From her latest piece:
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There’s a great comic by The Oatmeal which explains the psychological defense mechanisms humans have in place to protect their worldview from information that could destabilize it. Because of our tendency to select for cognitive ease over cognitive challenge in order to conserve mental energy, we tend to be heavily biased against consciously helping new worldview-disrupting information get past those psychological defense mechanisms.

And it doesn’t get more worldview-disrupting than questioning mainstream consensus reality. Because on the other side of that investigation is the realization that pretty much everything you’ve been trained to believe about your society, your nation, your government and your world, is a lie.

This is often what people are really pushing back against when they get upset at someone who is being critical of official empire narratives. It’s not actually super important to them that everyone believe the correct things about their government or someone else’s government, it’s super important to them that the world as they know it not come to a crashing halt.

Because that’s what it is, as far as their experience and perception is concerned. A lucid seeing that their entire worldview is based on lies would feel like the end of their world, because in their experience it would be the end of the world they know.

Having your entire understanding of the world and how it works torn asunder is a kind of a death, because it’s the end of your secure knowing of what’s real. In a sense it’s the end of you, too. It’s the end of the person you were. It’s all illusory of course, but that’s the way it feels.

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I disagree with Caitlin only insofar as I do not think she adequately describes the trauma that adheres to anyone who rejects the main stream narrative. Not only does it "feel" like the end of the world -- it is the end of the world for all practical purposes. What it will (or would) take to upend the entrenched power structure in upwards of 20 countries while rebuilding some kind of social cohesion is beyond anybody's comprehension. Vague pronouncements like "ending the system of profit over people" do not conjure up anything coherent -- and instead play into a century of both propaganda and objective reality suggesting that such a pipe dream is loony. Any specific list of tasks necessary to end the wars and to address environmental problems shows anybody how hopeless those tasks appear to be.

This is why I make snarky comments on this board about "critical thinking skills." Of course using your bean is necessary to understand the world you live in. But congratulating yourself for doing so really does not accomplish anything -- and accusing other people of not employing those "skills" is a gratuitous and counter-productive insult of potential allies.

"Since you are too stupid to understand the world, fuck you," is not a persuasive argument. Especially to stupid people.

In my experience as a union organizer I have learned that you can never get people to do anything by telling them how bad they have it -- or by predicting that it will get worse. People know exactl how bad they have it. The only take action when they experience trouble.

The gathering economic crisis will piss people off like we have never seen since the 1930s. For the same reason. It is one thing for people to take a slow steady decline in material comfort. It is another to find prices for necessities like food and fuel go up every week.
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In a related note, Last Year's Crisis is pretty much history now, but many of us are still wearing our masks. As I have mentioned before, I wear mine because if I died of Covid, my wife would kill me.

Here in my West Hollywood neighborhood stores, it is about two-third bare faces now, and one third wearing a mask. This morning I saw a fastidious mask wearer in the car next to me as I waited in line for an oil change. All the help was maskless, but this guy had all his windows up for almost a half hour as he waited his turn with his mask firmly in place. It was a nice counterpoint to my previous favorite mask vignette -- in early May of 2020 I saw a guy riding an expensive bicycle down the middle of my residential street with his mask on. He was riding with neither hand on the handlebar. I called the image, "Irony."

Over these two years, televised sports have given the viewing public a variety of takes on mask wearing. My favorite player in this game is Steve Kerr, the Coach of the Golden State Warriors. He has been famous for about 40 years and he has one of the most accommodating of public personas in the sports world. He was in the news recently because he had to miss playoff action due to coming down with Covid -- in spite of being "fully vaccinated." Go figure. Before and after his most recent bout with Covid, he has been the Poster Child for Mask Misuse. Usually, he wears it around his neck. Occasionally during games, the TV camera will catch him on the sideline as he pulls his mask down so that he can yell instructions to players on the court.

This mockery of the mask is not intended to be negative by Steve. He is a loyal member of the Home Team. It just remains unspoken that taking the mask off his nose and mouth completely destroys the premise of wearing the damn thing.

I was wondering if anybody else had written about this and I found this squib from some wingnut. It is short and his commentary is otherwise rather silly. But at least I am not the only one to notice.

Wingnut Facebook Piece

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Steve Kerr is just like most of the educated middle and upper middle class. He makes tons of money doing what he has loved to do his whole life. If he joins in the fight to take control of our society away from the Neoliberal Fascists who now own both parties and all the media, not only would he lose his seven figure salary -- the National Basketball League itself would disappear in the revolution.

The cost of coming to that conclusion is literally unthinkable.

Steve is not just virtue signaling -- he is engaging in what amounts to a religious practice called Fetishism:

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A fetish is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value, or powers, to an object.

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Instead of trying to convince the Steve Kerrs of the world that Critical Thinking Skills are what they lack, we should be focusing our attention of communicating with people who feel the effects of Weakening Russia every time they buy the necessities of life.