Truth

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Tucker Carlson first public appearance after leaving fox hit me very hard, the ones about truth. (Ignore the ancillary stuff from WSJ, but there’s a video here.)

It hit me hard because I’d been thinking along those lines already: how powerful the truth is. How suddenly telling even a grain of truth can dissolve a river of lies.

First I want to say for the rest of you, who simply aren’t sensitive to the feel of professions and places that no, none of this muzzling and cancelling is recent.

I notice that Tucker Carlson also seems to think it’s now, or very recent. And that we’re just at risk of silencing dissent.

He’s younger than I. At no time in his professional adult life has it been okay to tell the truth. NO TIME. At no time have we been allowed to go against what “everybody knows.”

I am perhaps more sensitive than most people to “What must not be uttered” because of when and where I grew up. If my real political opinions and leanings had been known, I’d never have made it to college, let alone out of it. My political opinions were known to be stupid, and believing in them would mark me as stupid.

This didn’t really change when i moved to the US….

Look, in all the intellectual fields, the “smart” thing was to parrot the message being put out by the media, which was uniformly and strongly socialist/communist. (Honestly indistinguishable from speeches heard from socialist/communist candidates in Europe.)

And if you talked out of school and countered them, the shock was enough to label you… oh, extreme right wing. Or outright evil. Or at the very least “someone who likes messing with people.”

And absolutely, if you were in a profession where they could do that, you’d absolutely be shut down cold.

There is a problem with this sort of environment when it stretches to generations. Because you know, you might start out with a lot of people who know they’re just keeping their mouth shut to keep their job, but after three generations, you’re buying some of the premises of the other side implicitly.

Look at how many on our side, before things became obvious, bought the Covid scam, hook line and sinker. Or how many still buy the utterly nonsensical anthropogenic global warming and its imperatives, even though every prediction has been wrong. And let’s not start on their fully canned opinions of Trump, etc.

Because when you live in an environment where this can’t be challenged, and a lot of you are falsifying their beliefs, it becomes “All sane people believe x.”

It’s not true. But the crushing weight of it actually changes opinions.

Which is what the left had for a long time. Seriously, you’ll be amazed if you research at how soft-left Nixon was, how little evidence there was of any chicanery, and how much they built on that. And let’s not get STARTED on “The climate of hatred that killed JFK.” No, seriously. But it became sanctified and went into history books.

They don’t have it all their way nowadays. I mean, if they did, they wouldn’t — still — be so worried about Trump.

But telling the truth is still a massively powerful thing. The truth, by itself, has a weight that melts away things on all sides.

Like, you know, RFK Jr. is as far ahead on poling as he is because he tells the truth about COVID. That grain of truth is recognized by people, and embraced. Because we all know, even if some won’t admit it, that the entire country was scammed. And just speaking it aloud has power. It might be enough for him to win, which would be a pity, as he’s still a global warmerist, etc.

Now I know many of you are still stuck in environments where telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth can get you in serious trouble.

But have you tried the power of minor truths. There are always some you can say without getting booted, but which will be powerful enough to start making people wonder about the other “everybody knows”. Like: “No, that’s not actually correct. Women don’t need to achieve parity in graduate degrees. They are now at 60%. I’m in awe of how strong women are.” With the dilution, it’s safe, but it’s still a truth bomb. And someone in the crowd will go “Wait, that’s not what I heard.”

Or “I’m just worried about how many women are being trafficked over the border.”

Or “You know many of those people are fleeing the cartels, and we’re dong nothing to keep them safe.”

Or “But do we have the services for these many refugees?”

Yes, some will still need to be careful, but the truth is important. The truth is how we reclaim the culture.

The truth has power and strength and those who hear it know they’re hearing it.

Misquoting Pratchett because the books are in storage:

“I come now to ransom my love

And ounce of truth is worth a pound of gold”

It really is. I don’t know how to put this, but the truth is recognized. And like water on highly wrought poisonous spun sugar, it melts a corner of their creation.

It might be a tiny, tiny corner, but it will add up, if all of us are out there and telling the truth.

And little by little the edifice of truth replaces the lies that are outright killing us.

It’s time.

There are four fingers. There are four lights.

No matter what the party says.

The truth is the truth.

And the truth will set you free.

189 thoughts on “Truth”

  1. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

    Lift your candle high. Hide not your light under a bushel. Speak the truth, and shame the devil.

    (School Board meeting tonight. Looking forward to raising a ruckus.)

    3. I personally prefer the KJV of that first one: “And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”

      It’s not just that they can’t win in the long run. It’s that they don’t understand what they’re trying to fight against.

      1. There’s an anecdote in The Screwtape Letters that Screwtapes relates to his nephew about how Our Father Below tried to get an explanation from the Enemy:

        Satan: I wish I could understand why you valued these pathetic little monkey-creatures.

        God: I, too, wish you could understand that.

        1. But it’s no wonder He is so cagey about it; His throne rests on it. The devils could re-enter Heaven if they figured it out. . . .

  2. “No, that is outdated. We now know that [rather different thing] happened. I can get you sources if you’re curious.” Start with little things, and slowly wear away the bigger things.

    “Huh. Interesting. What I remember from then is [different version of story.] Not saying that what you heard/read/learned was wrong, but in my part of the world, it was [actual version.]”

    “Really? That’s new. I’ve always understood that there are effects that can’t be reversed, like happened to the East German women athletes back in the 1960s-1990s, with the fertility problems and voice changes and stuff. Interesting!”

    Drip, drip, drip.

    1. I like TXRed’s strategy of asking seemingly innocent questions, and letting them lie like IEDs in the minds of the susceptible.
      So subtle.
      Drip. drip, drip.

          2. She is not a dragon… now whether the dragons will try and get in on the act is another thing. This foo dog is going to go sit in a corner and try and get some editing done.

            1. She might not be a Dragon but it is obvious that she’s a flying being.

              Of course, if she’s a Roc, then you should be careful.

              Rocs like Dragons “love” Foo Dogs for dinner. 😈

              1. I’m not interfering with flight patterns of anyone on this blog. I know better. Though I’m afraid you may find Foo Dog a bit of a… heavy… meal and we tend to be a bit hard headed.

              1. Based on the picture and usual posture, Winged Elf is my guess. Though she might be a Pegasus in disguise you make a very good point.

          3. “Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.”

            Words to keep living by.

            But, there’s nothing wrong with appreciating beauty as it flies over my head. Hummingbirds, F16s, F/A18s, dragons …

          4. Worse, the flamingos! Yes, I know that as soon as they came to life from plastic, they flew off to the lake — the one you see glittering in the distance — but sometimes they go for synchronized flying. . . .

  5. He’s younger than I. At no time in his professional adult life has it been okay to tell the truth. NO TIME. At no time have we been allowed to go against what “everybody knows.”

    Coast to Coast AM has made it how many decades of cash off of “this is the place that will give anybody, no matter how crazy, some air time if they can be entertaining.”

    So you get both very serious discussions of how to keep your cats from eating fairies and getting sick, and good, orthodox Catholic exorcists, and “bioethicists who all humans are people and you shouldn’t eat people” all actually getting airtime…. because that was their hat, the “weekly world news” of radio.

      1. Simple. Eat the fairies yourself. I hear they’re pretty good, deep fried…of course, EVERYTHING is pretty good, deep fried…

        1. Ah, fairy fritters. Makes sense.

          Although it’s getting to be the time of year out here where nobody really want to cook inside and stress out the air conditioning. I wonder how they would do on the grill? Maybe a nice bright citrus rub…

      3. Dunno about fairies in general but the brownies who come every night to mix the chocolate milk for my wife didn’t have any trouble convincing the cats to give them a wide berth.

        1. I suspect that it helps that the brownies fill the cats’ food bowl and gives them extra milk. [Wink]

  6. “Cursing the darkness does no good, Light a Candle instead” paraphrasing John Ringo from the Dark Tide Rising series.
    You can not stop the tidal wave of truth that is coming. Nor the Tsunami of anger that will follow. One can only hope the anger won’t spill into blood, if it does, may god have mercy on the liberals souls, the people wont.

      1. “Sure, that’s all you need crazed human zombies on fire running all over the place, wait, didn’t we already see that with anti-fa? Never mind carry on” He said bring extra napalm.

        1. Nah. What I’m really thinking is a sprinkler system all around the perimeter of my property. Probably work well against an army ant invasion too.

      3. Yes.

        Or as a recent vignette character said…

        “You keep thinking you want to light a candle, not just curse the darkness. Me, I want to send up a parachute flare, light up a square mile or three, then go on from there. Hard, unforgiving, clear magnesium light that lets nothing hide…”

        But what comes to me now to write is this:

        “The light from a properly ignited, fully-involved major lie can be seen from a hundred miles off on a clear night. Like an atomic explosion can. And long after the light has faded and the lie is ashes (otherwise known as truth), the enlightenment remains.”

        (Paging Tony “The Masked Bandit” Fauci, Deborah “I confessed all in my brag-book” Birx…)

        This is also one big reason the left hates memes. Because sparks, like neutrons, can make a chain reaction go…

      1. If talking is a free action, should the BBEG be able to monologue freely during combat?

        Because there’s a recurring meme of players invariably interrupting said monologues with prejudice. So it might be hilarious to have the BBEG stay silent until initiative is rolled, then speak a paragraph’s worth of gloating each round, as weapons are being swung at him/her/it.

  7. I’m finishing up my first year as Headmaster of a small Catholic high school . I have a lot to learn, but one thing I have learned: start on Day 1 (next year!) hammering at the lies. I’m already planning out the first 4 days, call them orientation, of next year, and here are some of the points on my list:

    Adults often lie to children, sometimes on purpose, but often just repeating lies they heard and believed; (see https://yardsaleofthemind.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/a-story-for-today/ ) Your job at this school is to learn to use your mind to resist lies.
    Fearful people are easy to control. Do not be afraid! “Friends” who try to scare you by threats to call you names or shun you because you don’t agree with them are no real friends at all. You can do better than them.
    Emotions are easy to manipulate. Beware appeals to feelings! Often, appeals to feelings contain the implied threat that you will be called names and shunned if you don’t agree.
    People who try to hurry you up on making up your mind are trying to manipulate you. There’s no reason you, a high school student, needs to take a position RIGHT NOW on much of anything. It’s not only OK, but generally correct to say “I don’t know’ and resist demands you accept a position.
    The worst lies are the ones that are almost true. These lies start out stating something true and sympathetic, then, bit by bit, move on to manipulative lies. Just because you agree that, say, poor people need help, doesn’t mean you have to agree with every proposed step to help them. You know you’re being manipulated when you are accused of hating poor people if you ask questions about how, exactly, the proposed action works.

    And a bunch more. If I fail to help these kids understand what they’re up against, it won’t be for lack of trying.

    Also, and in connection with this, we’re going to teach them what it means to really read a book, really write a paper, and really carry on a meaningful discussion – or die trying.

      1. Thanks. I got hired almost by accident, went into the year with slightly rose-tinted glasses, but now? I got to raise up the generation to whom the task of rebuilding a civilization worthy of the word will fall. Obviously beyond my strength – but I trust in God to get His work done,

        2. You sound a bit like “Father Martial,” my current headmaster. I highly approve of your approach, and I hope the parents support you.

        3. I’ve always said the first step to fixing things is to take back the schools. Good bless you for staying the counter offensive!

        4. I’ve always said the first step to fixing things is to take back the schools. Good bless you for staying the counter offensive!

        6. Another item for the students, Michael Crichton’s “Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect”:

          “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
          In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

          I used to think it important to teach HS students how to read a newspaper, and some basic statistics. Now you need to teach them a way to assess the reliability of online articles against some standard of accuracy.

    2. Fearful people are easy to control. Do not be afraid!

      To quote a song from the 2000s, “Fear is a weapon of mass destruction”

    3. In connection with ‘you do not have to take a position on the issue NOW,’ I’d add that you and everyone else can take a position, revisit it, realize you were wrong, and take a new position.

      It’s tempting, especially with all the COVIDiocy, to insist that stupid decisions are unforgiveable. But for a confused kid whose friends convinced them they’re trans, etc., the possibility of saying, ‘nope, I was an idiot back then, and I’m going to stop being an idiot now that I know better,’ is really important.

    4. BZ!

      I’ll add: There are very few real villains in history. Most of wars are between fundamentally decent people whose needs are in conflict. Understanding what your opponent’s motivations are is key to figuring out how to sidestep a war.

      Also: We study history in order to learn from the past. Mostly because some mistakes are fatal. Learning how to sift through history to pick out the nuggets of wisdom is a vital skill.

      1. I like to point out that if you want to know why X and Y are fighting, you have to go back longer than the last two years/decades. Or centuries, in one case. That usually gets their attention.

    5. Speaking of books, one you might assign is “View of the Constitution of the United States” by St. George Tucker, from 1803. The English in it isn’t particularly hard as I recall. It’s a free download from the Von Mises Institute website.

    6. As I understand it, that Austrian Upstart from about a century ago started off speeches very calm, low key, seemingly reasonable… and slowly worked up his audiences to be the insane rabble his insane ideas required.

    7. Here’s one: Anyone who encourages you to make excuses wants to own you. Never take the blame for what is not your fault either. Though if you grow strong enough you can take responsibility for other problems than your own once you grow up. Virtue = power.

      Explanations yes, to understand what went wrong, and to make a plan. Figuring out what works, what doesn’t is a big enough job. You do not need to sabotage it by playing pretend. It’s okay to have to keep backing up and figuring it out, especially when you are young.

      Own your own faults, so you can take them to God, be forgiven, and start the work again without despair.

      Even if someone really is out to get you, why not have Christ your brother on your side, and succeed despite them?

    8. I went to one of those in the 60s. Boarding school, all boys. It’s co-ed now, would have folded had they not opened up to both.

      We sent our children to larger, non-boarding versions in the late 90s, partially because they reminded us of that 60s school I attended.

      So, best wishes in that work!

  8. The problem is they actually believe it. My nephew actually believes that Antifa is right wing, that PETA is right wing, and that all the mass shooters are white Republicans. He BELIEVES it. He’s been fed from the NPR trough all his life, and even though he’s highly intelligent he can’t see past what he was taught.

    The closest I came to getting through to him was a discussion on the amazing powers of central government and how the government always knows best. I asked him, if the .gov told him to give them all his food to take care of the poor would he do it?

    He said absolutely. I asked him, what if you found out they’d actually taken it back to DC to feed themselves?

    He said he’d go take it back.

    I said, with what? They’ve confiscated all the guns.

    His mouth fell open, his father came around the corner and firmly escorted him away from badthink.

    The kid is in his late twenties now, and absolutely convinced that he’s been fed only truth. All evil has conservative roots, and if the facts don’t line up he’ll go out and find facts that prove his pov correct.

    I’ve had other discussions with him, and I can only hope that someday it will make a dent.

    1. Lauren, you need to introduce your nephew, who in fact isn’t smart, he only has the capability to be smart, to some of us redneck hillbillies. I guarantee that none of the idiocy he spouts would get him the high ground around here. And some of us redneck hillbillies are black, hispanic, and eve asian. Blow his mind, what there is of it…

      1. He’s half Hispanic, and he was raised on a diet of “They’re just pretending to like you,” in regards to his (pinkish) cousins. Sometimes I’d like to strangle my sister, but I’m afraid that would be redundant.

        He’s also been taught that you never argue with Dad. About ANYTHING. Seriously, that half-cowed mutter of “Yes, Sir” when they were kids made me want to do some uncivilized things to their parents.

        I’m afraid he’s going to have to figure it out on his own. I give him information and resources when he asks, but there’s no hint that he’s actually thinking behind the mask.

        1. “I’m afraid he’s going to have to figure it out on his own. I give him information and resources when he asks, but there’s no hint that he’s actually thinking behind the mask.”

          Everyone has to do this, to some extent. But if you can engage his mind gently, to question things, that can start an avalanche. Sounds like you’re on the right track.

      1. Yep. He actually stated it during the covidiocy riots. After all, the Left would never…

        1. Oh, boy. That’s simple-minded even for a college student leftist. “Everything good is left, if something is bad, it’s magically right-wing.”

      2. Odd. Because fascism is traditionally associated with the European concept of Right wing. Logically Antifascist would be on the Left then. Yeah, I know. Logic is not their forte’.

        2. European ‘right-wing’ is anything slightly less far left than Stalin. Therefore, since fascists are not quite as far left as outright communists, they’re ‘right-wing’.
          ———————————
          It takes a LOT of Education to make somebody that stupid.

    3. He’s not the only one, unfortunately.

      https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/05/11/end-white-supremacy-hs-students-walk-out-to-protest-teacher-who-warned-they-were-being-indoctrinated-1358223/

      “Dovetailing back to the protest, the students “said they wanted to publicly refute Sullivan’s claims in order to show that she doesn’t speak for the entire SM North community,” according to the Shawnee Mission Post.

      Yet the children offered zero evidence debunking anything Sullivan had posited. Which was admittedly not surprising, since young and old leftists alike are impressively adept at steering clear of facts and data.”

      1. I can’t say I’m surprised.

        One of my bosses at my shoe store was a Shawnee Mission North graduate. She had to write out the alphabet to put shoes in the correct order, and her emails were appalling in their grammar mistakes.

    4. It’s not so much the “facts” they think they know, but the filters they’ve been programmed with, that only permit them to think about the things that are allowed.

    5. I’ve literally seen leftists claim that Stalin, and every other mass-murdering Communist, was a right-winger who infiltrated the Revolution.

      Why, if the Revolution is so vulnerable to infiltration by mass-murdering right-wingers without accomplishing ANY of its aim, we should have it, does not get a coherent answer.

      1. Right, and how did some Eeevul ‘right-winger’ take over every single communist regime that has ever been and proceed to commit atrocities? And why did they only take over communist regimes? Sumpthin’ don’t add up here.

  9. “The climate of hatred that killed JFK.” That’s a new one on me.

    Maybe it has to do with the place and time where I grew up, but I was given to understand that it was done by either a disgruntled commie (has there ever been a gruntled one in this country?) or by said disgruntled commie as a patsy for organized crime/government (two degrees of the same thing).

    1. We got the “climate of hate” version at school, too– the actual shooter was just “crazy”, it was how “high” tensions were, and then use some flim flam to imply that it was related to horrible Republicans trying to bring back slavery.

      1. I got a little of that “climate of hate” stuff, about how Dallas was full of eeeeeeevul white-supremacy so of course Someone was going to do Something, even if Someone was a Communist who killed the president because …. reasons.

    2. It’s not new at all. The left underwent severe cognitive dissonance when a commie killed JFK (at least, in the official version), and they couldn’t deny his commie-ness, but they also had to believe commie==good, so within a year or two it became “JFK was killed by a right-wing climate of hate”. Lots of writing on how it happened over the decades.

      It literally began right away, with Richard Hofstader’s “The Parnoid Style in American Politics“.

        1. That’s more coherent than the actual cope of the time. More like “It was done by a commie, but that CAN’T be so, because commies are good. Therefore, it was a right-wing culture of hate that made the assassination possible.”

    3. It was current events when I was in 6th grade. The news media at the time presented it as “that commie did it”, with Jack Ruby portrayed as an upright(ish) citizen outraged and extracting vengeance upon Oswald. That seemed to be the official story and TPTB were sticking to it.

      American History as taught in high school didn’t say much about the assassination. It wasn’t until quite recently (Vast Right Wing Conspiracy FTW) that JFK’s speech condemning the CIA got mentioned as something worth noting. Somewhere along the way, a Mafia hit got quiet whispers. The DA (Garrison in New Orleans, I think) who was investigating seemed to have gotten “the history is settled, you nutcase” STFU treatment.

      I have my own thoughts on the matter now, but I’m on enough lists.

      1. My mom’s family figured it was organized crime– though I think they figured Irish, not Italian– because JFK hadn’t pulled through with paying them for helping him fraud his way in.

        1. I mean, not an insane theory, since his brother and AG went hard after organized crime, rather than giving them a pass.

          But I’m fairly sold that it was the CIA making sure he didn’t disband them.

            2. Yes, agreed. Shows where the CIA and/or FBI characters are Honest|Trustworthy|Not Scumbags are unwatchable after the past few years.

            1. Confirmed the Mafia involvement? I missed that. The biggest news was that the declassification of documents that was scheduled to take place was delayed for more decades, and the LBJ Presidential Library released audio proof that he stole his first Senate election. (And if you think that’s not related, well…)

                2. My thought on the JFK assassination is that if we knew everything to know about what actually happen, there would be one or more vocal group(s) screaming “You’re Lying!”. 😈

      2. It was current events when I was in 6th grade.
        …………..

        I was in the 2nd grade. I don’t remember getting anything about JFK in HS American History. Current events when I was in HS was Vietnam.

        1. None of the schools I went to had updated their textbooks yet. They stopped with FDR, Praise Be Unto His Name, etc.

          We got a lot about Wonderful Woodrow Wilson, and that festering dirtbag Hoover, but not as much as about FDR. (peace be upon him)

    4. But…the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a Republican bill. The only reason Johnson signed it was because the Republicans had enough support to override a veto in both House and Senate.

      The Democrats have always been the party of slavery, oppression, segregation, discrimination and hate.

        2. I “love” the leftist argument that the Dems and Repubs switched magically after the ACW, and the KKK was a Rethuglican effort. IMAX, meet Leftists. (Since the topic is partly the ’60s, would it be Cinerama? Triple the projection!)

          1. How would Republicans start an organization initially composed of CONFEDERATE OFFICERS? Yeah, I know, “Spin Control to Major Tom…”

              1. Or the first Democrat president.

                Although Jefferson Davis wasn’t president of the United States…

                And the first black presidential nominee was Frederick Douglass, Republican, in 1888. He didn’t get far in the primaries, but his hat was in the ring.

            1. There is no R flip-flop, that I know of. There is an S-R (Set-Reset) flip-flop.
              There IS a D flip-flop.
              There is also a J-K flip-flop. (John Kerry? No…. he’s always been LEFT..on the bell curve.)

          3. It is not that simple. The original Klan was a major vehicle for Southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies and, ultimately, helped bring the post war American South back under Democrat control. The revival of the Klan in the early 20th Century was more inclusive in adding anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant, and anti-union sentiments to its repertoire. It was still dominated by registered Democrats — especially in the Midwestern States — but that wasn’t as universally true as the first incarnation. For example, the Klan in California was mostly Republican.

              1. And in Texas, it appeared that the Klan was more of a force against flagrant social offenses. Like domestic brutality, and speaking German in public. I have read (although I can’t now find a link to the cite) that the last white man persecuted or hanged by the Klan in Texas was for the crime of being German-speaking.
                The 1920s Klan in Texas and in Mid-Western States was something completely different from the Klan in the post ACW South.
                But all this is a subtly lost on the current racial warriors.

      2. That and LBJ planned (successfully for the most part) to spin it into a Dem victory and insert his Racist quote of getting the black vote here

  10. I wonder if, in some sense, mass culture isn’t always some sort of mass delusion, or mass fiction that enough people buy into. The fiction (or philosophy, or religion) can be good, bad, or neutral, but those who see it and want to control it always want to turn it to their own short-term advantage.

    As to Nixon being “soft left”, I am not sure that’s possible to discern. He started off staunchly anti-communist, then — arguably — witnessed the power of the deep state when it stole the election from him and gave it to JFK (and then they offed JFK, but that’s another story) and set himself against it in a quixotic quest. Yes, quixotic, even while he held the most powerful office in the land. Witness how the media and deep state aligned against him for Watergate. (Deep Throat was not some crusading truth-teller, he was an FBI bureaucrat pissed off that Nixon didn’t make him head of the FBI. And honestly, how many of the Watergate burglars were not affiliated with the CIA at one time or another?)

    Nixon’s actual record as President is likely a mix of what options were available to him at that time, following bad advice, and following advice that was better than the advisors could possibly have known (that last being opening relations with China, which despite what certain conservative commentators claim today, with fifty years of magical hindsight, was in fact a very good thing, in part because it aided in lifting a billion people from starvation and totalitarian rule, to something like prosperity, and freedom that increased, fitfully, but markedly, for well over forty years; the fly in the ointment was Xi Jinping, and to claim that anybody could have foreseen him so far in advance is to engage in wishful thinking).

    Nixon was hated not because he was right-wing, but because he was an outsider. He went to the wrong schools, had the wrong background, and was not approved by the Snob Class. Just like Trump.

    That outsider status, I think, best explains the occasional sympathy he has received from avowed leftists like Oliver Stone and Robert Altman (of all people!). Films like Stone’s Nixon and Altman’s Secret Honor don’t argue that Nixon had some leftist tendencies, and therefore wasn’t as bad as the culture held him to be; rather, they showed him as a lifelong outsider, assailed on all fronts, confused by the hostility and yet holding true to some inner core.

    How accurate is that view? No idea. Seems more likely than the “Tricky Dick was the worstest thing ever to happen in the history of the world” mentality that pervaded the culture into the 1980s, though.

    As for the idea of the culture being a set of lies that people are browbeaten into agreeing with…

    Ayn Rand portrayed it well in The Fountainhead, where Ellsworth Toohey backstage-manages “grassroots” and “spontaneous” cultural happenings, that all happen in one direction (natch). The more the leftist manipulation of everything gets exposed, the more her critics owe her apologies for calling her fiction exaggerated and unlikely, and admissions that she seriously understated things.

    And look at the amazing PR illusion the news media managed in the early 20th century. They went from yellow journalism rags to “Objective Truth” in the matter of a couple of decades, with no actual change taking place in how they operated.

    And finally, there is this video, which outlines in shocking and clear terms, how and why corporate America suddenly went woke. It wasn’t spontaneous, it wasn’t natural, it was simple blackmail. “Follow ESG, or your line of credit goes poof.”

    The power lusters can never win by being honest. They can only win by threats, intimidation, and lies.

    So, yes. Truth has power. Always.

    1. I wonder if, in some sense, mass culture isn’t always some sort of mass delusion, or mass fiction that enough people buy into.

      Applies to all culture. And state legitimacy. And money.

      All of these are conceptual spooks that work if and only if the majority of people believe in them.

      1. Um. I see what you mean, but also don’t quite agree.

        Money, for example. Seeing value in things other people value is not a delusion, but a… social calculation that makes trade easier. That’s different than fiction or delusion, although it is admittedly fluid and dependent on other people’s valuations of things.

        Jeffrey Tucker laid out how money arises naturally from trade in an essay on Halloween candy from over a decade ago. There is nothing fictional or delusional about the process, even if it is ephemeral.

    2. The Reader believes that Rand never realized the left would use her work as a how to manual. The only reason the Reader can see that the Brandon gang hasn’t published Directive 10-289 as an executive order is that all of the bureaucrats wouldn’t have anything left to do…

      1. I think Rand was fully aware of how things can be twisted — she grew up in the USSR, after all — but refused to back off from telling the truth for the chance that at least a few would listen.

    3. The problem is that many of Nixon’s policies were LBJ’s second and partial third terms. He kept expanding the welfare state, created the EPA, and so forth. Foreign policy was the only thing he DIDN’T screw up.

      1. Ending the gold standard, don’t forget that. But I can see him feeling embattled and acting on advice from experts — who were, remember, far more trusted then than now (which is a terrifying thought, but there you are).

        He was a complicated man, and not one I particularly care for. But I hate being lied to, and was lied to all my childhood about what he was.

        And I will forever go to bat for his going to China, however much it looks like a bad idea at this particular moment in time. Remove the present-ism, and he inarguably improved the lives of nearly a billion people by that one act. That’s better than the vast majority of humanity can ever claim to have done.

        1. Nixon was also a political animal – and he saw what happened to Goldwater in 1964.

          1. Which you would think the right would remember and enshrine in memory for at least another hundred years: the media hates you and will stop at nothing to destroy you. Example Number One, Barry Goldwater.

            1. There’s too much of the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party in the GOPe, and there are also those who think that the media “love” in the primaries will continue in the general. CF Mittens Romney and John Spit McCain.

              Trump was in no danger of forgetting the media hatred, though I gather he was sort-of tolerated in NYF’nC when he was merely a developer.

              1. Yeah, I was thinking less of the uniparty apparatchiks and more of, well, everybody else who’s not necessarily sucking at the deep state teat. You know, more people than just Tucker Carlson.

          2. Dad used to talk about the 1964 election. Every day the Democrats screamed “If you vote for Goldwater, we’ll go to war in Southeast Asia!”

            He told me, “Sure enough, they were right. I voted for Goldwater, and we went to war in Southeast Asia.”
            ———————————
            Those who do not remember the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes. Those who do remember are doomed to watch everybody else repeat them.

            1. This same story/joke also told by Jerry Pournelle, in (IIRC) one of his “A Step Farther Out” columns, once upon a time. (Sigh.)

              Really missing what he’d have had to say about the new burst of private space development including the on-coming private space stations. (Space X and Vast have announced just this week a mini-station launch contract for Aug. 2025, with manned Dragon missions to follow. See “updates” at spacex dot com and vastspace dot com, or shorter story at Zimmerman’s behindtheblack dot com.) And, of course, the Starship.

              He did enough over the years to try to kick this sort of thing off, personally…

  11. “The climate of hatred that killed JFK.” No, seriously. But it became sanctified and went into history books.

    JFK, first victim of climate change.

  12. Fear is a liar. And anyone who tells you you need to worry is a liar. You are free to move about the cabin (however you define that).

    “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” — Paul’s Letter to the Galatians

    1. I dearly love the Wall Street Journal‘s annual Christmas editorial, “In Hoc Anno Domini,” because it points out the difference between Rome and Christianity, submission and freedom. The older I get, the more it resonates.

      1. When they stop running it (and the Thanksgiving editorials) and they will given trends there, the Reader’s subscription will end immediately.

  13. Opinions, conjecture, and suppositions have become facts in the minds(?) of the many and are freely parrotted and adopted as undeniable fact by the most. The only way (and it’s marginally effective at best) to combat this is to “bring the receipts”. Kari Lake did this with effect when confronting the election denier label the press tried to pin on her. Likewise Trump during the CNN Town Hall debacle. It is ineffective on the truly brain-washed but it could plant a seed in those who still have some remnants of rational and logical thought.

    And save your brass.

    1. The key attack for those on the right is simplicity itself. One must first get one’s opposite number to think. Once that happens, all bets are off.

      The large problem with that is that piercing through the thick armor of ignorance buttressed by rote memorization and social pressures is extremely difficult to achieve with regularity.

      Thus humor as a weapon. It tends to disarm the opponent and surprise them.

  15. From Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

    Some nights, abed, Will put his ear to the wall to listen, and if his folks talked things that were right, he stayed, and if not right he turned away. If it was about time and passing years or himself or town or just the general inconclusive way God ran the world, he listened warmly, comfortably, secretly, for it was usually Dad talking. He could not often speak with Dad anywhere in the world, inside or out, but this was different. There was a thing in Dad’s voice, up, over, down, easy as a hand winging soft in the air like a white bird describing flight pattern, made the ear want to follow and the mind’s eye to see.

    And the odd thing in Dad’s voice was the sound truth makes being said. The sound of truth, in a wild roving land of city or plain country lies, will spell any boy. Many nights Will drowsed this way, his senses like stopped clocks long before that half-singing voice was still. Dad’s voice was a midnight school, teaching deep fathom hours, and the subject was life.

  17. There is one truth, but a near-infinite number of lies.

    The truth is what the facts show.

    Liars have to hide the facts, or get you to not believe them.

    Liars attempt to construct a false universe, in opposition to the real one.

    Facts are stubborn things, which remain facts whether you want to believe them or not.

    1. In one of the Anne of Green Gables books (the one where she goes to college), someone says something like, “Facts are stubborn things. But not nearly as stubborn as fallacies.”

    2. Few more:

      You can’t know something that isn’t true. You can only believe it, and be wrong.

      Finding a bunch of other idiots that believe the same lies does not make you right; it just means you are not alone in being wrong. That is good enough for some people.

      It matters little whether liars believe their own lies or not. They are still lying.

    1. It was less than a year ago when SCOTUS ruled that the EPA had no authority to regulate CO2 unless & until new legislation from Congress clearly grants them that authority. That hasn’t happened. How does this “rulemaking” stand up?
      The only thing this will accomplish is funneling more money to lawyers – and (probably the whole point of the otherwise futile excercise) getting those already brainwashed by the Climate Catastrophe crowd to support intimidating and/or packing the Supreme Court.

      1. Two ways: one, they aren’t using the word “ban”; the power companies can always install unproven and expensive “carbon capture” technology. Second, they’re obviously planning on having SCOTUS reverse itself under various threats.

        Democrats: “We’re going to do it anyway, and you’ll either surrender or give us an excuse to crush you. Pick one. “

        1. The “major questions doctrine” and “transformational to the economy” principles the Court based W Virginia v EPA on apply exactly the same way to this new attempt at regulation. SCOTUS (unless at least two Justices are replaced) really can’t back down on this.

    2. “The punishments for lying to the government are severe. Why, then, are there no penalties when the government lies to us? That seems to me much the more serious offense. The government can do far, far more damage by lying to us than any of us can do by lying to the government.”

  19. Diversity is naught but diversion. Inclusion only means its opposite. Equity creates twisted hierarchy. Sexism is the attempt to destroy the bonds of family. Racism is a lie. Taxation is theft. The environmentalist movement holds omnicidal roots close to its breast.

    The lies and obfuscation are yet growing. Yet today, perhaps with the benefit of years and experience, it has become only easier to sift out the obvious untruths.

    Before, when there was no internet, before Limbaugh and AM radio… It was easier to believe the lies. You were crazy if you didn’t. The overculture was quite thorough in a way that would be utterly impossible today without destroying a large portion of technological infrastructure and people (because we’d just build it back, better to thumb one’s nose at Bidet).

    Truth is uncompromisingly difficult at times. But truth cannot be broken by lies. Hidden, yes. Never destroyed.

    In that, there is hope.

  20. Successful assassins most always fit into one of two groups:

    1) Bodyguards

    2) Crazies

    If you examine cases where a head of state is whacked, or nearly so, the perp is almost always one of those two categories.

    And any pro guard will tell you, truthfully, that cat 2 is the everlovin b-word to stop. They usually have no escape intention, so they lack that “exit check” tell. Also, they can usually put false expressions on their face that would fool a pro poker player. Plus, they are utterly unpredictable to most sane folks.

    So “crazy whacked JFK” is totally likely. Now, lots of folks just can’t accept that cat 2 reality, despite it succeeding over and over again. (Mr McKinley to the courtesy phone, please…) Thus, some folks have to believe in an utterly fool-proof sixty-year no-leak conspiracy, in a government that routinely leaks vital national defense secrets and juicy political stuff like an over-full collander, rather than accept a crazy ex-Marine marksman with a scoped rifle could shoot a man in a vehicle moving at a walking pace less than 150 meters away, three shots in six seconds, from a prepared supported position.

    Right. No.

    The Feddies dropped the bodyguard ball, then screwed up the investigation. That is why they wont talk about it. Shame.

  21. Argument doesn’t work on Leftists because Leftist belief is not a conclusion of reason but an insistence of the will. They want reality to be hateful to justify their hate; they want to believe that they deserve power over lesser people; they want their daydreams to have the power to remake reality. Their minds are tools of their desires.

    That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t keep opposing their fantasies with truth. You never know when something real will penetrate the bubble. But it generally takes an existential shock to loosen the hold of the will. The narratives of ex-Communists, like Whittaker Chambers, tend to show this.

        1. Truth – believe whatever you want in your own mind. Express anything other than what the ruling class wants you to say and unless you can be completely self sufficient you’re dead.
          Justice – The only justice that’s gonna be seen is in front of St. Peter. In the Empire of DC if you belong to the ruling class or are not damaging the ruling class you are ignored or protected. If you are in what used to be middle or upper class, you’re going to be fined, hassled, and destroyed.
          American Way – not even sure what this used to mean. The only differentiating factor between the US and USSR was that the peons at least were allowed to believe they had innate rights within the US. Now if you’re not a curmudgeon or shut away you may as well just go the Russian route and drink because you are only allowed to sit in whatever the box of the day is.

          1. Hey. Don’t make me hit you. I’m tired and I have work to do.
            You want to give up, give up quietly. The rest of us ain’t gonna, so you might as well spare saliva.

          3. What is truth? Conformity to reality. Even if people in power say that you die if you say that the sky is blue – So what? If you refuse to say something true because hardship comes, then your life is over and you are naught but a husk of a man.

            Justice has always been assured in front of the Great White Throne of YHWH. It’s our duty to do our best to execute it here. So what if others don’t? So what if eth y persecute you? YHWH sees and will reply.

            American way? God and country, expressed through self-reliance combined with neighbourliness that lives in the heart. If your heart is so cold and dead that you don’t have that, I will pray for you.

            If you want to be the avatar of the Black Dog of Apathy, Depression, and Gloom, I tell ye this. Fine. But you’re cute, and I need a new rug.

            whets knives

            1. I’ve gotten to point that I just keep quiet. If you’re stuck in corpmerica speaking out and being contrary will get you tossed as soon as they can create an excuse.

              And the whole neighborliness and self reliance bit gets thrown thru the wringer when you cannot set roots down and are not in an approved group. Just look at Perry and Penny this week. Put yourself out and you will be thrown under the bus to appease the approved group (both were effectively looking out for extended peer group and show why not to be a hero). As for neighbors, the world has gone from having neighbors to interacting online. Instead of having a community it’s just a bunch of rentals that pop up moving trucks every two years

              1. I feel compelled to tell you that this sounds familiar to me. You sound very young to me, likely because I project, and I felt exactly that way when I was young. It’s a rigged game, and it seemed only those who could “compromise the truth” (whore themselves to the lie) could get any traction, and build anything.

                I have a son in your situation (the one I project you to have), and his generation has far fewer opportunities and options that I had at his age. The biggest difference might be that for me, all those decades ago, the collapse had always been there, continuing apace, since before I was born. It was constant and steady, and there was no reason to think it would ever be different.

                Now… things are accellerating, things are changing faster and faster, five years from now all the rules will have changed. Perhaps this could be reason for hope. The gods of the copybook headings are returning. Be light on your feet, and opportunity may emerge.

                1. Again, I repeat, the collapse you feel is the collapse of the blue model. You’re letting it panic you, is all.
                  What you think is the left winning is the wild flailing of a fatally wounded beast.

              2. I have to add: Don’t become the monster you fight. When opportunity arises and consider action, be true to your values, do not become the lie. The opportunites that are coming are far more broad and diverse than has been seen here in many generations. Choose wisely.

          4. Bless your heart.

            Truth, Justice, and the American Way are quite real.

            So is the obstinate intentional blindness that denies them. Your fetters and blinkers are self-applied. You gain neither respect nor pity for rattling them.

  23. I would like to have someone ask RFK Jr why, if he believes that the medical PTB have been lying to us all these years about vaccines for power and money, he doesn’t consider that the environmental PTB aren’t also lying about the environment for power and money. Especially considering that none, as in zero, of their predictions has been found correct.

    1. RFK Jr. is an opportunistic socialist. He ‘believes’ whatever is politically convenient for him at the moment. The difference between him and Bernie Sanders is where their funding comes from.

      Currently it is convenient for him to trash Big Pharma by mentioning what is glaringly obvious on television. I would guess Big Pharma didn’t support his campaign enough, so he can afford to point the finger at them. If they give him a sh1tlocker full of money, he will point the finger somewhere else.

      Which REALLY makes me wonder about Tucker Carlson, frankly. Because that guy -never- talks about who is funding RFK Jr. or #LetsGoBrandon or Tulsi Gabbard, or even Donald Trump. The subject never comes up.

      1. It’ll be interesting to see, if/when his self-produced show gets going, what he does and doesn’t talk about.

          1. some witnesses have gone missing while others are in jail
            …………

            The witnesses committed Clintoncide and Bidencide suicide. Instead of death bed confessions whistle blow witness statements it is all hearsay.

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