Escaping The Cave

#80 - The Stalker Militia, A Hydroxy Hardon, Woke Youth

So, about that silly "in this together" thing... Topics include Trump's bizarre and supernatural hydroxychloroquine erection, quarantine and consumerist withdrawal, free-rage extremism and Michigan's armed stalkers closing the capitol, ideological bleed-over, identity politics infecting the virus, humble ignorance, a COVID-exploiting Woke Youth Recruitment video seizing the national airwaves, and what happens when I go off my gated social media reservation and why it's becoming nearly essential to completely disconnect. 

More: www.escapingthecave.com

#79 - Stories, Hope, and The Propaganda Paradox

Adventures in leaving the house after 5-weeks, a quick review of the crappy Vaporesso Target PM-80, populism and the supposed "wisdom" of the bewildered herd, belief and truth are mutually exclusive, atheists: leave the non-phallus swinging faithful alone, the crucial crusading distinction between religious & ideological zealots, and why the simple human need for hope probably makes us powerless against tasty propaganda.  

 

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#78 - Social Media Disease: A Cacophony of Nothing

Todd's merciful Bat Plague boycott continues with more spiritually uplifting content like: "F**k Subaru. I hate them and you should, too." Also, 2020's Jill Stein; Steinbeck, Salinas, and digital detox; social media "should" be regulated like radio; data overload is killing democracy; the Wisdom of the People™ doesn't exist therefore populism is pandering to a screeching herd; and rejoice! The Devil's all up in ya! Can you feel him?    

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#77 - The Blacklands Abyss

Taking an improvised break from Bat Plague punditry by focusing on more "uplifting" material like cancerous cynicism! Also, a few old hitchhiking yarns and the metaphysical notion of trail magic, losing your religion, the God/Devil parable, and ignoring the positive side of universal human duality. Just for optimistic kicks, I also muse about my podcast's course and its ultimate futility. A warm and fuzzy episode? Believe it or not, kinda. And, no Covid! You're welcome.

 

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 [CEP2]

#76 - Hot Pockets & Lysol

"Idiocracy 2: The Pandemic" continues. Todd discusses how the coronavirus hype has matched the reality, his digital detox, covid's ominous sign for star spangled socialist "revolutionaries", hot pockets, and how one quarantine doesn't fit all. He also asks where the Lansing protest's ideological diversity was (not what you think) and rages against Trump supporters and the intellectual treason of joining his limp and lame post hoc orgy. Children's parties: booked thru May! Book June's bat mitzvah or graduation party now! Promo code: "Brawndo" gets you 50% off! Clip: Jim Gaffigan.

 

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#75 - Seekers, Preachers, The Covid Reality Wars

Toddzilla delivers his overdue Message of Hope™ featuring topics like strutting stupidity, social media's performance addiction, Hobbes' inevitable civil war, the need for propaganda, and releasing our infected cattle back into the bewildered herd. Book your children's party now! Use promo code "Leviathan Rising" to get 50% off!

 

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#74 - Detroit, Intellectual Distancing, The Glowing Antichrist

Can Detroit and rural Michigan bear what they say is coming? Social distancing as an apt metaphor and how it can be useful. A crisis instinctively prods a frightened herd into a closed-tribe psychology, which is nationalism. How data overload contributes to it and helps obliterate the utopian Brotherhood of Man mythology. Why many quietly want Trump to fail, whether they admit it or not.

 

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#71- The Primaries: Noise Makers vs. The Majority

The Sober Majority and why Biden's resurrection and surge should surprise no one. Bernie's "revolution" was always fueled by Clinton disgust and a foolish dependency on a Youthquake fantasy. Mike Pence is a Biden asset, Jill the Vulture is back, and embrace Biden: he's far from certain but all you've got; the only thing that "can" work. Also, a 2024 wokeflake warning. 

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#70 - COVID Media: Crying Blitzer, Aftertruth & The Religious Mind

COVID-19: the media sounds like the Weather Channel sensationalizing a hurricane. They'd better get it right or the Aftertruth Age fully arrives. "There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies." Why doesn't matter.

 

Also:

-Competing incompatible "realities"

-Personalized Informational Warfare

-Informational becoming literal anarchy.

 

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#67 - Propaganda, Trust, Coronavirus, and You

How will the for-profit boutique/reality show/agitation news media model affect how we respond to the virus? Have a drink. Make sure it's not bleach. Includes a quick introduction to Matt Taibbi's book Hate Inc. and material from Your Undivided Attention on the reality apathy and the abandonment of trust in public institutions and each other. 

Listen to Your Undivided Attention here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/

 

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#63- "Vladdy Loves Bernie?" Or "It's The Destabilization, Dummy!"

Of course Putin's playing both sides and assisting Bernie in the Democratic primary. It's about agitation, discord, and eroding the public's already fractured belief it itself, not ideology. This is the perfect insurgent agitation storm: who in this country are more divisive than Bernie, AOC, and Trump? The Russians aren't to blame. We are. Also, why Informational Education programs aren't coming, the simple and cynical reason our for-profit media outlets and political "leadership" won't help us immunize ourselves from foreign propaganda, and Walter Lippmann on free speech and why Facebook must eventually take the fall for our unwillingness to tell truth from falsehood. Includes a quick refresher on 2016's multi-pronged disinformation/partitioning campaign as well as a recap on Jacques Ellul's agitation propaganda material regarding the unleashing of hatred. Introducing: The Rant Alert!  

Listen to "Your Undivided Attention" here: https://humanetech.com/podcast/

 

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#61 - Unimpressed Sobriety & Sanity’s Touchstone

Toddzilla's latest Message of Hope formally introduces the loyal listener to Mr. Lippmann: a Man of the People! Touched on are Lippmann's "The Phantom Public", his iconoclastic thoughts on technologically pre-historic data overload, emotional detachment, objective reality, the presumed wisdom of We the People™, and democracy's fate. Have a drink first. Also, institutions and trust are dead, less-not-more is the answer, a defense of the "elites", a need for collective humility, and generalists vs. specialists. 

 

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#59 - Conformist Suicide

"Imitation is suicide." How independent thought gets smothered in infancy, the need to belong: why standing apart from the impaired herd is not only hard, it runs against our social and evolutionary grain. Also, collective and self-delusions protecting us from unpleasant discoveries that might destroy our notions of being special, divine, or even "good."  

ALSO: 

-Tending to personal and commercial attachments

-How political and marketing swine manipulate attachments via identity

-Meditation and Buddhist philosophy as tools to disconnect

-Blank Slatists: Beware

-Emerson's Self-Reliance: read it. 

-Subscribe on any podcatcher that doesn't suck.

www.escapingthecave.com and www.christophermedia.net

#58 - Independent Thought vs. The Need to Belong

The next great war: intellectual autonomy. The bold certainty of the herd, the challenges of independent thought and why seeing someone who is genuinely their own Man is so rare, the media has supplanted the church, disengaging from the ideological Holy War in favor of political atheism, and Toddzilla's Paradox: the conflict between intellectual independence and the desperate human need to belong. Still available for children's parties! Now doing bat mitzvahs!

ALSO:

• A quick impeachment fart
• You want an authoritarian
• Political Vampires
• Algorithms, Lippmann, Bernays, and You
• Silver Spoons: A Hate Crime
• The filthy Centrus Americanus
• Friendship: Loyalty & Support vs. Honesty
• Nothing can be done about climate change
• Data Overload revisited 

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#54 - Apocalypto and The Red Star of Moscow

Happy 2020! Are we ready? After a 2-month hiatus spent illegally hunting rhinoceros and snipe in the wilds of the West Michigan wilderness, Todd welcomes the 20's with a quick episode discussing apocalyptic thinking, the coming electoral season, where to find balanced news coverage, and the rarely-used technique of actually listening to "opposition" media simply to understand where they're coming from. Eureka! 

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#52 - Presidential Anarchy, Goebbels & Advertising, A Prayer

Trump's not actually retarded, is he? Pray with me, won't you? 

Also: 

• Quitting smoking: it sucks
• Nicholas Carr and the "influencer"
• Goebbels ❤️'s Bernays
• My poor defenseless podcast is attacked by a zombie
• Happy Halloween?
• Fu*k Twitter

 

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#51 - Pinching The Impeachment Loaf

Are you stuck trying to build a well-reasoned, impartial, and detached impeachment snowman from competing piles of steaming cable news shit? Yeah. Me too. The only lens that works: the wide-angle agitation propaganda lens. First, a virtual colon cleanse in the form of a micro-pod. 

ALSO: 

• Fcuk Twitter
• Twice
• Hard

 

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#50 - Agitational Dysfunction & Revolutionary Hatred

An introduction to LeBon, his ideas on mobs, and The Psychology of Revolution--specifically: hatred. The forthcoming electoral reality show, 2020's prepared script, how the spinoffs will be cast, and what happens when our Matrix Avatar Superheroes stumble into the Desert of the Real.

ALSO: 

• Unrealistic expectations inside the steaming pile of Twitter
• Was it your childhood dream to be Saul Goodman?
• More on pseudo-environments and internal narratives
• Fcuk Twitter. (Not a big part of the episode. Just felt like saying it.)

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#49 - Propaganda Blindspots & The Constituent Mob

Institutions fail and democracy descends into mob rule when representative are paralyzed and terrorized by fear of their voters. Trump, Ukraine, and 2020's year-long electoral reality show disguised as an idealistic impeachment. Informational sectarianism and how it's easy to see "their" propaganda. Yours? Never! Their demagogue is your savior. There may be a way for a detaching informational unicorn treat that. MSNBC, CNN, and FOX are Pepsi, Coke, and Dr. Pepper; when everything is spin and propaganda, who's a political infidel supposed to believe?

 Also: 

• Alternate Informational Universes 
• Half-assed media sophistication: not enough
• Why can't we watch the opposition's media without going nuts?
• Our dueling scandals aren't automatically mutually exclusive
• More on the the Current Events Man 
• Media isn't free. You are the product being sold. 

 

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* F**k Twitter 

 

#48 - The Internal Narrative Trojan Horse

"The fiction is taken as truth because the fiction is badly needed." A quick introduction to Walter Lippmann and the commonality between him, Ellul, Bernays, Haidt, and Harari. People can't personally perceive the world beyond their own sliver of firsthand experience. Therefore, the Current Events Man is beholden, dependent upon, and therefore exploited by the propagandist and his digital distortions. If democracy is demands an "enlightened citizenry", it's likely doomed from the start. Paradoxically, there's a stab at some hope in here too. Weird. 

ALSO:

• Te Nosce, bitches 
• Competing Scandals; Competing Networks; Competing Narratives 
• Smoking, Facebook, and associative dopamine addiction.    
• The Matrix and the Internet
• The responsibility and danger of exposing "their" delusion
• All Cats Meow
• Why we believe the ridiculous
• Finding hope in human imperfection
• More on likability and art
• The Hobgoblin  
• Where the hell is Jill Stein? #NeverForget

 

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#46 - Newton's Third Law of Totalitarian Messiahs

Agitation propaganda doing its work, speechcrime taking root in the form of virtual media mobs enforcing cancel culture and its point-of-view authoritarianism, the Wokeflake Messiah will arrive soon, Newton's Third Law of Extremism, slave's spirituals and frightened children scrambling to the ideological church to be soothed by visions of a future Heaven on Earth.

ALSO: 

• Toxic Compromise
• The Election Won't Matter
• At all.
• Wokeflakes Becoming Trump
• We The Authoritarian People

*The Propaganda and Social Media Disease theme resumes soon. It's a good time to catch up on what you may have missed.*

 

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#44 - Propaganda: Agitating the Inner Ape

Agitation and Integration: two often closely related but very different types of propagandas: one used to provoke internal conflict the other to shape members of a population into a mold. Agitation: The propaganda of insurgency and revolution. Includes how internal enemies are used as scapegoats to manufacture then exploit hatreds as means to an insurgent's end, Mao's view on "the enemy residing in every man" and fitting him into the "Socialist Mold", Hitler's internal agitation, spontaneous volunteer propagandists, and how facts and "truth" are irrelevant to the person burning with primal hatred. 

ALSO: 

• Agitation propaganda during the American Revolution 
• Triggering revolution by provoking hate? It's easy!
• Exploiting hatred and the path to genocide
• Hatred: small investment, high return
• Agitation and Integration can be used simultaneously
• Utopia is totalitarian
• Intellectuals: More susceptible to integration propaganda than dolts
• Intellectuals and self-bigotry
• "Can I hate you?"
• Justification, rationalization and stampeding enraged elephants
• Agitation to Integration: extremely difficult
• Successful Agitation + Failed Integration = Mob Rule
• Winter Is Here
• Yep. It's a doozy. 

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

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#42 - Propaganda: Contradictions, Agitation Media, Typhoid Mark

Propaganda's ambiguity and contradictions including: creating tensions while relieving others, the Outrage Media Complex and introduction to the companion propagandas: agitation and integration and how they overlap; self-justification and imposed guilt; attachment and ostracizing oneself to join the "enemy; politicization and privatization; "Why die for Danzig?' and how political orphans benefit extremists and authoritarians.

ALSO:

• Andrew Sullivan on the boomerang
• Post-Truth hatred and division: a bigger threat than climate change
• Don't blame the bartender for getting you drunk
• Twitter, Facebook, and Typhoid Mary
• Atomic Ping Pong
• Our personal broadcast stations
• The Russia investigation saved the Democrats
• Setting up your triage tent
• Forget the mob; save yourself
• Information or Propaganda? Can you tell? Does it even matter?
• The Matrix & Propaganda

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

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#41 - Propaganda: Drunks In Denial

On Ellul's "The Need For Propaganda." We've both developed a tolerance for and a psychological dependency on propaganda's certainty-stoking, justifying, and and self-worth generating narratives, social media is a propagandist's dream, desensitization and an increasing desire for the excitement felt from being immersed in the constant, and necessary stream of propaganda, how our addiction has allowed both traditional media and social media "influencers" to monetize the Outrage Industrial Complex, our role as retained ideological attorneys, and wishful thinking (and possibly disastrous effects) of suddenly eliminating 320-million people's propaganda narratives. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Grab a sammich for this one. And maybe a stiff drink. Hey! I never said this would be easy! 

 

ALSO: 

• This is a triage situation; not a search for the "cure"
• Disinformation bit me again!
• Why we won't quit the informational drug
• A possible path to empathy
• The culture war is a War of Narratives
• Chosen perspective becomes "personal truth"
• Provoking shame as a "debate" tool: a boomerang
• Social media "influencers": personal brands hocking a product while posing as "journalists"
• The IDW: agitation propaganda

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

 

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#40 - Propaganda: Righteousness & Simplicity

The Propaganda opus resumes with Ellul's take on psychic "dissociation". Includes more on wordknapping, how righteous and simplistic propaganda narratives silence the self and numb natural cognitive dissonance, replacing reality with the electronic eyes of the "verbal universe", the effects of disconnecting a person's personal opinion in favor of an acceptable "public" opinion, and how opposing propagandas affect the target.

ALSO:

• Democratic Socialists: as ridiculous during Occupy as at their "convention"
• Aligned, Premeditated, and Secret Consciences: Individuality and Haidt's Elephant
• Disconnecting thought & action  
• Opposing propagandas: political abstention or fanaticism?
• The IDW: Agitation Propaganda
• Data Overload and the Defective Human Mind
• Your congenial host and the Ideological Riptide
• No one's immune. Not even you.

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

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#39 - Wanted: Wokeflake Demagogue, Dignity And The Useful Idiot, Tyrannizing The Vanquished

Todd, Chris and Rich discuss the Dayton shooter's leftist leanings being swept aside, poking the Crackerbear and how a real conflict between Woke Island and Trumptown might resemble an episode of "Lambs to the Wolves", Los Tíos Tom Blancos and their own dignity, informational chum agitating swarming ideological sharks, how suppressing a defeated ideological Holy War enemy might look in the 21st century, and we revisit "reparations" just to, you know, lighten things up. (Send the bill to Boris!) The Propaganda opus continues next time.

ALSO:

• Chris & Rich educate Todd on "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo"
• The PMRC and the new Left
• Corey Booker's "community"
• The Dragon, Kraken, and your own self-interest
• The absurdity of expecting a Matriarchal Utopia

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#38 - Informational Anarchy & Deadly Insignificance

After more shootings, Chris & Rich rejoin the show to discuss our "news" (propaganda) consumption, and the predictably tribal response. We're malleable psychological adolescents and clearly unprepared for this informational responsibility. Also, the same recycled arguments with a few new propaganda twists, did you know the Dayton killer was a self-proclaimed Leftist? Is it coincidence that most "news" coverage is in El Paso? Remote rhetorical assaults and the usefulness of "physical accountability": smacking bullies in the snout.

ALSO: 

• "Can I believe this" vs "Must I believe this"
• Snorting pacifists: lambs to the wolves
• Arya Stark: she was fiction. 
• "Educated Intellectuals" aren't immune to propaganda; maybe more vulnerable  

 

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#37 - Propaganda: Intellectual Autonomy & Banishing Fabricants

How propaganda acts as an informational virus to destroy critical thought and alienate the person from himself. More on data overload, the uninformed Current Events Man knowing a little about everything and a lot about nothing, mistaking feelings for thought, having to accept or reject an entire doctrine in total, losing intellectual autonomy, and how artificial tensions are often accompanied by dubious solutions. 

ALSO:

• Artificial solutions to real needs
• Real solutions to artificial needs
• "Influencers", their product, and their Patreon
• The Tribal Dance of Rhetorical Fuckery
• We're a species of sleazy lawyers and pathological liars
• Self-stereotyping caricatures
• It's fine to generalize then exile sectarian fabricants

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747

 

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#36 - Propaganda: Slogans, Rationalizations, The Religious Mind

The conclusion of Ellul's "Psychological Crystallization" featuring the makeup of its slogans & how they're used to replace thought. Also, collective belief and obsessions, self-justification/rationalizations and how they spawn the self-righteous Puritan, the closing of the crystallized mind, propaganda's religious personality, and the bizarre media phenomenon: monetizing your mind rape. 

ALSO:

- Marianne Williamson: The New Trump?

- Introducing the father of American propaganda: Edward Bernays

- They know you better than you know yourself   

- Propaganda's side-effects and how they mirror the '60's definition of "neurosis"

 

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747


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#35 - Propaganda: Inseminating Zealots & Vicarious Atonement

Begins with a takedown of "white privilege", self-flagellation vs. self-interest, and the asinine/futile demands of our Social Vengeance Warriors; beware the boomerang, Moonbeam. From there, I move on to Ellul's dissection of how propaganda hijacks the political cultist's mind. The first of two parts, this episode focusses on the distinction between doctrine and critical thought, unnaturally homogenous thought, codifying social, political, and moral standards, exploiting latent pre-existing prejudices, and the power of implanted stereotypes & symbols used as triggering mechanisms. The elephant is strong in this one!  

 

Jacques Ellul's "Propaganda": https://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Formation-Attitudes-Jacques-Ellul/dp/0394718747


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