Public Un-Safety

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Two days ago, I ran across this on twitter:

Again, the “if you disagree with me” “you make me feel unsafe.”

It is on the face of it a totally nonsensical claim. I’ve hung out with plenty of people with whom I disagreed violently, as for instance the late Eric Flint and my brother, and I’ve yet to be attacked or killed by them. And I’ve certainly neither attacked them nor killed them.

It is possible to have completely opposite ideas of how society or life in general should be run and to be friends or friendly acquaintances or even beloved family members.

In fact that is the normal behavior of humanity, and the idea that being near or sharing a hobby with someone who disagrees with you or works with someone you despise or for a cause you don’t like.

Humans — adult humans — don’t just pound or hurt each other for no reason other than disagreement.

When I pointed this out in my share, people said they’re lying about feeling unsafe.

I don’t think this is true, because among other things to say you feel “unsafe” makes you weak. But also because it’s on the face of it a pretty bizarre claim for us here, in the outer world, looking at things objectively.

So, what is going on? Our very own Foxfier said it was an admission of guilt. The people on the left who scream they feel “unsafe” would in fact gleefully attack those who don’t agree with them, and since the model for how everyone works inside our own heads is based on us, they assume that we’ll gleefully attack them, instead of being grown ups and sane who just shrug and go “I think your beliefs are pernicious, but you’re not a bad person.”

That might be part of it for some of them, but I think it’s more visceral and basic. They say they feel unsafe because, hear me out, they feel unsafe.

But how can they when we’ve never even thought of hurting them?

I just did a dive through my archives and can’t find the — I THINK — guest post in which it was explained that our schools teach people NOT TO THINK. I don’t remember if it was a guest post or me, nattering about what I saw as my kids were going through. Heck, as I went through, because when it comes to leftism Portugal was ahead of its time.

It’s more or less like this: the schools claim to be teaching you TO think. They present scenarios, they stimulate discussion.

But it doesn’t take very long for students to realize — certainly while still in elementary — that through all this supposed freewheeling discussion, there is a RIGHT answer and all other answers will be harshly punished and held against you.

It’s the problem of the right square.

As a commenter put it not so long ago, it’s the equivalent of crossing a floor composed of identical squares, and suddenly, out of nowhere, you get hit, and get told it’s because you stepped on that square. Yes, that one there. And you should have known better. And your only salvation, the only way to make the beating stop is to admit you did wrong and stepped on that wrong square, even though it’s indistinguishable from all others.

Which means instead of thinking, people are trained NOT TO THINK. They are trained to avoid thinking. Because if they think and come up with the wrong conclusion, they will be cast into the outer darkness and their former friends will call them all sorts of bad things, up to and including Nazi. (And racisss, sexisss, homophobic.)

So people feel unsafe when around people who disagree with them, because if they listen to them and disagree with their “friends”/fellow cultists, they will be hurt. So they feel “unsafe.”

This is why we get the other side writing fiction in which wrong words MUST be suppressed, or else they will “contagious” somehow.

In that sense, we are “unsafe” and they feel “unsafe.”

Which, I’m so sorry, but it just means it sucks to be them. Their “safety” depends on “if only everyone thought the same.” And since it’s impossible to MAKE everyone think or do the same, they’re doomed to feel “unsafe.”

Unfortunately in the meantime they break fan spaces, friend spaces, and the regular places that people meet and talk and gather and where we decompress and are “simply” human.

So… What do we do? We get used to feeling disappointed in former friends and associates. And we must — MUST — build spaces we don’t let them take over and destroy.

There really aren’t that many of them. They’re just loud and don’t brook opposition.

So build under, build over, build around.

And be not afraid.

Sursum corda!

336 thoughts on “Public Un-Safety”

  1. Obviously, we aren’t True Humans and must be beaten over the head until we become True Humans (or at least pretend to be True Humans). 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

    Liked by 3 people

      1. Halfway there when I hit 55. The “I give a damn” shattered and evaporated at age 60. Just means I shake my head and walk away on most topics. There are a few topics that get middle fingers as I walk away. A couple of topics that I’ll try to educate on, before stating “read the law” or “You do you.”

        Latter happened on Nextdoor. Topic was dogs in hardware (Lowes) and other non-food (grocery/restaurants). Most comments were education that, yes, surprisingly enough a lot of stores allow pets (besides pet and hardware stores, there is Cabellas, Hobby Lobby, farm coops, plants, etc.) One commenter in particular asked “Why? Leave pets at home.” Responses “Good places to train. Different than outdoors. It is allowed.” Commenters take “Train outdoors. Pets don’t need to go with you!” Ended with “It is legal. Stores allow. You do you.”

        Liked by 2 people

        2. My level of concern for the worries of others was never all that high, but it has almost completely vanished since moving to Northern Texas!

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          4. Aaannnd…looks like it’s never gonna show up. It was a link to the Yoo Toob video “I’ve No More F*ks To Give”. :-D

            I’ve no more f*ks to give

            My f*ks have all run dry

            I tried to go f*k shopping, but

            There’s no f*ks left to buy

            Liked by 1 person

    1. No, no, their ‘feelings’ give them moral authority to dictate not only your deeds and words, but your very thoughts. Badthink! Unclean! Drive out the heretics! Even better, burn them!

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  3. And another reason I do very little on FB….once again, someone we have known for decades in the SCA just viciously attacked my beloved (again), by calling his military oath into question. Why? Because he not only voted for the Orange Mango (yes, that’s the term the guy used), he is not properly outraged and infuriated by his Fascist Military Birthday Parade. He cannot be honoring his oath to defend the Constitution if he is not righteously opposing the Orange Mango with every fiber of his being, etc. If he does not, he is supporting Nazis. Etc.

    This guy actually served in the military in the 1980s. He’s been an off and on enemy since that time; how much of it was falling in love with a very “liberal,” woman I don’t know.

    My beloved, btw, has never once responded in kind to the people who do this. He finally looked at this guy and decided it wasn’t worth dealing with. So he’s blocked.

    But I simply do not understand why being able to type commentary gives so many people permission to spew the nastiest, most painful crap they can think of at people who do not agree with every iota of current progressive doctrine.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Lately for me there seems to (sometimes, randomly) be a word count involved in “mod for YOU”, with longer comments much more likely to send me to the gaol.

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  5. I’ve seen this from a different angle. There are people who’s primary value is to be part of The Group. Anything that threatens that, threatens them.

    Right now the Over-group is one that argues that mere knowledge of something makes one unclean and Not One of Us. So they must must suppress any knowledge of the thing, and prevent anyone knowing they might have been exposed to the Knowledge of Not One of Us, lest they too become Not One of Us.

    It is a hard thing for me to wrap my head around. I don’t think I will ever be able to respect them, but what concerns me is I’m not even sure I fully view them as people now. I know that way lies horrors, but they feel like they’ve lobotomized their souls and they want me to carve up mine too.

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    1. El Gato Malo postulates many people have completely identified with an ideology. For them, an attack on the ideology threatens their very identity. They perceive it as an existential attack on themselves and that’s why they lash out so viciously. It seems plausible.

      Now, wi,, WP put this in the moderation box? Let’s see.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. See, I’m not sure they’ve even done that. That rarely even know or understand their ideology, merely attack the targets who their leaders designate or anyone who threatens to separate them from their tribe.

        And if our ideology ever gains precedence, I suspect every one would immediately flip to it, professing they were always ABCD and never XYZ, and act like the last twenty years never happened.

        And we will once again be too impure for their new, completely different purity spiral to accept.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I think both of these are correct.

          Zealots for an ideology, who practice as a religion that is officially not a religion, and is therefore super sciencey.

          Additionally as well, go-alongs, for whom conformance to group has become magically the highest good.

          The behaviors can overlap in the same person, or a person could have one and not the other. Or one of the third or fourth modes of Marxism. (Three is the will to murderous bullying. Four is an allowance for my current state of impairment, as well as for the fact that I probably do not have the ability to exhaust every possibiltiy even at my best.)

          Liked by 1 person

        2. They don’t understand it, they just identify with it.

          Leaving ideology would mean they would have to find meaning themselves.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. And that would mean they’d have to spend time thinking. The horrors of an unknown activity/process/DANGER-PERSON/Squirrel!

            Is “person” sexist? Not sure I want to try a gender-discarding version of that word.

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      2. Years ago I saw a FB post from a pastor pointing out that the LGB community had embraced their sexual preference to the point of making it the most important aspect of their lives; in Christian theological terms they made their sin not just something they did for pleasure, but it became an integral, foundational part of their very selves. Giving it up would be even more difficult than breaking an addiction to nicotine or heroine because they would have to destroy their inmost selves.

        It gave me a lot to think about. If you believe in the existence of God, and sin, and Satan, that is.

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  6. Practice defending your beliefs. Not against the idiot interlocutor in front of you, but to display them to the world. Being wrong is okay. It’s even necessary for growth. Life is unsafe. Safety, even as many workplaces try to give it primacy, is almost never the top priority.

    Profitability? Yes. Safety? Absolute safety, such that you are never even slightly harmed, not even your feelings (which itself a harm, I would argue)? Nope. That kind of safety is a lie some folks tell themselves. A comforting one, but a lie nonetheless. Accepting risk is an adult behavior. Expecting eternal safety is not.

    Our country was founded upon principles of liberty. Of Freedom. And freedom itself is inseparable from risk. To be free is to accept risk. Risk of failure. Risk of loss. Risk of tragedy. Those who want to live their lives in protected little hovels, well, I’m sure there’s a sort of way for that, more or less. Which is putting your life and safety in the hands of another.

    That’s what the proggies want to do. They want power in the hands of government- folks they elect to have power over them- and expect the bennies they’ve been promised. Free health care, free money, free phones, the like. Modern day bread and circuses. It works, for a certain kind of person.

    It is childish. And foolish. Those in power from their efforts do not keep them safe. Viz Gruesome Newsome, et al. The constant promises of utopian dreams are in reality a confidence man’s game writ large. Notice the lack of funding of the D party, mere months after the doge cuts that haven’t even really got traction yet. Notice that all the money towards glowbull wormening/climate ca-ching! and what effect it had on the world climate (bubkus. Nada. Zilch).

    The shattering of the D party’s hold on the public cannot come soon enough.

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  7. their former friends will call them all sorts of bad things, up to and including Nazi. (And racisss, sexisss, homophobic.)

    Sarah, they have good reason for feeling unsafe, because (and increasingly) the name calling is the justification for a pink monkey beatdown. Certainly “morally” and also increasingly “legally”….

    Liked by 2 people

      1. And that DISSIDENT better feel unsafe enough not to be labelled a pink monkey. Which is the purpose, to suppress dissidents.

        Liked by 1 person

  8. I saw that happen more than a decade ago (could it have been two decades) to Elizabeth Moon. She wrote on Livejournal about reasons that Americans had problems with Islam, focusing on its treatment of women. Almost immediately her invitation to be GoH at a feminist science fiction convention was revoked because she made people feel “unsafe.”

    Liked by 3 people

  9. “Unfortunately in the meantime they break fan spaces, friend spaces, and the regular places that people meet and talk and gather and where we decompress and are “simply” human.

    So… What do we do? We get used to feeling disappointed in former friends and associates. And we must — MUST — build spaces we don’t let them take over and destroy.”

    And if we are the ones who maintain and moderate those spaces, we absolutely have to make it clear that such crybullying is not allowed. I had the experience of moderating an indy writer discussion group in the late oughts; we all had written HF novels, and we all wanted to support each other, and to swap information and help with creating and marketing our books. The political and social opinions were … all across the spectrum. (And a few of them were really out on the far fringe, of left and right. I was myself more on the center-right span of the spectrum, I think from what I have gathered since from other members’ social media.) I had to firmly intervene and quash discussions of politics and social beliefs on a good few occasions, especially around election time — because THAT WAS NOT WHAT THE GROUP WAS THERE FOR!

    We were there for our books. You want a political slanging match – take it out of group and keep it private between yourselves. The same ought to be in the various science fiction groups. It’s about science fiction. You want a screaming cat-fight … take it outside.

    Liked by 3 people

    2. I ran into this once for an extended family FB group. Squashed it at the get go. Had to. Just the immediate extended family, uncles and nephews, aren’t talking (FB group covers every extended family member back to who is my great-great-great-grandfather) opposite sides of the political divide (Orange-man-bad to Oregon-capital-*itch, polar opposites). To the point where mom made sure nephew knew that *uncle died (yesterday morning) because she knew no one in the uncle’s family would call, not even his ex-wife, let alone his children, or brother (sister probably, if they thought of it, but their health isn’t good either, OTOH she’s 83).

      (*) Age 77. Fighting blood cancer and heart.

      Good family news, cousin’s youngest and hubby are expecting children 2 and 3, a girl and a boy. Due Christmas. Likely be born Thanksgiving. They’ll have a toddler and twin newborns. The twins are uncle’s great-grands, 6 and 7.

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  10. Apparently the Codex Bored is not a Sci Fi Writers group, but a social control group.

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  11. It’s not about guilt or safety.

    It is a Power thing. It’s straight from Alinsky and disciples. HOA Concern Bully Karens on steroids.

    This tactic is currently used to infiltrate, take over and destroy groups and individuals for fun and/or profit. Currently being used by corporations to take over OSS software communities and projects through Leftist and Trans/Racial useful puppets.

    It works because people in modern society want to follow rules, get along and are too ignorant or apathetic or pacifist to figure out what’s going on and fight. People that value group acceptance over accomplishment.

    It doesn’t work in certain communities with fiercely free individuals, a higher barrier to entry or dealing with physical reality. That’s why it’s so widespread in most Internet communities. Anyone with a phone can be an arsehole and fsk with others.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. But how can they when we’ve never even thought of hurting them?

    As someone who’s been checking in on this blog intermittently for the past while, one of the first things I noticed was how common it is for the people in this community to look forward to the supposedly-inevitable day when the left will “force” all right thinking people to start killing them.

    To the extent that such comments get pushback, it’s in the form of hoping that such killing won’t be necessary.

    And then, of course, there’s Larry. You’re not Larry, and are not responsible for what he says, but my point is: dude has written a post on X in which he claims that he and people like him hate people like me so much that the only thing stopping them from murdering us is that “decent people don’t want to do time.”

    (which, as a sidebar: if the only thing stopping someone from committing murder is the fear of prison time, they’re axiomatically not a decent person. Like, hello?)

    That, and things like it, gets factored into the assessment that MAGA are dangerous.

    Because if they think and come up with the wrong conclusion, they will be cast into the outer darkness and their former friends will call them all sorts of bad things, up to and including Nazi. (And racisss, sexisss, homophobic.)

    What happens to your various relationships, including with the online community you’ve built here, if tomorrow you conclude that you’ve been wrong about Trump and he is an authoritarian and actively working to destroy democracy? That putting RFKj in charge of the nation’s health is going to hurt an enormous number of people? And so on?

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    1. DUDE. You’re checking on MY EXPLICITLY POLITICAL BLOG. Not my fiction writing groups of various sorts.
      Also, while on that, if that’s what you see here, you’re reading to be offended. WE DO EXPLICITLY SAY THAT IT WON’T BE NEEDED.
      Yes, we do joke about helicopters. We joke because we have a dark sense of humor and find horrifying things funny.
      BLah blah blah, “you’re evil and we’re totally unsafe around you.”
      Bullshit on stilts.
      Your side is the violent one. Always was.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Also, “actively working to destroy democracy”? We are a representative Republic. We are NOT a democracy. Destroy democracy? Bah. We’re restoring the Republic. That’s gonna hurt but it’s not destroying anything. It’s removing what doesn’t belong.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. I thought at first it was an experiment with sockpuppeting, making your point by example, but you don’t work that way. It was just the cosmic comedy of the doctrinaire Leftroid making irrational and poorly timed decisions in the usual demonstrative and projecting manner.

            Liked by 2 people

          2. Well, they need to fling a lot of stuff out so when you fail to refute everything they can claim some sort of victory.

            SOP… or as I often snark, part of the script downloaded from the Hive.

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    3. As someone who’s been checking in on this blog intermittently for the past while, one of the first things I noticed was how common it is for the people in this community to look forward to the supposedly-inevitable day when the left will “force” all right thinking people to start killing them.

      Are you on crack? Or merely hallucinating?

      Because you’ve managed to shift things a solid measure over– unless you count the glowies who show up, glory at the idea of shoot-em-up, and get dogpiled.

      We routinely have folks get pissy about how we aren’t like “normal” (left wing) locations, with the “yay now we get to murder!” nonsense.

      Try turning off your IMAX, maybe you’ll be able to see better.

      And then, of course, there’s Larry. You’re not Larry, and are not responsible for what he says, but my point is: dude has written a post on X in which he claims that he and people like him hate people like me so much that the only thing stopping them from murdering us is that “decent people don’t want to do time.”

      Interesting.

      Larry points that out for… people who try to cause harm to others.

      And you self identify as being the sort that would be threatened by the possibility of those attacked for political reasons being able to fight back effectively.

      I choose to accept your self-identification as a violent coward who feels threatened by the idea of those subject to violence being able to fight back and win.

      Liked by 3 people

    4. What happens to your various relationships, including with the online community you’ve built here, if tomorrow you conclude that you’ve been wrong about Trump and he is an authoritarian and actively working to destroy democracy? That putting RFKj in charge of the nation’s health is going to hurt an enormous number of people? And so on?

      Well, just for starters, Sarah would provide reasons for the change. And she’s built up enough trust, at least with me (and I’m the only one I can truly speak for) that I’ll give her arguments serious consideration. I’ve been a commenter here for well over 10 years, and Sarah and I have our disagreements.

      After that? I’ll decide if I still want to be here, or she will. Either way, I’m a guest in her “house”, and I’ll leave quietly. But it hasn’t happened yet.

      Liked by 2 people

        1. No, this bit is just this individual’s IMAX set to “bright”, as this individual knows what would happen in the inverse situation, since it has happened over and over again in reality: If a lefty varies from the party line ONE IOTA they get publicly je’accus’d, convicted in absentia, sent to a “work camp” in internet Siberia immediately, declared persona non persona, and all right thinking people must denounce the transgressor.

          Declared lefty J.K.R is only one example of many, but she fights. And the only reason she has survived this precise outcasting is these same denouncers gave her all the FU money in the universe, and continue to give her more via the new projects Hollywood keeps licensing in the Potterverse. And she fights.

          Liked by 2 people

        3. Not the only one. More than a few of us, have explicitly stated that in 2016 we didn’t so much vote for President Trump, but we voted against HER. That we were pleasantly surprised at #45 even a little shocked at our and his swamp nativity (no he can’t run it like a business, exactly). That we did vote for President Trump in 2020, and again in 2024. That we may not agree 100% with #47, but he is doing what he’d said he was going to do. I’m not unhappy, at all.

          Liked by 1 person

    5. If you think “Larry” is blunt, I want you to go find and read Tom Kratman’s “Tom’s Substack” (He has two.) You are looking for the RWDS series. -Highly- recommend starting from #1 and reading the whole thing. I also strongly recommend you securely wrap your head with duct tape before reading. Won’t actually help you, but the image amuses me.

      Did our Hostess pay you to show up and be exactly the unthinking irrational doomdweeb she referenced in her article? Because you nailed it in one excretion. No? You are genuine? Too funny. You do realize how epic foolish you look?

      Scuttle back under the leaching field capstone from whence you came.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. ”…wrap your head with duct tape…”

        Do they make Kevlar reinforced duct tape? I’m thinking of any bystanders here…

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          1. He occasionally gets things linked to from Instapundit, so if he’s on the Insty front page then you’ll be able to read that article.

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    6. If you think that

      “To the extent that such comments get pushback, it’s in the form of hoping that such killing won’t be necessary.”

      is weak sauce or pro forma or camouflage … You’re very bad at reading the room.

      That *hope* that you appear to be denigrating? That’s not some namby-pamby “oh, I hope I can get ice cream this afternoon.” It’s Garden of Gethsemane prayer. Also backed by terror, because none of us here relish the thought of what that day might look like and what will come after.

      *We don’t want the violence.*

      “Check your assumptions at the door.”

      Liked by 3 people

    7. how common it is for the people in this community to look forward to the supposedly-inevitable day when the left will “force” all right thinking people to start killing them.

      To the extent that such comments get pushback, it’s in the form of hoping that such killing won’t be necessary.

      This is because the people who read this blog actually know history, and in particular the history of communist regimes.

      You can concern troll all you want about “these people seem to want to do violence”, but the fact of history is, once the radical left gains power, the mass graves start filling up. For a somewhat recent exploration of one particular real world example, Frank Dikotter’s The Tragedy of Liberation will do.

      When the left gains power, the first thing to happen is “up against the wall, motherf/-/-er!” To ignore that constant pattern is to risk being the next against the wall.

      Liked by 1 person

      3. And the idealists who actually believe in the ideology go first, because they are a genuine danger to the sociopaths that have taken over the Party.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. …
          The phone rang two longs, his call. It was a girl’s voice that he didn’t recognize at first.

          “It’s Betsy,” she said with whispered urgency. “No names. Your two friends–remember this morning?”

          Yes; yes. The Bradens. Well? “Yes. I remember.”

          “In the basement of the school. The janitor saw the bodies before they took them away. They were shot. You knew them. I–I thought I ought to tell you. They must have been very brave. I never suspected—-”

          “Thanks,” he said. “Good-by,” and hung up.

          Betsy thought the Bradens were some kind of heroic anti-Communists.

          Then he began to laugh, hysterically. He could reconstruct it perfectly. The Marshal said to the General: “The first thing we’ve got to do is get rid of the damn Red troublemakers.” And so it trickled down to “Pliss to expedite delivery of these, Mr. Postmahster,” and so the Bradens got their summons and, unsuspecting, were taken down-cellar and shot because, as Braden knew, those Reds were very smart cookies indeed. They knew, from long experience, that you don’t want trained revolutionaries kicking around in a country you’ve just whipped, revolutionaries who know how to hide and subvert and betray, because all of a sudden you are stability and order, and trained revolutionaries are a menace.

          –C.M. KornbluthNot This August, 1955

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    9. Well “Hello”, I don’t know what Larry actually said but I’ve thought “if we were as EVIL as people like you believe, people like you would be dead”.

      If you’re still around, have a nice day.

      Liked by 1 person

    10. You might want to notice which side actively riots repeatedly, murders people (including shooting up schools) and claims to want the other side in camps or dead. Your people are the Antifa/BLM rioters, MS-13, and every child trafficker that your hero let into the US. So don’t try to be “the noble voice of reason”; it’s a poor fit at best.

      Liked by 1 person

    11. You really need to be more specific. There are several people who go by “Larry” in these communities. But to play along, I’ll assume you mean the ILoH (International, or is it inter-dimensional now? Lord of Hate, though you could throw a cis-gender in there as well) who draws a wide collection of trolls to his social media. If you do mean Correia, you really should study the part about internet arguing being a spectator sport so you can differentiate between hyperbole and true anger.

      Also, unless you’re a communist or fascist (actual, not current trendy type) I doubt anyone here hates “people like” you.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. Maybe “FBI” that hasn’t got the message to “stop” from new bosses. They do tend to show up occasionally. Right?

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            1. Maybe not but Sarah could control “who is allowed to post here”.

              Not that she will but she could do so. 😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁

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        2. I think they were discussing the Scary Larry, aka MHI Larry, the Larry without large boobs.

          I’m just a member of his fan club, because Larry is Right. (About most things…)

          ;)

          Liked by 1 person

    12. “As someone who’s been checking in on this blog intermittently for the past while, one of the first things I noticed was how common it is for the people in this community to look forward to the supposedly-inevitable day when the left will “force” all right thinking people to start killing them.“

      Wow, another lurking idiot. You read what we write here, day after day after day, and -this- is what you come up with?

      Have you looked at the news lately, Mr. Idiot? Who’s beating up who out there in the street? Is it Republicans rioting and burning cop cars? No, it is not. It is RENT-A-MOB scumbags hired by -leftists-.

      Here, let me lay this one on you. This is some soy-sipping Torontonian decrying the American destruction of the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

      “Canadian peace advocates expressed outrage at the Canadian government’s failure to condemn the illegal attacks on Iran by the US and Israel last week.” It goes on and on (and on, and on…) but that’s the gist of the conversation.

      I see things like that all the time. The USA -ends- the threat of nuclear war caused by religious fundamentalist fruitcakes, and without killing any civilians into the bargain, and the Left is up in arms.

      I remember when #BillClinton bombed an aspirin factory in Sudan to cover over his #MonicaLewinsky problem, and none of you Lefties said jack. I also remember a -lot- of drone strikes being called by #TheLightBringer… and none of you Lefties said jack.

      Who was it that suddenly started vandalizing Cybertrucks because REEEEEEEE!!!! Hmm?

      Sarah said “But how can they when we’ve never even thought of hurting them?”

      I’ll be the first to say that I’ve thought about it quite a bit. Mostly my thinking is about what to do when the rent-a-mob comes to Chez Phantom to ‘cancel my membership’ as they say.

      “That, and things like it, gets factored into the assessment that MAGA are dangerous.“

      They are dangerous. Maybe you should reconsider f-ing with them the way you have been, hmm? Seems prudent, wouldn’t you say?

      “Don’t start none, won’t be none.” Men In Black.

      Liked by 2 people

        1. You’re thinking Iran vs., Israel? One side targets cities, the other side targets individual windows in specific buildings in cities.

          I was thinking more like bears. Bears are dangerous IF YOU BOTHER THEM. If you leave them alone, they will leave you alone. Because that’s how they are. Bears are big, but cool.

          Do not mess with the bear. It will not end well.

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        1. As one of my characters says when accused of being violent: “I never hit anybody that didn’t attack me first.”

          She doesn’t mention baiting a few of them into taking that first swing, though. :-P

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Sigh. When I was young and stupid I might have engaged in SOME hunting over bait of commies. Seriously, why must they bring out the AKs if you sing PATRIOTIC songs?
            Weirdly my husband heard some of this hooliganism and apparently it’s when he decided to marry me.

            Liked by 1 person

        2. I’ve come to the conclusion that Lefties don’t believe in self defense. The notion that you would merely object to their righteous and entirely correct chastisement of you is terribly offensive! That you might -make- them stop, that is beyond the pale.

          You know, like you might run over the maniac that’s trying to stab his way through your window while your car is surrounded by hundreds of shrieking rent-a-mob cretins. It makes them feel unsafe.

          How could you, Sarah! The poor things.

          Like

            1. Like to? Welcome to Canada.

              Five guys break into the man’s house while trying to steal his car out of his driveway.

              The cops arrest the victim for resisting. Because 5 on 1 is completely fair, right? No danger there, right?

              “Give them your Lambo, stupid victim.”

              Liked by 1 person

          2. This is pertinent.

            So a lot of the behavioral fields in academia are (seemingly deliberately) not asking and not answering the questions that would redirect an honest man towards developing a more correct and more predictive theory.

            My view that war default is a much more accurate way to perceive history and prehistory than peace default is such a slice.

            Peace in this view requires that the two or more parties involved in an (internal or external) peace have specific sorts of perceptions. That they have common perceptions is not actually required. But, they need some commonalities of perception patterns, in terms of shared understandings of what counts as harm.

            If Alice and Bob have wildly divergent views about what counts as harm, Alice and Bob will not be in agreement about what harms are done the other, and will not run the same calculations about escalations, and reciprocity.

            If your ‘civilized’ peoples, and your lower population density savage and barbarian peoples do not have the ability to even recognize whether a common understnading of peace is holding in practice, then they will be at war, and it will probably go badly for the lower density population.

            Academia now is promoting a bunch of theories about elaborate ‘magical’ conspiracies involving language (going back to prehistory), and is such a greenhouse garden that they presume that the uneducated will never entertain any theories of academic conspiracy to screw the uneducated.

            A lot of hot house flowers buy the theroy that they learned as freshmen that they are harmed by ‘improper’ speech, and have not been equipped to test any of the key ideas, nor to evaluate breakdowns in consensus of treating the ‘educated’ as honest proxies for the uneducated.

            We here are oeprating on older conventional thinking abotu individual rights and wrongs, and also good and evil. (To some extent also Austrian economics, but it seems like we have not fully communicated a teoery of that which we agree upon. (Of course, we have fairly bitter internal disagreements wrt some of the other theories as well.))

            This is different from people who want the consensus speech magic of their own crowd, and do not want to be cut out of the herd by their own leaders for associating with wrong thinkers, for not clapping hard enough for Stalin.

            Liked by 1 person

          3. Slight correction. They don’t think *we* should have self – defense against *them *. If we look at them funny, or call them the names they have chosen for themselves, if course they are entitled to self – defense

            Liked by 1 person

      3. You said “and without killing any civilians into the bargain”

        I do have to point out that when we blew up those bunkers, there were likely hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilian workers present, from minions and moppers to scientists, managment, engineers, and probably at least one political “minder”.

        Our Israeli associates have been popping designated civillian key nuclear personnel like a stoner goes through Doritos.

        It is civilian/military split, not civilian/government. “Civil authorities” unelss a place is an outright -military- dictatorship, which the Iranian Republic decidely is not.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “…hundreds, possibly thousands, of civilian workers present…”

          You forgot to put “civillian” in scare quotes. ~:D

          I’m sure there is some suuuuper legalistic definition of “guys actively trying to make an atomic bomb for insane religious fanatics so they can destroy the world” but I’m going to go with the Texas definition of “needed k1llin’.”

          Because honestly, you’re mopping the floor of the nuclear bomb factory and fetching coffee for the mad scientists? You’re asking for it.

          They asked for it, they got it. Toyota. >:D

          Let’s run with the “nobody not actively engaged in trying to destroy the world got blown up” in the #OrangeManBad Double-Plus-Ungood illegal blowing up of nuclear bomb factory owned by lunatics.

          Because Americans target the little tiny 12″ diameter thermal exhaust port where the Mullahs target 40 square miles and hope for the best. (Much smaller than a womp rat, those things are almost 2 meters.)

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Oh, dont get me wrong. Glad we took down their nuke program a few pegs. Just pointing our we do not have clean hands. No one engaged in war has clean hands. Some just get much, much worse. Its a filthy business, utterly necesary at times, but never “clean”.

            Our MAD deterrant is “we will vaporize entire cities if you annoy us sufficiently”. That is kinda … dark.

            I just want the only folks with nukes to be a) us, b) folks we consier “civilized”and “rational” and “tight friends of the USA”, and c) no one else, especially genocidal theocracies and inbred loon-dynasties.

            And as far as such dynasties trying for the NBC specials, If they wont take the hint, take out their top ranks. and be done with it. The madmullahs, for example, have made it abundantly clear that they can and will get nukes eventually,and will then use them to “death to…” with glee. I see no moral reason to wait for cities to get vaporized to knock off the weirdbeard assholes cracking the whip.

            In personal self-defence, one does not have to wait to get shot before shooting the person swearing to kill you and assembling / preparing the means to do it. I see no reason nations should slaughter minions by the acre, and spare the dorkheads giving the orders. Popping the HMFWICs of the Peoples Theocratic Republic of Aholeia is the less nasty way to resolve the problem, versus repeatedly blowing to bits various minions while the HMFWICs draw retirement benefits.

            “Oh, but we need theri leaders to negotiate!”

            Nope. Whomever replaces them will negotiate, or we will repeat the process until we find the sane ones who will.

            Yes, I would explicity approve a nuclear “Pax America”. We are the only nation that has demonstrated anything like the moral core to do it. The alternative is the eventual incineration of tens to hundreds of millions. Becasue sooner or later, some lunatic is going to give it a go.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. +1

              “…t’were best it were done quickly.”

              We coulda had a Pax Americana after we wrapped up Japan, and we dam’ well SHOULDA after 9/11–like, by the next Friday. Friggin’ Dubya…

              Like

    13. No, we are afraid of the left abandoning what’s left of their sanity. That the people who actually wanted their non-vaccinated neighbors punished, shunned, denied medical care, could actually gain the upper hand, if people are frightened enough. (To be clear, that that subgroup would apply shunning/punishing/imprisoning to their opponents in any situation they gain power to do so).

      We don’t want that, any more than most military members want war.

      And for the rest, if Trump were an authoritarian the “Resistance,” would have folded up like a cheap suit. We are a representative republic, not a democracy. And RFK Jr. strikes me as a crank, but better a crank than a beagle-torturing real authoritarian like Fauci.

      Liked by 2 people

    14. It’s funny that the Concern Troll mentioned my namesake, since back in the day the trolls thought our gracious host was Larry with boobs. :D

      And the “normal” posters here don’t go through their day thinking of violence. They just want to live peacefully and free without too much fskery. Our first rule is to avoid conflict. Second rule is to avoid conflict.

      Then if pushed to the point of survival it’s FAFO since we are students of real history, especially that of Great Socialist/Marxist Experiments of the 20th century that put 100 million innocent people in the grave. Not to mention the Islamic cult of the last 1,500 years.

      We know the “other” side lies. We know they have tried to destroy and kill us through multiple means. We’ve been pushed around for over 100 years. We’ve collected the documentation. Then Covid left us no doubt that 95% of governments, corporations, institutions, and concern trolls have no problem stomping on individual freedom.

      We aren’t the rioters and looters. We are the warriors in the garden that would rather grow veggies and flowers, but are prepared for the worst. As former military, I never ever want to point a weapon at a person again. But experience shows I can, even though I’d rather plant some peppers.

      Liked by 1 person

    15. My question now is, in which field are we going to put this straw man that Hello has so lovingly crafted?

      Like

  13. Celebrating diversity by eliminating any diversity of thought. Go figure.

    I’m reminded of this quote that appeared on this blog some time ago: “You can’t be a non-conformist without the proper uniform.” — attributed to Christopher Stasheff

    Like

    2. everyone must be diverse in exactly the same way.

      Then there’s Catbert’s quote on workplace conditions: ” The longer you work here, diverse it gets.”

      Liked by 1 person

  14. Get slapped down for not doing what the group wants. Or, How I learned the lesson provided but not what was meant by the middle school teacher.

    Which was AUTHORITY was not to be blindly followed, believed in, and should always be questioned.

    The essay question was “Was the Atomic Bombing of Japan justified”. The answer I KNEW that was wanted was (NO). I literally stared at the paper a good minute before I just wrote out a paragraph on why it was needed. Don’t think the teacher really had it in her head that I read EVERYTHING I could get a hold of, and had read several articles in old magazines debating the point. Got an F on that test, even if everything else was correct.

    If I’m going to get in trouble for not following the group fine, I’ll do it in style because the more you push me the more my “NO. You are not the boss of me” comes out even when I know it’s the correct thing to do, but not doing it if you push. No, Not, Never. I call it the stupidly stubborn mode.

    PS: Ok, that remove whole paragraphs due to a backspace to fix a typo WP DIE DIE DIE YOU $&*#*(%&

    Liked by 2 people

    1. That was what I had against the WuFlu shots, even before the real info about what they could do to you came out. TPTB were so adamant that we get them before there was enough info for informed consent (gotta love post-concussion issues, I actually typed “conformed insent”, not as wrong as it might be, since TPTB were demanding conformity) that I was automatically against them. Then when I found the info on Factor V Leiden, “As long as you’ve never had a clot you’ll be fine” coupled with crickets about what would happen if you’d already thrown clots, and no way was I getting one. But even if the info had suggested it was completely safe, and I’d have been able to keep my job, by that time they had been so insanely pushy there was No Way I was going to give in to their bullying.

      But even with a valid medical reason, there were far too many folks who seemed to think that I should be happy to risk death or worse to make them feel “safe”.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. That came home to me this week. I got the WuFlu in March ’20, and as it happened, after the full announcements came out, my family medicine doc (Dr. Mengele because why not.) got to be the COVID lead for the big clinic (maybe the hospital, too, such is life in rural counties with little competition.

        When the clot-shots came out, immediate pressure to get it. I said a) “wait for FDA approval”, then when it was clear that was never going to happen, b) I already had it. At which point Dr. M said that could not be true, because the first official case in the county didn’t happen until April. (“Official” because the state finally sent testing kits our way. I went in for a flu test and failed both types. Symptoms, dead ringer for COVID.

        Discussions like this (never arguments) went on until MSM started talking about adverse reactions. At which point, Covid was never discussed. Before that, I mentioned that a doc told me to not take it. Re really wanted to know who. Never told. He also mentioned another doc’s name. (Not the one. Snicker.)

        Another clinic announced it’s taking patients, and I decided to pull the cord. Did get a checkup with Dr. Mengele’s junior member of the team–teaching clinic. If I weren’t sure he was going to be gone in a few months, I’d stay. I did mention I was leaving (2 months before intake appointment because busy), and the ‘Vid was one reason, plus Dr. M has sufficient teaching duties I seldom saw him post Covidiocy.

        Fine. Needed a prescription redone, since out of refills. Went to pharmacy (also part of the medical junta, but it’s not likely to go toes up) and “Denied. No Provider.”

        I did not explode, though calling Dr M a bastard upon hearing the news might count. Drove to the clinic and politely (bearing in mind, I’m 6’0, 280 pounds, and occasionally scare small children) explained what I saw. It got fixed. “Computer problem” is their story, and they’re sticking to it. Got a prescription from the junior doc (no refills, but enough). No apologies, and the e-chart system says Dr. Mengele is once again my doctor of record. ($SPOUSE figures/hopes that his boss read him the riot act.)

        Not much of a way to shorten this, but I seemed to have been temporarily (not going to push the envelope barring strange circumstances) banned, then unbanned. Apparently for being skeptical about the healing power of mRNA not-vaccines.

        Dear Hello. This is why we joke about helicopters and Saint Augusto.

        (If this escapes moderation, I’ll be shocked.)

        Liked by 2 people

    2. I grew up with an air force base a few miles away (still the only dual nuclear base in the US) so when that question came up in high school debate most of us actually said it was necessary. Still, the debates were great fun.

      Like

    3. The paragraph gets removed when you hit backspace while holding down Shift, which usually happens by reflex when you typo a capital letter or a parenthesis. It’s SUPREMELY dumb, and the WP programmers who came up with the idea should be given forty lashes with a wet noodle.

      BUT… it’s fixable. When it happens, IMMEDIATELY hit Ctrl+Z and it will undo the deletion. It happened to me THREE TIMES while writing this comment, but Ctrl+Z brought the paragraph back every time.

      Liked by 1 person

    4. One wonders why your teacher was a genocidal maniac who wanted every Japanese subject to be dead.

      Like

        1. …you go play in the trees by yourself. Because that is -way- better than having hateful vermin trying to curb-stomp you on the side of the sandbox.

          Besides, the neighborhood cats use it as a litter box. >:D

          Liked by 1 person

    2. My wife and I have discussions about being shunned. She has a lot of anxiety, along with her clinical depression, and points to her childhood of not fitting in with any groups. A large part of that is also that her dad, as police chief, told her that her “friends” were really her friends and were just using her as a way to try to get out of trouble with her dad at some point. She wants to be recognized.

      Whereas I came to grips with not being a part of any particular “in” group, and just surfed the edges of several different groups. That whole meme about GenX not caring? I identify with that. If I don’t see people for days or weeks on end, I’m perfectly happy. Probably because I see most people as problems that need to be dealt with, and I’d rather just do my own thing. She gets upset on my behalf if I don’t get the recognition she thinks I deserve. I’ve had my 15 minutes of fame, and I managed to keep my name out of it.

      Liked by 2 people

  16. We ran into this recently at work.

    My group has the utter misfortune to be one of the more experienced groups (10+ year each) in the organization, and the one that asks questions about and and pushes back against sudden unannounced changes from the other group.

    The other group which announces these changes – and has the authority to do so – is composed of completely new people, most of whom have worked here less than 2 years and are learning their jobs from people who have also worked here for less than 2 years and also from policy documents that have not kept up with changes to procedure.

    Their practice is to not announce a change in enforcement and not leave a grace period for everyone to learn about and catch up with that change in enforcement, but to suddenly start returning reports for things they allowed through the week before, and were allowable the year before when the authorizations associated with, say, travel, were created.

    They also like to publicly contradict their own instructions in the course of about three sentences.

    And naturally, their motto is “Non-compliance will not be tolerated.”

    Well, our group questioned them and objected to the contradictory answers they came up with in a public forum, and they, a week later, through their boss’s boss, demanded a public apology from us for making them feel unsafe.

    Our boss’s boss said no. Happily. I don’t think I would still be working here if he didn’t have our back.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. I hope you understand that “no” will burn them like white phosphorus coals poured upon their heads.

      So enjoy the image. 8 – )

      Liked by 1 person

    1. The question is, will they feel sufficiently unsafe to leave us all the f- alone? I feel the communication has not been impressed upon them enough yet, they still seem cocky.

      Liked by 2 people

  18. A great deal of the “I feel unsafe” crisis is fed by cowardly bosses. So often, from news reports, it’s an obvious power play by younger employees. If you reward certain behaviors, the behaviors increase. Certain professions seem to be more vulnerable than others. The news media in particular, seems to be running away from office mean girls.

    In this case, it’s the codex board. In past cases, previously respectable arts and culture boards. Note the effective demise of the Hugos, for example, a once respectable award.

    I know the life of a volunteer board member is unpaid, and opens you to disrespect, but part of the job is to occasionally tell people to pound sand, even if you’re afraid they might say mean things about you.

    Strangely enough, if they can tell that you won’t fold, they’re unlikely to try anything.

    Like

    1. It is not simply a ploy by younger cohorts. Lots of young-person-complaining stuff is where the senior levels have quietly invited compliant youngsters to give the senior lunatics a young person shaped figleaf.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Like at various protests, where they’ll have kids and young women in front… and most people never even glance to the left or right, much less a bit behind that thin line, to notice who’s standing there.

        (It gets really obvious when they’re the only ones whose faces are visible, and you start eyeballing and the masked “woman” next to shouting chica forgot to shave, but happens to be short)

        Liked by 2 people

    2. if you’re afraid they might say mean things about you.

      Strangely enough, if they can tell that you won’t fold, they’re unlikely to try anything.

      You’re about 30 years behind. They can say them to various bureaucrats, who can and do investigate and then prosecute. They can say them on the internet, and there are whole businesses devoted to stripmining websites and social media. Finally, if they spin it right, they can put it on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook, they just might get a mob of randos to your door. Even if it’s unlikely, it still happens, and your management has even less incentive to stand up for you.

      Liked by 1 person

  19. Nobody can make those wankers ‘feel unsafe’. That’s something they do all on their own. They just can’t take responsibility for anything, even their own ‘feeeeeelings’.

    Like

    1. “Nobody can make those wankers ‘feel unsafe’.”

      Heh heh, that is so untrue. I’ve made a whole station full of middle aged nurses (all named Karen, apparently) feel unsafe by walking in and saying “good morning”.

      So big, so male, and so profoundly indifferent to whatever they thought I was supposed to be doing. And standing on the Forbidden Tile too.

      They demanded to speak to my manager. >:D

      Like

  20. I find it bizarre that we’ve decided as a society that being a victim is a Good Thing™. I can only assume it is because it allows the “victims” to feel that violence against anyone and anything they don’t like is justified. (See: the Palestinians.)

    Like

    1. Marxism.

      Marxism is the pretense that humanity evenly divides into bullies and victims, for the purpose of enabling the most viciously insane bullies with the conceit that they are the real victims.

      The murderous tyranny is not an accident that inexplicably occurs over and over again, it is the purpose.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Intellectually I understand that’s how it works, but I fail to see how a society built on “the weaker you are the more power you can wield” is going to be successful in the long run.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. Frank Herbert nailed it when he had an Honored Mater (the anti-Bene Gesseritt) say, “What have my grandchildren done for me lately?”

            Like

  21. The right square problem is a real and increasing one. At my favorite vacation that I have all year last weekend I bit my tongue on three separate occasions rather than engage with a leftist. One instance I was told that the T’s of that infamous alphabet just wished to be left alone. I walked away. I wish they wished that. Jolie LaChance KG7IQC

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Older T’s from decades ago wanted to be left alone, or just be treated semi-normal. T’s of the last two decades weaponize their “victim status” and act like turds in the punch bowl.

      Just my experience from dealing with the high functioning mentally ill in my tech career.

      Like

      1. I’ve met a lot of older T’s and this seems to be the case. Along with a fierce desire to “pass” as hard as possible.

        Most modern Ts seem to be more of a brand identity or externally imposed than an internal desire that won’t go away.

        Liked by 1 person

  22. ‘to say you feel “unsafe” makes you weak’

    The ones less likely to drink the Kool-aid are likely concerned about avoiding the appearance of weakness. But the Western left these days celebrated the Cult of Victimhood. And as a result, I suspect quite a few of them believe it a virtue to look weak.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. But the Western left these days celebrated the Cult of Victimhood. And as a result, I suspect quite a few of them believe it a virtue to look weak.

      It’s certainly a good lure, isn’t it? And don’t we Americans have a soft spot for the weak – the underdog – too? Aren’t we known for being kind and helpful when dealing with those less strong than ourselves?

      There might be more than virtue-signaling that goes into some people’s decision to appear weak….

      Like

      1. It’s not just Americans. It’s a core principal of Christianity, and thus hard-coded into nearly two millennia of Western culture.

        Liked by 1 person

  23. Funny how the Codex Board suddenly re-discovers the (once, oh-so suspect) “Freedom of Association.”

    Like

  24. They are doing themselves grave damage. When a person with a phobia runs away from the object of the phobia, he is reinforcing it and thus increasing it by telling himself the phobia is right.

    Liked by 2 people

  25. Word Press and Fox News comment boxes must share some code that every so often makes whatever you’re typing go poof. I haven’t figured out which combo of keys might be involved.

    What these snowflakes fail to understand is that there is no right to feel safe. Sure, a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But feeling safe falls under that happiness category, and they can pursue it, but it’s not a guarantee they will ever acheive it.

    Heck, I always feel at least a little unsafe, even in the most secure surroundings. Mostly because, A: I’m always looking for the best escape routes, B: Thinking of how I could best attack the place, and C: What’s there that I can use as a weapon, distraction, cover, or shielding.

    Liked by 3 people

    2. At least here and to me, what I have consistently seen happen is this comment editor automatically asserts the “shift” key in certain instances, such as after a period, and at the same time the Good Idea Fairy caused some WP programmer to define “shift+delete” as “delete paragraph”, so if you hit “delete” while the auto “shift” is in force, poof!

      The “undo” function on mobile does not ever work to recover such, while the “ctrl+Z” form works sometimes on PCs.

      Like

      1. Note it might be ”backspace” – this iPad keyboard only has something labeled “delete” but I can’t see what ASCII it sends.

        And as an addenda, on this iPad mac-format keyboard, “cmd+Z” does work to recover paragraphs from Lost Island.

        Like

  26. You feel unsafe? Your quaking cowardly emotions are not my problem. I don’t care and the world at large doesn’t feel any need to wrap you in a blankie and keep you safe. But I’ll give you some honest advice. It doesn’t make you more fun to be around and I’d never consider working with youl

    Liked by 1 person

    1. A lot of the stuff the Progs do has two options.

      This one, if it fails– damages your right to say “No, I recognize a threat. I am getting out of here. I refuse to be a good little victim.”

      Because that makes you a “hypocrite.”

      Here’s an example of the activists doing it, and getting pushback from the ‘TERF’s.

      https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/chris-kenny/gaslighting-victorian-government-faces-backlash-over-new-equality-campaign-ad/video/6694b74b367f60215af962aff8fb4492

      Liked by 1 person

    1. It looks, at the moment, like he writes nonfiction business books and technical manuals. Or at least, that’s what is published under his name.

      Liked by 1 person

  28. I don’t think this is true, because among other things to say you feel “unsafe” makes you weak. But also because it’s on the face of it a pretty bizarre claim for us here, in the outer world, looking at things objectively.

    We are a threat.

    Not because we will do something to harm them, but because if they are exposed to us, they may become shunned.

    This is why you must avoid badthink, because you may become infected– and then you will be cast out.

    If this is hitting the warning bells for “cult like behavior,” then good, you’re paying attention.

    Liked by 3 people

  29. Funny how feigning weakness is typically a lure used by various creatures, real and folkloric, to draw in prey. One might almost think that appearing weak is a good way to eat.

    P.S. If you see a magnificent horse on it’s own in a field, keep walking away from it. If you see a woman apparently crying over her infant in her arms, walk away. If you hear your name called in the woods, do not answer.

    If you are told that you make someone feel unsafe, you are likely the one unsafe. Do not agree to anything, document everything, be polite, and leave at the first opportunity – for your own safety’s sake.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Indeed. Very weird. One might almost suspect that’s why they despise the Old Stories and lore. Can’t camouflage yourself if people recognize the colors or pattern you’re using, after all….

        Liked by 2 people

      2. Honestly, pretty much any precautions one would take against the fae or the greek gods apply online as well. If you give out your children’s true names too freely, flaunt their charm and goodness too openly, take too obvious pleasure in the good things in life, unseen bad forces might take it on themselves to torment you/your children out of envy or spite. (And that’s before we get into computer coding, aka gibberish incantations that work magic if you write them exactly correctly). I don’t care what the ppl with the polar ice samples claim, I think there’s a real chance we’ve reached this tech level before, and it didn’t end well.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. No. There has never been a worldwide technological civilization before. We know that because of what we have found, and what we have not found.

          All the coal, oil, gas, mineral ores and fossils were still in the ground undisturbed until we started digging them out. Nobody ever mined uranium before the 20th century. Nothing could have hidden the results of uranium mining in less than millions of years.

          No major rivers had ever been dammed. We have found no shipwrecks of completely unknown origin in either the oceans or big lakes. And we were responsible for all the invasive species, from crops and domestic animals to vermin and diseases. There were no rats in the Americas until they stowed away on Columbus’s ships. No mice or rabbits in Australia. And so on.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I buy the uranium mining and lake wreck arguments up to a point, but we started mining for coal before we were particularly sophisticated archeologists, and we certainly haven’t mapped the ocean floor as systematically as all that. I thought I’d heard about incidents of either oil or gas deposits appearing to refill, presumably due to connections to deeper deposits.

            Liked by 2 people

                2. Yeah, 50,000 year old shipwrecks… made of unobtainium?

                  We’ve only had ships of mostly metal construction for the last 200 years, and based on the wrecks we have of those, most of them will be corroded away within 300-500 years of hitting bottom.

                  Wooden ships only have a tiny fraction of the wood surviving after 500 years, unless sunk under optimal conditions (see: Black Sea, or the VASA in the Baltic).

                  The shipwrecks over 1000 years old we really only know of from the stone cargo, pottery, or metal cargos that are made of stuff you’d never build a vessel out of (copper, bronze, tin, zinc, gold, silver).

                  And, until just 12,000 years ago, the sea level was 400-600 feet lower, so you aren’t going to find a 15,000 year old shipwreck in ANY of today’s currently human-dive-allowing waters. And the bottoms aren’t static. Finding a 50,000 year old shipwreck, if one existed, would require accidentally drilling a core sample through some sort of cargo that wouldn’t look like generic stone rubble, and just finding one (let alone recognizing it) would be a trillions to one accident (given that a typical core has at most a 20cm diameter).

                  As for animal distributions, your choice of example animals assumes a lot. If you don’t import a non-pest, it’s not going to make a trip. If a society arises on a more island-like environment, they might have brought pests back home, rather than the other direction – then became extremely paranoid about making sure their rat-equivalents weren’t carried along to new lands. And, their lands would then be drowned by sea level rise. You are victim of the “They had to think exactly like us” fallacy.

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. They would have been human. What are the odds that they wouldn’t resemble at least one of the human cultures we’re aware of?

                    The whole question is about a global, industrial civilization equivalent to ours in the distant past. Not a few primitive villages clustered around some ancient seashore. There is no place on Earth that we have not established a presence, raised constructions and scattered unmistakeable high-tech artifacts about. We have found no evidence of any such civilization existing prior to ours. And there would be overwhelming evidence if there had been.

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                    1. Don’t get me wrong, if this particular piece of looniness is true, some other pieces of looniness are as well, most likely the polar shift looniness.

                      But here’s a different idea to try on for size: it seems to be reasonably well accepted there were modern humans in Africa 300,000 years ago. (Sarah below says more like a million years, I personally haven’t seen those articles). Pretend some specific group of them fetched up in an area with all the right resources, and over the course of ninety thousand years got to where we are now in terms of weapons, comms, modcons, maybe medicine, but cultural taboos or dependence on the resources in that area kept them from spreading out/getting as advanced in transportation as widely as we do.

                      And then, not long after the invention of their version of social media, their society tears itself apart, exhausts its natural resources, whatever collapse narrative you like, and before long their descendants are just primitives mingling with everyone else, and sharing stories about the Before Times. Those stories migrate out of Africa at the same time mankind and spread all over the world, leading to the memes I mentioned originally.

                      The homeland with the interesting 200,000 year old artifacts? Today buried under heavy vegetation and political instability. Who’s gonna know?

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                    2. You…don’t really understand what is involved in developing and maintaining an industrial, technological civilization, do you?

                      The first requirement is an extremely large population freed from the unending drudgery of subsistence farming which fully occupies at least 80% of the available labor just to provide food. This means agriculture, mechanized farming, and a well-developed chemical industry to provide fertilizer, weed and bug killers. Only then do enough people have the time and energy to apply to studying math, science and engineering. How many people does it take to support one computer engineer? Hint: a lot.

                      A civilization capable of reaching our level of technology CAN NOT FIT into some isolated little spot in the middle of nowhere. It HAS to spread over a large geographical area. This is one of the main reasons the United States grew into the world’s premier industrial, economic and technological power in such a short time — we had the space and the population to support that growth.

                      When your postulated tiny isolated high-tech civilization was declining (you don’t pretend it collapsed in one night of horror like the Krell, do you?) NOBODY bugged out to escape the impending collapse? NOBODY even tried to rebuild elsewhere?

                      No. That hypothesis requires the concatenation of waaay too many circumstances that are each individually unlikely. There’s improbable, and then there’s ‘violates the fundamental principles of the universe’ improbable.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    3. Where did Sarah say anything about ancient INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATIONS?

                      Was the Roman Empire an INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION?

                      Where the Greek City-States INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATIONS?

                      We know they existed but nobody really believes that they were Industrial Civilization.

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                    5. Yes, yes, we do.
                      Okay, for the record, there have been people who did an analysis of things like heavy metal concentrations and atmospheric changes and came up with FOUR industrial civilizations before ours.
                      Are they right? I have my doubts because for one of those there would be ONLY DINOSAURS.
                      However stomping your foot and treating us like idiots is not going to convince anyone that this should be a completely forbidden topic.
                      DO CHILL. Consider the unimaginable. It’s what SF is for.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    6. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, fair enough. You reminded of some logistical things I’d forgotten or not thought hard about, and for that I thank you. But you and I live on earth, which is a billion to one shot planet circling a billion to one shot star, so please keep that in mind when arguing from improbability. :)

                      Liked by 1 person

                    7. Go back and read the root comment that started this whole thread. Especially the last line:

                      I think there’s a real chance we’ve reached this tech level before, and it didn’t end well.

                      No, we didn’t, and I have been explaining why.

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                  2. Note we have found some truly weird stuff precisely in cores. I won’t even kick about its being put in “we’ll figure it later” because obviously speculation has no room, but still.

                    Liked by 1 person

          2. Also, how in the world would you be able to tell from the fossil record if a species was imported with intent or migrated there? Okay, fine, it’s pretty obvious in AU, but the rest of the world?

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            1. Pottery lasts forever. If there was an advanced civilization, they’d have left a hoard of ceramics. Like spark plugs. I’m sure a buried spark plug would last a million years, easy.

              Liked by 1 person

                1. I was thinking that based on the garbage we produce these days, there’d be no escaping it. It would be everywhere. There would be mountains of it.

                  You said yourself that your mom can’t stick a spade in the ground back home without hitting some busted Roman artifact. ~:D

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                2. An ancient technological civilization that only lived on land that is now deep under water? I don’t find that hypothesis credible. None of them climbed Everest and left so much as a piton behind? Or carved something memorable into the highest rock in the world?

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              2. There are estimates that AOL (remember them?) sent out more than a billion ‘free’ AOL CDs back in the 90s. They might not last forever, or be readable a century from now, but they will be recognizable as artifacts of an advanced technological civilization for a very, very long time.

                We find lots of million-year-old primitive stone tools. We don’t find 100,000-year-old stone artifacts worked with power tools. How long will a granite gravestone last? Or a marble statue? A beer bottle, even? Billions of aluminum pop-tops?

                Where are the descendants of food crops and domesticated animals from an ancient ‘lost’ civilization?

                Liked by 1 person

                  1. Well, I wouldn’t, specifically. That was just an example. The chance that a hypothetical ‘lost’ civilization came up with an identical device is practically nil. What I mean is that there is no place on Earth you can go and not find clear evidence of our industrial civilization — constructions, excavations and artifacts that will be unmistakeable for hundreds of thousands to millions of years. Far longer than there have been humans, for certain. Therefore, the fact that we have found no such evidence of any ancient civilization equivalent to ours is sufficient proof that there wasn’t one.

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                    1. I also doubt that there was past civilizations as advanced as we currently are.

                      However, it is possible that the Ice Ages destroyed metal-working civilizations where the only remains are underwater (continental shelf level).

                      We know that ocean levels fell during the Ice Ages and rose when the Ice Ages ended.

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                    2. Precisely that.
                      I don’t think there was anything at our level. If there was, it was “sideways” i.e. not quite what we have. BUT it’s not IMPOSSIBLE.

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                    4. Incidentally, read the actual contents in there.

                      There’s nothing in it that should send it off to a “WOW! ANENCHUNT MYYYYYSTERIES!!!! HITLER AND ALIENS!!!” type website, it’s literally “huh, that’s weird, there’s a bunch of obviously man-made ditches in the rain forests in these areas. Now that we know they exist we can look around and find them in a lot of places that didn’t look like people had ever done anything.”

                      That is why there’s a question of how much to trust prior judgements and act like the science is doing anything other than trying to tapdance on a land slide.

                      Liked by 2 people

                  2. Hanging out with my kids and finding “ancient” stuff that’s only maybe 20 years out of common use brings an interesting angle to stuff- things that I recognize because I nkow them when they’re working, and my kids are staring at why mom is fussing at some weird branch things.

                    Liked by 2 people

                2. We don’t find 100,000-year-old stone artifacts worked with power tools. 

                  How do you know?

                  If the tool’s not there but only the artifact, how do you know what it was and wasn’t worked with.

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              3. One of the “out of place objects” floating around out there is in fact alleged to be an ancient sparkplug. Debunked, of course, but I don’t know enough to be sure of the debunking.

                Liked by 2 people

            2. Anything that happened more than half a million years ago was not the result of a ‘lost’ human technological civilization. Because before that, there weren’t any humans.

              Like

              2. The origin of our species, Homo sapiens, has puzzled paleoanthropologists for generations — and finding the answer has only gotten more complicated with the discovery of far-flung fossils and the advent of genetic analysis. So where and when did our ancestors first appear?

                Currently, the answer is still up for debate: Researchers have so far unearthed 300,000-year-old fossils attributed to our species, while some scientists trace modern humans’ origins to 1 million years ago. One of the reasons for the lack of clarity is the definition of species itself: what do we mean by Homo sapiens?

                What is a species?
                The biological species concept is the most well-known — members of a population that can interbreed are considered one species. Thanks to DNA analysis, in 2010, scientists discovered that Neanderthals and humans had interbred in Europe and the Middle East, with more recent research suggesting they paired up as far back as 250,000 years ago. Another close relative, the Denisovans from Asia, also interbred with humans at least 50,000 years ago. Some anthropologists now consider Neanderthals and Denisovans to be the same biological species as we are — Homo sapiens — but others maintain each is a separate species within the Homo genus.

                https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/when-did-homo-sapiens-first-appear

                That’s one theory.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. Neanderthals and Denisovans were at the very least morphologically distinct subspecies. And there was interbreeding. A lot. Our family tree is more of a bramble bush. :-D

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                  1. Possibly so– are they a subspecies like gray vs timber wolves?
                    Like dogs vs wolves?
                    Like coyotes vs dogs, which just a decade and change ago reputable scientists assured us could not interbreed?
                    Opposite direction, are they subspecies like poodles and sheepdogs? Like different varieties of miniature dogs, from each-other?
                    We don’t really know, and the information is very limited, and the more information we get the more we find things like a lot of “modern humans” have a lot of Neanderthal, amusingly enough highest in the region of folks who came up with the idea of modern humans as A Thing. :D

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. There’s speculation that we got blond/red hair and blue eyes from the Neanderthals.

                      And with what we’ve found about the correlation between Neanderthal DNA and our capacity for logical/abstract thought…Biden’s jape about Neanderthal thinking was more of a compliment than an insult. :-P

                      Liked by 1 person

            4. add to that that populations of horses we thought were original wild stock are re-feralized and that dogs actually are not that different from wolves genetically.
              Also of cheetahs weren’t domesticated at some point, they’re impossible. No, seriously.

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              1. Cheetahs are weird. They’re felines. But the way they stand and move reminds me of canines.

                IIRC, there are records showing that some were domesticated by the Egyptians. But it wasn’t a species-wide thing, which is what I think you’re talking about.

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                1. Hmm. I’m recalling Dean Ing’s Harv Rackman stories (IIRC Pulling Through) where he had a watch-cat. A cheetah named Spot.

                  FWIW, that’s a hard-SF after-the-blowup short novel. The paperback version had articles on fallout shelters, air purification (toilet paper filters and cardboard box+plastic pumps FTW) and other survival needs.

                  He also had a great ground effect-lift Lotus. I wanted one. :)

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                    3. It’s possible, but. Didn’t see the Bond movie (got iffy about seeing them late in the Roger Moore era), but if that Lotus could fly, I wouldn’t bet against Ing consulting on the car.

                      Dean Ing was heavy on advanced aeronautic machines in his work, so a Lotus (and earlier an off-road Porsche) capable of ground effect flight (usually in hops for the Lotus, though the novel had it traversing one of the north bays in the SF region) wasn’t a stretch. I don’t have the short story with the Porsche, so not sure of the date. (It should be included in the 2004 collection The Rackham Files.)

                      Liked by 1 person

                    5. Make that early in the Moore era. Rather liked the knockoff Never Say Never with Sean Connery (though then-GF and I were in a drive-in and [redacted]. :) )

                      Liked by 1 person

                2. They have to have been AT SOME POINT. Not the Egyptians. Further back.
                  Because they almost can’t reproduce on their own. And they have ISSUES only shared by highly inbred pets.

                  Liked by 1 person

          3. Look at those resources we are familiar with having been used.

            Look at what happened when they became difficult to get.

            Why on earth would a prior, same level of technology civilization, use the stuff that is available now?

            Would they not, rather, use what was available for the job when they did it?

            That’s why the way to find cultures you don’t already have information on is to say “they would have to do X, Y, and Z” and then go look for that.

            Even something like finding ways that you don’t have most of the population working just to feed everyone is prone to the problem of looking at how we fixed that problem, rather than what the problem being fixed was.

            This shows up a lot in “hard scifi,” where the screamers insist that problems must exactly match their understandings or it’s not “really” scientific.

            Liked by 1 person

      3. I had so much fun blowing up the evil fae, I’ve got a whole book about it. Disgusting creatures, even the Dark Ones won’t do deals with them.

        And yes, the Left does act like them. I made them as disgusting as I could manage, but I think I still fell short of #AlexandriaOccasionalCortex.

        Did you know #TheOccasionalOne went to Yorktown High in Westchester County? She wasn’t within 40 miles of the Bronx. ~:D Bwaha, whadda riot!

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Cheap ex-Warsaw-Pact ammunition (and some modern stuff) uses an iron core, lead being a strategic metal in wartime. Also, some British hunting ammunition in the late 1800s/early 1900s.

          Just, you know, if whatever you’re shooting at has issues with iron.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. George McIntyre was dissatisfied by the 20mm ammunition he was using after hosing down a zombie with 200 rounds and having it stick a sword through him anyway.

            Accordingly, the issue Angels Inc. railgun ammo is tungsten penetrator core with iron jacket and titanium outer layer. It gets nice and hot from eddy currents when launched and much hotter on the way from air friction. The titanium outer jacket maintains the shape of the round as the iron gets hot enough to deform. On contact the iron splashes and sets Mr. Zombie on fire, while the penetrator punches through the armor, dumps all that heat and causes a steam explosion inside Mr. Zombie. Ka-blooey.

            Works great on demons too, as the iron hinders their eldritch powers of regeneration. And of course being on fire is distracting, even for a demon.

            However your notion regarding cheap Commie ammo is well taken. Nothing like a nice iron slug to spoil Mr. Demon-Tiger’s day. I’m reminded that there are also copious quantities of disgraceful Soviet steel-jacket 7.62×39 rounds out there, which might sting a bit at full-auto.

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          1. I’ve been having fun shooting demons for a while now. For release shortly, because I FINALLY found a decent monster for the cover, The Demon Slayers.

            Alice finally gets to go full-auto with her Mobile Infantry suit, the lippy combat spiders get let off the leash, and the Valkyries don’t have to shoot up into the sky anymore…

            …but yeah, I think somebody needs to shoot that demon tiger. Maybe Jimmy. He’s been having a tough time lately, some .600 Nitro might be just the thing.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. From your descriptions of Jimmy, a .600 Nitro Express would not be His Friend. (Touches it off, flies backward, lands on his butt with a very sore shoulder: “OWWW!”)

              And don’t even think of a 4-bore or a .460 Weatherby.😉

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Jimmy has been working out. ~:D The 19 year old basement nerd has been running, getting yelled into shape by Alice Haddison and Sylvia Mynarski, and receiving the subtle kung-fu knowledge of Nammu Chen for quite some time now.

                My writing is nearly a year ahead of the books released so far in the Angels timeline, so Jimmy has had about 8 months of saving the world and being looked after by determined post-human AIs. He’s getting to be a pretty tough kid.

                That aside, on the shooting technology front I once saw an 11 year old boy shoot a .300 Winchester Magnum bolt gun. He giggled. Muzzle brake.

                (A lengthy aside, shooters will know that .300 WinMag kicks like a mule in a regular bolt action. This one was a custom Remington 700 with a special muzzle brake machined into the end of the barrel. These can be arranged through Goshen Enterprises, Inc., located in Sedona, AZ

                Tim Sheehan is the guy at Goshen, Tom Aston does the muzzle brakes, the name of the integral muzzle brake is The Keeper. They also make the Hexsight pistol and shotgun sight, which is amazing. I don’t know if Tim is still in the business, his website is off the air but you could still send a letter or make a phone call.

                Goshen Enterprises 1355 Lee Mountain Road, Sedona, AZ 86351, PO Box 20489, Sedona, AZ 86341, (928) 284-1483

                The only reason I mention is one of our lads might want a muzzle brake, and that’s the best one I ever saw. Couldn’t hurt to slide some business to Tom and Tim either. I haven’t seen either of them in 25 years, but what the hell.)

                So, the recoil on a .600 Nitro double rifle with muzzle brakes on both tubes would be “hearty,” possibly “daunting,” but not break the shoulder of a trained-up 19 year old nerd. Particularly if he was seeing red because a demon tiger had the gall to call his name. >:D

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  30. Ultimately, theirs is an irrational thought process. Trying to apply rational rules to that is pointless. They see it as empowering. It permits them the “We are -good-!” conceit as they do every twisted evil thing to their foes.

    As long as you are willing to pay the price, you can inflict your freedom on them like a burning iron.

    Just say “no” and carry on.

    Liked by 2 people

  31. This week I’ve been at a professional development thing. I did not “fly my flag” nearly as much as I do back home. Why? One, not knowing the landscape and a desire for personal safety when out by myself in the evenings. Two, I’m representing my employer, not me. Three, not wanting to spook any normies. As it turned out, there was one ‘normal gal’ in my cohort, and she was cramming the material. She didn’t care if a pink and purple zebra taught the class, so long as she got all the basics she needed in order to know where to start looking for more.

    Everyone else was probably left of center. Who cared? No one. No one mentioned personal politics, because we were workin’ so stinkin’ hard to learn as much as we could, as fast as we could and accomplish our goals. Which is how it should be, in writing groups or other voluntary organizations.

    Liked by 3 people

  32. There are always more mean girl wannabes than there are places at the mean girl’s table. If your spot is threatened of COURSE you will be scared.

    Only nobodies wouldn’t get that.

    Duh!

    Nobodies need to be crushed like the insects they are, lest they rise up and laugh in the mean girls faces.

    Liked by 4 people

  34. Behaving like a victim gets them all kinds of nice treatment from corporations, too. They expect it. To the point that if you tell them no, when you have every reason to tell them no (company policy says we need photo ID for X, no we can’t take your word for it), they feel free to harangue you up one side and down the other and try to get you fired.

    …Forgive me, I’ve run into at least 3 of those this week, and I kind of want to bite something.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. “You’re obligated to trust your customers!”

        No, no I specifically am not obligated to trust anyone who’s trying to claim a 10% military discount without proof. Or who claims a item is X price “and I ought to honor that on the customer’s word” when my search says the item costs 25% more.

        “You make it unpleasant to shop here!”

        …I am a professional, I did not say “go somewhere else then”.

        But yes. That was a truly incredible level of rage. Probably because this has been happening a lot lately.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Oh, for love of- argh, no, that’s not how the dang discount goes!

          Yeah, I’m super pleased my state has it right there on the ID, and the kid at the counter taught me how to scan correctly so I don’t have to bug anyone, but….

          :shakes head: Heck, no. If I want to be trusted, I’ll go take a picture.

          Liked by 3 people

          1. The scan code on his item was unreadable, hence why I was searching to pull it up.

            …I will admit the search function is sometimes… well, not quite as borked as Amazon’s. But sometimes it honestly doesn’t pull up an item that does exist!

            Liked by 2 people

                1. Having bought obscure items at Home Desperate, where some have been purchased and returned, I’d venture that the thing had been taken apart then reassembled, sort of.

                  Like

            2. Not quite as bad as Tractor Supply Company, but yeah– I’ve had to play “can you think of a way to describe this differently?” or poked around on my phone to find what we’re physically looking at.

              I try to treat it as my “job” to be playing interference for the checkout folks with the people behind me.

              .,..then again, I was always taught to treat the whole thing as a shared quest, unless the folks across the counter make it clear they’re not in for that. They want my money, I want this stuff, work towards the shared goal with as little pain as possible.

              Liked by 3 people

              1. I always try to make sure that every item has a readable bar code. And if the pricing looks strange will take a picture. Especially in the big box stores. Why? Because I want to spend as little time in line as possible as it gives me the twitches/bounces/dancing in a circle (and a 60 year old doing dances like a 6 year old is NOT the way to keep the hairy eye balls off you). I’ve also been on the other side of the register.

                And I feel that part of the reason I’m here on Earth is to make it just a little better by giving people something to smile about, even that crazy old person there.

                Like

                2. These days? I’m pre boxing/bagging the items when I grocery shop. Try to use the same staff at checkout who appreciate my thoughtfulness. I’m not packing so tight that they can’t see what is there. When I get multiples, it is the same item and flavor. Only one item that is 12 or more (12 is the lowest quantity times price they can put in) so still have to scan the number I give them, but they can just pull and run the top one X times. Also taking in a cooler for frozen and cold items, cooler is just another box/bag. Lots faster putting stuff up on the belt too. Most appreciate this. Including those standing in line behind me. Note, this is not done in Costco, I just decline a box, and pack everything when I get to the car.

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                  1. This reminds me. Go select the Kroger Digital Coupons (including Friday 4x Fuel points) at home, because do this while in the store, then won’t be there (sometimes works, usually doesn’t).

                    Like

                  2. We restock canned veggies at Fred Meyer/Kroger on First Tuesdays. I’ll get a flat of green beans, and 6 black/6 kidney beans. I’ll put those in a flat, and tell the checker (yeah, I try to see the same one) how the mix is done.

                    I used to get boxes at Costco, but that was when we were using a pickup truck. Now that the runs entail a Subaru Forester and bulky luggage, I skip them.

                    Like

                4. I always arrange the items so the bar code can be scanned without moving the products out of the cart when possible. Makes everyone happy and checkout a breeze.

                  Like

          2. And it’s amazing how many people refuse to bring their ID these days. Just come in with a credit card and nothing else. What, did you leave your wallet sitting out in the car? What if someone breaks in, you… no, that’s an insult to idiots….

            Liked by 1 person

              1. No way to know. This guy apparently had the ID (his wife had hers this time), he just didn’t want to be bothered to bring it in. Because people should just trust his word.

                *Wry* Nope. Don’t know you from Adam. No idea if you’re telling the truth or not. Provide evidence.

                Liked by 3 people

              2. It’s really “fun” when apparently under-aged teens want to purchase tobacco/alcohol products and “just happened” to forget their id.

                Note, there are plenty of locations where the store would be in Big Legal Trouble if they sold such items to an under-aged teen.

                Liked by 1 person

                  1. Nod.

                    I have a funny story about lack of Ids.

                    I worked in a 7-11 where I had to deal with customers lacking Ids.

                    I was then shopping in a supermarket near that 7-11 and while I waiting to check out this guy ahead of me started talking to me about the “idiot” stuff in that 7-11 (he knew that I worked there).

                    Well, the supermarket cashier had heard him so when it came to his time to purchase his items, she politely informed him that if he attempted to purchase tobacco products at the supermarket, he’d have to show his Id.

                    I may have given her a “knowing grin”. 😉

                    Liked by 1 person

                3. Our son had to do community service years ago because he sold cigarettes to a kid acting as part of a sting. The kid had a beard and he assumed he was of age.

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. These days, at least in Oregon (local Fred Meyers/Krogers), if it is a restricted product, everyone’s ID gets pulled and scanned. No exceptions. I get a kick out of it. My hair is white with gray streaks. No way am I taken for underage anything, not anymore. My id gets scanned. Usually for cold medications, never for tobacco products (fake or otherwise), rarely for alcohol.

                    Liked by 1 person

        2. My beloved gets annoyed when he thinks there’s a military discount and the cashier says no. But he always got his ID ready for display.

          Liked by 1 person

          3. My spouse gets annoyed when I don’t ask for it or claim it on small purchases.

            If I get any discount it should be for surviving the scary parts of childhood. Everything since has been easy in comparision, especially military and civilian life.

            Liked by 1 person

    2. This, so much! After 4-1/2 years of working in an auto parts store, I am firmly convinced that the person who came up with ‘The customer is always right’ needs to have his – priorities – rearranged.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. The store I worked at had a sign:

          The customer is always right!

          Forgetful, perhaps. Inexact.

          Stubborn, fickle, ignorant.

          Even abysmally stupid.

          But never wrong.

          Like

      2. And yet. So often upper management is willing to go with that – methinks because they don’t have to take the in-your-face screaming and insults.

        I seriously don’t get it. Customer service is not an unskilled job. It takes time to learn the machinery, the protocols, the “where can I find X that the computer won’t admit exists”. Yet customers are allowed to behave as if employees have no dignity or human worth. Bewildering.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. You might be interested to know that around Ontario there are signs popping up in doctors offices, hospitals, government offices like the Ministry of Transport and the post office, and retail stores. These signs generally say that abusive behavior will not be tolerated and abusive patrons will be refused service.

          In medical spaces the abuse was simply ridiculous, since Covid the medical staff and ancilary staff won’t have it any more. Now they call the cops, and the sign says they will too. Fair warning, Karen.

          This trend is the result, I think anyway, of employees showing management the video of Karen going off on them and throwing stuff. Not because managers give a single schlitz about the employees I hasten to say, but more that now there’s incontrovertible evidence to support a toxic work environment lawsuit.

          Also because people losing their schlitz and chimping out is getting to be an epidemic in certain places. Some of it is performative Instagram hissy fits, but a lot of it is genuine humanoid chimps going on rampages. Drugs can be a pretty wonderful thing, I guess.

          Liked by 2 people

            1. Honestly, it’s like fricking Mad Max in Toronto these days. The cops are barely keeping it together out there.

              The Toronto I knew in my youth is 100% gone, replaced by this wrecked landscape full of closed stores and bodies lying randomly on the sidewalk. Usually alive, but I stopped checking a while ago in case I might find something I don’t want to see.

              Liked by 2 people

      3. The full quote is “The customer is always right in matters of taste.”

        Which, given the meaning of words at the time the phrase was created, means that the customer can like the violent orange-and-green 1970s monstrosity print if they like, and you can’t tell them that it’s ugly, because it’s their opinion and their potential purchase, so grit your teeth and say, “Excellent choice. How much would you like?”

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I’ve run into conflicting accounts on that phrase, but – yes. If someone wants to mix hot pink with brass furnishings, that’s their privilege.

          If someone says they want blue PEX for their hot water lines… oy.

          Liked by 2 people

  35. It’s also why they think we’re such terrible people – racist, sexist, homophobic – in that we laugh in the face of those overused, meaningless words. Because they would be HORRIFIED to accidentally say anything out of place. And if we can not only say it, but laugh at it uproariously, that is PROOF we are those things, and evil beyond the pale.

    Liked by 2 people

  36. In one of Doris Lessing’s earlier novels (before she started trying to write science fiction), the PoV character is a woman who belongs to the British communist party, around the time the revelations of Stalin’s crimes are starting to come out. One of the regular topics of conversation is “So and so broke with the Party.” No one is really surprised when this happens; they understand that people are reading about what Stalin did and reaching the point of breaking strain. They all know that they too might reach that point. But they all dread it, because breaking with the Party means losing the thing that gave them a sense that life was meaningful, and also losing all their relationships with everyone they’re close to. And they all know that loss will happen, because they themselves will have nothing to do with anyone who broke with the Party, for fear that they’ll come to think that doing so makes sense and do it themselves, as if it were a sort of contagion—so they know that when they break with the Party all their friends will avoid them in the same way.

    It was really rather heartbreaking to read.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Lessing could write decent allegory, but my, her attemps at SF stunk.

      But then,my experience is that with occasional exceptions, very few “literary,” or “mainstream,” writers can write decent SF.

      Liked by 1 person

  37. There is no room for legitimate dissent with the modern Left. The only possible reason in their minds for any sort of disagreement with the Woke is fascism. So by banning “fascists” they become “safe”. Until the definition shifts even further to encompass other, previously tolerated ideas.

    Liked by 1 person

  38. “I feel Unsafe! Waaaaaaah!”

    “Gee, welcome to the Real World, bub.”

    Because the world ain’t a safe place. Never was. Never will be. The universe is constantly trying to kill you, and one day it will succeed. What little safety we have managed to carve out of a hostile universe comes at the cost of unremitting toil and eternal vigilance.

    But they can’t understand that. Any suggestion that they should be required to work for what they want is perceived as an attack. They feel compelled to screech “*ist!” and “*phobe!” (whatever the latest Eeevul -ist and -phobe happen to be) and scurry to a Safe Place. Which must be established and maintained by other people, since the wankers are incapable of doing so themselves.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Had an airline employee run away from me yelling she felt unsafe because I said I could wait for her to finish what she was doing before I asked a question. This was 20 years ago.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. She said she felt unsafe because you were OK with waiting for her to answer a question?!? Oy…

        There’s irrational, and then there’s her, the poster child for the affliction.

        Liked by 2 people

  39. Just saw this video on Trench Crusade and how the idea of a consistent game universe and the absolute moral flexibility of far too many “creators” is part and parcel of their desire to ensure that nobody else can pin them down on details.

    Because if you set up a detail, it’s harder to change things in the future to stay loyal to the current diktat of Those In Charge.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Had never heard of Trench Crusade before. Having watched Arch’s video, never want to hear of it again. “There is no lore consistency, and even the devs don’t have the final word on what the truth of the setting is?” Hard, HARD pass, given the disingenuity the devs have displayed on other subjects. (“No politics allowed, except that these obviously-political topics don’t count as “politics” in our inconsistent rules.” Yeah, they’re a bunch of liars and gaslighters.)

      Arch is excellent, though. Thanks for reminding me about his channel; I really should bookmark it. (I don’t do Youtube subscriptions, and in fact I watch every Youtube video in a private-browsing window that I subsequently close so that they will have a hard time collecting data on my viewing habits. It’s possible, but I don’t make it easy on them. So instead of subscribing to channels, I have a small set of channels I check regularly. Like Cracking the Cryptic, two guys who solve sudokus on-screen. You wouldn’t think it would be interesting, but it really is. And they keep their politics off-screen and never mentioned, which these days I’m grateful for.)

      Liked by 1 person

      1. And the funny thing is that the Trench Crusade devs didn’t make their comments about the politics or the consistency of the game universe until AFTER the Kickstarter (which I did support) was finished. I wonder why…

        Like

      2. Trench Crusade has gained a great degree of notoriety in online circles for many reasons, all of which revolve around stupid politics and suppression of “bad” viewpoints by the creators. The most obvious reason is that the creators insist on a “there are no good guys” claim, even though one side is made up of literal demons (and not the Xanxia kind) invading the world to destroy humanity, and the other side is attempting to defend humanity. There’s a bunch of other stuff, but that’s the most obvious.

        And then the creators go to public events and present themselves as people who have to struggle to defend their game against unreasonable and hateful right-wing online chuds.

        It’s a shame, too, because a lot of people apparently think that the figures are pretty good.

        Like

        1. “…the creators insist on a “there are no good guys” claim, even though one side is made up of literal demons…”

          Yeah.

          […] Sigh.

          I dunno what these people think sometimes. Like, I’m sorry dudes, these are supposed to be -demons- aren’t they? Supernatural creatures escaped from Hell? If you call something a demon in a story, that’s what it is.

          Isn’t there a -reason- they got sent to Hell in the first place? Like, that they’re evil? And if you’re fighting evil, even if you’re being a d1ck about it, you are -fighting evil-. Leaving aside any religious connotations, evil is, you know, bad. So fighting against it is good.

          This game seems like it would just annoy me. Sounds like more of the “self defense is bad, you should just die” theme we’ve been talking about here.

          This type of thing is why I write my own these days. Seriously, the Lefty non-sequitur crapola takes all the fun out stories.

          Like

          1. Late reply because I was away from computers and the Internet all weekend.

            There are some stories in which “demon” doesn’t mean “creature from literal Hell”, e.g. Robert Asprin’s Myth series in which it means “creature from another dimension” and the “dimen” of “dimensionial traveler” became “demon” in the speech of at least one dimension.

            BUT that’s not what the Trench Crusade devs mean. They mean literal demons from literal Hell, where you have to have no goodness in you at all to join their side, and yet the side fighting them is not automatically the “good” side. Which… says a LOT about their mentality (the devs’ mentality, I mean).

            Liked by 1 person

            1. “Which… says a LOT about their mentality”

              Yeah, that they’re taking a philosophically unsupportable position purely to seem “edgy” and “dark”.

              Intellectually deficient poseurs, in other words. Eye-roll, sigh, scroll to next entry.

              There’s a lot of it going around lately. Gay Pride in Toronto this week is stuffed with Palestinian flags, if you can imagine such a thing. Gays for Gaza!!!

              Real life “Chickens for KFC!” All completely serious you know, no hint of irony at all.

              Same schlitz, different pile.

              Liked by 1 person

  41. Regarding the problem of The Right Square, I think Sarah is right about that. Because we are the mutants that not only step on the Forbidden Square That You Must Not Step On, we will ARGUE about it, and get up in Teacher’s face, and go DANCE on that friggin’ square.

    So yeah, that’s going to make some good little compliant Normies feel totes unsafe.

    As I said in the comments of that classic article, I’ve been forced to make a career out of stepping on the bad square. When you can’t see it, you can’t see it.

    Tough schlitz, Normies.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. By the way. Does anybody know where Shadowdancer Duskstar went? I assumed she was managing family and babies, but it would be nice to get an update.

      Kindly send up a flare.

      Liked by 2 people

      2. Big surgery was mostly good, still has some eye issues and general “adjusting after not having slowly growing physical trauma for years,’ some other maybe-related health stuff besides the one where they found out there WAS a reason for the headaches, and her WP passy went on walkabout without leaving a note.

        The babies are now in school and doing well. :D

        …ok, the two new babies, I just realized my brain puts her eldest son in for “babies” and he’s… well, good young man. :D

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Nice to hear things are going along. WordPress Delenda Est.

          Another new baby? I can see why she doesn’t have time to comment online. ~:D My salutations and congratulations to Chocolate Rabbit, belated though they may be.

          Liked by 1 person

        3. Thank you for the update!

          Adding “eye issues” in to all the other things taking her attention, and I can see why she’s been away. Pass on that we’re happy to hear about her.

          Liked by 1 person

  42. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » UNSAFE AT ANY STUPID:  Public Un-Safety.

  43. In my experience they do feel unsafe. Being seen as “weak” doesn’t mean anything to them because they measure strength and weakness differently than in the past. In fact, Strength IS to be feared. Weakness = being vulnerable = reveling in how imperfect you are, which is “truth” and the preferred state.

    Yet another concept they’ve inverted.

    Like

  44. Much as I hate to admit it, we on the “right wing” (to include libertarians, although we don’t feel we fit into the left-right dichotomy) have our own sets of shibboleths and Things Never Ever To Be Questioned. Even sounding doubtful about these “Revealed Truths” will set off a screaming mob as bad as anything the “left” does.

    I would give some examples, but it’s late and I just got done being screamed down on a China-related message board for daring to question whether the so-called “People’s” so-called “Republic” of so-called “China” should continue to rule Tibet and Xinjiang—or, for that matter, “retake” Taiwan some day Real Soon Now. Maybe when I’ve had some sleep, I can elaborate.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. My question would be, “One, how long was that area part of the Chinese Empire, and what was the local response then to that incorporation?” If they can’t give me at least vague dates and info, I’d start suspecting they are not as familiar with the regions as they claim. My other favorite question is, “Why is China so vehement about Tibet? What specifically do they value there?”

      But I’m tired from a week of very intensive continuing education, and cranky.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Sometimes it’s the “woke right,” sometimes it’s folks who don’t understand why they think a thing, and sometimes it’s that the “questioning” displays a failure to understand/world view gap on par with “conservatives are hypocrites because they hate government but love the military!”

      Example chosen because it misses that conservatives hate government like a firefighter. They might actually adore “government”– in its proper place, and used as safely as possible. It makes life possible. Similarly, “the military” that American conservatives love is closer to honoring those who put out a blank check for the very philosophy of America. It’s not a magic token that goes “oh, military, must love!”

      Liked by 1 person

    4. “…will set off a screaming mob as bad as anything the “left” does.”

      Nope. People do get angry, and may even shun you, but they don’t try to get you cancelled out of your whole life. I do not see that behavior on the Right at all.

      And really, if for example you’re talking to Catholics it doesn’t hurt to take it easy with the “The Pope is a Commie!!!” comments. I mean he is, but there’s no need to belabor the issue. ~:D

      Never hurts to be polite while you’re stepping on the Forbidden Square with your big clodhoppers.

      Like

  45. What the SF association has told *me*, a formerly voracious reader of books (2-3 per week) with that tweet there is that none of authors or books associated it are worthy of being read or purchased because they are all members of a woke circle-jerk.

    Liked by 1 person

  46. By letting the mere presence of a Dissenter make themselves feel uncomfortable or uNsAfe!11! lefties have guaranteed that every single person who belongs to their worldview will be miserable every single day of their lives.

    And people voluntarily join them. For Ghu’s sake why?!?

    Like

    1. For all the ‘Free Stuff!’ they promise. For telling lazy losers that it’s somebody else’s fault they’re lazy losers. For appealing to the losers’ envy and hate by promising to loot ‘The Rich!’.

      Like

      1. And people voluntarily join them. For Ghu’s sake why?!?

        Because so many of them are women, or feminized men.

        Sarah has mentioned “conquered culture syndrome” a few times: the New Guys (and, yes, it’s ALWAYS men) bring the New Normal, which is undiluted disaster for the local men. If they survive, it’s mostly by being elsewhere (by dumb luck, or by hiding and/or bugging out–with their wives and kids, if possible) or by abjectly surrendering to an enemy who, they must hope, will “merely” enslave* them, and who might even let them keep their Naughty Bits. The only really good move the local men can make–and can pass to offspring–is to be War Gods and not get conquered. A long shot, that, against competent invaders who arranged everything their way before their surprise attack.

        Even if they live, conquered men probably won’t breed very much, or with high-value women–the New Guys get those–so men haven’t been much selected for traits that help them to thrive when conquered. So conquered men just break, in all sorts of ways that are inconvenient to their conquerors, which is why conquerors make such a point of killing the men.

        For women, tho, there is a very obvious survival strategy. Indeed, being conquered has its upside for the ladies: they get tougher mates, who aren’t such close relatives as the local guys were, and can maybe even repel an invasion.

        The only women who aren’t better off after the Conquering are the ones who fail to, ah… embrace the New Normal with open… uh….

        Anyway.

        Anyway, women, unlike men, are strongly selected to Go Along, to get on the New Page as quickly and enthusiastically and ostentatiously as possible; the only ones who get culled are the ones who make trouble, or who are just unbearable because they won’t STFU already about Poor Old Harold.

        Fast forward 10,000 generations, you have the Femocrat Party: if they think the Wokies are winning, they get sincerely Woke, right [bleep]ing now.

        *It might, in the long term, be a Really Bad Idea to develop a cultural custom of allowing conquered men to save their lives–and to continue breeding–by submitting to slavery. Word of that gets around, the next thing you know other cultures might start thinking that your kids make good slaves.

        Like

  47. The “Chinese patriot” viewpoint, which is Not To Be Questioned, is that:

    A) The Chinese Communist Party is the best thing that ever happened to China, and is the only rightful ruler of China.

    B) All areas (including independent Mongolia) that were ever under the Qing Dynasty’s rule are rightfully Chinese, and should be ruled by the Communists in Beijing, forever and ever, amen.

    C) Anybody questioning or arguing with the above is an evil China-hating no-goodnik, and if of Han Chinese ethnicity, is a “Hanjian” (a traitor to the Chinese people—far worse than a traitor to any particular government.)

    I find this deeply offensive on a lot of counts. Just for starters, I doubt you could find a bigger fan of all things Chinese in SF fandom than me and saying I “hate China and the Chinese people” just because I question their right to rule non-Chinese (i.e., outside of the “Eighteen Provinces” and the Northeastern provinces we used to call Manchuria) areas and people infuriates me.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Chinese people are weird. When I lived with some as a young man, it became clear that I and the rest of us White kids were considered to be moderately entertaining barbarians. Fun to watch but don’t teach them the Important Stuff and don’t let them steer the boat. And don’t date them. Big no-no.

      Which was pretty fair about me at the time, I am forced to concede. But being old now and having figured out a lot of the important stuff on my own, the attitude hasn’t changed and I do find it tiresome. It’s just chauvinism, plain and simple.

      Japan is similar, one example being there are at most three 8th Dan practitioners in Kendo who were not born in Japan. There are zero non-Japanese, as far as I know, despite there being more than a few Europeans/Americans/whathaveyou who beat everybody else at tournaments.

      But then some people get snooty about the metric system too. For metric snobs I generally ask if they knew that the Americans landed on the Moon with a spacecraft made using pounds, gallons and inches, and how many manned missions have there been using metric?

      Because I will FIND that frigging forbidden square, and I will stomp on it.

      Like

    2. B) All areas (including independent Mongolia) that were ever under the Qing Dynasty’s rule are rightfully Chinese, and should be ruled by the Communists in Beijing, forever and ever, amen.

      Yes, but no.

      First and foremost, this is not part of Chinese communism, this is embedded in Chinese culture itself, and has been for a millenium or more. In English, it is sometimes termed “the Mandate of Heaven”, and it is often misunderstood (and always oversimplified, but that is basically unavoidable).

      It is not that the ChiComs feel they have a divine right to rule every piece of land that has ever been controlled by “China”. It’s actually the other way around. If they do not rule every square inch of land that was ever “China”, then they lose the Mandate of Heaven in the minds of the people, which means they lose legitimacy, the right to rule, and then they will be decorating lamp posts with a quickness.

      This is why they must invade and conquer Taiwan, and have had to for over seventy years. And it’s why internal political discussions in the Mainland (and in Taiwan) come across as psychotically delusional to anyone outside. Both sides have pretended, since 1949, to be in control of all of China, and thus kept a tenuous hold on power.

      This goes well beyond PRC’s frothy-mouthed rage any time any nation dares suggest the idea that Taiwan is an independent nation. I’m talking about, if there is a mining disaster on the mainland, the people in Taiwan demand of their politicians answers for why more safety measures weren’t enforced. If a building falls in Taiwan, Mainland Chicom officials have to pretend they are responsible and working to ensure it never happens again. This is totally normal and has been since 1949.

      The rage isn’t just rage, it’s fear. The kind of fear that can only happen when your entire understanding of reality is at risk.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Minor Nit.

        While I’m aware that originally the Government ruling Taiwan claimed all of Mainland China as “rightfully theirs”, but I got the impression that the current government of Taiwan is more interested in Mainland China accepting them as an independent nation.

        Maybe not “you can have it, we don’t want Mainland China” but still an acknowledgement of the fact that Taiwan doesn’t rule Mainland China and the Chicoms do rule Mainland China.

        Like

        1. As with literally everything related to Chinese culture, it’s more complicated than can be gotten across in a comment, an hour, a day, or a month of lecturing.

          Yes, Taiwan is trending that direction. Ish. The sudden and recent rise in pressure by Xi to retake Taiwan is probably a factor in that.

          There’s also the fact that Taiwanese Chinese, and actual Taiwan natives, have been at odds for a long time (the KMT invaders were only just slightly less brutal and genocide-y than the PRC they were escaping) likely also colors a lot of it. My impression is that the internal pressures and conflicts have abated in the past decade or more, which maybe made seeing things from a Taiwanese rather than a Chinese perspective easier for the whole culture.

          Liked by 1 person

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