Year Zero - CJ Hopkins

[DrEvil]

That was a pretty fucking terrible piece. The real fascists are the people opposed to fascism!

Let the rot fester and keep trivializing it and I'm sure it will go away on its own.

[Marionumber1]

Hopkins' piece is ridiculous in how much it minimizes the actual fascist mob that descended on the Capitol (as if the events of January 6 can be reduced to them having "entered a building without permission" ), and its attempt at biting satire is painful to read, like the work of a high schooler who just discovered the word "satire" for the first time and is trying poorly to produce it. That said, the piece raises at least one valid point, albeit in an inartful and overly exaggerated manner:

But, now that I have seen the light, I see how bad and wrong that would have been. Clearly, trespassing in the US Capitol is a crime that should be punishable by death. And comparing contemporary American liberals to the “good Germans” during the Nazi era is so outrageous that … well, it should probably be censored. So, good thing I decided not to do that! Plus, the woman was a “devoted conspiracy theorist,” so she got what she deserved, right? (“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” was the official liberal shibboleth, I believe.)

In fact (and I hope my liberal friends are still reading this), the police should have shot the entire lot of them! All these Russian-backed Nazi insurrectionists should have been gunned down right there on the spot, preferably by muscle-bound corporate mercenaries and CIA snipers in Black Hawk helicopters with big Facebook and Twitter logos on them! Actually, anyone who trespassed in the Capitol Building (which is like a cathedral), or just came to the protest wearing a MAGA hat, should be hunted down by federal authorities, charged as a “domestic white-supremacist terrorist,” frog-marched out onto Black Lives Matter Plaza, and shot, in the face, live, on TV, so that everyone can watch and howl at their screens like the Two Minutes Hate in 1984. That would teach these “insurrectionists” a lesson!

I have seen a large number of left-leaning people acting anywhere from indifferent to gleeful towards some of the participants being killed. And it is not as if I have sympathy for the fascists, especially knowing that many of them harbored violent intent. But I believe in a law enforcement response that is as non-violent and deescalatory as possible, regardless of how reprehensible the suspects are. This principle holds whether we are talking about the likes of Jacob Blake from last summer, racists like Arthur Kirk of Nebraska or the Weaver family of Ruby Ridge, or (yes) the mob at the Capitol. We have due process of law to deal with violent criminals and punish them appropriately without just shooting them dead, unless there is a real imminent threat to the officers or third parties that can't be prevented any other way. And maybe that was the case in some of these shootings, but a lot of people were celebrating the police response before having all the facts to indicate whether or not that was true. I don't think principles about a proper law enforcement response are to be abandoned so easily, and when they are, it makes a lot of supporters of movements like Black Lives Matter appear to be hypocrites.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Hopkins' piece is ridiculous in how much it minimizes the actual fascist mob that descended on the Capitol (as if the events of January 6 can be reduced to them having "entered a building without permission" ), and its attempt at biting satire is painful to read, like the work of a high schooler who just discovered the word "satire" for the first time and is trying poorly to produce it. That said, the piece raises at least one valid point, albeit in an inartful and overly exaggerated manner:

But, now that I have seen the light, I see how bad and wrong that would have been. Clearly, trespassing in the US Capitol is a crime that should be punishable by death. And comparing contemporary American liberals to the “good Germans” during the Nazi era is so outrageous that … well, it should probably be censored. So, good thing I decided not to do that! Plus, the woman was a “devoted conspiracy theorist,” so she got what she deserved, right? (“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” was the official liberal shibboleth, I believe.)

In fact (and I hope my liberal friends are still reading this), the police should have shot the entire lot of them! All these Russian-backed Nazi insurrectionists should have been gunned down right there on the spot, preferably by muscle-bound corporate mercenaries and CIA snipers in Black Hawk helicopters with big Facebook and Twitter logos on them! Actually, anyone who trespassed in the Capitol Building (which is like a cathedral), or just came to the protest wearing a MAGA hat, should be hunted down by federal authorities, charged as a “domestic white-supremacist terrorist,” frog-marched out onto Black Lives Matter Plaza, and shot, in the face, live, on TV, so that everyone can watch and howl at their screens like the Two Minutes Hate in 1984. That would teach these “insurrectionists” a lesson!

I have seen a large number of left-leaning people acting anywhere from indifferent to gleeful towards some of the participants being killed. And it is not as if I have sympathy for the fascists, especially knowing that many of them harbored violent intent. But I believe in a law enforcement response that is as non-violent and deescalatory as possible, regardless of how reprehensible the suspects are. This principle holds whether we are talking about the likes of Jacob Blake from last summer, racists like Arthur Kirk of Nebraska or the Weaver family of Ruby Ridge, or (yes) the mob at the Capitol. We have due process of law to deal with violent criminals and punish them appropriately without just shooting them dead, unless there is a real imminent threat to the officers or third parties that can't be prevented any other way. And maybe that was the case in some of these shootings, but a lot of people were celebrating the police response before having all the facts to indicate whether or not that was true. I don't think principles about a proper law enforcement response are to be abandoned so easily, and when they are, it makes a lot of supporters of movements like Black Lives Matter appear to be hypocrites.

Yeah to be clear, if I'm gonna beat the fuck out of Nazis, which I haven't done for 25 - 30 years plus (if you've seen the movie Romper Stomper, that is set in the area where I grew up), its me taking the law into my own hands. I'll wear the consequences. I never want the cops shooting anyone on my behalf. (Or the government killing people for me for that matter.)

there is alot of disturbing stuff coming out of the "centre left".

There are people calling for Qanon and MAGA types to be treated like full on terrorists. Now I know QAnon is basically crap but its less than a stones throw from reality in some cases. Imagine all that stuff about the Catholic Church was starting to come out now. If you were in the Catholic Church and wanted to make it go away you'd simply link it to QAnon and people who don't want to confront difficult stuff qwill sweep it under that carpet.

[mentalgongfu2]

You're not wrong, Joe. It is to our detriment to ignore how riled up the centre left has become. Is Hegelian dialectic the right term here? Pushing the boundaries with the Trump right in America is not exactly making the left more rational.

And its admittedly hard for some of us to focus on that when the other side has people in the highest offices vouching for Nazi supporters.

[dada]

Not an explanation of everything, but a line of thinking that may shed some light. Across the political spectrum, how much desire for control an individual has may influence the shape that their ideology takes. Also works the other way, ideology may influence the 'compensatory control mechanisms.'

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 34, August 2020, Pages 112-117

Political ideology and compensatory control mechanisms

People strive to feel in control. As such, under control threat, people defensively endorse ideologies that help compensate for diminished control. Although scholarly work has tended to focus on conservatism as a compensatory control mechanism, recent research suggests that conservatism is not always the most appealing means of restoring feelings of control. While conservatives are higher in the need for control — and conservative social ideologies often function as compensatory control tools — the endorsement of both liberal and normative ideologies can also serve as compensatory control mechanisms, under different circumstances. However, political groups are likely to differ in the ideologies they adopt under control threat. Factors related to the cognitive accessibility of ideologies and their propensity to combat the control threat at play help determine which set of ideological beliefs people embrace when they face control loss.

Introduction

Be it the impact of a warming climate, the threat of global pandemics, mass shootings that outpace the days in a year, or the effects of continued political polarization, a variety of modern social issues often lead people to feel their lives may be spiraling out of control. In the face of these various threats to perceived order, people may respond in ways that compensate for this lack of control. According to compensatory control theory (CCT) [1, 2, 3], low personal control is an aversive psychological state that leads people to endorse ideologies or other external systems of control — such as religious or political entities — that promote feelings of structure and stability. That is, because people have an epistemic need to view and experience the world as controllable and orderly, they endorse-specific political, religious, or economic ideologies that bolster this view of the world in the face of perceived randomness.

However, while control is generally understood as a universal human desire [4], a wide array of studies also suggest that political beliefs are related to the degree to which people desire a sense of control. Specifically, a number of studies have revealed that conservatives have a greater need than liberals for control, structure, and order [5, 6, 7, 8, 9] and that conservatism itself may restore feelings of control [2,8,10]. As such, in this paper we ask: do individuals’ political beliefs influence the types of compensatory control strategies they are likely to rely on?

To answer this question, we review recent literature exploring the relationship between political ideology and compensatory control mechanisms. Ultimately, we discuss the possibility that people across the political spectrum engage in an array of compensatory control behaviors, although these behaviors may vary in systematic ways.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352154620300334?via%3Dihub

I think what appears as an argument between narratives is actually argument over who is pulling the strings. But the string-pulling narratives are all variations of the narrative of control. A narrative that isn't a control narrative will be rejected out of hand. It's the one thing that all sides of the apparent argument can agree on.

Not that it isn't understandable. Like the constellations, the control narrative asserts itself with all the force of history. To get out from under it isn't easy. Depending on what you want out of life, it may not even be desirable.

[Marionumber1]

The thing to be cautious of, however, is that this is the same line of thinking that "explains" why people believe so-called conspiracy theories. I can't count how many times I've seen armchair psychologists asserting that people only believe in conspiracies because it allows them to assert order on a chaotic world totally devoid of centralized plans, as if it couldn't possibly be that there is genuine evidence for these theories being true. And as if the rich and powerful stay that way by pure chance, not because they conspire to maintain the system that way.

[Harvey]

Expertly missing the point is so de-rigueur. J T Fraser called it the 'error of misplaced precision.' (Not to be confused with J G Frazer!)

[Harvey]

The thing to be cautious of, however, is that this is the same line of thinking that "explains" why people believe so-called conspiracy theories. I can't count how many times I've seen armchair psychologists asserting that people only believe in conspiracies because it allows them to assert order on a chaotic world totally devoid of centralized plans, as if it couldn't possibly be that there is genuine evidence for these theories being true. And as if the rich and powerful stay that way by pure chance, not because they conspire to maintain the system that way.

I agree. Breathing together is just that. One isn't necessarily aware of why we make a decision which goes this way or another decision which goes that way. We have learning and we have assumptions, and both are related to experience. Ersatz experience, as PKD might have termed it, is narrative, explanatory chronology. Long after the formative experience is forgotten, the behavioural instinct (assumption and conclusion) remains. There are things we are more or less familiar with and which we tend to favour, which is the basis of the $600 billion dollar a year (global) public relations budget. That the wholesale manufacturing of consensual reality is a global enterprise renders such discussions about 'control', at best naive.

[stickdog99]

I think that a piece like the one above only serves the "globocap" forces it wants to stand against. CJ Hopkins becomes a support of his percieved enemies, reinforcing and spreading their message. He hates the system, yet this system he hates is exactly what he is.

I take a different view. I happen to know that everyone cannot but act the way they do. A billionaire or a trillonaire has a narrow set of parameters in which to function. So it comes as no surprise to me the choices they make. This is not to say everyone deserves sympathy, or that anyone is absolved of responsibility for their actions. But a dispassionate view of what is happening around you frees your thinking. Without it, your thinking itself becomes the ties that bind.

I'm reminded of the movie Bridge of Spies. Tom Hanks is the lawyer defending the Russian spy. Hanks asks the spy if he's worried or angry that the trial will likely lead to his execution. The spy responds by asking Hanks, "will it help?"

Sure, billionaires do not have have total control over events or even the decisions they themselves make. But Bill Gates sure as fuck has a lot more control over the global response to COVID-19 than I do. And I want a rational, logically defensible, compassionate response that mitigates death and illness as much as possible while still respecting basic human rights. So why doesn't he?

[Harvey]

I want a rational, logically defensible, compassionate response that mitigates death and illness as much as possible while still respecting basic human rights. So why doesn't he?

You're in the wrong continuum for that.

[dada]

Seems like it's very easy to dismiss the narrative that is not a control narrative here, for various reasons.

The narrative that is not a control narrative is secretly a control narrative. A conspiracy orchestrated by goats from a chaotic world.

[dada]

It's alright, mind you. I'm not convinced, either way. And if I were, I wouldn't tell. I'm not agreeing with everyone. Not even with the other chaos goats, like Dr. Evil.

I'm not judge, or on jury duty. Maybe I'm the executioner.

The grim reader. I did execute a strange animal in a dream last night. Like a hyena with a snout. I had grabbed it perfectly and was holding the mouth closed, but I couldn't let it go because it would've nstantly turned and bit. We filled up a sink and I drowned it.

Felt terrible. I hate the idea of taking a life with my own hands. But it had to be done, it was rabid, and there were kids around.

[stickdog99]

Reality is obviously humanly constructed, and the vast majority of humans are just trying to survive the humanly constructed reality that has been foisted upon them while attempting to make some sense out of it.

While the all-powerful THE POWERS THAT BE may be a demonstrably false paradigm, mass media information is definitely strictly controlled. A small number of humans have the power to control mass media narratives. Like all humans, they make their decisions in one-on-one and small group social situations and they act toward "things" based on the meaning that they assign to these things.

So regardless of the validity of the omnipotence of elites, the only legitimate response is to do everything possible to question irrational and morally indefensible narratives and demand rationally and morally defensible narratives. For example, nobody can get an entire society to lock itself down without convincing that society to lock itself down. To me, the specter of a more dangerous and deadly flu is more than enough to advise people at risk to take significant precautions and invoke special precautions for nursing homes. It is also more than enough to provoke government funding of basic nutritional support, overflow healthcare facilities, the development of diagnostic tests of the highest sensitivity and selectivity, and rigorously scientific double-blind tests of the real world efficacy of all manners of interventions such as antiviral medications, vaccines, the wearing of specific masks, various social distancing protocols, and limited vs. stringent prohibitions of large group activities.

But the idea that a first ever total quarantine of healthy low risk individuals is a self-evident intervention for a more dangerous and deadly flu could be foisted upon a society only by an extremely well-coordinated propaganda effort. And the fact that so many millions of us now sincerely believe that such extreme interventions are self-evidently justified in the complete absence of any compelling hard scientific evidence of their benefits stands as a testament to the effectiveness of lockstep mass media fear porn propaganda, as well as to the reigning blue vs. red paradigm that (at least for members of Team Blue) equates strict adherence to authoritarian decrees about COVID-19 with moral and political virtue.

[dada]

Yes, the control narrative asserts itself with all the force of history.

Maybe it is history, even. Like a big pyramid, tons of stone coming right at you.

A grand piano lifted into an apartment building by an old rope pulley. Just an accident waiting to happen.

[Marionumber1]

I don't really see what is particularly controversial about a "control narrative". On Rigorous Intuition of all places, it seems odd to me that the idea of powerful individuals conspiring together to manipulate society for their own benefit is a concept that's in dispute. I haven't seen anyone here claim that the elites are all powerful or always act in perfect unison, but the nature of interpersonal dynamics often results in coordinated actions that certainly, for most intents and purposes, resemble monolithic plots. To use the Kennedy assassination as an example: it's not as if the corporate executives, high-level CIA officers, military leaders, Mafia players, and Cuban exiles all had the exact same goals, or liked each other on a personal level, or even agreed on all the dynamics of what should happen, but through a series of behind-the-scenes relationships between all of these groups, they found common purposes and put a plan in motion that certainly appears from the outside to be one broad conspiracy for a hostile takeover of government. And the very history of the CIA itself suggests the same pattern, given its formation by a bunch of Wall Street veterans and its actions both foreign and domestic that constantly centered around the promotion of corporate America's interests. If control narratives have so much potency, it is because that's what those in power have actually been doing, with imperfect but still notable success over the years.