The Monthly Review — June 2024
All of New Outlook's topics, stories, and opinions you missed this past month, in one place.
For the readers who love short, snappy reads. Those who are short on time. In commute. And those who want a quick entry point into exploring bigger ideas.
The Monthly Review is your sneak peek into many of the topics, stories, and opinions I’m typically publishing on New Outlook, from the short notes to the long-form articles. Let’s have a quick dive!
➊ GOOD INTENTIONS THAT PAVE THE ROAD THE HELL
You don’t get to say your social justice movement is built on compassion, love, diversity, inclusion, etc., meanwhile all we see that follows your movement’s execution in real life is more hatred, more division, more destruction, more homogeneity (of thought and worldview), more exclusion, more animosity and vitriol toward people who tepidly disagree with you or do not acquiesce to your worldview.
So it begs the question: what exactly is the social justice movement’s aim if not to destroy everything in its path that does not conform to its dictates.
Saying you stand for something in theory is nice. But the execution stage is where we really get to witness the core of your values. The WNBA labels itself as an “activist league,” but the way the league has treated its generational rising star player, Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark, proves that conformity, by any means necessary, is what it advocates.
★★★★★ New Outlook Recommends:
The WNBA Has A Mission Problem
In just one month of her professional WNBA career, Caitlin Clark, former Iowa Hawks NCAAW Division 1 superstar, and the No. 1 WNBA draft pick in the 2024 class, has brought an unprecedented fanfare to the league, the likes of which has not been seen in decades. Despite her Indiana Fever team’s slow start in the league, Clark’s presence has already
➋ HAVE THE COURAGE TO CHANGE YOUR MIND
“I’m not going to apologize for changing my mind when new information comes to light or when I discover an error in my prior thinking… Admitting to my mistakes and correcting my errors isn’t a sign of weakness—it’s integrity.”
—GLENN LOURY
I've been thinking about this idea for a while now. The notion of abandoning your previously held (cringe) beliefs for new ones when confronted with new information that renders your previous worldview senseless and incoherent.
People often suspect that a person who happens to change his mind on a particular subject must have something up his sleeves. They believe he must be duplicitous, or untrustworthy, or lack conviction. But what is often missing from that analysis is the critical effort to understand the reasoning behind the decision to change one’s mind, and the process one takes to change their mind.
There are those who change their mind because there is a financial or social incentive to do so. And there are those who change their mind because they have been proven wrong with newly emerging information, and more than anything, what matters to them is what is true, not what is materially beneficial.
➌ THE PROBLEM WITH JON STEWART
In 2004, Jon Stewart went on CNN’s Crossfire show, cohosted by Tucker Carlson, to give Carlson & his cohost a talking to about journalistic ethics & the responsibilities of the news media. He was right!
Ironically, in 2024, Stewart is the commentator who now displays the very same unethical standards in newsmen that he once lambasted. He has blatantly become more partisan and ideological, while Carlson, in the wake of his departure from FOX News, has become more anti-establishment and representative of the adversarial flank of independent news media.
Carlson seems to have taken Stewart’s advice in 2004. However, twenty years later, it seems Stewart has become the thing he hated most back then: a propagandist. You can’t make this stuff up.
➍ DARING TO BE CONSISTENT
When people unashamedly talk about how much they prefer the “peaceful atmosphere” that exists under a Biden administration to the raucous atmosphere that existed under a Trump administration, they are telling you that they are not critical thinkers and would really make for good test subjects of propaganda.
There is a seemingly “peaceful atmosphere” under Biden because every politician, media outlet, publication, journalists, government officials, and on and on have entirely abdicated their respective responsibilities in favor of their political party’s dominance. These institutions—majority of which are liberal—could never afford to critique themselves while under their own party’s administration. Instead, they prefer to take siestas, willfully fall asleep at the wheel, serve up puff pieces that soften the rough edges of a catastrophic administration, offer no critical coverage of world affairs while the world literally burns at war. But hey, at least you’re enjoying the “peaceful atmosphere” orchestrated for you under Biden.
On the other hand, there was a seemingly “raucous atmosphere” under Trump because every politician, media outlet, publication, journalists, government officials, and on and on were up in hysteria because a political figure who didn’t care to play political ball, as it’s often played, was suddenly in position to expose their carefully designed and orchestrated political machine. That, to them, was as dangerous as a Hitlerian figure. So they’re more than willing to sound the alarms, beat the drums, write alarming editorials that warn of the end of the world, cook up conspiratorial narratives that are wholly fabricated… anything to make you feel like under his administration, the sky could literally fall at any moment.
If these institutions had ANY integrity at all, there would ALWAYS be a raucous atmosphere that you’re sick and tired of, no matter who the president is.
➎ THE AWAKENING MANIFESTO
“Ten years ago, I was fully immersed in the Woke ‘cult milieu.’ I didn’t ask any questions, I just assumed that I was a “good person” on the “right side of history” because I supported anything and everything that sounded virtuous. It never occurred to me that the language I was using may hide contrived terms and radical agendas; never occurred to me that education today could be extremely different than the education I received 20 years ago; never occurred to me that there may be reasons why six-out-of-ten children in Wisconsin aren’t proficient in reading or math.”
— LOGAN LANCING
It takes serious self-awareness to consider tearing down the “identity” you’ve erected with the support of ideas and beliefs that have almost become a new religion. If you can muster up enough courage to do that—to ask curious questions, to want to know the why and the how, to want to know if what you believe was ever right, to want to connect to a more honest, authentic, and unshaken version of yourself—you’ll quickly realize that the real you awaits behind all of the facade that once represented your “identity.”
➏ RACE AS AN INDUSTRY
Think of race as an industry. For institutions, organizations, and individuals whose entire ethos is built upon racial advocacy, they must be willing to do whatever it takes to keep the industry going, even if it means keeping people wrongfully obsessed with their identity rather than their intrinsic values. These institutions must be willing to push narratives that may not be for the betterment or wellness of their support base, but that serve the interest of the “movement,” as a whole; advancing the idea that racism is more pernicious today than it ever was.
The following 3-step strategy always applies:
1. Create the problem (Say anything and everything is the result of racism)
2. Create the solution (Advance organizational “solutions” including forced DEI Trainings, discriminatory hiring criteria, quotas, etc)
3. Create lifetime customers (Cultivate new generations of people who embody victimhood and are primed to search for AND manufacture racially based events—see Jussie Smolett etc.)
➐ HOW TO TAKE DOWN IDEOLOGICAL DRONES
Tucker Carlson’s latest takedown of an Australian “journalist” serves as the template for how to handle these robotic drones with their programmed, ideological talking points. Previously, the best method of taking down ideological drones was showcased by Canadian politician Pierre Poilievre.
These types of people don’t enter conversations to listen and learn about your views through dialogue, to discover something new they may apply to their understanding of your views and how it pertains to the world. Instead, they are simply after character assassination, by any means necessary. Your reasonable answers mean nothing to them because they already have an arsenal of talking points ready to be deployed, with the primary intention of leaving a stain on your character. These are not journalists. They are State-programmed drones doing the bidding of institutions of power.
The only way to handle people like this is to call out their bullshit in real time, have them clarify every derogatory claim they put on you, make them state their source, expose how baseless and unfounded their thinking and positions are, and expose their discursive tactics with as many needling questions as possible.
➑ THE RECKONING
Chris Cuomo faced a reckoning for his role as a corporate news media propagandist, at the hands of comedian and political commentator Dave Smith.
Anthony Fauci is facing a reckoning for his role in funding and weaponizing a known biological weapon against a populace for global compliance.
Ibram X Kendi is currently facing a reckoning for his race hustle and his nonsensical “anti-racist” ideology.
In each case, the reckoning arrives 4+ years too late, even though we—who were often lambasted and labeled as “conspiracy theorists” for calling attention to the fraudulence of each of these figures—were exposing them for who they were since 2020.
➒ APPRECIATING GLENN GREENWALD
Glenn Greenwald launching his independent, investigative news media platform—The Intercept—to directly combat the bias and State-sanctioned propaganda in mainstream media was revolutionary.
Glenn watching his independent platform get swallowed up, overtaken, and diverted from that mission by editors who formerly held positions within corporate news media was heartbreaking.
Seeing him resign from his founder/lead contributing editor role—a cushy and lucrative position—when denied by executives at the helm of his company from publishing an exposé on Hunter Biden, prior to the 2020 elections, was empowering. It proved that there are still journalists who are driven by integrity, who adhere to the traditional standards of journalism. It proved that not everyone is looking for the opportunity to make a living writing and printing lies or half-truths on behalf of the establishment or to placate an audience.
Seeing other journalists leave The Intercept years later and seeing that Glenn is delighted by the cratering of the platform (as seen in his recent ReasonTV interview) makes me appreciate that he’s just as petty as he is a fierce journalist.
➓ “SPONSORED BY [INSERT CORPORATION HERE]”
Your news media agencies are bought by the same corporations whose products they readily promote, favorably report on, and mislead you with.
Your politicians are bought by the same corporations and entities they serve fealty to and play political theater for, playing you for the fool.
Your tech giants are bought and managed by the same corporations that are working both out in the open and behind the scenes, in collaboration with governmental agencies, to limit and censor the voices that don’t fit their narratives, and soon your voice (slippery slopes, and all).
If your media agencies are rigged, your politicians and elections are rigged, and your social platforms & cultural institutions are rigged, it begs the question: when will people snap out of the trance and do what is necessary to counter being slow-walked off of a cliff psychologically, politically, and economically?
That’s a wrap! Hope you enjoyed this installment of The Monthly Review. If something resonated, leave a like, leave a comment, open the floor up for discourse. Or share this with a friend. Thank you for reading, subscribing, and supporting this project. Until next month.
Damn this is a great piece!!