The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.
We don’t call someone a liar only if they lie 100 percent of the time. We call someone a liar because he or she does not care about the TRUTH.
A liar is at war with reality. Facts are uttered when it’s convenient. Falsehoods are uttered when it’s convenient. Crucial facts are left out when it’s convenient. For whose convenience? The liar’s.
Anyone who has been close to an addict, a narcissit or a sociopath understands. You cannot EVER believe what a liar says. Even if the liar happens to be accurate 80 or 90 percent of the time. Why? Because you cannot TRUST someone who does not care about objective truth.
That’s what we’re all facing with today’s media and government. It’s not that they’re always lying. It’s that they do not care about truth. They will say whatever needs to be said — truthful, or not — in order to maintain and expand their power over people.
We saw this with the deception over COVID that goes on to this day. We saw this with the deliberate refusal to mention the violence of the Black Lives Matter rioters and looters. We saw this with the refusal to even report on evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, and overt punishment or censorship when discussion was even contemplated.
The media and our government are liars. It’s not really a partisan issue. Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are no better than Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden. The longer anyone has been in government, the less you can trust them. The media is so dishonest that they’re even worse than the media under a dictatorship. Under a dictatorship, you can at least excuse the fear. Our media does not yet have to lie (and a small number of them don’t); but they lie anyway, in order to advance the sociopathic, narcissistic and financial interests of those in power.
It’s sick to the point of evil. But it’s where we are. So just as you should arm yourself literally, you also must arm yourself intellectually and psychologically — with an understanding that the people you have been trained to trust on NBC, CNN, CBS and at the White House do not value the truth, or tell the truth.
Somehow, we will have to figure out the truth for ourselves. We have the brains to do so; if only more of us would use those brhe’ll.
PJ’s Rick Moran revealed recently that the chief of America’s new Thought Police, Disinformation Governance Board executive director Nina Jankowicz, brings a peculiar wealth of experience to her new job: she falsely claimed in 2017 that Republicans funded the notorious Steele Dossier that was a central element of the Russian Collusion hoax, and she insisted that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a “Trump campaign product.” So it’s clear: this is an individual who knows all about disinformation. She also brings a certain enthusiasm to her Disinformation Governance Board job, as is clear from a video Tucker Carlson broadcast Thursday, in which Jankowicz lustily belts out a song, sung to the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” denouncing disinformation.
Jankowicz herself tweeted the video on Feb. 17, 2021, with the caption, “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation.” Affecting a poor English accent, she sang:
Information laundering is really quite ferocious
It’s when a huckster takes some lies and makes them sound precocious
By saying them in Congress or in mainstream outlets so disinformation’s origins are slightly less atrocious
It’s how you hide a little lie, little lie
It’s how you hide a little lie, little lie
It’s how you hide a little, hide a little lie
But Rudy Giuliani shared bad intel from Ukraine
Or when TikTok influencers said COVID can cause pain
They’re laundering disinfo and we really should take note, and not support their lies with our wallet, voice or throat
These are our moral superiors, America! These are the guardians of acceptable opinion! Is there anyone who ever saw this video who thought it was cute or funny? Likely the only people who did were members of Jankowicz’s own social circle: far-Left members of the Washington elite, affluent, comfortable, and untroubled by the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. because they themselves are the authoritarians.
Tucker Carlson pointed out: “Now, you may have noticed if you listened carefully to the ditty that she just sang that every example of disinformation in her karaoke performance came from people who opposed Joe Biden’s policies. Is that a coincidence? Probably not. In fact, we know it’s not because Nina Jankowicz is telling [us that] all the disinformation is on the other side of the political divide.” That is no surprise, as the whole point of Jankowicz’s Disinformation Governance Board is to quash dissent by stigmatizing it as falsehood that is inimical to the life and health of “our democracy,” by which Leftists mean “Leftist hegemony in politics and culture.”
Jankowicz is a natural for her new job. Not only does her revolting disinformation ditty reveal her enthusiasm for censorship, but she has been calling for it for quite some time. On Jan. 28, 2021, she published a lengthy article in Wired entitled “Online Harassment Toward Women Is Getting Even More Insidious: From coded memes to deepfake porn, abusive disinformation campaigns are sliding past moderation tools. Platforms, Congress, and employers need to help women fight back.”
On the same day, she tweeted: “For @WIRED, I wrote about the online gendered abuse I experienced, and the attacks we tracked against @KamalaHarris, @AOC, and more. Platforms and governments aren’t doing enough. It’s time to act. Our national security and democracy are at stake.” Apparently conservative women don’t experience any online harassment; that’s only for Leftist women. Ominously, Jankowicz declared in her article that “Congress should reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and include provisions against online gender-based harassment.” If the definition of “violence” is to be redefined to include certain types of speech, the door is opened to all manner of censorship. Anything can be said to be speech that might lead to violence, including political dissent, and silenced accordingly.
The very idea of the Disinformation Governance Board is bad enough, but the fact that Biden’s handlers would put a convinced and enthusiastic fascist such as Nina Jankowicz in charge of it is even worse. Nina Jankowicz has been preparing for this moment for practically her entire professional life, and this is her chance to shine on the biggest stage of all. Her own website is labeled “Nina Jankowicz, Disinformation Expert.” Her bio at that website begins: “Nina Jankowicz is an internationally-recognized expert on disinformation.” This is her entire professional identity. There is no doubt that she is going to undertake her new duties with gusto. And that’s just one more problem with this new Disinformation Governance Board, on top of all the others.
Clients often ask me if the children (or adults) in their lives are just looking for attention when they “act up” or become emotionally distraught. This is often true, but the goal isn’t attention as much as what I call “visibility.”
People have a reasonable need to feel that their lives are important and that they are visible to others. Visibility is the end result of achievement or success, and it cannot be faked in order to make visibility an end in itself. An author achieves visibility when she convinces readers that she has something valuable to say. A sports hero achieves visibility when he demonstrates talent on the playing field. A businessperson achieves visibility because he makes a profit by creating and selling a product or service of value to many.
So you can’t seek attention or visibility without first focusing on the means that make it possible. And that, not the visibility, has to be the end in itself. In the absence of actually earning it, the failure to get visibility can often lead to anxiety, which in extreme cases can lead to desperation. When people develop emotional disorders or maladies as a bid for attention, it doesn’t mean they’re deliberately faking it. While this may sometimes be true, what may actually be happening is that the person has become anxious and desperate because he or she has failed to understand that visibility can only come from a continuous policy of achievement over time.
There are also achievements in character or personality as well. You don’t obtain visibility in personal relationships primarily through career achievement. Somebody becomes good friends with you or marries you more for your personal traits and qualities (hopefully) than anything else. If you haven’t nurtured these qualities over time in a rational, principled and thoughtful way, you won’t obtain the desired visibility from somebody who reflects the ideals you already practice daily. You might end up with friends or a spouse in name only, but you will still not be satisfied, because you never satisfied yourself.
Some mental health professionals encourage people to get caught up in their childhood. “You didn’t get what you needed as a child,” they intone. “You must now work through that as an adult.” “Work through” is never concretely defined, and hundreds of psychotherapy sessions will give you no better understanding of that (though it might put a nice pool in the therapist’s back yard). This is because “working through” generally does not correct the most basic error: Failing to tend to the self and to develop it in a way that brings pleasure and genuine satisfaction.
To make matters worse, ethicists and moralists throughout history have emphasized what they consider to be the “virtue” of selflessness. So we end up with millions of conscientious, thoughtful people – the ones with the greatest potential for earned visibility – trying to become the opposite of what they require. They’re taught that the ideal is to tend to others, and never to themselves. And then they wonder why they suffer from depression, anxiety and other manifestations of low self-esteem.
If we want to feel good every day, it’s necessary to pursue the only course that can make that possible: self-interest, self-nurturing and recognition of the same in others. And better yet, when we find others we value or care about, it makes us better people to encourage the same in them. It’s mentally healthy for us and those we care about to seek our own happiness first. Selflessness cannot be the ideal if it is practiced with no regard for our own well-being.
Nobody can experience genuine happiness without a strong sense of self. It’s time to embrace the tools and the ideals that can make that possible.
“There are a lot of children running around believing that they need puberty blockers when in reality what they need are stable parents.
Any parent that would allow their child to permanently alter his/her body and psyche is a child abuser.
Bar none.”
Candace Owens, @RealCandaceO, writing on Twitter.
I am a therapist, and have worked with people, including children and teens, for 30-plus years. I agree 100 percent with Candace Owens. I know of many therapists who agree, but who are afraid to say so, because of the toxic, nasty, intimidating cultural atmosphere we now inhabit.
Fox News: “Chief Justice Roberts issues scating statement, announces probe after draft abortion opinion [overturning Roe v. Wade] leaked”
We don’t need a lecture from this compromised scumbag about “betrayal.” HE has betrayed the Constitution he swore to uphold many times — most notably in his repeated refusals even to consider hard evidence of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, whereby the ridiculous yet dangerous Biden was installed as a U.S. president.
We already know we have been betrayed, Justice Roberts — by your kind, more than anyone. That’s the reason the U.S. is going down. Your own situation is probably just a good example of what goes around, comes around (some call it karma).
DemComs now want to use Supreme Court breach as an excuse to revive court-packing. OF COURSE THEY DO. Now the Supreme Court is a compromised joke, just like Congress and the presidency. No worries. This will make the break with them that much easier.
The Saker and Andrei Martyanov are two competent analysts of Russian military capability. Until recently they have acknowledged no problem with Putin’s limited military operation in Ukraine. But The Saker now realizes that the slow Russian operation has made opportunities for Western mischief that will widen the conflict. No doubt Martyanov also sees the adverse consequences of delay, but he is yet to attribute any importance to them.
The Saker reports Western plans to bring into western Ukraine where Russia has no boots on the ground Polish and Romanian soldiers with NATO air cover for “military exercises.” The Saker also reports that there seems to be a military operation in preparation against Russian Transnistria.
Quoting other analysts, The Saker reports that on the Polish, Belarus, and Moldova borders with Ukraine a total contingent of 50,000 to 100,000 troops can be inferred. “NATO’s ultimate strategy on this issue is currently unclear, but several options could be considered. Firstly, this can be done for a banal intimidation of Russia and an attempt to put pressure on the course of the special operation in Ukraine, and secondly, in the West they perfectly understand that Ukraine as a country no longer exists and see its future on the principle of occupation sectors. And the third option is the most terrible, but the least likely: NATO decided to go all the way and, if lend-lease and hybrid warfare do not stop the Russians, then regular units of Western countries will step in. This, of course, is a 100% threat of the use of nuclear weapons. It looks utopian, but in 2022 everything is possible.”
The Saker quotes the Russian Colonel Cassad:
“The main topic that worries many today is the adoption by the US Congress of the lend-lease program for Ukraine. Delivery of large batches of modern weapons is expected soon. The war will reach a new level, because now we will also have to fight with the American military industry. Deliveries of American heavy weapons are expected, including F-16 aircraft. Today we wrote that Ukraine is already preparing pilots for these machines. Here you need to understand once and for all, we are at war with NATO, where Ukraine is just cheap service personnel and cannon fodder.”
The Pentagon’s John Kirby backs up Colonel Cassad’s report with his announcement: “Today I can announce that the United States has begun training the Ukrainian armed forces to use key weapons at US military bases in Germany.”
The lend-lease bill was introduced in the US Senate on January 19, 2022, a month prior to the Russian intervention in Ukraine. This supports the abundant evidence that Washington did intend to cause Russian intervention in Donbass by mobilizing a large Ukrainian army ready to attack Donbass.
The Saker also quotes this report:
“Kiev secretly sent Kharkiv cadets to the United States to learn to fly the F-16, which will soon enter service with the Armed Forces of Ukraine under lend-lease. Kiev decided in advance to retrain its pilots for the NATO fleet. As it became known to Readovka, the cadets of the Kharkiv Higher Military School were sent to one of the European NATO countries and to the United States in early February for emergency retraining in the management of American F-16s. The cadets were taken directly from the 4th year classes. All of them were transported in complete secrecy. Thus, it is more likely that NATO, together with Kiev, knew about the imminent deployment of a special operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and tried to work ahead of the curve. The law passed the day before by the US Congress authorizing the lend-lease of heavy weapons to Ukraine apparently involves the supply, among other things, of American F-16 fighters. There is also information that the lend-lease announced by the United States was launched solely to legalize the transfer of F-16 fighters to Ukraine.”
None of this information fits in the narrative that Washington has created as the controlled explanation of the Russian intervention fed by the presstitutes to the peoples in the West. The Western peoples in their “free societies” with their “free press” remain as ignorant of events as Big Brother’s people in George Orwell’s book, 1984.
My views on the dangerousness of the situation are, of course, ignored by the US foreign policy community, most of whom are busy at work with war propaganda. Only twice have my articles been posted on Johnson’s Russian List. In foreign policy, as in Covid and all else, dissenting views are no longer permitted.
It is now clear that the Kremlin’s limited military operation was a serious mistake. There was no reason for the Russians to believe that Washington would not use the larger part of Ukraine not under attack to force the Russians into a wider war on the West’s terms, a wider war that could have been avoided if the Kremlin had not been so anxious to minimize the use of force. As the situation spirals out of control, we might now be living in our last days.
Here’s the problem: Biden’s collapsing popularity in every demographic group does not mean good news for Republicans. It only means the people who voted for Biden will now say, “Let’s get the real deal — AOC, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, etc.” Biden has delivered on every one of their agenda items (including, it appears, writing off all student loan debt). But he’s old, doddering, and not cool. The people who were depraved or stupid enough to vote for Biden in the first place will NOT turn to Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis or any meaningful alternative to our literally Communist status quo.
And then there’s the problem of fraud. But even if you accept the 2020 election results as bereft of fraud, those of us who are still rational and freedom-loving must accept the hard truth: Millions of us are NOT rational and are not freedom-loving. They will move from Biden to AOC, or some equivalent. If you know any leftists, or have known any — you know they ARE that depraved and stupid.
And then there’s the problem of Republicans — like Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy. Even if Republicans take over all of Congress, these swamp monsters are still the swamp monsters they were 10, 20 and 30 years ago, when they were also in power (and nothing changed). They are WORSE than worthless. They create the illusion we are still a free republic when they proceed to annihilate our rights just as decisively — though less openly — than the people we’re desperately trying to throw out.
I don’t know “the” answer. I cannot fantasize that one person is coming, like Superman, to rescue us. At some point, we have to rescue ourselves — and stop pretending we don’t see what’s going on because we’re worried about upsetting or angering other people (many of whom feel secretly the same). I DO know that pinning your hopes on an election is a mistake. The events of 2020 and 2021, into this year (up through and including the Ministry of Disinformation now coming for us) prove — tragically — that we are beyond elections in America.
The people in charge of our culture and our government are not “Democrats” like we have always known them. They are brutal totalitarians. They will not let go of power, in my view. Time will tell if I’m right or wrong. I don’t see how there’s a peaceful solution to this. Go ahead and hope. But keep your reality caps on, even while you hope.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 