Oh Crap
I have to!
Posted on 12/19/2022 8:01:56 AM PST by elpadre
Governments have learnt that fear works – and that is truly terrifying
We have returned to the world of Galileo vs the Vatican. Scientific dissidents are again silenced and ostracised for their opinions
As the year in which life officially returned to normal comes to an end, we must ask an uncomfortable question. What on earth just happened? We have lived through a period of what would once have been the unthinkable suspension of basic freedoms: interventions by the state into personal life that even most totalitarian governments would not have dared to impose. And we, along with most (not all) of the democratic societies of the West, accepted it. Before that era slips into the fog of convenient forgetfulness, it is absolutely imperative that we – the country as a whole – hold a thorough post hoc examination, because our governing classes have certainly learnt something they will remember.
The critical lesson that has been indelibly absorbed by people in power, and those who advise them, is that fear works. There is, it turns out, almost nothing that a population (even one as brave and insouciant as Britain’s) will not give up if they are systematically, relentlessly frightened.
The Covid phenomenon has provided an invaluable training session in public mind-control techniques: the formula was refined – with the assistance of sophisticated advertising and opinion-forming advice – to an astonishingly successful blend of mass anxiety (your life is in danger) and moral coercion (you are putting other people’s lives in danger). But it was not just the endless repetition of that message that accomplished the almost universal, and quite unexpected, compliance. It was the comprehensive suppression of dissent even when it came from expert sources – and the prohibition on argument even when it was accompanied by counter-evidence – that
(Excerpt) Read more at theautomaticearth.com ...
This bit about the “persecution” of Galileo is almost entirely untrue. 1. The heliocentric theory was Copernicus’s, not Galileo’s. Copernicus was a Catholic cleric, and the Church published his work, which circulated for decades freely. 2. Galileo, like many gifted people, was arrogant, and he was so infatuated with Copernicus’ theory that his championing of the theory overlooked critical facts and was presented in a poorly disguised ad hominem tirade against the Pope. 3. The Copernican theory did NOT predict well because it assumed that orbits are circular. The Ptolemaic geocentric theory, though complicated, made more accurate predictions about the movements of the planets. At the time, it was clearly the better theory based on the evidence. 4. Cardinal Bellarmine investigated the controversy and concluded that the heliocentric theory was promising, but wasn’t supported by the facts, which was correct. 5. It wasn’t until Kepler theorized that orbits are elliptical, not circular, that the deficiencies of Copernican model were corrected. This was long after Galileo’s death. 6. Galileo was financially supported by the Church, and that support continued after the investigation until his death. Galileo was never tortured, never held in a prison, or in any other way physically abused. 7. This Galileo myth is largely a 19th Century invention and has been repeated endlessly because it has been useful to the secular left in the culture wars. There are many other examples of tales about the “war” between “science” and Christianity that are nothing but useful, false narratives.
Unfortunately, this nonsense is endlessly repeated. Historians of science, however, know better.
Trump revived the US very effectively, for a time.
Any government anywhere trying to enforce one version of ‘Truth’ over another leads to evil. Governments can’t be moral, the most one can hope for is one that doesn’t actively do evil more than not. Anyone who wants to have power, authority, control, or influence over others I do and shall consider evil and only concerned with their ownself aggrandizement, Good people don’t go into politics.
That was as obviously wrong then as it is now, especially since tides move in a frequency much faster than annually. Perhaps if he hadn't gone there, the scientific leaders (including the ones in charge of the church's education) in his day might have been more open to dissing the Aristotelian world view in favor of the Copernican world view.
Given how many decks of cards were stacked against him, this was no mean feat. The Byzantine Empire under his reign had to survive the great famine of 536, followed by the original "black death" of 541 (never to be repeated until the more famous one of 1347), followed by the major war with the Persians which ended with securing Christian provinces at the cost of a major annual tribute, followed by the massive earthquake of 557, followed by Attila in 559 (who daily greeted his wives after a hard day's pillage with, "Hi huns, I'm home," but I digress). And we think we have it bad?
The great collapse of civilization wasn’t the Fall of Rome...The great collapse was the enlightenment, during which time the average lifespan (at least of someone who survived infancy) plunged, and the great festivals and community celebrations were replaced by unrelenting drudgery.
Methinks you are conflating the Enlightenment with the Industrial Revolution. Factories turned work into drudgery, and created urban squalor with its concomitant illnesses--including tuberculosis, but especially syphilis, which can be blamed on Romanticism, where feelings were more important than facts, instead of the Enlightenment. The American Golden Age, which is still with us but may soon be lost, is the result of industrialization meeting with engineering to end factory squalor and agricultural famine, creating the greatest prosperity the world has ever known.
Both were undone by epidemics, which in both cases are suspected to have been caused by cutting-edge biological warfare.
That no one ever expected...
Sorry my outline didn’t get removed...
POKE HIM WITH THE FLUFFY CUSHIONS!!!!!!
Oh Crap
I have to!
This has been a fascinating thread. Many excellent comments.
The Trump presidency was the last gasp hope of reversing course, rolling back the Idiocracy and returning the nation to some semblance of normality.
But with the willing aid of RINOs and the Deep State GOPe democrats were successful in hamstringing President Trump for four years.
And subsequently, with the aid and tacit approval of a spineless and corrupt Supreme Court, democrats were easily able to steal the 2020 election.
As witnessed in the recent 2022 midterms stolen elections by democrats are now the accepted norm enabled by the cowardly and corrupt "justice" system and judiciary.
The "Free Republic" is already gone - the tipping point is now so far back in the rear view mirror it is no longer visible.
Government always is involved in enforcing a version of “Truth”. For example, it tries to persuade the population that it is true that “you must stop at stop signs to ensure public safety”. After all, “governing” implies getting people to behave differently than they would in the absence of government — else why would there be a government?
“Truth” is different from “Moral”. It may be moral to drive through a stop sign if you can clearly see that there are no pedestrians or other traffic in the vicinity.
And then there were the artists. I’ve always loved Michelangelo’s jab at the Church he included in his work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It’s a small self-portrait depicting him as a hanging empty skin.
I’m largely including the early phases of the Industrial Revolution as a part of the Enlightenment, although actually, the IR saw steady improvement in life expectancy, which was 26 in France in 1760-1790, rising to 41 in 1845 to 49 in 1910.
(I know a lot of people use 1800 as the end of the Enlightenment, but I do tend to see Napoleon as a product of Enlightenment even if signals its self-defeat.)
Very doubtful that it was any kind of "jab at the Church" -- being simply the traditional way to depict a martyr -- although it's entirely possible that Michelangelo used himself as his model for St. Bartholomew.
It’s that the face of the skin of St. Bartholomew, who was skinned aline, looks like Michelangelo. It’s more a commentary of an artist being emptied out by the demands of his work, of which his Church patrons ARE his taskmaster. So you’re not wrong, but your wording makes it sound like this is evidence of his dissidence.
“...wouldn’t that be egocentric...”
The sinful nature of mankind - I want my toy - and yours too!!
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