Watching Joe Rogan interview (2019) Bari Weiss got me thinking… We can fall prey to being biased because we assume and we do a lot of assuming to defend our position or attack another position and/or person. We even do it without understanding what we talk about. Yes, that is assuming. Voicing an opinion while being ignorant of facts, often using other people biases to construct our own… So, one thing leads to another, should we try to understand. At what point can we assume that we KNOW? We never do, do we?…

Someone like Stephen Colbert is paid to assume. The left smells good and the right is evil… He assumes very well, using routine (ritualised) comedy. His audience EXPECTS HIM TO ASSUME with brilliant quips, turns of phrase and “bons mots”… He’s Catholic, apparently, and Catholics do a lot of assuming, sometimes viciously… They thrive on it. Religions, from Islam to devil-worshipping, do a lot of assuming — using rituals, form and style to corner the truth, whatever that is to them. The indoctrination is systemic and powerful, to the point that if you don’t believe, we kill you. The commies did this too. It keeps adherents on the narrow path of accepted behaviour. 

I have been told Alan Jones is charming to “people like us” as long as we’re true to our views. He has a great intellect, is able to brilliantly support the right-wing of politics while we have have to defend the left with the usual plodding arguments, including that the communist party lost its way (in Russia) by doing this and that social issue wrongly — but the commies/socialists still deserves our support for the ideologies of equality and fairness, while the right is mostly about gaining power over the weaknesses of others. 

We are told now, Alan Jones, like many other celebrities, such as the singing three-legged man, Rolf Harris (no relation to Kamala), has a dark side… We had been told about his foray in toilet blocks but we paid little attention. Jones had his aura by saying things with a strong conviction designed to convince others. Preachers do this too.

Boom. We know. Progress often needs to demonstrate that a new product is better than the old one. The capitalist system offers greed as a motivator. Socialist meetings use megaphone in empty halls full of equally-uncomfortable chairs. Christians used the fear of hell for yonks, now they have switched to the LOVE of god for you and your dog… Once you remove, these incentives, one can become “lost”… This happens with young people. They used pop music then, now vacuous TikTok is the “information” drug… Before all this, they HAD to join the army to die for the king and amass some glory. Welcome to Ukraine hell.

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“One critic describes the essay — Slouching Towards Bethlehem — as "a devastating depiction of the aimless lives of the disaffected and incoherent young," with Didion positioned as "a cool observer but not a hardhearted one."[3] Another scholar writes that the essay's form mirrors its content; the fragmented structure resonates with the essay's theme of societal fragmentation.[4] In a 2011 interview, Didion discussed her technique of centering herself and her perspective in her non-fiction works like "Slouching Towards Bethlehem": "I thought it was important always for the reader, for me to place myself in the piece so that the reader knew where I was, the reader knew who was talking… At the time I started doing these pieces it was not considered a good thing for writers to put themselves front and center, but I had this strong feeling you had to place yourself there and tell the reader who that was at the other end of the voice."[5]

Didion originally wrote the piece as an assignment for The Saturday Evening Post in 1967.[6][7]

In her preface to the book, Didion writes, "I went to San Francisco because I had not been able to work in some months, had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I had understood it no longer existed. If I was to work again at all, it would be necessary for me to come to terms with disorder.”[8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slouching_Towards_Bethlehem

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This has relevance to today’s American malaise… and possibly why Trump has been anointed as a "strong man” — aka dictatorial (though he’s not. He’s more of a clowning Jones). 

Pause here… We, most of us old fellows, know of the “futility of life” unless we join the club of believers in heaven or hell. But this does not mean we’ve been useless. We are leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for others to follow… 

This waffling dissertation came about because Bari Weiss, a “conservative” writer — did not try to understand Tulsi Gabbard. She went for the jugular because at the time Tulsi was “the enemy” — a Democrat. In doing so Bari lost the plot, as exposed in the interview by Joe Rogan. Bari also annoyed Glenn Greenwald, who I believe is a stickler for accuracy and fair facts.

Beyond this, we need to understand that Bari had resigned from The New York Times in 2016 and she made her position clear in regard to the lack of balance between left and right at that paper… The same thing happened again before the 2024 elections. The New York Times became so biased towards Kamala (Harris) and against Trump that it could have been an embarrassment for nuanced journalists. 

We’ve been there… Cartooning since 1951 against the army, the police and the politicians, we had to be unfair to all. But big organisms like the NYT need a lot of cash. A lonely night-pamphleteer only needs a roneo machine and some sharp tacks…

But we also worked “for the other side” — advertising. The psychology between rebellion where life becomes an unpaid calvary of floggings and being given royal treatment for helping sell more goods, is a fascinating experience. Money is part of the indoctrination — and if you want to avoid depression, you need to understand the dynamics between “action and reward”. It’s natural: it’s chasing and catching carrots and/or rabbits.

We had to rebel against some of the religious (bend the knees) and civic (go to war) indoctrination, and this understanding of the shackling system did not come overnight. We’re still learning. The bastards seem to always be one step ahead with new tricks, including showing carrots that glow in the dark…

Sometimes we need to give a bit of slack to those people seeking power but seem to be a bit more honest and humble enough.

So Bari is a lesbian conservative. Her husband is Nellie Bowle  (https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/nellie-bowless-failed-provocations) — an admirer of Joan Didion, a writer from where we started this essay…

Tulsi Gabbard as far as I can see was never a traitor, nor an “Assad Toady” (what does that mean? asked Rogan). I could be wrong but in general I need proofs. Understanding that the USA was hypocritically demolishing Assad does not mean that we’re an Assad arse-kisser, but being an anti-Obama-Empire-building-with-disregard-for-people is somewhat de rigueur. 

Eventually Putin played the game from the other side. He’s another cookie that gets a lot of brickbats, because…. because… because… he’s RUSSIAN. America (the Empire) has been anti-Russia for more than a century. THIS HATE of Russia has become a US religion. It's preached DAILY from the pulpits of CONGRESS and the White House...

In most regard, we have to rely on other people testimonies versus what we know and assess. We do not have the time nor the opportunities to EXPERIENCE everything. Thus, it’s not always easy to choose. And our choices are rarely (if ever) objective.

As if democracy meant to only vote for a colored woman.... Because we’re angels, the other side must be evil…

Tulsi left the Democrats because they had lost their core ideals of fairness. Tulsi went to the Republicans because, one guesses, she could see the bread was going to be buttered with better peace, hopefully. Meanwhile the other mongrels such as Bolton and Cheney, seeing that warmongering was off the menu at Trump's, went for the Joe-crowd, deep in fights, still, dishonourably and dishonestly attached to Empire-building rather than defending the USA per se… 

Joe and his sycophants proved to be the pits.

We need to keep the dream alive…

GUS LEONISKY

RABID ATHEIST AND POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951....