As IF Times

link:  https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c8nq32jw5r5t/afghanistan

As this is being written, the tragedy which is US policy in Afghanistan is unfolding on the news.  Over the next few weeks to a year, we’ll likely see more of the dire consequences of the failure, much of it now still unknown.  With as much money, manpower and political and industrial capital that has been focused on that nation for almost 20 years, some very bad actors are going to be exposed.

Here’s another view of it.  The US tried to impose their way on an ancient, proud and stubborn people who refused to back down even in the face of laughable odds. Compared to the armaments and personnel that the Americans had at their disposal, the Taliban may as well have been throwing rocks and spears.  A primitive people with primitive values prevailed over a much better equipped opponent…even if it did take 20 years.  They did the same thing to the Russians. The Taliban take fighting for their culture seriously.

Let’s be clear.  The results were never about weapons.  It was about will and vision. The Taliban, as savage as they are, have it; the Americans do not and their efforts have clearly been mismanaged by inept leadership.  Soldiers can only do so much if strategy and tactics are lacking. The Taliban, through an entire generation, were able to impress their people with a vison of their lives that would not be swayed.  Not even the relentless pounding of superior weaponry could move them.

Compare that to what we observe today inside the US and in fact, most western nations.  The most sacred core value of freedom in all aspects of life has been surrendered by the populace with nary a whimper.  Even a primitive people like the Taliban will fight to the death, for generations, to preserve what they consider to be their rightful way of life.  Here in America, as well as most western nations, that very basic core of existence has been taken away from people by their governments…and it was done without any existential threat…other than fines.

Many will tsk tsk the impending takeover of the Afghan nation by the stone-age savages who will enforce strict rules of behavior and decorum upon those ruled. They will stifle dissent and oppress women and minorities.  The word of the theocracy will be ironclad law.  Life will revert pretty much back to how it was during the good old days of 12 BC. All color will be forbidden from their society.  Never mind the rainbow nonsense we celebrate here, they’ll be lucky to get lighter shades of sepia for their summer collection.

Someone else can explain how this is different from the US experience if you happen to express views not favored by our own version of the Taliban, the American media oligarchy.  Someone else can probably explain why it’s different that people there are forced to unquestioningly comply to edicts issued by a handful of religious zealots, whereas in the US, people only have to comply without question to the edicts of a handful of political zealots.

The Americans depended on ‘experts’ to fight the wars and to do what was necessary to achieve victory in Afghanistan.  They lost.  In fact, upon reflection, the Americans have not prevailed in any military conflict since World War 2.  The haunting memories of the abandoned people in Saigon as the American helicopters left have been revived again with the Afghanistan fiasco.  The experts were wrong…or we listened to the wrong experts.  The reliance of ‘experts’ has created a lazy populace who think that the government knows best.  As we’ve seen from the events of the last year and half during the Covid scam, the experts are failing us again.

People may have to take a page from the Taliban; fight for the core values of life that are important.  Don’t give up that fight.  The odds are good that the experts don’t know what they’re doing and we will prevail in the end. We should not suffer under the ineptitude of the ‘experts’.  So many disasters have befallen societies over history and many recent ones can be traced to the dependence on ‘experts’ to steer events.  Think of national debt defaults and bank collapses, most brought on because their stewardship were in the hands of ‘experts’. Like the military fiascos, eventually the beneficiaries of the Covid mayhem will be exposed.  It will be as ugly as Afghanistan.

link:  https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/pretty-weird-facebook-starts-sending-extremist-content-warnings-to-users_3883194.html?v=ul

The big side benefit of childhood is that any and all major decisions affecting your day to day life needs are taken care of by others, usually parents.  As you get older, you appreciate in hindsight that the mundane necessities of life were automatically in place without any effort or input from you at all.  No need to worry about what to eat, where to live, and all of the usual creature comforts of life including toilet paper and clean clothes were provided for.

The flip side to this benign life is that you have little influence on these very things that are presented to you as conveniences. If you didn’t happen to like liver and onions for dinner, or living in a double wide, it was too bad.  It wasn’t until mid-adolescence that the inner urge to express your own choices became overwhelming and the urge to pull away from the dictates of parents needed to be addressed.  We could date girls with tattoos, go to late night bars and even buy sketchy tech IPO’s.

In the past few generations in western societies, this natural need for people to break free from the tethers of childhood has been eclipsed by an acceptance of protracted adolescence.  Sadly, the arrival of affluence has made people more risk averse and unwilling to cross natural life milestones.  The overbearing mother has taken a place of significant prominence in western society.  Through many generations of subtle and now not so subtle coercion, the role of males has been overshadowed by the smothering mother.

We may have noticed the predilection towards ‘safety’ in whatever we do these days and thus, the avoidance of all things unsafe is paramount in our activities.  It’s hard to quantify if the world has actually become so unsafe in recent generations that it’s necessary to place ‘safety’ above all else in our lives. Add lawyers to that and now you have a recipe for a neutered society.

In our pre-adolescent years, we were advised to avoid activities or people that were likely to compromise our ‘safety’. With the coming of age, we made our own decisions on such things for ourselves.  In our modern information era, the ubiquitous social platforms have taken it upon themselves to be our permanent nannies by directing us against undesirable information….you know, to be safe.

It’s the greatest irony that living in a ‘free society’ actually creates the environment for a controlled population.  The ‘free exchange’ of information that we notionally have access to on-line for example has been used as a tool to impose conformity among those who profess to seek independence of thought.  In fact, the on-line community is high school writ on a grotesque scale.  Coercion of views is so powerful that it’s as if you were escaping from the Scientologists if you dared to have opposing views from accepted norms.

Now we have official corporate nannies guiding your views, as your mother may have done during your childhood. As the linked article notes, we are warned off by the Facebook nannies if we even consider consuming views not of the accepted narrative. In fact such views are labelled as extremist.  YouTube has also implemented such guidance as well as other popular platforms such as Instagram who warn you of “unverified” sources.  This is the present day version of “eat your broccoli” by the mom surrogates of the online world. We are coerced to stay away from people who dare to even talk about things not approved for civilized people; the adult version of don’t hang out with the boy down the street with long hair who spends his days playing music.

As people move from adolescence, the constraints of behavior and thought imposed by their parents dissipate as they move on to their own sense of self. It’s called growing up.  We are now in a novel phase of civilization wherein people refuse to grow up and instead live in a world of protracted adolescence. A society that promulgates pre adolescent conformity will result in one in which only a handful of savvy adults will control them.