Be Not Afraid

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Yes, things are getting scary.

You must remember we’re not Sri Lanka. We have resources they don’t have, and we’ve never gone completely crazy the way they have.

It is part of the tragedy of the world that the crazy ideas our intellectuals come up with are tried by little countries with no resources, because their bright young men attend our universities and take the craziest things seriously.

But we’re not Sri Lanka. Even California (and it’s crazy) isn’t crazy enough to mandate all organic farming. And other states are better, almost all of them.

Yes, we’re going to have a shortage of fertilizer, and the weather has been wonky (would you believe “return of ice age pattern?” Not saying it will return, by the way, because there are a lot of variables and “climate science” is a bad joke. we simply don’t know enough.) so our crops will be scant.

But we live in a country that makes each one of us the top 1% of the world. If the time comes that we’re starving, most of us, then all the rest of the world is dead.

But —

Our institutions have been corrupted by these crazy ass air dreamers. They’ve forgotten history and they’ve lost sight of reality.

They have power of a sort, but reality has more power. And most of us aren’t crazy.

So, that’s why everything is coming undone, splitting apart at the seams.

Which means …. things aren’t going to be comfortable.

And for people who aren’t resourceful, who won’t scramble, particularly if they live in the big blue cities, things are going to get down right uncomfortable and at times sportive.

And perhaps those of us who can should help our friends who have a little more trouble. Maybe. Be careful you’re not getting in trouble yourself, but lend a helping hand, if you can.

America is large enough, varied enough, strong enough we’ll be okay.

But it’s going to get bad. Really, really bad. For the rest of the world, more than for us. Shaky here.

A way of life — and the statist, centralized way of life has been prevalent for a hundred years — doesn’t pass away without pain.

Birth never occurs without pain, either.

And the ending is a beginning, too.

Let’s make it the beginning we want.

Let’s do our best. For ourselves, for the Republic. For civilization. For humanity.

215 thoughts on “Be Not Afraid”

  1. In his story “As Easy as A.B.C.,” set in 2065, Kipling has his narrator reflect that “It must be three-quarters of a generation since any house or city faced a food shortage. Yet is there house or city on the Planet today that has not half a year’s provisions laid in? We are like the shipwrecked seamen in the old books, who, having once nearly starved to death, ever afterwards hide away bits of food and biscuit. Truly we trust no Crowds, nor system based on Crowds!”

      1. Since ABC is now owned by Disney, it is to be expected. The House of Mouse are Woke tyran– Oh, wait, that’s not the ABC you’re referring to. ;-p

      3. I don’t see it that way. They went out of their way to try to avoid intervening in Chicago at all; their primary goal was to prevent loss of life, both of the Serviles and of the woman who tried to kill herself, hoping to provoke a mob to tear the Serviles limb from liimb; they didn’t do anything at all to the farm girl who ground-circuited them and tried to run a robot plow over them; and they ended up taking the Serviles off to London, where they would be seen as a curiosity rather than a threat.

        The ABC does represent Kipling’s idea of the virtues of imperial governments stepping in to prevent local violence, in a fashion parallel to the way the Roman Empire steps in in “A Church There Was at Antioch.” But that’s a comparatively libertarian argument for imperialism. Stopping mob violence doesn’t strike me as an act of oppression.

        Even the planetwide violence that did away with democratic government and left the ABC in power seems to have aimed at the rule of law, going by the last verse of McDonough’s Song:

        Whatsoever, for any cause,
        Seeketh to take and give
        Power above and beyond the Laws—
        Suffer it not to live.
        Holy State—or Holy King—
        Or Holy People’s Will—
        Have no truck with the senseless thing.
        Order the guns and kill.

        (I remember fondly the panel at an SF convention I attended, where at the end I quoted a line from that to David Friedman, who picked up the next line, and a cluster of us walked out reciting the whole thing—one of us being Poul Anderson’s wife Karen. I don’t think we had learnt it by heart because of a shared fondness for despotism!)

        1. Same here. You can read “As Easy As ABC” as supporting despotism, but McDonough’s Song pretty much refutes that. To me, and even though Kipling was definitely and Empirist, it is as close as I’ve seen to expressing the ideals of the Constitution in a story – rule by law, not by men (or mobs); the part you quoted above says that quite clearly.

  2. The logic of the Powers That Be is unmistakable:
    Phase 1 – Seize total control over every aspect of the American way of life.
    Phase 2 – ????????
    Phase 3 – We all live in peace and harmony under their benevolent guidance.

    Obviously we are being taken over by a new generation of underpants gnomes.

    1. Part of phase two appears to be, “silence any dissent,” whether it works or not.

    2. Phase Three ‘peace and harmony with them as the boss’ is what they think will happen after phase two, ‘massive depopulation.’ They leave that one blank in case the rest of us, aka the ones they want to ‘depopulate’ might get antsy.

      This is the actual platform of Extinction Rebellion, one of the nut-groups who say the quiet part out loud.

      And speaking of idiots saying the quiet part, Let’s Go Brandon gave a speech in Buffalo linking the Buffalo shooter to the November 6th Congressional Guided Tour.

      https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/05/17/jjoe-biden-connects-buffalo-mass-shooting-to-january-6/

      It’s also being noised about by DemocRat operatives that voting Republican means you are a potential mass-murderer. In Canada we may actually see the Conservative Party outlawed in the near future. That’s the direction they’re headed.

      It’s for the children, you know.

      2. I also saw (claimed on Gateway Pundit, iirc) that it got only 800-ish viewers when it was livestreamed. Took a look at the official YouTube video of it, and it had only 8000+ views as of this morning. That’s hardly more than you’d need to account for all the progtard journalists whose job it is to spread propaganda about Very Important Speeches.

        These are not popular people or popular ideas.

        1. The shooter streamed it on Twitch and released a freakin’ manifesto, that got a lot more views than Let’s Go Brandon mumbling what’s on a teleprompter. By now everybody with a clue knows the guy was a mentally ill teen with a large part of his mental illness being Leftist Kant. By now everybody with a clue knows that the January 6th Guided Tour of the Capitol was… a guided tour.

          By now everybody with a clue knows that the shooter had less than nothing to do with American Conservatism. That is the audience into which Let’s Go Brandon has farted this speech of his. 8000 views, 5000 of which were probably guys looking for meme material.

          But that’s just ‘everybody with a clue’ which is a shockingly small number of weirdos. The Inside Baseball crowd. Like us here at ATH. We’re weirdos, and proud of it. >:D

          Everybody else, the clueless Normies, did not twitch a neuron that there was a shooting in Buffalo. They not only don’t care, they didn’t -notice-. Let’s Go Brandon is fighting uphill to even get 10k views of a speech about a “national tragedy.” The Normies are oblivious.

          Tell you what though, the Normies noticed those gas prices. The house prices. The stock market crash. The pandemic lockdowns that didn’t work. The masks that didn’t work. Their kids getting shown weird sex stuff in public school. There’s no baby formula at the store. Druggies lying covered in poo on the sidewalk. They noticed that.

          I think they noticed Let’s Go Brandon playing chicken with the nuclear armed Russians too, but I’m not sure about that. Normies are thick. It takes physical pain to get their attention. Normie and Norma go to the store and there’s no baby formula, that’s the kind of pain we’re talking about.

          Let’s Go Brandon is wearing all that today.

  3. Consider the thought that however bad things get here they will be far worse in other parts of the world.
    Correlate that with the current administration’s policy of “y’all come on in and we’ll treat you just like citizens only better because you are each and every one of you more deserving of government help.”
    Immigration only works so long as the flow is less that the number that prevents assimilation into the target countrys’ existing society. We in America as well as appears much of Western Europe are well past that number.
    Current illegal immigration would appear to be unsustainable yet with current trends in the world situation it will only get much much worse.
    Any way you shake it, when any societal system is stressed to and past the breaking point things are going to get very ugly.

    2. There’s a knee-jerk response I first saw a decade ago from a volunteer, that seems to be pretty common: “We’re the richest country in the world. There no reason everyone shouldn’t have X.” In the first case, it was, “decent housing,” but it’s an all-purpose complaint. We’re the richest country in the world, so there’s no reason we can’t be all,things to all people.
      Men and women of good will are simply not thinking it through. The rest react to any effort to explain why that ot true will instantly accuse you of whatever motive they find most evil.
      But when reality bites, a lot of us are going to learn some hard lessons about what “the richest country in the world,” can actually do.

    3. That number is approximately 1 million immigrants per year for the United States. That is based on the assumption of 20 years for a brand new immigrant to effectively assimilate into American culture; without causing major disruptions to our society. (Some, like our esteemed hostess, assimilate far faster, some never do.) Current estimate of number of legal immigrants is a bit over 1 million, and over 2 million for illegals. This is NOT a sustainable, or desirable, condition.

        1. That may end up depending on the relative rates of fubarization.

          After a sufficiently large dumpster fire, home isn’t particularly home anymore.

      2. Nor do.we do what the Italians have done to.prevent the sort of.problem the Feench have with Mohammedans. First, the Italians use permessos to prevent voluntary ghettoization. you have to get permission to.luve someplace. Second, they allow mosques but insist that all services be conducted in Italian.
        slam.dunk

      1. True, but America with streets of gold and free room and board for everyone is an image that’s hard to shake. Of course the counter image is our reputation for rampant crime and violence even though critical analysis shows our violent crime rates pale in comparison to most other Western countries.
        Hard to ignore the attraction when where you’re coming from folks are starving while people in the US are whining about having to eat ground beef instead of steak and lobster.

        1. It’s starting to overpower the “streets of gold” thing. Also the “streets of gold” work against themselves, when people get here and find us in trouble.

      2. Could we at least give the illusion that the United States is in big trouble to persuade those that plan on illegally entering the country that it’s not better than where they already are?

        1. The Reader suggests we put the top men (and top 57 other genders) in the government right on it. We can call it the ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ and host it in the Department of Homeland Insecurity.

  4. Appreciate your blog. Big picture below. Find the positive way through helping other like minded folks. Love thy neighbor.

    Cabal will ship our food out of the US forcing more shortage here in the name of diversity, equity, inclusion (DIE) or whatever acronym/critically thoughtless appeal to emotion canard they choose to use to press their fight.

    CIA/DNC pantifa/communist insurrectionists insurgents will destroy (fire) moar processors/storage lots (new target – grocery stores/logistic hubs) and the FDA will find moar “bird flu” to destroy protein. (The bird flu dies when you cook the meat.) How now Mad Cow?

    And our southern border just had the largest number of border contacts at nearly 250K. Wait till the famine migration occurs. How many illegal aliens will compete with US citizens for basic necessities. Cabal wants this. Its the (in)grate-replacement. I wonder how violent cabal can make these people towards TradAm’s?

    No vax passport! Now it’s a social credit food passport.

    And the pandemic. Antibody Dependent Enhancement always has been a thing and its going to kill a lot of people who’ve been jabbed multiple times unless they embrace treatment truth. Moar here from Geert – top, world class immunologist/vaccinologist/virolgist – all three disciples are key to understand what’s happening with the stroke poke causing intense mutating immune pressure on the spike protein in the wild. First comes hyper transmissibility, next comes hyper virulence. It achieved the first. Geert discusses it all. https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/videos-and-interviews/predictions-on-the-evolution-of-covid-19-omicron-and-vaccines
    Antiviral Treatments here: https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/

    Pandemic/Famine/War The Three (human generated) Whoresmen. WEF/totalitarian/communist generated pandemic/famine/war to destroy. Done administratively thru Ahrimanic evil Burn it down in order to build back better (*TM).

    They are sorathic evil.

    So know the enemy. Pick your side – freewill and all. Find Jesus. Yes. Jesus. For truth. Love thy neighbor. Prepare – including wrapping your head around Scaling Force to defend life or be a logistics/intelligence asset to neighbors that will. Find your place. Find the positive way through helping other like minded folks.

    1. Okay, no. You’re seeing the worst possible scenario and for some reason assuming the gang that can’t shoot straight is suddenly going to do everything perfectly.
      Be real.
      The border, sure, but do you know that people are starting to leave in numbers? And more will as our economy worsens. Obama couldn’t keep them here, and neither can these bozos, not when they kill the economy.
      Yeah, we’ll get a bunch of criminals and traffickers. Work to do.
      As for shipping the food abroad, they’ll try. But do you think states will allow it?
      And social credit? DUDE. We’re NOT China. They’ve been trying to do that for years, and it doesn’t stick, just like the vaccine passport only took in the most government controlled areas and places.
      PFUI.
      As for finding Jesus, about a third of my blog readers are the old dispensation. They seem to do okay. In fact every country that tosses them out suffers.
      Let’s keep religion out of this, shall we? I’m a believer, but not everyone is.
      And we need every man and woman of good will who believes in the republic.
      Spit out the black pill. If these idiots plans all go the way they want it will be the first time in…. Oh, yeah, ever.
      It’s funny, you know, for someone who professes to have faith, the only faith you seem to have is that the enemy will win.

    2. “Solidarity”, eh? Definitely not sus at all.

      Points for getting 3/4ths of the way through before descending into buzzwords.

    3. While there has been an odd up-tick in fires and the like at food processing facilities, the number of sites affected is a drop in the bucket when compared to the total number of such facilities in the US. It’s worth checking into due to the odd coincidence, but you would need to take the total number of facilities affected so far, and damage that many facilities each day to have any real affect on the US food logistical system. And even then, the effect would likely be minor. There are tens of thousands of processing facilities in the US.

  5. I never wanted to live in interesting times, but apparently they are coming. Trying to prepare as best I can.

  7. Chicagoboyz had a post on famine, Instalinked today by Our Gracious Hostess. As per the comments, one of the takes is “The first rule of preppers is you don’t talk about being a prepper.” Prepper ==> Hoarder sounds too plausible from TPTB.

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/67663.html

    I was bemused by the comment, quoting John C Dvorak, where Dvorak advocated robbing the stash of other members of a prepper organization. I don’t think it’d turn out the way he said. Decisions, decisions. SSS or #teamheadsonpikes?

    1. First step is knowing how much you need for you and your group. That includes a Murphy factor for when stuff even worse than bad happens. You can share in excess of that, but you should shoot to kill any attempts to drag you below that.

      Second thing is as Pete says, don’t let anyone know what you have. Never show ’em your cards.

    3. I once heard a friend of a friend recounting a conversation at the bangstore, to the effect of “I practice my marksmanship so that when SHTF, I can just take OTHER people’s stash.” “…you realize you’ve just advertised that, in the event of zombies, you should be shot on sight?”

      1. My church group had a new member move from Montana (but he’s originally from Oregon which explains how left he is) during the pandemic. He made the claim that he would just use his weapons to take other peoples food during the pandemic. To which I replied that he hadn’t moved to a blue state, and did he want a fire fight in the streets of Alabama.

        Also, sweet potatoes 🍠 seem an easier crop than potatoes 🥔 to me as a gardener. Please correct me if there is a flaw in this advice?

        1. “You might get away with that once. Maybe. The second time you tried it, you’d be gunned down like a mad dog. There would be no law to stop us, remember?”

        2. Depends on your climate. Potatoes are more disposed towards cool / dry weather. I don’t know about sweet potatoes / yams. I would reclon they are a more warm climate crop. However, I’m going to bang my drum of “The Intelligent Gardener” and soil test! Soil test! Soil test and amend!

          1. I’ve had some luck with potatoes, but not so much of late. I just might try sweet potatoes, to see if they work any better. Texas is hot …
            As William T. Sherman noted – if I owned Hell and Texas, I’d rent out Texas and live in Hell…
            How living here was endurable before air conditioning, I will never know…

  8. The weird thing about the Sri Lanka situation is it sounds like they may have tried “all organic” because the gov’t was afraid too many dollars were leaving the country to buy fertilizer. The gov’t figured if they banned fertilizer imports that would stop people spending dollar buying it and their economy would start pulling dollars in.

    1. I believe it’s Greg Gutfeld who regularly points out that the liberal progressive left appear incapable of wrapping their minds around second order effects of the grand and glorious policies they try to ram down peoples throats.
      Just as you state, Sri Lanka’s PTB were subsidizing farmers purchase of foreign fertilizer and pesticides so figured banning those imports and going organic would be a massive savings. So in point of fact they really did do it to themselves and are now in horror that they are being held accountable.
      On our own home front it’s starting to make sense why so many of our public buildings are being hardened against attacks by mobs of very unhappy people.

      1. It is Sri Lanka after all, so the notion of a “Principled Stand on Organic Agriculture” doesn’t pass the giggle test. Clearly the High and the Mighty passed a sweeping Five Year Plan that would Solve Everything purely for the purpose of lining their own pockets… and it came unglued before they had time to book their flights to Paris.

        I’m starting to view these insurrections and debacles in brown countries no one cares about as practice runs for the SHTF events that I assume are coming to Canada and the USA.

        Rule One appears to be “don’t be in a city.”
        Rule Two is clearly “don’t be poor.” That one really sucks, but it seems to really be a rule.

        1. They’re Platonists. Things are what they conceive them to be. If the real world conflicts with their conception — well, too bad for the real world.

          I’m not being snarky for the sake of snark. I think this is the ultimate reason.

          2. That’s not Platonism. It’s multipersonal solipsism – the “real world” is what we as a society believe it to be, so if we just lie to ourselves and each other firmly enough, what we say will become true, and we will have paradise at last. Plato thought the Forms are more real than material things, but he’d have scorned anyone who thought we had the power to change the Forms.

            1. I think it’s platonism, the platonic ideal of platonism. Add a neo or neo neo if you want. Platonism and Rationalism opposed to Aristotelianism and empiricism. Plato believed the forms were eternal, but he made the whole thing up and the forms, quite conveniently, insulated his failures from reality.

              I had a thesis at one point that only the west had aristotelianism, later empiricism, as the dominant philosophical outlook. China, India, never really did and the Muslims turned against it fairly early on. I never worked out the details.

              1. People on the spectrum know they’re missing things and try to compensate. They also are usually not overly social.
                The left IS social and gives itself autism by believing they can change reality with their beliefs, and that nothing will happen they don’t want, and no one will disagree with them.

          4. I’m not sure it’s that they are Platoists, exactly, but rather that the systems they operate in have such long and circuitous true feedback loops that it’s easier to advance by hacking the feedback cycle than actually producing.

            I keep seeing this play out where the impacts of decisions seen inevitability borne well after the people who made them have moved on. The patch to promotion became about controlling perceptions instead of true results.

        3. Sweetie, in the fictional bubble world they all reside there are no unintended consequences.
          Speaking of Unintended Consequences there happens to be a most excellent book of that name by John Ross. May be a bit hard to find, but a well researched examination of an alternate history involving our government’s attack on private ownership of firearms.

          1. Agreed. I found electronic copies in 2 different formats from different places (both paperback and hardcover are available [used] on Amazon, but $145 – $175 is a bit pricey for me) and kept the one that had been”cleaned up” the best, even though the OCR used left quite a few common repeated errors (7 for “apostrophe ll”, for instance, and “/” for “I” when the “I” was at the beginning of a sentence). Definitely worth reading.

            So, where’s Henry Bowman when we really need him? 🙂

      1. And at the same time they want to get rid of fertilizer producers (cows, sheep, pigs) to stop overgrazing and stop greenhouse gasses. (Do NOT get me started on “cows and sheep kill sage grouse.” No, actually it is the huge number of ravens eating sage grouse eggs, and the lack of grazing to maintain species richness in the environment.)

          1. Ah, but they were natural, doncha know. They belonged here, and had treaties with the sage grouse.

        2. “Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.”

          Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.

          “But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut.”

          Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down.
          “So in order to obviate this problem,” he continued, “and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests. I think you’ll all agree that’s a sensible move under the circumstances.”

          The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a profitable autumn aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd.”

          1. “…adopt the leaf as legal tender…”

            Why am I getting mental images of B.C., and their ubiquitous “clams”? 🙂

      2. All-Organic does work.

        For the Amish.

        Of course, they’ve been growing food that way for centuries, it’s literally their religion, and still they get about a quarter as much food per acre as the ‘Eeevul Industrial Farm’ next door, but it works.

        For certain values of ‘works’.

        If the U.S. tried to go ‘all-organic’ we’d have to plow up every square inch of forest and wetland to grow crops, and then decide which 20% of Americans don’t get to eat this year.
        ———————————
        People can make stupid mistakes, but only the government can force everybody to make the SAME stupid mistakes.

        1. The Amish depend on the rest of us for the many things they can’t make/grow. Like diesel. Diesel powered things are fine because they don’t use spark plugs. Can the Amish extract oil? No. They buy seeds from seed supply companies (through intermediaries who may use the computer). Do they have sufficient seeds saved if those companies can’t fill orders? I don’t know. They’d do better in the short term because they are closer to their farms and they grow more things on their farms and still use horses in varying measure. But they need us. I’m not sure we need them. (Although I certainly don’t mind them).

          2. I think we do need the Amish, in the same way the Christian Church needs the monasteries and the consecrated religious. They remind us that there’s another way to live that doesn’t revolve the stuff and technology of modern. That stuff and technology has admittedly raised our material standard of living, and helped more people live longer and more healthy lives, so I won’t knock it. On the other hand, if we’re not careful, our stuff will own us. The Amish way of life certainly isn’t a perfect defense against that. Even the poorest person can make an idol of money and possessions. But, such deliberate simplicity does give us something to think about.

      3. That makes sense. They’re not acting on the green ideology, but they are extrapolating by assuming the lies they’ve been taught by the green ideologs are true, and acting accordingly.

        In a way, that more worrying. Worse than finding out a single engineer is corrupt, but instead finding out that the texts all the honest engineers learned from was full of falsified functions.

        1. Some years ago, when computers and programming became powerful and sophisticated enough to do the job, they ground through all the Standard Integrals that have been printed and re-printed in generations of calculus textbooks.

          Several of the Standard Integrals were found to be wrong. 😮

          1. Wasn’t it Babbage that wanted to create a mechanical computation device so that he could, hopefully, get results better than the error-ridden text he was frustrated by? (And also bewildered by a political type who asked if such a device could give correct results even if given incorrect input…)

            1. That’s him; his “Analytical Engine” was pretty clever. I hadn’t heard the one about the idiot pol (yeah, I know; redundant…), but color me unsurprised. You might be interested in this, which I first saw in the mid-70s:

              https://brianjriddle.github.io/whbw/

              There’s a fairly good Wiki article on him, and Ada Lovelace, credited as the first computer programmer, is mentioned; I believe the language “Ada” was a tribute to her.

              BTW, no, I can’t pass the test… 🙂

      4. John Ringo’s The Last Centurion goes into some detail about what is involved in a successful farming operation including what happens when you try to go organic.

      5. Just so, Sri Lanka’s government bought in to the Organic is as (or More!) efficient than modern Green Revolution farming. This is of course utter bunkum and even honest organic farmers would note there would be considerably lower (50%, 35%?) yields and greatly reduced quality. As noted elsewhere it sounds like they bought this and were trying to use organic to avoid spending hard currency on things like seed, fertilizer, pesticides etc. Now we have starving Sri Lankans, and the Sri Lankan elite seemed to be scheduled for 9mm hemorrhages and stylish Sisal/Hemp/Jute/Nylon neck decorations as well as possible large diameter piercings in various body parts including the nether regions. Sad for the Sri Lankan Hoi Polloi I hope they come out of this with the ability to choose better leadership, but a strong part of me says they’re going to play the part of the proverbial bird that built its nest in a downspout.

    2. Yeah, that happens on a regular basis. My understanding (don’t quote me on this) is that his subscriber/view count is high enough that a particularly popular post can overwhelm the host servers through sheer number of views. I believe Jack Wylder (his tech guy) has made comments about trying to move the blog to another host or a dedicated server that can handle the increasing number of visitors.

  12. I see the scripted narrative for this week is “Great Replacement Theory”. Before the bodies in Buffalo were cold, the media was blood-libelling Tucker Carlson for allegedly pushing it. Now, the Buffalo shooter hates Fox, so it’s somewhat unlikely that he’d be inspired by anything a host on that network said. And furthermore, Carlson never pushed this idea. Hell, whenever I’ve watched a segment of his show where race comes up, Carlson clearly and unambiguously condemns racism in all its forms. Just check out his YouTube channel (while you can) and see for yourself.

    But the other side doesn’t hear us when we say we oppose racism and cite individualism or religious reasons why it’s wrong. Instead when we speak like that, they hear Hitler speeches. Because a certain portion of the population has, for lack of a better term, been brainwashed. They are no longer capable of independent and rational thought. If CNN told them one day to obey brown-eyed people, they’d become slaves. If the next day CNN said that brown-eyed people were all white supremacists who need to die, they’d kill them, no questions asked. And if the day after CNN told them it was Fox New’s fault that all noble, peaceful brown-eyed people were dead, they’d believe that too and they’d call you a genocidal racist for thinking otherwise.

    1. But… The ‘Great Replacement Theory’ is based on what the Democrats themselves have been saying for years. Their traditional underclasses are wising up and getting uppity, so they’re importing new underclasses. They’re just being more blatant about it these days.

      And, of course, their new underclasses all need ‘help’ which will be taken from the old underclasses now turned traitor to the Democrat Cause. See: Baby formula stripped from our store shelves and shipped to the border.

      Mostly, Tucker Carlson asks Questions Which Must Not Be Asked. He plays their own words back at them, and is condemned for ‘Hate Speech’ and ‘spreading Conspiracy Theories’. Why wasn’t it Hate Speech and Conspiracy when the Democrats said it? Oops, there’s another one of those questions…
      ———————————
      Elections are far too important to be left up to a bunch of uncontrolled voters. The Party MUST exercise oversight and management to prevent mere voters from electing the wrong candidates!

    2. This twist in the Approved Narrative is particularly stupid, because the real source for it is the 2004 book “The Emerging Democratic Majority” by John Judis and Ruy Texiera … who were and are Democrats.

      What’s more, what Judis and Texiera actually said was that the immigrants from Latin America would be a natural constituency for a social democratic platform, like FDR’s New Deal or Johnson’s Great Society. It’s the activist core of the Democrats who took their demographic study as a coming opportunity for a socialist revolution in America, after racial war clears out those inconvenient liberty-minded people who were born here. All the conservatives have done is note what the Democrats have been saying to each other for eighteen years.

      Honestly. Do they think we’re blind and deaf?

      1. No, they believe their followers are blind and deaf to everything except the Official Party Line. They’re not trying to convince us, they’re trying to prevent us from getting the truth to their followers. If they just make enough noise, they can drown us out.
        ———————————
        ‘Progressives’ suppress free speech because they don’t have the means to suppress free thought.

        Yet.

        1. They just suffered a massive blow: the much-mocked “Disinformation Governance Board” headed by J. Edgar Jazzhands is being shelved. Oh, I have no doubt they’ll try to smuggle this Orwellian nonsense in some other way, but they’ve been defeated and every defeat is a delay. Every delay buys time for more things to go wrong for our would-be rulers.

          We do not struggle in vain.

          1. Damn. I was hoping they’d actually get the Ministry Of Truth set up and rip the masks all the way off. Now they’ll just do something sneakier in the shadows.
            ———————————
            The ‘dog whistles’ they hear is just the ringing in their own ears.

            1. Same…kind of. Not that I wanted them to go full totalitarian, because that would suck. But the death of (LOL!) J. Edgar Jazzhands’ dream job isn’t the end of their dezinformazia plan.

              It’ll keep right on going in secret, probably with help from people who are ostensibly on our side and opposed to it, but can safely stab us all in the back now that the glare of the public spotlight is gone.

          2. I see Sundance at Conservative Treehouse has a post about the WaPo article about Jankowitz getting turfed out and Minitrue put on hold. It included a picture of her typing away in Zelensky’s campaign headquarters in Kyiv in 2019 working on “disinformation”.

            So they have putting her in place for at least that long. She lasted, what, 2 weeks?

            Bwahawahaha!!!!

          3. They just decided to keep spying on what people are saying and getting their tech oligarch friends to censor speech they don’t like under the radar. Their efforts to silence dissent will only increase. Remember the DOJ is still spying on parents objecting to leftist school boards using the claim that such parents are “domestic terrorists” even after telling Congress they were not going to do so.

      3. Ah, but what makes it a conspiracy theory is invoking the Jews as orchestrating it.

        Naturally, about the only people doing that, are the ones condemning the discussion as “encouraging” conspiracy theorists.

    3. I don’t actually think that’s illogical. Turn it around the other way: I consider the people who call themselves “anti-racist” to be among the worst racists in American society (and perhaps a majority of them), and the fact that they proclaim their opposition to racism doesn’t change my opinion. I think that their definition of racism is unsound and actively harmful. So it makes perfect sense that they would think my definition of racism is unsound and actively harmful.

      1. Of course they are. Kendri and his cadre of “anti-racists” are simply spewing Farrakhan’s racist diatribes dressed up in the language of academia. It is fundamentally the same racist hatred and call for revenge.

    5. The commentary on the Buffalo shooters manifesto is very weird. (take a look in Mr. Grants blog here:
      https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/05/a-totalitarian-onslaught-against.html ). There’s stuff that just doesn’t make sense and seems to scream Glowie but yet no obvious connection. I mean maybe a seriously deranged individual would create something like that, but parts of it (like the firearms stuff) feel like they were manufactured to use to attack various gun and weapon sites. And the money he used for all the stuff he purchased, where’d it come from? Not clear if the family is well off. I HATE HATE HATE things that start to set off the conspiracy theory side of my brain, and parts of this make absolutely no fricking sense and send the alarm bells screaming. Who is plotting this crap, it makes a third rate Gor knock off novel look like A Tale of Two Cities…

      1. Given his age and the stuff he apparently believes in, I’d like to know how many of his near relatives spout the same things.

      2. It’s the rest of the post that’s really interesting reading….. particularly in light of the “black-pilled” “discussion”.

        “I could go on, and on, and on, picking on events and trends and incidents and using them to support my case: but what’s the point? If I haven’t given enough evidence already to convince you, you won’t change your mind if I provide more. To my mind, the accumulation of evidence in all these separate areas is utterly convincing when you put them all together. We are not facing a series of accidents, or coincidences, or unrelated trends. We’re seeing multiple facets of the same threat to our independence, our constitution, our human rights. We’re seeing a totalitarian onslaught against freedom on a worldwide scale.”

        Is Peter Grant “enemy action”?

        1. Peter Grant is one of the good guys.

          It took awhile for him to be fully “red-pilled” and he used to see some of the more enlighten as conspiracy theorists but he has finally recognized the evidence in front of us all.

          I’ve been sifting clues and researching various money and power trails since the early ’90s. The power of the internet and the increasing number of analytical minds make connections is allowing a large magnitude to escape the cage the establishment was weaving with the MSM.

          All hail the paranoid autists!

          1. Peter went through one model of come apart, and never realizes it doesn’t apply here.
            Yes, he is one of the good guys, but he doesn’t FULLY get the difference between SA and USA.

            1. Just as a matter of idle curiosity, we now have two prominent (though not to the same degree) South Africans who have been red-pilled to different levels.
              How much alike are Peter Grant and Elon Musk in their POV and thought processes?
              Can the comparison even be attempted?

              1. Not even close. Let’s say Musk announced solemnly he’ll be voting Republican for the first time in November.
                He’s been SLOW to realize the danger at all.

                1. Sarah, most techies of my experience, especially Musk’s age and mine, would love nothing better than to be left alone to tech. Not all of us grew up on a farm where putting off unpleasant necessity just makes it worse.

            2. The motives and specific precedures, as he interprets them, don’t (fully) apply here, but we’re still dealing with humans (after a fashion), and humans, especially those who either hold or want to hold political power, tend to operate in similar ways in all cultures, and the “tells” seem to be quite similar. Just my 20 mills…

              2. SA was wildly different.

                The Boers had been pissed off at their treatment at British hands.

                During WWII, a Boer faction got into power, with the intent of a) white only government b) screwing the British out of political power. After WWII, the British put a lot of permanent colonists into SA.

                Around 1980, the wheels were already starting to come off, because the Boers needed the other whites to support apartheid, to continue keeping it in force. Which was doomed anyway, because whites were 5% of population.

                It wound up sucking, but partly there was never any reason to think that SA was set up to sustain not sucking. Possibly, if Apartheid hadn’t been attempted for 40-50 years, it might have been possible to grow customs in the black population that would have made stable politics more practical. But, the behavior forced by apartheid pushed out the possibility of much functional collaborative behavior.

                The United States is completely different. We have functional behavior, in every demographic, and have had functional for generations, longer than we have had a country. There are transplants that don’t have the behavior yet, but they also don’t have the fighting power to tip everything over. Most of the opposition fighting power seems to be tied up in habitual criminals, and we never had enough habitual criminals for them to win a fight to control the country.

    6. The pro-abortion protester who was interviewed and linked on (IIRC) Gateway Pundit, and kept saying robotically that it was a woman’s choice, when the interviewer kept pressing her – abort at nine months? After birth? At two years? – it was like she couldn’t say anything else, other than “pull the ring on her back, answer with the pre-recorded message” It was horrible and baffling to listen to, a woman who couldn’t actually THINK and answer the question put to her, just answer like a Chatty Cathy Abortion Doll…
      Brainwashing, indeed.

      On the matter of coming shortages, my daughter had reason to hit the grocery store today, and was genuinely unsettled at the empty shelves – the worst that she had seen since the first couple of weeks of the covid lockdowns, when the store staff had personnel at either end of the canned food aisle, to enforce a limit on purchases of canned goods.

      I didn’t think that we could get quite to the point of famine at the grocery store quite this rapidly, but I may be wrong on that.

      1. Your daughter’s report is troubling.

        I was at my usual supermarket a couple of days ago, and things looked about the same as always. I’m hoping it stays like that (or improves back to pre-lockdown normal, of course), but I’m not getting my hopes up.

        1. Part of it is stocking.

          Local grocery store had to limit their pick-up times for groceries, so that they could get the shelves stocked.

      3. The pro-abortion protester who was interviewed and linked on (IIRC) Gateway Pundit, and kept saying robotically that it was a woman’s choice, when the interviewer kept pressing her – abort at nine months? After birth? At two years? – it was like she couldn’t say anything else, other than “pull the ring on her back, answer with the pre-recorded message” It was horrible and baffling to listen to, a woman who couldn’t actually THINK and answer the question put to her, just answer like a Chatty Cathy Abortion Doll…
        Brainwashing, indeed.

        Father Mitch had a similar call– though his was an organ donation doctor.
        Who called in to challenge him, because two weeks prior he’d gone into the morality of killing someone to harvest their organs, even if you were ‘sure’ they would die.
        And even when she chose the battle field, and this guy isn’t exactly an unknown, she didn’t HAVE anything but the profession of conclusion and attack the enemy.

        All I can figure is some kind of self defense– ‘if this is not so, then I did something unspeakable’.

        1. I listened to that episode after you referenced it. He just gets her talking. He’s not confrontational. But the moment where she says the medical team always has a moment of silence as they begin operation? She sees it, but doesn’t want to. She wants to save lives, not admit she’s taking them too.

          1. I hope you’re right, that she sees it…and I hope that his just get her talking thing worked, so she doesn’t feel like she’s in a corner.

        2. I think you are right. It is an ego defense, as if they feel the need to feel good about themselves, and refuse to see the horror of what they have done, because if they do, they’d have to face the fact that they’re not as good as they would like to think they are.
          I think we all do this, in our own way, for own pet sins. We often care much more about feeling good than about being good.

          1. There’s a big difference between “I have a nasty temper that I need to guard so I don’t get all stabby without just cause and for the right reason” and child-killing.

            Part of the genius of the Catholic confessional is that you can short-circuit even the most horrible of wrongs you’ve done, because each sin is an offense to God. (by definition) Since it’s not in public, you only have to face down yourself to get there.

            (Note: the sacrament of confession is limited, but most priests are willing to do a non-sacramental version, as a sort of out-reach. Check your local parish listings to make an appointment.)

            1. Yes, there is a difference, I admit. I’m not saying all sins are similarly heinous. (On the other hand, as a Protestant, mortal versus venial sin isn’t something I think about.) What I mean is that, as long as we can more about feeling good ourselves than actually being good, we have a lot of incentive to hide our sins from ourselves. Doing that, of course, seems like a very effective way to turn oneself into a Pharisee or a hypocrite. The Good News is God goes to great lengths to reclaim us – even us Methodists!

                1. “G-d reclaiming Methodists????? Highly unlikely. ”

                  Officially, He’d have to reclaim ME, after all.

                2. Of course! I would be a pretty lousy Methodist if I thought that the grace of the Holy One wasn’t freely available to all, wouldn’t I?.
                  Fun fact: I was raised Baptist. I became Methodist because I started really listening to Catholics.

                3. Hey, now. We know His capacity for mercy is infinite; he hasn’t smote ME yet. 😛

            1. I’m joking, but they are not. Shopping in a store with full shelves is a ‘privilegs’ don’t’cha know, one us Kulaks don’t deserve.

              Bought 3 big bags of cat chow today, because the shelves weren’t empty for once. I used to make purchases based on what was on sale. Now it’s all about what’s on the shelves today (and might not be tomorrow).
              ———————————
              Harris-und-Biden were never elected — they were installed, like a toilet and a bidet. Unlike them, a couple of plumbing fixtures would actually be useful.

  13. “…our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
    Well then.
    I can’t let my forbears make a better show of liberty than I do.
    Let’s Roll.

  14. It would be easy to be scared of food shortages, knowing that the United States is the number one importer of food in the world.

    The important thing to remember is that we’re also the number one food exporter. We export staples and import luxuries like December strawberries. Prices will continue to rise, but aside from specialty foods with fusterclucked supply chains like baby formula, there will be enough food to buy if you can afford it.

    Unlike, say, the Arab world, which is dependent on Russian and Ukrainian wheat. The last time that food supply got tight when Russia banned exports, we called it the Arab Spring.

      1. I think it likely.

        In the end, the US will be fine. We’ve got the food, the energy (if our “betters” would let us use it), the raw materials, and the people. And that’s before you get into soft factors like culture, preppers, home manufacturing hobbiests, and our “little platoons.”

        It’s the rest of the world I worry about. One destroyer sinking oil tankers in the straits of Mallaca could bring China to starvation in six months. Mr. Putin’s War has pretty much guaranteed another round of riots with a side offer of regime change in the Middle East. The world is going to get really ugly, really soon, and that will cause problems here.

  15. My tribe gets my support. Not the communists. I would have said even five years ago that my tribe was all Americans, despite our political differences, but no more. The communists are not American even if they were born here.

    1. Given that Idaho just nominated a POS I wouldn’t vote for in a thousand years for governor, I’m with you.
      I know a bunch of fellow believers who have jumped on the big government solves everything train. Sigh.
      No more. No quarter.

      1. Huh. I’m surprised that Little came out on top in the primaries again.

        Of course, the Republicans did have a pretty crowded field to choose from.

        1. The enemies of liberty have destroyed Boise and Moscow, and they are trying to spread the cancer throughout the state.
          However, they are using the foolish top-down-tyranny theory of authoritarianism: They won Governor, LT Governor, and Sec’y of State, all garbage POS medical-overlord types.
          However, local races appear to have gone for MAGA candidates. AND we have Raul Labrador in as our hope for Attorney General.

          We will destroy them from the bottom up.

          1. I was absolutely horrified to see Little not only won, but won with 53% of the vote.

            The Idaho of my childhood no longer exists.
            I already knew it, but it’s always an unwelcome surprise.

            1. I am so angry and sorry. We will not let this stand. We will NOT. The enemy will not destroy another state out from under me.

        2. Yeah, Idaho is dead may be premature.

          I would only believe it after all probabilities of cheating have been excluded from actual possibility.

          Until then, electoral results are at most a temporary victory.

        3. At this stage, and after yesterday, fraud is on the table in all 50 states. There are a lot of angry Famous Potatoes today.

    3. In some states, (like Texas), you can get lists of voters that are registered and what primary they voted in.

      “Under 18.005 of the Texas Election Code, a person’s name, Date of Birth, and Voter Identification number are public information. Additionally, what elections you voted in (but not how you voted) is also public information.”

      I have a copy of this list for the 2022 Primaries, which is freely available for download on a Texas .gov website.

      https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/historical/index.shtml

      Guess who gets zero support?

  16. I’m doing what I can. The garden is planted, the tomato and pepper plants that I started indoors are transplanted (just finished giving them their morning watering), and I’m hoping to get a decent crop out of them. I still have last year’s unused seeds and will keep what’s left of this year’s, so if seeds are impossible to get next year, I’ll still be able to put in a garden. I’ll just need to use more seed for a given area.

    1. Have you gardened (??) before? As long as your using good seeds, you can grow on by saving this years seeds too. An old WV hillbilly, who worked down in the swamp, but lived in take-me-home taught me to pick a good, well grown mater & mash it on a paper playe or paper towel. Let it dry, then pick the seeds off for next year. Beans are easy too, i choose a dozen or so that have grown well, string them until they’re dry, shell them & then store in a glass jar. Working off the produce of a “speciality” pak of beans i bought 5 years ago! Also bulk seeds from Southern States.

  17. I atttempted to post this comment in response to wolfwalker’s comment at https://accordingtohoyt.com/2022/05/16/it-has-to-die-here/#comment-846594 in which he talked about Richard Dawkins’ original definition of the word “meme” and how the Internet turned it into simply “picture with humorous caption(s)” instead, but WP gave me an error message when I tried. So I’m posting it here, where it’s slightly off-topic but at least people will see it and be able to discuss the idea. Below is the original comment I tried to post:

    Dawkins, IMNSHO, meant the “meme” concept as an attack on religion, and specifically on Christianity, with its truth claims. E.g., Christianity claims that some two thousand years ago, Jesus rose from the dead. The claim is that this is not a mere story, but actual, historical fact, which could (in theory) be disproved by new historical evidence turning up. (Of course, there are two reasons why it couldn’t be disproved; the first would be the enormous, though not insurmountable, difficulty of turning up solid historical evidence from two thousand years ago that hasn’t been found already. The second reason would be if it just so happened that it’s true, and that event really did happen, in which case it would be impossible to disprove it for the very simple and obvious reason that it’s the truth and therefore no evidence disproving it can possibly exist.)

    Digression aside, the reason I say that Dawkins meant the “meme” concept as an attack on Christianity’s truth claims is that it works very nicely as a way to discredit religion. You can neatly sidestep the question of whether it’s true by focusing your audience’s attention on the fact that it’s a concept that wants to spread. (And it does: those who believe Christianity is true generally want to share the good news with other people). Dawkins, like the magician who has everyone watching his right hand while his left hand slips under the table to retrieve a hidden item, found a really clever way to get people to focus on the wrong thing. By focusing only on something trivial, the “people want to spread this idea” part, and comparing it to a virus, he was trying (again, IMNSHO) to get people to look only at that instead of the fundamental question of whether or not the idea is true. Because if it’s true, it should be spread, and if it’s false, it should be mocked and ignored.

    So I’m tickled beyond reason to see Dawkins’ attempted attack go completely off-course, as the Internet turned the word “meme” into something totally different from what Dawkins intended it to be.

    1. I remember thinking that Dawkins would have made a very good puritan divine thundering against the whore of Babylon. I thought it telling that he, and his ilk, only dealt with Victorian divines like Whewell and the watchmaker and never actually confronted someone like Aquinas who had already raised all the objections and met them.

      Fish don’t see the water in which they swim and Dawkins was blinder than most.

    2. And yet the concept of a meme or memeplex is ridiculously useful for clarifying thinking. Especially since it aids in noticing religion-like entities which do not think of themselves as religions. Or watching the evolution of ideologies and cultures. Or the evolution of sub-ideological thought constructs, particularly when they carry direct survival benefits for the users.

      Just because you don’t like why something was created doesn’t make it wrong.

      2. I’ll point out that I have, for a long time thought that cultures themselves are alive, and kind of memetic entities that infect those born in them.
        It’s not true, but it’s a way of understanding human societies.

        1. Cultures evolve, but their evolution is Lamarckian rather than Darwinian.

          1. This I suspect: Cultures reproduce by training new members in them. Cultures that cost their member to much for to little return die out as their members either fail or turn to other cultures. Cultures that simply fail to train new members also die out, regardless of the benefits they provide to their members.

            Though sufficiently beneficial cultures with poor recruitment methods likely find their core elements absorbed by other more vital cultures to form new child cultures, if they do not simply die out.

              1. Yuuup.

                Lunatic Hobbes inspired extremist views of inter cultural conflict are not entirely lunatic.

                Can they win enough of the time, that the territory they hold onto, however briefly, can supply enough food resources not to immediately starve?

                Admits a wide range in levels of dysfunction.

              2. I mean, as long at it can generate more members than it loses, is it evolutionarily dysfunctional? The Shakers certainly could not and seem to have largely vanished, and the Quakers don’t appear to be thriving.

                The complicated bit seems to be cultures depend on mindspread so can sweep through populations before their costs catch up with them.

                And things that are stupidly expensive can persist in a population for a long time while times are good. I recall the Nautilus and squid families had some pretty extreme reproductive fitness displays that persisted well into at least one big die-off. It does look like the display heavy versions all died out, but it really only hit during an extinction event, not normal day-to-day evolution.

                1. You’re thinking of this the wrong way. I don’t mean cults, etc. Those have their own culture, too, sure, but competition there is more complex.
                  I mean national cultures. They can be horrible for the individual, reduce everyone to extreme misery, yet surve and technically “thrive.”
                  Reading the biography of an Islamic woman who immigrated it occurred to “Not even the very wealthy really enjoy life, let alone create or thrive.” And yet.

                  1. I’d argue the same mechanic exists at the national level as well. It doesn’t have to be the optimal culture, just good enough to keep above replacement level and not have any major hard competitors for it to persist.

                    Globally, we’ve been in a era of unprecedented prosperity and growth since the end of WWII. Even with the turmoil in the Middle East, have they really gone through any extinction level events in the last 50-70+ years?

                    Now, are we heading in that direction? Quite possibly. But they’ve been able to rely on the west to keep them alive, even if they are miserable.

                    And they’re still losing people to the Western cultures. And even where people aren’t leaving for less grim pastures, their birth rates aren’t especially keeping up either.

                  2. As we have seen in past few years, there is a portion of population that does act as if it is born saddled and bridled, needing the enlightened to guide them. These types allow these cultures to survive. Now the question is whether the majority of them with the rights of citizenship here are sufficient to overpower the minority that disagrees.

                  3. Honestly, this reminds me of reading about how habits that allow you to survive abusive situations can cripple you once you are out of that abusive situation.

                    1. That’s the classic truism, that the skills which keep you alive in poverty aren’t the same as the skills you need to get you out of that poverty. I believe that point was made by someone, possibly here, recently.

              3. Sometimes, just sometimes, reality does triumph because reality takes away that culture’s ability to win in battle. To that end, word has come down that the river crossing that saw at least one, possibly two, Russian battalions destroyed was ordered by Putin, who fancies himself a modern Robert S McNamara. They’re saying Putin has taken total control over tactical decisions and is acting like a Lt. Colonel. China’s government. is even more centralized than Russia’s and Xi, channeling Mao as he so often does, will not allow bad news, Hence, rather than report the massive foreign capital outflow, they shut down all reporting of foreign bond transactions in China and haven’t reported anything since 11 May. Domestic Chinese bond transactions are still reported and you can get prices, sort of, but China is shutting down. OH, did I mention that the floods are back? No, OK, the floods are back. You won’t see that in the American press.

                Who knows how it will end, but maybe, just maybe, some good will come from the wreck,

                In other news, today was the most orderly 4% down day on the US markets I’ve ever seen. No fuss, no panic just a straight line down from the open ending off more than 150 pts on the S&P and 1000 points on the Dow. It broke below 4000, which is a big technical level. There’ll be some pullbacks I’m sure, but …. Buckle up buttercup. The best way to combat fear is to prepare.

                1. “…Putin has taken total control over tactical decisions…”

                  I guess he never heard of LBJ or Robert the McMoron, and the (in)famous breakfast tactical meetings…

                    1. As I understand it he didn’t (usually) try to exercise the sort of direct daily tactical control at the company level that was done at those “breakfast meetings” by LBJ and crew. More in the nature of “Wait 6 weeks, until fall, to attack Russia to get revenge on [X] (Yugoslavia?), I don’t care what good strategy says!”.

            2. Hence the reason American culture has been so successful, it’s adopted and incorporated the best bits from every culture it’s come across. I’m not really joking when I say that cultural appropriation is American culture.

              Unfortunately that’s been perverted and now some parts are trying to incorporate the worst cultural traits from other cultures. Clearing those out is going to be…annoying.

        2. The truth is that individuals exist.

          There is a purely material model, and in it, stuff like history, power, authority, law, etc., do not exist. Those things are abstractions, fit to individual behavior, resulting from choices by individuals. Game theory, without a fully specified set of rules for the game, and enough room for ‘rule variation’ that the problem of ‘ideal strategy’ is intractable.

          There may well be non-material factors, but they are not as the theoretical abstractions we use to ‘understand’ aggregate behaviors.

      3. I don’t think it’s a question of liking the concept or not. It’s very useful. So useful that the concept has been around for centuries. Dawkins gets credit for coming up with a name, though even the name isn’t new. what’s new in the concept isn’t good and what’s good in it isn’t new.

        Typical modern scientist to whom everything is new. M. Jourdain would be proud.

  18. “return of ice age pattern?”
    Wisconsin had a ‘shroom festival this past weekend with no shrooms to be had. Too cold of a spring, so they are not sprouting up in numbers yet. (hunters Friday found 3!)

    1. Meanwhile, some guys in Missouri found 230 pounds of morels. In a few acres.

      I cannot even picture eating that many morels, but I am willing to try.

      1. They needed to ship them to WI, but the Kiwanees running the fest didn’t pre-buy this year to ensure they’d have them and then didn’t have them.

      2. I “planted” three morel beds this last weekend. And several Winecap mushroom beds.

        We shall see how it goes.

        Winecaps grow about anywhere but morels are an experiment here.

      1. That artist is one of my favorites. He did the artwork for Hunter S. Thompson, among other things.

        1. “We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when…”

          Oh. Oops. Never mind… 😉

  22. Which means …. things aren’t going to be comfortable.

    And for people who aren’t resourceful, who won’t scramble, particularly if they live in the big blue cities, things are going to get down right uncomfortable and at times sportive.

    :sighs:

    I hate it when folks go all English on me… it’s somewhat concerning.

  23. Since most people refuse to be scared into submission by the Democrats/globalists screaming about the CCP Virus, they are apparently pushing the next big disease that will require totalitarian measures, just in time for November 2022; monkeypox.

  24. God promised He would not leave us or forsake us. That doesn’t mean our earthsuit will never be damaged, it means He will do whatever is best for us. Even if we don’t like that flavor.

    So be strong and courageous. We win. They lose.

    1. When you read Genesis, you realize the human partners with God go through some very tough stuff. Just ask Joseph. Course i understand why the sanctimonious, arrogant, thoughtless youth could piss off his brothers.

      Also, none are perfect, they sleep with their daughters, feel unloved, are barren, trick their brothers, hide their house gods, offer sons as sacrifice, hurt their hip. I could go on.., but you get the idea. I love Genesis, not for any theology, but for the true fragile humanness of the people. This is a message of true HOPE for us today, in our time of minor problems. May we know that God is with us today.

      Had a reminder of how well off we still are. Called the EDD last week. Miracle, someone answered. It was Abdul from Afgan. He spoke English well, he didn’t go into any details of his Afgan life, but I soon realized he was one of those on a hit list. So, appreciate what you have and rejoice.

      1. It’s important to remember we, even Elon Musk, may not be the wisest, highest, ultimate critters in the Cosmos. And be ready to listen to those who know better.

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