When our time is looked at in history, future historians — if there are any — will be torn between laughing their heads off and disgust.
Recently fell across someone on FB who thought the West had started the crusades against “peaceful” Islam, just out of how evil and imperialistic we were, just because.
This person has a university degree.
When told how wrong she was, she fell back on how the past is unknowable.
You know these are things she was taught, at great expense and effort. Further, her teachers inculcated in her the idea she was so smart and special, the culmination of all intelligence and knowledge in the history of man, which prevents this person and her cohorts from ever examining what they were taught in the light of reason. I mean, they don’t want to come to different conclusions, and thereby become “stupid”.
It’s not official censorship, the “church” of SJW can’t formally excommunicate you, but everyone on twitter knows they do, anyway, and worse, destroy your life, for having just one slightly unapproved thought.
Neither government nor church, they managed to make knowledge and belief into a virtue signal, which keeps their devotees and at this point many who just want to have a job and a life cowed and quiet and unable to read or research the real past.
Thus we have:
-People who attack capitalism with tu quoque fallacies, while never facing the HUNDRED MILLION graves of socialism. Yes, I know “capitalism is just as bad indirectly.” (Even though that can never be proven, it’s what they say, as deflection.) Which is why refugees go only in one direction. Also, socialism is JUST AS BAD INDIRECTLY. But they never think that, or that the world is nowhere a utopia. But capitalism has fed and clothed more people than any other system, ever.
-Attack and destroy the statues of people who made an uneasy peace with slavery, never considering that maybe the future will consider something they cherish — say elective abortion, for instance — just as great an evil, and thereby topple all the “sacred” cows of our time. Ability to look in a mirror? None.
They believe so intensely in the “arrow of history” of Marxist faith, and the idea that they’re so advanced that it never occurs to them it is not for the future to judge the past. You weren’t there. Yes, you can say slavery is an evil. (Arguably one of the greatest evils humanity can do.) BUT you can’t say that whatever people did in the past to cope with it/compound with it, invalidated all the good they did.
Slavery appears as evil to us now, starkly so, because it’s uneeded. We have machines for most of the unpleasant/awful labor. In the past, most people knew it was an evil, but couldn’t let go of it. Oh, and they had their rationalizations, too. Just as we have them for things we know are evil but tolerate or compound with, because how is one single person to stop it?
Being human means you live in the time you live in. And people are not the same across time, nor are their circumstances.
-Make idols of foreigners they don’t understand, or despicable characters — Che Guevara! — whose history they don’t even know.
-Read only the approved tracts, because history is unknowable and knowing the “wrong things” mean you’re “uneducated.”
-Believe there was a perfect, utopia-like matriarchy, which the evil men destroyed (apparently unhappy in paradise, who knew) and men have since then conspired across cultures, languages and possibly time to keep women subjugated. Instead of looking at biology and the reproductive processes of mankind as to why women have by and large not been as influential in public life.
-Ignore the fact that women are probably more influential than men in early childhood education and training. Always were. Will always be. And that this shapes civilizations.
-Only believe in female power when it involves taking male power.
And many, many more outrages you guys can probably conjure up.
It occurs to me that though no cage or bars are visible, they’re as much prisoners as anyone kept in a too small cage and taught to hate freedom. This applies:
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.
According To Hoyt 
You can lead a dolt to knowledge, but you can’t make them think.
It’s a cult, complete with 10,000 commandments which change randomly at the whim of the leaders so that everybody is guilty of some sin, always. The same people who mock Christians for being narrow-minded are almost always the most fanatical members of the Church of Social Justice.
Comrade, I see you are following the discredited doctrine of 10,000 commandments, when there were always 10,023 and statements to the contrary are the product of saboteurs.
Please report for re-education.
Kulak! How dare you reveal such information to the enemies of the people?
It’s actually worse than that. Those thousands of commandments don’t just change at the whim of the leaders. They change, often randomly, in response to evolving circumstances and fads…sometimes against the preferences of the leaders! This is intellectual anarchy.
Anarchy, yes.
Intellectual? Eh. Emotional, yes.
I use the phrase “Intellectual Anarchy” quite specifically. Their thinking is in constant disarray because of the mental gymnastics they put themselves through to satisfy their emotional need to be The Elect. It becomes next to impossible to engage them in intellectual discourse, because there simply isn’t anything THERE. It’s like forming up a disciplined military formation to take on a ravening mob. There’s no way of imposing order on it.
As they are dismissive of all arguments, all arguments must be made to those outside the anarchy. We cannot engage with the SJWs. Instead we must stick to those arguments that resonate with the non-SJWs. And this is what, to a great degree, Trump has been doing that enrages the SJWs so. He insists on referencing facts instead of trying to address their turmoil. Since their Narrative changes from day to day (save in that it attacks him), he deals with fact. China engages in unfair trade practices, so so will wee to get them to the negotiation point. The southern border is leaking lime a sieve, so we will make it harder to cross.
This we must do also:
“The Science Is Settled!”
Science is never settled, and the global warming faction has been caught lying often enough to discredit them
“You’re a Denier!”
Yes, I am. Do you actually have any proof?
“Medicare for all!”
We simply cannot afford it. Further, it has been tried extensively elsewhere and never worked.
We won’t convince the SJWs. We don’t need to. We need to convince those they bamboozle. And we can.
Arguing with SJWs is like arguing on the internet. It isn’t about convincing who you are arguing with; it’s about convincing the audience.
“Arguing with SJWs …”
Persuading them is not a reasonable goal; but it is possible to embarrass them sufficiently that they think before they spew. This effectively eliminates >95% of their posts.
“Medicare for all!”
Medicare only works by shifting costs* to those covered by insurance — which drives up the price of insurance, making it less affordable. Without insurance to absorb those costs, how will “Medicare for all!” work?
*For example, Medicare reimburses for the marginal cost of an extra patient, contributing little or nothing to the fixed costs — building, equipment, management overhead — entailed n a medical practice. Thus it pays for the film and electricity used by an X-ray machine, but not to the cost (purchase price and maintenance expenses) of the X-ray machine itself. In the long-term this renders providers unable to cover the cost of updating and replacing equipment.
Government run health care has been tried again and again. It. Doesn’t. WORK.
But the Left is awfully fond of a lot of things that just. Don’t. Work.
What do you mean, it doesn’t work? It gets them more power, and THEY get the treatment they need. What more could any system need to do?
They don’t change! The have been true since the dawn of time!
But sometimes in the past the meaning of the words have been misunderstood.
To me the unique thing about the newest generation of minds-of-mush is how hard the current “education” system worked to retain and reinforce their adolescent “I (already) know everything” mindset. Between all the self-worth-affirmation stuff (except if the student violates a shibboleth – we obviously can’t validate that) and the precious snowflake environment, it seems to me that the entire process was consciously configured to produce highly self confident closed-minded snowflakes with a checklist of Reagan’s “the things they know that are not so” in their heads, ready to accept new mush input if the source has the right credentials.
It has been an amusement over time to watch the collision of these folks with actual reality, and I retain faith in the kids who got past the mush stage on their own and proceeded to fool the system while actually developing working brains, but I fear the mass throughput will achieve critical mass of mush, and the resulting impact on the Republic.
Increasingly what we’re seeing is spoiled grownup perpetual children demanding loudly and often violently that society change reality to suit their misguided perceptions.
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings sit patiently waiting for the perfect moment to pounce.
Playground bullies and mean girls that just took to mew mediums.
How catty of them.
Was waiting to see who’d catch my tyop.
someone was bound to pounce.
I fear the mass throughput will achieve critical mass of mush, and the resulting impact on the Republic.
I sometimes fear it, but two things give me hope:
1. Sheep follow the shepherd. If we replace the shepherd the sheep generation will follow them.
2. They have taught them all to be sheep so if the goats rise up their current shepherds will lack for reinforcements.
At some point, and I genuinely thing within 24 months, they will push to the point the goats rise up, seize the sheep bell, and put it on goat. Once that is done, the docile will fall in line, arguing we were always at war with Eastasia.
I also think within twenty four months. Gut feel is more like 16.
Watch how the election campaign(s) proceed. Already we’ve had Gillibrand tar any pro-choicer as (equivalent to) racist, Harris promising to prosecute Trump should she win, and Biden calling Trump “literally an existential threat to this country” — and the first primary debate is yet to occur. The tempers in this election will be running full of moral fervor and are not likely to be satiated by the pull of a polling booth lever.
Trump has the gods on his side: “Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
I’m beginning to think that Trump’s Twitter behavior is deliberate, that he spent two years provoking the Democrats into greater and greater madness so that when election season comes around he can behave normally and show the American people that the Democrats, who claim that Trump is a boor and a threat to everything, are utterly insane and threatening everything.
Thus far it has been interesting watching the Gaslight Media trying to pretend that
anythingeverything the Dem candidates say is reasonable.Me too.
Yes, and no.
He’s definitely provoking them. And given how they react every single time, I can’t say I blame him. But at the same time, he’s not the one responsible for their obsession with him. That’s their own fault. He’s merely taking advantage of it.
I came to that conclusion within six months of his being President, because frankly, the Democrats were nothing if predictable.
Sadly, so were Republicans, who were easily manipulated by the Democrats into throwing people under the bus at the merest accusation.
Until we can guarantee honest polls, the elections are just kabuki theater.
Whoever controls the vote counting, choses our next President.
“Let’s see, who do I like? — Nobody!”
I think the timing will be determined by the election:
1. Trump wins it happens by Friday of that week.
2. Trump loses it happens sometime in February/March when they begin using government to make sure they never lose again.
There is, as of this morning, also:
3. Next summer when the efforts to make sure they never use again through non-government means goes too far (woke up this morning to more YouTube people I follow just banned).
who else got banned?
Black Pigeon Speech…deleted in full. No strikes and fully monetized last night. This morning, gone.
Thinking about working on a Bitchute client that is a little more robust. A lot of my YT is audio only during walks and the Bitchute client doesn’t work well there.
Ops. initial scanning of “Bitchute” produced a different wrd and I now want somebody to design a Bipartisan Interactive Transactionaly Collaborative Heterogeneous Internet Explorer system.
blank reply thing again… O.o
Reference:
Twitter Is Now Banning Conservatives For Investigative Journalism About Big Tech’s Abortion Activism
After investigative reporters at Project Veritas published information from a whistleblower in Pinterest headquarters, revealing the social media site’s bias against pro-lifers, Twitter joined in the censorship. On Wednesday, Twitter banned Project Veritas for violating its “rules against posting private information.”
In this case, the “private information” was screenshots of Pinterest’s internal communications and Slack messages, which showed one Pinterest employee calling Ben Shapiro a “white supremacist” and adding him to the “sensitive terms list.” …
that’s twitter….
Whass dat gall say? Build up, build around, build over?
Jordan Peterson announces new social media platform amid Pinterest controversy
Jordan Peterson recently announced he will be launching a social media website alongside Dave Rubin and other key figures. Peterson says the site will have strong free speech policies, and the announcement is quite timely in light of the new Pinterest censorship scandal.
Peterson made the exciting announcement Monday morning on Twitter, stating, “Per the Joe Rogan podcast this week, I’m backing a new platform called thinkspot, currently in Beta. Get on the waitlist here, exciting announcements coming very soon. Thinkspot.com”
Peterson and other thinkers within the “intellectual dark web” have played with this idea for a while. The intellectual dark web includes an interesting variety of thinkers, including atheist Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro, an orthodox Jew. It also includes right-of-center figures such as PayPal founder Peter Thiel and left-of-center figures such as professors Bret and Eric Weinstein.
The group is remarkably diverse, yet they all agree on one point: The radical intolerance of the far left is out of hand, and free exchange of ideas must be defended.
According to Peterson, the platform will won’t voluntarily ban any users. “Once you’re on our platform we won’t take you down unless we’re ordered to by a U.S. court of law,” he said. Thinkspot will also differ from standard social media platforms by requiring comments at least 50 words long in an attempt to elevate the level of public discourse. [MORE]
I wonder how long it will take for his hosting service to say otherwise, as MS Azure did to gab.ai? Or his bank account to be closed.
Speaking of which, I’m sure it’s just a coinky-dink that after three years Paypal doesn’t want to process my monthly donation to TrueTheVote……
As a great philosopher once said, “You see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear.”
There’s no denying he had a point.
-Believe that police are horrible oppressors, but that only police should have guns/certain classes and types of guns.
– People who own guns are crazy right wingers and will shoot anyone at any provocation.
– Crazy right wingers should be yelled at, confronted in public and driven out of public spaces, and have things thrown at them (for now milkshakes, but the message is “we can reach you”).
– If I taunt the crazy right wingers who will shoot at any provocation I can play the “but I’m a victim” card when they do.
> for now milkshakes
“BANG!”
“How was I to know it wasn’t acid?”
Imagine the reactions should anybody dare throw a milkshake on Bernie, on Uncle Joe, on Kamala, Mayor Pete or Fauxcahantas.
Implicit in how they report such events is that their side’s actions are benign, our side’s malign.
Implicit in how they report such events is that people who agree with them are people and individuals who do not are not people.
Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I see milkshaking and the open encouragement of it by many in the media (including a certain whinny little fig who is upset someone called him bad names on YouTube) as the last step before real street violence. It is normalizing assault and getting people ready to take the next step.
Then, when what TRX predicts above happens, they’ll claim they are justified in escalation.
2016 was their chance to step back. At this point when 2020 happens either:
1. They lose and go for revolution.
2. They win and go for “revenge” and force our hands.
Did you the church providing classes for elementary school Antifa. Antifa are shock troops to take the early bullets (no, they don’t know that, but history shows). Are they thinking if they put 8 year olds in front they can’t lose as either we won’t shoot or we’ll lose all legitimacy if we do?
they lose and go for revolution, and then discover that all those fun mental health gun laws they made mean they can’t actually buy firearms.
LOL
That doesn’t matter. They know the military will side with them again Cheeto Hitler.
Given how many called for a military coup I suspect they believe that.
because they think that Trump is the one out of touch with the ‘common people’, naturally.
While I’m not as sanguine as some on the right about the desertion rate if the military was told to fire on US citizens, if they think they’ll both keep enough of the military to be able to use it for mass suppression anywhere outside of the Acela corridor, they are fools.
Acela corridor?
The Acela corridor is the route taken by Amtrak’s most popular (and likely only profitable) train, running
It provides 25% of Amtrak’s total revenue and is beloved by politicians (who, for security purposes, ride in their private car.) It is also popular with the pundit and lobbyist (But I repeat Myself) class. I very much doubt any of those people actually, personally, pay for their train passes out of their own pockets.
Formally, it is the Northeast Corridor. And what percentage of revenue it actually generates, once Amtrak’s accounting tricks are factored out, is a truly fascinating question that many have speculated about, but none seem to have a real answer for.
Herb, the only thing that makes me sanguine about that is simply that a substantial majority of the troops are recruited from the Deplorable class, they know what their ordnance can do, and that the neighborhoods with gun owners are also the ones where their families and those of their comrades live.
Shockingly, yes, they do. Also that they can get the police to defend them.
“Run to mommy” is so deeply set in that as Bill Reader points out,they c an’t imagine “Mommy” not taking their side.
Note that most Antifa violence takes place in Leftist run cities and states, where the leaders are sympathetic, if not downright encouraging of this sort of behavior.
Though here in CA the times that Antifa violence units unexpectedly encountered folks ready to fight back, back when orders were keeping the Police away to allow the Antifa to break some heads in peace, the result was not a vast and extended hand-to-hand conflict, but a display of running-away-really-fast by the Brave Sir Robins of Antifa.
Almost like hey expected their awards for just showing up.
Speaking of obtaining things, I’ve been mulling over a way to build a Stalin organ in the garage.
Really? Which one? Kidney? Liver? I know it can’t be the heart.
Actually, a working version of a Stalin heart would be a miracle.
I knew a guy who had a WWII replica towed howitzer. It used a coke-can (filled with concrete) for a projectile and a coke-can filled with black powder. Not a bad replica.
Nobody ever tailgated him when that was on his hitch.
Only mulling over? What’s been Stalin the project? *ba-DUMP-krsshh!*
Unsurprisingly, Yama is pestering over there, … roughly shortly after the pjm article was linked. Naturally.
And true to form, he’s going after Mother of Four Original (as usual, harassing a woman, a mother, who doesn’t have political opinions he approves of.)
PJM seems to be flypaper for Yamamanama.
Man, I’d like to see that jackass Bernie Saunders wearing a milkshake. It would look good on him.
Made from ben and jerrys
I can easily imagine a bird crapping on Congresswoman Jihad, and everyone having a fit about it, blaming Trump.
Since Those Better Than Us in the media have assured us that milkshake assaults are harmless fun, surely they won’t object to getting a DQ Blizzard back. The screeching will be fun.
Actually, I’ve been waiting for a milkshake with deadly additives to get thrown. I’m not sure what the reaction would be in the UK, but I have a fair guess about it in the US. Either place, it won’t be pretty.
If I saw someone approach like that the knife would be out by the time they reached me.
I might get wet and sticky from dairy, but their arm would from their own blood.
Or something Dreadfully Infectious.
Considering how many acid assaults there have been in Great Britain (and possibly other places, but most of the ones I’ve heard about seem to have been in Great Britain), I think that’s a serious danger. It might be good proaction to talk to representatives about having it made illegal to throw *anything* at other people in public, so we don’t have to wait to respond until one of those cups actually does contain acid. I don’t know that it would stop any of the Left-wing/Globalists from actually throwing stuff, but if it was illegal, it would hopefully mean fewer legal problems for people who responded with force to such actions. (I’m not even talking about deadly force, although with acid a potential danger, I think deadly force would be justified. But if someone threw something like that at me, I want it to be legal to hit them, at the very least. Kneecaps with a heavy walking cane, maybe.)
It’s going to depend on the state of justice (or lack thereof) in your area, but throwing anything potentially dangerous should be recognizable as assault. Even those glitter-bomb things could be a problem.
I can’t pull off an innocent look, but the heavy cane sounds good.
US has “reasonable expectation.”
So if you act like you’re attacking me but the gun is unloaded, or a toy, I can still shoot you.
There’s a district attorney west of us who thinks that Hispanics and uber-lefties can do no wrong. The corollary is that whites and deplorables must be guilty, so it’s best to stay as far away from there as practical.
Fortunately, I don’t have to go to the People’s Republic of Ashland next week, just Medford. If I’m careful, I should be OK.
I’m waiting patiently for the W & D in that county to get fed up and vote the idiot out of office.
I had to check on OR, since Ashland and Medford WI are not exactly close. And yes, I do think of Medford, WI first – it was in the next county over for me for a few decades. (And UW is Wisconsin, not Washington, to me.)
There’s another Medford near Boston, too. Mercifully, there’s only one Klamath Falls, although there’s a Klamath, CA (on the river, naturally).
Hmm, DDG says there are Ashlands in Oregon, Virginia, and Ohio. On the gripping hand, Dallas and Milwaukee are also towns in Oregon. I won’t get into Springfield or Salem…
I am unreasonably confident there is an Ashland in Kaintuckey, too. It should be right there in the NE tip, adjoining Ohio and West Byrdginia.
RES has it about right. Ashland, Kentucky is on the Ohio River a bit downriver from Huntington, WV, and not too far upriver from Portsmouth, OH.
On the gripping hand, one nearby town has a unique name. Chiloquin, OR. It gets some entertaining mispronunciations on the news and text-to-voice on the NOAA radio. (The latter has the last syllable like “queen”. No, closer to “Quinn”.)
Chill-oh-Quinn, right?
Correct.
“Forget it Pete – it’a Ashland.”
Mercifully, the last two times I had to go there, it was to the hospital’s day surgery center. That’s far enough away from Protest Central to be safe-ish, and I didn’t have to go through P.C. on the way back.
$SPOUSE used to go to a yarn/weaving store down there, but no more.
Lithia Park is still a great design and a nice place to walk, and seeing Shakespeare at the big Globe-style open theater is a great (well, unless they smother them in PC as has recently been happening), but the rest of the town just shows you what happens when your nice little college town is where all the old hippies moved when they discovered that California taxes applied to them.
The perpetually outraged made Lithia Park hell for people trying to celebrate Independence Day a few years back.
Oregon Department of Forestry is trying to get the underbrush cleared so when the next big fire starts there, the town might not go up in flames. This, naturally, is causing an uproar over the aesthetics. (I’ve reviewed the escape paths for Ashland in case of a fire like Paradise, CA had. Short answer, a lot of people there are screwed. Very few paths out of there.)
They’re also seeing the wonderful side effects of the homeless population around the town. I’m guessing that tourist income will be steadily dropping for a few years.
More popcorn, please.
Along with the heavy cane adopt a pair of pince-nez eyeglasses and insist you identify as that great conservationist Teddy Roosevelt.
Appropriate, Big Stick and all. One of my knees is reminding me that it’s been rode hard the past few years. That cane might actually be useful for its nominal purpose.
Due to The Lieutenant (see Tunnel in the Sky), reinforced of late by Agent Gibbs, I have long been a knife guy.
That said, workplace policy or no there is a threshold where I will moved to CC.
I’ve held a CCW permit for several years. The noisy one is a bit of a mouse shooter, but it fits a pocket well. I have a knife in another pocket just in case. OTOH, I think I’m going to go to something a bit more energetic for the firearm. I’m not fond of CCW with a 1911, but there are times it’s the best option. I do have another choice. The obvious choice of holster won’t go with my fat body, but I think I have a solution.
Oregon says private enterprises can ban firearms or weapons from the premises. I consider the knife a tool, not a weapon, and I’m sticking to that story. Damn fine letter opener, too.
It is illegal and the milkshakers have been uniformly arrested. Those who have faced court (at least, all that I have seen reports on) have done jail time.
Because it was only diary products the jail time seems to be about a month, but still jail time.
The problem isn’t it is legal. The problem is the left doesn’t care about the law.
As for use of force for self-protection, I don’t know UK law on it, but I suspect they are least as bad as the worst liberal states in the US.
As far as the US I will point out the guy who one punched the Antifa idiot unconscious in Portland (yes, Portland) was detained in typical police “arrest them all and let the desk sergeant sort it out” manner (which in a riot makes complete sense to me), but was released as it was self-defense and defense of others.
If in Portland that is the ruling there is still hope.
AntiFa really screwed up when they destroyed that car dealership. A lot of the “oh, it’s just a protest” folks hit a hard nope on that, so a lot of the leeway went away.
Which is why you don’t see it in places where self-defense is a possibility.
Many people don’t think. Sometimes they don’t know how. Sometimes they have the chops; they just refuse to apply them to certain topics.
Listening or reading someone else’s thoughts isn’t thinking. Repeating what someone else has thought isn’t thinking. And
“When they think at all, the last thing men think about is their own thoughts…. [M]en reflect continually on the most complex problems—problems of vital importance to them—and expect to obtain satisfactory solutions, without once giving a thought to the manner in which they go about obtaining those solutions; without a thought to their own mind, the tool which produces those solutions.”
— Henry Hazlitt, Thinking As a Science (1916)
How do you know they have the chops if they refuse to listen to others and consider what is said.
I just finished, as part of an essay a day, reading Sontag’s Against Interpretation and it has made me think and consider things I have held. It has modified some stances and forced me to think through and clarify others.
Hell, yesterday I wrote how Jordan Peterson moved my views slightly left on one issue. Now that I consider the last bit, I see something Sontag’s writing forced me to clarify in my mind shows up in the closing (the idea of all fiction teaching).
Someone can claim to have the chops to think and change all they want. The link above is the minimum evidence I demand and that requires engaging the thoughts of others.
No comments at your site?
Mack Reynolds wrote extensively about GBI/UBI systems in his later SF, and Gini Coefficients so extreme they evolved into de facto caste systems.
Most of his stories tried to deal with the “no conquest” issue, but a few dealt with it by adding a form of ritualized combat as mercenaries or gladiators to provide a social relief valve and upward movement.
No, none of Mack the Hack’s stories are ever going to make any “great SF” lists, but he usually did his homework on the backstories…
Comments should be on.
Also, I will check the stories out.
FWIW, there are on and there is even one now.
They didn’t show up the first time I looked. Konqueror and some blog software as an uneasy working relationship…
I know they have the chops to research, to understand, and to reason rigorously because they exhibit the skills when the topic isn’t political. Nobel laureates in theoretical physics, applied mathematicians, nuclear engineers for example. Folks I’ve known personally for many years. Who turn their rigor off when the topic is political. Who repeat talking points and bumper stickers.
Often there *is* a decent argument for their position. But they don’t make it.
(I did *not* say they were open to considering other viewpoints or to changing their minds, on any topic. Some are, some aren’t.)
I read your essay. Peterson is still wrong. Sorry, “inequality” is not an issue. If the young men need to “Conquer” then even minimal inequality is will cause it. Or perceived inequality. Or…
The problem is the young men having nowhere to go, and a culture that tells them they’re victims with no agency.
He’s misinterpreting the effects of Marxist indoctrination as the effects of inequality.
Peterson’s flaw is in not digging back far enough, generally.
He’s still getting enough acorns to start a new gluten-free factory, though.
He’s having a huge and generally good effect, but again, he’s not taking in account the ethos of the times that might cause that.
WHAT!!! He is (gasp) imperfect?
Quelle horreur ! (Clutches pearls) Quick, assist me to my couch. Fetch smelling salts.
Ah well, he’s Canadian, so it is to be expected.
His being a Canadian proves how hysterical the SJW types are.
They are getting that offended by a Canadian.
I mean, people are still shocked to find Canada has a warship
“people are still shocked to find Canada has a warship”
Has quick flash of vision of Canadian SEALs in those little paddleboats popular at lakeside parks …
To be clear, I mean no disparagement of Canadian forces, brave, superbly trained, well disciplined combat troops, eh? It’s just a shame they have to hitch rides to any theater of operations.
Oh, read the article. It’s a riot.
As first-tier Anglosphere, Canada’s special operators would be logically be SAS, like the Kiwi’s NZSAS and Oz SASR, but apparently all that Englishness bothered the French-speaking side of the Canadian brain or something, so it appears the Canadians waited until 2006 to stand up the “Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR)”.
https://www.canada.ca/en/special-operations-forces-command/corporate/organizational-structure/so-regiment.html
I’d love to see the reasoning on why Canada skipped directly from the WWII First Special Service Force (U.S./Canadian combined staffing) right over the intervening 60 years until 2006 before they thought to set up a special operations unit.
And of course the swan pedal boats would be for the SBS.
See, I think the difference between his thinking and Sarah’s response is Sarah isn’t digging back far enough.
Marxism is the 20th century manifestation of a more general problem throughout history in this case.
I’m even started to suspect Marxism is a specific manifestation of a thought pattern that arises in specific conditions. Read the demands of Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, 250 years before Marx’s birth for one example and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom for another (technically after Marx, but I have no evidence of Marxist influence and it seems unlikely enough that without direct evidence I will conclude there was none).
For a guy who consistently rails against Marx, the number of fundamentally Marxist assumptions that have taken firm root in Peterson’s mind are surprising. For example, he swallows the “income inequality” trope whole.
I kind of accept it as part and parcel of his being Canadian.
For the record, let it be noted that not all Canadians buy the idea that income inequality is ipso facto a social injustice. I’m Canadian and I’ve abandoned the concept.
The Canadian MSM operates overwhelmingly out of Toronto and Vancouver, with supporting roles from Ottawa (the national capital) and Montreal. The vast majority of Western, suburban and rural Canadians are not terribly well-represented by them.
*curious* Are the Western, suburban and rural Canadians more numerous than the populations of the Toronto, Vancouver and Ottatwa lefties? I’m not sure how it’d translate to votes / influence.
That said, I think these days that most folks will have a bunch of Marxist assumptions as root concepts in their minds (I’m fairly sure I’d have a few as well, just not aware of it) and it’d take at first awareness, then de-programming, to get rid of.
I haven’t studied the breakdown well enough to answer exactly, but in terms of absolute numbers, no, our urban lefty population is nowhere near the overall numerical equal of the rest of the country. (It is a significant factor, though, that because we’re such a comparatively sparsely populated nation, the populations of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver constitute nearly a third of the country’s overall — imagine if New York, L.A. and Chicago between them were a third of the U.S.)
The trick of it is, of course, that thanks to a multi-party system, an executive branch much less separate from the legislative (it’s impossible for us, for example, to have a Prime Minister of one party and a Parliament dominated by another), and the normal voter apathy where we’re lucky to get 50% turnout in most elections, a party can technically be in power while its actual voters represent nowhere near an absolute numerical country-wide majority.
Ah, so Canada doesn’t have mandatory voting.
I’d say more but I’m getting sleepy.
Some years ago in an election, the Quebec went overwhelmingly liberal, the east went liberal, Ontario split and the Liberals did not get one seat west of the Ontairo-Manitoba border. They still formed a majority government. I suspect that it has become worse since then. (Quebec, for historical reasons, has more seats than its population justifies.)
May I ask why Quebec has more seats for historical reasons, if it is possible to nutshell the answer?
They were guaranteed 25% of the seats back in the 1980s (part of the endless set of deals re separatism). Their population share has dropped below that since then.
Not surprising. He does have a doctorate. Fish, water, etc.
So, first: the conquer word is my choice injected from a very memorable line from one of my favorite television shows. It’s a short hand, but it does seem to correspond to religious teaching, psychological theory, and direct experience.
Once people have survival cover they seek new worlds to conquer or rot on the vine.
Peterson is making a specific claim, that two numbers, Gini coefficient and rates of violent crime, strongly correlate. That is either true or false, it’s not an opinion. I will admit I haven’t done into studies, but on the surface I have no reason to assume without evidence he is lying.
I’ll look for studies this weekend.
For the moment I’m going to take it as a given: the two correlate. The question becomes why. Peterson’s theory follows as follows:
1. Young men are the largest source of violent crime. The amount of folk wisdom around this should give you a reason to think this is likely even if you think every single statistic on violence every published is fake to promote Marxism.
2. Young men are also in a period where they are seeking a place in the world with a focus on the things that appeal to women in their local culture, which make to material resources (money, land, etc) and immaterial resources (status, celebrity, etc.) to attract women. Again, even if you reject all of psychology as a Marxist tool, as a storyteller you should be well acquainted with this idea. It is at the core of some many stories.
3. High inequality by the best measure available (Gini) correlates well to high rates of violence, which we know from #1 is generally committed by young men.
So, the question becomes: does #2 play a role.
Let’s look at how I phrased it:
They rage because they are denied any socially approved method of conquest.
And let’s look at your counter:
The problem is the young men having nowhere to go, and a culture that tells them they’re victims with no agency.
Now, could your answer be a specific version of mine. If blacks are encouraged to think engaging in successful behaviors is “acting white” and they are pointless anyway because “the man” won’t let them win, what does that do?
It makes seeking the normal methods of success in American society something that is not an option for them culturally. Even without actual mustache twirling racists stopping them, the education and popular media are making sure, by false teaching, that they are cut off from the socially acceptable means of success, that is of conquest.
So, I see no incompatibility between your argument, teaching people poor quality Marxist claptrap which separates them from productive society, and mine, that people cut off from productive society turns them violent. The former is a mechanism and the latter is a pattern.
But here is where I think the higher level version is more useful.
Why did England never suffer the revolutions of the continent? You cannot blame the French Revolution on Marxism, although modern leftism IMHO owes more the the French Revolution than it does to Marx. You cannot blame the Revolutions of 1848 on Marx. The Communist Manifesto was published as the revolutions began. If anything, they spring from common sources intellectually.
Let, despite Marx being in London and publishing the manifesto and latter works there, it was the continent and the third world who suffered from Marxist inspired revolution.
If it is the teaching of Marxist claptrap alone that leads to that violence, the UK should be included.
While data prior to 1912 (when Gini invented the index) is hard to get, appearances are the Anglosphere is generally lower than continental Europe and clearly that is case of the Anglosphere versus the modern third world.
So, the theory that inequality as an indirect measure of social mobility (the ability to conquer and obtain resources) is an indicator of crime seems to work. The mechanism that connects the two may vary, but it is there. It is a correlation, not a causation, after all.
And that distinction, that they correlate, is why some form of BGI cannot break the correlation. BGI tries to treat the symptom, lack of money, instead of the underlying causes, the inability to meet a basic human drive to accumulate resources.
Circling way back, the correlation is either there or it isn’t. If it is, to argue against BGI and other socialist fixes you need to be able to explain why they will not change things despite the correlation.
That is what I am trying to do. “Marxist indoctrination” fails as a general explanation even if it demonstrates the mechanism in specific instances.
This is getting really long, but there are other historical instances more amenable to the relative inequality explanation, such as the revolts by non-nobles during Richard II’s regency (I do not like calling them peasant’s revolts as is done in most histories, because common understanding of that word maps poorly to tenant farmers in England by that point). Oddly enough, some of the demands presage socialism (perhaps relative inequality causes socialist thinking?). I think it also accounts for your contention that revolutions happen not at the bottom, but at the first uptick from the bottom.
“Young men are also in a period where they are seeking a place in the world with a focus on the things that appeal to women in their local culture, which make to material resources (money, land, etc) and immaterial resources (status, celebrity, etc.) to attract women.”
Indeed, the effect of female mating-choice criteria on male behavior, especially young-male behavior, should not be ignored. There is an interesting & relevant passage in Hans Fallada’s great novel of Weimar Germany, Little Man,What Now?
The struggling young couple who are the book’s protagonists, Sonny and Lammchen, are taken, as a rare treat, to see a movie, in which the following play-within-a-play occurs…
The film’s protagonist is a young bank clerk, very much in love with his wife…the wife being less than happy with their financial circumstances. The clerk begins thinking how easy it would be to steal money, and one day his hand actually moves toward a pile of currency…but he just can’t do it. He is noticed, though, by his friend the Management Trainee (son of a bank director), who takes pity on him and gives him money.
The clerk cannot bring himself to tell his wife how he got the money, but implies he has embezzled it. She is thrilled…”You did that for me?”…and their relationship improves dramatically.
But the Management Trainee meets the wife, and falls in love with her…still, “she only had eyes for her husband, that brave, reckless man, who would do anything for her.” Finally, the Management Trainee tells the wife the truth about how the clerk got the money, and she laughs in her husband’s face.
Note the implied priorities of the wife’s attraction…her husband the Thief is more attractive than the high-status and well-off Management Trainee. However, the Management Trainee is more attractive than her husband the Recipient of Charity. Also, her husband the Recipient of Charity is even less attractive than her husband the Mere Bank Clerk.
It’s only fiction, of course, even meta-fiction….but seems to me relevant to the Guaranteed Income for All question.
This…this is what I was after.
After the movie is over, Sonny is so disturbed that he is barely able to get up out of his seat…he sees too many parallels between the situation of the movie couple and that of himself and Lammchen. But as the remainder of the book unfolds, Lammchen remains steadfastly loyal to him, despite his ongoing problems with getting and keeping jobs. So Fallada, at least in this novel, is disclaiming the view that ALL women would act like the one in the movie.
(When the book was first published in Germany, the character of Lammchen struck quite a chord with the reading public. There was even a newspaper-sponsored contest, with prizes, for essays on the subject “Your view of Lammchen.”)
Herbn,
That is an interesting post. Thanks.
One problem, or at least a limitation, with the Gini coefficient is that it doesn’t look at the cause of the inequality.
Imagine two games. In the first, points are awarded based on the skill of the player. Because people have different levels of skill, the distribution of points will be unequal. In the second game, points are awarded at the discretion of the referee based on his own desires. Depending on the distribution of skill and the desires of the referee both games could have the same Gini coefficient, but their impacts on the players would be vastly different.
For reasonably mature adults being beaten by a more skilled opponent might not be that much fun, but it isn’t going to cause a lot of frustration or anger. It may even spur the loser to improve his skills in order to win next time.
A rigged game, on the other hand, is going to cause anger, frustration, and depression in almost anyone. Couple that with the responses testosterone tends to program in us and you get violent young men striking out at anything they can reach, regardless of its relationship to what’s actually keeping them back.
Outside of America the economy is likely to be much closer to the second game than the first (and America is much further from the first game than it was in years past). Which means that any correlation with Gini coefficients has little to nothing to say about the effects of a truly free economy.
There’s another factor at play. Marxism teaches that inequality always comes from a rigged system, even if it’s actually due to unequal skill. Marx basically teaches people to become ill-tempered children who throw the board in the air and stomp off when they lose fair and square.
Precisely.
Which means that any correlation with Gini coefficients has little to nothing to say about the effects of a truly free economy.
Actually, I disagree, especially if you use Shorrocks extension where he compares short term income Gini to long term income Gini to look for movement among quintiles. I would point out using such measures is a common method by economists such as Thomas Sowell to debunk Marxism, so I’m willing to give it some validity.
Given that economic freedom and social mobility, as measured by Shorrocks, correlate I think that tells us a lot about a free economy.
It tells us free economies provide more opportunities to “seek your fortune” as every young man in an old story does.
Marxism teaches that inequality always comes from a rigged system, even if it’s actually due to unequal skill.
I don’t disagree, and Marxist teachings can cut off a person from the socially acceptable means of seeking success.
“Because Marxism” doesn’t make the correlation between “inability to seek success in social acceptable ways” and “resorts to violence” go away. It explains one mechanism for cutting off individuals from socially acceptable means of seeking success.
-Believe that the government should enforce free speech, as long as its their speech.
The first thing that will happen when government begins to outlaw “hate speech” is classification of opposition to prevailing leftist orthodoxy as “hate speech”. Since those who oppose prevailing leftist orthodoxy tend to quote the Bible, it’s a very short step to persecution of religious believers. Jews, Catholics, evangelical Protestants, and Mormons are all at risk.
Perhaps an Orwellian scenario could take place in Europe where religious faith was already senescent and moribund, but I don’t see it happening in America. Just because the lion hasn’t yet been sufficiently provoked doesn’t mean that it is tame.
It is already affecting parts of the left not in line with the Hillary brand: the anti-war left. It doesn’t get much coverage in conservative circles, but Tim Pool, among others, has been pointing out things like the Veritas drops showing suppression of conservative sites shows the same for anti-war leftist sites.
Yet they still don’t realize the anti-war movement gets coverage when they are useful not because the press and the Dems (but I repeat myself) finds them useful: ie, when Bush is in office.
I think that maybe my biggest disagreement with our hostess (if it is one, I’m not sure it is versus emphasis). I think most of the people at the top of these leftist hierarchies (which will whither away come the revolution, they promise) are not all (maybe not mostly) actual Marxists (ie, descendants of Trotsky or maybe Lenin), but grifters who know a useful idiot when then see one (ie, descendants of Stalin or maybe Lenin).
Casey’s mom went from leading figure to annoyance as soon as 0bama won the election.
To her very little credit, she continued protesting right through his 8 years, but other than an attempt at primarying San Fran Nan, she was dropped from the news as fast as a mass shooter who turns out to be a commie symp.
Are we talking the Bernibro who shot Scalise, or the failed (?) defector to the USSR who shot JFK?
Yes.
Ah but it was the evil Right Wing that really shot JFK.
The poor little man was just the scapegoat that the evil Right Wing said killed JFK. 😈
Remember the dustup on the bar re Ted Kennedy, when the guy said “people like you killed his brothers” and we went “Wait – who here are the commies and Pali nationalists?”
Yes, it was the Evil Right-Wing Climate of Hate which forced the poor innocent leftie Oswald to kill a Democrat.
Worst. Conspiracy. Ever!
Just from the Warren Commission Report and Gerald Ford’s account (1), Oswald’s guilt is questionable. And, just from those two accounts, the level of incompetence of the “investigation” passed “WTF?!” levels.
*Could* Oswald have done it? Certainly.
*Did* Oswald do it? Had Ruby not greased him during DPD’s silly PR stunt, it’s unlikely he would have been convicted.
(1) I consider those two to be the most “official” accounts, though not necessarily the most accurate. There are enough whack-a-doodle books on the subject that you can find someone making a claim for almost any scenario you care to imagine…
“Had Ruby not greased him during DPD’s silly PR stunt”
Bong! Unwarranted assumption! That “PR Stunt” may have only been the cover for the actual mission.
What!? Me, (kicks empty gas can out of sight) throw accelerant on a fire?
I’m thinking organized crime, honestly. It fits the facts as they stand, including the “WTF?” investigation, and it’s been a theory since at-the-time.
It’s also not pushed by the theorists very often, probably because it makes JFK look bad.
well, they gloss over the LHO fella’s wants and what . . . much like JFK’s tax cuts, defense posturing and spending would today make him some evil ultra-conservative Texas Republican.
There was a similar one recently too. Trump hater who went a shooting, MSM – “Who?” ‘Local’ story, sorry.”
Oh, some of them are just evil grifters and don’t believe Marxism at all. I think Soros for ex will seize anything that helps destroy the west.
The question of how much they believe or pretend to believe is one between them and the conscience they don’t have.
I’m almost sure Obama believes Marxism, but then I don’t think he’s near the top. Just a useful meat puppet.
It gives one pause to imagine the reactions from the Left if Soros were right-wing. The way they demonize the libertarian Koch brothers is not one tenth of the conniptions they’d toss over what George does. Imagine David Koch announcing he is deliberately providing funds and campaign advisers to Secretary of State candidates with the intention of affecting how state campaigns are governed.
IIRC, Soros (supposedly) publicly stated that what the latest generation of Leftists is doing will only result in undoing decades of what the older generations have managed to erode. Something like that.
I suspect those who rise to the top of any Marxist food chains are grifters. There were 1.5 exceptions in Soviet history. The 0.5, Khrushchev, was willing to see what was failing and try to change. He was deposed for his troubles. The 1.0 (who may just have been a 0.5, but came to power as it) was Gorby, who was almost deposed, but survived because the rot in the system made the fall inevitable anyway (and fell within a year of almost being deposed as the whole thing crumbled).
Since “hate speech” will by definition involve beliefs about right and wrong, it will pretty much instantly be weaponized against any religion not held by whoever is deciding what “hate” is.
Even if the differences are tiny, any other religion will be “hateful” where it varies from the decider.
What angers me is the obvious contradictions in their Dogma.
IE They know “the West started the fight against Islam” and also know “history is unknowable”.
If “history is unknowable”, how do they know that “the West started the fight against Islam”?
Of course, if “history is unknowable”, how do they know about the “perfect, utopia-like matriarchy” of the past?
😡
Those are known unknowns, of course. 😉
It makes me wonder if by “The West”, they were referring to the USA.
Yes, I’ve known people who were that dumb.
Ah, yes, the Crusaders from the US, famous for their (checks already used colors) white cross on a quartered blue and red field.
oh dagum it, now I wanna make a Crusader Cross that is obviously American.
Maybe a blue cross on a red field with white stars?
Or a white cross on a red field with blue quarters holding white stars?
replace the stars in the flag with little white crosses
What would the lay brothers wear?
There’s a case for, riffing off the Livonian order and the SF, crossed arrows with a small eagle below.
Yes, slavery is bad but it is still practiced everywhere. It’s just not sanctioned or practiced openly in the West. Historically, pre industrial revolution, slavery was practiced by everybody including the peoples who became slaves. Sorry lefties deal with it.
The secret to a properly functioning Matriarchy is not to let the controlled male population know about it. This is where the modern feminist is screwing things up for all women and why an increasing number of women are speaking out in favor of chivalry and old style manners.
Another on point quote by the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century RAH.
Excellent post.
Wait, so if “the past is unknowable”, how did she know the crusades were started by the west and that the west was imperialistic?
These are deeply and aggressively stupid people. It doesn’t matter if they were born that way, or made that way. Dumb is dumb.
It takes an idiot to think that “capitalism” is a coherent political ideology, because you simply can’t disabuse these folks of the misinformation in their heads when the very language used to describe the relevant concepts means whatever they need it to mean.
Capitalism is a label from Marx. I try to avoid it in favor of “free and open markets” or “free exchange between equals”.
Same here. It’s long past time to push back against the fundamental Marxist assumptions festering away in the discourse, even down to the language. It’s why I always put “capitalism” in quotes.
Given that some form of it what happens whenever force is not used to suppress it (and most times even then) I prefer Organic, Free-Range Economics.
*golf clap*
Well played Sir, well played.
Very good, but in recognition of the role played by entrepreneurs, I suggest the following editorial amendment:
Artisinal, Organic, Free-Range Economics.
As I said I lunch, I love the Huns.
Nice.
I think that’s a subset – but certainly a useful one. It shows we care about the talented people who make the system work.
“she fell back on how the past is unknowable.”
Then she had no business making her original assertion.
You’re assuming that she is thinking. 😈
I would never be so foolish as to imagine a Liberal engages in thinking!
What I am proposing is she be confronted with the inherent contradictions of her positions.
Not in the idea that it will affect her — she is capable of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast. But onlookers might be induced to point at her and laugh, and mockery is to such as her as the Cross to vampires.
mockery is to such as her as the Cross to vampires.
For example, see the huge amount of butt hurt the Boston Straight Pride parade is causing. The level of inkind contributions to Trump 2020 is amazing.
I’m thinking Alinksy’s greatest insight was rule #5, although #1 and #6 are pretty strong today.
I rather like the maraschino cherry effect of having Milo Yiannopoulos as marshal for the parade.
So much popcorn…
Oh, I’m loving it.
It is inspiring a new WoD RPG: Trolls: the Triggering
Oh, oh oh IS he?!
I want to know what his outfit will be now.
It will be fabulous, but still, the devil is in the details!
These folks are, seemingly, lacking the ability to see themselves in the mirror (of logic, etc.) so vampire is a most apt descriptor for the lot.
Today’s ‘Democrats’ are the modern Committee to RE-Elect the President. Yes, I’m calling them CREEPs. They even brought in Dean, so… it fits. This Reality thing is goofy.
Or how ‘Learn to code’ was perfectly acceptable when applied to out-of-work W. Virginia coal miners but is hate speech when applied to RIFfed journalists . . .
As in, “How Dare you say we should be treated like we treat people!”
I’d say it’s more like “How dare you imply that they who perform manual labor are equal to their superiors in the press corps, and that we must lower ourselves to the benighted status of learning to perform some useful work?”
But they are defiling the holy day and name of pride in everything but heterosexuality
Not only is she capable of believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast, she’s likely to proclaim during breakfast that what happened before breakfast is unknowable.
With the state of my memory these days, what happened before breakfast almost always is unknowable.
Fortunately, I almost never eat breakfast, so I don’t have to worry about it.
I don’t. I think most of them are squishy flesh versions of the old Eliza program and written in just as powerful a version of BASIC.
They aren’t speaking so much as making pre-programmed noises to certain inputs.
The NPC meme exists for a reason.
And how do you feel about Eliza? 😛
I’d rather talk to her than a leftist 9 times out of 10. I’m more likely to be surprised.
As I recall, Eliza was written in Lisp. Now that I think about it that makes it even more appropriate as a lefty generator.
Now I want to start singing “Defer. Defer. …” and I suck at singing.
There was a clone in BASIC in Dave Ahl’s books and elsewhere.
I can see how LISP would work a lot better.
LISP…. does this relate to pride month?
(Runs. Really, really, really FAST.)
Most people who write lots of LISP have a great deal of pride in being a LISPer.
But who wants to be Lost In Stupid Parentheses?
Lisp is more of a religion than a programming language.
Then there are the people who use APL…
Never did APL, but I have had a job writing RPG.
I do enjoy Lisp but have never had the chance to use it professionally and given in the great religious struggle I follow the holy faith of vi so don’t need Lisp for automation.
After all……
By happenstance (or perhaps there’s something in the air….) I was having a similar conversation elsewhere. I was trying think of “What things do we take for granted today that in other times would be barbaric” — of course there are the obvious ones, but those are too hot-button to be interesting for discussion, because there are large parts of current cultures that already considers them barbaric.
One that interests me is the breakdown of the “family/household” as the fundamental economic unit. That’s been the case in literally every human society for which we have records and good anthropological data, including Polynesian, African, Classical Greek, Roman, Western Civ, and US prior to 1970. Throughout all those varied circumstances, just what a ‘household’ was, who was in it, how it was organized, what the social roles were, and the extent to which ‘love’ was expected to be found inside or outside the unit, were extremely varied — but it was always understood that there was a “lowest unit” in the economic organization which was not a single individual. Marriage customs are built around that unit, social networks are as well, and the primary responsibilities for child-rearing, convalescent care, ownership of the basic tools, food preparation, etc., have been at the “family/household” level.
We are now conducting a widespread social experiment in making the primary economic/social unit the individual — which leaves large swaths of function that take a larger unit adrift and we are scrambling to figure out how to take care of all of those functions. Perhaps that will work, but perhaps by the 22nd century that will be viewed as bizarre and contrasurvival.
FYI we insist on at least a handle here. Making your next post, I recommend a handle of some sort.
A thought that has been recurring to me quite a bit over the past several yeras: There is no prison so strong as the one we craft for ourselves. They have made their own prison, in their own minds. They are the only ones who can free themselves, baring intervention of the Almighty, and so they are prisoners indeed for having decided they need someone else to free them, they will not free themselves nor conceive any notion they can.
I agree, though I’m not sure if it’s so much a prison as a cross between a playpan and a padded cell…
The only flaw in Mr. Heinlein’s argument is it ignores the fact that some people just need to be oppressed.
I will not endeavor to point to examples (although certain native Central & South American tribes come to mind, as do practitioners of certain Indian funeral traditions) but I will admit I’ve got a little list.
Let’s face it: had I not, one of you would have.
If they really need to be oppressed, there are people who do that for a living. No need to drag the rest of us into their private proclivities.
Unfortunately, there are people in those kinks who insist on bringing out the freak-on in public. If I’m not mistaken, there were actual discussions about that, because not getting the consent of the unwary surrounding audience to ‘see, thus indirectly participate’ was a dangerous precedent to hold (slowly erodes the concepts of safe and consensual, by forcing the ‘normals’/everyday people to unwillingly endure acts of kink.)
“forcing the ‘normals’/everyday people to unwillingly endure acts of kink”
Hmmmm … exhibitionism as a subset of rape, forcing participation on the willing. And what are we allowed to do to would-be rapists?
Turning the hose on them would be no higher than #4 on the list.
Not a good idea. At least in a country where “proper defense of another” is justification for all levels of violence.
There’s a reason they keep trying to capture the rules so that it’s the gov’t doing the actual force.
Or their private militias. Could argue that it happens in portland
Scott, the problem is that’s a state by state, county by county, or even city by city proposition. Yes, even here in TX, if I was in Austin, Houston, or San Antonio, I’d have to think twice. Because the local LEO chiefs and DAs will charge you anyway, even though state law says they will lose, just as a “lawfare” proposition. And if they get a Democrat judge and jury, they’ll have you in jail while the appeals process is going on.
It’s the ‘shock the squares’ mindset and a feeling that by not being allowed to before they deserve revenge. It’s why you see the revenge lawsuits and such.
When told how wrong she was, she fell back on how the past is unknowable.
Except,when I know it.
Also, socialism is JUST AS BAD INDIRECTLY. But they never think that, or that the world is nowhere a utopia. But capitalism has fed and clothed more people than any other system, ever.
Yet HBO has recently produced an okayish serious proving this.
Chernobyl affect one reactor and involved no acts of nature.
Fukuyama involved six reactors, four of which had various degrees of failure, and was caused by a near worst case natural disaster.
Yet Chernobyl was still worse in terms of damage and radiation released. It was hidden and affected people were intentionally lied to. Half information led to knock on effects such as wide spread iodine poisoning (people who didn’t get iodine pills, but knew that had been issued took to drinking medical sterilizing iodine). The need to keep up appearances led to exposing people in a May Day parade to up to as much radiation as a nuclear industry worker in the US is allowed to receive in a calendar quarter (May 1st Kiev parade was ordered by Gorby himself to happen despite the fact the winds had shifted and outdoor ambient exposure in Kiev peaked that day at 0.5 to 1.2 rem/hr depending on the part of the city).
Yet, it is capitalism that has running dog hidden deaths greater than socialism’s open ones.
Right.
Don’t you mean Fukushima?
Yes…my bad.
And then there’s the almost(?) identical reactor site to Fukushima that is almost never heard about. Why? Because the site engineer was a stubborn git who was right and insisted/demanded that a levee/seawall be made to withstand the “500 year” wave… and it was, and it worked.
Didn’t he also put the switch gear near the roof and not in the basement (which is why the emergency generations on the hill above the water line and the truck based generations could not be used, because the switch gear was flooded).
The would not surprise me. One smart decision suggests other smart decisions might have happened. Not a certainty, but… at least a hope.
Worth pointing out that the whole “we make the reactor safe by invoking other active systems” approach of third-generation nuclear reactors ought to be long, long obsolete. We keep building the old style reactors because the regulatory barrier for certifying newer designs has become so high. But there are multiple designs for ‘self-safing’ designs that don’t depend on things outside the reactor to work to deal with the leftover heat after turning the fission rates down. The better answer would be to get the fourth-generation designs in to production rather than trusting to engineering excellence to foresee all the way the third-generation designs can break.
Aye. While a truly fool-proof design might be a dream [“The Universe is winning”…], it sure seems a lot better can be done than what is currently running. And likely running despite a lot of things.
We keep building the old style reactors because the regulatory barrier for certifying newer designs has become so high.
This this this – the insane regulatory overburden, driven by Hollywood Engineering Assessments, has prevented reactor design from moving much past the era of rotary phones and hippies for half a century. When your design tools are pencil, paper and slide rule, you make certain decisions – but when you can model the whole reactor system iteratively, you can take advantage of 50 years of good ideas (and filter out 50 years of bad ideas) before you actually build anything.
There are far better modern reactor designs, and interestingly as far as I’ve seen, most of them are currently being built in China as they try and kick their coal-burning power plan addiction.
For that matter, the early reports were saying that the Fukushima containment held up *far* past its required failure point. But instead of giving the engineers some attaboys, people were howling for their blood.
Some of them were probably beancounters furious about “wasted” money…
Yes, you can say slavery is an evil. (Arguably one of the greatest evils humanity can do.)
No phrase annoys me more than “wrong side of history” and slavery is the prime example.
Is slavery on the wrong side of history. It has only been gone from the West legally for about a century and a half.
It has never been gone from Africa or the Middle East. In fact, it is spreading in Africa with the appearance of slave markets in Libya, on the Mediterranean Coast (probably for the first time in a century, since the fall of the Ottomans).
US tech companies push for and get legal indentured servitude, slavery’s first cousin, via the H1B Visa system (the indentured part is more important than the pay part in the desire for them in my experience). US leftists, the same people who use “arrow of history” and “right side of history” are using peonage, slavery’s other first cousin on the other side of the family, to provide household help via illegal immigrants.
That arrow is pretty broken and it seems being on the right side, ie in an anti-slavery era, is mostly good luck in the Heinleinian sense.
But thats different. They pay them a pittance and don’t officially own their children. It’s like any of the company town thing (being brought back by our tech overlords) or the cartel slavery. ‘They agreed to it so boo hoo.” And safety? “Bah, I’m out nothing and can get another at the dock tomorrow.”
Slaves have to be quartered and fed when not being worked. The Yankees had the Irish, who were way cheaper than slaves…
Exactly what I’ve brought up before. The morals are very fluid
The history of the Democrat Party makes more sense if you assume that they NEVER considered Blacks to be their moral equals, they simply abandoned (first) slavery and (later) Jim Crow because circumstances made them bad tactics.
I’m not saying it’s TRUE, mind. Just that it comes out that the Democrat Party always seems to pick policies that keep the poor brown folk in poverty.
Welfare is cheaper than Jim Crow- plus you get not only the black vote, but the vote of the whole mass of apparatchiks too.
If you can convince a group to engage in self-subjugation, you spend less effort subjugating them. It’s no less evil, merely easier on you.
Well, they went from “Blacks are less than us, so it is only right we keep them as slaves” to “Blacks are less than us, so it is only right they be kept separate via segregation” to “Blacks are less than us so we need to fight even our party man, LBJ’s civil rights act”, to “Blacks are less than us so we need to pass special laws so they can get on in the world and we shall call it Affirmative action.”
They cannot function without thinking anyone who tans faster is below them, but they now ride that into power in new ways.
You want to get my husband raving, bring up the cartels and folks “agreeing” to work with them.
A huge portion of the first-time smugglers they get are college age girls who visited family, were informed they’d carry drugs or their family would die, and then when they’re caught crossing they are told by the cartels that now they’re in debt to the cartels for the value of the drugs plus whatever other bullshit they can pile on,
On a related note: https://twitter.com/ThomasSowell/status/1138491850816413696
For as long as I can recall, going back at least into the Sixties, there have always been those who argued there could be no legitimate basis for disagreeing with them. Of course, back when the Left was being called unpatriotic and soft on Communism they said things like “I’m sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we’re Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration.”
Now, when it is they who face dissent … well, thank Lucifer they are the tolerant ones.
Yep, nowadays, if you disagree with the ‘woke’, they will stalk you, doxx you, destroy your place of employ, your business, your livelihood, your family and threaten to rape and murder your wife and children, because that’s ‘tolerance’ these days.
I am paying attention with great interest to the ongoing Oberlin College trial – if the wages of supporting the wokethink penalizers brigade are $30m verdicts that your insurers won’t cover, the behavior may be altered.
Give an $800M+ endowment, I don’t think a ~$33M verdict is truly going to be that painful. As long as they have the wit to amend their behavior and don’t find themselves hit with more such judgments. Of course their general counsel sent out a mass email to the college community insulting the jurors, so amending their behavior may need some more expensive prods.
Legal Insurrection has reported (Oberlin begs for mercy) that the college is pleading that such heavy damages will hurt students. What part of “punitive” are they not grasping?
Maybe if they cut a few administrative salaries (and even some positions) and added a surcharge to student activity fees they could absorb the burden. With an enrollment of 2,785 a $5 a semester additional fee would generate a neat $27,850 annually — and that”s without summer semesters! They could pay it off in a mere 790 years (although that is admittedly without interest.) If they raise student activity fees by $25 a semester they could generate $139,250 a year, allowing them to pay it off in only 158 years. For a school asking $70K tuition a measly fifty dollars a year in additional student activity fees doesn’t seem all that much. Maybe if they cut back on other expenses, such as not printing flyers libeling local businesses, they could further finance the fines?
Hmmmm … this‘ll leave a mark:
Oberlin College hit with maximum PUNITIVE DAMAGES (capped at $22 million by law) in Gibson’s Bakery case
Added to $11 million compensatory damages, brings total to $33 million
Daniel McGraw, our reporter in the courtroom, reports that in addition to the $11.2 million compensatory damages awarded last Friday, the jury awarded a total of $33 million in punitive damages, which will probably be reduced by the court to $22 million because of the state law cap at twice compensatory (it’s not an absolute cap, but probably will apply here). That brings the total damages to $33 million. We will have the breakdown soon. The jury also awarded attorney’s fees, to be determined by the judge.
[MORE]
Assuming their minds have flexibility enough.
I think we have an answer on that question.
WILL OBERLIN LEARN ITS LESSON? (2)
I wondered on Thursday whether Oberlin would learn its lesson from the $33 million defamation verdict against the college, and explained why the answer was almost certainly No. You can strike “almost.” Today the New York Times reports that Oberlin’s president has confirmed that they are determined not to learn anything from the verdict:
[END EXCERPT]
So apparently the
bitchbakery was asking for it, and the jury just bitterly clung to “archaic” policies.Well, the punitive damages were probably influenced by the way the college sent out an email saying the jury had ignored the plain evidence after the first judgment.
Also, having said it was all the students, they plead at the punitive damages hearing that heavy damages would — hurt the students!
Yep. And they’ll go back decades for evidence, holding stockpiles of defamatory ‘evidence’ and hounding their target.
Stupidly, I just checked twitter.
Wretchard’s tweet of the BBC article that quotes that Hacker fellow about the cruelty of teaching math.
There’s not enough facepalm.
Teaching mathematics poorly is a cruelty. Teaching it well is not. Alas, there seem to be precious few alleged teachers who can teach math without making it more annoying than strictly necessary. There will always be *some* level of annoyance (any subject). Much of mathematics is not about making things easy, but making them possible or easier which is NOT the same as ‘easy’. And yet, so much is really just counting. Sometimes rather fancy counting, but still counting. Yet somehow people become convinced that they cannot handle counting. That is a crime, if not an outright sin.
Last semester in undergrad, I took a complex variables course. Damned good instructor, and a lot of the good part was he kept us on the lookout for ways to make the problems easier to digest.
It was kind of fun. (FWIW, the course was aimed at us engineering troglodytes, not the mathematicians.)
It’s funny, but I was reading the history on one of the attempts to raise a chimpanzee as a human being yesterday. It sounded like the chimp had very similar psycho-social-emotional development as humans have, but only up to adolescence. She became frequently angry, violent, and disobedient; your typical teenager with zero restraints. The parallels between an adult chimp stuck in perpetual adolescence, and the behavior of our SJWs sadly shows that for far too many of us humans, we’re less above our ape cousins as we think.
ah, chimps . . . typical teen, but with the ability to pull your arms off and beat you with them.
When told how wrong she was, she fell back on how the past is unknowable.
…That is obnoxiously … aaaaagh. I hate equivocation.
Yes, the past is not perfectly knowable.
No, the past is not knowable on the level of “we’re reasonably sure that 2+2=4.”
The past is knowable to the degree it supports the current narrative to know it.
The answer is 5, Winston.
Every time I see an illustration of “the blind men and the Elephant” I wish the Elephant (surely something that big deserves a capital letter) would crap on the fool messing with its tail.
Assuming it’s a Male Elephant, I’d wonder what he’d do to the blind man that messes with his penis. 😈
Musth you go there?
Can you say, “Blind man pate”?
Meh. Assume the elephant is female and you’ve a similar problem, although there is a serious question as to whether a man can find a clitoris.
It was a gay guy who pointed out to me how an elephant’s mouth resembled a vagina, as we were feeding them at a sanctuary in Malaysia. I always wondered how he knew what they looked like.
To truly know you don’t like something requires sampling it at least once or twice.
Vaginas with tusks? Now there’s a concept to wilt many a willie.
….Instead of looking at biology and the reproductive processes of mankind as to why women have by and large not been as influential in public life.
-Ignore the fact that women are probably more influential than men in early childhood education and training. Always were. Will always be. And that this shapes civilizations.
-Only believe in female power when it involves taking male power.
Random thought:
Could this be a fruit of the…argh, that tactic where they want to frame EVERYTHING as a freaking war?
Because it’s an art-of-war old trope that everybody forgets support staff in war, and fixates on the fighter pilot type.
It can also be seen in folks who think Samwise is a useless character.
Women are biological support units. We LITERALLY grow the next generation, and then feed it from our own bodies, and traditionally a lot of the work we do is similarly tuned— up-keep of the home, clothes repair, foundation training, food for heaven’s sake…. EVERYTHING you need to live. Women are life support.
Men are fighter units. Yes, even if the “fighting” is just a 9-to-5 job.
They get the materials, they take point, they use the support material to get to the goal.
They’re both freaking worthless without each other.
Samwise is a useless character.
Samwise is the hero of the LotR.
Prove me wrong.
My position is that he is One Of The Heroes and not the “lesser of the heroes”. 😀
Samwise is the one who, without the dreams that brought Frodo to the fight, or the naive thirst for ‘adventure’ that drove Merry and Pippin, walked the hardest road all the way to the end. And, in the end, he was the one who would stay and preserve the tale for future generations. Samwise is the keystone that will keep the tale from becoming such a misty legend that the Hobbits forget it.
*ignores challenge and goes about doing whatever needs to be done*
Lord of the Rings.
It’s got his title right there in the title. Sauron is the real hero, it is a tragedy.
Why, yes, I am a hot head confrontational idiot. However did you guess?
LeGuin thought the same thing.
(Truncated, alas.)
“For the fight for freedom can be lost or won, by the man* behind the man behind the gun.”
* Who might not be a man as such. The machinery doesn’t care.
[OT: I first heard this tune, complete, the night of 9/10. Yes, that one. You bet I recalled the line “They say over here we have nothing to fear, but let’s get ready just in case.” the next morning.]
One of my favorite quotes is “in language as in life, the male embraces the female.”
Which can be interpreted as:
It doesn’t matter if you’re a dude. If it’s important that you’re a chick, we’ll make it clear.
There were good reasons it wasn’t the Spartan fathers telling their sons, “With your shield or on it.”
Apologies ahead of time, but I can’t resist, in no small part because Sparta makes me wanna burn things in spite of their awesome points.
“Yeah, ‘cus the fathers are already freaking DEAD and you can replace the warriors a dozen years after the sperm donor is dead.”
Sometimes a civilization faces a choice: let the other tribe kill you (they’ve been trying for generations) or kill them or, if you are of a more moral fiber, kill their fighters and enslave the rest, in the hope that what we now call the Stockholm Syndrome will turn them into members of your tribe. Suicide, genocide, or extinguishing the murderous culture but not all the people–which would you prefer? If you say ‘suicide’, then you first.
And people wonder why I argue for extermination as a morally preferable outcome.
If we follow modern American mores, and say that slavery is always morally wrong, and worse, less profitable than market labor.
Of course, in absence of socialism, mass killings destroy wealth, hurt potential income, and should be avoided unless truly necessary.
Not killing them all can work. You just have to be prepared to go back every generation or so and put the terror of you into them. Getting a post-War Japan situation is so rare as to be all but unheard of.
Modern technology makes the whole “go back once a generation or so and remind them” thing much more feasible than it used to be. But you have to keep an eye out to make sure that they don’t get access to the same technology.
The current situation with regard to the indian tribes isn’t so bad. Almost enough to make us think we can duplicate the effect on demand.
This is frequently where the “take the women and make them bear the next generation of YOUR fighters” comes in, as well.
23 skidoo
You lose hope sometimes.
I’m glancing at a forum (which I’ve been gladly banned from a while ago, thank God), and there’s a discussion about “stories that started to disappoint me” and they started to talk about The Dresden Files. And, I recognize that I have some issues with the series (after about Ghost Story), but I also recognize that Jim Butcher has been having some serious issues over the last few years, so he hasn’t been able to really write or publish for a while.
That isn’t the issue.
The issue is that one of the discussions was what happened to Molly post-Cold Days and it was all framed in the lens of third/fourth-wave feminism and how her new status “removed her agency.”
…
Because of what happened, Molly is now a Fae. The Fae are not human except in appearance. They are ancient to a degree and scale that it is hard for humans to wrap our brains around. They consider the Time Lords to be Johnnie-come-lately gatecrashers, barely above oinks with pig-shit between their toes. (And, the Time Lords have been quoted at being at least six billion years old, minimum.) They are bound by laws and rules and geas that we can barely comprehend and anticipate. And they enforce their laws with brutal ruthlessness.
And, of the Great Fae in Jim Butcher’s universe, Molly is the youngest and the newest. Mab does not like her, despite her ability, because of how she became the Winter Maiden. So, she has been…less than complete in telling Molly what it means to be her now. And, the short story that it really slams into her what it means to be the Winter Maiden, Molly learns that to have sex with anyone that isn’t Winter Fae would be to turn her from Maiden to Mother-and her Mantle will kill anyone that tries to change that.
Winter Fae are some of the most ruthless sociopath monsters out there. Often, knowing better and choosing to be otherwise because it’s fun. The only person that is among Winter that she can trust, that she could even have a safe emotional and sexual relationship with is the Winter Knight.
You know, Harry Dresden. The man that consider himself to be her much older brother, because it was in the Carpenter household that the orphan even remotely felt he had anything like a sane family? The man that was her mentor and teacher for years, and knows very well that Molly has been carrying a forest of torches for him? And, he won’t act on it because it would be so many levels of wrong for him, fundamental violations of his personal codes?
And, this is all in the stories and the mythology that is behind the stories. The mythology that is the common heritage of Americans and people in the West.
Were they never taught? Were they never given positive experiences in our culture? And, how in the hell can we expect them to defend what they have had beaten into their heads is a horrible thing?
You lose hope sometimes.
(And, my reason for being a description slut in my writing. I want nobody to misinterpret me without looking silly. Or being a college professor.)
“The only person that is among Winter that she can trust, that she could even have a safe emotional and sexual relationship with is the Winter Knight.”
Actually, I thought the lesson was the maiden mantel wouldn’t have chosen Molly if she hadn’t been a virgin. The mantel will protect itself to prevent her from becoming the Lady (mother), regardless because there can be only one Lady. Mab knew Molly. Molly was explicitly asked given what happened had she only been told of the restriction, would she tried to connive and finesse her way around it? Given what happened, would she ever forget? Same way with why they were there. Sure Molly solved the problem. But she still had to extract the tribute. Lesson. Learn to ask.
s not official censorship, the “church” of SJW can’t formally excommunicate you, but everyone on twitter knows they do, anyway, and worse, destroy your life, for having just one slightly unapproved thought.
Yard sale of the Mind has,an excellent essay on this based on Camille Paglia’s experience with the Hive.
https://yardsaleofthemind.wordpress.com/2019/06/12/paglia-and-ugly-tactics-of-the-left/