Category Archives: Epistemology

Agitprop: Biden 1994 Crime Bill Meme

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics

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Here’s the culprit —

— and you know how it’s done: someone pastes up the art, slips it into the Internet Wild absent of context and any thematic evaluation, and out it goes to intellectually poison the gulls.

Here’s a note From the Awesome Conversation with reference to “Biden on the 1994 Crime Bill” on the FactCheck website.

Biden on the 1994 Crime Bill

Agitation/Propaganda (agitprop) is never clear, accurate, or complete. It is always twisted, lacking in context, in detail, and integrity.

Excerpted from the above URL.

“Nearly 40 African American religious leaders released a statement supporting the bill, saying: “While we do not agree with every provision in the crime bill, we do believe and emphatically support the bill’s goal to save our communities, and most importantly, our children.”

Now I have to ask my fellow Americans: what kind of person, what mentality, what measure in irresponsible character grabs an attention-getting image with potent political content or suggestion and goes with it without at least a look into the claim?

That person — the person who would do that — that’s not an American.

We’re a real country full of real GOOD people working difficult issues as we go along, and if we’re not that today, let’s get back to that real fast!

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FTAC: A Short Note on the Demonizing of George Soros

08 Saturday Aug 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology

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That a certain portion of conservative and reactionary Republicans have chosen to develop and spread lies about George Soros — it’s practically an industry — comes as no surprise. Push-back, however, seems to me comparatively rare. The Political Correctness of the Far White Right immediately demonizes those who would defend the billionaire’s spacious philanthropy on behalf of authentic democracy, freedom, and progress.

The post that follows came about through involvement in one such conversation.

From the Awesome Conversation

Soros’s funding engages and liberates. Some of the people you hate so much appear to be fashionably “Marxist” but in fact hustling capitalist and modern Americans themselves, but they are leveraging substantial American challenges (involving bigotry) into careers.

The Anti-Defamation League has commented twice in the past two years on the demonizing of George Soros: https://www.adl.org/blog/the-antisemitism-lurking-behind-george-soros-conspiracy-theories & https://www.adl.org/blog/soros-conspiracy-theories-and-the-protests-a-gateway-to-antisemitism.

Sometimes, some features of the “New Nationalism” and its Christian focus may remind many of the mission taken up by Gerald L. K. Smith (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_L.K._Smith) and his own (failed) “America First Party” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Party(1943).

BackChannels has come to regard the co-founds of Black Lives Matter as fashionably “Marxist” — the term has been overplayed as a dog whistle for the nation’s reactionaries — but in fact deeply “capitalist” — i.e., making their way — as modern moral entrepreneurs, each uniquely engaged in the address of the more stubborn aspects of America’s issues with class and race.

https://www.ted.com/speakers/alicia_garza

https://www.ted.com/speakers/opal_tometi

https://www.ted.com/speakers/patrisse_cullors

With the Trump Administration playing up the term “Antifa”, some easily seduced may come out to play, as it were, and by doing so actually create an organized and visible Antifa movement, but for the most part, such claims have been Big Lies and undeniably fake news, e.g., “FBI did not say teacher is the most common occupation of antifa activists” (Ali Swenson for AP, July 9, 2020).

The Trump Administration lies to Americans — not as yet a still conscionable FBI (please do look up “FBI, Antifa” up to this day (August 8, 2020) and let BackChannels know of any substantiation of claims about either “Antifa” and “Black Lives Matter” as the direct drivers of protester violence.

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Russian Active Measures, Donald Trump, and Either Evil or Gullible Americans (Or Both)

22 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Epistemology, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, United States of America

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Active Measures — The collection of Russian Agitation, Disinformation, and Propaganda Methods made evident through covert or subtle Influence Campaigns applied to wrecking the political coherence and cohesion of EU/NATO for the purpose of reestablishing Political Absolutism in the same and then using the most thuggish of feudal and medieval methods to leverage loyalty and wealth from them for contribution to the Greater Imperial Glory of Moscow, the Russian “mafia state” it has come to represent, and the immense enrichment of its oligarchy.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/02/13/active-measures/

Kaplan, Alex. “Trump has repeatedly amplified QAnon Twitter accounts. The FBI has linked the conspiracy theory to domestic terror.” Media Matters, August 1, 2019.

Iyengar, Rishi. “Twitter takes down 7,000 accounts linked to QAnon.” CNN Business, July 22, 2020.

From the above references, one might suggest that in or with President Donald J. Trump, Washington, like Moscow, has had some kind of energized disinformation factory. It may not be the President’s factory, but he has encouraged and endorsed baseless conspiracy theories and the most disingenuous innuendo involving his political enemies.

Among the more stunning of this morning’s headlines: “The White House is pushing a conspiracy theorist fired from the NSC for a top Pentagon position” (CNN Politics, July 20, 2020).

Related: Winter, Jana and Elias Groll. “Here’s the Memo That Blew Up the NSC.” Foreign Policy, August 10, 2017. Here’s a key excerpt —

Trump is being attacked, the memo says, because he represents “an existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative.” Those threatened by Trump include “‘deep state’ actors, globalists, bankers, Islamists, and establishment Republicans.”

The memo is part of a broader political struggle inside the White House between current National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and alt-right operatives with a nationalist worldview who believe the Army general and his crew are subverting the president’s agenda.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/10/heres-the-memo-that-blew-up-the-nsc/

Foreign Policy has the full memo embedded in its account.

Said Rich Higgins back in February: “Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman wasn’t the first staffer to be fired from President Trump’s National Security Council and escorted from the premises by security. I went through the same ritual on July 21, 2017. But in contrast to Col. Vindman, I lost my job because I was loyal to the president” (by Rich Higgins for WSJ Opinion, February 12, 2020).

Well, here in an NYT lead (by Julie Hirschfeld Davis, August 11, 2017) is evidence of what Higgins thought was necessary for pleasing President Trump —

WASHINGTON — A cabal of leftist “deep state” government workers, “globalists,” bankers, adherents to Islamic fundamentalism and establishment Republicans are conspiring to remove President Trump and impose cultural Marxism in the United States, according to a former White House aide whose darkly worded memo detailing the alleged conspiracy got him removed last month from the National Security Council.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/politics/rich-higgins-memo-national-security-council.html

Who has placed themselves behind the QAnon distribution?

Who has been reading and ingesting the garbage?

Who among Americans believes everything an American president might care to tell them (especially this American president)?

Bigoted, fake, weak, willful and enamored, apparently, of the kind of powerful others known to the west as dictators, who, aware of the pain he has caused others through multiple bankruptcies and countless and apparently limitless lies can respect him out of love rather than fear?

Have some Americans been so duped and convinced of “HIS” nobility in character that they cannot admit to themselves that they may have been fooled?

Americans will now have to educate themselves in relation to the collected legacies of the nation without regard for immediate resources and public or private channeling. To have become this ignorant, this vulnerable, to such an ignoramus: politically and socially obscene and tragic.

Related Online

Alba, Davey. “Debunking 4 Viral Rumors About the Bidens and Ukraine.” The New York Times, October 29, 2019.

Oppenheim, James S. “FBI, ANTIFA, and Swamp Gas.” BackChannels, July 1, 2020.

Oppenheim, James S. “The Confidence Man — He’ll Tell You Anything.” BackChannels, November 23, 2019.

Stanton, Zack. “You’re Living in the Golden Age of Conspiracy Theories.” Politico, June 17, 2020.

Venook Jeremy. “20 Conspiracy Theories Trump Has Pushed Before and During His Presidency.” Center for American Progress Action Fund, May 19, 2020.

Regarding President Trumps big dumb “Crowdstrike” attempt at misdirecting the attention of the American public —

Gramer, Robbie and Amy Mackinnon. “Impeachment Trials and Conspiracy Theories: A Match Made in Hell.” Foreign Policy, January 24, 2020.

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FTAC: The Briefest Comment on Epistemology and the Perception of Public Events and Issues

15 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, A Little Wisdom, Epistemology, Philosophy, Political Psychology

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“We are going to destroy each other and this country based on raw emotion, public opinion, media distortion, fake news, false narratives and unverified video and allegations.”

Amen.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/

Disciplined observation with integrity accompanied by empathy, logic, and reason may be more difficult than casually imagined, but those are the best tools we have for defining issues and answering with appropriate and progressive policy.

The Stanford philosophizing referenced above may not lead to the most cogent or helpful of references for approaching legal or policy issues, but for those two regions, any may start with the idea that mere perception is not reality, and it is generally good to investigate how things really work when on the way to making decisions or plans pertaining to them.

Peel the onion; turn over the rock; have another look; put it to a test — language has many cliches and tropes related to investigation and the methods of arriving at conclusions — “truths” one might call them — in which one might have confidence on the basis of other than ambitions, agendas, pleasant delusions, and personal interests.

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FTAC: COVID-19: The “Cure” Worse Than the Illness

13 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, COVID-19, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, United States of America

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Our nation really panicked and blundered on C19, a briefly alien presence for which neither our public nor private sectors were evidently ready with emergency treatment or burial facilities and services. We’re paying a high price for public (and partisan) responses to it. In defense language, “reflexive control” — I don’t want to ask whether the virus has been a blasting cap, the thing that sets off the greater explosion, but the results would seem to point that way.

Fast correspondence aids brevity.

C19 Lessons Learned Since January

  1. Be Prepared, Be Ready. C19 may bump America’s annual rate of morbidity from 2.813 million dead souls to 2.9 million. We were not prepared to respond with emergency facilities or, sadly, or basic carnage related to holding or burying the dead.
  2. Don’t Panic, Stay Calm. The Great “Killer Virus” has taken some older and health-imperiled lives or younger and not so well, but, by and large, it has been a bust for those yet healthy enough to fend it off.
  3. Think (and think again) about the consequences of hasty public policy, especially episode the shutting down of the base and much of the soul of our nation’s economy and related vitality.

Time to get back to work?

In 2020 hindsight, of course, the hours, days, weeks, and months should not have been lost in the first place but voluntarily as the degrees of risk became known.

We’re Americans.

Americans have been braving the Devil a long time.

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Ai Fen, Chinese Authorities, and the Shame of Hiding Shame

01 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, COVID-19, Epistemology, Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy, Political Psychology, Psychology

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While C19 moves around the world, the sudden disappearance of Chinese whistle blower Dr. Ai Fen has been moving across the World Wide Web as well.

Carr, Jemma. “Wuhan doctor who was among the first to alert other medics to the spread of coronavirus ‘goes missing’ amid fears she has been detained for speaking out.” Daily Mail, April 1, 2020.

From the Awesome Conversation

What are China’s authorities hiding or trying to hide?

It’s remarkable watching the hiding of shame (or guilt) play out on the global stage.

There are people who believe — and when they’re leaders, they may be the worst of people — that any show of damage, fear, or sentiment weakens them in relation to public perception when, in fact, it is their own “inner eye” (the way the may be forced to view themselves) that cannot stand being seen as weak. In that may be the soul of “malignant narcissism” and related “civilizational narcissism”.

Such types embarrass and shame themselves, for what seems right to them looks wrong to everyone else.

Dogma may no longer serve to cover or excuse less savory designs.

Our species evolves not only physically but psychologically, and we have reached an age with sufficient global and open communications in which authoritarians, criminals, and dictators may no longer brush aside or suppress essentially truthful criticism and data. The same may not stop “black programs” and conversations “behind the curtains” — that kind of feudal and medieval egotism and power may be always with us — but by and large BackChannels believes the world evolves toward greater complexity, interdependence, and freedom. The global public may still be misled, but not for long provided the journalists have integrity and do their work.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2020/03/19/note-covid-19-biological-warfare-and-the-odds-and-ambiguities/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/civilizational-narcissism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/malignant-narcissism/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/coins-and-other-terms/anthropolitical-psychology/paranoid-delusional-narcissistic-reflection-of-motivation/

Perspective: Related Online and With the Truth About COVID-19 in the United States

This first preliminary description of outcomes among patients with COVID-19 in the United States indicates that fatality was highest in persons aged =85, ranging from 10% to 27%, followed by 3% to 11% among persons aged 65–84 years, 1% to 3% among persons aged 55-64 years, <1% among persons aged 20–54 years, and no fatalities among persons aged =19 years.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm

Annual Rate of Death for the United States of America

Number of deaths: 2,813,503
Death rate: 863.8 deaths per 100,000 population
Life expectancy: 78.6 years
Infant Mortality rate: 5.79 deaths per 1,000 live births

Number of deaths for leading causes of death:

Heart disease: 647,457
Cancer: 599,108
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
Diabetes: 83,564
Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,672
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 50,633
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

Between the people of the United States and the nation’s most prominent authority on infectious disease and pandemic, the Centers of Disease Control, hide nothing, sugarcoat nothing but report accurately, plainly, clearly, empirically, completely–and that may be the best cure this editor might know for panic and state-driven perceptual control of “the masses”.

In America, at least, democracy has just become more directly responsive and responsible to the People.

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COVID-19: Pandemic Pandemonium

21 Saturday Mar 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, COVID-19, Epistemology

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The District Department of Health said the first known death in the city as a result of the virus is that of a 59-year-old man who was admitted to a hospital last week. The man had fever and a cough, as well as other underlying medical conditions, health officials said.

• A Baltimore County resident in his 60s who suffered from underlying medical conditions has become the second known person to die of coronavirus in Maryland.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/03/20/coronavirus-dc-maryland-virginia-updates/

The incident reports would seem as generally expected regarding COVID-19 and who dies from it.

Read and reflect a moment (boldface added) —

This first preliminary description of outcomes among patients with COVID-19 in the United States indicates that fatality was highest in persons aged ≥85, ranging from 10% to 27%, followed by 3% to 11% among persons aged 65–84 years, 1% to 3% among persons aged 55-64 years, <1% among persons aged 20–54 years, and no fatalities among persons aged ≤19 years.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e2.htm

Of course, the experience with older adults involves a virus target numbering in the millions, so the something-new-to-die-of has been making its mark, especially above age 65 with underlying conditions, highest estimates for death ranging from 3 to 11 percent as age increases.

Ageing is not for sissies?

Count the ways: cancers; heart disease; severe respiratory illness (!); other diseases associated with our kidneys and livers.

Most Wanted: a predictive feature for determining whose case may need mechanical or other treatment while others survive in the normal way and may move on with immunity provided by the antigens developed while ill.

Disclosure: the editor of this blog has cause to believe he experienced his worst of the latest between February 15 and February 25 with spiking into a full Bronchial Symphony of Wheezing (you have no idea how many the sounds!) and days and nights without sleep between the 21st and 24th (right on time). Impression: whatever it was dominated the immune system (the symptoms of other illnesses, including allergies – to dust – and cancer (lung) were poking about [but to clear up with the recovery of the immune system]. Three weeks out: all passageways (and voice) stunningly clear and normal! Thank God. Note: the patient was 64 years old with a present but slowly moving leukemia.

For the overwhelming majority of those who experience COVID-19, albeit with exceptions very small, the memory will be that of having had an awful, infamous, and interesting bout with the flu.

Related Online

Rettner, Rachael. “COVID-19 spread is fueled by ‘stealth transmission’.” Live Science, March 17, 2020.

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FTAC: COVID-19: One Question, Please

17 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, COVID-19, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation

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From CDC —

The complete clinical picture with regard to COVID-19 is not fully known. Reported illnesses have ranged from very mild (including some with no reported symptoms) to severe, including illness resulting in death. While information so far suggests that most COVID-19 illness is mild, a report out of China suggests serious illness occurs in 16% of cases. Older people and people of all ages with severe chronic medical conditions — like heart disease, lung disease and diabetes, for example — seem to be at higher risk of developing serious COVID-19 illness.

Situation Summary, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 15, 2020

So how much higher are COVID-19 rates of infection and morbidity compared to the full suite of respiratory illnesses involving the same set of variables, especially x patient / target’s age, preexisting conditions, and vulnerability (physical condition)?

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