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The Intellectualist Profile picture
@highbrow_nobrow
Jun 5, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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1/5 Supply-side economics💰claims that tax cuts for rich people and businesses spur growth. But is it that simple? Let’s delve into it. #EconomicPolicy #SupplySideEconomics Image
2/5 First up, tax cuts can boost income inequality. The rich get richer, while funding for public services, often benefiting the less affluent, takes a hit due to less government revenue 💸. #IncomeInequality 📈 Image
3/5 Second, supply-side theory assumes companies will reinvest their extra cash to grow and create jobs 👷‍♀️🧑‍✈️. But what if they use the funds for stock buybacks or increased executive pay instead? 🤔💰 #CorporateBehavior Image
4/5 Third, the idea that tax cuts will fuel enough growth to offset reduced revenues often falls short in reality, leading to bigger budget deficits and national debt 💳💔. #NationalDebt 🌪️ Image
5/5 In a nutshell, supply-side economics 📈 comes with downsides: increased inequality, dependence on corporate choices, and surging national debt. #EconomicPolicy Image
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More from @highbrow_nobrow

The Intellectualist Profile picture
Oct 1
🧵1/4: Fox News: The Engine of Disinformation That Shaped and Shattered America

In the summer of 2001, while President George W. Bush was enjoying a break at his Texas ranch, America’s future was buried in a stack of ignored intelligence reports. Among them, the now-infamous “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” memo.

The negligence was catastrophic, leading to 9/11—a tragedy that would forever alter the world. But as the dust settled from the Twin Towers, another kind of threat was taking shape—not through terror, but through information, or rather, disinformation. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News wasn’t merely informing the public; it was systematically bending reality, reshaping the world one half-truth at a time.

From the moment it launched, Fox News wasn’t interested in being a conservative counterweight to the so-called liberal media. It set out to create an alternate universe where facts were malleable, and the truth was whatever kept its audience hooked. Think of it as a political reality show, except instead of roses, viewers were handed fear, outrage, and lies. It wasn’t about keeping the public informed; it was about keeping them addicted.

The WMD Lie: Fox’s Role in Selling a War

Fox News wasn’t just reporting a war—it was crafting one. Doubt the WMD narrative? Question the invasion’s morality? You weren’t just wrong—you were unpatriotic, even traitorous. Anchors like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly weren’t journalists; they were war salesmen, packaging an invasion as a righteous crusade against evil. Fox’s “Countdown to Iraq” segments, complete with ominous music and dramatic flag imagery, reduced a complex geopolitical conflict into a high-stakes episode of 24. Saddam Hussein wasn’t just a dictator—he was the villain America had to vanquish. And the viewers? They weren’t asked to think; they were told to feel. Fear. Anger. Patriotism.

The results were as predictable as they were deadly. Research confirmed that regions with heavy Fox News consumption saw disproportionately higher support for the Iraq War, a direct result of the network’s uncritical amplification of flawed intelligence. But these aren’t just numbers on a page.

These are human lives—neighbors, family members—lost to an ideological war where ratings mattered more than responsibility. Over 4,000 American soldiers died. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis perished. And the war, a ratings bonanza for Fox, became one of the most disastrous foreign policy decisions in American history.

And the cost? A destabilized Middle East, the birth of ISIS, and a war on terror that left deep scars on the global stage. Fox didn’t stop at reporting—it manufactured consent. As former producer Alex Bronkowski admitted, “We weren’t in the business of informing. We were in the business of fear. Fear sells.” And sell, it did—like a dark rerun of America’s longest-running horror show.
theintellectualist.com/how-fox-news-r…Image
2/4: COVID-19: The Deadly Cost of Disinformation

With lessons learned from Iraq, Fox turned its attention to a new battlefield: the global pandemic. In 2020, as the world locked down to fight COVID-19, Fox was busy opening the floodgates of misinformation. This time, the enemy wasn’t a foreign dictator—it was science.

Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, the network’s stars, led the charge against masks, vaccines, and lockdowns. Carlson, with his trademark smirk, called lockdowns “the greatest infringement on personal liberty since slavery” (yes, really), while Ingraham downplayed the efficacy of vaccines, even as body counts rose.

Behind the scenes, Fox’s hypocrisy was breathtaking. Inside their own offices, strict COVID protocols were enforced. Rupert Murdoch quietly got vaccinated—one of the first to do so. The very people spreading vaccine skepticism to millions of Americans were protecting themselves, leaving their viewers to roll the dice with their lives. The result? The regions most loyal to Fox News saw higher COVID-19 deaths, with vaccine hesitancy rampant.

Take Joe Joyce, a Brooklyn bar owner who took Fox at its word, dismissed COVID as media hype, and refused to wear a mask. He died from the virus not long after. His daughter said, “He trusted them. Now he’s gone.” Stories like Joe’s never made it to air. Instead, Fox promoted figures like Robert LaMay, a Washington state trooper who refused the vaccine and became a folk hero for defying mandates—until COVID took his life. After he died, Fox moved on. His defiance was useful; his death, not so much.

But these aren’t just tragic anecdotes. Research confirmed that COVID death rates were higher in counties dominated by Fox News viewers. Once again, Fox had blood on its hands—not because of bombs, but because of lies.
theintellectualist.com/how-fox-news-r…Image
3/4: Undermining America: Fox’s Legacy of Mistrust

Fox News isn’t just a media outlet—it’s the sharpest cultural weapon ever wielded in American politics. It didn’t just fracture families; it reshaped the very DNA of the nation, turning neighbors into enemies and citizens into foot soldiers for disinformation. Fox News has left an indelible mark on America’s psyche, undermining trust in the very institutions that hold the country together. Scientists? They’re shills. The government? Corrupt. The media? The enemy of the people. Fox has turned collective action—whether it’s tackling climate change or improving healthcare—into a dirty word, equating it with government overreach and the loss of personal liberty.

And here’s the thing: Fox knows exactly what it’s doing. It has conditioned an entire segment of the population to live in a state of perpetual grievance and distrust, tuning in night after night for their daily fix of outrage. America’s real problems—like wealth inequality, systemic racism, and the existential threat of climate change—take a back seat to the latest culture war Fox chooses to manufacture.

And for what? As Rupert Murdoch himself admitted during the Dominion lawsuit: “It’s not about what’s true—it’s about what sells.” And Fox, in the end, is in the business of selling fear.
theintellectualist.com/how-fox-news-r…Image
Read 6 tweets
The Intellectualist Profile picture
Sep 26
🧵1/7: Fox News: The Disinformation Engine That Rewired and Ruined America

In the summer of 2001, while President George W. Bush was enjoying a break at his Texas ranch, America’s future was buried in a stack of ignored intelligence reports.

Among them, the now-infamous “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” memo. The negligence was catastrophic, leading to 9/11—a tragedy that would forever alter the world.

But as the dust settled from the Twin Towers, another kind of threat was taking shape—not through terror, but through information, or rather, disinformation. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News wasn’t merely informing the public; it was systematically bending reality, reshaping the world one half-truth at a time.

From the moment it launched, Fox News wasn’t interested in being a conservative counterweight to the so-called liberal media. It set out to create an alternate universe where facts were malleable, and the truth was whatever kept its audience hooked.

Think of it as a political reality show, except instead of roses, viewers were handed fear, outrage, and lies. It wasn’t about keeping the public informed; it was about keeping them addicted.
theintellectualist.com/how-fox-news-r…Image
2/7: The WMD Lie: Fox’s Role in Selling a War

Fox News wasn’t just reporting a war—it was crafting one. Doubt the WMD narrative? Question the invasion’s morality? You weren’t just wrong—you were unpatriotic, even traitorous.

Anchors like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly weren’t journalists; they were war salesmen, packaging an invasion as a righteous crusade against evil. Fox’s “Countdown to Iraq” segments, complete with ominous music and dramatic flag imagery, reduced a complex geopolitical conflict into a high-stakes videogame.

Saddam Hussein wasn’t just a dictator—he was the villain America had to vanquish. And the viewers? They weren’t asked to think; they were told to feel. Fear. Anger. Patriotism.
theintellectualist.com/how-fox-news-r…Image
3/7: Consequences of Fox’s War Propaganda

The results were as predictable as they were deadly. Research confirmed that regions with heavy Fox News consumption saw disproportionately higher support for the Iraq War, a direct result of the network’s uncritical amplification of flawed intelligence. But these aren’t just numbers on a page.

These are human lives—neighbors, family members—lost to an ideological war where ratings mattered more than responsibility. Over 4,000 American soldiers died. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis perished. And the war, a ratings bonanza for Fox, became one of the most disastrous foreign policy decisions in American history.

And the cost?

A destabilized Middle East, the birth of ISIS, and a war on terror that left deep scars on the global stage. Fox didn’t stop at reporting—it manufactured consent. As former producer Alex Bronkowski admitted, “We weren’t in the business of informing. We were in the business of fear. Fear sells.” And sell, it did—like a dark rerun of America’s longest-running horror show.
theintellectualist.com/how-fox-news-r…Image
Read 9 tweets
The Intellectualist Profile picture
Sep 25
Clay Higgins’ Latest Outburst Is More Than Just Racist: It’s the Face of GOP’s White Nationalism

🧵 1/8: Congressman Clay Higgins is no stranger to controversy. On September 25th, his latest outburst on X (formerly Twitter) set a troubling standard. Referring to Haitian Americans as “thugs” and implying they don’t belong in the United States,

Higgins exposed more than just personal animus—he offered a glimpse into the GOP’s ongoing embrace of white nationalism. This transformation, decades in the making, has shifted from covert dog whistles to blatant displays of racial hostility.

Higgins’ comments, while grotesque, are symptomatic of a broader political shift that began in the mid-20th century with Nixon’s Southern Strategy, extended through the War on Drugs, and culminated with the ascent of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

What was once subtle and coded has now become an explicit endorsement of white grievance, and figures like Higgins represent the modern face of this ideological shift.
theintellectualist.com/clay-higgins-w…Image
Nixon’s Southern Strategy: The Beginnings of Coded Racism

2/8: The GOP’s pivot toward white grievance politics began with Richard Nixon in the late 1960s. After the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights, Nixon saw an opportunity to win over disaffected white voters in the South. Knowing that overt racism would not play well in the post-Civil Rights era, Nixon’s advisers crafted the Southern Strategy.

They leaned into coded language like “states’ rights” and “law and order,” which, while seemingly innocuous, were designed to appeal to white Southern voters who felt threatened by the successes of the civil rights movement.



(Legalize It All, by Daun Baum, Harper's Magazine, 2016)theintellectualist.com/clay-higgins-w…Image
3/8: Lee Atwater, a strategist for Nixon, later made the GOP’s strategy plain: “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘n*****, n*****, n*****.’ By 1968, you can’t say ‘n*****’—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now.”

Atwater’s words reveal the core of this strategy: the use of abstract language to mask racist intent while still delivering the message.

Nixon didn’t stop with his strategic use of language. His administration launched the War on Drugs, a “tough on crime” initiative that disproportionately targeted Black Americans.

John Ehrlichman, a top Nixon aide, later admitted the underlying purpose of the War on Drugs: “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.”
theintellectualist.com/clay-higgins-w…Image
Read 10 tweets
The Intellectualist Profile picture
Sep 25
The Execution of Marcellus Williams: Missouri’s Dark Legacy of Race, Justice, and Power

🧵1/4: Marcellus Williams was fifty-four when Missouri killed him tonight. Or was he murdered? For over two decades, he sat on death row, convicted of a crime he had always insisted he didn’t commit—the brutal 1998 stabbing of Felicia Gayle, a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. Despite DNA evidence that excluded him as the source of male DNA found on the murder weapon, the state of Missouri pushed ahead with his execution.

Williams wasn’t just a faceless inmate confined to a cell. Over the years, he earned two college degrees while incarcerated, using his time to pursue self-improvement despite the looming death sentence. His story is one of resilience and transformation.

He often mentored younger inmates, encouraging them to pursue education as a way to reclaim their humanity in a system designed to strip it away. His sister, Patricia Davis, once said, “Marcellus never gave up on hope. He believed the truth would set him free.” Even as his legal team fought to prove his innocence, Williams inspired those around him.

Yet, even the victim’s family—who lost a loved one in a horrific crime—expressed doubts about Williams' guilt. As new DNA evidence emerged that excluded Williams as the source of the male DNA found on the murder weapon, the Gayle family called for leniency, believing that life without parole was a more just sentence given the uncertainty surrounding his conviction. Despite these pleas, Missouri moved forward with the execution, sparking outrage and disbelief among many who followed the case.Image
2/4: Felicia Gayle’s murder remains a tragic loss, and the urgency to bring justice to her case is understandable. However, the rush to execute Williams without fully addressing the new evidence creates a deeply unsettling question: could the real murderer still be free? By not allowing for a thorough re-evaluation of the case, the state may have failed both the Williams family and the Gayle family. Rather than achieving justice, the legal system may have prematurely closed a case that still had questions left unanswered. This rush to finality failed to provide the truth for either family, leaving them both with an unresolved sense of justice.

Missouri’s decision to execute Willia did not occur in a vacuum—it’s part of a much larger and troubling legacy of racial disparity in the state’s justice system. His conviction rested heavily on the testimony of two incentivized jailhouse informants, both of whom had much to gain by testifying against him. There was no physical evidence linking Williams to the crime. Despite DNA testing showing that Williams’ DNA did not match the male DNA on the murder weapon, Missouri courts never conducted a full evidentiary review of this critical fact. The courts proceeded forward, ignoring exculpatory evidence in favor of maintaining the status quo.Image
3/4: This pattern of racial injustice is not unique to Williams’ case. Missouri has a long history of disproportionately targeting Black men in its legal system. Black men are incarcerated at five times the rate of white men in Missouri.

When it comes to the death penalty, Black defendants convicted of killing white victims are significantly more likely to be sentenced to death than white defendants convicted of killing Black victims. Williams’ story is a tragic example of how these disparities continue to manifest in life-or-death decisions.

Meanwhile, the contrasting treatment of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a wealthy white couple who brandished firearms at peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters, highlights the glaring double standards at play. In 2020, the McCloskeys pointed guns at protesters outside their St. Louis home, an act captured on camera and widely shared. Rather than facing severe consequences, the McCloskeys were quickly turned into conservative heroes.

Governor Mike Parson pardoned them after they pled guilty to misdemeanor charges. The same Parson who granted clemency to the McCloskeys refused to consider the new DNA evidence in Marcellus Williams’ case, ensuring his execution moved forward. The contrast is stark: while the McCloskeys were forgiven for their aggressive actions, Williams was denied any semblance of justice despite compelling evidence in his favor.Image
Read 6 tweets
The Intellectualist Profile picture
Sep 15
🧵1/12: Imagine a man whose admiration for his daughter crosses a line so blurred, it shocks even his closest allies. That man is Donald Trump, who once mused about dating Ivanka, offering a window into a mind steeped in disturbing desires.
theintellectualist.com/access-hollywo…
2/12: “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her,” Trump said in 2006. But this wasn’t just an offhand remark—it was a revelation of a man who views even his daughter through a lens of sexual objectification.
theintellectualist.com/access-hollywo…
3/12: The disturbing reality is that Trump’s inappropriate comments extend far beyond Ivanka. Over 26 women have accused him of sexual misconduct, with stories ranging from groping to outright assault, painting a damning portrait of predatory behavior.
theintellectualist.com/access-hollywo…
Read 15 tweets
The Intellectualist Profile picture
Sep 9
🧵1/12: Rolling Stone reports that Trump fantasized about executions by firing squads and gallows during his first term. These ideas were blocked by advisers. In 2025, however, Trump is expected to be surrounded by 'Yes' people.
theintellectualist.com/trump-2024-ele…
2/12: Without the moderating influence of his first-term advisers, experts fear Trump will have more freedom to pursue authoritarian impulses. His circle of loyalists raises concerns about unchecked power in 2025.
theintellectualist.com/trump-2024-ele…
3/12: Trump's inner circle may now be filled with loyalists eager to support even his most extreme ideas. With fewer obstacles, his potential return in 2025 could mean the implementation of policies that were previously blocked.
theintellectualist.com/trump-2024-ele…
Read 14 tweets

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