The Courage To Be

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Humans are social great apes. That means at a very deep level in our architecture is the certainty that if we offend the group at large, we’re going to get chased away from the band and die in the wilderness.

Mind you the ability to stand apart from the group and say “This far and no further” or even “no, you’re all wrong and I’m right” vary greatly from individual to individual. Some have a lot, some have very little. But in the end all of us, to some extent, flinch at the idea of being at odds with the majority of our group/society.

This has been the weapon used by the left (and the psy-ops troops of the USSR for the longest time. BIRM) to force their corrupt rot into every nook and cranie of society, corrupting schooling, art, even religion with their Marxist anti-reality pap.

When people marvel at the fact that the west is quite literally choosing to commit suicide by surrendering to some of the least functional societies in the world, and surrendering to its own criminals, and paying to appease the non-productive and outright destructive members of their societies?

They shouldn’t marvel. People are not choosing that. They are choosing not to speak out against what they think is the overwhelming consensus of their society, repeated at them through schooling, information channels, even art. Each individually is afraid of getting cast out of the band if they don’t go along with what is objectively social suicide.

This also tells you how and where it’s failing. It’s failing here — largely here — because we know the consensus is not overwhelming and in fact we have reason — seriously guys, no one fights against clean elections, unless the fraud is favoring them. And for a whole, supposedly major party to do it? It’s saying the quiet part out loud — to believe the stuff pushed out of official media and the mass industrial information/art/opinion complex is a very minority ideology. Here, where social media and blogs — blogs! — that talk of books and public affairs have been a force in the land for a good 25 years, we have found places to meet, places to realize we’re not alone.

Why hasn’t it happened in the rest of the world? I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I swear it only took off in the US because of 9/11. Faced with a trauma we had to process, we hit the blogs. Blogs that were about music, or culture or whatever became about politics overnight. And the most successful ones and most of them were from a perspective that ran contrarian to the leftist establishment. Perhaps it took Rush Limbaugh’s seed, planted with his AM radio program, too. Perhaps that had already given people an inkling of not being alone, perhaps it had seeded a bit of courage. In that sense perhaps all of us who hit the blogs (for me for many years only as a commenter, under a false identity because baby needed shoes and trad pub was the only game in town) were children of Rush’s, fanning out into the world. And now of course there is twitter. The rest of the world uses it, to the extent they can, of course, but it’s not quite the same as the hurley burley of American twitter with the limits mostly removed since Elon bought it.

The other side is fighting, because they know that their only weapon, their only strength is the ILLUSION of unity and consensus, against whom most people cannot stand. If that illusion is shattered for good and all, and it’s been getting chipped more and more every year, they have nothing.

The other side is fighting very successfully — it will be successful for a while. But such tactics don’t endure forever — to silence all alternative media in other countries. They tried it here, too, but thank heavens even under the Auto Pen it never took. There are too many of us — a rabble in blogs — for them to silence every one, no matter how hard they tried. And ooh, boy, did they try hard. We also have have the first amendment, our foundational belief in everyone’s right to speak out which also stands as the law of the land, and makes cute ideas like the attempted ministry of truth die aborning. (So may it ever be.)

It’s probably the best time ever to be a dissenter, an Odd, someone who sticks out.

Is it a great time? See the beginning of this post: Sticking out is never easy, not even now. The other side scores some amazing psy-ops victories every now and then, and it seems to be my fate to stand in front of the rushing crowd going “that thing behind you is a man wearing a bear costume. It’s not real.”

The one you all shared with me — okay almost all. But the rest of you came back after a while — was the covidiocy. Most of you, at least after a while went “Wait the heck up” and most of you, those who could at all without losing jobs, stood up and shouted “that’s not real.” I’m very proud to be in your company, all of you.

And I think that’s when the last of my fear of standing out died. Because it was so obviously a psy-ops. So obviously a massive lie.

You have to understand, I started out, when I started this blog and was still deep in the political closet, so conflict avoidant, so afraid of being thrown out of the ape band, that when I said something slightly out of turn I worried for a month over it.

But I had to come out of the political closet. I felt as though I was selling my soul and not even for very much. Just continued publication. And — if we’re going to talk about my pre-Baen career — publication that was a compromise between what I’d like to do and what I was allowed to. Honestly, it felt like I couldn’t be myself even inside my own head.

And so, even I — coward though I was — was forced out of hiding, step by step, bit by bit. And found out that though the walls did fall on my head, it didn’t kill me. So I took another step.

And then Covid broke me. When my mother asked “How can you be so sure you’re right, when everyone else says you’re wrong.” I told her the truth “Because the numbers say I’m right. Because what the people in power are doing makes no sense if this were a real pandemic. There would be people dead in every street corner. Because the facts are on my side.”

Which leads us to where we are today.

I do know that many of you can’t come out of the political closet. Many of you can’t speak out. You’d lose jobs, or families, or whatever little piece of reality you’ve carved out as a niche for yourselves.

I’m not telling you to. I stayed quiet as long as as I could.

But if you’re not held back by such considerations, if it’s just fear of standing out; just fear of disagreeing… Consider the courage to simply be. To simply say what you observe and believe.

It will be very scary at first. Yes, there will be some (Ah!) negative consequences. But you don’t actually get kicked out of the band and into the outer darkness to die.

You just find another band. And you sleep better at night. And recognize the person in the mirror in the morning.

It’s not much, but ask yourself: what kind of movement makes it impossible for people to simply be? To simply speak frankly of what they know and see?

The power is not on our opponents’ side. The only power they have to keep you silent. To make you feel alone.

And that power is waning by the day.

You are not alone. Chances are you’re a part of a vast majority.

Be not afraid. Find the courage to be who you are, to know what you know. Even if you can’t speak out, don’t be afraid to think.

In the end we win, they lose.

DAY 15 of this blog’s annual fundraiser!

Go ahead, go batty…

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200 thoughts on “The Courage To Be”

  1. Leaving the Band and heading for the wilderness practically defines the history of the US, from those who cut generational ties in 1620 and left for parts unknown, to the many who thought a neighbor they could hear was too close during the early frontier days, and the many who moved west after the Civil War. The wilderness shouldn’t scare us, it should inspire us, and adventurers seeking both poles, the highest peaks, and now space are our examples. We need to recapture and cultivate that American trait.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Problem is, there is no more wilderness to go to.

      Not until, like crossing the oceans, space is open to the individual and families. Musk is opening the way equivalent to the Mayflower of space. It’ll be a while before the Conestoga of the prairie west.

      Liked by 1 person

      2. That’s fairly true in the strictest sense, but the “spirit” of wilderness is still around us (or Sarah’s analogy would be meaningless) – the threat of being cast there implies such things as cancel culture, debanking, and social or professional shunning.

        But just as we can be threatened with such wildernesses, we can also form our own; Galt’s Gulch, for example, especially today, need not be in a remote Colorado canyon, nor even be confined to a single country. The wilderness – and the adventure – exists within us.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “The wilderness – and the adventure – exists within us.“

          –

          True.

          But the physical ability to show both middle fingers as one rides, er, blasts off to parts unknown? That is a bit beyond us. It is coming. If it can be dreamed. It will be done. Eventually. It is being dreamed.

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  3. They shouldn’t marvel. People are not choosing that. They are choosing not to speak out against what they think is the overwhelming consensus of their society, repeated at them through schooling, information channels, even art. Each individually is afraid of getting cast out of the band if they don’t go along with what is objectively social suicide.

    And this is rational.

    It takes a really well developed society to not destroy someone simply because they say “the emperor has no clothes.”

    The Purity Spiral, and its negative effects on ability to do anything, are a really good example of this in action– the reroll locusts show up, act like they did in the place they left because it wasn’t good enough, drive out or actually destroy those who don’t go along, then get mad that the result is really bad.

    Something I keep coming back to in 1776, the Musical, is how John Adams is indeed obnoxious and disliked… but he’s there. He’s got a network of folks who are annoyed with him, but also recognize his value. OK, Franklin might hang out with him just because it’s hilarious, but Thomas Jefferson respected him enough to meet him on even grounds and stick to the implicit agreement when he lost. (“By physical force, if necessary.” :Adams looks a foot straight up at Jefferson:)

    John Adams clearly didn’t want to be there. But he needed to be. Because that was the only way to make it work.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Exactly. They flee from their 3rd-world shitholes, dragging along all the baggage that made them 3rd-world shitholes, and then wonder why every place they go turns into another shithole.

      Those 3rd-world countries have people. They have natural resources. They have access to all the same knowledge we have. They have all the ingredients to create their own free, prosperous societies right there where they are. They have an example of how it can be done. It’s not our fault they remain in poverty, squalor and misery. It’s theirs.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. and then wonder why every place they go turns into another shithole

        Do they, though?

        I end up sitting and listening a lot, and the enforcement mechanism on the behavior seems to be the idea that everything is as bad as the places that have no maintenance being done.

        That’s a really good example of the cultural risk of having new folks come in– with a matching risk of the folks most likely to self-anoint as the ones who Should Be In Charge of the folks coming in (or already there) are, er, frequently not load-bearing structures, we’ll say nicely.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. The VA waiting area is notably different from even car repair places and normal doctor’s offices in Iowa, and both are worlds apart from places like the Seattle Blob and El Paso, or Virginia near DC.

          Yes, weirdly, those three do “sound” a lot alike– Iowa in general is just flat nicer, trying to be cheery; although the VA in Seattle was also more … trying to be happy … than anywhere else.

          I think a chunk of it is the idea that there’s something you can do. It may not work, but veterans seem to be in for the “f it, we ride” mentality. (Although a lot of that here in Iowa may be that they’re actually quite good. In the VA building in Seattle I got to watch the guy trying to fix our house loan dial a phone, then reroute it to the person who was in charge of the thing the computer in front of him wouldn’t let him do, and the phone right next to him started ringing. That poor man’s face….)

          Liked by 2 people

        2. Most cultures have something of value, even 3rd world cesspools. Most religions (pardon me for stepping a toe in that water here), have something of value, some universal good in them (although that may be less than half of whatever creed they’re espousing.) If they were ALL bad, they wouldn’t survive.

          What controlled, limited immigration does is allow that trickle of outsiders to come in, learn about and become part of the new whole, and introduce us to the best ideas, clothing, foods, processes they brought with them so we can decide which to adopt, and which to toss back. The limitations serving to not overload the gaining society. It’s kind of like making cheese; a small inoculation is all it takes. You don’t dump an entire bucket of mold or bacteria into it and expect anything good to come out of it. Unfortunately, the Democrats, and their Globalist-Socialist infiltrators, never learned that.

          Liked by 3 people

          1. People don’t do things that have no utility.

            Some of them only have short term utility for a specific situation.

            And yeah, folks who’ve actually seen other stuff are the best cure for “wow, this one trick will fix it all!”

            Liked by 1 person

              1. Pretty much. A high trust society is better for everyone in general. But trying to live by a high trust society’s rules in a low trust society is almost suicidal.

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                1. Junior said (Italics mine):

                  But trying to live by a high trust society’s rules in a low trust society is almost suicidal.

                  Junior I think you can take the almost out of that sentence. In a low trust society high trust behavior makes you a rube or a target. That’s a lesson this kid from a suburban/rural part of Connecticut learned when he and a buddy were in New York City in the early ’80s near Times Square. We got away unhurt but only because I grabed said buddy (who was even MORE clueless than me!) and dashed across several lanes of traffic against the lights with his skinny posterior in tow.

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      2. I don’t know about that. It’s possible that however bad they makes things here, it’s still better than the third world hellhole they came from. I think that’s one of the reasons they refuse to leave.

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    2. I suspect Jefferson also recognized that Adams would fight mean, if he had to, and do his darndest to back up that threat. ;)

      And yes. Ran across a quip on Tumblr. “Introvirtuous. I’m here, but I don’t want to be….”

      Liked by 3 people

      1. Of course, TJ was many things, but bone-dead stupid isn’t one of them! He might lose, but nobody doubts John Adams would fight.

        I still think that Mama Bunny should draw that scene with animals, but can’t figure out what animals they’d be. Maybe a crane and a badger?

        “Introvirtuous. I’m here, but I don’t want to be….”

        Hm… this reminds me of the “stupid mental health walk for my stupid mental and physical well-being” type sailor-grumbles that work really well for some folks’ psychology. Kind of like the tumblr-style depression exhibitionism, but with more of a happy-warrior “our battle cry is for spite!” type vibe.

        Liked by 3 people

          1. There’s a programmer who advises time away from the computer to think about the program and what needs to be written next. (He calls it “hammock time” because of his favorite place to think). Same advice applies to fiction writing, I’m sure.

            Liked by 2 people

            2. Indeed. Applies to any mental work, really. I’m lucky that my job, specifically my supervisor, doesn’t try to micromanage time at our desks in the cubicle farm. I pace the halls and occasionally take short walks outside specifically because I’m more effective when I get back, and often those movement breaks involve some active thinking about a problem I’m trying to solve.

              Liked by 1 person

          1. They’re a whole family of honey badgers. Sam Adams, John Adams. John Q. Adams, even Abigail Adams who married into the clan (and bore John Q.). On average, that’s New England Natives well into the early 20th Century. Not sure what it is, could be the weather, could be the constant digging up of rocks when you try to farm, could be a very hard-nosed Calvinistic religious streak, could be the particular parts of Old Blighty we come from or a combination of all of those things. Not to say we won’t help folks in trouble, just in general we’re a bit cantankerous and antisocial/introverted.

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      2. Lesson One: If you’re going to fight, do it to win. And fighting mean, hard, fast, and nasty is the smartest thing to do to win it fast and with as little danger to yourself as possible. You can afford to be magnanimous and merciful AFTER you’ve won. You certainly can’t do it if you’ve lost.

        Liked by 3 people

    4. Could you explain the term “reroll locusts” a little? I understand the meaning, I think — the people who, say, leave California because it had gone downhill, then proceed to vote for liberals in their new state, not understanding that the liberals they voted for in California were the cause of it going downhill (or substitute any online community, e.g. the people who left Twitter for Bluesky, then made Bluesky as toxic as Twitter used to be). But I’m curious to know what made you use the term “reroll locusts” for them. Is there a history behind it? Or did you coin it just now?

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      1. Sorry, it’s a gaming term!

        About 20 years ago, when WoW was still fairly new, is where I ran into it.

        The way it went was, this server or that server would be declared a “really good place” for something desirable.

        Which would then result in the people who wanted that thing making a new character– “re-rolling”– on that server, in numbers sufficient to cause server issues in addition to running around demanding to be handed things because they were new.

        Then when the server could no longer manage the thing they were famous for, the locust all left for the next really good place for easy wins, complaining the entire time about how the game was not rewarding at all.

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        1. … demanding to be handed things because they were new …

          Dude. I played about seven different characters (all on the same server, can’t remember which one), and never once did I ask anyone for a handout. I worked my way up from scratch each time. I may have given myself a handout from time to time, e.g. my level-70 mage giving my level-40 paladin the 40 gold he needed for his mount, but that’s totally different. With that attitude, it’s no wonder they were locusts. *Shakes head*. Sheesh.

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          1. Exactly, that’s part of the FUN!

            I did sometimes run around doing charity, like raising enchanting by standing in a starting zone and saying “free enchant, put your boots in trade!”

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            1. And hey, when you’re a newbie, any enchant on your equipment is a bonus, even if it’s one that’s not specialized for your class.

              Remind me, because it’s been nearly a decade since I quit WoW. The trade interface would let the person refuse the enchant if the enchanter put the wrong one on, right? Or they could remove the enchant themselves if they didn’t like it? I’m trying to come up with any scenarios where someone would be suspicious of such an offer and say “you’re just going to grief me by giving me an unremovable enchant that’s the wrong one, aren’t you?”

              But in a beginner zone, when you won’t be keeping those boots more than a few levels anyway? Yeah, even if someone thought you were a griefer I could see them going for it anyway, because what have they got to lose. Am I right in remembering that there were no negative enchants (i.e. curses) and so any bonus would be helpful, even a rogue-oriented bonus on a mage character?

              Liked by 1 person

              3. Yeah, I’m starting to remember now. You’d put your items in the trade window, you’d put in an amount of money, and once both people clicked Accept, then the trade happened. But I’m pretty sure you could remove your Accept (or even that it was auto-removed) if the other person made any changes to the trade, to avoid the cheat of “remove all the gold coins I put in then quickly click Accept before the other guy can un-accept the now-bad trade”. So yeah, there wouldn’t be any way of griefing with the trade window if they implemented it right.

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  4. When ‘The Band’ is a band of idiots charging headlong over a cliff, that Outer Darkness starts to look mighty inviting.

    Yesterday I saw video clips of some Moslem Leftroid Democrat ‘leader’ calling to:

    * Abolish the Senate
    * Abolish the Supreme Court
    * Completely abolish police and prisons
    * Make everything ‘Freeeee!’

    Somehow when they bleat ‘Democratic Socialism!!’ I hear ‘National Socialism!!’ They call Trump Hitler and can’t see that the ones acting like Nazis is them.

    Puts me in mind of a comic strip called ‘The Bus’ I saw in Heavy Metal magazine. One strip showed a broken bridge, with cars driving off the end to a long fall and crash. The Bus stops just short of the break, traffic backs up behind it…and then they all start honking their horns at The Bus. Never mind that it’s saving them from driving off the end, it’s blocking traffic! That is ‘The Band’.

    Liked by 4 people

        1. And you know, that whole spontaneous glorious socialist revolution thing has never happened outside of that place with actual serfs. And even in mid-WWone Imperial Russia it had help from the Imperial Germans trying (successfully) to knock the Tsar out of the war and clear their eastern front.

          All the rest, from post-WWeleven Middle Kingdom, through all the Soviet troop occupied countries, to the Asian stuff and all the African paradises, all had piles of Socialist Brotherhood help from Moscow Center.

          So I just don’t get how they think the modern day “counterrevolutionary” forces here would let them slide into control, even if they have Pooh Bear Power and various dumb western billionaires helping them.

          Do they somehow think billionaires are immune to helicopter rides if things get spicy? What worked in Chile and Argentina when Moscow Center was still active would work again, no doubt. It would be bad times all around, but it would work just fine.

          I just don’t get how they see a practical end game, a valid path from here to there.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. That may be because you are not a savage.

            You were raised inside the part of American culture that believes that warfare involves some or more parties outside of your immediate social group, and involves techniques and processes that are rationally knowable, and which are testable.

            You are the military behavior version of, say, an electrical engineer that knows radios. Metaphorically, you don’t understand the cargo cultist who sees the box and the coconuts as a working radio system. (How does the rope antenna work? etc?)

            Liked by 1 person

          2. That may be because you are not a savage.

            You were raised inside the part of American culture that believes that warfare involves some or more parties outside of your immediate social group, and involves techniques and processes that are rationally knowable, and which are testable.

            You are the military behavior version of, say, an electrical engineer that knows radios. Metaphorically, you don’t understand the cargo cultist who sees the box and the coconuts as a working radio system. (How does the rope antenna work? etc?)

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    2. I remember a Rabbi remarking back during the Da Vinci Code phenomenon that the book’s ability to make people think it was the real Christianity was “a failure of catechesis.” This politician getting any traction for his nonsense is a failure of civics. In both cases it is the result of long term efforts, accelerated by the Soviets, but not begun by them and continuing today. B-stards, the whole lot,of them.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. Heh. I think part of the problem of ” the Da Vinci Code phenomenon” is the Church itself provably did so much to suppress unapproved, non-canonical, thoughts and writings. What we do have has an amazing level of fidelity to what we think are the originals, but it’s not all that was written by or about Christianity, or even Judaism.

        It’s almost like the Smithsonian Museum complex. What you see are merely the approved exhibits. There’s nearly 10 times that number of historical objects in warehouses, storage rooms, and basements controlled by the Smithsonian that nobody ever sees unless you go poking around behind closed doors.

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        1. Remember, the Smithsonian was going to crush the Enola Gay until some airplane-heads found out about it and started a huge ruckus.

          It’s pretty hard to hide a B-29. Makes you wonder what smaller things have disappeared from their warehouses because they didn’t meet whatever the current standard of political correctness was.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I was part of the group that called them out in the early 1990s and forced them to drop the “We were evil for nuking Japan and it wasn’t needed” stuff. I also have unofficial copies of the stamp that was never issued (had the mushroom cloud on it) because “It might offend the Japanese.” I think that was my first time yelling at the .gov for trying to shade history.

            Liked by 1 person

        2. Heh. I think part of the problem of ” the Da Vinci Code phenomenon” is the Church itself provably did so much to suppress unapproved, non-canonical, thoughts and writings. What we do have has an amazing level of fidelity to what we think are the originals, but it’s not all that was written by or about Christianity, or even Judaism.

          Not exactly.

          The #1 place to get non-canonical works, historically, is from Catholics. That’s who copied them and stored them. Even if they’re not part of the Biblical Canon, they can be useful for education. Most of the websites that have nice big collections will even note where they got the copies from, especially if it’s a translation. I can go dig up a couple if you’d like.

          For “unapproved”–well, duh, they didn’t let folks claim to speak for the Church when they didn’t. “No, you can’t claim your ink still wet fanfic is the original, nor can you sell it to people with 100% Pure Truth on the label, and this really bad translation is Straight Out do you even speak the language coherently?”
          That’s why when they find bits and bobs of 2200+ year old writings in the Dead Sea Scrolls, they match the Catholic collections. (Down to folks geeking on which exact heretical group this document or that document was from.)
          It’s basic anti-fraud measures, but instead of people just losing money or health, it’d be their eternal souls, and dragging others down with them. That’s before we get into cases where it was “send the folks you’re lying to out to kill the people whose document you’ve altered to say what you want.

          Not a pleasant world.

          What Da Vinci Code did was tap in to a lot of very lurid accusations from pop fiction, wrapped up in the alluring promise of Hidden Knowledge for The Special Ones!11!!!

          …in spite of the claims in the intro, he couldn’t even get the locations correct. Much less the rest of the details.

          There was a rather large wave of people actually going and doing basic research and showing it was nonsense. Right down to “Hey look here’s google street view…annnnnd it’s not there. And you can’t go from here to there that fast. And this isn’t anywhere near that-”

          Which got reported as “the Church objects” when it was just believers looking at the facts.

          Rewarmed Gnosticism is usually popular; that’s why Brown stole the idea of Jesus being married from the Holy Blood, Holy Grail authors. (Even if it is darkly funny that they couldn’t sue because they claimed that was fact, and he claimed to be writing fiction.)

          Liked by 3 people

            1. I seem to remember some cultures did the “shift from being descended from #localgod to #jesus” shtick.

              There was at least one Converso ancestry Bishop who would say something like “Hail Mary, Full of Grace, and my blood relative-“

              Liked by 1 person

                1. I prefer the thought of Joseph of Arimathea, Lazarus, Mary and Martha winding up at Glastonbury, myself. (Having a soft spot in my heart for Martha and all).

                  Liked by 1 person

          2. A lie can run halfway round the world before the truth can get its boots on.

            Brown stole from Baigent, et.al, who stole from Pierre Plantard who stole from a myth made up in the 1950s by Noël Corbu, a local hotelier in Rennes Le Chateau that a hidden treasure, often tied to Blanche of Castile, the Cathars, Visigoths, Knights Templar, or even proof of Jesus and Mary Magdalene’s bloodline, had been found to attract tourists.

            In the 1960s Pierre Plantard, a French con artist and right-wing esotericist, along with collaborators like Philippe de Chérisey and author Gérard de Sède created the Priory of Sion myth (a supposed ancient secret society protecting a Merovingian bloodline descending from Jesus and Mary Magdalene,) forged “ancient” parchments (the famous coded ones reproduced in books) and planted fake documents (Les Dossiers Secrets) in the Bibliothèque Nationale and linked these forgeries directly to Saunière and Rennes-le-Château in books like L’Or de Rennes (1967). 

            Plantard later admitted under oath in the 1990s that the Priory was his invention and the documents were fakes. The parchments were modern forgeries by de Chérisey. No credible evidence supports grand conspiracies, a Jesus bloodline, or a vast ancient treasure. These fabrications inspired Baigent et. al., The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and, indirectly, Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

            I collect conspiracy theories … Sorry.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. I should collect pieces of the cross. I’m sure there’s enough claimed pieces of it to build an entire cathedral out of them. However, it would have to be composite wood due to the small pieces.

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              1. Actually, somebody had already done that study, and it amounted to part of one arm of a standard cross size, and all the pieces were from the same kind of wood, same color, etc.

                I forget if they have done a genetic study.

                But pieces of True Cross were important to Byzantine foreign relations and European power politics, so it was important in the Middle Ages to have Byzantine provenance from the actual Emperor of the day.

                Therefore, faking a piece was stupid back then, because somebody would catch it even if they might let other dubious relics slide.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. That’s why I said “claimed” pieces. Because in that case, matching wood, number of pieces, color, bloodstains, C14 dating are all irrelevant to the scammers trying to get you to buy them.

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              1. Indeed they are. What I’ve found to be the best way to ID conspiracy theories is that they are all just that little bit too perfect. Reality tends to be messy.

                One way I knew that WuFlu was likely a scam is that no holes in the picture were allowed, even though reality had to shift to hide that what was now not allowed was common knowledge yesterday (e.g. masks). They would have been better off to let there be a “loyal opposition” but they’re really not that bright.

                IYKYK David Eicke ID’d me as a reptilian because I refused to give him my seat in a pub near Cowes IOW. I’m in good company because he publicly outed the head of the local yacht club (OK, it was the Royal Yacht Squadron) because he wouldn’t overrule the members and let Eicke in.

                So it’s the British royals, the Rockefellers, the trilateral commission, and me 😜My mum’s family are gentry, but I suppose blood will tell.

                Like

                4. Oh. that first part. Yes. it’s also a way to identify psy ops disseminated through the culture. They’re a little too perfect. A little too constructed.

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                5. The “messiness,” of Christianity was one ot the things that convinced C.S. Lewis there was something to it. He noted reality tends to be messy and unexpected.

                  Liked by 1 person

          3. This is going to trigger the spam filter, but so would posting a half dozen links without a lot of text.

            One of the most complete collections of early church writings, has a Jewish sister-site.

            A more focused text site, The Tertullian Project. Notable for having hands-down the best selection of primary and secondary sources on the Romans’ Mithras cult.

            The Internet Sacred Texts Archive, which throws a fairly broad net on what documents it’ll show. (As one would wish!)

            The digital Dead Sea Scrolls.

            And of course the Vatican Archive’s digital outlet.

            Liked by 1 person

          4. On the one hand people criticize the Catholic Church for not sticking to the historical truth. On the other, they say it has been too harsh on heretics–those who claim their own version of that histoey and the doctrine that follows from it.

            I won’t say these claims are absolutely irreconcilable, but they don’t rest well together. “Nihil obstat” and “imprimatur” might not carry the weight they once did, but it was a formidable weight.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Unless I’m very much mistaken, some heretics only claimed different versions of doctrine, not different versions of history. (I want to say “most” heretics but I haven’t studied enough Church history to know whether that’s actually true).

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              1. Some, yes; even if we give wiggle room about the question of if Jesus was created by God as “doctrine” rather than history.

                Most, no way- one of the most basic ways to give support to a new claim was to say “X didn’t happen, Y did.” Usually about where someone went, but sometimes as big as the Da Vinci “Jesus was married, actually.”

                For a low-impact example, the issue of the miracle of water to wine; some hold that it was turned into fresh squeezed grape juice. (Cannot be “grape juice,” because without treatment it starts to ferment immediately.)

                Liked by 1 person

    3. Fox Outnumbered reported on this, this morning. Pointed out to do the list means abolishing the first through third articles of the US Constitution. Interestingly enough the fifth article makes it impossible to abolish them even through a constitutional amendment.

      The same 1776 musical has a number arguing democracy. With the argument stating that democracy is what doomed Greeks. Back and forth. Compromise was the triangle, with majority backstop for two legs (legislative and SCOTUS), and a fork with two different basis (legislative, Senate and Congress). Thus creating a new concept, a democratic republic.

      Preaching to the choir here. The point of the senate VS congress is to rein in the mob against the least populated. Otherwise, the wealthy of New York and California, would empty states like Montana, Utah, even Colorado, to leave them for the estates of the wealthy. Does this sound familiar? Dacha or royal estate, anyone?

      Starting to occur anyway with land costs out pricing the locals. OTOH, not established residency (usually) so the local and state politics are not affected as much, despite the proper taxes being extorted out of such individuals. or corporations.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. They don’t want to amend the Constitution. They literally want to throw it out and create a brand new one. Besides, as we know, the Left are big believers in “stroke of the pen, law of the land, pretty cool.”

        Liked by 2 people

        1. No, they don’t want a new Constitution. They don’t want an immutable structure of law standing in the way of their Infallible Wisdom and Enlightened absolute rule. We have always been at war with Eastasia!

          Liked by 2 people

        2. “don’t want to amend the Constitution. They literally want to throw it out and create a brand new one“

          –

          The discussion’s end point. Exactly what was concluded. Regardless of what the dimocrats and dumocrats (redundant I know) were saying.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. The Reader notes here that the Constitution Convention did exactly that to the Articles of Confederation. Sometimes known as The Framers Coup or the 2nd American Revolution.

            Like

        2. Or hwy 20. Did you read about the accident west of West Yellowstone? My response was, “How in the H* did they do that?” Pickup truck and tourist van. High death toll, including both drivers. There were survivors in the van, thanks to other drivers pulling people out of the engulfed vehicles and providing first aid before first responders arrived.

          Like

  5. While looking for a linkable image to Captain America’s “No, you move.” speech (here:)

    I found site (pitui) giving a warning that Cap’s speech might be read by the “wrong” people. Who might have bad ideas. I further found that the “marvelous” folks have Cap wielding a glowing sickle. In other words, Hydra took over Marvel, apparently a while back.

    Eff all that effing horsephuckey. Cap is the quintessential -American- hero. Not a wokewombat wobblie.

    Hm. Satire is fair use, right? A satire Cap who sticks fully to the canon of the original, thus lampooning the wokewombat soystuff. Bet it would sell boocoo.

    Liked by 5 people

    1. Satire is fair use, right?

      You would think… but I suspect that HydraMarvel would use the same playbook the House of Mouse used on a filker named Tom Smith back in the 90s and . Tom wrote and recorded a number of parodies using the tunes to some songs from Disney movies (“Under the Sea” / “On the PC”, etc.).

      Well, somehow this came to the attention of the Disney legal department who promptly said cease / desist. After SCOTUS issued the parody ruling, Tom wanted to re-publish, and pointed out that his songs were obviously covered.

      They basically said “You might be right, but we’ll sue you here in FL, and you can make court appearances here until you get it moved to MI just to make sure that your songs are REALLY covered.”

      Tom was a bank clerk, and there was no way that he could afford that much justice.

      My distaste for our current legal system and support for “loser pays” pretty much dates from that.

      Like

      1. Straczynski called them, “Mauswich.” (Back when he’d pop onto the Compuserve B5 forum and comment).

        Like

  6. I double-out myself on introductions: My husband and I moved here from Denver after coming up to see Trump and loving the place.

    It’s a convenient way to get everything on the table in one sentence.

    Four WordPress login attempts. Something is wrong with it.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Lately every time I comment when I try and click back to “Continue reading” WordPress says it’s detected a duplicate comment. It’s annoying.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I got that the other day, but it gave up complaining to me. Both browsers on my machine. Shrugs.

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        2. Started getting that today too. If I don’t click on “continue reading”, don’t get the “duplicate message”.

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  7. Rather, I’d have said, “Hey, you DSA folks. That thing behind you is a bear wearing a man costume. It’s not really a nice guy, it’s a vicious creature that will kill you and eat you and go looking for more.”

    Liked by 3 people

  8. I was optimistic (unduly so, in retrospect) about myself not being affected by taking the Coof mRNA, but I did warn my parents that they should avoid it.

    And they are now both dead, if conditions they did not have before they took that stuff. And one of my uncles is dead, and the other is frail, also from conditions they acquired probably through the mRNA shot.

    And I am angrier for that than for the eye situation I got.

    Liked by 6 people

    1. Don’t forget all the miscarriages. I heard about one hospital that got around a dozen miscarriage cases a year. In the year of mass COVID inoculations, they had over 2,400.

      Treatment for 700,000 cancer patients was ‘deferred due to the Unprecedented Health Crisis of COVID19!’ How many died? Nobody will say.

      Liked by 3 people

    2. I never took the Coof mRNA because I caught the horrendous early version and spent about the next six weeks trying not to die every night.

      (Yeah. I fell into the category of “if it gets any worse you should be in a hospital”. Ugh.)

      After that I figured there was no point, and managed to avoid mentioning vaccination status for employment, so I just didn’t. Having heard even a little of what came out later about heart problems, etc., I feel very lucky. The virus did significant damage and I’ve never had the same endurance since, but the mRNA would have hit bits I already know are orginal-factory-flawed in my physical model. Ow.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Two weeks of hell for us, and our senses of smell have been rewired big time. I’m now quite reluctant to take any vaccine, particularly after I got one, had a reaction (pneumonia, complete with spot on the lung), and the Freaking Clinic never recorded that I had that shot. “You probably caught pneumonia during the office visit the week before.”

        I not only swapped doctors, but use a different clinic. Alas, both are still connected to the monopoly medical complex in-county.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. Ditto. One bit of running across “we’re going to bundle Flu and the latest Covid and just not mention it” and – yeah. That was it for me. I did get a DPT shot due to squirrel encounter. But the medical profession did a good job illustrating they cared more about the party line than their patients, and we’re going to be side-eyeing everything for a long, long time.

            Liked by 3 people

          2. Also guilty of this.

            Rarely got the flu vaccine before. Just not going to now.

            We’ll see what the pressures are after this Aug and ongoing. Going to be really reluctant.

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            1. My dad swore he caught the flu every time he took the vaccine, so I’ve never bothered. This year’s flu was the first bull-bore, no-doubt-about-it flu I’d had in over 40 years.

              So,far as I know I”ve missed Covid so far, but there were a couple of three-day fevers that popped up put of nowhere.

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              1. Not guaranteed Dec 2019 was covid, given timing. But I was awfully sick with the exact copy of what I was sick with Jan 2021 (after covid shots FWIW). Jan 2021 was just after son got verified covid (at least the home test said so). Then hubby got sick. Now they had fevers and felt “icky”. Me? Please just kill me now. Or asked if I “was going to live”, hold up a thumb and groan. Sick. Didn’t try to find a test kit (one for son’s was a PIA to find).

                Was that test kit accurate? Who knows? Flu test kits were also not to be found. Have I been that sick with regular colds or the flu? Yes. Generally what happens. I skate through the seasons and years of not getting caught by a bad cold or flu. Then wham. I am down for the count. In general, and this isn’t a true definition, I distinguish the difference between a bad cold and the flu as the latter including a bad fever and upchucking. Had the former, did not have the latter, as symptoms. With covid defined as a cold on steroids? That is what I had, both times.

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            2. only got the flu shot when I worked. I retired in 2022. Haven’t had one since.

              I DID get a Covid shot, my Doctor recommended that, due to my allergies, I take the Johnson and Johnson shot. So I did, and got a Pfizer booster in 2022. In 2023, I was a passenger in the second car of a three car pileup (It still raised my insurance rates. How? I wasn’t even driving!) and when they took me to the hospital (after waiting 7 hours to be seen) they did a scan that found kidney cancer. Which was a tumor on my left kidney, that was removed as soon as they could manage it.

              Now I get lesions in my lungs. They have all been benign do far, but I am waiting for one of them to be malignant.

              Do I blame the Covid shot and booster? Yes I do. Privately. Quietly. Because I live with my stepbrother and sister in law, who always do what they are told.

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              1. I got the J&J original and booster, supposedly not the mRNA. So fingers crossed.

                Regarding the multi-vehicle accident. We were at the front of a five car pileup. All four vehicles in the front were at a full stop. Pickup, technically speeding (35 in 30 MPH), did not stop (sun in eyes, excuse). Back to cars, totaled back and front. Car directly behind us, back end damaged, not totaled. It barely bumped us. No damage to our vehicle. Long enough ago, that police did show up. Vehicles towed off. No ambulances, but EMTs were called. All whiplash injuries.

                Timing was such that we knew insurance costs were increasing because we were moving from a smaller city to a larger one in a different state. Not that much! Asked why. “Because we didn’t report to the insurance that we’d been in an accident.” Why? “Not at fault. No damage to us or our vehicle. Or damage, caused by us, to the vehicle or occupants that bumped us.” We changed insurance. Told them. Their response was “not required to report to your insurance”.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. Hmm. Our accident happened the day that Ohio’s Distracted Driver law went into effect. We were on a bridge, second car back, waiting for a light to turn green. In front of us was a light utility pickup truck. The guy who hit was was driving a work truck and had been told that he would lose his job if he did not immediately respond to texts from work. Which he was doing. He did not even slow down. so thank God we were stationary, and the truck we were pushed into was stationary. Because he was doing the speed limit – 45 mph. Englewood police issued its first citation under the new law to him, and I hope he told the officers his job was threatened, because, even though Ohio is an at-will employment state, I think that is a fair labor board concern.

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                  1. The accident described above was pre-smartphone. In fact, cell phones were barely single hand holding bricks and not common.

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        2. To be clear, the phantom vaccine was the 2018 version of the New Improved! pneumonia shot. I had the original version in 1999 or so. I’ve resisted efforts for the Newer! Shinier! Even More Improved version.

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          1. Primary wanted to wait for the reported due anytime new and improved vaccine. Then gave up and had me get the old version. At least it is once and done. Don’t have to worry about it now.

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      2. It occurs to me that having that non-standard, extra cardiac artery may be why I never had a heart attack from the blockages before having them stented open. Of course, it is quite possible that I’d never have had the blockages had there not been any cardiac inflammation from the repeated COVID jabs. The timing of the onset of walking angina from when I got the clot shots is just about right.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. I’m almost ashamed to admit that I never took the Clot Shot simply because I was trying to be a Good Person. At first I wasn’t against it, but since I worked 100% remote at the time and rarely left the house anyway, I figured, well, let’s leave the initial doses for first responders and people who really need it. I can go later after the important people get it, I’m just a fat guy in front of a keyboard in a home office and at worst I’m only moderate risk.

        It wasn’t until later on that my stubborn streak kicked in and I realized that something had to be wrong if the media/leftist complex were THAT bloody hysterical about getting the shot. It just felt wrong. So I never took it.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. It doesn’t seem to have done anything to me, but I can’t help feeling I should’ve had the fortitude to refuse it. I didn’t want it. At all. But it was either take the shot or keep wearing a mask at work all day, every day with no foreseeable end (state “emergency” declaration, plus Biden’s federal rules), and I have asthma that makes mask-wearing not a good idea. To break the rules and refuse the mask and the shot…well, I love my job, and more than that, I NEED it. Couldn’t risk it. The wellbeing of four other people depends almost entirely on my continuing to have it.

          So what DO you do when refusing puts at risk everything you and your loved ones have? You knuckle under. At least if you’re me, you do. But you don’t have to forgive them for it. I want to see heads on pikes just as much now as I did 5+ years ago when they made me give up. More, even. (Am I angry? Yes, sometimes, when I think about it, but mostly it’s just hate. Anger consumes energy that I can’t spare. The great thing about hatred is that it’s sustainable; takes virtually no effort to keep it alive. In fact, the bastards do all the work of renewing it for me.)

          One guy I know (knew…he turned on me a few months after the 2024 election and had our gaming group kick me out) took every booster that was offered, plus more, and kept testing positive for covid for the better part of TWO YEARS. Just couldn’t kick that “long covid” syndrome. Yeah, I wonder why…but gotta Trust The Science, you know…

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        2. What gets (as in, makes my inner rabid raccoon start frothing) me is when Trump did Operation Warp Speed, all the Resistance types did everything but swear on their mothers’ graves they’d never take the shot and There Must Be Something Wrong With It. Then, after Jan. 2021, they went seamlessly to, “Everyone should be vaccinated! Anyone who refuses vaccination should be Punished!”

          Same shot, different President. Pretty disgusting, overall.

          Liked by 4 people

    3. I took the first shot; never got any boosters though. If there are complications from that for me only God knows and He isn’t sharing information.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. One of our neighbors got the shot, plus myriad boosters when he went for an allergy series. He’s about 10 years younger than me. So far, so good, but ohboy.

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      2. I got the Jenssen, in part because it was being pooh-poohed and it was a one-and-done. I’d gotten the coof in Jan 2020, got it again in November of that year (after vax) and supposedly had it back this Jan-Feb. (They were just supposed to test for strep, but they ran coof as well. Since I never had a fever, I don’t buy it.)

        I’m fortunate. Given what happened to some of the people (family) that got the other versions, there is no way I would ever get a booster. I get the flu to placate a family member with health problems, and because of Day Job. I make certain to get only the flu, not the bundled (we have that option.)

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Since a couple of companies are still making the standard flu vaccine the old-fashioned way by incubating it in eggs and then weakening/killing the virus to produce it, you can specifically request only that shot. Sure, that only has a 40 to 60% efficacity, but it’s so old a tech they’ve minimized all the bugs (no pun intended) and know the side effects. Refuse all others for the next 20 years.

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        2. Once we heard about mRNA trials for the flu shot, we decided that we wouldn’t give them the opportunity to give us that version “by mistake”.

          If I need DPT, I’ll get it. Last time, I used an independent FNP, but he might have retired by now. The complex was trying to put him out of business (his cash cow was mass flu vax events at the county fairgrounds), but he was resisting. Haven’t been there in a while.

          Liked by 1 person

    4. The early COVID tests were 30% accurate at best. Literally worse than flipping a coin, and in some places they were ‘Mandatory!’

      Then ‘The Experts!’ cited the increase in positive COVID tests as proof that the ‘Epidemic!’ was getting catastrophically worse — “Positive COVID tests have more than doubled in the last week!” — while ignoring the fact that they had tested twice as many people. Or that they were testing for antibodies, so if you had COVID and got over it 2 months ago, you’d test positive.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Oh, it was worse than that. Britain bought Chinesium test kits that managed a 30% false positive AND a 20% false negative on kits in the same lot.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. News today is that some poor sod Pakistani EOD guy was blown up when the Chinese bomb defuser thingy turned out to be fake.

          Other China news, enrollment in PRC pre schools is down 30% since 2020. Chinese numbers are always suspect, but that’s demographic catastrophe. That’s the government statistic BTW, reality could be far, far worse.

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          1. Other news lately is PLA troops showing up in the flooded parts of China (there’s very serious and dangerous flooding going on in and around Shenzhong), posing for some photos (including one video of troops so worn out from working that they’re sleeping out in the open while it’s raining… but somehow the puddles also in the video aren’t showing splashes), and then leaving without actually doing any work.

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        2. I’d note, hypothesis testing for detection has a known mathematical requirement of trading between false positive and false negative rate. Turning one way down requires that the other be very high.

          Concluding that the test info on incident rates was super reliable thus tends to require that one be ignorant, or unthinking, or some other issue.

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      3. There was also a systemic/methodological issue in how the tests were processed.

        There was something, PCR replication steps, that basically functioned like gain in electroncis. Turn it way up, and ‘thermal noise’ produces a strong staticy signal.

        I understand that they turned the gain way up during Trump, then turned it way down during Biden. and that this was very documetned and known, at the time.

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      4. The doctor who read my negative flu tests left a message on our home phone. (40 mile trip. People in F-Falls tend to forget that.) After saying A and B were both negative, he mentioned that two <strike>victims</strike> patients were in the hospital with ventilators. (Poor folks. No idea if they survived the “therapy”.) He also mentioned that while the state of Oregon had COVID test kits, Flyover County had not been issued any*, so said patients were “unknown”, as was I. (This doctor did my colon exam a few months before, and we got along, so I think he was a bit more willing to drop breadcrumbs. Unfortunately, he retired so I couldn’t switch to him as my primary care doc. Mengele thought he was the one who advised me not to get the clot-shot. Nope. He wasn’t alone, though.)

        (*) Par for the course with Despicable Kate. We vote R, you see…

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  9. The thing that really blows up any respect for authority is the in-your-face-waddya-gonna-do-abouddit stuff – during wuflu the public stats on hospital “overcapacity” did not work how statistics work (hospitals were adjusting the staffing so the staffed beds denominator kept the “dangerous” percentage of “available beds” that the public health bureaucracy wanted publicized, which basis statistics evaluation the “award winning investigative reporter” doing the breathless telling somehow just missed), the empty hospital parking lot emergency tents, the nurses losing shifts because there were no patients… and the elected officials maskless cheek and jowl eating overpriced crappy food (I have eaten at the French Laundry – the food was terrible, and the service was worse, both perhaps due to the celebrity they jumped in ahead of my BILs wedding party reservation when we’d already been standing there waiting. Total scum.), the arresting lone surfers, the floor stickers, the mask police, the rat-out-your-neighbors hotlines — all for a bad cold that everyone caught anyway.

    And the sewage sampling showed massive waves of infection – yet the hospitals stayed empty. But the mask mandates stayed, and the poor kids…

    Yeah, I think a lot of people are never going to believe self proclaimed “experts” again.

    Liked by 4 people

    1. Not to mention the hospital ships Mercy and Comfort, sent to New Yuck and Lost Angeles, which never saw a single patient. The massive field hospitals set up near several cities, the same. The thousands of doctors and nurses fired during a ‘Health Crisis!!’ for not submitting to the Sacred Inoculations.

      If doctors and nurses would rather be fired and blacklisted than take the ‘cure’ that ought to make people think.

      Liked by 7 people

      1. The good news in Oregon, was nurses let go because they wouldn’t take the clot-shot could become “traveling nurses”, generally (because of shortages) at much higher pay. The kicker, the Travelers were exempt from the shot mandate. One suspects they had TPTB’s naughty bits in their gloved handsl…

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      2. Not to mention the hospital ships Mercy and Comfort, sent to New Yuck and Lost Angeles, which never saw a single patient. 

        You DO realize that’s because Cuomo and DiBlasio ORDERED their EMS teams not to utilize them, lest Bad Orange Man get credit. Instead, put them back in the nursing homes.

        https://nypost.com/2023/02/18/top-navy-admiral-begged-melissa-derosa-to-fill-comfort-ship-during-covid-emails/

        A US Navy admiral begged the Cuomo administration to send patients to the nearly-empty hospital ship docked on the Hudson River during the height of the pandemic — but his pleas were met with politics and paranoia, The Post has learned.

        With city medical facilities packed with critically ill COVID patients in the spring of 2020 — and just days after the infamous edict by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to send COVID patients to nursing homes, which critics say resulted in thousands of deaths — the Trump administration sent the USNS Comfort, a 1,000-bed ship, to relieve hospitals of patients with non-COVID illnesses.

        #TeamShortStakes

        Liked by 1 person

    2. The underlying problems had already been there for years.

      The stupid bastards, however, documented the specific problems, and were delusional enough not to think that they were doing so where everyone could verify.

      Everyone who wants to be an expert is gonna be paying this down for decades.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. They think we are still in the times of Leper colonies, and Tuberculous sanitariums. When a diagnosis meant commitment. Smallpox outbreaks meant burning of entire households. Fear was their weapon of choice.

        Unfortunately for them, we are not there. The math ultimately didn’t add up.

        For some of us, an aunt’s second husband died of heart complications due to the clot shot. They are older (barely) and traveled a lot. Same reasons mom accepted the shots, and sisters and their husbands (travel, slightly younger). Hubby and I wanted to travel to Canada. Bonus, the shots did me absolutely no good as I caught it both before shots were available, and after second booster (why bother?); I wasn’t just inconvenienced sick, I was SICK.

        Can I blame the clot shot for my heart valve problems? No? Maybe? Partly? Valve problems can be triggered by childhood fevers. Old enough that having measles, chicken pox, mumps, rubella, repeated strep, etc., pre-vaccine, and the resulting fevers, probably started the process. Doesn’t help that my valves are smaller than standard.

        Like

        1. Or they could be like the Reader’s mitral valve; probably congenital but getting worse over 72 years of pumping.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. In my case, 69 years. And yes. But how to know?

            All I know is it went from minor, at first “Hm, that sounds like a mummer,” and mild. To “Um, moderate to severe.” (Me. “WHAT!!!! Why? How?”) Yes, hello freight train.

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        2. One has to remember that wuflu pushed the local “public health” minor bureaucrats who had been bravely running meetings and petitioning county and city governments for their meager budgets in abject obscurity, mostly trying to limit sexually transmitted disease spread while not offending anyone, into the full on media spotlight by putting them in direct control of all aspects of society.

          Of course they effed it up.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. So, saw an infographic purporting to be based on employment data last updated in 2014.

            Percents of partisan donorship by occupation, in something like 320 or 120 occupation categories.

            At the most Democratic, were about ten where I went ‘wait, these must be politically captured occupations, where a small number of people is selected for political loyalty, and giving money’.

            One of these was public health administrators.

            More than one reason what having that occupation do those things would have unfortunate outcomes.

            I go back to ‘the underlying problem of excess trust in certain university occupations was there before’. This time, the dice came up bomb.

            A question is how many remaining bomb events are still possible to roll.

            I really wanted to believe that we could just drive into the next world war, and our technocratic excellence would cover all possible opponents.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. See the Los Angeles department of public health, where the uniquely unqualified Barbara Ferrer, famously inept in 2020, is still_in_that_job.

              Liked by 1 person

    3. The underlying problems had already been there for years.

      The stupid bastards, however, documented the specific problems, and were delusional enough not to think that they were doing so where everyone could verify.

      Everyone who wants to be an expert is gonna be paying this down for decades.

      Like

    4. The underlying problems had already been there for years.

      The stupid bastards, however, documented the specific problems, and were delusional enough not to think that they were doing so where everyone could verify.

      Everyone who wants to be an expert is gonna be paying this down for decades.

      Like

    5. The underlying problems had already been there for years.

      The stupid bastards, however, documented the specific problems, and were delusional enough not to think that they were doing so where everyone could verify.

      Everyone who wants to be an expert is gonna be paying this down for decades.

      Like

    6. When I fell and disconnected my quadriceps from the knee (Feb 2021), the surgeon would have liked for me to stay overnight. However, Dispicable Kate Brown and the Oregon “Health Authority” decided that $LOCAL_HOSPITAL needed to run at 1/3rd capacity in the event that they could drum up more COVID cases. That still rankles–it was a longish procedure and getting home and into The Comfy Chair was, er, interesting. Any respect I might have had for the OHA went away.

      Lost respect for Doctor Mengele when he assured me that I couldn’t possibly have had COVID in mid March, 2020, because it wasn’t officially recorded in county until April. I went in for a flu test, flunked both Type A and Type B, and ended up with the COVID symptoms. As did $SPOUSE. I seemed to have presented a half day ahead of her.

      Part of Mengele’s rational was: Since you haven’t had COVID, you MUST get the not-vaxx to <strike>destroy your health</strike> protect those (presumeably already vaccinated) others. I refused. Later I talked to another doctor who advised not getting the shot. Mengele tried to demand that I identify which doc it was. I was able to dump him (small county, tiny medical system, what fun) last year, and after he tried to cut me off from getting prescriptions, I gently put the fear of God in that clinic. Yes, Mengele was the medical complex’s COVID Kooridinator. Last I looked, he was still there, but his boss diddn’t seem to have much respect for him. An attitude I share, for that and other reasons.

      N.B. Both a brother-in-law and a nephew are unavailable for comment, due to the not-vax.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. It was first warned about by that whistleblowing Chinese doctor in December 2019. Does anyone believe he caught the very first cases, and it wasn’t around in November 2019? Or October? How many airplane flights left Wuhan heading to international destinations in November 2019?

        Yeah, the Democrats called Trump racist for trying to forbid flights from China in early 2020, but it was almost certainly too late even then: the virus was already on the North American continent.

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    1. I’d expect the cat to try escaping to the one place that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism… SPACE!

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      1. You can see the moment when Tim Curry sees the last word of his line appear on the teleprompter, and very nearly cracks up on-camera. I love it.

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  12. References to us being apes (well, ape-descendant to quote Douglas Adams – if we thought digital watches were neat, what do we think about mobile phones with mobile internet?) always amuses me because much of current ideological thought willfully ignores the fact.

    Take the phrase “objectification of women”. I understand what objectification is meant to mean – that women are being evaluated by their physical attributes. It is, however, a meaningless phrase which, through considerable repetition, has acquired a rather loaded meaning.

    The idea that women are things to be used is despicable and I have no issue in calling it out (I have heard of behavior that stuns me and I find the idea of beauty pageants boring) but it is the phrase, and its implications, that interests me. Objectification, used this way is meaningless because we are ape-descendant, social creatures and we judge other people (well, at least those that we don’t know – i.e. not my tribe) by their external attributes. It is what, as social apes, we do; we evaluate based on appearance, smell, sound and I am sure lots of other cues. I could talk about the evolutionary advantage of such behavior but I would be talking out of my hat so I won’t.

    What interests me is how that word is being subverted to make an ideological point – the despicability of men. The phrase ignores the fact that this is behavior ingrained in every human being (well, almost every – are there any saints out there?). It is being used as a club against men. I am sure there are men who deserve to be clubbed as I am sure there are women who quite like to objectify other women, but this behavior is not limited just to men, it is inherent in all of us.

    Most people, if encountering an unwashed person, with a distinct personal odor, and mumbling to themselves, would give that person a wide birth. That person has just been “objectified”. Is it fair? Possibly not, could be a Nobel laureate on a bad day. Is it something that only men do? I am a man so I can’t be completely sure but I am almost certain that women make the same judgements using the same external cues.

    The phrase is, thus, being applied dishonestly and, worse, is being used to warp reality in mendacious ways. If taken at face value, this phrase implies that men are evil and mindless beasts, incapable of treating women as anything other than things. Downstream of that assumption is such thinking as “all men are rapists”.

    This phrase should, thus, be treated with contempt and not promulgated, but that requires critical thinking unbiased by ideology. Instead, we are bombarded by this sort of subverted language and language that is swallowed whole by mindless ideologues. Such language is a snare, if we argue against the language we get lost in the language. We need to argue about the fallacy of the underlying assumption.

    I have no problem with the idea that we should resist our natural inclinations, that’s why we have concepts such as virtue, but at least we should be honest that this applies to all of us. It’s weird how this sort of “inclusive” thinking is used to ever more fracture our society dividing us and them

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I’ve been a female since infancy, and before.

      Trust me, women objectify men…just about different things. Wealth, social status, and height come immediately to mind.

      Liked by 3 people

      2. Height is the attribute always referenced in comics noting double standards on the matter. So, yeah, quite a lot of men are aware of it. It’s also part of the infamous “6 pack, 6 feet, 6 figure income” dating standard.

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        1. It should be noted that the women pushing the 6-6-6 standard are giving advice or speaking on explicitly hook-up type “dates.”

          Not find-a-lifemate type get to know you relations.

          What kind of shopping one is doing will change the prices one pays.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. So…

            1.) Are you suggesting that women who are interested in more than a one night stand completely ignore height as a thing?

            2.) Requiring a particular level of income would suggest interest in more than just a one night stand.

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            1. I am giving important context.

              Same as I would to anybody trying to act like the Tate idiot was in some manner representing normal males in the dating pool.

              Requiring a particular level of income would suggest interest in more than just a one night stand.

              Not really, since the same gals are also the source of the “get him to drop several hundred dollars in Experiences and gifts in return for your company” type date planning. You know, the other thing that is generally complained about?

              Since there is no relationship, there has to be something they find of worth; since they literally make a living off of shows talking about this, they get things to talk about, and especially to brag about.

              This guy covers it fairly well:

              Like

    2. Most people, if encountering an unwashed person, with a distinct personal odor, and mumbling to themselves, would give that person a wide birth. That person has just been “objectified”. Is it fair? Possibly not, could be a Nobel laureate on a bad day.

      Or a good day. When she was in college, my sister was out photographing the campus for the admissions office, and she ran across a guy in a dirty, torn suit napping on the bench in front of the fountain, who yelled at her for waking him up.

      She told me later that she honestly wasn’t sure if she’d been yelled at by a homeless man or a tenured professor.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Women objectify and put each other down all the time. For wearing the ‘wrong’ clothes, ‘wrong’ makeup, ‘wrong’ jewelry, carrying the ‘wrong’ purse, dating the ‘wrong’ man…

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      1. I couldn’t possibly comment :-)

        These shibboleths that cannot be questioned without accusation of ‘isms are annoying. Let’s think up a few that we can fire back.

        Like

      2. There was an article written over a decade ago (in one of the British papers, iirc) by a woman who had decided that she was going to start an all female company. So everyone she had hired was a woman (this was before trans became a thing). In the article, she wrote a bit about the cruelty that the members of her staff inflicted on each other. Apparently at least one woman would end up in the restroom crying every day.

        She also noted that the only times the cruelty halted was when men were present (outside contractors brought in to perform quick jobs).

        Like

        1. Hypothetically, she could have tended to hire worse women, because she had ‘women’ as such a priority, and other employers did not.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. :points up:

            Even back in the 70s, someone who appealed to “the sisterhood” was trying to use you.

            So her selection process was basically tailor made for seriously bad results.

            Liked by 1 person

          2. Possibly. But I think an important element of it as well is that last sentence. Each of the sexes on their own act in certain ways. Put members of the other sex into the room (or office suite), and the actions change, likely at a sub-conscious level.

            Like

      3. Ran across a YT video last week where a guy was doing “woman on the street” type interviews, and one woman starts off insisting men obviously enforce all aspects of The Patriarchy, but then through a very cogent series of Socratic Method questions, he leads her to agree in the end that it is much more women who enforce the tangible aspects of what she considers The Patriarchy, including female beauty standards, fashion and behavior constraints.

        If I can find it I’ll post a link.

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        1. When I was in college the first time, it was all female. One evening I dressed up for supper, and everyone stared, then asked what was going on. The social pattern was strongly down-pushing, so the poorest, most battered was superior, be it clothes or personal background. I observed that 1) I wanted to and 2)laundry, and everyone relaxed. The “laundry” part was socially OK.

          That was NOT the patriarchy.

          Liked by 1 person

        2. Ladies, just a case a point. So I grew up in the Eastern Star *culture. Including, personally, Job’s Daughters. You can imagine how well a forester/computer science (former did hit before college, latter, no) female fits in. I wear jeans (okay, now are stretch variety, but still). Dresses just didn’t cut it.

          The locals I don’t get side eyes from, so not everyone. But I was in a situation where not just locals were involved. Got the side-eye disapproval look. I ignore them. Others, including mom, can’t. I was dressed conservatively, just not wearing a dress or good slacks. Heck, even my slacks are Costco based. We don’t spend our hard earned money on expensive clothing (except good fitting **shoes, only because my feet rebel otherwise; no heels, ever.)

          I do not see men being judgmental this way. Even before I was married. OTOH, it has been almost 50 years since I’ve paid attention to what any ***man, except one special one (hubby), thought of how I looked. Okay, three, if you count son and dad.

          (*) Mom is still involved in some of the women offshoots associated with Shriner. They do good. Raising funds for the various Shriner hospitals, and different critical research like T1 diabetes.

          (**) Note, I only own 5 pairs, and three are hiking boots or shoes.

          (***) Not that I remember paying attention. I was naively oblivious.

          Liked by 1 person

    4. Take the phrase “objectification of women”. I understand what objectification is meant to mean – that women are being evaluated by their physical attributes.

      The actual problem it was meant to address is — what was that horrible Mae West quote?

      “Men should be like kleenex. Soft, strong, disposable.”

      You can go through the rest of her quotes on sexual use and manipulation of others and invert them; her entire shtick was that she was the Bad Idea Boyfriend but as a woman. Those trapped watching various Judge Judy type tv shows have seen the demonstrations of folks believing “like linoleum; lay ’em right, and you can walk all over ’em.”

      Obviously, this runs into issues when one entire political party revolves around promoting the ability of to use female bodies as free sex dolls that do their own maintenance. Sex sells, after all, and if you can warp the access, such as through power, that’s a lot of bonus power.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. They mined Mae West for Jessica Rabbit, too.

          The character archtype is bleepin’ epic for drama-fodder.

          ….still A Bad Idea, but the horrifyingly great lines!

          Liked by 1 person

  13. Sarah: “Here, where social media and blogs — blogs! — that talk of books and public affairs have been a force in the land for a good 25 years, we have found places to meet, places to realize we’re not alone.”

    Jeff Childers covers several of Sarah’s main and tangential points with his post today, and generally touches on most of the things talked about around this place at sometime or other.

    I’ve started reading Jeff’s post first thing every day, and I don’t even drink coffee. I do think AesopSpouse and I had Covid in February 2020, way earlier than they told (lied to) us about the WuFlu.

    https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/the-list-wednesday-july-15-2026-c

    SUMMARY: “Your roundup includes: the House votes 308-117 to make Daylight Saving Time permanent and end our twice-a-year clock-changing misery, then punts the bill to the Senate, where good ideas go to lie down; I finally quit grumbling and build THE list — every Trump 2.0 win in one place, engineered for copy-paste — so nobody ever again has to face the “they haven’t done anything” crowd empty-handed; buttoned-down Speaker Mike Johnson dusts off the anti-communist playbook and warns that the Cold War just got renewed for another season; and inflation logs its biggest drop since the pandemic — exactly what 67 unanimous experts swore was impossible.“

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I like his substack but the subscription price means I’ll never see the Sunday content (modulo the few odd days he opens it).

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Note: his monthly fee is $50, or you can get one year for $500. I don’t feel a need to comment there, and for that amount, I’ll pass on the Sunday posts.

        I don’t know the fees for other Substacks, but this one is way beyond my news budget.

        Liked by 1 person

          2. Which is why I’m subscribed to yours and not his.

            Besides, he can’t offer me books, politics, and the ongoing serial of Indy the Engineer Cat. 😺😺😺

            Liked by 2 people

              1. Indy, proving why “curiosity killed the cat” is NOT recommended…… but I guess a vibrating heated napping surface is hard to resist.

                Liked by 1 person

  14. Having gone to high school as the glaciers were still retreating, we read FJTurner’s Frontier and Section. I asked Grok how its reputation is standing up these days.

    That work has been criticized since, commonly on a complaint of ethnocentrism. But some folks are more supportive, if not embracing the entire thesis. See https://www.broadstreet.blog/p/on-the-frontier-thesis; I have not read “Samuel Bazzi, Martin Fiszbein, and Mesay Gebresilasse’s forthcoming article in Econometrica: “Frontier Culture: The Roots and Persistence of ‘Rugged Individualism’ in the United States”.” (link to pdf in the broadstreet post) but I think I may get to that shortly.

    But the Broadstreet post summarizes:

    This article presents a test of the famous (if outdated) thesis by Frederick Jackson Turner that the American frontier fostered a culture of “rugged individualism”. By rugged individualism, they mean the combination of two traits: individualism and antipathy to government intervention.

    How would you go about testing this hypothesis? The authors derive metrics for historic individualism (mainly the uniqueness of names, an increasingly common metric used in historical studies) and show that the longer a county was “exposed” to the frontier, the more “individualistic” its people are today. They have preferences against redistribution, vote Republican, don’t like government spending, don’t like taxes, and so on.

    I think that stands up reasonably well, though perhaps not quite how Turner argues.

    Like

    1. ”…famous (if outdated)…”

      It’s a thesis – disprove it by argument and evidence, not age.

      Yeesh.

      Like

      1. As a concept and a starting point, it holds up pretty well. The details are … dated, and most of us in the field agree that it fits the northern plains better than the southern and southwest (Hispanos moved east, not west), but the idea of cultural succession and how the frontier shaped the way people thought is still a very good frame for western history.

        Walter Prescott Webb did something similar in The Great Plains, but looking at climate as a determiner for culture and mindset. Again, it is still a great launchpad for debate and research.

        Liked by 2 people

  15. Having gone to high school as the glaciers were still retreating, we read FJTurner’s Frontier and Section. I asked Grok how its reputation is standing up these days.

    That work has been criticized since, commonly on a complaint of ethnocentrism. But some folks are more supportive, if not embracing the entire thesis. See https://www.broadstreet.blog/p/on-the-frontier-thesis; I have not read “Samuel Bazzi, Martin Fiszbein, and Mesay Gebresilasse’s forthcoming article in Econometrica: “Frontier Culture: The Roots and Persistence of ‘Rugged Individualism’ in the United States”.” (link to pdf in the broadstreet post) but I think I may get to that shortly.

    But the Broadstreet post summarizes:

    This article presents a test of the famous (if outdated) thesis by Frederick Jackson Turner that the American frontier fostered a culture of “rugged individualism”. By rugged individualism, they mean the combination of two traits: individualism and antipathy to government intervention.

    How would you go about testing this hypothesis? The authors derive metrics for historic individualism (mainly the uniqueness of names, an increasingly common metric used in historical studies) and show that the longer a county was “exposed” to the frontier, the more “individualistic” its people are today. They have preferences against redistribution, vote Republican, don’t like government spending, don’t like taxes, and so on.

    I think that stands up reasonably well, though perhaps not quite how Turner argues.

    Like

  16. I hope you are right, though I am less optimistic. Imho, it will get a lot worse before it can get better.

    Like

  17. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » SOCIETY SHOULDN’T DEMAND YOU SUPPRESS YOUR RATIONALITY TO FIT IN:  The Courage To Be.

  18. “Some have a lot, some very little.”

    Because it is by breeding. No, not genetics, though that may play in how prededposed one is to receiving instruction.

    There it is; instruction. Witness the overabundance of they who today are afraid of their own shadow. Witness the rise of ‘suicidal empathy’ and other behaviors of the same. Don’t tell me such behaviors are manifest of the natural order.

    Moving right along, I am going to put forward a thought which seems dastardly and scary. Nonetheless, consider that if there be a cultural instruction it should be to make war.

    We’ve tried to create gardners out of warriors; to create a world where we can busy ourselves in the passive arts of humanity.

    Look what it has gotten us. An open range mental ward where anything that can be conceived in the mind is allowable, even encouraged,. A class of deviants breeding for deviancy.

    A pendelum favors no middle ground. If there be two nodes in culture, I prefer the sometimes brutal, always animated. The permissiveness as seen today truly sickens me for it breeds a most dispicable deviancy.

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    1. Meh. It’s not breeding. It’s a quality of the soul.
      As for what you’re talking about: Social engineering is a bad idea, m’kay? Whoever does it. Individuals are individuals. LET THEM BE.

      Liked by 1 person

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