What Is The Truth

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

The left believes the truth is whatever you say fervently enough. This is of course, not reality, but I can guess how it got this way in their minds.

Blame this on the strange conjunction of my reading Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time (yes, it’s my link. I make some pennies from it.)I think I read it before, when I was not doing well, but the echoes are very faint) and this episode of well, what used to be trifecta.

I will first admit that I’ve always been HIGHLY suspicious of the rehabilitation of Richard III, partly because the people involved in it are cult-like, partly because the left always rehabilitates monsters.

OTOH….

I like the Tudor period not because it was great, but because it was interesting. The Tudor’s are somewhere between the Clintons and the Obamas given unlimited power.

So, can we trust anything that came out of a tightly controlled info environment? No. I’ve seen what the mass media did to Trump and how hard they’re trying to make Biden sound wonderful. Give it a few centuries….

So, maybe Richard III really was a decent man who was taken down and destroyed by a clan of very evil people.

(He is fortunately well beyond our judgement. And if he was good, someone else knows.)

The other was the fact that in the video even Scott Ott refuses to believe that the FBI is responsible for the deep fake. Even though we’ve seen plenty of evidence of their being dirty over the years.

Now, of course it’s possible it’s someone else. I believe I pointed out before that most of the white supremacist comments vanished overnight from my blog once I blocked SPECIFICALLY Russian IPs from commenting. And a lot of the crazy white supremacist anti-semitic stuff on blogs does seem to have a distinctly non-American flavor. Is there any reason to believe they wouldn’t stage something in person? Something that looked like the fake rally?

No, of course there isn’t.

One of the things that Americans are traditionally very vulnerable to is information wars. If it makes you feel better, the rest of the world is also coping with the information suddenly playing the joker and going wild.

We’re somehow coping better, and I have no explanation for this, except blogs to the level we use them, are extremely American for some reason.

What is all this about?

The truth is the truth. The method expounded by Tey to figure out the truth will work for us, too. You can figure out the puzzle if you look. But you have to look.

And you have to be aware there are people all over the world who think it would be a great idea if the next iteration of the US is a form of national socialism. Because that’s sort of where they live, anyway, including China. It is not a functional government, but it’s more functional than INTERNATIONAL socialism, and they’re clutching onto it for dear life.

Because individualism and not having power over others are unthinkable.

Do let’s make them think it. With spikes. (Or pikes, if it comes to that.)

Yeah, deep fakes exist, but we have the power to find the truth. And the truth exists as well.

Remember that. And be not afraid.

161 thoughts on “What Is The Truth”

  1. I’m definitely in a really silly phase, because I want to joke on formal Confessions of faith, and on speculating that other federal organizations are responsible. And am not thinking straight enough to put together a good joke on that.

  2. I’d make a crummy revolutionary anyway. I won’t condemn a man unless I can prove to myself that he’s guilty of crimes deserving of my dishing out punishment to him. If I can’t prove it, then I have to let the scoundrel go. Doesn’t matter if he’s accused of raping babies of either gender, and beating and eating innocent old grandmothers; I may dislike him, but I can’t condemn him without that proof. And it doesn’t mean I won’t keep an eye out for that proof either.

  3. I’m a decade out of the loop, but I don’t recall there being any significant political flavor besides being contrarian among those of us pushing the rehabilitation of Richard III, (or Stephen I).

    Now, I don’t know that he was *good*. But he certainly wasn’t any worse than those damning his memory, and there’s lingering evidence that he was significantly better.

      1. Some genres seem infested with them. Once upon a time, I thought sci-fi was going that way. Worried, more like. I’m glad it did not, thanks to certain authors here and there what was too cussed stubborn to quit writing.

        Nothing wrong with reading the liberal inspired books now and then. Goes without saying that we don’t throw the kindle at the wall when the books inside itch the “that’s not right” bone.

    2. If he really WAS better than them, of COURSE they would bash him. Like the Fauxi cultists bashing Rand Paul and Dr. Scott Atlas.

      We can only hope for a non-revisionist history that accurately describes Fauxi as a greedy power-mad political hack with mediocre medical talents and a messiah complex.
      ———————————
      “I’d like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come at too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave, like this.”

    3. Richard made life a little easier for the peasants and working class, and so was liked by them and disliked by the nobility…One of the Lords who betrayed Richard at Bosworth Field was cornered and hacked to death years later by a group of peasants…

      1. The negative portrayals of Richard III were themselves pushed by his opponents in the struggle for the throne of England, and Shakespeare in particular wrote his play Richard III as essentially a propaganda piece for the dynasty which succeeded Richards. Is it any wonder that he was portrayed so negatively?

  4. Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia?

    Just sayin 😇

      1. At thanksgiving we were talking about historians in 2,000 years writing about Trump if the only thing that remained was the NYT or alternatively something like Fox News. Would he be Augustus or Caligula? We all agreed George W is Claudius, not Grave’s Claudius either.

        I’m fairly sure that Cataline was not a good guy but I can’t forget the Cicero was a lawyer on the make.

          1. Yeah and he was one of Sulla’s boys. On the other hand, he died well at the front leading his men. better than Cicero anyway

            I hate the bloody Romans. What have the Romans ever done for us anyway?

            1. What have the Romans ever done for us anyway?

              The Roman Peace made the spread of Christianity more possible. 😉

              1. Well, apart from medicine, irrigation, health, roads, cheese, education, baths, and the Circus Maximus, what have the Romans ever done for us?

                I still hate the bloody Romans. Goes back to translating that genocidal psychopath when I was a schoolboy.

      1. Certainly not that.

        Funny thing though, for at least the last 1000 years up to the last generation, schoolboys spent their adolescence translating the campaign biography of a genocidal psychopath, followed by a sycophantic poem dedicated to a despot, and then the speeches of a lawyer on the make. This was called education.

        In Greek, at least, we got to read about old guys and their adolescent boy lovers after we finished the endless parasangs before Thalassa!

        1. And despite that, generations turned out fairly well, and could tell you there are only two sexes.

  5. I wonder if we’re handling it better because we’ve got that cultural heritage of sod-breaking? Even though its been 100+ years, we still have a huge reserve of wanderlust, and the idea of going to some unseen lands and making them civil still has huge appeal.

    That’s not much different from going into a situation where you just know nothing about what’s going on, and have to adapt and overcome.

    On a tangent, just finished up another chunk of that fanfic project over lunch, and realized, I’m actually really close to the end. The male lead just has to get through the bamboo grove of madness, and we’re on to the ending. It’s kind of funny, because I might actually get to use a could of chekhov’s guns I accidentally set up too. Don’t know, but maybe.

    I still need to go back and re-write some sections based on some changes I decided needed to happen, and do a couple wordsmithing/proofreading passes, but this may actually be just about done.

    It’s not huge. Thinking probably 30-40 pages? But it’s a start. Feels weird. Cool, but weird. (And then I need to find the appropriate piranha pool to go hurl it in…)

  6. Yep, the truth’s there but I’m not sure we can find it, it’s often buried so deep. Now the lies are often obvious but getting through the layers of then all the way to the nugget of truth below ain’t easy.

    None the less, just knowing when they’re lying (Is their mouth moving?) is enough to let us know we need proceed with caution.

        1. You’d almost have to set it in one of those “magic library” type settings they like for books– which would let you visit both history and out-of-copyright novels….

  7. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve begun to believe the worst about the communists and totalitarians, and the FBI is a collection of both.

    One reason I don’t support the former Trifecta is because of Scott and Steve’s opinions on things virtually always give the benefit of a doubt I don’t feel.

    It’s past time to take action based on what I believe to be true. I can’t wait for the records to be sorted out.

    Maybe it’s living in communist WA State. Maybe it’s enough federal/government service to distrust any and all agency.

    I’m not cynical about America the Republic, I am completely cynical about the involvement of every single person in every single agency. If you aren’t actively lying, you’re required to look the other way. And that deserves what it gets.

    1. I agree…I regard the entire cabal in DC as convicted of every crime on the list, including the heinous crimes of treason and poisoning babies, in the womb or out…And I’m not the forgiving person that I once was, so the punishment would be severe if it were in my discretion as a judge…

    2. I like them, and Instapundit, but after their reactions to Jan. 6 I mostly, though not totally, moved on. I refuse to give up our right to hold large protests. Things frequently get carried away at these things, and when they do, the proper response is to do spin for our side, and criticize the other people. Apparently Pelosi and others took advantage of it to make it a trap, and even won the public opinion battle, but the answer isn’t to scold people for trying, but to better plan and prepare for the next one.

      Right now, I think a lot of people are concerned about showing up on watch-lists (government or corporate) if they protest again, and since there is very little support from the Right, it’s hard to blame them.

      1. Scaring people into staying silent rather than speaking up was the entire point of the declaration by the DOJ that it was going to engage in surveillance of parents protesting at school board meetings. Frightening people into silence is a deliberate policy of the current junta.

    3. I mostly enjoy Bret Weinstein/Heather Heying’s “Dark Horse” podcast, but it infuriates me how even after a couple of years of plumbing the depths of the left’s bad faith, they insist on steelmanning every leftist position to the most excruciating degree. “Stop wasting our time, dammit! You know they’re lying!”

          1. It’s Scott Ott that always gives everyone the benefit of the doubt. Steve’s still ok.

            Then there is Ted Cruz. He totally bought into the J6 riot narrative. I had such high hopes for him.

    5. I had to scratch my head this morning. As I drove to Day Job, I saw a car with a “Let’s go, Brandon!” sticker on it. And what looked for all the world like the CIA’s crest. My first reaction was “Pick one. You can’t be both, not anymore.” Which is not fair to some of the employees of that group. [Note, I said “some.” The size of “some” is left to the reader to decide.]

      1. As many folks have been pointing out– ever notice how many of the official screwups are exactly what you’d do if you WANTED the plot to fail?

        Yeah, some may be idiots who’ve gotten away with it before. ::points to Kenosha:: But all of them?

        1. Glowie false flags.

          Some of them are mind boggling.

          Malicious compliance is an explanation.

          1. Wouldn’t surprise me all that much, to be honest. What would you or I do, in a situation where your upper chain of command has gone utterly coo-coo for cocoa puffs, but there’s a mission still there that is important and protects the innocent down at your level? If we believed in protecting American citizens, but were stuck like that?

            We can armchair wargame it all we like, but none of us are in the hot seat. Too many unknown unknowns.

            That said, I’m *not* giving them a pass on any of the boondoggle shenanigans that we *know* about. Consequences need to happen. Any crimes against American people need to be charged, tried, and if properly convicted, punished according to the law. I don’t see that happening in the current “Rule by Establishment,” but it is something we need to work toward. What cannot stand, won’t.

    6. How come none of the thugs that were seen ON VIDEO smashing in doors and windows on January 6 2021 were ever arrested and put in solitary confinement for 11 months? Why was Confederate Flag Dude not arrested? Why were none of the instigators handing out weapons from backpacks ever identified? The ones that brought armor and riot shields to a political rally?

      Why have none of the ‘rioters’ been charged with anything more than ‘demonstrating’ or trespassing? And how exactly is it ‘trespassing’ to enter a public building where OUR business is being conducted?

      If Congresscritters feel ‘threatened’ by the people they are supposed to be working for, they damn well SHOULD be threatened!
      ———————————
      The Capitol is OUR house. Congresscritters are just the help.

      2. My essays on LinkedIn are mostly about my work in software engineering and Artificial Intelligence although I’ve started to get increasingly crotchety in commenting on others’ posts.

      3. I just looked; no password is needed. (Never had one for the app.)

        XXXX bathes in the blood of virgins. Really????

          1. Something went zonko during the most recent global PHP upgrade, and now a whole bunch of sites speak slowly or not at all to computers and browsers older than last week. LinkedIn is one of ’em.

            1. Taking “last week” literally–Could be. I keep my LInux machines updated, with Pale Moon (a not entirely compatible variant of Mozilla Firefox) a month old, with internal libraries updated 5 days ago. I don’t have a Windows machine, so YMMV.

              FWIW, the distribution changelog says PHP was updated 12/3, apparently over “issues”, so yeah.

              1. Yep. Everyday is WinXP and SeaMonkey-3yearsold (because XP doesn’t give me hives if I have to use it for everyday work), but the linux box is a rolling distro with Chrome (its job is mostly Youtube) and is never more than a few days out-of-date. And a couple days ago I had the odd experience of having said linux box get clogged up to where I had to restart it, for the first time ever. And the culprit was Chrome struggling with a huge amount of garbage buildup, apparently just from Youtube. (Sucked down 24GB of RAM and was working on 100% of an i7 CPU.)

                1. Yeah, there is something screwed up with youtube, and I’m not sure if it was exposed on the current machine by some OS updates.

  9. I can’t guarantee I “won’t get fooled again” because I’ve been fooled a number of times. I originally thought Rush Limbaugh was just Jim Rome on politics–until I actually listened to his show. I thought that Newt Gingrich fellow was a little too out there–until I watched him on C-Span during the transition to the 1994 Congress. One of my life mottoes is, “People who believe, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, are easy prey for those who blow smoke.”

  10. Well, we’re still building around and up … We can outlast the vile, lying progs.
    And if it is any comfort to fans of Richard III – he was very well liked and respected in the North of England. The people are reported to have mourned his death very deeply …

  11. It’s possible to spot a lie and be reasonably sure that it is a lie even without having the truth to compare it to.

  12. Evergrande defaulted yesterday. China told its banks to ignore it. Somehow, the western banks are ignoring it too. How long can the lie go on? I’m just agog.

      1. I’m a little nervous because my wife spent too much of my savings on her business expenses without telling me. We only get that back if she can sell, and she’s not making too many sales if the economy tanks.

      2. Essentially, we’re driving a truck filled with nitroglycerin across a rocky field. What I can’t understand is why it hasn’t blown up yet, under the headlines it already has. Everything peaked in February and it’s been sputtering since.

        I wish you’d sell your old place, I really do.

              1. Still? Maybe she SHOULD take a chance on having to explain that rank smell in the basement…

                1. From the bits and pieces I’ve picked up, I don’t even want to THINK about how many thousands the SOB has cheated folks of– and I’m wondering what the kick-back was. No way was that stuff mere incompetency and accidents that just happen to all fall one direction.

    2. Until somebody along the chain finally says “f*** you, pay me” and the whole thing unravels.

        1. Yeah. It occurred to me just after I posted, that Uncle Sugar could step in and say “here’s some taxpayer money, now keep quiet and don’t make waves”. Almost certainly would, I suspect.

          1. That’s what’s the FRB has been doing for the last 25 years since LTCM. Currencies die when people stop believing in them. hasn’t happened, yet, but that’s the end game,

            China is going to be interesting because the local governments will implode without the flow from property sales. Everything we’ve seen has been a political fight among elites who have Noddy’s understanding of economics,

            Have a look at the life expectancy of a Chinese billionaire someday. An awful lot of them seem to have had “accidents.”

            1. “Accidents” and “heart attacks”, in the Peter Clemenza meaning of the word “heart attack”.

              Leftists here aren’t limited to wanting people to stop believing in the US dollar. They really want people to simply stop believing in the USA at all, except for the leftist assertion that the USA is the source of all the world’s evil. They believe the wrong side won the Cold War.

            2. If (when, I’m starting to worry…) people stop believing in the US dollar…

              *shudder*

              I don’t even want to think about what a disaster that would be for the entire world.

    3. It can go on right up until a critical mass of money is needed that simply isn’t there.

      When that critical mass will make itself known?

      Couldn’t tell you.

      1. Define “money”. When it’s all 1s and 0s, it can be and will be conjured. As long as the coyote doesn’t look down….

        1. Money is credit and credit is belief, literally that’s what the word means. When the belief stops, money dies. It’s not new and death of money happens all the time.

          1. WSJ reported Xi took complete control of the Bank of China yesterday, as part of his general “anti-corruption,” program. Not that it was independent before, but the last shreds of pretense are gone.

            1. Yeah, China is collapsing. As bad as we think we have it, it’s nothing compared to the problems they have. My only hope is that they don’t take everything else with them when they go.

              1. It’s going to take a good chunk of CALPERS with it. Somewhere around half the pension fund is invested in China…

                1. That would explain why their results are so bad. Investment returns from China have been very, very poor. Japan after the bust like poor. Better to have put it in US Treasury bills poor. Start campfires with it so it’ll have done something useful poor.

                  The elite narrative around China and the truth around China are completely different. What’s really brazen is that the stock data are actually public and give accurate prices so it requires willfully ignoring the facts.

                  I read the other day that Chinese savings account interest was a very good deal because Chinese CPI is only 1%. Chinese CPI has been 1% +/- since they started calculating it. Really? With huge increase in fools and energy costs Chinese CPI didn’t budge? Then I read that Chinese WuFlu rates are the lowest in the world. Both of these things, to pick two out of thousands, were not some guy down the pub but, rather responsible officials. American officials.

                  Believe nothing you read.

                2. Unsurprising, given the apparent subornment of California faction Democrats by the PRC.

        2. Which is all well and good if you’re a bank, and don’t care about inflation. But a lot of Chinese citizens sank money into properties that they’re never going to get. They’re also not going to get their 1s and 0s back. Will one ticked off investor make a difference? It’s very unlikely without a freak string of coincidences. But each individual investor is another drop in the critical mass bucket.

          If that bucket keeps getting filled, sooner or later it will spill over and make a mess.

          1. The CCP has never had a problem with murdering millions of their own people, so the fact that people are upset at what is happening isn’t going to really be a factor in their decision making; especially when they see a craven west that goes along with their concentration camps and genocide, and will readily promote the inevitable “those millions died of COVID” propaganda that the CCP will push.

            1. But the CCP murdered its people in the past by starving a bunch of poor, illiterate peasants. And even so, Mao’s fellow party leaders started getting cold feet, and forced him to back down and end the famine. In addition, there were other signs that defiance against Mao was growing, and that there would might have been serious trouble if Mao had allowed things to continue as they were.

              Now, the people have something to lose. It’s been noted that in many ways, it’s easier to keep people cowed when they have nothing. It’s when they have something, only to lose it due to the higher-ups screwing around, that they start to get restive.

              Finally, China’s most recent unification only began at the end of the Chinese Civil War. Even throughout the entirety of World War 2, there were parts of free China that were more or less outside of Nationalist China’s control (and I’m not talking about the Communist areas). “The Empire, long divided, must unite. The Empire, long united, must divide.” China has spent probably as much of its history divided as it has united. And you never know what will set off another collapse. The greatest internal threat to China’s final dynasty – the Qing Dynasty – prior to its eventual fall, was the Tai-Ping Rebellion. That started because a failed rural scholar had a mental breakdown and got it into his head that he was Jesus’s younger brother (not in a spiritual sense), and the local Qing authorities overreacted to the cult that gathered around him.

      2. Social construct.

        Where we are doing physical things based upon a lie of our modeling, the truth of reality will win out in a predictable way.

        Where we act on false models of our behavior, there are modes of failure that can be unpredictable. For something like this default, there may be near term effects in things that we cannot measure, or can not reliably perceive.

        We do not see the behavior we expect with a default. This implies a behavior change that we have not really noticed. A behavior change that God would have knowledge of, but whose immediate consequences may be hidden by too much noise for human measurements.

        Behavior changes inspire behavior changes. But, a human cannot process all the information in the world, even if they could access it. There is the information delay, and the processing delay.

        No power can reach every man with coercive force. Where a force arranges for a few key men to ignore a problem, there is always a circle of men beyond the reach of that force. If the information reaches them, they will process it, and change their behavior if they decide the information is important. But information delays, and processing delays, may be important.

        So, as distressed as I am that my own inside baseball has not resulted in actions that I perceive, it may be this, and this may also be BGE’s issue.

  14. In my insane days of wanting to do movies, I came up with an idea for doing “Richard III” as a science fiction movie, not cutting a single line of the original play, but having Richard show up as someone that survived the War of the Roses, realized that the King was going to pretty much start the entire mess all over again, and took over because he hated that war in the first place.

    After establishing that Richard III was Edward IV’s bagman and the one he sent to do terrible things.

      1. Also, Will wrote the play in the days when the Tudors were on the throne and wanted to make it clear that Richard III was very much the villain. And, he knew which side his bread was buttered on.

        1. “he knew which side his bread was buttered on.”

          Also where his head was attached. The Tudors had a rather expansive definition of “lese majeste”. 😎

          1. Before Henry VIII, treason was what our Constitution says it is. After, well,

            ““do maliciously wish, will or desire by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the king’s most royal person, the queen’s or the heirs apparent, or to deprive them of any of their dignity, title or name of their royal estates, or slanderously and maliciously publish and pronounce, by express writing or words, that the king should be heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel or usurper of the crown.”

    2. There was the Patrick Stewart ‘MacBeth’ in a Soviet-style setting; I s’pose a SF Dickie 3 could work . . .

    3. Private Romeo is a bit like that. The on-stage/off-stage mixing is very strange and one can’t really tell who’s saying what to whom (characters or actors). It’s mean to be that way and you can take it whichever way you wish to.

  15. My most recent thought: I wish for all (muslims, liberals, communists, whites, etc. you fill in the blank) what they wish for all non (fill in the blank).

  16. My brother said that his business (glass windows) is doing better than it ever has, and at the same time he feels like a single match could explode the world.

    “The quest stands on the edge of a knife.” I feel that way too.

    1. Well, Russia is about to invade the Ukraine and some Chinese real estate firms are about to default.

    1. Omg. Richard of Gloucester, sensible and low-key guy with a profession, who had to take over his dukedom from a dashing brother who died young and stupid. Presenting a show on Richard III, who was in much the same boat.

      Um. Pretty much on the nose.

    1. His defense lawyer’s final argument was amusingly off-base. And in his case, going on the stand was a bad idea.

      1. this is why you don’t want to make it a publicity stunt. Then sweeping it under the carpet doesn’t work, and your first joke of a plea bargain means they won’t offer another.

      1. :considers some of the defense’s arguments for why he should be found Not Guilty:

        ::has a fit of very immature snickers::
        PHRASING!

      2. Yeah, one case of lying to an investigator. See legalinsurrection for the summary of charges.

        I haven’t paid that much attention to the trial, except to note that it could have been comedy gold if it had been televised.

      3. He got off on the count of lying about an aggravated assault, specifically to a detective some time after the claimed attack. The first five counts – the ones he was found guilty of – apparently involved lying about the “assault” to the responding officers.

        Something I heard shortly afterwards suggested that the count he was found Not Guilty on may have been the only felony of the bunch. That may have influenced the decision, though I don’t know for sure. But it’s also possible that there’s something about the specifics of the last charge that caused the jury to find an out for him.

          1. It wouldn’t surprise me if the reason why he was found Not Guilty of the last charge was a compromise fig leaf for one or two jurors who wanted to nullify the conviction.

            1. I heard was that the sixth charge was lying to law enforcement about an aggravated battery, with the aggravating part being the wearing of masks (by the fake assailants). They may have just decided there was no credible evidence that the Osundairo brothers were wearing masks – or that given the last two years having an additional charge for lying about someone wearing a mask was just too big a stretch.

    3. Hate Crimes are in such short supply, they have to fake up counterfeit Hate Crimes, and then Believe! in them. Why do they have a need for Hate Crimes?

      How did it ever make any sense that a couple of ‘radical right-wing Trump supporters’ would have:

      Been on that street between 1:00 and 2:00 AM in the first place?
      Recognized an actor from a show they probably never watched?
      Known anything about his sexual proclivities?
      Decided to attack him?
      Been carrying a noose around, just in case?

      The whole thing was completely demented.

      2. No, you are just saying that because you’ve fallen for Multiple Man’s disinformation campaign.

      3. It is not even the hour, place or rampant absurdity of all of it. What is mind boggling is that NO ONE was outside basically that whole week. That night it was negative 20 degrees with a windchill at NEGATIVE 50.
        That means windchill was 82 degrees below freezing. I lived there at the time. Warnings about going out.

        If you lived there and heard the story and had more than one active brain cell you KNEW it was a lie. But Chicago. What a joke.

        1. I have raised a child from birth. Most pertinently, through the preschool years. My kid could’ve come up with a better story at three.

  20. “One of the things that Americans are traditionally very vulnerable to is information wars. If it makes you feel better, the rest of the world is also coping with the information suddenly playing the joker and going wild.

    We’re somehow coping better, and I have no explanation for this, except blogs to the level we use them, are extremely American for some reason.”

    I postulate that Americans (meaning those who prefer dangerous freedom over ‘safe’ chains) cope better because we understand freedom better. Freedom is, in essence, chaos. We’re more comfortable with it. We can envision dynamic stability rather than cling to stagnant and rotting top-down command economics.

    Well, that, and we’re bloody suspicious bastards when it comes to anything that comes out of a politician’s mouth. Or a media personality. Or an actors. Or… Well, say we have trust issues and call it done.

    Can you blame us? I mean, the stuff they’ve denied, denied, and called us crazy for believing that they’ve later quietly admitted- that’s stuff’s pretty damning already. And if you’re like me, you seriously wonder about those unknown unknowns that I’m morally certain are there.

    Doubt is an important quality for the intelligent mind to cultivate. Always, always doubt. Test, investigate, and verify. Especially when someone tells you “trust me.” Humans are tricksy buggers.

    1. Thing is, we’re *suspicious*, but we’re not tossing out what is said 100%, not most of us, anyways.

      That’s pretty normal for a lot of places. It works as poorly as 100% belief does.

    1. That was very cute. The bass notes gave the song a nice balance that it usually lacks — very much like listening to an Irish harp tune with the intended counterpoint notes, as opposed to going without.

      But they were either using Autotune, or they had a very odd mix. Which I think is unfortunate, because a more natural sound would have benefitted the song and honored the singers.

      2. He may have been singing partially in one of those styles that aren’t very particular about a steady and precise start to each new note.

        You’re right though, there was something excessively artificial about it …

        1. His vid on how to sing basso profundo is very interesting. Ain’t gonna work for me, for obvious reasons, but it turns out that there is a sort of subsonic throatsinging or reverse-falsetto trick.to it.

          Comments reveal that a common problem for basses is not hearing basses in person to model their voice production off, or even the notes. Makes sense of why US choirs often have a problem finding basses, although genetics argues there should be plenty.

      4. iirc they have had to autotune him (and Avi) to make the lows play on a speaker of any sort other than a mahoosive bass cone. I recall hearing of one time he sang that the audience heard little because he was miked and most were rather far away (tv show?) and the note was so low it dropped out of the mix, and only those very close heard anything at all.

  23. BTW…went Christmas shopping with my beloved today. Because he’s a small businessman, he has to buy small gifts for the employees. He favors calendars. So we were at the calendar kiosk and I took a look at political calendars.
    Large, full-color, non mocking Trump calendar. One calendar for Michele Obama, one, slightly hidden calendar for Kamala Harris. No Biden calendar. Not a one.
    Interesting.

    1. Now there’s an idea — a calendar marking significant events in the Bidenreich. The unconstitutional Executive Orders. The idiotic decisions leading to the Afghanistan debacle. The appointment of each moron to the Cabinet, and other positions. The court decisions striking down Executive Orders and decrees. Various milestones in the meltdown at the southern border. Each one of Fauxi’s Follies. All those incoherent speeches from the mumbling, bumbling, stumbling buffoon.
      ———————————
      “They should turn the teleprompters around so the audience can read them directly. It would make things much less confusing for everybody — including Biden.”

      1. There’s usually a Presidential calendar done straight, and sometimes mocking/humorous ones. Maybe the official Presidential Calendar hasn’t been put out yet, but it days something the Party hasn’t made sure one was ready. For private companies, it says something like, “Well, this thing won’t make money.”
        And I suppose corporate is nervous about doing a , “Let’s Go, Brandon!” calendar with 12 months of Presidential gaffes.

  24. Truth…has philosophical connotations to me. Facts, on the other hand, are much simpler: hard, quantifiable data. You can use “fact” to help find “truth” but not necessarily the reverse. Because too many people have distorted what “truth” means.

    Show me the facts. Or, if they won’t, I can freakin’ *find* them for myself by finding the raw data. (Granted, I seem to have the ability to parse said raw data that a lot of the people I’ve spoken with–not THIS bunch, thank God–seems to lack…and that’s disheartening since it’s NOT THAT HARD.)

    1. :nodding:

      The truth has…all the bits connected, is the best way I can think to describe it.

      A fact just is, it’s isolated.

      IE, I have been gutted, repeatedly. That is a fact.

      The truth includes the context that it was c-sections, and there is more context as is relevant to a specific situation or area of interest– such as that the times the doctor *wasn’t* big enough to basically shove down on my stomach and squeeze the baby out the incision, recovery was even harder than the emergency case.

      It’s HARDER to get The Truth, because reality is strongly connected.

      1. Truth according to Tarski and Popper after him is that which corresponds to the facts. It’s a negative test though as there can more than one truth that corresponds to the facts but if it doesn’t correspond to the facts it’s false

        1. Goes back to the problem Holly pointed out– people *really suck* at getting their facts nailed down to the degree of accuracy that they act like they have. They’ll pile a ton of assumptions and prior-partly-assumption-“facts” on top of each other, and winnow away Truths on the weight of that… so it turns into “facts are little chunks of the truth” and gets all circular.

    2. The behavior that really gets my goat is analysis of factual data that begins “We know….” As in, “we know the conclusion that we need to reach in order to continue getting invited to the right sort of parties”, and then the rest of the analysis is an exercise in avoiding the obvious.

      1. Ah, like ‘We know the CCcorona virus outbreak is an entirely natural occurrence’?

        Never mind the bio-warfare lab next door that’s been tinkering with the world’s largest collection of corona viruses. Nothing to see there! So of course nobody will be allowed to look.

        1. Or “we know the vax is 100% safe and effective”. And that’s why we didn’t bother to do long-term safety studies.

  25. Something weird happened in America where people started _believing_ what they read. Newspapers were total propaganda and everyone knew this. At some point (before my time; I have no idea when), people started believing “if it’s in print, it’s true.” The Internet blew that up (not that it was ever actually true). I think people are still adjusting.
    It won’t be long until “show me video or it didn’t happen” will not be true, either.

  26. I mean…I saw a few years ago where there’s those out there (*cough* feminist ‘academics’ *cough*) trying to freakin’ rehabilitate Elisabet of Bathory by claiming the whole serial killer thing was just made up by her brothers in law who were Protestant because she was Catholic and a woman with “too much power.”

    They *always* try to rehabilitate the monsters.

    1. The only part of that which startles me is that they pointed out the Catholic part– I’ve seen the target being Catholic, even an obviously cast-out Catholic, used to justify any sort of attack someone wanted to use.

    2. YES. I saw that too.
      But I’ll admit Richard III might have been innocent, simply because I know what Henry VII was like.
      OTOH there’s some chick writing time travel romances with Richard III that completely turned me off the fandom.
      Look, I know I’ve used dead people in my books. BUT LIKE THAT? EW.

      2. Yeah…I presume said chick was, ahem, utilizing Richard III in a, shall we say, romantic light?

        I find that particular genre to be up there with “real person” fanfiction or “friend fic” (basically the same thing as real person fanfic, only even worse because you’re doing it to your *friends*) It’s creepy as hell, and very repulsive. (And the only thing that saves the dead-real-person fic for being only slightly better is that, you know, they’re dead and probably don’t know what the writer is doing with their corpse, so to speak. Still-living real person fic, on the other hand…I don’t know why that doesn’t count as stalking. Or some form of mental sexual abuse.)

        1. I do tuckerize my friends, fans, and passerbyes for minor roles, mostly because it amuses me, but not as main characters.
          And yes, I feel really guilty for writing SHakespeare and Marlowe, and I didn’t cast myself in there.

          1. Yeah, but tuckerizing is a whole other animal (and often done with permission–at least general if not specific), and it’s generally understood, as you said, that they are NOT main characters, and that while the person being tuckerized might get killed in an interestingly gruesome manner, the writer is probably NOT going to be putting them into explicit sex scenes…

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