3/5/20 - Insurrection, Resurrection, and The Rubicon

Super Tuesday Political Dump. How did Biden revive himself? It's simple, really. Fighting extremism with extremism is suicide. Also, fanatical ideological religions, the UK canary in the colony's coal mine, our own wokeflake tumor, the Youthquake fantasy, and your righteous revolution: who's actually buying?




--Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!

--Fuck Twitter!

3/2/20 - Propaganda, Trust, Coronavirus, and You

How will the for-profit boutique/reality show/agitation news media model affect how we respond to the virus? Have a drink. Make sure it's not bleach. Includes a quick introduction to Matt Taibbi's book Hate Inc. and material from Your Undivided Attention on the reality apathy and the abandonment of trust in public institutions and each other. 

Listen to Your Undivided Attention here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/

--Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!

2/23/20 - "Vladdy Loves Bernie?" Or "It's The Destabilization, Dummy!"

Of course Putin's playing both sides and assisting Bernie in the Democratic primary. It's about agitation, discord, and eroding the public's already fractured belief it itself, not ideology. This is the perfect insurgent agitation storm: who in this country are more divisive than Bernie, AOC, and Trump? The Russians aren't to blame. We are. Also, why Informational Education programs aren't coming, the simple and cynical reason our for-profit media outlets and political "leadership" won't help us immunize ourselves from foreign propaganda, and Walter Lippmann on free speech and why Facebook must eventually take the fall for our unwillingness to tell truth from falsehood. Includes a quick refresher on 2016's multi-pronged disinformation/partitioning campaign as well as a recap on Jacques Ellul's agitation propaganda material regarding the unleashing of hatred. Introducing: The Rant Alert!

Listen to "Your Undivided Attention" here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/




Don't settle for imitations! Be sure you're subscribed to an authentic Escaping The Cave feed!

2/11/20 - Unimpressed Sobriety & Sanity's Touchstone

Toddzilla's latest Message of Hope formally introduces the loyal listener to Mr. Lippmann: a Man of the People! Touched on are Lippmann's "The Phantom Public", his iconoclastic thoughts on technologically pre-historic data overload, emotional detachment, objective reality, the presumed wisdom of We the People™, and democracy's fate. Have a drink first. Also, institutions and trust are dead, a defense of the "elites", and generalists vs. specialists.



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* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net

2/6/20: The Wokeflake Follies

The Iowa Boner, The Rips Heard 'Round the World, and impeachment fails. All by Wednesday. This is the alternative?



ALSO:

• Scripture, agitation, and The Herd Mind
• Democracy implodes without the public's consensual trust
• The means, ends, and Salem Witches
• Romney, Amash, Manchin, and the Principled Pit of Hell
• Howard Dean says Democrats will challenge November's election  

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* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net

1/28/20 - The Boldness of the Herd, Political Atheism, Our Glowing Christ

The next great war: intellectual autonomy. The bold certainty of the herd, the challenges of independent thought and why seeing someone who is genuinely their own Man is so rare, the media has supplanted the church, disengaging from the ideological Holy War in favor of political atheism, and Toddzilla's Paradox: the conflict between intellectual independence and the desperate human need to belong. Still available for children's parties! Now doing bat mitzvahs!



ALSO:

• A quick impeachment fart
• You want an authoritarian
• Political Vampires
• Algorithms, Lippmann, Bernays, and You
• Silver Spoons: A Hate Crime
• The filthy Centrus Americanus
• Friendship: Loyalty & Support vs. Honesty
• Nothing can be done about climate change
• Data Overload revisited 

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* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net

1/23/20 - Hilerpes; Bernie & The Suckerfish

Hilary's flared up again, this time on Bernie's groin while Tulsi sues to find out if Valtrex is right for her. Also, It's time for the Democratic Socialist's Red Tea Party to get off the DNC's guest couch, pack their stuff, and find their own place. Go be a dragon, Daenerys.  



Remember: Toddzilla didn't kill himself. 

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1/21/20 - Richmond: The 2A and MLK

Wokeflake Twitter was apoplectic when the Richmond pro-gun rally turned out to be peaceful while the rest of world asked, "What? No Antifa? Do they not believe in their holy crusade against Fascismo de Naranja?" Not really. No one asked that. I discuss Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, how it affected Gandhi and MLK, and how that's an unexpected and possible path for gun advocates to reclaiming the narrative.

Also:

• The Invasive Species has a name
• The Democrat's fracture has gangrene
• Daenerys and the Utopian Teet
• Don't call a backdraft a boomerang
• F**K Twitter

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* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net

1/21/20 - Mobsters (2013)

This isn't being presented as an elegantly polished piece of Pulitzer-worthy prose. (Gaudy alliteration intended for sarcastic effect!) Instead, this theme--intellectual conformity and our tendency toward tribalism and the groupmind--is part of a near-future podcast and an example of some old writing that has not only stood the test of time (2013), but enhanced itself over 7-years. What's changed: gaining a better understanding of the evolutionary and social psychology leading to it. And its exploitation.

Still wondering why my comments are off? This might help. The pickup LeBon!

1/15/20 - Snakes, Survival, & Sabotage: The Need to Feel Alive

Todd discusses collective human boredom in relation to the need for a sense of purpose, struggle, and the addictive rush of just feeling alive. How a dormant survival instinct comes alive during a crisis and how, absent that, we'll manufacture one just to have something to endure, battle, and survive. Also, some some predictions for the 20's. Book those children's parties now!

Also:

• An evening with Pablo Escobar's "chemist"
• A naked man kills a fer-de-lance
• Men, middle age, and the power plant
• Healthy anxiety vs. fear
• This election won't matter
• The tyrant is in the eye of the beholder
• The Titan Tragedy
• Podcasters: they're spammy and slimy.
• ^They call that foreshadowing

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* Also check out www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net
* Fuck Twitter

1/13/20: Apocalypto and The Red Star of Moscow

Happy 2020! Are we ready? After a 2-month hiatus spent illegally hunting rhinoceros and snipe in the primitive wilds of the West Michigan wilderness, Todd welcomes the 20's with a quick episode discussing apocalyptic thinking, the coming electoral season, where to find balanced news coverage, and the rarely-used technique of actually listening to "opposition" media simply to understand where they're coming from. Eureka!

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* Also check out www.christophermedia.net
* F**k Twitter and Facebook

10/30/19: Disinformation '16, Weaponized Truth, Hillary The Halloween Zombie

This episode focusses mostly on disinformation and interference in the 2016 election and includes selected clips from the Your Undivided Attention podcast episode "From Russia With Likes" (#1) featuring disinformation expert Renée DiResta. Her expertise connects incredibly well to my Propaganda series. Topics include: the seemingly innocent methods used by the Russians exploiting personal identity to create online communities that can be manipulated via agitative identity politics later on, The Call to Action: The Manchurian Propagandist, more on the propaganda dopamine connection: validation, attacking trust in political institutions and the media, anger and apathy, exploiting freedom of speech, and the silliness of the "Global Public Square.

Listen to Your Undivided Attention here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/



ALSO:

• Hillary: probably right about Tulsi Gabbard
• Hillary: definitely right about Jill Stein
• Hillary: absolutely a Trump asset
• Hillary: continue your role as a public servant. Retire. Quietly. 
• Americans subsidize European entitlements
• Trump's "foreign policy" could lead to universal education 
• Media and Information Education: stat!
• Be sure you're subscribed to "Escaping The Cave"

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net  www.escapingthecave.com

10/24/19: Presidential Anarchy, Goebbels' Ad Company, and a Prayer

Trump's not actually retarded, is he? Pray with me, won't you?

Also:

• Quitting smoking: it sucks
• No, seriously. I prayed.
• Nicholas Carr and the "influencer"
• Joseph Goebbels and Edward Bernays
• My poor little podcast is attacked by a zombie
• Happy Halloween?
• Fu*k Twitter

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net  www.escapingthecave.com

10/09/19: Pinching The Impeachment Loaf

Are you stuck trying to build a well-reasoned, impartial, and detached impeachment snowman from competing piles of steaming cable news shit? Yeah. Me too. The only lens that works: the wide-angle agitation propaganda lens. First, a virtual colon cleanse in the form of a micro-pod.



ALSO: 

• Fuck Twitter
• Twice
• Hard

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net  www.escapingthecave.com

10/01/19: Agitational Dysfunction & Revolutionary Hatred

An introduction to LeBon, his ideas on mobs, and The Psychology of Revolution--specifically hatred. The forthcoming electoral reality show, 2020's prepared script, how the spinoffs will be cast, and what happens when our Matrix Avatar Superheroes stumble into the Desert of the Real.



ALSO:

• Unrealistic expectations in the steaming pile of Twitter
• Was it your childhood dream to be Saul Goodman?
• More on pseudo-environments and internal narratives
• Fcuk Twitter

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9/27/19: Propaganda Blindspots & The Constituent Mob

Institutions fail and democracy descends into mob rule when representative are paralyzed and terrorized by fear of their voters. Trump, Ukraine, and 2020's year-long electoral reality show disguised as an idealistic impeachment. Informational sectarianism and how it's easy to see "their" propaganda. Yours? Never! Their demagogue is your savior. There may be a way for a detaching informational unicorn treat that. MSNBC, CNN, and FOX are Pepsi, Coke, and Dr. Pepper; when everything is spin and propaganda, who's a political infidel supposed to believe?



Also:

• Alternate Informational Universes 
• Half-assed media sophistication: not enough
• Why can't we watch the opposition's media without going nuts?
• Our dueling scandals aren't automatically mutually exclusive
• More on the the Current Events Man 
• Media isn't free. You are the product being sold. 

 

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

 

9/26/19: The Internal Narrative Trojan Horse

"The fiction is taken as truth because the fiction is badly needed." A quick introduction to Walter Lippmann and the commonality between him, Ellul, Bernays, Haidt, and Harari. People can't personally perceive the world beyond their own sliver of firsthand experience. Therefore, the Current Events Man is beholden, dependent upon, and therefore exploited by the propagandist and his digital distortions. Tech and data overload confusion has made this exponentially worse. If democracy is demands an "enlightened citizenry", it's maybe doomed from the start. Paradoxically, there's a stab at some hope in here too. Weird.



ALSO:

• Te Nosce, bitches 
• Competing Scandals; Competing Networks; Competing Narratives 
• Smoking, Facebook, and associative dopamine addiction.    
• The Matrix and the Internet
• The responsibility and danger of exposing "their" delusion
• All Cats Meow
• Why we believe the ridiculous
• Finding hope in human imperfection
• More on likability and art
• The Hobgoblin  
• Where the hell is Jill Stein? #NeverForget

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net & www.escapingthecave.com

9/18/19: Newton's Third Law of Totalitarian Messiahs

Agitation propaganda doing its work, speechcrime taking root in the form of virtual media mobs enforcing cancel culture and point-of-view authoritarianism, the Wokeflake Messiah will arrive soon, Newton's Third Law of Extremism, the slave's spirituals and frightened children scrambling to the ideological church to be soothed by visions of a future Heaven on Earth.



ALSO: 

• Toxic Compromise
• The Election Won't Matter
• At all.
• Wokeflakes Becoming Trump
• We The Authoritarian People

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8/29/19: Propaganda: Agitating The Inner Ape

Agitation and Integration: two often closely related but very different types of propagandas: one used to provoke internal conflict the other to shape members of a population into a mold. Agitation: The propaganda of insurgency and revolution. Includes how internal enemies are used as scapegoats to manufacture then exploit hatreds as means to an insurgent's end, Mao's view on "the enemy residing in every man" and fitting him into the "Socialist Mold", Hitler's internal agitation, spontaneous volunteer propagandists, and how facts and "truth" are irrelevant to the person burning with primal hatred.

ALSO: 

• Agitation propaganda during the American Revolution 
• Triggering revolution by provoking hate? It's easy!
• Exploiting hatred and the path to genocide
• Hatred: small investment, high return
• Agitation and Integration can be used simultaneously
• Utopia is totalitarian
• Intellectuals: More susceptible to integration propaganda than dolts
• Intellectuals and self-bigotry
• "Can I hate you?"
• Justification, rationalization and stampeding enraged elephants
• Agitation to Integration: extremely difficult
• Successful Agitation + Failed Integration = Mob Rule
• Winter Is Here
• Yep. It's a doozy. 

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

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8/22/19: Propaganda: Contradictions, Agitation Media, Typhoid Zuck

Propaganda's ambiguity and contradictions including: creating tensions while relieving others, an introduction to the companion propagandas: agitation and integration and how they overlap; self-justification and imposed guilt; attachment and ostracizing oneself to join the "enemy; politicization and privatization; "Why die for Danzig?' and how political orphans benefit extremists and authoritarians.



ALSO:

• Andrew Sullivan on the boomerang
• Post-Truth hatred and division: a bigger threat than climate change
• Don't blame the bartender for getting you drunk
• Twitter, Facebook, and Typhoid Mary
• Atomic Ping Pong
• Our personal broadcast stations
• The Russia investigation saved the Democrats
• Setting up your triage tent
• Forget the mob; save yourself
• Information or Propaganda? Can you tell? Does it even matter?
• The Matrix & Propaganda

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

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*Also check out www.christophermedia.net