My C99 Investment
Intelligence is necessarily social, and we are swimming upstream every time we conjure up ghosts of The Individual. Liberalism and Social Action
I consider my small financial contributions to C99 an important investment in preserving what is being rapidly eroded from our public life: democracy.
I do not mean a Democratic Republic, Parliamentary system or a Direct Democracy or any other "form of government" democracy. What I am investing in here is small d "way of life" democracy, the respectful give and take of points of view. I actively give and I actively receive world-views here and elsewhere. This interaction enriches me daily, as it should. It is my only source of political power in this world. I throw my tiny pebble into the pond and see what happens.
The key-note of democracy as a way of life may be expressed, it seems to me, as the necessity for the participation of every mature human being in formation of the values that regulate the living of men together: which is necessary from the standpoint of both the general social welfare and the full development of human beings as individuals. On Democracy
We are seeing the rapid erosion of small d democracy in our daily lives aided and abetted by an authoritarian mass media hell bent on paralyzing our ability to recognize a collective reality and thereby dooming us to a confused isolation.
We here recognize this turn of events as purposeful. The goal as far as I can see is isolation of the individual from community and ultimately the prevention of a public from forming that is engaged, confident and educated by the free interchange of ideas.
All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? MLK, Letter from Birmingham Jail
It is separation, and as MLK said in quoting Tillich, separation is sin. As racial segregation, overtly in the South and covertly in the North, was (is?) "an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness", so is our collective social and political segregation now so skillfully induced by mass propaganda and manufactured dissonance.
We are losing places like this on purpose. The "free market" is seeking out and destroying outlets for free speech and free association as we know it. Daily Kos is but just one sad example. This is what makes JtC's efforts in creating and operating C99 truly remarkable. He seems to understand that the "free market" cannot and will not subsidize what it worries would be the means of its eventual destruction by aiding the formation of a democratically informed public, even if profitable. Therefore, we witness this "free market" (monopolistic) assault on free association of ideas that is the life-blood of small d democracy.
They have moved on from manufactured consent to what I call manufactured dissonance. It is a purposeful muddling of the public consciousnesses. They are using paid trolls to disrupt real discourse and then blaming others for using paid trolls to disrupt contrived discourse. Every imaginable propaganda technique is being inflicted on us. What we're seeing now in this regard are just the early scattered snowflakes of the blizzard to come. It will be total whiteout.
No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which if surrendered will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost. Abraham Lincoln
This is why I invest my scarce cash resources here. I give as much as I can and then wish I could give more. I am grateful for JtC's efforts in creating this unique space for dialogue and engagement. I am thankful for his patience and graciousness.
JtC seems unwilling to bow to the masters or take rent from the lords. Because of this, I am willing to invest in this wonderful bastion of small d democracy. I hope you are too.
Comments
"Manufactured dissonance" is a great meme
Thank you for your contribution of this thoughtful essay.
That is what it is
I watched a video of Chris Hayes interviewing (playing softball) with John Brennan.
Hayes allowed Brennan to say one thing in his first sentence and then imply the exact opposite in his following sentences. This is happening all over the airwaves and on the internet. It is truly astounding and disturbing that they must know what they are doing.
At 5:53 mark, Brennan says he didn't say what Hayes what Hayes thinks he said.
Literally the next utterances through the 6:34 mark negates that first sentence. Hayes then displays his slow pitch softball skills with a question about treasonous paths.
That is a textbook display of sowing dissonance.
Watch here:
[video:https://youtu.be/JSXqdkIrk50]
Brennan did contradict himself quite distinctly
Watching the video I wondered what it was that got Hayes to ditch his integrity and reputation and sign up with this psyops and all the other ones we've been exposed to. The main guy from Orwell's 1984 kept flashing through my mind and how he had to rewrite the news every day to keep up with the never changing propaganda. I'm going to start calling people who are Russian pushers by the guys last name when someone supplies it for me.
Wilson ....?
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Bond, James Bond.
just kidding.
Winston Smith
Ah yes. Winston Smith
You're sweet for helping with my failed memory. Thanks. I thought Smith was his last name. So from now on Rachel Maddow is Rachel Smith. Chris Smith. Jake Smith. Anyone else who is helping pass this Russian propaganda on to us is a Smith. They know damn well what they are doing and how wrong it is for the press to sell out. I'm damn sure that they know that what they are selling us is more war. For Rachel especially to do this after her earlier days on Air America is beyond my comprehension.
"How dare Trump collude with Vlad!
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Thank you jobu...
for the very kind words and your continued support. You have expressed succinctly just how important sites that allow open discussion have become in this time of government backed corporate censorship run amok. And also exactly how I feel about it. How can we call ourselves caucus99percent, of the 99, by the 99, for the 99, and at the same time clutter the site up with corporate advertising. That would be the antithesis of what this site is about.
Sites across the internet are struggling with this very same issue. Advertising money is drying up and corporate censorship and deplatforming are taking their toll. More and more, websites are relying on member donations to get by. It's a sign of the political times.
I long ago realized that I would never become rich running this blog and along with that realization I came to understand that it's not about money anyway. It's about the principles that you so eloquently lay down in this essay. I truly despise asking for donations, that's why you hardly ever see me do it. If I was well off financially I would certainly do it for nothing, but alas, I am far from well off. But what I lack in monetary resources is more than made up for in the satisfaction that I get from watching folks enjoying the great writing and community that c99 affords. It is a labor of love for me.
I know that sometimes the weight gets to me and sometimes that may show through, but I want everyone to know, that as long as I am able and contributions allow, I will keep this site open. I would never let the good folks of this site down in that regard.
We are up against it
We are not the first to witness injustice. However, I fear we may be witnessing the closing of the door so to speak.
As I have repeated here many times paraphrasing Churchill's famous speech, we seem to be sinking into the abyss of a new and perhaps permanent Dark Age made more sinister by the lights of the perverted science of Mass Propaganda and Mass Distraction.
Again, I so appreciate your humble efforts to stem this awful tide of deceit.
Another thank you.
This essay is an excellent defense of the need for C99. The effort of the rich, the powerful, and the ignorant to stifle independent thought is the worst and strongest I have ever seen. I don't write essays anymore because people here anticipate anything I might have to say. It is an island of sanity and thoughtfulness in a sea of trivia and lies.
I also invest what I can in this bastion of sanity.
-Greed is not a virtue.
-Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.
-Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962
The personal cost of sanity
is lost on the ledger of larger expressional freedoms.
Well stated
The knives are definitely out for alternative websites that tell people the truth about what their country and government are doing. It started out with FB and Google changing their algorithms, FB and Twitter censoring people and websites and Google kicking people off YouTube.
This site is doing a great job keeping people in the know about many horrible issues that the PTB have put in place. NewsGuard and the Integrity Initiative being just the latest. Wondering what happened to Hamilton68? I saw a new company that is keeping track of the Russian bots.
Thanks for all that you do JtC to keep the blue blog working!
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Powerful essay
You have said it so much better than anyone else could. For me, C99 has been a place where I feel I can express myself openly, even when it may not always be the prevailing opinion.
The world needs more open forums like this where we can learn from one another without being censured by those who scream fake news while they are pushing fake (propaganda) news upon us.
C99 recognizes each of us as individual beings who still use our own cognitive skills to determine what is real and what is propaganda. It treats us as adults who do not need someone or something else to tell us how to think. For me, this is the most important reason why I have chosen to support C99 on a monthly basis.
Thank you for this very powerful essay, jobu.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Exactly... how many other websites would let us Q?
WWG1WGA! Right, gulfgal?
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Heh!
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I have to take severe exception to the opening quote
Maybe it's a language/semantic barrier, but I'm autistic; much as cultural anthropologists and their disciples insist it's impossible, I'm a culture of one. I'm living proof not only that individuals can exist apart from other individuals, but that altruism is borne of egotism; anything else has us trapped in the same unwinnable ping-pong-match-from-Hell between Ayn Rand and Mao Zedong; it's the grand fallacy of the Cold War, the Evil Yin-Yang.
People - and I don't know why this should be, my best guess is a kind of "fundamentalist empiricism" that was one of the signature blights of the fundamentally-singular (as in "singularity") 20th Century - keep failing to differentiate between matter and mind, between inner and outer space. I'm very, for want of a better word, Cartesian - again, while there's not necessarily any way most people could know this, I prove most of what I have to say simply by existing as I do; even my failures and slippages only confirm it. Maybe it's the whole Baby Boomer rush to embrace "Eastern philosophies" and presume to view them as different from the Western they were familiar with. I grew up in Silicon Valley, very much a hybrid of "East" and "West" (I mean, if *I* wanted to be all provincial about it, I could assert that "the West" means "Japan"). I have a new twist to offer, one that both combines and stands in defiance of the Industrialism/Romanticism of the late 19th/early 20th Century that people still seem to be stuck in...and I'm feeling like I'm being buried alive before I can even deliver my message. The great gears have turned again...backward, and people appear to have been brainwashed of the plateau of progress upon which I'd been building myself to reach the next step my whole life.
I know, I'm not managing to be very coherent; as I've said before, I feel like I'm falling fading away due to Back To The Future turning into a prescient and horrific political allegory (and "President Biff" is the least of such concerns; more a mean punchline, really). That said, I think of how, in some world mythologies (Finnish, for example, and I think some First Nations), "the spirit world" is imagined as an "upside-down/backwards" version of the material world, and I find that holds true insomuch as the truths that hold in one come out the opposite in the other. We are all individuals; society is a perilous illusion - but the realm of matter is our common ground.
I briefly took a class labeled "Ancient Eastern Mysticism" (the teacher lamented that it couldn't be called "yoga", because that would lead people to the wrong conclusions involving hotpants or whatever) that described a difference between a supposedly-primordial "membranous self", and a supposedly-modern "buffered" self; we seem to be regressing to the membranous, and no doubt the Internet is contributing. We have got to get that buffer back. If the 20th Century taught us anything, and the last 19 years have served only to gratuitously confirm, it is that Human Hive-Mind is the root of most human evil. This whole "individualism = capitalism" thing is and always was bullshit cooked up by hack imitators, just like "Social Darwinism" (and, I am increasingly concluding, the whole setup of "social science" - just another 19th-Century conceit that winds up hijacking the Enlightenment for a return to feudalism).
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Gave $42, hope Big Al writes more
Daily would be good, heh. That number is the whole trump bump for january, the 2.9% COLA increase. 42 has such a nice ring it kinda blew my mind. It's the biggest SS$ increase ever since I started, I think.
I am still in the Very Poor median of California, who else but c99 will hear my plaintive cries of woe, instead of kicking me to the ditch? good therapy, thanks a lot. It feels good to not be kicked. huh
NOBODY 2020
think bigly
Rounding up some pennies....
No giving in to woe, must dodge despair, can't help but see the abyss but hey what to do about that? Dance around it I think. Donating to a campaign against smiths. Oh and thanks for a beautiful place.