Decadence and Wealth

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

When discussing the experiment of the Mouse Utopia, which, again, to recap, was completely faked, probably tried various habitats to get the results that fit with his preconceived notions (Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia) a friend suggested perhaps the mouse utopia suggested that having everything handed to you and not having to struggle was what caused the problems.

That I know this was never suggested as the meaning of Calhoun’s Utopia. Though, honestly, that’s probably only because they never thought of it, since the left, where he definitely was, love to claim that prosperity makes you weak and decadent.

It’s nonsense. If anything what the Mouse Utopia shows is that it’s a really bad idea to get captured by an alien species that sets up what they think is utopia for you and in the process stress you to a breaking point.

Most of the behaviors associated with “decadence” or in Calhoun’s mind, “overpopulation” are in fact stress behaviors, from over-grooming to infanticide to the entire issues the mice displayed.

For the mice, of course, is was being held captive by an alien species that dictated their every living condition.

For us…

Well, Russia tried very hard to convince us that it was because we were so wealthy. Think about it, the lie might even have been aimed mostly at their people. The USSR couldn’t give them food, it couldn’t give them even basic necessities. It certainly couldn’t give them luxuries. And even right after WWII with the rudimentary technology of the time, it was impossible to completely keep out that we were richer, happier, more free than they could ever hope to be.

This needed to be dealt with, and was, by convincing them that any aberrant behavior, any problems in our society were because of how rich we were. Wealth causes decadence, donchyouknow?

That of course filtered back here, partly because their useful idiots were… idiots. And were all through our society. Even as late as the eighties, in Charlotte NC, I remember reading some brain damaged journalist who had spent time in Russia, extolling how wonderful the ridiculously simple, stupid cartoons in Russia were compared to our cartoons. Because they were simple, of course, and stripped down. As someone who, after the revolution, endured a lot of programming from behind the iron curtain, I’d like to point out this was an exercise in self deception and insanity.

Of course (I don’t need to tell you) over here it hooked into our Puritan roots and a certain very strange idea that being rich is — somehow — sinful. Oh, there is a certain twist of that in all Christianity. It’s not real, meaning it’s not actual good doctrine, but it’s what people tend to get when they fixate on rich and camels and eyes of the needle and such and don’t look at the deeper meaning.

The end result of that is the whole idiotic idea that good times create weak men and hard times create strong men.

No, they don’t. As what remains of the Soviet Union, the various corrupt always on the edge of starvation South American banana republics, and the perpetual sh*t show that’s Africa can attest, what hard times create are … weasely men, slippery men, men who are lawless and shelfish and cruel. Hard times create barbarians, even if sometimes barbarians wear suits and ties. If Putin is your idea of a strong man (as opposed to a political strongman) you might be confused.

So, what caused the symptoms of degeneracy and decadence in the west? Which have worsened exponentially in the last half century?

Well…

Some decadence you shall always have with you. Look, people can find themselves purposeless and be of the kind that breaks at any level of wealth. Or we wouldn’t have such stories dating back what must have been dang near close to the Neolithic.

But mostly?

Mostly what seems to cause the symptoms of society coming apart? I.e. the men become drunkards (and gay), the women become whores, crime goes through the roof, children are destroyed (or never born)?

Being occupied.

It’s the way a culture comes apart when it’s been invaded and occupied by an alien culture.

But, you’ll say, this has never happened to us, ever.

Ah. What do you think happened when the socialists (national and for that matter international) captured the over culture and started trying to impose their “scientific” governance on the masses, and social engineering on a grand scale?

We’re doing all right, for having been occupied for pretty much a century now. We’re fighting back.

In the US we’re fighting harder because we have a healthy disrespect for the overculture, and because frankly disrespecting “our betters” is part of our culture.

We’re starting to win.

Heinlein believed humans — for good and ill — couldn’t be tamed. And frankly our puppet masters are not all that. They’re just Marxists.

“Were they ever really intelligent? By themselves, I mean? I don’t know, and I don’t know how we can ever find out.”

Fortunately, we don’t need to. We just need to remember not to let them manipulate us — the only thing they’re actually good at — and keep in mind that their cultish beliefs are not scientific and are not superior and bring about hell on Earth.

Communists bring about hard times. Stop them and thrive. There is no virtue in poverty and decadence.

BLOG FUNDRAISER 2025

UPDATE: Okay, okay, the song and dance. This one is dedicated to Imaginos.
Also, POLKA NEVER DIES!

(Sigh. I’m such a ridiculously indulgent blog mistress. Yes, I was a permissive parent too. I confess.)

Five more days. Four? Well, I took the 14th off, so this will go on through the nineteenth. sorry.

Yes, I know it’s a nuisance. And I’m not going to claim that if I don’t get enough money I’ll shutter the blog because we all know I won’t. It will on the other hand make it harder to do this on weekends and holidays when my husband objects to my sitting up late or getting up early to put up the post. Which is fine. I’ve survived it for near on 20 years. I’m not going to wilt.

I’m just going to say every blogger to the right of Lenin has paid the price in career, in wealth, in prospects. And that keeping us poor and meek is a great way to serve as a warning to others who would speak out. If you want to nullify the “warning,” consider donating.

And thank you to everyone who donated.

For this year, I’ll (merely) give you ways to donate.

The Give Send Go is still active. (And to the person who compared me to Jerry Pournelle, G-d bless you.)

There is also paypal. Yes, I removed the button from the side (though I’ll return it) a couple years ago because they were threatening to fine people for badthink. Whether that was entirely organic or part of the Autopen administration it’s open to debate. They were being very enthusiastic about forcing everything from social media to everything else including debanking. At any rate, I think it is safe to use a paypal link for the next four years. Give or take. (Look none of these services are pure. We use what we can and seems safe at the time.)


So, here’s the paypal link.

While on that, yes, the address in Las Vegas is still available:

Sarah A. Hoyt

Goldport Press

304 S Jones Blvd #6771

Las Vegas, NV  89107

(Note this is a drop box. Please don’t send perishables that will be damaged by heat. If you want to send something out of the ordinary, contact me first. I’ll figure out antoher place to send it where things won’t be damaged and I can retrieve it. And if you want to give me physical stuff, it might be best to catch me at a con. (Younger DIL says I have do do more cons. Sigh.)

And please, please, please do not send either a multitool of any kind of learning center for Indy. The cat with hand-paws and the engineer mind who yes indeed does understand English is already enough trouble as is.

And I’m THIS close to having the first third of NML ready for an earc. THIS close.

Bear with me. (Why yes, the sinus infection is TRYING to come back. I’m fighting it.)

238 thoughts on “Decadence and Wealth”

  1. The bible warns us to be careful what we put into out minds. We swim in an ocean of lies and the biggest one of them is America is full of “weak men”. The media is full of tales of weak men; social media times 10. But the truth is that “strong men” are too busy living their lives to bother with poly-tics and social media. What is happening is strong men are coming forward and saying “enough of this bull—-“! The weak are very afraid because we have finally reached the point where those who “Just want to be left alone” are clenching their fists!

    Liked by 2 people

  2. the lie might even have been aimed mostly at their people. The USSR couldn’t give them food, it couldn’t give them even basic necessities. It certainly couldn’t give them luxuries. And even right after WWII with the rudimentary technology of the time, it was impossible to completely keep out that we were richer, happier, more free than they could ever hope to be.

    It was most certainly aimed at the Russian population. The entire point of the communist revolution was to get rid of the wealth of a few. The lie was designed to hide the fact that that wealth was simply transferred to Lenin et al (and especially to Stalin). The Soviet government never even *tried* to deliver luxuries. Russia’s government, whether tsarist or communist has never tried to make Russians happy. Rather the entire point of the Russian aristocracy, again both tsarist and communist, has been to keep one particular class of people in luxury and the rest of the population serving that luxury.

    As a result, the Russian government has always denigrated the culture and economies of western Europe and the US and held them up as examples of the “evils” of wide-spread wealth and success. Peter the Great went undercover to the west to see what it was like and returned realizing that with his own political structures he couldn’t replicate what he saw, so he went even more into how great Russia was compared to the west. Bear in mind, we’re talking about an economy that was genuinely feudal until the 1880s. So internal propaganda was required.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. There were some tsars that began to institute reforms that would have liberalized Russian society. Unfortunately, in every single instance that this happened, radicals that thought the reforms were moving too slowly decided to try and assassinate the tsar. This – understandably – caused the tsar (or in at least one case, his successor…) to roll back the reforms and institute crackdowns against the radicals.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. What wealth there was. I have heard people who went to dachas and observed that they were vacation homes within the reach of a reasonably hard-working plumber in the US.

      But then, the plumber doesn’t have the thrill of knowing the peons don’t get this.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. So many Europeans have no idea how wealthy we are. I just recently read a post on X from a Brit who went to a national park somewhere in the mountain states and was flabbergasted at all the $50-200K RVs owned by seemingly middle-class Americans.

        Liked by 1 person

  3. Remember different cultures, different thoughts. There is an old Russian story about what each nation wants the last day the Earth survives, the French want this the British want that . The Russian peasant wants to burn his neighbors house down.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Like the ‘mansion on the hill’ story. European looks at a mansion on a hill and thinks “Some day I’m gonna burn that sucker down.” American looks at it and thinks “Some day I’m gonna have a mansion too.”

      Liked by 1 person

    2. The fairy tale where the farmer is offered three wishes but his neighbor gets twice of whatever he gets. His third wish is blind himself in one eye. Envy is poison.

      Like

      1. I really liked that. Sometimes if nobody here minds one has to get religious and know that just because someone has something maybe G-d just didn’t intend for you to have it or its not good for you.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “Why”, asked the genie after the Pole invoked his third and final wish, “why did you wish three times for Poland to be invaded by the Mongols?”

          “Because to sack Poland 3 times” said the man, “they would have to cross and sack Russia 6 times!”

          Liked by 1 person

  4. No dancing rodents today? :-D

    We are surrounded by weak men (and weak women) who can’t even decide what sex they are. They whine for ‘Safe Spaces’ — which have to be established by other people, because sure as hell they can’t do it themselves. They cry about ‘microaggressions’ that exist only in their own heads. They ‘feel’ that they are constantly oppressed and discriminated against, faced with such unreasonable requests as that they actually work to earn money, or learn something useful instead of majoring in Grievance Studies.

    Like

      2. Actually given results from previous fund raisers I would suggest Bats, Some Really cute dancing bats. Closer to fruit bats not the snub nosed varieties usually seen in the U.S.

        Liked by 1 person

            2. Two Millennial daughters.. That is something I remember seeing (and hearing) WAY two often…

              Like

  5. “Think about it, the lie might even have been aimed mostly at their people”.

    As Becky said, it was and sometimes back-fired.

    The Soviets imported the “Grapes Of Wrath” movie to show their people “how bad things were in the US”, but their people saw that even poor Americans had cars.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. And the Soviet viewers saw that Americans could just pack up and hit the road, without an internal passport or asking some official for permission.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. “Grandma will be eating Dog and Cat food!”

      The communist countries, both Russia and China: “Wait? Americans can afford animals as pets? Americans have special food just for their animals? Their cats and dogs don’t have to hunt for their own food?”

      Liked by 1 person

        1. I wonder what their reactions are to pet pigs, mini-horses, mini-cows, and goats, that we also don’t eat. Some mini-cows are raised for meat. But eating goats, and horses (regardless of type) is not cultural norm (even with all the emigrants, legal or otherwise that we get). Even shipping any horse (yes, mini-horses get in the mix) out of country for the meat market generates outrage when found out. It happens. It is legal. But outrage is trying to stop the practice.

          Like

          1. With all the herbivores to choose from, isn’t it odd that our two commonest pets are carnivores? We live with domesticated lions and wolves. :-P

            Like

              1. And some breeds of dogs still continue their role as hunting partners of humans.

                Like

                  1. I met a poodle who was a PTSD service dog. When she was leashed—”on the job”—you’d forget she was there, she was so quiet and focused. When she was off-leash, she would bound with wild abandon and come over for all the loves.

                    Good dog, very well-trained. (Owner was a police detective working child abuse cases. He said he both didn’t believe in the death penalty and that all child abusers should be shot immediately. Can’t say as I blame him.)

                    Liked by 1 person

            2. Dogs and cats domesticated themselves. Dogs by a mutualism where they ate after we butchered the kill, and we took advantage of their finding the animal. Cats by moving in when we set up these mouse attractions.

              Liked by 1 person

  6. For those so callow in their youth to be too young to have seen this in effect, a bit of background history:

    When the USSR was still up and running TASS was their official government controlled news agency, and Pravda was the official government controlled newspaper, and they both religiously picked up and published internally pretty much every negative western press story about health issues or crime or garbage strikes or rat infestations, pretty much anything bad. Same for certain Hollywood movies that showed anything bad.

    This sometimes backfired by providing subtext that the censors either missed or purposely allowed through, as famously when the Soviets widely showed the movie version of ”The Grapes of Wrath” and Soviet citizens who saw it came out, not tutt-tutting about how evil capitalism was to make those farmer poor, but instead expressing in wonderment “Even their dirt poor farmers have automobiles!” And often other subtext got through in print stories as well. Eventually the KGB built up very, very sophisticated western acculturated experts who could catch most of these, but by then the fax machine was in wide use and the message had other pathways to get through, which is why you will see fax machines credited as a major contributor to the fall of the USSR.

    Like

    1. Or the news story in the early 1980s about how things were so terrible for the elderly that they could not afford regular food and had to subsist on canned cat and dog food.

      Ordinary Russians said, “They are so rich they have special food for animals!?! Wow!!!”

      Oops.

      [Not certain if this one is true, but I can totally believe it, because I remember those stupid “news” stories about the starving elderly.]

      Liked by 1 person

        1. Good way to tear up your stomach eating cat or dog food. This is because of the bone meal and other additives. Which our pets need. There is human grade dog food (“Sundays for Dogs”). My dog has eaten it, but we didn’t stay with it. But I didn’t try eating it.

          Liked by 1 person

    2. When Ray Bradbury died, one Russian wrote a reminiscence about how his writings were supposed to show the horrors of America, but he and his classmates recognized the issues as the human condition.

      Liked by 2 people

  7. I wonder if a chunk of “being rich is sinful,” comes in part from a willful misunderstanding of Calvinism and of Separatist (aka Puritan) theology. Being successful might be a sign of being among the Elect, or it might not. If someone has a bee in their bonnet about Puritans (H.L. Menken and Co.), then it is easy to claim that “being rich means G-d loves me and so I can rub it in your face.” Which is not what the Puritans and Separatists taught at all.

    Being quietly successful and using spare money silently for charity and helping others doesn’t get seen or garner public praise. So those “rich” people slide below notice. The ostentatious donors who also show off luxury lifestyles become the “immoral rich,” even if they are not actively crooked. Toss in a few people who happen to be immoral and wealthy, and all of a sudden “being rich is sinful” sounds really tempting, and mis-quoted Scripture verses get trotted out about “money is the root of all evil” and “rich people can’t get into Heaven” and so on.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I always thought it was more that money flowed -upward- in the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic church too, and the Protestants had a big problem with that.

      It’s supposed to be a church, right? Not a business.

      Like

      1. If by “upward,” you mean to groups that had no children, no love-life, and thus no reason to be easily manipulated– and were willing to literally die doing the work nobody else would do.

        That gets folks extremely upset, especially when they also do a ton of research in all areas of science and share that information. Instead of having it locked away in a guild.

        That gets a lot of people very upset. Especially since you couldn’t even loot their treasuries when they figured out a work-around for something that had been your big money-maker.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. No, I was thinking more of Henry VIII and his irritation with tithes going to Rome instead of staying in England. To enrich -his- purse.

          “Rich people are bad!” seems like ancient propaganda from one side in a ancient fight over money.

          But also we do recall there was a reason the Church decreed celibacy and poverty for all clerics, and the reason had its own name. Simony. There’s a whole circle in Dante’s Inferno for Simonists. (Simoners? The Simonized? Simon says?)

          Anyway, plenty to object to no matter where you look and d@mn little virtue in high places. Kind of like now, really.

          Like

          1. Phantom, you’re buying in to a bunch of lies.

            Who, exactly, told you that the reason priests are to copy Jesus is because of simony? (Which you don’t even have to be a priest to do.)

            Why the blazes are you looking at accusations for evidence of virtue in high places?

            Is there perfection? No.
            Is there good? YES.

            Who benefits by people going “oh, well, power corrupts, you know– if you’ve got money or power, you’re probably a bad person”?

            The original “power corrupts” was about people making excuses for those in power, not a statement on how often the powerful are corrupt– it argues for the inverse, that they are simply people, and THUS CAN BE HELD TO THE SAME STANDARDS. Both against them, and for them.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. “Phantom, you’re buying in to a bunch of lies.”

              I did mention it was propaganda? As to who said so, I got it from Dante. He was pretty cranky about the whole thing. He had a point of view on the issue, one could say. Is he 100% Right? Doubtful. He’s a man. He can’t know everything.

              We’re talking about where these false conceptions come from, aren’t we? Virtuous men of wealth exist and have always done so, putting the lie to that one. Power corrupts? I wrote an entire book about how power doesn’t corrupt all on it’s own. That’s what “Unfair Advantage” is. The hero has absolute power thrust on him right at the beginning, the whole rest of the book is him learning how to not become a tyrant.

              Try not to have a cow if I mention past wrongs of organizations in that context, eh? We all try to learn and get it right, that’s all we can do.

              Like

              1. We’re talking about where these false conceptions come from, aren’t we? 

                Not really.

                You made claims, I pointed out issues with them, you appear to have skimmed and responded rather at random.

                That looks like the end of any productive outcome from this engagement.

                Liked by 1 person

                  1. :shakes head:
                    Not how that works, Phantom, you know that.

                    You don’t get out of folks pointing out you’re throwing spaghetti around by being obnoxious.

                    Even when they point out that you’re wasting everyone else’s time.

                    Like

                    1. So then. Are we meant to pretend Simony -wasn’t- a thing? Despite having it’s own name and everything. Or that concubinage among clerics was -never- common in the Church? Inherited clerical posts, nope didn’t happen?

                      Why is The Reformation capitalized in history books? What got reformed? How many Protestants got burned at the stake over it? More than five, as I heard it.

                      Or for that matter, Henry VIII -didn’t- covet those tithes? Yeah, he did. It’s a matter of historical record. More people burned at the stake, hanged, beheaded, etc. Not as many as The Reformation, Henry was weak-sauce for numbers compared to Europe as a whole.

                      Note the commonality of results. Murders, wars, rich guys getting richer.

                      History contains a lot of things one doesn’t like to hear. But they still happened, like it or not. Conflicting factions twist things to suit their purposes, as we all know to our cost because we see it all freaking day long. That it happened a long time ago doesn’t make it okay, so far as I’m concerned. Could be I’m just cranky, or could be I’m not cranky enough.

                      Generally if you follow the money you’ll find out the real story, sooner or later. That it sucks does not make it untrue. There are exceptions. Their rarity amply demonstrates the rule.

                      Like

          2. Re kings in Henry’s era: To Henry VIII and to pretty much all the other European monarchies at that point, Henry WAS England. It was all his, with nobles granted boons at his whim, which could be revoked at his whim, and taxes his collecting from those people he allowed to exist and do things in his country for the privilege of doing so. So those tithes were his money hijacked and going out to that dude in Rome, as if the Vikings were still raiding and taking some of what was his, and all that tax-free productive land the church owned was rightfully his property, but thanks to prior Kings, that land and the people on it was not paying him a dime.

            One can see why he was looking for an excuse to do what he ended up doing.

            Liked by 1 person

              1. That’s why he created the House of Commons. He wanted to have the power to tax the people directly instead of having to go through the nobility who would inevitably withhold larger portions of what they collected for themselves. With the House of Commons he could siphon money away from the nobility and directly to his own treasury.

                Liked by 1 person

      2. I was thinking about the 19th-20th century US popular culture, and how certain things got twisted.

        If you really dig into the century before the Reformation, and earlier, a lot of people, not just Protestants, were not pleased with the apparent disconnect between the Church (pre-1517) and the needs of the people. The Hussites had some problems with that in 1415, and you can go back to St. Francis of Assisi, although he stayed within the Church.

        There’s a thread of Christianity going back to the 400s AD/CE that argues for “just prices” and that only people who actually produce things or grow them should benefit. Hansa merchants were often criticized because “all they did was move things around,” rather than adding value, so they should not charge more for vital goods than they paid (food, some kinds of clothing, mill wheels). Luxury goods came under different rules, but the same idea that “transportation shouldn’t count toward cost” played a role there, too. Interestingly, some NeoConfucian thinkers in China made the same argument.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. That doesn’t make sense. Transportation adds cost, and somebody has to pay for it. If not the people benefiting from goods being moved to a more convenient location, then who?

          Communists mostly ignore transportation, too.

          Like

          2. Yep. “So YOU go way over there and buy it, then pay someone to move it here” seems too opaque for these zealots of “what should”.

            Like

        2. Which is also one of the things people used against Jews and other “middleman minorities.” Same thing with the prejudice against “being in trade” among the ton. You shouldn’t dirty your hands with commerce.

          One of the reasons I chose a Christian-affiliated college for my financial planning studies was the ability to talk about financial stewardship as part of a spiritual practice.

          Just look at the way the Biblical admonition that “the *love* of money is the root of evil” gets corrupted into “caring about money is evil.”

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Apparently some prejudice against hands dirtied with trade, at least in Austen’s time, was veiled references to businessmen who invested in the slave trade.

            It’s much more veiled than I’m used to seeing, but yeah, apparently that’s why Bristol and Liverpool get so much of that sniffing.

            I think the other part of it is that, unlike Tudor businessmen who were rich, they wanted to marry into the families of the gentry, so the moral guilt could actually land on your own family, if you unwarily let your kid marry somebody with the wrong kind of investment money.

            I don’t know why they couldn’t just say it, but there you go.

            Like

        3. Confucious himself was not a fan of merchants, though I don’t think he went that far. He did hold them in contempt, though.

          One of the many views he had that probably screwed over the long-term development of China.

          Like

          1. It didn’t help that pure mathematics didn’t have any place in their education.

            In Europe, there was equal contempt for using math — as in accounts — but pure mathematics was philosophical. And nothing could prevent the merchants from using the math the philosopher developed.

            Like

            1. I’ve seen enough stories where Some Random Activist claims that “Math is raaaaacist!*” to figure that that contempt for something they cannot/will not master has been a thing for one hell of a long time.

              Like

              2. The thing is that China didn’t have the same tradition of philosophy. They were not exposed to math except as something merchants did.

                Like

                1. Correct. Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism were basically the beginning and end of Chinese philosophical thought since the first emperor. Buddhism came in later, and managed to survive the purges of non-Chinese thought after the fall of the Tang Dynasty. Thought and theorizing outside of those traditions simply wasn’t done. And if it was, it was ignored by the society at large.

                  Christianity was also present during the Tang Dynasty, but unfortunately did not survive the post-Tang purges.

                  Like

          2. Not just China. It seems fairly common for agrarian cultures (i.e. most cultures until the 18th century with a few exceptions) to denigrate merchants: they don’t make anything, they don’t feed anyone, they don’t appease the gods, they don’t defend the city/state, and so forth. They just move stuff around, and somehow that makes them wealthy? Injustice!

            Liked by 2 people

            1. Another thing about merchants was that they “weren’t from around here”.

              IE They were travelers in a “world” where most people didn’t travel from their towns/villages.

              People knew what to expect from others of their towns/villages. Why should they trust those travelers coming from gods-know-where?

              Liked by 1 person

              1. That someone came in as a merchant didn’t actually mean they’d bought what they were trying to sell, or that they wouldn’t be back to take stuff to sell elsewhere if they thought the reward was good enough.

                Like

                1. Nod.

                  Yep, travelers weren’t trusted but “Hospitality Rules” meant that you couldn’t harm them or fail to offer them hospitality.

                  And yes, the gods were said to enforce “Hospitality Rules”.

                  Like

    2. OTOH, John Law’s “Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life,” specifically questioned whether any businessman could be saved. (C.S. Lewis cited Law as a formative influence, which is scary).

      He also felt that driving for pleasure on a Sunday was sinful and believed every waking minute should either be devoted to prayer, reading edifying/books on practical charity or performing acts of charity.

      Liked by 1 person

      2. Didn’t Herbert Spencer have some quote that the reading of fiction was bad and should be discouraged? Sounds similar, and yet another reason to dislike Spencer.

        Like

        1. I believe Plato had a thing against the theater because the plays showed the worst of human nature rather than the best. (But this was from Mary Renault, so not a primary source).

          Liked by 2 people

          1. I looked up the Spencer thing and I didn’t find what he said, if anything. But I did discover that there is a whole slew of religious opinion that one should not read fiction. It’s bad, apparently. So they insist.

            None of which I’m going to touch with a stolen barge pole. No way.

            However, I will say that having seen it, I am encouraged to write EVEN MOAR FICTION. Way more. Tons more. Books and books and books.

            Like

          2. In The Republic, he first had the position that only the best of human behavior should be shown in art. Later, he argued against having anything because art was just a copy of a copy — humans themselves being merely a copy of the Ideas — and things got blurred.

            Like

      3. I’ll see your autist, and raise you an Egyptian-Greek-philosopher convert who thought Christian men and women should wear the same exact clothing styles.

        St. Clement of Alexandria also wrote “Can the Rich Man Be Saved?” (Spoiler: The answer is yes.)

        Liked by 1 person

  8. I’m thinking of the Weimar Republic, held up (correctly) as an example of decadence. I note that what the people didn’t have was hope for the future. “Eat, drink and be sodomites because tomorrow will be worse”. Jolie LaChance KG7IQC

    Like

      1. Speaking of defeated nations, I saw a couple of things today bearing on this notion. First, there was one of those idiotic polls about who’s the happiest province in Canada. Answer, according to the pollsters, Quebec.

        Quick backstory filler on Quebec, it is the only place in Canada that has it’s own language, so you can instantly tell who’s on your side. Furthermore pride in being French is GOVERNMENT POLICY in Quebec. If you talk schlitz about being French and White publicly in Quebec, someone will kick your @$$.

        I take it as no surprise that Quebeckers feel better about themselves and about life in general compared to the rest of Canada.

        Second, there was this article about the effects of “”multiculturalism” in Britain amounting to anarcho-tyranny. It is in the Telegraph by Neil O’Brien, and begins thus:

        “A while back I came across some people who were actually being deported by the Home Office. They were an American couple running the only shop in a remote part of Scotland. Locals were up in arms about the nice couple being booted out.
        I think of them when I see stories about some of the people who are allowed to stay in this country by our courts. The Ugandan murderer who clubbed a man to death in the back of an ambulance but was allowed to stay because of his mental health. The Pakistani paedophile was allowed to stay because his life would be at risk back home. The Jamaican murderer who can’t be deported because a rival criminal gang in his native country might harm him.
        Welcome to justice in twenty-first century Britain. Judges, some of whom are also pro-migrant activists, have decided that the rights of foreign criminals are more important than the right of everyone else to live in safety; there are more than 10,000 foreign national offenders living in the country.

        There’s a pattern here. The British state persecutes the law-abiding while coddling dangerous people. This worst-of-both-worlds has been dubbed “anarcho-tyranny”. Examples of it abound.”

        He goes on to mention how the response to the Manchester Concert bombing was to make a law that venues have to file a “terrorism response plan” for events. Net result being that terrorism continues while events are cancelled because no one can afford security. Punish the innocent, coddle the guilty.

        That situation also exists in Canada. To wit:

        “DEA Busts Canadian Narco Whose Chinese Supplier Promised to Ship 100 Kilos of Fentanyl Precursors per Month From Vancouver to Los Angeles”

        Not to put too fine a point on it, the AMERICAN DEA busted this CANADIAN drug trafficker for running CHINESE supplied fentanyl and precursors into the USA. The Canadian enforcement effort has been pretty much zero, and the reason is he’s a Sikh guy. Not White.

        Had he been a White born-in-Canada guy they’d have gone after him hammer and tongs. Even the cops say that. Even FBI director Kash Patel said that the other day.

        Other examples are the car theft victim charged with gun crimes after four masked men armed with blunt instruments kicked in his door at zero-dark-thirty in the morning. He didn’t actually shoot any of them I hasten to add, his crime is having a gun handy when invaders kicked in his door. You’re not allowed to do that. (No, really. Consider yourselves blessed, my dear American friends.)

        Then there’s stupid stuff like random immigrants poaching fish out of local rivers during spawning season. Every kid in Canada knows not to do that, even bums and drug addicts don’t do it, but there they are in their HUNDREDS, stealing salmon. It’s all over YouTube. They don’t see why they shouldn’t do it, and when you explain why they shouldn’t, they don’t care. Not their country, not their problem, they’re taking the fish so f- you. Besides which, if they don’t take it someone else will. That’s how life is, stupid Canadians.

        So yeah. Canada is a defeated nation. And an invaded one. I see signs of it everywhere.

        Simple example, and one Sarah has talked about before, gates. I’m seeing gates popping up on people’s driveways. I’ve had one for a long time, because of Maximum Maxwell the murder poodle. Having the black demon raising hell on the front lawn was a great excuse to put up a fence and a big fat cattle gate on the driveway. Now he can threaten the Amazon driver from behind the big gate that says “BEWARE OF DOG!” on it, and said driver (different sketchy-looking dude every week) will not develop undue and perhaps unwholesome interest in Chez Phantom.

        But why would I want that? I’ve never had a gate on the end of my driveway in my life. It would have been considered crazy to have a gate when I was a young man, unless it was a farm with livestock. And even then the front drive up to the house would not have had one. The gate is a pain the the @$$. I have to get in and out of the PhantomMobile twice, once to open and once to close, and it cost me money too. No one ever had them before.

        But now I’m seeing gates. Fences. Bollards in the driveway. Stuff that is a huge pain, and no one likes it, but there it is.

        I don’t want it. But I have it. Because I do not want to be the next guy charged with crimes due to fending off robbers. And I would be, if I successfully survived the initial event. For sure. Even if I saw them off with a flashlight, I’d be up for assault. Better to let the sketchy Amazon freak be afraid of the dog.

        So in case anyone was wondering why our high-trust Western nations are turning into low-trust dumps, that’s why.

        As to who conquered us? Socialists. Only a Socialist would consider charging the victim of a crime for resisting the criminals. Only a Socialist could import a million 3rd World foreigners in a year (At least a million, probably more) and then pretend to be surprised to find them poaching salmon out of Bowmanville Creek during the spring spawn. And then call -me- a racist for mentioning it.

        This is also why the 3rd World is the 3rd World, by the way. Stupid f-ers poaching the salmon during spawn. But extend that to -everything-.

        Sorry for the wall of text you guys, it appears I was a trifle upset. >:(

        Like

        1. You have grizzlies and wolves up there? Don’t you?

          Not fair to the natural predators, I know. Because a fed bear/wolf is a dead bear/wolf and I like bears and wolves. Besides I don’t want either stalking me when we visit because the locals had to give the predators “ideas”.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. No bears and wolves along Bowmanville Creek. Just a couple hundred “foreign students” out to “enjoy the outdoors.” And steal salmon. On video, no less. And then they sell the fish, right? They don’t eat it themselves.

            But the part I love the most is how the fish cops are getting called racists and settlers for enforcing the law. Whereas if they busted -me- for poaching those exact same people would be screeching they didn’t bust me hard enough.

            Almost enough to make one suspect an arrangement…

            Like

        2. The decorative cages-filled-with-rocks fences known as Gabion fences are conveniently a very close analog to the way they put up FOBs in the WoT using Hescos. If things get more bad here in the Formerly Golden State I expect to see more and more decorative Gabion use in landscaping, especially in higher end landscape design.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Agreed, I see a new popularity for large chunks of limestone “decorating” the verges of larger properties, always with the most interesting spacing. Wide enough to walk between, too small for a SmartCar to pass.

            We have a tank trap at our place which functions as a ditch. >:D

            Liked by 2 people

                1. Okay, no obvious trigger word in my stuck in mod comment that explains it going straight to mod, so just WP being Stoopid. WPDE.

                  Like

                    1. Hey, I got moderation for a comment mildly criticizing the intelligence deemed less than natural. Seems the albert-go-rhythm didn’t much care for it.

                      Liked by 1 person

        5. Judges, some of whom are also pro-migrant activists, have decided that the rights of foreign criminals are more important than the right of everyone else to live in safety

          Many if not most of the UK judges are activists, the ones who aren’t probably know they’ll be overridden by the ECHR, which Britain inexplicably refuses to tell to go eff itself.

          Liked by 2 people

              1. Ours is politicians. I won’t say Sacramento, because that’s my hometown and the political problems are IMPORTS from points west and south.

                Like

                1. California’s problem is the Democratic super-majority, officially aided by the Dem’s almost immediate seizure of the “non-partisan” redistricting commission (which was passed by ballot initiative a little while back, and almost immediately taken over by the left). Unofficially, I suspect there’s a lot of fraud boosting the Dems’ numbers, including people on the voting rolls who aren’t supposed to be in the country.

                  Currently, both Los Angeles and the state – both of which are out of money – are promising large chunks of money to help illegals against the evil Trump administration. The State Senate and Assembly are also slowly moving through a bill that would allow LA County to use property taxes to purchase fire-damaged land “at fair values”. The only requirement is that 40% of the money spent go toward building low-income housing. And if you don’t think the above is code for “eminent domain to seize lots that had the houses burn down during the fires, and rebuild low-income housing there”, then I don’t know what to tell you. There is no conceivable reason why the county would need to buy the lots. And yet, it’s probably going to pass soon.

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. I know that in San Diego, anybody who hasn’t voted in the last 4 elections is supposed to be removed from the registration rolls. It’s a law.

                    I also know that as of the 2024 election, more than 70,000 entries that should have been removed years ago were still on the rolls. That’s a violation of state law, and possibly federal law as well.

                    Nothing has been done about it. Nobody has been held accountable.

                    As for the burned-out houses, what you’re seeing is standard procedure. Hold up building permits until the owners are forced to sell their properties for peanuts, then hand them over to politically connected real estate developers. It’s been 6 months since the fires, and NO permits have been issued. I don’t think anybody has even managed to get a demolition permit to clear away the burnt wreckage of what used to be their houses.

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. There have been a little over 100 permits issued.

                      Also, iirc residents had the option of allowing the Army Corps of Engineers to clear their property.

                      As for old voters on the rolls –

                      Judicial Watch used a successful lawsuit to force clean-up here in LA County. I think it got me booted off the rolls, which I didn’t realize until after a primary election. But it also got the previous resident of my apartment removed, so I view it as an overall positive good.

                      Like

                    2. Finally started issuing permits, did they? Bet they’re delaying them as much as they can get away with, though. Handing ‘distressed’ properties over to their developer cronies is practically a way of life around here.

                      Like

                    3. News just hit about the CA State Senate passing a special bill that (surprise!) lets the City of LA buy out burned out lots to build multiunit housing on what used to be single home lots:

                      https://lamag.com/news/ca-senate-passes-bill-that-will-allow-la-to-buy-fire-ravaged-lots-to-build-low-income-housing

                      So they hold permits in limbo to keep anyone from rebuilding their homes until they get desperate, then roll up with a buyout offer and build section 8 housing.

                      Like

                  2. That “non-partisan redistricting” thing was from Ahnold.

                    He rode in on the 2003 wave that was the last time any R had any chance at statewide office when Dem Gray Davis managed to get himself recalled. There were real Republicans in that election, but Hollywood name recognition and his ability to believably tell a convincing story sucked all the air out the election and put Ahnold in. Then he blew all his political capital on a special election with four Propositions to massively change the way money moved around, but all of them failed, shattering his mojo. After that, even though he won reelection in 2006, the rest of the CA pols pretty much ignored him, while he veered left into sucking up to the climate change freaks and pandering about universal healthcare. When he left everyone was glad to see him go.

                    Like

                  3. On the eminent domain seizures, that was unfortunately predictable and predicted at the time of the fires. And people are going to have to take it, because permits for rebuilding? Hah! “Your septic is not up to modern code.”

                    Like

        6. My car parked on the street in front of my house was burgled twice by someone walking along checking door handles (I *swear* I locked it, but maybe I just pushed the button and imagined the bleep).

          After that, I started parking in my driveway and pulling the sliding chainlink fence gate open and shut every time. My car (now truck) is still right there and perfectly visible, but just having to cross that threshold is apparently enough of a psychological barrier that I never had a problem again.

          Liked by 2 people

        7. 100 kilograms of fentanyl — I forget, is that enough to kill 10 million people, or only 1 million?

          (Consult DuckDuckGo. Do some math)

          Golly, it’s more like 30 million. Every month. Isn’t that, like, genocide or something?

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Fatal dose is 2 milligrams. Which is like a grain of table salt, give or take.

            Compare annual fentanyl fatalities with US combat losses in WWII. One of those numbers is bigger than the other, imbecile Lefties are encouraged to Google for themselves.

            The cousin of the Danforth Shooter was caught with 53kg of carfentanyl in his apartment, that’s fentanyl’s worse, more fatal version. They figured it was enough to do for the whole city if distributed finely.

            It’s a weapon of war, is what it is.

            Like

            1. What I found is that 2.1 milligrams of fentanyl is LD50 for ‘typical’ 70 KG adults. Meaning half of 70 KG test subjects given 2.1 mg would die. Using those numbers, 100 KG of fentanyl is enough to give LD50 doses to 47.6 million people, and 23.8 million would die. Larger individual doses would result in fewer overall, but a higher percentage of fatal ODs. I guesstimated that the numbers would peak at about 30 million.

              George Floyd took some totally unreasonable amount of fentanyl, which would be LD50 for an 800 KG mass. Literally, enough to kill a horse.

              Liked by 1 person

        8. You’ve also got the way that Quebec and Ontario basically lord it over the other provinces. If I was living in one of the other provinces, I wouldn’t be happy about it.

          Speaking of home invaders –

          Here in the US we get the entitled [censored}s that are indignant because you view your property as more important than the burglar’s (or worse) life. One of them (maybe; it might just be someone engagement farming by posting something obnoxious) has been raising a ruckus recently on X, getting responses from a number of accounts that I regularly see posts from.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. “Here in the US we get the entitled [censored}s that are indignant because you view your property as more important than the burglar’s (or worse) life.”

            Yes, well go hard on those ones because in Canada they run the place. And by that I mean it is the law of the land here. You may NOT use force to protect property.

            https://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2019/01/sjws-womens-self-defense-is-problematic.html

            This is the type of thing you mean, right? SJWs think self defense equals the Death Penalty, and so you should just allow yourself to be robbed. Or maimed, raped, murdered, and so forth.

            I had a couple of imbeciles (Hi, Bonnie!) from the flopping camel blog have this argument with me, their consensus was that women are too fluffy and frail for self defense. Better to lie back and think of England.

            I asked them how they felt about women in the military. Because that’s different, right?

            There’s no possible chance of talking sense to these people, because they are bound and determined that -you- are evil and therefore anything they do to fight you is perfectly legit. Also I think that most of them are not very bright (Hi, Aaron!) and can’t process an argument anyway. The best they can do is parrot what they’ve been told.

            Liked by 1 person

      2. Well, except that the alien directives imposed upon Germany were:

        1. F*** you, pay us
        2. Your army can only be >theees beeg<
        3. You can’t have the Rhineland back

        There weren’t any French/British commissars bigfooting around Berlin enforcing French/British cultural norms on the Germans.

        Like

        1. There was an occupation after the Armistice. American troops had to defer going home to participate, including some of the U.S. Aero Squadron aviation units. It did not last as long as the one after Round Two, and there was no reeducation as seen in the organized denazification program in 1945+.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Yes, “I was with them when they blundered into Berlin” and all that. Except they didn’t blunder into Berlin, they were restricted to the Rhineland, and only until 1922. The excesses of Weimar came years later.

            Liked by 1 person

          1. That, and the Communist-instigated 1919 civil war (“Spartacist Rebellion”) that didn’t help the big cities, either.

            Like

          2. Yes, but many many MANY starving nations never tipped over into decadence. Only Weimar that I can think of.

            Again, it was not an occupied country. Nobody took over their education, media, government, etc., to turn them against their past and their cultural norms. They did all that to themselves.

            Like

            1. They did all that to themselves.

              Much as we are in all the Western countries, in fact. The occupation is coming from inside the house.

              In the case of Weimar it was due to the war, of course, but not because of what the Allies did postwar.

              Like

            2. If you’ve ever read “The Arms of Krupp” by William Manchester, you quickly find that the decadence was well underway by the time Wilhelm II took the throne pre war.

              Liked by 2 people

              1. I have read it, but it was 35 years ago and I don’t remember many of the details. But yeah, socialism and its evil fruits (but enough about the Berlin nightlife, ha ha) were infiltrating German society even then.

                One detail I do remember, though, is that it was university professors who were stirring up a lot of the nationalist fervor and prodding their students to join the army for the glory of the Fatherland. What a difference from today.

                Like

                1. The German kingdoms and the German state directly subsidized the professors, and I believe they were political appointments who had to prove that they were all-in for the state.

                  The professors also got used for government jobs, for which they got paid extra.

                  This is why you had a bunch of German religious scholars writing scholarly articles about how the Bible supported whatever the latest German state position was, or that the verses which didn’t support them were inauthentic.

                  It was really very mind-blowing to find that out.

                  Especially since a lot of Americans happily went to foreign universities in German to get the latest Bible research and bring it back, when it was really propaganda about issues that didn’t even exist for the US.

                  Like

  9. Decadence on that kind of scale is often a depression response.

    Why save for the future, why build for the future…if you’re pretty sure that there isn’t going to be one?

    In the United States and the Western world in general, we’ve been marinading in the hateful ideology of socialism since the end of the Great War at best. And most people, instinctually, respond to socialism badly. It’s depressing and states that what you do doesn’t matter-it’s just the vague human blob of society that means anything.

    You don’t mean anything. Not at all. Unless you make meaning for yourself.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. That would match with the way that there is always something that’s going to End The World that shows up, and each solution becomes worse than what it solved by the act of working.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. And every solution requires you to be smaller, to be quieter, to be less and require less.

        You don’t matter. Not at all. The vague “people” and “world” matter more than your own individual desires…if you’re not one of the siloviki or inner circles of power.

        Every disaster requires greater and greater sacrifices away from you, into projects of vanity and brutalism. Nothing that gives you meaning or worth, just survival.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “You must use LESS and LESS energy!”

          Now, efficiency (the real kind) is good. But EVERY time energy became more readily available, standard of living went UP. What diseased mind want it to go DOWN? Oh, just down for YOU, not for THEM as well? That answers it: the EVIL.

          Liked by 2 people

            1. A Step Farther Out was one of the two or three most influential books on my life I’ve ever read.

              Like

    2. Only Wreckers and Kulaks try to make meaning for themselves, comrade!

      All those so-called ‘luxuries’ reserved for Chairman and Politburo are for greater glory of Proletariat.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I’m going to have to make note of this in my posthuman society concept-

        “MEANING-At the end of the day, the Union tries to ensure that what people have determined is their meaning for their life is possible.
        “This could be a harem of (consensual) cat-girls.
        “This could be 2.5 kids and a spouse in a split-level somewhere.
        “This could be colonizing new worlds.
        “This could be ascending to the highest levels of power in business, industry, or government.
        “This could be any number of things…but as long as the law isn’t broken and no harm comes to others, it is possible to have your meaning.
        “It doesn’t mean that you’re going to get it handed to you on a silver platter, but you damn well can fight for it-and learn something even if you lose.”

        Like

      2. The pigs really don’t ENJOY eating all the milk and apples while leaving none for the other animals. But they force themselves to do so to keep up their strength since being public servants requires so much stamina.

        They also require better houses, vacation dachas and private transportation because making the planet Safe for Democracy is the highest imperative and they are selfless servants who need these things to be effective spokespersons for the voiceless.

        It’s for the children! You don’t want children to die, do you.

        Well except those pesky unborn ones. They need to go away. Sacrifices must be made for the greater good.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. From HBO’s “Chernobyl” :

          Khodymuk: “I’m a nuclear physicist. Before you were Deputy Secretary, you worked in a shoe factory.”

          Secretary: “Yes, I worked in a shoe factory. And now I’m in charge.” *raises vodka class in toast* “Here’s to the workers of the world.”

          Like

          1. It was a common practice in Russia for the director of any important facility to be a figurehead, an apparatchik whose primary job was to schmooze with the Central Committee and generally play politics. The deputy director actually ran the place.

            Unfortunately, after a long day, followed by hours of delays, the deputy director of Chernobyl had to cancel the test and go home. When the test was finally approved at around 2:00 AM, only the director was on site, along with a Kremlin political officer with the authority to tell the operators to violate every sane operating procedure and safety rule. They did everything wrong. The wonder was that it still took them over 3 hours to blow up Unit #4.

            Liked by 1 person

    3. The leaders of the late stage USSR were so concerned about the dismal Russian birth rates that they ran extensive advertising campaigns against abortion, and while they were legal, they were as unpleasant as possible, done without anesthesia in open wards. One uncited item on w*pedia (I know, but communist stuff is pretty much right in their wheelhouse) indicates for long periods in the USSR abortions likely outnumbered live births, and there was always concerned discussion within the power centers that the only parts of the USSR with robust birth rates were the Central Asian Republics (“the ‘stans”).

      They ran surveys, and women’s cited reasons were basically career and convenience, but note that answering official surveys in that period with anything like “because communism sucks” would be inadvisable.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. You have to have a point and an ability to raise children to HAVE children.
        Japan has the same problem in a sense. Their culture is almost terrifyingly workaholic and hierarchal. When your boss wants to go out drinking late EVERY NIGHT, you have to go with him. Work overtime five nights a week? Yep!
        How can you even FIND someone to make a life with if you don’t even have a chance to have a life of your own outside of work?

        Liked by 2 people

        1. You’d think that at some point — much like American hospitals became slightly more sane about making residents work 4723 hours without sleeping — the Japanese government would step in and say look, we need our young men out in the evenings meeting girls and our slightly older men at home in the evenings schtupping their wives, so knock it off already.

          Liked by 1 person

            1. I really don’t understand how hospitals that are not on the Mayo Clinic model (i.e. not on commission*) work. But artificially restricting the supply of medical personnel doesn’t help the long hours situations.

              *If you’re getting paid by the procedure (or the theoretical procedure that you bill to the patient you spoke to for 1.5 minutes), that’s a commission in my mind.

              Like

              1. The government and AMA (spit!) place strict limits on the number of doctors and nurses allowed to practice medicine in this country. 0bamacare and the COVID19 panic drove thousands of them completely out of medicine. Now they are Shocked, Shocked! that medical services are less available and more expensive.

                Strangely, there is no limit on the number of bureaucrats. They proliferate like cockroaches.

                Liked by 2 people

                    1. The waiting list to see a pediatrician is so long, the kid will be grown up before the appointment. :-P

                      If the patient dies before getting to see a doctor, well, problem solved, right?

                      Liked by 1 person

              2. Fee for service, what you’re calling commission, means that providers have the incentive to provide their service to as many patients as they can. The more they work, the more they get paid.

                The other way is the Kaiser HMO model (Health Maintenance Organization), where providers contract to cover a population of patients, and provide their service when required. They make the same money no matter how many patients they see. In the HMO model providers have the incentive to provide service to as FEW patients as they can.

                I don’t know how Mayo works these days, seems like docs are on salary, probably they have a quota or something. Again, incentive to not see any more than they have to.

                I like fee for service. Pay money, see doctor. Boom, done. Otherwise you’ve got the “I’m too busy because I don’t get anything out of seeing you” problem.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. I have no idea as to why, but in my experience, the people who used the Kaiser HMO were generally happy about their treatment, while people in other HMOs felt that the organization should be burnt to the ground, the earth salted, with orbital nukes to be sure.

                  OTOH, this was Kaiser in the 1980s and 1990s. No data from later.

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. Kaiser apparently started out okay, but eventually the adverse incentive and ever-shrinking staffing started to bite down.

                    The true problem with HMOs is that they were created to shift the monetary risk away from the insurance companies and onto individual doctors or their hospital groups. They’re a scam.

                    The insurance company contracts with a physician group to send ALL their patients to that group. The group gets paid annually. And now the -group- is responsible for all the care for all those patients for the whole year, and the insurance company has no further risk.

                    So of course the physican groups all got very smart about how to chisel patients. So lately, if your “health insurance” is an HMO, you better have a good lawyer if you get sick.

                    Which, sadly, is still better than Canada. Socialized medicine means “crawl to Buffalo for treatment.”

                    Like

                2. There needs to be a hybrid of the two. The problem with the former is overwork and also fudging the numbers. The problem with the latter is not servicing patients with time.

                  I’m currently with the HMO model, and I haven’t had trouble getting services. However, I am on the healthy end, so that has to figure into what I need. The email service is gold, though, because that’s how you can get all manner of small questions cleared up without having to schedule an appointment.

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. I do like the medical portals. Peace Health is our primary one. I was able push through medical issues for myself using it. Much easier than playing phone tag or visit with doctor but nothing coming of it.

                    Liked by 1 person

            2. When it was pointed out to a hospital in Arizona that the hospital, the residency program AND the university medical school were -liable- if one of their residents crashed, (and possibly crashed into someone else) after a far-too-long stretch of mandatory call (Like 36 hours commonly)…

              …the ridiculous amount of on-call hours miraculously shrank to eight. It was like Moses parting the Red Sea, except with red tape.

              Also, when it was pointed out to said program that #Resident was A) extremely pregnant and B) was having pre-term contractions all the frigging time while on call, and C) her husband was huge, horrible, not suffering fools gladly and D) not going to be happy if his first born didn’t make it because #Resident was being forced to work with pre-term contractions…

              …it miraculously became possible that #Resident could complete her rotation -after- giving birth. As if falling from Olympus like the thunderbolt of Jove.

              Such things are possible. >:(

              Liked by 1 person

          2. Shinzo Abe made the birthrate one of his issues. I don’t think he made any headway with it.

            Part of it might be cultural expectations. The executives are doing what successful executives are expected to do. A couple hundred years ago, it was a trip to the brothel to party with the guys while a talented female performer (who might not be expected to sleep with you as part of the night’s entertainment) played, sang, and/or danced while you get yourself drunk.

            It was also expensive, so couldn’t be done that often unless you were really, really rich.

            Nowadays, the old-style brothels are replaced by hostess bars (and more explicitly vulger forms of that type of entertainment also exist). Or for a lot less money, you can all go out and get drunk for fairly cheap in a bar.

            Is that the reason why they do it? Dunno. But it makes for a good story. :p

            Liked by 2 people

            1. Yeah, I mean “c’mon folks, have more kids” isn’t a very effective message all by itself. “Hey, stop doing these cultural practices (that prevent young men and women from getting married and having children)” might be better.

              The US managed to successfully stigmatize smoking and three-martini lunches; surely the Japanese could successfully stigmatize “party harder than your boss every night”.

              Liked by 1 person

            2. About a decade or two back, some folk made a study of the countries with varying birthrates and tried to figure out why some Western-style countries had better birthrates than others. You know what they found out?

              There were two types of countries that had higher birthrates. Some of the Scandinavian ones, with generous parental leave policies, did fairly well. You know the other type? The U.S., with its “at will” hiring and firing.

              The best way to explain it is to point out the European country with the lowest birthrate at the time of the study, Italy. Italy has strong worker protections for jobs. Basically, it’s all but impossible to fire someone. And what that means is that once you’re out of the employment field, you will never be hired again, because you won’t hire someone if you’re stuck with them forever.

              Kids are far too much of an opportunity cost in that environment. You have more than one kid, you leave the job market, and you never work again. Contrast that with the U.S. job market. Yes, searching for jobs sucks. Yes, it may take a while to get employment, and it may not be in your field of choice. But taking 10-20 years to raise kids isn’t a death sentence for your experience. There are any number of 40-something moms entering the workforce once their kids are grown, or starting a new career in their 50s.

              So American women can have kids and know they’ll get another job later. It’s not the end of their lives as productive citizens. And… overall, we like to be productive. It feels good.

              Liked by 1 person

          3. Yes, but that would require them to actually care about those things, because that means people that aren’t of the ruling class…matter.
            I love the Japanese, but I know that there’s a lot of the medieval mindset still under the skin.

            Like

            1. “Wait, what happened to all the serfs that used to be around here?”

              “They got old and died with no children, sire.”

              “Well, round up some new ones then!”

              “Umm…”

              I find it hard to believe that even Japanese ruling class types are that stupid. On the other hand, they’re relaxing their immigration laws and bringing in the usual suspects, so maybe they are.

              Liked by 1 person

  10. The grasshoppers will always be among us humans beings, the takers, the wastrels, the entitled, their stories get lots of press and media play by other envious wastrels who can’t do the same. The truth is most of us do our work, live our lives and try to ignore them until they make such a mess, that we the people, have to clean it up again. They tried with Reagan, then the snakes doubled down, so now they get Trump. You really don’t want to see who comes next.

    Like

  11. Hauling out my favorite hobby horse, Attachment Theory.

    The most durable bonds are from from fixing stress. A group work together and solve a problem, they learn that this team can solve problems, so they can relax until the next big problem comes up.

    Bulldozing every problem before our kids means they never get that, until we hit a problem so big that we cannot smooth it at all. It’s the pilot training version of handing the controls to the trainee for the first time when you’re already in a fully developed flat spin.

    And when you don’t have those bonds to go tackle problems with, you just burn in the stress. That’s where the dopamine binging comes from: it’s a momentary relief from your system running past redline.

    I would actually expect that to correlate with wealth because the wealthier you are, the more parasites you will attract, making it ever harder to find those reliable, trustworthy friends that one needs to be a functional human. You end up alone and surrounded by open grasping hands, each just hoping to pluck another piece from you.

    Like

      1. Yeah. There they just do their bestest to make all problems unsolvable. Which achieves the same end, just with more psychological torture in the mix.

        One of the adaptive modes of attachment literally revolves around going into permanent faun mode. And its considered an adaption rather than a disorder because certain highly hostile environments, that’s the only way to survive.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Faun mode …

          The fawn response, a term coined by therapist Pete Walker, describes (often unconscious) behavior that aims to please, appease, and pacify the threat in an effort to keep yourself safe from further harm.

          Now faun mode could be interesting, in it’s Satyrical manifestations. But the stories of the Fae suggest they are indifferent to humans, so being ‘occupied’ by Fae would seem to be a Bad Thing.

          Liked by 2 people

        2. An amazing number of interpersonal problems boys face can be fixed with a good punch to the face.

          Once that’s settled, they can get on be with being reasonable human beings again.

          Granted, some problems, such as bullying the weak, can’t be solved this way.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Sometimes the “weak” can be quite a surprise on the face-punching front. I had a few bullies that were shocked when the goofy weird kid decided he wasn’t having it that day. Didn’t always win, but went for it anyway.

            Never seemed to make much difference that I could discern, overall. One guy backs off after you pound him, but eventually another one will start up again.

            What finally put a stop to it was I grew big enough that they wouldn’t try me anymore. That was freakin’ satisfying, I must say.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. That was the theme of my response to the latest writing challenge on the Victory Girls blog:

              Three hundred light-years, and who’s the first person from home I find on the schoolyard but Roddy the Bully. He was two years older and a head taller than me, and unlike the bullies in all the after-school specials and Very Special Episodes, he had this talent for switching from mean and nasty to smooth as a used-car salesman the minute an adult came around. So of course the teachers all thought we were the bad guys and sent us off to detention and made us write lines, while he goes smirking along.

              I held back, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t recognize me, maybe wouldn’t even notice me. I had no doubt of what had happen if he took a renewed interest in me — the same old pains, and the same old useless platitudes from all the adults. “Just ignore him” — as if he’d let me. And all those snappy comebacks that were supposed to knock him dead? Fell flat on their faces the minute they were coming out of my mouth.

              I scanned the area, looking for any escape route, any way to get away from him. And then I realized what it meant to no longer be on Earth, no longer in a purely human polity. The Kitties are predators, and they expect a certain amount of play-fighting among their kittens. With the playground monitors being members of one or another of the other species in their Empire, could I finally give Roddy the good sock to the mouth he deserves?

              Not like I expect him to suddenly turn into a friend like in some of those particularly glurgy Very Special Episodes, but if he’ll just leave me alone, I’ll be happy.

              Liked by 1 person

            2. Sometimes the “weak” can be quite a surprise on the face-punching front. I had a few bullies that were shocked when the goofy weird kid decided he wasn’t having it that day. 

              Heh, I was twelve years old; this bully tells me that he and his buddies are going to kick my ass after school. He was a known gangbanger in training.

              Well, I walked up behind him in the hallway; clamped my hand over his mouth and dragged my comb across his throat. “Kick my a$$! I can’t stop you, but you are locked in here with me for the next three years. By the way, I collect straight razors as a hobby.”

              I was unaware that a gentleman of his genetics could turn so pale. We later became friends and he thanked me for scaring him straight. Sometimes rabbits bite back.

              Liked by 2 people

      2. I swear sometimes your brain runs in the same track as mine, Sarah. My current work-in-progress is Our Heros fighting evil spirits in the school system. The miasma of corruption, and what to do about it. They’re having trouble because there’s no one to punch in the face, just bullsh1t for miles.

        On the bright side I get to depict the school board and the Karens of the local community having to deal with 200 new Grade Nine students who are little girls, but also nanotech combat spiders. Artificial Intelligence beings can have more than one drone, right? >:D

        Oh, and wolf spirits.

        A snippet, to cheer us up:

        When the first bus was pulling up, the giant wolf Mánagarmr stood up from where he had been sitting in the woods next to the gate, hidden in shadow. The bus stopped and the door opened. The wolf winked at the first girl in line, and stuck his head and shoulders into doorway.

        “Eeeep!” squeaked the bus driver, shrinking back from him in her seat. His head was nearly as big as her body.

        “Good morning dear lady,” the wolf said politely, sniffing in her direction. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Mánagarmr. Formerly the Wolf of the Moon, now retired to your lovely town here in Midgard. I am the new bus inspector.”

        “You can talk!” the driver accused him loudly. “How the hell?!”

        “I certainly can,” he agreed easily. “I learned the usual way, as one does you know. May I assume your bus is well prepared to receive the McNair children, madam driver?”

        “Um, yes?” she ventured fearfully. “You don’t bite, do you?”

        “Not as a general rule,” he assured her. “Although if harm were to come to my little McNairs, I might feel a bit nippy. I’m sure the problem will not arise, dear lady. Only two miles to school, after all. What could happen?” He raised an eyebrow at her, a silent admonition that nothing had better happen.

        “I haven’t crashed yet,” she said defensively, nettled by the implication. “Are you going to chase us again?”

        “Of course,” he nodded. “All part of the bus inspection you know. Inside, outside, at rest and in motion. Well, carry on my dear, school waits for no man.”

        He pulled his head out and went back to repeat the conversation with the other bus driver. The McNairs all got on in an orderly and efficient way, as the driver tried not to hyperventilate after the shock of that huge head up so close.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. One of the reasons I’m so glad to see the DOE bull dozed into nothing. Also that the BBB codified school choice with school dollars. If the state hasn’t already got a mechanism for using your school tax dollars, paid usually by property tax, to spend for your children, plus additional deductions. (Oregon does, just the home district gets to keep a percentage for “administration”.) Those of us whose children are out of the system, or never had any, don’t benefit. But at least some parents now get choices.

        Liked by 2 people

      4. (My response got stuck in moderation, it appears WordPress must delenda est today.)

        re-trying:

        I swear sometimes your brain runs in the same track as mine, Sarah. My current work-in-progress is Our Heros fighting evil spirits in the school system. The miasma of corruption, and what to do about it. They’re having trouble because there’s no one to punch in the face, just bullsh1t for miles.

        On the bright side I get to depict the school board and the Karens of the local community having to deal with 200 new Grade Nine students who are little girls, but also nanotech combat spiders. Artificial Intelligence beings can have more than one drone, right? >:D

        Oh, and wolf spirits.

        A snippet, to cheer us up:

        When the first bus was pulling up, the giant wolf Mánagarmr stood up from where he had been sitting in the woods next to the gate, hidden in shadow. The bus stopped and the door opened. The wolf winked at the first girl in line, and stuck his head and shoulders into doorway.

        “Eeeep!” squeaked the bus driver, shrinking back from him in her seat. His head was nearly as big as her body.

        “Good morning dear lady,” the wolf said politely, sniffing in her direction. “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Mánagarmr. Formerly the Wolf of the Moon, now retired to your lovely town here in Midgard. I am the new bus inspector.”

        “You can talk!” the driver accused him loudly. “How the hell?!”

        “I certainly can,” he agreed easily. “I learned the usual way, as one does you know. May I assume your bus is well prepared to receive the McNair children, madam driver?”

        “Um, yes?” she ventured fearfully. “You don’t bite, do you?”

        “Not as a general rule,” he assured her. “Although if harm were to come to my little McNairs, I might feel a bit nippy. I’m sure the problem will not arise, dear lady. Only two miles to school, after all. What could happen?” He raised an eyebrow at her, a silent admonition that nothing had better happen.

        “I haven’t crashed yet,” she said defensively, nettled by the implication. “Are you going to chase us again?”

        “Of course,” he nodded. “All part of the bus inspection you know. Inside, outside, at rest and in motion. Well, carry on my dear, school waits for no man.”

        He pulled his head out and went back to repeat the conversation with the other bus driver. The McNairs all got on in an orderly and efficient way, as the driver tried not to hyperventilate after the shock of that huge head up so close.

        Like

    2. I think you need to add in the flip-side issue– the problems that you’re not allowed to solve, because someone has decided they are a good thing, not a problem.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Yeah, that does it too, spectacularly, though it tends to produce people locked into the feeze/fawn mode instead of the hyper fragile mode.

        Usually attachment issues turn into either ‘avoidant’ (everyone else is the problem) or ‘anxious’ (I’m the problem) but if someone is pushed hard enough and far enough, they’ll flip coping modes. The avoidant will conclude they desperately need people even though they can’t trust any of them, and the anxious will conclude the people they desperately need are also completely untrustworthy.

        That’s where you start seeing the manic behaviours or apologizing for bleeding when they’ve just been stabbed.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. That doesn’t match up with my experience– I went anxious. Still there a bit, although studying on the precursors to physical abuse in relationships helped me identify the pattern of abuse.

          It’s somewhat popular to call it ‘gaslighting’, now.

          “There is no problem. You are the problem. How dare you not be happy being the problem?”

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Truth be told, the naming conventions are pretty bad. And, just because of the biochemestry differences men are more likely to flip to ‘avoidant’, and women are more likely to flip ‘anxious’. And any sort of intermittent reinforcement with push someone to develop the ‘anxious’ mode.

            ‘Avoidant’ the bonding centers are pretty much shut down because of constant stress and they tend to be extreme lone wolves with higher worry levels. Everyone must be monitored and controlled for their own safety.

            ‘Anxious’ typically have had some sort of familial bond, but it wasn’t reliable or was highly conditional. So they know that is exists, they just learn they have to earn it. I can see how gas lighting can train someone in that.

            Thing is, these are emergent behaviors out of four different hormone/ receptive pairs, including one (oxytocine) that can have four different behaviors depending on conditions.

            And, men and women don’t have them in the same ratios either, with men having more vasopresin and women having more oxytocin, so while they both show the same behaviors, they show them to different magnitudes and likelihoods.

            Really wild stuff.

            Like

        2. :snickers: The anxious/”I must be the problem” first reaction is hilariously useful online, though.

          Accusations that you already tested before speaking don’t have a lot of bite when thrown by a third party. :grin:

          Liked by 2 people

        1. :shakes head:

          Looking at the wrong area.

          This is where individuals identify a problem, something that hurts them, and they are not allowed to either remove themselves or act to fix it.

          Over. And over. And over.

          Like

          1. The problems that you’re not allowed to solve, because someone has decided they are a good thing, not a problem.

            Individuals are constrained at the retail level. Homelessness is a wholesale implementation.

            Neither is good. I would argue the cynical commercial exploitation of the homeless is a more serious – and tractable, if we could develop the will – problem.

            But we will always have mean/evil people, as well as the piously-coated greedy ones. I think the former group is suffering from a mental illness, while the latter is principally morally impaired.

            Like

            1. …..we must be around different homeless, ours are either the insane or grifters, usually college age guys who know they can do a don’t need to work living by being illegal.

              Like

              1. I lived in Asbury Park just after the compassionate liberals deinstitutionalized mental patients. Some are dangerous, but I only saw the ones who were natural prey.

                Liked by 1 person

              2. My observation matches Foxfier’s although we have more middle-aged-looking individuals. They beg on street corners, sell “art” that supposedly they do (cheap tempera paint on cardboard), or are insane (some of those self-medicate, which does not help things).

                Like

                1. I have noticed a really interesting thing– when I go into Des Moines, even if I don’t know there’s some big national event going on, I can tell.

                  Because suddenly there are panhandlers at all the intersections.

                  I don’t know how or why they do this– for all I know, they’re freaking security for events in a guise that nobody looks at twice– but there are mobile “homeless”.

                  (Des Moines had one big illegal encampment. It belonged to a very nice– as in good people– brewery, and they agreed to let it be cleaned out because of the human cost of the natural prey that was mentioned.)

                  Like

              3. You left off the druggies and the casual criminals – lots of overlap with insane and grifters. And, there are, occasionally, people unhoused due to temporary financial distress – who are often portrayed as representative of the whole much more varied group.

                We do have all of those. The mentally ill might, in some cases, be ‘victims’.

                It’s the organized rape of the public treasury that is the macro problem, that leaves the homeless on the streets to do whatever while the organizations to notionally ‘help’ them collect $$ and do nothing or less than nothing – those are the “piously-coated greedy ones”. It’s the ‘progressive’ Seattle-Portland-San Francisco axis of greed.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. You left off the druggies and the casual criminals – lots of overlap with insane and grifters. 

                  Which is why I didn’t single them off. They overlap.

                  And, there are, occasionally, people unhoused due to temporary financial distress 

                  I have been that.

                  Which is why I am familiar with this run in circles.

                  We do have all of those. The mentally ill might, in some cases, be ‘victims’.

                  They are victims, in the form of they get dead.

                  Like

  12. Well the devil has always been good at propaganda so the communists being masters of it makes sense. Being captured by an evil alien over culture also makes sense for the low birth rate; breeding in captivity and all.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. I chipped in a few bucks when you said a fundraiser was nigh. Paypal said it would go through on the 18th, though I was trying for immediate. I have learned to distrust Paypal for a bunch of reasons. Just one more on the list!

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Bible doesn’t say money is the root of all evil, Bible says love of money is the root of all evil. We’re raised to think that looks like Ebenezer Scrooge, or maybe the merchants in the cartoon Small One, but where we actually see it IRL is all these companies that drive themselves into the ground chasing maximum profits at the expense of delivering goods or services.

    As for decadence, wealth and status kind of acts like cocaine in the Bill Crosby routine: yeah it intensifies your personality but what if you’re a scumbag?

    (Credit where due: autocucumber kept me from committing l33tspeak a number of times in this comment.)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Yeah. Money is useful, but making it the measuring stick of your life suffers from the issue with all metrics: it cannot measure everything.

      I can’t help but think that any system that requires perfect quantitative metrics will eventually dissolve into some version of mammon cult, too.

      Liked by 1 person

  15. But what about the Gulag gap with the Russians?

    Doesn’t the lack of academics and of intellectuals in internment camps raise basic questions about the fitness and legitimacy of the American government?

    (yeah, I have been bouncing wildly between silly thoughts. Now, maybe better than getting confused trying to debug a 34 point outline that attempts to say something serious and true. Lately, when it comes to my judgement, I have questions.)

    Would not American policy be a lot simpler to understand if we simply asked ourselves “What Would The Mongols Do?”

    Anyway, under Trump there was some negotiation questions with the Dominion of Canada. The Dominion did not immediately fold and give everything to him. Unlike Mexico, there are more Canadian cities in easier range for massacre. Yet, I do not think we have killed every single living thing in even one of those settlements.

    That means that we have not done a very effective job of terrorizing every person who hears about such events.

    I do wonder if maybe we ought to just nuke Moscow, lest we be decadent, and lest we be globohomo neo-con degenerates.

    Or maybe the theatrical methods of other people are not a great way to actually do things for oneself.

    Like

    1. The downside of a Canadian Persuasion Expeditionary Force is the danger of breaking the whole rickety thing, which would invoke the “you broke it, you bought it” clause. Don’t want that, would‘t be prudent.

      Like

      1. Correct. And Canada and Mexico are really close, so if we mess things up badly enough, we could really be stuck trying to fix things later.

        We have enough problems on our own, without trying to impress the Russians or whomever.

        Liked by 1 person

      1. There do seem to be quite a number of them who want us in gulags, true enough. I’m liking Bob’s gulag gap.

        But on the other hand, Bob is completely wrong about Canada. The reason he’s wrong is that all important decisions regarding Canada are made in Beijing. Ottawa is a side show put on to fool the rubes.

        Yes, I am a little salty today. I want to go for a rip on my bike but I’m stuck inside. Because Beijing didn’t want to spend money on forest management, so we are all choking on the smoke of our burning Northern forests. Again.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. I find myself wondering about California’s abject disregard for sound forest management.

          Maybe if I study Chinese history hard enough, I can find a time and place when the central plains practiced what might be thought of as environmentally responsible land management. (Okay, I do not like the environmentalists. I’m still not entirely sure that the imperialists of the middle kingdom have ever practiced a good alternative recipe.)

          If Trump or Reagan are decadent, for lack of Stronkman behavior, I’m not at all sure that decadance (should it exist) is an entirely bad thing.

          Being relaxed enough not to go full murderous henwit at the first obstacle kinda seems like an objectively good thing.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. “I find myself wondering about California’s abject disregard for sound forest management.”

            Same in Canada.

            Canada has a long history of forest management, and in fact it can be argued we invented it here along with a lot of other environmental stuff. The recovery from desert conditions brought on by bad farming practices were pioneered right here in Ontario down the road from me, in the Turkey Point/Long Point area of the Lake Erie shore. Forestry guys know what’s up here in the Demented Dominion.

            But, for ten years (or longer, some say) the federal government has found reasons not to do what everybody knows has to be done. Because they don’t get votes for forest management. And now I’m not going for my bike ride because everything went on fire. Again. What is this, four years in a row now?

            Relative of mine is in the northern firefighting racket. They have to fight to get things they used to have in abundance, like manpower and hoses. Basic stuff.

            I would think the same is probably true in Cali, given the number of “Save The Desert!!!” nutbag groups screeching over every controlled burn or garbage clearing operation.

            Same reason the power company doesn’t trim the trees in New York State. Every time they pull out a chainsaw to cut off an overhanging limb, some tree-hugger group files a lawsuit. So the power company doesn’t do it. Then comes winter, and mass power outages. Surprise!

            Stupidity and thievery, or so I think. Like a lot of things, you follow the money and you find the reason.

            Liked by 2 people

          2. I find myself wondering about California’s abject disregard for sound forest management.

            Ooh! I have a good quote about this. A few years back, my daughter’s troop went to a large summer camp, on the order of five-digit acres. They had a forest manager (who I swear hardly looked older than the campers, but was old enough to have a master’s degree and a job managing grounds up near Chico in addition to the camp.)

            Anyway, as part of the Forestry merit badge, he had campers building burn piles that he would burn in winter, built a particular way so they’d collapse in on themselves. And what he said was that the best forest management came from the remaining timber companies, with the Forest Service and federal properties coming in dead last. Mostly because they got their hands tied with lawsuits, but he was very clear that private hands had lands that didn’t burn.

            (He was also justly proud that the lands he helped manage were where major fires stopped, just saying.)

            Like

            1. Weyerhaeuser lands burned in the McKenzie corridor in 2020, the Holiday fire. Not much they can do when a wildfire comes whipping through the crown. Weyerhaeuser dumped their logging plans for at least 3 years to log the burned areas. Government land logged? None.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Every trip to town, I go through a stretch of [Redacted] National Forest. Overgrown, scattered dead trees from Ponderosa Bark Beetle infestation, and utter neglect. We haven’t had a major fire in that stretch of the woods, just yet, but it’s a matter of time.

                The private land (used to be Jeld-Wen, now bought (I think) by a Gates shell company) has a tree farm that really needs to be thinned. It needed it 20 years ago. OTOH, it doesn’t have the ladder fuels the Nat’l Forest does, so it’s slightly less likely to have the major fire start. On the gripping hand, with next door being fed (NF, plus BLM), it’s at risk.

                And, Phantom, you’re not the only one to have plans disrupted by Canadian wildfires. We had N winds overnight, and in addition to a fire in Oregon, the smoke reports say we’re getting a bunch from Canada.

                Can we get a tariff on smoke? Asking for a friend.

                Like

                1. 2003 Santiam Fires (not called that but both sides of Big Lake and across over the other side of hwy 126 at the pass). Combination of wilderness and USFS (including Hoodoo Ski, and Sutter Lake area). Thus no logging. What was mix of trees and brush? All brush and downed timber to be seen on north side of highway. Some of the timber below Hoodoo (as approaching the pass from the west), was still upright last time we were through. Just a matter of time before those are down. Regardless the brush coming up is going to be grease to the next fire.

                  Like

            2. A fanatic!

              :salutes: May he find a hundred like himself to train!

              (my mom’s family did fire fighting as their summer job for decades; the longest geek out sessions I’ve ever seen were on fire and forest management at family reunions, I very much want this to be A Thing)

              Liked by 1 person

              1. GOATS. I mean, they use them for urban/suburban fire management, they just need to make goat the next Superfood of choice. The goat industry could take off, fire management strategies employed, everyone happy.

                I suggest Basque cuisine. Can we make that a thing?

                Like

                1. Unfortunately, they can’t take out the giant bullseye of beetle-killed wood, and that stuff is thick enough that it sterilizes the land under it– will even crack the stone.

                  Liked by 1 person

          3. AFAIK, China’s land management practices largely revolved around making sure that there were enough people to farm for food, and dealing with the rivers via canals and flood control.

            An amusing story about the former – Cao Cao once put down a revolt by a group of farmers who were upset about not having farmland to use… and then “punished” them by installing them on farmland left vacant by the wars of the time, and ordering them to grow food; note that he likely got the idea from a much earlier Chinese leader who did the exact same thing.

            Like

      2. The medical advisor from BobCare thinks this might be a sign of ill health, and will probably recede if you wait it out.

        Academic henwits are an important matter, but mainstream Americans can probably just treat the university sorts according to American custom. And American custom can be pretty merciful, without satisficing mad tertiary school theories about multicultural anti-colonialist wackaloonism.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I maintain that #TheDonald and his tariffs have done more to rescue Canaduh from itself than any Canadian politician ever in history.

          However even #TheDonald has made an error with his 51st State nonsense. Because then y’all would be stuck with Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Which amount to another California, meaning DemocRat rule forever more.

          If he wanted to be serious about it, he could make them their own little nation-states and leave them out of it while accepting the whole rest of Canada. Where people understand that meat does not come from the supermarket, nicely cut and wrapped, by magic. You have to grow the cow first.

          There are plenty of people in Toronto who have never seen a real cow except on TV.

          Like

          1. Yeah, “51st state” is dumb. Even “51st-55th” states is dumb, because 4 out of 5 would be whackadoodle progs.

            On the other hand, a protectorate like the Philippines 1898-1946 might be workable if immigration were strictly controlled and radically limited.

            Liked by 2 people

              1. The Canadian provinces are a problem for the US because geographically, they’re huge. But population-wise, they’re tiny.

                Like

                1. As we all know representation isn’t based off of land mass. But representation. Thus if most are only 3 (the two senators + congress rep), at least the conservative are pulling reps from the more heavily over represented blue states. The total electoral count goes up by # new states X 2. But the total congress count stays the same. Does make states like California, and New York, want to discourage new applicants.

                  Like

          2. “TheDonald has made an error with his 51st State nonsense“

            –

            Correct. Bringing in entirety of Canada as the 51st state would be a mistake.

            However bringing in Canada as states #51 through #63, with Greenland as #64, and other US territories just might decide to come in as full states too. The fallout? IDK. Like to believe everything balances out. With a major tilt toward freedom. What a coup for TheDonald?

            Liked by 1 person

            1. I’d say to be selective on which province to consider for statehood. West of Ontario (perhaps east of Quebec, too), would make sense, particularly if BC were either excluded or the coastal SW portion be kept in the Duhminion, split off a-la Greater Idaho/State of Jefferson, etc.

              Like

            2. OR…

              It could work out like Boeing purchasing McDonnell-Douglas and ending up with them in charge.

              Just sayin’.

              Like

              1. I “hear” what you are saying.

                Again. Representation is about population, not square miles. Like already stated, there is a lot of land per some provinces, but few people. Like Montana. Fixed by law 435. Each state gets one representative. That leaves 385 currently to be appropriated by percentage of total population (the usual suspect think it should be every individual, US citizen or not; I disagree, muchly). If all the provinces and territories of Canada join the US, that 385 is decreased by another 13 (if there are no provinces that split, like N. and S. Dakota). Conclusion? The states that will scream the loudest against Canadian provinces being accepted will be California and New York, etc. They have the most to lose.

                This is a fine exercise to discuss. Won’t happen on the grand scale. We might see Alberta break from Canada and petition to join. They are already making noise that way, at least on the break away part. IDK what other provinces would also want to. Maybe eastern and northern BC, but I doubt they have the population to go against Vancouver the city, and the island, to break up BC.

                Like

  16. Tell me the truth, o ye self-published! Regardless of “profit” made, how did your first books sold make you feel?

    Like

        1. Soon! Cover being made, book edited, Life interfering but things will come together Pretty Soon Now.

          My best one so far. It has a werewolf. You will like it. ~:D

          Like

    3. Really, really good. I like pelf and lucre, filthy or otherwise. Eating on a regular basis and having a roof over my head are bad habits I’d prefer not to shake, thankyouverymuch!

      Like

  17. The Democratic/a/k/a neo-Marxist Party has fully embraced the Soviet propaganda; recall Bernie Sanders complaining, to the cheers of his fellow Marxists that “people have too many choices” and cited as an example the number of brands and types of deodorants. This of course has become a constant theme of theirs, as has their scolding of what they call “the consumption society”. Just like the Soviets, the people telling the masses that austere lives are for the good of humanity, are the ones who take everything for themselves and live lives of luxury that would make the kings in Versailles blush (note that those considered poor in the USA live far more luxurious lives than those kings could dream of).

    Marxism, in all its varieties, is at its core an ideology of envy and hatred, and in practice is essentially a modern form of feudalism that demands absolute control over the vast majority of people by a small oligarchy “for our own good”, proving yet again how correct C.S. Lewis was in his remarks about tyrants and tyranny.

    The worst part is that just like 1984s Inner Party, the ones who are most aware that what they are spreading is BS, are the ones who are also the most fervent true believers in that BS; as Obama once said “sometimes I believe my own BS”. They are so arrogant and vain that they truly believe that they, and they alone, know what is best for everyone and thus must be given absolute power to impose their vision.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Yeah, Bernie, who couldn’t choose among three houses, so he has them all. Perhaps he could chose between manila, polypropylene, and nylon ropes. Hey, he could choose between a lamppost and a tree for all I care. He does not get to choose the victim, however.

      Liked by 1 person

  18. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » WEAK MINDS CREATE HARD TIMES:  Decadence and Wealth.

  19. In other news.

    In a FB/Instagram video that popped up on my feed. One of those videos where one person plays two parts. This one is regarding the leftest judge who “struck down” Birth Right Citizenship. Not about the SCOTUS overrule on nationwide injunctions. But under “unintended consequences” of sticking it to orange-man-bad.

    Part of the ruling had to set standing on behalf of the current (pregnant illegal) and future unborn. The effect of ruling that fetus are babies are humans. Because only humans can have standing in a lawsuit. This is called a major OOPS.

    Which means the counter argument is the leftest judge was correct on standing, fetus are human, but that still doesn’t grant them birth right citizenship if neither parent is a citizen.

    Kind of reminds me of Clancy’s “Executive Order” where the judge rules the shelter in place order presidential order was vacated because it violated the freedom of movement of the constitution. The presidents lawyer thanked the judge and filed an appeal on the ruling on the shelter in place, and for ruling who was the actual president. I read that and gleefully laughed (the plaintiff was an idiot, not quite a Biden, but …). OTOH figured author finger on the scale because writing it. But no judge would be that stupid. I was wrong.

    Like

Comments are closed.