And how did you enjoy your Winter of Severe Illness and Death?
Tag: rhetoric
China Signals its Side
The specific choice of rhetoric utilized in this Global Times article is extremely significant.
Last year, several “anonymous US officials” have told the media either “the Chinese military has three times rejected requests for calls from the US defense secretary,” “researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick and sought hospital care before COVID-19 outbreak disclosed,” or “China has no intention of engaging in serious or substantive talks with the US.” All of these have later been proven to be utter disinformation, which only serves as “cannonballs” for attacking China.
When looking back at his past as CIA director, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo once said publicly, “We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses.” So how does the US lie and deceive people? It is easier for Washington and the US media to quote “anonymous officials” to spread lies as shocking “exclusive news.” The cooperation between US propaganda machines and diplomatic and intelligence services has greatly increased the deceptiveness of those lies. Moreover, the US’ alliance system and hegemony in public opinion can make sure that even though Washington is a habitual liar, it can obtain a certain amount of assentation and support. This has become the bases for the US to play politics as it wants.
While US media maliciously falsifies the truth, Washington deliberately pretends to know nothing. These two to some extent have even formed an integral production, supply and distribution chain of fake news. This is unprofessional, immoral, and irresponsible, and will only further discredit the US in front of the world. As some comments pointed out, whenever people see the news reports that include sentences like “anonymous officials revealed…” and “US intelligence agencies claimed…,” they should in their minds replace everything in those sentences with “They may be lying.”
Therefore, unsurprisingly, as Washington is changing its foreign strategy to “great power competition,” it will use its hegemony in public opinion and media to spread false information and launch a “public opinion warfare.” Of course, we can also be sure that such a “double act” will sooner or later fail to work as the deficit in the US’ account of credibility rises.
Right now, when the military conflict in Ukraine is getting increasingly serious under Washington’s provocation, and when the energy and refugee crises become more and more severe in Europe, the US’ smear campaign will only unmask it as the initiator. More and more people will see the true face of the US – an “empire of lies.”
The Chinese may not believe in Satan or the spiritual side of Babelism, but they are nevertheless opposed to the forces of globalist satanry for their own materialistic and nationalistic reasons.
Cracks in the Narrative
The globalist media begins to prepare the great mass of NPCs that the Ukrainians are not winning the war, Putin is not going to be overthrown, and jaw-jaw does not trump war-war. While globohomo clearly won the information war, Russia is winning the actual boots-on-the-ground war.
As Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine grinds on into its fourth week, the physical war rages in the cities and countryside, while an information war is waged over the airwaves and on the internet and social media.
On the actual battlefield, the Russian offensive has undoubtedly slowed over the past week. But what is being described as a ‘stalled’ takeover may be the result of the Russians taking time to reorganize their forces and improve their logistics.
On the Western side of the information war, we were told from the opening days of the conflict that the Russian military would break due to high casualties and defections, loss of tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and aircraft, and domestic opposition.
Videos of Russian battlefield setbacks abound in the media, and strangely there is little reporting on Ukrainian losses.
And yet, over three weeks into the war, Vladimir Putin remains president and the Russian war machine has not collapsed but in fact continues its plodding, imperfect, and messy advance.
Ukraine certainly has won the war on social media and in the press. This gives the average Western viewer the impression of a lopsided victory in favor of Ukraine.
Additionally, the Pentagon has taken the unprecedented step of conducting daily briefings on the war, even though the U.S. is not at war.
The Pentagon assessments often track closely with assessments given by the Ukrainian government.
The Russian military has used a mix of maneuver and siege warfare in an effort to achieve its goal of breaking the Ukrainian military and government and conquering vast regions of the country.
This is not a condemnation of the West’s use of information and disinformation.
These tactics play a role in the management of conflicts. But the West should not delude itself into believing that the Ukrainians will be saved by wishful thinking.
Optics are not everything. Propaganda is not power. And no amount of wishing and wordspelling is sufficient to defeat air, sea, and ground superiority combined with the will to complete the mission.
The Least of the Charges
Hypocrisy is arguably among the least of the charges that can be accurately lodged against The Empire That Never Ended. Given that its influence rests entirely on lies, redefinitions, and sophistic rhetorical manipulation, it’s hardly a surprise that an institution also known as The Empire of Lies should be shamelessly hypocritical. But it is worth observing nevertheless, if only to disarm its rhetoric.
Since people insist on bringing up the moral principles of self-determination and freedom of association, I insist that those principles be equally and fairly applied. That is a thing that human beings do, when it comes to questions of morality, to demand that they be universally invoked if they are to be invoked at all. I don’t know what kind of weird moral world people are living in where they think it’s some irrelevant dodge to maintain the essential notion of universalism. Those who use the term “whataboutism” are alleging that their targets are avoiding hard conversations and real engagement through distraction, but that is in fact precisely the function that the term uses in our discourse, to allow people to wriggle out of considering America’s terrible history of crimes abroad. And to the extent that this dynamic is identified at all, it’s never matched with an attendant focus on the stuff that was disallowed from the conversation. People don’t say “that’s whataboutism” at 2:00 and then say “OK let’s get serious about what America’s drug war has done to Mexico” at 2:30.
The people who say “whataboutism” don’t want to talk about carpet bombing in Cambodia. They don’t want to talk about death squads in El Salvador. They don’t want to talk about reinstalling the Shah in Iran. They don’t want to talk about the murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. They don’t want to talk about giving a hit list to rampaging anti-Communists in Indonesia. They don’t want to talk about the US’s role in installing a far-right government in Honduras. They don’t want to talk about US support for apartheid in South Africa. They don’t want to talk about unexploded ordnance that still kills and maims in Laos. They don’t want to talk about supporting the hideously corrupt drug lord post-Taliban regime in Afghanistan. They don’t want to talk about aiding literal Nazis and Italian fascists in taking over the government in Albania. They don’t want to talk about giving support to the far-right government’s “dirty war” in Argentina. They don’t want to talk about the US-instigated far-right coup in Ghana. They don’t want to talk about our illegal bombing of Yugoslavia. They don’t want to talk about centuries of mistreatment of Haiti, such as sponsoring the coup against Aristide. They don’t want to talk about sparking 36 years of ruinous civil war, and attendant slaughters of indigenous people, in Guatemala. They don’t want to talk about our drone war in Pakistan. They don’t want to talk about how much longer this list could go on….
I asked some really basic questions in this post – do you really think the United States operates under the principle of self-determination for other nations? Do Cuba or any other disfavored countries enjoy self-determination from the influence of the United States? Why are we allowed to dictate who neighbors ally with, where Russia is not? Are you all really so blind to your country’s history? And not one comment, among hundreds, has credibly provided a coherent answer to the basic moral questions at hand.
Those limited to the rhetoric should never be expected to directly answer dialectical questions. Because they can’t. All they have is emotion, and emotion is intrinsically irrational and incoherent.
And liars will never be troubled by their inconsistency. It’s the least of their concerns.
Rhetorical Overload
The Ukrainian PR department is out of control:
Russia is stockpiling the bodies of dead Ukrainians to stage a false flag attack at Chernobyl, releasing radioactive waste in a ‘man-made catastrophe’ that would amount to a ‘terrorist attack’, Ukraine has warned.
Vladimir Putin has ordered his troops to release radioactive waste at the nuclear site which he plans to blame on Ukrainian ‘saboteurs’ in order to justify further escalating his barbaric war against the ex-Soviet country, officials fear.
Kyiv’s Military Intelligence Directorate said Kremlin forces have been collecting ‘fake evidence’ for the planned operation at the power plant which was captured by Russian forces on the first day of the invasion, and has since been manned by staffers at gunpoint.
They said in a statement: ‘Russian car refrigerators collecting the bodies of dead Ukrainian defenders were spotted near the Antonov airport in Hostomel. There is a possibility that they will be presented as killed saboteurs in the Chernobyl zone.’
The disaster – which would almost certainly cause radioactive fallout to land on Russia – would be used to justify the use of further force against Ukraine and ‘blackmail the global community’ for sanctioning Russia and providing weapons to Ukraine.
But there are fears there could also be an accidental leak at the nuclear site because the Russians manning it have ‘no clue about nuclear security protocols’, the daughter of a overnight staffer warned.
Who writes these things, the descendants of Rube Goldberg? It’s pretty clear that the same sort of fiction writers who produced with ridiculous implausibilities like the Rollercoaster of Death at Auschwitz and the Smashed Incubators of Kuwait have been commissioned to create the rhetoric intended to demonize the Russians presently liberating Ukraine from The Empire That Never Ended.
And, of course, it may be intended as cover for what the imperial troops tried, and failed, to do, just as material evidence of US bioweaponry labs is being somehow cited as conclusive proof of Russian devilries.
Whenever you see this sort of inversion, you know Satan’s little servitors are hard at work. And the clumsier and the more complicated it is, the more certain you can be that the opposite is much closer to the truth.
At this rate, we should be seeing breathless news stories about how Russian techno-necromancers are saving radioactive ice-covered Ukrainian corpses in order to turn them into glowing battle zombies and send them into Kiev to devour women and children at night in about two weeks.
Oh, the outrage! Shelling maternity hospitals was bad enough, but atomic cannibal war zombies is simply too much. Tell it to the Marines!
We Don’t Know it’s the Vaxx
But it’s the vaxx:
Victorian Labor senator Kimberley Kitching dies suddenly in Melbourne aged 52
The ABC understands Senator Kitching, 52, died of a suspected heart attack this afternoon. Labor Leader Anthony Albanese says the party is “in shock” over the passing of their friend and colleague.
Victorian Labor senator Kimberley Kitching has died suddenly in the Melbourne suburb of Strathmore. She began feeling unwell while driving between two meetings and pulled over before calling her husband, Andrew Landeryou. An ambulance was called but she died of a suspected heart attack near to where her vehicle was parked.
Two weeks ago, one of my family members, double-vaxxed and boosted, died of a “pulmonary edema” at the age of 42.
I’m genuinely curious how many members of my extended social circle are going to die suddenly, unexpectedly, and at a relatively young age before everyone understands and is willing to admit that it is the vaccinations that are primarily responsible for those deaths. One is easily dismissed. Two is just an unfortunate coincidence. Three is just an agglomeration of people with unhealthy lifestyles. At four, I suspect those who have been vaccinated will start to get nervous and begin asking serious questions for the first time in two years.
But I anticipate that it will take at least five statistically-improbable deaths in an extended social circle before the idea that the Covid vaccines were responsible for them is accepted as the general consensus. Perhaps some unlikely health emergencies, such as a teenager’s stroke or heart attack, that don’t prove fatal, would also count as an input factor, but I think it will require five improbable events per social circle before the consensus changes, because it appears to take at least five undeniable dialectical narrative violations to penetrate the average individual’s rhetorical shield.
As one of my brothers recently noted, “dies suddenly” is not an actual cause of death.
Of Pearls and Swine
If you ever wonder why I simply ignore people who ask me to provide sources or support my statements, this exchange on Gab between a Peterson fan and a Jordanetics reader pretty much summarizes why.
All the peterson hate is such obvious jealous. I’ve never heard anyone attack his message, because you all agree with it
You mean messages like this?
yeah exactly, you have to resort to criticizing parody of him because you can’t actually articulate an argument against anything he says.
Read this and then say that again. But of course you won’t because you are taken in by his moronic baffle garble: (Link to Jordanetics)
tell me what he’s wrong about and tell me why he’s wrong.
yep, just go ahead and not read the thing that you literally asked for. Because you don’t really want to think, you just want to slaver over the alter of his baffle garble. Just go clean your room bucko!
There is absolutely no point in attempting to engage intellectually with those who are limited to the rhetorical. Their demand for sources and evidence is nothing more than a rhetorical ploy; if provided, they will not hesitate to ignore them.
Only Fools Trust Science
Science doesn’t even rise to the level of accuracy attained by gamers playing games:
Apart from a minority of professional gamers, speedrunning is a hobby, and the community is moderated by volunteers. Science is, well, science: a crucially important endeavor that we need to get right, a prestige industry employing hundreds of thousands of paid, dedicated, smart people, submitting their research to journals run by enormously profitable publishing companies.
Perhaps the very status of science is what makes its practitioners reluctant to pursue fraudsters: Not only do scientists find it difficult to imagine that their peers or colleagues could be making up the data, but questioning a suspect data set could result in anything from extended frustration and social awkwardness to the destruction of someone’s career. You can see why so many scientists, who hope for a quiet life where they can pursue their own research, aren’t motivated to grasp the nettle.
But the consequences of ignoring fraud can be drastic too, and whole evidence bases, sometimes for medical treatments, can be polluted by fraudulent studies. The entire purpose of the scientific endeavor is brought into question if its gatekeepers—the reviewers and editors and others who are supposed to be the custodians of scientific probity—are so often presented with evidence of fraud and so often fail to take action.
If unpaid Minecraft mods can produce a 29-page mathematical analysis of Dream’s contested run, then scientists and editors can find the time to treat plausible fraud allegations with the seriousness they deserve. If the maintenance of integrity can become such a crucial interest for a community of gaming hobbyists, then it can be the same for a community of professional researchers. And if the speedrunning world can learn lessons from so many cases of cheating, there’s no excuse for scientists who fail to do the same.
Not only is scientistry – the profession of science – entirely corrupt, but the massive extent of its corruption has rendered a) the knowledge base unreliable and b) cast every claim of an application of scientody – the scientific method – into intrinsic doubt.
The corollary to this is that anyone demanding that one “trust the science” is not only engaging in rhetoric, but is either doing so in ignorance or for the purposes of deceit.
Scientists don’t catch fraud because they don’t want to. It’s not in their interest and it has not been for decades. Never trust science. There is a word for the kind of science you can trust, and it is a distinct subset of science, being comprised of a hypothesis that has not only been tested, but applied in practice.
Trust God and engineering.
The Best Thing That Ever Happened
The latest Vaxx Trax, THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED, is now available for your listening pleasure. Lyrics by Vox Day with assistance from Scott Adams… or possibly the other way around. Scott once claimed that I am his mascot. Whether that is true or not, it is eminently clear that Scott Adams is my muse.
I hate the world tonight
Shelley said that I was wrong, but I was right
Tried to tell you but you seem to think that
Maybe I said something incorrect
I say you project
Don’t hallucinate
If you think I’m wrong I’ll just equivocate
I can understand how you’d be so confused
I don’t envy you
I’m a prophet and an oracle of perfect persuasion
You’re a bitch
You’re a cunt
You’re cognitive dissonant
You’re a nasty human stain
And you should be ashamed
You’re a total narcissist
You fucking piece of shit
And so you’d better shut up, go the hell away
Don’t you know who I am?
This may mean you’ll have to try to understand
Rest assured that when you think I contradict
Half the things that I predict
Tomorrow they will change, yesterday’s won’t mean a thing
You’re a bitch
You’re a cunt
You’re a mental midget runt
You’re disgusting you’re insane
And you should be ashamed
I’m a master hypnotist
You fucking piece of shit
And now you’re banned so you should go the hell away
Just when you think you got me figured out
My reason’s already changing
You should die and I’ll tell you why
Don’t comment at me
You’re a bitch
You’re a cunt
You’re a sick and evil front
You’re so stupid you’re so vain
And you should be ashamed
I’m a master hypnotist
And you’re the narcissist
So shut the fuck up Shelley, go the hell away
I’m a seer, I’m the law
I’m perfect without a flaw
The best thing that ever happened
To you bitch you’re probably fat and
I got you hypnotized
Can’t say I ever lied
You know I’m always right in every single way
He Can Shoot Any Booster
If you watched the Darkstream, then you know what this is all about. By request:
You know that any vaxx is capable of boosting
Scotty got it right and he’s capable of proving
He can be what he wants to be
Shoot a one shoot a two then he boosts a three
Whatever kind, he’ll max the vaxx
And if he gets it wrong he walks it back
Amphiboly proves he could never be a loser
That’s why he can shoot any booster
