Matt Taibbi Disembowels Corporate Media

Some of the best people to read today are the honest leftists.  They are few and far between, but they're out there.

Matt Taibbi is a reporter who, frankly, sees the media committing suicide.  Even though he leans left, he still has a good grasp of reality.  This is rare.  Taibbi pinned blame where it belonged after the 2008 mortgage crisis, he was howling at the media during the 2016 Trump campaign, and now he is at it again for the 2020 election cycle.

I get asked often about where to find good sources for news, solid opinions on current affairs, and for people who can write.  Taibbi is perhaps the best analyst of the Corporate media today.

Here are some bits of his latest disemboweling of the Progressive Corporate Media Complex:

"The low point came Saturday, when Joy Reid on MSNBC’s AM Joy show had on a “body language expert” named Janine Driver to declare Sanders a liar, because his posture reminds her of a turtle. There’s not much to say about this except it’s the same combo of junk forensics and yellow journalism that Bill O’Reilly made infamous."

And:

"But they couldn’t help themselves, declaring every word out of his mouth a Satanic lie. This made the occasional things that he said that were true, like that Jeb Bush was a puppet for corporate donors or NATO was a bloated and outdated organization, pack significantly more punch.

The transparent full-of-shitness of the corporate press reaction to Trump was probably the leading argument for his credibility."

I enjoy not only Taibbi's dedication to reality, but is ability to turn a phrase.  I recommend his columns, even with his liberal political leanings.

The Forgotten Bravery of Kobe Bryant

Lorenzen Wright, Samaki Walker, and Todd Fuller were all drafted before Kobe Bryant.  What my younger readers don't realize is that Bryant took a huge risk going into the 1996 draft right after high school.  He was drafted 13th, by the Hornets, who had a deal with the Lakers to trade him to LA.

It could have gone badly.  While Bryant was a high school superstar, only big men like Moses Malone, Kevin Garnett, and Chocolate Thunder had gone directly to the NBA, and it took a 6'11" Garnett to break a decades long hiatus in prep to pro movement.

Bryant's move as an 18 year old was a risk.  6'6" guards are common.  One without college seasoning who is ready for the pro game is, and was, completely unheard of.  Bryant's decision underlies one of the basic tenets of success: risk.  They all say the same thing.  People from disparate backgrounds, with success in radically different fields all have the same message; you have to take risks.

What will be forgotten in the hagiographic articles about Bryant's death is the fact that he began his NBA career by risking everything on the judgement of The Legend Jerry West.  West, the Lakers General Manager, saw in Bryant what others did not.  It is not only a testament to West's ability to see talent, but Bryant's willingness to risk much in order to get his pro career started.

It was a risky roll of the dice, and it worked.  He took a huge risk, and it paid off.  We should all be so brave.

Student Debt Slavery

When you don't have a dog in the race it's easier to get good information.  Looking at the state of affairs in higher education is one litmus test to find out who can see what's going on.  For example, the W Bush administration made it so you couldn't expel your student debt in bankruptcy.  Regular people, justifiably, went bananas and were angry.  The Obama administration made some noise about changing this terrible policy, but did nothing.  No one said anything, or complained. I'll be repetitive in saying how easy it is for those at the top of the pyramid to shape opinion.

The student debt fiasco is still going strong.  Charles Hugh Smith correctly explains financialization, and its role in the college loan scam:

"Financialization is the mass commoditization of debt collaterized by previously unsecuritized assets, a pyramiding of risk and speculation that is only possible in a massive expansion of low-cost credit and leverage for those at the top of the wealth-power pyramid: financiers, banks and corporations."

You don't benefit from the student loan.  The loans, pooled together, are chopped up and sold among the ruling and political class, at your expense.  While you have a degree in uselessness, the people who run the Fake America make massive amounts of money:

The culprits are easy to spot: the FED and the Federal Government have caused a $1.6 TRILLION dollar student loan bubble that you can't get rid of via bankruptcy.  Bankruptcy is germane to capitalism, a system you're taught is terrible.  Not only that, you're taught that without a degree you're not going to make it.  Additionally, while you're on campus you learn that Western Culture is awful.  It's all bathed in "Orange Man Bad" atmosphere.

The Elite did this a decade ago with the Mortgage bubble.  Now it's the Student Loan bubble.  Those of you who can avoid the Fake R vs. D Cage Match (tm) should make out ok.  Those who cannot may be financially ruined.

If you don't pick a 'side', you'll see things more clearly.  The adults in your life struggle with this concept.  Avoid their mistakes.

G.E.D. Report #42 - I Want to Know

One of the good things about being in my line of work is that students come back and show me hope. One of my top students from years ago came back and she is even more intellectually curious than she was when she was in High School. We talked about the Heaphy Report from Charlottesville, the way the Media tries to censor Truth, and the value of knowing. I asked her if she was sure she wanted to see the Heaphy report, as it will ruin the mainstream narrative, and she said: "I want to know". This young woman is 21, trying to find her way, and she is already way ahead of most of the older adults I know.

Heaphy Report on Charlottesville:  https://6f95d3c4-7db3-43c0-b78d-20f4f8cf737c.filesusr.com/ugd/c869fb_3e5aaa31f38c4a708afe9375d4cd435b.pdf

The article I mentioned by the woman from the Daily Dot, the one who is trying to play gatekeeper for your information and news:  https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/bitchute/

My online school:

https://thefreelanceteacher.teachable.com/

Nicolás Gómez Dávila: The Nietzsche From the Andes

I was on the new social media site Social Galactic, and someone posted a wonderfully thoughtful quote from someone named Nicolás Gómez Dávila.  I like quotes, and I have many posted throughout my classroom, many of them boldly in front.  Good aphorisms have a way of distilling thought into a digestible chunk, easily understood yet generating complex thought.

Dávila's aphorisms stood out.  I had never heard of him and when I looked him up I saw that he was classified as a conservative, but in the Latin American mold.  He is also seen as a reactionary, someone who had an innate sense that 'new' doesn't always mean better.  From the tone of Dávila's writings, he would say that 'new' never means better.  I can only imagine him looking at what is going on now, particularly here in America.  There are small armies of people who want to destroy established institutions, while not only never asking why they were there in the first place, but also while enjoying the benefits of said institution / system.

It's a caricature, but the Social Justice Warrior Progressive railing against capitalism while on his iPhone is the perfect image.  The self identified liberal who is constantly upset about the situation on the US - Mexican border, but only after 2016: Dávila would have had the perfect words to explain such people and the movements they are a part of.

"Whoever says that he "belongs to his time" is only saying that he agrees with the largest number of fools at that moment."
These words fully explain, in a sentence, much of the political thought among Americans today, particularly among the Progressive Left.  Dávila would have skewered them in a way that few people are able to do today.

I will be reading more of his work.

Orlov on Climate Change

I can't really say it better than my guy Dmitri, so I won't:

"If you are a former industrial power that has squandered its resources on solar panels and wind generators while shutting down your coal-fired power plants (to avoid a potential 4±15ºC global average temperature rise by 2100) as well as your nuclear power plants (because of Fukushima) you need to go to Moscow as well. To smooth out the ragged, intermittent power output from sun and wind you’ll need lots of cheap natural gas imports, and here Russia’s Gazprom is your friend. (The +4ºC is from the IPCC consensus estimate, and ±15ºC is the size of the error bars on that number based on standard error propagation analysis of errors on current climate measurements; so, yeah, it could be +19ºC, or it could be ‑11ºC, or anything in between—take your pick!—though ±19ºC doesn’t look physically possible while ‑11ºC would put us in the middle of the next hundred-thousand-year glaciation cycle.) Your other option is to wait for your “renewables” to get worn out, then reread printouts of this article by candlelight while gently weeping."

Global warming is one of my favorite bugaboos.  While it has become obvious to me that the power seeking parasites, and the rent seekers in government use CC as simply a lever, many people do not.  I find that strange to the point of being funny.  

When the techno-archeologists sift through the rubble, they'll look at the Global Warming scam the same way we look at the Salem Witch Trials.

Newsletter from Room 227 - 2020 Vision

I realize that "2020 Vision" is played out and tired, but I couldn't resist. I promise not to use it again.

There were 3 things that I covered with students this year that are worth reinforcing.

1) People are guided by emotions. In my public speaking class, we learned that rhetoric, the art of using words to emotionally move people, is more effective than dialectic, the words that explain reason. I don't like it any more than you do, but it seems to be how we are made. All levels of HS students understand this, once it's shown to them.

2) People will conform. The Asch Conformity Experiments show that people will ignore evidence right in front of them and go with the group around 40% of the time - even when the evidence is obvious. The key to Asch's findings was that all it takes is one person to speak up, to go against the group, and opinions can be changed. Speaking out against injustice can work. It takes a little bravery though.

3) Do Your Job. On the scoreboard during the New England Patriot's football practice, the coach, Bill Belichick, has "Do Your Job" on the scoreboard. No stats. No quotes. No motivational sayings. "Do Your Job" is a mantra that is elegant in its simplicity. Too often we get caught up in drama, and it's usually because we're hyper about what someone else is (or isn't) doing. Teams can do well, and you as an individual can succeed if you do your job. Belichick's record speaks for itself. My theory is that social media gets us so blitzed about everyone else, we lose sight of ourselves and our job. I think I'm right.

These 3 things are going to be talked about and focused on during 2020. We have been having a great time in room 227. I don't think anyone is having more fun in class than we are!

Looking forward to another great year!

Douglas Marolla
https://thefreelanceteacher.teachable.com/

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