Emotional (Dis)information

The news must convey information. Enrich the viewer's cognitive baggage. Nothing more, nothing less.
If, when watching a newscast or a video, you instead feel emotionally struck—indignant, angry, saddened, euphoric, or pitied—you are the target of manipulative techniques designed to gather consensus on some issue. The purpose may be political, economic, bellicose, or strategic in general. Certainly, no one is trying to inform you.
Government bodies, propagandists, and so-called "spin doctors" are masters at using these techniques and use compliant media to carry them out.
I am not just talking about state TV and newspapers. You are also a victim, you who believe you are drinking from the pure springs of the phantasmagoric bluff called anti-mainstream.
The techniques are subtle, but the effects are so blatant as to render them harmless, provided one is aware of them and keeps their level of attention high.
To escape the spell, it is enough to ask yourself the question implicit in the opening: does the news affect me on an emotional level? If the answer is "yes": immediately turn off the squawking contraption, use the filthy sheet to wipe your ass, or place your cell phone on that stack of papers that are blowing away.
Train yourself to always subject yourself to that simple test. And act accordingly when the outcome is positive. Don't worry: what you are giving up is not true knowledge.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

They feel the weather

Every now and then, without actually intending to, I happen to eavesdrop on the conversations of little groups of young people. These kids often adopt a serious, or perhaps overly serious, almost offended tone, with strong tendencies toward indignation. When I fleetingly manage to catch the subject of their talk, I realize it's just simple chatter, almost always about people who aren't present.
Of course, gossip, otherwise known as small talk, has always existed. However, this is a less harmless version of it, in my view. It doesn't involve elderly women and men whose souls have been hardened by time and events, but rather kids who should be swept up in healthy youth enthusiasm.
It cannot be generational victimhood: with few exceptions, any of them would only need to go up two or three levels on the family tree to find individuals for whom life reserved much worse conditions and circumstances.
But then why do they do it? The first reaction of an older person observing them might be the usual accusation: "They're spoiled youth!". Instead, I have the impression that they use silly occurrences as a pretext to seek confirmation, comfort, and empathy from their peers.
However, this is only an interpretation of the symptom, which thus pushes the problem further back. What inner and intangible ogre is tearing their soul apart? Why precisely in this historical period? And why this generation in particular?
Perhaps, if I may be allowed the awkward quote: "They are like beasts, they feel the changing weather!" Where the weather, of course, is not the climate, but history.
And theirs is nothing other than natural agitation in the face of a future that, perhaps like never before, promises to be full of uncertainty.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Wars and Simpletons: Part Two

You can find the first part here.

Let's explain better why simpletons who root for one or the other belligerent, while being convinced they are inspired by sharp analytical-geopolitical insights, actually don't understand a damn thing. Worse still, they play more or less consciously into the hands of some filthy propagandist.
Remember that this does not refer here to the fans of Putin or Zelensky, of the Israelis or the Palestinians, of Trump or Khamenei. Here there is no "or", there are only "and": we are talking about ALL of them. About anyone who simplifies issues that are actually complex and whose roots are embedded very deeply in the rocky soil of history. History that they ignore, of course, apart from some artfully filtered sediment here and there. And which, just as obviously, they fail to analyze with a minimum of usefulness for the sake of the debate.
In war, any war, everyone has little right and everyone is very wrong. There is no right or wrong. Nor are there good guys or bad guys. Or rather, none of this exists in absolute terms. It can only be discussed in relative terms: relative to the motivations of each side, which are inspired by criteria of survival, security, and prosperity, and therefore of subjugation. These are subjective and biased perspectives by nature, selfish and ruthless. Also, why not, ancestral, primordial, and tribal.
Often, as in family or clan feuds, conflicts have been going on for so long that no one remembers why they started anymore. They are handed down from generation to generation, as if they were part of the genetic makeup.
Moreover, the tangle in which they are wrapped is vastly more chaotic than how it is presented by the spokespersons of the parties, or perceived by their supporters.
Finally, in every war, communication is always polluted by censorship and propaganda. ALWAYS. Therefore, if you read or hear something that seems to prove one of the contenders right — perhaps your favorite — or prove the other wrong, know that this is not information confirming or refuting your partisanship — which is anyway by its very nature misplaced. You are actually the target of crude advertising. What we precisely call propaganda.
If you take sides, therefore, not only do you not understand a damn thing, but you are also accomplices, as repeaters of a squalid megaphone.
Go ahead, if you like. But now that you know, you can no longer afford to pose as paladins of justice.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Wars and simpletons

The poor deluded souls are many, so many, far too many.
You see them facing off on two sides of public opinion artificially created on the battlefield of a conflict, a diatribe, or a dispute.
With the stubborn certainty of a mule, they always know who is right and who is wrong. They accuse the deluded souls of the opposing camp, which is equally phony, of naivety or malice. They accuse opposing public opinion of being subservient to propaganda and wave the sources aligned with their own side as custodians of pure truth.
They cheer, putting on that pathetic yet irritating air of misunderstood analysts.
The tragicomic twist to all this is that they are right. Every single one of them is right. The accusations they hurl against their "enemies" are true. They are true on both sides, however.
The reason for this moronic polarization is well known: the inability—which characterizes certain simple minds—to handle chaos, the complexity inherent in every sector of reality, not only social but also anthropological, biological, natural. A complexity they deal with every day in their miserable lives, but which paradoxically they cannot accept when it comes to events taking place at a higher, and therefore even more complicated, level.
One could watch them with tenderness and leave them splashing around in their pathetic simplified kiddie pool for those who don't know how to swim in rough waters.
The problem is that their number is not negligible; on the contrary, it is massive, and thus it influences the society that we too must live in. Those who wield power—political, media, or financial—know this and act accordingly, feeding the polarized explanations provided to these self-proclaimed clever ones. They thus manage to evade the control that would be necessary to make them perform their duties for the benefit of the community rather than themselves.
It is the "divide and conquer" of Roman memory. Still extremely relevant and effective today.
Unfortunately, this is a self-feeding spiral, a vicious circle, an almost irreversible tendency.
We nevertheless have a duty—moral, human, secularly sacred—to keep trying. If it was all in vain, at least we will have nothing to reproach ourselves for.
And if it ends in catastrophe, we can point the finger and declare: "We told you so!" A meager consolation is always better than fat and cowardly inaction.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Uncontrolled immigration: the theories

I read a provocative cartoon. It went something like this: <<Who wants uncontrolled immigration according to populists? The "do-gooder progressives". But who really wants it? The "industrialist-capitalists" (meaning anyone who needs a pool of cheap labor).>>
I've never been much of a conspiracy theorist, but the second thesis convinces me more than the first. First of all, because it makes more sense. Why on earth would ordinary people, based on their political views, wish for uncontrolled immigration with all the public order problems it entails? The others, those in the second scenario, instead have very concrete interests in importing low-cost workers. And besides, as Americans say, if you want to untangle a mess, "follow the money". And it's pretty clear where the money trail leads.
Be careful though, this completely dismantles the other conspiracy theory about it. The one about ethnic replacement, which according to lovers of the most fanciful hypotheses is supposedly pursued by the usual pluto-judeo-fascist-marxist-nonsense cabal.
Whoever wants cheap labor is interested, as the very expression says, in the cost of that labor, not in its ethnicity. Ethnic replacement would at most be a consequence and not the goal of the mechanism.
Ironically, once replacement has occurred, the "capitalist industrialists", or whoever acts on their behalf, in order to save on labor costs would go looking for super-Christian, marginalized white people, thus setting in motion a process of ethnic replacement in reverse.
A vicious circle in short. The usual blind alley that those who believe in fanciful theories get themselves into just because they have the charm, precisely, of fanciful theories.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Sinister agenda - part seven: the extremization

Find the other episodes of the "Sinister agenda" saga by following this link.

The imbalance generated by polarization fuels—and is fueled by—a socio-political-media vicious circle through which polarization itself is amplified and exalted rather than mitigated or placated.
In the long run, this unstable process aimed at constant growth can only lead to extremization.
Today we are indeed at one of the peaks due to this diabolical mechanism, the effects and symptoms of which are evident by observing the tone and level of the debate within public opinion.
A debate that I would summarize like this: bullshitting, bullshitters shouting at the top of their lungs.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.

Uselessly amazing

After reading this I suddenly realized that some pieces of information can be jaw-droppingly amazing and yet utterly useless:
"The time between Biden's birth and Lincoln's presidency is less than the time between Biden's birth and his own presidency."
Wow! And yet...Who cares?