Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Quote of the Day: Solzhenitsyn on the Liars
“We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.” – Attributed to Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
I believe the United States has seen a new level of deliberate disinformation from the media, the government, and major corporations. This jumped to a new level with the efforts to hobble the Trump administration. I think when the institutions saw that they could get away with it, they have doubled down. Now we have Facebook and Twitter helping to preserve the lies.
I know we need to fight back, but I am not sure how.
Published in Politics
Republicans shoot themselves in the foot multiple times.
We have to expose and purge the fake conservatives = step 1
A united conservative front can fight the USSR Democrats
This goes to the fearlessness that has been the hallmark of all the cop-on-black shootings. Utter fearlessness of any consequences.
We’re so much wealthier, so much more comfortable, so much less engaged, except the kids who have been propagandized instead of educated but act mostly remotely and without risk with new media. Moreover we don’t have a John Paul. The thugs in contrast get to destroy and steal stuff when they raise hell in other peoples neighborhoods and pay no price. It’s occurring mostly in Democrat run states and cities and national democrat leaders act as if Republicans were in charge. What’s it all about now that they have the White House and control the states where such chaos erupts?
After the failure of every theory and policy, lies are all the left has.
They are much more likely to be killed buy criminal blacks. Folks in those neighborhoods have other things to be worried about. Maybe that 16 year old girl felt like she didn’t have anything to live for anymore.
We continue to suffer from the long term effects of the fallacy of the “Vote most conservative in the primary, vote Republican in the general” mentality that was very popular among the earlier right-ish blogging generation (particularly places like the first gen RedState regime). [And still is, I suppose.] The thinking was that someone who votes with you 80% of the time is better than nothing. The problem is that you hand the near perfect power of the incumbency in this modern shell of a Republic to so many whose votes on the other 20% encompass 100% of the issues that are fundamental to what the party is supposed to stand for. Therefore, “we” always lose when it really counts and “purging” these bums in any meaningful numbers at the ballot box is simply impossible. [Note: Give someone like Mitch 3-5 or these votes in his caucus and he further muddies the water by rotating the “trader” to best protect the weakest ones with respect to election timing and home state politics. It really is just an evil game.]
This condition is only compounded by the “big tent-ism” of the late ought’s and early teens. The R tent swelled beyond even the most accommodating edge flaps with people who self identified as “conservative” solely on the data-point that they were not as bat crap crazy as Nancy Pelosi. Too many think that having one picture of Ronald Reagan in their house makes them “true conservatives” while they still use MSNBC as a primary feeding source. Unfortunately, “expose and purge” is very difficult with so many like this inside your perimeter.
All really should read the entire Havel piece (print a hard copy for the file and grab a highlighter while you are at it) but if you are short on time, at least search for the parts on “dissident movements” and “parallel structures.” After that, look for “greengrocer” too.
Who is like that? How many RINOs do you know that are like that?
Well, I think it is clear that I am exaggerating somewhat there to point the accusatory finger at the one that most here are familiar with but I see it all the time. The basic phenomenon is real and easy to detect…
The media gives us frequent examples. We have seen it with the occasional young, blonde, “conservative” FOX host of the month who derails the minute she starts running her mouth about her thoughts on abortion / reproductive rights. I remember another leggy “conservative” FOXNEWS host on a Saturday business show some 12 years ago or so going “green” live on-air and insisting the gasoline should be “taxed to the hilt.” I also watched an entire FOX business show round table (sans the more intelligent host) agree that the government can read their email and invade their privacy as much as necessary as long as it made them safe to walk to their fancy NYC studio every day. (And I haven’t even touched on the token “conservatives” at the non-“conservative” news sources…many of which have now self-identified as the frauds they were all along.) A favorite of mine was when the callers to a local “conservative” radio show split about 50/50 on the property rights of restaurant owners (i.e. smoking). It was amazing to hear from so many self-identified “conservatives” how someone’s fundamental property rights ended abruptly at someone else’s right to voluntarily sit in the owner’s building and not smell smoke.
In my day to day life I run into this quite a lot. I could just say that I am a Methodist and end the argument there (i.e. victory) but I have coffee left and word limit space available so: In some social circles I see groups who are strictly anti-abortion (and see right through the propaganda of the “common sense reproductive rights pro-choicers) but will gladly go along with any and all limitations on ownership of firearms (especially if they is presented as “common sense measures,” etc., etc.). In other groups, I can just as easily reverse that scenario. And don’t even get me started on the number of “not as bat crap crazy as Pelosi” people who I have encountered over the last year who have given way to their reactionary selves with respect to due process (sometimes it is just too obvious to waste time on) and their caring selves with respect to lockdowns (sometimes jobs and the economy must play second fiddle to
flattening the curve…cases…another surge…new variants…Fauci’s itchy trigger finger…something).One other sobering aspect to this incident, one that should give us pause, is that if that officer had arrived on the scene ten seconds later, too late to act, and the girl had stabbed and killed the other girl, we would never be hearing about it. It would just be another local crime story. And, because it was black-on-black crime, it would be actively ignored by the Media.
So while we’re all sputtering “but this was obvious! An obvious case of a cop doing his job!!”, we should notice that that, while obvious, is also apparently not the point. That doesn’t matter. Only the color of their skin, which creates another opportunity to further the Great Lie about racism in our country. That’s the point.
This might seem to be one of those things that is “only obvious to the cynic”. But it’s not. It’s the effing point. It’s the real battle we are fighting. And we had better start fighting it with the same dedication that those who wish to destroy all that we are and all that we value are fighting it.
Drugs?
Turn off Facebook.
Personally the next time I buy a phone, I am going to take my phone company to court for false advertising. Pre loaded apps means I have less data storage than they say they would.
Or maybe you could…uninstall the apps you don’t want.
(Yes, I know, some of them are uninstallable. Still.)
I’m with ToryWarWriter on this one. Apps I don’t want reduce the value of the device and it takes my effort to remove them.
Well, again, this was turned into a situation of facts-be-d*mned by the media. In this morning’s Columbus Dispatch the knife-wielding punk was deified in the headline, “Friends, family remember fun-loving, kind teen”.
Who are you going to trust? We in the media or your lying eyes?
Back in the old days when I delivered the Dispatch, it was a real broadsheet newspaper. In the last twenty years, it’s converted to a tabloid format. But since they still have pretensions of being a real paper, they fold it as if it were still a broadsheet, yielding that most ridiculous of newspaper formats, the folded tabloid, usually reserved for free car ads, newsletters and high-school papers.
I’m nervous about uninstalling those apps. I’m afraid they’re integrated into the system in some way. Should I not be nervous?
Software integration is pretty good on phones. If it lets you uninstall an app, probably it doesn’t need it.
Apps don’t generally take up a lot of space. And if you don’t run them they don’t consume much in the way of resources. I uninstall games and shopping apps and anything else that seems frivolous, hide most of the icons away in a folder, and leave it at that.
On my phone, the thing that consumes memory is the Ricochet superfeed.
Thanks!
So . . . maybe instead of just ignoring the dang thing I’ll try uninstalling the Facebook app.
Facebook is in a class by itself, as far as I’m concerned. I think it’s an insidious piece of spyware masquerading as social media; I keep it off my phone. I use WhatsApp (also owned by Facebook) because I need it for a specific activity, keeping in touch with a medical mission I work with in Ghana, but I keep it as unprivileged and locked down as I can. Facebook is evil. (So is Google, of course, but there’s only so much you can do to avoid that. It’s everywhere.)
They might be ok with switching to Signal or Telegram in Ghana.
I’ve thought about it. But we’ve got several people in our group, including a couple of octogenarian priests I wouldn’t want to have to retrain. ;)
YES! It is Spyware masquerading as an app.