2/22/21 - Political Cults & Mobs 101

After a 2021 open, your friendly virtual Toddzilla mines early episodes, from 2014 & 2018, as a foreshadowing refresher on ideological religions and the Holy War being fueled by their proselytizing zombie hordes. Remember kids, mobs: they're f***ing stupid! Ask your doctor if intellectual autonomy is right for you!

More: https://toddzillax.substack.com

2/15/21 - Leaders, Puppets, Boils, and Show Trials

 

Why aren't impeachments argued before the Supreme Court instead of pre-decided partisans? What better time to revisit the ridiculous idea of Mob Wisdom and the Plague of Democratized Opinion? Are the intentionally misinformed qualified to sit on a We The People's Court Jury? And, if "the people" are going to metaphorically kidnap and blackmail their representatives, should "news" outlets be subject to perjury laws? Also, the weird thing that happens when abstractions come alive!

More: https://toddzillax.substack.com

10/26/20 - Addictive Outrage, Empathy's Path, A Nation in Heat

Todd & Brian return discussing the direct parallels between ideological and theological religion and what Dan Carlin calls The Heat: trivial outrage manufactured to manipulate media consumers for advertising profits, and how it affects us as a society. And, does it matter if our outrage triggers are fake? Is social media contributing to a literal devolution and destroying eons of self-domestication? How do we reclaim our human empathy? Are we returning to naked barbarism as we become slaves to emotional impulses that just "must" be expressed/inflicted? Also, fertile revolutionary soil and how it's the suffering who are susceptible to Snake Oil Demagoguery, Manchurian propagandists, the Electoral College, and Mencken's disturbing concept of irredeemably. What if there is no solution?

Dan Carlin's "A Recipe For Caesar": https://www.dancarlin.com/product/common-sense-319-a-recipe-for-caesar/

9/28/20 - An Invasive Species Gazes Into The Abyss

Todd & Brian discuss whether the "divine" human species is in fact both bipolar and invasive, the difficulties that come from gazing into the Abyss, and moral imperatives vs. self-righteousness: how narcissistic morality becomes naked authoritarianism. Also, where solutions to the informational anarchy crisis must begin, when the ends smother the means, how a species can summon both altruism and barbarity, and let's kill Rousseau's Noble Savage once and for all. Yes. More easy listening to help you escape the world's troubles!

 

Music: Paul Vernon and Yellow Candy

Like it? Share it!  

8/19/20 - Intellectual Populism, Enemy of the People, The Humanovirus Sh*tshow

Detailing the gloriously organic results coming from a month of social media, news, and podcasting detox. Also, boutique "news" & democratized opinion's relationship to mob rule: Ibsen's Enemy of the People, the humanovirus and its ubiquitous invasive species traits, the Dennis Doctrine, and podcasting without Sausage Party Hope and with a severed validation stream leaves one pesky unanswered question: "why the f**ck am I doing this?"

More Drew Michael: https://www.youtube.com/user/drewmichaelcomedy/videos

Like the podcast? Share it!

6/18/20 - A "Real Conversation"? Allow Me to Retort...

You say you want a real Great Racial Awakening™ dialogue? Great! Quit proselytizing long enough to take a stiff drink and have a listen. Remember: when you clicked you asked.



Also: supporting lockdown protests and the 2A while mocking militia stalkers at the capitol, burning heretics and blasphemers at the free speech stake, influencers exploiting and monetizing catastrophe and chaos, electoral Ground Hog Day, and why Biden's VP choice is maybe more important than anything. Like it? Share it!

More: www.facebook.com/escapingthecave.com 

Propaganda or Education; Patriot or Traitor; Riot or Protest?

 In one of many examples of how he knew the herd better than it knows itself, Edward Bernays, the man who took "propaganda" and rebranded it "public relations,"pointed out in the late 20's that whether you perceive something as "propaganda" or "education" depends upon what you've adopted to explain the world for you: your belief system; which god you worship. That's shamefully self-evident and explains why most are, almost literally, physically unable to consume "their" "news."

Whether you would have seen our 18th century mobs as "patriots" or "traitors" depended upon the same thing: chosen identity and an adopted perspective skewed by subjective "faith." Stampeding herd dynamics functioned the same in Boston and Philadelphia as in Paris, Moscow, Havana, and Berlin. The difference between these four and ours is that our founders understood and feared the mob. They attempted to straddle saddling a temporarily useful but snarling and unpredictably dangerous beast with long-term stability and "liberty." 

The Crowd: Mencken or LeBon?

Several times over the last few years, I'd bounced a counterargument around in my notebooks: the possibility that LeBon's character sketch of The Crowd has it backwards. The existence of a mob mentality is unquestionable, but maybe it doesn't psychologically transform an otherwise reasonable individual into a frothing barbarian. Instead, perhaps the induced hypnotic flock-state simply unleashes the domesticated savage's suppressed impulses; ones that are always boiling just beneath his thin civilized veneer.