While visiting with some close friends who think I’m “over reacting a bit” when I talk about the 3 E’s, I read the Boston.com article and was outraged. My friends were curious enough about my reaction that they decided to read the article, and after a year of trying to get them to watch TCC, they finally started to watch it. They got through the first 6 chapters with me right there with them, which they had always found an excuse not to do so in the past. Guess what? They no longer think I’m crazy and are finally waking up! Who would have thought that it would take this outrageous article to finally reach friends I care about.
Keep up the great work Dr. Martenson! Kudos to everyone here who has shown such great support.
It was really rich how the story delved into exactly nothing concerning the point of your message. Water off a duck’s back Chris. While bashing Gold, I bet she never thought about how fiat currency makes endless war possible…
I don’t think it would have mattered how ‘sanitized’ the site or forums were… it looked like she was digging for dirt and determined to get it. The fact is that she didn’t really have any ‘gotcha!’ bits, mostly just subjective associations and phrases taken out of context. Heck, the phrases she quoted out of the Definitive Firearms Thread in many parts of the country (including my own) would have garnered unhappy but grudging agreement. Given the subject and some of the unpleasant associations involved, the DFT is a very well-behaved and friendly thread. And I find her mention of a ‘revolutionary wing’(?!?) of the Transition Towns movement gaining ground in the US both puzzling and amusing.
I too left a comment. And according to Chris’ wishes I even managed to do it in a respectful manner, without dropping phrases like “reminiscent of a college term paper hastily written 8 hours before it’s due”… Not without temptation though
(Seriously though, aside from the negative slant there did seem to be a hastily assembled, poorly edited, or rambling quality to it)
- Nick
It’s sad. The journalist either missed the point or did what journalists often tend to do: twist words and facts to obtain sensational misinformation.
Of course this has a positive side. Many readers will take time to visit this site and follow the crash course. Negative advertisement is also advertisement. In the end the truth always wins. Especially when the truth is so widely spread over the world as Chris does with this website.
Keep up the good work, Doc, and thanks for buying us time to prepare for resilient future.
In hindsight…would you really expect someone named “Pagan Kennedy” to be an trustworthy person? 
People trust the media less than politicians. I agree that all publicity is good publicity, though often painful. This article will work in your favor and likely open up a whole new market of careful thinkers who are attempting to understand their emerging discontents. We are experiencing the front edge of a huge paradigm shift, and early messages are always challenged brutally. Your work is spreading virally, and the article will only increase your momentum.
I am one of the people who is new to your work Chris, though I have thought along these lines since the 70’s. I believe in a very short time you have become a true national figure who will be one of the bridge builders and interpreters of the big change.
You have a capacity to explain the difficult future we face and remain resourceful. Any visitor driven to your site via this article will see who you are and the tone of your message.
Few have ever thanked me for telling them that we face great change. Some viciously attack perhaps because they know the party is slipping away. Expect these attacks and biases to continue. This is one of the terms of gaining national prominence. I am sure looking back you will see the article as ramping up your momentum. You need that, we need that. The way I see this article, however unfair, as a vote for your significance. More media will come your way as a result of the article and your audience will widen. Sadly the distortions are the terms of being a messenger of change.
- "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. - Mahatma Gandhi
- If one interprets "win" as winning the argument it would appear that CM and his CC is somewhere between stages three and four.
- The MSM has failed us.
Here is the letter I sent to the editors:
Dear Editor,
I just want to congratulate you on the outstanding piece of work your reporter did on the work of Dr. Chris Martenson. Boy, he really had me going there for a while. What, with his fact-based scientific approach, his clear thinking, and his sharp analytical skills that can't be found anywhere else. But thanks to your article, now I really "get it" and see that he is just one of those scary militia-types who is out to profit by making me afraid. Whew. That was a close one, but now I can go dig up my gold to sell it so I can buy that Hummer I always wanted. Thanks, Boston Magazine, for setting me straight!
Betsy Ames
Chris & others,
I’m not surprised that a magazine that focuses on who the best lawyers in Boston are would do this. We have been receiving Boston Magazine for years, only because my wife was the labor nurse for the editor many years ago, and they gave her a lifetime subscription. Most of the time I find this magazine offensive at best. It’s not surprising that the article about Chris and his family would be twisted this way, and of course it’s placed between plastic surgery ads. I read the article last night, before seeing this blog entry, and was really sadened by it. The message was totally twisted. On the other hand, those who read Boston Magazine faithfully will be the last to wake up anyway, and of course the first to say “who saw that coming”.
On a positive note, this article indicates to me that I still have a little more time to get my own act together, because the ignorance is clearly still widespread.
Dean
Hello All,
I agree with the idea that this article is a net positive for raising awareness of the CC. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but she did get one thing right in the article from my perspective . . . she described me pretty well. I am an older white male with assets that I would like to protect (not that there’s anything wrong with that). What if the are similar folks who read the article and who’ve had an uneasy feeling in the pit of their stomach for some time now? They want an overview, a context to form a plan of concrete actions to handle any future. They WILL watch the CC. Ms Kennedy just did them a great favor. The other readers, blissful in their ignorance, will be mildy amused and forget the article by tommorrow’s episode of ‘The Kardashians’.
I found Ms Kennedy’s myspace page. Based on what I found there, I don’t think there was any chance the CC was going to get a fair shake. Just my opinion.
[quote=livsez]
While visiting with some close friends who think I’m “over reacting a bit” when I talk about the 3 E’s, I read the Boston.com article and was outraged. My friends were curious enough about my reaction that they decided to read the article, and after a year of trying to get them to watch TCC, they finally started to watch it. They got through the first 6 chapters with me right there with them, which they had always found an excuse not to do so in the past. Guess what? They no longer think I’m crazy and are finally waking up! Who would have thought that it would take this outrageous article to finally reach friends I care about.
Keep up the great work Dr. Martenson! Kudos to everyone here who has shown such great support.
[/quote]Proof that the moron never watched the cc before doing the write.
To Chris and all you other “zealots”-
hehe, bet that got someone’s attention.
You (ok, we) are trying to tell people their way of life is over. We are doing this with simple math and logic. There will be people that will hate this message, that do not want change, especially any change that reduces in any way their exorbitant, unsustainable lifestyle. When confronted with data that they are unable to refute, they become angry, and that anger will be directed at the messenger. I have experienced this myself on several occasions. I’ve been talking about the problem of fiat money for about 15 years.
What was written was clearly a deliberate attempt to “kookify” the concept that we cannot continue on our present course. The longer people stay in the dark, the longer they will place misguided faith in a broken system, and the longer the people benefitting from this system will be able to milk it. Fiat money has no value without faith, and you are attacking the very core of their faith-based system!
That’s the real reason to attack Chris and anyone like him, to preserve the status quo for as long as possible. I would not expect fair treatment from anyone in the mainstream media, they are owned by masters that have a vested interest in preserving the current regime.
My letter to the editor-
Good Morning-
I have enjoyed several of your articles in the past, but this morning I read one that seemed out of context for your publication. The article on Chris Martenson seemed more like propaganda than reporting. I realize Mr. Martenson has been distributing information that is quite troubling to many people, but a better approach would have been to attack the data that he presents. I myself have been attempting to do so for several months, and so far have been unable to. I suspect that is why the article is written to ridicule rather than refute.
If you cannot make a logical argument against what Mr. Martenson is “preaching”, perhaps you should consider an apology? This article unfortunately dilutes your publication’s credibility.
I hate to say it, Chris, but it’s common knowledge that the press does this kind of thing. I am surprised that a researcher like yourself didn’t check out the reporter before agreeing to be interviewed.
I took a look at the pagankennedy.org website. That photo alone would have made me back off.
At any rate, your efforts have gained some publicity in the mainstream audience.
Delete duplicate comment.
Mr. Martenson, fuhgetaboudit. You’re a good guy doing good things.
Well, I’ve just read the article that has created quite a stir here at home base, and I have to say I’m a bit underwhelmed. I didn’t really see it as a hit piece on Chris Martenson, his family, or his work.
Is it an embarrassing and poorly written article brimming with self-congratulatory snark? That’s beyond doubt. But did she really bash gold or guns? I’m not so sure. Though she certainly addressed these issues – however cursorily – with a childish and uninformed eye. A canned comment from a generic, mainstream economist regurgitating dogma hardly serves as a rebuttal to those who’ve bought gold – and made great returns doing so! Likewise, her gun-wielding anecdote – framed as high-school adventure --doesn’t serve as a condemnation of gun ownership or even an oblique criticism of gun rights.
But I see the dominant strain within her work to be that of pure ignorance. Distilling her into a stereotype so as to make personal criticism of her more believable, it seems that she is a pop culture-nista who can only see and interact with things with the aforementioned snark, obligatory irreverence, and insincerity required of her ilk to gain acceptance – most typically for which the forums are various “social networking“ platforms. These people abhor sincerity, fear (which is a form of sincerity), personal/emotional investment (because that creates vulnerability) and personal expression (though curiously this demographic is the most likely to be self-declared “artists”).
That aside, I think the most important take-away that may be being missed here is that her reaction to the work of Chris Martenson and this website is more or less the way most people feel about it. It’s a culturally pre-selected and pre-determined reaction that conveniently places the subject into the Mad Max box and then ridicules them/it for, essentially, not being bullish enough on America and the status quo. So in this sense, Ms. Kennedy’s article is accurate – both to her and tens of millions of Americans who are forced by fear and cultural control to see Chris in the exact same light. This represents “the movement’s” biggest challenge – those who are unaware that they‘re even carrying water for the high priests and cultural managers.
And to those concerned that this could derail Chris. Don’t be. Go back and read the article again. It’s utter lack of seriousness and odd non-addressing of Chris’s fundamental points will be apparent to even critics of the Crash Course. It’s so ham-handed, so transparent, so naïve it could practically be an ironic piece in The Onion created to lampoon people just like Pagan Kennedy.
maincooncat, post 77
You have made an excellent analysis of the article and its implications. I suspect that after we all get over our personal sense of outrage we will be able to see this more clearly.
You wrote – " … it seems that she is a pop culture-nista who can only see and interact with things with the aforementioned snark, obligatory irreverence, and insincerity required of her ilk to gain acceptance."
After visiting her web site and Wikipedia listing I think you have her pegged. She is primarily a novelist by profession.
You wrote – “That aside, I think the most important take-away that may be being missed here is that her reaction to the work of Chris Martenson and this website is more or less the way most people feel about it. It’s a culturally pre-selected and pre-determined reaction that conveniently places the subject into the Mad Max box and then ridicules them/it for, essentially, not being bullish enough on America and the status quo. So in this sense, Ms. Kennedy’s article is accurate – both to her and tens of millions of Americans who are forced by fear and cultural control to see Chris in the exact same light. This represents “the movement’s” biggest challenge – those who are unaware that they‘re even carrying water for the high priests and cultural managers.”
So is our sense of outrage and desire to demean the message of Page Kennedy a mirror of the response of the broader culture to us? That’s worth some thought. Chris’s challenge is based on facts and logic, whereas hers was not. But a lot of people don’t have the capability to evaluate Chris’s facts and logic, and we’ve all seen predictions that seem logical but don’t come to pass. Most people will fall back on what they believe.
As Chris has often said, challenging beliefs provokes strong reactions. It works both ways. All of us need to remember that we carry a threatening message people don’t want to hear. We have to control our own reactions to hostility to be effective. It ain’t easy.
I agree…I did not think it was a totally disastrous piece…but you were spot on about her level of “snark.”
I think my big issue with her article is that she cannot have possibly watched the Crash Course and written that. That is just plain irresponsible.
And yet, THIS woman is a visiting writer in non-fiction at Dartmouth? Wow. No wonder our journalism is in the sorry state it is in today.