Video about how violent psychopaths demand "civility"

 

Not as kick-ass as I thought it would be but worth a viewing/listening.

Jordan Peterson Deep Dive

 Cody the News Guy at "Some More News" briefly looks at the topic of Jordan Peterson:

I don't know how Peterson still has any credibility as a self-help guru after he drove his own life into a ditch a few years back.  But he does.  He is still very influential.  Cody's short video provides a good portrait of the man himself and his style of argumentation and his way of looking at the world.

My takeway from it is that Peterson is a deeply insecure individual who NEEDS for the values of the world he grew up in to remain valid.  That world was patriarchal, Christian, heterosexual, capitalist, with a smattering of liberal-representative democracy.  It was also white supremacist.  And (as the video shows beyond a shadow of a doubt) Peterson is more than happy to quote drivel from nazi-adjacent "thinkers" to "prove" that a certain percentage of the population might be completely irredeemable and useless.  (He leaves it to his readers/listeners to ponder what the skin colour of those "useless eaters" might be.)

Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Peterson wasn't/isn't a bad looking guy.  He's also relatively tall (1.85 m).  These attributes, combined with a brain that works quickly at the task of inventing nonsensical arguments, have given him the self-confidence to rise above his squeaky voice and emotional fragility, and become a semi-charismatic bullshit artist.  He is a guru for a racist-conservative philosophy which he cloaks under a veneer of pseudo-scientific mysticism to appear as reasonable.

[Among several painful, cringe-worthy, infuriating segments, there's one part where Peterson angrily denies a nervous male university student's assertion that he (Peterson) defends the hierarchies he is always defending and celebrating.  The young man is unnerved by Peterson's yelling and gives up his point.  At a panel discussion on a British television show, Peterson's self-righteous indignation is less effective when a woman points out that women are not well represented in most Western representative democracies.  In response to her Peterson whines about being insulted and then starts yammering about how maybe she won't be happy unless 51% of bricklayers are female.  To which the woman smiles sadly to herself about the idiot she's sitting beside.]

Which all gets back to Peterson's emotional fragility.  I don't think he's aware that he's actually a con-man.  I think he genuinely believes in the white, patriarchal, capitalist, conservative worldview he proselytizes for.  When he smooshes together truthy-sounding arguments based on pseudo-facts and wishful thinking, he believes he's doing the Lord's work.  He probably truely believes that civilization will fall apart if father-led nuclear families believing in sky-gods who want us all to work hard and get rich are at all challenged.  His tears for the desperate young men who likewise need their fantasies upheld and for his own crumbling under the pressures of defending a world under attack from pink-haired feminist social-justice warriors are genuine.  As was his total nervous breakdown a few years back.

This is how a guy can write a book called Twelve Rules For Life, have a nervous breakdown and then come out with yet another book with supposedly more rules for life (the majority of all these rules being banalities) and then get a paying gig with racist, babbling speed-talker Ben Shapiro.

Don't get me wrong.  There's stupidity aplenty across the whole political spectrum.  But right-wing ideas, the thinkers of those ideas, and the swallowers of those ideas, enjoy the lion's share of the total quantity of stupidity in the universe.

Escape the Binary

 

Some musings from the day:

The Liberal Party leadership are merely more intelligent overseers of the same capitalist system as the Conservative Party's. As such, they serve Fossil Fuels, Bay Street, Big Telecom and other capitalist scum.

But grifters like Ezra Levant (who is supported/protected by elements from within the same capitalist elite) keeps his shit-for-brains fans infuriated with Trudeau and the Liberals.

It seems to me that the more extremist and frightening the right-wing base becomes, the more some people seem to think it necessary to coalesce around the Liberals (or in the USA, the Democrats) despite the Liberals (or Democrats) being just as responsible for the growing desperation of the populace.

And:

The first thing to do is to make all future plans with neither the Republicans or the Democrats.

The Democratic Party leadership supported an anti-choice incumbent against a pro-choice primary challenger in Texas.

It also supported a pro-Trump/Jan. 6th challenger to a Republican incumbent whom they had only recently praised for voting to impeach Trump for instigating that riot. (The thinking is that the pro-Trump candidate will be easier for the Democrats to beat in the actual election. The same way they promoted Trump over other candidates, believing Hillary would have an easier time crushing him.)

There.

The Catholic Church and the $30 Million

 

Big surprise that the mobbed-up gang of pedophiles and pedophile enablers/accessories after the fact is sleazing out on their obligations to provide even token compensation for the horrors they inflicted on First Nations children and their familes. (National Observer)  The Catholic Church pinky-swore to raise $30 million in compensation to the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement but has so far failed to raise even 1/6th that amount.  (At the same time it was able to raise four times that amount to renovate a Catholic Church in Toronto.)  This is racist arrogance, pure and simple.