1796 - Washington announced he would not be seeking another term. His announcement was the first in what became the tradition of Presidents addressing the people before their departure as well as what was, until recently, how they departed from public service. 🧵 I have a favorite founding document that was once part of our shared general knowledge. It was delivered to the people in 1796 and some may recall portions of it from the score of the musical Hamilton.

NPR did it first. npr.org/2020/11/07/930…

The socrealist spectacle of the Olympic opening ceremony served its Purpose.

1. Remind that the Hero is Toil and the toiler is unthinkable outside the collective by bastardizing the ancient transformative promise of ritual to elevate an individual from the mundane to awe at and with the potential of one human being to be exceptional and to be celebrated for it.

2. By distracting you with visuals meant to distort your consciousness (“engineer the human soul.”)

3. Replace lineage with a march toward an assured glorious future determined by Party and worshiping Purpose.

4. By destroying the author/artist by activating a feverish activity, and confusing / burying history. “The artist must be both midwife and gravedigger; not only giving birth to a new art but exterminating the pernicious elements of the old, even if they like it.”

5. By continuing to use children to trigger fear and paralysis.

6. Meanwhile…

TransFORMATION - distract you with symbols that offend and fear which aim to destroy your fundamental belief which no one can touch unless you allow them to.

The Last Supper was painted by DeVinci, not by God or Christ or John the Baptist or anyone.

🧵I think there are insights into our current situation which can be very useful from
this particular essay titled Power of the Powerless.

I’ve quoted later parts of it often, but now I want to focus on the earlier sections where he explains why what they experienced and what I believe we are also, isn’t a dictatorship or even really communism or fascism, but rather something else. Something unique to modernity but also requiring a very different tactic to defeat… Here is a link to the essay. I’ll be quoting from it and also trying to, later in this thread, summarize its nature. In order to defeat an enemy we must first be able to understand what it actually is. hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the…

Hate is an emotion.

No laws should ever dictate emotion. Learning how to regulate one’s emotional outbursts is not the same thing as attempting to regulate another being’s emotions.

We are not livestock.

SEL is a form of socialist realism, a philosophy which views the mere idea of individualism as “zoological.”

It is NOT merely an artistic aesthetic or style of literature. It is a philosophy and cornerstone of Stalinist and Maoist theology.

#WarOnMemory

It is said, by many, that in part the justification for Jew hate can be found in the writings and brilliance of people like Nietzsche. However this, just like every justification by intellectuals to pseudo intellectuals and their pawns is not only shallow, but false What I find remarkable as of late is how many justifications often cite, adopt, even claim ideas and language and declarations that are uniquely part of jewish wisdom and spirit, preserved by my people for millennia or - bastardizations of non Jewish but thoughtful, wise, brilliant

Ritual power is transformative. We tend to apply a positive to the word transformative…

Masking changes someone. The extent to which, if we keep attempting to understand purely rationally, is like trying to understand why touch, music, prayer, hearing laughter and so on can stir the human spirit.

The literalists may literally kill us all.

That’s fundamentally what my piece was about. Never flat out stated this before. It’s kinda a rule one shouldn’t. Right now - it’s a rule I think I had to break.

Masking changes human beings. Full stop. The why doesn’t exist anymore. The days never did matter. It’s truly heartbreaking.

See Merloo, Rape of the Mind.

🧵The rebirth of SocRealism and the fall of the hope of Tamizdat.

I am beginning to keenly realize that this slow poisoning of the very things that ended the tyranny of the Soviet Union and it’s mission men and women around the world, began three quarters of a century ago and… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… dissentmagazine.org/wp-content/fil…

I just remembered how Russian artists couldn’t play music in NYC, and how the Russian Tea Room was boycotted, hell people lamented the name “st. Petersburg” in the state I’m in now….

People encouraged the bigotry of Russians in NYC as easily and with as much smug dedication as they did the term “anti-vax.”

We keep having our president and nearly ever legacy media and new media say the danger is on the right or white supremacy or transphobia or or or…no.

The problem is how young people are encouraged to become bigot, racists, hell - they were… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

So - I made a very clear and direct statement of opinion yesterday - and have been dealing with an unreal attempt to bully me for it.

I’ve seen more bigotry, childish rage and nasty - hate filed rhetoric than I’ve ever seen on twitter before.

I’ve blocked thousands of… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… What troubles me - sincerely - is that I’ve never seen anything like it outside the most vile hatred of Jews.

I wonder, what America has helped allow go on with our aid to anyone in this war.

Very little online scares me. This did. It reminds me of what I’ve rarely heard

I’ve never had an abortion or IVF.

I’ve known so many women who were told not to allow their complex emotions regarding ending pregnancy or fertility to enter their minds or hearts because - they didn’t matter.

Who is worse than by the standards recently laid out by some who say that “hard truths” must be considered.

Those who always considered these? Who were told to be silent? Or cold to their own thinking?

Or the people who have made the private matters so brutally public as if anyone ever had the right to be the voice of such things?

Does… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

I find myself utterly losing trust with intellectuals. I trust those whose subscriptions to any system is based on what’s directly in front of them.

Can they get from point a to point b?

Can they heat their home?

Are they being asked or not asked to sacrifice themselves or… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… Cheap because frankly- look around. If you don’t see what’s happened to people in the last year you’re treating them as cheap. I’m sorry. But you are.

I asked someone I respect deeply who fights harder than anyone I know what keeps them going- because I’ve felt so much like giving up and just running away to try to create a small little life for myself from the ashes of everything I’d wanted. Also because I’m so scared. He… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… and I share this now because, it’s true. And not true in a way that most people may think. He said “what is being done is evil, and so to give up would be evil.”

It sounds like something you’d only hear from the mouths of religious zealots. But here’s the rub. It’s true.

In learning about the history of those who seem compelled to rule over us and squander liberty- there is a missing piece I can’t seem to quite figure out…. … this episode talks about the link to Maoism quite compellingly.

It appears that even under Stalin, the Soviets kept these people at bay. Yet their rhetoric is so similar to what was created under Gorky etc for Stalin.

Has anyone found anything that

Too many women try to tell us that bodily autonomy is a partisan and only a partisan and binary issue.

I know for a fact that it isn’t. I hope this spares other women what I’ve gone through.

https://twitter.com/ooana/status/1667311745591922689?s=46&t=qYU37LW1Vn8SLcdlBti1jQ

https://twitter.com/realEssYoo/status/1667300284790620160

Forgive any typos please. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to try and talk about. I will try and get better at it, but it’s very difficult and frightening to do so. I’m sorry for anything that I might have not presented well.

It’s true and I think I have to try no… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

It’s heartbreakingly strange to remember how not long ago, it was incredibly rational, reasonable and moral to say that we lived during an amazing time to be alive. Yes, compared to other times we may have it good, but we squandered and worse were primed to trivialize so much.

https://twitter.com/michaelpsenger/status/1667194459027832832

I’ve been haunted by a recent conversation with someone. They believe, wholeheartedly, that the choices imposed upon us - were the best ones. That we were better off than if we had not locked down etc.

When I mentioned this editorial as an example of how this was not done

So let me get this straight - and those who may know what I’m not clear on please correct me. The fires in Canada were lit by arsonists. The PM is claiming this was caused by climate change and using this to push the net zero/carbon zero policies… The fires are so bad that they have caused damage all across the NE coast and blocked the sun and made NYC look like a sepia toned photo from the 1800s.

The air quality is horrible, but the city that clutched masks like woobies are behaving with ambivalence.

Thank you to all who joined or popped in and out for any portion.

Continuation of readings from the journal 8pm this remainder of this week (tentatively - until fin.)

https://twitter.com/ooana/status/1666237034371973120

If you’d like to show some support financially there is a tip link in my bio.

The ways that people manage their grief, manage the trauma and ongoing trauma of these last three years is very individual. Very human. And something we have all- by force of the horror of these last three years in a variety of ways; some known and featured in documentaries and… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… This is a blessing and it could, of course, be so much worse.

But what a low bar isn’t it. And how dehumanizing and how- strange to assume that it isn’t any less difficult to restart after being forced into a complete stop.

twitter.com/i/spaces/1LyGB… #WarOnMemory
#HistoryRhymes
#DissidentArtists
#SocialistRealism
#AgeOfArtifice
#Absurdism
#Suprahumanism

The way the media operates in this country now - is unrecognizable to anyone who was familiar with it just a few decades ago…from top to bottom.

I had a chat with a neighbor in his late 70s last night. He use to work as a major player in advertising.

He confided in me, and seemed very relieved to be able to do so (we sat and spoke for about an hour) that he doesn’t recognize the industry at all.

He was responsible for some very recognizable consumer campaigns in the 80s. He also remembers AIDS well and personally. I worked at CNN’s Strategic Integration Group as the project manager in 2008. I noticed a major shift then myself. I’ve discussed this before. It’s what prompted me to write this public post. facebook.com/725552541/post…