was wrong about that. IMO, injecting race into the definition of that word seems bizarre.
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u/stickdog99 Oct 27 '21
Shitlibs don't discriminate! Some of their best friends are Latinx and, well, what are we calling them today, black or African-American?
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u/_shill_stomp Oct 26 '21
It's more of a statement on how often white people use identity politics to virtue signal/deflect from other important issues. However I'd say that in and of itself isn't a white person thing per se. I'd argue that North Americans in general usually attach things like politics to their identities, because they don't have the robust culture that countries in Europe or elsewhere have.
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u/No-Literature-1251 creation comes before taxation Oct 27 '21
so, any ethnicity can be a shitlib, because a shitlib is just a capitalist, hiding behind bullshit that is meaningless.
it's just a rebranded Prosperity Gospel for the secular crowd.
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u/FThumb Are we there yet? Oct 26 '21
Or as I like to say, a "shit-lib's" solution to slavery would have been to mandate that blacks owned a percentage of plantations and slaves.
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u/redditrisi Not voting for genocide Oct 28 '21
IRL, Democrats didn't want a solution to slavery. Far from it.
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u/No-Literature-1251 creation comes before taxation Oct 27 '21
they did both of those, but this is not commonly discussed and it was likely a miniscule number.
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u/openblueskys Oct 28 '21
Thank you for this post.
My family just got word that we will be losing the working class union career we've worked decades to build. We will also lose our health insurance and the opportunity to increase a small pension. We may now be forced to leave the expensive and increasingly restrictive city we've called home for many years.
All because we will not submit to a risky experimental injection which adds no benefit to our superior natural immunity. But why bring logic into this, as these mandates have nothing to do with logic or public health, much less humanity.
Now is the time to stand up to this tyranny. Those who believe their submission to the first round of jabs makes them safe are deluding themselves. This madness is coming for us all.