Anyone know a cure for sex addiction?
I've tried fuvking everything.
*.*
I got a new pair of gloves today, but they're both 'lefts' which, on the one hand is great.
On the other hand, they're just not right.
*.*
Lines:
The Chinese New Year was last Friday. We are now in the Year of the Ox. Should be a big year for clumsy people.
I don't think I'd mind being famous. I just don't know that I would go to the length it takes to become known as "Gorilla Glue Girl."
Time to get out there and hit those After-Valentine's Day Sales.
The governor of South Dakota has decided to delay legalizing medicinal marijuana for one more year. In her defense, it does make you lazy and want to put things off.
Now experts are saying that two hours outdoors should be your daily goal. I guess I should really take my time checking the mail each day.
A new study predicts that drones will make up 30% of the home delivery market by 2040. Considering what age I'll be by then, I'm good with it.
An advertising guy who died last month has left $5-million to his dog. Why do I have this sudden, uncontrollable urge to adopt that dog?
A new study says that pigs can actually be trained to play video games. I would teach my pig, but I'm afraid he'd hog the game.
Philadelphia, the folks who make cream cheese, are now making cheesecake desert cups, for people obsessed with cheesecake. Because your favorite pair of jeans were starting to fit again?
Archeologists have discovered an ancient brewery in Egypt. Well, that explains how they got to the point of worshiping cats.
*.*
How does an attorney sleep?
First he lies on one side.
Then he lies on the other.
*.*
“Describe yourself with one word”, my employer asked.
“Bad with numbers”, I blurted out.
Quote of the Times;
It is a sad commentary on our times that one political party in America is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law, defame law enforcement, cheer mobs, excuse rioters, and transform justice into a tool of political vengeance, and persecute, blacklist, cancel and suppress all people and viewpoints with whom or which they disagree. I always have, and always will, be a champion for the unwavering rule of law, the heroes of law enforcement, and the right of Americans to peacefully and honorably debate the issues of the day without malice and without hate. – Trump
Link of the Times;
https://knst.iheart.com/featured/garret-lewis/content/2021-02-16-watch-rand-paul-destroy-masks-mask-believers-wants-to-get-back-to-normal/
Issue of the Times;
They're Obliterating our History More Quickly Than You Think by Patrice Lewis
Last summer I read an engrossing book entitled "1421: The Year China Discovered America" by Gavin Menzies, a retired British submarine lieutenant commander turned amateur archeologist. The book documented his efforts to demonstrate how a Chinese fleet of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of ships set sail in 1421 and circumnavigated the world, touching base everywhere from the Americas (North and South), Australia, Africa, Greenland, Europe, and all points between. The purpose of the expeditions, according to Menzies, was to chart the waters of the globe, impress and intimidate foreign rulers, and bring the entire world into China's "tribute system."
The book was riveting. While COVID lockdowns and subsequent unemployment soared around America, I was lost in the voyages of these Chinese explorers. While cities burned around the nation, causing billions of dollars in damages and killing dozens of people, I was absorbed by the evidence of the expeditions found in California and the Caribbean. While BLM and Antifa toppled statues, defaced monuments and demanded history be rewritten, I was captivated by the evidence presented of the Chinese discovery of Australia and even Antarctica. While Portland, Seattle and other blue cities were torn apart by constant violence and anarchy, I was immersed in the phenomenal accomplishments of those Imperial Chinese fleets.
Some sources dismiss Menzies as a "pseudo-historian" because he doesn't have academic credentials after his name (for the record, I'm not nearly as impressed by academic credentials as I used to be), but I found the book compelling and fascinating nonetheless. Whether or not Menzies' conclusions are accurate is not the focus of this column. Instead, ponder this question: If the premise of the book is true – if evidence points to China being world explorers long before Europeans – why doesn't history reflect this? Why aren't the accomplishments of Imperial China known throughout the world?
The proposed answer, according to Menzies, is because during the years the voyagers were at sea and out of touch with their mother country, Imperial China's tumultuous and controversial régime changed, and its leaders (who commissioned the fleet) were deposed. The new incoming régime was rigidly insular. All foreign goods, services and trade were forcibly suppressed and – here's the critical part – expunged from the records. As with many cultural revolutions, the leaders wanted their reign to be "Year Zero" for history. The accomplishments of the previous rulers were not just unwelcome, they were downright dangerous to acknowledge.
Therefore, when the greatly diminished Chinese fleets finally limped home, these mariners found themselves irrelevant and their discoveries and adventures dismissed. "Not only was the priceless legacy of the greatest maritime expeditions of all time gone forever, foreign lands were to be banished from the minds of the Chinese people," wrote Menzies. "The legacy of [the expedition leaders] and their great treasure fleets would be all but obliterated. What oceans they had sailed, what lands they had seen, what discoveries they had made, what settlement they had created were no longer of interest to the Chinese hierarchy. … The logs and records were destroyed, and the memory of them expunged so completely over the succeeding decades that they might never have existed."
When I read that last line, I was stunned. Absolutely floored. Why would any nation erase such a glorious legacy of world exploration? Why would they take second place behind European explorers in terms of historical accuracy and bragging rights?
As American anarchists (encouraged by Democratic leaders) burned and rioted and toppled statues and rewrote history during the last year, I pondered that question. Then it hit me. Oh wait …
America is doing the same thing.
America, too, has experienced a régime change in which the Five Evils (Big Tech, Hollywood, public education, mainstream media, politicians) are engaging in a long-term scrubbing of history, both past and modern. In a remarkably short period of time, our history – the good, the bad and the ugly – is being expunged from the records, leaving behind a sterilized and factually false account. Our founding documents are being dismissed as racist, and the intellectual giants who shaped the groundwork for a nation of freedom are being rebranded as white supremacists whose legacy is not just unimportant, but downright dangerous to acknowledge. America's origins are being rewritten to fit the narrative of the extreme left agenda.
How long before the logs and records of our history are destroyed, and the memory of them expunged so completely over the succeeding decades that they might never have existed? Even now there are whole generations of children who have grown up completely ignorant of major world events, everything from the Holocaust to the democide (death by government) of hundreds of millions of people over the last 120 years due to socialism and communism. They are equally ignorant of American history except what reflects the extreme leftist narrative.
"As with most cultural revolutions that wish to start things over at 'Year Zero,'" wrote historian and columnist Victor Davis Hanson last August, "the violence is aimed at America's past in order to change its present and future. The targets are not just the old majority culture but also classical statues and buildings, hallowed institutions, religious icons, the renowned names of streets and plazas, and almost every representation of tradition and authority. … The point of the mob is to wipe out what it cannot create. It topples what it can neither match nor even comprehend. It would erode the very system that ensures it singular freedom, leisure, and historic affluence. The brand of the anarchist is not logic but envy-driven power: to take it, to keep it, and to use it against purported enemies – which would otherwise be impossible in times of calm or through the ballot box."
Even now, the left is trying to scrub President Trump from history. We're watching it happen in real time.
We are witnessing a purge unprecedented in America, but widely repeated through world history during tyrannical régimes. Dissenting voices are silenced, religious expression is suppressed, statues are toppled, history is rewritten, and – most importantly – the education of children is strictly regulated. As Hitler so accurately observed, "When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. … What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community."
And it's all happening in less time than you think.
News of the Times;
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/feb/10/people-who-quit-social-media
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=241577
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-official-whitewash-of-the-killing-of-duncan-lemp/
https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/07/our-animal-farm/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/biden-political-donor-sentenced-12-years-prison-illegal-campaign-contributions-straw-donor-scheme
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/selco-erase-them/
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0221/prager020921.php3
https://dailycaller.com/2021/02/16/cnn-nbc-john-sullivan-footage-capitol-riot-shooting/
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/covid-facial-recognition-thermal-image/
https://www.thebuffalotribune.com/post/the-moral-hypocrisy-of-celebrities-the-case-of-seth-rogen
https://www.takimag.com/article/follow-the-science-off-a-cliff/
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/texas-freeze-raises-cost-charging-tesla-900
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/qatar_calls_on_muslim_migrants_to_hate_their_western_benefactors.html
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/world-s-solar-and-wind-capital-freezing-due-to-snow-blanketing-millions-of-solar-panels/ar-BB1dF9Dp
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/defund-police-movement-spectacularly-fails-minneapolis-spend-6-4m-hiring-cops/
Obliterating?
Insurrection?
The wife loved the flowers I gave her for Valentine’s Day.
She got really angry when she read the small card on them which said, "With deepest sympathy".
*.*
Told my boss I would leave my job because they weren't giving me sufficient training.
"Well, you know where the door is," he spat.
"No, I don't!"
*.*
Recently divorced movie buff Darren Thorndike has not let his increasingly paranoid suspicion that his life is being secretly recorded and broadcast on television like the plot of The Truman Show stop him from masturbating like he would anyway.
“Darren had been pretty down since his wife left him,” next door neighbor Melissa Perkins explained. “My husband thought loaning him some Jim Carrey movies would cheer him up, but ever since he returned our copy of The Truman Show he’s been very theatrical, as if he thinks there’s cameras on him like in the movie. Honestly, I preferred his Yes Man phase. I guess it’s a good thing we don’t own Bruce Almighty.”
Others on the block confirm that Thorndike has been overheard announcing his thoughts out loud to nobody in particular as he goes about his daily routine. Attempts to sit down with Thorndike were declined under the pretense that “interview segments have been played out since Modern Family ended.”
Despite the feeling that his every waking move was being shown to viewers the world over, Thorndike was recently seen reading an issue of Playboy magazine that he’d crudely attempted to hide behind a Pottery Barn catalog, despite being alone in his house.
“So many choices for ottomans,” he loudly announced to the empty room as he opened the centerfold. He appeared to pause as if expecting a laugh after musing how relaxed the Ottoman Empire must have been before standing up and grabbing a tissue box from a nearby table.
“Oh man, these allergies are killing me,” Thorndike continued in a stage whisper as he made his way down the hall with the tissues and now-uncovered Playboy. “Maybe I should lay down under the covers in case I have a cold coming on or something. And my hands are so dry lately! Where’s that lotion?”
At press time, network executives for The Thorndike Chronicles were so impressed by ratings following the incident, they announced the late night companion program Darren After Dark in hopes of recapturing that moment’s virality.
*.*
WIFE: We just ate. Why are you cooking pancakes?
ME: They're for the dogs.
WIFE: For the dogs? Why are you cooking pancakes for the dogs?
ME: They don't know how.
*.*
My ex-wife has a fanny like a chimney.
My kids came out of it black.
Quote of the Times;
Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views. - Gina Carano
Link of the Times;
https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/dershowitz-house-violated-the-constitution-six-times-in-latest-impeachment-sham/
Issue of the Times;
Both Groups Charged with Conspiracy to Storm the Capitol Were Led by FBI by Chris Black
It is very clear that we are moving very fast to something very bad.
Two different groups were charged with conspiracy to storm the Capitol on January 6th: the Proud Boys, which is currently designated as a terrorist group in Canada, and the Oath Keepers. The Oath Keepers were the first to be charged with “conspiracy”:
TIME Magazine:
A man who authorities say is a leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group and helped to organize a ring of other extremists and led them in the attack last month at the U.S. Capitol has held a top-secret security clearance for decades and previously worked for the FBI, his attorney said Monday.
So, the leader of the Oath Keepers was glowing in the dark, but what about Proud Boys? Well, what do you know: their leader is also an FBI informant, who used to work on undercover stings since 2012.
Moreover, the Oath Keeper guy was actually a former FBI agent, division chief, who held a top security clearance since the seventies.
Meanwhile, Ricky Vaughn, a memelord who helped Trump win the election in 2016 was indicted on conspiracy charges, after he was doxed by Christopher Cantwell and Paul Nehlen, who informed on him to the FBI.
MILO Yiannopoulos also was an FBI informant, as we learned via court documents from the Charlottesville civil lawsuit. The bizarre “The Base” aka AtomWaffen terrorist group was exposed as being run by a CIA glow-in-the-dark agent with an active CAGE code.
For anybody with 2 neurons to rub together, it becomes obvious that we live in a country where the entire right-wing is effectively controlled and manipulated by the FBI/CIA/whatever alphabet agency you can think of.
To put it simply, the Capitol riot, storm or whatever was quite literally organized by the FBI. As in, the FBI organized the “events”. And now, the FBI is arresting regular Americans for a crime that was carried out and organized by the FBI.
This is a hard pill to swallow, but this is what happened, and is continuing to happen.
Everything in 2021 is part of a complex psyop, aimed at right wing Americans, Trump voters mostly, who are designated as white supremacists and domestic terrorists. The end goal is to dissolve the US into Globo Homo Shlomo, or Global Capitalism as they call it, with as little resistance as possible.
The Capitol is currently under military occupation, and no one is explaining to us why. The governor of Illinois claims that he sent troops to fight disinformation and white supremacy.
You should know that your face is already in a facial recognition database, there are already cameras all over the world in every public place, and many of these cameras are about to be linked into the global facial recognition database which, using 5G, will allow for real time registering of every movement anyone makes.
These are the two basic goals of ZOG:
Prevent the masses of people from uniting under a single flag, keep them fighting amongst themselves, keep drama energy rolling.
Provide the Western establishment with a boogieman to justify their own actions.
You saw a lot of #1 during the Trump era. Under Biden, you’re going to see a lot of #2.
PS: did you see this? MAGA Blood Libel: Why Are They Hiding The Medical Report?
Law enforcement officials now tell CNN that there was no fire extinguisher blow, no bloody gash, and no blunt force trauma to Sicknick’s body when he died.
Not only that, but it is increasingly unclear when, where and if Sicknick was even rushed to the hospital.
As it turns out, multiple hours after the protest had already concluded, Sicknick texted his own brother Ken that very night he was basically fine, other than being “pepper sprayed twice,” confirming he was safe and “in good shape.”
Then, an odd thing happened. The next afternoon, the Sicknick family began getting phone calls that Officer Brian Sicknick had been declared dead. The phone calls didn’t come from the hospital. They didn’t come from the treating physicians. They didn’t come from the US Capitol Police, or the FBI, or the DOJ.
They came from media reporters.
News of the Times;
https://www.lifenews.com/2021/02/12/andrew-cuomo-hid-15000-nursing-home-deaths-to-avoid-trump-admin-investigation/
https://notthebee.com/article/shout-out-to-gina-carano-here-are-a-bunch-of-libs-who-have-compared-conservatives-to-nazis-but-were-not-canceled
https://visiontimes.com/2021/02/07/russia-and-china-are-both-long-term-rivals-of-the-united-states-and-recent-u-s-intelligence-indicates-that-they-are-prepared-to-launch-cybergeddon-a-type-of-large-scale-sabotage-of.html
https://ussanews.com/News1/2021/02/06/senior-establishment-republican-staffer-arrested-for-running-pedophile-ring/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/02/08/flashback-kamala-harris-joked-about-killing-trump-pence-and-jeff-sessions-n1423976
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/biden-holds-first-phone-call-xi-both-sides-offer-vastly-different-accounts-what-was-said
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ny-toledo-woman-finds-sons-shot-2-dead-boyfriend-homicide-20210209-kzpaevnwe5cl7i5awikvli3qzq-story.html
https://cnsnews.com/article/national/quinn-weimer/report-cancelling-keystone-will-boost-carbon-emissions-equal-nearly
https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/12/gina-carano-firing-proves-the-left-only-wants-submissive-women-not-strong-and-independent-women/
https://www.eutimes.net/2021/02/seniors-who-already-beat-covid-19-are-dying-after-taking-pfizer-jab/
https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/biden-rescinds-confucius-institute-regulations/
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/military-occupation-of-the-u-s-capitol-will-continue-through-the-end-of-the-year-per-bidens-orders/
https://fee.org/articles/ivy-league-study-shows-how-us-media-created-a-climate-of-fear-over-covid-19
https://identitydixie.com/2021/02/11/hollywood-is-cancer/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/netflix-has-nothing-to-say-after-three-men-from-cheer-arrested-for-sex-crimes-against-minors
She got really angry when she read the small card on them which said, "With deepest sympathy".
*.*
Told my boss I would leave my job because they weren't giving me sufficient training.
"Well, you know where the door is," he spat.
"No, I don't!"
*.*
Recently divorced movie buff Darren Thorndike has not let his increasingly paranoid suspicion that his life is being secretly recorded and broadcast on television like the plot of The Truman Show stop him from masturbating like he would anyway.
“Darren had been pretty down since his wife left him,” next door neighbor Melissa Perkins explained. “My husband thought loaning him some Jim Carrey movies would cheer him up, but ever since he returned our copy of The Truman Show he’s been very theatrical, as if he thinks there’s cameras on him like in the movie. Honestly, I preferred his Yes Man phase. I guess it’s a good thing we don’t own Bruce Almighty.”
Others on the block confirm that Thorndike has been overheard announcing his thoughts out loud to nobody in particular as he goes about his daily routine. Attempts to sit down with Thorndike were declined under the pretense that “interview segments have been played out since Modern Family ended.”
Despite the feeling that his every waking move was being shown to viewers the world over, Thorndike was recently seen reading an issue of Playboy magazine that he’d crudely attempted to hide behind a Pottery Barn catalog, despite being alone in his house.
“So many choices for ottomans,” he loudly announced to the empty room as he opened the centerfold. He appeared to pause as if expecting a laugh after musing how relaxed the Ottoman Empire must have been before standing up and grabbing a tissue box from a nearby table.
“Oh man, these allergies are killing me,” Thorndike continued in a stage whisper as he made his way down the hall with the tissues and now-uncovered Playboy. “Maybe I should lay down under the covers in case I have a cold coming on or something. And my hands are so dry lately! Where’s that lotion?”
At press time, network executives for The Thorndike Chronicles were so impressed by ratings following the incident, they announced the late night companion program Darren After Dark in hopes of recapturing that moment’s virality.
*.*
WIFE: We just ate. Why are you cooking pancakes?
ME: They're for the dogs.
WIFE: For the dogs? Why are you cooking pancakes for the dogs?
ME: They don't know how.
*.*
My ex-wife has a fanny like a chimney.
My kids came out of it black.
Quote of the Times;
Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views. - Gina Carano
Link of the Times;
https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/dershowitz-house-violated-the-constitution-six-times-in-latest-impeachment-sham/
Issue of the Times;
Both Groups Charged with Conspiracy to Storm the Capitol Were Led by FBI by Chris Black
It is very clear that we are moving very fast to something very bad.
Two different groups were charged with conspiracy to storm the Capitol on January 6th: the Proud Boys, which is currently designated as a terrorist group in Canada, and the Oath Keepers. The Oath Keepers were the first to be charged with “conspiracy”:
TIME Magazine:
A man who authorities say is a leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group and helped to organize a ring of other extremists and led them in the attack last month at the U.S. Capitol has held a top-secret security clearance for decades and previously worked for the FBI, his attorney said Monday.
So, the leader of the Oath Keepers was glowing in the dark, but what about Proud Boys? Well, what do you know: their leader is also an FBI informant, who used to work on undercover stings since 2012.
Moreover, the Oath Keeper guy was actually a former FBI agent, division chief, who held a top security clearance since the seventies.
Meanwhile, Ricky Vaughn, a memelord who helped Trump win the election in 2016 was indicted on conspiracy charges, after he was doxed by Christopher Cantwell and Paul Nehlen, who informed on him to the FBI.
MILO Yiannopoulos also was an FBI informant, as we learned via court documents from the Charlottesville civil lawsuit. The bizarre “The Base” aka AtomWaffen terrorist group was exposed as being run by a CIA glow-in-the-dark agent with an active CAGE code.
For anybody with 2 neurons to rub together, it becomes obvious that we live in a country where the entire right-wing is effectively controlled and manipulated by the FBI/CIA/whatever alphabet agency you can think of.
To put it simply, the Capitol riot, storm or whatever was quite literally organized by the FBI. As in, the FBI organized the “events”. And now, the FBI is arresting regular Americans for a crime that was carried out and organized by the FBI.
This is a hard pill to swallow, but this is what happened, and is continuing to happen.
Everything in 2021 is part of a complex psyop, aimed at right wing Americans, Trump voters mostly, who are designated as white supremacists and domestic terrorists. The end goal is to dissolve the US into Globo Homo Shlomo, or Global Capitalism as they call it, with as little resistance as possible.
The Capitol is currently under military occupation, and no one is explaining to us why. The governor of Illinois claims that he sent troops to fight disinformation and white supremacy.
You should know that your face is already in a facial recognition database, there are already cameras all over the world in every public place, and many of these cameras are about to be linked into the global facial recognition database which, using 5G, will allow for real time registering of every movement anyone makes.
These are the two basic goals of ZOG:
Prevent the masses of people from uniting under a single flag, keep them fighting amongst themselves, keep drama energy rolling.
Provide the Western establishment with a boogieman to justify their own actions.
You saw a lot of #1 during the Trump era. Under Biden, you’re going to see a lot of #2.
PS: did you see this? MAGA Blood Libel: Why Are They Hiding The Medical Report?
Law enforcement officials now tell CNN that there was no fire extinguisher blow, no bloody gash, and no blunt force trauma to Sicknick’s body when he died.
Not only that, but it is increasingly unclear when, where and if Sicknick was even rushed to the hospital.
As it turns out, multiple hours after the protest had already concluded, Sicknick texted his own brother Ken that very night he was basically fine, other than being “pepper sprayed twice,” confirming he was safe and “in good shape.”
Then, an odd thing happened. The next afternoon, the Sicknick family began getting phone calls that Officer Brian Sicknick had been declared dead. The phone calls didn’t come from the hospital. They didn’t come from the treating physicians. They didn’t come from the US Capitol Police, or the FBI, or the DOJ.
They came from media reporters.
News of the Times;
https://www.lifenews.com/2021/02/12/andrew-cuomo-hid-15000-nursing-home-deaths-to-avoid-trump-admin-investigation/
https://notthebee.com/article/shout-out-to-gina-carano-here-are-a-bunch-of-libs-who-have-compared-conservatives-to-nazis-but-were-not-canceled
https://visiontimes.com/2021/02/07/russia-and-china-are-both-long-term-rivals-of-the-united-states-and-recent-u-s-intelligence-indicates-that-they-are-prepared-to-launch-cybergeddon-a-type-of-large-scale-sabotage-of.html
https://ussanews.com/News1/2021/02/06/senior-establishment-republican-staffer-arrested-for-running-pedophile-ring/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/02/08/flashback-kamala-harris-joked-about-killing-trump-pence-and-jeff-sessions-n1423976
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/biden-holds-first-phone-call-xi-both-sides-offer-vastly-different-accounts-what-was-said
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ny-toledo-woman-finds-sons-shot-2-dead-boyfriend-homicide-20210209-kzpaevnwe5cl7i5awikvli3qzq-story.html
https://cnsnews.com/article/national/quinn-weimer/report-cancelling-keystone-will-boost-carbon-emissions-equal-nearly
https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/12/gina-carano-firing-proves-the-left-only-wants-submissive-women-not-strong-and-independent-women/
https://www.eutimes.net/2021/02/seniors-who-already-beat-covid-19-are-dying-after-taking-pfizer-jab/
https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/biden-rescinds-confucius-institute-regulations/
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/military-occupation-of-the-u-s-capitol-will-continue-through-the-end-of-the-year-per-bidens-orders/
https://fee.org/articles/ivy-league-study-shows-how-us-media-created-a-climate-of-fear-over-covid-19
https://identitydixie.com/2021/02/11/hollywood-is-cancer/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/netflix-has-nothing-to-say-after-three-men-from-cheer-arrested-for-sex-crimes-against-minors
Anyone?
I call my wife my wifi.
Sometimes she works in the kitchen and sometimes she works in the garden.
And I'm pretty sure on the weekend and in the evening my neighbor uses her.
*.*
Liners:
Yankee Stadium became a vaccination site last weekend. Out of habit, Red Sox fans immediately started yelling, "Vaccine's suck!"
Sheriff's deputies in Austin discovered $2.7-million worth of meth hidden inside printer cartridges. This also explains why everything was printing so quickly.
So, is it Tampa? Or Tampa Bay? Did someone get offended by the word ‘Bay'?
These days when we call into work, we say things like, "Yeah, we've got a lot of snow here and I having a real hard time getting out... ..of bed."
Kevin Hart's personal shopper used his credit card to make over $1 million in unauthorized purchases. On the positive side, that earned Kevin quite a bit of cash back!
Acne caused by wearing a mask has a name: Maskne! Probably invented by the same people who came up with the word for folks who caught COVID from Miley Cyrus: corona-Cyrus.
Today is the Chinese New Year-the Year of the Ox. Which, coincidentally, is my most often-spelled word in "Words with Friends."
The NBA is now requiring teams to play the National Anthem prior to games. Of course, there are some who won't stand for it.
*.*
A kid is playing video games in his room, minding his business.
His mother walks in. "Honey, come meet my new boyfriend!"
"I'm kind of busy right now. Can you bring him in here instead?"
A minute or so later, her boyfriend walks in. "Hey, champ! How you doing?"
The kid ignores him.
"Don't like champ, huh? That's fine. How about BlueDragon72?"
The kid turns his head quickly. "I haven't heard that name since I was ten..." He then realized. "It can't be.."
"Call of Duty, right? I told you I'd bang your mom."
*.*
In a historic move, the U.S. Senate decided to switch to voting by mail for Trump's second impeachment trial. After all the votes were counted by an intern in a back room with no cameras, the Senate ruled to convict President Trump of incitement to violence by a vote of 8275 to 3.
"Our holy democracy has spoken," said Senator Chuck Schumer. "Do not ask any questions or you are a blasphemer against the sacred sacredness of our vote. Everyone can go home now!"
A couple of troublemaking Senators attempted to overthrow the Constitution by bringing up the point that there are only 100 Senators, making it impossible to arrive at a tally of 8275 to 3, but they were quickly removed from the Senate Chambers and condemned for "attempting to suppress the votes of people of color."
*.*
Top 5 Signs that Cupid is Mad At You
He's using real arrows. That hurt!
He only gives you the candy hearts that say, "Bite me!"
Leaves you one of his old diapers.
Uses his special powers to get you on the TV show, "The Bachelor: Leper Edition".
Left you a Valentine that says "Please open away from people" on the envelope.
Quote of the Times;
Anytime the right organizes an event in real life it ends with the entrapment and imprisonment of good people with good intentions who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the left organizes the burning down of our cities for an entire summer they are rewarded with billions from corporations, praise from government, and glowing media support. How does everyone not see this? - Torba
Link of the Times;
https://reason.com/2021/01/24/in-2020-teachers-unions-and-police-unions-showed-their-true-colors/
Issue of the Times;
Cats And Dogs
Anyone who has had a cat knows that the cat takes a certain pleasure in the acquisition of its food. Put food down for the dog and the dog eats the food. Put food down for the cat and it will saunter up to the dish and maybe sample a little, then take a break to watch the dish for a while, before returning for some more food. A bug gets loose in the house and the dog will just eat it, but the cat will torment the thing to death. One animal is all about the process, while the other is about the result.
This difference is something to keep in mind as America descends into the woke totalitarianism of our diversity loving masters. It is assumed that totalitarianism leads to labor camps and people disappearing in the night. Those are the examples we have from our history. The communists liked sending the uncooperative to work camps, while the fascist like shooting the inconvenient. In both cases, the point was to remove the problem and discourage others from being a problem.
Those old school totalitarians were dog people. Just as the dog is happy to eat when hungry, without thinking much about how the food was made available to him, the old totalitarians took an end justifies the means approach to exercising power. Problem people were like any other sort of problem. The point was to solve the problem, which in the case of people meant making them go away. No man, no problem. How the problem felt about what was happening was of no consideration.
Our new totalitarians turn all of this on its head. Like the cat and his food, or his prey in the case of an unfortunate insect, the end is not really the point. It is not about removing the obstacles to their project, in order to achieve some end. The dealing with the problem is the end. In the case of the poor unfortunate who has run afoul of the rulers, the point of the process is submitting the troublemaker to endless torment that has no purpose beyond the pleasure of the tormentor.
Take the doxing business as an example. The people who do this are not trying to make the victim go away, any more than the cat wants the wayward cricket to go away. To the contrary, they hope the victim will cry out in agony and make his misery into a long-drawn-out public performance. They revel in seeing the victim moan about how his PayPal was deleted or how he lost his job. For the army of the woke, the suffering of the victim and the fame for inflicting that suffering is what matters.
When the victim simply kills off his internet character, the doxers have a problem as they do not have that living trophy to show off on-line. They are forced to go onto their social media platforms and imagine how the victim is suffering. We are not far away from a time when Twitter or Facebook start creating scapegoat accounts for the anointed to attack as a part of their rituals. Instead of relying on a real person to be the victim, they will conjure a fake one that plays the victim properly.
Of course, in every totalitarian society, the people eventually figure out the rules in order to avoid the boot. That was the point of the old totalitarian model. In the new totalitarian model, the rules will constantly change so it is nearly impossible to avoid the wrath of the official tormentors. After all, like the cat tormenting its prey, the new totalitarians care only for the process. Like an engine needs fuel, the new totalitarians need a constant supply of victims to torment.
An excellent example of this is the Covid madness. When it all started, the point was to slow the spread so the hospitals would not be too crowded. We had two weeks to flatten the curve, but after two weeks the rules changed. The rules keep changing as the rulers find new ways to torment us, causing people to go into the streets to protest the new torments, to the delight of the tormentors. Covid has revealed that the new totalitarians are little more than sadists.
What this means, of course, is that there will be not settling into a set of fixed rules as happened in communist societies. We do not know if this would have happened in certain fascist societies, but the experience of Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal and Pinochet’s Chile suggest the fascists would have settled into a conservative system of fixed rules. The new system, in contrast, will be perpetually disrupting this tendency in order to perpetuate the necessary disorderliness.
The question is whether any society can go on very long when the rules are constantly changing in order to give the Torquemada’s more victims. A bedrock requirement for any society is a set of rules to govern conduct. In order to have an organization of humans greater than the Dunbar number means having a code and a way to enforce that code in order to make the code a habit of mind. This is what we think of when we think of culture. The rules we live by because we just do.
We are already seeing problems with the Covid madness. The ever-changing rules are making life impossible for small business. In some areas, whole swaths of the economy have collapsed. Of course, the religious aspects to compliance are pitting people against one another. The new totalitarians are creating a Hobbesian world where it is a war of all against all, not for limited resources, but due to the deliberate cacophony of every changing rules that have no logic.
The good news, if there is any, is that totalitarianism has diminishing returns, as the cost of maintaining it eventually dwarfs the benefits. Initially it seems to work pretty well, but over time the costs become unsustainable. This new totalitarianism is especially front loaded, almost accelerationist. It is destroying every reason for people to remain loyal to the system. Instead of carrying on for several generations, the new totalitarianism will be lucky to make it past this decade.
News of the Times;
https://rfangle.com/politics/former-capitol-police-chief-blows-hole-in-dems-case-against-trump/
https://nationalfile.com/alt-tech-rises-gab-received-more-traffic-than-nbc-tmz-breitbart-and-huffington-post-in-january/
https://archive.is/LRe05
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=it&tl=en&u=https://www.secondopianonews.it/news/cronaca/2021/01/27/un-altro-infermiere-muore-nel-sonno-infarto-aveva-fatto-la-seconda-dose-di-vaccino.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2020/12/10/the-un-makes-the-case-for-the-us-to-stay-out-of-the-paris-climate-accord
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/jeffrey-lord-read-democrats-77-page-impeachment-paper-identified-75-lies/
https://populist.press/illegal-surge-has-arrived-1000s-crossing-now/
https://vdare.com/articles/michelle-malkin-the-matter-of-tori-rose-smith-s-life
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/fact-checking-phony-fact-checkers-gateway-pundits-explosive-michigan-tcf-center-reporting-absolututely-shows-voter-fraud
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/01/lyft-fires-female-driver-who-used-concealed-gun-to-stop-2-men-violently-attacking-her-in-car
https://www.bitchute.com/video/RvDf8D6DhiOx/
https://breaking911.com/explosives-have-gone-missing-from-the-nations-largest-marine-corps-base/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-us-biodata-60-minutes-2021-01-28/
https://nationalfile.com/medical-examiners-reportedly-say-capitol-cop-did-not-die-from-fire-extinguisher-attack/
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/houthis-bomb-civilian-airport-days-after-biden-removes-terrorist-designation
Sometimes she works in the kitchen and sometimes she works in the garden.
And I'm pretty sure on the weekend and in the evening my neighbor uses her.
*.*
Liners:
Yankee Stadium became a vaccination site last weekend. Out of habit, Red Sox fans immediately started yelling, "Vaccine's suck!"
Sheriff's deputies in Austin discovered $2.7-million worth of meth hidden inside printer cartridges. This also explains why everything was printing so quickly.
So, is it Tampa? Or Tampa Bay? Did someone get offended by the word ‘Bay'?
These days when we call into work, we say things like, "Yeah, we've got a lot of snow here and I having a real hard time getting out... ..of bed."
Kevin Hart's personal shopper used his credit card to make over $1 million in unauthorized purchases. On the positive side, that earned Kevin quite a bit of cash back!
Acne caused by wearing a mask has a name: Maskne! Probably invented by the same people who came up with the word for folks who caught COVID from Miley Cyrus: corona-Cyrus.
Today is the Chinese New Year-the Year of the Ox. Which, coincidentally, is my most often-spelled word in "Words with Friends."
The NBA is now requiring teams to play the National Anthem prior to games. Of course, there are some who won't stand for it.
*.*
A kid is playing video games in his room, minding his business.
His mother walks in. "Honey, come meet my new boyfriend!"
"I'm kind of busy right now. Can you bring him in here instead?"
A minute or so later, her boyfriend walks in. "Hey, champ! How you doing?"
The kid ignores him.
"Don't like champ, huh? That's fine. How about BlueDragon72?"
The kid turns his head quickly. "I haven't heard that name since I was ten..." He then realized. "It can't be.."
"Call of Duty, right? I told you I'd bang your mom."
*.*
In a historic move, the U.S. Senate decided to switch to voting by mail for Trump's second impeachment trial. After all the votes were counted by an intern in a back room with no cameras, the Senate ruled to convict President Trump of incitement to violence by a vote of 8275 to 3.
"Our holy democracy has spoken," said Senator Chuck Schumer. "Do not ask any questions or you are a blasphemer against the sacred sacredness of our vote. Everyone can go home now!"
A couple of troublemaking Senators attempted to overthrow the Constitution by bringing up the point that there are only 100 Senators, making it impossible to arrive at a tally of 8275 to 3, but they were quickly removed from the Senate Chambers and condemned for "attempting to suppress the votes of people of color."
*.*
Top 5 Signs that Cupid is Mad At You
He's using real arrows. That hurt!
He only gives you the candy hearts that say, "Bite me!"
Leaves you one of his old diapers.
Uses his special powers to get you on the TV show, "The Bachelor: Leper Edition".
Left you a Valentine that says "Please open away from people" on the envelope.
Quote of the Times;
Anytime the right organizes an event in real life it ends with the entrapment and imprisonment of good people with good intentions who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the left organizes the burning down of our cities for an entire summer they are rewarded with billions from corporations, praise from government, and glowing media support. How does everyone not see this? - Torba
Link of the Times;
https://reason.com/2021/01/24/in-2020-teachers-unions-and-police-unions-showed-their-true-colors/
Issue of the Times;
Cats And Dogs
Anyone who has had a cat knows that the cat takes a certain pleasure in the acquisition of its food. Put food down for the dog and the dog eats the food. Put food down for the cat and it will saunter up to the dish and maybe sample a little, then take a break to watch the dish for a while, before returning for some more food. A bug gets loose in the house and the dog will just eat it, but the cat will torment the thing to death. One animal is all about the process, while the other is about the result.
This difference is something to keep in mind as America descends into the woke totalitarianism of our diversity loving masters. It is assumed that totalitarianism leads to labor camps and people disappearing in the night. Those are the examples we have from our history. The communists liked sending the uncooperative to work camps, while the fascist like shooting the inconvenient. In both cases, the point was to remove the problem and discourage others from being a problem.
Those old school totalitarians were dog people. Just as the dog is happy to eat when hungry, without thinking much about how the food was made available to him, the old totalitarians took an end justifies the means approach to exercising power. Problem people were like any other sort of problem. The point was to solve the problem, which in the case of people meant making them go away. No man, no problem. How the problem felt about what was happening was of no consideration.
Our new totalitarians turn all of this on its head. Like the cat and his food, or his prey in the case of an unfortunate insect, the end is not really the point. It is not about removing the obstacles to their project, in order to achieve some end. The dealing with the problem is the end. In the case of the poor unfortunate who has run afoul of the rulers, the point of the process is submitting the troublemaker to endless torment that has no purpose beyond the pleasure of the tormentor.
Take the doxing business as an example. The people who do this are not trying to make the victim go away, any more than the cat wants the wayward cricket to go away. To the contrary, they hope the victim will cry out in agony and make his misery into a long-drawn-out public performance. They revel in seeing the victim moan about how his PayPal was deleted or how he lost his job. For the army of the woke, the suffering of the victim and the fame for inflicting that suffering is what matters.
When the victim simply kills off his internet character, the doxers have a problem as they do not have that living trophy to show off on-line. They are forced to go onto their social media platforms and imagine how the victim is suffering. We are not far away from a time when Twitter or Facebook start creating scapegoat accounts for the anointed to attack as a part of their rituals. Instead of relying on a real person to be the victim, they will conjure a fake one that plays the victim properly.
Of course, in every totalitarian society, the people eventually figure out the rules in order to avoid the boot. That was the point of the old totalitarian model. In the new totalitarian model, the rules will constantly change so it is nearly impossible to avoid the wrath of the official tormentors. After all, like the cat tormenting its prey, the new totalitarians care only for the process. Like an engine needs fuel, the new totalitarians need a constant supply of victims to torment.
An excellent example of this is the Covid madness. When it all started, the point was to slow the spread so the hospitals would not be too crowded. We had two weeks to flatten the curve, but after two weeks the rules changed. The rules keep changing as the rulers find new ways to torment us, causing people to go into the streets to protest the new torments, to the delight of the tormentors. Covid has revealed that the new totalitarians are little more than sadists.
What this means, of course, is that there will be not settling into a set of fixed rules as happened in communist societies. We do not know if this would have happened in certain fascist societies, but the experience of Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal and Pinochet’s Chile suggest the fascists would have settled into a conservative system of fixed rules. The new system, in contrast, will be perpetually disrupting this tendency in order to perpetuate the necessary disorderliness.
The question is whether any society can go on very long when the rules are constantly changing in order to give the Torquemada’s more victims. A bedrock requirement for any society is a set of rules to govern conduct. In order to have an organization of humans greater than the Dunbar number means having a code and a way to enforce that code in order to make the code a habit of mind. This is what we think of when we think of culture. The rules we live by because we just do.
We are already seeing problems with the Covid madness. The ever-changing rules are making life impossible for small business. In some areas, whole swaths of the economy have collapsed. Of course, the religious aspects to compliance are pitting people against one another. The new totalitarians are creating a Hobbesian world where it is a war of all against all, not for limited resources, but due to the deliberate cacophony of every changing rules that have no logic.
The good news, if there is any, is that totalitarianism has diminishing returns, as the cost of maintaining it eventually dwarfs the benefits. Initially it seems to work pretty well, but over time the costs become unsustainable. This new totalitarianism is especially front loaded, almost accelerationist. It is destroying every reason for people to remain loyal to the system. Instead of carrying on for several generations, the new totalitarianism will be lucky to make it past this decade.
News of the Times;
https://rfangle.com/politics/former-capitol-police-chief-blows-hole-in-dems-case-against-trump/
https://nationalfile.com/alt-tech-rises-gab-received-more-traffic-than-nbc-tmz-breitbart-and-huffington-post-in-january/
https://archive.is/LRe05
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=it&tl=en&u=https://www.secondopianonews.it/news/cronaca/2021/01/27/un-altro-infermiere-muore-nel-sonno-infarto-aveva-fatto-la-seconda-dose-di-vaccino.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2020/12/10/the-un-makes-the-case-for-the-us-to-stay-out-of-the-paris-climate-accord
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/jeffrey-lord-read-democrats-77-page-impeachment-paper-identified-75-lies/
https://populist.press/illegal-surge-has-arrived-1000s-crossing-now/
https://vdare.com/articles/michelle-malkin-the-matter-of-tori-rose-smith-s-life
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/02/fact-checking-phony-fact-checkers-gateway-pundits-explosive-michigan-tcf-center-reporting-absolututely-shows-voter-fraud
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/01/lyft-fires-female-driver-who-used-concealed-gun-to-stop-2-men-violently-attacking-her-in-car
https://www.bitchute.com/video/RvDf8D6DhiOx/
https://breaking911.com/explosives-have-gone-missing-from-the-nations-largest-marine-corps-base/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-us-biodata-60-minutes-2021-01-28/
https://nationalfile.com/medical-examiners-reportedly-say-capitol-cop-did-not-die-from-fire-extinguisher-attack/
https://freebeacon.com/national-security/houthis-bomb-civilian-airport-days-after-biden-removes-terrorist-designation
Testing?
My dentist reminded me of my wife's sensitive gag reflex.
We laughed and laughed.
Then I remembered that my wife and I have different dentists.
*.*
The other night I was expecting an important phone call, so I slept with my mobile under the pillow.
When I woke up, it was gone and there was just a shiny new fifty pence piece where I'd left it.
Damn that blue-tooth fairy!
*.*
Biden's transition team has announced they will be appointing an all-female communications team. According to sources, the team will not tell the nation what's wrong, since the nation should already know.
"It's fine. Everything's fine. Nothing's wrong, OK!?" said Jen Psaki in her first press conference as a part of Biden's team. "Why would you think I'm not fine? Ugh... if you have to ask, I'm not going to tell you."
Insiders close to Biden say the communications team will hold periodic press conferences where they will just glare at reporters with an icy look and make them try to guess what's wrong. If the reporters fail to understand their highly advanced non-verbal communication, they will smile sweetly and walk out of the room before slamming the door as hard as they can.
"This is a huge step for this country," said Communication Director Kate Bedingfield to reporters. "We need to move beyond archaic and male-centric methods of communication that use things like clear language and written words. We hope this will help deepen the country's level of intimacy with the Biden administration and open up new channels of understanding and communication."
The press has been frantically buying flowers, chocolates, and jewelry for the communications team in hopes of receiving some clue as to what the heck is going on. The team responded by rolling their eyes and going to bed early due to a really bad headache.
*.*
I said to my son, "You really need to start checking your pockets before you put your jeans in the washing machine."
He said, "Why, have you found some money?"
"No,” I said, “just your hamster."
*.*
Doctor : This new vaccine is perfectly harmless.
Me : You said that about Thalidomide.
Doctor : No we said armless.
Quote of the Times;
Don't ever take a fence down, until you know the reason why it was put up. – G.K. Chesterton
Link of the Times;
https://www.paul.senate.gov/sites/default/files/page-attachments/2020FestivusReport.pdf
Issue of the Times;
Testing The "Systemic Racism" Narrative by Francis Menton
How do you establish that a hypothesis is true? According to numerous explainers of the scientific method, starting with philosopher Karl Popper, the best you can do is to try to prove the hypothesis false, and fail. By this method — the scientific method — you can never definitively establish “truth” of a hypothesis, but over time you can get close.
Of course, we now live in the era of official narratives permanently immunized from attempts at falsification, nevertheless incorrectly claiming the mantle of “science.” The big three for this crazy year of 2020 are (1) the proposition that forced “lockdowns” and mask-wearing mandates slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus, (2) the proposition that human greenhouse gas emissions are causing dangerous increase in global surface temperatures, and (3) the proposition that income and wealth inequality are the result of “systemic racism” in our society. Proponents flood us with information consistent with these narratives, as if such information, if only provided in sufficient quantity, could prove their truth. But if we are really interested in getting as close as possible to the truth, shouldn’t we instead be looking for information inconsistent with the narratives?
Here is the exposition of the scientific method from physicist Richard Feynman from his classic series of recorded lectures:
We compute the consequences of the [hypothesis], to see what, if this is right, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. . . .
For today, let’s consider applying this logical method to testing one of this year’s big three narratives, namely the narrative that “systemic racism” is the principal explanation for disparities of income and wealth in our society. Following Feynman’s exposition, our first step would be to come up with some of the necessary consequences of this hypothesis, so that they can be tested. For example, if the “systemic racism” hypothesis is correct, surely that would imply that all sub-groups of non-white races would rank lower than whites in measures of income and wealth. Remarkably, in hundreds of pieces in dozens of sources railing about the evils of systemic racism in the U.S., you almost never find anyone considering this kind of a test of the narrative.
Now along comes a guy named Rav Arora with a piece on December 22 at Quillette, headline “A Peculiar Kind of Racist Patriarchy.” Arora takes exactly the approach that the scientific method would suggest, testing the “systemic racism” narrative by seeing whether actual data support or refute its logical consequences. Arora’s piece is filled with dozens of examples of data that are simply inconsistent with the “systemic racism” narrative. I’ll give just a few examples:
• Based on newly released statistics from the US Department of Labor for the third quarter of 2020 . . ., Asian women have now surpassed white men in weekly earnings. That trend has been consistent throughout this past year—an unprecedented outcome. Full-time working Asian women earned $1,224 in median weekly earnings in the third quarter of this year compared to $1,122 earned by their white male counterparts.
• Copious research finds that ethnic minorities and women frequently eclipse their white and male counterparts, even when these identities intersect. Several ethnic minority groups consistently out-perform whites in a variety of categories—higher test scores, lower incarceration rates, and longer life expectancies. According to the latest data from the US Census Bureau, over the 12 months covered by the survey, the median household incomes of Syrian Americans ($74,047), Korean Americans ($76,674), Indonesian Americans ($93,501), Taiwanese Americans ($102,405), and Filipino Americans ($100,273) are all significantly higher than that of whites ($69,823).
• Valerie Wilson at the Economic Policy Institute reports that from 2018 to 2019, Asian and black households had the highest rate of median income growth (10.6 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively) of all main racial groups.
• Despite the greater oppression black women supposedly face compared to white women, a much-publicized 2018 study featured in the New York Times found that black women had slightly higher incomes than white women raised in families with comparable earnings.
This is just a small sample. Mr. Arora’s Quillette piece goes on at great length. There are also additional data that Mr. Arora does not get to, including that median household income for some black ethnic subgroups exceeds the median household income for white Americans. As examples, per the American Community Survey for 2018, the median household income for white Americans was $65,777; but Nigerian-Americans had median household income of $68,658, and Ghanaian-Americans had median household income of $66,571.
Don’t expect the purveyors of the “systemic racism” narrative to be trying to deal with these contradictions any time soon. It’s too easy just to play to progressive guilt, and assume that no one will really bother to check the readily-available data for things that completely undermine the narrative.
News of the Times;
https://thenationalpulse.com/news/yellen-made-millions-speaking-to-wall-street/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/440000-americans-dead-facebook-american-journal-medicine-admit-stand-hcq-wrong-people-prosecuted
https://prayingmedic.com/2021/01/23/the-military-is-the-only-way-what-happens-next/
https://nationalfile.com/video-bidens-earpiece-says-salute-the-marines-so-he-says-salute-the-marines-out-loud-doesnt-salute-them/
https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-donald-was-their-final-warning.html
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/bidens-gave-dogs-warm-fluffy-doggie-beds-sleep-made-troops-sleep-cold-hard-floor-parking-garage-paying-attention-yet/
https://thenewamerican.com/biden-girls-must-compete-against-boys-and-share-a-locker-room-women-must-risk-rape-for-trans-rights
https://fee.org/articles/3-harmful-consequences-of-biden-killing-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/
https://national-justice.com/black-lives-matter-organizer-seen-entering-capitol-building-crowd-likely-fbi-agent-provocateur
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/remember-said-betsy-ross-flag-racist-now-not-racist-cuz-joe-biden-used
https://www.city-journal.org/penn-central-railroad-failure-resonates-today
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/release-them-all-tucker-exposes-full-biden-jailbreak-order-for-illegal-aliens/
https://salmartingano.com/2020/05/the-1918-spanish-flu-only-the-vaccinated-died/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/exclusive-independent-journalist-tayler-hansen-riot-turned-deadly-witnessed-us-capitol-riot
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/amazon-demands-person-union-vote-after-arguing-mail-ballots-raise-risk-fraud
We laughed and laughed.
Then I remembered that my wife and I have different dentists.
*.*
The other night I was expecting an important phone call, so I slept with my mobile under the pillow.
When I woke up, it was gone and there was just a shiny new fifty pence piece where I'd left it.
Damn that blue-tooth fairy!
*.*
Biden's transition team has announced they will be appointing an all-female communications team. According to sources, the team will not tell the nation what's wrong, since the nation should already know.
"It's fine. Everything's fine. Nothing's wrong, OK!?" said Jen Psaki in her first press conference as a part of Biden's team. "Why would you think I'm not fine? Ugh... if you have to ask, I'm not going to tell you."
Insiders close to Biden say the communications team will hold periodic press conferences where they will just glare at reporters with an icy look and make them try to guess what's wrong. If the reporters fail to understand their highly advanced non-verbal communication, they will smile sweetly and walk out of the room before slamming the door as hard as they can.
"This is a huge step for this country," said Communication Director Kate Bedingfield to reporters. "We need to move beyond archaic and male-centric methods of communication that use things like clear language and written words. We hope this will help deepen the country's level of intimacy with the Biden administration and open up new channels of understanding and communication."
The press has been frantically buying flowers, chocolates, and jewelry for the communications team in hopes of receiving some clue as to what the heck is going on. The team responded by rolling their eyes and going to bed early due to a really bad headache.
*.*
I said to my son, "You really need to start checking your pockets before you put your jeans in the washing machine."
He said, "Why, have you found some money?"
"No,” I said, “just your hamster."
*.*
Doctor : This new vaccine is perfectly harmless.
Me : You said that about Thalidomide.
Doctor : No we said armless.
Quote of the Times;
Don't ever take a fence down, until you know the reason why it was put up. – G.K. Chesterton
Link of the Times;
https://www.paul.senate.gov/sites/default/files/page-attachments/2020FestivusReport.pdf
Issue of the Times;
Testing The "Systemic Racism" Narrative by Francis Menton
How do you establish that a hypothesis is true? According to numerous explainers of the scientific method, starting with philosopher Karl Popper, the best you can do is to try to prove the hypothesis false, and fail. By this method — the scientific method — you can never definitively establish “truth” of a hypothesis, but over time you can get close.
Of course, we now live in the era of official narratives permanently immunized from attempts at falsification, nevertheless incorrectly claiming the mantle of “science.” The big three for this crazy year of 2020 are (1) the proposition that forced “lockdowns” and mask-wearing mandates slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus, (2) the proposition that human greenhouse gas emissions are causing dangerous increase in global surface temperatures, and (3) the proposition that income and wealth inequality are the result of “systemic racism” in our society. Proponents flood us with information consistent with these narratives, as if such information, if only provided in sufficient quantity, could prove their truth. But if we are really interested in getting as close as possible to the truth, shouldn’t we instead be looking for information inconsistent with the narratives?
Here is the exposition of the scientific method from physicist Richard Feynman from his classic series of recorded lectures:
We compute the consequences of the [hypothesis], to see what, if this is right, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. . . .
For today, let’s consider applying this logical method to testing one of this year’s big three narratives, namely the narrative that “systemic racism” is the principal explanation for disparities of income and wealth in our society. Following Feynman’s exposition, our first step would be to come up with some of the necessary consequences of this hypothesis, so that they can be tested. For example, if the “systemic racism” hypothesis is correct, surely that would imply that all sub-groups of non-white races would rank lower than whites in measures of income and wealth. Remarkably, in hundreds of pieces in dozens of sources railing about the evils of systemic racism in the U.S., you almost never find anyone considering this kind of a test of the narrative.
Now along comes a guy named Rav Arora with a piece on December 22 at Quillette, headline “A Peculiar Kind of Racist Patriarchy.” Arora takes exactly the approach that the scientific method would suggest, testing the “systemic racism” narrative by seeing whether actual data support or refute its logical consequences. Arora’s piece is filled with dozens of examples of data that are simply inconsistent with the “systemic racism” narrative. I’ll give just a few examples:
• Based on newly released statistics from the US Department of Labor for the third quarter of 2020 . . ., Asian women have now surpassed white men in weekly earnings. That trend has been consistent throughout this past year—an unprecedented outcome. Full-time working Asian women earned $1,224 in median weekly earnings in the third quarter of this year compared to $1,122 earned by their white male counterparts.
• Copious research finds that ethnic minorities and women frequently eclipse their white and male counterparts, even when these identities intersect. Several ethnic minority groups consistently out-perform whites in a variety of categories—higher test scores, lower incarceration rates, and longer life expectancies. According to the latest data from the US Census Bureau, over the 12 months covered by the survey, the median household incomes of Syrian Americans ($74,047), Korean Americans ($76,674), Indonesian Americans ($93,501), Taiwanese Americans ($102,405), and Filipino Americans ($100,273) are all significantly higher than that of whites ($69,823).
• Valerie Wilson at the Economic Policy Institute reports that from 2018 to 2019, Asian and black households had the highest rate of median income growth (10.6 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively) of all main racial groups.
• Despite the greater oppression black women supposedly face compared to white women, a much-publicized 2018 study featured in the New York Times found that black women had slightly higher incomes than white women raised in families with comparable earnings.
This is just a small sample. Mr. Arora’s Quillette piece goes on at great length. There are also additional data that Mr. Arora does not get to, including that median household income for some black ethnic subgroups exceeds the median household income for white Americans. As examples, per the American Community Survey for 2018, the median household income for white Americans was $65,777; but Nigerian-Americans had median household income of $68,658, and Ghanaian-Americans had median household income of $66,571.
Don’t expect the purveyors of the “systemic racism” narrative to be trying to deal with these contradictions any time soon. It’s too easy just to play to progressive guilt, and assume that no one will really bother to check the readily-available data for things that completely undermine the narrative.
News of the Times;
https://thenationalpulse.com/news/yellen-made-millions-speaking-to-wall-street/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/440000-americans-dead-facebook-american-journal-medicine-admit-stand-hcq-wrong-people-prosecuted
https://prayingmedic.com/2021/01/23/the-military-is-the-only-way-what-happens-next/
https://nationalfile.com/video-bidens-earpiece-says-salute-the-marines-so-he-says-salute-the-marines-out-loud-doesnt-salute-them/
https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-donald-was-their-final-warning.html
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/bidens-gave-dogs-warm-fluffy-doggie-beds-sleep-made-troops-sleep-cold-hard-floor-parking-garage-paying-attention-yet/
https://thenewamerican.com/biden-girls-must-compete-against-boys-and-share-a-locker-room-women-must-risk-rape-for-trans-rights
https://fee.org/articles/3-harmful-consequences-of-biden-killing-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/
https://national-justice.com/black-lives-matter-organizer-seen-entering-capitol-building-crowd-likely-fbi-agent-provocateur
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/remember-said-betsy-ross-flag-racist-now-not-racist-cuz-joe-biden-used
https://www.city-journal.org/penn-central-railroad-failure-resonates-today
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/release-them-all-tucker-exposes-full-biden-jailbreak-order-for-illegal-aliens/
https://salmartingano.com/2020/05/the-1918-spanish-flu-only-the-vaccinated-died/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/exclusive-independent-journalist-tayler-hansen-riot-turned-deadly-witnessed-us-capitol-riot
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/amazon-demands-person-union-vote-after-arguing-mail-ballots-raise-risk-fraud
Telos?
A homeless person tried to sell me a marble today for $5 saying it brings good luck to all who possess it.
Judging by his piss stained trousers and bare feet, his interpretation of good luck seems somewhat different to mine.
*.*
It was my wife's birthday and she rang me to see what time I would be home.
"Can't talk" I said, "I'm driving."
"Where are you?" she asked.
She wasn't happy when I said the 7th tee.
*.*
An overly cautious Dungeons & Dragons party is reportedly still lingering in the Purple Pig Tavern, the location where their campaign began 10 weekly sessions ago, a frustrated source confirmed.
“We ruled out the front door by session three. Could a trap be any more obvious than that?” said Mark Nathansen, rolling a persuasion check to determine if the innkeeper would give his character a discount on weekly room rates. “And the back door is almost certainly a portal to the underdark summoned by the main villain this campaign may or may not have. The cook told us he’d pay us to kill the giant rats in the backyard, but nobody insight checked him! How can we be sure he isn’t a red dragon in disguise? Nice try, but I’m not falling for that one.”
After failing the persuasion check, Nathensen began to inquire whether there were any open positions on the tavern waitstaff.
“I’m at my wit’s end with these fuckers,” said Terri Moss, the Dungeon Master for the campaign which began over 2 months ago. “The investigation checks to search for traps under every chair were cute at first, but after three sessions they were still insight checking the bartender to figure out if the ale was poisoned. Why would I try to poison them in the starting area?”
“At one point during the eighth session, I had an NPC literally offer the party a hundred gold each just to go outside and check the weather,” Moss continued. “Boy, was that a mistake. My players spent the next two hours asking me questions about the gold coin exchange rates in the region before their characters would even respond.”
At press time, the players were arguing amongst themselves about the likelihood they had spent the past ten sessions inside a giant, tavern-shaped mimic.
*.*
Joseph Stalin and my wife have the same birthday.
It's crazy to think that such a loathsome figure, who ruined the lives of so many people shares the same birthday as Stalin.
*.*
The woman I was on a date with last night clearly thinks she can do better than me.
When the waiter asked if she had any reservations I heard her saying "well he's not as funny as he thinks he is and he's a bit short but he'll do for now."
Quote of the Times;
"Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all." - Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60 (1960)
Link of the Times;
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/tech-companies-purge-users-here-are-some-alternatives
Issue of the Times;
Why Are Modern Debates on Morality So Shrill? by Brett and Kate McKay
It’s hard not to notice that in interactions both online and off, people seem increasingly polarized when it comes to political, social justice, and moral and ethical issues of all kinds. Rather than engaging in a civil discussion, debates turn into emotionally-charged flame wars, marked by blame, shame, and the exchange of insults. Such interactions are acrimonious, seemingly interminable, and markedly shrill.
What accounts for the tenor of these melees on morality?
Some astute observers have posited that our political and social positions have become more fervent as society has become more secular. People seem to have an ingrained penchant for the “religious” — a proclivity to draw lines between us and them, the pure and the polluted, doctrine and heresy, the unconverted and the woke — and in the absence of traditional faith-based outlets for these energies, have channeled these “religious” impulses towards partisan politics.
There’s surely something to this theory. But the shrillness of our modern debates on morality has an even deeper underlying cause.
The 3 Elements of a Rational, Functional Moral Culture
In After Virtue, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argues that Aristotelian virtue ethics offers the best model of a healthy and well-functioning moral system; its strength, he asserts, is the presence of three elements — all of which must be in place for any moral system to thrive:
1. Man-as-he-happens-to-be.
This is a human being in his raw, morally untutored state. This is man left to his own devices and allowed to follow his default impulses. Man on the path of least resistance.
2. A view of man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-telos.
Telos is the Greek word for man’s ultimate aim. It represents his ultimate purpose and function — an essential nature that can only be realized by throwing off the inertia of default desires and actively striving after it.
For the ancient Greeks, a man’s telos was reaching a state of eudaimonia; a word that is hard to translate but means something akin to happiness, excellence — full human flourishing. For Aristotle specifically, eudaimonia meant not only possessing good character, but achieving excellence in action. Virtue was both the goal and the practice — the end man should strive for, and the active means of attaining that end.
For Aristotle, a “good man” was as functional and objective a concept as a “good watch” or a “good musician.” A good watch accurately tells time; a good musician plays his instrument well; and a good man fulfills his purpose as a man. Each statement, the philosopher would say, is equally objective and factual.
3. An ethical code that allows a man to move from state #1 to state #2.
Man-as-he-happens-to-be and man-if-he-realized-his-telos are antagonistic states — one slides into the lowest and easiest, while the other aims for the noblest and highest.
To transition from the former to the latter — to access one’s full potential — you need to adopt certain behaviors and habits of action. What behaviors and actions to take are prescribed by a set of ethics that are specifically designed to move you from state #1 to state #2. The code lays out which virtues will take you towards your telos, and conversely, which vices will stymie your progress in reaching it. As MacIntyre explains:
“The precepts which enjoin the various virtues and prohibit the vices which are their counterparts instruct us how to move from potentiality to act, how to realize our true nature and to reach our true end. To defy them will be to be frustrated and incomplete, to fail to achieve that good of rational happiness which it is peculiarly ours as a species to pursue.”
Although we can describe this set of moral precepts as an ethical code, it should not be thought of, at least in the context of Aristotelianism, as primarily a set of rules. As MacIntyre observes, “the most obvious and astonishing absence from Aristotle’s thought for any modern reader” is that “there is relatively little mention of rules anywhere in the Ethics.” In the absence of strict, rote, universal rules, Aristotle instead argued for the cultivation of a kind of master virtue which would aid a man in acquiring all the rest: phronesis, or practical wisdom. As a virtue in one context can be a vice in another (e.g., being frugal vs. being cheap), a man needed phronesis to guide him in doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason.
Each of the three elements above “requires reference to the other two if its status and function are to be intelligible.” The combination of the three produces a moral culture that is not only functional, but rational.
Such a moral code is rational in the sense that there is a logical relationship between is and ought. That is, if your telos is X, we can objectively say that you ought to do Y, and you ought not to do Z, in order to reach it. To achieve this end, you must adopt these means.
While this threefold scheme can form the basis of a personal moral code, Aristotle specifically imagined his system of virtue ethics in the context of community (in his case, the Greek city-state). Individuals aim to fulfill their telos as men, while pointing that effort towards what MacIntyre calls a “shared project of achieving a common good” (for Aristotle, for example, reaching one’s telos was closely tied to being a good citizen and contributing to Athenian democracy). Within a community with a common telos, rules are erected that prohibit negative behaviors that would be destructive to the efforts and relationships necessary to achieving its shared project, while virtues — positive traits of character that move the community closer to that common good — are celebrated and encouraged. The rules cannot be understood apart from the virtues at which they aim; the former are not arbitrary, but designed to facilitate the greater flourishing of the latter.
The same 3-part moral framework also exists within the Abrahamic religions, only, as MacIntyre explains, shaded a bit differently:
“The precepts of ethics now have to be understood not only as teleological injunctions, but also as expressions of a divinely ordained law. The table of virtues and vices has to be amended and added to and a concept of sin is added to the Aristotelian concept of error. The law of God requires a new kind of respect and awe. The true end of man can no longer be completely achieved in this world, but only in another. Yet the threefold structure of untutored human-nature-as-it-happens-to-be, human-nature-as-it-could-be-if-it-realized-its-telos and the precepts of rational ethics as the means for the transition from one to the other remains central.”
For the religious adherent, one’s telos wasn’t eudaimonia (at least as Aristotle understood it), but salvation — being transformed into a creature divinely made perfect.
The Fate of a Moral Culture Without a Shared Telos
Over several centuries, and for complex reasons, a teleologically-based moral system eroded in the West.
As MacIntyre succinctly summarizes, “the joint effect of the secular rejection of both Protestant and Catholic theology and the scientific and philosophical rejection of Aristotelianism was to eliminate any notion of man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-telos.”
The idea of having an ultimate aim survives on a personal level (though scarcely few people seem to think of themselves as having a telos, or know what theirs is). But on a broad, cultural level, Western societies no longer share a telos in common. The kind of moral system outlined above can really only function in a fairly homogeneous community of limited size; as a society grows increasingly large and diverse, people no longer share the same telos (or have a concept of telos at all), nor a project of common good that the telos supports. Thus in our own culture, many competing teloi exist, or are absent altogether.
Yet, we still retain the other two pieces of classical morality: man-as-he-happens-to-be and a set of ethics. Witness the effect this creates:
The moral code which was specifically created to move man-as-he-happens-to-be towards his telos, now hangs in space, detached from a larger purpose.
There is only man in his raw state, and a code of behavior he is to follow. But, in the absence of a telos, this code consists not in virtues, alongside attendant rules that help a man achieve them, but in the rules alone. As McIntyre observes, when a moral culture lacks a teleological element, “Rules become the primary concept of the moral life.”
In a moral system which lacks a telos, there exist only negative proscriptions for appropriate behavior — rules which are not designed to move man to fulfill his essential purpose, but simply to allow the basic functions of society to continue.
No. No. No. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
And so today we have an abundance of voices pointing out what a good man isn’t, but very few describing what a good man is. We lack a positive ideal. In this we’ve become a nation of something worse than school marms — for at least the disciplinarian teacher reprimanded her students with some end in mind.
At the same time that rules become more central to such a moral culture, they become less motivating. Still today we know that man in his untutored state is prone to bad behavior, and so establish rules in an attempt to educate that behavior. But in the absence of an accompanying telos, such rules lack a compelling why — a rationale for why a man should choose to undergo this education, and offer his compliance, rather than following the less challenging path of least resistance.
This is quite problematic, for as pointed out above, man-as-he-happens-to-be and man-if-he-realized-his-telos are antagonistic states. The latter is not how we act if left to our druthers. Achieving one’s telos involves mastering lower impulses to reach for the higher variety. It requires self-mastery, self-control, delayed gratification. It’s not a “natural” state, and as such, its pursuit requires strong motivation — motivation that can only be furnished by pointing to an overarching aim.
Given the lack of motivation inherent to a telos-free moral code, vice inevitably waxes and virtue wanes. This ethical lassitude is still a cause of consternation to a culture, that, even if it’s lost hope in producing citizens of sterling character, still needs them to act with a minimum of propriety and trust in interpersonal relationships in order to keep day-to-day life safe and copacetic. It is rightly felt that people can no longer be left to rely on their phronesis to make moral judgements (for without a telos, what would this judgement be based on?), and so more and more granular and restrictive rules are created as to what constitutes appropriate behavior — external, universal, one-size-fits-all guidelines that of course work much less well in some circumstances than others.
Naturally, there is much disagreement on just how far all these rules should extend beyond the enforcement of the bare minimum of propriety. Just how granular the rules should get is a matter of one’s perspective of what is “just” and “right” and these positions are based on conflicting telos, or on no defined telos at all.
Indeed, the disappearance of a shared telos from a culture’s moral code ultimately has a deteriorating effect on that culture’s moral discourse. When a culture loses its shared telos, is and ought are divorced. Without this connection, moral precepts lose any objectivity — a rational basis for why we should choose one position over another. Though we still voice our positions as if they had this kind of rational authority, our moral arguments in fact become “mere instrument of individual desire and will.” We assert our opinions as if they are objectively true, when they are in fact the arbitrary product of emotion and personal preference. One notices that there is very little philosophical discussion surrounding our moral debates at all; very little appeal to reason is issued beyond “This is the way it should be! . . . Because!” Moral debate becomes a series of reciprocal shouts. Flaming, blaming, shaming.
Or as MacIntyre puts it, “without a teleological framework the whole project of morality becomes unintelligible.”
As he observes, each person has become an autonomous moral agent, who “now [speaks] unconstrained by the externalities of divine law, natural teleology or hierarchical authority; but why should anyone else now listen to him?”
Living a Eudaimonic Life In an Irrational, Dysfunctional Moral Culture
MacIntyre truly offers an incisive explanation for why our moral debates are so shrill. Moral precepts — encouragements of virtue and prohibitions of vice — are rationally based when they lead to a clear telos. If your telos is this, you ought to do that. When a culture lacks a shared telos, and everyone is following their own ultimate aim (or lack such an aim at all), people with competing teloi simply talk past each other, while those without any teloi make moral arguments that sound objective but are really the irrational products of personal preference and emotion.
While MacIntyre’s insights are descriptive, and it’s enormously helpful to understand why things are the way they are, they’re less prescriptive; what should we do with this information? Three takeaways suggest themselves:
The importance of having a personal telos.
Even though modern society no longer shares a common telos, you still should be clear on your own. What’s your ultimate aim? What’s your essential purpose and function? Throwing off your default desires is never easy. Knowing the end you’re aiming for will make you far more motivated in embracing the means — the habits of action attendant to living a strenuous life of virtue and excellence — that are necessary to get there.
The pointlessness of debate (with those who don’t share your telos).
The West still celebrates the debate of political, social, and moral issues, and we do so because of the tradition we inherited from the ancient Greeks. But the framework that allowed their rigorous exchanges to function — the context of a defined city-state with a shared telos — no longer exists in our large, heterogeneous modern countries. We’re still trying to engage in an old model of rhetoric, despite inhabiting a very different cultural landscape. The result is our empty, interminable, emotion-driven shouting matches.
Now I’m not saying we should never debate important ideas. Such debates can be healthy and robust when in engaged in between people who share the same telos. And those who do not share the same telos can debate issues in a strictly pragmatic way — arguing for which solutions will be most effective or expedient. But when debates concern issues of “right” and “wrong,” if the parties do not share a common telos, the result will only be pointless, irrational pontificating.
The importance of belonging to a community.
While it is impossible to share a telos with millions of other people, it is still quite possible, and desirable, to do so with a smaller community of like-minded folks. For Aristotle, achieving a life of eudaimonia could never be a solo affair; it required working on a shared project of common good with others. Comrades in a common purpose sharpen each other, and can create and achieve things they couldn’t by themselves.
Just as importantly, communities of virtue act as repositories of moral excellence, emitting an influence and fragrance that strengthen and leaven the larger culture, and preserving virtues that might otherwise disappear. As MacIntyre ended After Virtue over three decades ago:
“It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead—often not recognizing fully what they were doing—was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time.”
News of the Times;
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-12-28-high-cycle-pcr-tests-weaponized-to-terrorize-nations.html
https://monsterhunternation.com/2021/01/05/one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other/
https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/the-looming-national-security-crisis-young-americans-unable-serve-the-military
https://vdare.com/articles/memo-from-middle-america-the-pilgrims-landed-at-plymouth-rock-400-years-ago-this-month-guess-why-there-s-no-celebration
https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/best-of-art-of-manliness-2020/
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-cruise-ship-suicides/
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/selco-average-day-shtf/
http://personcountysportsnow.com/zookeeper-arrested-after-trying-to-molest-500-pound-male-gorilla/
https://notthebee.com/article/jeffrey-epsteins-last-cellmate-has-been-found-dead
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-12-30-full-list-of-traitor-media-outlets-sponsored-trips-communist-china.html
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/norway-sounds-alarm-over-vaccine-risks-elderly-frail-after-23-deaths
http://americandigest.org/forwarding-from-western-rifle-you-might-want-to-forward-as-well/
https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2021/01/12/tulsi-gabbard-reveals-why-congress-wont-act-against-big-tech-n308619
https://archive.vn/WPSV0
https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-01-20-pompeo-china-is-already-within-our-borders.html
Judging by his piss stained trousers and bare feet, his interpretation of good luck seems somewhat different to mine.
*.*
It was my wife's birthday and she rang me to see what time I would be home.
"Can't talk" I said, "I'm driving."
"Where are you?" she asked.
She wasn't happy when I said the 7th tee.
*.*
An overly cautious Dungeons & Dragons party is reportedly still lingering in the Purple Pig Tavern, the location where their campaign began 10 weekly sessions ago, a frustrated source confirmed.
“We ruled out the front door by session three. Could a trap be any more obvious than that?” said Mark Nathansen, rolling a persuasion check to determine if the innkeeper would give his character a discount on weekly room rates. “And the back door is almost certainly a portal to the underdark summoned by the main villain this campaign may or may not have. The cook told us he’d pay us to kill the giant rats in the backyard, but nobody insight checked him! How can we be sure he isn’t a red dragon in disguise? Nice try, but I’m not falling for that one.”
After failing the persuasion check, Nathensen began to inquire whether there were any open positions on the tavern waitstaff.
“I’m at my wit’s end with these fuckers,” said Terri Moss, the Dungeon Master for the campaign which began over 2 months ago. “The investigation checks to search for traps under every chair were cute at first, but after three sessions they were still insight checking the bartender to figure out if the ale was poisoned. Why would I try to poison them in the starting area?”
“At one point during the eighth session, I had an NPC literally offer the party a hundred gold each just to go outside and check the weather,” Moss continued. “Boy, was that a mistake. My players spent the next two hours asking me questions about the gold coin exchange rates in the region before their characters would even respond.”
At press time, the players were arguing amongst themselves about the likelihood they had spent the past ten sessions inside a giant, tavern-shaped mimic.
*.*
Joseph Stalin and my wife have the same birthday.
It's crazy to think that such a loathsome figure, who ruined the lives of so many people shares the same birthday as Stalin.
*.*
The woman I was on a date with last night clearly thinks she can do better than me.
When the waiter asked if she had any reservations I heard her saying "well he's not as funny as he thinks he is and he's a bit short but he'll do for now."
Quote of the Times;
"Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all." - Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60 (1960)
Link of the Times;
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/tech-companies-purge-users-here-are-some-alternatives
Issue of the Times;
Why Are Modern Debates on Morality So Shrill? by Brett and Kate McKay
It’s hard not to notice that in interactions both online and off, people seem increasingly polarized when it comes to political, social justice, and moral and ethical issues of all kinds. Rather than engaging in a civil discussion, debates turn into emotionally-charged flame wars, marked by blame, shame, and the exchange of insults. Such interactions are acrimonious, seemingly interminable, and markedly shrill.
What accounts for the tenor of these melees on morality?
Some astute observers have posited that our political and social positions have become more fervent as society has become more secular. People seem to have an ingrained penchant for the “religious” — a proclivity to draw lines between us and them, the pure and the polluted, doctrine and heresy, the unconverted and the woke — and in the absence of traditional faith-based outlets for these energies, have channeled these “religious” impulses towards partisan politics.
There’s surely something to this theory. But the shrillness of our modern debates on morality has an even deeper underlying cause.
The 3 Elements of a Rational, Functional Moral Culture
In After Virtue, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argues that Aristotelian virtue ethics offers the best model of a healthy and well-functioning moral system; its strength, he asserts, is the presence of three elements — all of which must be in place for any moral system to thrive:
1. Man-as-he-happens-to-be.
This is a human being in his raw, morally untutored state. This is man left to his own devices and allowed to follow his default impulses. Man on the path of least resistance.
2. A view of man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-telos.
Telos is the Greek word for man’s ultimate aim. It represents his ultimate purpose and function — an essential nature that can only be realized by throwing off the inertia of default desires and actively striving after it.
For the ancient Greeks, a man’s telos was reaching a state of eudaimonia; a word that is hard to translate but means something akin to happiness, excellence — full human flourishing. For Aristotle specifically, eudaimonia meant not only possessing good character, but achieving excellence in action. Virtue was both the goal and the practice — the end man should strive for, and the active means of attaining that end.
For Aristotle, a “good man” was as functional and objective a concept as a “good watch” or a “good musician.” A good watch accurately tells time; a good musician plays his instrument well; and a good man fulfills his purpose as a man. Each statement, the philosopher would say, is equally objective and factual.
3. An ethical code that allows a man to move from state #1 to state #2.
Man-as-he-happens-to-be and man-if-he-realized-his-telos are antagonistic states — one slides into the lowest and easiest, while the other aims for the noblest and highest.
To transition from the former to the latter — to access one’s full potential — you need to adopt certain behaviors and habits of action. What behaviors and actions to take are prescribed by a set of ethics that are specifically designed to move you from state #1 to state #2. The code lays out which virtues will take you towards your telos, and conversely, which vices will stymie your progress in reaching it. As MacIntyre explains:
“The precepts which enjoin the various virtues and prohibit the vices which are their counterparts instruct us how to move from potentiality to act, how to realize our true nature and to reach our true end. To defy them will be to be frustrated and incomplete, to fail to achieve that good of rational happiness which it is peculiarly ours as a species to pursue.”
Although we can describe this set of moral precepts as an ethical code, it should not be thought of, at least in the context of Aristotelianism, as primarily a set of rules. As MacIntyre observes, “the most obvious and astonishing absence from Aristotle’s thought for any modern reader” is that “there is relatively little mention of rules anywhere in the Ethics.” In the absence of strict, rote, universal rules, Aristotle instead argued for the cultivation of a kind of master virtue which would aid a man in acquiring all the rest: phronesis, or practical wisdom. As a virtue in one context can be a vice in another (e.g., being frugal vs. being cheap), a man needed phronesis to guide him in doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason.
Each of the three elements above “requires reference to the other two if its status and function are to be intelligible.” The combination of the three produces a moral culture that is not only functional, but rational.
Such a moral code is rational in the sense that there is a logical relationship between is and ought. That is, if your telos is X, we can objectively say that you ought to do Y, and you ought not to do Z, in order to reach it. To achieve this end, you must adopt these means.
While this threefold scheme can form the basis of a personal moral code, Aristotle specifically imagined his system of virtue ethics in the context of community (in his case, the Greek city-state). Individuals aim to fulfill their telos as men, while pointing that effort towards what MacIntyre calls a “shared project of achieving a common good” (for Aristotle, for example, reaching one’s telos was closely tied to being a good citizen and contributing to Athenian democracy). Within a community with a common telos, rules are erected that prohibit negative behaviors that would be destructive to the efforts and relationships necessary to achieving its shared project, while virtues — positive traits of character that move the community closer to that common good — are celebrated and encouraged. The rules cannot be understood apart from the virtues at which they aim; the former are not arbitrary, but designed to facilitate the greater flourishing of the latter.
The same 3-part moral framework also exists within the Abrahamic religions, only, as MacIntyre explains, shaded a bit differently:
“The precepts of ethics now have to be understood not only as teleological injunctions, but also as expressions of a divinely ordained law. The table of virtues and vices has to be amended and added to and a concept of sin is added to the Aristotelian concept of error. The law of God requires a new kind of respect and awe. The true end of man can no longer be completely achieved in this world, but only in another. Yet the threefold structure of untutored human-nature-as-it-happens-to-be, human-nature-as-it-could-be-if-it-realized-its-telos and the precepts of rational ethics as the means for the transition from one to the other remains central.”
For the religious adherent, one’s telos wasn’t eudaimonia (at least as Aristotle understood it), but salvation — being transformed into a creature divinely made perfect.
The Fate of a Moral Culture Without a Shared Telos
Over several centuries, and for complex reasons, a teleologically-based moral system eroded in the West.
As MacIntyre succinctly summarizes, “the joint effect of the secular rejection of both Protestant and Catholic theology and the scientific and philosophical rejection of Aristotelianism was to eliminate any notion of man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-his-telos.”
The idea of having an ultimate aim survives on a personal level (though scarcely few people seem to think of themselves as having a telos, or know what theirs is). But on a broad, cultural level, Western societies no longer share a telos in common. The kind of moral system outlined above can really only function in a fairly homogeneous community of limited size; as a society grows increasingly large and diverse, people no longer share the same telos (or have a concept of telos at all), nor a project of common good that the telos supports. Thus in our own culture, many competing teloi exist, or are absent altogether.
Yet, we still retain the other two pieces of classical morality: man-as-he-happens-to-be and a set of ethics. Witness the effect this creates:
The moral code which was specifically created to move man-as-he-happens-to-be towards his telos, now hangs in space, detached from a larger purpose.
There is only man in his raw state, and a code of behavior he is to follow. But, in the absence of a telos, this code consists not in virtues, alongside attendant rules that help a man achieve them, but in the rules alone. As McIntyre observes, when a moral culture lacks a teleological element, “Rules become the primary concept of the moral life.”
In a moral system which lacks a telos, there exist only negative proscriptions for appropriate behavior — rules which are not designed to move man to fulfill his essential purpose, but simply to allow the basic functions of society to continue.
No. No. No. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
And so today we have an abundance of voices pointing out what a good man isn’t, but very few describing what a good man is. We lack a positive ideal. In this we’ve become a nation of something worse than school marms — for at least the disciplinarian teacher reprimanded her students with some end in mind.
At the same time that rules become more central to such a moral culture, they become less motivating. Still today we know that man in his untutored state is prone to bad behavior, and so establish rules in an attempt to educate that behavior. But in the absence of an accompanying telos, such rules lack a compelling why — a rationale for why a man should choose to undergo this education, and offer his compliance, rather than following the less challenging path of least resistance.
This is quite problematic, for as pointed out above, man-as-he-happens-to-be and man-if-he-realized-his-telos are antagonistic states. The latter is not how we act if left to our druthers. Achieving one’s telos involves mastering lower impulses to reach for the higher variety. It requires self-mastery, self-control, delayed gratification. It’s not a “natural” state, and as such, its pursuit requires strong motivation — motivation that can only be furnished by pointing to an overarching aim.
Given the lack of motivation inherent to a telos-free moral code, vice inevitably waxes and virtue wanes. This ethical lassitude is still a cause of consternation to a culture, that, even if it’s lost hope in producing citizens of sterling character, still needs them to act with a minimum of propriety and trust in interpersonal relationships in order to keep day-to-day life safe and copacetic. It is rightly felt that people can no longer be left to rely on their phronesis to make moral judgements (for without a telos, what would this judgement be based on?), and so more and more granular and restrictive rules are created as to what constitutes appropriate behavior — external, universal, one-size-fits-all guidelines that of course work much less well in some circumstances than others.
Naturally, there is much disagreement on just how far all these rules should extend beyond the enforcement of the bare minimum of propriety. Just how granular the rules should get is a matter of one’s perspective of what is “just” and “right” and these positions are based on conflicting telos, or on no defined telos at all.
Indeed, the disappearance of a shared telos from a culture’s moral code ultimately has a deteriorating effect on that culture’s moral discourse. When a culture loses its shared telos, is and ought are divorced. Without this connection, moral precepts lose any objectivity — a rational basis for why we should choose one position over another. Though we still voice our positions as if they had this kind of rational authority, our moral arguments in fact become “mere instrument of individual desire and will.” We assert our opinions as if they are objectively true, when they are in fact the arbitrary product of emotion and personal preference. One notices that there is very little philosophical discussion surrounding our moral debates at all; very little appeal to reason is issued beyond “This is the way it should be! . . . Because!” Moral debate becomes a series of reciprocal shouts. Flaming, blaming, shaming.
Or as MacIntyre puts it, “without a teleological framework the whole project of morality becomes unintelligible.”
As he observes, each person has become an autonomous moral agent, who “now [speaks] unconstrained by the externalities of divine law, natural teleology or hierarchical authority; but why should anyone else now listen to him?”
Living a Eudaimonic Life In an Irrational, Dysfunctional Moral Culture
MacIntyre truly offers an incisive explanation for why our moral debates are so shrill. Moral precepts — encouragements of virtue and prohibitions of vice — are rationally based when they lead to a clear telos. If your telos is this, you ought to do that. When a culture lacks a shared telos, and everyone is following their own ultimate aim (or lack such an aim at all), people with competing teloi simply talk past each other, while those without any teloi make moral arguments that sound objective but are really the irrational products of personal preference and emotion.
While MacIntyre’s insights are descriptive, and it’s enormously helpful to understand why things are the way they are, they’re less prescriptive; what should we do with this information? Three takeaways suggest themselves:
The importance of having a personal telos.
Even though modern society no longer shares a common telos, you still should be clear on your own. What’s your ultimate aim? What’s your essential purpose and function? Throwing off your default desires is never easy. Knowing the end you’re aiming for will make you far more motivated in embracing the means — the habits of action attendant to living a strenuous life of virtue and excellence — that are necessary to get there.
The pointlessness of debate (with those who don’t share your telos).
The West still celebrates the debate of political, social, and moral issues, and we do so because of the tradition we inherited from the ancient Greeks. But the framework that allowed their rigorous exchanges to function — the context of a defined city-state with a shared telos — no longer exists in our large, heterogeneous modern countries. We’re still trying to engage in an old model of rhetoric, despite inhabiting a very different cultural landscape. The result is our empty, interminable, emotion-driven shouting matches.
Now I’m not saying we should never debate important ideas. Such debates can be healthy and robust when in engaged in between people who share the same telos. And those who do not share the same telos can debate issues in a strictly pragmatic way — arguing for which solutions will be most effective or expedient. But when debates concern issues of “right” and “wrong,” if the parties do not share a common telos, the result will only be pointless, irrational pontificating.
The importance of belonging to a community.
While it is impossible to share a telos with millions of other people, it is still quite possible, and desirable, to do so with a smaller community of like-minded folks. For Aristotle, achieving a life of eudaimonia could never be a solo affair; it required working on a shared project of common good with others. Comrades in a common purpose sharpen each other, and can create and achieve things they couldn’t by themselves.
Just as importantly, communities of virtue act as repositories of moral excellence, emitting an influence and fragrance that strengthen and leaven the larger culture, and preserving virtues that might otherwise disappear. As MacIntyre ended After Virtue over three decades ago:
“It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead—often not recognizing fully what they were doing—was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time.”
News of the Times;
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-12-28-high-cycle-pcr-tests-weaponized-to-terrorize-nations.html
https://monsterhunternation.com/2021/01/05/one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other/
https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/the-looming-national-security-crisis-young-americans-unable-serve-the-military
https://vdare.com/articles/memo-from-middle-america-the-pilgrims-landed-at-plymouth-rock-400-years-ago-this-month-guess-why-there-s-no-celebration
https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/best-of-art-of-manliness-2020/
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-cruise-ship-suicides/
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/selco-average-day-shtf/
http://personcountysportsnow.com/zookeeper-arrested-after-trying-to-molest-500-pound-male-gorilla/
https://notthebee.com/article/jeffrey-epsteins-last-cellmate-has-been-found-dead
https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-12-30-full-list-of-traitor-media-outlets-sponsored-trips-communist-china.html
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/norway-sounds-alarm-over-vaccine-risks-elderly-frail-after-23-deaths
http://americandigest.org/forwarding-from-western-rifle-you-might-want-to-forward-as-well/
https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2021/01/12/tulsi-gabbard-reveals-why-congress-wont-act-against-big-tech-n308619
https://archive.vn/WPSV0
https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-01-20-pompeo-china-is-already-within-our-borders.html
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And someone shot a duck.
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No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.