The phones were given to the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general, Joseph Cuffari “shortly after” July 19. Everything else about this story is vague and reeks of mis- and disinformation, but here is a link to an article about it.In other news, Russia blew up its own pipelines to Germany and colluded with Trump to steal the election from Hillary in 2016 but failed. ABN
I challenge readers to find an emotion that does not have “meaning.”
Emotions that have no meaning do exist, but are not common and are generally ignored.
What is “meaning” in this context?
Meaning here means, quite specifically, “that which is connected to (interconnected in) a semiotic network.”
Emotions arise due to bodily functions, metabolism, external events, communication events, life events, etc.
Once an emotion arises it is either discarded (given no “meaning”) or it is taken up into a semiotic network.
Once it is taken up into a semiotic network, an emotion will resonate within that network, have an import and “meaning” based on that network.
For example, a single impression of microaggression will almost certainly be defined by prior learning, by the prior existence of a semiotic network that accepts and defines this sort of perception.
That is to say, if the perceiver has been trained or self-taught to perceive and react to microaggression, their preformed sensibilities (its “meaning”) will respond to it, often far more strongly than conditions warrant.
A similar analysis applies to any emotion.
Watch yourself as you discard the brief feeling you might get from looking at a nondescript wall or a leaf curled on the ground. Compare emotional reactions you don’t discard, such as ones involving human expressions, tone of voice, things left unsaid, etc.
This shows that we will learn more about emotions by analyzing the semiotic networks that give them meaning rather than trying to trace them back to their intangible origins or follow their ambiguous development.
Emotions do develop as the networks that “hold” them develop and/or as the emotion itself is given greater or lesser prominence within its network(s).
In this sense, emotions can grow very large or become very small.
Ones that had meaning can and do disappear. But no emotion will appear and maintain itself for long without being taken into a semiotic network, given a meaning or assigned a meaning.
Notice how you have sensibilities and emotions connected to how you have been trained. And notice how these emotions and sensibilities are different from others who have not been trained as you have.
A trained gardener, salesperson, doctor, cook, surfer, etc. has emotions and sensibilities that are different from people who have not had their training, whether that training is formal or informal.
If you just spend time thinking about something you will be “training” yourself, developing different sensibilities and emotions about whatever it is.
Humans are semiotic animals that spend most of their time in semiotic environments.
A semiotic network communicates both with the self and with others.
Semiotic networks include everything that can be communicated, including language, ideas, emotions, beliefs, values, memories, skills, and so on.
If you were trained in a certain safety procedure and you agree with it (thoroughly putting out campfires, for example), it will drive you nuts to see someone ignore the basics. This is true for almost anything you were trained in and agree with.
Training gives us richer and different emotions, either in kind or in degree.
Training strengthens and broadens the semiotic network(s) holding or defining emotions, thus making them stronger, more sensible, more reasonable or, conversely, weaker, less sensible, less reasonable.
“Personalities” develop through training, some of it formal, much of it informal and idiosyncratic.
This is interesting because it is a strong signal. I think most of us can see it’s a signal of lack of faith in the US government due to how awful it is. A similar strong signal is being sent by parents who are refusing the covid vax for babies and toddlers. Minus the social pressure of school-based peer groups, parents of preschoolers are making the decision not to vax much more on their own, thus showing what they really think. I doubt the elite will respond to these signals in a way that benefits the people of this country. Instead, they will offer more pay for the military, more advertisements for service, and use more mercenaries. As for the terrible failed vaxxes, all government is doing in response is backing off, lying, pretending, running away. ABN
Furthermore, both the government and FB were wrong about most things covid and were themselves guilty of spreading misinformation and disinformation about covid origins, covid treatments, covid vaccines, and government policies on covid. All-in-all, this an excellent example of why First Amendment rights are of paramount importance. ABN
The Bundy ranch issue in Nevada is characterized by a battle over semiotics.
The other day, the New York Times used an edited video of Bundy that makes him look and sound like a racist.
This link compares the NYT video with a fuller version of Bundy’s remarks.
And here is another link where former U.N. Ambassador Alan Keyes, identified as a “black leader,“ defends Bundy, saying:
He wasn’t talking so much about black folks, but about the harm and damage that the leftist socialism has done to blacks.
What I see and hear in the longer version of the video is an unsophisticated man using ordinary language to express a legitimate idea. The way he puts his ideas and his use of the word “negro,” especially in the shorter version of the video, creates a bad impression which Harry Reid has been quick to exploit.
Reid has called Bundy a “hateful racist” and urged Republicans and other to “condemn Bundy” for his “hateful, dangerous extremism.”
Notice how your own feelings can go back and forth on this issue and how Bundy’s comments are probably going to destroy most of his support. In the realm of political semiotics, he was like an untrained boxer stepping into the ring with a pro. All Reid had to do was wait for Bundy to make a bad move and pounce, as he has done.
Whatever you may think about Bundy or this issue it is illustrative of how unsophisticated language can create a semiotic that is devastating to a political position.
Bundy rose to prominence on the semiotics of freedom, cowboys, and anti-federal government. He may well fall on the semiotics of unintended “racism.”
As with so many other complex issues, the Budy ranch standoff is being judged on small aspects of the whole, as the main weight of American political and media forces line up against him.
When that same political/media weight lines up in favor of “nice” semiotics—such as the Patriot Act or the Clean Air Act or the War on Terrorism—it wins the day time and again. The combination of sophisticated semiotics and media control almost always decides the course of American politics.
A co-author of a recent scholarly study on the American “oligarchy” has this to say about American politics:
I’d say that contrary to what decades of political science research might lead you to believe, ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups — of economic elites and of organized interests. (Source, with other links)
We are now living in a “Semiotic Age” or an “Age of Signals.” The Modern era is gone. In this current age, we have to be ever mindful of how semiotics are manipulated and used to further the interests of powerful groups that have control of media, government, and the US economy. I do not believe there is a humble person anywhere in the USA that can stand up to those forces and win.
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Edit: Readers may also want to notice that the short video version of Bundy’s comments was edited by Media Matters for America, a well-funded group that claims it is “dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” This group, and others, will very likely continue to use Bundy’s “racism” to slur what they will call Bundy’s “ultra right-wing” supporters, many of whom will make semiotic mistakes as bad or worse than Bundy’s. An individual going up against Media Matters, Harry Reid, the New York Times, or the Democratic Party is like a Baltic peasant going up against the Teutonic knights in the Middle Ages. They don’t have a prayer.
As a nation, I believe there is no hope for rational dialog on anything, but as individuals, we can understand our predicament.
Another Chinese megacity is put into lockdown now.
Guiyang City. Population 6 millions.
[These CCP lockdowns are an extreme anomaly in our world today. They are very weird. The CCP ostensible explanation is zero-covid, which is well-known to be an impossible goal and thus cannot be true. So we have to speculate. These measures could be due to fear of rebellion, disciplining the population, preparation for war either aggressive or defensive, preparation for another global bioweapon plandemic, preparation for total economic collapse. No one can say they know for sure, except maybe Xi Jinping. ABN]
Even if this “Zombie Apocalypse” is Deep State oppo mind-control, it is a helluva story. This is precisely the kind of thing the US government spends billions on to “nudge” the population to accept or reject whatever they want them to. It won’t hurt you to watch it. Make up your own mind. ABN
I usually prefer to stay away from the ancillary stuff, but the remarks by Joe Biden today were not normal, not even close.
Every national address by a president has a massive advance team checking every detail of a venue before broadcast. The optics they put together for Biden’s “battle for the soul of a nation” speech tonight, was just plain creepy and weird. I mean think about it, what does this imagery present when discussing the theme of battling for the soul of a nation?
These are not modified images or changes in presentation; they are exactly what was broadcast to the nation. It looks straight up evil. Like something out of a hellscape theatrical production intended to showcase Baal as the “soul of the nation.”
On one hand, this is the realistic tone of the Biden administration. But on the other hand, you would not expect to see this harsh dictatorship enhanced with the backdrop to give it such angered imagery. I have never seen anything even close to this in a presidential address. Beyond creepy.
You can do this to any culture. The West has been all but destroyed by attacking white males first and now all whites. No other civilization in world history has ever done this. Whites are cowed and allowing it due to infiltration and takeover by hostile cultures with ancient values. This has not been just a lost moral battle or a lost mind-control battle, it has also been a lost clandestine battle entailing violence, murder, maiming, poison, and more. ABN
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