When I was a hardcore, Libertarian Party Libertarian, back in the nineties we had a joke that riffed on the “evil Kirk” shtick of moving out of your parents basement and taking your posters off the wall… It went like this: The Democrats want to be your mommy; the Republicans want to be your dad. We want you to move out of the basement and get a job.
I hadn’t thought of that in years. But this morning, in the Discord group, someone posted a small snippet of a video about how Communism is the politics of toxic femininity. They’re not precisely wrong, but it doesn’t quite fit.
And then it hit me. Yeah, we all know that communists claim fascists were on the right, because Stalin said so. In fact they’re both flavors of socialism and more like each other than not. Which both makes the visceral hatred completely understandable and makes the absolute certainty they’re opposites bizarre.
Yes, sure, some of it is the press and historians who of course wholeheartedly believe Stalin. But that’s not all.
And finally it hit me. You see, I’m now on the other end of that meme. My kids are raised and though they both did live in the basement for a period when they both needed financial help they never really lived in the basement in the full sense (and we had an independent basement apartment in the former house, to be fair, with its own entrance, though they often used the inside one when it was dark, because there were bears in the neighborhood and they were less likely to be up front in the light. Um… real bears. Brown bears to be exact though one looked big enough to be a grizzly.)
However, even now, with them just over and just under thirty, I have to constantly rein in toxic motherhood. Which to be fair is just standard culture in Portugal, so that makes it harder.
There is a fine line between being supportive, and being a family that looks out for each other — the good portion of large Latin families — and being … well, the word for being related to each other in Portuguese is to “belong to” each other. And at least when i was growing up, regardless of what the law said, the police would haul kids who were of age but unmarried back to their families if they “ran away.” And even now, parents have an amount of say over the household and effects and financial decisions of their married children that appalls me. One thing is to give advice, another to go over and redecorate someone else’s house because you disapprove of their taste, for instance. But it is permissible in Portugal and probably, honestly in much of the world. Romeo and Juliet makes more sense in those cultures, because the idea of the kids rebelling and choosing their own partner retains the frisson of shock, even if — even in Portugal — parents haven’t chosen the kids’ spouses for a long time.
So my temptations might be higher than other people’s. And part of the problem is that I really like the kids, and enjoy their company. No. It is a problem because I want to spare them pain and suffering. I don’t want them to make the same mistakes I made. Etc.
Which is fine if what I’m doing is facilitating things, but not if it is browbeating them into complying, or somehow forcing them to do what I think best. (I can’t really do that. They’re both bigger than I. But this is an analogy.) And even on the facilitating things, you have to be careful, because if you make your place/support a feather bed, they’ll leave forever in the basement, never do anything, never live their own lives.
Such style of mothering in the Freud obsessed seventies was called Castrating. This is not wrong, because it is a form of extreme mothering, that accepts no limits and doesn’t understand when the child should by rights separate.
And we all know about the extreme forms of Fatherhood. You have the right of life and death over your children, and you order them about. You expect them to be perfectly regimented and go to extremes of heroic obedience to make you proud.
If you think about it, the two competing forms of socialism — national socialism and international socialism (the second is a lie. It was more Russian national socialism. The only thing international about it is that everyone was supposed to revere and adore mother Russia.) — were actually Toxic Fatherhood and Toxic Motherhood.
Neither of them recognized that adult human individuals could make their own way or choose their path, or even earn their own livelihood. Or at least choose what they worked for and how much they’d be paid. Or what they could work at. Essentially the essence of adulthood is to fend for yourself and make your own decisions. Both forms of socialism deny people the ability to do that. (Even the soft socialism of “social democracy” that Europe indulges in is Toxic Motherhood with a happy face. It’s “But dear, you shouldn’t have knives. They’re nasty. Little boys don’t need to defend themselves. Let mommy do.” But the police still stands by to disarm you. So it’s a distinction without a difference.)
However, they’re different in how they do it, and what they expect you to do.
The supposed international socialism sells itself as being so caring. Mommy adores you. She wants to smother you in kisses. No, no, you must not be better than your little sister. It hurts her feelings. So you shouldn’t walk because she can’t. Is it really so much effort to crawl? See how happy it is when you also crawl.”
It uses weaponized empathy to convince you that no only shouldn’t you struggle away — the government is only doing what’s best for you — but that you owe everyone around you handicapping and even hurting yourself in order to make others happy, or even no embarrassed, or not worried or….
Socialism of the kind that viewed itself on the way to communism is a blanket with happy faces snuggling everyone till it smothers them.
In the end, because humans tend to not do well in perpetual infantilization, it always turns on humans and starts killing them batch lots — yes, you ARE the carbon they want to eliminate — rather than letting them go.
It’s the jealous control of bad mothers. “If I can’t keep you, no one can have you.” and “You’re better off dead than outside, in the cold cruel world without mommy.” and the vicious defense of she bear with cubs when she decides you’re too nasty to be hers, and you’ll hurt her precious babies (how the left behaves to anyone else.)
It is the “love” that fills cemeteries — Canada is now considering euthanasia for the homeless, because after being coddled into uselessness they’re useless. Making them shape up would be cruel, but killing them is humane and now they’ll be safe forever — and wrecks civilization.
It also explains the communists/socialists/greens/democrats love of inefficient forms of energy over safe and clean nuclear. And their hatred of space. They want to push us to an earlier phase where we’d be better controlled, stop us walking away from them, keep us bound in the nursery. Because mommy loves baby soooooo much. Baby would be better off dead than without mommy.
The Fascist/National socialist model, which to fair is slightly more functional than the international socialist model, in the sense that toxic fatherhood allows some form of adulthood, or at least the appearance of it, and which only exists now in former communist societies (the poor things, they have no idea how to grow up) like Russia and China, is … well…. toxic, but in a very masculine way.
The National Socialists want you to toughen up and be a credit to them. They brag about you all the time. Both socialist regimes expect vast amounts of praise of themselves by their captives, but national socialism praises the captives too. Provided they’re perfect, of course. Which means the people better tell the government what it wants to hear or there will be spankings.
There is usually much talk of how tough the people are. Taking away of “soft” things like excess (by the father’s estimate) food or clothing, but not to make you infantile, but to toughen you up. There is much emphasis on being machine-like and perfect. And of course being good fighters in defense of the country/polity. Not yourself, because you really belong to father-state.
You’re allowed to own things, instead of those being distributed so no one feels bad, but you have to use the things the way father government wants or they will take your things and give them to someone more worthy. (So, you really don’t own them, really.)
You’re supposed to perform and do things, but only as Father Government dictates, and in exchange Father government will give recompense for being a good boy (you’re all supposed to be good boys, since women are fairly irrelevant in this. So even if they say they’re for women, and the heroic women who have children, the women are supposed to behave as disciplined, production-and-results obsessed men.
National socialism, Father chooses the objectives, and you’re supposed to fall in line and perform to the best of your ability for the glory and the honor.
The truth though is that both these forms of toxic parenthood are more alike than not, no matter that they think they are absolutely different from each other.
Left untended they both end in mass deaths, to cull out those bad children who aren’t extremely compliant to their parents’ will.
And if they go on long enough they both end in the infantile enslavement of feudalism.
Like the more literal toxic motherhood and toxic fatherhood, they both should be shunned and reproached. Because both are evil and both deny humans the right to be … human and serve their own lawful individual purposes.
Both need to stop and let humanity move out of the basement and off to its destiny.
According To Hoyt 
I’d have you know that I never lived in my parents’ basement… because they didn’t have a basement. 😉
Mind you, I hated the times when “between jobs” I had to live in my parents’ home because it meant that I was a hardship for them.
Which was why once I got disability SS, I started paying more than my share of the household expenses.
But I’m glad that I was living there after Dad’s death and Mom got the Big A.
Interesting picture. So, your basement is Castle Wolfenstein? 😛
It’s the only picture of a basement
ON PIXABAY.
Note that she has not denied the fact that her cellar is Wolfenstein
Can’t be Wolfenstein. No pixelated nazis…
Not anymore, no.
No pixelated splatters either so never were pixelated Nazis. Maybe there’s a trap we haven’t set off yet…
Inspect all the walls for texture variations. 😀
Nope; no stairs in Wolfenstein. The first one with those was Doom.
There’s a relatively new term among academics, teachers, and a few others to describe parents who insist on ensuring that Junior does well: lawnmower parent. Think a helicopter parent, but in a Sherman tank.
You know, like all the “allies” for [whatever group here] that “protect” the poor, oppressed victim. Or professional “advocates” and government bureaucrats who do the same thing, but with more paperwork and (usually) fewer hysterical fits. glares at the state senator in Nebraska
I can haz tank?
I wonder how far you could push each metaphor. When do helicopter parents get a Romanian Christmas?
I thought it was St Pinochet of the Helicopter…..
…of the whirling blades.
St. Augusto of the whirling blades spare us your necessities.
The WHO reminds us why they are necessities.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/05/20/who-blames-enterovirus-for-surge-in-severe-myocarditis-in-uk-infants-ignores-mrna-shots-n1696881
If that’s the WHO, can we try the WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, or even the HOW instead?
The WHO is a sock-puppet for the communist Chinese. It parrots the Party line.
THIS
When their kid finally flips out after not being ready for the real world due to parental smothering.
There’s a good chance that it’ll happen sooner or later
This is one of your all time best posts. As you have been writing about the current societal disfunction in many posts you have chosen many ways to illustrate it. This may be the most apt. The truth bomb of truth bombs.
Can’t put it any better than this.
Concur.
c4c
The concepts of “National Socialism” and “International Socialism” have an interesting history.
There was a guy in France named Jean Jaures.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Jaur%C3%A8s?wprov=sfti1 for more on Jaures.
He was a Socialist. He founded a newspaper called l’Humanite, which still exists today. Jaures united the three existing French Socialist parties into one, giving it significant influence. He strongly advocated for workers. In particular, he thought war was stupid: why should the workers of on country fight the workers of another country for the benefit of the Capitalists? Today we would call this position Anti-War Democrat. In the 1930’s, we would have called it America First Republican. Jaures got an International Socialist Conference of trade union representatives to adopt a resolution that workers would not fight other workers.
Jaures was assassinated on July 31, 1914. War between France and Germany broke out five days later — and the French workers couldn’t wait to kill German workers and vice-versa.
After the war, analysts concluded that Nationalism trumped ideology. Hitler and Mussolini saw that they needed to unite Nationalism and Socialism. The word Nazi is an abbreviation for the German words for National Socialism. Mussolini was a Socialist and a journalist (big surprise) and he called his political philosophy “Fascism”. A “fasces” is a bundle of sticks. One stick is easy to break — but not so a whole bundle. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign slogan, “Stronger Together “ is quite literally a Fascist slogan.
Stalin drew the opposite conclusion: since Nationalism is so strong, we need International Socialism — another name for Communism. All countries must be made Socialist. Through the Comintern, Stalin ordered Communists in the USA during the 1930’s to vote for Democrats and to infiltrate the government. A popular political slogan at the time was, “No enemies on the Left”. Who did this benefit? Everyone further Left.
In Germany, Communist and Nazi thugs were fighting each other in the streets. Stalin reasoned that since Communists were on the Left, he needed to reposition the Nazis as being on the Right (even though they were National Socialists). He ordered the Comintern to spread this “Big Lie” and fools believed it. Even today, you will hear some people say that Fascists are on the Right. The fig leaf for this belief is that some German industrialists, fearful of the Communists, did fund the Nazis, believing they could control them. Foolish!
America really is the “last, best hope of Earth”. It’s up to us to save her. There is no one else.
Sorry, but “International Socialism” existed long before the Russian Communist Revolution.
Plenty of people talked about it and “whined” when the workers were willing to fight for Their Country.
Of course, as you said, Mussolini was a Socialist but discovered that the workers of Italy weren’t interested in “International Socialism” so he founded the “National Socialism” that he named Fascism.
And as Sarah would say, “International Socialism” became an arm of the Russian Communists because (even in minds of true International Socialists) Russia was seen as the “First Success” of International Socialism.
What a bunch of idiots. 😉
Oh, IIRC many German Socialists ran to Russia when the Nazis took power in Germany.
They got what they deserved as Stalin threw them into Camps. 😈
Lady Gaia looks up and sees Joe Biden and the various Democrats (AOC, Feinstein, Fetterman etc). She says, “If that’s the best we’ve got Humanity is SOOOOO screwed…” Sorry I’m in a mood today, not sure why 🙂 .
She looks up, gets at the organ and plays this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkTgYiMDRHY
Revelation 8:7-13 with one blow.
The rock would happen to be named Wormwood?
Don’t know what the astronomers will call it, if they see it coming. No, I don’t think we’re quite so bad as to deserve being completely wiped out. But I’m not not so sure I’m in a safe place, either.
Ok dear hostess that is wonderful. Luckily I had swallowed my coffee and set down my cup before I played that video (prescience or perhaps familiarity with your sense of humor warned me). That it is set to this tune https://hymnary.org/tune/old_hundredth_bourgeois AKA Old Hundredth one of the original hymns from the Geneva Psalter and well know almost instantly to any one who has attended a protestant service in the last say 400 years or so is sheer genius. Because its meter is 8.8.8.8 also known as common meter anything that has 8 syllables per line (preferably with accent on 1,3,5 and 7) is going to work. The organist probably chose that as any organist worth his (or her) salt can crank Old Hundredth out by pure muscle memory so he can pay attention to the words and singing and keep his composure. Bravo to the organist for doing that and Brava to you for finding it…
Best we’ve got, nothing. America is good enough to survive rule by idiots and often has. They closed the asylums, but let the mentally ill gather in Congress, where their delusions can do the least harm – we must, though, remember to ignore their ravings.
I should start a comedy show that’s just C-SPAN with a laugh track.
Note that the bundle of sticks has an axe in the middle.
Despite a few characteristics considered right-wing at the time, Fascism was a movement that grew out of the Left. Its leaders and philosophers were secular-minded, highly progressive intellectuals who were generally disgusted with existing society — especially with its most bourgeois aspects.
Fascism and its evil twin, National Socialism, were firmly rooted in socialist thought. The revival of global capitalism after the Depression of 1873 precipitated a crisis in Marxist theory because those danged “proletariat” just weren’t acting the way they were supposed to. This “Crisis of Marxism” led to a schism where fascists were one of several dissident offshoots and adhered more to Bernstein’s vision of “scientific socialism” and piecemeal reforms within capitalism than to Marxist dogma. This, naturally, led to clashes with the old school Communists but the differences were, with a few exceptions, cosmetic.
More like Catholics and Lutherans.
“Despite a few characteristics considered right-wing”
Opposition to Stalin, obviously.
Totally unrelated. But if you cohabit with felines, this picture is just so ….. feline.
Iz cat indeed! Though in any very hypothetical wedding of mine I’d have R and/or C hanging off the tux coat…
LOL! Peak cat right there.
“I guess we’re getting married right here on the walkway, then.” 😀
No, just cut off that trail. I didn’t really want a wedding dress with a trail. 😉
No just walk dragging the cat. That’s how it works.
There’s a reason why some of those trains have a heavier material under the fancy stuff (and not just for feline transportation).
My sister-cousin’s (she was raised with us, hence more than a sister. Her parents had immigrated) son rode on my train often enough until caught and removed. He was 9? And very skinny, but you know….
He grew into a very nice calm man. Back then we didn’t believe he could.
a most merry and blessing-ful dowry I bring to thee, love;
with bright eyes and sharp claws and a tail!
I saw this somewhere and realized this is the photographer (guy with the fancy ass camera off to the right) trying to set up a pretty picture with the bride. Unless that’s the bride’s family home this is some random cat that shows up, sees the wedding dress train and says “Darn that looks like a first rate place to rest” and plopped itself down. As Ashen noted that is SOOOO cat…
I think the realization that “Left” and “Right” are two different labels for the same scam was very freeing for me.
The scam is: people are stupid, they must be controlled.
Once you accept the lie that people, generally, are too stupid to be allowed to decide things for themselves, it is all over. Nothing left but to move the deck chairs around, trying for the perfect arrangement as the iceberg looms. Sarah has elucidated two of the more common deck chair themes.
Whenever I say that theory of mine aloud, I’m always impressed by the number and variations of “but you can’t just let them do whatever they want!!!!”
That’s the one thing that never gets tried, isn’t it? Leave people alone, let them decide for themselves, and then live or die on the results.
And the reason is rather unsettling. It isn’t that it would be a disaster, or that there would be blood in the streets, or the economy would collapse. It is because there is no profit in it for those who seek to concentrate money and power in their own hands. There is no satisfaction in freedom for those who envy the success of others. There is no way to STEAL from free men.
The last thing those who govern want is for us all to be free. That is a nightmare to them. President to dog catcher, they fear it.
So, in keeping with their greatest fear, that’s what I write stories about. Characters who are free to do precisely as they see fit, constrained by nothing but physics and moral decency.
1. People are too stupid to make their own decisions.
2. The Right People are smart enough to make everybody’s decisions for them.
3. We are The Right People. Because we just are, that’s why! Shut up!
That right there is the whole assumption behind Big Government, censorship, gun control, Wokeism, race hustlers…all those that want to tell us what to do For Our Own Good.
———————————
“The difference between us is, we are smart enough to know that we can’t micromanage the lives of over three hundred million people. You are stupid enough to believe you can.”
Now, can we get word processors, spell checkers, etc. to automatically replace “gun control” with “tyranny enablement” for the sake truth and such? I can dream, can’t I?
I might be just a wee bit annoyed as Tim Jong Walz just signed a Tyranny Enablement bill and is gloating like the enemy to liberty he is.
Yes, they’re doing the same thing here. I’ve stopped writing about it now, the scam is so nakedly obvious that even Normies are objecting. Gun crime has never been a thing in Canada the way it is now, and every time the Liberals do more gun control, the worse the crime gets. Even newspaper reporters are noticing, and they’re literally paid not to notice.
It’s the only script they’ve got:
1. Find some Problem to screech about
2. Do Something about it
3. The Problem gets worse, not better
4. Repeat the same Something, only more and bigger
5. Be Shocked, Shocked! when The Problem gets even worse
Just like the Clinton ‘Assault Weapon’ Ban. Didn’t reduce crime in 10 years. Crime didn’t increase when it expired. But we need to do the same thing again, only Moar and Bigger!
They want to repeat everything that has always failed in the past, and avoid everything that has ever succeeded.
———————————
Never underestimate the stupidity of government. Always expect the government to do the stupidest things you can imagine, and they will rarely let you down. Indeed, from time to time the government will exceed your expectations by doing something unimaginably stupid.
At some point one must admit that stupidity is no longer a sufficient explanation, and allow malice into the conversation.
I submit the current administration of New York State to consideration. They are 1) banning gas stoves and gas furnaces, 2) promoting electric cars and 3) switching power generation to solar and wind. At the same time.
Even a child can see that you’re not going to power all-electric cooking, all-electric heating, AND all-electric cars in New York City with windmills and solar. No one who can stand up, see lightning and hear thunder is that stupid.
It’s malicious.
And they’re doing the same thing in Canada, so it isn’t just NY. It is an international campaign to destroy the infrastructure of nations.
Now add gun control.
Gun control is good! However many shots are in the magazine (or cylinder, for us old farts who like multiple types 🙂 ), all in the “A” zone. Perfect control!
And the normals are being soothed from worry about the availability of electricity with ‘virtual power’. These were hard for the Reader to read.
https://www.energy.gov/lpo/virtual-power-plants
Click to access Real-Reliability-The-Value-of-Virtual-Power_5.3.2023.pdf
I didn’t manage to get past the second page of the text. What an -amazing- tissue of lies.
Same here, and well said. Took me longer than it should have to get there, but eventually I did, and this blog played a big part in it.
You know what really did it for me, was Sarah making fun of the UN’s population numbers.
Almost every Greenie/Commie argument rests on overpopulation. This has been a thing ever since Thomas Malthus. It is baked into the Lefty cake, as they say. The very foundation of everything Communist is population control.
Sarah Hoyt is THE FIRST PERSON I’ve seen who openly derided the UN and the WHO on their population numbers. The very first one who laughed at my concerns about overpopulation and said something like: “The lying liars lied about literally everything else from gun control to Covid… but not population? Sure.”
It was then that the scales fell from my eyes, and the horseshit I’ve been smelling my whole life became clear. That was a few years ago.
And then they locked us down for two years because of a head cold, proving it beyond any shadow of doubt. They exceeded Hanlon’s Razor by a wide margin.
Its not stupidity. Its MALICE.
But… I thought it was obvious and was starting to get annoyed no one else said it. I thought everyone else saw it and inexplicably didn’t think it worth countering the lefty narrative.
As a small child I learned to eat all my vegetables because of the starving children in India. They can’t eat and you can, so don’t waste it. Very Scottish, very Canadian.
Why are the kids starving in India? [MAHATMA GANDHI AND COMMUNISM!!!] Ahem. Because of overpopulation, little Phantom. The message was delivered at school, at Sunday school, on TV, in books, everywhere. I drank it with milk in my sippy cup in my high chair. UNICEF was saving the world from overpopulation. Stupid foreigners having too many children.
Fast forward to whenever you said that and I read it, mid-2010s somewhere, it quite literally NEVER occurred to me that they were just lying.
Not until Sarah Hoyt pointed out that they lie about everything, all the time. Climate change, lie. Gun control, lie. Peak oil, lie. Peace In Our Time, lie. Electric cars, lie. Windmills, lie.
But overpopulation is real?
And I will tell you what, Sarah, I -still- see outrage and shrieking on Lefty SF blogs about that. To this day. “That Sarah Hoyt is so toxic, she even hates UNICEF!” Score.
So, if ever it seems like you’re just screaming into the void, and you can’t even get an echo off the far wall, that is an illusion.
Thanks for saying what I haven’t, although everything you wrote (except “Canadian”) applies to me as well. “Trust us; we’re from the government!” Not a chance these days. ANY government.
LOL. Idiots. The truth isn’t toxic. The truth is just is. I’m all for helping kids. At one time I wanted to be an interpreter with UNICEF. But you don’t help kids by killing them and sterilizing their parents. And until UNICEF is killing kakistocratic tyrants in batch lots the children will suffer.
Also, I wouldn’t trust anything related to the UN to shoot a lame rat in a barrel. They’d shoot the healthy rat instead.
When I was growing up, the line I heard from my Grandmother regarding those veggies I didn’t want to eat was “Think of the starving Armenians!” That never made sense to me. Quite aside from the natural “so ship it to them!” response… Starving Armenians? Really?
It took until I was in High School for me to realize that the Armenians really had been starving… in the aftermath of the 1st World War. When my Grandmother was in her late teens/early 20s. Insert face-palm here…
The Armenians weren’t starving; they were being starved, by the Turks. Might be where Stalin got the idea for the Holodomor a few years later.
THIS. Most starvation we know of in modern, documented history is done by governments.
For me it was “starving Chinese children”. The “ship it to them” didn’t go over well, not at all.
Children in Biafra for me. specifically beans.
“At least they’re spared the horrors of bean salad” said I, which resulted in my missing the midsummer fire because I was consigned to the table till the bean salad was consumed. it never was, though I rendered it inedible by falling asleep on it and getting it all over my hair.
It REALLY is the most repulsive thing. Imagine still-hard-ish boiled beans soaked in vinaigrette, with chopped onion and parsley. Years later my kids were served it, and from their mouths there came “what abomination is this?” My mom thinks I told them to say that.
3-Bean Salad
Creamed Corn
Stewed Tomatoes & Bread
Liver or Heart
Lima Beans
I am sure I can come up with more (does not count what TITB are trying to get us to choke down). Just these are things that come under “Have not eaten in weeks. I might choke down.”
A sufficiently high level of stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
The reported UN population numbers don’t support the overpopulation narrative and haven’t for years. For that matter, it’s not as though China kept the one child policy a secret, nor was the wholesale slaughter of female infants in India a secret.
That leaves Africa, and anyone who believes any statistical information coming out of Africa is an idiot, particularly as so much of the aid is determined by reported population.
I recall some discussion here about water use studies, and transportation studies, which estimated African populations at a fraction of the official numbers.
Anybody who believes statistics coming out of China is an idiot, and India is not much better. Numbers are arrived at for political considerations and everyone who lives there knows it.
THIS.
Heck, or China (they’re still inflating their population.) Or anywhere else. Even the US invents people.
School districts sure do. What ever became of that 10-15% of public students that disappeared after 2020? Not the ones that are known to have shifted to home school or private school, but the cohort that seem only to have existed on paper. I notice no one is asking the big districts about the numbers drop and where the money went. innocent kitty look
I’ve wondered about our underclass, too. we might never figure out how many there were now, that the border is wholly down. (And that too will serve to inflate the numbers) but I know their lifespans are short, brutish and nasty, yet we sure pay for them for a long time and–
“You can feed a starving African child for $12.00 a month!”
You probably could, except that $8.00 of it will consumed by the charity for
the exorbitant salaries of the charity’s bigwigsadministrative expenses, and the remaining $4.00 will be stolen by the warlords that were starving the child in the first place.It surely is a wonderment how the heads of all those ‘non-profit organizations’ get so rich…
The original CARE packages to Europe started in 1946. They contained 30 pounds of food and cost $15 (about $244 in 2023 money).
Carbohydrate calories are cheap — potatoes, rice, etc. but you also need protein —,and protein is costly. So later on, they found a very interesting way to get cheap protein — but the method they used is not legal to use to feed Americans. When you fish for cod or tuna or whatever, you also get what is called “bycatch” — other fish species you didn’t want. The CARE folks would take the inexpensive bycatch — a waste product after all — and steam the whole fish, guts and all, then dehydrate it to a high quality protein powder. Problem solved! But American law, as I understand it, says you have to gut the fish before you can sell it to Americans. Pity.
“Characters who are free to do precisely as they see fit, constrained by nothing but physics and moral decency…”
And that’s a remarkably “out of the box” thing, too. Not only one way your books are really good (at least the one I’ve got my hands on so far); but because the thing described is far less… constrained, let’s keep on saying, than our particular timeline-history and present circumstances might ever tend to lead us to believe. Likely to lead to some very unexpected (for us, and our prejudices) results.
In that socialist-occupied-Earth-invades-Mars story I’m (still) working on, the mayor of a big, important town on Mars (ironically of Russian ancestry) is trying the explain to a World State military officer (ironically of American origin) how Martians are just socially different from how he thinks they are, and will react differently from how he thinks they will (or must). She points to one of the windows of her office, which is thick (somewhat pressure-proof), clear glass.
It’s “waterfall glass” — made by taking thousands of tons of sand (and so forth, e.g. soda and lime), dropping it into midair into a large-ish evacuated cavern, and then “flashing” it with the radiant heat from what we’d call an H-bomb. Then you let it fall to the “floor” where there’s a fairly typical refractory-lined glass pit, for it to finish mixing etc. But the reason you use fusion heat is that it’s cheap and easy (‘burns’ mostly liquid heavy hydrogen, like our first big bomb from the early 1950s; the fission ‘match’ to ‘light’ it could be shared by multiple H-bombs, and its ‘unburned’ uranium or neptunium could even be recycled if you’re thrifty, see “fluoride volatility” research today), as compared to solar or electrical or (our familiar kind of) nuclear.
There are a dozen ways that wouldn’t work here or now or on that fictional Earth, like the NIMBYs or BANANAs (Not in My Backyard, Ban Anything Near Anyone Nearly Anywhere), like all our hangups about nuclear “weapons” (these are… not deliverable, as they used to say; the actual Russians joked that the Ivy Mike device, mentioned above, was a “thermonuclear installation” not a “thermonuclear warhead” — but who cares, it’s industrial not military on Mars anyway, plenty of airless desert to go around). And so on and on.
But Mars is not Earth, and our usual rules do not apply. There, it’s just natural and normal.
One detail, from one fictional future history, not even using any alternate-timeline stuff.
It’s actually hard for me to wrap my mind around how much that’s true; and I’m the guy who (allegedly!) is “making all this stuff up” in the first place…
Thanks for the vote of confidence. ~:D Working on #2 in the series, cover progresses!
The irony is, there are multitudes of ways of stealing from free people.
Eve Online is a superb example of unfettered capitalism. And yes people lose their shirts. And massive heists get pulled off, corporations go under, piracy (can be) rampant. And yet people survive & thrive in a fully pvp environment.
And through it all the miners & individuals keep building and you end up with trillion ISK organisations that work together to reach massive goals.
Freedom is the ONLY answer.
There are two ways to organize a society. The first is to recognize that your labor, and the compensation you receive for it, are yours by right, to do with as you choose.
The other is to pretend that somebody else has the right to take your money, your property, and by extension your labor, and use them for their own purposes. It matters not whether that ‘somebody else’ is the State, or the Proletariat; nor how ‘noble’ they claim their purposes to be; once the principle is established that somebody else has the right to take what you have earned from you by force, you have been reduced to slavery.
———————————
Nobody has so little that some asshole doesn’t want to take it. And the government is full of assholes.
Well, this is one of the reasons some of us live back in the hills and hollers, where those who know better than we do just what’s good for us have the devil’s own trouble finding us. Myself, I believe almost none of what I hear or read these days, and (honestly) only about half of what I say…
But in life generally, I aim to misbehave. By their “standards,” at least…
Our “Betters” are all city folk. They really detest the countryside, and focus their attention on city things.
Which is why I live in the sticks.
Ain’t got no betters, ‘n’ damned few equals…
Yep, city life for them; noe of that rural stuff. Twhen SHTF they should do well on a diet of pigeon and squirrel, before they turn to each other.
Aarggh. “none” and “When”.
Stupid fingers…
Not fond of pigeon, but squirrel’s fine. Just hard to raise’em in sufficient numbers to make a reliable food source for more than a family. As for city-folk, I doubt they’d even manage to catch one–and just how many of them have the shotguns you need to harvest them properly? (Frankly, I think most country folk don’t either–a 20 guage is too light to be sure to put them down every time, and a 12 guage leaves pretty much nothing edible. A 16 guage is just the thing, but you just don’t see those all that much anymore.)
Squirrel’s great; unique flavor. I always used a Marlin 39A; my grandfather (it was his .22, now mine) used a 12 gauge. No excessive damage (the .22 did more if I didn’t get a head shot), but his shots were usually at 25-30 yards, using #5 shot. Had to pick out shot, just like with quail, dove, pheasant and grouse (20 or 12, depending on the game and season), but that wasn’t a problem. 🙂
Farm (barn) pigeon tastes pretty much like dove; dunno about city “flying rats”. And you’re right; most city dwellers would starve. Or, as noted, turn to “other meat sources”. Blecch…
You’re probably right about the #5 shot, I was thinking 00-buck. My uncle used to bring home a fair amount of squirrel, rabbit, pheasant and grouse during the fall/winter with a 16 gauge, which was just what I was most familiar with.
I never shot a 16; no one I knew had or used one. Our usual choices were 12 ga for pheasant and 20 for the others; pheasant are tough to kill. #8 or 9 shot for dove, 7-1/2 for quail and woodcock, 6 (or 5, late season) for pheasant and 7-1/2 or 6 for grouse. Oh, and 12 ga with #4 or #2 (birdshot, not buck) for spring turkey.
Aaarrrgh, #00 buckshot, the most useless round on the planet. Not good for small game, not good for big game, not good for self-defense. Nine 54-grain pellets that can kill most anything they hit up to 75 yards away, but are unlikely to hit what you’re aiming at beyond 10 yards. They punch right through your typical interior wall.
We had to qualify on the 12-gauge shotgun with silhouette targets. Saw quite a few with pellet holes scattered all around the target, but no hits, at 25 yards.
Use smaller shot, or slugs.
Yeah… Buckshot effectiveness, especially with 00 and 000, is in the shotgun barrel. There are a number of test videos on the Tube of U, showing results at ranges up to 60 or 75 yards, using proper chokes, with all pellets in the “hit zones” of a standard silhouette target at 25 yards. Personally, I prefer #4 Buck for defense purposes (less penetration through walls) through a cylinder or improved cylinder choke; patterns with all hits in a 30″ circle at 25 yards are common. The same choke works best for Foster slugs; I prefer a rifled barrel for saboted slugs – 2-3″ groups at 100 yards.
As always, YMMV. But choke is critiical for buckshot and slugs.
That basically describes the issue of California in a nutshell. California is an amazing state agriculturally, growing all the premium foods that aren’t grown elsewhere. Yet almost every law or restriction or water policy is written and pushed by people who have never lived further rural than a historic suburb (which is basically “urb” by now) and who have no freaking clue that complaining about how farmers need water is rank stupidity.
Oh, but letting Nestle bottle the water on a decades-expired lease at a fraction of the price everybody else pays is fine. Or hey, fracking—which is water-intensive and threatens aquifers. (I mean, fracking in North Dakota or Wyoming? Compensate your surface farmers and go for it. Fracking in Southern California, historically water thieves, and threatening their aquifer? I’d ask “how stupid are they?” but I wouldn’t like the answer.)
Anyway. If you ever hear about “the Delta tunnel project,” note that no large-scale infrastructure process has ever not tried to make money back by large-scale use. The Delta locals are rightly worried about salinification of their fields because of negative pressure. “But,” claims the gub, “Our infrastructure for transferring water is inefficient and degrading.”
Yeah. Maybe you should make more desalination projects, yeah? Not just shut those down because the /redacted/ twits protest it on flimsy grounds.
Yeah, like maybe use some of the waste heat from the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to desalinate water, instead of just dumping it all into the ocean.
Fracking takes a fraction of the amount of water it used to.
You’ve been lied to again.
I moved out because I was lucky enough to get a place with a Crazy Roommate…who didn’t bring home rough trade, didn’t steal stuff, paid half of her rent, and I was able to get in before rents in the SF Bay Area went insane. When I lost the place in 2016…I had to move home because I couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.
I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t have family that wouldn’t let me live with them.
C4C worthy
Toxic fatherhood has the right to rule you because you are too lazy, stupid, and selfish to rule yourself. Father is always right. Even if he isn’t consistent. Especially if he isn’t consistent. If you don’t do what Father wants, (never mind what he told you or didn’t tell you), you must be punished. If Father wants your an opinion, it better be one he gave you first. You don’t dare leave Father because if he wasn’t protecting and providing for you, it would be so much worse.
It left me with deep and unfriendly feelings toward toxically paternalistic government in all its many forms and at all levels from abusive parent and the intrusive HOA on up.
International Socialism made a serious effort to export itself. but really only succeeded in infiltrating the edumacated intelligentsia of Britain, France, Germany, and to a lesser extent, the US. And those parts of the world that had bad experience with European Colonialism (which was slightly less toxically paternalistic)
And there’s no mistake too trivial to avoid maximum punishment from (Step)Father. I’ve been there and I wonder if that’s part of where my antipathy towards overbearing authority comes from now that you mention it, even if I’m no good at resisting it.
When punishment is doled out capriciously or according temper, mood, or whim, it tends to be irregular and anything but just. I’m more familiar with the style of inflicting the maximum penalty, not for for something you did, but something you failed to do. (If you both demand and punish initiative, you’re likely to get paralysis…) I haven’t seen a good example of ‘lawful’ family discipline up close, but I’ve heard rumors that it exists.
I got practice and training in resistance methods from a (younger) brother who attempted to be just as overbearing as Father. Much to his frustration, he didn’t have the size, experience, or authority to make his dictates stick…
Neither do I as you might expect and it’s a big part why cats are one of the few things I don’t mind taking responsibility for. Even if that means keeping C from being a brat around the computer because he wants attention!
When I was younger and was distressed by the constant quarreling among my sibs, I was taught Matt 5:9 “Blessed are the peacemakers”, and so I set out to become one. It didn’t work, partly because I didn’t have a good model and made every mistake in the book and likely several new ones. One thing I realized was that I had to get my own temper under control and develop shields. (One of the hardest things I’ve ever done, possibly because I live somewhere on the autistic spectrum. I still occasionally get ambushed. It’s just as important with the junior barbarians called children as it is with nosy and interfering neighbors and random internet trolls. ) The other was that I not only couldn’t arm twist people into agreeing with me, but I shouldn’t try. When I had my own go at fatherhood. I tried my level best to be less toxically overbearing than I endured. “What was hateful to you, do not to your children”. Result? I can at least speak to my older son a lot more comfortably than I ever could to my father. (Younger son doesn’t speak at all).
Forget, Hell.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/05/20/who-blames-enterovirus-for-surge-in-severe-myocarditis-in-uk-infants-ignores-mrna-shots-n1696881
Heads on pikes. I want to be there when that day comes.
Nah. Butts on stakes. #TeamVladTepes
Kate? why the new name?
#Fauci_at_Nuremberg_2024 ?
#No_Amnesty_for_Genocide ?
Someone I read regularly (the founder of Uncover DC) has taken to saying that the Warped Speed Clot Shot campaign (maybe along with its whole accompanying Covidiocy) is simply the biggest crime against humanity, ever. Not ironically, nor facetiously.
Would not/I> want the thankless job of even trying to counter-debate that one. Especially with the way the (actual) evidence keeps on coming out, keeps on piling up…
Or, to misquote a certain old-timey Russian schoolteacher (and space visionary):
“The ‘basement’ is the cradle of human society, but one ought not live in the cradle forever.”
(His actual quote is the moderately famous “This planet is the cradle of the mind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever” — though translations are multiple and debated, this does seem to be one of the best. Search on ‘Konstantin Tsiolkovsky’ or ‘cradle of reason’… )
And yes, that does mean that the Communists and Fascists of the left, and assorted others like monarchists and tribalists (of the below? not left-right friendly, them) especially from the past, do want to keep all humanity in their cradle; in both senses above, maybe others too.
(For more on how both “sides” are all leftists together, see any number of Dinesh D’Souza’s books, with more research than I even want to try to summarize by category.)
“The ‘basement’ is the cradle of human society, but one ought not live in the cradle forever.”
Once upon a time, I was in an online discussion with a well-known science fiction author regarding the purpose of planets in mankind’s future. I offered the opinion that: If a planet can be said to have any purpose, it is to provide a place for the evolution of an intelligent, technophilic species which can develop their technology to where they will not need planets any more.
And they even reflected it in their terms for the home country: “Fatherland”, vs “Motherland”.
I have to say I have my doubts about this category of fascism/national socialism.
The thing that the Nazis are famous for is mass murder. People like to say “genocide,” but I think that’s overspecific in an ideologically tendentious way; it allows them to treat the Nazis as essentially different from other mass murderers whose evil they prefer not to acknowledge.
But of the regimes that are commonly called “fascist”—Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, perhaps Brazil—I can’t think of any that killed people in the vast numbers that Hitler’s régime achieve, or at a comparably high percentage of their often smaller populations. One of these things is not like the others.
In fact, the association of Nazism with fascism appears to be partly a reflection of Hitler’s alliance with Mussolini. But that no more makes them ideologically identical than it makes either ideologically identical to Japan’s militaristic Shinto (or Churchill’s wartime central planning to Stalinism).
There is one case of “fascism” leading to mass murder: Germany. There are at least three outstanding cases of “socialism” leading to mass murder: Russia (at least twice), China (in several waves), and Cambodia. So it seems as if in an important way Germany is more like Russia, or China, or Cambodia, than it is like any of the other “fascist” systems. Hannah Arendt gave us a word for those similarities: “totalitarianism.”
Fascism, even using the word to include all those other regimes, is more a routine case of authoritarianism. It’s evil, but its evil has been exaggerated by taking Nazism as the prototype of fascism, rather than as being an anomaly. Rather as the socialism of the Labour Party is evil, but not on the monstrous scale of Lenin or Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot. And yet the same people who will denounce “fascism” as leading to mass murder (with only one case in view) will insist that “socialism” has nothing to do with the mass murder of Communism (despite having three cases to point to). Which I suppose is the point.
There once was a communist, Lenin,
Who did two or three million men in.
That’s a lot to have done in,
But where he did one in,
His follower, Stalin, did ten in.
(Robert Conquest, I believe)
I split Nazism apart from the Fascists and Fascist-inclined governments. All are statist, all share certain inclinations toward imagery and culture, all are authoritarian (Fascism proper tried to be totalitarian but also quasi-pro-Catholic. Um… Anyway), and nationalist to an extent.
Nazism, because of WWII and the Holocaust, occupies a different mental and cultural space for later generations, so putting it in a different column seems appropriate. N.B., I’m talking as a historian, NOT as a philosopher of government. Once you get into pure ideology and philosophies of ruling, the overlaps are greater.
I think the Nazis occupy a different headspace mostly because their atrocities were documented, right after the fall of hitler, with photos and videos. We don’t have that, I don’t think, for the Russian, Chinese, etc, atrocities.
I always like to remind admirers of Socialism that Adolf was the first out the gate with a serious environmental protection campaign, gun control and anti-smoking laws. Also that the US 1968 gun control act was plagiarized from Adolph’s 1938 gun control act. Word for word, in spots.
Nazism was a type of fascism, but it also added in a strongly explicit racial component And there were explicit calls to wipe out certain ethnic groups, such as Jews and Slavs. The anti-Semitism is well-known. But Hitler’s original plan for Ukraine would have effectively been a second Holomdor, and it was that by design. Hitler wanted the Slavs in Ukraine dead en masse so that the land could be resettled by Germans.
Japan’s brand of government might have gotten there eventually if the Allies hadn’t put a stop to it. The Japanese system was utterly racist. And even though the Japanese claimed to be fighting on behalf of all Asians, their contempt for the other Asian ethnicities led them to commit terrible atrocities. The Japanese didn’t engage in industrial-scale extermination like the Germans did. But I think they would have gotten there before long.
On one hand, yes. But on the other hand, there were significant differences between the National Socialist régime with its death camps and Italy, Spain, Argentina, and so on, just as there were between Stalin or Pol Pot and such socialist countries as Uruguay or New Zealand.
It seems to me that, if anything, mass extermination is more characteristic of socialism (at least three cases) than of fascism (only one case).
As for Japan, I’m not sure that its authoritarian government’s historical or ideological origins had any connection to those of any fascist society. Does it improve our understanding of what happened in Japan to view it through a fascist lens? I’m not sure that there are any similarities that aren’t just as well captured by the broader label “statist.”
I think you mean “communist”, and not “socialist”.
The difference is one of degree, and the transition line is nebulous.
In this case, the true issue was my misunderstanding of the point being made.
😅
What I’m trying to say is that on one hand, if you distinguish, socialism is to communism as fascism is to Nazism: socialism and fascism are less monstrous evils. On the other hand, if you include Nazism in fascism, it’s just as logical to include communism in socialism. But in that latter case, there is only one example of a fascist régime committing genocide within its own country, but there are at least three examples of socialist régimes doing so, so socialism has a worse record as far as intentional mass murder is concerned.
Or if you distinguish communism from socialism, then it’s just as logical to distinguish Nazism from fascism, and then the Nazi death camps don’t count when you assess the consequences of fascism.
The Reader resolves this by not distinguishing. They are all enemies of human freedom. Splitting hairs plays into their hands.
Except that fascism is a form of socialism, as is communism.
Nazism incorporates fascism for its economic and governance elements. The difference between the two is that nazism heavily incorporates eugenics (which includes the racial stuff), while fascism largely ignores it. Nazism, in essence, is “fascism + eugenics”.
Common garden variety fascism usually does its killing in war. The toxic father requires you be the best and bravest for honor and glory. Note this still leaves out Spain and Portugal which were too broke and exhausted for more wars. Otoh many died of sheer grinding poverty. Not because of nationalism but because socialism always kills, whether fast or slow.
Is it still okay to miss long-pass Grandmother ______’s Lemon Meringue Pie?
We never had a basement; but I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it anyway… I was the first to not be satisfied with a job in town and moved halfway across the country…
Children today are coddled MUCH more than we ever were. We were kicked out of the nest, both physically and metaphorically after graduating HS. “It’s time to start YOUR own life. Either college (if you can get a scholarship, or work), join the workforce, or the military, but you’re not living here anymore. There might have been helicopter parents, but we never saw any. Of course, most of our male parents were war vets, and had no patience with kids lollygagging around the house after graduation.
Sure there are some that are coddled. But historically multi-generational sharing the same Ranch, Farm, Homestead, even house in a town, was common. Less common the last 100 years, or less. Due to cost of rents and housing, that is returning. It can only work if the elder generation recognize that the next generation has been raised, are now (if less experienced) equals, can make their own choices, and mistakes. At that point is the next generation living with the older generation, or the older generation living with the next generation? Or it could be just roommates that each party knows that the other party will contribute without grief. While the older generation can usually afford to not have a roommate, the younger generation generally cannot. Anyone who ever has had to deal with flaky roommates knows that financial consequences. The extended social context is determined on how the living situation is viewed. I know of any number of non-married, and a few married with children, living in their childhood homes with grandparents. ALL of the younger generation are working. Sometimes the grandparents are daycare for their grandchildren. Sometimes they are not. Not one of these youngsters were shielded by helicopter parents.
precisely. Where I come from four generations in one house was normal till the 70s
This! My family history is rife with examples of people living in multi-generational households, and it wasn’t uncommon at all up until the 1950s. The anomaly is actually young people expected to ‘leave the nest’. That didn’t mean they didn’t contribute to the household.
Now, I do live at home with my aging parents. While I may not contribute monetarily to the household, I strive not to be a drain on their resources. I take care of my own expenses and I do a decent amount of the cooking, cleaning, and gardening/preserving (since my parents have dietary restrictions, it’s a necessity). Lately, I’ve also become the house-sitter when they go off on adventures. Neither of my parents would allow me to stay if I were just sitting on my butt all day doing nothing to contribute; they’re both from farm families, believe in hard work, and have little patience with freeloaders.
I know. I hedged when I wrote “100 years or less”.
Yes, but in the long run I’m not sure that “long coddling” has a bad effect. It was our parents’ generation, starting work, mostly in their very early teens who were all so hog fired for socialism and totalitarian regimes. So–
Yes, that was Dad’s (8th Airforce–in Okinawa) viewpoint. If college, summers could be spent at home ($OLDEST_BROTHER claimed the basement because his summer job was grave shift), but otherwise, 18 and out.
Dad passed my freshman year, and I spent summers living with Mom, and later on Grandma moved in. One summer, $OLDER_BROTHER moved in for a while because reasons. (Protip: servant’s quarters without a separate entrance as an apartment is awkward.)
I took me four tries to move out from under my parent’s roof.
They want to tyrannically parent us from cradle to (an earlier) grave.
Good analogy.
Point of order, they don’t end in feudalism, but pseudo-feudalism.
Feudalism works on mutual, if unbalanced, obligations. These ersatz parents are incapable of fulfilling obligations to other.
As with everything else, their “feudalism” is a narcissist caricature of the real thing.
True. In end stage feudalism. which led to la revolution, when the nobles were more useless than wet, jalapeno spiked toilet paper.
Point of order, they don’t end in feudalism, but pseudo-feudalism.
Feudalism works on mutual, if unbalanced, obligations. These ersatz parents are incapable of fulfilling obligations to other.
As with everything else, their “feudalism” is a narcissist caricature of the real thing.
I find it amazing that most of those who scream the loudest for socialism are the guilt ridden ignored children of the rich capitalists. Dear rich capitalist children nothing is stopping you from giving all your money to the government and living in a ghetto. If you won’t live like you talk, than shut the F*** Up.
That’s what some of the Victorian reformers actually did. They moved into the slums, actually learned what life there was like, and worked within the culture to help people get themselves out. But that takes work, and is not as fun as loudly proclaiming one’s Virtue and Advocacy and being lauded for Sacrifice that isn’t really a sacrifice.
I heard a gal today who belongs to a group that “meets people where they are.” It’s not fun, it’s not glamorous, it’s sort of dangerous at times, and she’ll never get to fly in her own jet to a meeting to discuss Saving the Planet™. Instead she’d down in the streets and alleys, letting people know that if they want to get out, or if they need access to help getting out, she and her folks are ready and have the tools.
And Bernie Sanders the Communist has four houses and one in of them is in Florida. His wife and him have never worked in the private sector and yet are millionaires. Funny how they keep their money, but if you point it out to the little democrats/socialists/commie punks, they either ignore you or call you names. I generally laugh at them. Seriously some of them actually wonder why we don’t agree with them?
Bravo to that gracious woman and her folks. She is putting into action one of the counsels of LDS President Ezra Taft Benson: “The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1985, 5; or Ensign, Nov. 1985, 6).
Book recommendation: When Helping Hurts.
A Christian writing about all the ways charity can be done poorly, paternalistically, and with no thought to the spiritual condition of people on either side.
Your ‘take the slum out of the man’ comment brought it to my mind.
There’s an Oingo Boingo song, “Capitalism”, that has the best chorus on this topic:
The song title on that album cover seems especially appropriate for today, unfortunately…
I am somehow reminded of the greatest movie trailer of all time:
“Get out of the booth, Jack.”
“No, I like it here!”
The Phantom says: May 21, 2023 at 11:44 am (and others)
You know what really did it for me, was Sarah making fun of the UN’s population numbers.
Instapundit delves into scifi ” in the Paul Ehrlich “Population Bomb” days of the 1970s, sexy robots that limit human reproduction might have seemed a blessing, but we are now facing a global population bust, as predicted by Philip Longman in Foreign Affairs almost 20 years ago. Shrinking populations, and inverted age pyramids, turn out not to be a blessing.”
https://instapundit.substack.com/p/ai-and-the-screwfly-succession
Another Glenn Reynolds essay, very much on topic.
https://instapundit.substack.com/p/the-age-barrier-and-its-costs
” If you look around our society, many of our more dysfunctional institutions are sorted by age: Homes for the elderly, public schools, even colleges. This age-segregation is artificial, something that never happened naturally in human society and barely happened at all until fairly recently in historical terms. Age segregation separates people from society, perhaps stigmatizes them, and, I think, harms society too.
It’s probably worst for teens. Putting kids together and sorting by age also created that dysfunctional modern creature, the “teenager.” Once, teen-agers weren’t so much a demographic as adults in training. They worked, did farm chores, watched children, and generally functioned in the real world. They got status and recognition for doing these things well, and they got shame and disapproval for doing them badly.”
RTWT – Instapundit never disappoints.
yep.