Comment by ravenstine

There is more than one kind of charisma.

Some people have a positive charisma that comes out of treating people well. I'd expect this from the captain of a sports team.

I knew someone who had a negative charisma, who was criminally minded. He was popular among drug users at my school because he would take more chances and thus have the best supply. He got caught on tape selling 3 kilo of cocaine to a cop after I'd graduate. He had a talent to motivate other people into criminal activity and became the leader of a gay bashing gang that seemed to mainly target straight allies because this was the 1980s and folks like that were probably scared about getting AIDS.

I don't picture the elementary school bully as being particularly popular, but he certainly gets deference from the other students. I think of the popular kids in school as being genuinely likeable even if they didn't take a stand against bullies.

I’ve taken away more from Ender’s Game than from anything an adult ever told me. From what I’ve seen, breaking the bullies’s nose is very effective.

XKCD is universal... https://xkcd.com/1216/

The typical case of physical bullying is not just "things happening that you don't like"; it's wanton, unprovoked assault and battery. Even lesser forms of bullying generally involve some kind of unambiguous threatening, menacing or intimidation. The "emotionally mature" way of dealing with such things in any sane society is not to just walk away, but rather to acknowledge that such actions are inherently an outrage to their fellow students' basic human dignity, and demand that those responsible face meaningful consequences. The fact that "it's rarely much physical pain" (and that merely because kids are involved as opposed to adults) is completely irrelevant.

> Adults can watch something happening and think nothing particularly significant is going on while some kids are experiencing extreme internal distress.

I think because that is also often because they regard it as normal for kids. A lot of people say things like "bullying toughens them up".

They would not think its OK for the same things to be done to adults. I wonder what the toughens them up lot would think if I showed up at their house with a few friends and gave them a light beating - I think calling the police would be a more likely outcome than thanking me for teaching them to be tough!

A lot of adults have the same experience. They are perpetually persecuted.

I'm sorry - you're following all the comments about public schools being like a prison and you're suggesting people get expelled faster or disciplined more to improve schools?

You have a choice of what public school your child goes to based on where you live. Many parents “shop” for their schools in this way.

There is an assumption that private is better always and that’s not true. Top 10-20% of private is better but it’s expensive and not available to most. There is a lot of poor and low quality private too.

Kids make do at good public schools. Source: went to one of them.

Lol. My public school sent 10% of its senior class to ivy league schools last year. I'll take it. Not all of them are inner city hell holes.

Agree, there are plenty of kids who go to government schools and have enormous gaps in their knowledge, in the west as well.

I'm saying that, all things being equal, I'd rather my kids be homeschooled with a few gaps, than go to a government school (and be traumatized) and have no gaps.

> But your insistence on assigning this behavior to some political side is, frankly, frightening.

You mistake this being political, and I did not assign these behaviors. These groups have done these acts. Its replete in the histories.

The acts have been littered throughout the historical record repeatedly and regularly starting with Marx and Engels taking from the Jesuits many of the practices that got the Jesuits expelled, and moving forward in time, the actions done by a majority of these people calling themselves such by various names, reflect what you call 'assigned'. They don't self-police and ignore destructive acts, if anything, these people's own actions assigned these to their movement.

I make a point of saying this too, because they change their group names to suit their groups purposes and to obscure their origins; misleadingly in a deceitful way, regularly. They do not want to be tied down by the same repeated failures that are associated with past groups. When you do the same exact things, and expect different results, this is a definition of insanity.

Marxists to Fabians to Bolsheviks, to Maoist, Communist, to Social Democracy, to Social Justice, to Wokeism, and I'm skipping quite a bit here.

There's been roughly a new name every 5-10 years going back to the 1920s, for the same Marxist-based doctrine that fails core components needed for rational objectivity. Failing such it shows the delusion, and fanaticism of those supporting it.

I would have nothing against these belief systems if they were consistent and rational, and in fact there would be no issues if that was met.

All they would have to do is conform to the basic principles inherent in rationalism, that is objective definition, unique meaning in language (no ambiguity of definition), Descartes Rules of Method, and logic. No improper use of the abuse of the contrast principle (hegel).

In other words, falsehoods get discarded.

They do not do this, and that is the core problem. They seek to unify through deceit and omission, that some of them, themselves, believe quite fallaciously, and by using language with multiple contradictory meanings, so no proper context can be made (newspeak). They use coercive methods to induct, following Cult structure as well. Seeming good at a cursory level, while sewing the seeds for evil through delusion, hallucination, and fallacy. These people also almost never happy.

Many leftist movements over the past hundred or so years seek to blur the line between politics, ideology, and economics, and state. This provides them cover to make unprovable false claims and create a power platform. You have part of the group which decries the abuses, while you have the other part pretending to be another group while inducing the same such abuses. Its about control of the resources, not ownership.

Its also beneficial to them to falsely call it political since politics is protected in open societies as is ideology, but this isn't religion, nor should any so called religion/ideology based in delusion or fallacy be protected or supported.

The important difference between real politics and this is in discerning rationally whether that type of ideology is a death cult, whose actions will result in unchecked destruction.

Mises wrote thoroughly about the 6 or so intractable problems of economics under such systems (by structure) because even back then they changed their names regularly (in the 1930s-1950s).

These movements we are talking about seek to make irrational dogma seeking power and control, they make broad nice sounding claims, while setting the stage for indirect but destructive outcomes. This has been demonstrated multiple times in their own policy and publications.

The Russian famine in 1921 for example, or the famines caused by Mao's Cultural Revolution, Maoist Re-education Camps (for the children), the massacres of Hue, Tienanmen Square, political dissident prisoners in Hong Kong, the ongoing acts of terrorism sponsored by the Stasi/KGB, the list goes on for miles.

They of course falsely claim its to make a better future, to get people to cede power to them, but the dynamics and the reality do not match up, and most don't resolve indirectly reference things that show it to be an unobtainable pipe dream, where the real outcome is destruction.

Eventually reality re-asserts when survival is on the line, and failing survival large numbers perish. Production may be continued through slavery, but overall eventually it shows itself to be a death cult.

If you've read any of the material published by the prominent people in these movements, you would see them talking about this, albeit in doublespeak to make it not sound as bad. They never question the viability of their premises.

Now that is frightening.

When you have a movement who abandons rational principles seeking a false utopia while in action only going for short term personal gain, this is destructive. People eventually die when this is unchecked.

Obviously, evil acts are any act that does not result in long term beneficial growth of self or others, and evil people are willfully blind to the consequence of their evil acts.

I'm well aware that there is no monopoly, I never claimed otherwise, but there are clusters or disease vectors where evil seeks to subvert from within until it can show its true face through action.

A group predominantly containing such is important to call out.

The Nazi's were evil, but they started off as the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

The Fabian's had similar origins, resulting in the economic collapse of the UK. They shared tactics, method, and history.

Bolsheviks had similar origins. Maoists had similar origins.

While they all claim to be new and independent groups, their structures show they've adopted core aspects of false or destructive ideology originally derived from Marxism in whole or part.

Political movements with core practices based in false ideology and method, resolving to destruction, are not valid political movements and do not deserve protection.

If you read nothing else, read this, it speaks unpleasant truth. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3263007/

They promote 'critical consciousness', which is a framework of looking at things in isolation without resolving indirections, and examining existing relationships by their power dynamics which are treated as static, not dynamic. These are based in fallacy, but more recently described in the critical turn in education, and was somewhat inspired by Paulo Freire's work.

The framework of reasoning being taught, is anything but, and follows circular paths that travel down a spiral of madness, and subjectivity without proper definition; in classic hegelian structure to abuse the contrast principle.

This is seen most recently in people who have contracted the mind virus, Woke-ism. When you adopt this 'critical consciousness', as they call it you blind yourself to the reality of things, and its a self-inflicted violation of your self. The things they do and say often are borderline delusional or insanely irrational, and not based in reality.

Marxist derivatives has not been about seizing collective ownership for quite some time, its been about interference, demoralization, and destabilization. They seized production by seizing the money, and are doing so through debasement as Lenin said in Keynes quote.

The currency allows control of the means of production as the root of all trade (exchange), and this has been seized already back in the 70s, by central planning bankers, and the ECP driven by money printing will be taking hold in a few short years once third stage ponzi is publicly visible. In other words, debt growth > GDP.

This sieving action of resources into fewer and fewer hands through debt is already driving legitimate producing businesses out of business (bankruptcy), or towards mergers, where they close shop which are funded by a money printer. The money printer swallows everything.

All debt issues with 0% fractional reserve is private money printing. This occurred in 2020 silently at the start of the pandemic. They replaced fractional reserve with an opaque capital reserve system (Basel III), which itself is based on fiat valuations that the banks loaning the money/printing the money decide. Carl Menger thoroughly proved how value is subjective. These structures neglect the simple fact that there are dynamics at work that determine value, so the associated banks will be fine until they suddenly aren't, without notice, or predictability (chaos).

Once concentrated, then everything can be seized and nationalized silently with cutout companies backed by the money printer, but in the process production grinds to a halt, shortage ensures, and stops and all value is lost since the store of value as a property of currency fails.

Order wanes, famine, slavery, and death, as occurs in every non-market socialist state to date; only this time it will be a global event and not an isolated nation event. That is the problem with parasites. Sometimes they kill the host, and by extension kill themselves.

> Research paper analyzing and defending the Black Panthers in high school.

Well I guess it would depend on what you wrote. The simple fact of the matter is, the dynamics of a successful protest or movement depend on largely two things.

The responsiveness of policymakers to listen and correct issues, and the inherent threat of violence or imposed cost.

If policy-makers fail to do their job by being unresponsive when their job is serving their constituency, violence holds them to account when the abuse is egregious enough. This once happened back in 1776, with colonists who were not considered british citizens or entitled to such protections without representation.

The politician's know this in theory too because they had to read the books covering these topics. Many of which are central to constitutional law, or social contract theory (Leviathan, Locke, Kant, Rosseau).

Absent the first, no non-violent movement can succeed in making change. You need appropriate political and judicial structures that are responsive to conflicts so they can be resolved non-violently. If they are not responsive (regardless of reason), the sole purpose of law fails, that purpose is non-violent conflict resolution equally under the law.

This used to be the courts, but they too have degraded to the point where if you don't have the money upfront to hire a lawyer, you don't have a seat at the table. A single civil suit today, even a slam dunk one, costs about a 50k retainer, from the lawyers I've spoken with. That's about the average median annual income for most people unspent (on things like food, necessities etc).

A rule of law requires certain elements, if you examine the law today and the associated costs, its largely only available to the select few with money. The 5 or so components have failed enough times to claim several decade long trends.

There is a psychological consistency pitfall in writing about things you don't care about because words alter your perception even if you don't believe it in the moment, the more often you write something the more it impacts you. They did this in the Korean Conflict to PoWs. It generally started with a choice; hard labor, or write an essay with the following prompt, "Why is the US not the best country in the world", to "Why does communism work better than capitalism", and then its read over a loudspeaker and celebrated among the captors, and prisoners.

Its subtle bias, but effective, proven, and documented.

If people can't organize and react to the reality of things being done to them, they implicitly are agreeing to their own destructive end, for themselves and anyone else they happen to manage to carry along with them.

> Absolutely not reading this entire diatribe.

If you don't read what you comment on, then you miss out on the things you then ask about. It makes anyone look stupid.

The sources on how torture works, were referenced. The authors are well established in their fields, its old material that has not been refuted in any way and is backed by first-hand accounts in the case studies (1950s).

The structural elements they cover are well discussed. These elements are also present in material pushed at the recommendation by the national Teachers Union in the past (at several points). This included, iirc, the Roots movie controversy and this revisionist fictional film being portrayed as historical to push a false narrative.

Teachers aren't generally malign, but bureacracies can be (NEA almost without a doubt imo). The teachers simply did what they were trained to do without knowing what they were trained to do. A potential example of the banality of evil with regards to complacency and sloth.

You may not like it, and not want to see it, and not want to believe it. Nonetheless, it is clearly happening.

James Lindsay has published quite a lot of rationally backed literature on Woke-ism, and its relation to Marxism/Maoism, and how its a cult. He has several publications, and a youtube channel if you are so inclined.

Regardless of what you happen to call a thing, you can describe a thing based on its elemental component or characteristics. Rationally this process is called characterization, and when you find the same elements, and the same outcomes, that suggests a thing that goes by another name (deceitfully to obscure), is the same thing functionally.

When you see the same structures used in Maoist prison camps in the 50s being used in education, the question shouldn't be is this happening because the characteristics match. It should be who chose to do this and why, and is it more important to protect them over your own children. These all have pretty simple straightforward answers.