social media – The Burning Platform

Netflix’s “Social Dilemma” is Pure Deflection Because the Best Lies Always Contain Some Truth

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

This blogger sees Netflix in the same way “Godfather”, Vito Corleone, viewed his enemies. In other words, I keep my books and blogs close, but television and movies closer. This is because social narratives are the new religion. As I’ve stated before in previous articles, I have a love-hate relationship with Netflix. It offers a convenient and affordable access to an impressive library of film and documentaries – but not without its cultural bias. It’s like anything else, buyer beware; or, rather, I simply slice off the meat and leave the bones when it comes to infotainment.

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The Physics of Karma Transcends the Perfidy of Billionaires

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

When I was in second grade, my class took a field trip whereby we walked through a cemetery and the county fairgrounds. We were strongly advised not to throw rocks by our gym instructor who was assisting our teacher on the trip. He was a large muscular man and had a Swedish-sounding name. He said to us kids: “Don’t even THINK about throwing any rocks! If any of you do, you will be in big, big, BIG trouble!”

Well, he should have never given me the idea. Because while walking through the fairgrounds, there were so many metal roofs on the buildings. So I picked up a round heavy stone and lobbed it as high as I could before it landed on what sounded like a giant cymbal.

“Who did that?!” screamed the teachers as over 20 tiny fingers pointed my way. The big gym teacher suddenly loomed over me, blocking out the sun. “Why did you do that?!” he asked me in a loud voice.

Of course, I had no answer for him other than “I don’t know” which I stated simply while squinting up at him. But I remember the feeling very well. Today, it would be summarized as: “Because, F*CK you, that’s why”.

Thus began my life of crime.

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A Satirical Dream: Trump’s 2019 State of the Union Address

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, the First Lady of the United States, and my fellow Americans:

It’s been another year since your president has stood before you to, once again, deliver yet another State of the Union address.

Tonight, however, will not be the standard fare. Instead of half-truths and false optimism, I am going to set aside all that in order to say what I believe is true.

Dear citizens, we now stand a crossroads and we must choose. We must choose if we are to move forward and deal with the real problems facing our nation, or to progress as a country of corruption; whether to return to our roots as an honorable republic – a nation of laws, or to continue our decline into lawlessness and the abyss.

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A Veritable Feast of Reality, Choice, and Consequences

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Someone I care about got into some trouble the week before Thanksgiving. They asked for my help, and I wasn’t raised to say “no” in such situations. What ensued were a series of unfortunate events that staggered my mind and challenged my previously naive vision of a moderately benevolent universe.

By any definition, any knowledgeable neutral party would say I did everything right, in spite of the dire turn of events that, fortunately, resulted in only a minor loss of time and money on my part; with a still positive outcome for the party I helped.

Even now, looking back, I realize I’d have made all the same decisions with the same information I had at the time. Yet, the mostly-positive denouement of the entire affair resulted in a conclusion I never dreamed possible at the start.

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MAD WORLD

And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very very
Mad world, mad world

The haunting Gary Jules version of the Tears for Fears’ Mad World speaks to me in these tumultuous mad times. It must speak to many others, as the music video has been viewed over 132 million times. The melancholy video is shot from the top of an urban school building in a decaying decrepit bleak neighborhood with school children creating various figures on the concrete pavement below. The camera pans slowly to Gary Jules singing on the rooftop and captures the concrete jungle of non-descript architecture, identical office towers, gray cookie cutter apartment complexes, and a world devoid of joy and vibrancy.

The song was influenced by Arthur Janov’s theories in his book The Primal Scream. The chorus above about his “dreams of dying were the best he ever had” is representative of letting go of this mad world and being free of the monotony and release from the insanity of this world. Our ego fools us into thinking the madness of this world is actually normal. Day after day we live lives of quiet desperation. Despite all evidence our world is spinning out of control and the madness of the crowds is visible in financial markets, housing markets, politics, social justice, and social media, the level of normalcy bias among the populace has reached astounding levels, as we desperately try to convince ourselves everything will be alright. But it won’t.

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Language: The Indispensable Fundamental Actuator of False Orthodoxy

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

In Ayn Rand’s penultimate magnum opus, “The Fountainhead”, there was a minor antagonist by the name of Ellsworth Toohey whose raison d’etre was to undermine Rand’s ideal man and protagonist, Howard Roark.

Although Toohey considered his parasitical power as having a major stifling effect on capitalistic society, in reality, all his cumulative efforts ended up as a mere minor footnote in the long march of Man; as evidenced in the story’s denouement and ensuing towering city skylines.

Of course, much of Rand’s life consisted of excoriating the parasitical aspect of the Collectivists and their government, as both defined by dependency; in stark contrast to the rugged self-reliance of the men who moved the world.

In The Fountainhead, a discussion took place whereby Toohey said he wanted to make the “ideological soil” infertile to the point where young heads would explode prior to expressing any individuality (or similar to that). Then, later, near the end, Toohey asked Roark what Roark thought of him, and the egoistic, self-reliant architect replied: “But I don’t think of you.”

In reality, is it possible today to ignore the Collective? Or, has it propagated sufficiently to where it can be ignored no longer?

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Towers to Heaven: The Alchemy of Prophecy, Terror, and Unity

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer).

– Revelation 9:11

At the end of last month, I read an article that claimed Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was foretold by a “20 Year Old Movie”. The film was a 1998 thriller entitled “Enemy of the State” starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman.

My curiosity aroused, I selected the show from my electronic catalog and watched it unwind; similar to the way I once queued up songs on jukeboxes in the halcyon days preceding the matrix.

In the film, Gene Hackman played an Edward Snowden-type National Security Agency (NSA) contractor gone rogue who revealed to the viewers the U.S. government’s high-tech surveillance capabilities. Two decades ago when the film was released, the surveillance grid disclosed therein would have seemed far-fetched. But not today. Now, in the aftermath of 911, the Patriot Act, and the Snowden revelations, those capabilities are not only common knowledge, but are the subjects of ongoing daily headlines.

The antagonist in the film was played by Jon Voight, a power-hungry NSA bureaucrat who assembled a team of technology experts and security agents that blackmailed Congress and even murdered a senator. The politician was killed to aid the passing of a Patriot Act-style bill that would have, in effect, drilled the final screw into the coffin of the Fourth Amendment.

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The Persistence of Their Delusion is Despicable

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

As I’ve written of before, I’m part of a group of men that meet for breakfast on some weekends as a result of our shared involvement in a community organization. A few weeks ago, I dined with two of the men who seemed genuinely excited about the upcoming Blue Wave they believe will occur in the November midterm elections.

One of the men, a business owner self-identifying as a Republican, said that after much thought and analysis, Hillary Clinton would have made a better president than Donald Trump. The other man, who is a physician, is by any definition a rainbow-flag waving Cultural Marxist.

When I explained to them my perspectives, they said I needed to “quit watching the lies on Fox News”. At one point during our conversation, the RINO (Republican in Name Only) said the Deep State did not exist. When I asked if he would acknowledge the influence of unelected government officials throughout the “swamp”, he simply stated again “there was no Deep State”.

And so began conversations that extended over the next several days.

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Those Who Don’t Take Heed Die of Ingratitude

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

One evening, while in college, I attended an extracurricular lecture held by my college adviser on nuclear proliferation. It was a concern that was close to his heart and I admired his “doing something about it” at the time.

During his talk, he shared the parable of “the frog in boiling water” and it was the first time I had heard it told.

Essentially, it boiled (pun intended) down to this:

If you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out to save its life. However, if you place the frog into a pot of room temperature water and slowly heat it to a boil, the frog will gradually boil to death.

The lesson from the story?

For me, it was this:

Inattention and complacency kills; gradually by degree at first, and then all once.

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Truth & Bullshit in the Digital Advertising Age

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

In sales and advertising it’s always a numbers game. That is to say the more people are impressed upon with a certain pitch, or spiel as it were, the larger the response will be during any given campaign or promotional event.

In advertising, “points” measure percentages of given populations and can be targeted to select demographics (called Target Rating Points) or even subjective measurements (called Index Rating Points) like the propensity to purchase in any given market.

Furthermore “Gross Impressions” quantify the approximate number and cost per thousands of duplicate people reached within a certain demographic; whereas “Reach” and “Frequency” represent math equations based upon algorithms involving unduplicated people impressed upon within a certain demographic and how many times they were imprinted with any given ad or message.

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Ten Ways the Democratic Northern Hemisphere Nations Became the Orwellian West

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

In his book, “1984”, George Orwell envisioned a future crushed by the iron grip of a collectivist oligarchy. The narrative told of the INGSOC Party which maintained power through a system of surveillance and brutality designed to monitor and control every aspect of society. From the time of the book’s release in 1949, any ensuing vision of a dark dystopia depicting variations of jackboots stomping on human faces, forever, has been referenced as being “Orwellian”. This is because Orwell’s narrative illustrated various disturbing and unjust conceptualizations of control, crime, and punishment.

For example, “Newspeak” represented the language of mind control, whereas “crimethink”, “thoughtcrime”, and “crimeface” manifested as transgressions against the state. Guilty citizens were captured by the “Thought Police”, and the ultimate punishment consisted of “vaporization”; which eliminated every last vestige of a person’s existence.

In the horrifying world of 1984, the nation of Oceania was divided into three concentric groups: The Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles, or proletariat. The Proles constituted 85% of the population and lived in extreme privation. The Inner Party represented the elite powerbrokers who led lives of comprehensive luxury compared to the minions in the Outer Party.

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Seven Days in May

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

As the political coup against President Donald Trump continues, I was recently reminded of a 1964 film entitled Seven Days in May starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, and Ava Gardner. Paradoxically, the screenplay was written by Rod Serling, the same guy who created and narrated The Twilight Zone.

Coincidence? But I digress.

Serling’s screenplay was, in fact, based upon the novel of the same name that was written by the authors Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II. Published during the first year of John F. Kennedy’s presidency, the book was actually read by JFK who not only shared it with those in his circle, but also encouraged the production of the film. Unfortunately, however, President Kennedy never lived to see the movie play on the big screen.

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