System And Power

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

We tend to think the left is breaking systems because they think it helps that goal. That is not completely wrong, but it’s more that they can’t help breaking systems for the same reason they think broken systems help their goal.

First I want to point out that I don’t think that leftists are either stupid or insane. (Yes, there are some number of mentally ill attracted not by the philosophy so much as the social perception that the philosophy is winning — it’s not but there’s a lot of false confidence and built in noise from their historical dominance of communications — attracts people, the insane, the wounded, the people who were bullied, who think it offers them protection. This has always happened with the left. In the places the left prevailed it didn’t go well for them. But that’s something else.)

The defect in perception/thinking it’s more of an acquired thing, partly induced by our education establishment, partly by the left’s full hold on all the mass-industrial-communication mechanisms, and partly because the mental mechanisms of Marxism have invaded everything, even the right. Heck, after years of being aware of them, I still sometimes trip on them.

Part of this was done through fiction, which bypasses our critical ability and embeds itself in our brains as “lived experience”. And a lot of those assumptions are plain wrong and bad.

But also, I’ve noticed that the extreme left of today, not the loot and burn lot, but the convinced intellectuals, are the good boys and girls of yore. In the past they’d have burn with zeal to to be missionaries. They still do. It’s just the post-Christian west only offers the broken faith of Marxism. But they still want to be “good” and “admirable” and their version of this is… Marxist insanity. At the same time, and possibly because over the last fifty years a lot of people were raised in group environments by strangers, there’s also poor socialization to take into account.

What I’m talking about is the fact that the left seems blind to any motivation or relationship that is not a matter of power.

Growing up in an even semi-functional family will teach you that systems of people work, without a power directing them from above. Sure, not perfectly — that’s the other thing families teach you. “If only everyone”never works, not even if mom screams and threatens people with the chancla. But it works, because each person gets something out of what they do for others, and even what they do for the whole.

But if your only experience is of a professional day care, all you experience is someone forcing others to obey, and nothing happening outside of that. Power.

And unfortunately that will slot into Marxism because Marx was an autistic bastard, and all the relationships he saw in society were translatable to power and group power at that. Because the only relationship is power, someone is always oppressing or being oppressed, hoarding the finite resources, or taking them back by force. Seriously, there was something very wrong in that man’s head. And unfortunately the broken meme has propagated.

The left truly doesn’t understand interconnected systems, or the fact that even minor things affect everything else. All they understand is power relationships.

Take environment. The left supposedly cares passionately about the environment. (How after fifty years of eminent apocalypse that never happens they can still believe I don’t know. But then I was never a good girl, piously believing my “betters.” As my parents would attest, I was “rather break than bend” which means I probably can’t grok them, even if I try.) And they do. But they also want us to eat the bugs. Which not only doesn’t solve the problems caused by traditional livestock, but uses more resources and destroys more.

But, ah, you see, in relation to the environment the masses of people have “power” therefore they’re oppressors. Making the oppressors suffer resolves the power imbalance, or at least helps it. Voila.

Same reason they’re not worried about China’s energy use and production by the dirtiest possible means going up, only ours. Because the US has “power” and China “doesn’t” so we’re the oppressors. Duh.

In the same way they are remarkably dense about the fact that importing millions of foreigners who don’t/can’t contribute anything to the country won’t help us OR THEM. Because you know, the US has the power and used to “steal” “resources” so bringing all these people here gives them power and gives back the resources we “took”.

They don’t understand complex relationships of intertwined groups or individuals and their interest.

This inevitably leads to their breaking everything, because the ONLY thing they understand is power relationships and think that inverting “power” fixes problems. Only what they see as power is often a relationship of service willingly taken — married people in mutual service, say, or kids helping their parents, or even volunteers genuinely serving those they help — and when they break that it breaks fundamental human connections.

And when they see the workplace/ commerce in terms of power, they make everyone concentrate on social games, and not the widgets being made or sold. Which explains the implosion of all the woke companies.

This also explains why now, that this problem is advanced, since it’s been on mental loop so long that competing ways of seeing the world have receded, their creativity seems to be stuck in “Scream at bad people and show oppression/revenge fantasies.”

In a way it’s horrifying, because they’ve lost 3/4 of what it is to be human. Things done, not because you’re oppressed or want to oppress, but because you you want to and it feeds your creativity or your social need, or it does something for someone you love.

Love is also out of it. it’s all power relationships. Hence why so many people can’t be in a relationship. because it must be power, and they must somehow be oppressed. Or those around them, in relationships, must be.

And I don’t know if it can be fixed, because a lot of it is fundamental, hinging on very early childhood training, and then reinforced in the thinking years, by every bit of education poured into people.

Only the very strong can escape this unscathed. Or the very non conformist.

Now, I firmly believe convinced Marxists are a very small minority. 25% at most. They show as more both through media domination and pudding heads non-thinkers who go along on the appearance of victory. But even with those they’re not even 50% or the fraud they push wouldn’t need to be the magnitude it is. A dab would do them.

But the problem is that a bit of this is in every one of our minds too. Yes, even mine, though mine is mostly — because I love history — bits of historical misinformation that I think about suddenly and go “Wait, that can’t be true, because this was also going on.” Though sometimes I still find breaks in the basic brain too. Like in the idea of writing something just because I want to, and it needs out of my head. Because doing something should be “useful.”

And that breakage in our own minds both amplifies the damage the left does and makes it harder to recover. For instance a lot of right entertainment as it sprouts up is… well, woke turned on its head.

Not all. We are the outsiders, the oddballs, the weirdos. So our stuff will often be quirky fun.

Unless … Well, even talented people get mad and think “People need to know.”

Part of the reason I have the blog is to process these things without their taking over my fiction. Because we can’t let it do that.

Look, of course your fiction will have your idea of how the world is organized. That’s because it’s yours. When we recreate even what we think is the real world in fiction, what we’re actually doing is not recreating the world, but recreating the world inside our heads. And that comes with your beliefs and assumptions. That’s fine.

But a good story is more than shouting the opposite of what the woke shout at us. Well done, it is subtle, and simply embedded in the story, not being screamed at the level of a morality play. And EVEN WHEN I AGREE WITH THE WRITERS when I accidentally download one of those books, they are fully as tedious as the leftist ones.

And it means you’ve internalized the power is the only thing that matters, bs. So you grab a little power and use it to equalize things by screaming the opposite of what is screamed by the establishment.

But that’s not what convinces anyone. Worse, that’s not even good. it’s forgetting the “thing” for social games.

I’m divided on “hire someone for their political beliefs” simply because I believe that the left has conquered all the institutions that way while we were unavailingly trying to respect competence.

What I will say is that there should be competence first. Faced with two candidates, equally able and qualified, knowing one is leftist and one is… standing with us more or less, go with the second. Because leftists have a hidden cost. As they multiply in your enterprise, they’ll use that to “equalize power” by hiring only their kind and using your concern to equalize power everywhere by “speaking truth to power” (Which because they’re the establishment is actually mostly speaking power to truth.) And your company is suddenly no longer producing widgets, but very concerned with hiring people with “oppressed” characteristics, to “equalize” the power. And this usually means you’re already doomed.

Still you need competence first. because hiring for any other reason at all always ends up in a war on things and people that work. Incompetence drives competence out. And if for competence you must hire a leftist (yeah, very rare, because, well, their brain is eaten with “power” worms) then you must watch them like a hawk, to not let your endeavor be corrupted out of existence. It’s just the price of it.

But everything else? This is not a power game. Society, economics, countries and yeah ecosystems have complex relationships between groups and individuals, most of which cannot be defined in terms of power. They’re rather “commensal” where the other benefits from what he/she/they do/es. Most relationships in nature are of that kind, (weirdly even predator/prey) and so are most relationships in human societies.

An inability to see that means you should be disqualified from opining on how people should live. But more importantly, it makes you a poor, broken creature destroying everything within reach, even without meaning to.

And when those in power are afflicted with this blindness, as they are in our society, reproduce the conditions of a family with a clinical narcissist parent. Because those in power are always trying to balance “power” where no power is involved, and create strife and hatred among those under them, while trying to “fix” things, which due to their blindness just make everything worse like throwing gasoline on the fire to put it out.

This means the moral character of people in charge doesn’t even matter. They’re all going to function as the worst possible humans. Of course, the broken system will also attract power vampires, which yes, are the worst possible humans.

No, I don’t know how to fix it, but understanding the mechanism that’s breaking everything in their heads might help both with not falling in the same trap and perhaps into reaching the younger people sliding into this mode of thought.

Because we need to rebuild and build a society where people can be whole.

137 thoughts on “System And Power”

  3. At the same time, and possibly because over the last fifty years a lot of people were raised in group environments by strangers, there’s also poor socialization to take into account.

    Whooo boy, is it ever.

    I’ve seen it popped up a couple of times in relation to folks saying that homeschooling makes folks weird and hard to work with, because… the person speaking has trouble dealing with them. And if they had been taught “proper social skills,” that wouldn’t be an issue.

    We’ll ignore the selection issue here, since I usually don’t find out folks are home schooled until they find out that we do homeschooling.

    In one case, the person went on to talk about how various technically focused training programs were also horrible, because — you guessed it! The “Properly Socialized!” were unable to interact with the people in them.

    I don’t know about you, but when I was taught about having great social skills? “I am unable to deal with anyone who is even slightly different from myself” was NOT a go-to example.

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    1. The pastor’s wife at the church we went to had problems with her car; the GM (arggh) plastic intake manifold went toes up, and she was weeping and moaning. I mentioned that it was most likely fixable, by a shadetree mechanic (no shortage of them in $TINY_TOWN), for not much money.

      She was seriously annoyed (IMHO, she was trying to cadge our old(ish) pickup as a donation). She asked $SPOUSE “How do you put up with an engineer for a husband?” (Unpleasant adjectives not stated, but dripping from tone of voice. Seems my inability to see it as TEOTWAWKI was a moral defect in her extremely progressive eyes.) $SPOUSE relayed that her father, sister, BIL, niece were also engineers, and that’s what engineers do.

      When they left the area, the residents managed to contain their grief quite well. Perhaps the fact that Minister and his wife took advantage of a welfare program that they didn’t need, displacing others who were seriously poor had a lot to do with it. Actually, they were fairly lucky that their house didn’t “spontaneously” combust one day. I doubt it would have happened at night, but…

      That church was gradually imploding, though it took his replacement to get it to “suddenly”. We left a couple of years before it went over the cliff.

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          1. :grimaces: Framing removed, that short has… issues, especially after folks chopped it down to remove the intro. I think it weakens it over all, even if it’s a creative and amusing setup.

            Because the nail is pretty horrifying to look at, but she’s speaking rather than screaming in pain, possibly if the person with a nail in their head says “HEY, PLEASE LISTEN TO WHAT THE PROBLEM IS,” they have a point.

            For anyone who’s managed to miss it, I THINK this is the original?

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            1. And yes, I do recognize the irony of applying Engineering Thought to a short that is…defending “identify and fix the issue” engineering thinking.

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      2. Reminds me of the (female) minister who infuriated my beloved (her predecessor had gotten to me) by telling the congregation to contact their state representatives and insist they increase funding for social programs. Why, she’d had to tap the pastor’s discretionary fund to help someone!
        We haven’t been back in years, so don’t know how that church is doing. Since it’s in New England, probably ok.

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        1. A lot of pastors’ discretionary fund is their own wallets, going out to people who need it….

          One day I happened to go by the parish office, and the secretary was talking about a poor family that didn’t have the money to claim a body of a loved one. And a priest I always thought was grumpy told her that she needed to get on the phone and find out, and he would pay whatever it was, himself, and do the funeral.

          (Cue me sneaking away… I was pretty sure I didn’t have that kind of cash…. But yeah, that is a reason to make more money and be able to donate more.)

          Needless to say this priest did not have the latest greatest stuff, but obviously his stipend money was working hard!

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          1. It was the complaining that got to me. Tell the State to step up so I don’t have to.
            My beloved actually wrote out a letter explaining how much more efficient private charity is, and she responded that she didn’t care.

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          2. Always making more money is important to bail friends (and sometimes strangers) in need. Particularly since husband has a habit of paying for the grocery bills of the elderly behind us in line at the grocery.

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            1. I’m still having to get used to younger people holding doors open for me. (I’m only 71, folks…) I don’t think I look feeble, though when my knee is complaining about the weather, it helps when somebody opens that door. Sigh. Getting old ain’t for sissies.

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            2. LoL. Being thrifty, I became the barracks bail bondsman. (joke)

              One of my squad sent his wife to argue before a judge, while he was out on an FTX. Judge didn’t buy the excuse, and put -her- in jail for contempt in his place.

              Long story short, it was brought to my attention well after hours, and I had the money in the bank. Several ATMs and one donut purchase later, I had the odd c-notes and change needed. Poor thing all 4’10’ was in the same tank as all the female street people. Once the matron turned her loose, she latched onto me like a starfish. Hard to walk, but finally got her settled piggy back so I could get us out. Hubby paid me next payday.

              Apparently, I gained boo-coo rep from that.

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              1. Yeah. Well, I hope not, but there’s a possibility a lot of us and our friends will need bail and lawyer money in the next year, because the left has lost its collective mind.

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                2. Well, bail is raaaaciss, and combining that with how they skipped the whole bail thing completely for the J6 folks, one way or the other making bail looks to likely not be a problem.

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    3. I HATE that attitude. When my unorthodox school record comes up in conversation, most people are like, “Cool, I wish I’d been homeschooled,” and move on with their lives, but then there are the people who act like I told them “I caught the bubonic plague when I was younger.”

      “How did you ‘get socialized’?” they ask in fascinated horror, and I am severely tempted to say, “I was actually raised by apes, like Tarzan,” just to see whether that’s more socially acceptable.

      Like, friend, I may be a raging introvert, but I can talk to and find common ground with practically anyone, because my parents found it important to learn that skill. I am reasonably articulate and a decent listener, and until I told you otherwise, you thought I was some flavor of college educated. I’m not the one you need to worry about when you talk about being ‘properly socialized’. Y’all are the ones with problems; you can’t hardly talk to someone five years out of your age range or from different social strata without freaking out.

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        1. If you wear “Raised by Wolves like Tarzan” or “Raised by Apes like Romulus and Remus” then people will come up and tell you your shirt is wrong, which is a great conversation starter.

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  4. The “power isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” attitude is only sort of attributable to Marx. What it really is, is psychopathy (or sociopathy, or narcissism, they tend to run in a pack). Marx merely formalized it into a “system”, and the postmodernists weaponized it. But it has always been with humanity, and always will be.

    Granted, we’re in a bad spot just now because, between Marx, the Frankfurt School, the postmodernists, and Saul Alinsky, most of our social structures have been so toxified that emulating psychopathy is the only way to gain status within them. But that is hardly new in human history, it only happens to be especially acute right now.

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    2. This goal echoes precisely that of the Inner Party of 1984. O’Brien admits that power is the goal outright when he is torturing Smith. If they gave a tinker’s damn about the various groups they allege to help they’d do something about the broken families, they’d actually use correction to (maybe) get better results. If anything they intentionally let them continue fail and tell them this is not their fault but someone else’s. Every once and a while I wonder if they really know they are the heirs to the KKK and the Old South and they just want their assorted prole domestics back, slave our peasant they don’t care.

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      1. Wonder? That’s precisely what the Leftist ringleaders want! They clearly desire a fantasy medieval world, with them as the Lords and the rest of us as the Peasants.

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        1. Communism is simply feudalism with the “divine right of Kings” replaced with the “divine right of Commissars” and with the Almighty State itself being the deity and Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao as their prophets.

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            2. Remember that in the Middle Ages, people believed in God. That is, the king thought he would be accountable in the end.

              People tend to slack even when accountable in the end by a human authority whom they have seen hold others to account, but it helped.

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        2. One of the things I noticed during my brief exposure to the Society for Creative Anachronism was that everyone wanted to be a Lord or a Lady, or a knight, or something cool like a minstrel; nobody wanted to be the nun who ran the orphanage.

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          1. Same with reincarnation. Everybody was once royalty, or otherwise rich and powerful. Somehow, there are no reincarnations of slaves, peasants and impoverished Chinese rice farmers.

            Even though they make up 99% of the people who have ever lived.

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            1. Chesterton poked fun at the reincarnation tales of his day where everyone was either an Egyptian princess or the lover of an Egyptian princess.

              He leaned more heavily on how there were a lot more ancient civilizations.

              (Howard had an evil wizard make a queen relive her past lives. She actually had a lot of poverty and suffering in them.)

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    3. Argh,, a freaking Vince Lombardi quote flashback. Yeah, yeah, supposedly his line did NOT mean “so cheat your [BIPPY] off” but it DANGSURE comes across that way! And did in the 1970’s, too.

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  5. I finished washing my hands of the “save the planet” junk when they out-right admitted that chopping Golden Eagles into extinction and cutting down the Odenwald are perfectly fine as long as they get “clean energy” and more wind turbines and solar panels. Poisoning animals and the land is fine if it is for the sake of mining rare earth metals for batteries and stuff.

    Bad cess to them! Smacks palm with back of opposite paw

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    1. I hadn’t come across “bad cess” before. Had to look it up, and that doesn’t happen often. Taxes turned into an insult? Love it! 10/10, will use again.

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    1. FYI: something about where or how this was embedded set it to Autoplay. I’ve now heard the opening 15 seconds roughly 50 times. Make it Staaaapp!

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      1. Sorry about that – it came up on search from other than YT, and apparently they suck more than teh ‘tube (hard to believe).

        WP does not allow edits by comment posters so I think Sarah will have to administratively kill that link.

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  8. It’s Khmer Rouge meets Underpants Gnomes
    Stage 1: Break everything and destroy society
    Stage 2: ???
    Stage 3: Communist Utopia!

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      1. And I reply with another South Park reference 🤣
        Cartman (After getting Cthulu to kill a bunch of people he doesn’t like): I’m making the world a better place.
        Kenny: For you! A better place for you!
        Cartman: That’s what superheroes do!

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  9. I remember a few years ago when the whole “eat the bugs to save the environment” thing was just starting I thought it was stupid because it was disgusting, but on the whole “it uses less resources” claim I was pretty neutral, because I didn’t know enough about the subject to judge if that was true or not. I supposed farming bugs COULD be more resource efficient than farming cows but that didn’t matter because I’m not about to trade eating beef for eating roaches. Then I saw some silly MFM article somewhere pushing that narrative again and it came with a gut churning picture of a deep- fried spider and the I could HEAR the needle scratch in my brain. See recently I had become fascinated by the subject of spider silk and was wondering how long it would take the technology to progress that spider sill clothing would be commercialy available; and the answer was-probably not for a while. Part of the problem is that it’s HARD to farm spiders. It’s very, very difficult and expensive. That’s why the only spider silk clothing you’ll see now is in a museum behind bullet proof glass, not at your local Nordstroms. That really clarified how utterly full of shit these eat-the-bugs people are. And I was already deeply skeptical about the greenies with their constant failure to predict anything, it’s just about power, humiliation and control. They was to be living in marble mansions eating filet mignon while we squat in grass huts eating bugs.

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    1. Last I heard, the spider-silk making goats have all shuffled off this mortal coil. ~:(

      No way to get the silk proteins to spin properly. Sad, I always thought those goats were pretty cool.

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    2. Cults require the members to perform dehumanizing tasks, with joy, as part of the control process.

      “Eat the bugs” is about obedience, not improvement.

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  10. “Only the very strong can escape this unscathed. Or the very non conformist.”

    I’m not sure anybody escapes all of it unscathed. It’s just what degree the scathing affects you. Me, I’m not very strong. Not very nonconformist, either. My first instinct is almost always to agree and go along/get along — but I can’t help observing and asking questions, which is what led to parting ways with the leftist herd.

    Not just that, actually; that, plus a very solid religious upbringing by parents who are both very intelligent, humble, and kind (and a big extended family which tends the same), which gave me a foundational reference for what’s truly good.

    You start comparing the progressives’ (leftists, Democrats, birm) actual behavior and actual results to their stated beliefs and the outcomes they claim to desire, and the gulf between eventually becomes too much to ignore. Even giving them the benefit of good intentions (which by now I absolutely do not), no good thing will ever be produced by their actions. They’re just wrong. Full stop.

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    1. “Only the very strong can escape this unscathed. Or the very non conformist.”

      I know so many of my generation, including a friend I had since 5th grade get brainwashed in college. The simple minded useful idiots like her can’t even really accurately describe what Marxism really is. They believe it just boils down to being nice and generous. So if you oppose it, you must be mean and stingy.

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    2. Hrm… my mind does not work by The Default Assumptions.. so when someone tells me off and FAILS TO EXPLAIN IN DETAIL WHY I was MYSTERIOUSLY wrong, I presume they are BUGNUTS. And you know what? Most of the time… they are indeed bugnuts!

      The ratfinks that figure they know my motivation(s) better than I do? Clearly utterly, completely, irredeemably, insane. After all, if they knew me and my motivations THAT well, they could tune things to their advantage. None, as far as I know anyway, has yet managed. A few have managed to be REALLY FSCKING ANNOYING (and are likely so insane they figure I owe them an apology. I’d say they could kiss me under my tail, but I have some respect for my… undertail).

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      1. Tune things to their advantage? You mean… MANAGE the creative, energetic man who is strong like bull and knows every g0dd@mn thing, so that he produces amazing results? And we all get rich?!

        Don’t be ridiculous. That nail is sticking up! Pound it down!

        In other news, self-employment and a rural location are really working for me. >:D

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        1. amen on the later. And on the earlier? Well…. you know, this is why commie shitocracies are shitocracies. Because the “elites” are scared of anyone smarter and more competent. Which, frankly applies to my cats. The 12 week old ones.

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          1. “Because the “elites” are scared of anyone smarter and more competent.”

            Yeah, this is where being an Odd really shows up. I see somebody better at something than I am, I want to know what they’re doing so I can do it too. It never occurs to me that I might not be -smart- enough to do it, unless it is mathematics. Even there I can sing along with the tune enough to understand what’s going on, though I can’t do it myself. Bad at math, just the way it is.

            A jackass of the type you’re talking about sees a guy better at something, they instantly move to suppress/sabotage/remove that guy. In Asia this is formalized as part of The Way Things Are Done, which is why they only copy what we do instead of inventing their own.

            Example, China is only now replicating the space-travel feats of the USA from the 1950s and early 1960s. They have the money. They just don’t have the culture.

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            1. Once upon a time I visited the space museum in Huntsville, AL. The Saturn V was impressives, as was the Apollo module (with re-renty carring) and the Command Module simulator. But what struck me was the launch control panel for one of the early satellites.. it looked like was made in someones garage. there were holes where switches or lamps no longer (or never?) were. It looked… like any HALF competent fellow might have made it. And that… was actually very pleasing, satisfying, reassuring. Despite it being rocket science… it ain’t all rocket science. A good amount is (or was?)…. well, shadetree mechanics or the electronic equivalent. I suspect Elon Musk is successful by NOT ignoring such things in favor of Grand Theory.

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            2. To be fair, the Chinese are replicating USSR feats from the 60s, 70s and 80s. The only arguable exception is their little lunar rover, but there were Lunokhod rovers too, just not as autonomous.
              They did not have to do these things first and develop procedures from physics, plus they have the vast advantage of modern compute power and simulation.
              Any manned space program is not easy, but the Chinese space engineers are standing on some pretty elevated shoulders.

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              1. I dispute having money. Their money is mostly make believe. BUT they have the force to make people do things. Now consider how slaves are the most inefficient form of labor. Then you’ll understand what they’re doing.

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                2. See my point about replicating the space stuff of the USSR from one or two generations ago – there is a reason why the USSR was where the joke with the punchline “they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work” originated.

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              1. Other than the Chinese one staying in orbit for a while vs. the Soviet’s version of a small spaceplane being a suborbital test shot, see BOR-4, launched from Kapustin Yar, USSR on 04 June 1982 and spotted and photographed by a lucky Australian P-3 after it splashed down but before it could be hoisted aboard the Soviet recovery trawler.

                The Soviets didn’t continue their SPIRAL program that this was spawned from because Ronald Reagans’s “spend them into the ground” worked, and the Soviets bet their dwindling pot on the Buran shuttle-copy.

                So again, China is boldly going where the Soviet Union went 40 years ago.

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                  1. Right – which means absent any images or design stuff so far, makes it amazingly like SPIRAL and the US small spaceplane research, which all led around the block a couple times back and forth to the design of the X-37 and Dream Chaser – see the Ars Technica story for a good recap,

                    Or…

                    “Let’s not bicker and argue about who stole from who…”:

                    https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/09/the-long-complicated-voyage-of-the-dream-chaser-may-yet-end-in-space/

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            5. I can’t do it myself. Bad at math, just the way it is.
              …………………..

              Personally not particularly bad at math. I can do the math if it is laid out. What I often find difficult is seeing the pattern. Oh. Can do it if I have too, at least the simple stuff. But I have to work at it. Which is why I was impressed with the 3.5% per quarter inflation rate math reasoning why “technically” not lying about reported inflation rates. Sure, that makes sense now. (grin) Or why I could never lie with statistics. (Seriously, I’ve technically taken statistics twice and I still couldn’t pull higher than a B out of the dang class, of coarse second time I was in the hospital for 2 weeks, but still. “Biometrics” didn’t count as statistics. So I had to take “statistics” math, again.)

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        2. Oh, I so do NOT know everything. I do, somehow, from time to time, pull a minor (5th rate at best…) miracle from under my tail. I have NO IDEA how this happens. If I did, well, a few not too big lotto payoffs would set me up. No, not A/THE BIG ONE.. that’d attract (very unwanted) Attention.

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  11. The Reader wonders how many interconnected systems have to break before what we odds see now that competence is required for the survival of the species is visible to enough that it is demanded. He fears it will involve people freezing in the dark among other horrors.

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  12. Looking back at a lot of the people that I’ve dealt with that drank the Marxist Kool-Aide, it’s an almost perfect predictor that they had some kind of trouble in their families. Single parents, abusive families, foster parents, siblings with more issues than National Geographic…
    I’m not going to say that it’s a one-to-one comparison, but it maps very closely.
    And almost all of these people think they are “good” because they survived and what they need to do to keep surviving is good and proper.

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    1. Problem now is that these loons have the schools and are inflicting their psychosis on kids using very sophisiticated mind control techniques. Once the kids are so confused they can’t tell their stinky from their binky they lock them in the Cult of Woke, which is really hard to get out of when your brain has been scrambled, topsy turvey normalized and continually reinforced.

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        1. It really shows. There’s a whole sub-rosa industry in Toronto, middle/upper class parents homeschooling their brats because the schools are not physically safe, and also full of groomers. It ain’t just the gym teacher these days.

          Of interest, home-schooled kids can -fake- being like their crippled public schooled counterparts, even as they roll their eyes behind the other kid’s backs. “What do you mean ‘how do I know the Parthenon is the Temple of Athena?’ Google, obviously.” And not because the Old Man said “It’s in Athens, who do you think was the god of Athens? Could it be Athena?”

          And some of the stuff the public-schooled Zoomer generation swears is important will leave you scratching your head. Young Relative tells me these things, and I just boggle. Their eagerness to pretend girls can be boys is stunning. Less eager about boys being girls, which is also interesting, almost as if self-preservation trumps politics.

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    2. I think I once related to Ma that the $SCHOOL had The Commusit Manisto and/or Das Kapital and Mein Kampf…. and she expressed concern about the first two. Likely figuring (correctly) that Mien Kampf would cure itself of itself. FWIW, I never read any of the lot, but I knew fellow who attempted Mein Kampf and gave up on it: “Every chapter is the same, poorly re-worded.”

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      2. The Reader is in the same boat. He has attempted Mein Kampf multiple times and failed every time (same for War and Peace). He did force himself to read all of Marx (gagging) because understanding the endless fallacies in Marx was more important than grokking Hitler.

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        1. I’ve read Mein Kampf (e-book) a couple of times. It’s…rough sledding, both for how godawfully written it is (if there was one author in history that needed an editor that would stand up to him, it was Adolf Schicklgruber) and the insane hatred and insanity spewed therein. Hitler, for all of his Hitlerness, was actually a fairly observant guy about human nature in some ways. Some of the things he says about how people react to politics and how to get people to buy into propaganda is fairly common-sense. The other 99% of the book is watching somebody take that knowledge and go so far off the deep end he’s digging a hole at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

          I also read Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I had a dead-tree version of that one, and boy howdy I got a few weird looks when I would read that one in public because it had a swastika on the cover.

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  13. BTW, another datum on the economy:
    I visit local yarn shops when we’re on the road, and one was in extreme southwestern Washington. They have beautiful locally-dyed yarns and spinning fibers. OTOH, the owners are progressives doing things like celebrating trans activism with lovely pale pink and blue yarns/fibers.
    I just got an email from them saying sales are way down and fiber shows have been very disappointing. Not to mention one was canceled. Also saying all the local businesses are suffering because the locals are going to big box stores. Evil Corporations!(Being fair, they did not actually call out Corporations per se).
    Well, let me note that there are no “big box” stores on the peninsula. The nearest Walmart, etc, are across the Columbia River in Astoria. Figure a minimum 40 mile round trip with gas prices near $5/gal or more. I suspect either local prices are high enough to make this feasible, or some items just aren’t available in local stores.
    In any case the yarn shop owners are going to raise prices, offer classes, presumably for a fee, and hold more local events in lieu of going to big events. And they’re asking for donations/tips.
    So another sign the economy is in a mess.

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    1. Figure a minimum 40 mile round trip with gas prices near $5/gal or more. I suspect either local prices are high enough to make this feasible, or some items just aren’t available in local stores.
      …………………………..

      Or Try And. Plus. SW Washington VS Astoria, Oregon. You know a state without a Sales Tax? Sure, technically suppose to voluntarily pay Use Tax. Which happens 5th of never. Oh, anything that has to be registered Use Tax will be paid, or anything delivered (Oregon businesses aren’t stupid). Otherwise, not so much. We lived in Longview, WA across from Rainer, Oregon (not that we went to Rainer for anything, we were in Portland often enough for big ticket items we could haul ourselves). Let me put it this way, I had to ask a client from my last job when something went sideways on Use Tax, what “Use Tax” was (well after we left Washington).

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      1. My beloved reminded me of the sales tax after I posted. I had forgotten, if I ever knew. Plus, lower gas prices, so tank up while you’re there. You have now paid for the trip and then some.
        I’m tempted to write the ladies back and mention, because I’m fairly sure none of that has occurred to them.

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        1. Actually fuel costs Washington VS Oregon are equivalent.

          Reality check. Generally Washington Sales Tax VS Oregon Income Tax are equivalent, especially since Oregon Income Tax offsets Federal Income Tax and Sales Tax doesn’t. One of the co-workers had their accountants work it through. Why would they do that? Because until Oregon state quashed it (late ’90s?), the scalers were grandfathered under “where you lived determined whether you paid Oregon income taxes, and not where you worked” under the old premise that log rafts moved while being worked on, and couldn’t know which state you were on (never mind, who in the heck would be on a log raft while it crossed the Columbia?). Thus when we lived in Longview, we didn’t pay Oregon income taxes when we were assigned to truck ramps along OR Hwy 30 (Rainer or Astoria ramps). At our spending habits then, living in Washington, we paid very little sales tax. Remember food and medicine isn’t sales taxed, and our vehicles were old. These days? Not so much. Also this comparison was done early ’80s.

          Where Washington gets one (other than nickle & dime) is vehicle and RV (OMG) registration (unless your vehicle is really old), and back end home sale (take sale tax when you sell). Neither of which one can avoid (well people try vehicle, but the penalties, when caught, are prohibitive). Which, while we technically were in the right, crossed our fingers when hubby was transferred to middle Washington in ’03 (for 17 months) and we didn’t move the household. The RV trailer he lived in, parked in Washington for 16 months, and the vehicle he drove back and forth every weekend, and drove to work, stayed Oregon registered. Our technicality? Registered in my name too, and I was an Oregon resident. But hubby was technically a Washington resident. Washington officials could have come after us for the RV taxes (paid even if you owned before moving there). Vehicle too, since we bought it after he was transferred north (fuel savings paid for it). Issue didn’t come up so we didn’t have to look into “worth it to fight it” costs. He wasn’t the only one in the boat. At least 4 others were transferred from various Oregon locations, didn’t move their households either, and lived in prior owned RV’s. Randle Washington is in the middle of nowhere.

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        2. I’m tempted to write the ladies back and mention, because I’m fairly sure none of that has occurred to them.
          ………………….

          Guarantied it has. They are counting on the fact they are a specialty shop. 100%. People who want what they have, will pay the price. But if “woke” and limiting color varieties, they are killing themselves.

          Additional problem they have (I don’t know when changed) used to be when shopping retail in Washington (not service) could show Oregon driver’s license and avoid Washington sales tax (not any other state, which is why I suspect WA changed that).

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  14. There is no need to hire Leftists. None. They are not competent in anything beyond the simplest tasks. Conserve your time, save your money, hire the Conservative.

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      1. The Reader is pretty sure that ChatGPT could handle any HR department or university DEI department.

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  17. Various Marx inspired groups are cooperating in the destruction of the USA, soon, and perhaps already, they are going to begin fighting each other for control of the rubble.

    The Chicoms want to turn the US into a colonial breadbasket serviced by an imported population. The Muthah WEFers want to depopulate the globe, enslave the reduced population and be worshiped as gods. The political left wants to take control of the government and milk the taxpayer like a Mafia capo forever.

    Then you have the radical, hard core Socialists who are engineering a giant Cloward Piven action: 1. Infiltrate and control the institutions; 2. wreck the institutions; 3. blame it on Capitalism; 4. overthrow the government and institute the The Dictatorship of the Proletariat aka The Glorious World of Next Tuesday. Seriously, this is how they think.

    What to do, what to do?

    Christianity built Christendom from the rubble of Rome, Christians refined Christendom in the 13 Colonies and later the United States of America. It can be done again.

    If America is wrecked, survive, adapt, begin again. If America is wrecked something will rise from the ashes. Why not the Usaians?

    For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seem slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.

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  18. The first power grab was Lucifer and his team against G-d, for all the marbles. When they failed, they were banished here. Is it any surprise, then, that their inheritance as the Prince of the power of this world has only been destruction? They are not capable of creation or we’d have seen some by now.

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  19. Getting the kids to read and discuss =The Screwtape Letters= before the Left gets too much of its venom in them might help. The Left’s abyssession with Power is a good match for the First Axiom of Hell. Asking “Why do you feel affection?” might also help, as does “What things make you feel good? Feel proud of yourself?”

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  20. I am totally baffled by the Russia/Ukraine thing. It’s such a poor investment for all parties.

    I thought everyone knew that “Crimea doesn’t pay”?

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  21. Dale Carnegie wrote that we should “make lemonade when Life hands us lemons.

    “Cave Johnson”, legendary founder and CEO of Aperture Science, is alleged to have shouted “When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade – make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager.”

    My philosophy is more along the lines of telling bad jokes (i.e, “laugh about it, cry about it, or tell bad jokes and make everyone in earshot laugh and cry”). Probably a holdover from being in the Strategic Air Command.

    If we ever meet, I’ll share more details. But you’ll need to supply your own WMDs.

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  22. I blame Star Trek. Gene Rodenberry taught an entire generation that you could fix anything by reversing the power polarity.

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  23. I wish I could entirely agree, but the Marxism and Leftism infecting the US is not so simple as ‘a movement’. It seems, to me, to be multilayered. The followers, be they college graduates, immigrants, politicians, or any of those in some pain, they are the bottom layer. They are directed, well, directly, by the next layer, ‘leadership’. These invent causes, inspire and infame the followers, and generally try to advance ‘the cause’. Many politicians, community organizers, celebrities, etc… You recognize them. They are rewarded with careers, employment in service to ‘the cause’, etc. The layer above these are strategists, directing the leaders for maximum benefit of, well them, and the top layers. They are motivated, sadly, by their greed, knowing full well they preach sacrifice and justice, but gather their paychecks and rewards for services rendered. Gladly. They expect to not have to suffer the deprivations of normal life under their rule because, well, they are in charge, and must be unfettered by the difficulties the little people suffer, suffering only because of their rule (and the blind fealty to these ‘betters’). How3ver many layers of these strategists there really are or seem to be, the top layer are nether Leftists not truly Marxists. They are the holders of the levers, the real kingpins, the true elites, and they intend to orchestrate global society to their exclusive benefit. They coordinate with captains of industry and technology (fascism by definition), control, banking finance, and government in national and regional arenas, and intend to have their way even if it means war and disease. And they will largely stay hidden from obvious view.

    Sad, the followers are first immunized from recognizing the highest levels of this organization, lest they realize they are enslaved.

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    1. DO NOT attribute magical powers to the enemy. Marxists could never even create a single successful five year plan, and here you are crediting them with a successful multi-decade layered plan. PFAUGH. BS. You interpret the mess we’re in as designed, and not the result of each of them trying to make sense of what is, at heart a very, very, stupid idea by an autistic evil man.
      And each of them trying to take advantage.
      It is not going to be easy to dismantle, because many have been mangled by it, but it starts with “make it not glamorous.” And part of it is realizing that no, they’re not masterminds. They’re just horrible people, trying to justify their greed and envy as virtues.

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      1. I do not consider it magic. For decades the USSR failed one five-year plan after another. Lenin, then Stalin, ruled without any lack of privilege, succumbing only to death. Mao led similar failures, again succumbing to death, not rejection. His successors modified the plans, but not their rule. The other tyrants using Marxist theory to grease the skids to power mostly does in office also. Sadly Marxism seems mostly to fail when the true oppressed overpower it, and not often. The French barely escaped it some centuries ago, though it’s still attractive to them.

        At the top, it’s not Marxism. It’s pure, evil tyrannical conspiracy. They use the message of Marx to deceive.

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      2. I perhaps owe you a bit of an apology, I’ve worked through this theory for so long I tend to assume I’m correct. I ought to listen to others more.

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        1. I’m not saying we’re not in a heck of a pickle, but just because things work together, don’t assume they were designed that way.
          And right now they’re scrambling. All we have to do is remain ungovernable. They thought they had the great reset slotted in. Eh.
          Even France is rebelling. And we? we’re plain stubborn.
          Keep your chin up.

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        2. See if your theory works with it as a difference of degree, rather than of kind.

          Like, one of the things against leftist stuff? Is that there’s always carve-outs for themselves, in some form.

          If you view that as a kind of slider, with folks further up having more and more carve-outs for Good Reasons…..

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    2. …you may not view that as magical thinking, but it is absolutely magical thinking and/or movie-and-story magic.

      The simplest form is that it’s way too clean and uniform; that’s not how groups actually work, and I’ve seen how there are folks who are the Secret Masters types who are just “practical” about how sure they violate this or that rule, it’s ok, because– whatever.

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    3. Perhaps the issue is murky due to perception and labeling (which one does out of necessity to simplify and project their arguments with some semblance of logic. These folks are a mish mash of insane, corrupt, hornswoggled, greedy, narcissistic and amoral individuals who either wear or are draped with a mantle of Leftist/Marxist/Communist (and more) persuasion that camouflages their underlying dark human motivation to subjugate, wield power, inflict pain and enjoy the lamentations of their perceived enemies women free of any real outside posture or politics. Some of them have no plans, some have bad plans, some have evil plans, and some have plans approaching genius. As true warriors have noted, a plan is something to deviate from. Or something like that. Whether good, bad or ugly, plans tend to break down. And that is our main hope here.

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  24. I wrote a long wordy response earlier today that appears to have disappeared into the ether. Or maybe WordPress is slow. Anyways, the distilled version would say that getting all bound up labeling various participants in the demise of our culture/country/society ignores basic human tendencies they all share; countering this requires ignoring the labels and neutralizing the sons of bitches, not skulking in shadows waiting for their flawed or genius plans to go South.

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