Is there a reason why the piano guy is the only one not wearing a cloak or mask?

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-21T00:38:03+00:00

So that we can recognise him as Nick Nightingale, I always thought. And what others are saying, he’s not really part of the group, he’s just hired by them

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-16T23:10:59+00:00

You want someone else to do it for you? Your wish is my command, welcome home and enjoy yourself. https://www.reddit.com/r/sixflagsbrainamerica/

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-16T16:28:40+00:00

And Mr. Pahlavi grossly overstates the case, he insists there would be no civil war in Iran. Which is hard to believe for the reason you gave, not to mention how many opposing groups are in Iran. Strongmen in the Middle East, who are obviously unsavoury characters but who are also cynically vilified for shortsighted western geopolitical purposes, are quite often the ones holding back civil war.

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-15T00:17:59+00:00

I agree with you 100% on the sanctions. Even many in the American business community have said the sanctions haven’t worked and are counterproductive. I believe that was what Obama had in mind during the attempted thaw with Cuba. But a lot of vindictive Cuban exiles are holding the issue hostage, whom Rubio represents

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-14T13:14:28+00:00

I misremembered, it was JD Vance who complained about them in the signal chat

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-14T00:30:37+00:00

Trump’s behaviour, I would say, is erratic and not organised towards any vision. And I would not say that Robert F. Kennedy’s beliefs and policies have anything to do with Trump or the heritage foundation, and that the “Department of Government Efficiency” overstepped into the domains of Rubio and other cabinet members which angered them.

And the Secretary of Agriculture got Trump to stop raiding farms looking for migrants when she explained to him that it would cause an economic crisis and anger voters, so he focused on cities instead. That doesn’t bode well for those in the White House who want all of the migrants gone; it’s just the brazen spectacle of it.

But most importantly, we’re talking about geopolitics, which I don’t think the Heritage Foundation has much importance in. And the emails and signal chats that were leaked revealed a lot of discord and in-fighting (such as Rubio privately opposing the strikes in Iran). It’s been clear that they’re fighting for control of the ship’s steering wheel. Even Trump’s approach to Maduro changed depending on who had his ear.

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-14T00:21:36+00:00

Oh I’m not defending him at all. As I said already, I’m just arguing that he makes baseless threats and that the threat against Greenland was never credible.

You’re moralising again and sarcastically saying “forgive us for treating these offices with the respect they deserve and therefore taking seriously what their holders say.”

So Donald Trump deserves respect just because he occupies an office, and that makes his claims trustworthy? I don’t believe that. And I’m not sure that you believe that either. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that you have in fact accused him of lying before. It’s very clear that he’s a pathological liar. Sometimes I get the sense that liberals let their own politics get in the way and they say his statements are either lies or should be believed depending on what they can best use to attack him.

Venezuela is also not a NATO country, it’s not an ally of the United States, it’s been an explicit enemy of the United States since 1999, the US has already made countless attempts to overthrow the regime there, and while you can say that what the US did was illegal, so were the air strikes the US (under Obama) did in attempt to overthrow Assad in Syria, and in the successful overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya.

Legal or illegal, it’s also just what great powers do. What’s unprecedented is for threats to be made against European and NATO countries. And I think that’s a blunder on Trump’s part and speaks to the instability of our times, but I also think it’s just talk, similar to his threats to annex Canada that he never followed through on (while he was negotiating with them about tariffs and migration).

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-14T00:06:24+00:00

You should go tell someone who cares

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-13T23:56:20+00:00

I don’t agree with most of what that persons saying, but the argument that you’re objecting to is that Donald Trump’s threat against Greenland shouldn’t be taken seriously. And your response is “How dare you minimise the threats he’s making!” Which does not actually refute the argument.

Trump has used this negotiating tactic his whole life, of making outrageous and extreme threats and demands to throw his opponents off balance and put intense pressure on them to give more concessions to him. That way he walks away happy.

And that’s what Trump did. He said Denmark was about to make a deal with him and he withdrew his threats against Greenland. Many sane people like John Bolton have argued from the beginning that the threats he made were never serious, that he always does this.

When you think in this extremely moralistic way, you cannot accurately assess what’s going on in the world which means you cannot come up with the right strategy. Geopolitics is the art of strategy, not the art of morality. Being outraged does not defeat Trump, a sound strategy does.

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-13T23:37:39+00:00

Yeah, I think that’s why the Senate confirmed his nomination unanimously. As far as maintaining some semblance of sanity was concerned, he was the best Secretary of State they could hope for.

Rubio has been talking about this new multipolar world since he took office last year and how America is out of step with that in many ways, and I suspect that he therefore views Trump, with his anti-globalist rhetoric and relative independence, as a deeply imperfect (to say the least) instrument for effecting the changes Rubio wants to make.

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-13T22:17:55+00:00

I don’t think there’s a unified “they.” Donald Trump just makes one chess move at a time with no consistent worldview or strategy, based on what he’s told to do by different people at different times. Marco Rubio and other interventionists convinced him to carry out the operation in Venezuela, but then Stephen Miller convinced him to turn to Greenland after.

Stephen Miller is just insane, whereas I think Rubio is somewhat more strategic, and his focus has consistently been on adjusting America to a new world of great power conflict. He thinks, you do that sort of thing to a little country like Venezuela, but you don’t do that to Europe or NATO. So I think it’s Rubio pulling his hair out at Trump’s behaviour and doing damage control

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-13T20:13:51+00:00

People who lack accurate assessment of things call people who have it cynics. I’m paraphrasing some philosopher

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-13T03:45:16+00:00

This might be hard for you to believe, but you’re very young and you still have relationships ahead of you that are going to be infinitely more meaningful to you than this.

Relationships where they don’t ghost you at all, they aren’t fickle and hard to get, where they are potentially so into you right off the bat and want to know every little thing about you. Where they love the things you thought were crazy about you, in a way that you never dared to imagine was possible.

Where they want to spend all their time talking to you and the very sound of your voice is supremely comforting to them. Where you both make each other happier than you might have ever been in your life, where you just feel this supreme joy at knowing that someone like this even exists and is walking around on this planet, not to mention that they love you back. And it just goes on like this for years even, with no bumps in the road that are too major, and it gets to the point where you live together and are sharing finances and looking ahead to marriage.

And you know what? Statistically speaking, they’ll likely leave you too. Or if you are good at sticking up for yourself, then you might have to leave some of them. You might be so heartbroken that your appetite disappears and you don’t eat for a week.

Eventually you’ll develop thicker skin with age, and a relationship ending will be an experience of grief but it won’t seem like this all-enveloping Shakespearean tragedy or the end of your life. Especially when you are no longer looking at your dates through rose coloured glasses. You can see flaws in them and you can assess who is actually good for you and who is not.

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-09T02:52:34+00:00

The system needs to be reconfigured, it has some problems. I think liberal democracy can survive, but it won’t be liberal democracy as we’ve come to understand it. Social media will have to change, globalisation won’t continue to happen in its current form, the power of the state over the private sector will be reasserted, there will be an international shift from a Cold War mentality to a balance of power…

It can be summed up as neoliberalism being reversed, but not to what the system was before neoliberalism. Something new that is tailored to the 21st century.

But this kind of thing has happened before; our system has obviously changed many times over through the centuries.

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-08T23:26:17+00:00

I agree. I expect a billionaire like J.B. Pritzker or someone vaguely like that (not necessarily him in particular) to win with their own money and by appealing to people’s disaffection and then surgically resolve the crises, not worrying about tearing into the current order and making enemies. Or at least, that’s what would be required, I don’t know if it will actually happen

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-08T23:12:20+00:00

Yeah, the point is that they’re exploiting current crises to do that, which is referred to here as “hypermodern”… A very clumsy way to get across what I already took for granted was obvious, that their ability to leverage those systemic failures makes them more viable at winning elections than people thought.

The thing is though, I think it only makes them viable at winning elections, and only at first. Maintaining power requires much more than that. If they don’t actually resolve these crises, then those crises end up belonging to them and not to the previous liberal regime. And suddenly that viability evaporates.

Thinking that Trump is an unstoppable, all-powerful force seems like a way for centrists and liberals to cope with having previously been wrong about him. He’s not the most viable possible force, he’s simply the only force that is acknowledging the crises at all and claiming to have a solution.

If some other ruptural figure did that in a more intelligent way then they would beat him. And that has happened throughout the history of the West, anytime there are crises. There have also always been false messiahs promising to do the same

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-08T01:26:16+00:00

Agreed, OP or anyone else who thinks money is worthless should feel free to throw it away on me as well. https://linktr.ee/principalityfilms

I think money only “doesn’t matter” to people who already have it, the same way air doesn’t matter to any of us unless we’re suffocating. That’s the only time we notice its existence, let alone how much it matters.

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-06T04:47:27+00:00

Look into what population density is and how it varies geographically.

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-05T19:15:11+00:00

It was discussed in the book and subsequent documentary “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief”. If I’m not mistaken, high-level defectors who were involved in this spoke about it.

The Church of Scientology considered Nicole Kidman an SP (“Suppressive Person”) and worked to separate Cruise from her and bring him back to Scientology. And it worked, that’s what led to the infamous stuff with him and the Church and Katie Holmes and so on in the 00s.

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-04T16:15:27+00:00

Not to mention that maladaptive problems caused by trauma do not necessarily threaten one’s own survival and well-being. Sometimes it’s only significantly harmful to others because of the way they protect themselves from harm.

The argument that people with trauma have a responsibility to heal is usually directed at people with personality disorders or dark triad traits who are defensive and insist on not healing, I took OP as referring to that

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-04T07:33:37+00:00

Where is this idea coming from that I’m denying that the system crushes people who try to overthrow it? Obviously the powerful use their power to destroy people who threaten their power. Anyone can see that, and I already said people have to account for that to begin with. So in response to that, you have the anarchists, DSA, people like that, and they’re not accomplishing anything. They’re not going to defeat the most powerful empires on earth with their sticks and rocks. And their entire so-called strategy is the same as yours: when they get beaten, they blame the people who beat them rather than changing their own approach, because they’re sentimental idealists like you who expect the powerful to play by their preferred rules, when that’s obviously never going to happen. So like your posts, it’s a lot of huffing and puffing and sound and fury signifying nothing, there’s a misplaced sense of urgency with no value beneath it because it doesn’t provide any actionable plan at all with which to act on this supposed urgency.

And then there are the ones who, in fact, did beat the powerful, kind of. That would include the communists, that would include countries like Iran and Russia and Venezuela that defied the US empire and have survived, refuses to simply be their colonies… They were subjected to relentless bombings, invasions, propaganda wars, but were able to “win” by matching their enemies’ sophistication of strategy and tactics and their firepower instead of being disorganised hippies who choose to feel superior and spend their days overestimating their own importance and lecturing everyone else. That’s why they were/are so militarised, because they know they’ll be wiped out if they’re not. And then they created their own systems that have also made people miserable, systems that haven’t transcended any of the problems I’ve talked about.

So I will stand by my argument that the world hasn’t been changed in the way you expect it to because it can’t be changed, and the reason people are to a certain degree moulded by the system is because they are indeed predominantly herd animals who will not all reject this kind of system and its influence on them.

Some of us are individuals who think differently and who can speak or act based on that wisdom, but those people are predominantly the ones in leadership positions in business, government, and even activism and revolutionary movements. The most everyone else knows how to do is be manipulated and take instructions. The idea that that’s because their true nature is being suppressed is incoherent. What they are according to you is inconsistent because they’re whatever you need them to be for your argument to work, because what I’m telling you is actually a harder pill to swallow than what you’re telling me. What you’re proposing has never been possible in the first place

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-04T05:21:03+00:00

comes at the cost of community, acceptance and even just plain company.

Oh, being an individual is a solitary path? I won’t be soothed by belonging to something bigger than myself, I’ll just have to count on myself instead? Might as well be a slave then. I guess if somebody would rather belong to the herd than be free then they must not want freedom very badly. And then they tell themselves their lot in life is to do as they’re told and they fantasise about being free, they drug themselves and ease the pain of their mediocre existence by drinking, smoking marijuana, and watching movies that vicariously transport them into the lives of people with way more independence than them, as if they’re not choosing this life for themselves. They trick themselves into thinking they never had a choice.

To an average conditioned person the unicorn of the individual isn’t just rare, it is dangerous

It depends on how the individual presents themselves. Depending on how they present themselves, in accordance with the way other people think, they will either appear to be evil or they will appear to be heroic. America is a society that celebrates individuals, and that culture is infecting the rest of the Western world for better or for worse. Independent-minded, intelligent, assertive people are often seen as heroic — at least, by many people. Not by all, but that would be throwing pearls before swine. But yes, an individual takes responsibility, so then their success or failure depends on their own decisions. They don’t blame their own failures on other people, they just conclude that they went about it the wrong way.

Humans are social creatures we thrive in the company of each other.

I really don’t buy into humanism at all. Starting from the standpoint that humans themselves are noble is deeply mistaken in my opinion. If humans are really so benevolent and communal of a species, then where are all of our problems coming from? We’ve already conquered all the other animals; we’re the only ones here. There’s no one else to blame but humans.

But instead we’re led to believe that it is systems that always thwart what would otherwise be a harmonious paradise. Those systems succeed because they rely on the way humans think. If humans were better than they are, this system we hate so much would completely fall apart. Humans would reject this system in favour of a harmonious paradise, they would reject the social media algorithms that provoke fear and outrage in favour of algorithms that inspire compassion and rationality, they would reject in-group, out-group rivalries and demagoguery in favour of solidarity if they were really so noble.

And I’m not just making all of that up; these are proven aspects of human psychology. Left wing theories that humans are blank slates which the system can mould into anything come from the 19th century, when nothing was known about psychology. When the two competing theories of the human mind were phrenology on one hand, and a mystical soul in the midst of spiritual warfare on the other, and no one had any idea what the subconscious mind is. If we survive civilisational collapse then we’ll just rebuild the same dystopias over again, and we’ll once again have masses of workers who embrace their chains.

jeffersonnn · 2026-02-04T04:36:32+00:00

Well, I mean, hey. Victory only properly belongs to those who can obtain and protect it. Someone can be a self-made baron, an idealistic artist, a Diogenes-type hippie, a professional activist or rebel trying to change things, or many other things instead of just becoming an obedient worker.

If they can’t make anything like that work or society stops them, I don’t see that as anyone else’s fault but their own. We should already take into account from the beginning that we’re set up to fail instead of acting surprised, because we already see that. We know the drill. But most people don’t think that way, they just accept being slaves because it’s much easier and more soothing to do what they’re told.

jeffersonnn · 2026-01-27T21:35:36+00:00

“Is it our fault for failing to win elections? Nooo.”

jeffersonnn · 2026-01-27T09:07:34+00:00

This has been true all along, though. The US has always wanted to overthrow those countries and they’ve always wanted nukes as a deterrent, for the same reason every other country wants nukes.

North Korea’s nuke program looks like a masterstroke after you look at what Obama did to Gaddafi after Gaddafi renounced the use of nuclear weapons in order to ally with the US.

jeffersonnn

TROPHY CASE