Vladimir Putin may be a paranoid autocrat and a failing military strategist but when he talks about people in the West who want to "destroy [its]traditional values and impose their pseudo-values... which would corrode [it] from within" you surely have to ask yourself if does have a point?
Aug 27, 2023·edited Aug 27, 2023Liked by Graham Cunningham
Close down all the faculties and departments of Education. Return to an internship/apprenticeship system for teacher training. You learn to teach by watching good teachers.
Mainstream conservativism has had a presumption that institutions should be allowed to run themselves. In the case of universities and now public schooling, that has been a catastrophic failure.
In the next century, I strongly believe that social scientists will look back in amazement that folks in our time didn't realize that these pathological ideas and urges were more biochemical than from any other cause. Read the excellent book, PATHOLOGICAL ALTRUISM by Barbara Oakley, Ph.d. That along with what I'll call "capacious compassion," has taken over the hive mind and individual constituents thereof. We know that testosterone in populations has waned over time. I'd love to see (if it's possible) a similar inspection of whether Oxytocin and Dopamine have also changed over historical time. Politics is downstream from culture. Culture is downstream from brain functioning. Brain functioning is downstream from its biology and chemistry.
Sep 18, 2023·edited Apr 26Liked by Graham Cunningham
The idea is to get the jokes moving in the populace at large. Not sure just how. Like you said, if it’s on a conservative site it won’t go far. Some really good jokes might spread. Repurposed blonde jokes for instance that make the woke look simple minded. I think they are one level thinkers, so it might not be to hard.
While I do agree with much of what's written here--and the monumental task laid out--the first paragraph of the essay describing Putin as "a paranoid autocrat and a failing military strategist" but then asks if he has a point regarding the West's "culture war" as a bit odd, considering your original description of him (autocrat / failed military strategist), and actually due to the fact that these two descriptions fit him so well, I think the real question is whether or not his criticisms of the West are valid at all.
Aug 7, 2023·edited Aug 7, 2023Liked by Graham Cunningham
"- an end to public sector security-of-tenure unrelated to performance."
I contemplated the idea of a right-wing thinker presenting this possibility earlier today and came to the conclusion that this would only work with total institutional control.
Imagine eliminating tenure with our modern administrations in universities: established conservative professors and individuals with political views outside of the accepted norm uprooted and replaced with opportunistic, but ultimately vacuous, Marxist ideologues considered more "competent".
I can’t help but wonder how much influence The Powell Memorandum has had in all this. Ostensibly anti-leftist, anti-communist, the memo identifies the major threats to American business (higher education and the media, among others), and offers a blueprint for countering these forces. Major resources were mobilized in these efforts, such as The Business Roundtable. How did they fail so miserably, so ironically?
Absolutely, this is a serious business after all. I would suggest thought that conservatives can’t deny that there social injustices in the world, and cede the moral high ground. The left have no interest in the real poor, so long as they serve their purpose.
Well, done that’s a difficult argument to make and you did it very well.
I think it might be an older phenomenon than we realize: “the Universities have been to the nation as the wooden horse was to the Trojans.” Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679
okay, Graham, over here I commented we were not going back far enough (https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/is-2024-the-year-of-reckoning-for/comment/46531427?r=b4o5c) but here you nailed it. I saw all of this begin to become entrenched when I was there during the 80s. The virtual signaling part is just a knock-on, a pole to hang from, a veil to hide behind, a fear of an impending idiocracy (of their own making through incompetence and malfeasance) that would affect paychecks, that's what I think happened, along with everything that you say here!
The only way you can accomplish any kind of clearing-out or swamp-draining is by first consolidating power and protecting those who have that power from retaliation. Then you can forcibly retire these people and clear them out.
No, Putin doesn't have a point -- not because something he says may or may not be true, but because he doesn't care whether it's true and because his statements have no referent that actually exists. When he speaks about the West, he is not talking about a place that exists in the world, he's talking about an ideological construct that he is attempting to project into the minds of anyone and everyone listening to him.
The actual state of the West is of absolutely no consequence or importance whatsoever to Putin. That we happen to be in a seemingly perpetual state of near-civil war is certainly convenient for him, but he would be saying everything he is saying no matter what the case was (and indeed, he has been saying it since at least the year 2000, long before the hypermodern internet-driven political realignment saw left and right become up and down).
Putin speaks and operates purely in terms of zero-sum power dynamics. His goals are onefold: to increase the power available to him and decrease the power available to every other human being alive. If you are listening to him, for any reason, you are losing. If you are repeating his words, for any reason, you are losing. I don't say this to make him seem like some kind of Machiavellian genius supervillain -- he is very far from the only person on Earth who operates this way; he just happens to be among those who have accrued the most real power for themselves in doing so.
All of us in the actual western world, if any of us care to put meaningful effort into improving it (as you seem to), would be better off making our points without including his demagoguery, lies, and bullshit.
Just forget about Putin and Russia for a second... how in the hell do you suppose These people will be able to sustain non-functioning everything. Talking about Right here in the good ole US of A.
I understand It’s finally becoming all Too Much for the going along to get along type person.
That is a good thing.
Necessary is sustainable. Nonsense isn’t.
And we are all going to be better off having to experience this crazy , unsustainable Nonsense. nonsense. Nonsense. All the time.
Close down all the faculties and departments of Education. Return to an internship/apprenticeship system for teacher training. You learn to teach by watching good teachers.
Mainstream conservativism has had a presumption that institutions should be allowed to run themselves. In the case of universities and now public schooling, that has been a catastrophic failure.
In the next century, I strongly believe that social scientists will look back in amazement that folks in our time didn't realize that these pathological ideas and urges were more biochemical than from any other cause. Read the excellent book, PATHOLOGICAL ALTRUISM by Barbara Oakley, Ph.d. That along with what I'll call "capacious compassion," has taken over the hive mind and individual constituents thereof. We know that testosterone in populations has waned over time. I'd love to see (if it's possible) a similar inspection of whether Oxytocin and Dopamine have also changed over historical time. Politics is downstream from culture. Culture is downstream from brain functioning. Brain functioning is downstream from its biology and chemistry.
The idea is to get the jokes moving in the populace at large. Not sure just how. Like you said, if it’s on a conservative site it won’t go far. Some really good jokes might spread. Repurposed blonde jokes for instance that make the woke look simple minded. I think they are one level thinkers, so it might not be to hard.
Be sure to make woke jokes. That might slowly undermine the narcissism. When it’s cool to be on the other side.
While I do agree with much of what's written here--and the monumental task laid out--the first paragraph of the essay describing Putin as "a paranoid autocrat and a failing military strategist" but then asks if he has a point regarding the West's "culture war" as a bit odd, considering your original description of him (autocrat / failed military strategist), and actually due to the fact that these two descriptions fit him so well, I think the real question is whether or not his criticisms of the West are valid at all.
"- an end to public sector security-of-tenure unrelated to performance."
I contemplated the idea of a right-wing thinker presenting this possibility earlier today and came to the conclusion that this would only work with total institutional control.
Imagine eliminating tenure with our modern administrations in universities: established conservative professors and individuals with political views outside of the accepted norm uprooted and replaced with opportunistic, but ultimately vacuous, Marxist ideologues considered more "competent".
Otherwise, excellent.
I can’t help but wonder how much influence The Powell Memorandum has had in all this. Ostensibly anti-leftist, anti-communist, the memo identifies the major threats to American business (higher education and the media, among others), and offers a blueprint for countering these forces. Major resources were mobilized in these efforts, such as The Business Roundtable. How did they fail so miserably, so ironically?
Absolutely, this is a serious business after all. I would suggest thought that conservatives can’t deny that there social injustices in the world, and cede the moral high ground. The left have no interest in the real poor, so long as they serve their purpose.
Well, done that’s a difficult argument to make and you did it very well.
I think it might be an older phenomenon than we realize: “the Universities have been to the nation as the wooden horse was to the Trojans.” Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679
okay, Graham, over here I commented we were not going back far enough (https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/is-2024-the-year-of-reckoning-for/comment/46531427?r=b4o5c) but here you nailed it. I saw all of this begin to become entrenched when I was there during the 80s. The virtual signaling part is just a knock-on, a pole to hang from, a veil to hide behind, a fear of an impending idiocracy (of their own making through incompetence and malfeasance) that would affect paychecks, that's what I think happened, along with everything that you say here!
"As Orwell said it “the public will believe what the media tell them they believe”."
Just a nitpick but Orwell didn't said that https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL2N2VZ236/
I’m currently drinking from the substack firehouse but have truly appreciated your writings.
The only way you can accomplish any kind of clearing-out or swamp-draining is by first consolidating power and protecting those who have that power from retaliation. Then you can forcibly retire these people and clear them out.
I think liberalism n is a good thing. What you're describing isn't liberalism, though
No, Putin doesn't have a point -- not because something he says may or may not be true, but because he doesn't care whether it's true and because his statements have no referent that actually exists. When he speaks about the West, he is not talking about a place that exists in the world, he's talking about an ideological construct that he is attempting to project into the minds of anyone and everyone listening to him.
The actual state of the West is of absolutely no consequence or importance whatsoever to Putin. That we happen to be in a seemingly perpetual state of near-civil war is certainly convenient for him, but he would be saying everything he is saying no matter what the case was (and indeed, he has been saying it since at least the year 2000, long before the hypermodern internet-driven political realignment saw left and right become up and down).
Putin speaks and operates purely in terms of zero-sum power dynamics. His goals are onefold: to increase the power available to him and decrease the power available to every other human being alive. If you are listening to him, for any reason, you are losing. If you are repeating his words, for any reason, you are losing. I don't say this to make him seem like some kind of Machiavellian genius supervillain -- he is very far from the only person on Earth who operates this way; he just happens to be among those who have accrued the most real power for themselves in doing so.
All of us in the actual western world, if any of us care to put meaningful effort into improving it (as you seem to), would be better off making our points without including his demagoguery, lies, and bullshit.
Just forget about Putin and Russia for a second... how in the hell do you suppose These people will be able to sustain non-functioning everything. Talking about Right here in the good ole US of A.
I understand It’s finally becoming all Too Much for the going along to get along type person.
That is a good thing.
Necessary is sustainable. Nonsense isn’t.
And we are all going to be better off having to experience this crazy , unsustainable Nonsense. nonsense. Nonsense. All the time.