Dillon says he doesn't know if there's "a grand plan," but, he says, there are "two things that are happening simultaneously." First, there are "people that believe in like nothing," "like empty suit Gavin Newsom types." And second, there are "the craziest people in the world that somehow have gotten hold of a ton of money and a ton of influence on social media." It's a terribly destructive combination:
"Those empty suit politicians are like scared of these lunatics that believe the craziest things you've ever heard. So these politicians are just like taking edicts from these crazy people online.... And I think it's a lot of these politicians are deeply corrupt and I think they're terribly afraid of whatever corruption they're involved with coming to the surface..... So if I was a really corrupt politician, I would just do the craziest left wing shit so that I could never be accused of anything...."
Consider how moderates may have lost the ability to operate as moderates. Their emptiness is filled up with the extremists' ideas, which are implemented without meaning or conviction.
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58 comments:
Empty suit and a tinfoil hat
No backbone but plenty of fat.
These corrupt politicians, first the Obama machine had 'em by the balls, but now Trump has 'em by the balls too and there's a tug-of-war going on in their pants with their scrotums for the rope and all the while they have to keep smiling, smiling.
Is there a “grand plan”? In his famous “House Divided” speech Abraham Lincoln presented the analogy that if four woodcutters — Stephen, Franklin, James, and Roger* — go off on their own, and when they come back with the lumber they’ve separately cut we find that the timbers fit together perfectly to make the frame of a house, it is reasonable to assume that there was an underlying plan, and that the timbers were cut and shaped in accordance with that plan.
Hardly anyone builds timber-framed houses anymore, but the analogy holds. When supposedly disparate events mesh together too perfectly it is not unreasonable to assume that there is some sort of plan, even if only a detailed set of guidelines, behind the events.
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* Stephen is presumed to be Stephen Douglas, Lincoln’s opponent in the senatorial race and the leading candidate for the Democrat nomination for President in 1860. Franklin is former President Franklin Pierce. James is James Buchanan, the sitting President (and until Joseph Biden regarded as the worst President in the history of the Republic). Roger is Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of the Dred Scott Decision.
They also spoke about 'humans being vessels' for some unknown alien experiment. "Tin foil hat" seems fair.....
Cynicism is just a reflexively negative form of naivety. The thing both lack is humility. Intellectual humility is refraining from jumping to conclusions, whereas naïfs/cynics do so by definition, either believing what they’re told uncritically or believing that they’re terribly clever by always thinking the worst of people. Whereas the classically naive person is usually optimistic and the cynic by nature pessimistic, neither really accepts the basic uncertainty about the world that makes the act of hope meaningful. You have to have the humility to accept that you don’t understand the future in order to be hopeful about it.
"Hope is the thing with feathers, That perches in the soul” ~ Emily Dickinson
We must nurture and protect this delicate thing. It’s the hope, after all, that saves you.
Whether it's the CCP, WEF or other malign actors there are "grand plans" out there in need of and in search for people in positions of power, along with just plain old useful idiots, to move society toward their goals, which entail the destruction of civilizational norms.
Many of the "crazy people online" are seeking to attain positions of influence if not power.
Well when I think about Gavin Newsom, I'll go with the empty suit meme. But his hair is "fabulous" and some folks will go with that. He's a male Kamala Harris but he doesn't dish up as much word salad.
Nice, Kak. You make a case for religion. I think that we need cynics and the naive to set endpoints in that spectrum. Like every thing else, this is the universe of contrast. How is hope not naive? Lack of hope isn't necessarily cynical, more like giving up.
Maybe I'm going to have to actually listen to Tim Dillon
Never underestimate the effectiveness of the Soviet Union's decades-long disinformation efforts. The Soviet Union fell, but its subsidiaries survive in the West.
Moderates can only exist when extemists have little power. The problem I have with his analysis is that its not "People on social media", its the big donors who control politicians on both sides. The Big Democrat Donors are more extreme. Hear any of those Billionare Democrats attack Antifa? Hear any of them being outraged over fellow rich guy Musk's Telsa's being attacked?
The democrats in Congress vote in lockstep xx-0 on almost every issue. They get their marching orders from Schumer or The house leader, and that's that. The SCOTUS Democrat Judges vote as a bloc on every issue and always take the leftwing side.
I see no evidence that any prominent Democrat disagreed with anything Biden did. If they disagreed, its because they wanted Biden to be even more of a warmonger or let in even more illegal aliens.
False hope gets you Obama. The handsome, slick talking king of destruction and grift. Bonus: Big money to the Iranian Mullahs.
The Prof has commended Dillon several times, and he was on Gutfeld! last week.
I don't see the attraction.
Most of it can be explained by priorities and blindspots.
If you think the deficit is a threat to our viability as a country and uncontrolled immigration is a threat to our safety and stability, then you probably voted for Trump. If you don’t think the deficit is a problem and that immigrants will always contribute more than they cost, then you probably voted for Harris.
I don't think Dillon is correct. The politicians aren't responding to whatever nuttiness is being conveyed by "influencers" on the internet.
The politicians are responding to the specific agendas being conveyed by the major news networks and organizations. Who grab ahold of whatever they can and twist it to suit those agendas.
Why have NONE of the major news organizations reporting on the Abrego Garcia affair published the police report from 2018 that Quinn posted yesterday? Why have NONE noted that the "mistake" in the "process" was that the administrative judge who issued the order specifically found that he was an MS-13 member, which is the reason why he would be in danger in El Salvador (in 2018)? There is nothing mysterious or complicated about it.
They have the resources, the information, and the platform. Yet they actively mislead.
Why should anyone trust them?
To RCOCEAN's point, I think it was Aristotle who observed that republics only thrive in environments of relative wealth equality. Agrarian societies are more equal than trading empires (much less societies dominated by global online and financial enterprises). Sic transit republics.
Sadly, many dumb people on the crazy left and the crazy right.
"Those empty suit politicians are like scared of these lunatics that believe the craziest things you've ever heard. So these politicians are just like taking edicts from these crazy people online.... And I think it's a lot of these politicians are deeply corrupt and I think they're terribly afraid of whatever corruption they're involved with coming to the surface..... So if I was a really corrupt politician, I would just do the craziest left wing shit so that I could never be accused of anything...."
They think that if they go with the flow, they'll be immune to any attacks later on, if the crazies come to power. They'll be in the same spot the Mensheviks found themselves after the Bolsheviks consolidated their power.
"Those empty suit politicians are like scared of these lunatics that believe the craziest things you've ever heard"
Such is most of history throughout the world.
The amazing thing isn't that this is that in our country we have experienced seasons where this isn't the case and realized it doesn't have to be like this.
its the wef in conjunction with the UN and the NGOs run by the usual suspects that is the linch pin, so everyone is on the same page on Gaza, on Skydragons (climate change) et al
we have discovered how much AID reinforces this through the internew service,
Tim is deceptively thoughtful. He inhabits the ever expanding, without ever snapping, universe of material.
they have been working at this for 50 years, at least, thats when schwab founded the wef, of course it took the oil shock to make these predictions look legitimate, now there are other parallel agendas like the islamists, who are odds with this view of modernity but not others,
It's hard to argue with that, except that he doesn't distinguish well between the "lunatics" and the people who "somehow have gotten hold of a ton of money." Admittedly, it is hard to distinguish between them if Bill Gates and Greta Thunberg (for example) are saying the same thing. I think it's more that both the billionaires, corporation leaders, foundation heads, media people, politicians and bureaucrats all follow what comes out of the universities, the same as the zanies do.
There is a naive cynicism, but not all cynicism is naive. Some is based on observation, analysis, and an understanding of how things work. If you live in some country where things only happen because of bribes, or where officials profess an ideology that isn't reflected in their actual behavior, you will be cynical, and our country isn't as different from countries like that as we once believed. I suppose there may also be a higher or deeper form of naiveté or innocence that somehow manages to believe that, despite all the horrors and betrayals, the "arc of history bends towards justice," but cynicism definitely isn't shallow when confronted with the real world. Positioning oneself in between extremes is always a clever move, but it may only be a move, a rhetorical creation of a position between two strawmen. Cynics may have a better view of at least of parts of the world than people who want to view themselves as more evolved.
Dillon's performance on Rogan reminded me of why it was that Kamala had to stay 1000 miles away from Rogan's studio. When you believe in just about nothing besides acquisition of power, it's impossible to talk for three hours without making that obvious.
There are others who do actually seem to believe in something that I'd be interested in listening to in a long form, mildly adversarial interview. Klaus Schwab (formerly WEF) , Alex Soros, Laurene Powell Jobs, MacKenzie Scott, Rachel Maddow. If they have a vision of a better world, I'd love to hear them explain the plan, unscripted, and how the plan is different from the loony policies of the Biden administration. Explain why DOGE is evil. Explain their vision for Ukraine, China, Taiwan, Iran, Gaza.
Lincoln's parable is nice, but it applies only to those four woodcutters. Substitute a random woodcutter, for say, Roger, one who doesn't have access to the drawings, or a corner gouge, the result will like be chaotic.
It's the watchmaker argument retooled, isn't it?
they don't think it's loony, Biden was that they were able to get away, Sheriff of Holborn, (Starmer) is what they desire, same with Metz in Germany,
“Consider how moderates may have lost the ability to operate as moderates.”
LGBT activist are identifiable extremists. Soros and others like him, Alfred Pennyworth’s “men [who] just want to watch the world burn”, likely qualify. Gramscian Marxists and their useful idiots are only immoderate in their durability. Otherwise, they behave as they have for decades.
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." —William Butler Yeats, about a century ago.
We take in millions of data points every day. Way too much to focus on. How we filter, interpret and react to them is up to us.
If you choose to see the world in purely negative, cynical, transactional terms, then that is all you will see and how you will react to it. It also tends to deprive you of agency - why bother? Who cares? Why does it matter?
Of course the Greeks had a story about hope that's a little more ambiguous — that of Pandora's Jar — where hope is retained by the Gods, possibly because hope in humans can lead to a denial of the truth of things. Perhaps modernism has changed the meaning of hope?
Albert Camus warns against hope, seeing it as a kind of philosophical escape hatch—a refusal to face the world as it truly is. In 'The Myth of Sisyphus', he argues that the universe is fundamentally absurd: it offers no inherent meaning, and human attempts to impose one—through religion, ideology, or even hope—are ultimately evasions. Unlike Aquinas or Lewis, who see hope as a lifeline, Camus sees it as a temptation to “philosophical suicide.” He urges us instead to live without illusions, to resist the impulse to seek comfort in imagined futures. “There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn,” he writes. And yet, paradoxically, this rejection of hope does not lead to nihilism. In Camus’s vision, meaning is not discovered but created—in the very act of defiant, conscious living. One must imagine Sisyphus happy, not because he hopes for freedom, but because he embraces the rock and the climb, with eyes open and unafraid.
Simone Weil who was a contemporary of Camus (& a Christian mystic) offered a counter argument to Camus - she imagined hope differently — as attention to the universe and to each human soul. She advised not to turn away from even the most painful affliction we see. Where Camus urges revolt, Weil suggests receptivity; where he lifts the rock defiantly, she kneels beside it, listening. For her, hope is not a leap but a stillness—an unguarded space in which grace, or clarity, might enter. It does seem that humans always hope, but sometimes forget the divine nature of hope, focusing on thwarted desire?
All of the above (10:55) consort with politicians who are treated as moderates by the Democrat rank and file and the leftmediaswine.
Still, I personally think a lot of it has to do with Obama repealing the law against the US government using propaganda against the US electorate. They gutted the law that was put in place after seeing what government propaganda had done in Germany and Italy, but the Obama Administration said that they were "modernizing it," which was of course propaganda.
They govern now by deciding policies in secret, then deciding what they need people to believe to get these policies enacted, and then using propaganda to bring people around to those beliefs, no matter how irrational.
As one YouTuber said, "The world would be an entirely different place if honesty got men laid." He blames it on women for rewarding dishonesty, however unconsciously they do it.
How does all that historical, philosophical bilge from Kak (11:00) comport with his/her/their TDS?
As an example, I doubt that posters pushing the hidden regime's policies, like Kakistocracy, whose very handle betrays his longing for days of the Biden Administration, would be nearly as ubiquitous without the repeal of anti-propaganda laws like the Smith-Mundt Act.
so the Australian British American, and other papers say quite nearly the same thing, Tim Blair showed me this, among others who failed to follow the drumbeat in the 00s,
perhaps the veto of Mundt Schmidt explains this, but the hive mind is independent of that,
Whatever metaphysical hopes one may have, cynicism about politics is usually justified.
even on X, the default setting that people see, when you sign on, more often then not has leftist orientation, often stupid ones but there they are,
I don't have a tin foil hat. But I do have a respectable Republican cloth hat. And I always look good in anything!
Quaestor: Lincoln's parable is nice, but it applies only to those four woodcutters. Substitute a random woodcutter, for say, Roger, one who doesn't have access to the drawings, or a corner gouge, the result will like be chaotic.
I'm not sure I follow your point. You seem to be saying that if one of the woodcutters was not in on the plan, then the plan wouldn't work. But that is the whole point of the parable, so I don't see how it undercuts the parable.
Anyone besides me think Kaki is paid by the word?
Well said.
the narratives are often so paper thin
https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/04/20/van-hollen-refuses-to-say-his-bro-garcia-is-not-ms-13-because-he-is-watch-n2411663
most fishwrap like gannett or tribune, the local papers are unreadable
Try to explain to a liberal woman why it is stupid to allow an illegal immigrant who belongs to a gang to claim asylum because his membership in his gang in his home country makes him a target for members of other, rival violent gangs, that that is nothing but a recipe for open immigration of violent gang members into the US. This was, after all, Garcia's claim, I even provided a link to the Boston Globe which explained this.
You can't do it. I have tried. The only answer I get is that it's about Trump's lawless fascism.
Maybe Kaka can explain why allowing violent criminals to claim asylum in the US based on their fear of rival violent criminals in their home countries is good policy.
of course they say he's innocent of course, and besides american born criminals are worse, much what they say about hamas terrorists, if some one got to ask them that question
recall in the 00s, a host of communities wanted to welcome those poor detainees to their midst, this never came to pass,
"of course they say he's innocent of course"
Even as US courts found him guilty, and even as his claim was an admission of membership in a violent gang.
I sampled around the vid, to see if I missed anything worthwhile; most of it is just two midwit guys bullshitting, but when Rogan started talking about the "stupid fucking wooden Wright brothers plane" I left.
yes thats very silly,
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/04/is_it_time_to_ignore_the_judiciary.html
LFC24770ST
It’s an Open Secret. They already told you what they want. A United States wounded but still a global economic engine, controlled by the evil Bond villains in zip up onesies. The American left content with cash flows and dachas and the power to torture their enemies.
NGOs and high speed rail and climate change and BLM are just tools to control the flow if funds to accomplish it…
“Consider how moderates may have lost the ability to operate as moderates. Their emptiness is filled up with the extremists' ideas, which are implemented without meaning or conviction.”
In a democracy you expect the center to win when the majority supports the center. But in the US this has been perverted by the apparent power of the fringes.
Parties support extremist views because activism wins, it makes more noise. A centrist candidate needs a better class of majority, one that is nicer and more mentally stable.
"Maybe [anyone] can explain why allowing violent criminals to claim asylum in the US based on their fear of rival violent criminals in their home countries is good policy."
Especially when you consider that those violent rival gangs are also present in the US ready, willing and able to do violence at any time to any asylum seeker.
"Any sufficiently stupid policy is indistinguishable from evil." ~ BagoH2O
Dillon isn't arguing for a compete and thoroughgoing cynicism about everything on heaven and earth, so I wonder how that became a topic here. One would want to strike a balance between complete cynicism and complete naiveté. In practice, though, those are often just strawmen used to skew arguments. One has to be realistic, and realists are going to take a dim view now of politicians and their pretentions.
Where did the moderates go? They were absorbed by the opinionosphere. Very few politicians get through a primary without aligning with their party's ideological line. There were moderates when politicians arose "organically" out of their constituencies -- when they spent most of their time with peanut farmers or fishermen or lumbermen. Now the politicians arise out of ideological groups -- and increasingly, their constituents do as well.
Political policy only makes sense when you realize the real motivations and separate them from the advertised ones. Who would be willing to pay the millions that politicians have made to get the "services" they provide?
The Soviet Union had built networks of both paid and volunteer operators throughout the U.S. When European communism collapsed in 1989, our genius intelligence services, who didn't see if coming, never bothered to clean up the remnants and prosecute the people who had been working for their country's enemies.
SOMEONE picked up those networks and repurposed them.
I suspect this because a college girlfriend's sister was high up enough to get money from the Communist Party in the '80s. Two decades later I see some TV story on the Occupy Wall Street "movement,"* and she is one of the spokespeople / leaders.
*Which was 100% astroturfed, as the day after it was announced, every academic organization in the country (AAUP, MLA, etc., etc.) endorsed it at the same time. (That was when I stopped paying AAUP dues).
"arc of history bends towards justice,"
I love that phrase. It is so arrogant in it's assertion. If you've ever read history you know that the arc of history bends toward chaos and death.
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