Scroll down to read this post.

 

My February birthday fund-raising campaign for this website, Behind the Black, is now over. Despite a relatively weak initial three weeks, the last week was spectacular, making this campaign the second best ever.

 

Thanks to every person who donated or subscribed. It continues to astonish me that people who can read my work for free like it enough to donate money voluntarily. Words cannot express my appreciation for that support, especially in these uncertain times.

 

If you have been a regular reader and a fan of my work and have not yet donated or subscribed, please consider doing so. I take no ads, I keep the website clean from pop-ups and annoying demands (most of the time). Thus, I depend entirely on my readers to support me. Though this means I am sacrificing some income, it also means that I remain entirely independent from outside pressure. By depending solely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, no one can threaten me with censorship. You don't like what I write, you can simply go elsewhere.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
 

3. A Paypal Donation:

4. A Paypal subscription:


5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652


How To Know You’re In a Mass Hysteria Bubble

Link here. Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, provides a very cogent analysis of the insanity of the liberal Democratic mindset today. His description of the event that triggered this hysteria is right on the money

On November 8th of 2016, half the country learned that everything they believed to be both true and obvious turned out to be wrong. The people who thought Trump had no chance of winning were under the impression they were smart people who understood their country, and politics, and how things work in general. When Trump won, they learned they were wrong. They were so very wrong that they reflexively (because this is how all brains work) rewrote the scripts they were seeing in their minds until it all made sense again. The wrong-about-everything crowd decided that the only way their world made sense, with their egos intact, is that either the Russians helped Trump win or there are far more racists in the country than they imagined, and he is their king. Those were the seeds of the two mass hysterias we witness today.

Trump supporters experienced no trigger event for cognitive dissonance when Trump won. Their worldview was confirmed by observed events.

.

Read it all to find out if you are in the bubble or not.

Posted north of Phoenix.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

10 comments

  • wayne

    Good stuff!

    “The 75 Bubbliest Zip-Codes in America”
    http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/top_bubbliest.png

    Total tangent–
    How much is gasoline in Arizona?
    (hovering at $2.309 in west Michigan.)

  • wayne

    an FYI–

    Live stream from Boston, courtesy of right side broadcasting network.
    https://youtu.be/fTxRr-UtVU8

  • Wayne: Tucson has some of the lowest gas prices in the U.S. In recent months I have routinely paid about $2 per gallon.

  • wayne

    Mr. Z.– thank you. (On the upside, we’ve had a dairy price-war going on for some time, gallon of Milk is $1.78, any variety.)

    Glenn Beck-
    “History of Segregation from 1866-1965.”
    Part 1of 4. (08-20-10)
    https://youtu.be/CJ2gNT2HN_8
    (9:59)

  • Chris

    Scott Adams continues his daily insightful surveillance into both every technology office in America, and it seems into the Democraitc Left – these are the same people on the Left and Right coasts of America. He was ALWAYS on topic and correct in his observations of the management (especially mid to upper) practices in the companies I worked for. Now it seems his cameras are also trained on political headquarters as well.
    With such power as to see all this goings on, he could easily take over the world. I am glad he is a benevolent cartoon writer.

  • wayne

    Chris-
    Good stuff!

    Highly recommend:
    “Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel,”
    Scott Adams 2002.

    “The chief premise of the book is that everyday actions of humanity are neither consistently honest nor criminal, but rather Weasel. He dissects the aspects of weasel behavior and explores its benefits and ramifications, sometimes referring to his own life experiences. The book is divided up into many sections and chapters which show different types of weasels, how to be a weasel, weasel-words, and methods for countering the weasels you may encounter in everyday life.”

  • Edward

    Speaking of mass hysteria, I find it odd that conservatives and Republicans disavow the violent actions of AntiFA (Anti First Amendment), but there are Democrats embracing them, comparing AntiFa’s morality with those of the soldiers of the Normandy D-Day invasion.
    http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/16/major-figures-work-to-mainstream-violent-antifa-protesters/
    Journalists and major liberal news outlets have compared violent American flag-burning protesters to soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy — all while downplaying the leftists’ violence.

    This comparison comes despite “The protesters, known as antifa (short for anti-fascist), often advocate for communism and have been deemed a domestic terrorist movement by New Jersey. Persons associated with the movement have previously stabbed a police horse and beat people with bike locks.” Does any of that sound like the D-Day troops? Such a comparison matches Scott Adams’s second sign of mass hysteria.

    Another sign that AntiFA supporters are in a mass hysteria bubble is that AntiFA seems to believe that fascism is when corporations have control over government. The opposite has been the case in all examples of fascism that I know about, and by definition fascism controls the corporations through overregulation. A democracy, on the other hand, is when those who are governed are in control of how they are governed — government does as We the People desire, even when some of the people are owners of companies. AntiFA has redefined fascism in order to correspond with what they are against; this is Adams’s third sign of mass hysteria.

  • Edward

    Here’s an irony: Antifa marched on Atlanta Georgia destroying in their path all that they didn’t like. This scorched earth policy sounds much like Sherman’s March.

    http://www.dailywire.com/news/19861/oops-antifa-protesters-vandalized-peace-monument-emily-zanotti#exit-modal

    From the article: “Unfortunately for Antifa, who were clearly to busy opposing fascism to read a plaque at the base of the monument (which is printed with the words, “Cease firing, peace is priceless,”) or do any basic Google research, what they thought was a pro-Confederate memorial turned out to be a monument to peace.

    Perhaps we overestimate Antifa intelligence or reading proficiency.

    This action seems to meet Adams’s signs 3, 4, and 5 of how to recognize a mass hysteria bubble.

    Sign 3: The Confirmation Bias. They saw a statue, and assumed it to be pro-Confederate.
    Sign 4: The Oversized Reaction. They took into their own hands the extreme solution that they assumed was correct.
    Sign 5: The Insult without supporting argument. The supposedly correct solution was to hide historical facts from posterity.

    The only reason that Antifa thinks that it is against fascism is that they learned some history. The reason that they are mistaken about what constitutes fascism is that they learned the wrong history — they missed the true history that others had hiden from them. Fascism — and Antifa — believe in the silencing of opposing opinions and in the creation of peace through violence (isn’t this analogous to creation of virginity through rape?).

    Antifa seems to have forgotten that it is the left wingers (in America: the Democrats) who have been the racists and pro-fascists.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wz_0utCrm0 (13 minutes, Bill Whittle: “Democrats’ Horrible Racist Past”)
    What most people don’t realize about the election of Abraham Lincoln was that the seven states of the deep Confederacy had left the Union before Lincoln even took office. … That’s because the slave-holding racist Democratic states and politicians that had just left the Union to form the Confederacy knew that the election of a Republican president meant the end of slavery in America.

    When racism became a disreputable tactic, the Democrats (LBJ) switched tactics to a subtler form of racism. Presenting the concept of reparations, Democrats made the idea of receiving welfare seem desirable.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weqQR-NnnIs (11 minutes, Bill Whittle: “The Most Shameful Injustice”)
    The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn’t do, what Jim Crow couldn’t do, what the harshest racism couldn’t do, and that is to destroy the black family.” Walter E. Williams.

    The attack stopped being head on and now is a sideways, flanking attack. Right down to minorities, themselves, demanding segregation. The Democrats don’t have to take the heat for that, anymore, because they convinced their victims to demand it for themselves. The victims have become their own oppressors, and the best part (for LBJ and his party) is that right wingers, not left wingers or Democrats, get the blame for all the world’s ills.

    The next thing that we know, Antifa will assume that fascism is a right wing concept, rather than a socialist concept, and attack those whom they assume to be right wingers. Oh, wait … That is what happened in Charlottesville. And Berkeley. And all of Antifa’s other victims of silence by violence.

  • Cotour

    Related: I had several people to dinner tonight and of course the subject of the taking down of statues of Robert E. Lee was eventually gotten to. I happen to have a Robert E. Lee whiskey bottle up on one of my shelf and that set it off (Who knew I had a Robert E. Lee whiskey bottle?). All of them Democrats, one was a musician, which means that he is very “compassionate”. By compassionate I mean compassionately confused.

    The specific subjects came up: Did Robert E. Lee own slaves? And, what was his position on slavery? I looked into it and prepared an email to rectify what most do not know about the subject. My friends wife who is a social studies teacher left in a huff when I suggested that Lee did not technically own slaves and that he did not support slavery. I then suggested that if the Left was acquiesced to that they would never stop until they were able to destroy the Constitution itself of course because the Constitution was written by rich, white slave owners. I was confronted with “Where did you get that, Breitbart? No, actually it is what I plainly perceive by what they say and do.

    The Lee truth is very interesting and I thought it would help better understand the history, what the Left’s agenda is is plain to me, but not everyone agrees with me.
    ——–

    Robert E. Lee, December, 1856: http://www.civilwarhome.com/leepierce.html

    Robert E. Lee on slavery: “There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former.”

    JGL: Did Lee believe in slavery? Lee in his writings appears to plainly reject slavery. But reading on he does not seem in a hurry to accomplish the slaves emancipation and seems to be relying more on Gods will than mans actions. A man of his times that was immersed in something that he despised? His personal opinion about slavery is clear by what he wrote, his actions as a husband that ran his wife’s estate in the 1850’s indicates that he ran and managed slaves. A bit of a paradox, he loved his wife, he loved Virginia he rejected slavery but there he found himself.

    Robert E. Lee “owning” slaves, executor of his wife’s estate: https://www.nps.gov/arho/learn/historyculture/robert-lee.htm

    “Though Arlington House never belonged to Lee (it belonged to his wife), he was the effective master of Arlington after 1857. ”

    JGL: While technically he did not own the slaves of the estate he was married to his wife and he did run the operation. He appears to be personally firmly against slavery but finds himself the master of 200 slaves by marriage. Would he have had to have purchased the slaves himself or inherited them from his own family to be technically a slave “owner”? When he looked out the window there they were. Arlington, where he lived and raised his family certainly did have slaves.

    My original point before everything blew up was simple, that there is a danger that all statuary and symbols that represent our history and honor who ever will have to be taken down if this political logic is accepted by the majority of the population. From Confederate Generals, to Italian sailors, to internment presidents, right down to the founders who wrote our Constitution. When you follow this logic, this political logic, and no mistake about it this is a political strategy, and that is exactly where you will find yourself. Political correctness and social justice, tools of manipulation of the Left if bought into will kill us all for sure.

    I hope every one enjoyed their dinner :)

  • Cotour

    INSANE RELATED: COUNTER INTUITIVE OR BY DESIGN?

    Democrat presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris apparently are open to the discussion and support people like the surviving Boston Marathon bomber being able to vote from his prison cell. The mass murderer bomber that killed a child and two others and maimed many others. This is who and what these people are willing to talk about. Seriously.

    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/apr/22/kamala-harris-open-bernie-sanders-boston-marathon-/

    And Democrats and the MSM are apparently unwilling to name the victims of the Sri Lanka bombing as Christians.

    This continuing seemingly counter intuitive insanity that the Democrat leadership is attempting to perpetrate on the people of America is very transparent to rationally thinking people. Everything that several Democrat candidates are apparently willing to talk about is based in outrageous and anti American values, and that is not by mistake.

    Barack Obama famously stated that he was interested in “Fundamental change”, and his statement is directly connected to the likes of Saul Alynski and his rules for radicals. In order to build what you believe must be you first must raze what exists that stops you from building it. And the only hope that the Democrats have to once again attain power in government is to do just that.

    No rational and minimally objective American upon hearing these Democrat leaders and destroyers of America as formulated agree with them. Their extreme rhetoric is designed to pander to a segment of America that they believe will give them what they want, and that segment apparently are prisoners, murderers and people in the country illegally and the “poor” people of color in America.

    Why will they not be successful in the next presidential elections? Because many of the Democrat leaders in America today running for president are un American and anti American and the good people of America can not and will not support them. Plain and simple.

    And any Democrat reading this message knows that they agree entirely with me.

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.

 

Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *