A Repudiation of Civilization?

Please read this article and comment on it.

Extract:
Thousands of addicted and mentally impaired people camped in public parks, collapsed on the sidewalks, assaulted passersby, and heeded the call of nature in the aisles of supermarkets. They desperately needed help, but the authorities wished to normalize their behavior or even to glorify it as a repudiation of capitalism.

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Yes, civilization is going through a “psychotic episode”. Society’s insanity has been brought on by decades of leftist gaslighting, propaganda, and brainwashing. What used to be scenes in dystopian novels like 1984 are now reality.

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OK, I will.
I don’t think I have ever read such a load of rubbish. The man is a word salad BS artist.
There is truth, and it is readily discernible. What he is talking about is basically emotion and prejudice, not truth. He makes a dig at Putin, as the “agent of ruin”. :face_vomiting: Which country has no external debt? Which country is a major supplier of agricultural, energy and industrial products to the World? Which country has just pegged it’s currency to gold? Which country declares that it protect it’s people?
Not the USA that is for sure. The USA is the world’s largest exporter of napalm and cluster bombs. It is also the world’s largest exporter of mayhem, poverty and dystopia.
Half the article talks of San Francisco, (as if Putin were responsible for that dump). The situation in SF is the result of feminism and welfare-ism, both are grounded in envy, jealousy, resentment and frustration. Human behaviour is like liquid, it will assume the shape of that which constrains it. Criminality is constrained by law enforcement, don’t enforce the laws and you get lawlessness, that is a truth.
When those guilty of ignorance, stupidity, laziness, drug addiction and cynical manipulation of the “system”, are rewarded for their behaviour, we will get more of it.
Nobody is camping out in Red Square and defecating on the sidewalk there.
Pandering to bums, assigning them victim status and unlimited rewards for no effort, gets us where we are. That also is truth. These vagrants need to be recognised for what they are; BUMS! They need to be rounded up and held in prison farms, where they get up in the morning, do a days work, and to some extent support themselves. Habitual law breakers need to be imprisoned, and we need national “3 strikes and you are out” legislation.
The writer of that article is a former CIA analyst, that tells you all you need to know. I am amazed that City Journal would publish such claptrap.

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Thank you, Father_Lode. But you would still rather live in the US than in Russia?

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The consequences of their actions are clear, in any case. Shellenberger, who is evidence-driven and not prone to exaggeration, speaks bluntly of “the end of civilization.”

Shellenberger is a leftist who wants socialized healthare as I understand it, so he is not evidence-driven in all respects as he has failed to notice the evidence that socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried.

The BBC and the Guardian both like to use this term “post-truth”, while being themselves two of the worst offenders at peddling propaganda. The term was used at first in an attempt to discredit Trump and Brexit and rising “populism” in general, and it’s really a totally meaningless phrase.

I do think we have moved into an era where people are beginning to question many previously accepted “truths” but I think a phrase I thought up “the post-certainty era” better describes that. It’s not clear where all this questioning will lead but I think it may lead eventually to a better sort of era and even to a thought revolution where ideas advance at a pace never seen before, but of course that will depend on people rising up to defend freedom of speech from the growing censorship and threatened legislation such as the Online Safety Bill here in the UK. This is an era of change but it’s not a post-truth era, overall I’m not sure that the author has shed any useful light on what’s happening right now.

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There are a lot of places in Russia that I would rather live in than many places in the US.
Detroit, Flint, Newark, Gary, New Orleans, just to name a few.
Pinellas County, Florida, where I live, is the closest to paradise I have ever seen or been, I don’t care if I never leave this county again.
But there is a serious political problem in the US, if we don’t solve it then Americans are headed for a very rough time indeed. Fortunately I see a change in the attitude of young people, they know they have been fed BS in school and are reacting. Like my granddaughter who was taught, in grade 3, the joys of lesbianism.

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I agree with you, Liz, that Orwell’s prophecies have come true now.

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I agree with your criticisms of the article, Chauncey.

“Post-truth” is, yes, meaningless. I didn’t know, and am interested to learn, that the BBC and Guardian - both long-standing and devout members of the Cult of Lies, aka the Left - use the term. Your “post-certainty era” is worth thinking about.

I admire your tentative predictions of “a better sort of era” and “a thought revolution where ideas advance at a pace never seen before”.

I wish I could share your (admittedly qualified) optimism.

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An “era of uncertainty” might be a better phrase I suppose, it’s a bit silly to talk about post- anything in such a generalized way really (not in more specific examples such as post-Soviet etc) but particularly about post-truth, as if there would never be a truthful word ever spoken or written again.

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Or as if until now history had been full of truth-tellers.

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There certainly is an attack on civilization by the Left. Most dangerously in the universities.

But with all that (real) science has discovered since the Enlightenment, and with the technology we have now, it is unlikely that civilization will disappear from the earth.

My fear is of the sort of civilization that future generations will inherit.

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I think many, perhaps all, the (non-technological) glories of our culture will be lost, if not forever at least for a very long time.

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Good grief! That is extreme child abuse. But of course I know it is happening. The criminal Left is fanatically corrupting children - such as are allowed to be born and to live beyond infancy.

At least in your state the Governor is working to put a stop to the corruption.

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Actually, it turned out really funny; my granddaughter came to us for a sleepover (she loves her Nana).
She had not spoken to her Mother because she knows her Mother is a flaming democrat who would applaud this nonsense, so she asked her Nana about it:
GD: Nana, you know everything don’t you?
Nana: Yes pretty much, why, is something bothering you?
GD: Yes, is it true that when I grow up I have to marry a girl?
Nana: Of course not, you want to marry a nice man like your Daddy, don’t you.
GD: Yes, but they tell me at school I can marry a girl.
Nana: Well they are wrong, you don’t.
GD: Thank you Nana, that’s a relief, I mean, it doesn’t make any sense, who would fix things?

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Yes, the question is not IF there will be a civilization, but what sort it will be.

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This is a precious story but sad that it had to even be a discussion. When they swear they aren’t pushing any agenda, they are lying.

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