There are modes of failure for control of human society that most of us don’t think of. We don’t think of them because they’re rarely if ever shown in movies, and certainly not recently.
Let me explain: I’ve been cycling very fast between thinking swallowing the blackpill is a lack of information; and thinking the blackpilled aren’t blackpilled enough. And the sad thing? Both are right. It’s just which one I think is stronger that day.
Oh, I stand by “We’ll win this.” In fact we’ve already won this. We’ve turned the corner. It’s just the amount of destruction laying between now and when we obviously won is immense.
Before you rush off to learn hand sewing, or mining or whatever: I don’t think we’ll lose tech, no. Or not to 19th century level. Or even mid-twentieth. Lack of resources might make things slightly cranky and slow for a while and might take us to the level of… Europe in providing creature comforts and care and luxuries to our people. But that’s about it.
It’s more that we’re going to lose people. We’re going to lose trust which is needed for prosperity. We’re going to lose institutions we actually need (most of those are extremely corrupted right now, but still sort of functioning. Soon they won’t.) And we’re going to lose a generation or two. Oh, not in the sense they’ll die. Honestly, most of them will never be born. It’s not even abortion. It’s that most of a generation is extremely gun shy about even marrying. Part is economics. Part is the extreme rifts the illusions of the left have created between male and female. And we’re going to lose people to grinding poverty and unhappiness, both because alone/isolated and because well…. they’re going to have to work very hard to rebuild. And hence we’ll lose LIVES that could have been great, but never get a chance.
Oh, we’ll also lose people to violence, to the left’s bizarre idea of compassion, to the left’s bizarre idea of immigration, to despair, to lack of meds…. To a lot of things.
Since ultimately individual humans are the only true wealth for the world, (because humans can create wealth) that one is going to hurt badly.
But the failure mode that is destroying the left is also the reason the blackpillers take them by the fistfull. And the reason the fall is going to hurt like a mother.
Look, how many times have you heard one nominally on our side (nominally, because fear and despondency aids the enemy. IOW think, for the love of Bob!) say something like “They control the schools, and they control the media, and they control the arts and history. Game over, man, game over.”
I can adduce various reasons it’s not game over, starting with “They’ve done that for almost a century, and almost all of come out of school leftist, or at least unwilling to admit we have doubts about the received wisdom, and then we…. change.
But we still don’t control the means of mass communication, and most people still think what they hear on TV is “the truth” so, of course, they assume the left is still gaining. Even when they resort to portraying my generation as my grandmother’s to claim they’re gaining adherents. (Bah.)
However, what they fail to realize is how much the left is impaired by controlling all the means of narrative. And yes, I do mean impaired. Particularly in these days when they really aren’t the ONLY means of narrative, and more and more people are escaping the thrall of said narrative, sideways, and by way of blogs, or way of mouth, or random confronting the truth with their own eyes.
At this point the left — true credulous left — is confined to that number of people who are either absurdly respecting of authority — they need to know their source of knowledge is “certified good” by all the “right people” which are usually people like politicians and college professors — or to people who are so busy with other things (which unfortunately includes any number of executives and high-producing artists and the like ) that they never look closely at the news. They have the one news outlet their parents watched, and they still watch it and piously believe it. I peg it at about 25% of the public, on nothing but a gut feel. (Which I could unpack for you, but seriously. Let’s just say if they really were 50% of the country, they wouldn’t need to fraud and defend means of fraud so much.)
Since the outlets — and official entertainment — pretty much are composed of those people, this means that they believe the narrative, and keep pushing on it, further and further. Which means they get further and further from any glimmer of observed reality. Which in turn, yes, causes more and more of the still mildly sane people in their midst to wake up, but also causes the people who don’t and base policies (A lot of them are in government at various levels) or corporate decisions on “the news” and “the entertainment” and the narrative of “everyone knows” and “settled science” to make increasingly more disastrous and bizarre decisions, entirely disconnected from reality.
So, the reason they are failing is because their decisions are causing even those mildly convinced of the nonsense to snap out of it. But they are also taking the country down a bizarre, suicidal path that is going to hurt all of us in the short run. (And short can be a couple of generations in this case.)
To illustrate, take the open borders: At least some number of the idiots on the left are convinced that we have to keep our borders open, to accommodate refugees of the “Climate catastrophe” that they think is turning every land to the South of us sterile.
No, seriously. They really believe this. They believe we have to let people in, because to do otherwise would be to condemn them to death.
Think about it, it’s generations of bandaid, and climate propaganda, and you’d be surprised how many of them really believe the world will end in 10 or 5 or however many years. Because they believe the “authorities.”
They’re the same people still convinced it was a miracle they survived the “pandemic.” Because they trust the authorities, and/or don’t have brain space to question.
In addition, they believe because they were told, that humans are infinitely plastic. Therefore, people coming in will just ‘of course’ become Americans. The only reason you could object to bringing them in is that they’re in general darker skinned than you, you racist.
In addition, they believe wealth can’t be created. So if the US is richer is because we stole the “natural resources” from everyone else. Bringing them here, to enjoy those natural resources we stole is just ETHICAL. This btw results in idiots saying things like “We don’t need to live this well. We’re really living too well. We can share.”
Because wealth can’t be created or destroyed, so it’s all a matter of a giant kindergarten class nicely sharing the cookies around, see?
They also don’t really believe in culture. They talk about culture, but what they mean by that is interesting foods and nice clothes. AND those are genetic. As is language. Which is why they both get furious when you “appropriate culture” because somehow inexplicably, the language, the food, the clothes, is all genetic, and all genetically linked. So only people with the right genetics can enjoy such things, or you’re stealing it AND call you a racist when you object to cultural practices like throwing gay people off roofs. Because, you know, it’s genetic, so if you object you’re racist. Also requiring people to learn English is racist. Don’t you know that poor brown people can’t? This is when my fist itches to punch their faces. BUT the point is they really really really believe this.
When they kept putting my kids in Spanish-only classes, they weren’t trying to sabotage them or hold them back. The kids looked Latin and I had an accent. And language is of course genetic. So if they put them in Spanish, then the kids, who were doing pretty well in English, would suddenly be really super-intelligent geniuses, because they wouldn’t be fighting their genetics.
The person who has got the closest to describing this phenomenon is Scott Adams with the “Different films in the heads.”
But that’s not even it. It’s more: the people controlling the narrative, once there were alternatives, were the same ones who refused to leave it. And they kept piling on more bits of narrative, all of which — because they long ago made a practice of running off all dissent. And got far more picky about dissent as time went on — create a bubble of virtual reality.
So when they do things like open the borders and accept everyone as “refugees” they really think they are doing what’s needful and indeed decent, and if you oppose them it can only be rank bigotry.
When they try to stop the use of fossil fuels, only a few of them do it because “it will stop people traveling.” There are a few, but not most people. To most of them that’s an incidental inconvenience/convenience. Mostly they just don’t want to burn up, and they really think this will happen tomorrow. They also think scientific progress can be wished into existence so if we don’t have perfect renewable energy yet it’s because you — yes you — uneducated bigot are clinging to unsafe alternatives like nuclear. If they take that way too, then you’ll have no choice but turn to renewables, and then we’ll have paradise.
Or take the horrors committed by Hamas. The lefties are terrified that the Israelis will go too far and “commit genocide” in punishing them. The pieces for this that fit into the reality bubble they live in are: in general the Palestinians are darker than the Jews they know (Not necessarily those in Israel, mind.) Therefore they are obviously oppressors, because whiter people are always oppressors. (So saith Gramsci and their college professors.) The state of Israel is new and therefore a “colonizing” entity. They heard that the Israelis are an apartheid state and therefore evil. (This is unexamined as to what it means. No. it’s not an apartheid state.) Also they don’t understand Israel is more or less under constant attack. The news rarely mentions it after all. Also Israel wants to take military action, and the military is chauvinistic, fascistic and too masculine. Also, of course, Israelis are more competent than Palestinians therefore evil. (No, this really seems to be an underlying, though unspoken belief.) Also of course, the Israelis live better, so they must have stolen the “natural resources” from the Palestinians.
BUT most of all, they can’t conceptualize violence. I know this sounds hilarious from the side that deployed antifa and BLM. However remember they think antifa is composed of poor people and BLM of black people. (No, neither is true, but that’s what the media says.) And the left really truly is incapable of conceptualizing people who do violence, evil and mayhem for their own sake.
The fault is partly of fiction, which demands that villains be as understandable as heroes and have a reason they went sour. But the reason fiction demands that is that it’s mostly composed of leftists in the upper publishing reaches, so it might be a chicken and egg situation.
And these people apparently managed to go through elementary without ever being kicked and bitten by a classmate who just didn’t like the look of them. This means they either were teachers’ pets or very very wealthy, btw.
So they think humans ONLY ever commit violence after being extensively sinned against. The very horror of the attack perpetrated on Israel, to people who don’t really understand culture or history or anything outside their bubble, means they must have suffered horribly.
And there you have the incentive for all the Jew hatred in this country and the rest of the west, and for the manifestations in favor of sparing genocidal monsters. Note that none of these idiots seems to realize Gaza has NOT surrendered and given up either the hostages or the perpetrators and planners of the attack. Which in any sane dispute would be condition zero for peace negotiations.
No, they just look at their virtual reality bubble, and the weight of the outrage means to them that it must be justified. And now we (the west in general) are going to hit the poor abused critters more, and that will make them hate us more. The idea that their hatred of Israel — and lest we forget us — is ex nihilo and can only be appeased if everyone else stops EXISTING never occurs to the left, because it’s not part of their bubble of virtual reality.
The problem with all this is that the inhabitants of the bubble feel justified and VIRTUOUS. The general attitude about vote fraud is that they’re not doing enough to alter the elections, even when they’re self-obviously doing so. But even if they were, what they’re frauding in is for our own good, and will lead to paradise on Earth, which we’re obviously too stupid to see.
Yep, they’re silencing us for our own good. For the good of humanity.
Again, the crazier the bubble gets, the more they expel anyone who even has a clue as to reality. And the more they expel even the marginally sane, the crazier the bubble gets.
The more out of touch the bubble is, the more people escape it.
But on the other hand, the more deep-bubble the decisions made by the people who stay within — which are, almost all, circumstantially, hereditarily, and by reason of personality, people with the most power over both the bubble and the institutions it long ago captured — the less they fit with reality.
Objectively the deep bubble “the criminals are just hurting and we need to help them be happier” and “the homeless are just people who lack houses, so let them live on the sidewalks” has destroyed most great American cities in three years. And yet smaller cities, controlled by the same bubble are still following suit. Because within the bubble those decisions make sense. And they can’t imagine the bubble being wrong, because they never experienced anything else.
And our large corporations seem to think most of the country is the bubble. So the products they create and try to sell are to the bubble. Which means they fall flat, and they can’t figure out why, and get very angry and decide the rest of the country are racist and evil.
It just keeps spinning. What power they have in controlling the narrative, only serves to poison them.
The problem of course being we’re linked, and being dragged down the same crazy path.
And the bubble can’t completely implode. The time is coming — trust me, you can see it — when the people in the bubble have less and less power, though they might not realize that, and can’t understand why or how, and just turn outright vindictive.
After which…. I don’t know.
But whether it’s radical withdrawal of the consent of the governed or a Romanian Christmas, what comes next will damage civil society and culture deeply.
It is already becoming damaged, as we can’t trust any “experts” or institutions. But it still sort of works in extremis, when absolutely needed.
We’re going to lose that. And it’s going to hurt like a mother.
Their clever fool plan, in the end will destroy them. But it’s going to hurt us a lot too.
I’m convinced the reaction will be a healthier society. Maybe my grandkids, if I have any, will see it. Or their kids.
But till then, we’re stuck here, trying to stop the people living in virtual reality from destroying the real-reality. Where the rest of us live.
According To Hoyt 
When their illusions fall, it’ll be like a glass ceiling falling on us all.
I’m just hoping to be wearing long sleeves, slacks, shoes, and get under a table when it happens.
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o/
Duck... and cover! o/LikeLiked by 1 person
The fallacy is the assumption of good intentions. They know full well what they are doing. They know full well about the killings and violence they unleash. They want that. They cheer for it. They are not naive, misguided, or out of touch. They are Evil. And they want you dead or enslaved.
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NOT the majority of them. Do NOT attribute magical powers to the enemy. They are not that coordinated.
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Sarah, neither are zombies. But they’ve all had their brains emptied of thought and reduced to a couple of basic desires. That fakes coordination pretty well when there are enough of them after you.
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Reality has its own internal consistency. It always obeys its rules (although we might not always understand those rules and so get surprised when something follows a rule we don’t understand). And it doesn’t contradict itself. Fine details might give the appearance of contradiction but generally a close examination does reveal the details that resolve the apparent contradiction.
Narrative doesn’t have that going for it. It’s up to the people creating the narrative to try to craft the story to provide the internal consistency, the following of its own rules, and resolve contradiction.
Even the best fiction writers aren’t able to do that. They can craft the illusion of doing so well enough to entertain readers/viewers, but even the most comprehensive stories show its cracks when examined closely enough.
Add in the extra complication of trying to say the narrative fits what people see around them every day and it becomes readily apparent why “crafted narrative” is at such a great disadvantage to simply telling the truth. Yeah, “crafted narrative” has largely carried the day for quite some time now, but what people don’t necessarily see is the immense effort it has taken to accomplish that. And “new media” and people’s social horizons being widened (I’m friends with people literally scattered across various continents and have at least semi-regular contact with them) the cracks are becoming great, gaping holes.
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“Even the best fiction writers aren’t able to do that. They can craft the illusion of doing so well enough to entertain readers/viewers, but even the most comprehensive stories show its cracks when examined closely enough.”
THIS torments me. I’m not saying I’m the best, or even close, and I know the trick is to dance off the stage before anyone sees your drawers, but the cracks I see and can’t cover up bug me.
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You entertain more than well enough that the cracks only show, if ever, long after the reader has finished.
That might not be your goal, but that puts you ahead of many celebrated writers on multiple axis.
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I’d say “don’t sweat it.” It’s like that ridiculous “the universe is probably a simulation” idea. (If you run a universe in a simulation, then the simulation would have simulated people running simulations, which would have simulated people running simulations, and so on and so on in infinite series so that there are infinite simulations for any one “real” universe. The problem is that a simulation is going to be far smaller and less “granular” than whatever is running the simulation. Thus the infinite expression breaks down. For the universe to be a simulation then the “hardware” on which it runs has to be bigger and more complex than the universe itself, which means the universe in which that hardware exists is so much bigger itself. It simply could not exist with what we know of physics. And if we’re postulating a completely different physics then we know nothing about it and, so, we can’t make any assessment of how likely it might be. It would fall into the realm of “questions we don’t understand enough to even properly ask, never mind answer.”
Which is a long winded way to say that our fictional worlds will always be more complex than we can understand. We do our best and that’s all that can really be asked.
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Someone reboot the navel-gazer. Crashed again.
(Grin)
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Mine do too. The temptation is to dive deep into the worldbuilding/editapocalypse and never come out. That’s a bad thing though, and readers tend to hate it.
One of the more offensive things about The Narrative is how shoddy and slapdash the whole thing is. Every bit of it is revealed as ugly once it is examined with even a little bit of skepticism.
Which is why they shout down anyone who so much as doesn’t chant loud enough and fast enough. The message is broken, but it’s what they got so they use it.
Storybook villains need a lot more backstory than the real life versions. The former tread a well worn path, true, but they have motivations, drives, and complexity. They aren’t just avaricious malcontents that lie about everything and only get away with it because they live in a corrupt power structure that they already control. That’s lazy worldbuilding.
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Yeah, but readers suspend disbelief. I know I am entering into a manufactured reality and go with it because I want the story. When I come up to something that doesn’t fit reality as I understand it I’ll give it a pass (suspend disbelief) if it is consistent with the premise of the story. There are exceptions.
Using the wrong word – a hoard of bandits stole the dragon’s horde. That can be borne if not too frequent.
Frequent repetitions of descriptions – when the only speed is terrifying speed.
Lack of narrative consistency – don’t let the small ship suddenly bulk up for no reason.
Those are annoying hiccups. What I can’t abide is transparently boilerplate characters or plots. I hate buying something I have to put down unread because it sets my mental teeth on edge and/or insults my intelligence.
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I can suspend disbelief in the interests of reading a good story, but there are limits. MHI, Amber or LotR, fine; they’re internally consistent and not really part of our universe-as-we-know-it. Ringo’s zombie apocalypse? Also fine; the phenonenon is explained quite well, and again it’s the story, not the details, that make it interesting.
But don’t give me a modern, allegedly “hard” SF story in which starships travel at multiples of c in normal (Einsteinian) space; that’s so hard a “NO!” that it destroys the story. C.C. MacApp’s “gravity is a universal ‘push’ which is shielded by matter” almost reached that point for me, but not quite; damfino why it didn’t.
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Cavorite! :-D
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Meh. I write space opera.
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And it’s all good; I’ve never seen any of yours, “Shifters” included, which tripped that particular switch for me.
Space opera is fine. Space opera which violates known physics? Not so much.
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My space opera handwaviums like crazy. :D
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TBH I thought space opera was partly about not letting known physics (or biology, etc.) spoil the fun too much.
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BUT particularly physics. That way we can have galactic empires!
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We can have galactic empires using physics “workarounds”; no need to violate known science. Weber and others do it all the time; anything involving “warp drives”, wormholes or hyperspace qualifies. Yeah, like Star Trek transporters it’s handwavium, but not an actual violation of known laws. At least, that’s how it looks to me. Superluminal travel in normal space is a whole different ball of wax.
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well, I’m using what Heinlein used ;) But the workarounds are the dance of the fans.
OTOH maybe something will work we don’t know yet.
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But then there is the Bergenholm. Accelerating a ship to light speed is impossible because the energy used to accelerate an object adds to its rest mass, requiring more energy for further acceleration, asymptotically trending to infinite energy as it approaches C.
If you nullify inertia so that accelerating the ship takes no energy, the problem evaporates and your ship can do 60 parsecs an hour in normal space. :-D
———————————
He’s a lumberjack, and he’s OK.
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The Lensman series, like anything from the “Golden Age”, hardly qualifies as “modern”. And as noted, I like it on its own terms. But if it were published today I’d feel differently about it. Think of it as treating the past as the past and evaluating it on its own terms, not ours. (I believe this issue comes up frequently today, in fields other than fiction… ;-) )
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I’m glad you said “modern” there.
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Well, of course! The Lensman series is still one of my favorites. :-)
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I was several books into a somewhat interesting series when I hit the deal breaker. A monologue in which the protagonist said that the secret to long life and super powers is constant heavy exercise – and eating only sugar. Only time I came close to flinging the Kindle…
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LOL
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Dear Hostess you said
THIS torments me. I’m not saying I’m the best, or even close, and I know the trick is to dance off the stage before anyone sees your drawers, but the cracks I see and can’t cover up bug me.
I think in a way the task of a fiction writer is very similar to that of a trained stage magician. When most adults watch a magician cut their assistant in half or pull a rabbit out of a hat we KNOW for certain that the assistant will return unharmed and the rabbit didn’t simply materialize out of thin air. And yet we enjoy it still. It provides entertainment and relaxation and perhaps a feeling there is something beyond that which we know. A good piece of fiction is similar. And in Sci-fi and fantasy it is far harder as the world it depicts can not depend as deeply on our shared concept of the world and must be provided to the reader in a consistent way. Not all writers have the time to write background material in quantities like Mr Tolkien, and even he wavers and changes his mind. Especially in a series of books written over time there will almost always be minor discontinuities. Please continue to tell the stories so we can continue to be entertained and can know there is something else out there. There will be those that argue over niggling bits and bobs. However, you should consider it a compliment, the writing so intrigued the readers that they tried to figure out where you hid that rabbit or how you reassembled the assistant.
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Thank you.
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I fully concur.
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^^^THIS^^^
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I’ve been cycling very fast between thinking swallowing the blackpill is a lack of information; and thinking the blackpilled aren’t blackpilled enough. And the sad thing? Both are right. It’s just which one I think is stronger that day.
For what it’s worth, I’m the least black-pilled I’ve been in years.
I realize for me that may not mean much, but I am.
The secret is just not caring about things beyond my control and avoiding the news cycle. The latter is the second biggest reason I’ve not tried to come back to the Discord despite how much I miss it.
That doesn’t mean I don’t care. It just means I’m more worried about controlling my blood sugar and getting words out than Trump/elections/War in the Middle East because in theory I can do something about the former, but under no theory can I about the latter.
That’s how it is different from being black-pilled and giving up. I’m not giving up out of depression. I’ll putting my energy closer to home to ward off depression.
Before you rush off to learn hand sewing, or mining or whatever: I don’t think we’ll lose tech, no. Or not to 19th century level. Or even mid-twentieth.
I agree with some minor caveats and one huge one.
The huge one is the destruction cannot affect the power grid for that to be true. Everything from green regulations to active enemy action could take out much of the power grid and the lead time on replacement parts, which would be complicated by widespread outages, would take us back to the 19th century for most.
Reliable electricity is that important.
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hugs glad to see you’re pulling up.
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Yep, that there!
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Exactly. 2016 was one of my most productive writing years because for reasons I only dimly recall, I decided to ignore the news and leave everything to God. Somewhere in 2017-2018, the news got more dramatic than the fiction I was reading/watching at the time, and therefore impossible to ignore. Bad for productivity, very bad.
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The Reader thinks it wouldn’t be that bad. The modern grid has sophisticated components because we can. A build out of a mid 20th century grid with less efficient but easy to manufacture components (stupid transformers for example) would be work but not technically difficult.
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I’ll take your word for it, but how long to boot strap production of those components especially with a disabled grid and long long to remove bureaucratic resistance to using them in various institutions?
I still think an active grid attack will see certain locations go years without electricity and more years without reliable electricity.
If it’s bad enough and there are enough shenanigans making sure the “right” people always have power I can see riots that extend those periods.
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No, seriously. They really believe this. They believe we have to let people in, because to do otherwise would be to condemn them to death.
I blame 80s Mad Max ripoffs like Blood of Heroes and Solar Babies for this.
Yes, I’m snarking but only somewhat. I think that “after the nuclear holocaust” destroyed landscape planted pretty hard into GenX and early Millennial brains and is being tapped (probably both consciously and unconsciously) by climate alarmism.
This isn’t even exclusively left wing either. More extreme preppers are probably under this spell to a degree as well.
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(Looks up from rerun of 80s Red Dawn, and inventorying ammo)
What?
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I feel like a lot but not necessarily all of the post-apocalyptic fictional stuff reflects the same desire for a frontier that westerns and certain types of SF&F do. It’s most obvious in Horseclans, Road Warrior and some of the Italian stuff, where the people involved either actually made spaghetti westerns earlier or would have done so given the chance.
I don’t think we really get much of that in the dystopian YA of the 00s, except maybe in places like the heroine’s vaguely Appalachian homeland in the Hunger Games, but certainly the youngest American generations in a position of power have received some narrative encouragement to believe that the apocalypse is a net good.
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That’s a pretty good observation.
And I love the Horseclans. I have a half finished Horseclans pastiche including my own semi-immortal leader of the my horse nomads south from the upper plains on the former US/Canada border to Alabama where he grew up in the 50s/60s.
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Re: frontier stuff…
The first half-dozen or so Horseclans books were excellent; the rest were OK, but IMHO not as good.
In video there’s Firefly. And Stirling’s Emberverse series (“Dies the Fire” et seq) in books. Both excellent.
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Also, of course, Israelis are more competent than Palestinians therefore evil. (No, this really seems to be an underlying, though unspoken belief.)
Labor theory of value.
If the value of a product is how much labor it takes to make it then building a bed in 10 hours of wood working versus 20 hours only proves you’ve stolen the other 10 hour of labor from someone else. Stealing is evil. Therefore, doing something better (i.e., less time for the same product of the same or better quality) is evil.
The war on competence makes absolute sense once you get that because competence is theft.
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Yep again, that there too.
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This is much more funny when one realizes how much the average moslem arab holds labor in utter contempt.
Those who think a Proletariat Revolution will rise in arab moslem lands are smoking crack.
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My fear, picked up from a former geology prof in Wisconsin, is that mentality against work and success, common in more than the Muslim world, is migrating here.
It’s in this article, under the heading “Prognosis” at the end. Dr. Dutch has passed, I believe, but if he hasn’t I’d love to read his re-evaluation.
https://stevedutch.net/pseudosc/toxicval.htm
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@ herbn – Dr. Dutch’s essay is absolutely the best on cultural determinants of material and social “success” that I have ever read. Very thorough. I will try to adopt his choice of the Arabic word “thar” for the toxic “(not)honor” societies he describes, since (as he said) they exemplify it so well.
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Correct! Hence, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut. Probably everyone here has read it, but if you haven’t, look it up. Very short story.
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Mindblowing, thank you!
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Note, there is an alternate labor theory of value (at least according to Wiki) most people use for at least some items. Even Adam Smith uses it.
That is the value of an object can be set at the labor required to obtain it or the labor it will save.
This is quite different in that it looks at individual future labor as the cost: the value of the time I will have to sell to get it or the value of the time I won’t have to work because of it, instead of a past universalist labor: simple hours of labor expended in creating it.
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The Reader marks that version ‘less wrong’ but still not useful.
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Why “not useful”? I find it quite useful in some conditions such as evaluating mowing my own lawn or hiring someone or choosing between materials to learn a new skill?
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A test: can a theory of value predict or estimate future value with any accuracy?
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Some can estimate. I wouldn’t have a job if they couldn’t.
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So, by using a circular saw and a router to build a bookcase in 1/4 the time it would take with hand tools, I’m ‘stealing’ labor from somebody else? They are smoking crack.
Producing more value with the same amount of labor is how we got the prosperity and abundance of modern society. Where a common shirt costs $10 instead of $700 for the 45 hours of labor with a spinning wheel and hand loom, or an orange grown 1,000 miles away costs 30¢.
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That is the logic that had the original luddites opposing weaving machines, that had Marx and his followers opposing mechanized ag and manufacturing, and that a lot of the argument about AI on twitter quite literally says.
If someone can get a thing that’s good enough for their purposes at a fraction of the cost, with a fraction of the work, it’s stealing from those who currently fill that need. Even if the folks who would be buying are a whole new group because they can’t afford the thing.
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Like…. I can’t afford a good enough cover artist. And while I could do it, it will take me as long or longer than writing the novel. And….
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Personally, I would call your covers quite “good enough.”
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Yes, but not without AI help.
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Well, it’s not ALL a whole new group — my employer lost enough customers to fire something like a quarter of us. Not me, yet, but I guess they can chuck the rest once they get their own AI product up and running to their satisfaction.
Should be great.
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–And I do, genuinely, acknowledge that it is good for our former customers if they can get “good enough” without paying as much for it.
I recognize that if I am less competent than a computer model at everything, it’s my own fault.
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Granted free stuff has gotten leaps and bounds “better”. But. Huge But. I know the reason I had a job is because the “free” or “less expensive” options weren’t good enough. Even for small locations. Bigger location the worse the “not us” options were. Just a question on whether an audit caught them or not. Not that anyone was doing anything wrong, just something fell through the cracks (when entries has to be entered 5x in different places, one or two of those manual entries are going to get missed, more than a few times). Especially for people that think -25 * -5 = -125 (just saying). The reason why the former company didn’t get bigger was because there wasn’t the bandwidth (that and the owner would not travel by air).
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Or your employeer isn’t adapting to the new technology.
I know that with art, AI is a force multiplyer. It’s not a replacement.
Similarly to digital photography and professional photographers, honestly. A lot of photographers went out of buisness because they refused to adapt the new technology.
They misidentified their market, usually because of the mental notion of “my producti is worth THIS MUCH!”– and charging hand-crafted prices for mass produced items doesn’t work.
And that’s when the buisness isn’t being stupid and thinking they don’t need ANYBODY who actually knows how to do the stuff.
I can do photographs of the kids, but a trained photographer can do a much better job.
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Hubby welds a camera that is as good as any professional photographer. We still had son’s senor pictures taken by a professional photographer. The difference between his baby/toddler and HS senor picture packages was the earlier pictures we were given completed touched up printed proofs and had to pick what pictures and packages we wanted to buy. Cost was the photo session and the package chosen. While the senor pictures were touched up and given to us on on a CD, all of them. Cost the photo session, for an hour. As many outfit changes as wanted (not only senor pictures, but got his Eagle portrait too). We then looked at the CD, chose our printer options (Costco), and chose which size(s) we wanted. Hubby has been playing with commercial picture touch up programs for our vacation pictures he has taken. We’ve even printed standard 8×10 and (simple) framed them. We have 4 pictures we had printed on metal (Costco) that are as saleable as anything we’ve seen at the places we go. Difference between hubby and a professional is a professional works at creating his collection. While hubby, well the 4 Teton scenic on metal prints are done. A dozen different elk print collection is done and framed. Now the bear collection compilation? The picture “book” compilation? Um? Someday?
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I believe they are adapting enthusiastically, actually.
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Adapting, or adopting?
I’ve noticed a lot of places that are treating AI like no-wages replacements, rather than a tool.
Which is going to bite them, because they’re dumping all the judgement that makes the tools useful.
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They say they want to keep people.
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An example of adopting:
I’ve gotten AI bots doing support chat.
Yes, they do the keyword search type bad responses, which a human could quickly catch and modify.
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Yes, that is their view. See, you can either sale you bookcase for less than them and have the same hourly wage, make 4 bookcases sold for the same price and have a larger hourly wage, or sell an intermediate amount for an intermediate price and having a higher hourly wage.
In any case you get an unfair hourly wage for producing the same goods in less time.
That is the logic of cookie cutter collectivism.
The circular saw and router, in particular, explain the “no one can have one until everyone can have one” mindset on technology common among leftists.
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So, since ‘everybody’ can’t have the first power tool, nobody can ever have any power tools, and we go on scratching at rocks by hand.
Years ago, the first flat-screen HD TVs were extremely expensive, like $15,000 for a 40-inch 720i plasma TV. Only the rich, or people of moderate means who really, really wanted one, could afford them. But, by selling those first crude HDTVs that few people could afford, the manufacturers could scale up production and spend money to develop better technologies. The next generation of HDTVs cost less than $10,000 for bigger screens. Last month I bought a 62″ 4K HDTV for $600 — all because ‘The Rich’ bought those first expensive units.
———————————
Only idiots believe they know how other people should live their lives. The stupider they are, the more blindly they believe it.
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’83 we bough an Apple IIe for $2800, a lot money (not peanuts now) back then. Especially since only one of us was working and the other was back in school. Did not get one of those fancy new Windows machines (which were somewhere in the $4k range). FYI, no hard drive, though it did have two floppy drives (not the 3.5″ ones either). 8K of memory (I think).
Now that $2800 buys (well not a fancy Apple, things have switched a bit) 16 – 24 GB memory, 3 – 5 TB hard drive, fancy graphics board, in a gaming laptop.
We used that Apple IIe until ’93, then it went to the local kindergarten class.
Same principle. If those of us who bought early, hadn’t, computers would still be prohibitively expensive.
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Yes. No one can have a power tool, even to make other power tools, until everyone can have one.
Seriously, watch for “it’s just a toy for the rich”. That’ll give the most open examples of that thinking.
Part of this is historical ignorance. They assume that things everyone has now, a car or AC, people have always had or at least did as soon as the thing was invented.
I guess I do need to write that guest post on the mental consequences of the labor theory of value.
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Re: “Labor theory of value”
This sounds remarkably similar, but not identical, to the actions of many union “workers” I had the misfortune to deal with as an engineer; anyone who does his/her work better or faster is a protruding nail which must be hammered down.
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Yes. The crab bucket theory seems to be a cousin. They are probably rooted in similar assumptions about the world.
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Captain Oswald heaved a sigh of relief as the colony ship lowered its ramp and began to disgorge the million passengers it had carried across the vastness of space to this new and empty world. She had been so busy during the trip conceptualizing and deconflicting that she never had time to review her instructions on what to do after arriving, but as the ship’s engines whined to an idle, she finally unlocked the mechanical folder.
“Open only after landing,” she mused as the first electronic lock clicked green. “Obviously written by a member of the dominant heteropatriarchy. Press red button. Still oppressive and demanding.”
The rest of the folder would not open until she complied no matter how much she pried on the box, so she reluctantly pushed the button and opened up the display screen as a small voice announced, “Post-landing procedures initiated. Engines settings adjusted. Proceed.”
“As Captain, it is your responsibility to assign tasks to the new colonists,” she read, following the text with one finger. “A listing of their talents and social skills is attached. Good luck. Hm…” She continued to look down the list, eventually skipping pages as she searched.
“No farmers,” she muttered. “No construction workers, no builders of any kind. Just degrees in neo-Marxist ideology and fifth-wave feminism. A whole collection of gender identification specialists. Hundreds of politicians and aides. This isn’t a list of colonists at all. It’s–”
She froze in place and looked up as the huge engines of the mighty starship began to melt, eventually sagging to the ground in glowing lumps and leaving the inhabitants stranded without a way home.
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Imagine the great and grand society that cadre will create. I mean, just ask them.
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What they really need, though, are some professional telephone sanitizers.
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Hairdressers are underrated, as some have an astounding body of knowledge. And great powers of diagnostics.
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(Gazes upon the silent fields of bones…)
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And aren’t they all soooo glad to be alphas?
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Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B
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Who needs a SMOD when you’ve got the Vogons in the vicinity?
As it is, we already have Vegans . . .
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Oh crud…. Vegan poetry.
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Trekverse “The Vegan Tyrrany”.
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If I look that up, I’m going to need a new bottle of Malort, aren’t I?
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Romulan ale required….
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Ah, so fairly tame.
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I will take Vogon poetry over Vegan whinery any day of the week.
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Or would that be Vegan Poseury? For they are surely a bunch of poseurs.
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Poetry written in a Chevy Vega…?
Here in a rusting heap I sit,
Hoping to start this piece of [shaving cream].
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NYC has warned Jews to stay away from one of their own neighborhoods because the modern day Hitler Youth are going to be holding a “protest” calling for genocide of Jews, and NYC can’t protect Jews from pogroms by the modern day Nazis:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/10/26/report-new-york-jews-warned-to-avoid-pro-palestinian-protest-near-famous-jewish-neighborhood/
Crown Heights of course is where Al Sharpton, now a Democratic Party kingmaker, led pogroms against Jews that resulted in Jews being murdered. Pretty much sums up the Democratic Party and the left.
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This is infuriating.
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Yet totally predictable.
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If the Nazi enemy practice gathering in dense, easily identifiable groups, I am not going to correct them.
Well, yet anyway. Not quite yet.
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It makes photography so convenient, doesn’t it?
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Welcome to Canada. Same thing going on in downtown Toronto.
But they can freeze the bank accounts of everybody who contributed to a trucker protest that put [gasp!] bouncy castles on the front lawn of Parliament.
So I don’t know who they think they’re fooling, but it isn’t me.
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My wife’s sister and her husband are still living in NYC, although Em’s nephew is in some kind of international business, and he, his British born wife, and their child are living in Madrid, and Em’s sister and husband are there with them right now. Em’s exchanged e-mail and they all seem to be fine.
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The state department has parts of spain and all of portugal as dangerous to Americans….
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We know. They aren’t listening. They’re sure (the nephew’s been living there for 2-3 years) that their neighbors are OK.
Sigh.
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YOUR neighbors are (almost) always OK. Or, at least you know what their triggers are.
It’s those assholes from the NEXT block over who are crazed psychopaths.
(Yes, there is one house that I keep a very careful eye on when I pass it, ever since they had “Howard Dean for President” signs all over their yard.)
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Cannot protect them, or won’t go to the inconvenience of protecting them?
I will assume in this instance that the powers in NYC wouldn’t like to see a little of that pogrom action, since they did stir themselves to tell Jews to stay away. Or maybe it satisfies their power-trip urges to drive them out for a while.
Good Lord, when did I become so cynical? Sarah’s point of yesterday holds: societal trust is dissolving like a sandcastle at high tide.
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“Good Lord, when did I become so cynical?”
You’re just paying attention. It isn’t you, its them. You can’t believe they’re doing what you can plainly see them doing.
Fun, right?
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I also have changed just these two weeks. I’m not sure I like it.
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Agreed. Distinct overtones of “I am so done being polite.” And when a civilized person decides that….
Well. Rudyard Kipling has a lot of warning poems about that.
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Yep.
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I find myself getting very, very polite.
Done with rage, time for controlled and precise application of hostilitis.
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I’ve been seeing more and more hardening of late. Independent music with a theme of doing your duty regardless of whether you think you’ll win or lose, that sort of thing.
Just a couple days ago I was reading a thread on overcharging:
alexandriabrown on X: “Good afternoon and welcome to Twitter Law School in which I pterodactyal about the ethical duty owed by prosecutors, the ethical duty owed by defense counsel, overcharging, plea deals, and the toxic combination of the above. Get a snack, this will be long winded, even for me.” / X
The short thing was, if enough people are willing to risk losing everything by going to trial, the entire malicious system goes down, but people have to be willing to lose everything to break it.
It struck me, when it’s been deployed against petty crooks, that’s hard, but as it gets more and more deployed against political opponents or political nuisances, there are going to be more people willing to stand and die on principle. And the more obvious that this is about fundamental principles it will become too.
And as people tug the ropes, things are going to break in weird, unpredictable and sudden ways.
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What is that I saw someone say? “You can kill on multiple hills, you can only die on one.”
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I’m a public defender. People have no clue that 97% of my cases end in plea agreements. We only go to trial once or twice a year. And because pretrial motions, like a motion to suppress illegally collected evidence, can only be appealed after a trial, I have been in the terrible situation of telling a client “We can take this case to trial, lose, and ask the appellate court to smack down the judge and the cop and dismiss the evidence for one of your charges. But if you do, you’ll still be looking at up to seven years in prison on the other charge, and you’ll spend at least six months to a year in prison during the appeals process. Or you can take the deal for three years, and with the time in jail you’ve already served you’re already eligible for parole.”
It is a rare person indeed who will fight the system when I lay it out like that. And I hate having to do that, because unless I appeal things, the sack o’crap cop and the judge won’t change. (Well, I take that back. I’m dealing with another case with that same cop, and he’s apparently learned that if he wants to search a car without the owner’s permission, he can impound it and do an inventory search that just happens to find evidence.)
I’ve had a trial this month. Contrary to all expectations, including my own, I won. He spent 438 days awaiting trial, and was offered a deal that instead of the minimum of 15 years and maximum of 45 years in prison if he were found guilty at trial as charged, the prosecutor offered two options for a deal for time served (one a misdemeanor with lifetime registration as a sex offender, and the other a felony with all the loss of rights that come with being a felon) that he refused. Frankly, against the advice of myself and senior colleagues. He was willing to risk the rest of his life in prison (and he was old enough that 45 years was definitely life) on the principle that he didn’t do it and wasn’t going to admit that he did.
Most people just aren’t that stubborn. Much as I may wish they were.
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James Mills wrote a novel “One Just Man” in the 1970s where a public defender sets in motion riots and social disorder by convincing his clients to insist on trials and reject all plea deals.
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In “Violence Unveiled”, based on the work of Rene Girard, Gil Bailie points out that the weaker a society’s solidarity becomes the greater the need of blood sacrifice to cement social cohesion. As the Cult of Woke sees their control slipping they will want to increase the levels of violence to create a justifying catharsis for their adherents and the clueless masses. This in and of itself is, in my view, evidence that a preference cascade is shaping, and they know it will not shift in their favor.
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Disagree.
The cloak previously protecting Enemy forces is failing. You, and others, discern the goats and wolves amoung the flock.
You scrutinize values. That is different from “low trust”.
If the denizens of this forum gathered fir a con, I would expect you to act high-trust and recieve such. Exceptions would get shunned or ejected.
Society isn’t failing. Enemy plans and intentions are failing.
We just wised up. Versus gave up.
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Speaking of, a chunk of us did gather recently– and it was very high trust, folks should consider signing up for next year’s Son of Silvercon!
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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.
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In New York it is absolutely malice. This is the same city that has prosecutors and courts who give slaps on the wrist to people who assault Jews physically while calling for death of Jews. It is also the city that let BLM riot while locking down playgrounds and parks used by Orthodox Jewish Community during the CCP Virus house arrests.
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Alas, is Idiot New York.
And thus will not be met with Jews with an Amazing Number of Guns.
Then, it’s amazed me that Jews are not armed to teeth one way or another, considering the early 1940’s. Heck, Tom Lehrer had it figured out:
The Lord’s our shepherd, says the Psalm,
But just in case, we better get a Bomb!
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I suspect a significant fraction of American jews would waltz into the showers, denying all the time that there was any reason to fear.
It’s insane. Utterly mad. They think their “progressive” views will spare then from those who abhor their existence.
And serving that delusion, they make defeating the mutual enemy that much harder.
Germany was a vibrant civilized developed nation in the 1910s. Thirty years later, “Einsatzgruppen” was a thing. As was “Final Solution”.
A challenge to those I would call my fellow “competents”: when the mobs start in your area, don the Mogen David. Blatantly. Openly. And be your competent selves. Hard.
Never again.
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No real access to firearms where I live, but… I’m not an engineer for nothing. Do recall the only people the Posleen ran from…
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Bows work, and can terrify.
Charging and screaming while welding sword or axe works.
The average farm supply store is a wealth of improvised mayhem, especially if one also can access a pool cleaning and supply place, and a filling station.
Just ask your friendly neighborhood chemical engineering / organic chemistry major.
Oh snap. I just gave Fred a wedgie. Oopsie.
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wielding. If you charge while welding, aguably scarier. (Runs) (HEY you guys make fun of my typos!)
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Definitely scarier, even just a tiny little propane torch freaks folks out more than a knife.
Blue flame is the best for scary.
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@ Cardshark > “NYC has warned Jews to stay away from one of their own neighborhoods”
In the same vein, from the Pixels of Record:
https://babylonbee.com/news/colleges-get-to-work-installing-attics-for-jewish-students-to-hide-in-during-violent-rallies
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As usual the Bee is publishing spoilers.
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That’s a little on the dark side even for the Bee. It feels like the some Liberal Jews have decided to try for the get eaten last strategy (or perhaps have Stockholm syndrome). Perhaps they should ask their Ashkenazi relations from Eastern Europe how that worked out for them. Big hint for the historically impaired, you may get eaten last, but you still get eaten.
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Just tracking the headlines…..
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/10/26/hide-in-the-attic-pro-israel-students-locked-in-college-library-from-raging-mob-rehash-harrowing-ordeal-1407645/
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“You’re a funny guy, Sully. I like you. That’s why I’m going to kill you last.”
And we all know how that worked out.
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If you have to die in a pogrom, make sure you take at least 5 of the sunsabishes with you.
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Because honor guard in hell. Yep.
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Can we get some Roof Yids? they can carry their weapons in fiddle cases….
Why fiddle cases, you ask? Tradition!
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You may go in the corner. Without books. For half an hour. THINK SHAME ON YOURSELF.
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The Beautiful but Evil Space Princess is indeed a harsh mistress.
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Although our hostess has spoken yet I feel I must say well well played Matthew well played. Enjoy your bounty of carp. Although that particular earworm is going to be running around my head for hours I should probably pull it up on Spotify and exorcise that demon.
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“At three I started Thomson guns. At ten I learned grenades. I hear they’ve picked a tank for me: I hope she’s pretty.
“And who does Mama teach, To prep, reload and snitch? Preparing her to target Whomever Papa picks?”
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(With apologies to Topol, Zero Mostel, Jerry Bock, Troy Duffy, et al…)
Twa Fine Fiddler Filks (I plead Fair Use…)
Expanding on the above:
And in the same vein…
I think there must’ve been a strike at the Muses Union when my application went through, and the scab they sent me was a filk-bard or something.
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Me, I say tend to your knitting and hand sewing. I think it’s quite possible we may lose tech, hence I keep pushing you/we/he/she otta keep paper copies of Audels Manuals, etc. on your shelves. Information therein to at least rebuild early 20th century as a restarting point.If I, or more likely, my progeny has to rebuild civilization, rather start doing so with a steam shovel than a digging stick.
Power: I’ve fired boilers I’ve generated electric. If a coal fired power plant goes down, if hundreds of them go down you don’t just flip a switch to restart them. You need power in to move the traveling grates, toss the coal on to them (No, men with shovels won’t work.), power to forced draft fans, etc., etc., etc.
Chips, computers: Clean rooms ultra high precision equipment, rare materials, half the globe length supply lines, -a nudge here, a fubar there and bye bye birdie.
Water treatment, wastewater treatment, distribution and collection. Been there, done that and can imagine far too many for want of a nail scenarios.
However, enough info in Audels, etc. to build a small hand fired boiler/generator system to build, start a larger one and an even larger one. Enough info to make vacuum tubes, and work, slowly up to putting many equivalents of such on a tiny piece of silicone.
I’m not saying it will happen (What do they call a futurist? A very bad guesser. [What do they call a futurist that puts his money where his mouth is? Poor.]) but you can’t go too far wrong if you hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
Just in case.
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I need to finish downloading those from Archive.org and then create a torrent to get them out there.
I mean, there is a Paladin Books torrent so there is an audience.
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Also of interest:
https://www.survivorlibrary.com/
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Yep, yep, yep.
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Ah, Paladin Press….
I gave our S- 2 fits with my barracks library.
“Mailclerk! WTF is Principia Discordia?!?”
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LOL
Did they do an edition? Mine is the SJG one.
The torrent is mostly Poor Man’s James Bond and various firearms books.
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Loompanics catalog for that one.
Communist manifesto
Sun tzu Art of War
A commentary on the Koran and mideast
(Wow was I ever ahead of -that- curve in 1988…)
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Ah, yes, I’ve heard of the Loompanics edition.
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Isabel Paterson’s “The Humanitarian With The Guillotine” remains forever pertinent.
As far as I’m concerned, the damage is already done, it’s just not showing yet. Those in the bubble have made it inevitable.
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“Isabel Paterson’s “The Humanitarian With The Guillotine” remains forever pertinent.”
Thanks for the link, good source for anti-socialist arguments.
Reminds me of “The Robber Baron” analogy by C. S. Lewis, of course.
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1241712-god-in-the-dock
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The God of the Machine is required reading, as far as I’m concerned.
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@ D Jason – not to be confused with “The Soul of a New Machine”
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I am staying as far away from Blues States and Cities as possible. I don’t give a rats ass what happens to them, yes I worry about family and friends there, nothing I can do about it. In most cases they voted for the criminally insane democrats that run the places, I am sorry but you get what you vote for. You allowed the fraud now it will, not might, will, kill and rape your children and enslave the white ones or the ones who look too white. I will gladly start the bonfires to get rid of the results of their vanities, but that will be after they kill themselves. May they burn in hell for all eternity. God’s call not mine, if it were mine, I would gladly burn them alive now, thankfully that is not my call.
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I will leave this here without comment.
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Is it going to make me want to throw chairs at people?
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It depends. He basically says we’re going to solve this problem our own way and you can butt out. We don’t need or want your help or advice.
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I made that sound wrong. He was talking to the pro-palestine idiots.
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I think he’s the son of the head of Hamas, who converted to Christianity and defected to Israel. He’s saying Israel will solve it.
There’s the usual snarky replies asking if that means he and Israel are going to not ask for foreign aid.
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If he can, good on him.
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The son of the founder of Hamas was on CNN, telling Jake Tapper a bunch of stuff Tapper might not have been expecting. It was not flattering to the Gazans, oh, my no.
But let’s also add John Fetterman (or whoever is running him) to the list of, “well, I didn’t see that coming.” He has the missing Israeli/American hostage flyers on the outer wall of his office where everyone can see them.
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There have been a lot of folks who startled me by taking the opportunity to NOT be horrifically awful.
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Over on Sci Fi Wright, one of the usual semi-trolls/trolls is being anti-troll. Saying sensible things.
As Mary was warned, “the thoughts of many will be revealed.”
Their response to big bad stuff (or even big good stuff) often reveals people’s hidden minds and hearts. There can be some unpleasant surprises, but also pleasant ones.
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Dang now I don’t want to make fun of the Fetterman monster anymore. Keep Puttin’ on the Ritz Sen. Fetterman…
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CNN was pushing back on guests that took the Pally line. I don’t know whether that’s still happening, but it was noteworthy that it was happening at all
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Only the ones you want to throw chairs at anyway. I gave him thumbs-up a few times.
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At least.
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….
Day ending in “Y”?
(Grin)
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He sounds fine to me. And justifiably angry with the idiot Hamas sympathizers. As for me, yeah, the disposition of Hamas IS AMERICAN business. Hamas ensured that by killing over two dozen Americans, and who knows how many kidnapped Americans they still hold.
Frankly, IMNSHO every single protestor/person in America supporting Hamas, calling for a cease fire, calling for proportionality, or crying about the poor Palestinians, needs to seriously be beaten with a 2×4.
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I’m stashing away all the print books that I can – books of art, history mostly – although I ought to branch out to technical manuals.
I’ve given up on depending on libraries, knowing how the field is infested with wokism…
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Definitely do not depend on libraries. If they can’t keep Charlotte MacLeod’s lovely mysteries on the shelves, what else will they dump?
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Yep – along that line, I have most of Charlotte MacLeod’s mysteries in paperback on the shelf in the hall… A long time ago, when I was stationed overseas for years on end, I learned to pick up copies of the stuff that I liked, because the base library was a small one (although the librarian herself was a peach and a delight) and the Stars & Stripes bookstore was dinky and anything good would sell out in seconds.
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I’m slowly picking up all the Peter Shandy mysteries used…. : )
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In one sense, many people do become violent after being sinned against–after being enslaved in the mind by the lies they are told, day after day, the lies they are basted in and marinated in and stewed in.
The liars have done a horrible thing before God, destroying the moral agency of men created free. I fear even to pray for justice for them, knowing my own need for mercy.
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No it won’t make you want to throw chairs at people.
It will make you want to hold others back so HE and his fellows can do what’s needful.
Although a few well tossed chairs toward DC and it’s denizens may facilitate things.
Especially if said chairs are on fire.
And radioactive.
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And the cushions are packed with C-4 and Willie Pete? :-D
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And maybe set some large lithium batteries around the burning areas.
For sustainability.
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I’m still waiting for someone to sneak up to Tlaib’s office door and light her Palestinian flag on fire.
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You just don’t understand! They Wish for Perfect Sustainable Green Energy, therefore it must be provided! The only reason you keep saying it’s impractical or impossible is because you are Irredeemably Eeevul! Their Wishes are far more important than mere economics or physics, therefore the universe must bend to them!
———————————
When reality fails to conform to your theories, it’s not the universe that’s wrong.
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They literally believe reality can be controlled with thoughts.
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Sarah, that’s because many / most of them are soaked in information technology, where that’s pretty often true. And it’s been a known fallacy since the year I was born.
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And they’ve been soaked and marinated in flattery. They’re special! They’re the clear-sighted ones!
Gag.
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Magical thinking, by people who don’t believe in God; either under a thousand names, or 9 billion of them.
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And a cold wind blew across the plains, heralding the start of a long cold winter.
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Large numbers of them have grown up during the era of Moore’s Law. And since they have no math or science background, they think ALL technology development works on a similar curve. That’s why they believe in huge improvements in battery technology among other unicorns.
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Green… young (or behave like it…) and inexperienced.
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So the U.S. Representative for the District in which I reside (she in no way represents me) asked a reporter a (probably intended to be rhetorical) question, “How many more Palestinians have to die to satisfy you?” She ran away without waiting for an answer. May God forgive me, I have an answer.
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So do I. And I suspect that my answer is the same as or similar to yours, so may God forgive us both.
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All three of us.
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I may be mistaken, but as I recall I learned it He punishes actions, not thoughts, or even wishes; He’s not a leftist.
So at some point I may be in deep kimchi, but it won’t be for what I think or wish. Just sayin’… :-x
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“All the ones that have committed atrocities, all the ones that supported them, and as many of the ones they’re hiding behind as they make necessary.”
———————————
Pacifism will, at best, get you a nice peaceful trip to the slave pens. At worst — tell me, have you ever heard of the Aztecs?
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Sigh. Me too.
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“Until they learn to not murder, rape, etc. If they fail to learn, that’s on them.”
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My answer would be, “All the ones who support the extinction of Jews.”
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My variant is the self defense one– “as many as it takes to make them stop trying to murder the Jews and all those who live in peace or even just basic decency with them.”
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Take the total population, reduce by the number of kids under age 3. Then add the number of UN apparatchiks involved in the mess, That sounds like a good place to aim for.
The alternative, which e will never do, is make the attack so devastating and casually irresistable so that it will take 7 generations before fathers stop beating their sons at the suggestion of aggressiveness. Would be nice, though – fewer dead kids.
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So do I… alas.
There were heaps of doe-eyed Japanese children in the early 1940s, and scads of good German hausfraus … but Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany could not be allowed to go on as they were.
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The Japanese example is dead on, too– because not fighting them, to “protect” those kids? Would have resulted in enough deaths that the “Japanese is only spoken in hell” thing could’ve happened.
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I think there might be hope, if only because the mask is coming off and “normies” on the left are finally seeing just how insane the movers and shakers and string-pullers on their side really are.
I’ve mentioned here before that Little Brother teaches at an Ivy League school (he’s not a professor or an adjunct, I think his title is preceptor or something like that). He’s been doing that for a few years now, ever since he got his doctorate. He’s always wanted to teach, and I admire him for that. But when he announced he wanted to teach at collegiate level, I suggested going into the business world first and then teach later, because a) academia paid peanuts, and he and Sister-In-Law wanted to buy a house and start a family (SIL also works, full disclosure) and b) academia was getting increasingly insane and he’s always been level-headed and takes his faith very seriously. He brushed me off with an unspoken but clearly implied “shut up, stupid Trump-lover.”
Anywho, last week the family had a group-chat, and he told us that his friend from college who works in some lab doing research for the Navy (I think) told him that there was an opening in his workplace that he thought Little Brother would be a good fit for and offered to put in a recommendation, and Little Brother admitted that he thanked his friend and asked for the recommendation. We were all a bit surprised since Little Brother made it clear he was sick and tired of research and wanted to teach.
Little Brother admitted that he was getting fed up with academia, or at least his school; they’re paying him peanuts to do an insane amount of work while most of the Profs he works for are making bank while doing practically nothing, whereas the Navy pays his friend a crazy amount of money on top of guaranteed pension and benefits, and LB’s employment contract with the school is up in another year with no guarantee of renewal and virtually no chance of a raise if it is renewed. LB says he feels like he’s been taken advantage of (to which I say, to y’all not him, “no duh!”). LB also says that he has regular lunches with his colleagues at a cafe near campus and, and this is as a direct quote as I can recall, “all of the non-tenured folks are normal, but all of the ones who are tenured or are trying to get tenure? They’re all insane! And they’re getting crazier!”
The fact that his school was in the news recently for all the wrong reasons probably only helped to firm up his decision to try to get the F out of there.
So yeah, he drank the kool-aid, but he’s finally starting to see the light. And I know he can’t be the only one.
It’s going to be ugly as all get-out (keep your flint sharp and your powder dry), but there is hope.
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The mask slippage will affect some, as it always does. But there have always been a lot of people who refuse to see. Or who convince themselves, “Sure, those weirdos over there are pretty bad, buy my local people are still decent.”
We’ll see.
I think the blatant anti-semitism is shocking many. But we apparently just had a city here in California (Richmond; it’s right next to Berzerkly) declare its support for the Palestinians, and accuse the Israelis of ethnic cleansing. So there are still a lot of people who have managed to rationalize all of it
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All the while saying “from the river to the sea (JudenFrei)”
Projecting like a multiplex.
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c4c
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We are about to celebrate the 83 anniversary of the act that defeated Adolf H. October 28, 1940, Italy invades Greece. It results in the delay of the invasion of the soviet union by more than a month, the total destruction of the only Nazi airborne division that could have taken Malta, and weakening the nazi force sent into ukrane. Because of this act by Italy, Moscow does not fall, and the Soviets survive.
So we can use this day to remind ourselves that evil oft is its own worst enemy. We see evil doing the same today. May they make more mistakes. This is my daily prayer.
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“I’ve been cycling very fast between thinking swallowing the blackpill is a lack of information; and thinking the blackpilled aren’t blackpilled enough. And the sad thing? Both are right. It’s just which one I think is stronger that day.”
Yes indeed. Since the 7th, I’ve been having quite a hard time this month. It’s the pictures. They keep showing us what was done. What happened. They live-streamed it.
Such things can’t be allowed. That’s where I’ve been stuck. It can’t be allowed, but there it is.
Watching the Left all around the world do the same dance they always do has been darkly amusing. They’re trying to pretend what can’t be allowed was right and proper. They don’t understand that WE SAW IT THIS TIME. Their pretense is over. They’re defending atrocity. Their mask has fallen off, and we all see the rotting skull underneath.
But none of that is helping me unstick. Hating them just makes me stick more.
So today, finally, I understood that I wasn’t there, I didn’t do that, I didn’t let it happen through inaction, and there is nothing I could have done before or since to change it. All I can do is maintain my life and my health, write my stories, and stand ready in case they try that shit here.
Where I can get at them.
So that’s what I’m doing. Keeping my shit organized, staying loose, not letting the demons tempt me into moving before it is time.
In Kendo there is a saying. The stroke of the sword falls as a leaf in autumn; in its own time.
I am a leaf.
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Well put.
And the humorous quip. In my case “I am a leaf in the wind. Watch me soar.” ( Grin )
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Careful; remember what happened to Wash. And for that matter, to the originals who supposedly used it to calm themselves before flight.
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Actually, I meant it as a Wash quote. (Grin)
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One thing is that for many, they cannot be pushed into somehow “seeing the world differently”. They can only get there at their own pace and as they are impacted by this world others are making for them. And once they are there, they can easily be turned off if the first reaction they hear is “I told you so” or “Took you long enough” or some other sort of phrase. One of the most discouraging and possibly angering things that can be done after an epiphany is to make someone feel stupid or foolish.
Far better to say “Welcome, friend. Here is the task ahead of us. Glad you are here.”
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I wish we weren’t stuck with those in the bubble. But if wishes were fishes I could walk across the sea.
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If we but had the correct pins to puncture the bubbles…
…I expect room temperature superconductors AND sustained controlled fusion will be worked out long, long before such pins can be fashioned.
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Everything in the news tonight is about that wack-job up in Maine. Like the whole rest of the world just stopped the minute it happened. Like the other 50 people randomly murdered in the U.S. that day, or the 300 dead of fentanyl overdoses, don’t matter. No, only the wacko with an ‘assault rifle’ is significant.
My reaction, besides the obvious? “Damn you for your gift to the left-wing anti-gun zealots.” Which they have gleefully unwrapped already.
Never mind that all 3 of the ‘mass shooting’ scenes are ‘gun-free zones’. But they never call for banning ‘gun-free zones’.
There is some good news — people are contacting the local gun stores about arming themselves.
———————————
Facts do not depend on opinions. Unfortunately, for far too many people, opinions do not depend on facts, either.
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Nothing on the individual politics. Because the “letter” left behind is part of an “ongoing investigation”. Like that stopped the usual suspects before, ever. After the confirmed mental health hold by military it has been “why weren’t his firearms legally removed from his custody?” With all kinds of excuses of why not (red laws VS yellow laws, as if the military couldn’t report him to the police to take him before a judge).
Press secretary has already, on behalf of the boss chief idiot, called for new speaker Johnson to follow his words to bring the house and senate together for bill and votes to ban assault rifles, and I don’t know what else regarding our 2nd amendment rights.
Everywhere but Maine. Apparently residents of Maine are well armed already.
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Male. Beard. Suddenly lethally violent. “Police baffled.”
Most likely just a random psychotic break. But the lack of info and amazing ability to avoid a manhunt suggests “allies”.
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One of the stories James O’Keefe broke in the early days of project Veritas was an undercover interview with a young Democratic staffer who, when asked how they could jump on incidents, said they maintained a list of crazy people they could influence and be pretty sure “something would happen.”
That doesn’t even count the incidents like where the FBI Good Guys followed the “Draw Mohammed shooter” in Garland TX to the parking lot without interfering with him…. because he was a “known wolf”.
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….so, to recap, you’re now upset that the FBI noticed someone they thought would be a problem, warned the local officials when he seemed interested in a high profile event, had someone on site to try to find legal grounds to stop any problems, but DID NOT ARREST THE GUY BEFORE HE DID SOMETHING ILLEGAL?
That is, you want the FBI arresting people on suspicion of Wanting To Do Bad Stuff?
WHY?!
Please note they’d actually investigated him starting back in ’09, but had closed out the case since then… and reopened it a few weeks before the Draw Mohammad attack.
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And this, folks, exactly mirrors the attitude of Democrats who insist there’s “no evidence” since there’s not a check made out to Slow Joe with “Bribe money” in the memo line.
Dozens of examples of abuse, but it’s never enough. And never will be.
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No, Nelson, it’s pointing out that your outrage is dependent on what gives you the results you want this time, and your principles change to match being angry at whoever you decided is the bad guy.
You chose the situation, and chose your side. I then pointed out what your own source said, after checking that it wasn’t engaged in a massive chunk of selective attention.
If you don’t like the result, that’s in your power to change– but not by pretending that the fault is in those who notice the double standards.
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Me personally? Disband the FBI. (No basis in Constitution) Establish an investigative clearinghouse under US Marshals, unarmed, that aids local/state investigations, and whatever the Marshals need, provided its overt.
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Which does nothing to speak to the principles of what was being complained about.
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Yes, this is the elephant in the room that people who want the government to Do Something resolutely pretend isn’t there.
You can’t arrest the guy before he does something. You have to wait until -after- he does something. Pre-crime isn’t a thing.
It’s funny though, that this standard doesn’t always apply. How many times have we seen lately that the cops often don’t wait for a guy to do something wrong, they go after him hammer and tongs and rip his life apart to FIND something, anything, they can charge him with. Usually during an election cycle, I’ve noticed.
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You’re right, of course. I mean, if there’s no way to identify people who are in need of treatment and do something preventive, maybe all we can do is hope someone is fast enough to shoot them when it becomes obvious.
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However, at that point, maybe we SHOULD abolish the police, except for body removal.
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And that desperation to find something that is a chargeable offense (and will catch the news’ attention[we all remember how much they like making up stories, too]) is a heck of a lot closer to “stop the bad guy” than is comfortable, especially when it doesn’t even reach that level– or when it involves forgetting that prior crimes don’t make you guilty of future ones, even if it makes it is a known pattern.
Those “how dare the cops hassle the poor guy whose wife is missing/why did it take six years for them to figure out The Husband Did It” stories come to mind. :/
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Advocates for strong police action always assume
A) the police are competent, and
B) the police are honest.
Two things not currently in evidence at the local, state and federal level of policing.
C) the other, third thing they never seem to get, they assume that the police, and by extension the entire government, is dedicated to the welfare of the citizenry.
That assumption makes me laugh these days. You have to be militantly blind to still think that in Canada. The Canadian government in fact has begun an across-the-board effort to PACIFY the Canadian citizenry. You don’t have to look any further than the response to the truckers Freedom Convoy, and the entirely different response to mass rallies in support of Hamas the last two weeks.
In this environment, people yelling “there oughta be a law!!!” are revealed as appalling imbeciles at least, or more likely potential saboteurs.
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And sometimes a loon gets lucky.
And sometimes we are lucky the loon self-terms.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/suspect/2023/10/27/id/1140037/
Supposedly, he left a note. Wonder if they will publish it.
Folks, if someone starts hearing voices, get help / get them help. Sometimes the only clue you get of a major psychiatric event is a sudden change in hygene/grooming.
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So of course their first (only!) impulse is to punish the innocent and reward the guilty with Yet Another ‘Assault Weapon’ Ban to ensure that the next wack-job is even less likely to face any return fire.
And the fact that Maine’s ‘Red Flag’ laws didn’t prevent this (because they were not applied) just means We Need More ‘Red Flag’ Laws! for the government to abuse against the innocent while ignoring the wack-jobs.
———————————
When police arrest violent criminals to protect innocent people, they are condemned as Jackbooted Fascist Stormtroopers.
When police arrest innocent people at the behest of corrupt politicians, they are hailed as National Heroes.
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Just a note: Maine doesn’t have a “Red Flag Law” (which viol;ate the Constitution anyway); what they have requires considerably more to implement:
https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/verify/maine-mass-shooting-red-flag-laws-verify/65-55e5d1a2-5fe6-4474-8706-0922e8e4e1db
I want to see this sort of crap stop, too, but at the same time I don’t want an incompetent “Minority Report” scenario, especially without the precogs.
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The loon was sane enough to target only “gun free zones”.
Again.
-again-
Ban the “gun free zone”. One sober barkeep with one shotgun would have ended the loon Pronto. Ditto one sober bowler.
The anti-gunners have much blood on their hands. As though they held the victims for slaughter.
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Agreed. Take him (or her) down when it happens. A win-win: end of the problem and no long expensive trial process, since guilt is demonstrated at the scene. Sanity or its lack is irrelevant; actions matter, and have consequences.
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Because the threat is rare and diffuse, the defense against it has to be both ubiquitous and distributed.
Random nut with gun is the threat? Common carry of firearms is the only defense that can work. Cops with guns are -never- going to be there when Mr. Nutjob goes off.
This is basic logic, not rocket surgery. And I strongly think that the citizens of Israel are taking a very hard look at their government and its love of gun control. The terrorists all died in locations where the locals were armed and shooting back.
To early to start making accusations of malfeasance, but I predict that gun control in Israel is going to end up being a cause of that atrocity on October 7th.
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That’s a fool’s bet I won’t take; gun control (or as I prefer, “victim disarmament”), from “Gun Safe” (i.e., “Free Fire”) Zones to governors making pronouncements which egregiously violate the Constitution, is at the root of nearly all such atrocities. I suspect that the situation in Israel WRT personal carry is a combination of the sort of idiocy that assumes criminals (or in this case, terrorists) obey any laws, and the European antigun heritage of many there. Maybe they’ll learn better.
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Yeah, I kinda know a super-lefty fannish guy from Lewiston, and he has enough hobby guns to count as an arsenal. He does not seem to be an outlier among his neighbors.
But I don’t think they have a lot of open/concealed carry, except hunting season carry.
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There are NO “gun free zones.”
There only ‘Bad guy FREE FIRE zones’ with an anti-sanity name.
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Like “Victim Disarmament” mislabeled as “Gun Control”? :-x
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Exactly.
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The best thing we have going in this event is that the great state of Maine already has a Red Flag law in effect, and this demonstrates the complete and total ineffectiveness of it. Also, there was obviously nobody in either venue carrying concealed or able to employ their firearm. Several people were killed trying to stop the shooter with bare hands and in one case, a kitchen knife.
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And in other news, WSJ reports former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang died today in Shanghai of “heart failure.” He was 68, which seems young for a CCP leader.
OTOH, is this the one who was “escorted,” out of the last Party Congress as part of Xi’s consolidation of power?
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No, that was Hu Jintao
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So Hu gone first?
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Dangerous to put “mister johnson” so close to spikey dragon heads like your illustration above…
“Mistakes were made” doesn’t really cover what could result. Hurts just looking at the otherwise very nice action picture.
Meanwhile, we need to trust Ms. Sarah enough to let her write the next Rhodes story/novel/anthology. That’s as tough as I can handle this week.
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The Iranian delegate to the UN did some mouthing off today in front of the council and apparently got people riled up. A couple of hours later the US fired on Iranian forces in Syria.
This sort of thing is going to get out of hand. It will get out of hand and we will be lucky to live through it.
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Yes–it’s liable to get very out of hand–but then, we’re living in a time where biblical prophecies thousands of years old are being fulfilled. Israel becoming a nation again, the verses about the hunters and the fishers–if you reread those verses, they describe the holocaust quite well. And now; the great falling away and the love of many growing cold.
So, what’s a little Armageddon?
But never forget if you are a believer in Christ, “greater is He that is you than he that is in the world.”
This battle isn’t ours alone: there is a great spiritual battle raging beyond our ability to see it. God sends His holy angels to war for us. We need to pray protection around our families, our friends, and our communities, and for God’s peace in our midst.
It’s important that we stay alert and not fall prey to the traps and pitfalls the enemy of our souls sets for us. We are to watch and pray, and be ready.
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Ah, Fred Thompson quotation for the win. Gone too soon.
I don’t think there’s a causal connection between the two. Military operations don’t quite work that way, at least not in a system as arteriosclerotic as I assume ours is. It’s closer to a Chestertonian coincidence, i.e., a spiritual pun.
Republica restituendae
et
Hamas delenda est.
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I personally don’t think there is a connection between the two either, however, early reports are linking them together.
No doubt they are doing that to make the frauds in charge here look less like the prevaricating appeasers they are.
The narrative must be fed at all times.
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I’d guess they’re related in that both are caused by Iran feeling its oats and acting up. Just different reactions.
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And yet sometimes the jokes write themselves: Some Republicans removed the last Speaker for, in their minds, being a dick. And after not getting any for a while, finally replaced the dick with a Johnson.
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And apparently Johnson is much more conservative than McCarthy. I doubt that was the intent of Matt Gaetz; but then I think Gaetz was an idiot for ousting McCarthy and not having an immediate replacement in mind for him.
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That’s because you didn’t understand it. Gaetz’ message was rather simple:
“OK, GOPe, you lied to the GOP voters for decades, pretending you’d do what you promised. Your boy McCarthy lied again, so here’s his head. Now, you clowns can find a replacement, but whoever you pick will still need our support to get elected, and the same conditions will apply.
OR, you can openly work with Democrats and prove you don’t represent us. OK, go ahead. That action will also have consequences. At least we’ll know where we really are.”
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Umm.. in Gaetz vs McCarthy, exactly which one got the entire Dem caucus to vote with him?
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@ Matthew – the logic I’m seeing is (1) McCarthy’s friends and allies won’t vote to dump him; (2) McCarthy’s opposing factions won’t unite behind one candidate (although Jordan came close), so NONE of them will vote to dump him; (3) the Democrats chortle in glee at making the GOP look bad by dumping him; (4) the ‘pubs actually rally ’round when push comes to shove (despite grumbling and back-stabbing); (5) the House ends up with the Democrats’ Worst Nightmare.
https://notthebee.com/article/new-speaker-mike-johnson-on-his-worldview-go-pick-up-a-bible-off-your-shelf-and-read-it-thats-my-worldview
What’s not to like?
As to the hand-wringing about chaos in the Congress: (1) there is and always has been chaos and gutter-sniping, we just didn’t have the means of observing it in action; (2) the over-lap of the Gaetz Gambit (10/3) with the Hamas massacres in Israel (10/7) was totally unexpected (ask all the intel services) and doesn’t count against him IMO.
To argue against upsetting the apple carts of the establishment because some crisis MIGHT happen while you are picking up the apples is to advocate never challenging the status quo, because there is always a crisis-in-waiting somewhere in the world. If one isn’t handy at the time, the Democrats will make one up.
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Both.
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“Gaetz’ message was rather simple:”
That was my reading of the situation. The people insisting that Gaetz & Co. should have had a replacement “lined up” are over-looking the fact that there was no possible way to do that ahead of time, witness the fractured voting and the alleged McCarthyite machinations.
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Look, good engineers and mechanics always have a replacement part ready, or at least in mind, before they yank the defective one out. And I don’t wipe out defective code without at least having a temporary comment and a redirect to replace it with.
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Having politics work that way would give the Reader heart failure.
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I never said I was “normal”. But I at least remember my CPR lessons.
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Good engineers and mechanics don’t get elected to anything. Because they’re of us.
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nothing was an improvement
The fundamental context is that the Speakership was used by Pelosi to frame an innocent man of treason, and to prosecute him for it, albeit ineffectively so far.
Pelosi screwed up holding onto power, and the Democrats failed to fraud enough to retain control of the house.
Every day where McCarthy was not setting the stage for refusing to seat the Representives who voted for her, as a reprisal, was a waste.
The consensus for peace has broken down. Pretending that everything is normal and that normal criteria are the only criteria is wrong.
There is maybe room for principled stands for normality.
Blaming Gaetz is ignoring that all of the chuckleheads are idiots desperately pretending that the situation is functional.
It is not incompetent to stop official business when official business is mostly fraud and illusion.
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Gaetz’s entire thought process seems to have been, “McCarthy broke his promise to the Republican delegation, so he has to go “. I’m not sure it was a good idea, but I can understand it
And at the very least, future Republican speakers will be more careful about upholding their promises.
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Anything that goes well for Buyden is most likely dumb luck, not intention.
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I recommend today’s post from Ward Clark as being germane to the topic.
https://redstate.com/wardclark/2023/10/26/social-justice-warriors-are-not-social-not-for-justice-and-not-warriors-n2165578
Concluding grafs:
“The proponents of social justice and all the other X justice agendas forget what kind of people set up the institutions of modern Western civilization, based on liberty, rooted in Enlightenment values. They forget how many people and what kind of people still value them today.
Most of all, they forget to what lengths people who decide they have nothing left to lose will go.
The message to those who would tear down those institutions that define civilization — liberty, property, individual rights, equal treatment under the law — I can only offer the venerable, classic warning:
We’re not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with us.“
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I can’t find a lie in any of this.
But here’s one you haven’t heard. I am a lifelong American white male in my mid 50s. I met early this year a black Kenyan-American woman. I will be going tomorrow to buy her an engagement ring.
We are both professionals…and we have tentatively decided to pull up stakes in a few years and go to Kenya to live among her tribe (the Kissij). I have begun to learn Swahili, which isn’t easy when you don’t hear much of it in media or on the street.
Anyway, whatever happens, I feel like I will have a VERY different view of it than someone in the states. And the Kenyans I have met all seem to be very grounded in reality, and their culture makes MUCH more sense to me than what the American culture has morphed into over the last decade or two.
I will likely be shielded there from some of the madness that is coming, but we shall see.
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That sounds like a horrible idea for both of you, hope nobody gets hurt.
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May I offer some advice, as someone married to someone from the opposite side of Africa?
Sit down with your lovely fiance and talk about what you will and will not fund for her tribe and what the consequences for you two will be if you live there and do not support the tribe the way they wish. We most definitely do not live there, and we fund only education, medical, business start-ups, and his parents’ living expenses. It took about a decade to get it through the various cousins’ heads that the Evil Wealthy American Spouse wasn’t going to ‘let her husband’ buy them cell phones, bikes, vacations, etc. (It really helped that my husband’s three siblings also all married Americans and so all four of us couples were young, broke, and on the same page.)
Find out if there is a water system, and how much water you need to store each time it comes on (my in-laws usually get water twice a week, in the largest city in the country, in the university district). Same for electricity. Whoever sees either come on yells to the neighborhood that it’s on so everyone can fill cans or charge batteries.
Find out how much the bribes are to get seen at the local hospital, what the options are for other medical care, and how much you can expect to pay. Find out the standards for pharmaceutical handling: are medicines sold at roadside stands? Does anyone bother to control temperatures? (My inlaws live in a country with socialized medicine: if you are well connected or can bribe adequetely you will get seen at the hospital. Otherwise, you go outside the system. When my mother-in-law was in a motorcycle taxi crash a few years ago, we paid someone to come to their house to put her broken leg bones together and splint her leg.)
Find out which neighbor tribes must be hated and learn to recognize them. Find out which are allies. Learn what to do about the former and what you owe the latter when you encounter them.
Find out what mechanisms of self defense are legal. Learn to use them. You stand out. You will not be able to deny that you are That American. Don’t use tools you aren’t supposed to have (where my husband came from, that means no firearms).
Learn and internalize the things you must not say or do ever. Learn and internalize the things you must always say and do.
Americans move differently. We walk differently, we talk differently, we look at the world differently, we think differently. We believe in inalienable rights. Those rights are very throurghally alienated across Africa. My in-laws are horrified when I criticize the US President, or Congress, or even the mayor. (After twenty-two years, my husband is resigned: I even criticize the FBI!) I’ve lost more firearms canoeing than the entire tribe has owned and one uncle has the privilege to be the one who shoots problem elephants when requested by the government.
Speaking of that uncle, a few years ago his wife was accused of witchcraft by a neighbor. She (in her seventies, probably, birth certificates unclear, nice Baptist lady) was offered the option of leaving the village or going to jail. They went to the city and stayed with my inlaws. Not the accusor, the victim of the accusations was punished “for her own safety”.
Reread Lawdog’s Africa Files with an eye to noticing where they’ve been severely toned down for the American audience. We used them as a mild introduction for our children, before my husband started talking–well, he still doesn’t, much, to the children-about what growing up there was like.
Don’t drink the palm wine.
I wish you both all the very best life has to offer and much happiness.
Oh, and when you have the inevitable disagreements with your future wife? Before you get in too deep, check that you are both using the same meaning for the same word. Because even though my husband and I are both native English speakers, we learned with different dictionaries, and sometimes that means that we’re actually agreeing, not arguing!
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One question to make a woke person’s head explode:
If cultural appropriation is bad, then why is diversity good?
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If they’re smart, the answer will be some form of justifying the checklist requirement– you can only get diversity by having The Genetics And Checklist Who Can Have That Culture/Diversity.
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Yeah, but I wouldn’t buy that even if you paid me. On the other hand, there’s apparently a lot of college students who wouldn’t think once about it, much less twice.
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We don’t share the assumptions.
It’s the same way they look at us like we’re crazy for “hating government” but supporting cops and the military.
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Indeed. I was reading a column this morning about how the older generation always says that kids today have it too good, and they’re all (mostly) lazy. And they really are, until they finally grow up and start earning their way (since their sugar daddies and mommies are finally dead and not providing for them), or starve to death. And this cycle has been going on for at least several thousand years.
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Unfortunately, there’s a big lag between “earn their way” and prior generations recognizing that– especially as they forget that “normal” is after more years in the workforce than the generation being considered has been alive– and that can be really rough on all involved.
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because you can’t have different opinions if you all look alike. Thought and opinion and culture are all genetic. DUH.
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Adam’s ‘two films’ was explained in detail by Sowell’s book, “Conflict of Visions”. Like most of Sowell’s work, such as “Social Justice Fallacies”, it is cutting commentary of world viewpoints.
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Scripture tells us where we are going. Its certainly “blackpill,” but it depends on your relationship with God as to it being black enough, or simply seeing what is going to happen to those that do not choose Christ as Lord. The Lake of Fire is a pretty black place.
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On a different note, via Insty the following screen shot is from Google AI’s response to a question about countries in Africa whose names start with the letter K
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9ZFrD6aYAAmi-z?format=png
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“No, they just look at their virtual reality bubble, and the weight of the outrage means to them that it must be justified.”
And yet, if I were to commit an act of equivalent violence that would not apply, because of who I am. At best, it would be a hate crime. I would be roundly condemned, no matter how “justified” the action was.
One thing that I’ve often noticed about the left is their absolutely clueless adoption of opposites. For example, can’t write a character of another ethnicity (except white), cultural appropriation bad, but also must have “diversity” in characters. This allows them to determine how the narrative is applied, no matter what the situation.
It takes a mind that is broken in a special way to think that two opposite values are equally valid, can be applied subjectively/selectively with no rational criteria, and remain valid.
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If you are part of a ‘Privileged Class’ you are automatically wrong, no matter what you personally have or have not done.
Elitist ‘Progressives’ ignore the fact that they are part of the most privileged class of all…
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I used to live on a farm. I know what bullshit smells like.
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Or how in fact “privileged” your life has been. They don’t get INDIVIDUALS.
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For me the blackpilled/not blackpilled question is about frames of reference. If I am thinking about the world I will finish out my life in, and that the younger people I care about will live in, I am very blackpilled. You do not destroy social institutions that took millennia to build with impunity, and Americans are just starting to learn what life in a low trust society is like. But I agree that in the long term incoherent beliefs destroy themselves. There will be boots stamping on human faces, but not forever.
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Don’t be blackpilled in the long term. The short term? 20 to 30 years? That will suck. For us. The young people? They’ll be fine.
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