Mike Cernovich has an excellent post showing who funds conservative pundits and a very enlightening look at how seriously one in particular takes his predictions. Many people make political predictions and I’ve personally been wrong plenty of times. But when it’s your job to do it and you are just writing what you’d like, rather than what is – then there is a problem. If you’re also writing what people paying you want everyone to believe; you have a big problem.
This is only tangentially related but it got me thinking about authority figures I had to listen to and just how wrong they turned out to be. I was put off by the “conservative” media simply because they were weak and I never gave much thought to who was funding them. Though the latter seems to be a major reason for the former.
When I went to university I was assaulted by different ideas, many of which contradicted what I had been brought up to believe. It is hard for someone young to respond to this; especially if they (rightly) feel their knowledge is lacking. After all, what is university for but to learn the big ideas and thoughts of history? Training priests? So I accepted much of what I was taught and told simply because I wasn’t intellectually equipped to know better.
I graduated university over 10 years ago this year and it’s interesting to think back to what professors were saying when they (regularly) commented on political matters. A small anecdote that comes to mind was when a professor commented on the film Black Hawk Down, claiming that what was shown was very inaccurate to the real incident. When years later, I made the same statement to someone who mentioned the film, they responded asking where the book it was based on and which they had read, had gone wrong. I was honest enough to admit that I had merely repeated an assertion of one of my professors. I haven’t found any reason to doubt the contents of the book or much of what the film apart from the African actors in the film not being Somalis and a few other generally trivial differences.
Many beliefs I held ten years ago and still do now have been vindicated many times over. Something that really stands out from university is Venezuela. When I was in university, Hugo Chavez was a hero for his anti-American rhetoric and his openly socialist policies. I remember Green politicians in Australia, Sean Penn and certainly plenty of professors and students praising him and his country. I suspected this was nonsense and how right I was. The country has recently been in the news again as it is collapsing.
I’ve made the observation that if capitalism had seen the same amount of failure that socialism/communism has, it would have become a historic footnote. Why has this not happened with the collectivism cult? This is what I was taught was right in university and I’m sure there will be every excuse made that ignores the flaws of the economic system that Venezuela had attempted to implement. I’m done arguing with people who cling to this. When I hear “socialist”, I hear “economic ignoramus”.
Edit: 14/5/2016
It occurs to me that I kind of went off point towards the end. Not surprising since the post began with a tangent. I suppose my point was that the supposedly elite and intelligent in society were completely wrong. As another example, a professor just before graduation said that the European Union and not the United States was the future. It would take quite a change for that to come true today. I’ll happily come out and admit if I turn out to be wrong though.
Edit: 22/5/2016
lol – no update since December last year!