Once I worked in an office that had a liberal in it. It happens. And he was actually a pretty smart, compassionate guy. That occasionally happens too. He was pondering the climate change scam– er, crisis — and came to realize that since it’s so undeniably true and everybody knows how true and not-scammy it is, it must logically follow that all of us people who possess and use critical thinking skills and have concluded it’s a scam, must actually be in the process of committing suicide or something. And so he wanted to know my take on it, since he knew I was one of the deplorables. What’s my angle? Why don’t I believe the science?

Or rather, why don’t I go chasing off after their perversion of Pascal’s Wager: If we prepare for climate change and it turns out not to be a thing, then hey no biggie, but if we don’t prepare for it and it turns out to be real, we’re screwed. So we better hedge our bets. Why does this not magically flip over the deplorables on the climate issue, like a pancake? Could I please speak on behalf of all the others and help enlighten him because he really wanted to know.

In my third paragraph I come to the heart of the matter. My answer to this has not changed across this handful of years. I cannot speak for each and every single deplorable, but for the ones who are like me, it’s a trust issue. We do not trust the progressive political movement. Nobody with common sense trusts them. We think of these made-up issues as sales pitches to enthrall us with, or get us acclimated to, socialism. Period, full stop. And with “climate change” it’s pretty darn easy to test: Transforming capitalist societies to socialist collectives, by rights, should have zip zero nada nothing to do with whether we’re approaching a climate Armageddon. In fact, if the threat were really serious, what we should then be demanding is that both capitalism and socialism persist, and all these models come together and learn how to coordinate to address the threat. But this remains a problem across a panoply of unrelated issues. Save the whales! Americans with Disabilities Act. Hate crime legislation. Abolishing the Electoral College. Raising the minimum wage. Gun control. All this stuff chips, chips, chips away at the individual’s right, obligation and ability to provide for himself and rely on himself, to think for himself. They’re all baby steps toward socialism. They attack businesses, starting with the small businesses. When you speak of deplorables, you speak of people who have figured this out and are rejecting your agenda. And you’re trying to gaslight them into forgetting what they’ve seen for themselves, playing the “Who ya gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?” game.

And that brings us to these “peaceful protests.” Liberals are such liars. They say this is the first step in the “progressive tradition” of demanding needed change. Imagine the deplorables taking to the streets to protest the unfairness of a progressive tax scheme. The liberals would haughtily intone to us — and they’d be completely right to do so — that we’re wrong. This is not the way. Our Constitution is malleable, and so are all the inferior laws that derive their statutory authority from it. The Constitution can be amended. All of the laws can be updated or rescinded altogether. Our elected officials serve at our pleasure. Yes taxation without representation would be wrong, but there’s a difference between guaranteed representation and guaranteed winning. So go home you deplorables. Go home, start trying to muster up the votes for the change you seek, and if you can’t do that then STFU.

Somehow, this doesn’t apply to them. Their rules only work one way.

That’s because they’re lying fakers. Oh, not each and every single one of them, but the ones who drive the agenda, the ones who really matter, are unabashed fake phonies. This is why people don’t trust them. They have an enormous problem here. I mean, think about it: As you rank the populace according to net worth, or annual income, take your pick; the median is far below the mean. That’s a fancy way of saying, by representing the people on the economic bottom who would benefit from a redistribution scheme, they’re representing far, far more than fifty percent. A political party that opposes redistribution because it represents those who would be asked to give more, should be getting creamed consistently, bashed and bashed until it’s pummeled into nonexistence, following a brief series of a few elections that turned out to be all but pointless. Why isn’t it happening?

Maybe I shouldn’t say this in social media. Liberals lose elections in the United States because of the trust issues. They’re just so clearly laboring toward ulterior motives they can’t spell out in detail, so obvious in the biases that drive their passions, and just so brazenly out to destroy things and hurt people. Republicans are winning with the votes of people who aren’t at all crazy about Republicans. People shy away from the negativity. Liberals are too close to it and they can’t see it.

The rank-and-file really do think they’re “fighting for the rights of” poor people, blacks, women, LGBTQ+ …really do think they’re trying to make the environment cleaner. They really do think anyone who questions them must want oppression for the minorities, and dirty air.

So they smash, break and burn our stuff. They’re becoming the very thing they hate.

And now that we’re in endless campaign season we get to see it all of the time.

What’s this now?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is no longer recommending testing for everyone who’s been exposed to Covid-19, saying people who don’t have symptoms “do not necessarily need a test.”

The agency quietly revised its testing guidance for asymptomatic individuals Monday, advising people who are vulnerable to the virus to get tested if they have been within 6 feet of an infected individual for at least 15 minutes.

The agency previously recommended testing for anyone with a “recent known or suspected exposure” to the virus even if they did not have symptoms. The CDC’s previous guidance cited “the potential for asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission” as a reason why people without symptoms who were exposed to the virus should be “quickly identified and tested.” Numerous studies have shown that people who don’t have symptoms can still carry and spread the virus — even in the presymptomatic stage a few days before symptoms appear or if they are asymptomatic and never develop symptoms.

I don’t object to these changes. I really don’t. They call this a “novel virus” for a reason and I would expect there to be some learning along the way. Beats the alternative, right?

What I object to is this “quietly” business. A hundred-eighty degree hairpin turn should be loud, loud, loud. Dedicated bureaucrats, it has been said, act primarily to preserve their bureaucracies and any motivation toward solving the problem the bureaucracy was chartered or mandated to solve, comes in a distant second place. People are struggling to figure out if the CDC has passed that point, and this business of “quietly revising” direction is a pretty big clue.

Only a dedicated bureaucracy would quietly revise guidance, on anything, related to this plague that has touched so many lives, directly or indirectly. And there are all sorts of new evils attendant to a dedicated bureaucracy that’s been elevated to this position, er, or maybe I should say, painted into this corner.

Okay I’ve been gone, and while not gone I’ve been a bit distracted. While not gone and not distracted I’ve been irrelevant, because now the conventions are going on and I’m not watching them. I find out about the highlights and the low lights the next day along with everybody else, and who wants my warmed-over opinions about that? So I’ve been quiet. All month.

But this…this…is amazing…

“The rioting has to stop, It’s showing up in the polling. It’s showing up in focus groups. It is the only thing right now that is sticking.”

People predicted this way back at the beginning, and common sense says it can’t go any other way. Even if you sympathize with the riots and want Trump to lose, the only logical effect the riots would have on you might be one of: I’m totally down with a change of leadership but it looks like now is not the time. We’ve got roving hordes of looting hooligans smashing in stores and setting fires, so Trump 2020.

It’s happening.

A recent poll from the Pew Research Center indicates violent crime is a significant issue amongst registered voters, heading into the 2020 presidential election. And a Zogby poll, reports record approval for the President, partially driven by the increase in violent crime and riots, particularly in Democratic Party-run cities.
:
News that American voters are more concerned about violent crime than alleged racial inequality, economic inequality, and climate change will undoubtedly come as a surprise to the Democrats. The latter failed to address rioting in the streets at last week’s party convention.

Rioting is not the only violence making voters take another look at Trump. In many cities such as Chicago, L.A., Washington D.C., and New York, liberal mayors have put “handcuffs” on law enforcement, causing spikes in violent crimes.

Allie Beth Stuckey put it in a way the mainstream media isn’t going to understand, at least, not on their own (H/T to Instapundit):

Liberals suddenly want the riots to stop because they realize it’s hurting their election chances. Conservatives have always wanted the riots to stop even though we know it’s helping our election chances. The former cares about votes, the latter about lives.

Mr. Lemon made reference in the video linked above, to the prospect of fixing the problem over the next 73 days, 68 days, whatevs. Liberals have a lot of trouble with the concept of fixing problems. They’re driven by something primal, something hormonal, like the endorphin rush you get when you’re in the process of fixing problems. Which means they’re really interested in going through the motions of fixing problems. We might think of it as playing a video game, finishing a level by beating a “boss” character. No state is being changed and the victory is not reproducible. You can play the same level minutes later with an entirely different outcome, maybe lose your last life when the boss beats you. So nothing is accomplished, not even in the pursuit of playing a game, it’s all about the rush.

That’s how they “solve problems” in the real world. They go through the motions to get the endorphin rush when they “solve”…homelessness, illiteracy, illegitimacy, blight, drug crimes, violent crimes, theft crimes…pandemics…nothing reproducible, no achievements verifiable, it’s all about the rush.

So I’m not entirely sure what was ever supposed to get “solved” here, and I don’t think anybody else knows either.

The Press has been reporting, with an undertone of contempt that comes through in varying degrees of subtlety, that the Republicans have hit a law and order theme hard in their conventions. Seems like that’s true. They’re being pretty smart this year.

Now that the democrats have decided the rioting must stop, assuming they have…I’m a bit lost on what they can do about it. Stop delivering riot supplies to the rioters maybe? That might help. But this is like putting toothpaste back in a tube. It was a stupid plan from the start and it’s not stoppable or reversible.

Picture a jackass building an enormous pile of tires out in a field, big enough to cover an entire city. Then setting fire to it and, in the ensuing months, discovering the fire is hurting his election chances. So he tries to extinguish it. He tries water drops via helicopter, he tries sand, he tries fire extinguishers with some kind of baking soda mixture…whatever…it still blazes away…then he turns to the camera and says “Oh well, you get the idea. Anyway you should totally put my people in charge.”

That’s what’s happening.

As a grouchy introverted curmudgeon, I’ve always had my issues with people in general. But I can’t work up enough resentment against total strangers who are innocently just going about living their lives, to seriously consider voting democrat. It takes far more genuine hate than I’ve got, or can ever get going and I haven’t got what it takes to wish that much suffering on people.

The fact checking is awful. It’s the same thing that always happens when there are no standards. Things degrade.

This may be the worst fact check of the year. I suppose it depends on the question being asked. In my situation it was “Is that the true and unaltered lettering on the box?” Fascinating things happened when I used this link to prove that the box lettering was genuine. See…you’re supposed to come to a different conclusion. And wear your masks. It’s important! So…in response to those who say “the masks are no damn good” or some such, they rated it false. I suppose that’s alright because the people who say the masks aren’t doing anything, are leaping to an unwarranted assumption. What fascinates me about the liberal mind though is, the issue being discussed was whether the lettering on the box was being accurately represented, and it was.

So obsessed are they with this business of “the authority figure awarded me the point” that they can’t see anything else. I guess maybe this is what Harry Potter did to that generation.

These poor kids can’t think through anything. They don’t understand the meaning of things.

I envision it through this fragment of imaginary dialogue:

Lefty: Together we can do this!

Righty: ++facepalm++

Lefty: Come on! Blow! We’re all in this together! (blows)

Righty: You…can’t…be…serious…you…can’t…sell…this…b.s.

Lefty: (Smug, lopsided I-can-sell-anything grin) Your intransigence is going to get us all killed. We’ve come a long way! We’re not there yet!

Righty: (Exasperated) WE’RE SITTING IN THE BOAT.

Lefty: Sails that catch moving air exert a force. There are many studies about this!

Righty: Yes, but we’re IN the BOAT.

Lefty: These studies are peer reviewed and everything!

Righty: Yes, but we’re IN the damn BOAT.

Lefty: The vast majority of scientists agree with me! Don’t be a denier! (blow blow blow)

Righty: Blow until your face is blue. I’m grabbing an oar.

Lefty: You’re endangering the public health. There ought to be a law against people like you.