This last week Pope Benedict died and also — for a short story — I found myself researching Denver in the 1920s.
Also, sometime in the last few months, an idiot lib asked for “amnesty” for what they did over the covidiocy.
All of these fell into the vat of squirm that is my head, and from it emerged the thought: We are all tainted.
No, seriously, we are all tainted. It’s impossible not to be. (Which is why the church chose men with strong shoulders to take on the sins of others in confession and pass it on to the One with the massive shoulders to take int. In a less religious sense, it is why most of us FEEL tainted.)
In case you don’t remember, when Pope Benedict ascended there was much gnashing of teeth on the left (they are experts) about how he had been a member of the Hitler youth.
I don’t remember how it was resolved, and whether he was or not, but I do know one thing: it didn’t matter to who he was as a late middle aged man. Because I have some notion of what the pressures were at that time and that place, and I suspect, “No Hitler Youth meant no schooling” which in point of fact meant no seminary and no ordination.
It was like that in Portugal under National Socialism and I remember my brother and older cousin who was raised with us having their uniforms ironed for Portuguese Youth (the equivalent) muster on whatever days were assigned to them. Nice uniforms. Snappy. But wearing them was just a thing you had to do to be in school. Everyone did. Nothing to do with actually being ideologically committed to it. It was “take part in this, or you don’t get to be in school and have to go and work for next to nothing in a factory.”
The same day, while researching Denver in the twenties, I came across the rending of shirts and beating of breasts at what used to be The Museum of Natural History and now the Museum of Nature And Science (I never liked the name change. What the heck is a museum of nature, anyway? And why is Science separate?) Apparently someone found a list of the KKK members in Denver at the time (When Colorado was sort of taken over by the KKK TBH) and the first director of the museum was on that list. Cry and woe, and scrutinizing all his decisions, and taking his name off the salon named for him.
Thing is, if no one suspected he was that or doubted his decisions at the time; if no one can point at a single one of his decisions that’s suspect, now that his affiliation is known: who are they to judge? Do they know if he was actually a committed KKK member, who believed in their crazy sh*t? Or if he was a guy who went along, let them put his name up, and went to a meeting or two just to get them off his back, but who secretly hated them with his whole guts and the fire of an undying sun?
Because it could be either.
Which brings us to the amnesty. Which, like everyone else, I don’t think should be granted. Not to the main instigators, like Fauci, who frankly have thousands if not millions (if we count the third world, and also the fact he founded the original research) of deaths on their conscience. Sorry, no. There need to be trials. Because we know monsters exist. Before we trust our institutions again, we have to know the monsters have been purged, and publicly too. (Which is what the left keeps missing.) No amount of “trust us, really” will take until we see the trials, and see that they are fair and open, and that punishments are enacted. I don’t care if it was in service of a soft coup. People died alone and terrified in hospitals. People put off treatment — not of their volition — and will die of the conditions not treated. Human lives will be lost to this pageantry of stupid. And that’s unforgivable. That’s not shrugged off. We need trials.
As for your local Karen, who ran around leaving you nasty notes, and keeping you from entering stores, no matter if you have an asthma pump with you, because she wanted you to wear the useless face diaper: she must at least admit she was wrong. She must admit she was swept away on a wave of hysteria, and that her imbibing propaganda from the TV is not a justification to make you suffocate, and she SHOULD have listened to reason. And she should be made to meditate on what makes her so frigging broken. The “confession” phrase from The Marching Morons would be a good beginning “Forgive me, Freud, For I have Neurosis.” (Except no reason to invoke Dr. Fraud. Saying “I’m a neurotic mess and I was an idiot” is a good start, though.)
But here’s the thing: In a year, or ten, once those have been done — the trials and the apologies — we’re going to have to forgive and forget. And if people dig this nonsense back in sixty years, it will be wrong.
One of the ways the left is broken is guilt by association. You one day talked for five minutes at a dinner with someone who once said something racist, so you’re racist, and you must be cancelled. Even though you might not have known what that person said, or whatever, because only Twitter addicts would know. Of course, they only apply it to those they dislike, so the many racist eructations of Joe Biden Fraud in Chief of the US remain unexamined and unassociated with anyone in his circle.
That’s just part of how they’re crazy. It’s also, in a way, bitterly funny because once the infection establishes itself, you”re not going to find anyone in the field, or the vicinity, or the country, who hasn’t at least got a mile case.
We’ve seen this with the covidiocy. Even otherwise sane and capable people suddenly lost their minds and started screaming we wanted to kill them if we weren’t wearing the mask, and who were we to doubt the great and powerful oz experts?
Humans are social apes. The ability to match the group interests and the group concerns is obviously an evolutionary advantage. In the wandering bands of our ancestors, being cast out was death. If everyone was rubbing blue mud on their belly, you did the same with much enthusiasm.
Yes, there are those of us who hold out, or even scream against it. And there’s mud-rubbing that’s vile and evil and should be denounced and stopped (All the examples in the intro.)
But do you know how many humans even HAVE principles? Much less clear ones? To some extent principles are a luxury of those of us who “think too much.” And even if you have principles, realizing when those are being infringed by an all-pervasive ideology is hard.
If your principles are soft and foggy like “be nice” what are you going to do when being nice requires not confronting the illusions of people who are convinced if you don’t ducttape a mask to a disabled child’s face, you’re causing your grandmother to die? I mean, one should hope that you’d come to yourself somewhere after “Well, if you can you should wear a mask” and before “if you’re asthmatic and can’t wear a mask, you should stay in house arrest for however many years, even if you live alone, and get everything delivered.” BUT if you don’t stop before you’re ducttaping the mask to the disabled kid, how nice are you?
And yet perfectly normal, everyday functional people went that far.
Even if your principles are “don’t kill people” what are you going to, when everyone around you assures you these creatures being killed aren’t people? Or when they assure you that by not getting rid of the “filthy unvaxed” you’ll kill more people?
It almost requires having an ear for evil, and weirdly some of the nicest/sweetest people don’t. Because there doesn’t seem to be evil in them, and/or they prefer not to think on evil, so if they have it, they aren’t aware of it.
The truth is that normal, everyday functional, generally nice human beings are capable of doing the most vile stuff, from discriminating and killing on race and religion, to being authoritarian little sh*ts and causing deaths.
It might be the default mode of humans, in fact. “Do what the pack is doing no matter how vile, so they don’t eat me next.”
It’s also repulsive. And some of us take very strong exception to it.
And yet, there will need to come a healing. Yes, even for election stealing and covidiocy.
No, it shouldn’t come — can’t come — before it’s all exposed, corrected, worked against so it doesn’t happen again, or at least not in the same form.
And that…. right now, is a long task to do in the future.
But supposing it is and it all comes out, in sixty years we shouldn’t be upset because someone who was 10 during covid ran around being a little Karen. Stupidity of that kind shouldn’t keep her from high office. One should instead look at her actions since.
It is funny — ironic really — that the same people beating their chests because a predecessor on the same job was in the KKK rolls — aka — the popular horrible thing of that time — but will probably wear Che T-shirts and talk about the virtues of Mao and how communism is misunderstood. And it’s ironic to see people with submission diapers on their face complain the late pope once wore the Nazi youth uniform.
It’s much easier to denounce, and apologize for, sins we didn’t commit. It’s much easier to beat your chest for the sins of those you’re only tenuously related to.
It is, in the end, just another form of pack behavior and virtue signaling.
What is hard is, in the moment, realizing when your behavior is crazed enough — even if it matches the behavior of everyone around you — to justify that kind of condemnation in the future, because it is obviously evil.
In general, I think Pratchett’s rule that evil is treating people like things apply. Or if you prefer, treating people like widgets.
Sure most people can wear masks — weather or not masks do anything — but some people can’t. Isn’t condemning those people to years of solitary prison evil? When all they did was have a genetic condition?
Or you know “Everyone says this is so dangerous” and not looking at numbers, and therefore causing the elderly to die alone? Because “everyone” says so, and it doesn’t matter how many individuals disagree.
Forgivable? Sure. Or not, but it will have to be forgiven, in the very long run, because people change and hopefully grow.
But it would be nice if we could equip people at large with the ability to stop the nonsense. Before it goes so far.
I do realize some of this is built into people as people are, and mass communication and propaganda makes the whole thing worse.
But still, I won’t rub my belly with mud. The mud is toxic, radioactive and spattered with the blood of innocents. And before you ask to get back to the pack, you’d better admit it was a pretty stupid idea to rub mud, to begin with. And don’t you go apologizing for great grandad’s mud. He is dead, and you don’t know the pressures he faced, in his time, with his mud. Maybe people like you threatened to kill him if he didn’t rub mud.
You’re not a good person for denouncing the past. We will not absolve you because you point fingers at your ancestors. Let each time carry the burden of its sins. Admit yours, so you don’t repeat them.
That’s all.
According To Hoyt 
“Learn from the past, but do not be enslaved by it.”
Hear!!! Hear!!!
Sadly some (brahmandarin type) folks would see that Orvan used “Enslaved” and get their knickers in a twist. This Newspeak like renovation of English is annoying to say the least.
For example in code development many people use a tool called GIT to store and track code and its changes. Its default branch is called “master” . Many companies (e,g, Amazon in much of their public code) in attempt to get rid of that word (apparently as offensive as certain derogatory references to people of color) renamed that branch (which GIT permits as it is branch name agnostic). But in doing so without giving warning many public and private builds which depend on that branch name broke and lots of developer time (hundreds maybe thousands of hours) was spent tracking this down and fixing it. All because someone MIGHT be offended by a word. Whatever happened to “Sticks and Stones may Break my bones but words will never hurt me”? Admittedly being called names hurts, hell I was called a fat annoying know it all teachers pet and it hurt, of course it was all true, but hey. In this case the word isn’t even used as a slur it’s just a usage of the word “master” in one of it’s multiple alternate meanings derived over the last few hundred years.
I think ours has been changed to “main” instead of “master.” Sigh.
Did they change ‘slave’ to ‘sub’, too? };o)
Oh good. Mine wasn’t the only mind that, ahem, went there.
That is what the Amazon ones did too now that you say it. Fear not, soon enough they’ll find a reason main is problematic…
Had a very annoying kerfuffle at work a few months ago over master/slave terminology, as applied to electronic devices. An engineer objected to jettisoning the terms (client/server is the Jargon of Now), and there was much virtue signaling among some coworkers in marketing, to the tune of “who would actually defend those horrible words?”
I could only count myself lucky that I wasn’t involved in that particular project, and still it was all I could do to bite my tongue (how much is workplace harmony really worth?).
Eventually somebody’s going to object to the notion of servitude on the same grounds, and around we go again. HerbN has it right in his comment below. None of this has ever been done in good faith.
A ‘master’ is the unit you make copies from. So you don’t wind up making copies of copies of copies of progressively degraded quality. Less of an issue with digital data, but if errors creep in, and get copied instead of corrected, the effect is similar.
Words are merely symbols. Being ‘Offended!’ by a word is idiotic. What they’re really ‘Offended!’ by is the meaning they attach to the symbol. Ban the Bad Word and substitute another, they’ll be ‘Offended!’ by that one too. It never ends. Just look at the endless succession of ‘Offensive!’ words used to describe people with very dark colored skin. Before long, every one gets blackened (oops!) by association, declared verbum non grata by the Enlightened, and another word condemned to the same eventual fate.
———————————
‘Progressives’ suppress free speech because they don’t have the means to suppress free thought.
Yet.
What they’re really fighting against is the Idea. It doesn’t matter to them what form the expression takes, as long as the Idea still exists they will continue to fight it. To have a Master is of course directly associated with the concept of Slave (or so the theory states) and in order to eliminate Slavery you must first eliminate Mastery.
So words and concepts vanish from the normal vocabulary and those who don’t know their history (because the very idea has been eliminated) recreate the concept and call it something else.
They are using the exact same reasoning and method that the purveyors of the Newspeak dictionary did in 1984. They intend to alter vocabulary to the point that it is impossible to articulate thought crime.
And their logic is just as farkakte as that of the Party in 1984. This comes out of Chomsky’s Nativist Linguistic Theory that grammar is innate, which as far as I can tell got thrown on the ash heap of history due to research in the 80’s and 90’s but is still a favorite fairy tale of our brahmandarins, Consider it one of their articles of faith…
Him and Whorf. Whorf and Sapir were the two main ones who were going, roughly, that the word is how you think about the thing, and therefore your language is your thought process.
Or conversely, they might be going after “master” in the name of going after “slave,” when their real target is (perhaps) “lord.” And sans “lords” and “lordship,” there’s neither any reason nor conceptual means to associate “deity” with any “superior and supreme” personage to whom they might owe unpaid “allegiance.”
Of course this is speculation, but it seems to be in character for the characters in question.
The SCA has been going through idiocy because they use (by this time, probably, “used,”) “master,” to denote exceptional skill/hard work. Both as Master of Guild X, and also as a formal rank -ironically, because some fighters didn’t want to be knighted and be called, “Sir,” so they became “Masters.” Likewise, “Master/Mistress,” has been used as a peerage rank. I have no idea just how they reconciled it all, or if they did. I do image Mistress Isabella, a lady of African descent who is surpassingly skillful at producing and wearing full Tudor, might object to losing her title.
Master in the SCA sense means exactly the same as its derivation: the Latin word magister, teacher.
People who refuse to learn history or linguistics….
Of course. But this was the East Kingdom, which is thoroughly infected with woke.
I mentioned the Zoom struggle session our household had in 2020, where a “gay Muslim iman,”
(yeah, I know, but he was calling in from San Francisco) and allies assured us that proper pronoun usage and “respect,” for all gender identities was, “the great civil rights struggle of our time.”
The household has split and shrunk, though we were able to get together for Pennsic. But the couple that firmly stated their faith (liberal Northeastern denomination) demanded they become “allies,” in the struggle have exiled themselves from our group and been rejected by the other. Plus, the man (a double Master, no less) pretty much had his political ambitions shot out from under him : all his wokeness did him no good. I feel sorry for him.
The stupidity of it all. . . .
“Mrs.” is just a contraction of “Mistress” the way “Ma’am” is a contraction of “Madam.” But people don’t want to listen to actual etymology. That’s too difficult.
Why do I have a sudden urge to rename “master” to “baas”? OTOH, “bwana” would do. /VBEG
Other possibilities come to mind, some more risque than others.
Magister and Discipula came to mind.
What are the colleges going to call a ‘Masters Degree’? 😛
Ouch!
My parents taught me to say no. It is a lesson many never learned – not even by example. Most people are cowards and will comply. Mud on their belly? If Fauci told the doctors to smear shit in their hair every morning or lose their jobs hospitals would sure stink.
So did mine. That, and the example of Nazi Germany, and how so many people went along because of herd behavior, and those who said “no” and resisted in various ways, even by leaving their homelands.
“But everyone is doing it!” (Said in an adolescent whine.)
“Sweetie, we’re not everyone!” (Said in stern parental tones.)
“If everyone was jumping off a cliff would you do it too?”
“If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?”
“Oh, jeez. Probably.”
https://xkcd.com/1170/
That was from before they started putting BLM links on the web page, though.
I found it …interesting.. how that link QUIETLY (as far as I could tell) disappeared. Perhaps there was some tiny bit of Realization?
“If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?”
Some of us would, if pressed for participation, volunteer to guide them to the bridge, help them over the railing if assisstance was requested and agree to provide the event record for posterity.
And, after the last one had jumped, go back to whatever we were doing before we were interrupted.
And, in the future, be a great deal more circumspect about whom we chose as “friends.”
Its why Soros’ claims that he worked with the Nazis as a child because he hand no choice. Yes he did have a choice. He could have told them NO, even if meant they might kill him. He made the wrong one.
As I recall, he also stated that it was (paraphrased) the most rewarding part of his life. May have been taken out of context, but…
Regardless, he’s a vile sh-t who needs to die a lot.
Nice uniforms. Snappy. But wearing them was just a thing you had to do to be in school. Everyone did. Nothing to do with actually being ideologically committed to it. It was “take part in this, or you don’t get to be in school and have to go and work for next to nothing in a factory.
That is one of the most effective means of control. It sounds like Portugal just didn’t do it well.
As Theodore Dalrymple wrote over twenty years ago:
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
That explains why even now we remain more supine than not in the face of all that is done to us.
Based on what our hostess has mentioned in the past, I’m guessing that the requirement to wear a uniform changed every couple of years. It’s a bit difficult to keep the control going under those circumstances.
😛
I have been looking for this article for months. Can you give me a cite?
It was from an interview on FrontPage Magazine that seems to have disappeared. Here is the best cite I have (includes old, broken link to FPM).
https://intellectualtakeout.org/2015/11/the-pc-culture-is-relying-on-communist-propaganda-tricks/
I think I have tracked said Interview down, offsite:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/1487936/posts
Thank-you also.
Looks like, thanks
Thank you. This may help a lot.
He does make similar comments in his essay on Tsarist Russia and how the USSR is in most ways a continuation under new management and his essay on visiting a department store in North Korea.
“And even if you have principles, realizing when those are being infringed by an all-pervasive ideology is hard.”
This is kind of what I’ve been thinking about this morning, after the “Who Goes Nazi” thread in yesterday’s post.
Who, at this point, would even recognize the Nazis?
Even the Nazis weren’t always (cue ominous music) The Nazis. At one point they were patriotic radicals, or at least positioned themselves as such, fighting against both a fantastically corrupt government and an international communist faction led by Jews. (Or at least perceived as being so.) There was a long path that led a lot of otherwise decent people into supporting something evil…or at least failing to recognize how evil it was.
And now here we are, with a bunch of people doing their best to make the USA imitate Germany circa 1934…
I would look at it slightly differently. When you have a bunch of people actually wanting the US to resemble Germany in 1930 instead of 1934–the depths of Weimar, depressed, depraved, flailing, impotent, aimless, dealing with political violence–suddenly the ones who want us to look like Germany in 1934–or 1939–start slowly, slowly gaining traction.
Right. Germany in 1930 is the better comparison. And the same people who are doing their best (whether they know it or not) to throw us into that type of catastrophe are also, as cover for their own totalitarian aims, doing their level best to convince us that those other people have already reenacted Germany in 1934.
Perceived as being so.
I recall sitting in a (MANDATORY) “Pep Rally” and thinking it sure looked scarily like 1930’s German Newsreels… when this was pointed out, it was, of course, vehemently denied. But NOT actually disproven.
As I point out to folks, because a professor pointed out to me, US and other political rallies steal a lot from Mussolini because it worked and still works. People are people, and imagery resonates, especially when used in a different context and with different trimmings.
Still creepy in a “It CAN HAPPEN HERE” way.
Jacques Ellul’s book Propaganda was written in the ’50s or ’60s, shortly postwar. (Yes I recommend it but no, I never finished it. It’s a slog after the midpoint or so.) He treats FDR’s propaganda and Goebbels’ equally, as it’s the phenomenon itself that he’d condemn.
To be fair, FDR, and his govt hangers on, were putting out a lot of borderline Commie and borderline Fascist stuff, which is often amended in our history books and videos.
And not allowed to have a book …. Grouse/Grumble …
Football coach one TRIED to shame me (without naming or pointing out) as I sat & read (book on early particle accelerators, INFINITELY more interesting) as some “didn’t stand for the National Anthem” and/or Pledge – NO. Those were the things I DID stand for the. The horse-apple School Spirit garbage I sat through. And still would.
And I was Vastly Amused that the name was pronounced, if not spelled, the same as the Disease also known as ‘German Measles’. The difference? You get by Measles in a week or two and don’t have to worry about it any more. Bitter? Denatonium might be sweeter.
I finally realized that while they blocked the exits, they could not truly force my attendance without beclowning themselves as the fascist clown they were – and simply didn’t get up from the last class. Annoyed the instructor, but he wasn’t attending either, so… not exactly a Convincing Fellow there. “I have more important things I need to do.” “Me too.”
My kids routinely escaped and called me from outside. “Mom, come pick us up. We’re on the lam.” 😀
Pre-cell phone for me. Plus rode the bus (middle school). H.S., just walked home …. or made sure to ride my bike that day (they were announced).
The Milgram Experiment demonstrated that more than 60% of the American public would administer electric shocks, even to the point of death, to a complete stranger if an authority figure, a man in a white lab coat with a clipboard, told them that it was necessary and OK..(Dr. Milgram used actors of course)..Most people want to obey and stay with the herd at almost any cost…
It did not prove any such thing. It was rigged and irreproducible.
Almost all those famous social experiments turned out to be rigged. Funny how they all gave the same sort of answer, isn’t it?
Yep. “Humans evil bad.” “There are no decent humans.”
Let’s just give all power to the few enlightened, omniscient, beneficent ones, you know … people like me and my friends. Certainly these common folk can’t be expected to govern themselves.
A student once asked, “Miss Red, what would you do if you were elected president?”
Me: “Run. Because things would have to be really, really horrible for anyone to think I should run the country.”
Half the class laughed, and the other half weren’t sure if it was safe to agree with me or not!
Yeah. SPIT.
Really? Where do I find the “irreproducibility” experiment? I think the Milgram results correspond quite nicely with what I have seen in 2020-22…A majority bought the covid narrative hook line and sinker, even to the point of un-personing relatives and friends…
Milgram has been thoroughly discredited in the social/behavioral science community. Australian psychologist Gina Perry is one of his strongest critics. She found Milgram had manipulated the data and misreported results. For example, only half the people in the experiment believed the shocks they were delivering were real — and of those who did, a majority refused to comply. You can read her account at the link below. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317914282_Deception_and_Illusion_in_Milgram%27s_accounts_of_the_Obedience_Experiments
Thank you. I didn’t have time to search.
So did this social “scientist” reproduce the experiment with neutral observers? Apparently not…But the point is not that people are evil…very few are (unfortunately, they’re our rulers)…the point is that humans are herd animals, a majority of whom submit blindly to authority in most cases…This has been obvious forever…
We are NOT herd animals. We’re pack animals. BIG difference
But the point is not that people are evil…
The point is that the support for your assertion was nonsense, has been known to be nonsense for quite some time, and the guy who pushed it knowingly committed fraud on top of bad study design and making stupid assumptions.
For crying out loud, if you’re going to try to make people think that an electrical shock is real, GET SOMEONE WHO CAN ACT!
I don’t care what you think they correspond with. 20-22 was a weaponizing of NICENESS.
As for finding it: do your own research. But none of those are reproducible. Not one.
Parents to me after a whine “but everyone’s doing it”: “And if everyone jumped off a cliff would you jump too?” Maybe fact that father earned living with real dynamite (impressed teen-aged daughter and friends seeing buildings implode exactly as planned…) meant he didn’t much care for what everybody did or didn’t do. I was lucky in the family sweepstakes and am grateful for it.
I guess it’s impossible for politicians and/or liberals not to care what everyone’s doing or worse yet wanting to force the rest of the world to follow like lemmings.
I agree with your comments about long-term grudge-holding. (Trust me, I get it. I’m unreconstructed Southern. We’re damn good at holding grudges. Not as good as, say, the Balkans, but still pretty good.) But I do think that in order for the rank-and-file Karenus Americanus to be forgiven about being a COVID Nazi, they have to first acknowledge that they were not just wrong about the virus, but wrong about how they went about handling it. No forgiveness without repentance, basically.
As for the higher-ups…I don’t think I’d mind one bit seeing people swing from gallows for all this. Fauci, his female counterpart at the CDC, maybe Andrew Cuomo and other governors who killed thousands in nursing homes. At the very least, such people should never hold a responsible position in government or the medical sector ever again, including lobbying. Let them work a real job with the rest of us grunts, or retire on Social Security (confiscate their pensions) and try to make ends meet.
For normal people who were just scared, I am forgiving and understanding. For the architects of 2020, I have no mercy.
“As for your local Karen, ” you need to add one more thing (even if it does make me sound like Columbo); never, Never, NEVER allow them in a position to make that kind of decision or action again.
Aye, a Record of Evil.. .or at least Incompetence.
Did you ever read about the Klan Bake? What they called the Democrat Convention in Boston back in the twenties/thirties I believe.
We are all tainted by are own minds eye, which is why Karen’s can’t see the harm they do.
A side question, Does Karen equal the same status as Carl?
And meanwhile, I just read an article talking about how a site has revealed that California Congresswoman Katie Porter is extremely nasty to her staff, and fired one of her staff members for supposedly infecting her with COVID (the staff member apparently forgot to follow some COVID safety protocol… because a friend had just been murdered). The press, of course, is studiously ignoring it. “We all know about it, but we need to get someone on the record before we report this!”
Like that ever stopped stories about Trump.
The article also suggests that Porter is being positioned to take over Feinstein’s senate seat if Feinstein doesn’t run for reelection (which she very nearly didn’t do this last election). The article also notes that Amy Klobuchar was similarly nasty to her staff, and once again everyone knew it. It wasn’t until she ran for president that it came out because at that point she was a possible threat to fellow Democrats. So maybe the rest of the country will finally hear about Porter during the California senate campaign.
My mother always said you could tell everything you needed to know about someone by how they treat servants. That all the current crew are nasty is of a piece with everything else we know about them.
When I see that So-and-So has gone through [large number] of staff in a year or two, that tells me what I need to know. Maxine Waters may be the poster person, or at least on the poster among many.
Kamela aspires to be front and center on that poster.
Even better – fired a staffer for giving her COVID, then went to a conference while still testing positive, told no one, then blamed the CONFERENCE for giving her and others COVID.
Sounds like real lamppost bait, there.
My liberal friend has written a couple of really nice blogs concerning that young football player who recently had a cardiac attack on the field and is still fighting for his life. All well and good.
But in her comments, she complained about “anti-vaxxers” who were questioning his Covid vaccine status. I don’t really care, one way or another in this case, but we’ve had that not-vaccine shoved down our throats for years, with an increase of healthy young people’s deaths with cardiac or stroke issues (not to mention the miscarriages), and we’re not even supposed to /question/ it?
On the other side, all sorts of know-nothing ‘Experts!’ are screeching loudly that “It wasn’t the COVID shot, and you’re a
KulakDeplorableMAGA RepublicanWhite SupremacistRRRAAACISSST!!! for suggesting it might have been!!”They started that nonsense before anybody had time to even make such a suggestion. Why were they so desperate to deny what nobody had even mentioned yet?
We don’t know what caused him to collapse on the playing field. We don’t know if it was the COVID shots. We don’t know it wasn’t, either. We don’t even know if he had the shots, although I sort-of remember something about the NFL mandating them, or considering doing so.
Tucker Carlson had a for-real medical doctor on his show who’d been investigating sports-related health issues for years. He said that before the shots, 29 players had sudden heart attacks on the field. After the shots, there were 1,500. Now that’s suggestive.
———————————
Science does not change from day to day depending on political expediency.
With respect to somebody suggesting it was the not-Vax, I must admit it was the first thing that I thought of. Far too many otherwise healthy people died of Suddenly since the shots.
FWIW, a doctor tweeted that he gave the player the shot on 12/26, the tweet was captured, then the doc deleted the tweet. Oops.
(The side effect that spooks me is the transplant rejection, including corneas. Since I was at least considering such, I’m very glad I’ve resisted the mRNA.)
What has me concerned is, as a “No Vaxxer” is the possibility of becoming Vaxxed anyway through a transfusion of blood donated by someone who was Vaxxed. It seems, at last report, blood donations are not being tested, nor being labeled, as coming from a Vaxxed donor.
One can “pre-donate” one’s own blood in preparation for scheduled procedures, but emergencies being what they are that won’t work every time. I suspect those who were not Vaxxed could offer non-Vax blood, for a fee, but given the social deterioration of the last couple years it’s probably quite incorrect to trust their statements; Lefties bent on insurrection and destruction cannot be even slightly depended upon to be even remotely truthful. And, I have my doubts about the reliability of whatever testing protocol The Medical Authorities may employ to certify non-Vaxxed blood.
I will note that while the local blood bank is asking if you’re vaccinated, they take it either way.
> the possibility of becoming Vaxxed anyway through a transfusion of blood donated by someone who was Vaxxed.
Not just that, but any kind of vaxx could be contaminating the blood; there’s no practical way to tell. Considering how several of the vaxxes claim to be entirely different technologies, I’m dubious as to how safe it is to mix them. Well, compared to the know bhazards of Chinavaxx in general.
> One can “pre-donate” one’s own blood in preparation for scheduled procedures,
Not at any of the three hospitals local to me. They each went through an elaborate song and dance routine implying we were completely bonkers to even suggest such a thing. It’s Red Cross blood or nothing.
Charlie Kirk popped up very quickly after the young man collapsed and strongly implied it was the vaccine. And since the Good People hate his guts anyway (I have no opinion either way)…
Of course, the awful things they said when Trump’s brother died are OK.
And they wonder why so many people are angry.
They started that nonsense before anybody had time to even make such a suggestion. Why were they so desperate to deny what nobody had even mentioned yet?
And ain’t THAT telling? “What you lot covering up, Cupcake?”
Frontlash. One of the “progressive” left’s favorite gaslighting tactics.
Benedict served as an anti-aircraft gunner in the Luftwaffe in 1945, he had been in the Hitler youth earlier. they had this thing in Germany called conscription. One didn’t choose to join these things, one was compelled to. I believe he essentially deserted, or went AWOL or some such.
I fell in love with Benedict as pope when he started wearing the caumoro. He really seemed to enjoy dressing up and the pope as Santa Claus is much more likely to put people at ease than the false populism of the current wee popey.
Agreed throughout.
I liked his writings, and his sense of humor. I get the feeling that Francis lacks his namesake’s sense of the absurd and of proportion. Which fits his apparent philosophy . . .
Communists (and socialists in general) generally fit that description. But it makes sense, since they’re fixated on big government.
Der PanzerKardinal
R.I.P.
His biography/interviews talk about how the local (boys) school had a teacher who was also in charge of the Hitler Youth chapter. The teacher’s job was to get every boy to join up, and get rewarded for it. If they didn’t join up, the teacher would be punished.
So after a while, when the Ratzinger brothers and other local boys did not join up, the teacher just filled out the membership forms for them and sent them in, with his own signature.
So then the school announced that they had 100 percent membership. And the kids objected, but the teacher refused takebacks, because he didn’t want to get punished. But he also never made any reports about those kids not attending meetings, not going to activities, and never wearing the uniforms. It was pure fiction, and the teacher just reported whatever was expected.
Granted, this was up in the mountains, and people had better things to do than to tattle to flatlanders. But still, it was a remarkable slice of dystopian life.
” Let each time carry the burden of its sins. Admit yours, so you don’t repeat them.” Such wise words and oh, how I hope those who are trying their level best to erase history can learn exactly how wise these words are, right now, at this moment in time.
Was reading up on Robert E Lee for the WIP. That is a complicated person. I still think he made the wrong call, but I understand how he got there. Great fuel for a tragic antagonist.
I think a lot of elites have nuked their moral capital. I’ve somehow ended up seeing a lot of clips of the game “High of Life” lately (think high caliber toilet humor, I think it was done by the Rick and Morty crew? Yes, the Lezdoit sequence is exactly what it looks like) but for all the humor in the rest of the game, the secret ending is legitimately creepy.
The secret villian? A scientist, whose only interest is unlocking the secrets of the universe, with no concern for the jars he breaks along the way. He is not even insane; simply unconcerned with your silly ideas of morality.
Amorality. Often forgotten these days with all of the blatant immorality – which is something different – that we see around us.
The left is already pursuing a policy of censure and demanding apologies, only for imagined offenses.
To reference a recent post from John C. Wright: either we deCovidicy them or they “deNazify” us.
Well, of course! A Nazi would disagree with them, therefore everybody who disagrees with them is a Nazi! Q.E.D.!
Everyone who loves their country and has a stable family is a proto-Nazi and needs deNazification by an enlightened elite.
That’s what the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Authoritarian Personality and all the other hoax studies and analyses were designed to prove.
Funny how they never mention all the things a Nazi would agree with them about…
Ah yes, to forgive – it is a blessed thing to do. Hard often times but something that can be done. I am all for forgiveness but there is also a need for accountability. Also, while I can forgive even awful, mean and evil things – I do NOT forget.
I also believe in behavior and conduct being something to also take into consideration and the past Pope is an example… sure some behavior was “bad” but what did he do later and for much of his life? That is something that should be measured for all. Having worked in prisons I got to see the few, rare, now and again examples of somebody who did “bad” and came around to being “good” after and never went back.
We have forgiveness backward. We think it is for the benefit of the person we forgive. Instead, it is to get them out of our head. It is for our benefit. You cannot change the past. You need to get past it, and get them out of your heads.
Some collect past “sins”, some wives are very good at that. So you think it gives you power, but it is poison for your soul. Your enemy lives in your head. Think Trump in Leftist heads. You have given them power over you, since those who think they have done nothing wrong, will Never ask for forgiveness.
It is very interesting to vocally forgive someone who thinks they have done nothing wrong. It can provoke intense anger. Because in order to accept forgiveness, you must admit it might have hurt someone.
This is just a short version of much longer thoughts about how we do not understand forgiveness, and how and why to do it. Because we do not understand, we do not benefit.
Pack behavior and virtue signaling have driven a LOT of what we’ve seen in the last couple of years. And much of that has been reinforced by the media. Now that they’ve been outed, they don’t want to apologize, recant, etc. They want absolution so they can start yet another virtue signal (insert new thing here)… sigh… I’m a grumpy old man. I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t try to force your (whatever) on me. You do that, I’m NOT going to react well, or kowtow to you or your Karens/Chips/etc.
One of my dead friends (Am at a point in my life where many, if not most, of my friends are dead.) was a member of the Hitler youth ( In 1939 made mandatory for all German children between 10 and 18.). No way I see to find fault with him as a person because of that, Feel the same about Joseph Ratzinger. RIP
I looked at a police yearbook from Germany dated 1940, translating it for a historical museum. It belonged to the donor’s grandfather. Guess what? Technically, that grandfather was in the SS because the SS took over all police jobs in Germany. Grandpa directed traffic in a small city in western Germany, handed out parking tickets, and stuff like that. Is grandson to be shunned?
Say with full sincerity, “I was wrong, I was scared, I should have looked and listened before I acted like an a$$ over the masks, ” and I’m willing to forgive, gladly forgive. “You were right about Tw!tter censoring people and I’m sorry I told you off,” and I’m good with it. Because I’ve acted like a jerk about stuff in the name of pride (the deadly sin, not the rainbow thing). Crow tastes bad, but it’s a lot better warm than cold.
I served with a guy who’s grandfather was SS, because he was in a Panzer division (on the Russian front. There were apparently stories), and, like the police, Panzer divisions, at least at the start, were automatically SS whether they wanted to be or not.
That doesn’t sound right. The SS had its own units which were distinct from the rest of the army. They started out as panzergrenadier units, but were changed into panzer units before the invasion of Russia. Meanwhile, the regular army, or Heer, had its own panzer divisions. Erwin Rommel was in command of one of them – the 7th Panzer Division – during the Battle of France. There were more Heer panzer divisions (at least until later; the SS divisions multiplied as the war went on), but the SS divisions tended to be better equipped.
Now my understanding is that late in the war, when things were getting desperate, regular civilians could end up getting conscripted into the SS units as manpower replacements. So a regular person could find himself in an SS unit (and I’m guessing be forced to join the SS) without wanting to have anything to do with the SS. But a claim that members of the Heer panzer divisions were required to join the SS (which the regular army despised, btw) doesn’t make any sense.
And yeah, Russian front, both sides, a lot of very ugly stories.
According to his grandfather he was in one of the original panzer units (did not specify beyond that) and the SS that everyone hated took THEIR nomenclature not the other way around. The gist of the story would be like a US secret police force claiming to be SEALs and making it stick without actually kicking out any people who were actually SEALs. (SEALs used for group identifiability, not because they are intrinsically like panzer units.)
I’ll be frank, I know more about the Russian side of that front than the German so salt.
For example, there was a 6th Panzer and 6 SS Panzer divisions at the Bulge. The SS Panzer divisions were typically larger and with better equipment, at least by TOE.
SS units generally were called “# SS [Unit Type] Division [Special Name]” (or regiment, depending), though the unit numbers weren’t added until a few years into the war. For example, one particular unit was the 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf (Death’s Head). This particular unit was originally formed using SS concentration camp guards as its core, and is known to have machine-gunned surrendered British soldiers during the Battle of France. Late in the war, it usually fought alongside 5th SS Panzer DIvision Wiking, which was largely made up of foreign-born recruits (either Nazi fans, or people whose hatred of Communism blinded them to what the Nazis were). The unit numbers were always unique among the SS formations, even if a particular unit was something other than a panzer division.
The regular army had its own 3rd Panzer Division, which was a completely separate unit. It was formed in 1935, fought in Poland and Belgium, and then spent the rest of the war on the Eastern Front.
However, because it’s political, it gets a bit more complicated. During the invasion of Poland, the Liebstandardt SS Adolph Hitler (or LSSAH for short; they were Hitler’s personal guards) fought as a regiment. This unit would expand and evolve into the 1st SS Division LSSAH later on. There was also a separate division-sized SS formation that fought in Poland. Finally, there was apparently a Panzer Division “Kempf” during the Invasion of Poland that was made up of both regular and SS troops. The SS members of the unit were known to have committed atrocities during the invasion. After Poland surrendered, Kempf was dissolved. The SS members went either to the previously mentioned SS division (most of which would later become 2nd SS Das Reich, though one regiment helped form the previously mentioned 5th SS Wiking), and the newly formed Totenkopf division (which later became the previously mentioned 3rd SS).
I suppose if your friend’s grandfather was in a unit like “Kempf”, then what he told you would fit. But it only would have applied for a couple of months before the unit was dissolved. To the best of my knowledge, the invasion of Poland was the only time something like that happened.
Incidentally, you might notice that the 4th SS got skipped in my write-up. The 4th SS was made up of some of the aforementioned police. Hitler had an agreement in place with the army that there would only be so many SS soldiers (I’m guessing that the agreement was either abandoned or ignored later on). But cops aren’t soldiers. So the SS Polizei division (later 4th SS) was created out of cops. And they technically remained cops, even as they fought on the front line, using police ranks instead of the military ranks that the other divisions used.
“But a claim that members of the Heer panzer divisions were required to join the SS (which the regular army despised, btw) doesn’t make any sense.”
One of the first things Hitler did to the military was change its enlistment oath from allegiance to Germany to a personal oath to him as Fuehrer. It created, supposedly, a real dilemma for the officer corps when it came to overthrowing him and breaking it.
My mother was the Girl Scout chairman for our neighborhood in the late 1960s – early 1970s. One of her most effective troop leaders had been a girl Hitler Youth as a kid. It was demanded of all kids in Germany in the 1930s-40s. The story I had it from Mom from that woman was that at her age, it was all outdoors fun sports and camping and hiking and such. Only a small portion was the political stuff.
What the critics of Papa Ratzi forget (or deliberately mean to forget) was that participation WAS REQUIRED.
Wow! Right on target. Loved it. Since the greater topic was the Covid fiasco, I wanted to mention my recent experience with Covid. (forgive me if I mentioned this in one of your earlier forums) On Christmas eve I got a call from my brother in the next town. He lives in a trailer. He said he had been in bed for two days and needed help. He’s 75; I’m 74. I went and got him and took him to the town’s hospital and ER. They diagnosed him with Covid. Neither he nor I wore a mask. I took him back to my place and gave him the chicken soup routine for starters (The hospital just gave him nausea meds and Tylenol) Within two days of playing Mother Theresa, I started to get what he had (I’ll have what he’s having…) Then as he was clawing his way out of that awfulness, I was descending. He got well before I did; I was on a two day lag. So, if he had Covid, that’s what I got. The point of the story. He has always been a big pro-government, proud democrat type. A big believer in the whole gubmint Covid protocol. So… He had had four (4) Covid shots when he came down with it.
I had NEVER had a Covid shot, having won my immunity by getting Covid in June of 2020. So, after we were both about five days out from being symptomatic and were, we believed, no longer contagious, my sister, 68, came to visit. Guess what? Yeah, she came down with the Covid (she’s still here recovering).
To sum up, yeah, it was awful, but awful just like a bad flu. It didn’t kill any of us, we’re still here, useless eaters, sitting in our house, not producing or contributing to anything, just enjoying the ‘golden’ years. So, four (4) Covid shots got my brother nothing but Covid. Then he gave it to me who’s had Covid before. Seems like it’s just like the flu, doesn’t it.
The big question that the deep state and their whores will not mention is, how many people were killed, you could even say, murdered, but hospitals NOT TREATING THEM WITH IVERMECTIN OR HCQ, BUT INSTEAD, SENDING THEM HOME WITH INSTRUCTIONS TO GET THEIR ASSES ASAP TO THE ER IF THEIR LIPS STARTED TO TURN BLUE. Yes, this is how I was treated in 2020.
So, hell yeah, there should be inquiries, hearings. Questions come to mind. Were hospitals INCENTIVIZED TO NOT TREAT COVID PATIENTS, BUT RATHER TO SEND THEM HOME? WERE THESE HOSPITALS GIVEN MONEY TO DO THIS, PER CAPITA MONEY? WERE PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES PAYING HOSPITALS AND DOCTORS TO PUSH VAX’S INSTEAD OF TREATING PEOPLE? These questions have to be asked under oath.
Anyway, I’ll leave it at that. I really enjoyed your article, Sarah, and I think you succinctly explained the core of what’s wrong with all this woke bs.
Were hospitals monetarily incentivized? Hell yes.
One to reduce usage in anticipation of a flood of patients. (That’s just risk preparation and not directly a money maker.)
Two, to prevent Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI) when there wasn’t really any known treatment (early in the pandemic.) That sure as heck is a financial risk prevention as Medicare doesn’t cover hospital acquired infections. That becomes the hospital’s fault.
Three, 100% immunization of staff had money attached to it; and everyone was held indemnity free of any complications or side effects.
Four, every diagnosed COVID case (real or not) had money attached to it also.
Hospitals were paid a bonus for every ‘COVID death’ they reported. Even when patients happened to have COVID when they died of something else, or didn’t have COVID at all.
Most of those decisions were made by bureaucrats, not doctors. Some of the bureaucrats might have been doctors at one time, or attended medical school, but a lot knew next to nothing about the subject and still told doctors how to practice medicine. Chloroquine and Ivermectin were all but banned because President Trump suggested trying them. 700,000 cancer patients couldn’t get treatment because cancer surgery and chemotherapy were ‘elective procedures’.
How many people did those vainglorious bureaucrats kill? How badly have they damaged our already dysfunctional health care system? Will we ever know?
———————————
A good Zombie Apocalypse novel is at least as believable as anything we’ve heard out of the ‘Publick Health Authoriteez’ over the last three years.
THIS. Even worse, they used the full force of the FBI and federal government to ensure that social media companies and establishment media would actively stifle debate and censor any dissenting opinions from the horrific policies they imposed.
Yes, the leftists at companies like Twitter may have gladly done so in some cases, but it is clear from what was released so far as to Twitter, that what the Feds wanted was a bridge too far even for them in quite a few cases. Of course Facebook and Google almost certainly gleefully complied with the diktats and no doubt provided massive amounts of data about dissenters that the FBI and other fed agencies were not legally entitled to without a warrant.
These people wrecked the country for the sake of expanding their power and have not only shown no regret, they have shown they are eager and ready to continue doing so.
They killed my cousin who died of brain cancer because no doctors would see her — they thought her early headache/disorientation symptoms were COVID, so she was forbidden to come in for an xray or MRI. For 2 months. While the tumor grew…
My daughter caught it – and then I did, after she was exposed to a friend at a social meeting who tested positive. It would have been just the yearly flu to us, save that it also turned into pneumonia … and we each had to go to the emergency room at BAMC for that. But once the pneumonia was sorted … we got over it, fairly readily. (It’s just that we were tired and sick and coughing after a week, and not getting better!)
Wee Jamie, the Wonder Grandson, was of course exposed at the age of about six months. He had the sniffles and a mild temperature for a day or so.
But… but… Sainted Fauci (peace be upon him) told is children couldn’t get SARS-COVID-19!
“But here’s the thing: In a year, or ten, once those have been done — the trials and the apologies — we’re going to have to forgive and forget.”
The Reader will forgive at the appropriate point, but he will NOT forget. And while Karen like behavior will not be an automatic disqualification for the Reader going forward, it will be a significant consideration. Even those who apparently recover sanity from the current madness will have to be watched. And some institutions are so infected that they will have to be (virtually) burned to the ground and salt sewn in their virtual ashes.
FOR THE RECORD
What they dont tell you is ALL children born in Germany at that time were Hitler Youth. Thats what public school was called and all private school was abolished.
What they don’t tell you is that young Josef Ratzinger wrote his final paper for Hitler Youth soundly debunking Nazi “Race Science”. He had to flee the school and his entire family moved to Rome, which saved his life. The only way to get him out of the country was to seminary. Which was fine with him, he wanted to be a priest anyway.
The Vatican had to hide him when the Nazis invaded Italy because he was still wanted by the Gestapo.
Don’t worry. A lot of Catholics get this wrong, too.
Um…. A) I’m Catholic. B) I knew that. I know that you had to be in Hitler Youth to attend school. I just pointed out in Portugal it was the same.
What exactly??????
That guy’s story must be about somebody else, because it has nothing to do with anything that happened to the Ratzingers.
We don’t need to make stuff up! History in this case was dramatic enough!
I mean, I knew that he wasn’t a Nazi, etc.
“an idiot lib asked for “amnesty” for what they did over the covidiocy.”
You know, you don’t ask for amnesty if you didn’t do anything wrong. I think it’s probably safe to say that more people died, or were injured, by the government response to COVID, than would have died or been injured had they done absolutely nothing.
I’d go further, and say that more people were injured/killed, or had other problems than would have been if they had done nothing and the virus had been as bad as they were trying to make it out to be. Which it wasn’t. By a longshot.
No question.
I read the Atlantic article. The tone was, “Well, maybe we were wrong, but nobody knew, and we were Doing Our Best, and trying really hard, so why don’t all you people forgive and forget, OK?”
In other words, not a shred of contrition nor a hint of repentance.
The love to say they were “Doing Our Best”. They neglect to mention that they also did their damnedist to make it a crime for anyone else to do anything else.
What they really mean is that “we know what is best so shut up serf”, which is why they were so quick to stifle any whiff of disagreement with their party line. When they ask for “amnesty” what they are really asking for is an expression of consent for them to do it all over again.
Every time I hear talk about amnesty, I have flashbacks to the time I was at our regional hospital and I witnessed a desperate woman pleading to the front desk staff to let her go see her dying father. “He is scared and all alone, please, he’s dying. Please”. They called security on her and as the guard was leading her out she said, “Some day you will answer to God for this.”
As the door shut behind her, they looked at each other and started laughing.
It shocks me to this day how callous they were to the real suffering they were causing.
I would like to think I won’t be so callous should they not get the amnesty they feel they deserve. But I’m probably not that good a person.
A lot of people have shown who they really are in the last few years.
What ‘amnesty’ do you think they would extend to you?
What ‘amnesty’ do you think they would extend to the tourists a couple years back?
And finally, do you honestly think ‘amnesty’ and ‘forgiveness’ will be yours to give should they have their way? They’re not asking it from you, they’re giving amnesty to themselves, to salve and numb their own conscienses, and it wont be us that gives it, but Brandon or Fauci or whatever idol of the moment they prop up for the purpose.
If I had witnessed something like that, I would hope I would have had the presence of mind to film every one of those scum, and make sure it became public knowledge one way or another. (As if the media would want to cover it, but…)
That is a perfect example of the types who should never be forgiven.
It never entered my mind to try to film that poor woman in her desperation. I was actually trying very hard to respect her privacy as I waited for my screening to see if they would pass me through to my oncologist. I was crying and praying (on the inside) for her father and her.
I had no idea that the two human scum at the front desk would have reacted like that. In fact, I didn’t even know they were human scum until then. And by the time I saw THAT, it was too late to capture it. It was like that part of the movie when you find out the nice little old ladies who make such delicious cookies have been poisoning people all along and have a basement full of victims on ice. I couldn’t even look them in the eye. But I think about it every time I walk past that desk.
Not to record the victim, to record the Nazis.
Of course to record the Nazis. But I had no idea they were that until the door shut behind the woman and they were laughing at her.
I had no idea because they were making all the right faces and noises to her face.
I have rarely been as shocked as I was that day to suddenly realize anyone I passed by could be One Of Them. Like at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers shocked.
Yeah well, I have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight here, and it’s not easy in the moment to see that things are going weird / creepy… the idiots don’t seem to have learned anything, so I hope there aren’t more um, “opportunities” to highlight bad behavior.
No, you shouldn’t rub your belly with mud. Our “leaders”, “experts” and “journalists” should have to crawl on their bellies and grovel for the public’s forgiveness for their behavior the past few years.
They should, but we don’t live in should-land.
I suspect they’ll get away with it.
Thing is, if they were ever to be held to account, half the county would have to admit they were fools or collaborators, and who would want to face that about themselves.
Especially with the TV tickling their ears.
I’ll admit, I’ve got a good case of the black dog today. I find it hard to believe anyone will ever admit wrongdoing, or even well intentioned error, because to do so, they would have to destroy their sense of self, to admit failure.
I remember the story of someone woman who had survived the concentration camps year later hunting down the lady Nazi who had sent her there to die. She had planned to kill her, but when she got there, she found someone who had wrapped their entire lives in such absolute denial that they had become pathetic. She turned around and left.
That is what I suspect we shall see; a future of these people denying what they did was wrong, or even that they did it at all, until the day they die. And we will simply have to live with that and either bite our tongues, or write them out of our lives for good.
“Overcome evil with good,” said the carpenter’s son…
c4c
I’m capable of the worst against my fellow man. I think any person is capable of the worst. I think it’s a tempting downside of how we’re created. I’ve had too much power at a young age and been ugly with it.
We get to choose to be brave, though, and do the right thing. Confession, repentance, and a desire/commitment to change is all I need in order to forgive completely and walk alongside that person. Can you imagine how hard it would be to come out of that deep a fog, and realize you’d been so wrong your wrongness crept into evil? Chances are you’d shame yourself mercilessly, if you were honest about it. Or tend toward self destruction. If a person sees that light enough to really ask forgiveness and mercy, I’m all over it.
“The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth like a gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.
It is twice blessed. It blesses him that gives and him that takes. It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.” So sayethhhhhh Shakespeare.
I think in order for people to get shocked into seeing that light, we’re going to have to have a serious, Nuremberg-Church Committee-treason is a hanging offense reckoning. I think people need to be physically held to account for their crimes: Fauci et al. The entire FBI. The CDC. Specific people within those agencies. We have the receipts.
We may, given the current glorious wrangling in the House, have enough people representing us to actually make the reckoning happen.
Very true, Kathy.
We are all sinners and in need of mercy.
Must pray harder!!!!
Unceasingly! 😁
The Reaper comes a calling
And before his feet they fall.
No voice his tread is stalling,
Yet one is standing tall.
A gentle hand beside him
A word of calm and still.
A quiet friend to guide him,
Mercy’s iron will.
The iron of repentance
Stills the Reaper’s hand.
The woe in its ascendance
Bows to this demand.
Yet not all evade his dooming,
Those damned and rotted souls,
Who cry with voices looming
And pay denial’s toll.
In chains of guilt he binds them,
To the fate they wove themselves.
A key for each he grinds them,
As they cast themselves to hell.
(As is typical, I published and the writing stopped for a bit. Thanks, this brought it back.)
One of your best.
Thank you.
Beautiful.
Thank you, and thank you for the inspiration.
My pleasure and delight.
Do they know if he was actually a committed KKK member, who believed in their crazy sh*t?
Why shouldn’t they think that.
They believe all the crazy KKK sh*t. Look at what they say constitutes whiteness and is not something to expect from blacks. Tell me they are the “intellectual” heirs of the Klan.
True that.
Some of them are the literal heirs of Southern slave owners. Most of them are their spiritual heirs. The Democrats never forgave us for winning the Civil War, and setting their slaves free.
The second article of faith in my religion is a firm rejection of collective guilt of any kind. That said I’m glad God gets to sort out the tangled mess of humanity, I certainly wouldn’t want the job.
@ Evenstar “a firm rejection of collective guilt of any kind”
That, and a few other doctrines, intrigued me enough to seriously study and then join the Church.
Praising Eve’s decision instead of condemning her was high on the list.
This passage really impressed me, and is actually relevant to the topic of the post.
Doctrine and Covenants 121:
41 No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;
42 By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile—
43 Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy;
44 That he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death.
45 Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly;
Not that any of that is EASY.
That sorting out (IMO) is one reason we have a Millennium before the final wrap.
via PJ Media:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/catherinesalgado/2023/01/06/remember-ashli-babbitt-rosanne-boyland-and-the-jan-6-political-prisoners-n1659175
It appears that Team HarrisBiden is sending Biden out to give another Triumph of the Shrill speech as they continue to try to turn J^ protests into their modern day Reichstag Fire.
They have engaged in widespread censorship and are holding people without bail and without trial in solitary confinement in conditions that are on par with the jails of Cuba’s communist dictatorship. Democrats prove yet again that they seek to create a single party CCP style totalitarian state by their efforts to suppress dissent and persecute dissenters, while protecting those such as BLM, Antifa, Jane’s Revenge, and others, who commit violence against their political opponents
This is either wildly off topic or the root of it, and I’m not sure which.
I think I figured out why people do crazy things and go NPC: it’s the OODA loop.
Been reading How to Think Like a Spy, and the thing he pointed out is Observe is not the first step of the OODA Loop. Decide is. Or specifically, What is the goal the decision needs to support. And that setting of your goal pre-filters every stage of the OODA loop. The loop will only loop on the goal it is set on. If the goal is “don’t embarrass myself by relieving in public” that’s what it’s going to loop on. If the goal is “score kills in enemy fighters” that’s what it’s going to loop on, and its going to do this regardless of whether or not you are in a dogfight when you have to go to the bathroom.
The thing is, setting your goals is a slow thought task, not one that you can generally reset under stress. (And if you don’t explicitly set one, it will be whatever your last one was, generally get to the end of the workday without getting fired for minimal effort).
That’s probably why affirmations seem to work: you start the day by orienting your OODA Loop to a specific goal, that’s not ‘get to the end of the day’. And it is probably why the ‘do trivial thing to make Big Bro Happy’ technique works so well: it gets people to change their loop to ‘make Big Bro Happy’ and once they’re in that mode, it is much easier to make bigger asks. And why most people can sleep through their roommate getting stabbed to death, even though that seems insane in retrospect. And why in battle ship Captains seem to default to their Navy’s character, even when it’s the wrong call, such as the Bizmark running from the disable KGV after sinking the Hood, the two British battleships mixing it up with the IJN fleet and getting sunk when their job was to be the fleet in being, and a battleship fleet containing both Yamato class turning and running from the USN tin cans at Leyte Gulf. All were acting to the core doctrine (KM and IJN: preserve the fleet, RN: No Captain can do much wrong who lays his ship along side the enemy.)
I think that is also why people with strong faiths tend to be less indoctrinatable: they start their day by setting their goal to please their God, so their stress response is to look for actions that meet that criteria. And why people whose main goal is to fit in will do things that horrify them to go along with the crowd.
And once you’re in that wake, it is very hard to get out because of the sunk costs problem and risks of the unknown.
Summary: people will have a very small number of core goals that they have going into any high stress situation, and their actions will generally stay oriented along those goals for the duration of the stressors, even if the goals are wildly inappropriate to the situation. And changing those goals is extremely hard mid-stress. I think it requires something of a high enough priority to cause then to entirely ignore the stressor in question to resolve the conflict.
I think I’ve seen it used in fiction, particularly anime, where a character has a major revelation after either finding, or creating a moment of stillness where they can simply think.
Sorry for the ramble: highly unrefined thought here, but need to get it written down and out there for refinement.
Speaking as a heavy sleeper, I have slept through tons of fire engines right outside my window; as well as the arrival of a SWAT team evacuating my building and setting up an HQ in the apartment next door.
The key is being used to noise meaning nothing. If you are desensitized by someone constantly pounding on doors in your building at all hours of the night, the “police knock” that supposedly can wake the dead is nothing. Same thing if fire engines use your road all the time.
OTOH, a tiny whiff of smoke will wake me from a sound sleep, and the same with a faraway smoke alarm noise. Or a dripping water noise. Because my brain takes those things seriously.
In a house full of college students, unexplained noises usually mean nothing; and sounds of violence mean somebody is playing a video game or watching a movie.
I can see that. I may be merging that response with the girl who apparently saw the guy who did it and froze, then locked her door after he left and didn’t look at anything until morning.
The typical person’s priority is to not cause trouble or embarrassment, so when someone scares the daylights out of them, the natural response is to avoid them and hide until the trouble is gone. Bothering everyone else just to make sure they’re ok isn’t even going to occur to most people.
100% … Until I became a mother with a newborn infant … In a college house with 3 different floors of occupancy? Not a chance. Someone who was in college after being in the military would be different. Me as a young 20-something coed, wouldn’t hear a thing. Not now, but 6 months ago someone coming in the house between 2 AM and 4 AM? Just son coming home from work. Multiple times? He then went out for a run before heading to bed, or is using the hot tub on the deck. Now? He leaves at 5:40-ish
Exactly. I used to be able to sleep through anything, and still sleep through fire engines, etc. because we lived downtown for YEARS.
BUT one step on the stairs and I’m wide awake, from years keeping the kids from going out sleepwalking.
I also slept through the tree falling down, almost next to my apartment on the second floor, during dry Ike. And that was just an afternoon nap.
Yeah, maybe I slept a little too good in my old apartment.
I think you are on to something here.
The people who F-ing Love Science are very invested in having people know how much they love science. They are groupies of famous “Scientists” like Mr. Science himself, Fauci. And Bill Nye the Science Guy, Paul Ehrlich et al.
These are people who rarely know actual science when it rears it’s non-settled head.
But boy, do they follow the lead of their I’m the Science leaders. You see them wearing masks alone in their cars unto this very day. And they can’t help sneering at you unscientific plebes who hate science and want everyone to die, obviously.
Off topic, China has capitulated to the property sector and the central bank will begin lending a l’outrance. This is precisely the opposite of what they should do and is the second major climb down by the CCP in less than a month.
What can’t go on, won’t, at least not forever.
I don’t remember how it was resolved, and whether he was or not, but I do know one thing: it didn’t matter to who he was as a late middle aged man.
It wasn’t.
They threw it out any time they needed an attack, and then got pissy when folks pointed out that he was involuntarily added to the list, actively fought against any kind of involvement, and basically did a lot more resisting than any of the lily-livered farm animals that wanted to attack him did.
@Sarah Hoyt
I am very sorry for the tone. I wasn’t attempting to argue against your article, nor did I mean to imply you said anything about him untrue. I was just spelling out the Ratzinger back story.
I have seen so such stupidity online of people mischaracterizing and getting it wrong I had to post this SOMEWHERE.
I don’t have the spoons for awesome judgment ATM. Thanks for understanding.
On the director of the museum– are they sure it’s him?
Because you can look at the news this week and notice that the PGA sent an invite to golf to the wrong guy who lived in that city with a wife named whatever…they wanted the golfer, they mailed it to the realtor.
For that matter, who made the list? And how much do you trust them?
Right? 100 years later.
Those Karen’s?
For one year:
Must post a public apology on all the social media they frequented. No further interaction with social media during that year.
Must wear a Scarlet K on their clothing, visible at all times.
Home they inhabit must post Scarlet K, visible to all passing it, whether on a sign, window, or door, whether temporary housing or permanent. Landlords or family members may not evict such tenants, if they resided there while Karening.
At the end of that time, the Karen will appear at a public ceremony, and be given acceptance back into the community, provided that they complied with all directives.
Just as a side note, I worked with an actual former Nazi soldier. Maintenance guy at the summer camp I worked at. (Kind of legendary, actually—among other things, he built a barge called Das Boat that is still in use decades later. It’s built along the lines of a dumpster in terms of steel and welding.)
He’d been a Russian POW, he’d been involved with tanks, and that was about the most he ever said on the subject. Well, that and that moving to America was the best decision he ever made in his life.
Forgiveness for the COVID Karens?
Screw that. They hurt kids. They hurt my kid by denying her visitation with her great grandfather from age 10 months to 3 years, with only a few visits possible after that before he deteriorated and passed away.
Short stakes, short drops, auto-de-fe, roped to a cross with legs fully intact, or tethered footfirst lowering into the chippers. I’m agnostic on the means, but it should hurt, humiliate, and be final.
During the first two-thirds of the 1920s, the Klan was very popular in many areas, and was seen as “just another lodge.” In Indiana, nearly a third or so of the men in the state belonged, and the Indiana Klan leader, D.C. Stephenson, was very powerful politically.
It took a series of scandals (look up D.C, Stephenson; he was found guilty of raping and all-but-murdering a young woman, which did NOT comport with Klan ideals at all, and he wasn’t the only one found to be far short of those ideals) to draw the Klan’s fangs. Stephenson’s downfall was the downfall of the Indiana Klan, and a severe body blow to the national organization.
And a lot of Klansmen resigned once it became apparent that the whole thing was mainly a money-spinner for the leadership.