Crimes Against Language

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

By now you’ve all seen the video of the representative saying “A-men and A-women” right?

If you haven’t, you need to. Because it’s hard to believe without seeing.

Seriously, y’all. Seriously, seriously, seriously.

I can’t find it, but thee was an article somewhere that said totalitarianism (it was a dry, academic article, studying various implementations of totalitarianism) always starts with corruption of the language, so people can’t communicate and realize how absolutely insane and out of touch with truth the impose reality has become.

BTW that was the most revelatory thing about that article that (damn it) I can’t find. Totalitarianism always imposes a version of everything that has nothing to do with reality. I don’t remember if the article said it, or if it’s just my observation from reading a lot of history, but totalitarianism also slowly, slowly tilts out of true more and more, so that by the end of it, you’re living in a parody of rational life, prioritizing things that make absolutely no sense. Like, for instance, apparently this is the most important thing for science to get done, right now!

UK Company Develops Climate Change Masks for Cows

I mean we’re all stupider for incidents like this. ALL OF US.

Stupider in the sense that “this behavior is anti-survival, yo. Keeping concentrating on crazy shit like this will end civilization and eventually the human race.”

But it is what totalitarianism is made of. It is the reason for Hitler is was way more important to kill Jews than to win the war. It is why communists became more focused on thought crimes and empty gestures the less they were able to feed their population. It is why Maduro at one point was raving about Portuguese stealing hams from Venezuela, or something equally stupid. It’s stupid and insane, but it makes sense inside this bizarre reality that has nothing to do with real reality.

Look, there is a part of the human brain that gives up when it can make no sense of conditions. We’ve seen this over and over again, with societies that reach a point they become obsessed with things that make no sense or are even detrimental, like oh, all the cargo cults in history. Or the way Islam in the last 50 years has concentrated on repressing women more and more and more, because that will solve all their problems.

The problem is that when humans reach that stage, they tend to construct pretty theories that explain EVERYTHING. At least they do if you never look outside them at all, and see the evidence they’re batshit nuts.

My theory is that Marxism exists at all because of this. Because Marx’s rather stodgy mind couldn’t make sense of the Industrial revolution, and the fact the world didn’t bow down to his natural birth superiority and brilliance and preferred instead to favor those with money, who worked for it.

So he built a beautiful system with zero reference to reality, but which made him feel the warm fuzzies and valued the useless intellectuals like him. And since then, despite all disproof, it’s been tilting more and more out of contact with reality.

As each stage fails, and they risk coming in contact with reality, they start attempting to make it impossible to see the failure. The attack on the language is a long form of this. The “climate emergency” a hysterical cultish part of it. Both are reaching points where those of us outside the cult can only clap our hands over our mouths and go “Oh, dear.”

I’d say next up is sacrificing babies to the climate gods, but hey, they’re doing that already in various ways.

And that’s what terrifies me. Honestly. There aren’t many of them, but not only do they hold positions of power, achieved by their more sane ancestors, but they are also starting to tilt to the level of insanity and lack of ability to see what’s real where they’re impossible to communicate with, and impossible to call to any semblance of usefulness or even calm.

You know, I’m sure the Aztecs came up with their theory of sacrificing humans to the sun god because the climate had gotten colder or whatever. So they did what humans do and created a system that made them feel they were doing something, even though they had no such ability.

BUT the fact was they had no such ability. Which meant that little by little, their own system said “well, if it’s not working, you haven’t done enough.” And they kept tilting more and more crazy till it was a hundred thousand hearts for the sun god, or the light goes out.

I thought that “womyn” and “herstory” were already terminally stupid manifestations of linguistic ignorance and feminist cultishness. Honestly, using they for singular of insisting in “man/woman” is also bizarrely stupid. Since man in non particular cases means the race of humans (and no, it doesn’t mean we’re all male. OBVIOUSLY) when you say man/woman you’re actually implying women aren’t human. I’m fairly sure I am.

BUT the problem is not the language as such. The problem is that they’re trying to use the language to fix a problem that doesn’t exist and get a result no one sane wants.

The idea of women being able to work and achieve to the limit of their abilities is unimpeachable. The problem is that the feminists looked at women who achieved despite being blocked and who were exceptional people and therefore achieved very highly, and made a completely nuts theory that this meant women were inherently better than men, and would ALL be top achievers, if they were given a chance.

Then when chances were given and the expected results didn’t happen, they built this entire theory of how women were still somehow oppressed: lack of role models, mean math teachers, the oppression of the male gaze, emotional labor, language…. And away we went down the rabbit trail of increasingly crazy things, with each of them held up as a be all end all and violating their latest shiboleths being the equivalent of genocide.

Sacrifice more rationality to the sun god now! Or we’ll never have women being exactly the same as men! Only better! Because all women are natural geniuses if unoppressed!

And that is the same, dialed to eleven in everything.

All of twenty twenty one — listen to the science, heathen! — and the bizarre culmination of imprisoning the entire population of the western world, and making them wear a symbolic muzzle to avoid a cold-family virus with slightly higher than normal mortality for such viruses (once we shake the stupid out of the statistics) is a manifestation of how far this has gone.

We can no longer indulge them or tolerate their mild eccentricities.

That speech is ridiculous, but also chilling. It is a mark of how far detached form history, from reality, from humanity they’ve become.

And once that happens, the horrors they can come up with to force to cosplay in their insanity are limitless.

We can no longer afford to give an inch, shrug our shoulders, or pretend they’re anything but utterly, bizarrely insane.

It might be too late to save them. But we can save ourselves.

501 thoughts on “Crimes Against Language”

  2. The “Amen and Awoman” thing was just so awesomely stupid … and I thought that Hank Johnson, of “Too many Marines and Guam will tip over!” was the far frozen limit. Now this genius says, in effect, “Hold my beer…”

    1. There is no “peak silly” and, it seems, no “peak stupidity.”
      Just that eventually the disconnect from Reality (yes, I know, Mythical Creature saying this.. that’s an indication just how screwy things have become!) snaps or snaps back because there are issues that cannot be wished away – the need for food being one – though even that seems to somehow get clobbered at least for a time, with the ‘anyone outside can see it coming’ obviousness to it.

      1. Well, it *is* the only infinite resource currently known. Human stupidity. Genius has its limits, as does patience, as does compassion. But the capacity for mankind to come up with stupid sh*t? Unlimited.

    2. The best thing about the “Guam will tip over!” bit was the general’s completely deadpan “We don’t anticipate that being a problem” answer.

      1. Too bad I suspect the General was thinking something like: “They’re Marines. Their skin is waterproof, and Marines won’t let a little thing like an island tipping over to get in the way of accomplishing the mission anyway.”

      2. I’d guess that aside from themselves, one target is probably whatever fraction of womankind forms part of the rage mobs on Twitter.

    6. Titania McGrath is a parody account on Twitter run by a guy who posts as a waaaay over the edge woke woman. Last week, “she” posted a list of top ten things Titania had predicted would come true. It’s some pretty absurd stuff.

      And then there’s the Babylon Bee sub-site, Not The Bee, which posts real news items that look like they came straight from the parody section of the site.

    7. Then there is the possibility that the more egregious the stuff they can force us to put up with, the more powerful they feel.

  3. At this point, I’m mostly focusing on actual survival strategies, and teaching my kids to distinguish what’s really important. (Like maybe getting up early enough that school tomorrow isn’t going to be a fog, KIDS?)

      1. Yes, the 30% who learn to read and do math do so in SPITE of the ‘education’ not because of it.

        1. We homeschooled, but it was pretty much unschooling to the max. Though we did make a special effort to teach math. And then sent them to the community college at 15 or so. It’s pretty clear that just living teaches people most of what they need to know. So yeah, schools in many cases do more preventing of learning than facilitating.

          1. It turns out that most adults are pretty good at teaching most kids. You’d expect that, since the children whose parents didn’t do a good job of teaching them probably wouldn’t have many kids of their own. That’s the main reason why teacher pay is so low, the law of supply and demand is real.

            1. Teacher pay might be low, but some of them get a pretty nice retirement. My sister and BIL live verrrrry comfortably on their teaching pensions.

              1. A lot of people overlook non-monetary compensation. With most jobs comparing salaries alone is apples-to-oranges.

                1. THIS. I couldn’t afford the health insurance my company offers and mostly pays for as an individual.

                  1. THIS. I couldn’t afford the health insurance my company offers and mostly pays for as an individual.

                    –
                    Thank God hubby had family insurance, no monthly copay on premium. I mostly declined my employer insurance (one even paid me a part of what they’d had to pay). But the last employer didn’t have that option. I had double coverage. Employer paid my insurance 100%, no monthly copay (if that had been a requirement then they would have legally required to allow me to decline it). But they only paid half of the monthly premium for spouse, and each child enrolled, with no bundled family option pass a certain number. We passed on the spouse and child coverage. The “half” that was paid? $350/person per month. And the insurance itself had horrible deductible, co-pay, and out of pocket totals, before it kicked in. That was 5 years ago. It hasn’t decreased.

                    1. The major company I work for basically issues each employee so much “benefit money” per year depending on employee family (all configurations) size (employee, spouse, partner, etc., kids of whatever provenance, no extended family). Call it $5000. Each employee picks from the benefit menu (health insurance, dental, long-term-care, pet, legal services, vision, HSA, etc.) which has a dollar value of how much it costs the company. If your choices come to over $5000, you pay the difference. Otherwise, you pocket the extra for that year as salary.

                    2. Nice! Until I calculated out the co-pay required for the “self insured large international company” (at least it was family coverage), and the actual insurance needed for the small company I last worked for. Don’t remember what I got extra when I worked for the midsize. Heck even our family retiree insurance through the union (which is inexpensive by any measurement) is over $5k/year (unless it is $5k/month … the YEA!), without dental or standard eye coverage. The only reason we still have that, because hubby is on medicare so his portion is medicare plus, is because I don’t hit the magic medicare required/allowed until October. Our net gain will be close to $350/month. Note the chances TPTB rats lower the medicare age allowed to 60 by the end of 2021, is zip to none.

                  2. I bet you that you could, if the health insurance market were individual-oriented rather than company oriented. It would also help people realize that they don’t need insurance for things like routine checkups and braces, they need to budget for them.

                    1. Seriously, the big issue is for instance, we’re paying for three policies right now that cover sex change operations and abortions. Why do we need those for two males and a no longer able to conceive female?
                      Oh, what they told me was “What if your son gets a girl pregnant?” BUT every girl is mandated to be covered for this too…. SO?
                      (Also we’re Catholics. Not the best Catholics in the world, but abortion is RIGHT OUT.)

                    2. Yeah, I’d rather not pay for fertility treatments and contraceptives. I have a pretty reliable and cheap method of birth control. Plus, my dentist is no longer in my insurer’s network, so I’ve been billed the last couple of visits (making that part of my insurance a waste).

                      I’d much rather pay fee for service out of my HSA for most things and only use insurance for rare events beyond my liquid assets.

                    3. Budget for them??? You’re talking about exercising White Privilege! People on Welfare don’t get to budget for s[quat] – that’s “accumulation of wealth” and cause for suspensioi of benefits.
                      ~

                    4. I know that it’s a radical idea to treat grown humans as adults, but I think it will work out OK in the end.

    3. Perzackly. There’s a part of my brain that hasn’t given up so much as it has begun revising its estimate of how well the hogs are going to eat, some day fairly soon. Maybe it’s given up on peaceful coexistence. :-p

    4. Point deer, make horse.
      At that point, recognizing reality is not a survival trait.

      I’ll damn Marx with the best of them, but he’s not the only progenerator of this pile of suck. There’s plenty of blame to go around, to Robespierre and Dayton, to Rousseau, to Lenin, to the Frankfort School, and most importantly I think, to Mao.
      While Russia had a truly breathtaking history of totalitarian oppression to draw from, it’s a pale shadow of China’s
      For all of Mao’s oppression of “the four olds”, it was in keeping with the practices of Chinese emperors before him.

      Confucius said that violent uprisings that removed the mandate of heaven from the existent system were largely driven by the rectification of language.
      Given the number of emporers who were enthusiastic about burning books (and murdering scholars), the powers that were clearly agreed with the assessment. (Not to mention the famous anecdote I referenced at the beginning of this disjointed ramble.)

      The SDS and the other ’60s radicals loved Mao with an unholy fervor. IIRC, there’s even a picture of Hillary proudly holding a copy of the “little red book”.
      Heck, look at all the card-carrying Trotskyists who became such a major part of the “Neocon” Movement in the aftermath. Some might have actually turned their back on communism, but most just seemed to know that they were at the top of the purge list.

        1. And they are fully engaged in rolling out Mao’s Cultural Revolution Redux to be followed by, if they get their way, the Great Leap Forward Redux (which is essentially what the Davos “Great Reset” is).

            1. Not really a distinction between the two as far as the threat they represent. Daleks simply use fewer words, but they are saying the same thing.

              1. On the other hand, the Daleks are pretty clear about their purpose, and don’t generally try to wrap it up in pretty words that sound benevolent if you’re not paying attention.

                I mean, other than for hard leftists and their general lack of cognitive ability it’s pretty obvious what’s meant by “EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!”.

                (I haven’t and don’t watch Dr. Who, for the record, but I’m familiar in general with the Daleks.)

      1. This is the bluegrass you want for flop sweat. You do have to settle for guitar and mandolin rather than banjo though.

        1. Hmmm … this is the first version of it I heard, and I think there may be banjo in there …

          recorded circa 1972, shortly after Matthews left Fairport Convention.
          ~

          1. Yeah, but the does it wrong. 🙂 Jim and Jesse first recorded it in ’67, I’m not sure but I think they wrote it.

            1. AllMusic[DOT]com credits Jim Fagan as author of the Plainsong version. Their credits for him indicate the song was indeed recorded by Jim & Jesse in 1967. The version you put up credits the song to “Jim and Jesse McReynolds” identified at AllMusic as a brother act. So the implication is that Jim & Jesse did not write the song but were indeed first to record it.

              The song may also be familiar to Grateful Dead fans as covered by the Jerry Garcia affiliated band New Riders of the Purple Sage.
              ~

  6. Maybe it’s time for us to write a new Constitution. Start with the one we’ve got, which is about 95% good, but take out the language authorizing slavery. Fix the Supreme Court at 9 justices, so that stacking the court would require a Constitutional amendment. Strengthen the Second Amendment! Expand the Third Amendment to prohibit the government from forcibly quartering ANYBODY in private property, not just soldiers. Make a clear distinction between duly enacted LAWS, and arbitrarily imposed bureaucratic RULES, and provide a recourse for people to have insane rules struck down.

    And change that bit about ‘a more Perfect Union’ to something like ‘a Fair and Functional Union’ because we can see all around us what an obsession with making society Perfect leads to.

    WE the Sane People of the United States Of America…

    The right of every Free Citizen to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

    1. The problem is that the process of creating Constitution 2.0 would be hijacked by Woko Haram and you’d end up as one nation under government, with liberty for none.

      1. Aye and alas.

        Though I do like the version of the Second Amendment in Road to Damascus (I think it was) that pretty much said: President, Congress, Courts, and anyone else can ALL shove it if they even think of trying to tamper with things.

        1. I think that one has the colony world’s arms amendment language of “The Right of any and all people to keep and bear arms of any type shall not be infringed, ever. No, really. We’re not kidding at all.”

          And the politicians do it anyway.

          1. I’m wondering if it would be better if the right to vote was tied to being able to demonstrate basic marksmanship proficiency in one or more of the current fielded combat rifles of the day.

              1. EXCEPT lack of hand eye coordination doesn’t mean inability to ponder and vote on issues.
                I mean, until I fixed the double vision, my shooting was a mess.

                1. Hence my basic requirement proposal, pulled the trigger on a .22 while pointing it at a 10 yd target. Don’t have to hit it, but if a person won’t pull the trigger, should they vote?

                  Ok, it’s tongue in cheek. The full ABCs of voting list is
                  Aim and fire .22 at target
                  Butcher a chicken
                  Check the ballot boxes in English, in person, all by yourself

                2. Do we include artillery field pieces among the currently fielded combat arms (rifles needlessly excludes smooth bore pieces, methinks.)

                  Of course, that discriminates against the numerodyslexic.

                  Dammit, this is a Revolution! We’re going to have to discriminate against somebody!
                  ~

                  1. I’m okay with the revolution. It’s the requirements for suffrage after that bother me.
                    And to quote my mom who got the vote when she was 45 (I THINK) “The vote? I was never disenfranchised. Any woman worth her salt can discuss politics in such a way that her men-folk ALL vote her way. I’ve always had several votes.”

                    2. Like in ‘A Civil Campaign’ after Miles finishes reading Alys Vorpatril’s letter about the Vor-lady network’s influence on the votes of nearly a dozen Counts.

                      “Richars sat right there, and told me Lady Alys doesn’t have a vote on the council.”

              2. Was thinking more along the lines that to register to vote, you had to demonstrate the equivalent of a passing grade for a low level infantry marksmanship test, but that could work too…

                1. I’ve often admired the idea of service guarantees citizenship. You sacrifice something for your country, and anyone can do that. No petty sacrifices, no substitutions. And no income taxes.

                  1. There is value in that too, though I’ve become leary of requiring gifting the state things. Also, a state does not always need a large army.

                    This is more of the order of ensuring that if you wish to exercise one political power, you are also capable of exercising the other.

                    Also, the lower barrier to entry would encourage a larger swath of the population to be both armed and capable. I doubt this would be a thing for the US, but smaller states would likely find it valuable to be able to call upon the entire citizenry to deter other states getting opportunistic.

                    1. I do not mean to say that “service” means only military service- even though the military has specializations that mostly mirror the civvies.

                      And I quite distrust government bureaus and the kind of person that makes that sort of thing their life. Power corrupts. Best it be taken in smaller doses, and spread out.

                      Service guaranteeing citizenship would necessitate a *smaller* governing body, in my opinion. And answerable to what was discussed here not too long passed- the people themselves.

                      Can’t say I’m so wise as to craft something like the Constitution and Amendments on my own, no. But the fact of having skin in the game is an important one. You value things you have paid for far more than the ones merely given to you as free gifts.

                  2. Occurs to me that various local, state, and national bureaucracies, such few as are necessary, could be manned by folks doing their national service. Might prevent entrenchment and the Iron Law, anyway.

            2. Set the ballot up at 50 yards, and you vote by shooting out the little targets.

              “You meant to vote for the Democrat? Too bad, you hit the Republican’s target. Practice more.”

        3. Eh, not really. “Haram” is Arabic for “forbidden” – “boko haram” means “books are forbidden”, meaning books other than the Koran. So “woko haram” would be “wokeness is forbidden”. And the degenerate form of Marxism that calls itself “woke” doesn’t want itself forbidden…

        1. Speaking of the Revolutionary War, it looks the Brits are in need of their own, after both Scotland and England declared “full lockdowns today” with the English one being “indefinite” in the classic model of Castro, Chavez, Maduro, etc. Of course since their right to bear arms was taken away from them many years ago, their throwing off the shackles of tyranny will be that much tougher.

      4. I’d suspect this is the reason neither party has put forth the possibility of amending the Constitution. Leave aside the difficulty of getting 2/3rds of the states on-board OR 2/3rds of BOTH the House and Senate. Once the Constitution is opened up for amending, the crazies are going to come out of the woodwork (on both sides) pushing to get their hobby-horse du jour amended into / out of the Constitution.

        Neither party wants to go down that road.

        1. It’s actually not quite that easy. A constitutional amendment requires either 2/3rds vote in both the House and Senate, or presentation by a Constitutional Amending Convention called by 2/3rds of the state legislatures (the votes in such a Convention are not specified to require 2/3rds majorities). Then any successfully proposed amendments must be ratified by 3/4ths of the state legislatures to go into effect.

          1. Oh, the ratification can be by state ratification conventions rather than state legislatures if Congress decrees that to be the ratification process for a particular proposed amendment. But it still requires 3/4ths of the states to agree.

            Oh, one more caveat. No state may be deprived of its equal sufferage in the Senate without its consent, by an amendment to the Constitution.

            1. But territories do not have Senators, so would de-Stating back to territorial status be kosher, or does that run afoul of the above?

              1. I’m petty sure it wouldn’t fly. Once a state, always a state. According to this clause a state could consent to becoming not a state, but I think there was a little contretemps about 160 years ago over that even…

                1. The Previous Unpleasantness featured sovereign states that wanted to stay sovereign states, just outside the Union. Though there is still discussion on the specific legal impact of the result (past “we won – you can’t leave”), the bottom line seems to be a state cannot voluntarily leave the Union without the consent of Congress.

                  From the annexations of Texas and Hawaii via a simple majority in both houses, I’d argue the same simple majority could approve un-stating back to a territory, though likely requiring the consent of the state’s legislatures.

                  This is why I will have to wait until The Gloriously Golden And Totally Not Plague Ridden Gavin’s Bear Flag Peoples Republic Where From Whence There Is Certainly No Exodus goes bankrupt and enters Federal receivership for reterritorializing the Golden State.

                  1. Now that I think about it a case could be made that “and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate” implies that with a state’s consent, it could be deprived of equal suffrage, in essence seceding from the union. This of course says nothing about its people’s representation in the House, or it’s standing to select presidential electors (although presumably it would get 2 fewer electors that states retaining their Senate suffrage). But I’m sure some penumbras and emanations could be squinted up to make this phrase allow complete secession.

                    1. Main legal weakness: While citizens of a reterritorialized ex-state would retain US citizenship, since territories do not participate in the electoral college one argument would be reterritorialization disenfranchises those citizens of that ex-state. Given modern US court history I’d expect this would be a winning argument, even if such a case was brought by the losing minority of state citizens after the majority approves.

      1. Require judicial interpretation of ALL Constitutional language to be done according to the original public meaning of the text being interpreted. Do not let the meaning “evolve” as the progressives decide. And declare “stare decisis” invalid, requiring all decisions to be done from first principles, not from prior precedent.

        1. Instead of being appointed for life, make sitting on the supreme court rotate through the entire Court of Appeals roster on a three-year term by random assignment, with three new ones coming in each year. That way the blocks won’t be forever, and the whole political theater of appointment hearings goes away.

          1. Oh, and outlaw all district-court-national-scope orders so judges can only write orders in their own jurisdiction. If you want an order to stop all left-handed-monkey-wrenching by the executive branch nationwide, you have to convince a Supreme to write it.

            1. It would take an Amendment (and some backwater jenny-ass in a wig would still rule the passage of such an Amendment “Unconthtituthional!*”), but this needs to happen yesterday. I’m convinced that such asininity is the matured fruit of the bad logic in Marbury v. Madison that gave us judiciary supremacy under the label of “Judicial review.”

              Such an explicit correlation of court jurisdiction to court authority wasn’t included in the Constitution because it would have made no more sense to the Founders to do so than to end their prayers with “Awoman.”

              *pronounced “Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

        2. “… declare “stare decisis” invalid, requiring all decisions to be done from first principles, not from prior precedent.”

          Timely support for this, from Edmund Burke (via Ed Whelan, writing at NRO’s Bench Memos blog):

          On Edmund Burke and Judicial Adherence to Precedent
          In a rich and interesting essay in the new issue of National Affairs, Jeremy Rozansky disputes “modern legal scholars,” such as David Strauss and Cass Sunstein, who “routinely look to [Edmund] Burke as a kind of theorist of precedent—a conservative who prefers stare decisis to original meaning.” According to Rozansky, that “conventional view”—also recently embraced by Chief Justice Roberts—confuses Burke’s view of statesmanship with his view of judging.

          By Rozansky’s account, a “basic mistake the conventional view of Burkean jurisprudence makes is to think of judicial precedent as law” rather only as evidence of what the law is. (The same mistake is routinely made by those who refer to Supreme Court decisions as “constitutional law”—a bad practice reinforced by decades of legal miseducation.) Burke “believed a precedent should be followed only if it can prove itself to be good evidence of the law” (my emphasis), and he “is therefore even less friendly to precedent as such than is Justice Thomas.”

          Burkean jurisprudence allows a Supreme Court justice to consider “a whole host of prudential factors” in deciding whether to grant review of a case. But “[w]hen the question of overruling is squarely presented to the Court, Burke offers the justices no justification for upholding an erroneous precedent.”
          ~

    3. Congress shall pass no bill which can not be read and understood by a person of ordinary literacy and intelligence in one hour.

        1. Congresscritters can take as long as they need to read it, but NO MORE 5,600 page doorstoppers written by lobbyists, special interests and ‘think tanks’ funded by our enemies in foreign countries. They have to break it up into much smaller bites. NO MORE holding one important piece of a bill hostage for 58 tons of pork.

          I’m still a bit on the fence about giving the President itemized-veto power. Might be a good idea, to prevent provisions that can’t stand on their own from being crammed into bills with otherwise wide appeal, but there is significant potential for abuse.
          ———————————
          Man does not live by bread alone — but he won’t live long without it.

          2. That is easy. One item per bill. Period.

            No money, ever, going to another country. No matter what.

            3. The “one issue” thing gets abused by deciding that “replace X with Y” is two issues, and even qualifiers are different issues.

              Say, “no taxation without representation” would be two issues, one is taxes teh other is defining representation.

            4. The bill must be read, by a human, in its entirety before every vote on the bill. Any successful amendment means that the entire bill must be re-read from the beginning.

              1. I wish to amend that:

                The bill must be read, by a human the Speaker of the House, in its entirety before every vote on the bill. Any successful amendment means that the entire bill must be re-read from the beginning.

                It is a debatable assertion whether the Speaker is a human, but as the Speaker has the power to keep bills from coming up for a vote …
                ~

                1. I’ve had a similar thoughts for several years myself, but didn’t think to add the wonderful stipulation that amendments to the bill require re-reading the entire thing.

                  The bill must be read, out loud, by the bill’s sponsor(s), to the assembled House/Senate in its entirety before it can be voted on. Representatives who want to vote on the bill must be present for at least 90% of the reading- attendance will be taken. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to enforce awake and paying attention as well as present before voting requirement- maybe a comprehension test?

          3. Make a rule that any bill passed by congress which is signed into law must be eaten by each congressman within a set time period.

            Rice paper is fine, but if they pass it they have to eat it.

            And then pass it again, so to speak.

          4. Perhaps import one procedure from Canada. Each bill must be read in its entirety in Congress three times before being passed. If you want your 5k page door-stopper fine, but you have to stand and read it in public three times.

            1. Three times by each sponsor.

              EACH reading to be accomplished without interruption. No recess overnight, no recess for meals. No recess for snacks. Bathroom breaks? Depends.
              ~

              1. And no crud about “deemed” or otherwise assuming things. IMO the Senate procedure took a big hit when they changed filibuster rules so that the speaker didn’t have to actually be actively speaking for more than an hour (IIRC).

                (Not as big a hit as the one from the 17th Amendment, though, and probably behind Reid invoking the Nuclear Option regarding Senate Rule 22, changing Cloture from 60 to 51 votes required.)

              2. (Budget for Depends to come out of wearers’ respective discretionary income. If you want to buy the cheap Maker’s-Mark brand in bulk from Sam’s Club instead, just don’t piddle on the antique leather seats.)

      2. One of the problems with this requirement is that much of the language in bills is of the “section D of HR 13495, sub-section IV, paragraph 9, clause 3, shall be amended to read, “and your little dog, too.”

        Comprehending such language – especially if the referenced clause is similarly altering extant regulation, to lead deep into bunny trails unplumbed.
        ~

      3. Congress shall pass no bill covering more than one subject. No bill shall be more than five pages long, nor may it disburse funding to more than one target.

    4. Remove the “necessary and proper” clause, for that has been the tiny loophole through which vast convoys of bad legislation have passed.

      Also: “The Commerce Clause, we really mean it this time.”

      1. Ah, the Commerce Clause, the elastic waistband of the Constitution that allows it to pretend it hasn’t changed pants sizes …

    5. At some pointt we may just have to say, “Congress shall make no Law and neither shall anyone else.”

    6. “And change that bit about ‘a more Perfect Union’ to something like ‘a Fair and Functional Union’ because we can see all around us what an obsession with making society Perfect leads to.”

      And there’s no way they could abuse “Fair” to corrupt the document’s intent!
      ~

    7. I actually did just that after the election, I posted it to the Hoyt’s Huns group on MeWe. I also included the Hamilton Plan for the Electoral College (each state is split into districts that send vote for 1 elector), eliminated birthright citizenship, barred the federal government from taxing anyone but the states in proportion to population, and implemented a “supervoter” who get two votes for President and are the only ones to vote for Senators.

    8. “Maybe it’s time for us to write a new Constitution.”

      The change, it had to come
      We knew it all along
      We were liberated from the fold, that’s all
      And the world looks just the same
      And history ain’t changed
      ‘Cause the banners, they are flown in the last war

      I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
      Take a bow for the new revolution
      Smile and grin at the change all around
      Pick up my guitar and play
      Just like yesterday
      Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
      We don’t get fooled again
      No, no!
      ~

  7. These people don’t understand what is meant. Mandating their linguistic misunderstandings (pardon my sexism for using this word) on the rest of us betrays a very messed-up mentality. It’s a mystery how they manage to get through life. Sarah is correct that this is an omen of worse things to come.

    1. A-hem. Your use of the term “misunderstanding” is archaic and sexist. In future please to be using “msunderstanding.”

      N.B.: it is acknowledged that “msunderstanding” is ableist, discriminating against those unable (or unwilling) to stand, The Committee on Terminology and the Committee on Diversity have not, as yet, resolved their dispute over jurisdiction in this ruling and therefore we expect a few additional decades will pass before a correct term can be recognized.
      ~

      2. No, there will be different terms referring to substantially the same thing, which will be deemed the correct term on alternate weeks, the term out of favor being considered a microaggression during those weeks.

  8. “Crimes Against Language”?

    Perhaps, but some of the self-appointed “Language Police” can be worse. 😦

      1. “If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”

      2. And Dante really did leave a special place in Hell for the corrupters of lnguage. They spend eternity in a big puddle of…manure.

        1. Well, in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s version of Inferno, dishonest salescritters were confined in a pit and literal bullshit poured out of their mouths whenever they talked. They had to keep quiet or wind up buried in it.

  9. I just hope the feller what said “Amen” (or was it “Aman”) and “Awoman” is asexual. We don’t need more of that. Yes, I know, we’ll get anyway. It’s enough to make a creature seriously consider that BobtheRegistered’s ideas regarding marijuana (etc.) use might be a Good Start.

    And Minnesota is if not there yet, edging ever closer to allowing recreational marijuana. I foresee even more no-shows and utter incompetents and incompetence in the workplace if/when it happens.

    1. Note for the new folks: These ideas include civic and public health cases for requiring the execution of pot smokers.

      This would probably involve killings on such scale that any conservative would want to be cautious about, if they could not avoid it entirely.

      I am not at all in favor of legalization.

      I haven’t been pushing this more now, despite the opportunity, because I know that everyone is a little bit nuts right now. Since people are not in their right minds, persuading them would not be a valid test of the sanity of these ideas.

        1. Bob: Sometimes the world is crazy. But the middle of the world’s psychotic break is not the time to be trying to convince the world to do something drastic.

          Also Bob: Drastic proposals suspending habeas corpus, and arresting federal judges, stage officials, and maybe even members of the legislature. To possibly be followed by drumhead courts martial and firing squads.

          Gripping hand Bob: Bob can work out that Bob is not full of good advice right now. Bob does not need to come up with answers now, in advance, that he theoretically understands. Preference cascade could still resort in a crowd sourced non-drastic theoretically unforeseeable solution.

          But maybe the moties had the right idea on interpersonal conflict.

          Cartago delenda est.

      2. “You want to use drugs recreationally? I’ll agree that it’s your right. However, you need to hand in your driver’s license, CDL, pilot’s license, master’s certificate, Professional Engineer certificate, M.D., J.D., resign from public office, and give up your right to vote, since you will be de facto of unsound mind and not to be trusted with adult affairs. And you’re a ward of the state, not a free citizen.

        Plenty of them would take the deal without hesitation, I bet.

        2. That much, at least, might possibly be broadly considered defensible.

          But you have practical issues of scaling if many take you up on the offer.

          On the order of “how the eff do you care for that many people?” and “how the eff do you reliably keep these people from being able to harm others?”

          Where the matter of my own insanity comes into play is proceeding directly to cutting the Gordian knot with “Caedete Eos”.

          Which is more of a problem when a) people are starting to get desperate for an answer to other problems b) my instinct is telling me there are a number of issues all part of the same Gordian knot.

          The right thing to do is to calm the h hockeysticks down, and figure out the limits of the coupling.

          We don’t need to kill all the druggies in the next two hours, and stuff like ‘systemic racism’ and ‘professional discrimination against women’ is likewise something we can leave alone, while we give waiting on the desperately urgent problems a chance.

          1. The Sainted Bob introduced me to the concept of “Coventry” many decades ago. But I couldn’t figure out a place that I disliked the people enough to dispossess them of their patrimony to accomodate the problem people.

            Then the (not so Sainted) John Ringo introduced me to the Mohinga. I don’t think there would be dispossession happening there. Although the rightful inhabitants might be a bit miffed if we ever stopped sending them such grand entertainment.

            1. That national park up in Alaska that they don’t want to let us drill for oil in.

        1. That’s possible dear Hostess. He certainly wasn’t referencing a Hebrew/Aramaic interjection.

        2. Whoever is synthesizing the evidence to frame that Nashville winnesplodo guy is TELLING THE TRUTH!

            1. The Truth Is Out There.

              Though I always wonder if the X-Files writers missed the boat: What if there’s a government agency specifically tasked with adding escalating nutjobbiness to any public disclosure that gets close to the truth in order to discredit everything in plain sight?

              2. It has always been easier to obfuscate than refute. Always. This being so, do you honestly expect it has not been utilized in fact, if not admitted to? Heck, there were ancient Greeks doing this.

                It may or may not be an official bureau. But it *is* a recognized tactic that produces results. Whether it is official doctrine or not, it is being done. Count on that.

              3. John Ringo played with the Monster Control Bureau in Monster Hunter:Sinners by having the New Orleans chief officer decide since everyone in N’Awlins believes in the supernatural anyway, exaggerate so much no non-local will believe it.

                1. Or as the MCB regional head put it, lie by telling the truth badly.

                  (Just finished that trilogy the other day, actually.)

    4. And since Oregon’s made recreational dope legal (more than marijuana, with heavier stuff now warranting a slap on the wrist), auto insurance rates have gone up. /begin_sarc Unexpectedly! /end_sarc
      Protip: Medical marijuana is merely the first part of the THC two-step. Pass it, and recreational MJ use comes up sooner or later.

      Several decades ago, Car and Driver did two articles on DUII. The first was alcohol, with the takeaway that legally drunk made a lot of their testers* people violently ill. The second, marijuana. The conclusion was along the lines that it didn’t prevent you from driving well, but you tended not to care.

      (*) Apparently drawn from a group of light drinkers. Whether this is applicable to the population at large is debatable. Wasn’t applicable to me at the time…

      1. More correct to say ‘pass’ it. There is no longer reason to think that those elections were honest, or that marijauna criminality is entirely unrelated to Democrat strategy.

        Doesn’t mean I’m correct on policy to remedy.

        I’m afraid I’m having a moment of blackpill/despair.

        It is feeling like a lot of the reasons not to do the more extreme things are gone.

        Might just be a sinus headache, a need to eat, or a need to get some productive work done.

        1. I know at least some people bought into medical marijuana.Supposedly, our county did. Really? I don’t know. ($SPOUSE did. I didn’t.) Once that was in place, the infrastructure for “legalized” (by hook, crook, or Dominion) had plenty of in$entive to make sure that recreational dope was put in place.

          1. I have one response to the advocates of “medical” marijuana. “Nicotine is a very useful drug in many treatments. But should your doctor prescribe a carton of Marlboros for what ails you?”

            1. That would be the same crowd who are opposed to vaping without smoke while firing up a fat one……

          2. Yup. Now they are going bankrupt as prices have cratered and it is more expensive to sell legally than illegally. Couldn’t happen to more deserving people.

    5. Representative Cleaver is not asexual but is rather one of the Wokestrati and thus is characterizable as being “All prick and no balls.”

      N.B. – I cannot, in good faith, claim credit for that deconstruction; I have lifted it from To Serve Them All My Days, an R.F. Delderfield novel set in an English boarding school during the period between World Wars I and II, in which a new and unloved headmaster, a Mr. Alcock, acquires the nickname “Noble” from the boys, a derivation for which I presume is readily determinable with but little thought. The BBC did a sic-part adaptation back i the Eighties; both the adaptation and the book are well recommended for devotees of “Mr. Chips” type tales.
      ~

      1. It made it over here under the “Masterpiece Theater” imprint and is available from Amazon as a DVD set.

    7. Actually the Democratic Party representative is like the rest of his party, simply AMORON.

  10. I agree with the general premise, but this seems more like a “point and laugh” moment. On a somewhat related note, I recently stumbled upon the best translation of “hallelujah”: Yeehaw! It’s certainly easier to spell.
    Now I need to look up what’s-his-name who is forgotten except for the line “Even the gods look upon human stupidity and despair”… Friedrich Schiller and the quote is “Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.”

  11. I’ll say Awoman to that. Can I get an Awoman here?

    But seriously, I consider the lack of lightning bolts evidence for the non-existance of God.

    Also there is teh leaked four-minutes of pieced-together audio from an hour-long conversation that apparently means drumph is committing treason and sedition by asking for an investigation.

    Two days ago I overheard people talking about how great it was that they stopped Bunker-boy from repealing 230 “because drumph was trying to take over the media.”

    “Dumper -Trumper is disenfranchising 80-million legit voters”

    “Those MAGAs need to recognize reality”

    And here I am, wondering how they can say that and not burst into flames, or at least their tongues rot and fall out.

    Shouldn’t the curse of babel start working right about now? Waiting to hear them starting in about the horses of industry.

    “The madrigore of verjuice must be talthibianised!”

        2. Too many righteous men. What was it Abraham negotiated for, ten?

          Clearly there are still ten in DC.

          Please, all street preachers, take your flocks and exit post haste. (Did I put the ‘e’ on the right word? I think I did.) That should take care of it.

      2. God does like to indulge in irony. I read Spider Robinson’s story “God is an Iron” several years before I had first-hand experience with His ironical nature. Yes, he is and does.

    3. It definitely works as evidence against a God that smacks you for being a twit, and forces you to “freely choose” what he/she/it wants.

      1. Well, I sometimes get the feeling that God is looking down, shaking his head slightly, and murmuring, “I explained what they need to do, and gave them free will. If they insist on screwing it up over and over, even though I keep taking them back when they repent, there’s really nothing else to be done.”

        1. Most parents have had times where they sit there, watching the kid do something stupid, and go: “The rules didn’t change. The situation didn’t change. They did this before. It didn’t go well. What else can I possibly do?”

          My dear half elf informs me that I hve to remember the kids have free will, too….. (and in bulk quantities)

          1. The little tykes are also heir to the Fall too. Don’t think so? I remember my elder daughter at 2+ had found the zinc based diaper rash ointment and had smeared it on her face. My wife and I came in to find her in that state with our orange tom cat Spike sitting nearby looking bemused/concerned. My wife asked her “Did you put the cream on your face?”. She replied “No Spike do it”and pointed at the cat. The accused’s response was to stand up, flick his tail and stalk out in high dudgeon (Tail flick being fairly close to being flipped the bird in cat as far as I can tell). I then asked “Did Spike really do that?”, she replied “No I did but you left it out”. That an innocent 2 year old’s first response is to blame someone else and then to blame the questioner is oddly like Adam’s response in the garden of Eden. And yes it was EXTREMELY hard to keep a straight face through all this…I will note that she has managed to keep out of major trouble in the 20+ intervening years 🙂 .

            1. Or not supplying information if not asked a direct question. At age 7 my brother fell while skiing. Told my dad and ski patrol that it was broken, but leg was straight, ski patrol couldn’t feel a break. But they put a splint on and sledded him down the hill just to be certain. Get to the clinic, brother is flying around in a wheel chair with leg straight out in front of him, still insisting it’s broken. Docs say doesn’t look broken, but we’ll x-ray just to be sure. X-ray shows *nasty* break with bone *split* from ankle to knee. My dad looks at brother. “How did you know it was broken?” “I heard it break.” “Why didn’t you tell us that?” “Nobody asked.”

            2. We had mirror image, identical twin sons a “few” decades ago. Some of their first sentences were: “Him doode it.” Pointing to his brother, the convenient scapegoat who looked like him in the mirror. So “learning” who to blame, seems a most basic human characteristic. It is “his” fault, not mine.

              I see the story of the garden as an attempt to get God off the hook. To answer the hardest theologic question: “How can a good god allow evil?” The story says: It isn’t God’s fault that there is evil. It is Adam’s fault. Or the snakes. Or Eve. As a “good” Calvinist, I hold God to a very high standard. He knew what was going to happen. He did not stop it. He is responsible.

              So all this is intentional on God’s part. He allows us to do awful things, in order to be free to come to Him. It is only when you are free to go, that you are free to come. Love requires freedom. Freedom is dangerous. The greatest paradox is that both predestination and free will are both 100% true, at the same time. God is fully in charge, yet everything we do is of cosmic significance. This means we can’t assume God will pull our chestnuts from the fire, we are responsible.

              My prayer for this year is that we will choose the least awful alternative. Just remember where Samson ends up. Is Trump’s task to pull down the temple? Who will die in the crash? Asked optimistically.

              1. Presbypoet my own opinion is that what we have with free will and predestination is vaguely analogous to the wave and particle Models of light. From certain observer states each can be true as a model. But theologians on the whole have made a mistake of viewing their particular model as reality essentially mistaking the map for the terrain. I suspect we can’t get to the privileged observer state that shows the whole thing as one has to be outside time and reality to do that and there is only one entity (though in three parts) that can do that. Of course I could be (and probably am) absolutely wrog making the same kind of mistake based on my own observational state.

                1. Quantum Mechanics is very helpful in understanding theology. Both are based on paradox.That electron going thru the slit is 100% particle and 100% wave, We can only see it as one or the other, but it only works if it is 100% of both. Jesus hypostatic union, 100% God, 100% man. It only works if HE is 100% of both. This is the strange message of Christmas. God became a baby, fully human…yet…?

                  I have collected paradoxes for the past quarter century. The more you understand a paradox, the less you understand it (an important paradox). Easy to say the electron is both, without understanding. The more you understand the implications, the more your brain hurts.
                  One of my hobbies is to contemplate multiple dimensions of space and time. By stretching my mind to dangerous levels, 5 dimensions of space and three of time are possible. The problem is that our entire 4 dimension universe is a single point in comparison.

                  So they are more than vaguely analogous, they are both paradoxic. So the same tool used to understand paradox is helpful. Just remember, we have now proved we do not know what 95% of the universe is made from. (Not a paradox).

                  1. Sequentiality of Time being only an illusion in a Simultaneously occurring universe, the entire question is irrelevant.
                    ~

            3. Our boy put a miniature train wheel up his nose when he was 3. (I shouldn’t have given him that die-cast train). When I asked, “Son, why did you put the train wheel up your nose?” He replied, “Because I wanted to.”
              I muttered, “Can’t argue with that,” and it was off to the emergency room.

                1. My brother, who BTW was the GOOD child, somehow managed to put half of mom’s pearl string up his nose at 3.
                  Because of this, ten years later mom was paranoid about my putting things up my nose.
                  One of my VERY first memories is thinking “BUT why would I want to put anything up my nose?”

                  1. My son put a pebble up his nose while on daycare playground. They couldn’t get a hold of me, *early cell phone days. I was out of town for work (day trip, actually on the road), dad was local but since he got moved around meant his office had to send someone out to the main site (after this incident, we made sure mom, dad, and daycare had hubbies work site number), grandma was at work, ended calling grandpa. By the time my work got a hold of me, dad had met grandpa at the urgent care facility. I rescheduled and headed home.

                    * Hwy 126 between Eugene and Mapleton/Florence isn’t known for it’s cell coverage even now. This was 1992 when he pullet this stunt. Naturally his response to “why?” was “because it fit”. Toddler logic.

                    1. Oh, yeah – at a very early age (about three, I think) my mother commanded, “Don’t put the pyracantha berries in your mouth!” So, my younger brother stuffed them up his nose, instead…

    4. Fellow I knew said he had issues in an economics class as the professor kept talking about racehorses. It was more than a week before he realized it was an accent issue and the word was really ‘resources’.

      1. Had a grad school prof from Boston. He kept talking about Congressional “mock up” sessions. Grad school in American politics and I had never heard of such a thing before. Took a couple of three-hour classes before I figured out he was talking about MARK up sessions.

        1. ROFL.
          I didn’t go into that. People are straight up not being taught the language.
          Things I’ve found reading indie books regularly….
          She was the bell of the ball. Okay, maybe typo, but probably not, because…. She dawned her dress….
          Oh, dear.

            1. I think that’s part of the issue, you know? They’ve heard the word, or even read it, but didn’t pay attention to the spelling.
              And now they think “dawned” like in the morning. Makes sense.
              Bell, well, people look at bells when they ring. Makes sense.
              Unfortunately I don’t remember the others, but I keep running into these in books written by young authors, and I go “Oh, I see how you got there…. but no.”
              At least the idiots in my class made a better class or error.
              When confronted with a question about the bellicose art of the 17th century in history, a friend who was none too bright and had just come from English class, thought he might have missed a unit on bells int he 17th century. So she made it up. Pages and pages on the manufacturing of bells, including the foundry art of the time. (Okay, she WAS in the gifted class, so she knew tons of things. She was just….. odd. She ended up paying for college (she didn’t qualify for free state college) by using her language skills to work for an escort service for visiting foreign dignitaries. For all I know she’s now in the diplomatic corps.
              One thing the gifted (and truly gifted, the selection was brutal) class taught me is that I’m not sure what IQ means, but it doesn’t mean good life choices, much less ability to command society. On the contrary.

              3. I think part of it is because people don’t read anymore. Reading gives you a chance to see actually see spelling and various phrases printed out. And reading older fiction is a vocabulary goldmine.

                1. I completely agree with this. It was through reading older fiction that I discovered the word “buss” for kiss. To this day when I see people writing about “busses” when discussing public transportation, I crack up. Even the dictionary will say that “buses” is the proper plural for the automotive thing, while “busses” is multiple exuberant kisses.

                  1. I’ve encountered “buss bars” in a few stf stories. I shall leave those to your imagination …

                    3. Which brings to mind, what the hell was the point behind a kissing booth? You see it all the time as part of the terrain in old fiction, particularly cartoons.

                2. They screwed up the kids “learning to read”. I think my kids ony read because they knew how to before school. And even then they tried to talk younger son out of it.
                  So most would-be readers listen to audio books or read comics.

                  1. I guess I should definitely be thankful that I taught younger daughter to read myself, and it was a struggle at that. Older daughter is like me and her father, and learned how to read on her own.

                    1. Both of mine learned on their own, though younger one hid it. But then he’s…. intensely private, I guess.
                      I found out because like most self-taught, he couldn’t figure out the order of the alphabet. So, he was tearing a swath through my mysteries (at 9?) and kept shelving them wrong. I thought it was his brother, so I yelled. And then from down the hall came the giggle that always happened when I went after his older brother for his crimes. Busted.

                3. Search for “France Is Bacon.”

                  I have a feeling there’s a great Abbott and Costello routine there waiting for the next Abbott and Costello, after comedy is allowed to return.

                4. Sometimes it works the other direction, such as people not knowing the “c” in “victuals” is silent.

                  2. Sayin’ it with a ‘c’ and three syllables is fer them highfalootin’ citified folks. Ever’body else jus’ says vittles.

                2. I’ve always believed IQ was an actual measure of intelligence. I still think it is, and not just a measure of ability on standardized tests.

                  1. This is the part where I’m agnostic. We KNOW for a fact it’s a measure of doing well in tests.
                    The rest…. It tends to come with oddness and other stuff. BUT again, I remain agnostic.

                    1. IQ is a measure of intelligence in that Intelligence often correlates to the ability to perform well in school, and IQ is developed and calibrated by its ability to predict school performance.

                      BUT, like Left/Right and Liberal/Conservative, it is a unidimensional measure. Some people are intelligent but, due to “disabilities” such as dyslexia or poor ability to perform under pressure, do poorly on tests. Other people are very high IQ but dislike IQ tests and deliberately (or subconsciously) select answers other than those the test designers intended (such “wrong” answers may, in fact, be entirely correct but only as an approach not anticipated.)

                      Some persons with very high IQs not only think “outside the box” — thus scoring poorly on tests — the box they’re thinking outside of is an eight-dimensional construct with no “inside” to think within (or, conversely, no “outside”). Because our ability to recognize intelligence is in part determined by our own intelligence (“an intelligent man is one who shares my opinions” factor) we are often in the position of the colour-blind trying to understand Georges Seurat.

                      Intelligence is far more mutable than researchers like to believe, which is why a kid can go from “moron” to “genius” in amazingly short time. It can turn on and off in an individual according to his level of interest … although a bored genius may be one of the most dangerous things in the world.

                      Finally, IQ is similar to soul in that we cannot accurately measure or define it but recognize it when we run into it.
                      ~

                  2. And no, this is not because I score poorly. I do …. um…. Let’s say Mensa is a low bar. The whole family is Mensa. One of my sons is improbable at best. Like one in a million.
                    But note that husband and I are considered top earners for Mensa and I’m one of the very few regularly published Mensans (at least in popular fiction.)
                    So, I reiterate: I don’t know what it’s GOOD for.

                    1. Hmmm. I qualified for Mensa by a few different standards, but when I looked at its members I decided I never wanted anything to do with them. I knew loads smarter people than those folks, and more fun to be around too.

                    3. I appear to have qualified also, based on the ASVAB test results from my reported scores from the test I took in the late 1970s. Eh… application using that certified score went nowhere, when I tried for application sometime in the 90s. Eh — y’all go and admire each others’ bulging brains. I’ve got better and more interesting things to do.

                    4. See, that’s it! What is an understanding of IQ actually good for?

                      Most of my understanding of IQ tests and patterns around the world come from Jordan B. Peterson’s work.

                      High IQ isn’t such a worry as really low IQ people living in a very high IQ world. What do you do with people who have an IQ below 100? The Army won’t hire you below an IQ of 89. They need to earn a living, too.

                  3. I contend that IQ is nothing more than the ability to do well on IQ tests. Because “intelligence” is such a nebulous term that any metric that claims to position individuals on a single-axis measuring their relative intelligence necessarily mischaracterizes them in the many different areas that can be defined as “intelligence” by others.

                    1. Focus on it and over think it, and that works even better– same way that swimming tests measure ability to do well in a swim test.

                      The “what use is it” thing is that you’ll identify folks who flat out can’t swim, and folks who are good swimmers without having ever seen water.

                      Swimming isn’t a very good measure of moral worth, or even athleticism, fitness, health…..

                    2. I don’t think the analogy works very well. Swimming well is natural ability and training. IQ is thinking well, without training.

                    3. Might want to read the thread again.

                      In this discussion, the theory is that “IQ” as reported from the tests is the measure of ability to do well on IQ tests.

                      Which is very much a trained ability– and why you can generally get a much better test result simply from training a student in how to take this test.

                      Most of the people here have had to learn to not “overthink”.
                      Those of us who have had swim tests have had to be informed how to take the swim test– simple example, use X swimming method because they want to look at your form, not “get to the other end quickly without drowning.”

                    4. This is a 13-minute video of Jordan Peterson talking about intelligence and IQ. I’ll stick with him.

              6. One of the happy consequences of (relative) stupidity is to perceive how much you do not understand. This breeds humility which is one of the first foundations of wisdom*. Though when you run into someone who is both wise and clever, he’s fairly awe-inspiring; just as when you’re both stupid *and* foolish it’s a dumpster fire.

                And a society of average but wise will get you a *lot* farther than one of genius but fools. Even if what you want requires challenging learning.

                Side note: I do not know if this is the article on language and totalitarianism (I expect not) but it is very, (sadly) apropos: https://www.city-journal.org/html/how-read-society-11819.html

                (*Yes I know. The actual start is the complete and healthy respect for the Lord, but *next* up.

            2. I will toss i one of my pet bugaboos (they’re getting to be a sizable pack): “He will have to tow the line.”

              No, no, a t’ousand times NO! That is Toe the line, t-o-e ye blithering blackguard (pronounced “Blaggard” to becalm another of my pets)! Have you ne’er played at darts? I’m damned sure you dasn’t toe the line, not come up to scratch, for the manly art of fisticuffs.

              Tow. They wrote “tow” as if that line they’re forever crossing ca be yoked to a trailer hitch and pulled away.
              ~

              1. You’re sure it doesn’t refer to the mules that towed barges up and down the Erie Canal (and others)? (Yes, I know you’re correct–I just have to make the mistakes have some rhetorical meaning…)

                1. I should probably give up on one of my pet peeves: “step foot” instead of “set foot”. The original, correct usage was “set foot”. Because step is intransitive and you can’t step a foot! However “set foot” has almost universally been replaced by “step foot”. Sigh. My guess is that I see about 14 instances of “step foot” for every “set foot”.

          2. So, so much this. I blame the copy editors. And lack thereof. *facepalm* I know, I know it costs. But a decent copy edit makes you money and you don’t get those reviews that say “Good story, but poor editing.” I’ve *written* said reviews. And copy edited some real eyebrow lifters.

            Sure, some things may slip through the cracks. But every. Three. Bog-danged pages. If that. Is not excusable.

            1. People are so hungry for story that they’ll take O.Henry writing. Also… I cannot help but suspect that we are devolving away from standardized spelling.

            2. Meh. The problem is EVERY INDIE GETS those, and the trads don’t. So, we’ve learned to discount them in indie. I KNOW for a fact that one of my collections has TWO typos. I need to redo a ton of stuff, so I haven’t fixed them.
              BUT the reviews nail those TWO typos over and over (and yes, it was copyedited. Three times.)
              My Baen published books? Oh, dear. Ten in one last time I counted. No mention in reviews.

              2. Yes but having those easy typos lets them forget about actually reviewing the work.
                So put in a couple. Your readers will ignore them and the Lefty Critics will yack on and on about nothing else and will be ignored.

        2. Ah the joys of a non rhotic accent where the r sound disappears (in which most New England and ESPECIALLY Boston accents qualify). Even with my own mildly r skipping accent it took me a while to understand that the references of friend from inside the 128 belt to Satin missiles were not some fashion advance but the rockets we used to go to the Moon. There seems to be a conservation of R’s as they come back in places they don’t belong such as Idears.

          1. My mother still had traces of her New Hampshire accent even after years in California and Alaska. My aunt had the full-on “pahk yeh cah in Hahvahd Yahd” Boston accent, which is one reason I love This Old House.

            My favorite example was an episode of Ask This Old House where Roger (the one with the strongest accent) goes to somewhere in the Midwest to help a homeowner with some lawn issue. He tells her to dig a hole and put the dirt on … well, we’ll see. He leaves to go get supplies, and when he comes back he asks her why she put the dirt on the grass. She says, “you told me to dig a hole and put the dirt on the top.” “No,” he says, “not on the tohwp, on the tahp. The tahhhp. [pointing to the blue fabric-y thing he spread out earlier]”

              1. That’s the whole Greater Upper Midwest, extending through Montana, Idaho, and into Eastern Washington.

        3. Written that way or spoken? Thats an obvious bostonism to me, and I’m from there. Think pahk the cah. Yes there are people that sound like that

            1. I can pick out west coasters by how they identify highways. Also had a professor who pronounced milk milik (economics) and bits as beets (syseng)

                1. Note that’s a SoCal thing – up here we have I-880 and 680 and I-280 and 101, over in the central valley, I-5, and down the coats Highway 1, while down south they have THE 5 and THE 405, and then the acronymed names (“PCH”).

                  From time to time a commercial comes up on the radio where it uses the wrong naming and it’s obvious the production company and ad agency were both SoCal.

                  1. In Chicago, the Interstates are all named, and the directions are “inbound” and “outbound,” not compass directions. The major Interstates are the Ryan, the Stevenson, the Ike, the Kennedy and the Edens. So you hear a traffic report about a wreck on the inbound Ryan with a gapers’ block on the outbound: anywhere else, that would be a wreck on the northbound I-90/94, with a backup on the southbound.

                    Also, many important landmarks retain old names in common parlance: the Circle interchange (Jane Byrne Interchange), the Sears Tower (Willis Tower), etc.

                  2. Yep. But the SoCal transplants to the north still use “the” when speaking of freeways unless it’s awkward (i.e. 99). I lived in SF for a few years and have lots of family in Sacto and Bay Area
                    .

        4. Old Brit I used to work with told me he had a penchant for ballet dancers. What a refined gentleman!
          I later found out he was really saying belly dancers.

      2. My Contracts prof in law school (don’t worry, I dropped out) was Anglo-South African, and I was one of the few students who could consistently understand him. One of the others was a very enthusiastic fellow … from Israel. When they would get into a discussion of some point, pretty much everyone else would just put down their pens and wait.

      3. Freshman year in college I took the mandatory (excuse me, Womandatory–I’ll stop soon, promise) humanities courses in Sociology 101 and 201. Both professors had interesting accent issues, with the latter one managing to put an interesting spin pronouncing my last name. Hey, it’s English, and one syllable. IIRC, he was the one from Argentina.

      4. I flunked a numerical methods class because I couldn’t figure out that “j” in physics equals “i” in math.

    5. Step 1: AMEN and AWOMEN walk into a bar.
      Step 2: ?
      Step 3: “Trunalimunumaprzure!”

    6. I haven’t bothered listening to the long version yet, but per the short version… was obvious Trump was offering Georgia a way out of their self-inflicted quagmire without losing face, not begging for newly minted votes for himself.

      Was fairly obvious from the audio quality that the leak was on the Georgia end, too. (Note one participant’s audio is very much clearer than everyone else.)

      Direct download (600mb) of complete call:

      [video src="https://d21rhj7n383afu.cloudfront.net/washpost-production/Obtained_by_The_Washington_Post/20210103/5ff20fe6c9e77c00016e16c3/5ff23ebccff47e00074cdaac/file_854x480-1200-v3_1.mp4" /]

    1. Having just read through that article, it almost makes me want a change in the law when it comes to elections (at any level.) Guilty until proven innocent.

      You say you ran a fair election with no shenanigans counting votes etc and the loser says otherwise?
      *YOU* need to prove it. If you did run a fair election, then there should be no reason to put your cards on the table.

      Pretty sure, though, there’s LOTS of secondary and tertiary effects that I’ve not even considered, and most of them probably very negative…

        1. A copypasta that was running around on thedonald a few weeks ago pointed out that “There was no evidence that an election happened”.

          1. Tainted ballots should be thrown out of the election, just like tainted evidence is thrown out of court. They haven’t been proven to be false and fraudulent, and they might not actually be false and fraudulent. But they can’t be trusted. And if this gives some people heartburn over innocents disenfranchised, or the guilty getting off on technicalities, then so be it. The blame belongs on the tainters, not on those who deliver the bad news about the presence of the taint.

  13. A nation, a world, where it’s acceptable to dress up as a vagina to protest a president, where the ‘woke’ knit and wear ‘kitty’ hats, where riots are fine and churches are closed, where it’s raciest to not hate colorless people, where government employees get raises while tens of thousands of citizens are not allowed to earn a living, and on, and on, and on.

    Is civilization, the world today, worth saving, or is it time to protect me and mine and you and yours, just hunker down and wait it out?

    If the 6 January objection fails, if the Camel and her frontman, Sleazy Joe, set foot in the Oval Office, the dank dark ages are here again. Hunker down, store knowledge and await the great restoration.

    Instead revolution? A lot talk the talk but how many are willing to walk the walk?

    1. “Is civilization, the world today, worth saving, or is it time to protect me and mine and you and yours, just hunker down and wait it out?”
      Try the amazing power of “Yes.”
      They can take the country. But they won’t hold it. Everything they do from #metoo to the covidiocy ends up hurting THEM.
      Trust in G-d and keep your powder dry.

      1. Yes, I agree, yes, but be ready for the long haul, which might include saving, stacking storing civilization and history in hardcover format.

      2. They are using all their influence and expending all their credibility for this.

        It’s up to all of us to build under and around so what they grab are the newspaper printing presses of the 21st century, or the buggy whip factories of the 20th.

        1. “…I suggest being prepared for any and every thing you can.”

          Which is why the propane tanks got filled today. The auto’s fuel tank tomorrow (BEFORE the 6th and any Idiocies – even though well away from any supposed Centers of Such). And almost every grocery trip has at least an extra can or two or such of this or that… just in case – and that since the first supply chain disruptions appeared.

          2. AFAIK, all fuel tanks are close to full, and the reserve stash of non-oxygenated gasoline is complete. Rural shopping patterns haven’t changed much, though it’s lowered the threshold to buy extra quantities. (That is, when X is available.) OTOH, the mini-box store is now limiting mass purchases, so there won’t be as much buying by the dozen.

            So far it’s been a mild winter. The snowplow blade is on the tractor, but hasn’t had to work yet. I still have summer tires on the pickup, though the Subies have and have needed their studded snow tires.

            1. OTOH, the mini-box store is now limiting mass purchases, so there won’t be as much buying by the dozen.

              –
              I bet that has the ranches torqued. I know larger families are complaining. Being accused of “hoarding shopping” when the shopping is < 1/2 of their normal because they can't get their normal volume.

                1. Every time. I’m in the middle of reading Hungry Ghosts and I keep having to suppress the urge to yell “don’t do that” as Mao et al. proceed to repeat every single mistake of the USSR’s collectivization and do it Bigger And Better because We’re China And Anything You Can Do, We Can Do Better.

                  Lessee. Render farmers’ livestock worthless so they’re slaughtered rather than be surrendered, check. Confiscate grain to meet the grandiose yield reports, check. Accuse the peasants of hoarding grain and hiding it in fiendishly clever ways, check. Impose drastic punishments for the illicit possession of a few grains of wheat or rice, check. Impose internal passport system so peasants can’t flee to the cities in hopes of finding food, check.

                  I know how this one ends because I’ve read it before in Russian history.

                  1. If Democrats get their way someone in the future will be reading about in American history.

                    1. No, we’ll read about the Democrats sending agents into the countryside to round up grain and never hearing from them again.

                    2. Well the wild hogs have to eat too. Unlike some gator species, they don’t let their rations ripen. Unlike cats (cougars & bobcats) or bears, they don’t cache their opportunistic meal put in their path. Unlike domestic hogs, they leave the evidence all over their extensive range.

                  2. Sounds like Fredo (Senior) Cuomo and his KungFluShot edicts. a) Vaccinate someone not on the Proper Victim List: $1,000,000 fine. b) Don’t use up the allocated vaccines in the 7 day useful period, that’s now a $100,000 fine. I don’t *think* there’s a fine for saying “Screw You, we won’t do vaccinations.”

                    I’m wondering if the last is Cuomo’s goal.

                    1. Gruesome Newsome is implementing similar policies in CA. As I said, I expect similar policies to be imposed nationally after Jan 20, so Texas and Florida will be brought to heel.

              2. Yo!

                Yep, the “limit one” on something that if we get it at all, we must get two to four for a single use is really, really annoying.

                1. Extreme. But the reference I was pointing o was the family with 9 kids: Older boy, 10 or 11, singleton; Twin Boys, 7 or 8; and sextuplets, 3 girls, 3 boys, age 3 now. Their last show, self shot, had dad going to try and get TP and wipes. Not that either could be had by the time they tried.

                  But one doesn’t have to be a family of 11 to be put into this situation. Anyone with one or more boys who have hit the see food diet will be. That is where neighbors are at. They have 6 kids between ages 6 to 13, 5 boys. Their saving grace is they don’t have them 100% of the time. Shared custody with ex’s. At least 3 households trying to feed the 3 boys who have hit this stage.

                  Locally Petsmart is having trouble getting deliveries. As well as our local Kroger affiliate. Local Costco has rearranged their medical/shampoo and center seasonal sections. With much wider aisles. The dairy section is way down on items every time I go. Not that I needed any, but they had TP.

                  Good news. Our freezer is full. We just got 1/2 hog. 105# cut and wrapped, $3.25/#. That is less expensive than I can buy cheap hamburger for. Let alone bacon, ribs, etc.

                  2. Oh dear lord, sextuplets would be *really* tough. I can wiggle around stuff because I have old diapers stuck in odd places, and I am mildly paranoid about running out– two is one and one is none– but there’s nothing you can do with six all at the same stage.

                    And the boys in their growing age, oh dear.

                    There’s the rice trick– basically, rice cooker and have rice going all the time, or do similar with a pot of beans– but *ouch*.

                    1. And the boys in their growing age, oh dear. There’s the rice trick– basically, rice cooker and have rice going all the time, or do similar with a pot of beans– but *ouch*.

                      –
                      I was blindsided when our picky eater son (food was NOT a battle I was willing to deal with for reasons) went from being extremely picky to the “See Food Diet”. To me it was in a blink of an eye.

                      Should have know it was coming. It hit him at 14. I didn’t have any experience with the phenomenon because there were just us 3 girls at home. Two of us are relative short, so the sudden growth spurt wasn’t a thing other (the yongest pulled that stunt after I was out of the house). Should have know it was coming because as an adult witnessed it with 3 of my young male cousins (they are 15 to 20 years younger). When they hit this phase hubby would tell the story on how he (at 13) and his brother (18) were kicked out of the local Bend “All you can eat” buffet … they’d been told mom wasn’t cooking again that night …

                      Son’s “see food diet” hit when he and dad were at Philmont on an 80 mile trek with 12 others. At the end of the trek hubby called to report in. When he reported on how trek went, including our son, the comment regarding son and food (remember, until now, said son was a picky eater) that “The other scouts were a bit miffed.” You see the trek providers, provided the food to be picked up for different stretches. They got to pick different backpacking foods, more than the 12 (4 adults, 8 youth from 14 to 17) could eat. The point was to provide trading goods between groups as they met on the trail sections. Because of our son, they never had anything left to trade. At the end of 10 days and 80 miles, he gained weight (only one to gain), and grew 3 inches (they never admitted to putting him on a stretching rack, but they did, I swear). That is something Philmont does, get participant’s weight before and after the treks. Even youth rarely gain weight on these treks.

                      The unknown side effect of the “See Food Diet”. I’d buy pant for him when it started getting cold (November) and have to buy them again, every 8 weeks. Kid wore shorts as early in the Spring and as late into the Fall as long as he could get into the shorts he had. Shorts, to an extent, above the knee, are acceptable. Pants that are suppose to be ankle length, half way up the shin, not so much …

                2. At a very basic level many of the challenges that rural folks face are completely opaque to urban dwellers, and as a result the “What are you complaining about, why don’t you just…” responses are completely nonsensical. When regulatory dictat emerges into force-of-law untouched by anything other than hard urban experience, vast stupid results.

                    1. Plus the, “And we cityfolk are ever so much smarter and sophisticated than you rubes, so we’re totally justified in looking down on you,” mindset.

                    2. I’ve noticed those city “sophisticates” think they’re hot s[tuff] doing their salsa and that twerking, but they can’t dance a square even with somebody calling the instructions to them.
                      ~

                    3. We get that crap every winter. TPTB in Salem whine to us Deplorables east of the Cascades about our use of studded snow tires. “But they wear the road dooooooown!” Yeah, and when we get 1/4″ of ice on those same roads, we prefer to be able to stay on them. They’ll get rain with a bit of snow occasionally. Here, we get rain, ice and snow, frequently all three in a day. (Biggest fun is late rain, then overnight freezing. Seems such things don’t happen at low elevations*, so they can’t possibly be a problem.)

                      (*) Except when it does happen. One of my better Schadenboner memories is from an ice storm in Portland. Some guy was on video sliding on his ass half a block down the hill. Vehicle incidents were off the charts. Snerk!

              3. I’ll give Bi-Mart a bit of a pass. Part of their problem is that their big canned produce supplier (Santiam) got clobbered in the Antifa Arson Tantrum in September. I’m not sure what the current status is, but the huge amounts of canned veggies are now a fraction of the size. OTOH, the limit sign was on Progresso soups two weeks ago, but dropped down to a nag (“be nice and don’t buy out the product”) last week. So, not a hard limit right now, and there are shoppers who make me look young. Some of the ranchers shop there, but Cash & Carry Smart Foodservice gets a lot of that business. (Winter staff should be lower, too, though I’m not sure of the LDS ranchers.)

                We’d prefer to get olives and green beans in dozen-can flats (12 weeks worth of olives, 4 of the green beans in winter), but we’ll do what we can. We usually split where we get our food (groceries usually come from 4 local sources, plus Costco for a bit) , so it’s not as big of a pain for us. Granny Weatherwax from Fuego Butte might be frightfully annoyed, however. (Scurries out of the way.)

    3. If the folks at the rally Wednesday march into the Capitol and insist the Congress do the right thing, perhaps things turn out OK. After all, if Democrats can threaten a Republican canvassing board member in Michigan to force certification, why can’t the rally-goers insist Congress refuse to certify?

          1. Honestly, I expect NOTHING effective, just slightly extended proceedings in Congress rather than the usual speedy pro forma proceedings. But a guy can hope.

              1. Or it could go the other way- the D’s play every conceivable parliamentary trick they can to draw things out in hopes the children get tired and go home.

                1. I dunno about the dog but the Fat Lady apparently isn’t ready:

                  GA State Senator: We Have Asked Pence to Postpone Counting the Election Results
                  A handful of Republican state senators in Georgia have asked Vice President Mike Pence to postpone the counting of electoral votes. The meeting to count – and certify – the votes from the 2020 presidential election are set to take place on Wednesday, Jan. 6. But, according to Georgia State Sen. Brandon Beach, officials at the state level need more time to thoroughly investigate allegations of election fraud, particularly in Fulton County.

                  “There’s about 16 or 18 of us now that signed this letter to the Vice President … asking him to delay the electoral vote for 10 to 12 days,” Beach told The Epoch Times. “We were going to get it to him tomorrow morning.”

                  Beach indicated that more senators are likely to sign onto the letter between now and when it’s delivered to Pence.

                  “People are saying yeah there is something here, there’s something that just doesn’t pass the smell test—that there was some irregularities, there was some impropriety going on in the voting process,” Beach explained.

                  The state senators want more time to conduct a forensic audit of voting machines used throughout the Peach State. The main reason is because a state election monitor was absent at the Farm Arena’s vote-tabulation center in Atlanta. He also cited concerns about Republican poll watchers being told counting was over when it really wasn’t.

                  On top of the joint letter that was sent to Pence, Beach said he also sent a personal letter as a member of the Georgia State Senate Judiciary Committee to ask for the postponement.

                  The state senator said he believes elected officials in various battleground states are doing something similar.

                  “I think several senators from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona also wrote letters sent to the Vice President, [telling him] we want the vice president to at least delay it 10 to 12 days,” Beach said.
                  ~

          1. Dear heart. Prepare your heart for disappointment.
            I tell you, we’re going to eat the bread the devil baked for at least two/three years.
            But in the end? We win, they lose. And we’re going to clean this sh*t up.

            1. I’m with Ian. And my heart is prepared for an awful outcome.

              Resolve is what I’m hanging on to. I have my life to build regardless [and because of] circumstances.

            2. Now the question is:

              Plan?

              Distraction from Real Plan?

              Plan, but also a distraction from Backup Plan?

              Something unthought of from an even higher dimensional form of chess?

      2. Congress getting forced to do the right thing is… unlikely. There are too many GOPe types who are willing to swallow the fraud “just this once” because “Orange Man Bad!”

        So the most likely outcome is that the protests get ignored, the fraud gets ignored, and the Biden gets officially chosen.

        Less likely:
        o The fraud gets ignored and Biden gets officially chosen, but the crackdowns against the protests kick off Hot Civil War 2.0
        o Folk storm the Capitol in response to Biden getting officially chosen, and THAT kicks off Hot Civil War 2.0
        o Congress decides to kick the can further down the road.
        o Folk march into the capital and successfully insist that Congress do the right thing
        o VP Pence does the troll thing and uses a Dominion voting machine to count the electoral votes, paying back blatant naked fraud with blatant naked fraud.
        o Trump announces that he is now the President of “The True United States of America” – a bunch of red States that officially announce their repudiation of the federal government as being the legitimate central government of the US.

    1. Razor gets it again.

      And after the defeat the RINOs and NeverTrumpers will bleat that it was the fault of the GA voters.

      1. Meh – saw this after Reagan, too, although it took them longer to get there. The GOP didn’t simply win the title of The Stupid Party, they earned it!
        ~

  15. I know the old expression that English has all the purity of a dockside whore. Got that. But, there are whores and there are whores. English should be the ambitious dockside whore that works her ass off for every dollar, looks for anything that will give her a better job that isn’t here, and her customers love her.

    Our enemies want English to be the dockside whore that is bitchy, annoying, inconvenient, greedy, rolls customers, and is one day going to have someone slit her throat. 3:2 odds it’ll be her pimp.

    Teach everyone you can and insist upon good language from everyone.

    1. It is useful to know why languages evolve.

      First you have random mutation. But human languages are not random conglomerations of sounds or symbols, so that clearly isn’t the dominant force.

      Then you have the slow slurring of one sound into another over a language’s lifetime. Because maintaining that precision requires constant work. But like the previous example our languages are not just a pile of trumpalurmazine, so there must be something pushing against that.

      The answer is of course that languages are for something. And that something is to communicate information. Sometimes explicit and clinical information, sometimes emotional tones, and everything in-between. From that we can figure out why some languages are good and some bad: a change that makes it easier to communicate is good. A change that makes it harder to communicate is bad.

      1. THIS.
        The only way languages evolve by decree is you’ve been invaded. And the speakers often then subvert the occupier’s intentions.
        I have lists of words from Latin whose meaning in Portuguese is the opposite of Latin and also very clearly “In your face, Roman.”

        1. Understanding the Why of Language also lets you deal with doctrinaire assertions that any language development after $DATE is debasement.

          1. The leaders of true dialectal sound shifts and vocabulary change in American English are teenage girls and middle-aged men.

            So I’d say English is a daddy’s girl.

        2. Back in New Jersey, we had a former Jesuit turned Methodist minister as a pastor (something about marrying another (yes, female) Methodist minister). He claimed some of Christ’s instructions are not quite as “lie down and be a doormat,” as they appear. As in, he claimed a Roman soldier could force a civilian to carry his load, but only for a specific distance, so if you “went the extra mile,” and he got caught, it did not go well for him. Likewise, if he smacked you one and you turned the other cheek so he smacked you again, it would also not go well with him. It was interesting.

      2. > communicate information

        Well, that’s what *you* use it for.

        For them… it enables them to abuse people by changing the rules behind their back. No matter what you do, they’ll decide you’re wrong and beat you for it. No different from the kind of abusers who mistreat their spouses.

  16. I don’t think you’ve got what happened to feminism quite right. The original feminist project, to get women into politics and skilled professions, reached an impasse due to two facts. First, in a large number of professions attaining excellence is impossible without spending long periods in single-minded concentration on a particular task; and such concentration is not compatible with the requirements for caring for a small child. And second, the majority of women would rather spend time with children – especially their own children – than have a professional career, if forced to choose. The upshot was that a lot of women, when offered the chances that the first-wave feminists went to such lengths to give them, turned up their noses and said “no thanks, we’d rather be mothers.”

    The second-wave feminists’ theories were developed, basically, by career women who were offended because other women didn’t share their ambitions and rated their accomplishments lower than raising a family. Because women were rejecting professional careers for marriage and motherhood, the feminists began attacking marriage and motherhood. They had no need for children, so obviously women who wanted them must be dupes of tyrannical men.

    1. A lot of the prominent feminists, like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, also had horrible childhoods, and extrapolated their personal experiences onto the whole of male/female relationships. Another example of letting the insane run the show.

      1. Which makes the idea of “why don’t we shoot the inmates, instead of putting them in charge” seem /really/ attractive. It is precisely when bad ideas are at their most attractive that we need our determination to resist them the strongest.

        In normal times, it is very easy to coast along, shorting ourselves of the will to resist bad ideas. And a bunch of people with strong wills to resist bad ideas may find it impossible to cooperate in seizing power.

        If there were not serious trade offs, it would not be life.

    2. Not denying any of that.
      BUT you see the “we based this on exceptional individuals, and the whole sex/race/etc isn’t getting same results. There must still be oppression” with ALL sorts of formerly oppressed races/classes/whatever.
      It’s a universal mechanism, regardless of auxiliary/complicating factors.

    3. There’s another aspect of feminism that destroyed our public education system. When the only career choices for women were teacher, nurse, or secretary, you had a lot of extremely smart and talented women working in education and nursing. With the opening of the job market, the women who would have been teachers and nurses 50-60 years ago are now engineers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc. Your teachers now are generally the women who wouldn’t or couldn’t work hard enough to succeed in those fields, leading to the wonderful results like a friend who admits she couldn’t do 5th grade math if she wasn’t teaching it.

      1. Yep. That’s “critical race theory,” in a nutshell. What’s worse is the really fanatic versions apparantly teach their adherents never to argue or respond to questions; argument is, “white,” and asking questions is an instrument of oppression, so the true believer must never respond to either. (For Sarah).

    4. Two other kernels, one mythological.

      Mythos
      From the garden of Eden story, that human beans miss the mark because we insist on wanting what we ought not have, because we’ll be miserable should we get it (open borders, a welfare state, free porn, etc.) For the ladies, their womanly baked-in vice that does them in, is the temper tantrums for male status and authority. While the male’s manly sin, is to us to cringe away and skive off from responsibility. Toxic feminity + gamma masculinity = SJW.

      The second is merely based on observation: Good times breed weak men because enough disposable wealth makes it easier to get a female, or get by with less personal capacity for things like prudence, courage, etc. (Men in a mankind sense) But more than that, weak *males* require women to step up and do the work that their men will not, will-they-nil-they. So before you can say “bob’s your uncle,” they’re advocating for feminism (See Lisa May Alcott’s An Old Fashioned Girl). Quite a lot of modern Marxism infesting the fabric of the U.S. is the follow-up consequences of risk-averse women responding to well-meaning , but perverse incentives like no-fault divorce.

      And it’s no use going full-Islam or what have you and demanding that woman be kept in their proper place. That works as well as it does to mend pauperism by leveling the productive class. Everyone has to pull their weight, or the system falls apart.

      Heh. It appears “structural sexism” (vs. women) could be a thing, just the exact opposite of what anyone is permitted to address.

      1. As my pastor has noted, the Bible always refers to “Adam’s sin” because the first sin was not Eve eating the forbidden fruit — it was Adam failing to protect her from the snake. (The text is quite clear that Adam was there at the temptation.)

  18. The ASL gloss that means “Amen” is “prayer-agree”. The glosses that might be used for similar types of agreement outside of a prayer setting might be the same, or might be different but absolutely none of them would have anything to do with “man” or “woman”. I can only imagine how translators might have felt as they suddenly had that thrust upon them.

    1. I KNOW.
      And no. Amen is pretty universal in the west.
      So are most of the words that would cause that issue. Also all other languages have things like that.
      The difficult ones are the ones that mean the opposite. Take push in English. Puxe means pull in Portuguese (pronounced the same.)
      This means if I’m dopey from a long flight and just come back from Portugal, I have problems leaving the airport (not a joke.) Until Dan goes “DUH” and opens the door for me.
      BUT for work? Nah. First thing we did was memorize the lists of “false friends”.
      After that we kept on trucking.

      1. Back when computers were either ISA or EISA busses, we discovered that the American pronunciation of each was exactly opposite to that of our German vendors. That was a whole lot of fun to decipher, though I *think* my high school German training helped resolve things.

  19. I always appreciate the part of Sarah’s writing that says “Say no to their mandates and silliness.”

    I know how to do that. And I’ve decided 2021 is the year of “No.”

      1. And What About the Gender-Confuseddates? Eh? Tell me your answer to that, you, you, Deplorable!

  20. “The English language is an arsenal of weapons. If you are going to brandish them without checking to see whether or not they are loaded, you must expect to have them explode in your face from time to time.”

    — Stephen Fry, Donald Trefusis, in “The Liar”

    1. Language is a tool. If you don’t learn how to use it properly, you’re likely to hurt yourself.

  21. But this is the most diversier, transparenty, wokiest House ever, and if things go Left in Georgia it will be a super-Woke Senate, too!
    ~

  22. I think the big problem, the thing that people take advantage of, is that many if not most people aren’t sensitive to language at all. Plenty of people are, and they tend to focus on written communication and make demands on conversation that other people can’t handle. My biggest struggle is that what I hear people saying much of the time amounts to nonsense. They get their point across, but they don’t seem to give a shit when what they say makes no sense whatsoever, or is just plain faddish, trendy speech detached from its actual meaning. Like the term “social distancing,” which somehow shoved its way into our lexicon over the space of two days. Or the phrase “bad actors.” So, bad actors can manipulate this attitude people have toward language, and some people notice and call it out, and they are condemned as “picky.” No, I’m not picky, I’m trying to point out how people are manipulating you with language.

    1. I agree that lack of sensitivity to language. I found that to be a problem with people getting their English degrees. Many of them couldn’t tell the difference between walk and amble. So yea… It would be easy to manipulate language if someone was too lazy to check a dictionary … although nowadays they change the dictionary as quickly as some “influencer” changes the meaning of a word.

      1. Weeeellllll, I would say that the ability to burble on about nothing is actually one of the big and interesting capabilities of language. Not necessarily nice, but useful in certain ways for certain purposes.

        Not recommended for longterm use, however.

    1. A comment seen on arfcom:

      There is open talk on the Chans and Donald.win to go armed, discretely if anything, but some are advocating OC.

      The recent instances of police taking sides with antifa in various forms over the last year have been clearly noted by those elements too.

      Jan. 6th has the potential to see the end of peaceful protesting by the right, and with it, the “support cops no matter what” crowd.

      1. I don’t think our people will turn violent. And I don’t think congress will come to its senses. So I suspect we’re pocked and it’s going to be a hard 2 or 3 years.
        BUT of course it’s scared. Obviously it’s scared. It’s not COMPLETELY stupid.

        3. Obviously it’s scared.

          Reportedly Lord Raffensperger of Georgiastan has been running ads talking about how well he oversaw such an honest election.

          Now why in blue blazes would someone not up for reelection feel the need to run something like that?

        4. No, we won’t turn violent. On the other hand if violence is turned on us by anyone. I don’t know if I hope that the Guard has orders to stop the cops if they go bad or not,

  24. Ok, yes, the Fascist Left is ostentatiously stupid. But I feel I have to emphasize that they really aren’t special. Each batch of self-selected Elite have devolved into outright idiocy as they lost power and position. Each has developed convoluted and reality-free theories to justify continuance of their positions in society. We’re in for some amazingly dumb self-justifications from the Left, especially as we bring the consequences of their recent fraud home to roost. Combine that with the ‘Intellectual’ Left’s obsessive need to be avant-garde (which drives stupidity like the Trans activism) and it’s going to be weird for a while.

    All I can say is, roll with it. Some sort of equilibrium will assert itself before too long…until the NEXT bunch of self-selected Elite start A) throwing their weight around and B) fading in THEIR turn.

  25. “The problem is that the feminists looked at women who achieved despite being blocked and who were exceptional people and therefore achieved very highly, and made a completely nuts theory that this meant women were inherently better than men, and would ALL be top achievers, if they were given a chance.”

    This is what comes of not teaching principles of statistics in grade school, particularly the concept of the Bell Curve and uneven distribution, both at the center of the bell and at the pointy parts.

    Of course, that would be wasted classroom time because (unlike wallabies) most girls aren’t interested in Math, cannot understand Math, and don’t like Math. I could show you the proofs but, as they involve Math …
    ~

    1. “Then when chances were given and the expected results didn’t happen, they built this entire theory of how women were still somehow oppressed”

      This is also the basis of Disparate Impact abuses of Math, insisting that distribution of attributes and talents is level across populations — which would imply that there is no special gift for coding or for understanding complex policy issues and therefore our “Elites” only got where they are by suppressing others and denying them opportunities.

      Which is a reason they are not good at logic – it keeps taking them places they do not want to go.
      ~

      2. There is a reason that check digits (digits added at the end of credit card numbers and most other id numbers except for SS that are calculated from the rest of the digits) are designed primarily to catch reversed digits in the number. You are not alone. Not even close.

        1. The problem is I HAD NO IDEA it was a legit defect. So I assumed I was “stupid”. And you can’t fix stupid.
          THEN–
          Then when I figured out it’s a brain glitch, I went “Oh.” And started figuring out how to cope with it. By that time I was 39.
          So, it was in time for me to teach the strategies to my kids, who both inherited it (In addition to younger being EXTREMELY dyslexic in the regular sense too.) So, result, they’re both great at math and took math recreationally in college.
          BUT if I’d found out sooner, I’d probably have gone for Mech E

  26. At the risk of weighing down the ordinarily lively discourse on your blog with a reference to an arguably leaden tome, Mrs. Hoyt, were you perhaps looking for the volume listed below? Clocking in at 316 pages, it’s regrettably rather longer than a mere “article.” 🙂

    Totalitarian Communication — Hierarchies, Codes and Messages (Kirill Postoutenko — editor)

    Click to access 1004721.pdf

    In any case, yes, your point is clear. I’ve long railed furiously myself against the way these blubbering goons try incessantly to buttrape my head with the arrogant crap floating around in their pointy little goblin heads. I know exactly what they’re trying to do, and I don’t appreciate it at all. My preferred response to their arrogant nonsense is perfectly illustrated by the included image:

  27. a) Raffensperger is from Georgia in every other way, but his bachelor’s is all the way from Ontario for some reason. He is sixty five years old, so his undergraduate degree may have been around 1980 or so.
    b) It is in civil engineering. 1980 is sixty years after some of Fisher’s work in statistics, so there should have been books on it in the university library, and he may or may not have had classes in it. A civil studying during that period isn’t necessarily going to have that intuitive of a sense for computer systems.
    c) His previous business was in providing engineering services. So, even disregarding that he would have been practicing civil, he would have been a PE, and left some publicly available records relating to that. (I have heard that all civils are required to be PEs.)
    d) In theory, his practice should have exposed him to concepts of ethics, and if he is crooked, it would probably not be a break from his previous practice.
    e) Civil is a discipline whose coursework might possibly be handled only with non-statistical methods. If you are consulting on civil practice, you would definitely need some statistical tools, because of testing material deliveries to ensure that they have the correct quality for the application. Between that, the level of fraud in construction, and the need to inspect for fraud, Raffensperger is someone that one would expect to have either learned the necessary mental tools, or to have learned that he does not have them, and probably needs them in some circumstances.
    f) There are six major elements of the fraud allegations. 1. Voter lists. 2. The unusual manner of the implementation of mail in votes. 3. Statistical arguments about large numbers of Biden ballots showing up with zero Trump votes. 4. Arguments about design and operation of computer systems. 5. Documentation retention and availability. 6. Claims about improper restrictions on GOP poll watchers. I have been investigating the academic backgrounds of current outspoken GOP NeverTrumpers because I do not expect a sophisticated understanding of items 3 and 4 to be uniformly distributed through the population. GIven his background, if Raffensperger is mentally competent, you would expect an awareness of 1,2, 5, and 6, probably 3, and maybe not 4. You would also expect him to foresee being audited, and understand that the quality of his documentation might matter. This leaves me puzzled about what he could be seeing that could possibly persuade him that everything is definitely and verifiably on the up and up.

      1. The third possibility is he’s gotten the, “Do what we say or Atlanta burns and it will be YOUR fault,” message.

      2. I’m in moderation because I said he might have gotten the, “you this or Atlanta burns,” message.

  28. “when you say man/woman you’re actually implying women aren’t human”
    Sounds very feminist to me.

  29. So the police arrested the head of the Proud Boys when he got off the plane in D.C. because he burned a BLM flag which is a hate crime ya’know.

    Poor deluded elitist fools. Decapitation strikes don’t work on Americans.

      1. That guy has a malicious prosecution claims just handed to him – lotsa precedent that burning any flag is protected political speech.

        If he can avoid settling and get to discovery to document what they really emailed to each other to set this up it will be, as the kids say, epic.

        1. “The procedure is the punishment.”

          Remember, the Supremes ruled the police don’t actually have to know what law you might have violated now; they can just arrest you at a whim and let the prosecutor try to find something to charge you with.

      3. Yep, targeted him for the BLM flag and a couple of magazines for… an AR maybe. News is unreliable.

        No surprise here. It will backfire, but no surprise.

        1. Yeah, that’s interesting. Because they arrested him at the airport as he was getting off the plane.

          Which means
          a) he got two gun magazines past all the TSA scanning and searches (including opening checked bags) or
          b) he didn’t have them when he got on the plane and picked them up in the airport inside security (spread the egg between TSA and the airport security mooks) or
          c) he didn’t have them until the cops planted them.

          Fun times.

    2. The scary thing is, given how many of the Proud Boys are ancestrally middle and south American, this is not entirely insane.

      The Burn, Loot, Murder guys are strongly influenced by “black” gang culture, and the Proud Boys are strongly influenced by the Cartels, so while policing thoughts is evil they may not be wrong about it existing.
      (PB are, as best I’ve heard, aware of the risk and take steps to keep from being subverted by any or all of the Cartels– but they are tapping into the same cultural demands that help the Cartels recruit. For those who are going “didn’t the Marines have a problem with gang activity?”– yes, similar demands, but Proud Boys also have a somewhat socially conservative tendency. They don’t ban folks who had gang ties, is all.)

      1. The cartel influence is an interesting idea. Do you have any evidence that they are heavily influenced by South American cartels?

        1. Remember the news reports about how they were under investigation by the Feds?

          That’s what the investigations were. They came back without anything actionable that I’ve heard of, which is freakin’ amazing and is why I say that they are aware of the risk.

          One of their leaders — the one with the memes about “hey, get a load of this very visibly Mexican ancestry ‘white supremacist’ dude?” –is loud about being prior “gang” involved, and glad of it being past-tense — one of the benefits is that their local chapters offer is that you’re not left alone if the cartels do their usual “hey, we have hooks in you, and we know where your sister lives” stuff.

          On the sliding scale of Cartel to Marine Corps, I’d put them a lot closer to the Marines. Even if they do have views on social interactions that set my teeth on edge when I was in El Paso.
          (I have an incredibly low tolerance for the flavor of Machismo that includes it being OK to lie to my face, as a customer, because I am female.)

          1. OK. So no evidence of cartel involvement other than the totally untrustworthy feds.

            Latin men are Latin men, for sure, and that masculinity can definitely be annoying. I’m in agreement there.

            With Proud Boys I’m glad they fight. That’s about it for me.

            1. Are you declaring that the Proud Boy members who run I-got-out-and-so-can-you programs for former Cartels members are Fed agents, or are you just randomly triggering off of words and going into lecture mode without bothering to figure out what people actually said?

              Because between this and the IQ thread, you’re coming in second to Facebook’s automated fact-checking as far as reading comprehension goes.

              1. I’m going to politely bow out of both conversations. It seems my intellect isn’t up to yours. For that I apologize.

                1. *eyeroll*

                  I didn’t say anything about your “intellect,” I said you’re not bothering to respond to what people say.

                  That’s one of the problems with online communication. People expect you to at least act like you’re paying attention to what they actually wrote.

                  1. And the eye roll? Why? You could have left that off and just said your comment. But you insist on inserting an “I’m better than you are” comment at the beginning.

                    OK. Be better.

                    1. I don’t think she meant she’s better than you are. You’re reading things in it. The eyeroll is “Oh, dear, not another one” since people who don’t read responses are one of her pet peeves.

                    2. Thank you, Sarah. Your explanation means a lot, and I appreciate it.

                      I really like it here.

                    3. And the eye roll? Why?

                      Because you are attempting to be manipulative, and you’re doing it badly. Not even to the point of being entertaining. Works even less well than expecting ongoing conversations to conform to your preferences and desires.

                      Would you prefer a “bless your heart”? Sorry, not southern gal.

                    4. I’m sorry I didn’t read your comments more closely. I could have. If I were you, I’d probably be angry, too. Especially today.
                      I’ll read your comments carefully next time.

                    8. Oh thank YOU! Not a day goes by that I don’t want to drive down to Olympia and tear that man limb from limb with my hands.

                    11. What! And leave Hitler Brown out? Wait a minute!

                      RCPete, are we going to let them get away with this? I mean, really!

                      🙂

                    12. Okay, fine. Do you know how many miles we’re going to log, guys. But fine, we’ll get your governor too. The despicable Kate Brown.
                      Speaking of Kates, let’s throw in Wolf, to make her happy.

                    13. “… you are attempting to be manipulative”

                      Really, Foxfier? REALLY? You are presuming to read people’s minds over the internet?

                      You came off as attempting to be manipulative – maybe. At least it doesn’t claim t read anybody’s heart.
                      ~

            2. Well, that, and the fact that multiple members, including the guy arrested, have SAID they had cartel membership in their pasts.

              1. I’ve been told in no uncertain terms I’m too fucking stupid and inarticulate for this thread, and for the IQ thread.

                I’m bowing out of the conversations for that reason.

                  1. She seems to have become offended at my expectation of someone showing evidence of having read what I wrote before I will genuflect to their corrections or demands.

                    2. Which is why I didn’t even growl until the third time established a pattern.

                      I’ve never had a very high tolerance for having to tell people that no, I meant what I said, not what their imagination came up with based on what they already “knew” I would say; recent times have not improved it.

                    4. I got my feelings hurt because you shamed me for trying.

                      I know you’re probably smarter, better read, more engaged in the topic. I wanted to join in. I tried to write in a way that furthered the conversation. I fell short.

                      So you shamed me for being inarticulate. And because this morning is a tough day already, it hurt more than it would have ordinarily.

                      I felt I’d found a home here, and then you shat on me. That’s what happened.

                    5. KATHY,
                      Stop that. I mean it. You’re making assumptions.
                      Seriously. NO ONE IS SAYING THEY’RE SMARTER THAN YOU.
                      Bragging of being smart is not a thing here. You’re scared and projecting your feelings on what people say. I understand being scared, these are scary times.
                      But seriously, if Foxfier were trying to make you feel bad, she’d TELL YOU. She’s not passive aggressive. She’s aggressive-aggressive.

                    7. But seriously, if Foxfier were trying to make you feel bad, she’d TELL YOU. She’s not passive aggressive. She’s aggressive-aggressive.

                      I prefer to think of it as being “direct.”

                      What is the point of talking if there’s no information being offered? Feeling bad is only useful if it promotes reform; if change can be gained otherwise, it’s generally to be preferred.

                    9. *snickering*

                      Does this make us some sort of unholy cross of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, “Single Intenders and Proud of it”?

                  2. Yeah. Foxfier made a mean comment this morning about my being too ignorant in my comments to two threads, IQ and…. something I can’t recall. I was watching my country dissolve, and I felt ashamed and stupid. It hit me harder than it might have ordinarily.

                    I know people on this blog are probably way smarter than I am. I try to think about what I write. I felt very badly that I didn’t measure up.

                    1. “I know people on this blog are probably way smarter than I am.”

                      Most people here know that smarter does not equal wiser not having greater sense. Do not let folk intimidate but do continue to think carefully about what you and others write.
                      ~

              2. The really notable thing is that Proud Boys, when investigated, are actually out of the whole criminal lifestyle thing– in contrast with several of the noisy activist “former gang member” guys who were being paid to talk about how they got out, and so should you.

      2. And the Hispanic gangs have been shooting the black gangs (and blacks in general) out of historically black neighborhoods such as Compton and South Central for a while.

        articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/25/local/la-me-0126-compton-20130126

        1. That poor guy who was shot on the way to work about 09 or so– just stopped to gas up in an area that the Cartel had decided they were going to take over– was likely a victim of that.

          There was a little interest in the whole multiple houses firebombed thing, until they realized it was cartel politics and what do you know, gangs are racist as bleep.

          *Sad*

        1. He stole it, burned it, just like BLANTIFA has done countless times to our property, without punishment.

          He was targeted because Muriel thinks she’s in control of the situation. She thought she would bring Proud Boys to heel if she captured and imprisoned their leader. Muriel is a dangerous fool.

          1. I could not help wondering if Mayor Bowser was a Dickens character and we’re all living in one of his rejected novels. But not even Dickens would name a character so appropriately.
            ~

    2. Sadly, Barbara Shelley is not.

      Barbara Shelley, Hammer Horror and ‘Doctor Who’ actress, dead at 88

      Barbara Shelley, the actress hailed as the “Queen of Hammer,” has died at the age of 88.

      The actress was the star of 1950s and 1960s Hammer Horror films including “The Gorgon,” “Dracula: Prince Of Darkness” and “Rasputin: The Mad Monk.”

      She also appeared in the “Doctor Who” episode “Planet Of Fire,” starring Peter Davison as the fifth Doctor.

      Her agent, Thomas Bowington, said: “She really was Hammer’s number one leading lady and the Technicolor queen of Hammer.

      “On-screen she could be quietly evil. She goes from statuesque beauty to just animalistic wildness.

      “She was a regular favourite of Hammer events and autograph shows but also performed on stage with the RSC,” referring to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

      He added: “She adored Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and loved working with them, that was very dear to her.”

      Bowington said Shelley had recently been in a hospital, where she had caught COVID-19, but had since recovered.

      He said: “It wasn’t the COVID that took her, she had underlying issues.”

      Born Barbra Kowin in 1932, Shelley was also known for TV roles in series including “The Saint,” “The Avengers,” “The Borgias,” “Blake’s 7” and “Crown Court,” and later played Hester Samuels in “EastEnders.”

      In 2010, writer and actor Mark Gatiss interviewed Shelley about her career at Hammer Films for his BBC documentary series “A History Of Horror.”
      [END EXCERPT]

      nypost . com/2021/01/04/barbara-shelley-hammer-horror-and-doctor-who-actress-dead/

      ~

  36. You haven’t noticed that the complete uselessness of lockdowns and hygiene burqas for stopping a contagious virus from being contagious hasn’t kept them from continuing to keep on pushing them? They went stupid over the virus by March 30 and have been ignoring causality ever since. They’ve substituted poop throwing. These people are so far from sane, there is no return.

    1. I was chatting with my boss this morning and he mentioned that a couple of friends of his had visited right before Christmas and then went on to see a bunch of other people, including elderly parents. A couple of days later the husband started feeling ill and wound up testing positive for WuFlu. Everyone they spent time with got tested and came back negative. A couple of days later the wife started coming down with the symptoms and the doctors said that she didn’t need to be tested. My boss complained that they were missing a case, so I told him that it would still be reported.

      “But there’s no test.”

      “There doesn’t need to be one, they’ll report it as a presumed positive. They’ve been doing that the entire time.”

      “That’s not scientific data.”

      “No, it isn’t.”

      “But the governor (Inslee) has been saying that he’s be basing his decisions on scientific data.”

      “Well, that’s what he says he’s doing…”

      1. “But the governor (Inslee) has been saying that he’s be basing his decisions on scientific data.”

        I am inclined to think that their “scientific data” refers to the psychological manipulation of crowds data. I do not recall ever noticing them specifying their data was medical, much less epidemiological.
        ~

        1. It all made sense once I realized that Science is the name of a major religious cult on the Left.

    2. They’re showing the signs Sarah mentions, too.I have seen people seriously state that the reasons lockdowns haven’t worked so far is they haven’t been done right – if “those people,” had only done what they should and strictly instituted and obeyed the original lockdown guidance, we would have the virus under control by summer. It’s “their” fault.

        2. Because that’s exactly the tone I read out of this stuff. Along with an almost desperate belief in ritual, any ritual, so long as it’s prefaced withnthe word, “scientific.”

      2. “the reasons lockdowns haven’t worked so far is they haven’t been done right”

        Geeze, no wonder the commitards are so i love with them.

        I’ve got a whole log list of things that have never been doe right they can attempt, starting with walking on air.
        ~

      3. That’s what they did to explain why the mandatory masking didn’t work for the Spanish Flu, too. Stupid civies weren’t doing it right.

        At the time, some of them backpedaled when it turned out that nurses and doctors had the same infection rates as the general public…..

        Write up from the poor guy set with explaining why The Science didn’t work, then:

        https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18010229/

        2. Re “civilians not doing it right”: Hard data contradicting that actually keeps coming out of the various studies about other existing drugs against the bug – see vid linked below for a good multiple study overview re Ivermectin, where, in addition to highlighting the fact that this MD’s prior vid related to this possibly efficacious off-label drug was removed by TehGoogIsEeevil’s YouTube arm because a twentysomething H1b slave labor video reviewer knows better than an experienced MD, the reviewed data with and without Ivermectin use also illustrates those highly trained and motivated PPE-wearing medical professionals worldwide are still coming down with the bug.

          1. In fairness to the censor, the trained MDs are the ones who started the “if the results don’t fit our theory then you did it wrong” shtick.

            1. Anybody who wants evidence that the masks don’t matter needn’t look further than the Army’s own mask recommendations (which include the self-comic “Your mask protects me; my mask protects you” mantra), and their diagrams for making an appropriate mask out of your undershirt.

              If these nose-nappies made a lick of difference medically, it would actually matter whether people wore the right ones rather than just any old bandana or restaurant napkin. But the standard is “something over your nose and mouth,” period. I could use a paint-rag and be as Safe-Frum-Teh-Cowvids as anybody else.

      4. Welcome to the Soviet of Washington. Western Washington. Folks to the eastern side are rural, good folks.

    3. As I asked the Vons clerk this afternoon: “How much do they have to lie to you before you stop believing them?”

    4. Corona virus stuff appears to have been originally fraud, calculated to aid electoral fraud, and to ease the seizing of power.

      1. I don’t think it was originally. I think the electoral fraud is a crime of opportunity. However, I do think a lot of this ahem, “stuff,” was instituted to wreck the economy and throw the election indirectly. Then the fraud got added on. It’s a distinction without a difference at this point.

        1. I lean toward this. They were humping the power of lockdowns etc and then were “Hey, we can use this come election time!” and then soon after was an all-in-one.

          1. The Dems tried to insert their fraud machine in HR1, the first bill the newly-victorious House of Pelosi tried to enact. So they had that card up their sleeve and were waiting to slip it into the first “Must Pass” bill that came along.

            And they managed events to ensure a Must Pass bill would come along. Such as letting businesses and people die during a government lockdown pandemic to force the GOP’s hand.
            ~

  38. Observing reactions to that Raffensperger phone call from Trump I feel depressed. I’m so old I can remember when leaking a secretly recorded private phone call was reprehensible.
    ~

    2. “It’s one of those irregular verbs again. I give confidential press briefings, you leak, he’s been charged with a violation of the Official Secrets Act.”

      There is a “Yes Minister” quote for everything in politics.

  39. Our champion, the International Lord Of Hate has a new post:

    One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

    Check the comment by ‘Larry Is Right’ about auditing Texas. Trump won Texas, but the fraud was still pervasive. The Democrats and the media don’t want the questions asked, because they already know the answers.

    1. Oh goody! The typo in the prior top post …

      “Destroyer of worlds- availalbe on audible …”

      …has been nagging at me.
      ~

    1. Actually, the End Times would mean that it will get a lot of worse before Doomsday.

      “But when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”

  43. Funny that you mention the article. I read either the same thing or something very similar yesterday. I wonder if this Powerline article is the one: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/01/how-to-read-a-society.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+powerlineblog%2Flivefeed+%28Power+Line%29

    And here’s the direct link to the City Journal article from 2000: https://www.city-journal.org/html/how-read-society-11819.html

  44. There’s an article on the Powerline blog that links to a 2000 City Line Journal article of the same name, called “How to Read a Society.” Funny you should mention it, because I was reading something similar just yesterday.

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