zazen

Many of the core progressive concerns are populist at heart. The establishment obscures these shared concerns through partisan framing so that people are busy fighting along tribal lines horizontally, rather than transcendent lines vertically - against the vested interests who benefit from that distraction which perpetuates the status quo. A lot of the time, the concerns are shared but people are divided about the solutions ie print more money to fund welfare vs de-regulate to boost wealth creation or boost immigration vs increase the fertility rate. Most people regardless of political affiliation want the same things: affordable healthcare, housing and education, safer streets and a stop to wars. These aren’t radical ideas to be boxed into left or right - but basic human needs. They’re popular and populist as they reflect the shared desires of many people. Populism has been tainted with a dark tone because at its worst it can lead to dark outcomes and at its best it challenges elite interests - but that doesn't mean its inherently bad. It's simply whats popular, and whats popular is democratic. It's funny how its democracy when the vote is in favour of the establishment but populism when it isn't. People have more in common than they think, but get lost in a culture war that the vested interests benefit from as it keeps people fighting at the margins on peripheral but valid issues rather than addressing the core issues which challenges the core power structures of our societies. Both the left and right are being played in this regard. To make things simple and generalise - I view the left as a pacifier and the right as amplifier. The Democrats soak up revolutionary rage, take all that energy for systemic change against inequality, war, and corporate domination - and funnel it into performative activism, identity politics and corporate approved “wokeism” that makes people feel like progress is happening when it barely is. It’s pacification by distraction. The rage is neutralized, absorbed into a cul-de-sac of safe, symbolic gestures. Let the people rage about pronouns and micro-agressions whilst the system inflicts macro-agressions that erode the quality of life for everybody and literally un-alive people across the world through wars and destabilisation. The Republicans on the other hand, amplify anger. They feed on the grievances of the disaffected and feed them red meat when they direct this rage at immigrants via ethnocentrism. This doesn’t pacify, it inflames. But it’s still a deflection as it keeps the rage unfocused and away from the multifaceted causes - it’s channeled into culture wars which have some validity but shouldn’t be a priority. The right at least do a better job of acknowledging a lot more of the basics - the need for safety, secure borders, being critical of a de-growth mentality to save gaia at the expense of their livelihoods, the imposition of woke values top down from institutions which is a ideology that denies reality and flirts with cultural authoritarianism. The left are blind to their abuse of power because power blinds those who have it. The right are blind to the problems within their solutions. The libertarian ethos (minimal government) among the right blinds them to the fact that de-regulation can lead to corporate and oligarchic domination. They conflate the idea that less state power means greater freedoms and wealth creation for all - when it can far too easily mean wealth consolidation for the few. In the end, Trump's populist appeal is more built around naming problems, rather than solving them, or only solving problems in a way that causes more on the back end.

I wouldn't disagree either. This is where I have a problem with the left - they are blind to their own abuses of power yet rant about the potential hypothetical abuse of power from a future presidency that is yet to even come into power. Ironically, this is one of the reasons people are disillusioned enough to even re-align themselves against the left. Authoritarianism for me but not for thee - wokism is basically cultural authoritarianism. There has been a quiet creeping authoritarianism that is very much a real thing and not a hypothetical - yet we only signal the red alarm for the hypothetical orange hitler version. De-platforming and cancel culture, financial blacklisting and de-banking, censorship and big tech collusion, political opponents submerged in a sea of legal warfare - these have authoritarian undertones. Remember Trudea's bank account freezing of the Freedom Convoy protesters - that wasn't ''regulation'' but silencing of dissent and freedom of protest. Theres a huge difference between regulation and de-banking. The lefts solution and slippery slope of logic rests upon - embrace authoritarianism today to prevent authoritarianism tomorrow. The fact these tactics are over looked or deemed ''okay'' because its done to the ''right'' people who aren't in our ''tribe'' is dangerous. Because authoritarianism doesn't care for political tribes, and the same tools that become normalised in their use today, will and can be used against everyone tomorrow. The left are having panic attacks over a phantom facism yet to even take hold, if it ever even does - yet ignore the very real authoritarian impulses that have crept into their own camp. Like a fish in water, power is blind to those that have it - and they have it via institutions, media and academia. This is why the right went all in on alternative media - because the mainstream is hostile to them. Just like how BRICS is forming an alternative financial system because the Western one is hostile and weaponised against them. The West loves to pat itself on the back for how virtuous they are, the same way domestically the liberal establishment pats itself for being the “good” guys that can do no wrong. It doesn’t even register amongst them that their “side” does so. As long as Trump lives rent free in their heads, they will miss the wider cause of his rise - and will ultimately fail in the next election again.

Here Sam Harris speaks on how much the far left have captured institutions and levers of power that the far right haven't (time stamp: What radicalised the right) Regarding the rise wokism - it seems to be a combination of a grassroots movement co-opted by power to deflect criticism away from those who abuse that power. The reason it rose so rapidly in the 2010's was because the occupy wall street movement was speaking up to power after the 2008 crisis and gaining traction - this was a challenging threat. Power (corporate) had to co-opt and pacify this revolutionary energy and channel it into a cul-de-sac of performative corporate approved wokism ie hashtag activism. So it became a top down-bottom up movement which is why it feels imposed, in-authentic and hollow - whilst having kernels of truth. They changed the game board people were fighting on, which was a vertical one challenging those above them (elites) - to a horizontal one (between left and right) where people fight among each other over socio-cultural issues as a deflection. They pacified real concern targeting the core power structure, and amplified peripheral concerns to deflect people away from it. The Democrat establishment elite don't challenge power, they contain challenges to it. It's the party of pacification, a pressure release valve for discontent - that re-directs rage towards identity politics rather than the realities of in-equality. The Republican right on the other hand amplify rage like a pressure cooker and direct it to fake solutions of de-regulation and minimal government - but they at least acknowledge the problem of safety and security ie borders, safe streets etc. The directing of real concern over inequality, towards socio-cultural issues - emboldened them into a social contagion of absurdities that the centre now feel hostage to and has everyone walking on egg shells for. Wokism is a threat in the sense that it's captured cultural, institutional, and bureaucratic power - and that it doesn't have a single tyrannical figure we can challenge because its a social contagion that's simply referred to as ''they/them'' pun intended. It's pervasive and stretches from academia to social media, from corporations to mainstream entertainers. They cancel, censor, lecture, and condescend. They emotionally black mail people who aren't as ideologically pure as them - and because in their world they can identify as anything - they'll call emotional terrorism emotional cardio thats just good for your heart. When a state and society starts being overly restrictive (whether it’s conservatives or wokies doing the restricting) - the natural response is to side with the side who will unburden them from those restrictions. In the words of Kamala - to be unburdened by what has been. Of course, not all freedom is freeing, nor are all restrictions restricting. Some freedoms are given up for larger freedoms - some restrictions can be more freeing than some so called freedoms. But the general sense among many people is that some essential freedoms have been breached - and so they swing to the side that claims to uphold them. What they perhaps don't realise is that the libertarian ethos (minimal government overreach) among the right blinds them to the fact that de-regulation can lead to corporate and oligarchic domination. They conflate the idea that less state power means greater freedoms and wealth creation for all - when it can far too easily mean wealth consolidation for the few. Trump's populist appeal is more built around naming problems, rather than solving them. Getting more philosophical on wokism, liberalism and conservatism: Wokism is a misdirected and misplaced expression of the souls yearning to transcend the limitations of form - they destroy or deny form instead. The truth is we are biologically conservative (form, boundaried), yet spiritually liberal (formless, boundless). We are lost in translation between two worlds, the duality we are - and this manifests in many ways including politics. Liberalism honors the formless (God / soul) within each form - thus calling for justice and equality for all. Conservatism honors the stability of form (Gods creation / structure) - thus calling to conserve it. Liberalism taken too far into what we call wokism denies form all together. Conservatism gone too far into what we call fundamentalism see's nothing beyond form even though they claim they do - their literalist interpretation of God contradicts this.

Isn’t Trump being a tyrannical orange Hitler also speculation? He wasn’t that 4 years ago and we all survived.. Meanwhile, Bidens administration presided over a plausible genocide and did nothing to stop it but in fact facilitated it, excused it, and diplomatically shielded it. They did nothing to de-escalate the Ukraine war. Nord stream blowing up is forgotten as if it never happened, the findings aren’t even being released by Swedens investigation which is now closed - though they found it was extensively sabotaged. When Kamala was asked what changes would be made she said she wouldn’t change anything, and was committed to continuity. Two months before Biden leaving office they have escalated against Russia crossings its red line by green lighting missile strikes into Russia. Due to this, NATO are now talking of pre-emptive strikes on Russia, and UK and France are talking of troop deployment in Ukraine. The establishment are backing a plausible genocide flirting with a major regional war in the Middle East that would spiral the world into hyperinflation, and another war of nuclear brinkmanship that would devastate the world to a degree we wouldn’t even exist to worry about hyperinflation. Yet - we should be raging about the hypothetical tyranny of Trump coming in and not about the real tyranny currently occurring? And before anyone says Biden probably didn’t green light it - okay then, but who did? Who’s making the decisions? That is part of the populist point - a faceless machine of an establishment is harder to tackle and far scarier to live with because it’s a invisible leviathan rather than a visible loudmouth buffoon you can just vote out.

@Raze That’s true. Once you get to witness the cheating that takes place, the cunningness involved, and the general level of stress induced from relationships - it can jade a man. You hear similar stories from friends in relationships and who’ve been “successful” also. Also, what gets interpreted as misogyny is sometimes just carelessness. Misogyny is a active hatred and disdain of women, some times - I’d say a lot of the time player types simply don’t care and are indifferent - which is why they also do well. But indifference also causes hurt - it’s just not a active hatred towards the opposite sex.

@Jodistrict I see where you’re coming from. There’s a way of viewing integrity as being beyond bipartisan politics to the point your willing to cross tribal lines for the sake of your cause. Perhaps he’s not betraying principles, he’s betraying the need for applause and risking tribal backlash because of what’s important to get done - being pragmatic over ideological - because the state of a nation requires it. This isn’t some purity contest - which is exactly what a lot of democrat defectors have said it’s become (Cenk most recently). Maybe a lot of the big names migrating to the Republican side view it as more workable and mouldable. Their not necessarily all narcissists or devils - maybe just architects seeing the R party as unformed clay they can work with. None of us can know RFK’s intent or what’s going on in his head, but if he’s pure intentioned then he isn’t playing the political game, he’s thrown the game board away completely for what he thinks matters. Flirt with opinions, date ideas, marry principles, divorce ideologies.

@Bobby_2021 @BlueOak Check out the first 6 minutes of this:

Check out this thread: https://x.com/villgecrazylady/status/1859748387291107797?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ Somewhat conspiratorial..but interesting. Politics is one dirty game.

Interesting breakdown of Ukraine

That’s actually a great blog post on RFK and exactly why he could mess up. They should have just got a proper doctor and RFK to advise on the natural health / food / preventative side of the equation.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-lawmakers-hague-invasion-act-what-is-it

@PurpleTree Nice share. Related to that:

Meanwhile Bud light learning from their mistakes:

Of course not man. If anything, Western elites are okay with it. I've literally seen their correspondents say the quiet part out loud ''The Ukraine war is strategically advantageous to us because we just provide the arms and funds without the loss of our own men''ie Ukrainians are their cannon fodder to be used as a thorn in Russia's side. Boris Johnson flopped a possible peace way back in the earlier days of this shit show. I also viewed Russia as a brazen aggressor, but after learning the context and what proceeded it, its a different story. Recommend the following 13 min watch, worth it: If anything, I'm the one who should be worried as I'm in the UK, and its more likely if anything escalates its the UK that would be hit first, not the US. But all I see is escalation and provocation with utter hubris.

A good channel in general, but check out these videos on seed oils and modern wheat:

RFK brings a good paradigm - which is of holistic health, prevention over cure. The status quo so far has been focused on treating diseases rather than fostering health to prevent them. But RFK's trap is to not dismiss the gains and legitimacy of modern medicine all together or to undermine it. Chronic diseases account for approx 90% of annul healthcare costs which is $4.1 trillion - thats $3.6 trillion. A lot of these are preventable through diet and lifestyle fixes. Imagine even a annual $1 trillion cut in expenses - thats better than what ''DOGE'' can achieve - not to mention the cascade of effects that has on productivity and happiness by having a clearer brain and energy to do things. Even from a national security perspective - 77% of young Americans aged 17-24 are ineligible for military service, a significant portion disqualified due to fitness. Regarding awakening (vertical-spiritual) and development (horizontal-material) - just because someone has experienced the absolute, or is aware of it - doesn't mean they have relative knowledge of the world. Even if they do, that doesn't mean they have it in all domains nor grasp all the intricacies involved. I became aware of Mark Hyman a decade ago through Tyler and his book ultra mind solution really helped me on my health journey: RFK speaking on God: People don't always commit bad or cause it to come about due to a bad heart, but due to being wrong minded.

This is how many people have felt regarding the left / Dems / establishment coming after them for not towing the party line or presenting a challenge to the orthodoxy. Jordan Peterson, Bret Weinstein, JK rowling - all their fiascos revolved around this, and these are just the more notable names. The pervasiveness of this stretches from academia to social media, from corporations to mainstream entertainers. Your ''side'' cancel, censor, lecture, and condescend. They wield moral superiority like a hammer, dismissing dissent as ignorant or bigoted. They can get someone memory holed from the internet and destroy careers with a hashtag. They can turn the entire media apparatus into a synchronized chorus singing whatever tune serves the establishment. The left are blind to this cultural authoritarianism, because power not only corrupts but blinds those who have it. The right naturally put their efforts into alternative media because the mainstream platforms were hostile to them. It’s the same reason on a macro geopolitical level - BRICS is forming an alternate financial system parallel to the Western system - because the West abuses and weaponises it through sanctions and seizure of assets - utterly suffocating multipolarity just like how the establishment suffocate domestic political plurality of opinions - causing utter polarity as a result!

He was probably speaking more in the hypothetical - if things were to escalate. The thing is even if these missiles don't do much damage or are countered by Russia - the major difference is this isn't simply providing weapons for Ukraine to use, these missiles require US participation in order to launch them. ATCAMS rely on advanced targeting data that Ukraine doesn't have without Western levels of ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance). Thats as far as I currently understand it. It's literally declaring war on Russia directly and no longer by proxy. Russia even said this was their red line, and here we are - the red line is shining bright red but the West just walks right past just like the past actions that resulted in where we are today. The hubris, arrogance, delusion and stupidity is on another level. This is Bidens legacy (if presidents even are in control that is) - presiding over a plausible genocide in Gaza he didn't stop but had all the means to (supposedly) and nuclear brinkmanship 2 months before his departure from office. But yeah, this forum can keep worrying about Orange Hitler whilst not a single thread gets started on this major escalation - and barely a mutter from Democrat die hards lol.

@Bobby_2021 @sholomar It ain’t looking good. UK the chihuahuas barking - it’s always the small insecure dogs isn’t it. They think because they got a pitbull (America) in their corner they’re safe.

It’s beautiful to expand our empathy to the marginalised, but to do it at the expense of alienating sizeable segments of society - working class people, rural communities or anyone who doesn’t parrot the same values - is selective empathy. When the circle of concern only extends to those who agree with you, it stops being concern and starts looking like tribalism wrapped in a moral bow. If your circle doesn’t include everyone, it’s not a circle, but a fence. Everyone should have discernment, integrity, and a duty to warn, but the lefts “concern” centers exclusively on denouncing Trump, while ignoring the systemic failures and institutional overreach that created him. Idolising him is misguided but obsessively denouncing him without addressing the broader context isn’t discernment - it’s deflection. True integrity would demand confronting the whole system, not just its most obnoxious byproduct - the orange tinted man. The left are so busy looking through their microscope to psychoanalyse Trump and his deplorable supporters micro aggressions that they forgot to pick up the mirror and check themselves before they wreck themselves - ie lose again in 2028.

When the left try to engineer societal transformation through institutional power, cultural policing, and moral absolutism, they create more toxic soil than fertile ground for lotus flowers. Power blinds those who have it, and their abuses of it. I see very little self-reflection (self actualization anyone?) among leftist Democrats. The left’s problem isn’t their ability to dissect Trump - it’s their inability to see why they keep losing to him - to dissect themselves. They’re like a boxer who’s perfected the jab but keeps getting knocked out because they don’t see the hooks coming. Power is like water to a fish – when you're swimming in it, you stop noticing it's there. That's why the establishment can't understand why people are "voting against their interests." They can't see how their own overreach, their own abuse of power, their own suffocating orthodoxy might feel to people who have to live under it. Real discernment would mean being able to see the whole picture – not just Trump's failures, but the system's failures. Not just the flaws in others thinking, but the fatal flaws in their own. Analyzing micro aggressions and individual failings is narrow band discernment, not wide band discernment of institutional systemic failings that commit macro aggressions on the populace within its borders and beyond in the form of foreign policy. That's the real tragedy here: The people who pride themselves on their ability to spot fascism in others have become blind to the authoritarian impulses in themselves or within their own “side”. The establishment left wield immense power - cultural, institutional, and bureaucratic. It's pervasive and stretches from academia to social media, from corporations to mainstream entertainers. They cancel, censor, lecture, and condescend. They wield moral superiority like a hammer, dismissing dissent as ignorant or bigoted. They can get someone memory holed from the internet and destroy careers with a hashtag. They can turn the entire media apparatus into a synchronized chorus singing whatever tune serves the establishment. When the right put their efforts into alternative media - the left cry about it calling for more censorship of misinformation. It’s the same reason on a macro geopolitical level - BRICS is forming an alternate financial system parallel to the Western system - because the West abuses and weaponises it through sanctions and seizure of assets - utterly suffocating multipolarity just like how the establishment suffocate domestic political plurality - causing utter polarity as a result! Trump’s flaws are obvious to anyone who cares to look - his lies, his ego, his opportunism. But to many he’s not just a man - he’s a battering ram against a system they feel failed them. On some level, people view a individual or a group of them as more nimble and agile, able to change - rather than a behemoth of an establishment. Its easier to turn around a dinghy than a titanic. This gives them hope, and they're willing to bet on it, even if it means the dinghy may be turning towards a ocean without a shore - for the status quo titanic they are currently on feels like its bound for a iceberg. The establishment are so drunk on their own power that they can't see how they're manufacturing their own opposition. They're like a person setting fire to their own house while complaining about the smell of smoke. Trump isn't their problem – he's a symptom of their problem. He's what happens when you convince half the country that they're deplorable, and then act surprised when they embrace it. Trump isn't winning because he's strong. He's winning because the liberal establishment has become everything they claim to oppose – authoritarian lite, elitist, and completely disconnected from the people they performatively champion. The establishment NCP's are too busy polishing their pronouns and perfecting their cancellation techniques to notice they've become exactly what they claim to hate. The people who control the message keep losing to the message they can't control thanks to alternative media.

To add to above: it's harder to turn around a titanic than a dingy. People consciously think or sub-conciously feel - that more change is possible with a individual or a small group of them, than established institutions. The former are more nimble and agile, the latter are frozen by inertia and paralyzed by decades of bureaucratic momentum, interconnected interests, and self-preserving mechanisms that resist change or change too slow in a world requiring the opposite. Change seems more possible in the margins where mavericks, misfits and macho men are than in a massive immovable center resisting it. This is not an endorsement, simply a observation. I'm aware of the dangers of power being held by non-establishment individuals and wild card saviors - they're talk of minimized regulations can seem like a boon for small business until those small fish realize that big fish eat little fish when in the wild (un-regulated market) - and that food doesn't always trickle down to the bottom of the ocean. Also, those ''revolutionaries'' can become the very establishment they rallied against - and so it happens in history. Both global and nationalist modes of power are fundamentally parasitic: One extracts wealth through borderless corporate imperialism, devouring national populations for global profit - this is the faceless establishment machine. The other concentrates power in individual oligarchs who treat nations as personal fiefdoms. Different tactics, same predatory result - same attitudes working on different latitudes.

But isn’t that what “smart” people are voting against (not so much for) - a state or social culture being held hostage to a mainstream narrative that can’t be challenged. We call state overreach authoritarian, and social overreach a social contagion that uses shaming and cancel culture as its weapon to enforce ideological purity. Isn’t policing language and micro aggressions overreach? Isn’t it normal for people to think - “they can take me down any minute”. Didn’t they shut down small-medium business whilst allowing the big fish to stay open in Covid? Didn’t they allow sub-prime mortgages to sink people economically and bail out the same banks that did so - with public money! Is saying that men can give birth - including having a emoji depicting so - Truth! The way we refer to political sides is through their mascots - people just say I’m voting Trump of Kamala - but what if a lot of people aren’t voting for Trump but for the team around him and against the establishment around Kamala - including what they stand for. “He’s afraid of his own freedoms” - is that a bad thing? When a state and society starts being overly restrictive (whether it’s conservatives or wokies doing the restricting) - the natural response is to side with the side one who will unburden them from those restrictions. In the words of Kamala - to be unburdened by what has been 😂 Of course, not all freedom is freeing, nor are all restrictions restricting. Some freedoms are given up for larger freedoms - some restrictions can be more freeing than some so called freedoms. But the general sense among many people is that some essential freedoms have been breached - and so they swing to the side that claims to uphold them.

@hundreth On point. Neither institutions or individuals should get a free pass to exploit peoples trust. Theres tons of snake oils types waiting to make money off people. It's like a feedback loop where when institutions fail, they cause people to look elsewhere and get burned if they aren't careful enough. I think people hold institutions to a higher standard simply due to their role (designed to serve the public good) and scale - corruption that exists among institutions can impact a far greater number of people compared to individuals - though individuals are now punching above their weight thanks to social media. People see the corruption of institutions and their governments then claim to be red pilled - once they then witness the corruption of individuals who promised to offer solutions where institutions didn't - they become black pilled and very cynical. It's utterly destabilising to the health of a society. Perhaps the onus is more on institutions as they have the power, societal mandate and purpose to serve the public - people falling prey to individuals and alternatives is the symptom of institutional failings. Good points. We generally can't rationalise people out of positions they didn't rationalise themselves into - for many people they simply responded to the circumstances. Major institutions failing once in a while in isolated pockets isn't enough to cause people to lose trust - it's a relationship between institutions and individuals which has eroded over time. When breach of trust accumulates over many incidents it's not as irrational to be wary of future claims from those same institutions - but its a error to dismiss them outright as you and hundreth have said. If mamma bear lies about Santa it's one thing, but if she lies about who my real pappa bear is thats a whole other - so the type of lie matters, as well as the number of them. People being lied to about the wars their men get sent out to die for - and to kill and destabilise entire regions is a scale and type of lie so large and egregious it makes one believe evil exists. If someones in a abusive relationship where they are lied to and cheated on many times - which creates a recognisable pattern - it's a a natural outcome to develop a heuristic as a defence mechanism. We'll be skeptical going forward. Ideally people would evaluate the merit of every claim being made - but thats exactly what institutions are there for and serve the function of - because every day people generally don't have the time, expertise or resources to do so. Which is why institutions are held to a higher standard, which is why them failing multiple times disillusioned people enough to look elsewhere then get burned by alternatives.