House of Eratosthenes

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.

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No ConsequencesSunday, November 28th, 2021

No Consequences
Sunday, November 28th, 2021