We need the term meta-Q which means “general meta cognitive ability,” or the ability to see the meta levels of several arguments at once including nuance and branch arguments.
IQ generally connotes being good at taking a test of reasoning, language, and some sort of abstract thinking.
People with high IQs probably also have high meta-Q. The advantage of adding this term is it distinguishes how arguments are presented and considered, how they are analyzed.
For example, mainstream medicine has usurped the meta-Q of virtually all covid reasoning. Fauci at the top either determined or became the spokesperson for what “the science” of covid is and no other view has been allowed. Literally hundreds of millions of people have been forced to agree with the irrational dictates of an irrationally narrow covid meta-Q. Big Tech aided and abetted this mockery of reason by censoring and deplatforming anyone who brought complexity and nuance into the prison yard.
The covid example is roughly the same with other issues of the day, such as election fraud, the January 6 “insurrection,” Critical Race Theory, equality of outcome, and so on. The country is divided because the meta-Q of public discourse is so low there can be no mixing of ideas, no synthesis, no rapprochement.
Magnates of meta-Q usurpation are most of the famous public “thinkers” in USA: Michael Shermer, Cass Sunstein, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Bill Maher, Fauci, Lakshmi Singh, famous actors, etc. These people are supported by editorials, talking-heads, politicians, terrible academics (most of them), and so on.
In private conversations, discussions always go badly when there are too many voices with low meta-Q training or ability in the room. Arguments become simplified and nuance is rarely acknowledged. Meta-Q is the ability to “see over” a problem, to see beyond the words, to what an argument is, how it was formed, what it will result in, how it moves through time, and what alternatives there are.
I am pretty sure most people could be trained to increase their meta-Q considerably and surely to at least know when it is called for and who is doing it well. ABN
Donald Trump asserted on Thursday that James Comey nearly started a war by launching Crossfire Hurricane – the widescale and fruitless investigation into Russian collusion.
‘Comey placed a cloud over the entire nation, and actually, the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax made it very difficult,’ Trump he told Fox News.
The president then added: ‘It could have caused wars.’
The charges for Comey were related to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 30, 2020 over Crossfire Hurricane – the codename for the Trump-Russia investigation.
For those having trouble following along with all of the controversy within “public health” as practiced in USA, vaccines, and medical practice.
When you distill it all, it comes down to the rights of the individual versus the rights of the collective.
Modern “Public health” is all about maximizing the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and acts to advance the rights and interests of the collective. Traditional medical practice is focused on the rights and interests of the individual patient.
From this, you can appreciate why socialists and leftists are all in on the rights of “Public Health” to impose mandates, and those that support personal liberty are aligned with the medical rights of the individual and the importance of informed consent.
“Public health” in USA believes that the rights of the collective are more important than the rights of the individual.
The work of Karl Marx and colleagues supports the collective as pre-eminent. The US Constitution and associated founding documents disagree and emphasize the rights of the individual.
Collectivism vs individual rights. That is really what this is all about.
The White House budget office indicated Wednesday that mass firings could be on the table in the event of a government shutdown as Congress faces a stalemate on negotiations in the days leading up to the government funding deadline.
A memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reviewed by The Hill indicates agencies are directed to “use this opportunity to consider reduction in force (RIF) notices for all employees in programs, projects, or activities” under three conditions.
The conditions include discretionary funding lapses Oct. 1, if another source of funding isn’t available and if the programs, projects, or activities are not “consistent with the president’s priorities.” In order to consider firing, all conditions must be met.
Agencies were also directed to revise RIFs once a shutdown ends to retain the “minimal number” of employees needed to function, according to the memo, and a plan must be submitted to the OMB.
The memo essentially directs agencies to permanently fire some federal employees that otherwise would be furloughed during a shutdown but then return to work once Congress reopens the government.
To understand how Israel has gained a near-total control over the American ruling class today, we must understand Israel of course, but we must also study the principles by which any ruling class operates. The perfect book for that is The Ruling Class, by Italian political scientist Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941). Mosca begins by establishing the following law (p. 50):
In all societies, from societies that are very meagerly developed and have barely attained the dawnings of civilization, down to the most advanced and powerful societies, two classes of people appear: a class that rules and a class that is ruled. The first class, always the less numerous, performs all political functions, monopolizes power and enjoys the advantages that power brings, whereas the second, the more numerous class, is directed and controlled by the first…
No matter what their internal divergences are, the ruling class is bonded by a high degree of solidarity: “the minority is organized for the very reason that it is a minority” (p. 54).
It follows that the main object of political science must be the study of various types of ruling classes. Mosca, p. 336: “We must patiently seek out the constant traits that various ruling classes possess and the variable traits with which the remote causes of their integration and dissolution, which contemporaries almost always fail to notice, are bound up.” Historians and journalists remain at the surface of historical events when they ascribe them to the decisions of heads of states, who are only, as a rule, the public faces of a ruling class, and sometimes not the main decision-makers.
A ruling class can be overthrown, either by a foreign conquest, by a coup d’état, by a revolution, or in more subtle ways that are not always immediately perceptible by the ruled. But any change of regime, even if provoked by popular uprising, leads to the formation of a new ruling class.
All this may seem quite obvious, but reading Mosca and pursuing this line of thought has modified my perspective on political regimes, on the illusion of Democracy, and on what Israel is up to.
My sense is conservatives have always been fundamentally live and let live, you do your thing, I’ll do mine, while liberals tend more to be activists for moral-sounding causes; and once they are activists they will also be ideologues and their whole thing becomes a religion.
This is a fundamental difference that shows very loudly in politics, as the chart above illustrates.
The activist left always wants to get into your head and make you be like them.
Historically and practically much of the fervor of the left comes from Jews who invented and them became fanatical about communism.
Today the same energies have morphed into woke stuff, previously PC stuff, now also Antifa stuff.
The common theme is they want to get into your head and make you be like them (often while robbing you blind).
There are few political happenings today that do not succumb to these energies.
There are also few interpersonal happenings today that do not succumb to these energies.
USA was built on the presumption that it was and would be a nation of White Christians who shared strong moral fiber and wanted to work together to build the nation.
USA today is no longer that and many of its non-Christian, non-Whites hate what they are not, and do activist shit against it relentlessly. ABN
I do not have a sophisticated understanding of Huckabee’s theology but have read it is called Dispensational Christianity, which was crystalized by the dubious Scofield Reference Bible in USA.
Whatever the case, Huckabee’s obeisance does not seem appropriate to me, especially while Israel’s savage assault on Gaza is ongoing and he is representing USA.
I know it is too much to ask of any mainstream prominent American, but it would be good if at least a few of them openly recognized that both USA and Israel had to have had foreknowledge of the 10/07 attack and that Israel clearly delayed reacting to it and was responsible for the majority of Israelis killed that day. This profoundly undermines the ersatz ‘moral basis’ of the slaughter and starvation of so many Gazan women, children and civilians.
I am fine with religion and government mixing on abstract and some practical levels, but Huckabee is taking this much too far into dangerous intellectual and theological territory. ABN
American Buddhist Net 