Archive for November, 2021

No Consequences

Sunday, November 28th, 2021

We are living in an era that is uncomfortable for a reason. During the middle ages, with Divine Right of Kings and so forth, the privileges of aristocracy were mostly pure privilege. We had liege lords and the law recognized everything underneath them, people included, as their personal property. The outstanding concerns were limited to famine and conquest. So if you were nobility, you were all good with the liege above you, you weren’t starving and nobody was coming to take your land by force, your jurisdiction was essentially your plaything and you could do as you pleased. With The Enlightenment, we began to fasten power to accountability. Eventually, people could be born poor, earn for themselves a little bit of money, and become customers. After hundreds of years of little people bossing around big people, empowered to say “I’m canceling this contract unless…” we’ve taken the blessings for granted, and have started to let it go. We’ve been shifting power on to people who can’t, or won’t, assume any responsibility for the end results of the commands they give out, and the decisions they make.

Dr. Fauci says he thinks it would be a great idea if we did X and it would be just terrible if we did Y. He does not say whether he has these opinions because science backs them, or because he’d like to hang on to power and get rid of Trump. There is no reason for him to so declare. No one asks. He labors under no responsibility whatsoever for the ultimate outcome.

Elected officials appoint people who don’t even know what sex they are, to be public health officials. Their responsibility for such appointments is limited to the negative effect such appointments might do against their electoral prospects…which is nil.

The dysphoria patients elevated to these lofty positions, shut down billion dollar industries, unilaterally, ostensibly because of the China Bioweapon threat. The responsibility they assume in making these decisions is zero.

The People’s Republic of China — come to think of it — assumes zero responsibility for their weapon. We know they did it because the evidence doesn’t point anywhere else. But all across the world, we have to be very, very careful about where we mention it. We labor under the responsibility of choosing and muting our words, with real consequences looming for us. They labor under none, for having built the damn thing.

Black Lives Matter and Antifa have “demonstrated” for “racial justice,” spending all last year and a good part of this year setting crowded cities on fire and smashing windows. There generally are no consequences for them for having done this.

There dang sure are some consequences for the “January 6 insurrectionists.” Many falsehoods have been presented to the rest of us, and then solidly debunked…but there are no consequences for those who fabricating these falsehoods. Even the ones who got caught fabricating them.

Hipsters want us to use heavy grocery bags, which we’re supposed to reuse to help save the environment. It turned out to be the wrong plan because the China Bioweapon made it impractical and unsafe to reuse bags. There is no responsibility assumed by anybody for having made the wrong call. The hipsters want us to use paper straws, and are cool with forcing us to do so by denying consumer choice. They assume no responsibility to go along with this power.

California’s Governor Gavin Newsom has signed an order for us to be “all electric,” as in electric cars, by 2035. The numbers say it is unlikely, to impossible, for the grid to support such a demand. He assumes no responsibility for this. There are no consequences looming for him over this.

Quite to the contrary, his presidential prospects, dead as a doornail since he was caught dining in a fancy French restaurant sans mask right after ordering us to stay home…have been revived through puppetry schemes like this one. No consequences. Oh, a recall petition surfaced against him because of the French Laundry scandal. Which he survived. No consequences.

And President Biden? Well, what is there to say. He makes the wrong move on everything. I don’t need to make a list. No one disagrees except his Psectretary Psaki, who fakes everything. No consequences for Biden. And Psaki is repeatedly caught lying…again, it’s redundant to put together a list. No consequences for Psaki.

Florida is reporting the lowest number of daily PRC Bioweapon cases in the entire nation. This, taken together with prior indicators that Florida’s doing at least alright, proves the other states with “tougher measures,” lived a lie. Now the officials of those other states have been caught. No responsibility, no consequences.

Labor union concessions, and rules, and antiquated regulations, have conjured up an acute “supply chain crisis” that is threatening Christmas, and in some cases, lives. The crisis came from nothing, just bad judgment. Now it is enmeshed within a many-layers deep finger-pointing melee among elected officials, the port authorities, longshoremen, truck drivers, appointed officials, etc…no responsibility, no consequences.

Hillary Clinton STILL isn’t in prison. No one knows why.

Dan Rather lied. No consequences.

Brian Williams lied. No consequences.

The news lied over and over again about Trump. Then they lied some more. No consequences.

I could go on and on…at this point, if I pause to merely point out that I think I’m seeing a pattern emerge, if you’ve got a brain in your head, you’ll get it.

But there are consequences to this no-consequences thing.

As Professor Frankfurt pointed out in his book On Bullshit, the difference between a liar and a bullshitter is that the liar has to care about what’s true, so he can make his effort to deviate from it, whereas the bullshitter doesn’t care. We’re buried up to our armpits in both of those.

Also, we’re buried up to our eyeballs in strutting martinets seeking power. Not just authority, which implies an indelible record of the fact that such-and-such a person made such-and-such a decision. But power, like a beach bully stomping sandcastles. And there is conflict because such power cannot be shared, but so many are pursuing it. And why in the world shouldn’t they? There’s no responsibility to go with it. No consequences.

If we’re buried up to our armpits in bullshitters and up to our eyeballs in these Little Napoleons seeking power…we’re over our heads with mistakes. Mistakes come from making the wrong call. The determination to avoid making the wrong call, and try to make the right call, comes from…consequences.

And there aren’t any.

Just Who, Exactly, is Requiring Me to Take This Shot?

Saturday, November 27th, 2021

Okay so that’s two. Two liberals who have been haranguing me about my obligation to believe everything the government tells me about vaccines and the Chinese Bioweapon, with all sorts of disparaging remarks to be made about my moral decay and deficiency when they find I don’t obey & believe everything. Take that shot, darn it. Oh sure, I have the right not to take it; but also, the moral imperative to go ahead and take it.

And they both want to bitch about the government’s incompetence, laziness…and, when circumstances warrant, its corruption and dishonesty.

How to reconcile this? See, this is why I think libs just want to be unhappy and angry. They want to complain about the problems. But they don’t want to solve them. They want to scold people, and act like they’re trying to scold them into doing something. But they’re not.

Lefties believe in a strong central government that is such an important aspect of our lives, that it can say what’s morally right and wrong, even on topics in which it lacks legal authority. it is in the nature of left wing to obliterate personal religious faith, and then replace it with the state. They talk about “separation of church and state,” but what they’re talking about is kind of like separation between a first wife and a second wife. Never the two shall meet, because one is replacing the other. That’s the dirty secret of leftism.

So now these government officials have defined what the right thing is for me to do — today. Not from here on out, although the government officials, big-government advocates, and lefties act like that’s what they mean. But they really just mean today. That’s another thing about lefties, the concept of time. It escapes them. They think like the mayfly, which lives for just a few days. It’s all no past, no future. The science said fifteen days to flatten the curve. Then it said otherwise — biggest betrayal of our lives. The science said get your vaccine you can take off your mask. Then it said otherwise — second biggest betrayal of our lives. Lefties don’t remember any of it because they live in snapshot mode, history always began this morning.

Their rebuttal to this is that science is all about learning, and as such must change. If we don’t get that, we don’t get science. Well, that’s all true. This is why we don’t form policy around “the science says.” That’s the part they don’t get about science. We have buffers. We have tests. We hear from dissenting viewpoints. It’s not a matter of “Find out what Dr. Fauci says and then do it.” The problem with that is much bigger than the problem that he hasn’t been elected to anything (although yes, there is that).

The House of Representatives has passed the monstrosity bill. We don’t really know how much it costs because, let’s face it, we can’t count that high. Once it goes into the trillions, all our news sources just sort of make up numbers. Our alleged President says it won’t cost anything. No one can defend this lie. His most ardent supporters simply change the subject.

The problem with our model of government is, this is the rule and not an exception to it. Government is run by people who have built up seniority and have been in it their whole lives. If they’ve been in it their whole lives, they don’t have experience in anything else, and it shows. Their solution to every little thing is to throw money at the whatever. Yeah we have that outside the government too. “But could you meet this arbitrary deadline if we provided you with a staff of junior programmers to help you?” That’s what you hear when the wrong people are in charge. With what we call “government,” that’s how everything is done, because the people at the top just churn money that represents wealth they did not create.

It seems to me like conservatives and liberals both recognize incompetency in government, but the liberals don’t have any idea what to do when you recognize incompetency. I guess they just get huffy about it so they can complain, and a minute later they forget all about it and are back to tut-tutting people like me for not obeying & believing.

Conservatives look at incompetence as a weak, rotten, creaky floorboard: Don’t put your weight on this, and if your weight is already on it you better get the fuck off of it. Because that’s what incompetence really is. Liberals, just like with everything else, are clueless. They see the incompetence. They’re clueless about what to do.

But the biggest problem lefties have with reality, and with this ongoing attempt to impose their vaccine lust on the rest of us, is that they think in passive voice. You have an obligation to take the shot because they said to take it. They want a government that can say “Here stupid, drink this” and we’re obliged to do it…so, government owns our bodies. No rights left for us at all, whatsoever. But who’s saying this? Elected officials? Appointed officials? “Science”? Point is, the lefties don’t care. That’s what I mean by thinking in passive voice — there’s no subject of the sentence.

If they could be compelled to think in active voice, and specify who has this authority, and why, they wouldn’t be so fond of their governmental model. They’re heaping so much authority on these strangers that they can’t even keep track of how much authority they’re heaping on them — literally forfeiting ownership of their own bodies — because, and only because, the trustees are not known to them. Because, and only because, they’re strangers.

Summarizing all the above: They simply don’t think like grown-ups. It’s not any more complicated than that. They haven’t accepted responsibility for making their own medical decisions, beyond the decision to be scared of things. So they don’t want anyone else accepting it either.

CRT Is Not Taught, and Other Talking Points

Saturday, November 27th, 2021

“Jussie Smollett got mugged” was disproven. No lefties anywhere, as far as I can see, ever acknowledged the error.

“Critical race theory is not taught” has been disproven. If it were in fact true, it would be unprovable. Lefties are still running around saying it as if they confirmed it firsthand, which is impossible.

“Kyle Rittenhouse traveled across state lines” is entirely irrelevant.

The Left says The Right lies, The Right says The Left lies, but the situation is not symmetrical. The Left has no idea what truth is. They are in a rubber dingy adrift in an ocean of talking points. Someone somewhere concocts them and disseminates them, the lefties swagger around relaying them as if they know what they’re talking about when they don’t know anything.

Then they recite statistics to make it look like they know something.

The statistics are also talking points.

A lot of these talking points, though, carry with them a tacit admission that talking points is all they are. The thing about CRT-isn’t-taught, for example. That’s black-swan stuff. As I pointed out above, there is no observation you can make that would prove such a thing, only observations you could make that would disprove it. You can’t inspect school curricula and come away with a validated observation that CRT doesn’t exist, just like you can’t study birds and prove black swans don’t exist.

What you can do is dial in to a zoom meeting or a podcast, or receive an e-mail, enumerating a collection of talking points. And one of those talking points could be “CRT doesn’t exist.” That’s the only way you could “learn” such a thing, taking your place in a command chain of puppeteers.

If that’s what “news” has become, in my opinion they should come clean about it. Maybe consumers of news really do want to just be told stories. But I would speculate a lot of them want actual news. You know, information.

They don’t want to go to Thanksgiving dinners, getting in arguments with their Republican Uncles, telling them “I watched the news and CRT doesn’t exist” only to be embarrassed when the Republican Uncle says “Here’s some.” When you send them in with a short lance like that, you’re doing them a disservice. And I think they look at it that way.

I honestly don’t understand why we hear that particular talking point so much. I don’t understand a lot of them, but in particular, I don’t understand that one. I can’t explain it. At least, not without starting with an assumption that there are people walking around, with influence over the process of coming up with and promulgating these talking points, who lack self respect.

My Exile

Saturday, November 27th, 2021

So I had another one of those dreams. I don’t get these very often. Last time I had one like this it was thirteen years ago, back before Emperor Barack The First, and it had something to do with people ostracizing other people and losing track of the fact they were ostracizing themselves. Since then, recent events have made it known to me that this is essentially all of human history, after you strip away the inconsequential bits of it.

This time, I’m standing out in the middle of nowhere just looking off into the distance. I have been exiled from civilization due to my general coarseness, my inflexibility…I keep “deadnaming” transgenders, wishing people a “Merry Christmas,” calling illegal aliens illegal aliens, referring to riots as riots, and the powers-that-be have decided it’s better for everyone if I just go away.

So there I am.

I hear a noise behind me, so I turn around and see…

…a flatbelly hottie girl in a weird hairdo handing me a lightsaber.

Ha! No, not her. But some sort of coalition sent out from mainstream society to find me. A couple guys, maybe three. Or a diverse committee. It doesn’t matter. They ask me — Why didn’t it all work? How did I know?

Civilization, in the aftermath of my forced exit from it, didn’t work out so hot. A few, or some, perhaps most, have figured out I must know something that all the smart people didn’t know. The coalition has been dispatched to seek me out, and figure out what exactly it is that was kept hidden from them, or that they failed to see.

How did I foresee that Biden/Harris really lost the 2020 election after all? That Slow Joe never won Arizona, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania or Georgia?

That the beltway crowd played up the Chinese Bioweapon as a way to get rid of Trump?

That mail-in voting would invite fraud?

That Fauci has a “God complex” a mile wide and isn’t the right professional for the role in which he was placed, because he can’t handle dissenting opinions?

That masks are useless?

That the efficacy of the vaccines was overstated? And the side effects were understated?

That Obama’s “Infrastructure Repair” was a boondoggle and a money grab; and a decade later, we’d be doing it all over again?

How did I know Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self defense?

That Jussie Smollett was lying?

That most-to-all “hate crimes” are hoaxes?

That the zillion-and-one-genders movement was just a big scam?

That monitoring of transactions over $600 had nothing whatsoever to do with national security?

That the whole concept of “microagressions” was, and is, a dangerous shitshow?

That “Critical Race Theory” is mostly to all mythical, a toxic mythology?

That when you load up a whole generation with potential reasons to get “triggered” and turn them into human landmines, you end up with a generation of neurotics who require medication and “fidget spinners” to focus on anything?

How did I know that all the Charlie’s Angels remakes would crash and burn? That Marvel Phase 4 would implode?

That Joss Whedon and James Cameron aren’t “feminists” who respect women?

That Hollywood is filled with perverts and pederasts?

That all the most popular non-anthology shows on cable and streaming, ever since X-Files, are only pretending to advance the plot throughout the season, or seasons…and the episodes are, in fact, entirely interchangeable just like back in the olden days?

That Hillary Clinton is not the smartest woman in the whole world?

That “Caitlyn Jenner” is a man after all?

That all the militant feminists would live unhappy lives all alone in their big houses, to keel over, die, and have their faces eaten off by dozens of cats?

That women are happiest when their men are happy?

That nobody, but nobody, likes James Bond any better when he drinks fewer alcoholic beverages, smokes fewer cigarettes and sleeps with fewer women?

How did I know that when social media platform providers flag material as “misinformation,” it has nothing whatsoever to do with whether it’s true or false?

That the “Black Lives Matter” protests of 2020 were coordinated, after all? How did I know they weren’t “peaceful protests” after all?

That “Defund the Police” would turn into such a dangerous disgrace?

That Pope Francis I is an imposter and a tool of Satan?

That democrats don’t want “equality”? That they want poor people to starve some more so they’ll keep voting democrat?

That China is not a neighbor in good standing? That they’re out for world domination and will stop at nothing? That they’re not nearly done infecting us and reinfecting us with deadly strains?

Princess Leia ConventionHow did I know that all the girls want to dress up as Slave Leia and not Rey Palpatine Skywalker or Jyn Erso? How did I know all the drab, rag-wearing, high-kicking “badass” StrongWilledWomen would fail to achieve a fraction of the currency of Baby Yoda?

That printing and spending all this money on bogus stimulus programs, would cause inflation?

That paying people not to work, is not the way to go?

That spending millions or billions of dollars to “fight the homelessness problem” would not end homelessness, but make it worse?

That when you hire based on gender, skin color, religion or sex preference instead of who’s bringing the best & most appropriate skills to the job, you don’t get the best?

How did I know that remote learning would turn out to be so ineffective?

That removing selected persons from rice, margarine and syrup packages wouldn’t promote peace or racial healing?

How did I figure out that our cable channel programming is designed to turn our sons into prison bitches and our daughters into whores?

That it would be good, after all, for little kids to learn how to drive stick shift cars, and to read cursive?

That radicalized Shiite and Sunnis are still intent on taking over the world just like they were thirteen centuries ago?

That, if “science” practitioners enjoy a built-in excuse when they get it wrong, because it’s inexact and we should show we understand by accepting that — that means, they don’t get to tell us how to live our lives, and they need to pick a damn lane?

That “climate change” is just a big swindle, and the people telling us it’s a serious problem don’t think it’s a serious problem?

People have been wondering how I got so much right when all the people they respected and trusted got it so wrong.

They have been searching for me far and wide because they need my help. They’re just so confused and baffled that all these things took them by surprise. There must have been signs. After all, I’m not that bright.

And I say, in response to their inquiry…you’re right, I’m not.

I just avoided emotional reasoning.

I didn’t surrender power and authority to people who can’t, or won’t, accept the associated responsibility.

I never accepted second-class citizenship, of any kind. I will not make that bargain of “You can eat lunch with the cool kids today, but you have to sit at the far end of the table.” Will. Not. Do. It. Live as sheep among sheep, or as a man by himself, you see which one I chose.

I didn’t think things just because large numbers of others already thought them. I sought, as Dennis Prager says, clarity over agreement.

Please come back with us!, they said. You have to help us!, they said.

I said no, you don’t need me. Stop forming foolish opinions, stop thinking like fools. Act like things matter. Think like they matter.

Then I walked past them to go get some green milk.

We’re Really Flying Blind

Monday, November 15th, 2021

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Andrew Sullivan notes the mainstream media “got every single one wrong,” in his list of news boondoggles from the last few years.

Brit Hume retweets it, adding a list of his own. In my recollection, few to none of these are facts-on-the-ground type things, like “We previously reported the man bit the dog, but it turns out it was the other way around” stuff. I remember the news media waded into these stories, and others, and specifically did what it isn’t supposed to be doing. “Some say this and some say that, and we’re here to tell you don’t listen to these people listen to those people instead, because these people are a bunch of poo poo heads.”

To all this, we can add — striking out any duplicates after we have done so — each item on Sharyl Attkison’s Definitive List from the Trump Era, now standing at 156.

Something is changing. There must be a common cause. What is it?

A lot of this trouble could have been avoided had the news whatever ya call it…industry…institution…”free press.” If it had simply stuck to what it was supposed to have been doing all along. But they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. Lewis Wallace said it first & best: Objectivity is dead and I’m okay with it, from Trump Day #8. He kicked off the era, or his commentary manifested an effect already underway, that kicked off the era. Perhaps there were problems in existence long predating Trump, which were intensified when Hillary lost against him — something that “wasn’t supposed” to happen.

The mainstream news media, so goes the theory, saw this upset as a failure on their part to properly educate us, and resolved to do “better.” Since then, we’ve been watching the medicine bring about a sickness worse than the disease it’s supposed to treat. With the arrival of “fact checkers” the prescriptions reached a second stage, even more harmful than the first. They didn’t treat the root cause of the problem. They didn’t get the news media out of the business of telling us what opinions we’re supposed to have. Instead, they ensconced it further therein.

All the “sensible moderates” out there, watching their morning/evening news, dutifully taking their vaccines and many boosters and wearing their masks, wondering about the various trust issues harbored by people like me…have no idea.

Maybe we can blame youth worship? It takes a certain number of years on the planet to be able to distinguish a fact from an opinion. It shouldn’t, but it does. Fact checkers, I’ve often observed, are younger than much of my selection of socks and underwear. People find that amusing because it’s ambiguous; you could take it as a commentary against the fact checkers, or my underwear. Perhaps both. It becomes only half-funny when you figure out “both” is likely the right answer. These kids think they know it all because they haven’t reached that stage of life where you figure out maybe you don’t. Separating out facts from opinions? That comes much later…and here they are, checking our “facts” for us, bringing us our “news.”

We have to rely on critical “tweets” for our record of how much & how often they need to correct things. Whatever the cause may be, kids, you’re not doing so hot. Might be time to reboot & recheck. The patchwork is replacing the quilt.