This week something happened that put who we’re dealing with and how bad it’s got.
The full story is here, but here is what happened:
Carson King, 24, raised over $1 million after holding up a sign during ESPN’s “College GameDay” on Sept. 14 in Iowa. The sign asked for Venmo donations for his “Busch Light Supply.” King donated the funds, which were matched by Venmo and Busch Light, to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
Okay, let’s pause here and admit several things:
We have no idea what this kid’s political affiliation was/is. Heck, I don’t know if anyone knows, yet.
He was running for no office, asking for no charity, not doing anything that required us to know about his character in any depth.
What we know about him is that he’s a college student who (probably as a joke) asked for beer money and got way more money than anyone could expect.
Which is when he did something I — personally — couldn’t do. Look, guys, if someone gave me 1 million, I’d pay off some of the kids’ loans (we only paid half their undergrad tuition each, plus living expenses/supplementary expenses) And depending on how much was left after taxes, pay down our mortgage or get us cars younger than 25 years.
I don’t think I’d have the courage/fortitude to donate it all to a children’s hospital.
The other thing I THINK I can say for sure is that despite the culture war we do all still agree that sick kids deserve treatment, right? We do still all agree on that, right?
So, this kid, whoever and whatever he was, was a hero and almost a saint in a way most of us couldn’t do: being a young man, with his life to establish, he didn’t say “I’ll start a business” or “I’ll buy a house” or even “I’ll have the biggest party.” No. He said, “You know what I wouldn’t have this money normally. Let’s do some good with it.”
So this is the part that made me go “In heaven’s name why?”
Des Moines Register reporter Aaron Calvin reported on two tweets written by King when he was 16 while compiling information for a profile on him, published Tuesday. The tweets were brought to King’s attention, and he apologized before the Register published the profile, including the unsavory comments.
The kid isn’t running for anything, guys. He’s not selling the public anything. He’s just a private citizen going about his private business. Who would go digging through is twitter feed to find SOME dirt from when he was too young to have a filter? WHO IN HECK EVEN THINKS of doing that?
I have no idea what the politics of the journalist are, either, that’s not the important thing. Pay attention to the actions, though. What this reminded me most of was the Covington kids, who weren’t selling anything; weren’t doing anything and yet the media looked to destroy their characters as thoroughly as possible, in public, with the potential for severe backlash and destroying their abilities to find a job… for no reason.
The left will say it’s because they were at a pro-life demonstration, but the left is full of sh*t. If that were the thing that would turn most people off, they’d have broadcast that, instead of inventing smirks and “rude to tribal elders” and “racist” bullshit, none of which actually happened.
And you can say what you will of the wisdom of taking teens to pro-life demonstrations. I went to demonstrations at 16 and I think I did it of my free will, and am still rather proud of them. In fact, I more or less dragged mom. Was I indoctrinated? Only if it was reverse-indoctrinated, since I got the other viewpoint in every class and civic occasion. Sure. For me, that probably counts.
But anyway, whatever you think of it, teens go to these demonstrations and the left lionizes the ones on their side, so kids don’t deserve that even if dragged to a demonstration. And yet the media gleefully set out to destroy their futures because they didn’t like the politics of the demonstration they were at.
This is what this incident reminded me of, only, so far as I can tell there was NO political motivation.
So, what was it?
Well, the journalist, whatever his politics — and I’d bet leftist, both because of his field and what he got away with for years without anyone doing this kind of dig — is immersed in a very leftist work culture.
I’ve said before that the left makes envy their cardinal virtue. If you’re envious and you hate, then you’re someone to be listened to.
I’d assumed — I have some naivite still I guess — that this envy was only for material goods. Apparently not.
What happened was that the journalist saw someone who was admirable, someone who had done something truly good for no personal benefit. And he thought “AhAH! This person has done something I couldn’t do. I MUST tear him down.”
And then did a deep dive for anything the kid might have said incautiously.
Sure, the journalist was fired — for his own stupid tweets — but what good is that to the big-hearted young man who donated what would be a great way to start out in life to kids with cancer? What does he do now? Every place he applies to, he’s going to come with a big, and I’m sure undeserved — why am I sure? Because he didn’t donate with any conditions as to what kids could be helped — label of “racist”. No corporate entity will hire him, lest they get submerged in wokerage.
I have no idea what politics the journalist has. But I know what he grew up reading, and I know the ethos of it. It is “Nobody is clean.” It is “There are no heroes, everyone is corrupt and evil.” It is “We shouldn’t look up to anyone, because everyone has flaws.”
And that revolting and vile insanity is at the feet of the political side that has controlled media, entertainment and literature my whole life: the left.
Why do I say it’s insanity? Aren’t humans all flawed?
Of course they are. We are all flawed in ways small and big. Which does not invalidate that a lot of us are saints and heroes. In fact, the proportion of saints and heroes is much higher than that of fools and criminals. More importantly, it had withstood a culture that tells us — social apes — that heroism and sanctity are impossible and faintly ridiculous.
I know why the left needs to believe that. If no individual can be good, then we need iron-clad laws (which, remember, they think are magical and make everyone even criminals magically obey) that make us act properly even in the tiniest and most personal aspects of our lives. And we need government to be totalitarian, to keep all these horrible individuals in check. (Keep in mind that to them government isn’t composed of humans.)
The left is wrong. Oh, maybe it’s that way in their circles. Among humans, social apes all, the most conformist and that follow what’s expected the most, seem to be the left, with their virtue signaling and group-think and thought-leaders. So maybe over the almost a century they’ve controlled communications in society they’ve made themselves into horrors.
But it’s not the way SOCIETY is. Observe any kindergarten class. Sure, you’ll see horrible spoiled brats. But you’ll also see kids who help others and try to be good. Heck, sometimes they’re the same person.
However, this is where the culture war has got us. The left has turned a vast number of people into despicable creatures, incapable of doing anything good, but more importantly, DESIROUS of tearing down everything that anyone else does or achieves.
Which of course also explains why they want to tear down civilization and take us back to before great humans created and fought and worked for centuries so their children wouldn’t die in infancy in the mud.
And why they are fascinated with the end product of their own digestion, in “culture” and “art.”
Oh, and with sex, that appetite we share with dogs.
They truly, absolutely, passionately hate anyone or anything who does things they’ve declared to be impossible: create, build, care for others, lift others up, do the best they can or die trying. They hate that with a bloody purple passion.
Let’s make them mad.
Go out there create, build, be! Show that there is more good than bad in this human creature. You can’t be perfect, and no one is asking you to be perfect. But you can TRY to be good. And it’s okay, you know, even a minimal amount of good is enough to drive the left into frothing rage.
So hold your middle fingers aloft to them — metaphorically — as you pass and do the things they say are impossible.
Be the best human you can be. Fully. And enjoy it. The left really hates that.
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus.
According To Hoyt 
Des Moines Register reporter Aaron Calvin deserves to have his every sin, impure thought and questionable act made public in the worst possible light and the least possible grace.
I tend to agree, but as Sarah pointed out, revenge doesn’t undo the original harm.
The only good thing it does (truly good, that is, as opposed to schadenfreude which feels good but accomplishes nothing of true worth) is to make it a little less likely that the next guy will try such a thing. It will take more than one such incident before it starts working, but if dozens of people who pick up stones to throw all find that their glass houses are falling to pieces around them… eventually others will learn to stop picking up stones.
In other words, it’s the doctrine of Mutually Assured Cancellation. (Not my term; someone used it at Instapundit and I decided it was perfect). Hey, if it managed to keep the right and the left from blowing each other up back when they were the USA and USSR respectively, MAYBE it’ll work again, at least somewhat.
Mutually Assured Cancellation now.
What does that mean?
It means that Massive Retribution is no longer working.
They haven’t seen retribution yet. They don’t even believe in it. They’re like the nasty kid kicking the pit bull; nothing happened the first dozen times, nothing is *going* to happen…
That’s what they believe that had been doing.
But, now.. they tap-dance through a minefield. Sure, it’s possible to get though unscathed for a while… but…
And when the pit bull takes the little stinker’s leg off, it’s “ban pit bulls!”.
*spit*
There will be another American Civil War.
With the way the Proggies have been behaving, I move we call this one the UNcivil War.
Considering the actual military probity of Progressives, and well aware of the hazards of hubris, the threat of a war with the Progs calls to mind an old story about G-d out walking Heaven’s boundaries and noting a section of the fence separating His Kingdom from Hell is in disrepair. As maintenance of this fence is Hell’s responsibility, He calls the Devil to Him to demand the fence’s repair.
The Devil’s reply is a sneering, “When I get around to it.”
Himself, “You best get around to it right quick, else I shall sue.”
“Piffle,” scoffed the Devil. “Where are You gonna get a lawyer?”
Remember which side has taken blood. Underestimate at peril
I agree — but I also have a sense of which side has the can of whoop-ass and the knowledge of how to open it.
I don’t see any grasp of martial tactics or discipline on the Left, merely rabble unaccustomed to opposition.
They confuse reluctance to treat them as they merit with fear of them.
They have the desire. They don’t have the ability to fight once the other side gets pissed off.
To which God merely smiled and said, “I don’t need a lawyer. I Am The Judge.”
The iterated prisoner’s dilemma.
McCarthy tried to pretend it was so, and this led to his rather inelastic collision with reality.
They never were, during the time USSR existed. Just two different sects of the big Progressive movement (which is Left and moves ever leftward), both with some unprincipled exceptions they didn’t eat yet (in USA, blunted Jay Gould style capitalism, in USSR, decaying Stalin style industrial feudalism). Competing sects always call each other “not TRU followers of TRU teaching at all”, so what?
“Pour encourager les autres.”
Not “revenge”.
Reprisal.
It is a valid and essential part of War. It is the only thing that can limit the insanity of War. It must be directly related to the offense, and of sufficient magnitude to dissuade repetition.
But on the other hand, tit-for-tat is the only way some people learn to behave like civilized human beings.
Not just the reporter, but any editor that approved that for publication.
Of course he deserved it. The idea that one can buy off the inherited guilt that comes of being of a historically privileged group that has stepped on historically oppressed and marginalized races, genders and sexualities is the epitome of whitecismale (and probably Mormon) privilage. What are the demographics of those sick kids is what I want to know. This is a teachable moment. If he wanted to help kids, he should donate to Beto’s campaign to get evil murder weapons of war out of peoples hands before the guns make people kill more kids. Greta is the real hero here. #cancelculture #reparationsnow #getwoke #theworldsucks
Please don’t try to make my head explode like that.
Bob really does that far too well. The “channeling the Terminally Woke” part, not the making Huns’ heads explode.
apply the same to everyone who can be linked to him.
we want the nutball community to have an interest in policing their own.
In the alternate timeline I came from, we don’t have this problem. Our journalists know full that if they pulled a stunt like this, they would spend the rest of their life in a hospital bed.
As I said over on PJM,
Can’t let anyone else do charity if it’s not through the government either!
Or let ‘some white dude’ do good things.
Lefties can’t stand that!
(Mom of 4 replied with: Right. Can’t have people thinking that the government might not be the solution to all problems.)
To which I answered: Can’t have people thinking that they can help themselves and get out of trouble on their own or with the help of each other either!
—
Because, how DARE other people have the ability to do MORE GOOD than the person who feels more inadequate by themselves, for not being that good?
It’s why there actually is a divide over helping the sick. If places like St. Jude or charity hospitals are supported and do a good job it removes a tool the ruling class can use to shame the commoners into further submission by giving the rulers control over health.
…and it removes the cashflow from their sticky fingers.
ding! ding! ding!
We have a winner!
Absolutely truth.
“SHOW ME THE MONEY!”
Thus the vilification of Shriner’s (never mind they exist to support the specialized hospitals) and all the affiliated organizations.
Of course. Shriners are just a bunch of Masons wearing fez. And Masons are supposed to be the root of all evil conspiracies around the world.
They are the cornerstones of conspiracy
In fairness, they do deserve a wee bit of villification on two points. First, the clown cars. Okay, that one’s really only a micro-wee bit.
Second, the fez. The history of the fez is hopefully unknown to the Shriners. Let’s just say that it’s right in line with Totenkopf emblem, only without 130+ years of usage prior to adoption by the SS. Perhaps they believe they have redeemed it if they know.
And a big Corporation can get kudos by spending their profits on something that has nothing to do with woke-ness.
I think we can judge by their attacks on Catholic Hospitals and adoption agencies a part of their agenda: no morality but what they preach.
Must participate in abortions, same-sex marriages, euthanasia, gender-identity politics …
They think that they are G-d and that they should rule us lesser mortals.
To quote Bruce Banner’s alter id …
“Puny g-ds.”
RES You have it there. However, you missed a critical step. You need to slap them back and forth on the floor a half dozen times to illustrate what you mean by puny :-). Somehow I’m picturing a giant Orange Hulk with a comb over slapping the previous occupant of the White House back and forth on the steps in front the Lincoln Memorial. It’s easy for him to do he’s always angry…Of course Loki is far more appealing due to Tom Hiddleston’s performance.
Of course he’s always angry. Have you ever tried to do business in NYC?
No I have not tried to do business in NYC. Nor have I tried to work with Nancy Pelosi et alia. I’ts no wonder he shows some severe anger managment issues.
I think we hit on the key words here: White. Male.
If this young man had had been black and female–or better yet, black and transgender–I would guarantee the reporter would not have ever considered digging for dirt. Because that person would have been a member of a protected Victim(tm) class.
But they can’t stand anyone contradicting the narrative that all white men are evil, and all white young men are selfish rapists, etc etc
Attempting to buy your way out of the inherited guilt of stepping on historically marginalized races, genders and sexual preferences is the definition of whitecismale privilage. He must be destroyed.
Saw a screenshotted exchange from Tumblr, where someone complained about the increasingly outre behaviour of transpeople, which contradicts the desire for equality from the group, actively making it more difficult for them to actually be accepted or seen as normal folks, and pointing that out was often shut down. (or something like it. It’s been a long while since I saw that picture)
Someone replied to the OP “You’re white and straight, aren’t you?”
The OP replied “I’m black and trans, but thanks for making my point.”
You don’t get any Victim Points for equality!
When I see an organization that’s supposed to be supporting some disadvantaged group, their schtick usually is more about promoting their victimhood than doing anything constructive.
The Democrats are trying to intimidate us by showing us how easily they can “destroy” us. Americans are slow to anger. But when we do get angry, major things happen; WWII comes to mind. We are still that country despite everything.
> But when we do get angry, major things happen; WWII comes to mind
Indeed. Major things happened. And pretty much all of them hapened just as planned.
You wouldn’t like us when we’re angry.”
No you wouldn’t. I don’t think the world has ever truly seen the US angry other than in little spurts. The men that freed the concentration camps and handed the the guards over to the captives were getting close. The Atom bombs in Japan and the fire bombings before weren’t, they were calculated uses of force albeit against populations we had previously limited our attacks on. America’s response in Col Kratman’s Caliphate to nuclear attacks feels close (although even there I think that alternate USA pulled its punches some). G*d have mercy on whoever manages to anger America that thoroughly, because we most certainly won’t.
America Angry:
In a science fiction book with multiple dimensions, a semi-rogue element of one of the alternate dimensions tries to set off a small, tactical nuke in Washington, D.C. (at the moment I don’t recall if they actually managed it.)
The US figures out where the attack came from and along with a LOT of bloodshed uncovering what was essentially a hidden conspiracy network centuries old, also figures out how to cross to the other dimension.
We use B-52s to carpet bomb the alternate dimension’s “America” (actually a high medieval Nordic realm, i.e. the Vikings came and stayed). The bombs used were nukes.
Frankly, I wish it wouldn’t come to something like a civil war or another world war to beat back the insanity. I keep wishing that the saner voices actually stood up, and pushed back before it got to that point, but I think that would be wishful thinking. If it does come to the point of international bloodshed, or multi-nation civil war, then I hope at the least, the cancerous plague that is communism is burned to the ground in the process, and it’s branches of ‘philosophy’ be discredited as thoroughly as Nazism for the rest of the generations to come.
Let’s not forget Islam, the other major malignancy.
Oh yes. A twisted part of me wants to drop all the Lefties into the Middle East that isn’t Israel, and watch them ‘try to change the world’ there.
The fact that they’re all pusillanimous* twigs who need to hide behind strong, armed men ready to do violence on their behalf so they can virtuously proclaim their pacifistic bloodless hands should be rather enlightening, don’t you think?
*the REAL origin of the shorthand ‘pussy’, despite what a censoring lefty might usually decry.
Of course, if the News Media dislikes somebody, then “of course” they knows something we don’t. [Sarcastic Grin]
There is one thing we can do to straighten out people like that reporter. We can make it -expensive- for them to keep doing this type of thing. And by expensive I mean it should cost the company they work for a great deal of money.
I also think we should bring back the Code Duello. Such things should have a -personal- cost.
Code Duello be damned, we should reinstitute the old custom of horsewhipping obnoxious newspaper stooges. Dueling with them sends the wrong message; it says we consider them our peers.
Embrace the virtues of “both”. Duelling is reserved for equals. Newspaper twits are caned.
I’ll donate a pillow to the cause if somebody’s got a bucket of tar.
Hmmm … I have some nice sturdy fence rails that I can send to Des Moines.
There’s something to be said for the traditional means of shaming someone out of town. Pine tar, feathers, rail and escort out of town. Some assembly required.
I’m a traditionalist. Lamp-post, rope; one journalist each.
Too quick to have much fun.
Now, a full booting or giving first, and if gloving wearing them for the hanging to avoid rope burns.
Depends on length of drop, doesn’t it?
Well, first, a fun hanging doesn’t involve a drop, but a raising. Let them strangle with the bulging eyes and the black tongue instead of the mercy of a broken neck.
Come now — not all journalists are vile. It’s just that 99% give the remainder a bad name.
Of course not. But they are exceptions to the rule. Brit Hume, Tucker Carlson, John Stossel.
If you can find stuff by Salena Zito, she’s well worth reading as well. Shoeleather journalism, talking to people at diners and the like.
I’ve read her stuff. Couldn’t remember her name.
Isn’t that the lady who actually reports on good stories, as well as horrible ones?
Now, now. Respect the Spectrum of Force. The fool reporter deserves tarring and feathers, along with the splintery rail ride outta town. His EDITOR deserves the lamp-post.
I have a piece of plate glass I can break and a heavy flogger I’m will to retire to create a true cat of nine.
Embed the glass in flogger, right?
yes
Sadly, they -are- our peers. There’s no nobility anymore, and I don’t want to bring it back.
But the Code does provide some recourse that’s currently missing, despite its obvious flaws. Scumbags have to back up their bullshit with their own blood, or publicly recant. In the internet age, that would be quite the punishment.
The problem I see is that this will probably happen no matter what anyone says. People affronted by obscene bullying will start seeking justice in dark alleys, if that’s the only place they can get it. Better to get out in front of it and lay down some ground rules before customs grow up on their own. They spring up like weeds.
Scumbags have to back up their bullshit with their own blood, or publicly recant. In the internet age, that would be quite the punishment.
Sounds like exactly what we have right now, but with a slightly different vector.
If you can destroy the person you’re lying about, you’re able to lie with little to no recourse for the person you’re lying about.
Shifting it to a physical destruction as a matter of course really isn’t an improvement.
I look at it more as Mutually Assured Destruction. They ruin my life, I ruin theirs. Its only fair, right?
Currently they get to ruin us, and we get to shut up. That’s not going to last.
Choose, Plan, execute, STFU! Repeat as needed.
SSS.
There is nobility of character. These people are our inferiors by that measure.
DUEL? Oh, hell no. They should be crucified along all major highways.
Crucifixion is weak sauce. Impalement!
Well, at least those both provide the pleasure of watching them writhe.
Find a nice scenic coastal village with good roads or other access, build a catapult and let them compete to make the first unassisted transatlantic
flightcrossing.Crucifixion? Nah, too slow and painless. Plus the icky Christian connotations (that last bit was sarcasm, btw).
So…
Scaphism! Scaphism for everyone!
What is scaphism?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism
ewwwww!
I’d prefer to bury them at the crossroads; but that would be considered road degradation.
Do NOT forget the stake of rosewood in their heart! Otherwise they’ll just keep writing the stupid columns.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I can’t see a scenario where it people don’t hire professional duelists to go and instigate a duel with someone who offended them, and that it would be the perpetually offended doing this more than what we would refer to as honorable people.
That’s why it would be nice to SET the ground rules ahead instead of getting stuck with custom. Professional duelists are an abomination of the past. They can’t be allowed to arise again.
No substitutions.
You have it wrong. There would not be any “substitution” to deny.
Your enemy secretly pays a Pro to pick a fight with you. He publicly heaps bile on you. You challenge him. He kills you. Or you don’t and folks heap more bile on you until you challenge him, or another Pro, who kills you.
Think of a top-ranked “tactical” shooter, or Tier-1 Special Ops as your “pro” opponent. Or just as a bullying thug.
And yes, the “other side” has such folks, by ideology or just for Filthy Lucre.
Still want dueling? I suggest you reconsider. As the Admiral said, “It’s a trap!”
“He publicly heaps bile on you. You challenge him. He kills you. Or you don’t and folks heap more bile on you until you challenge him…”
Currently they just heap bile, and we shut up. All I’m saying is, that situation won’t last. It’ll move into the ugly direction.
Might be nice to get out in front of it and eliminate some of the uglier possibilities, such as the one you mentioned.
Or we could all go along and pretend everything’s going to be fine, right up until its not fine anymore. Possible unlovely alternative to the Code Duello is a mob shows up at your house, drags you out into the street and kills you. They do that shit in Pakistan constantly. The Left in Canada is looking like they’d very much like to start doing it, but they don’t have the nerve. Yet.
I’m not -married- to the idea of dueling, I merely propose it as an alternative to vendettas that’s been used in the past.
In the US, we already have alternatives.
Both lawsuits, and things like the reaction to this hit on Mr. King, and if that mob shows up I can shoot them.
If one @#$@# stands by my house with a molotov and reasonably clear intent to use it, I can shoot HIM, too.
(….no, spellcheck, I did not mean “maltose.”)
No. Defamation lawsuits in the US are almost impossible to win if you are a “public person”.
As in, ask me why we put up with all the bilge the left in sf/f heaps on us.
Worse than that — the defaming party typically has lawyers in pocket and can drive up plaintiff costs precipitously, especially in jurisdictions that can require posted bonds for debts (Oberlin clearly attempted such a strategy against Gibson’s Bakery.) There is also the Streisand Effect, whereby suing for defamation makes the case more notorious — with the likelihood that even if you win, the number of people who know you were called a “Dootyhead” vastly exceeds the number of those who learned you made the defendant eat those words.
Finally, the very act of defamation can be interpreted by courts to have made you a “public person” — as in the Covington kids mousetrapped at the National Mall. Yes, the reasoning is circular, but who ever said no court has its head up its sphincter? Leave us simply acknowledge that winning a defamation suit is easier for Planned Parenthood than for the Center For Medical Progress, regardless of the facts of the case.
I was more looking at this part:
Possible unlovely alternative to the Code Duello is a mob shows up at your house, drags you out into the street and kills you.
You can’t stop lies, you can only fight them.
Physical fighting is really ripe for the exact same problems that come with the current defamation type fighting, but instead of socially damaged you’re actually dead.
Should the SOBs who slander you show up in person to burn the witch, it doesn’t matter that you won’t win a defamation lawsuit. It DOES matter that you can light them up.
Screw the dueling.
Take this overgrown child over your knee and spank him ’til he can’t sit for a week.
Oh. Well, that’s true. He might actually enjoy it.
Let the tar and feathering, or dueling, proceed.
Oh, I have much better toys for that than horseshoes and I know how to use them, but correctly and “incorrectly”.
Kind of like a towel full of oranges, but with more finesse.
Concur, but it also has to be made expensive for their entire reporting chain – in this case, the editor who let this junior loon run without adult supervision, and the editors boss, and the owner of the paper all have to see that this bad thing will cost them, enough that they implement what should have been in place in the first place, clear unmistakeable guidance to all these junior reporters on exactly where the Pale is that going beyond is a bad idea.
It should be noted that the “Aha! Badthink at age 16!!” “profile” story made it past all the layers of fact-checkers and editors, all of whom obviously thought publishing a story breathlessly documenting that the instant-philanthroper “tweeted something stupid” was a great and newsworthy idea, until the reaction hit. The fact that the junior reporter had his own skeletons in the twitterage-closet just adds to the Schadenfreudelishousness, but the story was crap even if the reporter had been as pure as Barry Soetero was portrayed.
The entire chain of decisionmaking failed to stop this story, so the entire chain should experience the expense.
“The entire chain of decisionmaking failed to stop this story, so the entire chain should experience the expense.”
If by that you mean they should all be out in the rain selling pencils on the side of the road, then yes. That’s what I had in mind.
Small people with shriveled souls always hate people who do good and generous things. It makes them feel their inadequacy in a truly painful fashion.
I’ve been thinking more and more on the subject of envy.
I think we need to start hammering that home, because most of the “enlightened” people I meet are nothing but envious, 24/7/365.
When you talk to one of those clever leftists, listen for the envy. “Such-an-so is rich, and nobody needs to have that much money” is the basis for most of their philosophy.
Every time you get into a discussion with one of these folks, stop them every time they drop an Envy Bomb. “People need? No, YOU WANT.”
Marxism is envy, writ large.
considering Marx was a lazy-ass git who thought others should give him his due for no work on his part, easy to see why
Had Engels not been such a sucker…
I dream of the alt-history where Engel’s parents had the fortitude to cut him off instead of continually enabling his crap -_-;
Some here may recall the famous Marx/Lennon poster, displaying Groucho (Marx) and John (Lennon).
I am dreaming of a Marx/Ingels poster, with Groucho (again) and Marty. Okay, maybe Chico is the more appropriate Marx.
Marxism is envy, writ sloppily with spray paint.
Weaponized envy.
envy made into a virus, David.
I think its a war meme. The kind of thing an evil space-alien would introduce into a culture so that the people would all kill each other. Saving the space aliens the trouble of doing it themselves.
Don’t forget greed, the other pillar of Marxism.
What about sloth? Surely the lack of, well, any sort of large scale motivation for hard work is indicative of something. Lust, well, the -isms and the whole radfem antipatriarch bit seemed rather a bit repressed to me.
One could do a post on the seven deadlies with direct relations to S&M (that is, Socialism and Marxism in this case). Just dropping it out there…
I’m personally slothful but I don’t deny the importance of work.
*chuckle* It is usually the folks that realize that they are flawed, that they fail daily to measure up to the example in their heads that I *don’t* worry about.
Me personally, I aspire to laziness. One day I might even get to sample boredom. *grin* I have hopes!
There’s a reason Marx is a four-letter word.
Groucho gets the acclaim, but Harpo was a genius.
But think about Karl Marx. Two four-letter words. Four letter words are bad. That makes Karl Marx doubleplusungood. 😉
I remember during the Occupy protests thinking that this really wasn’t a revolt of the poor or even middle-class who wanted to be rich: it was a revolt of the upper-middle and lower-upper class who wanted to be truly elite.
The guy with his masters in puppetry is the absurdity most people pointed to, but I always thought the real poster child was the musician whining that she had to choose between buying designer jeans and eating out every night. This was not a pitiful victim of the failures of capitalism, this was a spoiled child kicking and screaming because she wanted, MORE, MORE, MORE!
“the real poster child was the musician whining that she had to choose between buying designer jeans and eating out every night”
Not desirous of defending the brat, but in fairness: a NY apartment with functional kitchen is (essentially) a luxury good.
Now, if they eliminated rent control this would not — after an initial period of market re-balancing — be true, but it seems they are more likely to expand than eliminate rent control.
Speculation as to whether that child even knew how to cook is probably needless cruelty.
You need to make a distinction between Manhattan and the rest of New York City. Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island have have full size apartments and even houses.
I am well aware — I understand there’s a certain Manhattan brownstone house on W. 35th whose kitchen produces dishes to delight the most scrupulous palate.
While many Manhattan apartments lack kitchen sufficient to do more than stash a microwave, the real problem is likely how few
MillennialsYoung Adults can cook worth a crap.They can’t cook worth a darn as neither of their parents can. We live in what has become a fairly upper middle class Suburb (Boxford, Topsfield, Middleton). When my daughters went to someone else’s house for dinner (other than the children of the few “Townies”) they were astounded to see one of two things happen 1) Takeout was ordered, 2) Some partially prepared meal purchased from a specialty store was reheated. Cooking from basic ingredients didn’t happen. And many of these moms (pardon me for my gaucherie but that’s who it was) usually didn’t work other than volunteer work. In previous times they might have had a maid, some who worked did have a nanny. The parents couldn’t cook, it’s likely the GRANDPARENTS didn’t cook. So how are you going to learn to cook? As stores provide more and more heat and serve fare at lower prices this has been moving down market.
As an aside both of my (now adult) millennial daughters can cook as their mom (and I) taught them.
FWIW, I prefer to do take-out or similar dodges if I have company over. I’m a good plain cook, but generally not very pretty.
Kids don’t count, though.
Foxfier it was fairly clear this was SOP at these homes, friends or not. Certainly if we had a mob over someone went out for pizza or suchlike. But a single friend or two they just joined in our Dinner. One of our younger daughters friends wondered if we ate other than spaghetti and meatballs as she seemed always to catch that meal in the rotation.
The great thing about crockpots and microwaves is that you do not need much space for a.kitchen.
.I don’t cook from scratch but I can follow directions in a cookbook. That’s where it starts. If you are poor you must cook or you will have no money for anything else.
My sons cook. From scratch. Both well, btw. Before a trip we took recently, younger son, unprompted, got worried about us not having a decent meal before we left (in the wee ours) so he came up, cooked and served us dinner.
(Which brings up the question: HOW did we get so lucky, really?)
I suppose there is some luck to it, even the best of families can end up with a bad one (though I wonder if my Irish ancestors didn’t have the right of it with the idea of changelings). However, exposed to Love, Nurture, care (and decent literature like Heinlein) things tend to turn out for the best :-).
“… So how are you going to learn to cook?”
The way lots of people have, from cookbooks. Or, these days, from some really good videos on Youtube and from Internet recipes. If, and that’s a BIG if, you’re actually motivated to learn despite your parents and grandparents never teaching you that cultural value.
(Generic “you”, in case that wasn’t obvious).
This is where the “you can’t even try unless you’re going to succeed right off the bat” thing is so insidious– especially if combined with the idea that “I can cook” means you’re making restaurant-presentation meals. There’s a reason I always clarify I’m a plain cooks, not a “cook.”
It’s like expecting someone to drive a very fussy stick-shift from arcade racing games.
Which is probably the real reason for those dang gourmet-meal-in-a-box services.
Once upon a time cookbooks were a collection of notes on how to do special dishes, intended for people who could already cook.
Then Fannie Farmer’s father went bankrupt. Her sisters all got jobs. She, being the sickly one, got to do all the housework.
When she did a cookbook, it was for people who had never boiled water before.
Ooh, I forgot my other rant related to modern attitudes about cooking– the folks who tend to do the “teach someone to REALLY cook” stuff, and their books, besides being aimed at restaurant fancy are also ignoring all the short-cuts.
Look, there is no reason on earth that someone who doesn’t actually LIKE the idea of learning to make their own spaghetti sauce should START with “make your own sauce from fresh tomatoes on up” to make freakin’ spaghetti. There’s noting wrong with getting someone going by showing them how to brown some sausage or ground meat, dump in a can of sauce, and get the noodles cooked decently, then top with that powdered Parmesan cheese.
That is why folks say they can’t afford to “cook at home.” Instead of being taught to cook with shelf-stable products and frozen goods, they’re taught to cook with only fresh items and few or no shortcuts, which means you’re either paying a premium (I pay less per can of diced, stewed tomatoes than a half-pound of fresh tomatoes would cost) or throwing away a lot of wasted produce you got in bulk at an about-to-go-bad sale. Even salad is cheaper in the bag, half the time, especially in quantities a single person is going to eat before it goes slimy. (Neat hack, if you’re going to use for frying, buy a bunch of the coleslaw mix cabbage when it’s on sale– it freezes nicely in the bag, and I actually like it better for the fried-sausage-and-cabbage type dishes. Shredded cheese that will be melted when used, likewise.)
And it takes a ton of time to prepare stuff, which means folks are exhausted and more likely to say ‘to heck with it.’
************
It’s after they’re hooked that you get things like preparing enough zucchini for 44 loaves of zucchini bread and freezing most of it…..
I have one of those books. It was from a TV show in Portugal, aimed at newly wed college educated women, most of whom had grown up with maids (I just grew up with mom not letting me in the kitchen. Territorial.)
It starts with “boil the water” Throw some pasta in. This is when it’s done.
Among other things it was a GREAT book for a newlywed (my MIL bless her gave it to me as a wedding gift) because it had “when you don’t have a can of sauce, here’s how to make it from paste. Oh, yeah, it’s cheaper, too” and “You don’t have paste in the pantry? Okay. Here, use some butter, some nutmeg, and salt and pepper. If you have two table spoons of cream, you can also do this. Oh, if you had a little bit of bacon and cheese, it’s this supposedly fancy dish. Do you have mushrooms? Well, if you brown them and add it in, plus THIS it’s great.”
Dan said he ate pasta 50 ways our first year of marriage.
Other things: how to cook cheap sausage to taste like wonderful stuff. Fake lobster with monkfish. (AT THE TIME cheap.) Your guests will think it’s the real thing (They refused to believe even when I told them it was fake.) Etc, etc. etc. I lived by that book first ten years of marriage, until it fell apart and I’d learned to cook.
Aaah, that sounds fantastic.
I have a cookbook of Greek recipes, in translation to English, which apparently was the the Greek equivalent of Joy of Cooking, or Fannie Farmer – all the basic recipes and techniques. Greek cooking is actually pretty basic; peasant cooking, not insanely complicated like high French. Limited number of basics, meats, spices, cheeses and add-ons. Everything that I cooked out of that cookbook tasted pretty much like what I had tasted in various restraints in Athens and wherever I traveled in Greece. Loved practically everything that I cooked out of it – reminds me of Greece. I wish that I could grow fresh dill in the quantities needed for certain stuff, and get lamb in various forms at a reasonable price. But the local mid-East market has good feta cheese and excellent yogurt…
Can’t find the link to that particular cookbook, or else I would post it. But everything that I cooked from it tasted just like it should.
That is brilliant, start basic and build up!
There’s a reason my “feeding the active writer” posts, in addition to having some things done from scratch, also include “cut meat into bite size pieces and put in slow cooker. Dump in three jars of salsa. Add a few herbs and spices to pump up the flavor. Cook for 6-8 hours.” Because that’s often how I cook, stuff that I can knock out reasonably quickly, in batches (so I only have to do it once on the weekend and I’ve got food for the week), and on a budget.
I always thought the real poster child was the musician whining…
I thought it was the girl who had her laptop stolen.
She went to a protest about redistributing wealth. Surprise! Her wealth was redistributed. She should be happy, not filing a police report.
It was supposed to be distributed to her, not from her.
Yeah, they have arbitrarily “defined” a distinction between personal and private property, where personal property is stuff they have and use, and private property is (paraphrased because I don’t want to go look for it again) stuff only capitalists have that they use to extract profit from you and the natural world.
Excuse me, my eyes rolled across the room while I was typing that…
Toddler/ex-wife psychology.
What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine.
With the caveat that I know more generous toddlers.
The puppetry guy’s problem was that he was on the wrong (East) coast. If he’s been in LA, he could have probably found work (maybe part-time and not paid well, so he’d need a “day job,” but work) in his chosen field, and worked his way up. Jim Henson (of Muppets fame) had to start from somewhere, after all.
It would have been cheaper for him to cross the country and find a place to live.
I saw that a day or so back, before there was anything done to the reporter.
The paper that supported the reporter’s actions in deciding to publish what he had dug up – something stupid that a 16 year old said – as if it were relevant, is in a way *worse* than the reporter himself.
Now it’s not that the reporter doesn’t deserve what he got and more: but the fact is that the paper will get away with simply sacrificing the reporter who was working well within their philosophical ecosystem, and thus save themselves any more real criticism, or heaven forbid actual change.
Oh, it *is* worse. Editors are supposed to exercise adult judgment. His editors did not stop the nonsense. And then they fired him. As though that absolves *them* of their bad decision(s).
It could have become a teachable moment – perhaps have the reporter *and editors* publish essays on “Why I shouldn’t have done that.”
(This was pointed out by someone else I read on Twitter, not my original idea, I merely realized it was a good point after I read it – and no, I can’t remember who it was)
Basic rule for any of those who are enforcing the rules– you have to go *further*.
If everyone is to bring one dessert, you have to bring two.
If a call could go either way, it has to be against your side. Every time.
If everyone has to be polite, you have to refrain from even TEMPTING people to be rude.
Signed, the daughter of the gal who was always drafted to be the umpire.
This.
Ah, but you see, that is simply not how the left operate.
The mote in their opposition’s eye is broadcast to the world.
The beam in theirs never gets mentioned.
I highly suspect that much of the cause for some of their current melt downs is due to the fact that some on the right will no longer play their game of cowering in shame at the first disgusting, ugly, and ultimately unfounded accusation. It’s worked for many years for them, but now it’s all falling apart. They’ve been actively using their tried and true methods on Trump and he tells them to pound sand. They tried it with Roy Moore and it worked based on some specious rumors so went full bore on Brett Kavanaugh and failed miserably.
But they ignore, obfuscate, or turn a willing blind eye to a host of criminal actions by their good friends and supporters, at least until things become so obvious that they can no longer be denied. And when the criminal abuse of such folks as Weinstein, Epstein, or for that matter good old Willy Jeff are brought to light queue the faux astonishment, followed by a concerted effort to throw one sacrificial lamb under the bus to keep all their complicit enablers safe from scrutiny.
The editors of the paper are maintaining that *they* did nothing wrong, but still offered up a scapegoat by firing the reporter. If they are that morally feckless, the whole newspaper should be fired.
Agreed.
yes. THAT.
They DID NOT ” simply sacrificing the reporter”, they fired the reporter for his unwoke tweets and then SAID they were RIGHT to print the info because the PUBLIC NEEDED TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT WHO THE GUY WAS!!!!
They doubled down on they were right to print it.
Funny how a news organization isn’t bright enough to distinguish the difference between they have a right to do something, and if it’s right to do that thing.
Subtlety is lost on these people.
Subtlety is indeed beyond their ken. Which is why I’m reasonably sure their efforts to vote-fraud their way to victory in 2020 will be a spectacular disaster. As I’ve said before, they keep running plays that assume Trump is a Good Loyal Opposition Republican, and he keeps knocking them on their backsides. I think the odds are good that they will try something so rank that the stink would expose it even if Trump wasn’t on the lookout.
They lost the skills necessary to deal with real opposition, and they show scant sign of re-acquiring them.
Your lips,God’s ears
yes, that.
They were right to print it.
How else is the public to discern what the Register‘s news judgment deems significant?
Apropos of nothing:
Demons need darkness. If a light comes, they see their own sins and burn from it. That’s why vampires can’t be out in the sun. The sins burn away in the light, and after the last of it burns there’s nothing left.
Envy and hatred cannot live under the light of day.
Just to complexify.
Shadows need the light. Without it, they die. Shadows are the last, the least, and the furthest from the light before it is consumed by darkness. So too can the sin of pride become passion, envy become respect (even grudging), and pride become wisdom if they move even one step away from the darkness- and continue on that path.
*grin*
This brings up a philosophical point that I’ve been pondering for a while.
Darkness isn’t the opposite of light. Darkness is the absence of light. Light has an actual existence — photons and so on — but there is no such thing as a particle of darkness. Darkness doesn’t have actual, independent existence; it’s merely the name we use for the absence of light.
Vacuum isn’t the opposite of matter. Vacuum is the absence of matter. Matter has an actual existence — protons and neutrons and electrons and so on — but there is no such thing as a particle of vacuum. Vacuum doesn’t have actual, independent existence; it’s merely the name we use for the absence of matter.
And now for the one that not everyone will agree with on first glance, but that I’m firmly persuaded of. Evil isn’t the opposite of good. Evil is the absence of good. Evil may seem to have actual, independent existence — look at all the evil deeds done throughout history. But good has actual, independent existence (in the Christian worldview, God is the source of all that is good), while evil is merely the name we use for what happens when you remove all good from someone. In the Christian idea, the thing that makes hell hell is the complete absence of God and the goodness inherent in His being.
There is actual evil. There are evil people. There are evil acts.
Oh, there is indeed evil, just as there is darkness and there is vacuum. The point I’m trying to make isn’t denying the existence of evil, it’s denying that it is an independent thing in itself. I first started thinking about this when I heard people saying things like “Without darkness, we couldn’t appreciate the light as much” and applying it to evil and good, and I thought, “What BS. There’s no need to understand evil to appreciate good. There’s no need to understand garbage to appreciate good food.” Whereas the other direction does hold: if you don’t understand light, you won’t be able to grasp what darkness is. If you don’t understand good, you won’t be able to understand evil nearly as well.
Maybe a better way of putting it would be to say that light, and good, are “higher” than darkness and evil in terms of existence. They are more real. To turn a room dark, you can’t just open a window to the night outside and let the darkness in; you have to turn off the light. Darkness doesn’t spill over into light. Here the analogy is not perfect, because it is possible for evil to snuff out good on a local level: murdering someone will prevent all the good he would have done in the future, for example. But because God is the ultimate good, and is more powerful than evil, it is not possible for evil to snuff out good on a universal level; instead, the presence of absolute good drives out evil the way light drives out darkness.
… Perhaps this idea is more dependent on Judeo-Christian philosophy than I thought, since it ultimately relies on the concept of God being the ultimate good.
I agree with you. I was just disagreeing with the people who say that there is no evil and that everything is just wunnerful.
Maybe think of it like the right way to do things– there is a definite right way to do a thing (any thing!) in that it will work.
There’s MANY ways to do things the wrong way, because each wrong way is lacking one or more thing that is required to complete the task.
“The” wrong way doesn’t exist, it’s a description of “this thing is lacking something needed to get the job done.”
Evil is a property that some good things have. stemming from the sacrifice of a higher good to a lower good.
Not just a college kid, but he’s got a job– as a casino security guard.
So definitely, that money could’ve been a heck of a boost…and he did a Good Thing instead.
The kid isn’t running for anything, guys. He’s not selling the public anything. He’s just a private citizen going about his private business. Who would go digging through is twitter feed to find SOME dirt from when he was too young to have a filter? WHO IN HECK EVEN THINKS of doing that?
Worse, it’s not a matter of not having a filter.
It was a conversation where the kids were riffing on a freaking Comedy Central show.
So not only is the guy not a racist–which I think most of us guessed when the tweets were summarized on the news, rather than quoted, much less given in context– but the jokes are/were mainstream and nationally acceptable, as humor.
Quiet! We got a narrative to maintain here! Waddya think you’re doing by pointing out the truth?
“Only that which supports the Narrative is true. And all that supports the Narrative is true.”
Just ask Adam Schiff or Dan Rather…
or Shelia Jackson Lee
well, even some leftoids did the doggy head tilt over her “AR15s weigh soooooooooooo much”
So, that makes them…
(Puts on sunglasses)
Narrative Americans.
A great many well known comedians are now refusing to do gigs on any college campus for the good and sufficient reason that the woke generation is completely devoid of and sense of humor. As Heinlein pointed out many years ago, humor, especially edgy humor, always contains an element of pain and cruelty. Such can no longer be tolerated.
Nowadays, the pain and cruelty can be tolerated – but not if it’s funny.
“Such an no longer be tolerated.” Especially since reality is being so painfully cruel to them, poor little mummy’s darlings!
*gag*
It may well be jiggered to go the other way, but if 2020 goes for Trump to the degree the Lefies deserve after four years or earsplitting snit, then I’m gonna take great pleasure in watching the lot of ‘em getting a large jalapeño coated reality suppository.
Sideways.
No, uncle Lar. Such cannot be DISGUISED or DIFFUSED anymore. THey love their cruelty.
The devil shall not be mocked.
Pieter Hintjens got a theory that the evolutionary advantage of humor is that it’s never understood by psychopaths, thus useful to detect such threats.
Which is pretty dang disturbing, given that Chad Irby’s comment above about how the pain and cruelty can be tolerated, but not the humor, is pretty painfully on the nose.
Have you noticed how much torture there is in SF these days? Its like pr0nZ for these twinkies. So gross. 😡
I’m the kind of person who flinches when the bad guy gets stabbed/shot, so generally I either leave the room or don’t watch at all…does explain why I don’t watch as much these days.
I’ve had a few cases where I’ve shuddered or been surprised by tv. Eyeballs are my kryptonite.
Sci fi or san Francisco?
Both? Yeah, both.
Not quite correct. Pain and cruelty is the sum total of leftist humor, so long as it is directed at the proper targets.
Well, the journalist, whatever his politics — and I’d bet leftist, both because of his field and what he got away with for years without anyone doing this kind of dig — is immersed in a very leftist work culture.
From the pictures of the reporter– and backed up by his work history and samples of the same– he’s suffering from toxic femininity; aka, a ‘soyboy’ or male mean girl.
Were I an employer, I’d hire this kid in a shot. Wokerage? Seems to have done wonders for Chick-fil-A. I think there are a lot of places where having the Nitwit Woke throwing a tantrum about you would be taken as a sterling recommendation.
There may not be yet… but there will be. More and more of them.
To God’s ears!
It already works with movies, doesn’t it?
https://www.kukuruyo.com/comic/triggerhappy-movie-critics/
Not until “hostile environment” harassment is knocked in the head as a legal doctrine. There is no objective measurement for “hostile environment”…. until the hostility gets to the immediate physical harm level, anyway.
There may be a nugget of truth in “no such thing as bad publicity!”
The Left can’t seem to let go of Chick-Fil-A, yet every time they try to wage a new hate campaign, CFA opens new stores and declares even higher profits…
As far as I know, CFA’s main crime has been to fail to issue groveling apologies and then go out of business.
Somehow, when I look at where to cut down the eating-out budget, I can never bring myself to trim back too far on them.
I make a point of patronizing CFA whenever possible.
But then I’m supposedly one of those evil gun-totin’, Bible-huggin’, middle-aged, white supremacist patriarchs.
Did I get that right? Feels like I’m missing a couple condemnatory adjectives.
You misspelled ‘complimentary’.
I get the impression their menu has changed since my single encounter with them in a mall in Memphis in the early 1980s. All they offered were chicken nuggets pressed into various shapes, and they were made out of what I suspected were beaks, feet, and recycled foam rubber. It is still memorable as the worst fast food I have ever encountered. Even the fries were inedible.
CFA is not a thing here, and the only one I know if is probably still in Memphis, 150 miles away. While I approve of them telling the crazies to fribble off, I have absolutely no desire to sample their menu again.
That wasn’t just “a chance to lose a customer”, it was aversion therapy…
Their nuggets are, so far as I can tell, pieces of chicken. They are pretty good, although I personally prefer a sandwich.
I liked the cut-up nuggets they handed out on toothpicks in the local mall in the 1980s, though, so I don’t reckon you’re going to take a recommendation from me. I’m sorry you apparently got terrible ones, though.
Back when there were still malls, my friend and I used to plan our routes so that we would walk in front of the Chick-Fil-A as many times as possible and maximize the number of samples we got.
I’ve never had a bad experience with CFA. They have the cleanest bathrooms ever. They have the best lemonade.
If you ever try again get the spicy deluxe. One of the best chicken sandwiches out there. The waffle fries suck though.
All waffle fries suck. Every single version I’ve ever tried.
Can I have yours then? Waffle fries are wonderful unless somebody spices ’em.
Any time we are in the same restaurant, and waffle fries are unavoidable, yes you may.
Also, coated fries…the chicken ones they’ve botched up with flour or something to make them extra crunchy. Also, curly fries.
Basically, I’m a picky bastard.
Curly fries… why would I want to eat ringworms?
I don’t know Orvan, really good curly fries are darned tasty. Best I ever had was when I was working with the DEC workstation folks in Palo Alto. There was a Diner like place called the Palo Alto Creamery. Nice Hamburg with carmelized Onions (apologies hope it wasn’t a relation), Fresh made curly fries and a chocolate malted shake (pardon me I’m in Massachusetts, frappe). That was my last day lunch after a 2-3 week stint before I caught the red eye out from SFO for home. It’s still there down near Stanford or so the intertubes tell me. Seems to have gotten snooty in the interim. East Palo Alto was slowly encroaching on that part of town as the workstation companies started tanking.
I’ve never much liked CFA either, but I basically don’t like fast-food chicken. I go to Popeyes for the onion rings, and the chicken fingers are ok, but I’d stick to popcorn shrimp if they didn’t kickstart my gout.
Gout, the only Chemistry hiding out as a Bio Problem. Gout is uric acid getting to levels where it crystalizes out of the blood. The crystals have sharp point that irritate and cause pain and inflammation. It is THAT simple. The ONLY cure is t DRINK FLUDES mostly Water until the crystals dissolve. It is totally simple chemistry.
Stuff like shrimp, salmon, liver and other foods can increase the amount of Uric Acid in your blood but drinking until you slosh stops it from crystalizing out. If you are prone to Gout and you don’t slosh when you walk, you are not doing it right.
I’ve been pushing fluids ever since I moved South. My father had gout.
It’s anecdotal, but some have said some good things about the effects of Bing cherries. Fortunately I have not had to run the experiment myself.
That never worked for me.
I second the recommendation to try the spicy chicken deluxe sandwich. It’s been nearly forty years since your bad experience; what other things can you think of that are the same now as they were in the early 1980s? Then perhaps it’s worth checking whether Chick-Fil-A food has changed in the past forty years as well. Especially considering that many people really, REALLY like their food, so it’s quite likely that it doesn’t taste like cardboard.
To be fair, large numbers of people like things that utterly baffle me, like bell peppers.
40 years ago we had hostages in Iran. and then elected Ronaldus Maximus of blessed memory.
Their first product was chicken sandwiches; nuggets came later. And I’ve eaten at dozens of them all over the US including the original in Atlanta and never encountered that level of bad food. Ever.
Every time I see the left whining about Chik-Fil-A I make a point of having a meal there.
Bingo. I prefer Zaxby’s, but to Chik-Fil-A when they are the target of a 15 minute hate.
They just opened a zaxbys here. Better sauces. But just remember that last time I was in a zaxbys before it opened it was the most heavily armed one in georgia. Coming back from college sponsored range trip and got food
I thought that one provided one’s own sauce.
At their Toronto opening there were Wokeling protesters out front, and a line to buy food that went out the door and down the street. Vastly outnumbering the Wokelings.
Many, many people were there mainly to annoy the Woke with their silent vote of confidence for Chick-fil-A. The chicken sandwich was just a bonus.
From the linked article:
> A routine background check of King’s social media
Sounds like they plan to do that to *everyone*. It will become just another part of “journalism.”
Yes, there are already companies that do “social media background checks.”
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/social-media-background-checks-2059605
“Social Intelligence Corporation’s automated collection technology allows SIC to provide reports within 24 to 48 hours while still having social media activity about every job applicant manually reviewed. When the information is reviewed, protected information is filtered out of the report.
Reporting includes information on objectionable material, such as racist remarks or behavior, explicit photos and video, and illegal activity as defined by the employer.
Employers are benefitted by being alerted if their potential or current employees violate the company’s standards for online behavior without the risk of discrimination charges that comes with standard search engine screening.”
I bet they even offer a volume discount… and once they’re firmly established in the “new employee vetting” market, how long until employers use these services to go after their existing employees and management?
Being a nasty sort, I bet there are companies who will pre-emptively insert damning “social media” commentary for future discovery…
I’ve long thought that the current “everything you ever did is recorded” world would lead to trouble…and, I had hoped, to a new attitude that while actions can be held against someone, words could not. Alas, that last part has not yet come to pass.
They aren’t interested in the “good of society” they want to destroy it.
They are very interested in the “good of society” — they think they are it.
Mores are only formed through time and pain. Which is a good a description as any for the current unpleasantness.
In a tribal region, the first guy who does not treat his brother’s goods as something to demand gets all the hardships and none of the benefit. So too with this.
What I write online, at home, on my own time is NOT ANY EMPLOYER’S FUCKING BUSINESS!!!
But of course, that doesn’t matter. If the ‘progressives’ find Badspeak online, they are compelled to find some way, any way, to punish the Badspeak-er. If the First Amendment gets in their way, to hell with it. And, equally of course, Badspeak is any word that any SJW disagrees with.
They’re making it harder for people to find work, and for employers to find workers, all ‘for the good of society’. Looks like they’ve found some definition of ‘good’ that has been hidden from the rest of us.
Pointing out that the ‘progressives’ are a bunch of useless, lying, delusional whiny spoiled babies would be DoublePlusBadspeak!
———————————
I used to live on a farm. I know what bullshit smells like.
It can be, and there are instances in which it should. As an example, if someone who works at a shelter for abused women starts posting things like blatantly misogynist statements, or pictures of the workplace (including people sheltering there and/or the location), then the employer should probably be aware of those actions.
Note the common factor: things that are directly relevant to the job.
Many on the Left share that view, thus the ban on questioning job seekers about possible criminal backgrounds.
Funny how quickly they discard that principle when given the opportunity.
I wouldn’t call them hypocrites, however.
Why needlessly insult hypocrites?
I still live around farms. Bullshit smells infinitely better than this SJW crap.
Retired. My postings are puppies, kittens, and foals, conservation issues related to wolves, cougars, wild horses … since I’ve started on FB. Nothing personal by choice. (Might have something to do with a career on computers, YMMV). Don’t do Twitter or Instagram. Opinions are 100% on locked feeds like Sarah’s Diner and Blogs like these. Even then I really, really, try to avoid stuff that when I was working, wouldn’t get me in trouble. Luckily, when my “give a damn” broke, I was at age 60. Retired at 59 1/4. Would not consider my former colleagues, or most of them, conservatives, or rather on the right of middle. Environmental conservative, yes. Politically, not so much.
Nowadays it seems to be… also note how many schools seem to think they have the right to expell or punish students for entirely normal and lawful activities performed while not at school.
And look how many schools that do that get taken behind the woodshed by the first Judge that such behavior lands in front of.
And how many parents simply comply, rather than taking time off work, hiring a lawyer, and tilting against the school system?
My parents certainly wouldn’t have kicked back. They were believers in the power of Authority.
My Father would have erupted like Vesuvius. The ditzy Ed School graduates were scared to death of him, and they had reason.
My parents didn’t. Schools were afraid of mom. But that was 40+ years ago (start to finish for all 3 of us).
We didn’t either and that was only slightly over 10 years ago since kid got out. Didn’t take them to court, but were down at the office as soon as it hit. Got them to admit that kid was 100% ignorant, had no way to be clued in, thus 100% innocent. Their comment “don’t you care who is responsible?” Our response. “For this? No.” (Hell no. But hey.)
We still get high fives from certain teachers and the stink eye from the vice principles we dealt with.
The two articles by the paper trying to justify their actions brought the Red Curtain of Blood, since walling the computer would have been a bad idea.
The editors saw the 8 year old tweets, and decided that since King already apologized for it, they’d carry on the insult as if it were newsworthy.
Now, the publisher says we should be grateful to them for “doing our job”, as if ordinary people think it’s the paper’s duty to destroy the reputation of somebody who does good without the express permission of TPTB. Firing the SJW writer for doing what they wanted was another nice touch. (They put themselves in a lose-lose position, how nice!)
I’m now figuring that there’s now a small army of people going through the social media and any other public records for dirt on anybody in a position of authority at that paper. I won’t shed a tear for them when that gets out.
> firing the SJW writer
I also notice they’re not promising to go back, check, and if necessary correct every story he ever wrote while he was their employee… and then there’s *his* “social media” to be investigated.
By “industry standards” he didn’t even lie; I would have been astonished if he’d been censured, and I’m gobsmacked that he was terminated. He didn’t even fabricate evidence and lie outright, like the “journalists” who faked the “exploding Chevy truck” story (and were not fired…)
My based-on-absolutely-no-evidence theory is that his “expose” embarrassed some of the paper’s advertisers, like InBev and the various local companies who had also supported King.
They’re training to be Stasi.
Yep. This is why I don’t have social media. The Phantom has a blog, but he’s a shadowy, ghostly type of thing. Not the kind of thing an employer is going to be digging up, so to speak.
“Yes, there are already companies that do “social media background checks.””
I refuse to answer that question. I leave it blank. If pressed, still refuse to answer. As long as I’m not providing links between me and being an employee of theirs, it’s none of their damn business.
Any company that doesn’t respect my rights to free speech and association isn’t worth working for anyway. And if I find out about it, they’ll get worse negative publicity than it would have cost to hire me in the first place.
Social Intelligence Corporation? The Chinese will do it for you cheaper and faster.
Although I wonder whether those running (and backing) SICorp* have had their own background’s checked?
Probably checked and scrubbed, ya think? Maybe there’s a high school classmate that might ‘remember” some misdeed?
*SICorps is Mother, SICorps is Father.
What makes you think they are NOT owned by the Chinese????
The Chinese would be subtler.
Or Alphabet…
“All your data are belong to us!”
Yup, Original Google “Don’t be Evil”, VS Alphabet, “Let’s be evil, really evil”
The proper way to refer to the Des Moines Register is “The Des Moines Register, owned by Gannett”, just as the proper way to refer to CNN is “CNN, a subsidiary of telecom giant AT&T”.
Most of these media entities are *not* independent organizations, and their corporate parents need to be held accountable for the bad behavior of their irresponsible children.
As a well mannered Rigellian Lensman (L2) writing in a family blog I am not able to use the correct form of address for the Des Moines Register or Mentor would chide me severely.
and…
>Anheuser-Busch InBev, Busch Light’s parent company, announced in a statement Tuesday night that they will “have no further association with [King],
—
Yeah. Woke dirtbags…
Lucky for us, their beer is crap…
Indeed.
I’ll have a Sam Adams, please.
The first beer I liked was a Sam Adams cherry wheat. Right now, I’m rather fond of their Kosmic Sour.
I got introduced to beer with Sam. It’s my floor. Most of recent have been barrel
I admit my floor is a bit lower, but I generally follow the rule that if a place has a ‘neon’ sign for it, order something else. There are exceptions, but it’s a reasonable rule to follow.
Exceptions like a microbrewery having a neon sign out front of their taproom?
That sort. Or even the local bar having a Sam Adams or local/regional brew neon sign – it’s kinda like “Never buy from the bottom shelf.” If you know that something doesn’t really belong on the bottom shelf, well… but if you don’t know… make the safe choice and leave it be.
I’ll take a nice cold Shiner Bock if I can get it.
It’s difficult to wrong with Shiner. They even managed to make grapefruit at least tolerable.
What about beer in Milwaukee?
I find it best to avoid Milwaukee entirely.
What?
The beer that made Mel Famy walk us?
Unfortunately, I no longer drink beer, so I cannot boycott Anheuser-Busch, but it sure makes me want to boycott.
What, their American Patriotism (when convenient) coming from a Belgian parent company doesn’t make you want to go out and stock up on
horse pissBeer?The last beer I had was in Bavaria. If I wanted to endanger my health with ethanol, it would be good stuff…
Darn right. Even though I don’t drink anymore, I still miss that dark German beer my father used to bring back for us.
I have always had a soft-spot for Anheuser-Busch, and so have refrained from publicly calling their product what it is and why I buy it:
Sug beer. Cheap, garden-safe pest control.
No longer. I am not on the Borg, but please feel free to use the Busch Slug Beer descriptor whenever the topic of beer, gardening, or environmental responsibility arises on Facebook, Twitter et al. @Anheuser-Busch a bonus.
Slug. Beer.
I even added it to the thing’s dictionary.
Gives new meaning to ‘beer garden’ …
We have plenty of locally-brewed IPAs and whatever else one’s palate may desire; no need to consume the horse piss, even if I used more than a case per decade.
What does Anheuser-Busch have to do with drinking beer?
I, too, no longer drink beer, but when I drank beer I disdained horse piss beer.
Even when I drank horse-piss beer I drank Stroh’s (bought in Detroit it was all right) rather than Anheuser-Busch.
I don’t recognize all the beers they list under their header, but Becks, Bass, and St. Pauli Girl are all A-B beers.
I do kinda wish Anheuser-Busch had had the guts to keep sponsoring the guy, but the way things have been going, and with most Boards being run by professional Suits, I ain’t surprised.
Don’t drink beer either. Never have. So can’t boycott them.
As long as it isn’t the Clydesdale beer. I like their commercials. Don’t give them any money …
If it’s beer, it’s probably InBev. Go into a store almost anywhere in the world and chances are there will be InBev products in it. After I learned about them a few years ago I’ve paid attention to what’s in the coolers in local stores; most of the time, *all* of the contents are InBev brands.
After buying most of the larger competition they’ve been snapping up small local brands and even some microbrews. Because “there can be only one!”
The company has an interesting history, in a Borg-meets-Body Snatchers sort of way…
There’s always Yuengling. Family-owned, and I doubt that will ever change. Those Pennsylvania deplorables are a stubborn bunch…
I’ve been boycotting them for a good while now, and the reasons just keep adding up.
They too need to be made to feel the whip.
THAT’s what I mean by no longer tolerating the left. Bring them into the light. LIGHT THEM UP.
Thanks for clarifying. Yesterday disturbed me.
What size artillery? Or Carpet bombing?
I think the potential to envy honor is greater than the envy of material goods. Men won’t die for a bigger house of fancy car…they will lay down their lives for honor.
And thus the Left is choked with envy. Especially these days, when they HAVE no honor left.
Some 25 years ago the company I worked at was giving us a week long seminar on management. Part of this was done by a lady who taught HR at a university. She was speaking of the hiring process and stated you should always dig up dirt on any prospective employee before the interview. This was to either screen them out or provide a negotiating tool to decrease salary. She relished it. I was apalled that she saw all people as adversaries and criminals. She also recommended 20% annual turnover as a motivational tool for the 80% left.
Oh, and she had transparent hair: full set of thick hair, but you could see through it all straight to her scalp. Very odd and disturbing.
Even then envy was running through society. Which makes me think of the book, Envy a Theory of Social Behavior, by Helmut Schoek. Recommended for understanding this mindset and its consequences in culture.
My goodness, what a revolting person.
Whom, we must note, in her day job was instilling her poisonous philosophy in the minds of hundreds of business administration students.
And on top of that, getting paid what I’m sure was an exorbitant amount to spread her BS throughout the corporate culture.
> recommended 20% annual turnover as a motivational tool
—
Fairly common; I’ve worked at a couple of places like that. Every year some percentage got the ax, even if they were performing just fine. Since there was never any budget for training, it meant we spent a significant portion of our time before we could get the new hired up to speed, which the management types never seemed to be able to figure into their schedules…
I got the ax in due course. Having seen how things worked there, I was surprised it didn’t happen earlier.
Places like that are likely WHY there are some undocumented or misdocumented things. And that’s NOT little time-bombs that need ones presence to maintain the no-boom state.
No, it’s like the employer has carefully and thoroughly broken the give-a-damn of the employees who handle the documentation. I once worked for a company that had a related attitude*, and they managed to have the worst record for reliability and quality of any in that industry.
(*) Massive layoffs at the slightest downturn. In an industry that was boom or bust. In two years, one department had three cycles of hire/layoff-everybody on graveyard shift. No shock, that company is long gone.
*nod*
Several commands and departments I’ve seen broke folks’ give-a-damn like that; usually when you dug there was at least one person in authority who held that if your people weren’t actively unhappy, and informing you of such, you were not doing your job correctly.
I know of exactly one case where such a person was later smacked with the cold fish of reality, and even recanted, to some of the folks he’d “trained.”
It was after his trainees functionally staged a revolt that ended up destroying the idiot’s future military career, and only because his behavior effectively destroyed the lives of those under him.
Where I had worked, they never quite learned. Some of the managers* left and formed another company, which was quite successful. I see it’s now been absorbed.
(*) Management-by-yelling was common, but they seemed to have better business sense than the company they left. OTOH, when they were at the original company, it was draining. I got out of there as soon as practical. One of the happiest days of my life was when I left.
Oh, I documented everything. Properly and in detail. If they’d managed to hired even a good entry-level programmer, he would have had no trouble maintaining what was finished and completing what wasn’t.
Unfortunately, the people who were in charge of hiring knew zippity about programming and about the same for system administration, and from what I gather a long string of replacements sat in my chair, one-trick-ponies full of training and certificates from Microsoft or colleges, but all they knew were “web” code generator packages or someone’s “application frameworks”, not Pascal, C, Perl, or bash…
I did send word that I’d be happy to come back under contract and bring their new hires up to speed (and it was a legitimate offer, asking only current local going rate), but apparently I was by then anathema, the manager who had done the actual firing having been publicly embarrassed by Corporate asking why he’d done it and he having no good explanation.
Now, a later employer… they really should have read the parts about “intellectual property” and “breach of contract” before signing the contract. They were a mid-90s start-up playing fast and loose, and they didn’t need any lawyer to tell them about contracts.
It would never pass even a casual look today, but they’d agreed that the rights to any software I wrote belonged to me, and they had free use of them only while I was still an employee.
So, terminated hours after telling them their new billing and accounting system was complete, I was escorted out with the only copies in my shirt pocket.
Apparently, their lawyer felt the contract was valid… I would have let them have the code if they hadn’t felt they had to be jackasses. But a certain mentality gets off in being able to screw someone over. That time, they got screwed back.
Your post reads like a whole bunch of submissions to the Reddit thread Malicious Compliance. Story after story of hotshot middle managers coming in to “change things up” and make their mark with little if any understanding of the processes already in place. For such types earning brownie points for themselves is vastly more important than the actual work being accomplished. Add in the philosophy that the bottom line for the next quarter is way more important that long range planning, and such geniuses with their shiny new MBA degrees are responsible for a great number of business failures. Sadly, far too often they destroy a well run process then bail before it all comes crashing down, using a few short term gains to sell themselves to the next corporate victim and do it all over again.
Ah, Reddit. I never figured out how to navigate it. Pages full of links that either don’t go anywhere, or take you right back to where you were. “131 comments”, but no matter what you click on, you only see the same five or six. I spent *hours* trying to figure out how the hell the thing was supposed to work before giving up.
And they were hard Left even before they got bought by the People’s Liberation Army. So, alas, it is free from my
drivel.
Ah, Reddit. I never found anything there worth figuring out how to navigate it.
I didn’t own the code as it was started by a contractor before they paid him off, brought in house, and hired me. Pretty sure that contractor was counting on no one being able to figure out the code. No documentation either. Contractor was wrong.
I did document. Heavily. I mean I understand where the contractor was coming from. Less than 24 months after I started my new job, there was a turn over in leadership for Engineering. Hardware was fine. But software side, not so much. Luckily someone went to bat for me and I was moved to a different department with a new role. That lasted about 6 months. Then I was moved back to my original role and given back the project. Even with my documentation, the person hired to move into my original role, couldn’t cope with the convoluted way everything was put together. Nor could the person figure out how to “fix it”. Heck, at that point, neither could I, knew it needed to be corrected, and had said so, but I could deal with the PIA mess, and make it work; until I was allowed to, didn’t bother. Another year and I was finally given the go ahead to unsnarl it, which I did. Paid off on the next release.
Normally changes took anywhere from 18 to 24 months. The next release (and turns out last) took me 4 months.
Then the company went into foreclosure. Got hit on the 5th or 6th round. Got called by the poor kid who had to take over. I was nice about it, told him how to find his information in documents. But not helping for free … (still was counting on references …)
My next job I was told that it would take me almost a year to be fully productive in the system as it was “that massive”, even with other programmers working on the same programs who’d been there 5 years or more. Nope. Less than a month. Code documentation not that great. But there was a definite rhythm to the code. This was on top of learning the development tool(s). Only difference between this job and the prior ones were there were 5 others working on the same code with accumulated total years working on it of 50+ years.
Don’t know why, and others have to be like me, just haven’t ran into any. Programmers forget, or maybe because they aren’t developers too, don’t know. Maybe most don’t have my “here is the program, no one else knows it, figure it out, we have faith (sink or swim)” experience, from first job.
Existing programs still work the same way any new program, it has to. What is the goal (outputs)? Where does the input come from? From there it is easy to trace “How”, “Input”, becomes “Output”. With actual code you don’t even have the “a miracle occurs here”, even without the code being documented.
Did the University have a 20% non-student turnover rate to keep her properly concerned? No? Gee…. Or, tenure, huh? Gee…
“Well, you see, after a some good performance, our employees get tenure, so… you’re full of $DUNG.”
Yeah, late now.
From what I gather, a 20% dropout rate would be cause for much happy dancing, certificates of excellence, and possibly even bonuses.
Nah – to meet a 20% non-student annual rollover cut they would just zap non-tenured associate prof indentured servant positions at a rate around 50%-75%, depending on how many administrator positions they carried.
To be fair, Dr. Jerry Pournelle used to advocate that we fire the bottom performing 10% of all school teachers every year, as a means of improving education, weeding out the deadwood and the politically motivated. That’s not being mean or adversarial, it’s just product improvement.
Well, if you are starting from a baseline so horrible that you’d rather fire the bottom 80%, Jerry’s proposal looks quite benign. From what I’ve heard and seen, locally that’s about the situation.
If we had kids (married way too late for that to happen), this is not an area we would have selected. Still, I worry for the
inmatesstudents.Depends. On the parents. Drove our kids teachers batty. “It’s not fair to everyone else that (kid) has two *tutors (or even one). What is going to happen when he goes to college?” Uh, have to pay for tutors? VS getting them for free?
* That made him do the work.
What we know about him is that he’s a college student who (probably as a joke) asked for beer money and got way more money than anyone could expect.
I like to watch the last 20 minutes or so of the show for the headgear picks, so I thought I would give some context, since I don’t know how many here watch “College GameDay”:
The point of the show is that they have the pre-game analysis of the college football schedule at the campus of a school hosting a major game. There’s always a big crowd of students in the background, many of whom are waving signs. Most of the signs are football related, i.e. “Iowa State’s coach is a poopyhead” (I’m paraphrasing), but there’s are also usually a smattering of signs that are more college student related: “Jenny, will you go out with me?” “Mom, Dad, send cash,” “Help, I can’t pay for my Econ text book,” and yes, the ever popular “I need beer money.” I didn’t see this particular sign, and I have no idea what caused it to go viral like that, but almost certainly the man who made it considered it no more than a way to get noticed by the camera crew and have his face on TV.
I don’t know what I would do if I tried something like that and ended up with a million dollars, but I do know that his choice was admirable. I don’t care if he tweeted “racist” things when he was 16. Heck, I don’t know that I care if he’s a full-blown white nationalist (a real one rather than the “someone bad” definition the media uses). His only public action is donating money for sick kids. Leave him alone.
> I don’t know that I care if he’s a …
“We created something to make him look bad, therefore his money is dirty.”
Funny, MIT was perfectly happy to take Epstein’s money, even after he went to prison the first time. But the *second* time, well, that’s just terrible, and now they must have mass firings…
I note I have yet to see mention of them giving the money back to Epstein’s estate.
I’m sure MIT will be giving it to the victims
***snort***
So, reading more about MIT’s Media Lab and Epstein’s donations… the amounts of money seemed pretty small to me. Yet there seemed to be an awful lot of schmoozing going on, and then MIT’s reaction to having it exposed was over the top, considering they don’t actually appear to have any written policies about such things.
Something hinky is going on at MIT’s Media Lab, but it’s not all necessarily related to Epstein. Reading up on the Lab’s history, it has most of the earmarks of a money-laundering operation.
MIT’s spokespeople also keep talking about “anonymous donations”, which I also found interesting. MIT is a publicly held corporation, *and* it accepts Federal money, which means every financial transaction down to individual paper clips ought to be public record. Unless these “donations” were made in cash in increments under $10,000 each, there’s a record of every donation.
Epstein also gave money to Harvard, which announced it was “clean” money and they were keeping it, though of course they would have never considered accepting any “dirty” money. Apparently they’re not aware of IRS policies on that sort of thing, or laws and decisions from politicians and judges who were often graduates of – wait for it – Harvard Law School.
> “Nobody is clean.”
The paladins are *personally* offensive to the Woke. Which is why they work so hard to smear any they find.
#truth
Someone doing a hard thing means that it’s possible.
So failure to do so, to those who destroy ‘hypocrites,’ is an attack on their very being.
Crab buckets all the way down?
I was thinking the other day about idols, and how the only way to stay on track is to pick something that cannot be corrupted. Something real that transcends space and time: Truth. Justice. Courage. Etc. Of course. It’s a bit of a scam to say that to someone. If he dedicates himself to Truth, he soon discovers he can’t have it without courage, and before long he’s dragging in humility and justice and the next thing you know he’s there at the heart of everything.
I wonder if the opposite is the same? Give one cardinal vice a pass, even one that isn’t obviously awful like Wrath or Pride, and before long you’re in a long orbit into the outer empty Nothing.
It pulls you off balance– most of the vices are deformed virtues, in some form.
So if you’re really dedicated to a transcendent virtue, and aren’t letting it deform…you HAVE to drag in the rest…..
Love they neighbor turns into sexual freedom with everyone, regardless of whether it’s adultery or not.
Yeah, I get it.
Eh, I’d hold the infamous tenderness that leads to the gas chamber as a bigger threat– ‘I can’t bear to see your discomfort, so you must cease to exist that I am not uncomfortable on your behalf’– but sure.
This. This is horrible.
Which is why it’s actually surprising that the snob-classes in the City and County of San Fran have allowed the homeless issue to accumulate to the degree it has. I would have expected the City and County of SF’s homeless assistance budget to have been spent as some of the lesser municipalities in Silicon Valley have done it, by using said homeless assistance budget monies to buy homeless people bus tickets to elsewhere.
There’s a lot of money to be made in poverty.
Commissions, studies, housing development and social programs… heck, they’re claiming their new public toilet/shooting galleries are costing $200K per year since they have to be guarded full-time…
A couple years back they first tried these same expensive SELF-CLEANING PUBLIC TOILETS OF THE FUTURE!!! and they instantly turned into drug injection and sleep-it-off sleeping accommodations / sex-worker-workplace-enclosures (presumably on a schedule of rotation administered by local neighborhood authorities), so they were rapidly yanked back to some city storage warehouse where they’ve been carefully maintained under contract ever since. The new use case, where they have a 24-hour unarmed “attendant” to overrule those neighborhood-authority use cases as well as enforce time limits on non-drug-injection or hooker-and-client users, accomplishes City and County of SF goals by both providing for a new union CCoSF job, and by making the prior expensive purchase of these thngs look prescient rather than wasteful.
That’ll only happen when they can’t do the old Bugs Bunny gag of closing the window and feeling smug that the folks who actually have to deal with the homeless are suffering For The Greater Good.
I guess I’m not the only one who has nightmares of American Progressives following the footsteps of the Nazi’s Aktion T4. I swear reading about that is almost more nauseating than reading about the rest of the Holocaust, even if the numbers were far smaller.
I think it’s because you can see folks doing it, maybe even see YOURSELF falling into it.
“Gosh, they hurt so much, and there’s so much to be gained if you just…put them out of their suffering.”
And humans are so, so good at making ourselves believe what would be useful.
We are indeed. Even if you *don’t* believe, the preponderance of evidence leans towards all humans being at least capable of true evil. Most of us don’t even know what our limits are because we’ve not even gotten close to them. And expedience pays off *right now.*
The benefits of it are obvious. But despite all the immediate rewards of short term thinking, folks keep choosing the harder, higher path. Our brains are hard wired to zero in on the bad, especially if it happens to us or those close to us. Lions and snakes and forest fires are bad- but so is getting fired, being betrayed by a loved one, or recieving an unexpected (and large) bill. Along with that, the pattern matching that is each of us constantly searches for a solution, so we don’t get et by lions, or fired. And yet there are fundraisers when a neighbor’s house gets destroyed in a fire, folks who donate kidneys to strangers, and the occasional young man who, when getting an unexpected windfall, choose a better path.
We are much more than the flaws built in to our very brains. I find it a hopeful thing to recall that when I’m having a bad day.
As a “good” Calvinist, I am fully aware of just how depraved everyone is. Each of us subject to different temptations (books), (games), sloth.
Don’t put the alcoholic in charge of the communion wine. Don’t let the minister count the loot.
Yet God invites us to join Him in His plans. This is the advantage a disciple of Jesus has. They do not try to do it in their own strength. The left tries to be “good”. Then wonders why it didn’t work.
Nightmare? Given the reality in Europe, and the stated intent of the American left, isn’t it more something they are seriously working on implementing?
Of course, my helpful suggestions for how the mandatory substance abuse treatment should be implemented put that firmly into ‘the pot calling the kettle black’.
At age 64 this is the first time I’ve heard of the Aktion T4 program referred to as such, though I knew in general that the Nazis killed the disabled. Sounds almost like what the Dutch are doing today. And the Chinese. The eugenicists are always among us.
Perhaps we ought start by eliminating all who think that human eugenics is simply practiced?
Psychopaths all, and even if psychopathy is not genetic, why take the chance?
From Walter Miller’s “A Canticle for Liebowitz” after a discussion with a doctor about a fatal radiation case:
“You heard him say it? ‘Pain’s the only evil I know about.’ You heard that?”
The monk nodded solemnly.
“And that society is the only thing that determines whether an act is wrong or not? That too?”
“Yes.”
“Dearest God, how did those two heresies get back into the world after all this time? Hell has limited imaginations down there. ‘The serpent deceived me, and I did eat.”
This mess has been under way for at least 70 years and truthfully far longer.
Since the first ape did step and think and become human, I suspect, Tregonsee.
It wasn’t so named by the Nazis, AFAIK, but postwar investigators labelled it such because it was coordinated out of Tiergartenstrasse 4. Hundreds of thousands were killed, both by medical professionals, and by SS personnel with portable euthanasia equipment. The last such killing actually occurred after the German surrender, performed by doctors in occupied Bavaria. When it came to the attention of American occupation forces, a ban was quickly promulgated.
In the here and now, countries that Germany once occupied, like the Netherlands, are bringing it back. Not quite as official policy, but the courts aren’t exactly punishing those who perform “questionable” euthanasia.
And the medical system, even here in America, seems to offer levels of care to the frail, the hopeless, the elderly, etc. that seem little better than an attempt to ape Europe. I’m not talking about health care costs, or medical insurance, but the actual quality of care offered those who have trouble speaking and asserting themselves. I know that “data is not the plural of anecdotes” but the number of anecdotes is climbing, and appalling, and seem concentrated among those who, at least temporarily, would have been candidates for an evil program like Aktion T4. I am starting to worry.
What happened to Charlie Gard and the other baby UK boy in a similar situation just a few weeks later is arguably the same. It’s true that the NHS people didn’t kill the boys themselves. But they did actively work to block the parents of the boys from getting the experimental treatments that offered the only slim hope of survival.
Liverpool pathway, or whatever they’re calling it this week.
The evergreen scandal where states that legalized medical euthanasia have medical boards that refuse to treat the patient, but will pay for them to die.
Of their own free will, of course.
There are far more than those kids hurt — think of all the people potentially saved by developing those experimental procedures into cures.
After all, every successful cure began as an experimental treatment.
I hold that tenderness on a par with that which declares some lives are better not begun.
You can see this mindset in one of the popular arguments for abortion these days – that the unwanted child is likely to have an unhappy and traumatic time in foster care, with consequent problems later in life (and so is better off being ‘terminated’). Which may be true, but it’s hard to argue why the same reasoning shouldn’t be applied to, say, a five-year-old child whose parents have become unable to take care of him.
If we’re going to start killing people just because they *might* have a difficult life in the future… well, there won’t be many of us left.
Dang, I love the comments in here. I’m going to be chewing on this for the rest of the day, at least.
This is the mantra of the left. ‘We’ know better than you. ‘We’ will tell you what is acceptable, and if you do ANYTHING outside those parameters, ‘we’ will take you down. Envy is definitely a part of this, as one kid did something amazing and provided money to help the Children’s Hospital with funding for kids less well off than he is. What has the left done that is good? Crickets…
Unless you count the freebies that in effect KEEP people on the dole, and voting for those freebies. Living well IS the best defense, because that sends the left/et al into spasms of anger, denial, and brings out their true natures.
Control is the goal, and as someone said, it all comes down to money. If the government controls it, they rake off a considerable percentage for ‘other’ things. When something like this happens, they don’t get their take, and it proves once again, that good people will do the right things for the right reasons. Both of those are counter to the left’s narrative and mantra.
Veni vidi visa… 🙂
One of the hallmarks of evil is ultimate selfishness, to the point that if it sees anything good or praiseworthy it must either possess it or destroy it. Consider the Bishop’s line in the movie Ladyhawke: “If I can’t have her, no man shall.” Sums it up right there.
There’s a reason “coveting” made the top ten “do not do” list. (Even this old heathen gets that.)
yep
also, my cat is named Isabeau after Pfeiffer’s role
Ditto the eagle-owl Familiar how tries to keep Dolores Lee out of trouble.
“For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.”
Absurdly simple, in this instance. As we have previously discussed, many will claim to be of the Light and will denounce the Light as Darkness.
The left sees “charity” as competitve virtue-signaling. And if you aren’t one of the leftists they must negate your good deed in some way.
This. Can’t simply appreciate it, because it’s a *competition!*
“Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”. I wonder how many High School and College students would approve Il Duce’s statement if they didn’t know its source. I take that back I really don’t want to know.
“If no individual can be good …”
Then there’s no onus on my failure to do the right thing.
“You’re no better than me” is one of humanity’s oldest assertions.
> no better than me
That’s what the “created equal” means in the Declaration of Independence. We all start from the same beginning; no nobles, no commoners, clean slates.
What we make of that… that’s the part where you have to make your choices and accept the responsibility for the results.
That is, a flashing DO NOT WANT to many people, who would prefer that nothing is ever their fault. Their version of “equal” is “cutting everyone else down to their size.”
Harrison Bergeron
See? High school English classes were not completely useless!
Sadly, their ignorance renders their Procrustean logic impenetrable to themselves.
It’s very troubling. I like the theory that leftism is a Christian heresy and “social justice” really exposes the horror that is condemnation for sin without Christ offering forgiveness and repentance.
I think you’re right. I think you aren’t even overstating the elevation of jealousy.
Maybe, I don’t know, maybe the foundation of it all, every last bit of it, was when we stopped believing that we are born sinful. Because along with that comes the notion of humans being naturally pure and thus perfectible since it’s our normal state of being.
I read the excuses from the newspaper, that it was actually news to discover what sort of person this young man really was. That it was *legitimate* and in the interest of their readers to know a person’s true nature because they came to public notice.
Clue… human… fallen and sinful.
Not news. And it shouldn’t be “news” for anyone. It should be something that we understand because we, if nothing else, observe the imperfect people around us, those we love, and ourselves and do so objectively.
It’s the ultimate in black-and-white thinking, of simplistic and blinkered morality, to imagine that people come in categories of “good” and “bad”.
“That it was *legitimate* and in the interest of their readers to know a person’s true nature because they came to public notice.”
I look forward to reading their coverage of George Soros. I presume they’ve long since published in depth profiles of Bill & Hillary, Barry & Michelle and of the Biden family?
This is OT, but I’m asking Sarah because she has posted links to NeoNeocon’s site over at Instapundit. When I went to read Neo’s new posts today, I saw a notice that her account has been suspended by her hosting service. Sarah, do you know anything about this? Neo’s is one of my favorite sites. Thanks for any insight you may have.
I have no clue. I haven’t been on line most of the day.
Okay, she says it’s a glitch, now fixed https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/09/27/no-your-account-has-not-been-suspended/
Can’t reach it from my Dish account as of 9PM Pacific. OTOH, it might take time for any DNS fixes to propagate. Are the hamsters working the night shift today?
OK, it’s working correctly this morning. I didn’t clear the cache, nor any cookies, so I assume it was something upstream.
fluke. Details here:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2019/09/27/no-your-account-has-not-been-suspended/
Gah! What this dude is doing?! Never apologize where the rat inquisition is concerned! It’s an admission of guilt and weakness at the same time. I thought by now everyone knows this.
Not WSJ. And they are very “moderate”. https://mrpumpkinface.com/comic/entry/the-right-side-or-the-right-side
Well…
1. Unapproved charity activity like this makes others look bad. Specifically, the Foundations that donate their pocket change and then end up washing 9/10 of the donated money to their own ends.
2. All boons must come from The Great And Good, not the Unwashed Masses. Violating this principle is an offense against the Current Truth (“hu-mons would totally eat each other raw if not their benevolent shepherds”).
3. It amounts to feeding someone The Great And Good see as their pets. Which returns to both (1) and (2) at a slightly different angle.
I only skimmed some of the above comments, so I apologize if this has been mentioned already. Breitbart has an article that includes:
“Stepping in for the corporate quislings at Anheuser-Busch is the Geneseo Brewing Company out of Genesco, Illinois, which has named one of its beers “Carson King” and will donate $1 of every pint sold to that children’s hospital.”
One has to hope when the time comes Carson King finishes his education and steps out in the world there are still companies that have some intestinal fortitude like that (and yes, obviously they’re going for some good PR too, but if they really follow through, so what).
Also, does Aneuser-Busch “cutting all ties” with King mean they’re welshing on the commitment to donate a matching sum to what he raised? I’d consider that a bigger sin than ill-advised mouthing off on the internet at 16.
I’m pretty sure they said they were still donating the money.
except since they’re no longer doing that particular sub-brand…
I believe that’s incorrect, it’s Iowa Hero.
Other than that, on the nose.
Last I saw, A-B was going to pay up on the original amount, but would do a Sir Robin for the future.
Why?
Hate. For the sake of Hate.
Power. Simply to demonstrate it.
This is the naked face of Totalitarian States. Someone very much like that presstitute simply puts on the Jackboots, just to be stamping on faces. No higher reason or purpose is there. Don’t bother trying to discern anything in it.
It is simply Hate and Power for its own sake.
You are warned.
I’m pretty glad nobody tried to do that to me last year:
https://katu.com/news/local/man-travels-from-montana-to-bring-cases-of-water-to-salem
Then again, aside from local news and the Air Force covering the story, this was kept pretty quiet.
Some good effects, not from the DMR-muckrakers but from the cyclists that are sponsored by them:
https://www.kcci.com/article/ragbrai-announces-dollar50000-contribution-to-carson-king-fundraiser/29263491#
And related to that $50k, the fundraiser is still going strong– they hit 2 million over an hour ago!
https://www.weareiowa.com/news/local-news/carson-kings-fundraiser-for-u-of-i-childrens-hospital-hits-2-million/
Personally, I’ve decided that any social media anything done before age 18 should be ignored, or auto-deleted when the individual turns 18. Teenagers just don’t think long term, and anyone who hasn’t said/done/drawn/played something stupid when they were young… Most of us prefer not to admit it, but who hasn’t acted or spoken on impulse while under age 18?
Gets better in this case when you take the tweets in the context they were sent in. Apparently (according to two stories I read at lunch today) they were quotes from (a) TV show(s). Mad or Dave Chappel stuff from non-adult programing will now get you this.
Iowahawk nailed it with just how effed up the DMR’s actions on this are.
I keep coming back to how if someone is a convicted murderer at 16, it takes major effort to make it last five years much less be treated like it was done by an adult.
But a freaking Comedy Central show being riffed on, by a minor, eight years ago, THIS is worth crucifying someone for?!?!
Criminal records from adolescent years are sealed, are they not?
Although, given the absence of social media from my youth, I can raise my hand in answer of your question of “who hasn’t acted or spoken on impulse while under age 18?” without fear of contradiction.
I would have been calculating about what I said on the internet even then. Rashly calculating at times, but that is also true now. As is quite mad. Perhaps also ‘completely screwed over my career without realizing it’.
Legalities and implementation of such laws raise interesting questions. On the one hand, I giggle at the thought of putting Facebook, Twitter, and Google out of business. On the other hand, taking out FFN is too high a price. On the gripping hand, freedom of speech, so if we can’t instead address this issue by restoring custom or making new custom, we may well be fucked.
I have a long, long explanatory theory about this, but I have a headache and sore head due to diet (doctor insists that I get on a low carb and low fat diet, and I have to call his office, three times to get a consult…), so here’s what I think.
The ugly leftists? Shoot ’em. Rent a steam shovel and find a good field to fertilize.
The cute leftists? Harem ’em. Hire a good harem manager. Go from there.
This might be the only way keep us from having to do even worse things…
Back away from the Kildar book!
Oh John Ringo No (~_^)
Just…two girls that are very pretty and raging liberals. The fantasy of spanking the stupid out of them… 😀
Odd, isn’t it, that the adjective which adheres most naturally to “liberals” id “raging”?
Sadly, I do not think it possible to spank the stupid out of anyone; all you can do is suppress their urge for exposure.
Liberalism takes the place of most religious faiths for them. At the very least, the local priesthood can get away with sexual scandals because it’s permitted in the faith.
Spanking will hardly lessen the desire for exposure. People into that sort of thing enjoy displaying it, too.
a) if your right hand offends against you, cut it off b) don’t stick it in crazy c) let’s talk about game theory: all monogamy is probably the optimal strategy for maximizing sexual intercourse without also optimizing crazy to the point that sex is pointless. d) If one is a man planning a life with at most one woman, it is best to realize some traits make spending time around people with them miserable in the long term. e) If someone’s brain does not naturally work around to wise decisions eventually, throwing my brain into the mix is not going to result in a stable combination.
It’s hard to predict these things, but what will her mind be like in twenty or thirty years? Lot of women are treating Hillary as a magical fetish, so it is plausible that the trend of many women is in the direction of being like Hillary. So, someone sensible now might, ten, twenty, thirty years from now conclude that a life that does not personally achieve the highest level of power is wasted, no matter what was done in concert with others. Best insurance against that is someone with a strong stable mental bent in other directions.
Subjectively, it seems like being even center is such a huge warning sign of being a proto-hillaryoid that it should be extremely unattractive. That it would be wiser to learn to ignore pretty liberals and, if necessary, spend the energy on imaginary women instead.
Back before puberty, I thought it might be possible to always make sound decisions about such matters. Turns out I might possibly have been incorrect. Huge surprise to everyone here, right?
Oh, I know. But the fantasies are fun. One of them would look great in a full English maid outfit.
I…don’t think it works that way, old boy.
It would probably have the exact opposite effect, actually. And would be wrong on many levels.
Which is why it’s a fantasy. I know the practicality won’t work, but one can dream…
and I’ll bet, if TSHTF they’ll be right there expecting you to protect them . . .
Considering how pretty they are and that they would have to go through San Francisco to get here…a serious SHTF situation might not turn out well for them.
Low carb low fat will kill you. For one you’ll get an intestinal obstruction.
Try low carb high fat. It doesn’t do what he thinks it does.
Actually, my goal right now is running off an app and getting my calorie and sugar count down, walk our new dog more, and get rid of as many snacks as I can.
I too need to walk more. I hate walking alone though and can’t get a dog till the cats move to the happy hunting grounds..
Get some black plastic sheeting and have one of the boys build you the robotic innards for a mini-shoggoth. Provide it with a speaker and device to read audiobooks to you and voila! Not just companionship but something to keep the weirdos at bay.
Read Poes! Read Poes!
You need a certain number of calories to fuel activity in the body. Carbs, fats, and protein can all provide those. You can trade among those three to get daily requirement of calories but there are different effects from various tradeoffs.
Protein is also (primarily actually) used for building structures and really shouldn’t be burned for fuel. Among other things, that’s seriously hard on the kidneys.
So, enough protein for your size and activity level to maintain and build structure, maybe a little extra to be safe. Low carb. Then the rest of your daily calories from fat.
I started that fifty pounds ago. And, well, “fifty pounds ago” so it’s been working well. My cholesterol and triglyceride numbers have improved. My A1C remains good (mostly in “pre-diabetic” range). My liver and kidney function have actually improved. Pretty much every measure has improved.
I have also come to the conclusion that the calories from fat satisfy hunger better than the equal number of calories from carbs even though you have to eat more carbs to get the same number of calories (which is why “low fat, high carb” was conventional wisdom for so long). I don’t feel as hungry, nor do I snack as much since going low carb, moderate protein, and the rest fat.
My goal has been to get lower calories, more exercise, less refined sugar, and more sunlight. I have a new dog that needs to be walked every day, so I can get that exercise in. Cut my soda down from the full sized cans to the small cans. And, keeping a better eye out on what I am having.
What I did was start tracking everything, absolutely everything. I’ve got a spreadsheet, and if it goes into my body it goes on the spreadsheet along with the protein fat and carb content. That act by itself ends “mindless snacking”. And getting the numbers means that anything I prepare for myself has to be measured, not just “guestimated” which enforces portion control.
Then it was a matter of figuring out how much I needed to meet daily needs–with a modest deficit in calories ingested vs. calories expended (target is a bit over 1800 cal/day). I usually end up having to add some fat into my diet at the end of the day–I use heavy whipping cream with various flavor extracts and sweetener to add variety to reach the target.
There’s also a lot of effort in figuring out what I can eat when I eat out. There is a lot of sugar hidden in a lot of things you wouldn’t think has it. Salads figure prominently, with grilled chicken or roast turkey where available. Chik-Fil-A is the only chicken place I’ve found that has grilled nuggets. (The carbs from the breading in most place’s nuggets is outrageous.) Used to be able to get grilled chicken at KFC, but the places local to me don’t do that anymore. Hardees will do their sandwiches “low carb” which means they’ll use a lettuce wrap instead of a bun. And Taco Bell’s “power bowls” work if you hold the rice and beans. And so on. Haven’t found anything I can do at Panda Express (my daughter likes them) so when we go there we get a to-go order, I get something somewhere else, and then we sit in the parking lot and eat.
This works for me. But I’m a scientist and record keeping and numbers are pretty much my thing. There are apps and things that can automate a lot of that for you. But the big things are awareness (I as amazed at how much I was ingesting that I never even thought about) and consistency. The occasional “cheat day” is fine. “Cheat month”, not so much.
That’s what I’m discovering as well. Trimming just to the small cans of soda lets me get the soda flavor and taste, but not all the calories and the sugar. Some of the other surprises allow me to trim back in other places.
For the sake of decreasing sugar without as much expense as the small cans, I was going to try to go back to one size or another of bottle. Unfortunately, they all seem to go noticeably flat within a few days.
flavored sugar free carbonated water works. It’s also cheaper than soda.
I do drink dilute coffee-flavored water, which is sugar-free, but it doesn’t have quite the same effect. 😀 If the flavored waters are sugar-free because they aren’t sweet, that’s one thing, but aspartame disagrees with me.
They’re seltzer with so little flavoring that it technically doesn’t have to be listed on the ingredients.
No fake sugar. ^.^
I rather like them; the Waterloo at Costco is an example, more strongly flavored, the ‘flavored seltzer’ at Safeway/Albertson’s (can’t remember where you live) is a much weaker flavor but it’s better than just water. I got hooked when I was pregnant and couldn’t bear to look at any more water.
Good to know, thanks, I’ll look into them! I sometimes find weakened flavors I like to be really irritating — never have managed to take up watering my apple juice — but if it’s something I’m not used to at a stronger level, I could see it working better for me.
I can actually go through a lot of water quite happily, but I also really like having something with a taste.
Once, I posted a spaghetti sauce recipe and a woman said she might use it because she could not find sauce without sugar added.
Leaving aside the moral problems here, there is the practical problem of having a harem full of people who hate you.
Where’s that get fun, unless you’re into some really weird and disturbing stuff?
(Good night, having a harem of people who like you seems troublesome enough)
Shooting the ones who would have the gumption to act on it would solve that. Most are too spineless.
That only answers part of the question, though. Leaving aside the massive moral problems, where’s having sex with people who’d rather not have sex with you get fun, unless you’re into weird and disturbing stuff?
Enough that streetwalkers have no problem supporting themselves.
Not just themselves, if I correctly understand the economic structure of that business model.
And, not at all related: Pretty Woman is one of the vilest films Hollywood has ever produced.
I’ve also got issues with Green Card.
But Groundhog Day may be the greatest story of redemption to not feature Christ..
Pleasant people, who believe true things and do good things, get better looking with age. People working on sainthood get more and more luminescent in their faces, with a sort of peace even when things go bad a lot of the time.
The vast majority of lefties… do not have inner peace. So they tend to look like Karens, or the male equivalent, as they grow older.
BTW, Dr. Nina Heereman has an interesting talk on YouTube from this year’s Steubenville Biblical conference. The theme this year was divine Wisdom and the wisdom literature. Her talk pointed out how a lot of divine titles and descriptors get used also for humans in both the OT and NT, which goes with being God’s people or part of His Body. But in general, and without any feminist or non-feminist weirdness, men get more Christological descriptors, and women get more Holy Spirit ones. So her talk is about asking what the deal is.
One of the most important is the Biblical thing with Eve being Adam’s “helper,” also translatable as “champion” or “ally”, which is a very big descriptor for God also. (So yes, that is what a man should expect in a wife.)
Steubenville has a ton of good and scholarly, devout speakers at the back to back Biblical conference and Defending the Faith (Catholic apologetics) conference. So if you are even vaguely interested, check out some of the talks. Hahn and Bergsma are favorites for me.
A quick search turns up two (2) possible presentations:
Dr. Nina Heereman – You Have Excelled Them All: Incarnating Wisdom in the Woman (2019 ABS)
Dr. Nina Heereman delivered this talk, “You Have Excelled Them All Proverbs 30:29: Incarnating Wisdom in the Woman” at the 2019 Applied Biblical Studies Steubenville Conference.
/watch?v=qTdiD1BYdgQ
Dr. Nina Heereman – I Sought to Take Her as My Bride (2019 Applied Biblical Studies)
Dr. Nina Heereman delivered this talk, “‘I Sought to Take Her as My Bride’ Wisdom 8:2: On the Spousal Role of Wisdom,” at the 2019 Applied Biblical Studies Steubenville Conference.
/watch?v=VrSoRyC3_kY
Care to specify which is the one you cited?
BTW: to avoid moderation for two links, the initial https://www.youtube.com was excised from each link. So any of you wishing to watch, be advised: some assembly required.
And for those wondering, the Steubenville Conferences is a youtube channel, with playlists extending back to 2014.
Sorry! I was talking about “You Have Excelled Them All.”
Posting links is a pain on the tablet; but I can do it, and sometimes should.
Pleasant people, who believe true things and do good things, get better looking with age.
My godfather was an objectively ugly guy. Nose like a potato, age splotches, ears looked like he’d been a prize-fighter.
Plus, he was a cranky old cuss.
In spite of that, when you look at his picture, some 20 years after he’s been gone– the impression isn’t “ugly.” You look at his scowl (was almost always scowling) and the impression is that he’s good. Not nice, not sweet, for heaven’s sake not easy to get along with– but you can tell that he was a decent guy. You aren’t surprised to find out he upset his dear wife by putting a cow that needed help in the back of his BMW. (“She helped buy it!” And no, I have NO IDEA how he managed that, at 70-something.) Nor that when he passed away, a ton of anonymous donations suddenly didn’t show up. (Almost as many as were late the year his wife went ahead of him.)
I don’t know what it is, but what I’m taking forever to get to is– yeah, there’s something to that.
I generally don’t add to your comment lists, because they’re so long, but I just searched on “Dante” and saw nobody mentioned him.
What is interesting to me is that so many Christian writers, whether lay or cleric, tended to consider Pride the worst of the sins, in that one is putting one’s own judgment over God’s.
But Dante noted that Envy really was the worst sin from a human standpoint: it was the opposite of the cardinal virtue of Caritas, and it eroded human community.
So while Pride does poison the specific sinner vs. Paradiso, Envy extends well beyond the original sinner, and pulls multiple people in its wake. Envy is far more poisonous than all the other deadly sins given how many people it can infect and keep spreading.
“The Hatred of Good” – you’re getting very close to what (I’ve concluded) is the essential nature of a progressive, i.e, a progressive is that soul that, above all else, aims to punish the good, in the name of the good, for being good.
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today.
Imagine there’s no Good
Or Evil if you try
Just shades of gray around us
Nuances by and by
Imagine all the people doing what they like.
“We have no idea what this kid’s political affiliation was/is. Heck, I don’t know if anyone knows, yet.”
I have a pretty good idea what it is. Now.
I was thinking about Robert Penn Warren’s All the Kings Men as I wsa reading this. Willie employed Jack Burden to do the same thing this reporter did to consolidate his power and stick it to the big boys. Jack ended up cutting off the only link he had between the past and present.