Line Dancing: How To Be A Scary Moron

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Okay, yeah, this is a weird thing to teach isn’t it?  But I know you guys and while you can be so sharp you cut yourselves, you really, really suck at playing it dumb.

And you have to. You absolutely have to in some circumstances. It not only could save your life, it will sow confusion among the enemy.

Read this article if you don’t believe me.

Look, a great part of what you’re having to do is called a White Mutiny (no, it has nothing to do with race. It’s the opposite of Black Mutiny which is the kind that leaves the deck littered with bodies.) It can also be called “Irish Democracy” though that’s more complicated and involves things like paying people under the table, to starve the beast which is NOT entitled to your taxes. It also doesn’t come naturally to Americans. Though I suspect we’ll learn.

It was quite a shock to me, when I first read Have Spacesuit Will Travel to find that the IRS (and therefore, logically the Portuguese equivalent) could NOT require you to keep records. They couldn’t even require you to know how to read.  And that you could in fact pay your tax bill in nickels, dimes and the odd penny.

Now, the IRS in the US has gotten into their own version of malicious compliance in responding to that sort of thing. You’re not forced to keep records – the government can’t even make you learn how to read! And many people don’t know how since the government got into education – but they an by default assume you owe them everything.  When playing stupid games, make sure the stupid prizes are things you’re willing to risk.

However, connected to that: the government cannot require you to be smart.  Nor do they have any reason to think you are. In fact, the default mode of lefties is to think that we are completely stupid, and that’s the only reason we don’t agree with them.  To mangle a meme “Shiny. Let’s be morons.”

Right here, I want to stop and recommend that (in addition to the linked article, you find and read Comrade Don Camillo, which is a manual for subversion while surrounded. I linked it on Amazon.)

Depending on the circumstances, you can in fact be UNBELIEVABLY stupid, and they’ll probably still believe it.

They want you to write a confession? Ask for help spelling words, and then consistently misspell them. And I mean unreadably. Or confuse words with their close cousins.  They want you to spell expected? Spell expel and refuse to understand what you did wrong.

This is actually very, very hard, so I recommend you practice it and play act it with a friend.  In fact, I recommend you practice and play act all the techniques with friends.

Stupidity is very very difficult to do if you’re not stupid. It also is both infuriating and confusing to anyone trying to make you do something.  It is said against stupidity the gods themselves strive in vain.  These people aren’t gods. They’re really very naughty mental children.

If you read the article linked above, you see that stupidity also gives you the right to change your story/abilities and not be held to it. I mean sometimes he pretended not to know how to write, then he wrote, then he didn’t know how to write again.  The thing is you run into this sort of thing with truly stupid people, and now we can do it, too.

Remember the attitude: very eager to learn, very impressed by the enemy – tug on forlock, yesssur – but a hopeless, bumbling fool.

They want you to sign something? Misspell your name. Or do weird handwriting. This too can be practiced.

They want you to tell them something? Ask for clarification. Then ask for clarification again. Then ask for clarification on the clarification. Rinse, repeat, wide eyed and just wanting to help, really, if they just explain this one simple thing.

Oh acquiring sudden religious mania and explaining to them “Doesn’t the good book say bend your knee to the superior man” (no fear of quoting scripture in vain. You just make up sh*t. They won’t know scripture if it bits them in the nads.)  Or, “I really want to sign this confession, but doesn’t John 578 say “never affix your name to document you don’t compass with your mind”? So can you explain it to me again?”
Because they believe we’re all religious maniacs, stupid and (inexplicably) Southern. I can’t do accents to save my life, but if you can, practice your Southern accent. That way if you DON’T normally have one, and they videotape you confessing to something, we will KNOW.

One side step of this, and honestly very good at saving your life in an emergency is to act completely and utterly nuts.

Look, don’t do this to a mob. You scare a mob too much, they will kill you.  But if it’s just one or two people and they’re stronger/better armed than you? Being utterly insane will make them leave you alone or run away.  I speak from experience. I’ve used it to make feral homeless run away.

Again, this sort of nonsense doesn’t come easy, so you might want to practice shouting “Butterflies, all the dragons are here. You did it. You did it. It was you!”  If you can make spittle fly, it’s perfect.

An extension of this, and the reason that I want you to read Comrade Don Camillo is to make them explain their beliefs.  No, I’m serious, fun for all ages.  The caveat is the you probably can’t do it in your own persona, and why someone’s suggestion for creating a bunch of fake online personas is great.  This falls under “sowing doubt and dissention” in their ranks, while being perfectly normal.

You might need to do this in person, and of course, then you have to trust they don’t know you have degrees or whatever, because you really have to play “dumb and willing.”

Fortunately, you’ll be helped by the left’s certainty that not only are we all dumb, but that everything including colleges teaches as it did in the 50s. So they won’t realize we’ve heard their shiboleths and code words before.  I do however suggest playing this online, under an assumed ID before you try it in person. It is a technique and ought to be practiced.

Say they accuse you of white supremacy. You act all confused and tell them you don’t know what it is. When they explain you ask them how this can be since you are not white/are not married to a white person/don’t even know why THEY think whites are superior. If they say “educate yourself” ask how. If they recommend books say “Well, that seems like a difficult read. Can you explain it to me, in your own words?” When they explain you say “Are you saying that people should think whites are superior because—”

Make them unpack the insane assumptions behind their actions/doctrines.  This btw, is difficult, because you’re going to ask them “isn’t that what Hitler believed?” and that will just stop the conversation and make them suspect you, without it really going into their brain and wreaking havoc.  Instead try “Isn’t that a belief from long ago? That people are born good or bad, and only good people should have babies, or something? Something like the Eugene theory, I think?”

BTW this also can work to deprogram teens who have gone wrong. They think you’re a dumbass, anyway, it’s part of being a teen. So play to it and make them “educate” you, and in the process sow doubts in their heads. Be the hopelessly out of touch parent/grandparent, and ask unbelievably dumb questions.

That’s all for today, my friends.  Go practice being obstinately, bottomlessly, brilliantly dumb.

525 thoughts on “Line Dancing: How To Be A Scary Moron”

  2. ALERT: Someone is planning a false flag event this weekend. Either the 16th, 17th, or 19th at state capitols and DC (the date of the supposed patriot event varies). Poorly designed posters have been mailed out to conservatives and conservative groups. The FBI is in on it, since they are now making noises about “uncovering the plot”. (Sources, the Blaze, ABC, etc..)

    The president is being held incommunicado, and our normal modes of communication are recording the event are being shut down. This is (other than the sheer hell of it) so that we cannot shine a light on what really happens this weekend.

    The posters call for armed men to show up at the capitols for a march. This is a TRAP. Unfortunately, with a few million pissed off people, it’s almost inevitable that enough idiots will show to give them their set-piece Tiennemen square massacre. If by some miracle, everyone stays home, I’m sure antifa, or Hollywood CGI will fill in.

    What is planned next is a brutal crackdown on America in “response” to inaugurate the new regime. The capitol hill protest didn’t do what they want, so this is plan B. These liars will now make up reality to suit them, so that they have some bloody shirt to wave giving them moral authority for the rest of the evil they plan.

      1. I think he (she) is saying to trust the Feebs when they say they are doing something – but not when they say WHY they are doing it.

        Sounds like they are preparing the narrative here.

      2. There IS something going on. I was already suspicious that any such “armed protests” would be a false flag op, given that Biden just said that he’s going to “destroy” the NRA. But someone put up a website meant to coordinate such protests. Lemme see if I can find the link again… effing hell, I saved the page just yesterday, but do I know where I put it? and the web is so flooded with stories about this “FBI leak” that I can’t find the site again.

        Anyway, the site was calling for “armed protests in every state capital” on the 20th. But what set off my bullshit detector was that on the front page it had a banner naming Trump in some mildly negative way. (They just can’t help themselves.) And the tone was overall just… wrong, like Patriot wasn’t their first language.

        Every news site is parroting the same story as mentioned by Anonymous, but so far I haven’t found a copy of this supposed FBI leak. However the original source claiming it is ABC News:

        https://abcnews.go.com/US/armed-protests-planned-50-state-capitols-fbi-bulletin/story?id=75179771

        Trump is supposed to speak at the town of Alamo TX today, is he not? Not at “the Alamo” as has been rumored.

        (And they’re still building that border wall, at a rate of up to five miles a day.)

              1. Embrace the power of AND…

                FBI held a live press conference today. They’re going whole hog investigating the Capitol’s Unfortunate Events (where was all this zeal for justice when BLM/Antifa were burning down cities??) including tracing money/contacts/etc. Will be just fascinating to see if they magically skip over the Antifa types, who might have connections back into the Hallowed Halls. And if they do an honest investigation… who it takes down.

                With any luck, it’ll get leaked so we can see for ourselves.

          2. Especially ABC, after the Political Director for ABC News called for “cleansing” America of Trump supporters.

            His words… CLEANSING. Does anyone here know a single instance where Political Cleansing doesn’t mean killing people? As far as I’m concerned, it sounds to me like Rick Klein, Political Director for ABC News, called for the DEATH of 75+ Million Americans. How does that guys still have a job?

          3. Someone pointed out the color scheme was more fast food (reds and yellows) than patriotic (red, white, blue) and the symbolic CommuFist was there. How much more obvious can it be that I’ve flushed better?

          4. ABC News’ political director called for a “cleansing” of Trump supporters. Anything that is said by ABC News should be viewed in that light.

          6. So now there’s more info, and, well…

            washingtonpost DOT com/national-security/capitol-riot-fbi-intelligence/2021/01/12/30d12748-546b-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html

            “As of 5 January 2021, FBI Norfolk received information indicating calls for violence in response to ‘unlawful lockdowns’ to begin on 6 January 2021 in Washington, D.C.,” the document says. “An online thread discussed specific calls for violence to include stating ‘Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in, and blood from their BLM and Pantifa slave soldiers being spilled. Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war. We get our President or we die. NOTHING else will achieve this goal.”

            The language in the “online thread” sounds suspiciously like Antifa — specifics and syntax. It does not sound like our side.

            The basic difference is that our side consistently calls for hanging the target AFTER they commit treason. Their side consistently calls for INTIMIDATING the target into the desired behavior.

            This “thread” is definitely the latter.

            And oh my, the story it links to… “FBI focuses on whether some Capitol rioters intended to harm lawmakers or take hostages” — gee, does that sound anything like a certain Governor’s imaginary adventure, which as I recall proved to be plotted by 2 feds and 3 stooges??

            Some of our people may have unwittingly followed along, but no longer any doubt in my mind that the violence and destruction (minimal as it was) was entirely a setup. Also altogether too suspicious how many corporate entities dropped the banhammer all at once… I’d sure like to know how many have CCP involved at the decision-making level.

            I’m also wondering why this “thread” hasn’t leaked (assuming it exists, well, confirms these “secret channels” have gov’t plants, thanks for outing yourselves). The only non-media info I can find is here:

            gameruprising DOT to/index.php?threads/pro-trump-extremists-move-to-secret-online-channels-to-plan-for-inauguration-day-in-d-c.17209/

            …claiming it was on a Telegram channel. And no autist screencapped it and dumped it to 4chan or kiwifarms? really??

            A few salient comments from gameuprising:
            ===
            I hate to cite Chris Hedges (total manginaed Progressive) but he’s far better than anything on Fox News. Hedges has stated many times that the tools used by empire in far away lands, always get used on the citizens back home.
            ===
            FBI agents were aware that plotters had shared maps of the tunnels under the Capitol online, and arranged locations to rendez-vous in states including Kentucky and South Carolina before heading to Washington.

            lol of course the FBI agents were aware–they were the ones who gave out the maps in the first place!
            ===
            Following requests from Democrats some National Guard members were being subjected to additional background checks to ensure they were not “sympathetic to domestic terrorists.”

            That’s your money quote right there. Next step: Political commissars in the National Guard and all five branches of the Armed Forces.
            ===
            It’s not sedition if the government betrayed you first.
            ===

            1. Seriously, I’m divided on this.
              Oh, not this thread. It’s totally bogus.
              NO ONE ON THE RIGHT WOULD SAY “We get our president or–” THIS IS NOT ABOUT TRUMP. TO AN EXTENT IT NEVER WAS. It’d be more likely “We will get to vote again or”

              BUT to an extent I’m a little disappointed our side didn’t even BREAK IN TO THE CAPITOL. The left does it all the time. And I don’t mean the damage, I mean forcing their way in to shout at the legislators.

              I’m seriously pissed that we’re just going “Oh, I guess they took our vote and we can do nothing.”
              Kind of like, you know, the English, who are now not allowed to see anyone outside home, and plans are in place not to allow them to TALK in public. The intent is so obvious. Are people this stupid?

              1. Yep. Just ain’t our language. Then again, we’re writers, we notice when writing is tone-deaf.

                LIS we might have been better off if they’d made it that far and made sure they got heard BY the congresscritters. After all wasn’t that the goal?

                The English are what happens when first you drive your adventurous young men to emigrate, then kill your brave young men in two world wars. All that’s left are cowed compliant sheep.

                That technique is no longer an option, so they try to eliminate America’s brave and adventurous young men by turning them into soyboys and Marxists.

              2. Yes. Far too many people are exactly this stupid.

                I’m disappointed in my fellow countrymen. The English, who are submitting ever so politely, used to consider us rowdy and ill-mannered by comparison. I want to see a lot more rowdiness!

              3. I noted that that exact same comment–syntax, everything, down to being posted by an ‘anonymous’ was also posted over at Larry’s blog. ‘Cause that ain’t suspicious at ALL.

      4. I distrust everything I hear from the mainstream media right now. I find that a good policy in general, but especially right now.

        1. Yeah, it’s gotten to the point where everything they say is a lie, including the words “the” and “and”.

          1. Don’t forget ‘is’. They can twist ‘is’ into the most amazing contortions; I suspect at least two additional dimensions, inaccessible to the rational mind, must be involved.

            Either they’re deliberately spewing bullshit at us, or they actually BELIEVE that bullshit. I don’t know which alternative would be worse.
            ———————————
            It was impolite enough for me to suggest that the local government was stupid. It would have been most undiplomatic to prove it.

            1. I really did not realize that people can lie *so* much, and yet they seem to have no self-awareness that they are lying.

            2. While I *might* believe that some of those lower on the food chain believe what they are spewing, I don’t believe any such thing about the ones actually in front of a camera, or who hold any kind of power. (Including and especially any number of those “Republicans” who suddenly lost their spines again and brought out the back-stabby knives.) They know they’re lying. We know they’re lying. They know we know they are lying. But they are at the stage of “Whatcha gonna do about it, huh?” and taunting. Because they are bullies and budding tyrants who think they will hold the levers of power now and forever.

              (They won’t. That’s in G-d’s hands, but of course they don’t really believe in Him.)

        1. Yeah, since that’s how they’ve operated since…well, I’m thinking pretty much since the Feebs were founded. Ethical, J. Edgar Hoover most emphatically was NOT.

    2. >> “The president is being held incommunicado”

      [raised eyebrow]

      Why does this sound vaguely familiar?

      Oh, yes, I remember now:

  3. This is pretty dumb — What if we pick a day and start turning ourselves in? To the Police Station or the FBI or wherever. Just go in and say “I am turning myself in”. They ask why and you say “I voted for Trump”. Of course these dialogues never go according to plan, but just imagine that they then say “That’s not against the law”. If even 10% of us do this across the nation the lines will be long! It could be very annoying for them and get them on the record.

    1. “I voted for Trump and am reporting for my reprogramming. I want to be a USEFUL member of society; I do NOT want to be consigned to the Chinese Organ Banks.”

      Nikole Hannah-Jones Calls For ‘Consequences,’ ‘Deprogramming’ For Republicans
      Nikole Hannah-Jones believes 74 million Americans deserve to be “punished” as part of deprogramming them for voting for Donald Trump in 2020.

      Nikole Hannah-Jones was the developer of the 1619 Project for the New York Times.

      You might also use the 3-minute address portions typical of American City Council, County Commissioner and School Board meetings to inquire what arrangements for the re-programming of Trump voters have been made.
      ~

  4. I haven’t had the occasion to try this, but I’ve often thought about it. If arrested and read your Miranda warning, the officer should end by asking you to assert that you have understood his warning. Generally, officers must make sure the suspect understands what the officer is saying, taking into account potential education levels. It may be necessary to “translate” to the suspect’s level of understanding. Courts have ruled this admissible as long as the original waiver is said and the “translation” is recorded either on paper or on tape.

    I think we should all refuse to understand the warnings. “I’m sorry officer, but I don’t follow what you’re saying. Could you explain it to me again?” Question everything, misunderstand everything. It may not keep you from being arrested, but it should at least be entertaining.

    1. Didn’t you hear? They don’t have to Mirandize you any more. They’re not even required to actually tell you if you’re under arrest.

      2. They have never had to Mirandize you. If they don’t want to admit what you say as evidence, they are home-free.

        I have no trouble, of course, in believing that that is just a technicality.

    2. Common misconception: you have to have your Miranda rights read at the arrest. This has never been true. You have to have your Miranda rights read before you are questioned. It’s commonly done at the arrest because then no one has to worry about doing it later.

      2. Actually you have to be Mirandized before they can use anything you say in court. They can question you all day long as long as they don’t care that using anything you say, or the “fruits” of anything you say, like subsequent searches or arrests traceable back to anything you said, would immediately get thrown out in court.

        The “arresting officer Mirandized the suspect when they put you in cuffs” thing is a backstop to make sure it happens at least once, and before you start blabbing in the back seat o the police car. Often they will Mirandize a suspect several times, when they get officially booked, when they get the suspect into the interview room, and whenever a new questioner comes in, all to make sure they have documented counter when the defense tries to get whatever the suspect said in interview and all subsequent “fruit of the poisoned tree” excluded at trial.

        But if you are bound for the Fredo the Elder Memorial Reconciliation Commission Public Health Isolation Camp, yeah, those “cops” probably won’t bother.

        1. Correction conceded.

          Of course, from what I’ve heard from cops, the average suspect has the same problem as Donkey in Shrek 2: “Donkey, you have the right to remain silent. What you lack is the capacity.”

        2. A Supreme Court packed by the Democrats will declare that Miranda rights and other protections do not apply to “domestic terrorists”, which will include anyone who supports Trump or any other political opponent of the Democrats.

        3. You must also remember that NOTHING you say can be used to HELP YOU!!!!!!
          It is ALL hearsay from you and NOT admissible in court. Anything you say CAN ONLY BE USED AGAINST YOU!!!!
          The man reason ALL Lawyers tell you to STFU and don’t talk to the police or ANY LEOs (FBI).

          1. At this point they wouldn’t get anything beyond my name, former rank, social security, and a demand for a lawyer. In whatever accent seems to annoy them the most.

              1. You know, there are times I rather wish we could all meet in a big room with lots of coffee and snacks. I’m pretty sure most of you have gamed out a lot of the same scenarios I have and probably drawn similar conclusions.It’d be interesting to be able to compare and see what I’ve missed or hasn’t occurred to me or even get a good reality check.

                If the Democrats and their minions were going to be limited by the Constitution, I’d feel much easier going into the next however many years.

                  2. Sounds good to me. I’m not an extrovert (what a surprise!) and 8 hours a day of playing reception is no substitute for a good, in person, gabfest.
                    Got an ad from a nationally known yarn shop offering a “virtual retreat.” Swag bag mailed to you, Zoom access to classes and virtual yoga and teas. Makes me want to put my head down and moan.

                    1. For reasons I cannot fully articulate, interacting with people via video (even if it’s only audio) makes me all manner of anxious. I’m fine with in-person. I tolerate (barely) phone calls, if they MUST be done. But internet chat? Nope, nope, noppity nope. Stresses me the heck out.

                  3. Watch: Here’s how to prove that you’re either insanely stupid or stupidly insane.

                    I’ve been known to chair conventions, and I will volunteer to help organize.

                    4. I could not let that straight line go to waste. Now, some folks might take that for a character flaw… 😛

                    6. Should you ever see anything that I say that looks like a straight line to you, I formally give you my permission to provide whichever punch line(s) that leap to mind.

                      Just try to make some of the jokes funny. That’s all I ask.

                  4. Where’s that one? I tried a search and got some interesting results. As long as I don’t have to fly I’m good with that idea. Not because of a fear of flying or anything, but mostly because between being 6’4″ and 270-ish, I really don’t like cramming myself into little airplane seats. The non-stop flight from here to Dallas was always on one of the smaller jets I couldn’t even stand up straight in.

                  5. Even better! After the end of May I think I’m going to have a lot of free time on my hands. I think I’m finally going to get the chance to follow the Lewis and Clark trail for a couple weeks, do some camping, and take lots of pictures.

                    1. You do know all I have is my staple gun and my glue gun, you know?
                      Oh, and the bb to scare the woodpeckers.
                      All the rest perished in a weird spelunking accident.

                  7. Oh yes please!

                    Despite my current mobility problems I’d pull out all the stops to get to HunCon.

        4. Best to say nothing other than:
          “Why have you stopped me?”
          “Am I free to go now?”
          If they hold on to you, then say nothing beyond. “I want a lawyer.”

          1. This is How to deal with cops at Burning Man (2018 edition) but it’s of more general applicability.

            The line-dancing bit:

            If they ever say you are not free to go, you say “Am I being arrested?”. If they say “no you are not being arrested”, you say again “Am I free to go?”. Keep it up as many times as necessary. Yes, it will sound like a stupid kid game, like “stop copying me”, but the game is very real with very real stakes, and this is their game to win, and yours to lose.

        5. Oh, no—they quite like it when you start blabbing in the backseat before being questioned. That stuff is completely admissable, and is often much more useful (to them) than what you might say when you’re on your guard that you’re being questioned.

          1. Back seat blabbing is where the 1980 Rhode Island v Innis “spontaneous statement” not in response to direct police questioning exception – in that one, two cops expressed concern between themselves while driving the suspect to booking that a child might find the loaded shotgun that they suspected the suspect ditched near a school – and the suspect interrupted from the back seat, offering to help them find the gun before any kids found it.

            I’d note here that three Supremes (Marshall, Brennan and Stevens) dissented from the majority ruling, contending basically anything the police said was automatically an interrogation and since the perp had previously said he wanted a lawyer, his helping them find the gun and the gun itself should be excluded from his trial.

            The original Miranda, an Arizona rapist kidnapper, confessed first verbally and then in writing, said written confession which he signed including the typed statement “I do hereby swear that I make this statement voluntarily and of my own free will, with no threats, coercion, or promises of immunity, and with full knowledge of my legal rights, understanding any statement I make may be used against me.” His lawyer successfully claimed Miranda didn’t realize he had the right to not confess, and in fact, could not so realize unless someone had verbally informed him.

            The Supremes agreed, thus the magic words on the “Miranda warning” card.

            Miranda was convicted on retrial which didn’t use the confession, served 5 of a 20-to-30 year prison sentence before being paroled, and then four years after he got out, he was knifed to death in a bar fight.

            Arguments as to whether a bored officer droning the magic words from a card have protected any rights whatsoever are left as an exercise for the reader.

    3. And speaking a foreign/unidentifiable language is NOT out of the question. (Weirdly I can’t do it. All I can do is revert to village portuguese, which is close.)

      1. Village Portuguese certainly ought to count as a foreign/unidentifiable language!

        I used Swahili once to discourage some sidewalk Lotharios in Paris who were playing the “Mademoiselle? Miss? Senorita?” game. As they walked away I overheard one of them saying to the other, “Elle est tres grande pour un Chinoise.”

        Time to brush up on my Swahili.

          2. They will just accuse non-leftists of “cultural appropriation” for speaking in such languages and use that to hold and torture people. If the speech is incomprehensible they will use the old Soviet bloc “needs to be held indefinitely for psychological ‘examination and treatment'”

        2. At an airshow years ago, I was accosted by a rather large, drunk, angry redneck as to why I didn’t stand during the national anthem – It wasn’t, it was Al Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American” – and he really wanted to fight about it. I put on my worst Canadian accent and told him “Sorry, I’m Canadian… eh?” To which he shrugged and stumbled away.

          My mother and step-father, who were with me at the time, just looked at me like I was insane.

          Hey, I didn’t have to fight a drunken giant… who’s the crazy one now?

            2. Foxfier,

              I’m not certain what is going on, but it looks like I got moderated on your blog.

                1. He’s probably young, studied too much college level humanities, relies heavily on acceptance by peer group, and maybe is not doing too good in school.

                  I’m excluding the usual ‘drive by influence agent of a foreign intelligence’ theory because he was a little too engaged, and too easily prompted to say counterproductive things.

                  At least, I’m hoping there isn’t anyone organized on the right enough for that much effort to go into false flags.

                  Sophomore and Junior would match the level of “I’ve read this stuff and figure I have informed opinions”, but I would kinda hope a senior would be a little more attentive to having a viable path to work.

                  I was real tempted to do a “here’s how to think about choosing a major” tutorial, and some other stuff. Covid lockdown is not a wonderful time to be looking for a position.

                  It is really easy to drift into attending college, thinking it an extension of k-12, and just not have any sort of sound plan for what comes after college. I find that a bit pitiable, regardless of whether it is wasting a bunch of time on empty course work, or getting a real degree and screwing up starting a career.

                  So I went ‘idiot kid, stupid enough he may not be lying, probably not together enough to be personally dangerous, and being a raving nutjob myself, I have two reasons to want freedom of speech to permit raving nutjobbery’. Of course, I’m definitely not his next door neighbor, and I don’t have small kids to watch out for. So I may be being generous where ‘kill it with fire’ is appropriate.

                  I can remember a time when I trusted the teachers too much, lived to regret it, and wouldn’t have been up to taking advantage even if I had someone who would kick my ass to try to make me think things through better.

                2. Wider implications could be a combo of “It is afraid” with “impulse that leads to revitalization movements” and “going nuts in the bunker with Hitler”. Might simply be unusually crazy, the younger cohorts have not been well served when it comes to advice on maintaining mental health.

                  But stupid kid stupidity combined with current uncertainty and stress could fully explain the statements.

        3. I was in Berlin years ago and while waiting to meet a friend I watched a Roma girl accosting American men and trying to get money. She approached one group of 20-something clearly American guys, who were laughing and talking together (in English) and asked “Do you speak English?” (that was her standard approach). One of the guys looked straight at her and said, “Nein. Ich spreche keine Englishe.” and then went back to his friends. She looked astounded and asked again…he said the same thing. She finally walked off. Several people sitting in the square just started laughing.

          1. My first wife was a Mexican woman who grew up in the US as a Resident Alien. Her mother didn’t speak any English, and her father’s English was so bad, I usually had to get a translator to understand him anyway. When we were stationed at El Toro Marine Air Station in So. California, she would often have people walk up and talk to her in Spanish, to which she usually replied “I don’t speak Spanish”. Oh the faces… My first wife was unmistakably Mexican.

            Come to think of it. Except, apparently to some hillbillies when we we were stationed in TN, who followed us around calling me an “N” lover. Hilarity ensued (hey, I was a Marine and at the time fresh out of boot camp… My muscles had muscles.) To be fair, We weren’t stationed in TN for long enough for her to bother getting a job, so she spent that summer soaking up the sun and her tan really was WAY dark (and beautiful).

      3. Sarah, all you have to say is “Where are the Nuclear Wessels.”

        And maybe “I want to talk to Boris. That moose and squirrel framed me.”

        Actually, given the “Russians Under The Bed” obsessions of the other side, you should probably demand they let you speak to the Russian Ambassador.

  5. It’s very hard to appear dumb. I think I may have to use my standby. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been on chemo for several years and I don’t understand. Can you say that again?” or “I just can’t think of a word.” Or my last resort… I’ll stutter. I used to stutter as a kid… Oh and apparently if you use manners– please and thank you– then you a dumb.

  6. You don’t even have to play dumb. The entire legal profession, (as well as a myriad of other specialties) is founded on the command of specialist language that the layman does not understand. I seem to recall that the good Captain Krausa advised Thorby that he should never sign his name to a contract or agreement if he didn’t understand it or the laws it will be executed under. It’s advice I thought was good but haven’t much heeded, Perhaps it’s high time I did.

    1. Too bad we can’t hold Congress to that standard.

      And make them *personally* liable for what they do sign. They’re professionals, we hold engineers, doctors, pilots, and truck drivers to that standard.

      I bet there would be fewer of them bragging how they didn’t read the latest thousand-page doorstop they just signed.

      1. Seeing how the thousand page doorstops frequently consist of editing instructions to the United States Code, a straightforward reading might produce little comprehension. It requires perhaps a program that can perform and highlight the excisions and additions. Although even reading that might sorely tax the intellectual capacities of some of our congresscritters.

          1. There comes a point where you can no longer maintain those multiple generations of spaghetti code…

        2. I still say imposing a requirement that if Congresscritters vote for a bill they have to physically eat it would do wonders for the conciseness of the Law.

          1. That might be even better than “No bill shall be voted upon until after it has been read aloud in its entirety to the assembly not less than three times.” But both? Say….

            1. I believe that provision actually is in the Congressional rules; I saw it mentioned a couple of times when I attempted to actually read the Congressional Record. The requirement is routinely waived unless there is an objection, and there rarely is. To raise the objection and actually require the reading of a bill without the consent of Party leadership is apparently risky, since it is a known stalling tactic.

            2. Not only that, but if the bill references Section 26, Subsection 109, Paragraph 71 of some obscure law, they must also read all the relevant portions of THAT. And if Subsection 109 contains another reference, it must also be followed, and so on, all the way to the bottom of the rat-hole.

              The way they write those damned things, a one-pager could keep them yakking for days!

              How long would it have taken to read that 5,600 page doorstopper? It seems that 150 words per minute is a reasonable speed, and a page is about 500 words, so 3 minutes and 20 seconds per page, or about 310 hours for the whole thing — WITHOUT including digressions into ‘referenced’ material. That’s almost two weeks, 24 hours a day and no days off.

              The bill must be read in its entirety, with all references, before every vote. Every amendment must be read in the same way before voting to include it.
              ———————————
              God help us if we ever got all the government we pay for.

            1. They are incapable of reading the Constitution, why would anyone think them capable of reading legislation no matter the length.

              Note re impeachment; Article 2 provides:

              Section 4

              The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

              That’s it. There is no other punishment other than removal from office if one is impeached and convicted. It does not contain a bar against running for office in the future (if it did Hastings could not have run for and gotten elected to the House after being convicted on impeachment while a Federal Judge).

              Also a question I don’t recall seeing any of the Congress critters or pundits address; Who presides over a Senate trial of Trump after he leaves office? The Chief Justice? He only presides if the President or VP is being impeached, and by that point, Trump is no longer in office. The VP? In that case you have Kamala Harris presiding over the impeachment of someone that she just faced in an election and campaigned against. Does Roberts refuse to preside because Trump is no longer POTUS and thus the Chief Justice is not the requisite office to preside over an impeachment trial?

              1. You missed Article I, Section 3:

                “Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”

                The punishment is not repeated in Article II, Section 4, because it would be redundant.

                  1. It was one of the defenses for Bill and Hildebeeste for their Clinton Foundation capers.

                2. Yes, but office in Article 1, Section 3 refers to appointed offices, not elected ones. It is in the same section that prevents elected officials from also holding an appointed office Ii.e. one cannot be a member of the House and Secretary of State at the same time). Hastings was barred from future appointed offices. It did not prevent him from running for election, and winning, an elected position.

                1. If they really think humiliation is a good* tactic to use against Donald Trump, then they have totally failed to understand the man’s character. And after four years of him demonstrating how he thinks on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis, that doesn’t speak well for their intelligence.

                  * Here I mean “good tactic” as in “useful, gets them what they want” not as in “morally good”.

  7. You can also just go on about stuff that isn’t very relevant, and people will think you’re stupid or discount you.

    Today, among many others, we celebrate St. Tigrios, a priest of Constantinople, and St. Eutropios, a minor cleric (ie, lector). who both continued to support and raise money for the patriarch St. John Chrysostom who had been exiled by the Emperor Arcadius (mostly for being annoying and right). So they exiled these guys too, on the false charge that they had plotted to burn down Constantinople’s cathedral and also kill all the senators. They both died in exile. Chrysostom continued to have plenty of supporters, including a few who were too connected to be easily exiled. There was also the formidable St. Nicarete, a rich old deaconess at the cathedral who left Constantinople, rather than be forced to pretend that the new guy, Arsacios, was a valid patriarch, and who visited Chrysostom in exile (much to his embarassment and worry that she’d be punished).

    It’s also the day for St. Bernard of Corleone, the shoemaker who was the best swordsman and duelist in Sicily, who was suddenly converted in heart while hiding out in sanctuary in a Capuchin church after killing a man (again). He became a lay brother doing all the scutwork, and received a miraculous gift for healing animals.

    And then there’s St. John of Ravenna, who not only persuaded Attila the Hun to leave his flock alone, but did the same thing when Theodoric came along. Not easy.

    1. But being dumb and/or “compliant” is a lot safer.

      Another example: St. Thomas Aquinas, who put up with his family locking him up for a year to keep him from being a Dominican friar, escaped with his sisters’ help, and finally got to live a normal Dominican life in Naples. There he stayed quietly listening while the other students thought the guy who looked like a linebacker was “the Dumb Ox.” One of the guys took pity on him and started explaining theology to him so that he could keep up. He accepted this and said nothing. Then one day, his helper faltered on explaining a point… and Aquinas did the friendly thing and explained it to the other guy. In great depth. Which was the end of people assuming he was stupid.

      The hard thing is not revealing stuff or being impatient, basically.

      1. Also, although of course it’s good to prove oneself courageous and faithful, it’s also good to keep other people from being tempted to commit horrible sins, and to remove the means for them to sin more comprehensively. It’s okay to tell people only what they have a right to know, instead of the whole story that isn’t really their business or that of the state’s.

        Obviously you don’t want to authorize yourself to do _anything_, because that way lies madness; but one can go to fairly great lengths without actually sinning in any way, or even without hurting anybody in any real way.

      2. There’s the bit in one of Turtledove’s WorldWar books where the aliens have captured a bunch of humans and put them to work cleaning the air ducts on one of their ships. The Americans self-organize and get to work, efficiently doing the job, until the Russians stop them. “Never show the enemy your true capabilities,” say the Russians. The Americans get the point and slack off, and the aliens’ air ducts never get clean.

        (Maybe it’s Footfall, it’s been a good long while since I’ve read either.)

    2. Okay… actually there was more to the story. Under his birthname of Filippo Latini, Bernard of Corleone was a cobbler who became a mercenary soldier. He was a good blade with a hot temper, so he got in a lot of duels, but he was good enough to beat opponents without killing them. But then he ended up dueling with the hitman duelist Vito Canino, and almost killed him from wounds, and did make him lose his arm and hitman career. He was scared because Canino was a scary opponent he’d barely beaten, and because he hadn’t ever wanted to kill men in duels. But Canino had been supposedly the best blade in Sicily, and now Latini was. Canino’s thug buddies came after him to kill him, so he went into sanctuary. And that’s when he was converted and became a friar.

      At some point, the newly-made Fra Bernardo went to Canino and begged his forgiveness. Canino gave it, and the two became friends for the rest of their lives.

      He was often used as a cook at the friaries; and when stationed in Castelnovo, he was known for walking the streets with a big pot of minestrone on his head, which he would serve up to anybody poor and hungry.

      On his deathbed, he was visibly impatient to go to the Lord, and kept saying, “Let’s go!” Miracles galore occurred at his tomb right after his death.

      Apparently there were all kinds of exciting stories about Latini’s pre-conversion life that the witnesses gave at the gathering of evidence for his beatification, which happened only seven years after his death. Honestly sounds like it would make a cool movie.

  8. I did read the article. Worth the read on its own merit, but it also put me in mind of Heinlein’s tale of the lazy man in Time Enough For Love.
    Why exactly do farmers have to get up at oh dark thirty to milk the cows anyway?
    Perhaps time to read that part again to refresh me on the details, a common experience for me with many of Heinlein’s works.
    And as a side note, I can attest as a former officer in the organization, that Mensans can instinctively be some of the dumbest folk you’d ever want to meet. Seems to come naturally for some of us.

    1. One of the great eye-openers I’ve ever had in literature was in Brave New World, when they describe the failed experiment of a society composed entirely of Alphas. Now, I certainly disagree with the notion of deliberately poisoning embryos to create Betas, Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons, but the truth that a society of nothing but super-smart people would never work was a revelation. Growing up, everything was about brain-power and education, not the importance of hard work.

    2. oh, dear. Remember I raised someone who is in the rarified upper 0.5%. He still lives with us and sometimes I have to say things like “the towels are IN THE TOWEL CUPBOARD.” (When accused of hiding them.)

      1. I met one of those people 😀 He had to be cared for i.e. fed, clothed, laundry etc, because he just wasn’t in the same reality as the rest of us. He was always distracted. I think he was in physics or something like that. I realized then that the Einstein stories were true and not myths.

        1. I realized it raising my boys.
          Including the famous ones of wandering off to the front of the house with me in hot pursuit. “Yes, mom, anything wrong?”
          “YOU’RE NOT WEARING ANY PANTS.”
          Looking down. “Oh. Oh. I guess I forgot?”

        2. Smartest guy I knew was apparently a programer/designer/engineer for GM and made the Caddy V8-6-4 computer. GM being GM , they ignored him when he said the tech wasn’t ready, and released it anyway, then blamed him for it’s failure.
          This was the mild nudge that put him over the edge and in the several years I knew him he was institutionalized about every other year. He’d get out, sue people, then over the time would go from mild mannered guy to Rasputin looking loon until family would have him committed again.

          2. I can see why he’d be paranoid. A *lot* of people were angry about that; enough to form a class-action lawsuit against GM. And win. And they would cheerfully have strung him up if they’d known who he was…

            Whoever was responsible for the Oldsmobile Diesel conversions probably went into hiding, too.

            1. Those responsible were on the boards, the ones forced to do it were the ones blamed. (or as in his case tasked and then told “No, Go with it, as is!”when they said “Needs more time and tech to work right.”)
              Also that fine automobile (emphasis on bile) was GM deciding all those European and Japanese motors with aluminum heads were impossible things and went with an alloy block and iron head on floating iron cylinders. The ones who proposed that were nuts already. I recall an engine builder ordering liners with over-length sizes instead of over-bores, to fix knocks not from rods or mains, but liners moving.

              1. Buick used “wavy” liners that were cast in place in the Buick and Olds 215CID V8s. I’m not sure if Rover continued the process when they bought the tooling, but liner slippage wasn’t a thing with the Rover 3500. The 4-liter and larger engines, on the other hand, used smooth bores and “shrink fit” liners that were slipped into a heated block casting. Unfortunately, if the engine ever ran hot, the liners would slip down and unload the head gasket, which would then promptly fail.

                My fix for that was to drill and tap the block and run a soft hardware store bolt through the block and liner, then cut and hone it flush with the bore. It worked best if the liner hadn’t slipped yet, but you could often pull the liner back up using a tool and then deck the block back level, which it usually needed anyway after the gasket blew. It’s way cheaper than machining the block and fitting flanged liners. ($1000-$1500) For some reason other engine builders seemed dubious at first, but enough of them followed suit that it’s now a common procedure.

                Granted it sounds pretty ghetto, but sometimes a simple fix is all it takes to do the job.

                1. I’ve heard of Pinned liners.
                  The Caddy’s used a pocket that the liner bottom slipped into, and the top floated. Liners looked sorta like a Harley cylinder without fins. ( https://www.ebay.com/itm/Perfect-Circle-226-4488-Engine-Cylinder-Sleeve-Liner-1982-1988-Cadillac-4-1L/184264668846?epid=227629105&hash=item2ae707b6ae:g:JPkAAOSw1HZeoaqT ) If you had enough hard use the floating tops would waver, wiggle, and wallow out the base enough to jiggle. Bad enough it would sound like a rod knock, by then you had over-pressure going in the cooling system, blowing the water out. I knew of a used car dealer (N.A. Terrbonne, in Raceland, La) who was the unscrupulous type of the stereotype. He would buy them at auction for cheap, by the longer liner and hammer it in until level, bolt it back together and sell it. He was the paper behind the bearing shells, braze up freeze cracked blocks and bondo over, then paint, buy flood damage and power wash the whole thing sort of guy. He was one of my Cash Only customers. He had a mechanic who refused to do those things, so he had to do it himself and he wasn’t a very good mechanic to begin with. The Mechanic finally moved to another shop. I used to run into the Mechanic at car shows and get togethers. He had a Chevy Luv, tubbed and tilting front with a Big Block Chev for motor.

        3. Aye, there are absolute GENIUSES.. in their field. The Latin expert who can, with great detail, explain how and why ‘delenda est’ is not really right or not quite…and so on… but is eternally astonished at John Q. Public performing the miracle of replacing a light bulb.

        4. I’ve never had an IQ test, but I did take the GRE back in ’84 when it was correlated to IQ and according to that I’m in the mid 150s. My father is at least at that level.

          It took that man over a decade in their current house to figure out how to use the universal remote for both the TV and the cable box. I don’t recall him becoming safe to leave with a microwavable frozen meal until about 10 years ago. They’ve had a microwave in the house since ’87. And as far as I know, he has never figured out how to use the clotheswasher or dishwasher.

          I had to spell it out in words of mostly one syllable as to why I couldn’t apply to Cornell for library school. Me: “They don’t have a library/MLS program!” Daddy: “But they have a library!” Me: *sigh*

          He has a B.Eng from Cornell , an M.S. in physics from UT Austin (from before the bell tower shooter), and a PhD from MIT. His method of explaining calculus to a 15yo me was to assume that I had already learned it, but had spent a few years away and just needed reminding. It did not work.

          I fear for him (and the family) if he outlives my mother.

          2. Oddly, the calculus professor during my brief attempt at college appeared to make the same assumption…

            Newton and Leibnitz figured it out from first principles, obviously freshmen should be able to do the same. I, on the other hand, was paying my own money to attend classes, and had a somewhat different opinion.

            1. One of my favorite lines that my husband repeated from his partial differential equations professor, on the importance of doing one’s homework: “It took many smart men hundreds of years to figure this out. You will not derive it on the test.”

          3. After dad had his stroke in ’87 and went into short term therapy and rehab after the hospital, besides physical therapy, they took him into the kitchen and other domestic therapy sessions. They got frustrated with him because, as they told mom “he was less than cooperative.” They told mom dad’s response was “Why? I never dealt with this stuff before.” After mom quit laughing … she responded “He’s not wrong.” As for measurements and weights, they had to figure out something other than the kitchen to determine if the stroke didn’t affect him … it didn’t. His math was fine. Speech he had to work on. But not his math. We lost dad March 2009.

            Maternal grandfather was the same way. Great mechanic. Household, not so much. Grandma survived him by 2 weeks.

            Hubby and son will be fine without me. Their threshold for clutter, dust, vacuuming, cleaning in general, is lower than mine (mine isn’t as high as mom’s, but what can one do?) But they can handle the household, etc., duties just fine.

      2. As another from up in that rarified air… seriously, there’s not enough oxygen up here, otherwise I’d understand this perfectly.

      3. Nastiest place to hide them. Not only are they never found, but the searcher feels like an utter fool when he is given the location. Almost as bad as searching for my glasses for a hour then finding them on my nose.

        1. So maybe the 1960’s Batman bat-cave was NOT campy, but everything was overly labeled so Bruce Wayne/Batman could look not an utter fool every moment?

          1. Cause of death: could not remember which Safe Place he used for the Anti-purple-glowing-radiation bat-tablets would be a terrible way to die.

          3. Walked around the house asking, “Has anyone seen my glasses?” with my glasses pushed up on my head. The real hoot it, it took spouse and kid a while to notice.

            1. My whole family does that. Mother: “Where is my purse? I can’t find it, I have to leave now to do X!” Me: Is it the one on the chair you’ve walked past four times and moved so you could sit down while scanning the room?” Mother: “Yes!”

              Basically, whatever we are looking for goes and hides, and anyone else walks in to see why we’re ranting and says “Oh that?” and points directly at the object in plain site.

              1. We have a game we play “Where did mom leave her glasses?” The answer is NOT on the top of my head. I actually make an effort that when I take them off I put them in a case in a consistent spot. But when I don’t … It doesn’t help when the kittens bat them off wherever I left them, or pick them up and pack them off (thus the case). I know dang well I didn’t leave the glasses under the bed, dang it!

                I rarely read with them, unless my eyes are really tired (they are progressive) or reading labels (arms are too short). Don’t use them to watch TV (even tho I probably could see better). Don’t cook or clean house with them on. I use them outside (they are photo-sensitive). While I could drive, if not dark, know where I’m at and going, I really, really, shouldn’t.

            2. >> “Walked around the house asking, “Has anyone seen my glasses?” with my glasses pushed up on my head.”

              I think I managed to do this once when I was wearing my glasses normally and looking right through them…

                1. And you say we really, really suck at playing it dumb. 😛

                  “You cannot possibly as stupid as you act.”

                  “Ken if I VANTS to be!”

                  – Girl Genius

                2. I can’t find the key to my motorcycle. Using the spare for now, have to get it copied tomorrow.

                  Then, of course, the old key will turn up within hours. Can’t find something? Replace it. Boom! It turns up.

                  How about: Walk into the kitchen. Stop. “I know I came in here for a reason…”

                  2. How about: Walk into the kitchen. Stop. “I know I came in here for a reason…”

                    All. The. Time.

                    1. Worse. Walk into the back of the house for “something”.

                      “Oh, look the towel hamper is full.”
                      Grab towels out of both bathrooms into one hamper.
                      “Oh look need more TP from storage.”
                      Take towels to utility room, put in washer, start.
                      Grab TP take to bathroom that needs it.
                      Cat wants out.
                      Goes to let cat out.
                      Dog wants out.
                      Dog wants in.
                      “Oh ick. Better dust …”
                      “Dog wants out.” It isn’t raining, go out to pick up after dog.
                      Bring in wood …
                      Chase after kitten who isn’t allowed out, yet, but sneaked out when bring in wood.
                      Let dog in.
                      Let cat (allowed to be out) in.
                      Remember about thing in back of the house.
                      Head that way. Get pulled off coarse, again.
                      Repeat …

                      *Please note. The “something” in the back of the house either isn’t fetched or done.*

                      I swear I not only need to take a list grocery shopping, but I need a list for the house.

                    2. Yeah, that too. Have you ever been tested for ADHD?

                      My Ex used to get so irritated with me when I would work on house renovations, because I wouldn’t do subtasks until the first task was completed then move on: AAAA BBBB CCCC done.

                      I would do: AA get bored C BB while thinking about A CCC BB A done. It still took the same total elapsed time, and all the tasks were completed, but it would just make her so crazy that she would significantly delay me by forcing me to listen to her yell. And she wasn’t doing any of the work anyway.

                      It wasn’t until I was diagnosed years later that I understood what I was doing. I’m still not sure why it mattered so much to her.

                    4. No. Never evaluated for ADHD. At 64? Not likely to happen.

                      One of hubby’s complaints over the last 42+ years is that I get hyper focused on something and am oblivious to everything else. Usually reading, now. When I was writing software …. ummmmm.

                      Then there are incidents like this. So we have two young adolescent cats (kittens since < 1 year old) that are not let outside (yet). We had them out on harnesses, dragging light leashes, doing a backyard canvas. Something spooked the kittens. Sissy immediately ran inside, her light line end clanging. I followed her in. Brother took off for parts ??? Hubby and son are yelling at me to come help find him. Knowing the best bet is having a door open while we canvased for brother, I made sure that Sissy was shut in one of the bedrooms. Which took a few minutes (because I had to find where she was hiding). They are panicking because brother isn't being found (even with a 10' light line attached). I'm being "too slow getting out there". It's not like I can yell to tell them what I'm doing, without spooking Sissy more … FYI. Eventually brother did come in on his own spooked into the house. This happens All The Time. Afterwards, yes it makes sense. But every time I take others by surprise by the side trip. If that is ADHD? Then probably guilty.

                    5. Hyperfocused is m husband’s way of coping with…. ADHD.
                      yeah, I finally got diagnosed at …. 57. I’m really angry. My life would have been very different had it happened at 20

                    6. Right? Or at 10. 10 would have helped a lot: I was the kid in school who got an A in everything but couldn’t ever remember to bring his permission slip back. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 47, and it definitely played a part in my divorce.

                    7. A caution: it can be a bit more complicated than that. Was diagnosed at, oh, six I think? First it was ADD. Then some other nonsense. Third trip was a recommendation of enough drugs to tranquilize a small cow (I was SIX). Dear Mother told them all to get stuffed, put me back in school where they had the wild arsed idea to give me an IQ test… which got me put in accelerated courses which were interesting for about five minutes before getting stupid again.

                      If I had stayed on the drugs, like some of my peers, I know what would have happened. They are a crutch, save for a few that *really* need them, and the whole industry for a time was addicted to the diagnoses for everything from temper tantrums and cries for attention to simple young male behavior (and the female equivalent). If you don’t learn to self-moderate, acclimating to society becomes a whole order of magnitude harder (and you thought being Odd was bad). Some of those people are still on them at my age, and cannot function reliably without them, and it did not have to be that way.

                      Having the info is useful. But as with all things, there are Unintended Consequences around. If your folks weren’t as stubborn and proud as mine, getting put on drugs as a child is a real possibility.

                    8. Oh, absolutely. But I was in grade school before the great Ritalin mania started drugging boys into docility. On the other hand, I was never jumping-out-of-my-chair hyperactive, so there wouldn’t have been as much incentive for the teachers to do so.

                      It would have been nice to be told “you’re not defective, you’re not lazy, you’re not letting your life drift by; your brain works differently and you’ll always be quicker in some things but to fit into modern society you’ll need to adapt.” My daughter was diagnosed this year and so far we’ve kept her off meds, although her inability to concentrate on the written page and actually Read A Book (I never had that problem) makes me think that she might benefit from them.

                    9. Still not at the level of needing an addicting drug, methinks. It took me over year to read The Hobbit when I was a kid, and at first I just had to do it for some report or other. There are ways to train your mind. I got to the point where I could kill a 400 page novel in a day, around school and work and minimal social contact. For folks with ADHD, reading at first is boring.

                      Once you get faster, it gets better. Teaching yourself focus, or hyperfocus like Sarah’s Dan, is part of the process. It’s not just reading. Being able to focus is essential for daily life. Except we do it differently.

                      Take your earlier example- the focus was the task, you just jumped around in the parts of the task. That’s one way to get it done, and it works for you. No problems with that. I don’t know how old your daughter is, but for me I learned to read better because the books I was being read were going too slow for me (ADHD rears its ugly head), so I started trying to read ahead. If the problem is the material- the stuff she’s reading is boring to her- she’s not going to want to read. Don’t start her on school mandated crap if she’s young, that stuff will rot your brain.

                      That said, she’s your little girl (doesn’t matter how old she is, they are always little girls to their father). I know you’ll do what you think is best. Just know that the drugs *can* cripple her in some ways if she doesn’t absolutely, positively need them.

                    10. And I didn’t let them dope the boys. BUT by late high school I probably should have told them every teacher said they were ADD and I SUSPECTED Dan and I were too.

                    11. Yep.
                      I’d walk down the street carrying a book, drop it and not know where or how.
                      Heck, I forgot to refill the adderall for …. 6 months. During those six months, the housephone disappeared.
                      Recently Dan was looking through my office drawers for a floppy reader (because we need to start saving what we can from those, and getting rid of boxes of them) which has…. disappeared and found the house phone.
                      Only way I can explain it is: Must have been in my hand, and I went upstairs to pick up something, and….

                    12. After my diagnosis I went on Adderall for 6 months, and it didn’t help at all. All it did was make me painfully grind my teeth and clench my jaw. I lost 15 pounds, because yay amphetamines, but it came right back when I stopped.

                      My problem has never been an inability to focus on things like work (and I’ve cleverly maneuvered myself into a career where the work is interesting, mostly), the problem was always my disability to remember all the other stuff I had to do. “Oh, crap, honey, I forgot to do X, I’ll try to remember to do it tomorrow,” for ten years isn’t the only thing that killed my marriage, but it certainly gave an assist. And by the time I got my diagnosis, Ex was so angry she wasn’t willing to accommodate anymore.

                    14. Oh, and yes: I swear I spend a quarter of my working-on-the-house time wandering around going “now where the f*** did I set my pliers down?” Occasionally I have just gone to Home Depot for a new hand tool because I can’t find the one that I know I own already.

                    17. Hyperfocused is m husband’s way of coping with…. ADHD.

                      –
                      He is in tech …

                      Me. It is programming. I can deal with hardware or OS issues, would rather not. But I can do it. It is also crafts … I don’t do crafts anymore.

                  3. I’m always forgetting what I was doing. And having to find things. Particularly the book I was reading and put down for a minute.

    3. Why milk the cows are oh dark thirty? As best I recall (my grandparents both sides did this) it’s because you’re going to have to milk them again twelve hours later, and if that’s no later than mid- to late- afternoon it’s less likely to interfere with supper and/or visiting friends.

  9. > “Butterflies, all the dragons are here. You did it. You did it. It was you!” If you can make spittle fly, it’s perfect.

    Just rant at them in Klingon. Spittle is a given with properly-pronounced Klingon…

    1. I had dinner once with a bunch of sci-fi con cosplay Klingons. They said that if you don’t know the actual Klingon just start shouting a lot of mixed-up German and Russian words. The important part is the shouting.

      2. German’s too comprehensible. Czech, which I’m studying now, should be perfect.

        Ctvrt! Sonicky! Trzhi… ah, never mind, it doesn’t look as awful without the diacritic marks, which I don’t know how to put in blog comments.

          1. Mine too!

            My husband keeps asking if we can watch those scenes again so I can translate, and I keep telling him, I don’t think the Duolingo app teaches those kinds of words.

            Although just about anything you say in Czech can sound like cussing if you snarl it. I’m trying to train myself to respond to stabs of joint pain with things like “Babichka chce shalek kavy” (Grandma wants a cup of coffee, semi-phonetic transcription because of aforementioned diacritics) instead of the English four-letter words that I don’t want the grandbabies to pick up.

    2. One could, of course, simply channel Foul Ole Ron, or perhaps some characters from Lewis Carroll.
      Millennium hand and shrimp for the win.

  10. Well, apparently having a PhD in political science is a signal to PhDs in every other discipline that I have absolutely no knowledge of politics and have to have everything explained to me. So, I’m used to playing dumb with people I have to work with and upon whom I depended on for moving ahead in my profession. This is just a different arena.

  11. In the Philippines under Spanish rule, one popular character in folk tales was “Juan Tamad” (Lazy John) who was a young everyman who would do the dumbest things when ordered to tasks.

    1. There’s a similar character called “Amelia Bedelia” in American children’s literature. (Unless she’s been purged for wrong-think when I wasn’t looking.) Her thing is to always do things literally. Be Amelia Bedelia.

      Change the towels in the green bathroom – She used scissors to cut and change the towels’ appearance.
      Dust the furniture – She threw dusting powder onto the furniture (in her house “they undust the furniture”).
      Draw the drapes when the sun comes in – She drew a picture of the drapes.
      Put the lights out when you finish in the living room – She took all the light bulbs out of their sockets and hung them on the clothesline.
      Measure two cups of rice – She poured rice into two coffee cups, stacked them, and measured them with a tape measure. She then dumped the rice back into the box.
      Trim the fat before you put the steak in the icebox – She decorated the steak with lace and ribbons.
      Dress the chicken – She put little clothes onto the chicken.

      2. I remember a story in either Children’s Digest or Cricket where a young man for some reason accidentally indentures himself to the Devil and can’t get out of it. So:

        When told to dust the furniture, he spreads dust on it.
        When told to prune the vineyard, he prunes every vine to the ground.
        When told to mend every hole in the Devil’s clothes, he sews up the pant legs and shirt sleeves and necks and waists.
        Etc.

        Eventually the Devil gets so infuriated he frees the young man to get him off his estate.

  12. Doesn’t generally work with men, Sarah. For reasons that have never been entirely clear to me, apparently one can tell how bright a man is by looking at his face, at least with most.

    1. You did read the linked story, right?
      And no, you really, really can’t.
      I’ve known some amazing moron-playing geniuses like the one described.
      It takes extra effort, sure, because for women we can appeal to the protective nature of men. And sure, some people are very bad actors. Fortunately my grandparents on mom’s side met on the boards, and it seems to have passed on.

      1. I had the technique demonstrated to me by a girlfriend whose intelligence and comprehension fell off a cliff when I was trying to explain something she didn’t want to to understand…

    2. The brightness of a person’s eyes (ie, how much their eyes move around, that sort of thing) is an indicator of intelligence, alertness, etc.

      But if somebody is thinking hard and inwardly, a lot of that goes away. Some people look scowly when they’re concentrating. Some people look stupid, or stoned. And apparently Aquinas looked really stupid a lot of the time. (And to be fair, so did a lot of his giant hulking family.)

      1. But yeah, women and young folks can always be ditzy. Probably better to be mournfully ditzy around baddies, rather than cheerfully, because Karen likes you to be depressed. But in normal life you can be cheerful about it.

        Older people of both sexes can meander ditzily as much as they want. And everybody knows that boomers don’t understand technology.

        1. Oh, and a lot of people like to be told how smart they are, how clever, how wise, how caring, blah blah blah. Baddies are often people with poor self-esteem who don’t have a lot of real friends, sadly for them. Sometimes they just need someone who will listen sympathetically.

        2. I use the mom excuse… didn’t you know brain volume decreases during pregnancy? Or I’m sorry, not sleeping very well. I had to take care of the baby last night, I can’t remember anything!

    3. I had the technique demonstrated to me by a girlfriend whose intelligence and comprehension fell off a cliff when I was trying to explain something she didn’t want to to understand…

      2. One of my first jobs in the “real world” was as a secretary. I learned *real* fast not to let anybody know that I had figured out how to fix the copier. I made that mistake *once* and people were forever coming to me and asking for help. After that, I learned to only fix it when nobody was looking and to deny all knowledge of how to do anything other than push the button.

        2. Granted I was trying to get past the 6 month “trial period”. But when the boss wanted to pull in development on the Intermec in house. I pointed out that, programming the handheld intermec computer, and ones like it, had been my job at my last job (well setting up the libraries and generated code so others could). Me and my big mouth. I was stuck with it until I retired. Twelve years later they had to turn the C, C++ embedded, and C#, code back over to the company who originally wrote the C code (and where they got the hardware) because no one else knew how to do it. Which meant I got all the calls. I despise serial connected devices especially the way Intermec had it implemented. Got better with the embedded Windows and Windows 10 Intermec implementation (USB not serial, and USB/Serial conversion sucks). But dang it.

    4. We’re dealing with progressives, they can’t seem to grasp the world isn’t and doesn’t work the way they say it is. They’re already inclined to think we’re stupid, brutish, and violent. I’m going to start working on my ‘Joe Biden’ impersonation, minus the groping of women and children.

      1. Dropping the sniffing is probably also a Good Idea. But keep the speaking in slur – not using slurs, slurring speech in complete mixed mess.. pardon, shlurinspeeshinmshopmas.

        1. I counted the sniffing as part of the groping, though now that you mention it, I think it would be rather amusing to quite obviously sniff any of the male officers involved and ask them about their cologne. For those of you having issues trying to figure out how to play dumb or crazy? Go for woke. It’s a whole other kind of crazy and stupid all rolled into one. Plus the amusement value alone has me grinning. “I identify as a black lesbian woman, how dare you arrest me!”

  13. Speaking of stupid, the bots our tech masters use are incredibly stupid. With the ban on certain phrases, they only look for what they are told to look for. I suggest a work around. Homonyms, slang, and other misuse of the language to say what you want to say. For example, “schtupp the seal”. This by itself could keep so many of the human Stasi overworked looking through everything and not knowing what they are seeing.

    5. Block the Burglarly
      End the Extortion
      Freeze the Fraud
      Halt the Heist
      Prevent the Pillaging
      Stop the Swindle
      Terminate the Thievery

      Youse guys is writers.

      1. That was supposed to be a list. Try it with Markdown…

        – Block the Burglarly
        – End the Extortion
        – Freeze the Fraud
        – Halt the Heist
        – Prevent the Pillaging
        – Stop the Swindle
        – Terminate the Thievery

        1. Apparently the “good” folk at Facebook are not Baseball fans, as Steven Hayward reports at Power Line [LOOSE ENDS (121)]:

          A friend emails: “I just performed a test of Facebook censorship. I posted the iconic photo of Jackie Robinson stealing home, with the caption, ‘Stop the Steal.’ Gone in under 30 seconds. Twice.” (It did finally stick on the third try, though.)

          ~

          1. It is possible that Facebook’s objections over that “Stop the Steal” photo are due to its furtherance of invidious stereotyping of African-American men stealing, so you might want to try instead this picture of noted “White Supremacist”

            Ty Cobb stealing.
            ~

  15. Didn’t the skipper of the US ship Pueblo, when NK forced him to make a videotaped confession to crimes, use this idea?
    “We paean the DPRK [North Korea]. We paean their great leader Kim Il Sung”. Cdr Lloyd Bucher.

    1. He also carefully explained to his captors that an extended middle finger was actually known as a “Hawaiian good luck symbol” so he and his crew were photographed each and every one flipping a bird to the camera. Of course he was beaten once they discovered his duplicity, but he said it was worth it if only for the morale boost to the crew.
      Good man that Cdr Bucher.

            1. USS Pueblo and entire crew were captured by North Korean forces on January 23, 1968.
              The US negotiated with NK and the crew was released into US custody December 23 of that year.
              North Korea never returned the ship. It is currently docked in Pyongyang, North Korea and serves as a tourist attraction.

  16. Ooh. So many fun things to use. Start converting everything into Cockny Rhyming Slang. Pretend you don’t speak english. This works best if you know a non-standard language in America. “Saya berbicara Bahasa Indonesia, tidak bisa berbicara Bahasa Ingles. Mungkin Bapak bisa berbicara Bahasa Hatam? Bahasa Yali? Bahasa Dani? Maaf. Saya tidak tau.”

      1. Okay, fine, some were mixed in.
        But you know what? Going into the capitol and glaring at the congress critters? STILL NOT A CRIME. ANd no one should be barred from it.

        1. Congressional petting zoo? I think people should be able to watch them in person every second they are conducing ‘the people’s business’. No closed door meetings, no back rooms, all totally out in the open. Bring your own rotten fruit and megaphone.

            1. That’s easily fixed, just get a pussy hat and you’re good. All the incoherent yelling your little heart wants to do at that point is totally cool. The great thing about the left’s rules and selective enforcement is that it’s easily exploitable. If you mix in a little Conservative stuff along the way it would only add to the confusion.

              1. At the time, my reaction to the pussy hat thing was “Whaaaat?”

                I expect in 50 or 100 years’ time, future historians will watch the videos, look at the pictures, read the accounts, and go “Whaaaat?”

                Given the amount of coverage I’m reasonably sure it really happened, but that there would be that many people, that stupid, yet so motivated a to come up with costumes and travel to DC to look spastic retards “does not compute.”

                1. That’s still my reaction, I mean, by definition, doesn’t putting on a pussy hat make you a dickhead?

                  A lot depends on what happens next. If we assume that some semblance of sanity is returned to our culture and country, you are correct. Though I can’t see society lasting all that long under progressive rule. The world can’t afford to pay for their fantasies. Not to mention implementing them will also prevent them from going forward after a certain point.

          2. Yelling at congress-critters that we need “More government!” is not a crime. Yelling at them that we need “Less government!” is seditious hateful criminal evil rebel scum terrorism.

        3. Of course gawking and glaring and entering public buildings are not crimes. Still not a crime even if it embarrasses congresscritters into a hissy fit, or tracks mud on the shining marble floor.

          But it wasn’t our guys breaking windows; our guys tried to stop ’em. Let’s see if the FBI, in their glorious new zeal for justice, actually target those who DID perform unlawful acts. Not holding my breath.

    2. And the MSM have been denying right and left that any Antifa were present on the 6th. The sheer volume of lies coming out of them is incredible; and they are definitely programming the average Americans to believe the tripe they’re spewing.

      1. Except that both of my parents are about as average American as you can think of and they’re calling BS.

          1. In my dad’s case, it’s because he doesn’t have many people he can tell. He’s almost as shy and retiring as I am. 😎

            In his 6-month review (of a 15 year career, until he retired again) at AL Dept of Workman’s Comp:
            “How useful do you think people find the department?”

            “Director, if they flushed this entire department into the Alabama River, no one would notice the ripple.”

      2. The FBI “investigated” and declared there were no Antifa.

        Just like they “investigaged” and found no Antifa setting fires in Oregon and Washington.

        The FBI is fully converged.

        “But TRX, there are some good FBI agents, that aren’t actively betraying their country!”

        No. Anyone who works there can’t not-know. And just like the guy who drove the getaway car, even if they weren’t shooting children in their mothers’ arms, burning people alive, giving guns to Mexican drug runners, or not-seeing Hillary’s mail server, they’re equally guilty. That’s how the law applies to *us*. Much as they desire it, there’s no different law for them.

  18. How do you play this if you are genius, doctor degree, retired perfesser? And they know it. Maybe do a Swedish Chef with lots of nonsensical jargon? Any ideas? Asking for a friend.

    1. I’d say go for a combination of jargon and full-on absent-minded professor. Wear your glasses on your forehead and ask where they are. “Lose” your keys in your pockets. Ask questions that betray your “ignorance” about anything outside your field, and relate any answer outside your specific field to something within your field in the most jargony way. (e.g. Bones in Star Trek IV: “My God, man. Do you want an acute case on your hands? This woman has immediate postprandial, upper-abdominal distention. Now, out of the way! Get out of the way!”) They won’t believe you aren’t smart — they worship the degree too much for that — but you can convince them that you’re a harmless fool.

      1. Think of the stories told about Einstein, who reportedly needed a map to get to the store, and one to get back (I believe it. My younger son is sometimes like that.)
        Or think of my brilliant philosophy professor who once came to class WITH HIS TOILET SIT UNDER HIS ARM and didn’t notice till he was trying to consult something in the book he thought he was holding.
        (And the stunned look and “but you don’t understand. If I put the book where the seat goes it went int he water. And it’s PRICELESS” caused the entire class to almost die laughing, to his confusion.)

        1. THIS!
          My experience with highly intelligent people runs to Mensans, university research professors flying experiments in space, and both American and foreign astronauts conducting on orbit research with that experiment hardware.
          Astronauts were usually very broad based if typically rather arrogant. (usually for decent reasons, fighter jocks don’t you know)
          For the rest almost without fail they were amazing experts in a VERY NARROW DISCIPLINE, and rather naive and in some cases bordering on helpless idiots when removed from their area of expertise.
          Did not mean they were necessarily bad folks, but most suffered from the illusion that competence in their field could somehow be transferred to an entirely different area. Worse a similar attitude usually was held by those around them, at least until they pulled a number of bonehead mistakes.
          I was invariably the bad guy in the mix. Especially with those university professor principle investigator types. I had to tell them “no, your fantastic wondermus revolutionary experiment that will cure cancer, save the whales. and make it rain tomato soup will not be permitted to fly on ISS as designed.”
          You see, their procedures as crafted required the use at certain points in the operation of three crew members for a rather extended period. At that time ISS only had a crew of three and two of them were dedicated to the safe operation of the station. Thus their experiment if flown would be impossible to operate.
          After a considerable amount of work, mostly on my part, and after being denied appeal of my assessment by three levels of my management (think Center Director level) we spent a few months redesigning both the hardware and operational procedures to give them most of what they wanted while utilizing the hands on attention of one crew for half a day. And last I heard with the expanded sometimes six crew staffing they can on occasion get two crew for brief periods.

          2. We have had a strike in space.

            Because the idiots on the ground couldn’t understand that the Skylab crew needed a day off from time to time.

            2. Understand that crew time in orbit is a precious commodity.
              During the Spacelab missions we back of the envelope calculated that each minute of crew time cost approximately ten thousand dollars.
              That said, by the time I was a lead Data Management Coordinator, in charge of all onboard and downlinked experiment data and video, we had a firm understanding that our astronaut crews needed to be treated with respect and consideration. Still, on occasion some crew were not above hanging a t-shirt on each of the two module cameras for a break and a bit of privacy.

        1. Exactly the clip I was thinking of. That series (Chernobyl) should be required watching, not so much for its take on the nuclear disaster (it takes a few liberties with the science) but for how it shows the evil of totalitarianism affecting every aspect of life. Dangerous things like nuclear power require truth, and truth simply isn’t permitted in a totalitarian regime.

          Well, that and Tom Clancy’s line in The Cardinal of the Kremlin that “He’s too dumb to be a spy” is the highest compliment a spy can get from the counter-intelligence agents meant to catch him.

          1. (it takes a few liberties with the science)

            Remarkably few, all things considered.

            Dangerous things like nuclear power require truth, and truth simply isn’t permitted in a totalitarian regime.

            The director was yet another case of someone attempting to make a Grand Anti-Trump Statement, and excoriating his own ideology.

            And the final quote is fantastic as well:

            1. Oh, agreed. It’s probably the most accurate “based on real events” production ever made, but even with that, they had to add stupid crap like “the baby absorbed the radiation so the mother could live.” No, babies are just far more vulnerable to radiation. Also, said baby died of liver cirrhosis, which could have been due to radiation or the mom’s alcohol use. But that doesn’t make for as good of a story.

              And yeah, leftists like to imagine they are on the side of truth against the Powers that Be. In reality, it’s more like this:

              Howard: Maggie Thatcher, in my opinion-
              Sally: Now listen to this, Patrick. This is the voice of an oppressed minority.
              Howard: …Maggie Thatcher is the best Prime Minister *Patrick starts pumping his fist in the air* this country has ever had!
              Sally: How dare you say that! You’re gay! You’re on our side!
              Jane: Actually Sally, Howard doesn’t think of himself as gay.
              Howard: Yes, I do.
              Jane: Look, there are no homosexuals. There’s just peoplesexuals.
              Howard: No Jane, there are definitely homosexuals.
              Jane: Howard!! Do you want gay men to be labeled?
              Howard: Yes! That would be fantastic!
              Jeff: Must be a lot easier being gay. I mean, sex must be a piece of piss if you’re gay.
              Howard: Why’s that?
              Jeff: Well, ’cause if you’re gay, right? If you’re gay, masturbation is practice! You know, you can have a good ol’ practice on your own. And you know, when you’re ready, when you’ve got the hang of it, you have a go on someone else’s! It’s a piece of piss!
              Howard: That’s a very good point, actually.
              Sally: No, it’s not, it’s homophobic, you stupid queen!
              Howard: It is not in the least bit homophobic!
              Jane: Hello!? There’s no such thing as homophobia, there’s just peoplephobia.
              Jeff: See, i-it’s different, it’s different when you’re a straight bloke. When we finally get our hands on the gear, let me tell you, it’s not a drill! You know, gays, they’ve got their own practice kit, but you don’t get any practice women! We’re supposed to fly those babies the first time we get in ’em. *Patrick and Howard laugh*
              Sally: That’s not funny. ‘Get in them’ is not funny!
              Patrick: Oh, don’t be so piecey.
              Howard: Typical lefty puritan.
              Sally: Typical what? Come the revolution-
              Patrick: What revolution!? You guys are in power! We’re the revolution now!
              Sally: No. No, it can’t be right.
              Patrick: You’re the evil empire.
              Sally: No!
              Howard: Yes! Like Star Wars, and Patrick and me are the rebel alliance. *he and Patrick start doing the Star Wars theme, Jeff joins shortly after*
              Sally: No! You’re not the goodies, we’re the goodies! We’re lefties!! We’re always goodies!
              Patrick: *puts glass on his mouth and makes a Darth Vader voice* No, Sally. You’re the establishment.
              Sally: Don’t say that! You bastard.
              Patrick: Ah, you can’t call me bastard anymore, that’s oppressive. *does a mock wail* You’re oppressing me!

      3. Pull a Professor Porter (Jane’s father, from Tarzan.) Brilliant in his extraordinarily narrow field, and totally out of his gourd about anything else.

    2. Oh, easy. Retired professor? OLD and therefore an idiot with no grasp of the 20th century, let alone the 21st. I’ve had people (who KNEW I was an indie writer publishing on Amazon) ask me if I knew how to use email. Anybody with gray hair can easily pass for an ignorant idiot, because that’s what they expect.

      1. They also expect most members of their pet victim groups, (higher melanin, furriners, women, etc.) to be stupid too. I mean, if we were smart, we wouldn’t need their help, right?

      2. I can just quit trying to convert their babbling gibberish into some kind of English, and give them my thousand-yard stare.

    4. “Everybody”–and I use that phrase in the sense of “general knowledge of the vast majority of people” seems to buy wholesale into the television/movie genius: the person who is ridiculously smart about ALL THE THINGS and can’t hide it no matter what, and who just has some sort of charming social awkwardness to signal ‘they are a nerd.’ Same goes for professors: everyone has this “image” of super wise professors/people with advanced degrees, when in reality, if they ARE worth more than the paper their degree is printed on (and many of the professors/doctor types I’ve met in my life are…not…and more are more impressed with their titles and making sure everyone else is too than, you know, actually being intelligent human beings)…it’s only within a very limited area of knowledge.

      The super-smart pan-genius, quite frankly, is a mythological beast. There is a REASON most of us “former gifted kids/genius” ended up feeling like we are failures or something, because we didn’t live up to our “potential.” When in reality, it was just us and everyone around us buying into that fictional genius thing, ie, they’re supposed to be good at ALL THE THINGS and we were supposed to CHANGE THE WORLD(tm)!! When in reality, “actually just average, and sometimes worse than average, in most things” is the norm.

      And there are so many idiot professors/people with advanced degrees out there that…even if they know you’re supposedly super-smart and/or “But you are a professor! Have a doctorate!” it doesn’t mean jack. For one thing, “Professor” is a freaking political title these days more than anything else. All it means is the person who got the title has the right connections/stabbed the right backs/mouthed the right dogma to get there. (Even if they didn’t–most all the others DID.) Same, frankly, with doctorate degrees. All that means is the political game at whatever university/department was played correctly and the right people heard the right things. (And forgive me, but I’m not sure that it ever was anything else. I certainly know that MY survival just to get a lowly undergrad degree was more to do with ‘playing the political game’ than it was to do with any actual skill or talent on my part.)

      1. In the fields I found interesting, you really do have to know your linear algebra, or your differential equations, or your elementary chemistry and physics in order to progress, and although I liked all these subjects, I didn’t love them enough to do the necessary work.
        One of the better series on Netflix lately is “The Queen’s Gambit”, which portrays the fictional story of an orphaned female chess prodigy who reaches the top levels in international chess competition in the 1960s. But it’s not really about chess. It’s more about the struggle to fit in a world where you are out of the ordinary.
        I think it accurately portrays the fact that natural talent, “intelligence:, if you will, has to be combined with study and work in order to achieve excellence. It also presents the idea, I think an accurate one, that an exceptional talent, or gift, usually has a cost, two sides of the same coin. Also, that excellence isn’t a solitary endeavor. Beyond a certain point, you need a support network of some kind.
        For many people who are intellectually bright, that cost is being socially dumb. On both the high and low ends of the scale, the fact that they are exceptional makes relations with ordinary people difficult. Then, too, obsession does strange things to people, and creates pockets of what one author called “strange logic areas”.

          1. #MeToo

            Instance: Niece on hubby’s side. Works for Disney (she just came off of voluntary furlough). Her job? Translator between the computer techs/programmers and the more creative side of production.

            Then there is me. I’ve worked with more brilliant programmers than me. I consider myself better than average, dang good, if not particularly brilliant, especially at the lower level. But I absolutely defy ANY of the brilliant ones I’ve worked with to work with end users, or frankly, to actually implement the base of what they produced into anything an end user touches. Or without prodding to get something that can be implemented without having to constantly fix it … That was my pet peeve. I hated fixing code. Additions, fine. But not fixing it. Happened because it just does. But oddly enough, less frequently with mine. (Based off the limited experience I had … our end users were our testing department because we didn’t have one in house.)

            1. ” (Based off the limited experience I had … our end users were our testing department because we didn’t have one in house.)”

              That’s how it’s always been in my 30+ years Testing is viewed as a cost and an afterthought. Microsoft and the rest of the PC world. They put clauses in their license agreements that basically, this software isn’t fit for any purpose including what our sales pitch claimed.

              Dr Pournelle of blessed memory ranted about it for YEARS.

            2. I call this type of person a translator. Someone who can float between the two worlds and talk to both. I used to be one of those. However, it is harder now because of the types of medication I have had to use to stay alive.

      2. We lived in Ithaca (home to Cornell and Ithaca College) for 18 years. As a result I acquired an instinctive avoidance reaction to most professors. There were a few good ones, but most of them were supremely arrogant, ignorant outside of their area of expertise but totally unwilling to admit it, and very lefty, with that irritating attitude that they’re smarter than you.

        1. I worked in a bicycle shop near Tulane and Loyola in the 80’s and early 90’s, so the students and staff were a large part of our clientele.
          It ain’t just the professors, but yeah,
          In fact, it seems the longer someone was in there (frosh, grad student, admin or Prof) the more likely to be ignorant of reality they were, and the more unwilling to admit it they tended to be, with very very few exceptions.
          As I was known to say “Why is the traffic in Baton Rouge so bad? The roads are full of the stupidest people on the planet . . . College Students and Gov’t Workers.”

        2. The last president of Ithaca was my dissertation advisor…until he left suddenly for ETS, then went to Ithaca. An assumption of expertise outside their field is a prerequisite for most professors. And, yet, they will fight like rabid dogs if anybody dares to assume expertise in THEIR field, even their own department colleagues. Reason #47 why I left academia.

          1. My father was convinced that I was “too fragile” to handle the real world and so needed to aim for a job in academia.

            This after he’d lost one position when they called him just off a research cruise and starting his first vacation in 5+ years to tell him “Hey, you know how you were up for tenure in September? Well, we’re letting you go at the end of May.” along with “Well, you already have your doctorate and the other guy is still working on his PhD (with daddy as his advisor) and so you’ll have an easier time finding another job.” And “We had to cut a staff member, so we’re cutting the area which has two profs, instead of the one which has five.” Funny thing, at the anniversary dinner for the department a few years back, they glossed over the mid-’70s as if those years didn’t exist.

            Not to mention that when I was an undergraduate at TCD, I’d apparently made friends with the “wrong” grad student, and the profs on the other side used me as a way to get at her, and I nearly had to withdraw from school for a year.

            The real world has been far less harsh.

            1. For a few years, my father was puzzled as to why I wasn’t seeking a job in academia (because I did enjoy, at least back then, taking classes and learning new things). I kept trying to explain to him that it was because academics are the nastiest bunch of back-stabbing prima donnas I’d ever seen, and I really, really didn’t want to put up with that crap.

              1. How does it go? ‘The infighting is so vicious because there is so little to fight over.’

              2. I think it’s at least partly a big fish in a small pond thing. But my god, the backstabbing! My baby sister just finished her PhD in Archaeology last year, and is now working for BCG making far more money than she’d ever, ever get as an academic. Seems happier than she did during her grad school days too.

        3. I wonder how much of that arrogance is selected for and cultivated by the tilt to left. I went to a mostly-STEM and mostly conservative school, back before lefty was cool, and (having been on friendly terms with most of my profs, some to where we’d sit and talk for hours) I don’t recall any of ’em having that arrogant know-all attitude.

          1. That’s a good question. The better professors tended to be the older ones — but they were also probably less lefty. I would guess that academia has been selecting for the wrong type of people for quite a few decades.

      3. I’ve observed that. I can point to a number of brilliant physicists and other scientists (Neil DeGrasse Tyson…) who are very good in their field, but make basic mistakes in philosophy and theology that I would not expect from an undergraduate in those fields. This is one of the reasons I struggle with most athiest books that try to disprove the existence of God, because I can see the basic philosophical errors they make, even with a mere Masters degree in the field, rather than the authors’ God-like PhD in an unrelated field…

        1. NDgT does both massive error outside of his field and errors in his own field, according to others in his field I have spoken with.

          With a few notable exceptions, if they were really that good in their field, they’d be doing actual work in their field, not Teevee.

          1. I like to point at Nassim Nicholas Taleb, thanks to his “Intellectual Yet Idiot” article, demonstrating his personal expertise in the subject. Seldom have I seen such a fine example.

            View at Medium.com

  19. Thanks a bunch! Should have told my friend to just consult Prof. Buck Owens: “Act Naturally!”

  20. In the meantime our traitorous slimeweasel “representatives” have reintroduced the Hearing Protection Act for the new Congress.

    Have to keep up appearances for the three people left who don’t want to execute the entire GOP.

  21. I fully and completely understand what you are saying Sarah, but the book of Levi’s says thou shalt not cast graven images so while following your directions is dichotomy opposed to to accepted dogma and though allowable under certain circumstances, but only when in close contact as understood by all right thinkers, and of course allowing for divergent alternative but similar acceptable, even though, of course non-linear although rotund when transposed in to non Euclidean but space oriented universally accepted terminology I find I must concur.

    4. Time to memorize some of the great “Yes Minister” speeches.

      Jim Hacker : But if, as you say, he’s not overstretched.
      Sir Frank Gordon : Ah, when I say not overstretched, I was of course talking in a sense of total cumulative loading taken globally, rather than in respect of certain individual and essentially anomalous responsibilities which are not, logically speaking, consonant or harmonious with the broad spectrum of intermeshing and inseparable functions, and could indeed be said to place an excessive and supererogatory burden on the office, where considered in relation to the comparatively exiguous advantages of their overall centralisation.

      Sir Humphrey: “I wonder if I might crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a by no means disagreeable obligation which has, over the years, become more or less established practice in government service as we approach the terminal period of the year — calendar, of course, not financial — in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, Week Fifty-One — and submit to you, with all appropriate deference, for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere and sanguine expectation — indeed confidence — indeed one might go so far as to say hope — that the aforementioned period may be, at the end of the day, when all relevant factors have been taken into consideration, susceptible to being deemed to be such as to merit a final verdict of having been by no means unsatisfactory in its overall outcome and, in the final analysis, to give grounds for being judged, on mature reflection, to have been conducive to generating a degree of gratification which will be seen in retrospect to have been significantly higher than the general average.”
      Jim Hacker: “Are you trying to say “Happy Christmas,” Humphrey?”
      Sir Humphrey: “Yes, Minister.”

      1. I used to edit technical pubs for the Army. An early job had me translating “Engineering Improvement Recommendations ” written, of course, by engineers. I remember counting words in one sentence and finding the engineer had gone 83 words without a period. But Sir Humphrey has him beat. Easily.

  22. Problem with this strategy is if you have publicly available writing, podcasts, or videos which disprove the “Mr. Stupid” facade. What works in a POW camp will not work with those who can look at ones catalogue of books, published opinions, essays, blog comments, etc. As we have seen, the leftist mob can easily pull that stuff up off the internet once they have picked a target and decided to unperson them.

    2. Do remember that these are the same people who regularly deny reality. Even as, in some cases, reality is currently chewing their asses off (for example: the twit who crowed about BLM/antifa, then was shocked when they attacked HIS house. But I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that he didn’t go out and change his political affiliation–oh no, he is still mouthing the dogma.)

      These are the same people who simultaneously declared that Trump was the stupidest mouthbreather to ever ape, while also accusing him of the sort of evil-genius shenanigans that would require an IQ no one has ever seen before.

      They clearly took the wittcism that “consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds” and decided it meant that they should never, EVER be consistent about *anything* EVER.

      1. It was years before I ran into the original quote, which was “a FOOLISH consistency”….

        Which, to anybody who’s dealt with OCD, duh. Good weapon, there.

        and many, many more years before I got the source.

        A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. A great person does not have to think consistently from one day to the next. This remark comes from the essay “ Self-Reliance ” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson does not explain the difference between foolish and wise consistency.

        1. I’m sure it’s one of those things you can conjugate: “I am wisely inconsistent. You are foolishly inconsistent. He is insanely inconsistent.”

        2. Yes, same here–I didn’t see the ACTUAL, full-context quote for a long time. Admittedly, my first encounter with it was in a fantasy novel where someone was using it for the sake of humor (ie, poking fun at someone else, because they were being completely nutty). But even so, a remarkable number of people in the Real World(tm) seem to take it in that out-of-context thing entirely too much.

          I’m also not convinced that Emerson wasn’t being sarcastic himself.

      2. I did always ask folks how W was the dumbest man to ever be elected president, and yet an evil genius who could make hurricanes do his bidding.

        They never could answer, and usually changed the subject right quick.

    5. You can be “detained” indefinitely on “reasonable suspicion”, or if you were arrested on a warrant. They only have to let you go after a “reasonable period” (36 to 48 hours, usually) if they arrest you without a warrant. Of course, you could be brought before a judge who would then find you in contempt, or you could be sent for “psychiatric evaluation” and essentially disappeared without recourse, depending on the jurisdiction.

      Playing stupid is a useful tool, but it needs to be used carefully. The meat grinder is used to uncooperative citizens, and has evolved ways of dealing with them if it they get their faces rubbed in it.

  23. Speaking of how dumb they think we are and what they’d really like to do to us…

    Project Veritas : PBS Principal Counsel Michael Beller Incites Political Violence In Radical Left-Wing Agenda

    Also, there are numerous reports that you can no longer use the word “fraud” on Youtube without getting instantly nuked.

  24. Maybe I was never very smart to start off with but I can play dumb easily. I can tell you it works and is actually loads of fun. It saved me from a beat down from bullies in middle school and from some soldiers (also bullies) in a third world country.

    2. Being supernaturally chipper and polite–even in the face of extreme provocation–is also a lot of fun. I’m not as good at it now that I’m older (and no longer working in retail), but…add that to the “And also I’m dumb” and you can tie people into knots, so to speak.

      One of my mission companions and I made a young Romanian Orthodox priest look like the biggest jerk on the planet when he decided to start berating us and calling us names with that tactic. We were sweetness and light, and HE was the one getting filthy looks from passers-by, heh, for berating the two nice foreign girls. (My companion was a California Mexican, and I was a near-six-foot redhead in a country where there aren’t really any redheads at all. We stuck out like sore thumbs.)

      1. Oh, I’ve played that game in customer service, and it’s a lot of fun. Just say cheerful and polite and let them rant — it makes them even madder. “Aren’t you going to say something?!” “Sir, I’m just waiting until you’re finished so I don’t interrupt you.” You can just see the steam rising off their heads.

        1. Heh. Yeah. I had a coworker at the customer service desk at Sam’s Club lo, many years ago now who was an EXPERT at it (even better than me, and I can achieve near-supernatural levels of it). Customer trying to return a toaster (no box, no receipt, probably bought it 5 or 6 years earlier and NOT at a Sam’s Club) and being told “Sorry, here’s the rules, here’s how we can help you, you don’t tick any of these boxes there’s nothing we can do” and he got madder and madder (mostly because he knew he was trying to pull a fast one, we knew it, and he knew we knew it) and finally stomped off with a furious “EFF YOU” to which she replied with a big chipper smile “Same to you, sir!” It was quite hilarious.

          1. Had a great one. One of my head cashiers was handling returns one day at a big box. Long line when a guy comes busting in and going to the front of the line, She told him happy to help but he has to get to the back of the line. He continued to fuss and was annoying the other patient customers. She kept repeating for him to get in line and she would take care of him inn order. He finally says EFF U and begins to storm off. She said ” you have to get in the back of the line for that too”

            All these methods will work. Time to start practicing.

            1. Not customer service at retail … they are saints by the way … but standing in line. Rather than berate the person directly, talk to people on other side of you, about the actions of the person. When confronted acted shocked and polite, but end with “They have to be nice. Customer here. I don’t”. Everyone in line near enough will start laughing or rather unsuccessfully hide they are laughing.

              1. I like it. Because even when a retail clerk isn’t at their best…they HAVE to take the abuse. It’s nice when other customers call out the a-holes on their behavior. Because 99% of the time, the clerk does NOT in fact deserve any of the abuse, and 99.9999% of the time, the thing the jerk is upset about is entirely outside the clerk’s–and even the store manager’s–control. Like the woman in walmart here last week who was throwing a TEMPER TANTRUM at the clerk, and then the manager, about the price of MILK. Which no one, even, I think, at the corporate level of Walmart, has any say about. That’s up to the dairy farmers’ association, if I recall right…(And even if it was up to the corporate level…that’s in Arkansas. Not Rawlins, Wyoming.)

      2. Being supernaturally chipper and polite–even in the face of extreme provocation–is also a lot of fun.

        Be Ned Flanders. Okely-dokely!

        1. It can be – I used to do this all the time in Greece, with locals who were absolutely spoiling for a good verbal fight. Being chipper, polite and tactful wasn’t giving them the fight they wanted. I could almost see the steam coming out of their ears.

    1. they need to remember Americans, especially those who supported trump, are a bigger army than pretty much anyone else. The occupants might not be who they think.

      1. Well yes, but clearly the Democrats in Congress, as evidenced by Eric Swalwell, think that using nukes against those millions of Americans will be justified.

        1. Guess they have them that will keep him and his “allies” out of the effective area. Selective Big Baddabooms? Guess Fang Fang sucked what little brains he had out.

          1. And speaking of Swalwell, the CCP’s favorite House member has been named as one of the House Impeachment Manager’s by Pelosi,

            1. not that it will happen, but every R should Ask him if he’s heard from Fang Fang lately, or how is his boss Xi doing, call him Mr. Fang Fang etc.

              1. Yes!

                “Representative Fang, do you have anything to add?”

                Make up a name plate and swap it out.

    2. Side note: Disqus is apparently now moderating all comments (noted on several sties in the past day or so). Gee, I wonder why that could be??

      2. No sympathy here. Disqus was a bad idea to start with, plus its broken Javascript, but blog owners who should have known better jumped aboard and then made ridiculous excuses as to why.

        This is precisely one of the scenarios I brought up, that they mocked as ridiculous.

        “Let me know how that is working out for you.”

    1. No General is going to take control to “restore order” and then put DJT back in office.

      After the Armored Task Force Thunder Run into the Capitol District and the arrest of the “coup plotters” in congress, they will install a temporary committee of continuity of government consisting of three general officers, including the one who led the drive into DC, and install two buddies on that.

      The divergence is then is do they rule from that position in uniform until they get tired of it, or do they put on a civilian suit and reluctantly accept the unanimous acclimation of a grateful Congress (after appropriate reorganization of the members and certain trials) as the new President – see the current Egyptian President’s restoration of order for the template. My guess is the latter.

      1. I also suspect it’s because he’s not stupid, and knows there is no way to come out of that NOT looking like what they paint him as.

        I think he’s smart enough to be departing for parts unknown very soon. At least, I *hope* so.

          1. There are only two polities that could offer him a safe harbor, that the Fed couldn’t pressure into giving him up.

            One would be China, who Biden really couldn’t put any pressure on. But jumping from your enemy to your enemy’s master isn’t a good move.

            The other would be Russia. We have little political or economic pressure we can apply to the Russian Federation, and not much more we can apply to its major allies. Putin and the Duma would be delighted to have him; just his residency would give them massive propaganda value.

            The Swamp has made it quite clear that they want to grind him into the dirt before they Epstein him. I wouldn’t look down on him if he left and took as many family and associates as he could. Then we’d have a Government-in-Exile, at least.

      2. Trump is a patriot who still believes America will prevail, and he will not go against the Constitution even to save the Republic. Can’t fault his honor, tho his optimism may be misplaced.

        As one of my characters says, some people have more duty crammed up their ass than is good for them.

          1. Yep, it is. And as we’ve feared, the moment he’s out of office he and his family will be arrested for sedition. Don Jr. knows this, at least (he’s said it), so hopefully dad is on the alert.

            Or at least they’ll try.

            Democrats calling to expel Cruz et al. from Congress is headed in the same direction (and they’re getting more strident).

            It occurs to me that we might be better off if our side had *actually* taken control over the Capitol, and held it.

            1. I’m going to put down a marker: they’re going to do something false-flaggy for the inauguration, and it will ignite the powder barrel. By the end of this month, the country is going to be in a civil war and on fire.

              2. Yeah. Bumping off Biden seems like a strong possibility, since they’re going to want to get rid of him anyway, and they can *really* play up that one. I think anybody anywhere on the right who shows up at the inauguration is really stupid. They’re going to need some people to blame.

                1. The FBI is busily talking up something that glows like someone crashed a truck full of phosphorescent paint into a reactor.

                  The only thing we don’t know is the exact details of their plan.

                  1. …and stinks like a week-old dead hog. Of which I have first-hand (or first-nose, anyway) experience.

                    Whatever it is the Fibbies want us to do this weekend, I would place ‘Nothing’ pretty far down the list. That’s what I plan to do. A whole lot of Nothing. Well, aside from reading, and posting, and trying to finish Chapter 14 of my fan-fiction story. Maybe pick up a couple hundred square feet of floor tile, if Home Despot sends me another 10% discount coupon.

                    Wave guns at the Politburo in SacraDemento? Not my circus, not my monkeys.
                    ———————————
                    Some folks can be taught. Others can learn by example. The rest have to piss on the electric fence for themselves.

                2. They’ll set up one of their own if they need to. They’ve done it before.

                  Remember how many of those “right wing white supremacist Trumpkin” shooters turned out to be hardcore Democrats?

                    1. The previous Democrat governor and mayor set up the Charlottesville riots.

                      Now an independent report has come out, suggesting that much of the blame for the clashes, injuries and death lies with poor police work by the Charlottesville Police Department, the Virginia State Police and the University of Virginia Police.

                      The report, authored by former U.S. attorney Timothy Heaphy for the Charlottesville City Council, found, as reported by USA Today:

                      • Charlottesville police didn’t ensure separation between counter-protesters and so called alt-right protesters upset with the city council’s decision to remove the Robert E. Lee statue from Emancipation Park.

                      • Officers weren’t stationed along routes to the park, but instead remained behind barricades in relatively empty zones.

                      • City police didn’t adequately coordinate with Virginia State Police, and authorities were unable to communicate via radio.

                      • State police didn’t share a formal planning document with city police, “a crucial failure.”

                      • Officers were inadequately equipped to respond to the clashes between the two groups, and tactical gear was not accessible to officers.

                      Furthermore, though no specific evidence of a “stand down” order was found, as some have charged, the report did find that police didn’t do their jobs: “We did not find evidence of a direct order to officers to ‘stand down’ and not respond to fights and other disorders. Even if there was no explicit ‘stand down’ order in place, CPD and VSP both failed to ‘stand up’ to protect human life.” Areas where conflict could be expected to occur didn’t have police officers assigned to them; areas where police officers were stationed were out of the way.

                      When violence first broke out, according to two witnesses Chief Thomas reportedly said “let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.”

                      When the police finally decided to shut the rally down, they did it in a way that forced the protesters and counterprotesters into each other, instead of separating them, making violence far more likely. Meanwhile police who could have deescalated the violence stood aside.

                      http://tinyurl.com/ybvbpeut

                    2. And when I say “set up”, I mean conspiracy to facilitate murder, at the very least.

                      Dixon bragged on Facebook about confronting James Fields with an AR-15 rifle, moments before Fields drove his car into a crowd of protesters at the Charlottesville, Virginia protests (and in doing so, perhaps pushing Fields’s emotions past the point of reason). During Fields’s trial, though, Dixon changed his story, claiming it was not Fields’s car he approached with his weapon, but another one.

                      https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/07/unc-chapel-hill-a-sanctuary-campus-for-terroristic-radicals-on-the-taxpayers-dime/

                      An AR-15 is not a concealed carry gun. How did he get it into the area without the connivance of one or more of the law enforcement agencies whose connivance in ensuring that the Antifa mob would be allowed to assault the protesters who had a permit?

              4. Oh, I will be SO astonished. Yeah, likely so. The false flag is close to a sure thing. USA on fire, 50-50. (Tho as others have pointed out, sooner means more chance to win and less destruction, while later means they’re more entrenched and will need more rooting out.)

                And methinks DURING the inauguration was the planned arrest of Trump (and at this point, possibly others like Cruz and Jordan). Trump really is not the vindictive twit he’s made out to be; methinks maybe it wasn’t just “you’re not legit” when he said sorry, won’t be attending.

      1. Except the usual minor news services with their collective maybe-5% of the market. NTD lost their feed partway through, but RSB has the whole thing.

        1. Except they are using the warnings against totalitarianism, such as 1984, as their “how to” guides

          1. So many times they (and others as well, alas) get the map of a minefield (“DO NOT STEP HERE”) and use it as if it dance instructions (“STEP EXACTLY HERE”). And they do it over and over and over. But it’s everyone else that has some sort of learning issue?!?

        2. You notice that they went from a 50 page communist manifesto to 159? Inefficiency Bloat. 😉

    3. Just remember, the further the Left goes with this, the more they reveal themselves to be who and what they are, turning more moderate Democrats into former-Democrats.

  32. Democrats in Congress seeking to make “MAGA” rallies illegal as “domestic terrorism”:

    Meanwhile these same Democrats still cheer Antifa and BLM, both of whose organizational materials and leaders openly call for the violent overthrow of the United States and replacement with a Marxist “people’s republic”.

    With stuff like this, lots of people who would never think of violence are going to get very violent because they will have no choice.

  33. I find the technique Shakespeare’s Marc Anthony’s useful. State their “truths” with the proper undertone of irony and they’ve nothing to act upon even as their ethos is cut right out from under them.

    “But he called us ‘honorable men’!” is not generally a credible cause for assault.
    ~

      1. HBO’s Rome didn’t show Antony’s speech itself; instead they showed the angry mob at the funeral and then Brutus and the other conspirators talking about the speech and the angry mob that was no riled up against them. Sadly I could not find a youtube clip of it.

        1. HBO’s “Rome” made Anthony out to be a man of action and kind of an idiot. I don’t think they could have made a speech in which Anthony walks the tightrope of manipulating the crowd while not getting into trouble believable.

          2. His meeting with the conspirators was brilliant; he reminded them that if they declared Julius Caesar a tyrant, none of their offices were valid as they had been appointed to them by Caesar, and that elections would need to be held, “and elections are such messy things”. Cutting thereafter straight to contrasting funerallsm Lucius Vorenus’s quiet one for his wife and the mob fueling the bonfire of Caesar’s, with the conspirators gathering again to talk about how Antony riled up the crowd and now they couldn’t show their faces in public was brilliant film-making.

            Thought the show was a very good show, even if they played rather fast and loose with history (especially with Octavian’s mother, Atia, who died well before he became “princeps” (first citizen).

    3. Oh, I had fun doing that on Facebook the other day …

      “Some say that the Democrats cheated. Biden would no more do that than he would plagiarize another politician’s campaign speech, for Biden is an honorable man. Biden would no more cheat in an election than he would plagiarize papers in law school, for he is an honorable man. Biden would no more slander the president than he would lie about the circumstances of his wife’s death, for he is an honorable man.”

      About a third of my friends who reacted got the joke; a third agreed with it without catching the irony, and the last third were horrified I would say something so positive about Biden. Sigh. We have a lot of educating to do.

      2. Probably should have added “Biden would no more do that than he would sexually harass or assault a woman, for he is an honorable man.”

        I note how hard they memory-holed the woman with plausible accusations of straight up assault, even more than they have all the evidence of him being gropey with women and girls.

        1. My radfem prog ex-wife had all kinds of posts excoriating Biden for this very thing … during the early primaries.

          Since the Party anointed him, she hasn’t made a peep about it. Zero. Nor have any of the other liberals/progs/lefties I know.

          1. Well yes, that kind of doublethink is standard for members of The Party in good ol’ Oceania.

        2. They didn’t need to memory hole Tara Reed(sp?). The feminists flat out said in their Twitter feeds, “Yeah, what happened to her is unfortunate, and we believe what she says. But electing Biden is more important than anything else.” It wasn’t so much her getting memory holed as it was the Progs were flat out shameless in how they conducted themselves.

          1. Biden would no more allow his family to front accepting bribes from foreign countries than he would publicly brag about getting a foreign prosecutor fired who was investigating his son, for Biden is an honorable man.

            (Apologies if someone else already has said this. I was too lazy to read all the comments.)

            1. And some have said that Hunter hath filled his purse
              from foreign treasures, and hath given much
              therefrom unto his father, but Biden says
              it is not so, and Biden is an honorable man.

              2. Well, clean up the meter a bit:

                “Some have said that Hunter hath filled his purse
                from foreign treasures, and hath given much
                therefrom to his father, but Biden says
                tis not so, and Joe is an hon’rable man.”

                Not quite iambic pentameter with the extra beat on the last line, but it is a weak ending that was commonly used. (in William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: The Phantom of Menace, Chancellor Valorum always speaks in eleven beat lines. Weak endings for a weak chancellor.)

    4. Mark Anthony:

      Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
      I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
      The evil that men do lives after them;
      The good is oft interred with their bones:
      So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
      Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
      If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
      And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
      Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,–
      For Brutus is an honourable man;
      So are they all, all honorable men,–
      Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
      He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
      But Brutus says he was ambitious;
      And Brutus is an honourable man.
      He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
      Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
      Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
      When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
      Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
      Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
      And Brutus is an honourable man.
      You all did see that on the Lupercal
      I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
      Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
      Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
      And, sure, he is an honourable man.
      I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
      But here I am to speak what I do know.
      You all did love him once,–not without cause:
      What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?–
      O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
      And men have lost their reason!–Bear with me;
      My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
      And I must pause till it come back to me.

    5. I recited part of Marc Antony’s speech to one of my high school English classes. Some of my classmates were in awe of how potent a weapon “honorable men” could be with the right tone of voice.

      Actually, The Federalist did this toward Joe Biden’s election. In an article printed shortly after the election, it publicly praised the amazing job that Biden did in getting out the vote, and how he was so much better of a politician than even Barack Obama, based on the voting returns. And at the end, the article wondered why no journalists had yet written up the amazing story of Biden’s unusual campaign and how it resulted in such amazing election returns.

  34. Speaking of activists “attacking the capitol and disrupting Congress:

    But of course its okay when leftists do it.

  35. See: No Time For Sergeants or almost any comedy team’s “straight man” who *acts* ‘dumb’ but sets things up. The hard part is keeping a straight face. That’s why the take was 60/40 rather than 50/50 with the 60 going to the straight man – that was the HARD job. (Yes, Burns & Allen did 50/50 but they were married… and George got a Helluva good deal twice, there).

    And it forces ‘teaching’ — which is IDEAL. The one way to truly learn your subject is to have to teach it. And then teach it not merely until your student understands it, but until YOU understand it.

    1. My drama teacher in high school was very clear: if you’re going to do comedy well, you have to play it absolutely straight. Which is why comics who wink at the audience are never all that funny to me. Lou Costello, I’m looking at you. Adam Sandler, I’m looking at you in everything before “The Wedding Singer”.

  38. “Insanity” can be useful. When I was at the Post Office (feeling better now, yes) moving equipment at a rapid (decidedly NON-union!) pace, with a wild-eyed look… cleared the path wonderfully. Of course, that “leave the maniac alone” ALSO resulted in “Sholy hit! How’d all this get done?” didn’t hurt. Not a brag. Just wasn’t union going union-slow. Only going ox slow. MUCH faster. ANYONE could have done it.

    1. Hooves and horns and a wild look in the eyes — of COURSE they cleared out of the way! 😛

  39. I’ve never really been one to self promote, and I do so with great reluctance, but some of you might enjoy this:

  40. I’ll be honest here. My own unforgiving nature strongly veers to nailing the commievermin to a plywood roofing sheet with a nailgun and then savagely crushing its knees with a sledgehammer before yanking out the nails and hanging it up in the exact same agonizing positions that the commievermin loved to inflict on our POWs in the Vietnam War and before that in the Korean War and even today to innocents in Communist China.

    https://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2014/12/20/147374.html

    But the psychological pranks you mention could help maintain the morale of many who aren’t quite up to simply exterminating the evil leftist enemy by any means necessary.

    2. Right now and for the next 3 months, at least, until they rip the mask fully off (I thought it would take 2 years, but I don’t think so) all going full kinectic would do is get the mushy middle on their side as they’d be “victims.”

      1. I might be wrong in this, but I think even if it went full kinetic *right now* it would still be grudgingly supported with the caveat that “you should have waited a bit longer”.

        1. Maybe, but I’m not sure yet.
          Though I half suspect they’re going to do a fake insurgency and try to get us to denounce it, only to have us say “well, it’s a good start.”

          2. Thing about false flagging a fake insurrection as prelude to a crackdown, there’s a chance that you wind up triggering a real insurrection you aren’t prepared to deal with. Assuming the risk isn’t there is not the act of a healthy rational mind.

            So, if staying pat will get you what you could reasonably want, and keep you in the game to play later, you’d have to be stupid and insane to go for the false flag.

            Oh. Wait.

            Never mind.

                1. You! Apologize to the rabid wolverines for making ANY comparison to the Leftroids! 😛

              2. Given human nature, I suspect that the Founding Fathers saw the theatrical production.

                The Romans probably tore down walls painted with records of princes afraid of mortality doing idiotic things. To make their own monuments to human stupidity, even.

  42. I’m as stubborn as the mule pictured up above, and already certifiably insane. I don’t want to get into a tight situation, but I will make as many people as possible pay, if I do.

          1. Their next step will be to consider any parent complaints about the indoctrination or efforts to counteract it to be child abuse and they will take the children away from the parents. They want The State to raise children, not parents.

            The village in Hillary’s “It takes a village” is the Village from Pat McGoohan’s The Prisoner.

            I am to be unmutual.

            1. Would anyone here object to an amendment kicking government out of children’s education altogether – as either a provider or a funder – and making it entirely a private sector matter?

            2. They want The State to raise children, not parents.

              –
              At first glance I saw that as, ‘They want the State to raise perpetual children, not eventual adults’ and then saw that works, too.
              ———————————
              It takes a LOT of education to make somebody that stupid.

  44. “They want you to sign something?”

    I’m sorry – I don’t know how to do sign language

    Alternatively, make up your own signing language … feel free to slip i what would ordinarily be considered rude gestures (but don’t over do it.)

    If they insist that you “Sign your name to it!” carefully and laboriously write “2it” across the document. On the next try, write “Your Name”.

    Keep forgetting where the signature should go.

    Recommended viewing: study Abbott & Costello routines for advanced misconstrual technique.
    ~

    4. “I…” “I…” “Your name…” “Your name…” “*mutters* Schmucks…”

  45. I might not need to pretend religious mania and a psychotic break.

    I was born crazy, and I can have a religious fervor for being obnoxious.

    Normal is an act that eases relationships with those who are not putting up with my nonsense for love or money. It also eases relationships with those who are putting up with my nonsense for love or money.

  46. “I can’t do accents to save my life, but if you can, practice your Southern accent.”

    Shucks, Ma’am, ‘twarn’t anyone what cannot drawl. Slow talking and inserting linguistically meaningless terms (e.g., shucks) is a) conforming to their expectations (y’ever listen to a couple dem dere fellers doing their imitations of us?) and b) a sure fire guarandamnteed way of annoying these pumped up crackers.

    It is also useful to lose your train of thought, meander off into Granpa Simpson territory and be sure you employ a plethora of double, triple, sextuple negatives in your vernacular.
    ~

    1. There was speculation Pelosi’s 25th look into last year was in prep for Joe, not Trump. There is nothing that says she wasn’t planning for both.

      1. I don’t remember if there is a 25th amendment equivalent for Congress critters. They sure damn are acting like they lost their ever-loving minds.

        1. You’re giving them credit for having minds in the first place? I’ve seen no evidence that they ever had minds, or at least functional ones.

            1. I’ve seen little sign they have one of those either. Based on an observation of history, it seems having a soul would be detrimental to being a socialist or communist.

  49. “[Y]ou have to trust they don’t know you have degrees or whatever, because you really have to play ‘dumb and willing.’”

    Alternatively, the recent traumas might have left you slightly erratic.

    Feel free to confuse the meanings/pronunciations of erratic and erotic.
    ~

    1. >> “Feel free to confuse the meanings/pronunciations of erratic and erotic.”

      Look, I may have to do some unpleasant things to survive this but I will NOT become Joe Biden.

  50. “Say they accuse you of white supremacy. ”

    Easily handled. Cite the testimony of Biden’s nominee t head up the DOJ Department of Civil Rights, Kristen Clarke, as stated in a letter to the Harvard Crimson:

    “One: Dr Richard King reveals that the core of the human brain is the ‘locus coeruleus,’ which is a structure that is Black, because it contains large amounts of neuro-melanin, which is essential for its operation.

    “Two: Black infants sit, crawl and walk sooner than whites [sic].

    Three: Carol Barnes notes that human mental processes are controlled by melanin — that same chemical which gives Blacks their superior physical and mental abilities.

    “Four: Some scientists have revealed that most whites [sic] are unable to produce melanin because their pineal glands are often calcified or non-functioning. Pineal calcification rates with Africans are five to 15 percent [sic], Asians 15 to 25 percent [sic] and Europeans 60 to 80 percent [sic]. This is the chemical basis for the cultural differences between blacks and whites [sic].

    “Five: Melanin endows Blacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities — something which cannot be measured based on Eurocentric standards.”

    and demand they affirm those official government assertions – and demand they explain how you could be White Supremacist and believe that?

    Source: https://www.bizpacreview.com/2021/01/12/tucker-reveals-biden-doj-pick-once-said-melanin-gives-blacks-superior-physical-and-mental-abilities-1015562/ transcription of reporting by Tucker Carlson Tonight
    ~

    1. How can somebody say something so stupid using so many big fancy words? I mean, the stupid is CONCENTRATED!

      Melanin and melatonin are NOT the same. The protein that triggers neural activity is glutamate.

      How can one individual BE that stupid?

                  1. Alas, the Puppet Masters might win, because most politicians are not people the public wants to see naked.

                    1. I’d say that lot would certainly benefit from a Narn standing by to, ahem, take care of them when their Keeper pushes them too far into insane tyranny…

              2. Lizard aliens wearing human skin suits starts to be almost more believable than “real human”.

                  1. Hmm… So the pan-dimensional beings that WERE secretly manipulating us got eaten by the lizard people who are NOW secretly manipulating us?

                    I hate this plot twist on SO many levels.

                2. Girl Genius’ mind-control wasps. I think I know now why there’s been a campaign against sugar – to ensure that more of it is sent to feed the hive queens!

                  (I’m joking, for the people out there who are incapable of recognising that. We get those here and it’s rather irritating.)

              3. They have no contact with us. They socialize with each other. They have staff who obey them, lobbyists who woo them, the media that grooms them, the occasional contacts with the little people who bring them their vodka martinis in first class… They have their own literature, their own media, their own news… other than being interleaved into the same geographic area, they’re as isolated from our America as they would be if they were in a hut in Antarctica.

                In their slice of reality, everyone agrees with them and supports them. Nobody opposes them. Ever. The pecking order will take down challengers even if they don’t lift a finger. Which is why they freak out when things don’t go their way.

                For all practical purposes, they *are* lizard people.

                2. esr did a post on how Lizard and pedophile satanist theories are functionally similar, and keying on to something real.

                  There was, in that or another post, something else I wanted to respond to, but did not at the time have the spoons to do so.

                  I’ve maybe finished working it out.

                  Basically, esr is a virtuous pagan, so he is aligned with the correct side, but has a blinder where some of this stuff is concerned.

                  The utilitarian cases for certain religions rests in how the mechanisms of religion can enforce certain values. There are people outside those religions who work their way to the values by a philosophical process, but in no population will the whole or majority be so inclined. This isn’t the full mechanism driving values, because values from a religion can be embedded into a culture. So someone can have a bad religious influence, and still pick up the values from a good culture. There are a lot of older leftists, atheists, etc., who are not driven to good values by their religious behavior, or political beliefs, but are still practicing those values because of how they were raised.

                  One of the modern theories of electing officials is ‘cares about me’. This obviously selects for sociopaths skilled at lies where the group voting for the officials is larger than Dunbar’s number.

                  In this case, the relevant ‘good value’ is the understanding of what it means to tell the truth. Christianity has one model, and Communism’s view is entirely incompatible. The late DenBeste, esr, etc., are folks who live/lived this value, even if they were not living it directly from practicing Christianity.

                  Pelosi, Zuckerberg, and HRC, are living communism’s cognate bad value. This helps them when deceiving for a good chunk of the audience, but some folks pick up on something, it rubs them the wrong way, but they do not have a succinct theoretical explanation for it. So, anthrophagic lizard men, or pedophile satanists. The lizards do not look at humans the way a Christian does, and their patterns of speaking truth and falsehood have subtle inconsistencies with truths and lies as spoken by a Christian.

                  Pelosi is nominally Catholic, but shows few, if any, of the subtle behaviors of a Christian.

                  Compare how corrupt false official information sources breed rumor. This is basically a matter of Christians and Christendom versus the godless Commies, but we’ve for generations been too satisfied in leaving theory to academia, and the academics are blind to the truth here, because they are at least half-step lizards. So, for lack of broadly acceptable succinct theory, we resort to stuff that sounds funny, that people think they can discredit by repeating.

                  So, in some ways my “wait, why were we discarding the ‘pedophile satanist model’ was counterproductive.”

                    2. Yeah, Spero found the link to the correct post. Which had both of the elements that inspired response.

      2. I wish I could say this is dumbest thing I’ll hear all month but this isn’t even going to crack the Top 10 Dumb this week.

  51. Entrail studies.

    Cloward, motor voter in 1993, Pelosi had been in congress since 1987, she is 80 now.

    Things felt so sudden that I figured that the PRC had to explain it, but it makes sense as a rational act by a fundamentally disordered mind. Long term ambition, and a sense of mortality.

    1. If Pelosi is so concerned about “whiteness”, why doesn’t she resign her speakership so one of the many non-whites in the House can replace her?

  53. Question for @Mike Houst or anyone else who can answer these questions for me. I originally posted under the Night Terrors post, but I think the comment thread there had already gone stale. I hope it is OK to repost here.
    I did some more researching on the question after posting here, and it seems that the legislature has plenary power over the appointment of electors. BUT otoh, Congress gets to set the dates. Is the date set for that Election Day? Or is it Dec 14? If it is the latter, did the state legislatures that certified a different slate than the Governors do it by that date? If it is the former, how flexible is the date? (I ask because obviously ballots are accepted for weeks before Election Day and also now after that date.)
    All in all, what remedy is provided in the Constitution for the situation in which fraud / irregularities / abuse happens on Election Day? Could the state legislatures have declared the elections disputed and invalidated the slate of electors? Were they right to send / certify alternate slates?
    Is @drloss correct that the state legislature must be the certifying agency?
    It’s very confusing.
    Thanks.

    1. Well, Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the US Constitution states in full:

      “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.”

      That’s pretty clear. The state legislature determines how the electors are appointed.

      Clause 4 states:

      “The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.”

      This would seem to mean that Congress can set an election day for the states whose legislatures have decided to hold popular elections for presidential electors, and the same day would be when state legislatures that decide to choose electors through some other means would do so. When all electors are chosen, they would then give their votes on a Congressionally designated day.

      1. Thank you @drloss.

        So … all state legislatures have decided to hold popular elections. None changed that prior to election day, or met on that day to choose electors themselves, so they missed their chance to pick their own slate this year? (I.e. after election day happens and they see things go sideways, it’s too late?)

        1. It’s a bit more complicated than that. The Constitution says that all electors will be chosen at the same time, and that all chosen electors will vote for president on the same day. It doesn’t say that both of those actions should take place on the same day–indeed, they couldn’t. The US Code determines the schedule for all these actions:

          3 U.S. Code § 1 – Time of appointing electors

          The electors of President and Vice President shall be appointed, in each State, on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in every fourth year succeeding every election of a President and Vice President.

          3 U.S. Code § 2 – Failure to make choice on prescribed day

          Whenever any State has held an election for the purpose of choosing electors, and has failed to make a choice on the day prescribed by law, the electors may be appointed on a subsequent day in such a manner as the legislature of such State may direct.

          3 U.S. Code § 5 – Determination of controversy as to appointment of electors

          If any State shall have provided, by laws enacted prior to the day fixed for the appointment of the electors, for its final determination of any controversy or contest concerning the appointment of all or any of the electors of such State, by judicial or other methods or procedures, and such determination shall have been made at least six days before the time fixed for the meeting of the electors, such determination made pursuant to such law so existing on said day, and made at least six days prior to said time of meeting of the electors, shall be conclusive, and shall govern in the counting of the electoral votes as provided in the Constitution, and as hereinafter regulated, so far as the ascertainment of the electors appointed by such State is concerned.

          3 U.S. Code § 6 – Credentials of electors; transmission to Archivist of the United States and to Congress; public inspection

          It shall be the duty of the executive of each State, as soon as practicable after the conclusion of the appointment of the electors in such State by the final ascertainment, under and in pursuance of the laws of such State providing for such ascertainment, to communicate by registered mail under the seal of the State to the Archivist of the United States a certificate of such ascertainment of the electors appointed, setting forth the names of such electors and the canvass or other ascertainment under the laws of such State of the number of votes given or cast for each person for whose appointment any and all votes have been given or cast; and it shall also thereupon be the duty of the executive of each State to deliver to the electors of such State, on or before the day on which they are required by section 7 of this title to meet, six duplicate-originals of the same certificate under the seal of the State; and if there shall have been any final determination in a State in the manner provided for by law of a controversy or contest concerning the appointment of all or any of the electors of such State, it shall be the duty of the executive of such State, as soon as practicable after such determination, to communicate under the seal of the State to the Archivist of the United States a certificate of such determination in form and manner as the same shall have been made; and the certificate or certificates so received by the Archivist of the United States shall be preserved by him for one year and shall be a part of the public records of his office and shall be open to public inspection; and the Archivist of the United States at the first meeting of Congress thereafter shall transmit to the two Houses of Congress copies in full of each and every such certificate so received at the National Archives and Records Administration.

          3 U.S. Code § 7 – Meeting and vote of electors

          The electors of President and Vice President of each State shall meet and give their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December next following their appointment at such place in each State as the legislature of such State shall direct.

          There’s a lot more to 3 U.S. Code (21 sections), but this gives the basics.

          1. Ooh, my head hurts. Does 3 U.S. Code § 2 mean that if there is a problem Election Day, like irregularities or evidence of fraud, then the state legislators can fix that? Or does “failed to make a choice” mean only that the election was held but the results were (for example) a tie?

            1. Honestly, I’m not sure and I suspect no one else is. At a guess, “failed to make a choice” was originally intended to mean that the votes counting hadn’t been finished and certified by that date. But I personally would read it as taking effect if the results of an election were challenged in court due to evidence of election fraud such that the election couldn’t be certified by the specified date. Of course, we’ve seen just how much the entire legal system has refused to even consider such challenges. Why, actually lifting the rock might expose the fundamental rot underlying the entire government! Can’t have that…

  54. Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

    “Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. … The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.

    1. I deeply respect Bonhoeffer, but the short way to say that is “The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its dumbest member divided by the number of mobsters.” – Terry Pratchett
      Corollary: “The evilness of a mob is the evilness of its worst member multiplied by the number of mobsters.” – AF

  55. Nah; we should loudly celebrate SCOTUS and especially the Chief Justice for explaining how to get our voice heard and the proper way to get political results.

    You get a riot! And you get a riot!

    3. Whereas as it has been implied that if kulaks, wreckers, reactionaries, and other rightwing deviationists want a formal legal system, that they could make their own, so Bob shall.

      The executives of Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Alphabet and all subsidiaries have brought chaos into the world. As treatment and as service to compensate the community the will have a hand and a foot cut off on opposite sides. If they have a dominant hand it will be the dominant hand, if they are ambidextrous it will be the left hand.

      Fatwah issued by:
      Random Internet Psycho Bob
      On: 2774 ab urbe condita

    1. That column has a comment that feeds directly into the Bonhoeffer quote. ( How all the commenter’s Democratic friends think FB is biased against THEM, and favors the Right, and how all the “fake news,” needs to be removed, and so on. All slogans and catchphrases).

      1. I’m old enough to remember when lefty friends all claimed that the MSM was right-wing, because the networks were all owned by big corporations, and everyone knew that big corporations were right-wing. QED.

        This was around 2005, so already delusional even if that had ever been true.

  58. “…but if you can, practice your Southern accent.”

    Mine is too authentic to use. I’m gonna try upper mid-western.

    Narth Dakoota. Meenasoota, yah?

    I mean, even fascists watch Fargo, right?

      1. ‘Tis. First time I heard you speak it honestly surprised me. I read your blog in proper Southern lady speak, with occasional turn-the-crucifix-to-the-wall, listen-here-this-is-important speak.

        The other thing is, once you’ve got the drawl, it is a corrupting influence. It took years, well, about sixteen of them to be able to speak proper English when I have to. And it *always* comes out when I get angry. Even stuck out when I was in Texas, and heck, New York folks thought I was some kind of curious animal that made almost human-like noises.

        Be careful what you wish for. Once you’ve got the drawl, its danged hard to get rid of!

        1. Is there a video/audio clip of Sarah talking somewhere? I’m curious what she sounds like now.

  59. Pingback: For He Is An Honorable Man – Head Noises

  61. Hiding one’s intelligence is something of a regional sport in Southern Appalachia. You get it with mother’s milk. Careful, earnest, curious but deliberate misunderstanding is a thing of delicate proportion. Too much and you give the game away. Too little, and you end up doing what they wanted you to anyway.

    Tangents are your friend. Heck. If you can chain ’em together, so much the better. Tangent off a tangent, then circle back to the original tangent before spawning a new one altogether. Works best in teams, but can be done well in groups. Identify pet peeves, interests, and twitch points. Pile on, but gently. Like writing, you want to shape the conversation in such a way that the subject does not realize they are being led.

    Distraction works, too. You are playing a character that starts as how you present, but is a shade different. You need it to be natural. Avoid easy lies. You are building on yourself- this is a mask that grows from the skin out. Everyone wears a mask, whether they believe it or not- well, almost everyone. Its the grease in social behavior. What you are doing as adding a bit of sand to the grease.

    Its okay if they get mad at you. Even better, up to a point, in fact. You want to create *frustration,* at least at first. Subtly p*ssed off, frustrated people are prone to expedient thinking. Make sure you aren’t so annoying they want to punish you, though occasionally that may be necessary.

    Apologies if this got redundant. *grin* I’ll try and do better next time!

  62. This is interesting:

  63. Pingback: The Great Silencing Proceeds – The Laughing Wolf

  64. Writing my confession might be fun. I like to mirror-right in cursive (da Vinci turned me on to it). I can do the whole thing that way, or randomly insert words and phrases they’ll need a mirror to read. All while misspelling and using the wrong word and mixing my metaphors until the entire thing makes no sense at all. Next I have to figure out how to do this aloud, while speaking. How many backwards words can I say before the sentence makes no sense at all? This may keep me occupied my entire afternoon of working in the hoop house (only the chickens will hear me there).
    Christa

  65. A sentiment and syllogism I think many here will appreciate.

    If Andrew Cuomo’s recent Tweet calling for winding down the lockdowns becomes a trend among governors in lockdown-heavy states (especially Pennsylvania and Michigan)–that is, that they’re planning on ending the executive orders very soon–the supposed “conspiracy theories” are almost certainly true: governors around the country colluded to influence the election by using COVID lockdowns as a means of influencing voting patterns. If these governors truly believe this is world-ending (it’s not), their sudden and otherwise-inexplicable interest in ending lockdowns wouldn’t be remotely rational.
    For this to have roots in truth, it absolutely wouldn’t mean COVID isn’t real (of course it is!) or that it’s not harmful to vulnerable populations (of course it is!). There’s good reason for vulnerable populations to take extra caution and self-isolate. But the universal, top-down, population-wide mandates have been unnecessary and so disastrous that the small, mom-and-pop business environment may **never** recover in many areas of the country.
    We know this. They know this. And they know that we know this. Make them own it.
    ~ Andrew H. on Facebook

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