They'll be coming for Aristotle soon

A reader discovers why rhetoric is no longer taught in schools and universities:

Thanks to your writings on the topic, I've started to understand much more about the role of rhetoric and dialectic in communication.  I'm currently reading The Ethics of Rhetoric by Richard Weaver and came across this brilliant passage about practitioners of "base rhetoric," which he defines as "speech which influences us in the direction of what is evil."

Examples of this kind of contrivance occur on every hand in the impassioned language of journalism and political pleading.  In the world of affairs which these seek to influence, the many are kept in a state of pupillage so that they will be most docile to their "lovers."  The techniques of the base lover, especially as exemplified in modern journalism, would make a long catalogue, but in general it is accurate to say that he seeks to keep the understanding in a passive state by never permitting an honest examination of the alternatives.  Nothing is more feared by him than a true dialectic, for this not only endangers his favored alternative, but also gives the "beloved"...some training in intellectual independence.

What he does therefore is dress up one alternative in all the cheap finery of immediate hopes and fears, knowing that if he can thus prevent a masculine exercise of imagination and will he can have his way.  By discussing only one side of an issue, by mentioning cause without consequence or consequence without cause, acts without agents or agents without agency, he often successfully blocks definition and cause-and-effect reasoning.  In this way his choices are arrayed in such meretricious images that one can quickly infer the juvenile mind which they would attract.  Of course the base rhetorician today, with his vastly augmented power of propagation, has means of deluding which no ancient rhetor in forum or marketplace could have imagined.

It's amazing how even a basic understanding of this subject allows one a much more precise and clear view of the world; frauds, charlatans, and wizards are readily identifiable.  I suppose that's why it isn't taught in public schools.

Actually, I tend to disagree with the assertion that the true dialectician is the base rhetorician's greatest fear. Understanding and utilizing dialectic is good. But understanding and utilizing both dialectic and rhetoric is better, because while the dialectician has the ability to see through the base rhetoric, the true rhetorician has the ability to understand, confront, and publicly defeat it.

Exposing the enchantments

Conservatives and liberals alike are discovering that the Martin Luther King dream was never any more legitimate than any other Enlightenment lie:

Last week, a group of minority students emailed Professor Gordon Klein, asking him to let black students sit out this week’s exams in light of recent events. Klein refused. In an email supposedly from the professor, he explained his issues with the students’ racial grievances.

“Do you know the names of the classmates that are black?” he allegedly wrote. “How can I identify them, since we’ve been having online classes only? Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half? “One last thing strikes me: Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the 'color of their skin.' Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK’s admonition?”

The woke mob saw red, and a student named Preet Bains started a petition to have the professor fired. The petition, which describes Klein’s response as “woefully racist,” has attracted nearly 20,000 signatures, and UCLA has apparently sided with the aggrieved students. At some point since Friday, Klein was placed on leave.

Racial equality and content of character are not only the same sort of Enlightenment spells as free speech, free trade, and the labor theory of value, they are deep Promethean psyops that have successfully demoralized and paralyzed the Christian West for the last 60 years.

But sooner or later, the truth always exposes the lie hidden underneath the spell.

If you're one of those self-deceivers who "doesn't see color" or "looks at people as individuals" or "refuses to judge others by the color of their skin but by the content of their character", then you have been spell-bound by the evil wizards who serve Satan.

Only God sees the human heart, so by accepting the foundational lie of this spell, you are acceding to the Promethean program of seeking to make yourself a god.

Antifa: the movie

What you're seeing, the "riots" and the "police abuse" is all a movie playing out on a large scale in real-time. The consequences are real, but the narrative being pushed is entirely false.

#Bellevue Mall is being looted. I watched it unfold. Well-organized white men with walkie talkies broke windows and breeched the mall. Others went in and took stuff. By the time the media arrived, the only thing they saw was the taking of stuff. They did not see who started it.

If you think that sounds incredible, try to remember, we're dealing with a force that, in less than 60 years, somehow managed to convince the entire American nation that its flesh-and-blood people, the posterity and heirs of the American Revolution, were nothing more than an idea.

Even the conservative establishment tools are beginning to see through the charade. Whoever could have put that nice new stack of bricks in the middle of the street for the joggers? What an unfortunate coincidence!

Asking questions is racist

Don't ask questions of joggers or you might lose your job or even your lease:

A Minneapolis venture capitalist’s office lease has been terminated after a video went viral showing him asking a group of black entrepreneurs if they were tenants of the building and thus allowed to use its gym. In the video posted Tuesday night, Tom Austin, who is white, said he was going to call 911 on the group. He ended up calling the building’s property manager instead.

Meanwhile, Minneapolis enjoys more of its vibrant diversity, as "flames erupted" and "fires broke out" for absolutely no reason at all. This is an area I knew very well, as I graduated from a private school four blocks away from one of the liquor stores mentioned below.

Diversity in action

For much of the night, the police radio squawked with call after call, as looting started first at the Target store across the street from the precinct, before spreading to other areas in the city. Dozens of businesses were either looted or torched, or both, mostly in the area of Minnehaha Avenue and E. Lake Street, but also along business corridors on the city's North and South sides.

Firefighters raced from one blaze to the next, often with police in tow for crowd control. After someone started a fire at an AutoZone store at Minnehaha and Lake, firefighters worked to douse the flames, knocking down the majority of them. But within a matter of hours, the store was ablaze again, as was a half-built affordable housing development that caught fire, sending flames more than a hundred feet into the air.

Vandals broke into Chicago-Lake Liquor, and also shattered a few windows at the Midtown Market down the block. They also targeted businesses along W. Broadway Avenue, north Minneapolis’ main commercial drag, and in the Uptown area. Several pharmacies were reportedly burglarized, with suspects fleeing with handfuls of prescription pill bottles.

A Target and Cub Foods anchoring the corner of E. Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue were looted, along with other small businesses, including Minnehaha Lake Wine & Spirits. Flames and smoke shot into the air when a nearby AutoZone auto parts store was set ablaze. As some protesters tried to put out the fire, others danced gleefully in front of it, snapping selfies.

Equalitarianism is the real problem here. This isn't about "police brutality". After all, how many stores were burned and looted when an African cop shot and killed Justine Damond at her Minneapolis home in 2017?

Anyhow, I won't mind if the joggers burn all of South Minneapolis to the ground. It's a vibrant hellhole of diversity, and perhaps a sufficiently large conflagration will shake at least some idiot Minnesota liberals out of their smug equalitarianism.

And as one socialgalactician noted, it won't be long before the word "jogger" is banned.

Meanwhile, Rep. Ilhan Omar, who "represents" Minneapolis in Congress, said: "Our anger is just. Our anger is warranted."

This is why you always sink the damn ships and pick your own damn cotton.

The "evidence" rhetoric

A socialgalactician observes scientistic rhetoric in action.

Me:“here is anecdotal evidence hcq works”
Scientist friend: “so we agree there’s no evidence hcq works”

The devotees of scientistry always, Always, ALWAYS rely upon on rhetoric, specifically, upon a false definition of “evidence”. Their rhetorical redefinition is limited, ironically enough, to “published, peer-reviewed scientific evidence”, which statistical analysis has proven to be less reliable than a coin flip.

A belated convert

Grandpa Lampshade has come around to the idea that there is more to the concept of the gamma behavioral pattern than the mere desire to devalue disagreement:

Just wanted to say that I thought that the whole "gamma" thing came off a bit like "Anyone who doesn't agree with me = gamma"

I was wrong.

The patterns are like the "Well actually" meme; instead of simply pointing out where one could be incorrect about something, it always seems to be some form of semantics and always framed as a "gotcha" from a standpoint of superiority.

This is precisely why I no longer tolerate any mention of me, my motivations, my inclinations, or my objectives in the general discourse here. Because it's not all about me and there isn't a single idea that can be negated by my personal flaws and failings or proven by my positive attributes and accomplishments.

Argument ad hominem isn't merely a logical fallacy, not infrequently it is utilized as a dishonest rhetorical attempt to distract, discredit, and derail.

A government employee who has been responsible for public outreach during the pandemic adds his two cents on how to distinguish between people who are legitimately asking questions and those who are there to argue:

If the questioner refuses to click on a link, call a number, or take any effort at all to read or know the answer, then they are there to argue. Many times they have already read the answer and simply want to gripe. Other times, the answer is irrelevant and they just want to argue. They may have already asked multiple people and are digging for the answer they want to hear in order to pit different groups against each, and once again, argue.

They waste everyone's time and that is their actual goal.

The importance of rhetoric

No emotion, no victory:

The American media strategist Bill Knapp, who helped Obama into office in 2008, flies over to start preparing David for TV interviews. At the end of a long day, Bill takes me aside.

'I gotta be honest with you,' he says. 'You're never going to win this one unless you have an emotional argument for Remain. And you've gotta have a better answer on immigration.'

Of course, Bill has zoomed in straight away on our two core problems — problems we never resolve.

It's true our message isn't a very emotive one. No one is pretending the EU is a perfect institution. Quite the opposite. We've spent years arguing for reform. Securing our special status.

Essentially, we're stuck arguing for a marriage we've just taken to mediation. Saying: 'It's about more than just the relationship; it's about the kids — and their kids. The house, the car, the holidays, our social life. About our lifestyle.'

But still, at the core, we're having to mount an argument for what appears to be a soured relationship – and this is hard.

All the emotional energy is with the other side, the side that chants for liberty, freedom, a fresh start.

Immigration is a losing issue everywhere, except in the United States. But soon, it will be here too. Because the immigration = economic growth = societal wealth argument is now as observably and objectively false as the free trade = economic growth = societal prosperity argument.

They always want to escape consequences

And whatever happened to that whole "speech has consequences" idea they were pushing anyhow?

Back in September, we reported that TV network OAN had filed a lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for the time the host said that OAN “really, literally is paid Russian propaganda.”

Now, Maddow finds herself having to come up with a defense for her statement in court. And she has also apparently hired Lionel Hutz as her legal adviser.

According to Culttture, her lawyers argued in a recent motion that "…the liberal host was clearly offering up her ‘own unique expression’ of her views to capture what she saw as the ‘ridiculous’ nature of the undisputed facts. Her comment, therefore, is a quintessential statement ‘of rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or false."

So Maddow is looking for the court to give her a free pass to say anything she likes, because her words can never be considered true or false. It's an interesting, and perhaps even novel, legal theory, but I tend to doubt even a sympathetic liberal judge is likely to accept it.

Especially given the particular emphasis she really, literally, placed upon it.

However this is an excellent example of what happens when an individual abandons Truth, as he - or she - eventually becomes incapable of seeing or even speaking the truth.

Start with Britain

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson talks a good talk about defending the right of Christians to practice their faith. Let's see him start by defending British people attacked for practicing their faith and reading the Bible in public:

Christmas Day is, first and foremost, a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. It is a day of inestimable importance to billions of Christians. Today of all days, I want us to remember those Christians around the world who are facing persecution. For them, Christmas Day will be marked in private, in secret, perhaps even in a prison cell. As Prime Minister, that's something I want to change. We stand with Christians everywhere, in solidarity, and will defend your right to practise your faith.

It sounds like a good start. But sooner or later, he will have to address the fact that being a Christian has been redefined by the Prometheans as "anti-semitic". As, of course, has nationalism, self-interest, and drinking coffee.

Just as conservatives have been forced to choose between their professed ideological principles and not being called "racist', Christians are increasingly going to be forced to choose between their professed religious faith and not being called "anti-semitic". The Devil seldom bothers learning new tricks because the old ones work so well.

I would also be remiss if I failed to note that Johnson talks about "your faith" in regard to Christianity, not "our faith".

The impeccable logic of transracism

If men can identify as women, there is no rational reason to deny those of one race the ability to identify as the member of another race. In fact, the transracial case is stronger, given that racial labels are, unlike sex chromosomes, genuinely social constructs. Godfrey Elfwick was right all along. #Wrongskin

Anyone should be allowed to ‘identify’ as black regardless of the colour of their skin or background, according to Left-wing university leaders.

The Universities and Colleges Union has set out its stance in a report on the ongoing row about whether men should be able to self-identify as women and be treated as female regardless of their anatomy.

The UCU’s ‘position statement’ did not just stand by its support for self-identification of gender, but also insisted people can choose their own race, saying: ‘Our rules commit us to ending all forms of discrimination, bigotry and stereotyping. UCU has a long history of enabling members to self-identify whether that is being black, disabled, LGBT+ or women.’ 

Denying one's ability to racially self-identify is inarguably transphobic and if we've learned one thing in the last year, it is that transphobia trumps both sexism and racism. And the very worst transphobia is transracism.

Dark Thoughts

Immigration is a Ponzi scheme with people.

• Conservatives are as useless as bowties on a battlefield.
• They say you shouldn't kick a man when he's down. But it's harder to kick a man in the head when he's still standing.
• Homeschool or die.

Human shield fail

None of the post-Baby Boomer generations fall for the "do it for the children" rhetoric anymore:

Motorists in Germany, the automotive heart of Europe, are not taking kindly to Swedish youth climate activist Greta Thunberg. Some drivers are sporting bumper stickers telling the girl, in so many words, to take a hike.

At the age of 15, Thunberg captivated a large segment of the media in Europe and the US with her impassioned calls for immediate action on climate change, prompting similar activism from youths the world over. As many German cities prepare to go carless, however, some drivers have not been appreciative of Thunberg’s globetrotting activism, and they aren’t afraid to tell their fellow motorists.

'F**k you Greta' bumper stickers appear on German roads, taking aim at youth climate activist

Some German social media users also noticed the trend, but not everybody found humor in the vulgar stickers, which can now apparently be purchased on Amazon.

“White Audi Q7 with sticker ‘F**k you Greta’ - is this the new ‘a heart for children’?” asked one Twitter user.

You'd think the global warming shills would have learned from the complete failure of the Sandy Hook and Parkland shootings to even move the needle on gun control. No one gives a damn if one, two, or a thousand kindergartens are reported as being shot up; they're still not giving up their guns.

And most German motorists would quite cheerfully run over the Gretard before even considering giving up their autos and autobahns.

Besides, if the planet is overheating due to overpopulation, who gives a damn about children's lives, let alone what they happen to think? And, perhaps more importantly, why would you let even one single immigrant enter the country and contribute to global warming?

They're all yours, Richard

Matteo Salvini demonstrates why he is going to be the first Prime Minister of an independent and sovereign Italia.

Golden Globe winner Richard Gere visited a boat with 121 migrants on board in international waters near the Italian island of Lampedusa. Gere was pictured delivering food supplies to the migrants on board, who have been rescued by Spanish NGO Open Arms. In a barb to Italy and his own leader President Trump, he said: 'Demonizing people has to stop everywhere on the planet. What most people refer to as migrants, I refer to as refugees that are running from a fire.'

The right-wing League leader Matteo Salvini, whose party topped the polls in the recent European elections, hit back. Salvini said: 'Given this generous millionaire is voicing concern for the fate of the Open Arms migrants, we thank him: he can take back to Hollywood, on his private plane, all the people aboard and support them in his villas. Thank you Richard!'

Hilarious. And effective. Grazie, Richard!

Rhetoric works

Especially when it comes from the Bully Pulpit:

Somalia President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo voluntarily renounced his U.S. citizenship, a country where he lived, received education and worked.

“This follows the completion of the required legal and immigration processes that had been initiated after the president’s election,” his office said Thursday in an emailed statement.

The renunciation comes about two weeks after President Donald Trump attacked four minority freshmen congresswomen including Somali-born Ilhan Omar, whom he asked to return to the Horn of Africa nation.

It's a start, anyhow.

Pizzagate, reconsidered

Ron Unz reconsiders the plausibility of Pizzagate in light of the Epstein and McCain revelations:

Given my awareness of this remarkable track-record of major media cover-ups, I’m ashamed to admit that I had paid almost no attention to the Jeffrey Epstein case until it exploded across our national headlines earlier this month, suddenly becoming one of the biggest news stories in our country.

For many years, reports about Epstein and his illegal sex-ring had regularly circulated on the fringes of the Internet, with agitated commenters citing the case as proof of the dark and malevolent forces that secretly controlled our corrupted political system. But I almost entirely ignored these discussions, and I’m not sure that I ever once clicked on a single link.

Probably one reason I paid so little attention to the topic was the exceptionally lurid nature of the claims being made. Epstein was supposedly an enormously wealthy Wall Street financier of rather mysterious personal background and source of funds, who owned a private island and an immense New York City mansion, both regularly stocked with harems of underage girls provided for sexual purposes. He allegedly hobnobbed on a regular basis with Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz, and numerous other figures in the international elite, as well as a gaggle of ordinary billionaires, frequently transporting those individuals on his personal jet known as “the Lolita Express” for the role it played in facilitating illegal secret orgies with young girls. When right-wing bloggers on obscure websites claimed that former President Clinton and the British Royals were being sexually serviced by the underage girls of a James Bond super-villain brought to life, I just assumed those accusations were the wildest sort of Internet exaggeration....

Around the same time that I first became familiar with the details of the Pizzagate controversy, the topic also started reaching the pages of my morning newspapers, but in an rather strange manner. Political stories began giving a sentence or two to the “Pizzagate hoax,” describing it as a ridiculous right-wing “conspiracy theory” but excluding all relevant details. I had an eery feeling that some unseen hand had suddenly flipped a switch caused the entire mainstream media to begin displaying identical signs reading “Pizzagate Is False—Nothing To See There!” in brightly flashing neon. I couldn’t recall any previous example of such a strange media reaction to some obscure controversy on the Internet.

Articles in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times also suddenly appeared denouncing the entirety of the alternative media—Left, Right, and Libertarian—as “fake news” websites promoting Russian propaganda, while urging that their content be blocked by all patriotic Internet giants such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Prior to that moment, I’d never even heard the term “fake news” but suddenly it was ubiquitous across the media, once again almost as if some unseen hand had suddenly flipped a switch.

I naturally began to wonder whether the timing of these two strange developments was entirely coincidental. Perhaps Pizzagate was indeed true and struck so deeply at the core of our hugely corrupted political system that the media efforts to suppress it were approaching the point of hysteria.

Not long afterward, Tara McCarthy’s fine Pizzagate videos were purged from YouTube. This was among the very first instances of video content being banned despite fully conforming to all existing YouTube guidelines, another deeply suspicious development.

I also noticed that mere mention of Pizzagate had become politically lethal. Donald Trump had selected Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as his National Security Advisor, and Flynn’s son served as the latter’s chief of staff. The younger Flynn happened to Tweet out a couple of links to Pizzagate stories, pointing out that the accusations hadn’t yet been actually investigated let alone disproven, and very soon afterward, he was purged from the Trump transition team, foreshadowing his father’s fall a few weeks later. It seemed astonishing to me that a few simple Tweets about an Internet controversy could have such huge real-life impact near the top of our government.

The media continued its uniform drumbeat of “Pizzagate Has Been Disproven!” but we were never explained how or by whom, and I was not the only individual to notice the hollowness of such denunciations. An award-winning investigative journalist named Ben Swann at a CBS station in Atlanta broadcast a short television segment summarizing the Pizzagate controversy and noting that contrary to widespread media claims, Pizzagate had neither been investigated nor debunked.

Here is my prediction: Pizzagate will, sooner or later, be largely confirmed to be true, most likely sans a few of the more lurid and cartoonish elements, and, as with the Epstein case, will turn out to be more sinister and of larger scale than even the conspiracy theorists initially believed.

As always, you can trust the lies and illogic to guide you toward the truth. Which is to say, once you know someone is lying, once you see that someone is presenting an obviously false syllogism, you know there is a specific truth that they are desperately trying to hide. The fact that the oft-repeated claim that Pizzagate has been "debunked" without any of the so-called debunkings being at all logically coherent, let alone conclusive, is sufficient to indicate that there are specific truths being hidden underneath the denials.

Imagine if we were to utilize this debunking logic in other scenarios.

• Major Premise: Conspiracy theorists claim Donald Trump is the President of the United States.
• Minor Premise: A crazy man tried to attack Donald Trump at a rally in Vandalia, Ohio.
• Conclusion: Therefore, the claim that Donald Trump is President of the United States is debunked!

Precisely how low does your IQ have to be to find that syllogism to be not only compelling, but conclusive?

We won that one

After the media collaborated with Richard Spencer to poison the term "Alternative Right", we simply began to describe ourselves, accurately, as nationalists. Specifically, as "Nationalist Right" to distinguish ourselves from the left-wing imperialists of the Fake Right. Since the media's many subsequent attempts to poison that term have absolutely failed despite their best efforts, both the Left and Right factions of the globocracy are now attempting to capture it.

Nationalism, by its nature, excludes people. Raising one’s nation above others begins with defining what that nation is — and who belongs in it.

It’s theoretically possible to have a liberal nationalism, even a socialist nationalism, that welcomes foreigners interested in joining the nation’s ranks. The last president’s rhetoric about what Americans have in common, and how immigration strengthens the country, strikes me as a species of liberal nationalism.

But conservative nationalism by its nature not like that. It holds that community arises from longstanding and deep connections between citizens, connections that come from their shared identity, history, and cultural values. This is what is “conservative” about it, and also what makes it inclined to view the entry of foreigners into the American polity skeptically.

So now instead of liberalism/socialism vs conservatism they're attempting to set up a false dichotomy of liberal/socialist nationalism vs conservative nationalism. Their problem is that despite their best efforts to redefine "nationalism", the word still actually means something substantial to most people.

And not, as the NatCucks, aka Neoclowns 2.0, would have it, in "a repudiation of racism, libertarianism, and identity politics."

Nationalism, in the American context, means America First. Not "we must defend our Greatest Ally" or "we must bomb X for the children" or "we must invade Y because weapons of mass destruction" or "the problem is ILLEGAL immigration" or "the Z is rotting in the fields!" or "they have the Magic Paper so they are just as American as you". Nationalism means rejecting the Proposition Nation, the Huddled Masses, the Melting Pot, and the 1965 Invasion Act. It means rejecting Judeo-Christianity, the Athens+Jerusalem equation, equality, desegregation, diversity, and every other historical falsehood that is being utilized to adulterate, devalue, degrade, and demoralize America.

And no amount of placing adjectives in front of the word nationalism in order to gatekeep the genuine nationalists is going to work. But the mere fact that they feel the need to do so now confirms that the long-term macrosocietal trends are finally flowing in our favor.

There is no point in debate

I keep being asked if I'm willing to debate X or interested in talking to Y. The answer is no. What point is there in debate when most of the people watching are totally incapable of having their minds changed by the information exchanged and those who don't even bother watching or listening to it are nevertheless willing to lie about it. Consider these two recent YouTube comments concerning what passed for my "debate" with Andrew Anglin:

honkyness
Didn’t know about the Andrew Anglin interview.  You did some serious dodging Vox - damn disappointing.  I have no idea where you stand on the only thing that matters - the onslaught on Western Civilization and its people.

Hunter of Witches, Orcs and Goblins
I saw that debate recently and I'll admit I was secretly rooting for Anglin because I instinctively tend to root for people who are brave enough to fight unwinnable battles. That said you absolutely brutalised him. Even to call it a debate is a misnomer. It was an hour long history lesson with a whiny little pupil who ended up learning nothing. He couldn't even improvise, he was reading everything from a piece of paper and didn't even respond to anything you said. He was so intellectually inept and puny that it actually hurt my opinion of Anglin, he did nothing but whine and cry about "muh censorship". Seriously, get in line. Who isn't being censored?

In my both debates with Andrew Anglin and Bob Murphy, my opponent was totally - 100 percent - unable to even begin addressing the points I made. Neither of them raised a single point that was in any way new to me or that I did not address - if not refute entirely - with ease. And yet, there were still a sizable minority of viewers who claimed that Anglin or Murphy somehow won the debate.

So, when people ask me why I turn down debate invitations these days, that is why. As usual, it comes down to MPAI. I have always preferred written debates, and at this point, that is the only format that even potentially interests me anymore.

One less arrow in the quiver

An invasionist laments the fact that the visual rhetoric isn't working as designed anymore:

You may look at this photo and think that its deep message is “We are all hoping for a better life and will take extraordinary risks on behalf of those we love.” But someone else will probably say, “People shouldn’t cross borders without permission.” The drowning becomes a kind of punishment, a river stands in for ideas of human authority, and the photograph doesn’t break through anything. It merely reiterates an old and cherished belief: Bad things happen to those who break the rules. … there will be efforts to make it an allegory of law and judgment rather than an opportunity for moral imagination and compassion.

The day after these two people perished in the Rio Grande, the president of the United States dismissed an accusation that he had sexually assaulted a prominent author and columnist in the 1990s. He used a phrase similar to ones he has used in the past to deflect similar allegations: “She’s not my type.” It is a terrible thing to say, with a specifically misogynistic meaning in the context of how men practice violence against women.

But it is a perfect summation of our new and deformed American conscience. It is pithy and dismissive, an invitation to look at people who have been victimized and see only otherness. It shuts down any understanding of trauma before empathy has begun to interrogate how trauma is felt and experienced. It is about looking without seeing, judging without understanding. For anyone who wants an off-ramp to the moral demands made by this image, this could be the universal caption: “They weren’t our type.”

Translation: Did you not see the DROWNED LITTLE KID? How can you not submit to our insane immigration policies when we are showing you pictures of a DROWNED LITTLE KID! And WITH HER DADDY no less! FFS, what do we have to do, drown an entire kindergarten class of refugees just to evoke the desired Pavlovian reaction from you heartless bastards!

The title kind of gives it away. "We used to think photos like this could change the world." That's just it. They did. But that was before people began to recognize that they were being rhetorically manipulated.

The savage president

The God-Emperor is such a ruthless rhetorical savage:

Prince Harry was noticeably absent from the State Banquet staged in honour of Donald Trump, in the wake of alleged comments made about his wife. The Duke of Sussex appeared less than keen to be pictured with the President - who reportedly branded Harry's wife Meghan 'nasty' at the weekend after learning of comments she made about him while she was an actress.

Earlier in the day Harry had chaperoned Mr Trump's daughter, Ivanka, into Buckingham Palace's Picture Gallery for a display of US-themed artefacts.

But the Queen's grandson quickly disappeared into the background and did not follow other members of the Royal Family as they walked round the exhibition with the American leader and his party.

The reason Prince Harry is so furious is that he knows perfectly well what President Trump means when he said that he didn't know Megan Markle "was nasty". He knows the President wasn't referring to any name-calling, but rather, to his wife's former profession that did not involve acting.

You'd think people would have learned to keep their mouths shut about President Trump by now. At least, people with secrets they don't want distributed around the world by the media.

An inability to break free

The Z-Man observes how civic nationalists, melting-potheads, and proposition nationalists repeatedly fail to grok the reality of a demographically failed state:

Those who have tried to engage with hardcore civic nationalists or evangelical patriots will have experienced a strange phenomenon where they appear to be strangely blind to certain topics. For example, the story about the black seeking out and throwing a white child over a third floor railing at the Mall of America. These super-normies respond to it by blaming communism or democrats. It’s as if the facts cause their code to reboot and they start repeating whatever they saw on Sean Hannity the prior evening.

If you press them on the obvious racial angle, they get flustered and either change the subject or break into a different chant about how America is an idea. It’s an odd thing that suggests these people have some sort of shunt in their consciousness that prevents them from seeing certain aspects of life. It’s not just a matter of self-censorship in order to avoid taboo subjects. Something seems to have been altered in their brains that prevents them from seeing anything that contradicts the colorblind fantasy.

It is an important fact for dissidents to accept. A lifetime of conditioning, perhaps generations of conditioning, have made it impossible for some people to ever look up and see the great divide, much less cross over to this side. Part of it is the normal desire of most humans to belong to the pack. To stand outside the main, with regards to biology, is a dangerous place. It is a form of self-exile. Naturally, most people would not choose it, even if it meant degrading themselves by repeating what they know to be untrue.

Aristotle explained this mysterious phenomenon: "Before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct."
- Aristotle, Rhetoric   

Their attachment to racial equality, civic nationalism, the melting pot, and the concept of the nation as idea is emotional, not rational. Reason will not change their minds. Only emotion will do so, and the most convincing emotion is fear. They will not, they cannot, change their minds until they begin to fear for their lives, one way or another.