I find it funny, that all illiberal ideologies, be it CCP(Chinese communist party) version of Communism or Woke politics in USA, always come to same solutions. That is basicly shut down any dissenting voices, anyone who dears to thing differently will be delt as enemy
As a foreigner living in China (born in Europe, work here for 7 years n…
I find it funny, that all illiberal ideologies, be it CCP(Chinese communist party) version of Communism or Woke politics in USA, always come to same solutions. That is basicly shut down any dissenting voices, anyone who dears to thing differently will be delt as enemy
As a foreigner living in China (born in Europe, work here for 7 years now), I have experienced brutal efficiency of Chinese lockdowns. Basic moto is, you will comply or we (CCP) will force you to comply => let us do all thinking for you.
US Woke politicians (especially in blue run states), are very open to same abuse of power, even their if they intentions are "noble", reasoning is same, population is to stupid/uninformed to think for itself, so we will do all thinking for you. If you have dear to think different, you will be ostracized and we will do everything in our power to destroy you, not only professionally but also personally.
I would personally even go so far, that Woke politics is even more dangerous than CCP. CCP, after bad experiences with Lysenko and his teachings, has actually developed hand of approach from STEM fields and will not try to impose "pseudo science", but it will actively enurage learning of STEM.
On the other hand Woke ideology, is more actively trying to subvert STEM fields to its whim => Math is Racist, Gender doesn't exists and other insane woke topics that are now getting implemented in US High Schools and Universities. Hopefully, US will manage to get trough this phase of illiberal policies without larger damage to its educations, because if it continues like this, US will very soon (sadly) be on back seat of scientific race, since it will simply have generations of people who have been thought political correct "pseudo science" imposed by woke left.
Thank you Dr. Bhattacharya for contributing to discussion. Of course your expertise gives weight to your statement. The proposed bill pathologizes a normal part of social and societal interaction- discussion. When I studied public health at UCLA in 1993; public health messaging was considered a process of seduction, where the public becomes “seduced” by data, logic and math. Censorship, threats and punishment for speech are not public health, but different - like authoritarian rule. In the internet age, censorship backfires and discussion is driven underground, away from the guidance of institutions. Since I’m retired; I get to speak without threat of being fired.
I wonder if a populace that does not think for itself is a consequence of urbanization. I do not mean disrespect to urban dwellers but if one who lives in a large city has to rely on others to exist. Once comfortable doing so there are large swaths of existence that require no thought at all, just the ability to buy to fill one's needs.
You could NOT be more right, M. Lynne. In fact, i just now reread an article that explained as the difference between the elite "Virtuals" who live in their heads, and the "Physicals" which do the grunt work the Virtuals need to survive. It was wrapped around discussion of the Canadian Trucker's Convoy and the dictator Trudeau.
Probably paywalled, but so insightful I'd recommend a one-month sub to read it:
I will jt. This has been bubbling around my brain for awhile now. I keep coming back to the old urban/rural conflict. And of course the founding fathers addressed it.
"A little about me, tho nobody'd probably be interested."
I'm 50% Religio-Spiritual, so not overtly so. But I learned the hard Way that, "G*d don't put more on You than You can bear." I struggled for years and years, to the point You'd think I went out *looking* for them. *Now,* in *hindsight,* I can see there was a reason for it all. Back then I was too numb to notice anything was happening.
All that to say...
... It took me too long-a time to learn there's an easier Way. You're WAY more than half-Way there, right?
Yes and no. I have a very strong sense of right and wrong and I rarely cross the line. So I have always thought I was on the straight and narrow. As I matured I realized my idea of right and wrong and the Lord's might not be the same. Uh oh.
I'm only 50% Religio-Spiritual, and 67 to boot, so take this with a grain-a salt:
I gave up on trying to determine the Lord's wishes. And I'm a very "right vs. wrong" kind-a guy myself. But sometimes I hafta settle for "better or worse" options in my decisions. That's just me.
Naw. I'm just a goofus and have a good sense-a humor against myself.
I'm not a big country fan. But I remember Tim McGraw is married to another star, but can't remember her name. (Trish?) I did some freelance work for a Fortune 50 company's division in Nashville. Went at least twice to Grand Ole Opry. One time I saw Vince McGill in his first concert after his Father died. His Father lived here in Cowtown, Ohio, IIRC, and I'm pretty sure I Recall Correctly.
Actions of control by state representatives are NEVER motivated by nobility: NEVER. The phrase "with good intentions" needs to be banished from our language. Behind every single effort at controlling adults is the motivation of power and tyranny.
Perhaps if we stopped thinking that the people who dream up such laws and policies are "really not that bad", we would begin responding as we should.
There needs to be a brutal takedown of people like Collins, Fauci, Gates, Birx, Pfizer/Novartis/Moderna/Gilead/... CEOs. But it won't happen. We will continue our descent into big brotherhood. There are many people putting up the good fight, but there are too many people who just don't want to be bothered.
I think you overlook some important nuance with the strong statement that “every single effort at controlling adults is the motivation of power and tyranny”. That viewpoint is an expression of the human coalitional psychology of looking at the political outgroup as evil.
Humans solve problems by cooperation within an organizational hierarchy. In the modern scientific worldview we have demoted God as the ultimate authority, but are still susceptible to the idea of a directional progress that must be intelligently designed from the top down. You see this manifest in all sorts of top-down plans to save humanity, frequently translated to various big brother political ideologies. There is a basis of truth in the idea of noble cause corruption.
My point is that the real political target isn’t exactly Fauci et al, as power-motivated tyrants, but rather the unwarranted, albeit well-intentioned, faith in the centralized top-down management of scientific problems. Follow the real scientific method, as Dr. Bhattacharya is cogently arguing.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. You clearly have thought about this quite a bit.
As have I, and I strongly disagree. Your abstraction of this malevolence to "faith in the centralized ..." is the very thing that allows dictators to rise to power.
And "faith in the centralized..." is much more an abdication of individual responsibility and fear of individual autonomy than it is well-intentioned, in my opinion. That is the nature of our species, for good and bad.
In addition, I am looking at individuals, not political groups. It seems to me that you have made an incorrect extrapolation of my statement to fit into your way of viewing things. History has shown an abundance of times that bad individuals can coopt a group to achieve bad objectives. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc... take advantage of the tendency you mention and twist group politics to their own ends, not the ends of the group. Not surprisingly, that does result in "ending" the group as individuals fight for survival. Because there are individuals who do not exploit this tendency is, to me, proof that it is the individual. Just as some people are very good, some people are very bad.
I do see this nearly everywhere, because it is nearly everywhere at this point in history. I have lost count of the "conspiracy theories" that have turned out to be true over the last five or six years.
Sometimes it is complex and nuanced. Sometimes it is very simple and evident.
I don’t disagree with that point of view at all really. I just think, or at least I hope, that it is just one basin of attraction on the complexity landscape that is human society.
Your mention of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot recalls the Great Man Theory of history. Thomas Carlyle in his 1840 book ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY said “The history of the world is but the biography of great men”. Good and bad.
But an alternative view is that human society has been evolving according to forces independent of Great Men. The Darwinist Herbert Spencer, stated in 1896, “Before he [the Great Man] can remake his society, his society must make him.” There has been a strong, albeit uneven, trend toward decreasing human violence--- on the scale of war, political violence, interpersonal violence, violence toward women, violence toward children, and even violence toward animals. We don’t empirically really even know why that is, except that it correlates with improved material wellbeing giving space for Enlightenment values of respect for personal worth and personal autonomy.
I believe the driver of human progress from the Renaissance has been the discovery of empirical methods. So, I have this fantasy that the next step in societal progress is evidence-based public policy. But I certainly agree that the hurdles Dr. Bhattacharya experienced make you wonder whether the federal behemoth is simply too captured by bureaucrats and special interests to incorporate needed change.
When I was in grad school at UT, the business school had a statue of a family in front of it. I asked the person who requested it (Dr. George Kozmetsky - strange and brilliant guy) why he chose that. He said "the family is the basic economic unit". It was a bit of an epiphany for me, as I had never thought of that. I wonder what form our social and economic policy would take if it was based on that premise: a whole lot more effective I am sure.
I resoundingly reject the thought that "it takes a village to raise a child". That is so very wrong for a number of reasons.
I don't disagree entirely. Except that it *IS* complex. I dunno much about nuance, myself. I'm just saying it's not just a difference of theories, is all.
This here from an unknown is an example that the government, in large part, has already BEEN sold to the highest bidder. The MIC, in this case. Both sides. My hunch tells me what's said is fact. You may decide otherwise.
I agree, much of the government has been sold to the highest bidder - both sides. It's only a matter of timing that Dems are the most salient abusers right now. Repubs will gain power, and shortly after that will become the abusers. (on a tangent - I think the psychology of increasing political extremism is more akin to drug addiction than ideology, and "leaders" are exploiting that like drug dealers) For example, McCarthy is pimping out the idea of impeachment when Repubs take the House; he's providing a fix. But my money is on him pivoting to "we need to do the business of the country and not seek revenge" when Repubs win in 2022. So the right will need to pursue another source of a fix and the most likely target is abortion.
Here is why I consider this simple:
There will always be bad people.
Bad people will inevitably gain power and abuse it.
The more power they have, the greater will be the abuses.
Now, the brilliance of our founding documents is the decentralization of power. Those powers not exclusively granted to the federal government by the Constitution belong to the states. The founders new bad people would gain power but designed a way to minimize the damage (call it the "bad people principle").
Over the last 80 years, kicked off by Wickard v Filburn, that distribution of power has been turned on its head. Massive power is now highly centralized.
Bad people now have access to much more power than our Constitution envisioned.
The biggest oversight of our founders is that they never dreamed, because of shorter life spans and a completely different economy back then, that politicians would be in office for 50 friggin' years. Otherwise, they would have included term limits in the Constitution. So bad people have access to too much power for too long of a period of time, with very predictable results.
I see this as a failure, over generations, of courts and voters to rationalize and allow to accumulate the decisions that have taken power away from the states by forgetting the "bad people principle".
Our government was never supposed to be centralized - the founders knew the dangers of it. Unfortunately, the system they designed worked so well that we slowly forgot that lesson. We forgot that the control point was not "the system" but "the individuals in the system".
I agree with Your problem definition. I posted a couple links. One said we need more "working-class in government." The other suggested 18 year limits on SC, rotating 1 off every two years. (Among many other things.)
There has to be accountability and people held responsible. I don't think Kevin McCarthy has the "balls" to do it. I wish Jim Jordan could be the next Majority leader.
I find it funny, that all illiberal ideologies, be it CCP(Chinese communist party) version of Communism or Woke politics in USA, always come to same solutions. That is basicly shut down any dissenting voices, anyone who dears to thing differently will be delt as enemy
As a foreigner living in China (born in Europe, work here for 7 years now), I have experienced brutal efficiency of Chinese lockdowns. Basic moto is, you will comply or we (CCP) will force you to comply => let us do all thinking for you.
US Woke politicians (especially in blue run states), are very open to same abuse of power, even their if they intentions are "noble", reasoning is same, population is to stupid/uninformed to think for itself, so we will do all thinking for you. If you have dear to think different, you will be ostracized and we will do everything in our power to destroy you, not only professionally but also personally.
I would personally even go so far, that Woke politics is even more dangerous than CCP. CCP, after bad experiences with Lysenko and his teachings, has actually developed hand of approach from STEM fields and will not try to impose "pseudo science", but it will actively enurage learning of STEM.
On the other hand Woke ideology, is more actively trying to subvert STEM fields to its whim => Math is Racist, Gender doesn't exists and other insane woke topics that are now getting implemented in US High Schools and Universities. Hopefully, US will manage to get trough this phase of illiberal policies without larger damage to its educations, because if it continues like this, US will very soon (sadly) be on back seat of scientific race, since it will simply have generations of people who have been thought political correct "pseudo science" imposed by woke left.
Thank you Dr. Bhattacharya for contributing to discussion. Of course your expertise gives weight to your statement. The proposed bill pathologizes a normal part of social and societal interaction- discussion. When I studied public health at UCLA in 1993; public health messaging was considered a process of seduction, where the public becomes “seduced” by data, logic and math. Censorship, threats and punishment for speech are not public health, but different - like authoritarian rule. In the internet age, censorship backfires and discussion is driven underground, away from the guidance of institutions. Since I’m retired; I get to speak without threat of being fired.
I wonder if a populace that does not think for itself is a consequence of urbanization. I do not mean disrespect to urban dwellers but if one who lives in a large city has to rely on others to exist. Once comfortable doing so there are large swaths of existence that require no thought at all, just the ability to buy to fill one's needs.
You could NOT be more right, M. Lynne. In fact, i just now reread an article that explained as the difference between the elite "Virtuals" who live in their heads, and the "Physicals" which do the grunt work the Virtuals need to survive. It was wrapped around discussion of the Canadian Trucker's Convoy and the dictator Trudeau.
Probably paywalled, but so insightful I'd recommend a one-month sub to read it:
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/reality-honks-back?s=r
I will jt. This has been bubbling around my brain for awhile now. I keep coming back to the old urban/rural conflict. And of course the founding fathers addressed it.
'Scuse ignoramoose. They did? Federalist Papers again?
Congress - the Senate is by state, the House is by population.
REAL ignoramoose now! I knew that, but didn't catch the reference. Ah well... Long day done.
I went to Tim McGraw concert last week and he did "Always be Humble and Kind." You epitomize that which is wisdom of the ages. I struggle.
"A little about me, tho nobody'd probably be interested."
I'm 50% Religio-Spiritual, so not overtly so. But I learned the hard Way that, "G*d don't put more on You than You can bear." I struggled for years and years, to the point You'd think I went out *looking* for them. *Now,* in *hindsight,* I can see there was a reason for it all. Back then I was too numb to notice anything was happening.
All that to say...
... It took me too long-a time to learn there's an easier Way. You're WAY more than half-Way there, right?
Yes and no. I have a very strong sense of right and wrong and I rarely cross the line. So I have always thought I was on the straight and narrow. As I matured I realized my idea of right and wrong and the Lord's might not be the same. Uh oh.
I'm only 50% Religio-Spiritual, and 67 to boot, so take this with a grain-a salt:
I gave up on trying to determine the Lord's wishes. And I'm a very "right vs. wrong" kind-a guy myself. But sometimes I hafta settle for "better or worse" options in my decisions. That's just me.
Naw. I'm just a goofus and have a good sense-a humor against myself.
I'm not a big country fan. But I remember Tim McGraw is married to another star, but can't remember her name. (Trish?) I did some freelance work for a Fortune 50 company's division in Nashville. Went at least twice to Grand Ole Opry. One time I saw Vince McGill in his first concert after his Father died. His Father lived here in Cowtown, Ohio, IIRC, and I'm pretty sure I Recall Correctly.
TY for compliment. You make me blush.
Actions of control by state representatives are NEVER motivated by nobility: NEVER. The phrase "with good intentions" needs to be banished from our language. Behind every single effort at controlling adults is the motivation of power and tyranny.
Perhaps if we stopped thinking that the people who dream up such laws and policies are "really not that bad", we would begin responding as we should.
There needs to be a brutal takedown of people like Collins, Fauci, Gates, Birx, Pfizer/Novartis/Moderna/Gilead/... CEOs. But it won't happen. We will continue our descent into big brotherhood. There are many people putting up the good fight, but there are too many people who just don't want to be bothered.
I think you overlook some important nuance with the strong statement that “every single effort at controlling adults is the motivation of power and tyranny”. That viewpoint is an expression of the human coalitional psychology of looking at the political outgroup as evil.
Humans solve problems by cooperation within an organizational hierarchy. In the modern scientific worldview we have demoted God as the ultimate authority, but are still susceptible to the idea of a directional progress that must be intelligently designed from the top down. You see this manifest in all sorts of top-down plans to save humanity, frequently translated to various big brother political ideologies. There is a basis of truth in the idea of noble cause corruption.
My point is that the real political target isn’t exactly Fauci et al, as power-motivated tyrants, but rather the unwarranted, albeit well-intentioned, faith in the centralized top-down management of scientific problems. Follow the real scientific method, as Dr. Bhattacharya is cogently arguing.
I appreciate your thoughtful response. You clearly have thought about this quite a bit.
As have I, and I strongly disagree. Your abstraction of this malevolence to "faith in the centralized ..." is the very thing that allows dictators to rise to power.
And "faith in the centralized..." is much more an abdication of individual responsibility and fear of individual autonomy than it is well-intentioned, in my opinion. That is the nature of our species, for good and bad.
In addition, I am looking at individuals, not political groups. It seems to me that you have made an incorrect extrapolation of my statement to fit into your way of viewing things. History has shown an abundance of times that bad individuals can coopt a group to achieve bad objectives. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc... take advantage of the tendency you mention and twist group politics to their own ends, not the ends of the group. Not surprisingly, that does result in "ending" the group as individuals fight for survival. Because there are individuals who do not exploit this tendency is, to me, proof that it is the individual. Just as some people are very good, some people are very bad.
I do see this nearly everywhere, because it is nearly everywhere at this point in history. I have lost count of the "conspiracy theories" that have turned out to be true over the last five or six years.
Sometimes it is complex and nuanced. Sometimes it is very simple and evident.
I don’t disagree with that point of view at all really. I just think, or at least I hope, that it is just one basin of attraction on the complexity landscape that is human society.
Your mention of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot recalls the Great Man Theory of history. Thomas Carlyle in his 1840 book ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY said “The history of the world is but the biography of great men”. Good and bad.
But an alternative view is that human society has been evolving according to forces independent of Great Men. The Darwinist Herbert Spencer, stated in 1896, “Before he [the Great Man] can remake his society, his society must make him.” There has been a strong, albeit uneven, trend toward decreasing human violence--- on the scale of war, political violence, interpersonal violence, violence toward women, violence toward children, and even violence toward animals. We don’t empirically really even know why that is, except that it correlates with improved material wellbeing giving space for Enlightenment values of respect for personal worth and personal autonomy.
I believe the driver of human progress from the Renaissance has been the discovery of empirical methods. So, I have this fantasy that the next step in societal progress is evidence-based public policy. But I certainly agree that the hurdles Dr. Bhattacharya experienced make you wonder whether the federal behemoth is simply too captured by bureaucrats and special interests to incorporate needed change.
Just FYI. It is.
Have you ever read EO Wilson's book "Consilience"? Great book, probably my all time favorite.
I haven't. Thanks for the tip.
TYTY. Put it on list. Heard-a him several times, but read no books.
Bingo!!!
When I was in grad school at UT, the business school had a statue of a family in front of it. I asked the person who requested it (Dr. George Kozmetsky - strange and brilliant guy) why he chose that. He said "the family is the basic economic unit". It was a bit of an epiphany for me, as I had never thought of that. I wonder what form our social and economic policy would take if it was based on that premise: a whole lot more effective I am sure.
I resoundingly reject the thought that "it takes a village to raise a child". That is so very wrong for a number of reasons.
I don't disagree entirely. Except that it *IS* complex. I dunno much about nuance, myself. I'm just saying it's not just a difference of theories, is all.
This here from an unknown is an example that the government, in large part, has already BEEN sold to the highest bidder. The MIC, in this case. Both sides. My hunch tells me what's said is fact. You may decide otherwise.
https://wrongspeak.net/the-bi-partisanship-of-war-contractor-money/
I agree, much of the government has been sold to the highest bidder - both sides. It's only a matter of timing that Dems are the most salient abusers right now. Repubs will gain power, and shortly after that will become the abusers. (on a tangent - I think the psychology of increasing political extremism is more akin to drug addiction than ideology, and "leaders" are exploiting that like drug dealers) For example, McCarthy is pimping out the idea of impeachment when Repubs take the House; he's providing a fix. But my money is on him pivoting to "we need to do the business of the country and not seek revenge" when Repubs win in 2022. So the right will need to pursue another source of a fix and the most likely target is abortion.
Here is why I consider this simple:
There will always be bad people.
Bad people will inevitably gain power and abuse it.
The more power they have, the greater will be the abuses.
Now, the brilliance of our founding documents is the decentralization of power. Those powers not exclusively granted to the federal government by the Constitution belong to the states. The founders new bad people would gain power but designed a way to minimize the damage (call it the "bad people principle").
Over the last 80 years, kicked off by Wickard v Filburn, that distribution of power has been turned on its head. Massive power is now highly centralized.
Bad people now have access to much more power than our Constitution envisioned.
The biggest oversight of our founders is that they never dreamed, because of shorter life spans and a completely different economy back then, that politicians would be in office for 50 friggin' years. Otherwise, they would have included term limits in the Constitution. So bad people have access to too much power for too long of a period of time, with very predictable results.
I see this as a failure, over generations, of courts and voters to rationalize and allow to accumulate the decisions that have taken power away from the states by forgetting the "bad people principle".
Our government was never supposed to be centralized - the founders knew the dangers of it. Unfortunately, the system they designed worked so well that we slowly forgot that lesson. We forgot that the control point was not "the system" but "the individuals in the system".
TY for reply.
I agree with Your problem definition. I posted a couple links. One said we need more "working-class in government." The other suggested 18 year limits on SC, rotating 1 off every two years. (Among many other things.)
I liked both ideas.
not sure what happened - the end of my response got cut off
So bad people have access to more power for a longer period of time, with predictable results.
We have slowly forgotten the "bad people principle".
Yes, of course. Fauci et al are utopians who believe they know better than the unwashed masses. For the good of all, order must be imposed.
"We're from the government and we're here to help!"
There has to be accountability and people held responsible. I don't think Kevin McCarthy has the "balls" to do it. I wish Jim Jordan could be the next Majority leader.
I hate to say it but I don't think any of them can or will.
I don't have high hopes either but hope springs eternal.
I am feeling particularly pessimistic this morning. Apologies.
And if you have children significant inroads on your parental rights.
I'm gonna quote a saying of the Black Racists (most-a whom are Caucasian, BTW):
You gotta "do the work." I'm not smart enough, myself, to know what that is right now. But know it's gonna be hard work, is all.