The Peanut Gallery: February 8, 2024
Welcome to the Peanut Gallery! Your daily dose of unfounded speculation.
Please remember that I know nothing.
Nobody likes admitting when they’re wrong. I know that I hate doing it, that's for damn certain. It’s the intellectual price I pay to write as freely and aggressively as I do about complex topics to which I have zero practical experience. I try to make that fact as obvious and upfront as I possibly can, because I know that, eventually, I will find myself sitting in my chair, pounding out one of these as my hypothesis crumbles into dust. Such is the nature of this project. This would be the second revolution of that cycle.
Perhaps I should explain.
Many of you may have noticed, but organizations, government or private, work like hell to avoid publicly admitting their mistakes. This makes sense in zero-sum thinking as it’s a social humiliation, an acknowledgement and admission to one’s enemies of weakness.
But I think that this thought process is a mistake. Even benign denial, such as when governments dress their intentions in lies to accomplish political ends, are still a lie.
I’ve found over the course of my life that everyone longs to be spoken to with honesty and respect, and pretending otherwise is an enabling of the apathy which freezes our political systems. The discussion isn’t, “This is the problem as I see it. Here’s my solution. What’s yours?” it’s, “The border is in chaos! Joe Biden is ruining America! Texas is seceding from the Union and Donald Trump is a victim! But no, we shouldn’t attempt any of the solutions the other side is presenting because hermadermajerga-derp-derp.” Too many of us lack the capacity to admit our true motivations, and the failure to do so is what’s clogging up our democratic processes.
That’s the essence of populism, by the way. Donald Trump’s “He tells it like it is!” appeal is because he very clearly speaks his mind. What you hear (seemingly) is what you get. Narcissists are extremely good at this because their feeling towards other people are reflective of their feelings towards themselves. If a person is making them feel good, they will speak highly of that other person. And they will do so with complete honesty, because the emotional state of the self is subject to constant fluctuations. Like attracts like, and many people lack a coherent self-image, so what emerges is a cult of personality where followers adopt the identity of the narcissist. His wishes are their wishes because his affection for himself substitutes for their own internal deficits.
ADHD is similar, yet different to this mental deviation. It is, at its core, an inability to control one’s attention, thus it tends to follow a gradient. If something is interesting, if something yields a reward, then one goes wherever it leads. Wherever it leads. ADHD isn’t an absence of focus; it’s an the absence of interest in focus. The present fascination is the present fascination, and the next will be the next. In such a reality, the moment is all that matters; thus, the sum of the conscious perception is the occupation of the present. One thing leads to the next to the next to the next in a sequential order of fascinations.
Imagine, if you will, the thing you love most in the world. The one thing which draws your attention so sharply that you can look at it for a moment, only to glance up and find an hour has passed. It is that, yet also an eternal kaleidoscope of experiences. Each instant involves one’s entire being, yet also disappears in the blink of an eye. To focus on something one doesn’t wish to focus upon triggers psychic anguish, because it is the entirety of that moment's existence.
Knowledge has always been my muse, and in my experience gatekeepers who wrap themselves in institutions sacrifice intellectual honesty to gain credibility. A poor trade, in my opinion. The fact of the matter is if there isn’t a risk of saying something stupid then you aren’t saying anything that matters. The known is the known, maybe, so let’s try to predict what happens next, yeah?
Anyway, that’s the driving force behind the Peanut Gallery, along with a brief explanation as to why I’m taking the night off. I don’t care that I was wrong--it comes with the territory. I’m just depressed because it means our position is far more dire than I wanted to believe. That's what makes this one fucking sting.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attempted to use an interview with American media personality Tucker Carlson published on February 8 to present to a wider Western audience a long-standing Kremlin information operation that falsely asserts that Russia is interested in a negotiated end to its war in Ukraine. Putin illustrated throughout the interview that Russia has no interest in meaningful or legitimate negotiations, however, and that Putin still seeks to destroy Ukraine as a state. Putin also displayed his overarching hostility towards the West and falsely accused the West of forcing Russia to attack Ukraine.
Oh alright. I’ll do one.
Yeah, I watched this fuckin’ interview. Tucker Carlson is a twat, but I honestly can’t say I’d have done better had I been in his shoes. Putin literally throws people out windows, and the casual dismissive insults he subjected Carlson to at any pushback was extremely telling. It was passive intimidation, intimidation that had an almost self-censorship quality to it. Carlson didn’t speak often, yet when he did his questions were gentle—even this was too much almost, as the mere act of raising them triggered belittlement.
One that especially stood out (paraphrasing) went something like,
The CIA is out to overthrow my government—oh but you tried to get into the CIA, didn’t you, Tucker? But they didn’t want you. Because you aren’t good enough. Lucky that was the case, wouldn’t you say?
Or that seemed the implication. I’ll see if I can dig up the exact quote and stick it in the comments.
Honestly Carlson appeared almost paralyzed with terror throughout the entire experience, and for that he has my sympathy. He’s a small-time piece of shit who just got his first look at the true face of evil. It’s horrifying. Should he have gone? Absolutely not. Did he at least attempt to ask somewhat stringent questions? Sorta. For that he gets a gold star...but like a Dollar Store one, the kind that doesn’t stick to anything.
Putin, for his part, was utterly delusional. His two-hour rant swung between Nazism, to historical destiny, to NATO expansion, to coups and plots and CIA mumbo-jumbo—it was a fucking incoherent mess. The man is off his rocker, and if this is how he conducts himself in an interview, then I cannot imagine the madness behind the scenes. Carlson was terrified of asking him questions, so what must it be like to bring this monster bad news?