Dear Ed,
Again, thanks for alerting me to Umair's new essay on COVID Depression."
I must say that I confront a moral quandary sharing such bad news with people.
But there is a mechanism "in play" which, I think, makes it necessary to entone "Cassandra's Lament."
The mechanism is "kin to" (or at least "analogous to") Hitler's description of "The Big Lie."
Just make the lie big enough, and most people will not be able to believe that ANYONE could be THAT brazenly mendacious.
Why not?
Because most people are simply too "normal" to believe that another human being could be so grotesquely abnormal.
Here's the rub...
It is also true that if you tell people Big Truths, most people will not be able to believe them either because most people are grounded in "Good German" "normalcy," a kind of mundane normality which they MUST believe will persist-and-endure because their philosophical pre-
Incrementalism is "just the way things are."
The Chicxulub meteor Will Never Strike... even though it already has. https://www.
It is simply too much -- too onerous a burden -- for most "normal" people to entertain the prospect that the fundaments and foundation of the world are about to collapse.
Nor am I immune.
For the better part of a week, I have been working -- or trying to work despite my reluctance -- on an essay titled "The Death Of Epistemology: An Update."
In this "Update," I probe (and enumerate) the psycho-spiritual elements (both "propagated" and "received") that initially encourage people to "believe any damn thing," and then -- as witnessed in QAnon -- "the most stupefacted" reinterpret their stupefaction-as-enlightenment, and once they become THAT crazy, they zealously redefine their lunacy as the ONLY sanity.
Immediately thereafter, "the utterly benighted" conceive themselves as neo-gnostic cognoscenti, the only possessors of "the one, true Gnosis," knowledge so recondite that it is only accessible to initiates.
QAnon Thinks Donald Trump Is God And Tom Hanks Is The Devil... And Oprah Is Part Of A Vast Hollywood Conspiracy That Kills - And Eats - Children. (I Am Not Kidding)
QAnon Is Nucking Futs: A Clearing House For Crazy People (Which Continually Tells Them THEY Are The Sane Ones)
"Trolls And The End Of Civilization As We Knew It"
Daniel Webster Prompts A Review Of Conspiracism And Its Destructive Role In American Politics
Reprise: Orwell: A Brief, Image-Rich Introduction To A Prophetic Genius
Aldous Huxley Describes "The Perfect Dictatorship" (But Don't Worry... It Couldn't Happen Here.)
"There Is Neither Nobility, Nor Kindness Nor Uplift In Trump's America"
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 11:39 AM Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Ed,
Thanks for your COVID emails and for this new essay by Umair.I'm working on a post and will send it when done.Paz contigo,
Alan
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 12:09 AM Ed Myer <remyer20002000@yahoo.com> wrote:
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