There is an old market research typology joke that runs as follows: “The world is divided into two sorts of people: those who think it’s divided into two sorts of people, and those who don’t”. For the purposes of today’s Slogpostcontext, I am just this once going to simplify matters by saying there are three types: those self-styled incompetent experts who are up to no good; those sad data fiends and cynics who know the experts are up to no good; and the mass of doing very well thank you/don’t be silly/What time’s the kick-off. I think I know as well as anyone what’s coming down the road, so today’s effort is money+where mouth is hostage-to-fortune stuff.
Elon Musk has just named ten books he’s been reading, and there are no surprises on the list at all. Transhumanism is a recurring theme. Three are about AI, most of the rest are biographies about techie blokes who made a fortune, and one is about the importance of not lying.
You might think the ‘don’t tell naughty fibs’ is a surprise, but far from it: as I’ve opined previously, Musk is a master of hiding the obvious in plain sight with double bluff. Including the mendacity title is really just a lie about not lying.
Here’s his latest ruse on Twitter…..official release: ‘Twitter users may experience a decrease in their following in the days to come. As we will be cleaning a lot of spam and fraud accounts, you could notice a decline in your following count.’ No shit? “Cleaning” is an innovative way to spell “silencing”: it could very easily catch on, like ‘sponsored content’, ‘unexplained early death syndrome’, or ‘misinformation’. For myself, I quite like the term ‘ethical cleansing’.
Musk holding forth on the need for Truth is a little like Boris Johnson writing a tract on the importance of contraception.
Yes, we live in the age of the euphemism. A bioweapon is a vaccine, Bill Gates and George Soros are philanthropists, the CIA is the US Government, the EU is “the home of Democratic Values”, Vlodomor Zelenskyy is a fearless patriot and Anthony Fauci is a babe-magnet. I threw that last one in there to pose a simple question: at what point does a euphemism drift over the line into surreal delusion? That’s to say, what do you get when you euphemise a euphemism?
The answer is a diaphanously disguised, indefensible black lie of such idiocy, only the comfortably off haute bourgeoisie NYT/WAPO/Guardian/BBC axis and the tabloid Underclass Sun/NYPost/Mirror/USA Today sheep still believe that the stool emerging from the Corporate State anus is a 24 carat Golden Egg.
But here’s the rub: it’s reassuring to type ‘only’, but inaccurate. Those of us who see through the Seven Veils of Temptation are still at or around 12% of most Western electorates.
I’ve said before (but it bears repeating) that one can show numbers, block charts and every kind of graph to the pro-jab community and they will variously condemn them, reject them and/or fall asleep. I still think there is value in dragging the past behaviour of the Davos Depopulation Wing into the public arena (it’s hard to defend someone who very clearly is an habitual cheat, and a lover of brown envelopes with a penchant for cutting car brake-lines. But one easy-to-illustrate tactic is catching the social media censor going about his daily history-destruction at the Ministry of Truth. I stumbled on an opportunity to do this only yesterday.
Mate John and I were swapping book suggestions by email, so I wrote:
‘Monsieur le Commandant isn’t the best translated book in the world, but its main merit is in its ruthless presentation of the realities of French arse-licking collaboration during the Second World War. It is hated by the French Enarc class.
So the message bounced back as follows:
The message was actually blocked by Mac in France. As their bots are not terribly smart, I page captured my original recommendation to John, and it went through with flying colours – bots being usually incapable of deciphering digital photos. I added this message:
It’s 77 years since the Vichy regime fell. Most kids under ten years old won’t know what it was about anyway. Obviously, the aim is to reach a point one day where one can claim that it never happened.
As Joe Stalin said, “he who controls the past controls the future”.
This gives you some idea of how thorough these Truth-wipers intend to be.
So what do I expect from here on as an order of play? I think it goes like this:
Coming soon:
The Slog 