https://twitter.com/K_Niemietz/status/1704093894647161094
The think tank bros are not okay. Props to this dumbass retweeting all the people calling him a fucking idiot though. Good bit.
lmao
Plants are, in my experience, almost comically apolitical. They only care about their own photosynthesis. The idea that that they all work together, as a kingdom, to prop up the forest, is… not plausible.
I’ve studied fish and I can say with absolute certainty that they are not capable of forming schools. They only care about their own bubble and how close they are to the adjacent fish, striving to keep a minimum distance to each other. On the whole they cannot possibly move as a school. That would require a conspiracy of an uncountable number of fish, an implausible achievement for a creature with a brain the size of a pencil tip.
marx failed to consider this one
apolitical
I already knew this meant “status quo warrior ashamed of sounding right wing” but recent interactions with federated Lemmy users have really hammered in what a bunch of bootlicking sycophants for capitalism tend to call themselves “apolitical” or “nonpolitical.”
“The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.”
― Bertolt Brecht
“The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.”
― Bertolt Brecht
This reminded me of a passage from that Conspiracist Manifesto released a few years ago. It was, uh, not great, but this quote has always stuck with me:
At this point, it would be foolish to ask whether they are conspiring, the 1% who hold %48 of the world’s wealth, who attend the same type of schools, places and people everywhere, who read the same newspapers, succumb to the same fashions, bathe in the same discourses and in the same sense of their hereditary superiority
Of course they breathe the same air.
Of course they conspire.
They don’t even have to plot for that
Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together – on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot – though they call it “planning” and “strategizing” – and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.
George Carlin has a nearly identical quote out there somewhere, which I’m sure is what the “conspiracist manifesto” is ripping off.
The water cycle? Kind of ridiculous to think all those rivers are working together, most of them only care about their own flow. The idea that they all work together to prop up an ‘ocean’ is ridiculous.
