Are We Frightened?

[luka]

I wonder. Could the uptick in activity here correspond to a more or less repressed terror of what already looms on the horizon. Displacement activity in the face of imminent collapse. A fear too total to allow space in the conscious mind.

 

[vershy versh]

I'd say I am, but it's combined with a weary resignation with regard to things like global events. I find stuff like Brexit frightening, but I also know that I have no clue what's actually going on so I've stopped following the news almost entirely.

It's the same with the Trump stuff. It's hard enough to tell what's really happening at the best of times, with the media in overdrive and prioritising clicks and traffic over actual journalism, it's near impossible. You just get swept up in layers and layers of misinformation designed to work you up into a frenzy in order to sell more stories. It's damaging and fruitless.

I was reading Taibbi on Mueller last night, and it made me so grateful that I managed not to get fully sucked into the whirpool of reporting from places like Vox, The Hill and so on. When you see the stuff they were publishing laid out properly, it's just embarrassing.

After the 2016 election, the storyline instantly became that Trump was an illegitimate president, a foreign operative who’d cheated his way into office and would therefore need to be removed ahead of schedule.

There were too many stories that dwelled on this theme to count here, but we all saw them. New York asked, Was Trump “meeting his handler” in Helsinki? The Daily Beast asked, “Is he a Russian asset?”

(Note: the extravagant use of hack spy-novel language during this period is going to look particularly ridiculous in history books decades from now.)

Some outlets didn’t even put their beliefs in the form of a question. “Trump Is Compromised by Russia” read a not-unusual editorial in the New York Times last November.

If you tried to protest that this had not been proven, that journalists should be more careful about leveling such serious accusations, the first line of response (if it wasn’t accusing you of being in league with Putin) was usually a version of: Be quiet, you don’t know what Mueller knows.

Mueller knows became the cornerstone belief of nearly all reporters who covered the Russia investigation. Journalists reveled in the idea of being kept out of the loop, thrilled to defer to the impenetrable steward of national secrets, the interview-proof Man of State. He was no blabbermouth Donald Trump, this Mueller! He won’t tell us a thing!

“What Robert Mueller knows — and Isn’t Telling Us,” proclaimed Wired in February, going on to list the many areas where Mueller “probably knows far more than he’s willing to say.”

Last month’s “What we know we don’t know from Mueller’s investigation,” by the Washington Post, marveled at Mueller’s ability to keep secrets. It made note of former Trump aide George Papadopoulos: “Mueller’s team kept him under wraps for months, with barely a hint of his importance."

Dan Rather told us that “what Mueller knows” will make the Cohen/Manafort pleas “pale in comparison.” Often we were even told the things Mueller hadn’t told us yet were the most important facts of all, that his filings were “more revealing by what they did not include than by what they did.”

Other pieces were just embarrassing, the news version of “We’re not worthy!” The story Axios released after Mueller’s Internet Research Farm indictments was entitled “We know nothing; Mueller knows all.” Axios gushed that Mueller indicted a bunch of Russians no one ever expected to appear in court without word getting out. This, they said, spoke to Mueller’s “deep, serious investigative work” which had gone “totally under radar, with zero leaks.”

“Amazing there was no hint of this in the media,” Axios noted.

All this hyping of Mueller The Omniscient dovetailed with the preposterous mythologizing of the special counsel through consumer goods (Mueller action figures! “Mueller time!” beverage mugs! Saint Robert Muller prints!) and breathless stories like the Vanity Fair ode to the “dreamiest G-man to hunt for collusion.”

Then there were episodes like the “All I want for Christmas is you!” song performed by the SNL cast. “I don’t need a full impeachment / I just need a little fun / Please don’t tell us we aren’t crazy / At least indict his oldest son.”

 

[vershy versh]

You take the above, then you see something like this - - and it's totally plausible and sucks you back in. The only way out is to run to Dissensus and talk about the hardcore continuum.

 

[pattycakes_]

my insta reaction to things which are likely to get me wound up is getting sharper and faster. a few words into an article. a particular front. an aesthetic. occasionally i'll get sucked in, or for some weird self harm thing at certain moments i'll go looking for and dig right into shit which i know is only going to fuel the flames of despair. but on the whole i think right now, checking out is a totally healthy thing to do. we all know what's going on... enough

enough to know that not knowing is probably all there ever will be because the onion has fractalized and fecalized to the point where there's no point in even allowing into your headspace anymore. i wish i could share in luca's optimism about the next gen. but in all honesty i can't. and it's not even fear anymore. it's more like 'oh, come on. just get it fucking done then. let's see what you've really got' to whoever or whatever it is. because it's this in between thing, the slow rolling out which acts like a high octane, yet slow motion chinese water torture that really fucking does it more than anything.

get on with it!

 

[Mr. Tea]

At this stage, I almost feel like if you're not frightened, it's for one of three reasons: you're not paying attention, you're currently high on something pleasantly numbing or you're one of the people everyone else is frightened of.

 

[Leo]

Taibbi's article could be viewed as a reverse mirror image of what Fox News/further-right media spewed out during the Obama years: illegitimate president born in Kenya, fake birth certificate, muslim with angry black wife, wants to take your guns away, appeaser, weak for bowing to foreign leaders, Hilary selling uranium to Russians, etc. liberal media definitely went overboard on trump, for sure, but it's not so unusual.

after spending two weeks abroad, it was refreshing to be slightly unplugged: keep aware of news but not enough time to get sucked into all the day-to-day he said/she said drama, the Washington soap opera/reality show. you feel better if you just scan the headlines but don't watch hours of Rachel maddow.

 

[IdleRich]

...or you're one of the people everyone else is frightened of.

This is what i don't get. If you're one of the bad guys you still gotta live in the world. Digging up the arctic or destroying the climate or allowing civilisation to collapse will ultimately affect you too. Admittedly maybe later than it hits other people but still. And if you avoid but have kids and so on they are gonna get it in the arse eventually. I mean even the bad guys should be scared shouldn't they?

 

[luka]

This is where the conspiratorial notion of the breakaway civilization gets its steam from, either in space or in a radically depopulated world. The Ark.

 

[IdleRich]

I know the super rich are wacky - trying to live forever, become young again, live on the moon or under the sea or in a Bond villain style lair - but all of them? Does every wealthy climate change denier think that they can escape to Venus so it doesn't matter if they frack the fuck out of every square mm of Earth?

 

[luka]

I think the theory is explained by the behaviour better than the behaviour is explained by the theory.

 

[vershy versh]

At this stage, I almost feel like if you're not frightened, it's for one of three reasons: you're not paying attention, you're currently high on something pleasantly numbing or you're one of the people everyone else is frightened of.

I think you have to be frightened in the first place to be one of the people everyone else is frightened of. Those people are usually acting out of fear themselves.

 

[IdleRich]

I think the theory is explained by the behaviour better than the behaviour is explained by the theory.

It's gotta be one possible solution. It just seems so nuts.... but then so do all the alternatives, the most obvious of which is that they just don't care, or they care about money more than they do about being alive or having a decent quality of life or anything in fact.

 

[other_life]

i'm not frightened, fam. i'm from the future and i've seen the end: i'm going to die.
capitalism (as endpoint of civilisation, class society) can not last forever.
it's a possibility that mankind and our high culture will outlive it but not guaranteed, it could kill us. i don't individually get to decide whether or not it does.
this is not new information. the disinformation of news media is not new, either. it's actually positive that more people notice it and are talking about it!
so no, i'm not frightened. we will all have to be confronted by the Unspeakable, it's coded in to birth. what is there to be frightened of?

 

[IdleRich]

i'm not frightened, fam. i'm from the future and i've seen the end: i'm going to die.

I'm gonna live forever or die in the attempt.

 

[pattycakes_]

For me when I'm really honest with myself and take in everything I've chosen to use as a guide and or barometer of where we're at, which would mostly be the writings of people like Chris hedges, Dfw, John pilger, John Taylor gatto, chomsky, zizek and films by Adam Curtis etc. Not to mention my own experiences as a living human. Its basically game over for the good guys on planet earth. Life as we once knew it isn't coming back. This is my most honest opinion. And it's not that I actually want destruction, this is just me having taken in what I believe to be the most rational and honest information I could find and realising what i think many people who decide to dig in have realised. A lot of them have taken their own lives because I think they see things the same way I see them. Dfw, Mark f, hunter Thompson etc. Imo this is why they did what they did. They saw things for what they really are. The train has run away and is well off the tracks by now. All of these people deep down wanted good for society, so much in fact, that realising the truth as they fought so hard to do, broke them when time after time they were faced with the bare facts of human nature. All imo. But I don't see their choice as the only option. I think it's worth sticking around to see what happens. You never know. Even though the vast majority of people are so well managed by the powers that be, so many of the conspiracies are starting to be proven true, and the police are appropriately militarised now to deal with whatever revolt may happen once the people inevitably have had enough, only giving those in power more excuses to take away the final scraps of dignity and freedom we are all clinging onto, and I believe this is the root of most attention paying peoples fear right now, more so than any of your brexit, trumps or Isis'. It feels like the only way things are going to change is by whatever this stage we're at running its course, which will no doubt get much darker than things already are, but maybe this will have a cleansing effect in the long run. This is the bit of hope I'm holding onto. Because rationally, I don't see any change happening as things stand the way they are now. We had clear chances in the last few years with albeit flawed options, but let's be honest with ourselves, bernie and corbyn were a glimmer of possibility of moving in the right direction, and yet the powers that be managed to sabotage all of that beautifully. Things like this are what make me give up on the idea/chance of change through civilized/conventional ways. I feel like most of the people who still believe in the greater good prevailing in the end are almost on the level of organised religious idealists waiting for their saviour to come back and make everything better. Hoodwinked into thinking it wasn't them all along who was supposed to be their own saviour and take matters into their own hands. But this has been the game probably for longer than we have records for. The powers that be misdirecting our attentions from what's right under our noses.

 

[...]

I'm not frightened.

 

[pattycakes_]

The trick imo, is to find what gives you joy and constantly seek that. But allow for plenty of times when it can't be found. So, not like an addict, who needs it. But more like a passenger on a train who gets a kick out of seeing interesting nooks and crannies in the landscape as they pass you by. For me the base will always be music and the feelings of sensation and connection it's given me throughout my life. My daughter's laugh is the most beautiful sound I can think of and making her laugh one of my favourite feelings. Meeting interesting people. Making human connections beyond the basic level and feeling like you get each other. Learning new and useful things. Being in beautiful nature spots. These are some of the things that keep me going.

 

[Corpsey]

What do you sourpusses make of this?

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190111-seven-reasons-why-the-world-is-improving

 

[luka]

I'm not frightened.

I've never met anyone with less insight into their own internal processes than you so I'm not taking this as evidence of anything in particular. Your needs and emotions are an undiscovered continent.

 

[yyaldrin]

I know the super rich are wacky - trying to live forever, become young again, live on the moon or under the sea or in a Bond villain style lair - but all of them? Does every wealthy climate change denier think that they can escape to Venus so it doesn't matter if they frack the fuck out of every square mm of Earth?

area's affected most by climate change lay in the global south, the periphery that is already being exploited and stolen of its wealth. there will still be plenty of land to live on in case of climate change i think. we're talking about 1-5% of the global population. they don't have any reason to be frightened i think.