Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 2

"The whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognized this, while not appearing to."

-- Nixon's Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman

"You start out in 1954 by saying niger, niger, niger. By 1968 you can't say niger. That hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like 'forced busing', 'states rights', and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now, you're talking about cutting taxes. And all these things you're talking about are totally economic things, and the byproduct of them is that blacks get hurt worse than whites."

-- Republican strategist, Lee Atwater

I would be interested to hear how conservatives mental-gymnastics their way out of this one.

The reason I love to study the conservative mind so much is that conservativism is a feat of such audacious denial, ignorance, selfishness, and self-deception that it rises to the level of performance art. It's like watching an exotic tropical bird performing an elaborate mating dance without a conscious clue of what he's actually doing and why. But he does it with such self-righteous confidence that it blinds him to how ridiculous he looks to onlookers.

A good overview:

Note: I am not necessarily advocating for socialism. My purpose is to educate people and open their minds. Government is far too complex a topic to be boiled down to simplistic attitudes such as capitalism bad, socialism good — or vice versa. What's necessary is a deep, unbiased historical understanding of how government works.

Great documentary about Steve Bannon, architect of the alt-right and Trumpism:

Trumpism is a toxic mix of stage Red, Blue, and low Orange, with a massive Green shadow.

People who find the alt-right appealing are not merely Blue/Orange, the have a Red underbelly. Which is what makes the movement dangerous. It's fueled by anger, fear, vindictiveness, and greed. Which is why so many of Trump's lieutenants have been forced to step down due to allegations of domestic abuse, rape, bribery, tax evasion, corruption, misuse of public funds, sexism, racism, alcoholism, etc. That's because such people are precisely the sort who find strongmen and con-artists like Trump appealing. Because he's one of their kind, and so is basically any top Trump lieutenant. Because a conscious human who has transcended Red would find Trump's style abhorrent. But what Trump's top loyalists and fans find most appealing about him is that Red underbelly which cannot be satisfied by any normal career politician, left or right. Trump's scumminess is not a bug, it's a feature for people with a Red underbelly.

So that's how Trump manipulates his most loyal base: by tossing them Red meat. And that red meat is stage Green SJWs.

If you wanted to start a fascist movement in America, this is precisely how you'd do it.

You play as a potted flower in a city dreaming of the open flower fields.

The grassy gameplay is the flower's dream!

Beautiful game:

Respect to this guy for being vulnerable and sharing his experiences as a serious drug addict and his path to recovery.

It's hard for us normies to understand.

He has a great channel. I just hope he doesn't kill himself.

Don't do addictive drugs, kids.

Sometimes an obviously great thing sits right under your nose for years as you ignore it.

YouTube Premium is such a thing.

I don't know why I hadn't subscribed to it earlier. It's only $12/mo and gives you access to a totally ad-free YT experience, with a built-in button for downloading videos and the feature I really love which is the ability to play videos on your phone with the screen off.

If you've been hesitant to try YouTube Premium, I highly recommend it. $12/mo is a bargain to stop sitting through all the mindless ads, and it helps support your fave YouTube creators directly, unlike when you use AdBlocker.

I wish the whole internet had a single ad-free subscription option.

Sometimes, by being cheap you end up shooting yourself in the foot.

Note: this is not a paid promotion. I don't get paid for you signing up.

Rick Doblin is doing amazing work with his organization: MAPS.org

After some 25 years of tireless work from Rick and his colleagues, it looks like the first legal, FDA-approved psychedelic therapy/medicine will finally be ready to go in 2021 or 2022 in America. This is HUGE!

Please donate to MAPS.org if you care about the legalization of psychedelics. This is the real deal. This is our best shot.

P.S. Best YT comment under the video: "He’s grinning like a mushroom gnome."

BTW, this is a great example of how to execute a high-consciousness life purpose. It's just the right mix of idealistic yet pragmatic.

"There runs through the fundamentalist belief system a deep dread of ambiguity, disorder, and chaos. Accordingly, the cult of masculinity keeps all ambiguity — especially sexual ambiguity — in check. It fosters a world of binary opposites: God and man, saved and unsaved, church and world, Christianity and secular-humanism, male and female. These tidy pairings keep life from slipping back into a complicated nightmare. Reality thus defined, is made predictable and understandable — something deeply comforting to believers — who've had trouble coping with the messiness of human existence. There is, in this Christian worldview, clearly demarcated order and disorder. Behaviors that do not conform, such as homosexuality, are forms of disorder, tools of Satan, and must be abolished. A world that can be predicted and understood, a world that has clear boundaries, can be made rational, it can be managed and controlled. The petrified, binary world of fixed immutable roles is a world where people — many of them damaged by bouts with failure, despair, and their own ambiguities, can bury their chaotic and fragmented personalities and live with the illusion that they are strong, whole, and protected. The decline of America is described as the result of the decline of male prowess. This decline has led to weakness and moral decay. It has resulted in a bewildering human and social complexity that — often seen as feminine — is the work of Satan. By submitting to a Christian leader and powerful male God who will destroy those who misbehave, followers avoid dealing with life. The movement seeks, above all, to banish mystery — the very essence of faith. Not only is the binary world knowable and predictable, but finally God is knowable and predictable. Since life has a way of not respecting these artificial lines — since ambiguity, inconsistency, and irrationality are part of human existence — the only way believers can push forward is to pretend that these troubling aspects of our internal and external reality do not exist. They create a parallel reality, one that allows them to escape... into a world of their own creation. Unconscious motives, longings, and fears are denied and responsibility for them is abandoned as fundamentalism makes a pretense of being all about cut-and-dried truth, and clear and recognizable feelings."

-- Chris Hedges, American Fascists

The above is a characteristic feature of the Spiral Dynamics Stage Blue conservative worldview.

I'm lookin' at you, Jordan Peterson & Ben Shapiro.

But to truly become whole, this attitude cannot fly. Instead you must dive deep into the ambiguity of life and wrestle with the relativity of all boundaries, binaries, and dualities until you've recognized this as God's — and your's — ultimate nature. You cannot become whole or healed while denying chaos, vulnerability, uncertainty, femininity, feelings, emotions, intuition, relativity, mystery, irrationality, paradox, spontaneity, surrender, and love.

So beware the conservative, stoic approach to life. Beware the cult of masculinity. Beware the cult of "facts over feelings". It won't work, as it makes you emotionally stunted, repressed, bitter, and robotic.

It's the shit you deny which will come back to bite you in the ass. Since reality is a Great Circle.

Great video. The perfect balance of educational and entertaining: