111–120 of 197 posts
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I love that you're lamenting a CIA website closure as a step toward dystopia... 10/10 It could be as simple as budget changes.
Real reason to remove the facts and archive of the records is so that they're not cited in deportation litigation and government lawyers don't have to argue against the facts the government holds true
Facts are the enemy. I remember reading books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 as a teen thinking, "Cool story, but the US will never look like that." Oof.
FWIW both of these books were written about western societies. 1984 was about Orwell’s experience writing propaganda for the BBC during WW2. Oceania is explicitly modeled on the U.S. + Britain; “air strip one” is his tongue-in-cheek name for the British isles. Fahrenheit 451 is based on the second red scare and McCarthyism in the U.S. It’s explicitly set in America, and the inspiration for it was actual calls to ban…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Sources_f...
A very interesting read, but it did not verify any of your claims.
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How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? For the most part, the truth is trump's enemy. as far as he can control it, it's better for his to be the only authoritative voice. If he says Australia is full of muslims and bad hombres, he doesn't need the CIA contradicting him.
> How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? Broadly? A lot. Donald Trump is wickedly smart. So is Stephen Miller. Susie Wiles. Hegseth is an idiot, but he's Chip 'n' Dale to Marco Rubio. (Our planes aren't falling off our carriers any more. And the raid on Caracas was executed flawlessly. That isn't something numpties can pull off.)
Facts are the enemy. I remember reading books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 as a teen thinking, "Cool story, but the US will never look like that." Oof.
Apple's 1984 commercial didn't age well: https://youtu.be/ErwS24cBZPc
Everyone ran towards this Brave New World based on media fueled populism.
To me religion isn't Christianity or Islam. It's following orders of arbitrary leaders who give themselves titles via narrative. Priest, Minister, CEO, General... just words.
Provenance such as "this is what I want to do with my life" are poor justification for enabling it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? For the most part, the truth is trump's enemy. as far as he can control it, it's better for his to be the only authoritative voice. If he says Australia is full of muslims and bad hombres, he doesn't need the CIA contradicting him.
> How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? Broadly? A lot. Donald Trump is wickedly smart. So is Stephen Miller. Susie Wiles. Hegseth is an idiot, but he's Chip 'n' Dale to Marco Rubio. (Our planes aren't falling off our carriers any more. And the raid on Caracas was executed flawlessly. That isn't something numpties can pull off.)
I'll grant that he has achieved success via some amount of cunning (often via threats), but "smart" is decidedly not a term I would ever apply to him, and I'm not sure how anyone could reasonably think this given the myriad facts otherwise.
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The bumbling dope is the default go-to characterization by the left, they always target intelligence first no matter what. Bush 1 was a dope. Dan Quayle was a dope. Bush 2 was a dope (until they decided they liked him). Sarah Palin was a dope. Trump is a dope. Vance is a dope. The left views intelligence as a top tier prize, so they start by first trying to dismantle someone's standing on that. How likely is it that…
Bill Clinton who got caught in a sex scandal... smart?
The point is that intelligence is orthogonal to, say, lust or many other trappings of power.
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> How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? Broadly? A lot. Donald Trump is wickedly smart. So is Stephen Miller. Susie Wiles. Hegseth is an idiot, but he's Chip 'n' Dale to Marco Rubio. (Our planes aren't falling off our carriers any more. And the raid on Caracas was executed flawlessly. That isn't something numpties can pull off.)
People—especially the squares in this business—tend to mistake his unfamiliar blue-collar New Yorker manner of speech at face value and don't bother to look deeper.
I hope that we will eventually find out why it was shut down.
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FWIW both of these books were written about western societies. 1984 was about Orwell’s experience writing propaganda for the BBC during WW2. Oceania is explicitly modeled on the U.S. + Britain; “air strip one” is his tongue-in-cheek name for the British isles. Fahrenheit 451 is based on the second red scare and McCarthyism in the U.S. It’s explicitly set in America, and the inspiration for it was actual calls to ban…
I looked to see if I could find anything asserting 1984 was about propaganda at BBC - nothing. I found no interviews, no recordings - it seems what survives are his notebooks. Can you describe the basis for the claim?
Like if you take Zamyatin's "We", and make the main character a propagandist working for the government, you get 1984.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? For the most part, the truth is trump's enemy. as far as he can control it, it's better for his to be the only authoritative voice. If he says Australia is full of muslims and bad hombres, he doesn't need the CIA contradicting him.
> How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? Broadly? A lot. Donald Trump is wickedly smart. So is Stephen Miller. Susie Wiles. Hegseth is an idiot, but he's Chip 'n' Dale to Marco Rubio. (Our planes aren't falling off our carriers any more. And the raid on Caracas was executed flawlessly. That isn't something numpties can pull off.)