Friday, June 19, 2020

6/19/20 - Discourse? Or Just Waiting To Talk?

On the Social Media Disease: how exhibitionist combat and agitprop disguised as "debate" is having an effect on verbal comprehension and the ability to engage in meaningful organic conversations. Also, demagogues exploit and thrive on chaos, boycotting the for-profit Media Division Complex in favor of each other, and the switch: it's internal. It's still the people.



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More: www.facebook.com/escapingthecave

Thursday, June 18, 2020

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 

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

6/16/20 - Activist Media, Dogma as God, Marrow of Humanity

When the entire media's just abandoned their "objective" pretenses, where do you go? Also, digital detox and cutting the incoming noise, homogenous consistency of thought throughout a congregation qualifies as "religion", retained ideological attorneys, the difference between organic human beings and their virtual online projections, and the Marrow of Humanity: who we are when no one's looking. Don't worry. I'll get to the protests, riots, and thought-crime purges soon enough. Prepare yourselves accordingly!



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Beware the airlock: www.facebook.com/EscapingTheCave

Friday, June 12, 2020

11/12/16: Des Moines to Brooklyn, IA - Exploiting Fecalphelia

Destination: Iowa 80



Even on top of a bivy, sleeping on a cold trucker’s lounge floor isn’t restful, especially with a full-blown cold. So waking up at 5:30 to medicate, caffeinate, and migrate to the interstate wasn’t as much an inspired choice as an inevitable chore.

East Des Moines was brisk, but with no wind and with hot coffee keeping me warm, standing at the nearby I-80 ramp beneath a stunning heartland sunrise was pleasant. Even inspiring.

Saturday, May 23, 2020

Joan Didion's 'On Morality': The Extremist Test

There's a Bob Dylan lyric in Highlands that always makes me smile: "She said, "you don't read women authors, do you?"" For whatever reason, I typically don't with one very significant exception: Joan Didion. I bought We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, a non-fiction collection, with Orwell's. She's fantastic. Slouching Toward Bethlehem's essays/articles are on par with Mencken's, if less vitriolic and venomously entertaining! On Self-Respect and On Morality are worth finding and devouring.

Here's an excerpt from On Morality, written in 1965. That's significant, as you'll see. Crusading moral certitude isn't new. We were hatched in that fire; it's part of the American DNA and what makes us particularly susceptible to propaganda and makes this technologically amplified conflict between our moralistic ideological religions so dangerous. Didion's Lionel Trilling quote deserves its own space and I literally squealed when I saw she used the word, "agitprop!" And the last paragraph? Ooof! We need a test for those infected with the Extremist Virus. Joan Didion has it:

Thursday, May 21, 2020

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."