#14.3 School Sucks Project Podcasts 41 thru 61

[9-5-13: links corrected]
2010-5-9: #41 American History F-ed, – Part 8 Conclusion (The Natural State?)

Imagine there's no government, it's easy if you try. This one builds on the previous episodes and states some things ... in plain English. Brett throws a sharp rock through Pragmatism, a non-philosophy that has no respect for the truth, only effects. After this, no one in his right mind would ever describe himself / herself as a pragmatist. His short history of government of the mythology of governance, is really humorous, but it's also pretty accurate. Is it natural to want and need leaders? He takes a look at that question.

2010-5-16: #42 School News! (#3): School District Sues Taxpayers To Stop Questions

2012-5-24: #43 Kids Are Not Defective (Introduction)

There is a webpage that lists all 11 podcasts in this series here.

012-6-7: #44 Kids Are Not Defective (#2) The True Self Vs. the Fantasy Family

 

This is the first episode where Brett mentions Richard Grove (Peace Revolution series). This is an instance of networking, something we should all be doing. This monologue deals with some universal subjects, the family and society, nostalgia and dividing lines of then and now. Disciplining of children and child abuse are addressed, “good enough for us” rhetoric.

By the way, so far Brett has never mentioned the Trivium, which he will eventually get through Richard Grove. It is interesting to note this at this point because this is how all of us gain information, from networking through others, something we can do now from wherever we are via the internet, that our parents or grandparents never dreamed of doing. With this new acquaintance and idea sharing, couldn't we decide to rise to a higher level of consciousness?

For instance, it's quite obvious that children and even babies are after all just other people like yourself. Therefore how you would be treated is how you treat them. That's a very old maxim but goes unnoticed simply because we are conditioned to make excuses for some people to have the monopoly on violence (government and public schools as its extension) over us.

This bullying treatment being accepted by us from government authorities, we expect that our bullying of children and adolescents should likewise be accepted without question. Again, those who naively suppose that they can or do have any effect whatsoever on whatever system of government under which they live are quite simply mistaken and if you have been following along, you have already seen other ways of viewing the world than you probably expected; views based on plain facts. The uselessness and waste of time of politics was something E. C. Riegel understood and we take it as obvious, which is why our situation as described is accurate, proved through the trivium; data duly gathered, logically analyzed to remove fallacies and rhetoric arrived at as more reliable (more certain) statements.

Brett's statements are in many ways deeper than these because he focuses on family issues; it all really is our own fault because we let it happen and it gets back to consistent mistreatment of children. Yes, children may have it better on average than they had in prior centuries, but that's not saying anything worthy of excuse. We also happen to know that there are those who view children (and hence people) as necessarily expendable, because of genuine selfishness (for which we now have an instrumental definition); the taking advantage of others for one's own ends.

2010-6-12: #45 Kids Are Not Defective (#3) Curiosity Kills Christianity (and vice-versa)

 

People died for your freedom. The statement is addressed directly. This is a key episode examining American culture and icons. Christian conservatism is examined to show (not too hard) that it has been turned into support for the state (just another form of statism), in ways that have nothing to do with real Christianity or the real Christ at all. By the way, the exact same thing could easily be said of any religion.

In this episode Brett get's autobiographical. This is his authentication, it shows where he came from, what lessons he learned, how he was formed, etc. He describes his Roman Catholic upbringing.

2010-6-13: #45 [Abridged] Christianity Kills Curiosity (and vice-versa)

2010-6-19: #46 Kids Are Not Defective (#4) The Mutually Destructive Exchange

This episode takes on bullying. Bullying as misdirection / psychological projection away from low self-esteem. But that's obvious. More of his life as a teacher; he's really an outsider looking in. That's OK by me, he's a reporter in that case ... and a student pursuing the truth, as we should all be. Of course he goes beyond this, showing bullying as merely one of the products of the education / socializing process. He explains the process of victim being bullies too; uses moral superiority, develops a cutting edge vocabulary, etc. etc. Bullies like to work in groups too, who accept only information that confirms their myths. Childhood trauma and self-hatred as the source of bullying? Most likely, let's be honest. He's examining this as part of the process from infancy to adulthood.

2010-6-20: #47 Kids Are Not Defective (#5) The Incubator

More about myth and school and advice concerning bullying at school. More details concerning students and teachers in a typical school setting. A rather good presentation.

2010-6-28: #48 (Supplemental): The Catastrophe of Conventional Wisdom

Reflections on just completed Porcupine Festival (PorcFest), Lancaster, New Hampshire. He also mentions The Liberty Forum where he spoke, the last two thirds of this episode. Before this he mentions Larkin Rose, who of course was one of the contributors to Richard Grove's Peace Revolution course. More networking. We note that we are seeing this here in late 2012 from more than two years' distance. I did this course index in part on purpose because Brett interested me enough that I figured I'd start from the very beginning, so to speak, and “read” him, considering that knowing where he'd been, I'd have a much better idea of what he's currently doing. This amounts a to a kind of catching up process that I often employ doing research. In reference to the Trivium, this is getting one's grammar together. At this time in the series, Brett is grasping for what the Trivium will later present to him, and everyone else on the quest. Silver Circle Project envisaged telling the truth through animated cartoons. Here is and article from 26 April 2012. Brett runs through a few more names, contacts he made at the festival and then is introduced by Jason Osborn, speaks and takes questions.

2010-7-2: #49 The Free Lunch Project (Massachusetts Infomercial)

2010-7-7: #50 School News! (#4a): Warning Signs of Violence To Come

JROTC: Jr Officers Officers Training Center.

2010-7-17: #51 School News! (#4b): The Mainstream Media: Parrots On the Shoulders of Pirates

More on bullying and then on more subtle levels ... how the media shades things.

2010-7-25: #52 Kids Are Not Defective (#6) Holes

Brett mentions Liberty on Tour as an affiliate. Then Coxsackie-Athens High School is mentioned and he reads a speech by a valedictorian student, Erica Goldson, who tells a Zen story and then goes on to dead pan describe what has happened to her, she was the best slave, test taker, saw every subject of study as work, etc. The whole speech is quoted. It's an amazing speech. She clearly gets it. She mentioned John Taylor Gatto. 15 people had sent it to him! The episode goes on from there. Brett gets a little autobiographical. It's a tremendous episode.

2010-8-12: #53 Kids Are Not Defective (#7) Drapetomania

Total Transformation commercial buzzed out, then Brett talks about slavery. Morality to practicality. Slavery, the slaves' compulsion to flea captivity, slavery ended soon after. Similar arguments were made for later institutions; schools, where teenage rebellion is now a mental illness, treated by drugs, etc. all to conform obedience to authorities. This episode features Brett's interview of Dr. Bruce E. Levine. This is a very revealing discussion!

2010-8-15: #54 Keys (Instalment #4): Emergence (w/ Erica Goldson) 

Excerpt from the valedictory speech quoted in #52 as it was delivered by the author, Erica Goldson. Brett describes the tunnel of education. This episode features Brett's interview of Erica Goldson, 2010 Coxsackie-Athens High School valedictorian.

Homework:

John Perkins- Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

2010-8-23: #55 Kids Are Not Defective (#8) A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far, Far Away...and Today

 

The topic is heroism. Brett shows us who the heroes of the day typically are, the heroes of government school, psychopathic sociopaths, those who claim to know what's best for tens of millions of other people, those who are willing to shed other people's blood to get their way, and to whom we are to feel gratitude for saving us. He correctly sees this as part of a sinister process to deprive students, who become us, of access to knowledge of the common virtues.

What Brett and others would like to assume, because they are usually atheists, is that these virtues are purely rational and discernible on rational realistic grounds. If that be so then basic morality and ethics is also rational; right and wrong are knowable and measurable quantities, etc. But that may not mean that all people are capable of acknowledging, learning or accepting this basic rationality. Such things may or may not be provable for everyone. We might know more after we see the people who emerge from such schools as described in episode #40 of this series.

Another question begged by all of this is into what kind of a world, what kinds of jobs / livelihoods, is the education system training people for? It's easily contended that the education process cannot train any more cookie cutter people than the present fascist corporatist government structures can absorb. This of course leads to the present “musical chairs” economy of genocide by a passive aggressive policy, the “gee whiz” response of the welfare and social security bureaucracies to the economic “losers” who didn't figure out that the best slots in the present society go to those who figured out that their business was to become wolves and find sheep to sheer and devour.

Of course Brett's talk is on a far deeper more personal level than this. It's about basic stuff like self worth. Brett's guest speaker is Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio, certainly among the more interesting of the many of Brett and Richard Grove's guests. Stefan and Brett discusses heroism.

2010-9-3: #56 (Supplemental): Brett Veinotte On Liberty Conspiracy With Gardner Goldsmith

Brett on Gardner Goldsmith's Liberty Conspiracy show.

2010-9-4: #57 Kids Are Not Defective (#9) Relationships: Conformity and Convenience

2010-9-12: #58 (Supplemental): Brett Veinotte On Gnostic Media With Jan Irvin

This marks the first time Brett ever brings up the Trivium. The networking continues. Jan Irvin and Richard Grove are both key contributors to all these re-education efforts, and hopefully there will be many more.

2010-9-27: #59 Escape From Imaginationland (1 of 3) - The Set-Up

This episode (and those that follow) deals with situations where you have comprehended and understood something new and were faced with dealing with those who have already finished learning all they ever want to learn and believe that what you are talking about is either stupid or crazy. While perhaps people want to be good, more people are tired of the lives they have to live and resent others pointing out where they have failed. That's not too surprising, since most people by the time they get to be ... getting on in age, just want a little peace and quiet. Sorry to say maybe, but it's true; most people do not really or often like or appreciate helpful information coming to them from others, and it's something that gets worse the older one gets until one gets used to the times of one's life and basically throws up one's hands and says, “enough, I don't want to fight anymore.”

It starts when either one of the two following points are attempted with most people; 1) they resent being told they are slaves when they believe themselves to be free becasue they have been told this all their lives and accepted it without question and 2) they resent being told that the heart and soul of their government, their nation, is sick and based on fallacies or worse and needs to be moved away from. “Easy to say for you,” they will reply, because the economy where they live has already been so adversely affected through government actions (known or unknown by them) and they just want to live their lives as best they can without having to worry that the little reliable money they have to rely on from government or other sources stops flowing. As Brett says, to these people, they live in impervious mental houses that are immune from having any new inconvenient doors to understanding opened to them. Brett is saying that the goal of management is the continuance of fantasy, the moving pictures on the walls of Plato's cave. So Brett is dealing with these issues, or trying to so this is really his story. Each of us has our own. He's focusing on empathy even when it's likely that he'll never find it.

Homework:

Paulo Freire- Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Robert Epstein- The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen

2010-9-29: #60 Escape From Imaginationland (2 of 3) - The Emotional Incentives of Fantasy 

This podcast is the first where Brett and Richard Grove are together, this episode focuses on trying to find the source of people's dissatisfaction; perhaps it's not (for Americans) their presidents, although our expectations are usually ridiculously high. We hear a lot of quotes from a lot of recent presidents and those who support them. We hear a lot of dates listed, things have not changed. We hear stirring words on many noble and honourable sounding subjects, but there is no change.

With all due respects, Brett is doing what everyone does, focus on the fronts, the things people say publicly because those things can be verified, the thoughts and spoken words of those who make deals in private are never heard and cannot be verified, therefore they are ignored. In fact, one can't really blame most people because of the things I mentioned in the last series of comments. People have no idea of political freedom and most do not want to know. So are they free? No, but they don't want you to tell them they are slaves.

This is another very good discussion with one of the personalities that emerge in these podcasts; Richard Grove, who gets a lot of my comments for these podcasts concerning people's natural resistance to new and threatening ideas. They talk about keeping emotions in because that's what most people have been trained since their childhoods into doing. Statism becomes what people need to believe to survive rather than accepting that this is a fantasy that relegates them to the status of a child forever subservient to the state's nanny management. Pseudo self esteem from being part of the statist racket is another usual response to dealing with this reality. This conversation is deep and full of implications.

Homework:

Stefan Molyneux- Real-Time Relationships: The Logic of Love

2010-10-4: #61 Escape From Imaginationland (3 of 3) - The Most Successful Criminal Gang in History

We continue with Richard Grove discussing things with Brett and later Brett discusses things with Wes Bertrand. One point they make and address is how government is defined in a government textbook as the legitimate use of FORCE. Beyond that you aren't to bother.

We've all heard plenty over the years about people needing to change. Well maybe, but the facts are clear that people do not like being faced with underlying principles that demonstrate conclusively that there is NO DIFFERENCE between a government and a criminal gang. Legitimacy of government right to use FORCE therefore is assumed, not based on any rational principles whatsoever. I have gotten used to Richard Grove's definitive approach to political thinking, his read is clear and direct; he looks right through their scams. Obviously I would like to find and hear more people think, talk and act like him, but we are all on slightly different stages of awakening and radicalization.

What will we discover over the next year that will change our perspectives so that we will regard our previous position as untenable or even stupid? Around each corner there is always something new to learn that can change your life forever. It comes as a great challenge for most who were dragged through school, dragged through life, doing something pointless to them personally for years, just in order to get paid so they could go buy something useful or even essential to themselves (that was in all likelihood made by slave labour in some foreign country) to give up their addiction to notions that they want to believe that governments are instituted to look after them, rather than actually being self-serving organizations that can only care first and foremost about themselves and those private factors that support them, which live as literal economic parasites on the rest of humanity and claim for themselves the “legitimate” use of FORCE. There's a lot more good stuff in this episode.

Homework:

Ayn Rand- For The New Intellectual
Wes Bertrand- Psychology of Liberty

INTERMISSION