Tuesday, December 5, 2017

The Modern World | Lefsetz Letter


You have your own set of facts. There’s always a site on the internet that confirms your bias.

You work the refs. You believe if you reply every time, the other side will think twice before speaking again. The right is especially expert at this.

You think you know more than you do. The older you are, the less you think you know. Which is why it’s hard to find aged belligerent bullies, ever see a tattooed fiftysomething biker with an edge? Now you’re gonna say you have, which is exactly the problem in today’s society, the exception invalidates the rule, only it doesn’t.

Mine for me. No change can be made if I’m negatively impacted. No wonder there can’t be any progress.

No trusted single news source.

News is conflated and confused with opinion.

You can’t convince someone to change their opinion.

Compassion is secondary to personal triumph.

Corporations are venerated, this is what happens when artists abdicate. True artists exist outside the system, when they’re so busy sucking up to corporations for cash it’s no wonder they’re not believed.

Positivity rules. If you point out flaws you’re a hater.

Everybody’s establishing their personal brand, as if we can all be rich and famous.

No one looks at the long term picture, where you’re gonna be after your supposed peak.

The rich live a completely different life from the poor, and until this changes we will not see progress. The scions of the rich go to the best educational institutions, the rich go to the best doctors and their goal is to keep you out, ergo the gated community. They want to feel safe and want no crowds, ergo the private island. Life is about exclusivity, everybody’s trying to remove themselves from the hoi polloi. But we are the hoi polloi, that is society.

We need a scapegoat, the problem can’t be us.

The failures of the right are equated with the failures of the left. False equivalency reigns.

Too many people pontificating have too little experience.

You feel powerless. They tell you to run for office, but gerrymandering stacks the deck and Washington, D.C. is hampered and ineffective and elite. You’re willing to do the work, but not if it has no effect. Optimism has plunged even though it’s illegal to be negative.

The hard-working have contempt for those on drugs and welfare. As if living on the bottom was pleasant.

People vote against their own interests.

If you’re rich, you’re right, even though this is patently untrue.

Our heroes are techies, not politicians.

Techies sold us down the river. Google said it wasn’t evil but it and Facebook are the worst of all. Google gives different people different answers on the same query and both outfits know more about us than we know about ourselves and are little different from the idiot box TV of yore, only they’re worse.

Disinformation rules. It’s a full time job trying to ferret out the truth. Meanwhile, there are individuals and corporations investing in selling you falsehoods.

The issue isn’t whether Trump will lose his job over Russia but the fact that the integrity of the process may have been compromised, causing a lack of belief in the system, and then you’re screwed.

Issues are complicated, but those with little insight weigh in with answers.

Progress is happening, you can’t hold it back.

We live in a world economy, to deny this is to take the U.S. out of the equation to its detriment.

I’m afraid to be anti-right because of the blowback. But too many in the news business are faceless and unaware of this blowback. Or in cahoots with the rich and believe they’re above it.

Personal credibility is in peril. No one walks the walk and talks the talk. You can say no, you know. If someone rich with a bad CV wants to buy you dinner, you can say no. The key is to be uncompromised.

“Norma Rae” was a hit in the seventies, now unions have a bad name, the product is made overseas and they don’t make this kind of movie anymore.

Statistically the American Dream has better odds in Canada and Scandinavia, even the right wing paper of record, the “Wall Street Journal,” said so, but try convincing Americans of this, they just believe if they put their nose to the grindstone and work harder everything will work out, they’ve been sold a bill of goods.

[from http://ift.tt/2k9aO1A]

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