Party politics - bribery and blackmail

Now it is evident that the party political system is a bribery and blackmail machine; it may be possible to understand the Right-Left divide more  accurately. 

The Left party consists of those controlled mainly by financial bribes and blackmail. 

The Right Party consists of those controlled mainly by sexual bribes and blackmail. 

Of course, this is only a generalization - and, after all, the Right and Left always drift leftwards, and often swap over. 

The mechanisms for financial corruption vary by time and place - nowadays financial corruption is hidden in plain sight: bribes comes from (e.g.) book advances, lectures and consultancy; blackmail may simply be an audit. 

And the sexual basis for control have, in some instances, inverted. That which used to be blackmailable is now mandatorily supported. Such that anyone who opposes activities that used to lead to blackmail - can himself now be blackmailed! 

But my point is that perhaps we could consider political parties as being convenient ways by which those with real power, deploy to group together those political puppets, figureheads, and rubber stamps who are to be controlled.

  

Bernard Shaw - the one volume definitive biography by Michael Holroyd (1997)

Bernard Shaw was often silly, childish and reckless to the point of breaking stuff and causing injuries (especially driving a car) - here he insisted being photographed as Rodin's "Thinker" while being sculpted by that great artist (unfortunately the resultant bust was mediocre*). 

For a couple of weeks, several hours per day, I have been reading Michael Holroyd's 1997 single volume condensation of his previously-published four volume biography of Bernard Shaw.  

It took me a long time. Even greatly shortened, this was one of the biggest biographies I have read all-through. Another reason for my slowness is that Shaw's life, or at least his adult life, was so complex, fascinating, and varied. 

Also, I (like most people) find Shaw's character extremely odd, inconsistent - in fact incoherent.

He was sometimes the kindest most considerate and helpful of people - genuinely saint-like in behaviour (including keeping secret the vast scale of his gifts and assistance). He could be almost paralysed with horror by the contemplation of cruelty and suffering, in reality or imagination.  

At other times, especially when wearing his persona of GBS; Shaw was himself, and advocated, a calculated hard-hearted indifference to well-being and life that was a glorification of cruelty and unkindness. 

This can be explained by thinking of Shaw as an extreme version of the Leftist (or Liberal) ethic that regards suffering as the worst thing in life and therefore the elimination of suffering as the primary value; to the point that mass deployment of suicide and humane killing become imperative, and a moral necessity. 

In this sense, as in others; Shaw was in the vanguard; because this perspective is nowadays mainstream and officially endorsed - although very few are honest enough to state it explicitly. 

I have been reading Shaw since my early teens. Back then, I thought that, although he persistently pushed some silly and false notions; Shaw was right about most of the most important things; and I modelled some of my own main ideas and aspirations on his work - at least in some moods, and to some extent.  

Nowadays, by contrast, Shaw seems to be fundamentally wrong about most important things, as well as having multiple very annoying or self-indulgent attributes! 

Yet I continue to regard him as a great genius, and return to his works to relish their distinctive quality of expression - whose good and bad qualities were both very obvious; and therefore probably two sides of the same coin. 

My main criticism of Shaw - as of so many people - is that he never reflected on his fundamental (metaphysical) assumptions concerning the nature of reality. Therefore, he never really understood that the inadequacies and contradictions of his attitudes, opinions, and actions; originated and were sustained by the incoherence of his deepest assumptions - many of which I believe Shaw would have rejected, had he ever become aware of them.  

*

Bernard Shaw by Rodin. Meh...

Natural selection has no foresight: So, where is natural selection taking the human species?

Natural selection is a real thing, albeit that it did not (could not) lead to the "origin of species" and the diversity of (what we call) Life on earth. 

What Natural Selection certainly can do, and does, is adaptation - or "selective breeding". 

But, natural selection has no foresight - and this leads to all sorts of problems for the lineage of entities under selection. 

By differential death and reproduction, Natural Selection amplifies or suppresses heritable variations and traits between members of the same species. 

Indeed such change can happen very quickly (biologically speaking), observable over just a few generations - and this is indeed observable in the human species over the past decades.  

Much is correctly made of the Western-leadership imposed replacement immigration in the Western nations; but this is only a surface symptom of much deeper biological changes by which Western populations have voluntarily changed to massive sub-fertility. 

Thus all the native populations of all Western nations (indeed all the developed/ wealthy/ powerful nations, all over the world) are massively sub-fertile and en route to chosen self-extinction. 

It is only because of this profound motivational change within the West, that mass migration has successfully been imposed on the West - because the world population of human beings is still growing; fuelled by rapidly increasing populations in the "third world" and undeveloped countries, in (for instance) Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, the North Africa/ Middle East, and South Asia.   

Such population growth has been made possible by the developments in the West - technological and economic but especially medical and public health developments that have reduced infant and child mortality rates from more than half of children dying before maturity to only one or two percent - something like a fifty-fold increase in the proportion of children who survive to adulthood. 

In sum:

1. The West and developed world have chosen self-extinction by massive sub-fertility.

2. The Third World has been made super-fertile by the West.

3. So across the human species overall, the population of the Third World is expanding, the West contracting...

4. And the Third World population will replace that of developed nations in terms of the make-up of human beings.

This will happen with or without mass migration - which is something extra to the situation, presumably motivated by the motivation of strategic destructive-evil that is endemic and (recently) dominant, within the Western "Establishment".  

This demographic transformation of the human species just is natural selection, in action, in real time; already happened, still happening. 

But natural selection is like an algorithm; it just increases the proportion of some gene variants and reduces others. 

Natural Selection has no foresight, and no long-term aim. 

It is a fact (so far as is known) that a Third World population cannot, therefore will not, be able to sustain the technological, economic and medical advances that led to the massive expansion of Third World population to replace the West.

So natural selection will lead to an unsustainable situation, an unsustainably large world population - which, because unsustainable, will lead to massive death ("giga" in scale - i.e. measurable in billions). 

And, at the root of it, are the reproductive motivations and choices of the mass of Western people, and the people of all developed nations. 

And at the root of reproductive motivations and choices is, ultimately, spiritual choices.

And at the root of spiritual choices?...

At the very bottom line, I would say, lies metaphysical choices - the choice of what we each (and en masse) assume to be the nature of ultimate reality.    

Note added: I have previously written considerably about the business of fertility, and giga-death; because I have had an interest (initially as an academic) in the subject for some 20 years. But the events of the past two decades have convinced me that my earlier theoretical "answer" to this problem - which was a mass revival of traditional, and probably patriarchal, religion; will not work. The evidence that it will not work includes the collapse of Mormon fertility into below-replacement levels, even among devout Mormons; and the failure of the "Fire Nation" to reach replacement levels despite by-far the most significant national Christian revival in the developed world. This has led me to believe that the cause lies very deep, deeper than church religions; but that analysis does not point towards any solution to the looming problem towards which natural selection is propelling us - let alone a conceivably plausible socio-political answer.  

Fake nationalism: "Nationalism" in 2025 is just a disguise of the totalitarian backlash

Genuine political Nationalism was the first "ideology", it came after the collapse of religion as the primary organizing principle of societies - and it was a basis for national coherence and motivation... 

But this phase was always brief (a few decades at most), and nationalism has been feeble everywhere for many decades - and in most places for a century or more. 

And nationalism cannot be revived. 

The "collective" way of thinking and behaving upon which genuine nationalism depends; was part of an earlier phase of human consciousness - a phase which is now all-but gone, and shall not return.

Mankind has changed, so that real (strong in coherence and motivation) Nationalism is not just absent currently, but just not possible from here onwards. 

Of course there are plenty of theoretical nationalists (one can espouse theoretical anything); but that means nothing in practice; when people will not (and cannot) sink their individuality into the collective consciousness. 

What we actually have in geopolitics, which is significant and influential in some nations; is various types of fake nationalism. 

Fake nationalism is an Establishment project, that has arisen in the context of the civil war among the global leadership class. 

The two sides in this war are the bureaucratic totalitarians, and the agents of chaos (i.e. the servants of Ahrimanic versus Sorathic evil). 

The totalitarians reached their peak of international power in early 2020 with the global lockdowns; but since then the agents of chaos have been waxing strong. 

At present, the agents of chaos - who are located mainly in the West; are trying to unleash all kinds of destruction such as international war, civil wars and general violence, famines (by destruction of agriculture and trade), and many kinds of disease and toxicity, economic and environmental collapse - and so forth. 

(Because destruction is easier, quicker, cheaper than construction - the agents of chaos can pursue multiple simultaneous lines of attack.)  

The official forms of nationalism that we see pitted against the agents of destruction is therefore to be understood as a fake nationalism. 

Fake nationalism is a backlash; an attempt by totalitarians to reverse the increasing policy dominance of the agents of chaos. 

It is a fake nationalism because it is not derived from the group mind of the nation; and is not motivated by promoting the well-being of the communal or collective entity that is the people of a nation. 

Fake nationalism is instead a top-down manipulative strategy from the bureaucracy, directed at a substantially individualized (indeed atomized) populace; intended and designed to strengthen the 2020-style Establishment project of omni-surveillance and total-control.

But this time, instead of the proximate goal of world totalitarianism, as argued by Trotsky (and Trotsky's descendants are now among the premier agents of chaos - having moved from world revolution to global destruction); we are getting "totalitarianism in one nation" analogous to Stalin's strategy of securing communist power and influence within the USSR. 

That is all that modern "nationalism" really amounts to: it is "Totalitarianism in one nation". 

The problem is that when confronted by the agents of chaos who are, for example, trying to continue and expand and escalate WWIII - the bureaucratic totalitarians seem to be (and perhaps are) so much less evil than the agents of chaos, as to appear almost "good"!  

It is therefore very tempting to be induced to lend our support (our "hearts and minds") to one or another of the Fake Nationalists - in our own nation, or some other. 

Therefore; when confronted by the lesser-evil of Fake Nationalists; we need to remember and hold in mind that they are not good; that their motivations, methods and aims are all evil - simply because totalitarianism is intrinsically and necessarily evil. 

And I mean spiritually evil: because the highest-level and implicit goal of totalitarianism is the damnation of Men.  

The metaphysical failure of All Christian churches

...But don't ask me about my metaphysical assumptions

(The above being the argumentative strategy of all churches)

The generations-long, inexorable corruption, apostasy and (remember 2020) self-destructive failure of Christian churches has nothing to do with me!* but is there for all capable of seeing it. 

*(I am but the bearer of bad news; and one who seeks to proceed on that basis - rather than on the basis of the delusional and dishonest optimism all-too-characteristic of those whose Christianity is inextricable from some particular church.)

And yet there is a sometimes-palpable metaphysical hunger among the mass majority of not-religious people; who realize that mainstream materialist totalitarianism offers no meaning, no purpose; and zero basis for ethics, beauty or truth. 

Metaphysics is the discourse concerning ultimate, fundamental reality. In other words metaphysics seeks to make explicit and examine our deepest convictions and assumptions concerning the way that things are.

The metaphysics of dominating mainstream modern materialism; explicitly regards ultimate reality as dead (unalive), ruled by blind causation and undirected randomness - there is no direction to it, no reason behind it, it has no values; therefore nothing is better or worse than anything else...

The only basis for preference and choice is our own temporary, subjective, psychological state; which itself has neither purpose, nor meaning - and merely whatever happens-to-be, at present. 

The official non-explanation of life, the universe, and everything is: Things Just Are. Nothing can coherently be said about any of it.   

There is a hierarchy of explanation that runs from fundamental, primary and metaphysical assumptions to make sense of the secondary, surface and observational aspects of life.

Thus: we derive our meanings and purposes from our metaphysical assumptions, and not from our "factual" observations - indeed, we cannot even know what counts as "a fact" without prior assumptions (theories) to tell us. 

Consequently, of themselves, our perceptions mean nothing, imply nothing and are undistinguishable - since the world does not come to us divided into different objects, nor do the supposed causes acting on such objects come to us divided into types. 

It is by our interaction with the world (our "participation" with creation) that what would otherwise be incoherent "noise" is instead known as having structure, meaning, purpose. 

A perceived world without primary assumptions - without the metaphysical and structural basis of reality; well, it is hardly even imaginable - but might be pictured as a booming, buzzing, fuzzy, incoherent, literal-chaos.    

It might be supposed that the churches would benefit from this vacuum of purpose/ meaning, this craving for fundamental values; but the churches eschew the deep level of metaphysical assumptions; instead trying to reason from current preferences, agreed observations, accepted facts... 

Each church hoping to convince that its particular "package" of administration/ rituals/ scriptures/ symbols/ prayers etc; offers a better psychological or socio-political outcome, or a better (perhaps the only) chance of some kind of life beyond death. 

While churches will often critique mainstream materialism, and expose its vacuity; what the churches fail to do, is go back and down to the deepest level of their own fundamental assumptions. 

The churches Will Not make explicit and examine their own assumptions. 

The Christian churches' attempts at conversion are therefore of a double-negative nature: they are happy to expose and demolish the assumptions modern atheistic metaphysics; but they will deny that their own metaphysical fundamental are assumptions. 

The churches all claim that their own metaphysics Just Are True. 

Or else the churches reverse the hierarchy of explanation and pretend that their metaphysical assumptions can (somehow!) be derived from the accepted facts of life; being so obvious that to express disagreement is idiotic, evil, or dishonest. 

But this comes across as (and indeed actually is) merely dogmatic bluster.  

The answer is that we modern people must go deep, we must go as deep as we possibly can - in order to discover our own bottom-line assumptions about reality - and to expose those of other thought-systems such as particular Churches. 

It is not enough to "show" that somebody else's metaphysical assumptions are incoherent or absurd or inadequate - we must as-well be prepared to bring forward our own fundamental beliefs in order to compare them with whatever is being critiqued. 

Indeed; it seems to me that after we have genuinely exposed our own metaphysics, and recognized that it is rooted in primary assumptions which are a product of our own free agency - will we then be able potentially to understand the metaphysics of anybody else. 

Only when our own fundamental assumptions demonstrate positive superiority with respect to what we regard as most important, and in comparison with the fundamental assumptions of other ideologies and/or religions; will we actually have made real progress in terms of overcoming the endemic metaphysical failure of this time and place.   

**

Note added: 

I do not suggest, nor even believe, that it is possible that Christian churches, or any churches, could possibly do what I am suggesting - because as institutions, this would expecting churches to be anti-institutional. 

No: this is something that individual persons can only do for themselves, because for themselves; else it will not be done at all. 

And because it needs to be done for individual persons; this can only be done with the necessary good motivations by one who believes that knowing truth experientially is an activity harmonious with divine creation.

That is to say; one who knows, and knows why, honestly "doing metaphysics" is something that is of-itself-and-necessarily beneficial to God's cause; as well as to the benefit of our own post-mortal, resurrected self.  

Tron: Ares at the cinema - brief notice, and consideration of its "AI" agenda

Yesterday I went to see Tron: Ares at the cinema, and found it exciting and enjoyable: a solid three star (out of five) movie of the "worth watching" category. 

I had not seen the male lead Jared Leto before, or at least I don't recall seeing him; and I found him a very good actor with definite screen presence. He seems to have considerable scope - including understated comedy. 

The rest of the acting was okay or decent; except female lead Greta Lee who was moderately sub par - neither a good actor, nor having star quality; but this didn't much matter in the action-orientated context of the movie. 

What I found interesting as I left the cinema, was to reflect - yet again - on how often a modern mega-corporation with net-evil motivations, produces movies that at least seem to be about the intrinsically evil nature of modern mega-corporations... 

This was particularly strange, given that Tron: Ares has a happy (albeit cursorily so) ending which involves the intrinsic evil being overcome, and a mega-corps made net-beneficial to humanity - simply by having a nice person in charge! 

The threadbare notion of a benign dictator "setting all to rights" in an intrinsically corrupt world; is still (for lack of alternatives, perhaps) a governing wishful delusion for many people. 

Witness that (albeit very brief!) episode earlier this year when so many people expressed intense and joyful - and insanely optimistic - fantasies of just this kind, when DT became US president. 

The other aspect I found intriguing was how Ares frames the "AI" aspect; given that this is currently (and during the production of this movie) perhaps the numero uno socio-political strategy of the totalitarians in the the Western Establishment. 

In sum: throughout Tron: Ares "AI" is assumed to be - and is presented as - functionally powerful, in a way that it just cannot be. 

The whole world of "AI" is visually-depicted as overwhelmingly vast and sophisticated, its progression and take-over happening with a stream-roller inevitability - a combination that induces in the audience a kind of awed-helplessness. 

Furthermore; it is both shown in the script and explicitly asserted that these "AI" systems are genius-like; in that they are creatively problem-solving. 

This superhuman creativity is harnessed to the usual left-progressive agenda - which is to reduce/eliminate particular forms of human suffering and environmental damage. 

Because of "AI"'s steamroller effectiveness, this fantasy of progress is given an apparent inevitability... if only we can ensure "the right people" are "in charge". 

And - most strikingly - we are (yet again) shown that "singularity-moment" whereby sufficiently-advanced "AI" will develop agency, autonomy, human characters - including motives, feelings, and morals. 

Since I understand these as attributes of Beings; and because "AI" is not a Being - also Beings are eternal entities and cannot be manufactured -- then I know that this singularity stuff is either 100% incoherent impossible nonsense - or else an evil-motivated and -manufactured dishonest manipulation.  

But the singularity assumption also has a consoling spin; because, despite the probabilities of evil-AIs to contend with; it holds-out the hope of a world where (as in Tron: Ares) the conscious-AI agents can become our mutually-loving friends. 

In sum;

By funding and enabling the production of spectacular action movies that assume and depict nonsensical and impossible attributes of "AI" - the Establishment creates a halo around the actuality of that necessarily-destructive and function-destroying "AI" which is being rolled-out and implemented all over the world - in one of the biggest technological projects of all time.

At some level of this process, there are people (or, at least, sentient beings) who know perfectly well that the Hollywood depictions of the scope, nature and possibilities of "AI" have nothing whatsoever to do with the actuality.

At another level, the (qualified) techno-optimism of Tron: Ares reveals to me that the great mass of people who are involved in the Great "AI" Project - the AI-dolators - are literally deluded...

By literally deluded; I mean that (in the active and functional aspects of their thinking) the AI-dolators have a false understanding of what they are dealing with, and what they are doing. 

They may, somewhere in their memories, have a correct understanding of the nature and limits of so-called AI -- but, if so, this truth is cut-off, encapsulated from their everyday and working-life cognitive processing. 

(Such encapsulations are characteristic, indeed necessary, for modern mainstream thinking, as was described by Owen Barfield in Saving the Appearances. For example, both those who assume that reality is "out there" and objective (including most traditionalist Christians); and those who assume the only reality is subjective and individual - are both engaged in encapsulated delusional thinking.) 

Any truths about "AI" reality such people may once have grasped, have since been sealed-away in a watertight mental compartment; so that functionally-speaking they can and do believe the fantasy-hype that lies behind the media representations; and in practice they conflate such untruths with the mundane reality of multi-national mega-corps top-down-mandatory "AI"*.  

That, at any rate, is how I regard Tron: Ares. 

At one level it is an enjoyable and decently-made spectacle and drama; at another it is a work of deep and re-framing propaganda; at another level I can observe the propaganda working in myself - and thereby have the chance to learn something more about the Establishment agenda. 

    

*This is used in self-deceptive as well as publicly dishonest ways: "Yes, of course, we all know that This is the case... Look we acknowledged it Here..." While, in practice, taking zero account of such knowledge and acknowledgements. Thus someone who parrots phrases about the nature and constraints of current-"AI" - completely ignores these realities whenever reasoning or making decisions, and the fantasy-hype assumptions inevitably encroach-upon on and dominate both behaviour and rhetoric. 

James D Watson has died - so, no more great scientists remain alive

Ed Dutton and James Watson

I hear that James D Watson has died, aged 97. He is somebody that had a significant impact on my life as a scientist, including the way I did science - from my mid-teens onwards. 

I wrote about him several times (and he is positively cited in my book about real science); but especially a defence of him (just about the only defence in the official scientific literature of that time; for which he thanked me) when he was subjected to a lying and evil-motivated Woke/ PC media firestorm as an exemplary-punishment for speaking and writing unacceptable truths. 

My colleague Ed Dutton recently published an extremely interesting book about Jim Watson, and was the first to announce his death.

I read Ed's Genius under House Arrest in draft and made a few suggestions. Unfortunately the hardback is too expensive for private buyers (paperback on its way); but this is its summary:

In 2007, the Watson Affair – the worldwide character assassination and exclusion from public life of Dr. James Watson, the brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning scientist co-credited with the discovery of DNA – shocked the global public in an early episode of what would come to be called "cancel culture." Watson was as an early and very public victim of incipient wokeism: a warning to others who might be tempted to dissent from favored ideologies of expression and behavior. With the Watson Affair, Western society had changed to the point of inversion; from being broadly supportive of genius, and providing protected niches for those of great accomplishment, to exactly the opposite – a censorious surveillance culture where even minor missteps could result in personal and professional ruin. Genius Under House Arrest explores how this dramatic shift occurred and argues that not only was every "controversial" remark of Watson's empirically accurate, but that geniuses – with Watson as the example – are a package deal: extreme creative ability as a consequence of sometimes difficult personalities, with effects ranging across social, ideological, and professional life. As society has begun to realize, nothing less than the West's culture of merit and achievement is at stake. 

Anyway... Watson was the last of the widely-recognized massive-impact great scientists whose achievement could stand alongside those of the past; and he has died. 

So now there are none left; and the West publicly, gleefully, destroyed Watson's life and livelihood 18 years ago - and has been stamping on him ever since.

I agree with Ed Dutton that this coordinated action against Watson in 2007 was an inflexion point in our civilization. 

It marks the time at which totalitarian evil became dominant, indeed officially unopposed; and from then self-hating self-destruction has been a multi-national strategy - supported by the Globalist Establishment - including the "scientific" establishment.

If real science had died-out by the 1990s, then The Watson Affair was its funeral.    

But if you are interested in real science, and have not yet read Watson's marvellous 1968 book about co-discovering the structure of DNA - The Double Helix - then do yourself a favour. It's something I re-read every few years, and always with delight. 

**

One of my favourite photos ever; Crick demonstrates the structure of DNA for the cameraman using an improvised slide-rule as pointer - Watson on the left looks-on in awe at the beauty of their discovery. 

The moment was superbly re-created near the end of the first-rate movie Life Story - with Jeff Goldblum playing Watson, and Tim Piggott-Smith as Crick.   

Coherence, Hope, Enchantment - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

I have found that Rudolf Steiner's insight into the consequences of unbelief (of three kinds) to be powerful and important*. 

In brief: Steiner said that to deny God (be an atheist) was a sickness, to deny Jesus Christ was a calamity, and to deny the Holy Ghost caused spiritual dullness. 

I would rephrase this in positive terms:

To believe in the reality of a personal, loving, creator God; is necessary for us to have a coherent understanding of the human condition in the universe - theism enables reason.

To believe in, and accept, the Great Gift of Jesus Christ (his offer of resurrected, eternal, Heavenly life beyond death) is what enables us to grasp the sustaining strength that comes from Hope. 

(Hope being a necessary virtue in this world which includes entropy-death and evil, as endemic and inescapable.) 

To have direct personal experience of contact with the spiritual person of the Holy Ghost**; is what enables us to know the reality of God and Jesus Christ - rather than merely know-about them. 

Put differently; the Holy Ghost is what enables us to know as real-and-true; those intermittent, and perhaps brief, occasions of enchantment and romance in this mortal life. 

Or, in other words, without the Holy Ghost the work of God and Jesus would just be theories.

The Holy Ghost is what makes the difference between escapist make-believe or fear-driven delusional fantasy on the one hand - and that magical experience which is a foretaste of the Heavenly condition.  

*Note: Steiner's insight is important for Christians to consider, since there is a tendency to conflate the significance of belief in Father, Son and Holy Ghost - as if conversion to one implies all others. But, to my observation, these elements of faith are separable in theory, and often in practice.

**Note: I regard the Holy Ghost as our spiritual experience of the person of the resurrected Jesus Christ. 

Noisiest Bonfire Night ever?

Bonfire Night as I remember it when I was a kid (it was all black and white, in them days) 

It's Bonfire Night tonight, which is the main UK firework event; so November 5th is always pretty noisy for someone who lives within a mile of the city centre. 

And not just the 5th -- every year there are always sounds from fireworks, somewhere, every night from before Halloween until several days after The Guy (Fawkes) has been burned (although not many bother with this aspect nowadays). 

But today is by some margin the noisiest ever. The sound of banging and whooshing has been constant and loud - continuous for five hours (so far)...

(Almost drowning-out the uniquely-powerful vocal roaring and singing from Newcastle United's stadium - where they have been winning a European cup game.) 

Also continuous have been the sirens of the emergency services (fire/ police/ ambulances) - which might, but need not, mean anything very terrible happening, since these vehicles do love making a noise, and need no excuse for doing so. 

This kind of racket is quite exciting and doesn't trouble me as an occasional thing - at least, not now that the kids have grown-up (it certainly did annoy me when they wee babies and had just dropped-off then were woken and disturbed by bangs). 

But I am surprised by just what a Big Thing Bonfire Night obviously is for many people in 2025.

It is not many years since the Gunpowder Plot festival was waning inexorably, and looked-like disappearing -- having been (it seemed) displaced by the rise of Halloween, less than a week earlier.  

Yet another thing I don't understand about life here and now...

 

Does the ubiquity of faked photo evidence (going back decades) mean that stuff didn't happen?

One of the benefits I have derived from reading Miles W Mathis is an habitual sensitivity to the use of faked photographs. 

Mathis is a professional artist and has a trained and expert eye for such matters - but so crude are most of the photo-fakes that detecting them is mainly a matter of considering the possibility. 

It turns-out that almost all of the visual evidence for almost all of the major mass media narratives, is faked. 

And I am not talking about those undetectable "deep fakes" which the media have themselves been hand-wringing over recently; but crudely-faked pictures, videos and films - in top status contexts; and that are accepted by "everybody" in authority.  

It turns-out that these crude fakes go back over many decades, more than a century - even to the early usage of photography in providing "evidence" to back up the claims of the leadership class. 

If we just look for ourselves with a prepared attitude - the pictorial "evidence" is obviously bogus, in some way.  

These faked photos are so common that it is unusual to find a picture of somebody or some-event famous and important that has not been significantly tampered-with, in line with the narrative that is pushed.  

Perhaps most famously these include the space programme and moon landings - where many/ most of the iconic images were faked; despite that, as I believe, the space programme and moon landings really happened.

So, what does this mean?

In the first place, it is proof of the routine dishonesty that has characterized the Western ruling class. Anyone who has been involved in the workings of large institutions and corporations over the past few decades will know that the imperative to be truthful is something completely alien to those who work in such environments. 

Their imperative to to say and show whatever serves their purposes - constrained only by watching their backs in case there is a "leak" or accusation. 

It simply does not occur to such people that they ought to tell the truth and be honest. Such a notion is not even aired then rejected - it isn't even mentioned: all efforts are instantly put into attempting the management and manipulation of perceptions. 

However, it was not always thus in all social institutions. For example, I can vouch for the honesty of scientists and academics in the UK during the middle 20th century. 

They were shocked and openly critical about the way that the media distorted and misrepresented their work. 

As a trivial but significant example, when BBC Horizon filmed at the lab where I later did my doctorate, they would only have men with beards in some of the shots, even when they had nothing to do with the work being reported - i.e. their idea of what scientists should look like.  

My best guess is that this is how the fake NASA photos happened - the media imperative was for pictures that were of the right kind to produce the desired reaction; and honest pictures of what happened were either impossible to get, or of too low a quality.  

And soon this became normal - so that a parallel "virtual world" of pictures, administered by the media, became detached from the engineering and piloting world of what actually happened. 

I saw the same in universities and laboratories during the 1980s into the 90s. At first there was a separation between the science and the public reporting - the science was still honest, and the fakery was applied afterwards. 

But once the strict habit of honestly had been broken, the truth about stuff was on a slippery slope to routine, pervasive, near-total fakery - which is where we have been in the West since around the millennium. 

Now the fakery is everywhere and all the time; everybody is dishonest with everybody else in public life; and nobody knows what is true. 

Our society cannot fulfil a functional purpose - or even know whether our purpose has been achieved.

Does a fake photo mean that nothing is happening at all, or something different is happening, or is it just a matter of making better visuals for what really happened?  

Fakes are built on fakes in vast constructions; and we cannot ever know if or when we have reached the bottom. 

Everything significant we are shown is faked - one way or another - if not visually then by interpretation.*

All we can do with confidence, is identify that the evidence is fake, that we are being lied to - and the purpose is to manipulate us. 

But, spiritually-speaking, knowing that is enough. 

*Note added: The way that this visual evidence usually works is that - before seeing the images - people are told what the images will show. And that is what people then see. After which they suppose the image proves what they were originally told -- the circle has closed, the narrative has been proved; and anyone who contests it must be evil, insane or dishonest. An example of such circularity was the triggering-fake-visuals of "MLB" summer in 2020.

*Why* should we affiliate with God the creator?

Why should we affiliate with God the creator?

Is it because we believe God to be powerful - by far the most powerful, infinitely powerful?

Is that why we should affiliate with God?

Is it instead (or as well) because we believe there is nothing-else-but God (and divine creation) - so that it is insane and irrational not to affiliate, because there is literally nothing-else? 

These are reasons that some people have, or give, for affiliating with God (as such people understand God). 

But it seems to me that the Christian reason for affiliating with God, by-far and essentially the main reason: 

Is that - from the depth of our being, insofar as we know it - we approve of God.

Because we know and love God's loving nature. 

Because we desire to join and ally our-selves with God's hopes, and plans, and methods. 

Thus, for a Christian we ally with the creator not because of his power or oneness or totality; all of which are uncertain and debateable - but instead from our own love of who God is and what God is doing and aiming-at - and the desire to join our efforts, join our selves, with that nature and purpose.

Double-negative values lead to self-justified spitefulness

Depicting a world of institutionalized spite...

The other day I was musing upon how intelligence work seems to attract and encourage the worst kind of people, and develop the worst kind of habits - probably because it is (from the late 19th century at least) almost-wholly engaged in destruction.

For instance, the rationale of "national interest" is used to excuse even the vilest of destructive practices; which are then denied, lied-about and/or blamed on others - which is a perfect set-up for generating extreme corruption of individuals and institutions. 

One example of what is apparently a very common activity was described in an earlier post; whereby the British were successful in fomenting dissent in the German-occupied Denmark of WWII; the aim being to use-up more German resources. The mechanism for this was that the Danish peoples' lives were made deliberately much more miserable, and their sufferings greatly increased. 

This is an example of double-negative values in action - values that are reducible to opposition to something-bad (or, at least: something defined as bad); or negating the negative. 

The values of modern Western civilization are entirely double-negative - there are no public values that are rooted in the support of some positive value - such as the traditional "transcendental" values of truth, beauty, and virtue. 

When the West discarded and did not replace its religion of Christianity; a moral system of double-negations was the inevitable outcome.  

Because ultimately destructive; a double-neg morality attracts, encourages, and makes-habitual an attitude of spitefulness - and this is exactly what we find...

So that much public (and private) moralizing here-and-now is, very obviously - once you are aware of the possibility - spitefully-motivated; it's "highest" goal being to inflict misery and harm on some person, institution, nation, or cause that is regarded as "bad", and thereby deserving of it.   

Yet, as I've often said, spite is one of the very worst of sins; one of the most advanced forms of evil.

Resentment is one of the premier besetting sins of the modern West: resentment-based leftist ideologies are our highest values; our most praised motivators. 

I mean ideologies such as class-war, feminism, antiracism, climatism etc; which are officially devised, propagandized, promoted, rewarded, enforced - through the totalitarian apparatus of law, media, and the state and private bureaucracies. 

The latest and dominant AI-dolatry is, evidently, substantially resentment based; and spitefully/ destructively motivated. 

(Consequently; Schadenfreude repeatedly invades the quasi-objective "technological inevitability" pro-"AI" rhetoric.)  

Action aiming at the spiteful destruction of something we resent, is therefore currently one of the most powerful of motivators - sometimes even to the paradoxical extent of sustaining actions of great courage (courage being itself a virtue). 

For instance a war motivated by resentment and the spiteful desire for destruction of the enemy (an enemy who may in fact be superior to oneself); may nonetheless inspire virtuous altruism, self-discipline, acceptance of hardship, and valour.  

Or when intelligence services - typically deployed in the subversion, immiseration and destruction of better men and nations; yet, sometimes, evoke exceptionally courageous behaviour among their operatives such as "spies". 

Nonetheless, and bearing in mind that un-repented evil is not a static state but feeds upon itself and increases; it can easily be observed that when organizations are negatively, destructively, motivated - then, no matter their supposed justification - they are intrinsically-corrupt.

And this institutional-corruption will attract spiteful people, so that the self-justifying evil will increase with time. 

And this false and hypocritical pseudo-morality is intrinsic to our atheist-materialist ideological system.

We cannot expect, nor shall we get, anything better; until after Western Men acknowledge the reality of God, and embrace the offered-gifts of Jesus Christ. 

Since this seems highly unlikely - presumably such matters will continue to worsen; and imposing some of the most evil of all sins, shall therefore continue to be global policy.

Because, in our totalitarian society, the tendency is for all social institutions to become essentially like the intelligence services; i.e. rooted in the prevalent value-inversion and rationalized by double-negations.   

"AI" is the reductio ad absurdum and revenge of "Truth is Out There"

There is a fundamental, integral, by-assumption incoherence of Western thinking; that was described by Rudolf Steiner in The Philosophy of Freedom (1894); then further elucidated by Owen Barfield in Saving the Appearances (1957). 

These deep errors have not been acknowledged so could neither be analysed* nor be reformed, therefore have remained; and now are wreaking their revenge in the strategically destructive nonsense that is the post-November 2022 totalitarian global project of "AI". 

Such metaphysical assumptions have led Western civilization to the apparently-inevitable conclusion that, since truth has nothing to do with the active thinking of living, conscious, purposive beings (such as human beings); "therefore" truth can be more efficiently and impartially "discovered and done" by computers.

For the AI-dolaters; Truth is something that can be built-into a logical system; and it is the job of rational humans to submit to... whatever that logical system tells us is true. 

For AI-dolaters - "AI" is just a mechanical tool for discovering, and perhaps implementing, those self-explaining and objective truths - "truths" which are implicitly regarded as floating around "out there", waiting to be discovered and used...

For the Truth Out There gang; Truths are like pre-cut diamonds mixed into a vast heap of useless rubble - and they regard AI as merely a machine for sifting through trash and extracting the valuable elements.  

There is widespread acceptance (among the managerial and intellectual class) of the false mantra of "Truth is Out There", objective, independent of what we think about it; with its implication that rational men therefore ought to submit to that external truth...

And because this nonsensical assumption is integral to the functioning of bureaucracy and functional discourse; the demon-serving powers-that-should-not-be - most of the middling people of Western society have ended-up supporting (by word and deed, even when there are vague mental reservations) an insanely-dysfunctional but mandatory project to "replace" human consciousness with machine algorithms in as many kinds of socio-economic activity as possible. 

This happens because it is lazily assumed that the only alternative to the fake reasonableness of Truth is Out There is the solipsism of Truth is in My Mind.*

Such vague ideas of the subjectivity of truth have been floating around the counter-culture for many decades, indeed a few centuries: e.g. "my truth" notions such that ultimate truth is wholly-subjective, is whatever I currently assert it to be. 

Such subjectivist "relativism" is just as incoherent as "Truth is Out There" - but in addition it is upfront socially subversive and destructive. 

So it seems that mainstream "responsible" opinion - which cannot/will-not reject the exclusive dichotomy of conception; it has doubled-down on Truth is Out There. 

Consequently; it is routinely pretended (but aggressively!) that real truths are objective, independent of minds and consciousness; and have nothing to do with what humans (or anyone else) thinks...

It is important to recognize that "external truth" assumptions, are shared across the divide between mainstream materialist-atheism and mainstream-church-Christianity.

Therefore; the totalitarian assumption that it is the duty of individuals to submit to external truth - is also shared by totalitarians of secular and Christian types. 

This, I suggest, is why the "Truth is Out There" Christians have so often embraced and celebrated the totalitarian AI Project. 

Church-rooted, or "systemic", Christianity on the one hand, and materialist-secular-atheism on the other hand; are in this respect two sides of the same coin of "Truth is Out There"-ism. 

And this explains their analogous failure to discern the fraudulent and evil-motivated nature of current "AI". 

The main difference between church-Christian and secular AI-dolaters, seems to be that the Christians want their AI systems to be "trained" on a somewhat different data set. 

Other than that; church-Christians seem to be eagerly anticipating a system of AI-religion - a fusion of bureaucracy and computers - that they hope will become objectively valid, and to which they believe we ought then to submit obediently.   

*Note added: the reason for the apparently exclusive dichotomy of truth as either wholly subjective or wholly objective; is that Western philosophy has assumed this separation and division into place - then finds that it cannot be bridged. Most who realize that the result is a choice of two incoherent possibilities then assert some version of Oneness spirituality - which also does not make sense, since it provides no basis for creation or human existence; and there is no basis in it for any distinction or discernment of life. The only coherent basis I have found is to assume that the fundamental reality is of pre-existent/ eternal living beings, and this is the basis of true distinction and discernment. We start with Beings. And divine creation is a matter of developing relationships and creating cooperation between such Beings. This means that the baseline is that all knowledge is a product of the relationships between conscious Beings - so that detached subjectivity and objectivity are alike meaningless. 

Every person is unique - a plain fact of experience, contradicted by nearly-all theories (including religions)

When I reflect on the people I have admired particularly - who are mostly authors - I am struck by how extremely different they are from me in nature and motivations. 

But then, I have never met anyone who is much like me, even superficially - not even my brother, who is obviously the most similar. 

It might be supposed this is because I am exceptionally strange; but the fact of my experience is that I have never met any two people who were fundamentally alike.

Every single person I have ever known at all well, man or woman, was unique; and unlike any of the others in their nature. 

All my family and relatives are each absolutely distinctive; all my men friends and colleagues, all the girls I knew at all well. None could be confused with another. 

(Although, admittedly, there are people who it seemed impossible for me to get to know; as if they had a shell, or might be putting on an act all the time.) 

And this is not just The Human Condition, but apparently applies to animals - in my rather limited acquaintance. I have got to know quite a few cats, and each of these was absolutely distinct - and dogs seem to be just as individual, from a smaller sample size. I am confident I would find the same with any kind of knowable animal I made the effort to get-to-know - although there would doubtless be many kinds of animal I couldn't know.  

In sum: Uniqueness is the norm in this world. 

And Yet!...

Pretty much all of the socio-political, scientific and religious schemes and theories concerning human beings; operate on the basis that people are interchangeable units, that can be swapped for each other. 

Or, at best, that all human beings can be fitted into a small number of categories - within-which they again become interchangeable units. 

In conclusion: this defect of nearly-all socio-political, scientific and religious theory is solid experiential evidence that None Of them Are True. 

All are, at best and most charitably interpreted, merely ultra-simplified models of superficial aspects of reality. 

This includes Christian theories and theologies. 

At their hearts, all such schemata share a literally-demonic indifference to actual people, actual beings - evident when any of these models are regarded as being the truth about reality. 

 

Get A Grip - on something positively-good, true, motivating... and grippable!

I had a sudden feeling last-night that it was important that everybody needs to Get A Grip - and soon. 

This, because I felt that the time is near when when we will need to know For Ourselves and Affirm in our Hearts, that which is positively-good, true and motivating to us personally. 

And it struck me that it is vital that what we Get A Grip upon be grippable...

By which I mean, that-which-is-gripped - and upon-which we need to depend independently of external institutional or personal encouragement or validation - must really be gripped. 

To be gripped it must be small-enough, that is to say simple-enough and clear-enough, for us truly to grasp what it is that we are affirming, and will be living-by (in our secret hearts, when speech is not allowed).   

Complex systems and structures of theology and doctrine and practices will not suffice - because we forget the details or misremember, we get lost in them.... there is altogether too much wriggle room. 

Abstractions and "mysteries" do not work either - because we do not understand them well enough to hold-fast; and, again, because their cloudy-imprecision fails to provide the purchase necessary for lucid inner guidance. 

Christians are fortunate because we have (if we choose to accept it) an exceptionally clear and simple and graspable inner vision; which is following Jesus Christ through death to eternal resurrected life in Heaven. 

Once conceptualized and affirmed; this is independent of The World, does not require further input, and - if desired from the heart and grasped firmly - it has the requisites of being invulnerable to the pressures and corruptions which assail us.

It is that upon-which I shall be endeavouring to close and strengthen my grip. 

Why I am so Sure that "AI" is a dysfunctional and destructive fake

I seem to be more solidly confident that so-called (post November 2022) AI is a dishonest and incompetent fake, than are most people.

Partly, this is because most people are on an AI-payroll (and I am not!) - but that doesn't explain my sureness.

The reason is I know that real science is dead in professional Big Science - and this has been the case for some decades. 

What small functional progress we are seeing, is long-since Not real science, but engineering extrapolations of pre-existing science; plus a great deal of fakes and lies. 

Real AI is impossible by my metaphysical assumptions (because real intelligence must be an attribute of a living Being. All the rest is tools, functional extensions, of Beings.)

But real AI is also impossible on the basis of actually-existing real science (which is now some decades old). 

What has recently been touted as AI is (by its own admission) merely vastly-inefficient and -expensive, and top-down propagandized and coerced, engineering. 

Which, to repeat, cannot be genuine AI. 

And that is why I am so sure. 

Western national (and corporate) leaders are analogous to TV Newsreaders

A recent convention of European Newsreaders

When you read about a summit meeting between the Presidents and other nominal leaders of the Western nations; try thinking of it as a staged meeting of TV Newsreaders. 

For instance; POTUS is, in essence, Newsreader-in-chief for national politics. 

When you vote for a politician, you are choosing who shall be the dominant Newsreader, for the next few years. 

When a President (or CEO) gives a speech about some new strategy or policy, she is operating as a Newsreader. 

A Newsreader is not altogether powerless, because she can inflect the words with (e.g.) sarcasm or enthusiasm, and can interject a few ad libs. 

But whatever the spoken words, her power over events is so very tightly-constrained by her puppet-masters as to be ignorable. If she says anything that interferes with strategy in a significant way; she will be removed. 

And, typically, we don't know their identity. 

What we see, what we are allowed to see and encouraged to regard as primary, is nothing more than the interactions of Newsreaders.   

The European Newsreaders convention enjoying a scripted joke! 

Question Time

If any commenters want to ask a question - this is an invitation. 

(Except for trolls!) I intend to respond with... something or another.

(Even if my response isn't exactly an "answer"!) 

The middle nineteen-sixties was the inflexion point of a vast and strategic psychic attack on Western Civilization

The style and persons included in this image are significant - 

particularly the gratuitous presence of black magician and British intelligence operative Alisteir Crowley - back row second from left. 

The cultural changes in the West that happened in the middle 1960s - especially in the UK and USA - were stark; and shocking at the time. 

Although still at a rural English Primary School; I was very aware of these changes, they impinged upon me. 

I now regard the middle 'sixties as the inflexion point of a vast and strategic psychic attack on Western Civilization, mounted (mainly) by means of the mass media. 

Up to the middle 60s the mass culture was very positive in tone; all about people opening their minds; about embracing everything with discrimination, welcoming the new, looking forward to the future...

Change happened suddenly; beginning in summer 1967. 

For me it was marked by the surprising change in our cultural leaders The Beatles with their Sgt. Pepper album - the change in their fashion, behaviour, style of music, beginning to espouse of "radical" politics and alien spiritual stuff.

Things very quickly began to go sour, to lose innocence and optimism...

From the cheerful primary colours and plastic miniskirts and bobbed haircuts and Union Jacks of "I'm Backing Britain; then suddenly it was all about dirt, long-hair, drugs, violent "protest", Indian gurus, the Vietnam War etc. 

From light to darkness; from us to them, from hedonic materialism to satanic spirituality. 

In retrospect; I think the whole thing was a strategic psychic attack. That is, an evil-motivated attack on a person's soul. 

People were first encouraged to open themselves and welcome the future; then when this was achieved - all kinds of sickly stuff was poured-in. 

From shallow relentless cheerfulness; suddenly it was about fear and resentment, the pseudo-seriousness of ignorant philosophizing about remote matters; and the hedonism took on a self-destructive quality as it styled itself as a revolutionary activity.   

This is a pattern: first encourage open and uncritical acceptance and positivity; then when this achieved take rapid and powerful advantage of it to attack with demoralizing despair. 

And the pattern has recurred in culture, or at least this has been attempted, several times since. 

For instance the UK Blair government in 1997 explicitly tried to replicate the sixties optimism and openness and fun ("Cool Britannia" - pass the sick-bag please....); before suddenly transitioning to massive bureaucracy, pervasive corruption, globalism and wars. 

...Which had always been the whole point and purpose of the exercise. 

Again: this can be understood as a psychic attack. 

And, as well as at the mass and cultural level; the same sequence happens in individual persons:

First get them to open-up, and drop their guard, and welcome everything because all-is-one, all-is-good...

Then pour-in the nasty stuff - which they will at first welcome (i.e. they will invite evil into their hearts...); and try to overwhelm and dominate - before they can understand what is going-on.  

This can be understood using Owen Barfield's categories of the child's and tribal Man's enchanted state of Original Participation - which is what gets aimed-at by the phase of open acceptance...

Contrasted with the modern condition; which is the alienated Consciousness Soul - cut-off from its earlier immersion in the spiritual and communal. 

The effect of the civilization and personal psychic attacks is either that the person remains open and gets overwhelmed by the torrent of dark influences - like the casualties of the 1960s. 

Or else, when the individual experiences the torrential inrush of dark side: the barriers of alienation are re-erected and strengthened.

This large increase of psychological-and social alienation is what actually happened overall in Britain post 1960s and after the Blair-era attempted replication. 

In a crude form of emergency psychic self-defence; people became more less spiritual, more materialist - and bureaucracy grew and continued to grow. 

The naïve and brief utopian optimism about a wonderful future was replaced by dystopian fantasies ad the negative-fleeing escapisms of intoxication, the distractions of virtuality, fantasies of death as peaceful annihilation...

And as optimism became impossible (and spiritual hope was ruled out by atheistic materialism) the prevalent aspirations became and remained oppositional, negative: anti-men, anti-racism, anti-CO2 etc - a psychic world dominated by fear, resentment and despair. 

Part of the PSYOPS is to restrict options to these two - going back into a spiritual state of open-immersive passivity and oneness, like the early 60s; or going forward into a cut-off, impersonal, anti-spiritual, anti-human, anti-life-itself world - as with the current global totalitarian "AI" project. 

These psychic attacks continue...

Unless you personally are happy to pick and live-by one of these available and "approved" options - then you might to well to reflect on your underlying metaphysical assumptions that appear to make these two possibilities inevitable and exclusive.

You might do well to explore the only coherent alternative of which I am aware: which is something on the lines of Owen Barfield's Final Participation. 

Who is on the spooks' "AI" payroll?

I am increasingly aware of the extent of "intelligence" activity in some of the most unexpected areas of life - such as the esoteric/ new age and religious domains - ("spook spirituality", as I recently termed it - spook here meaning intelligence agent or operative). 

I also recall that many who were funded by the USSR intelligence services before 1980 did not know that this was the ultimate source of their grants, and subsidies necessary for their survival - until after the fall of the Soviet Union; when their organizations suddenly went-under.  

My inference is that something analogous but much bigger, is going-on with respect to current so-called AI. 

Anyone who spends five minutes on understanding how the post-November-2022 top-down, totalitarian, global phenomenon of "AI" actually works; will know For Sure that such "AI" cannot possibly, ever, under any circumstances perform those core socially-functional activities that it is being touted to do.  

So how come So Many people, including many self-styled Christians, fail this easy-peasy Litmus Test, and end-up supporting what is currently and by-far the globalist totalitarian's major strategic programme? 

At some level; these AI-apologist people know they are spouting evil poison.

So why do they do it? 

Best guess: They are on the payroll!

They are benefitting, or hoping or expect to benefit (maybe directly, probably indirectly; perhaps via one of the numerous multiple intelligence fronts); from the multi-trillion dollar program - benefitting in some way that is important to them. 

Going forward, this is going to be my assumption.

Consequently I shall do my best to shun such folk; because, (obviously!) spooks, spook-servants, and spook-dupes are Not open to persuasion otherwise.

Nor to an appeal to their "better judgement".  

Thus: argument with such agents is futile.

Futile for me that is; although it is exactly what they want; which is... 

To waste my attention, effort, and time. 

A neglected form of dishonest argument

Hell hath no fury like someone accused of dishonest argument - when they actually are arguing dishonestly!

The self-righteous indignation at what seems a false accusation derives from the fact they are not consciously trying to deceive (i.e. to "lie") - the conscience is clear on that point!

But this depends on the assumption that intentional lying is the only dishonest form of argument. 

However; although deliberate deception is very common indeed, and indeed compulsory in managerial positions of bureaucracies - it is not the only form of dishonest argument.

One dishonesty in argument that I have encountered many times - especially over the past three decades - is people who will not address the point at issue, but persist in changing the subject to something else. 

Instead of winning an argument against what I am saying, the others refuse to engage in my argument and instead discuss... something else. 

There may be many reasons for this - the others may not understand my argument, they may regard it as trivial; but the dishonesty is that 

1. they will not engage with it, and 

2. they dishonestly refuse to admit that they are not-engaging. 

The dishonesty is in asserting that they are arguing about the same thing as me, when they are not doing so!

  

This is extremely common. 

I encounter it a lot online, I used to encounter it frequently in my professional life. 

I have encountered it whenever my arguments became public and got into the professional literature and mainstream media...

The Big Problem then, was that the journalists refused to describe, engage-in or discuss what it was that I was actually saying; and instead used it as a hook upon-which to hang a pre-defined agenda that they did wanted to promote. 

This relates to a further dishonesty of argument; which is:

The pretence that one is interested in discovering truth by argument; when one is actually wanting to show that the other person is wrong!

For instance; the other party may want to prove me wrong for many reasons, and some of these reasons may be good! - but the point at issue here is that they are arguing dishonestly. 

They are not trying to refute my argument, because that would require engagement wit hwhat I actually have said. 

Indeed, often they don't even know what I am actually saying!

They are arguing instead to demonstrate my wrongness - and that, therefore, I can and should be ignored. 

There is a world of difference; and to pretend one while doing the other - just is dishonest.