THE PSYCHOLOGIST : The destruction of the Georgia guidestones

The destruction of the Georgia guidestones

I am rather sad at the destruction of this eccentric monument to one man's ego. It cost him $100,000 to create it but he evidently thought his ideas were worth drawing to the attention of a lot of people for a long time. He meant it to stand more or less forever -- hence its extremely durable construction. It was intended as an American version of the Egyptian pyramids

The monumnent was harmless. The ideas inscribed on is were between mundane and anodyne but were predominantly of a Green/Left character. But in a world of a lot of uniformity and conformity the structure was a refreshing change: Something genuinely original

The usual suspects are of course assuming that conservatives blew it up but, given the past history of such accusations, the truth is more likely to be the reverse

A mysterious granite monument in rural Georgia has been destroyed after an explosive device reduced it to rubble in the early hours of the morning.

The popular yet peculiar attraction is often called "America's Stonehenge" by locals, but has become the target of far-right conspiracy theorists in recent years — including a candidate who was in the race to become Georgia's governor.

Multiple law enforcement agencies are investigating the explosion, which was captured on nearby CCTV cameras.

What are the Guidestones?

The Georgia Guidestones are grey stone slabs that have stood in a field in Elberton in eastern Georgia since 1980.

Standing at 5.8-metres tall, the unusual structure is made up of four large granite tablets arranged around an upright column, complete with a large rectangular capstone lying on top, and would illuminate a date engraved on the granite at noon each day.

No one knows exactly who is behind the Guidestones, but an article in Wired Magazine in 2009 reported the monument was commissioned by a man who used the pseudonym of Robert C. Christian on behalf of "a small group of local Americans" who had been planning the monument for decades.

The slabs themselves were inscribed with a 10-part message in a dozen different languages, including Sanskrit, English, Russian, Hebrew and Spanish.

According to the Elbert County Chamber of Commerce, the message roughly translates to:

"Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature; Guide reproduction wisely, improving fitness and diversity; Unite humanity with a living new language; Rule passion, faith, tradition, and all things with tempered reason; Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts; Let all nations rule internally, resolving external disputes in a world court; Avoid petty laws and useless officials; Balance personal rights with social duties; Prize truth, beauty, love ... seeking harmony with the infinite; Be not a cancer on earth — leave room for nature — leave room for nature."

What happened?

According to surveillance footage, a sharp explosion occurred at the Guidestones shortly after 4am local time on Wednesday, July 6.

The footage shows the bottom half of one of the granite panels shattering, sending debris flying across the field for several metres.

A short time later on a separate security camera, a silver sedan was seen leaving the remote location as the panel collapsed entirely, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.

Officers from the Elbert County Sheriff's Office attended the site to discover a large portion of the structure had been destroyed.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GIB) said no-one was at the site at the time of the explosion, and that initial investigations indicate that the explosive device was detonated by unknown individuals.

Why was the site targeted?

The Georgia Guidestones have often been the subject of far-right conspiracy theories because of the mystery of how the structure came to be, and how some of the messages have been interpreted.

The site has been vandalised in the past, including with the phrase "new world order" — a longstanding, baseless conspiracy that a totalitarian world government is emerging, which prompted local authorities to install video cameras at the site.

The structure had also attracted more attention in recent months, after becoming the target of Republican candidate for the governor of Georgia, Kandiss Taylor, who had committed to destroying them as part of her conspiracy-laden election campaign.

Ms Taylor, who received just 3.4 per cent of the primary vote in May, said the destruction of the "satanic" Guidestones was proof of God's intervention.

"He can do ANYTHING He wants to do. That includes striking down Satanic Guidestones," she wrote on Twitter.

Ms Taylor later released a video insisting she would never support vandalism, and that "anyone who goes on private or public property to destroy anything illegally should be arrested."

Police have not yet identified any suspects, nor have they commented on whether conspiracy theorists played a role in the monument's destruction.

What will happen to the monument?

Although most of the pillars were unaffected by the explosion, the popular tourist attraction is no more.

Shortly after the explosion, the Elberton Granite Association, which maintains the stones, had estimated the repair bill would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But authorities ultimately deemed the site a safety risk, and knocked down the remaining granite slabs shortly after finalising their investigation at the scene.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-07/mobile-georgia-guidestones-destroyed/101216348

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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

THE PSYCHOLOGIST

The destruction of the Georgia guidestones

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