In Cornwall, England, an 83-year-old woman accidentally fell down a ravine and probably would have died there if it weren't for her cat, who stayed up at the top and meowed until help arrived.
Of course, there is a part of me that wonders if the cat pushed her down there.
*.*
Quiz: Which collapses fastest?
A. Italian bridges during rainstorms.
B. The Twin Towers on 9/11.
C. The French in 1941.
D. The Afghan government in 2021.
*.*
Recent advancements in ponytails for women have progressed the Army and other military services. But before ponytails were approved for women there was a memorandum from 1985 to approve mullets for men, and today it was finally signed.
"If women can wear ponytails, it's time to let men wear mullets," American Legion spokesman John Raughter said in response. "Fair is fair when it comes to hair."
The memo stemmed from a study that began in 1984 that suggested that men with mullets could run faster, jump higher, and instill traumatic levels of fear in the hearts of enemies. The initial study was so promising that it continued into the 1990s and was finally published in 2003, but it was overshadowed by the Global War on Terror. It's unclear why the mullet memo was never approved, especially since the data showed that improving mullethality led to great recruitment numbers.
"If the hair is off my ears, I should be allowed to rock a sick pony, too. Man, it’d blow gloriously behind me when closing with and destroying our nation's enemies," said Bubba Boy, spokesman for Service Mulletmen, a niche veterans group.
Indeed, the study’s executive summary cited numerous examples of increased lethality by men sporting mullets in recent memory, including:
• Patrick Swayze in “Road House”
• Roddy "The Rod" Piper in “They Live”
• Jean-Claude Van Damme in “Hard Target”
• Richard Dean Anderson in “MacGyver”
• Kurt Russell in “Big Trouble in Little China”
• Mel Gibson in “Lethal Weapon”
• Dolph Lundgren in “He-Man: Masters of the Universe”
• Nicolas Cage in “Con Air”
• Chuck Norris in “The Hitman”
Researchers also pointed to Sylvester Stallone in every single “Rambo” movie. The peer-reviewed study checked out, defense officials said.
The memo was found last year in a desk drawer inside the Army’s G-1 personnel section at the Pentagon. The same drawer is rumored to house a number of sensitive and little-known copies of paperwork from as far back as the 1870s, including a copy of a request to take leave for at least a few months from Gen. George Custer in May 1876.
"We'll do anything to avoid letting the men wear beards," said one general on condition of anonymity. "We're cool with them pretending that their religion is Jedi, though."
Perhaps the most illuminating of the rumors is that Gen. Mark A. Milley secretly wants a new haircut.
*.*
A man and his wife attended a dinner party at the home of their friends. Near the end of the meal, the wife reprimanded her husband. "That's the third time you've gone for dessert," she scolded. "The hostess must think you're selfish and an absolute pig."
"I don't think so," he said. "I've been telling her it's for you."
*.*
If 'Jurassic Park' were real, it would cost an estimated $11,907,000,000 a year to maintain.
Just like the dinosaurs in Congress.
Quote of the Times;
Cowardice is called courage, Failure is called success, Men are called women, Abortion is called healthcare, Racism is called anti-racism, Fascism is called anti-fascism, Opinions are called facts, Facts are called hate, Regressive is called progressive. - @LeonydusJohnson
Link of the Times;
https://www.bitchute.com/video/tGuiAKSh9kvP/
Issue of the Times;
Diversity Is Not Our Strength — And The Lie Is Deliberate by Christopher Bedford
Far from a strength, diversity in and of itself is at best a feature, and more often a weakness.
“Diversity is our strength.” You’ve heard it over and over again, and it seems simple enough. It doesn’t matter if it’s not true; it’s a basic feel-goodism — the kind of phrase that adorns the kitschy signs Bed Bath and Beyond sells for people to hang in their kitchen. A “live, laugh, love” sort of thing. If only.
Rather, in America today, “Diversity is our strength” is a commanding ethos: It governs the minds of the Joint Chiefs, it informs the decisions of our top policymakers, it drives the campaigns of the political left, it animates the activities of the activist left, and it’s scribbled on the chalkboards of our children’s schools.
The idea is not entirely without merit, and there’s a case to be made for the whole thing, even if the case is fatally flawed — which it is.
Men and women, for example, need each other (despite what some women might have heard). Our differences complement each other literally perfectly.
The young grow stronger from the wisdom and leadership of the old, while the old benefit from the strength, vitality, and energy of the young.
The warrior needs the philosopher if the warrior is to be at his best, and the philosopher needs the warrior to guard the philosopher’s peace.
The soldiers fighting right now to bring their Afghan interpreters to America before they’re murdered by the Taliban can tell you a lot about the diversity of language, culture, and understanding those brave men brought to their units, and how it saved American lives over and over again.
Police officers patrolling an inward-facing neighborhood suspicious of outsiders benefit from colleagues who are from that community and, therefore, better understand and interact with its members.
Anyone who has raised, or helped to raise, a severely handicapped person knows that person needs them, but also, maybe, that they have been made better for it — more kind, more industrious, more caring, more understanding, more loving.
But is that all it takes, being different? Would a kid in a wheelchair, a skateboard punk, a nerd, an explorer, a tomboy, an older black kid, an older Hispanic kid, and a dog with a helmet make the perfect team? Maybe, but probably not — at least based solely on that description.
Would they make the perfect Burger King Kids Club? Well, they might.
But how? What would bring them together? Do the things that make them different also unite them?
Yes, if you believe the simpleton slogans of the modern left, but in reality, the answer is no. Not one of those fictitious kids is brought together and made stronger simply because of his differences.
Rather, it is their shared values and purpose — or, the things that are the same, rather than those that are different or diverse — that unite them, bind them, and make them a club. In this case, it’s being kids who love adventure and cheeseburgers — these are what make them the Burger King Kids Club.
In real life, the differences between men and women can make us much weaker — just see the STD rate at The Villages or Texas Tech, or, joking aside, look at the global ravages of pornography and human trafficking, or the packed orphanages and abandoned women left behind a long military occupation. But brought together in a loving family with shared values and commitments, together we create the essential building blocks of society — we all get stronger.
The same goes for the young and the old, the able and disabled: They must be brought together first in shared purpose, and not simply left to manipulate or abuse the other, as is often the case when a stronger, governing principle is not present to overcome the differences in age, ability, and cunning.
The warrior and philosopher must be united in their love of their country and its people through a commitment to duty and shared sacrifice. We’ve felt for 20 long years what happens when the philosophers aren’t governed by the right ideas.
Similarly, many brave military men and women have died, led astray by locals who did not share their mission. And many neighborhoods have been let down — and police forces weakened — when fitness, intelligence, and a commitment to law and order are treated as secondary to identity politics.
Because, far from a strength, diversity in and of itself is at best a feature, and more often a weakness. For centuries past, successful military leaders understood this so implicitly they’d make their men wear the same uniforms, sleep in the same bunks or holes, share the same food, often follow the same grooming, and always answer to the same drills and the same orders at the same time. They made them one — a unit — and that made them stronger.
Today, those who preach the gospel of diversity, be it multiculturalism, critical race theory, or any other novel heresy, don’t care about what unifies us. Often, they resent it and instead actively promote what makes us different. Many times, they work to actively divide us.
And it’s working: In 2004, 74 percent of white Americans and 68 percent of black Americans told Gallup that race relations in America were good. This year, those numbers are 43 percent and 33 percent, respectively. It turns out that a decade and a half of relentlessly racializing every issue in American politics just made everyone feel less happy, less trusting, less like they are part of a unified American whole.
Our differences without unifying mores — an anthem, a language, a border, a history, a Constitution, a faith in God — make us weak, and this is deadly. Roger Scruton, one of the finest philosophers of the past half-century, explained the danger succinctly in the stirring and controversial BBC documentary “Rivers of Blood.”
All of us need an identity which unites us with our neighbors, our countrymen: those people who are subject to the same rules and the same laws as us, those people with whom we might one day have to fight side by side to protect our inheritance, those people with whom we will suffer when attacked, those people whose destinies are in some way tied up with our own.
So why would they preach otherwise? The correct answer, sadly, is the simplest: To make us weaker. The left is obsessed with making us weaker. A strong, united America is, in their minds, a great evil.
They love that a strong, united America once smashed fascism — that’s OK in their minds. But the patriotism, the religious values, the martial order, the industry, the mining — the things that propelled us to victory? They don’t want those.
They think it was just Rosie the Riveter girl-power liberation, or Mexican immigrants manning the jobs our boys left behind. Both of those contributed to the war effort, no doubt, but they contributed far more in the myth of World War II the left prefers over the reality.
In the 1940s, we were a strong country, and remember, the professional left hates our past. We know that because they tell us.
Their hatred of a strong America continues today. You might have noticed a strange statement last week from Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor to the White House. It started out simple enough: “Higher gasoline costs, if left unchecked, risk harming the ongoing global recovery.” Makes sense.
But that’s where it got weird, and in the following two paragraphs, Jake got on his knees and begged OPEC to sell us more oil. Remember OPEC? The ring of Arab oil-producing countries currently led by the Saudis? They’re in the news every now and then, when they make demands in return for sating America and the world’s endless oil addiction.
A couple of things stand out here. For one, why do we need oil from OPEC right now? It’s not 1973 anymore. When President Joe Biden came into office, we were energy self-reliant. The Trump administration had seen to that, but since coming into office our new president canceled all future contracts on federal lands and scuttled the Keystone Pipeline, which would have brought oil from Canada and supplied 11,000 American jobs in the process.
Why did they scuttle the pipeline? They claimed it was for global warming purposes — to fight climate change and such. That’s all good and great, but nothing about this actually reduced our need for oil, so here we are, seven months later, begging a cabal of Islamic fundamentalists to sell us more of it. Does it really make a difference to the atmosphere if the oil is pumped in foreign deserts versus the American heartland?
Or how about pumping it in Russia? That’s where the Nord Stream 2 pipeline begins, snaking all the way into Germany. The Biden administration removed Trump-era sanctions on it, allowing energy to flow into Europe in exchange for money flowing to the Kremlin.
So we’re fine with Saudi oil and we’re fine with Russian oil. Apparently, it’s just Canadian oil, finished in American factories, that we cannot abide. It’s almost like this isn’t about global warming at all. So what is it? Are we against American workers? Are we trying to punish the working class? Seems a stretch.
Are we just lying to naïve environmentalist voters? Well, yes, but there’s something else here, and it’s our elites’ distrust of America and their fervent wish for us to be at the mercy of the world. That way we can be nice players in the global community. That way things can become “equitable.”
“This,” former Sen. Jim DeMint wrote last week, “is a design feature, not a flaw of the socialists’ plans. They want us dependent on others. [The] Socialist left doesn’t believe in borders, sovereignty, independence or the American way of life.”
It’s why they hated America First then, and it’s why they’re America Last now. They won’t stop — they’re committed. So long as we are strong, they cannot win. But there’s a snag in their plan, and it’s that we are a strong people, often united, who can once again be healed.
You can see it in the Americans who donated more than $30 million to Barstool Sports’ fund for businesses damaged by coronavirus lockdowns.
You can see it in the joy of Olympian Tamyra Mensah-Stock, who after winning a gold medal used her moment to say how much she loved living in America. “I went into a trance and God just spoke through me,” she later said. “I know there’s a lot of negativity going on, and I just want to enlighten people of my feelings to spread positivity, and it happened.”
And you can see it in the crowds of people all over the country who are turning out to demand that their public schools be kept free of mind-destroying racist poison.
In Loudoun Country, Virginia, hundreds of parents turned out, and the terrified school board declared a riot rather than face them.
In Philadelphia, a Chinese immigrant mother compared the new race politics to the Cultural Revolution she remembered in China, the one where students were taught to hate and kill their teachers, their bosses, their religious leaders, and even their parents.
In Florida, there was black mother Keisha King, who pointed out how racist it is to teach any ideology that declares some races to be perpetual oppressors and others to be perpetual victims.
A lot of these folks aren’t very political — they definitely aren’t the same Tea Party activists from a decade ago. These are Americans who don’t want their country to be torn apart by hate. And if we stand with them, and understand what the left is doing and why, we may save this nation yet.
Most Democrats and liberals don’t think about a lot of these things. In reality, only a relatively small cadre of Americans are ideologically compelled to hate this country, hate white people, hate Christians, and hate straight men; but they are a vocal minority, and their voices dominate our society at every single level.
But remember: The Russian Revolution didn’t succeed because the majority of the country took arms against the tsars for Bolshevism; the American Revolution didn’t succeed because a majority of the country fought to overthrow the British and declare independence. In both cases, as in most, loud and fanatically committed minorities changed the world — and it could happen here.
But there are weaknesses: For one, their ideas don’t work, and for another, they habitually overreach. Combined, these two weaknesses might have awakened the American public — and no revolution can succeed without at least the tolerance of the communities from which it is launched.
Evil ideas doomed to fail will fail, but they can destroy whole countries before they do. Let’s not let that happen to us, because our world, our inheritance, and our children’s inheritance is right here, right now — and it needs us if it is to survive.
News of the Times;
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/selco-resolution-of-crisis/
http://www.amerika.org/politics/barack-obamas-birthday-party-the-cdc-and-tupacs-law-of-amerikan-caste/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/breaking-exclusive-chinese-communist-party-cadre-may-already-place-u-s-planned-takeover/
https://www.lawofficer.com/new-jersey-inmate-jerry-crawford-freed-early-covid-charged-murder/
https://neonnettle.com/news/16271-swiss-police-reject-the-great-reset-we-work-for-the-people-not-the-elite-
https://www.westernjournal.com/comes-covid-government-media-need-stop-lying/
https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-08-17-former-cdc-director-science-thuggery-facts-ignored.html#
https://www.lawofficer.com/san-jose-police-arrest-dupree-hornsby-accused-raping-8-year-old-girl/
https://choiceclips.whatfinger.com/2021/08/16/the-truth-about-afghanistan-paul-joseph-watson/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/guessed-obamas-taliban-five-instrumental-overthrow-afghanistan/
https://pjmedia.com/columns/ari-j-kaufman/2021/08/12/what-did-san-francisco-expect-when-it-elected-the-progeny-of-of-militant-marxist-terrorists-n1468973
https://www.persuasion.community/p/when-therapists-become-activists
https://www.foxnews.com/us/teacher-utah-trump-video-no-longer-employed
https://pjmedia.com/columns/lincolnbrown/2021/08/19/dear-leftists-i-hope-you-cant-live-with-yourselves-n1470878
https://lidblog.com/wheres-kamala-afghan-women/
Not?
Us?
The late actor Adam West once recalled having sex with eight women at one time in the Sixties.
Done her, done her, done her, done her, done her, done her, done her, done her, Batmaaaaan!
*.*
I love watching the Olympics and comparing my performance to the athletes.
Recently, I watched the Triathlon and in 2 hours they swam a mile, cycled 28 miles and ran 6 miles.
Armatures; in that time I managed to drink a bottle of wine and eat a whole family bag of Doritos.
*.*
A CNN reporter walks into a neighborhood tavern and is about to order a drink when he sees a guy at the end of the bar wearing a "make america great again" hat. It didn't take an Einstein to know the guy was a Donald Trump supporter.
The CNN guy shouts over to the bartender, loudly enough that everyone in the bar could hear, "drinks for everyone in here, bartender, except for that Trump supporter."
After the drinks were handed out the Trump guy gives the CNN guy a big smile, waves at him and says, in an equally loud voice, "Thank you!"
This infuriates the CNN reporter. So he once again loudly orders drinks for everyone except the guy wearing the Trump hat. As before, this doesn't seem to bother the Trump guy. He just continues to smile and again yells, "Thank you!"
So the CNN guy again loudly orders drinks for everyone except the Trump guy. And again the Trump guy just smiles and yells back, "Thank you!"
At that point the aggravated CNN reporter asks the bartender, "What the hell is the matter with that Trump supporter? I've ordered three rounds of drinks for everyone in the bar but him and all the silly ass does is smile and thank me. Is he nuts?"
"Nope," replies the bartender. "He owns the place."
*.*
My mother-in-law is coming over.
I had to clear out half our wardrobe so she has a place to hang upside down and sleep.
*.*
What do you call a nervous javelin thrower?
Shakespeare.
Quote of the Times;
Only the sick governing elites can look you in the eye with a straight face and force experimental injections on you because masks didn’t work while simultaneously forcing masks on you because the injections didn’t work. – Horowitz
Link of the Times;
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/us-media-goes-full-pravda-not-one-single-mainstream-outlet-reports-presidents-naked-son-hooker-complaining-russians-stealing-laptop-blackmail/
Issue of the Times;
Why Don’t They Believe Us? by Konstantin Kisin
You’re struggling to understand where all this vaccine hesitancy comes from. Let me help you.
Imagine you’re a normal person. The year is 2016. Rightly or wrongly, you believe most of what you see in the media. You believe polls are broadly reflective of public opinion. You believe doctors and scientists are trustworthy and independent. You’re a decent, reasonable person who follows the rules and trusts the authorities.
Imagine your shock, then, when Brexit, which you were assured couldn’t happen because it was a fringe movement led by racists for racists, happens. The polls, which widely predicted it wouldn’t happen, were wrong. The experts and pundits who told you day after day that it wouldn’t happen were also wrong. “Oh well,” you say, “these things happen.”
Imagine that soon after Brexit, Donald Trump is running for president. You are told by the most trustworthy media outlets that he is going to lose. Some experts say his opponent has a 99% chance of winning. Imagine waking up the morning after the election to discover that the pollsters, experts, and politicians you still trusted were wrong again. Now the racist monster who you were told would never get near the White House is the leader of the free world.
“How did this happen?” you ask yourself. How could everyone I rely on for good information be so wrong? “It was the Russians,” they tell you. “The Russians did Brexit, and they got Trump elected too.” Imagine that for the next three years, day after day, the media and politicians you still trust keep you up to date on this story of Trump’s collusion with Russia. They tell you the how, when, where, and why: the dossiers, the whistleblowers, the peeing prostitutes. Imagine your desperation for things to somehow make sense again.
Here comes the Mueller report. Hard evidence of foreign meddling in Brexit and the 2016 U.S. election is coming to set the world right again.
Imagine your shock, then, when you discover that Brexit had little to do with foreign meddling, and Robert Mueller has very little to report about Trump and the Russians. The collusion story, which dominated your news intake for the better part of three years, slowly dies down. Then it’s gone. No one talks about it anymore. Imagine that bit by bit, you’re starting to feel that the events you were told would not and could not happen not only happened, but happened without some sort of malign interference. Instead, millions of your fellow citizens simply voted for them. In the American case, it turns out many of your fellow citizens who simply voted for Trump come from states that have been devastated by an opioid epidemic enabled by a corrupt system of incentives involving the Food and Drug Administration, doctors, and Big Pharma. (You might want to take note of this. It will come up again later.)
Again, you ask, “How could this happen?” And again, the media outlets and political representatives you’ve always trusted have the answer: racism.
“Your country is racist,” they tell you. If you’re white, this may seem strange to you. Other than a handful of idiots, you’ve never met a racist. If you’re an ethnic minority immigrant like me, this seems even stranger. Why would people in one of the most welcoming, tolerant countries in the world want to convince themselves their country is racist when it’s so obviously not?
But the evidence is right there on your TV screen. Imagine your horror as a famous and beloved gay African American actor is assaulted by MAGA hat-wearing thugs who racially abuse him and put a noose around his neck. In a prime-time interview, he cries while talking about it.
Imagine your outrage as you see news reports of a bunch of MAGA hat-wearing kids from a religious school contemptuously confront a Native American elder. Professional, adult commentators on TV tell you the kid has a “punchable face,” and while you abhor violence, it’s hard to disagree. Imagine that for days you watch coverage of these events, with expert after expert, pundit after pundit, sharing and fueling your outrage. Maybe your country really is racist. Maybe you’re racist. Were you always just blind?
Imagine that soon after, however, the Jussie Smollett story turns out to be an attention-seeking hoax: He made it all up. Imagine you also quickly discover that the Native American elder was the one who confronted the kids, and not the other way around. “If this is such a racist country,” you ask yourself, “why would they need to make up stories of racism?” As you ponder this, you remember that for years now, you’ve been expected to go along with other, more elaborate make-believe stories.
You’re expected to understand that gender is not as binary as school, your eyes, and your own experience have led you to believe. Whatever you learned about biology growing up is not only wrong, it’s pathological and harmful, according to the American Psychological Association. You no longer know how many genders you’re expected to be able to recognize. You do know that asking questions is dangerous.
Imagine that you still want to believe the experts and the commentators, but now that requires you to believe your country is racist, that men are bad, and that gender is a social construct, which is an idea you still don’t really understand.
It’s at this point that a pandemic breaks out in China.
You are initially unconcerned, but as terrifying scenes increasingly emerge from Italy and other countries closer to home, it is clear that something big is happening. You watch nervously as politicians give press conference after press conference, flanked by experts, to explain the situation.
President Trump shuts down travel to the United States from China. He has been widely condemned as a racist repeatedly in the past, and the same explanation is given this time. It’s not just Americans who tell you Trump is racist for calling a virus that emerged in China a “Chinese virus.” In response, the mayor of Florence advises Italian citizens to fight Trump’s anti-Chinese bigotry by “hugging a Chinese person.” Shortly after, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the most respected and powerful Democrats in the country, visits Chinatown in San Francisco to explain that “there’s no reason tourists or locals should be staying away from the area because of coronavirus concerns.”
“Thank God there are some sensible, nonracist people who aren’t overreacting,” you say to yourself. Imagine watching as Trump doubles down on his racism by claiming the virus may have come from a lab in Wuhan. “Nonsense,” you think. You’re more concerned with how best to protect yourself and your family from this deadly disease than with its origins at this point anyway. You consider buying surgical masks, or using homemade ones—you’ve seen visitors and tourists from Asian countries wear them, and they’ve been through things like this before, so maybe it’s best to follow their lead.
But the country’s chief medical experts tell you not to wear masks, and to focus on washing your hands instead. As lockdowns are introduced around the world, you diligently follow all the rules. You stay at home. You only go out once, and live off savings or government grants. You do your best to keep your hands clean, to not touch other surfaces that other people touch. Some political representatives make the solemn decision to shut down beaches, parks, and playgrounds, encouraging everyone to stay indoors.
You are proud to be doing your part. Thanks to you and millions of your fellow citizens, the first wave of the pandemic overwhelms certain hot spots, but it does not devastate the health care system at a national level. While thousands sadly die, you’ve helped to protect those around you.
Imagine your confusion as the same people who spent three months telling you not only that masks don’t work, but that there are several reasons you shouldn’t wear or purchase them, suddenly introduce mask mandates. We’re “following the science,” they tell you. This seems to make little sense, but a pandemic is no time for questions. And who knows, maybe our understanding of the science evolved?
As you cautiously go to the supermarket, you notice that masks have made people less likely to socially distance. You remember reading somewhere that bicycle helmets work similarly: They give the wearer more confidence, and the result is often more accidents and injuries, not fewer. “Silly people,” you say to yourself. “If only they would follow the experts.”
You turn on your TV and learn that shoppers at your local supermarket aren’t the only ones who have been ignoring the rules. Nancy Pelosi arranged for a salon, shutdown by government decree, to open privately for her—then publicly blamed the business owner for violating the lockdown. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is seen eating dinner at one of the most expensive restaurants in America with a large group of unmasked people indoors. In the U.K., Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist whose projections were used as the basis for lockdowns, appears to have broken his own rules to get some action with his married lover. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, drove halfway across the country to ensure he had a better place to isolate. The journalists who berate him for this are later found to have attended an unmasked, indoor birthday party in breach of the rules. The lockdowns continue.
Then a man is killed in Minneapolis by a police officer arresting him for a petty crime. The man is African American. The officer is white. The arrest and murder are captured on video, which quickly goes viral around the world. Imagine your horror as you watch an officer of the law kneel on another man’s neck until he passes out and later dies. “This is disgusting,” you say to yourself. “I hope they throw the book at him.” Overnight, a huge campaign for racial justice springs up around the world.
No one explains what racism had to do with the incident, but they don’t need to. As you know by now, the West is racist, America is racist, and police are racist. Therefore any time a crime has a white perpetrator and an African American victim, there is only one possible motive. The fact that an identical incident led to the death of a white man named Tony Timpa in Dallas in August 2016 is never mentioned for context.
While the lockdown rules remain in place, the protests against injustice spill out into public spaces. Tens of thousands of people crowd into the streets of major cities. Few of them wear masks, and social distancing is nonexistent. Clashes with police ensue, and in the United States, protesters loot stores, destroy businesses, attack residents, and start fires. A retired African American police officer from St. Louis named David Dorn is among dozens of people who are murdered in the chaos.
The media describes these events as “mostly peaceful protests,” as broadcast reporters stand in front of burning buildings. After months of harsh restrictions, the media and political class offer no criticism of protests that violate every element of lockdown policy. After months of telling you to stay at home to avoid spreading COVID, doctors explain that rather than being a potential form of super spreading, “protest is a profound public health intervention.”
Big tech companies go into overdrive to stop the spread of what they call disinformation. Alternative points of view regarding the efficacy of masks and lockdowns, as well as the origins of the virus itself, are increasingly blocked, flagged, and censored. Attempts to discuss the negative impacts of lockdowns on health and mental well-being, especially that of children barred from going to school, are suppressed. As the year runs on, with a pivotal U.S. election looming, Trump promises a huge push to develop a vaccine. Then-Sen. Kamala Harris, running for vice president, says that if Trump advised people to take a vaccine, she wouldn’t take it.
On the eve of the election, a major media outlet releases a damaging report about Hunter Biden, son of presidential candidate Joe Biden. The story alleges corruption that may implicate his father, as well as drug use, paying for prostitutes, and more. Twitter and other social media platforms immediately prevent the story from being shared. The media lines up commentators to claim the story was, yet again, “Russian disinformation.” Once Hunter’s father wins the election, it becomes clear that several key elements of the story are likely accurate, and the laptop from which the information was recovered is not in fact a Russian decoy, but Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Meanwhile, in the U.K., the publicly available number of COVID patients and deaths nationwide turns out to have been inaccurate. For some time, any British citizen who died at any point for any reason after having tested positive for COVID was counted as dying from COVID, even if it was from a car crash. The official figure is later revised again. The number of people who are in hospital because of COVID also turns out to be incorrect.
Now that a bigot is no longer president of the United States, closing national borders to visitors from other countries is no longer considered xenophobic. In fact, it is widely advocated in the media. Likewise, it is no longer considered racist to detain people at the border, to put them in holding cells, to deport them, or to simply turn them away.
The supposedly racist conspiracy theory that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan is now also open for discussion. It even looks like the most credible explanation of the origins of the virus. Imagine your horror as you learn that the reason thousands of people died in the first wave of the pandemic was that elderly patients with COVID were allowed, and sometimes compelled, to be released back into nursing homes. In fact, it was a personal decision by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, brother of CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. Gov. Cuomo’s publisher later suspends promotion of a book he wrote in the meantime. It’s about his leadership during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Texas and Florida, which largely remained open and avoided draconian lockdowns, seem to have made out OK. Kids have been going to school, businesses have stayed open. You look at COVID death rates by state, and neither Florida nor Texas cracks the top half.
It is at this point that vaccines become the main focus of government policy and media commentary.
The same people who told you Brexit would never happen, that Trump would never win, that when he did win it was because of Russian collusion but also because of racism, that you must follow lockdowns while they don’t, that masks don’t work, that masks do work, that social justice protests during pandemic lockdowns are a form of “health intervention,” that ransacking African American communities in the name of fighting racism is a “mostly peaceful” form of protest, that poor and underserved children locked out of shuttered schools are “still learning,” that Jussie Smollett was a victim of a hate crime, that men are toxic, that there is an infinite number of genders, that COVID couldn’t have come from a lab until maybe it did, that closing borders is racist until maybe it isn’t, that you shouldn’t take Trump’s vaccine, that you must take the vaccine developed during the Trump administration, that Andrew Cuomo is a great leader, that Andrew Cuomo is a granny killer, that the number of COVID deaths is one thing and then another … are the same people telling you now that the vaccine is safe, that you must take it, and that if you don’t, you will be a second-class citizen.
Understand vaccine hesitancy now?
News of the Times;
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/i-was-never-evil-monster-until-you-decided-i-was
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/07/federal-charges-dropped-against-iu-phd-student-accused-of-spying-for-chinese-government/
https://www.wnd.com/2021/08/shock-executive-order-greenlights-quarantines-involuntary-commitment-amid-covid-fears/
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vaccinated-people-may-play-key-role-in-aiding-evolution-of-more-dangerous-covid-variants-study-says/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/lied-vindman-reveals-memoir-whistleblower-trump-sham-impeachment-testified-oath-wasnt-whisteblower/
https://welovetrump.com/2020/12/19/video-resurfaces-of-joe-biden-admitting-in-2007-they-can-manipulate-the-voting-machines/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/jack-dunphy/2021/08/06/in-progressive-washington-state-criminal-justice-reform-only-a-criminal-could-love-n1467754
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fveA7E1wms4
https://www.waynedupree.com/2021/08/ted-cruz-schumer-election-bill/
https://freedomfirstnetwork.com/2021/08/denmark-abolishes-all-corona-measures
https://townhall.com/columnists/willalexander/2021/08/09/woke-politics-destroyed-the-marine-corps-i-knew-n2593790
https://dailycaller.com/2021/08/09/piers-morgan-andrew-cuomo-a-fork-tongued-charlatan-sleazeball-soared-gold-medal-levels-hypocrisy/
https://www.8newsnow.com/news/college-professor-suspected-of-setting-7-fires-in-california/
https://resistthemainstream.org/former-councilman-wife-arrested-for-voter-registration-fraud-perjury/
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/whopping-2-8-tons-of-meth-fentanyl-seized-in-california_3943267.html
Done her, done her, done her, done her, done her, done her, done her, done her, Batmaaaaan!
*.*
I love watching the Olympics and comparing my performance to the athletes.
Recently, I watched the Triathlon and in 2 hours they swam a mile, cycled 28 miles and ran 6 miles.
Armatures; in that time I managed to drink a bottle of wine and eat a whole family bag of Doritos.
*.*
A CNN reporter walks into a neighborhood tavern and is about to order a drink when he sees a guy at the end of the bar wearing a "make america great again" hat. It didn't take an Einstein to know the guy was a Donald Trump supporter.
The CNN guy shouts over to the bartender, loudly enough that everyone in the bar could hear, "drinks for everyone in here, bartender, except for that Trump supporter."
After the drinks were handed out the Trump guy gives the CNN guy a big smile, waves at him and says, in an equally loud voice, "Thank you!"
This infuriates the CNN reporter. So he once again loudly orders drinks for everyone except the guy wearing the Trump hat. As before, this doesn't seem to bother the Trump guy. He just continues to smile and again yells, "Thank you!"
So the CNN guy again loudly orders drinks for everyone except the Trump guy. And again the Trump guy just smiles and yells back, "Thank you!"
At that point the aggravated CNN reporter asks the bartender, "What the hell is the matter with that Trump supporter? I've ordered three rounds of drinks for everyone in the bar but him and all the silly ass does is smile and thank me. Is he nuts?"
"Nope," replies the bartender. "He owns the place."
*.*
My mother-in-law is coming over.
I had to clear out half our wardrobe so she has a place to hang upside down and sleep.
*.*
What do you call a nervous javelin thrower?
Shakespeare.
Quote of the Times;
Only the sick governing elites can look you in the eye with a straight face and force experimental injections on you because masks didn’t work while simultaneously forcing masks on you because the injections didn’t work. – Horowitz
Link of the Times;
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/us-media-goes-full-pravda-not-one-single-mainstream-outlet-reports-presidents-naked-son-hooker-complaining-russians-stealing-laptop-blackmail/
Issue of the Times;
Why Don’t They Believe Us? by Konstantin Kisin
You’re struggling to understand where all this vaccine hesitancy comes from. Let me help you.
Imagine you’re a normal person. The year is 2016. Rightly or wrongly, you believe most of what you see in the media. You believe polls are broadly reflective of public opinion. You believe doctors and scientists are trustworthy and independent. You’re a decent, reasonable person who follows the rules and trusts the authorities.
Imagine your shock, then, when Brexit, which you were assured couldn’t happen because it was a fringe movement led by racists for racists, happens. The polls, which widely predicted it wouldn’t happen, were wrong. The experts and pundits who told you day after day that it wouldn’t happen were also wrong. “Oh well,” you say, “these things happen.”
Imagine that soon after Brexit, Donald Trump is running for president. You are told by the most trustworthy media outlets that he is going to lose. Some experts say his opponent has a 99% chance of winning. Imagine waking up the morning after the election to discover that the pollsters, experts, and politicians you still trusted were wrong again. Now the racist monster who you were told would never get near the White House is the leader of the free world.
“How did this happen?” you ask yourself. How could everyone I rely on for good information be so wrong? “It was the Russians,” they tell you. “The Russians did Brexit, and they got Trump elected too.” Imagine that for the next three years, day after day, the media and politicians you still trust keep you up to date on this story of Trump’s collusion with Russia. They tell you the how, when, where, and why: the dossiers, the whistleblowers, the peeing prostitutes. Imagine your desperation for things to somehow make sense again.
Here comes the Mueller report. Hard evidence of foreign meddling in Brexit and the 2016 U.S. election is coming to set the world right again.
Imagine your shock, then, when you discover that Brexit had little to do with foreign meddling, and Robert Mueller has very little to report about Trump and the Russians. The collusion story, which dominated your news intake for the better part of three years, slowly dies down. Then it’s gone. No one talks about it anymore. Imagine that bit by bit, you’re starting to feel that the events you were told would not and could not happen not only happened, but happened without some sort of malign interference. Instead, millions of your fellow citizens simply voted for them. In the American case, it turns out many of your fellow citizens who simply voted for Trump come from states that have been devastated by an opioid epidemic enabled by a corrupt system of incentives involving the Food and Drug Administration, doctors, and Big Pharma. (You might want to take note of this. It will come up again later.)
Again, you ask, “How could this happen?” And again, the media outlets and political representatives you’ve always trusted have the answer: racism.
“Your country is racist,” they tell you. If you’re white, this may seem strange to you. Other than a handful of idiots, you’ve never met a racist. If you’re an ethnic minority immigrant like me, this seems even stranger. Why would people in one of the most welcoming, tolerant countries in the world want to convince themselves their country is racist when it’s so obviously not?
But the evidence is right there on your TV screen. Imagine your horror as a famous and beloved gay African American actor is assaulted by MAGA hat-wearing thugs who racially abuse him and put a noose around his neck. In a prime-time interview, he cries while talking about it.
Imagine your outrage as you see news reports of a bunch of MAGA hat-wearing kids from a religious school contemptuously confront a Native American elder. Professional, adult commentators on TV tell you the kid has a “punchable face,” and while you abhor violence, it’s hard to disagree. Imagine that for days you watch coverage of these events, with expert after expert, pundit after pundit, sharing and fueling your outrage. Maybe your country really is racist. Maybe you’re racist. Were you always just blind?
Imagine that soon after, however, the Jussie Smollett story turns out to be an attention-seeking hoax: He made it all up. Imagine you also quickly discover that the Native American elder was the one who confronted the kids, and not the other way around. “If this is such a racist country,” you ask yourself, “why would they need to make up stories of racism?” As you ponder this, you remember that for years now, you’ve been expected to go along with other, more elaborate make-believe stories.
You’re expected to understand that gender is not as binary as school, your eyes, and your own experience have led you to believe. Whatever you learned about biology growing up is not only wrong, it’s pathological and harmful, according to the American Psychological Association. You no longer know how many genders you’re expected to be able to recognize. You do know that asking questions is dangerous.
Imagine that you still want to believe the experts and the commentators, but now that requires you to believe your country is racist, that men are bad, and that gender is a social construct, which is an idea you still don’t really understand.
It’s at this point that a pandemic breaks out in China.
You are initially unconcerned, but as terrifying scenes increasingly emerge from Italy and other countries closer to home, it is clear that something big is happening. You watch nervously as politicians give press conference after press conference, flanked by experts, to explain the situation.
President Trump shuts down travel to the United States from China. He has been widely condemned as a racist repeatedly in the past, and the same explanation is given this time. It’s not just Americans who tell you Trump is racist for calling a virus that emerged in China a “Chinese virus.” In response, the mayor of Florence advises Italian citizens to fight Trump’s anti-Chinese bigotry by “hugging a Chinese person.” Shortly after, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the most respected and powerful Democrats in the country, visits Chinatown in San Francisco to explain that “there’s no reason tourists or locals should be staying away from the area because of coronavirus concerns.”
“Thank God there are some sensible, nonracist people who aren’t overreacting,” you say to yourself. Imagine watching as Trump doubles down on his racism by claiming the virus may have come from a lab in Wuhan. “Nonsense,” you think. You’re more concerned with how best to protect yourself and your family from this deadly disease than with its origins at this point anyway. You consider buying surgical masks, or using homemade ones—you’ve seen visitors and tourists from Asian countries wear them, and they’ve been through things like this before, so maybe it’s best to follow their lead.
But the country’s chief medical experts tell you not to wear masks, and to focus on washing your hands instead. As lockdowns are introduced around the world, you diligently follow all the rules. You stay at home. You only go out once, and live off savings or government grants. You do your best to keep your hands clean, to not touch other surfaces that other people touch. Some political representatives make the solemn decision to shut down beaches, parks, and playgrounds, encouraging everyone to stay indoors.
You are proud to be doing your part. Thanks to you and millions of your fellow citizens, the first wave of the pandemic overwhelms certain hot spots, but it does not devastate the health care system at a national level. While thousands sadly die, you’ve helped to protect those around you.
Imagine your confusion as the same people who spent three months telling you not only that masks don’t work, but that there are several reasons you shouldn’t wear or purchase them, suddenly introduce mask mandates. We’re “following the science,” they tell you. This seems to make little sense, but a pandemic is no time for questions. And who knows, maybe our understanding of the science evolved?
As you cautiously go to the supermarket, you notice that masks have made people less likely to socially distance. You remember reading somewhere that bicycle helmets work similarly: They give the wearer more confidence, and the result is often more accidents and injuries, not fewer. “Silly people,” you say to yourself. “If only they would follow the experts.”
You turn on your TV and learn that shoppers at your local supermarket aren’t the only ones who have been ignoring the rules. Nancy Pelosi arranged for a salon, shutdown by government decree, to open privately for her—then publicly blamed the business owner for violating the lockdown. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is seen eating dinner at one of the most expensive restaurants in America with a large group of unmasked people indoors. In the U.K., Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist whose projections were used as the basis for lockdowns, appears to have broken his own rules to get some action with his married lover. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, drove halfway across the country to ensure he had a better place to isolate. The journalists who berate him for this are later found to have attended an unmasked, indoor birthday party in breach of the rules. The lockdowns continue.
Then a man is killed in Minneapolis by a police officer arresting him for a petty crime. The man is African American. The officer is white. The arrest and murder are captured on video, which quickly goes viral around the world. Imagine your horror as you watch an officer of the law kneel on another man’s neck until he passes out and later dies. “This is disgusting,” you say to yourself. “I hope they throw the book at him.” Overnight, a huge campaign for racial justice springs up around the world.
No one explains what racism had to do with the incident, but they don’t need to. As you know by now, the West is racist, America is racist, and police are racist. Therefore any time a crime has a white perpetrator and an African American victim, there is only one possible motive. The fact that an identical incident led to the death of a white man named Tony Timpa in Dallas in August 2016 is never mentioned for context.
While the lockdown rules remain in place, the protests against injustice spill out into public spaces. Tens of thousands of people crowd into the streets of major cities. Few of them wear masks, and social distancing is nonexistent. Clashes with police ensue, and in the United States, protesters loot stores, destroy businesses, attack residents, and start fires. A retired African American police officer from St. Louis named David Dorn is among dozens of people who are murdered in the chaos.
The media describes these events as “mostly peaceful protests,” as broadcast reporters stand in front of burning buildings. After months of harsh restrictions, the media and political class offer no criticism of protests that violate every element of lockdown policy. After months of telling you to stay at home to avoid spreading COVID, doctors explain that rather than being a potential form of super spreading, “protest is a profound public health intervention.”
Big tech companies go into overdrive to stop the spread of what they call disinformation. Alternative points of view regarding the efficacy of masks and lockdowns, as well as the origins of the virus itself, are increasingly blocked, flagged, and censored. Attempts to discuss the negative impacts of lockdowns on health and mental well-being, especially that of children barred from going to school, are suppressed. As the year runs on, with a pivotal U.S. election looming, Trump promises a huge push to develop a vaccine. Then-Sen. Kamala Harris, running for vice president, says that if Trump advised people to take a vaccine, she wouldn’t take it.
On the eve of the election, a major media outlet releases a damaging report about Hunter Biden, son of presidential candidate Joe Biden. The story alleges corruption that may implicate his father, as well as drug use, paying for prostitutes, and more. Twitter and other social media platforms immediately prevent the story from being shared. The media lines up commentators to claim the story was, yet again, “Russian disinformation.” Once Hunter’s father wins the election, it becomes clear that several key elements of the story are likely accurate, and the laptop from which the information was recovered is not in fact a Russian decoy, but Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Meanwhile, in the U.K., the publicly available number of COVID patients and deaths nationwide turns out to have been inaccurate. For some time, any British citizen who died at any point for any reason after having tested positive for COVID was counted as dying from COVID, even if it was from a car crash. The official figure is later revised again. The number of people who are in hospital because of COVID also turns out to be incorrect.
Now that a bigot is no longer president of the United States, closing national borders to visitors from other countries is no longer considered xenophobic. In fact, it is widely advocated in the media. Likewise, it is no longer considered racist to detain people at the border, to put them in holding cells, to deport them, or to simply turn them away.
The supposedly racist conspiracy theory that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan is now also open for discussion. It even looks like the most credible explanation of the origins of the virus. Imagine your horror as you learn that the reason thousands of people died in the first wave of the pandemic was that elderly patients with COVID were allowed, and sometimes compelled, to be released back into nursing homes. In fact, it was a personal decision by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, brother of CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. Gov. Cuomo’s publisher later suspends promotion of a book he wrote in the meantime. It’s about his leadership during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Texas and Florida, which largely remained open and avoided draconian lockdowns, seem to have made out OK. Kids have been going to school, businesses have stayed open. You look at COVID death rates by state, and neither Florida nor Texas cracks the top half.
It is at this point that vaccines become the main focus of government policy and media commentary.
The same people who told you Brexit would never happen, that Trump would never win, that when he did win it was because of Russian collusion but also because of racism, that you must follow lockdowns while they don’t, that masks don’t work, that masks do work, that social justice protests during pandemic lockdowns are a form of “health intervention,” that ransacking African American communities in the name of fighting racism is a “mostly peaceful” form of protest, that poor and underserved children locked out of shuttered schools are “still learning,” that Jussie Smollett was a victim of a hate crime, that men are toxic, that there is an infinite number of genders, that COVID couldn’t have come from a lab until maybe it did, that closing borders is racist until maybe it isn’t, that you shouldn’t take Trump’s vaccine, that you must take the vaccine developed during the Trump administration, that Andrew Cuomo is a great leader, that Andrew Cuomo is a granny killer, that the number of COVID deaths is one thing and then another … are the same people telling you now that the vaccine is safe, that you must take it, and that if you don’t, you will be a second-class citizen.
Understand vaccine hesitancy now?
News of the Times;
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/i-was-never-evil-monster-until-you-decided-i-was
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/07/federal-charges-dropped-against-iu-phd-student-accused-of-spying-for-chinese-government/
https://www.wnd.com/2021/08/shock-executive-order-greenlights-quarantines-involuntary-commitment-amid-covid-fears/
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vaccinated-people-may-play-key-role-in-aiding-evolution-of-more-dangerous-covid-variants-study-says/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/lied-vindman-reveals-memoir-whistleblower-trump-sham-impeachment-testified-oath-wasnt-whisteblower/
https://welovetrump.com/2020/12/19/video-resurfaces-of-joe-biden-admitting-in-2007-they-can-manipulate-the-voting-machines/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/jack-dunphy/2021/08/06/in-progressive-washington-state-criminal-justice-reform-only-a-criminal-could-love-n1467754
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fveA7E1wms4
https://www.waynedupree.com/2021/08/ted-cruz-schumer-election-bill/
https://freedomfirstnetwork.com/2021/08/denmark-abolishes-all-corona-measures
https://townhall.com/columnists/willalexander/2021/08/09/woke-politics-destroyed-the-marine-corps-i-knew-n2593790
https://dailycaller.com/2021/08/09/piers-morgan-andrew-cuomo-a-fork-tongued-charlatan-sleazeball-soared-gold-medal-levels-hypocrisy/
https://www.8newsnow.com/news/college-professor-suspected-of-setting-7-fires-in-california/
https://resistthemainstream.org/former-councilman-wife-arrested-for-voter-registration-fraud-perjury/
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/whopping-2-8-tons-of-meth-fentanyl-seized-in-california_3943267.html
Hagerty?
“Your underwear is much too tight and very revealing,” I said to my wife.
"Wear your own then”, she replied.
*.*
What's the difference between complete and finished?
If you marry the right woman, you are 'complete.'
If you marry the wrong woman, you are 'finished.'
And, if the right one catches you with the wrong one, you are 'completely finished.'
*.*
A man running a little behind schedule arrives at the cinema, goes in to watch the movie that has already started, and as his eyes adjust to the darkness, he is surprised to see a dog sitting beside its master in the row ahead, intently watching the movie.
It even seemed to be enjoying the movie: wagging its tail in the happy bits, drooping its ears at the sad bits, and hiding its eyes with its paws at the scary bits.
After the movie, the man approaches the dog's owner, "Wow, your dog really seemed to enjoy the movie. I'm amazed!"
"Yes, I can't believe it myself," came the reply. "He hated the book."
*.*
I finally did it, I bought a pair of shoes with Memory Foam Insoles in them.
No more forgetting why I walked into a room.
*.*
If you really want to piss your girlfriend off, tell her she reminds you of your mom.
After sex.
Quote of the Times;
We don’t have to accept the mandates, lockdowns, and harmful policies of the petty tyrants and feckless bureaucrats. We can simply say no, not again. We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy, and children? Or will we stand together and say, absolutely not. Not this time. I choose freedom. - Senator Rand Paul
Link of the Times;
https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2021/07/27/the-media-produces-derangement-proof-from-new-york-times-readers-n2593145
Issue of the Times;
Hagerty Holds Up the Senate - For Good Reason by Roger Simon
An article in the Washington Times this morning—“GOP Sen. Hagerty blocks Democrats from expediting $1.2T infrastructure bill in late-night session”—made this bald guy’s hair stand on end this morning.
“Sen. Bill Hagerty blocked Democrats from ramming through President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill late Thursday, only hours after the package was found to be not fully paid for as promised.
“Mr. Hagerty, a first-term Republican from Tennessee, refused to sign off on a deal between Democratic and GOP lawmakers to expedite passage of the legislation. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer had worked out an agreement with Republicans to pass a series of amendments to the infrastructure package en masse.
“If successful, the tactic would have all but ended debate on the bill, setting up a final vote for Saturday. To succeed, however, all 100 members of the Senate had to acquiesce, something Mr. Hagerty refused.”
It appears Hagerty had a good reason. A report had just come in from the Congressional Budget Office detailing that the bill, which had been ballyhooed as revenue neutral (i.e., “No new taxes,” as the saying goes), was coming in all of a quarter of trillion dollars short.
Who pays for that? Well, we know. And then there’s the little matter of the astronomical national debt no one’s supposed to care about.
Bravo, Bill Hagerty!
But where were the rest of the supposedly fiscally-responsible Republicans?
Arguing with Hagerty to get him to change his mind, according to Examiner reporter Haris Alic, so they could go off on vacation. It’s the dog days of August, so the beaches were calling, and, besides, Schumer & Co. were going to get their way in the end anyway. The rancid Green New Deal was next.
Yet, Hagerty held his ground. And, to be clear, the freshman senator is no naive freshman, wet behind the ears. He was the ambassador to Japan, not exactly a lightweight job.
This kind of report, assuming it’s accurate, and unfortunately it reads true, makes you wonder about many of your favorite senators talk a good game on television but when the rubber meets the road (hate that expression, but it’s still early in the morning) don’t come through.
I’ll be a nice guy and not name names, but readers can fill in their own. Almost any will do.
When we do see a politician acting, not just talking, with integrity, we’re pleased, but shocked at the same time. We’re not used to it. (This accounts for a lot of the popularity of Gov. Ron DeSantis.)
This all talk and little or no action, maybe some pro-forma flag-waving, approach is the familiar way in politics, both nationally and on a state level and has made many of us cynical about the process.
But it also speaks to our own lack of engagement with that process. If we were all paying more attention, and making our views known—respectfully, but firmly and constantly—more people would be acting like Hagerty.
Start locally.
News of the Times;
https://fee.org/articles/the-aclu-is-no-longer-free-speechs-champion-but-other-groups-are-filling-the-gap/
https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/08/04/americas_re-education_camps_788419.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9859653/Trans-YouTuber-Chris-Chan-39-filed-female-police-housed-women-inmates.html
https://pjmedia.com/columns/lincolnbrown/2021/08/06/womens-prison-dealing-with-wave-of-pregnancies-in-wake-of-californias-compassionate-trans-law-n1467454
https://www.wnd.com/2021/08/twitter-suspends-reporter-points-established-medical-truth-vaccines/
https://creativedestructionmedia.com/news/politics/2021/08/07/breaking-democrat-az-senator-admits-to-pedophilia-could-be-removed-handing-gop-means-to-push-forward-with-election-audit-enforcement/
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-real-story-of-the-central-park
https://nationalfile.com/lgbtq-activist-accused-of-soliciting-sex-from-14-year-old-claims-to-work-for-pelosi-hillary-major-democrats/
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2021/08/04/video-hygiene-theater-aoc-puts-mask-on-for-selfie-takes-it-right-back-off-n1467004
https://healthimpactnews.com/2021/tragic-loss-of-life-following-covid-19-injections/
https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-07-25-cdc-withdraws-fraudulent-pcr-testing-protocol-used-to-falsify-covid-positives.html
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/08/08/the-fourth-branch-of-united-states-government/#more-215066
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/one-man-killed-after-homeless-crowd-attacks-couple-seattle-encampment
https://creativedestructionmedia.com/opinion/2021/08/06/without-an-enforced-honor-code-can-the-military-academies-survive/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2021/08/06/north-korean-defector-robbed-by-black-muggers-as-woke-bystanders-call-her-a-racist-n1467516
"Wear your own then”, she replied.
*.*
What's the difference between complete and finished?
If you marry the right woman, you are 'complete.'
If you marry the wrong woman, you are 'finished.'
And, if the right one catches you with the wrong one, you are 'completely finished.'
*.*
A man running a little behind schedule arrives at the cinema, goes in to watch the movie that has already started, and as his eyes adjust to the darkness, he is surprised to see a dog sitting beside its master in the row ahead, intently watching the movie.
It even seemed to be enjoying the movie: wagging its tail in the happy bits, drooping its ears at the sad bits, and hiding its eyes with its paws at the scary bits.
After the movie, the man approaches the dog's owner, "Wow, your dog really seemed to enjoy the movie. I'm amazed!"
"Yes, I can't believe it myself," came the reply. "He hated the book."
*.*
I finally did it, I bought a pair of shoes with Memory Foam Insoles in them.
No more forgetting why I walked into a room.
*.*
If you really want to piss your girlfriend off, tell her she reminds you of your mom.
After sex.
Quote of the Times;
We don’t have to accept the mandates, lockdowns, and harmful policies of the petty tyrants and feckless bureaucrats. We can simply say no, not again. We are at a moment of truth and a crossroads. Will we allow these people to use fear and propaganda to do further harm to our society, economy, and children? Or will we stand together and say, absolutely not. Not this time. I choose freedom. - Senator Rand Paul
Link of the Times;
https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2021/07/27/the-media-produces-derangement-proof-from-new-york-times-readers-n2593145
Issue of the Times;
Hagerty Holds Up the Senate - For Good Reason by Roger Simon
An article in the Washington Times this morning—“GOP Sen. Hagerty blocks Democrats from expediting $1.2T infrastructure bill in late-night session”—made this bald guy’s hair stand on end this morning.
“Sen. Bill Hagerty blocked Democrats from ramming through President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill late Thursday, only hours after the package was found to be not fully paid for as promised.
“Mr. Hagerty, a first-term Republican from Tennessee, refused to sign off on a deal between Democratic and GOP lawmakers to expedite passage of the legislation. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer had worked out an agreement with Republicans to pass a series of amendments to the infrastructure package en masse.
“If successful, the tactic would have all but ended debate on the bill, setting up a final vote for Saturday. To succeed, however, all 100 members of the Senate had to acquiesce, something Mr. Hagerty refused.”
It appears Hagerty had a good reason. A report had just come in from the Congressional Budget Office detailing that the bill, which had been ballyhooed as revenue neutral (i.e., “No new taxes,” as the saying goes), was coming in all of a quarter of trillion dollars short.
Who pays for that? Well, we know. And then there’s the little matter of the astronomical national debt no one’s supposed to care about.
Bravo, Bill Hagerty!
But where were the rest of the supposedly fiscally-responsible Republicans?
Arguing with Hagerty to get him to change his mind, according to Examiner reporter Haris Alic, so they could go off on vacation. It’s the dog days of August, so the beaches were calling, and, besides, Schumer & Co. were going to get their way in the end anyway. The rancid Green New Deal was next.
Yet, Hagerty held his ground. And, to be clear, the freshman senator is no naive freshman, wet behind the ears. He was the ambassador to Japan, not exactly a lightweight job.
This kind of report, assuming it’s accurate, and unfortunately it reads true, makes you wonder about many of your favorite senators talk a good game on television but when the rubber meets the road (hate that expression, but it’s still early in the morning) don’t come through.
I’ll be a nice guy and not name names, but readers can fill in their own. Almost any will do.
When we do see a politician acting, not just talking, with integrity, we’re pleased, but shocked at the same time. We’re not used to it. (This accounts for a lot of the popularity of Gov. Ron DeSantis.)
This all talk and little or no action, maybe some pro-forma flag-waving, approach is the familiar way in politics, both nationally and on a state level and has made many of us cynical about the process.
But it also speaks to our own lack of engagement with that process. If we were all paying more attention, and making our views known—respectfully, but firmly and constantly—more people would be acting like Hagerty.
Start locally.
News of the Times;
https://fee.org/articles/the-aclu-is-no-longer-free-speechs-champion-but-other-groups-are-filling-the-gap/
https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/08/04/americas_re-education_camps_788419.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9859653/Trans-YouTuber-Chris-Chan-39-filed-female-police-housed-women-inmates.html
https://pjmedia.com/columns/lincolnbrown/2021/08/06/womens-prison-dealing-with-wave-of-pregnancies-in-wake-of-californias-compassionate-trans-law-n1467454
https://www.wnd.com/2021/08/twitter-suspends-reporter-points-established-medical-truth-vaccines/
https://creativedestructionmedia.com/news/politics/2021/08/07/breaking-democrat-az-senator-admits-to-pedophilia-could-be-removed-handing-gop-means-to-push-forward-with-election-audit-enforcement/
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-real-story-of-the-central-park
https://nationalfile.com/lgbtq-activist-accused-of-soliciting-sex-from-14-year-old-claims-to-work-for-pelosi-hillary-major-democrats/
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2021/08/04/video-hygiene-theater-aoc-puts-mask-on-for-selfie-takes-it-right-back-off-n1467004
https://healthimpactnews.com/2021/tragic-loss-of-life-following-covid-19-injections/
https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-07-25-cdc-withdraws-fraudulent-pcr-testing-protocol-used-to-falsify-covid-positives.html
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/08/08/the-fourth-branch-of-united-states-government/#more-215066
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/one-man-killed-after-homeless-crowd-attacks-couple-seattle-encampment
https://creativedestructionmedia.com/opinion/2021/08/06/without-an-enforced-honor-code-can-the-military-academies-survive/
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2021/08/06/north-korean-defector-robbed-by-black-muggers-as-woke-bystanders-call-her-a-racist-n1467516
Low?
British fashion magnet Gok Wan's bisexual brother is doing a book signing and, for every book sold this week, Gok is adding his signature too.
It's Bi Wan, Gok Wan free.
*.*
A man who hadn't attended church in years suddenly began attending faithfully on Sunday mornings instead of going fishing as was his normal habit.
The pastor was highly gratified and at the end of service one morning told him, "How wonderful it makes me feel to see you at services with your good wife!"
"Well, Preacher," said the fisherman, "Quite honestly, it's a matter of choice. I'd much rather hear your sermon than hers."
*.*
Three men were buried under a landslide in China.
They're inside a car when it happened, and miraculously still have cell phone connection.
The first man made a phone call to the police:
"I'm a good citizen and husband, please come save us!"
The police tell him they will come for them in 24 hours
The second man made a phone call to the army:
"Comrade, I served the country as you do, please get me out of here!"
The soldier tell him they will come for them in 12 hours
The final man made a phone call to someone, and made a whisper which the other two man can't hear
Within an hour, the men were dug out and rescued
A group of police officer walks up to the weary men:
"Alright, which one of you said Taiwan is a country?"
*.*
According to sources, beloved North Korean tyrant and lover of doughnuts Kim Jong Un is now attending Columbia University, a prestigious Ivy League school, to learn new brainwashing techniques for his regime.
"I thought I knew all there was to know about communist indoctrination, but I was wrong," said the ruthless dictator to reporters after sitting through a 2-hour lecture on why fidget spinners are a remnant of Western patriarchal oppression. "Your American college professors have this down to an art!"
Kim Jong Un then waddled over to the food court for all-you-can-eat frozen yogurt, whistling a merry tune as he went.
According to experts, Ivy League schools in America boast the world's finest anti-Western propaganda and brainwashing techniques. The North Korean dictator expressed hope that his newfound knowledge would help him make his citizens more robotically obedient.
"We still have our troublemakers, but with these Ivy League techniques, I'll have them eating out of my hand in no time!" he said.
The murderous leader of North Korea plans to go back to his home country and start his own Ivy League school: Kim Jong UNiversity.
*.*
A man inserted an 'ad' in the classifieds: "Wife wanted."
Next day he received hundreds of letters.
They all said the same thing... "You can have mine!"
Quote of the Times;
Private Property No Longer Exists. (Director of the CDC) Rochelle Walensky is now in charge. She has now nationalized American rental properties. Millions of them from Maine to California. Tenants are no longer required to pay their rent. Property owners cannot evict them under any circumstances. Making someone pay to live on your property is now a federal crime. Try it and you can end up in prison with hundred's of thousands in fines. But the property owners are still required to pay the banks their mortgages. There are no moratoriums on mortgages. Why? Because the Banks are massive Democrat donors, and they are getting the treatment that they paid for. – Carlson
Link of the Times;
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/codemonkeyz-bombshell-dominion-whistleblower-speaks-releases-admin-password-proving-remote-access-video/
Issue of the Times;
A Day in the Life of a Low-Information Voter by Mark Ellis
The low-information voter begins his or her day largely unaware that any snippets of news they consume are likely to be spun leftward. Many don’t know any better, but some, with guarded comprehension, don’t want to know any better. They’ve subsisted on a diet of mainstream and Big Tech news for so long that biased reportage has become their media comfort zone.
A glance at Zuckerberg’s feed. Yahoo News. They may prepare for work with the montage of a major network morning show as background: cookbook authors and studies that show transgenderism in rhesus monkeys. The LIV’s sources are completely devoid of solid conservative content.
At their midmorning break they get another dose of fake news they don’t know any better than to believe in. They spent over a year absorbing Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell sound bites to the effect that President Trump had colluded with the Russians. In truth it was the candidate they likely voted for, Hillary Clinton, who had.
At noon the LIV mind remains firmly closed. If they get any news at all, it comes in drips from Facebook’s censorious ministry of truth or Biden-propping major network radio affiliate news directors. They know mostly that Republicans and conservatives “seem” bad (and Donald Trump the worst) and are exposed only to informational items that blatantly or subliminally reinforce that. As the media circus moves in a blur past their coopted consciousness, they register that Liz Cheney is the hero, a brave herald attempting to right the GOP ship.
They hear an elected Democrat suggest that January 6th was worse than 9/11, and feel the force of the statement even while grasping on some level that it is intrinsically false. Yes, they think, while waiting in the drive-thru at Wendy’s, a thorough investigation of Matt Gaetz is warranted. Hunter Biden never makes the feed.
The LIV is never privy to buried media corrections. When a purported white supremacist defacement of a notable African-American’s statue is shown to have been a Jussie Smollett-style hoax, they never get the update, and thus believe there’s a white supremacist living on every block. The LIV is blissful in his/her ignorance, but it may be dawning on the periphery of their minds that Biden’s installment in the White House is a disaster for them and the nation. They’re paying more for pretty much everything, and the school their children attend is experiencing an uptick in immigrant students whose vaccination status is unknown. They’ve been vaccinated, but are keeping a package of disposable masks in the car because they heard George Stephanopoulos warning about “variants.” They go on believing, as they catch headlines while surfing for “COVID guidelines in Scranton restaurants,” that sacrifice is necessary. The small business that provided them with a paycheck and benefits went out of business in August 2020, but they are soldiering on.
Everything has to be better now, doesn’t it, now that the Evil One, the mean one, the heartless one, the racist one, is out of office?
They are hearing what they have been conditioned to hear, lies about everything from January 6th to election integrity. Like jurisdictional courthouses across the land–all the way up to the Supreme Court–they are not interested in delving too deeply, or at all, into what happened on Election Day 2020.
As night falls, unlike committed leftists who glory in the alleged coup, LIVs might experience brief pangs of worry. They’ve heard things through inadvertent backchannels: was the election stolen?
They are not the heart of the new Democrat Socialist Party. Those people have plenty of information, and are looking to control the flow of information. Those people know how bad things are getting, and why it has to get bad: to bring down existentially racist, capitalist America as founded.
No, the low-information voter, content with a faux understanding of the way things are, is a pawn in the game. While there is such a thing as a Republican LIV, Democrat LIVs round out the base of the Democrat Party. Lose them, and Democrats would never win again.
The great Rush Limbaugh often used the term “low-information voter” on his show to describe masses who are only exposed to liberal viewpoints and are thus woefully misinformed and in lazy lockstep with cultural liberalism. They are spoon-fed, undernourished people who have been propagandized into a mode of reactionary anti-Americanism.
Interestingly, unlike confirmed socialists who are ideologically honest, they think they love America, and at the same time may describe themselves as “not really political.” But the vision of this nation they think they love is a media-crafted abomination.
They’re pretty sure they don’t want open borders, but would never vote for a Republican Freedom Caucus member who advocates for sane immigration policy. They regard shills like Chuck Todd as credible journalists. They perceive politicians like Maxine Waters as “out there,” but essentially sympathetic. They hopefully cling to the idea that Biden won, despite mounting evidence the lays the question on every kitchen table in the nation.
They turn away from networks like Newsmax, or radio shows like Hannity, appalled, but left to wonder what would happen if they allowed themselves to take such media in, and consider alternate viewpoints and positions.
The LIV beds down at night with a look-in at the late local news, typically devoid of all but the “progressivism” of hard-left programming directors. Even the weather report is manipulatively laced with sleepy half-truths about climate change.
News of the Times;
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9853429/Third-Capitol-cop-commits-suicide-Officer.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/4th-police-officer-who-was-at-jan-6-capitol-breach-dies-by-suicide_3930825.html
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/june-2021/no-babies-no-more-nazis/
https://www.rt.com/usa/530741-cdc-vaccine-delta-study-masks/
https://www.wnd.com/2021/07/carlson-unmasking-reveals-biden-using-intel-target-political-enemies/
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/teslas-big-battery-fire-highlights-growing-risks-related-lithium-ion-power-storage
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/07/29/republican-staffers-defy-pelosi-maskless-beer-pong-cigars-in-capitol-hallway/
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/10-signs-that-things-are-getting-better-in-america/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/exclusive-second-eye-witness-steps-forward-confirms-capitol-hill-police-killed-trump-supporter-rosanne-boyland-attacked-tried-save-video/
https://summit.news/2021/08/02/paypal-co-founder-warns-financial-giant-is-creating-de-facto-no-buy-list-by-banning-dissidents/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/aoc_in_middle_of_a_packed_crowd_dons_a_mask_when_the_cameras_start_rolling.html
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/03/cuomo-called-for-zero-tolerance-policy-for-sexual-harassment-years-before-investigation-determined-he-sexually-harassed-women/
https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2021/08/03/mo-gov-mike-parson-pardons-mark-and-patricia-mccloskey-of-gun-charges-n420938
https://resistthemainstream.org/metoo-group-helped-cuomo-draft-letter-smearing-accuser-bombshell-report-finds/
https://nationalfile.com/mask-tyrant-nevada-commissioner-tick-segerblom-caught-on-maskless-pub-crawl/
It's Bi Wan, Gok Wan free.
*.*
A man who hadn't attended church in years suddenly began attending faithfully on Sunday mornings instead of going fishing as was his normal habit.
The pastor was highly gratified and at the end of service one morning told him, "How wonderful it makes me feel to see you at services with your good wife!"
"Well, Preacher," said the fisherman, "Quite honestly, it's a matter of choice. I'd much rather hear your sermon than hers."
*.*
Three men were buried under a landslide in China.
They're inside a car when it happened, and miraculously still have cell phone connection.
The first man made a phone call to the police:
"I'm a good citizen and husband, please come save us!"
The police tell him they will come for them in 24 hours
The second man made a phone call to the army:
"Comrade, I served the country as you do, please get me out of here!"
The soldier tell him they will come for them in 12 hours
The final man made a phone call to someone, and made a whisper which the other two man can't hear
Within an hour, the men were dug out and rescued
A group of police officer walks up to the weary men:
"Alright, which one of you said Taiwan is a country?"
*.*
According to sources, beloved North Korean tyrant and lover of doughnuts Kim Jong Un is now attending Columbia University, a prestigious Ivy League school, to learn new brainwashing techniques for his regime.
"I thought I knew all there was to know about communist indoctrination, but I was wrong," said the ruthless dictator to reporters after sitting through a 2-hour lecture on why fidget spinners are a remnant of Western patriarchal oppression. "Your American college professors have this down to an art!"
Kim Jong Un then waddled over to the food court for all-you-can-eat frozen yogurt, whistling a merry tune as he went.
According to experts, Ivy League schools in America boast the world's finest anti-Western propaganda and brainwashing techniques. The North Korean dictator expressed hope that his newfound knowledge would help him make his citizens more robotically obedient.
"We still have our troublemakers, but with these Ivy League techniques, I'll have them eating out of my hand in no time!" he said.
The murderous leader of North Korea plans to go back to his home country and start his own Ivy League school: Kim Jong UNiversity.
*.*
A man inserted an 'ad' in the classifieds: "Wife wanted."
Next day he received hundreds of letters.
They all said the same thing... "You can have mine!"
Quote of the Times;
Private Property No Longer Exists. (Director of the CDC) Rochelle Walensky is now in charge. She has now nationalized American rental properties. Millions of them from Maine to California. Tenants are no longer required to pay their rent. Property owners cannot evict them under any circumstances. Making someone pay to live on your property is now a federal crime. Try it and you can end up in prison with hundred's of thousands in fines. But the property owners are still required to pay the banks their mortgages. There are no moratoriums on mortgages. Why? Because the Banks are massive Democrat donors, and they are getting the treatment that they paid for. – Carlson
Link of the Times;
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/codemonkeyz-bombshell-dominion-whistleblower-speaks-releases-admin-password-proving-remote-access-video/
Issue of the Times;
A Day in the Life of a Low-Information Voter by Mark Ellis
The low-information voter begins his or her day largely unaware that any snippets of news they consume are likely to be spun leftward. Many don’t know any better, but some, with guarded comprehension, don’t want to know any better. They’ve subsisted on a diet of mainstream and Big Tech news for so long that biased reportage has become their media comfort zone.
A glance at Zuckerberg’s feed. Yahoo News. They may prepare for work with the montage of a major network morning show as background: cookbook authors and studies that show transgenderism in rhesus monkeys. The LIV’s sources are completely devoid of solid conservative content.
At their midmorning break they get another dose of fake news they don’t know any better than to believe in. They spent over a year absorbing Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell sound bites to the effect that President Trump had colluded with the Russians. In truth it was the candidate they likely voted for, Hillary Clinton, who had.
At noon the LIV mind remains firmly closed. If they get any news at all, it comes in drips from Facebook’s censorious ministry of truth or Biden-propping major network radio affiliate news directors. They know mostly that Republicans and conservatives “seem” bad (and Donald Trump the worst) and are exposed only to informational items that blatantly or subliminally reinforce that. As the media circus moves in a blur past their coopted consciousness, they register that Liz Cheney is the hero, a brave herald attempting to right the GOP ship.
They hear an elected Democrat suggest that January 6th was worse than 9/11, and feel the force of the statement even while grasping on some level that it is intrinsically false. Yes, they think, while waiting in the drive-thru at Wendy’s, a thorough investigation of Matt Gaetz is warranted. Hunter Biden never makes the feed.
The LIV is never privy to buried media corrections. When a purported white supremacist defacement of a notable African-American’s statue is shown to have been a Jussie Smollett-style hoax, they never get the update, and thus believe there’s a white supremacist living on every block. The LIV is blissful in his/her ignorance, but it may be dawning on the periphery of their minds that Biden’s installment in the White House is a disaster for them and the nation. They’re paying more for pretty much everything, and the school their children attend is experiencing an uptick in immigrant students whose vaccination status is unknown. They’ve been vaccinated, but are keeping a package of disposable masks in the car because they heard George Stephanopoulos warning about “variants.” They go on believing, as they catch headlines while surfing for “COVID guidelines in Scranton restaurants,” that sacrifice is necessary. The small business that provided them with a paycheck and benefits went out of business in August 2020, but they are soldiering on.
Everything has to be better now, doesn’t it, now that the Evil One, the mean one, the heartless one, the racist one, is out of office?
They are hearing what they have been conditioned to hear, lies about everything from January 6th to election integrity. Like jurisdictional courthouses across the land–all the way up to the Supreme Court–they are not interested in delving too deeply, or at all, into what happened on Election Day 2020.
As night falls, unlike committed leftists who glory in the alleged coup, LIVs might experience brief pangs of worry. They’ve heard things through inadvertent backchannels: was the election stolen?
They are not the heart of the new Democrat Socialist Party. Those people have plenty of information, and are looking to control the flow of information. Those people know how bad things are getting, and why it has to get bad: to bring down existentially racist, capitalist America as founded.
No, the low-information voter, content with a faux understanding of the way things are, is a pawn in the game. While there is such a thing as a Republican LIV, Democrat LIVs round out the base of the Democrat Party. Lose them, and Democrats would never win again.
The great Rush Limbaugh often used the term “low-information voter” on his show to describe masses who are only exposed to liberal viewpoints and are thus woefully misinformed and in lazy lockstep with cultural liberalism. They are spoon-fed, undernourished people who have been propagandized into a mode of reactionary anti-Americanism.
Interestingly, unlike confirmed socialists who are ideologically honest, they think they love America, and at the same time may describe themselves as “not really political.” But the vision of this nation they think they love is a media-crafted abomination.
They’re pretty sure they don’t want open borders, but would never vote for a Republican Freedom Caucus member who advocates for sane immigration policy. They regard shills like Chuck Todd as credible journalists. They perceive politicians like Maxine Waters as “out there,” but essentially sympathetic. They hopefully cling to the idea that Biden won, despite mounting evidence the lays the question on every kitchen table in the nation.
They turn away from networks like Newsmax, or radio shows like Hannity, appalled, but left to wonder what would happen if they allowed themselves to take such media in, and consider alternate viewpoints and positions.
The LIV beds down at night with a look-in at the late local news, typically devoid of all but the “progressivism” of hard-left programming directors. Even the weather report is manipulatively laced with sleepy half-truths about climate change.
News of the Times;
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9853429/Third-Capitol-cop-commits-suicide-Officer.html
https://www.theepochtimes.com/4th-police-officer-who-was-at-jan-6-capitol-breach-dies-by-suicide_3930825.html
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/june-2021/no-babies-no-more-nazis/
https://www.rt.com/usa/530741-cdc-vaccine-delta-study-masks/
https://www.wnd.com/2021/07/carlson-unmasking-reveals-biden-using-intel-target-political-enemies/
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/teslas-big-battery-fire-highlights-growing-risks-related-lithium-ion-power-storage
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/07/29/republican-staffers-defy-pelosi-maskless-beer-pong-cigars-in-capitol-hallway/
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/10-signs-that-things-are-getting-better-in-america/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/exclusive-second-eye-witness-steps-forward-confirms-capitol-hill-police-killed-trump-supporter-rosanne-boyland-attacked-tried-save-video/
https://summit.news/2021/08/02/paypal-co-founder-warns-financial-giant-is-creating-de-facto-no-buy-list-by-banning-dissidents/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/aoc_in_middle_of_a_packed_crowd_dons_a_mask_when_the_cameras_start_rolling.html
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/03/cuomo-called-for-zero-tolerance-policy-for-sexual-harassment-years-before-investigation-determined-he-sexually-harassed-women/
https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2021/08/03/mo-gov-mike-parson-pardons-mark-and-patricia-mccloskey-of-gun-charges-n420938
https://resistthemainstream.org/metoo-group-helped-cuomo-draft-letter-smearing-accuser-bombshell-report-finds/
https://nationalfile.com/mask-tyrant-nevada-commissioner-tick-segerblom-caught-on-maskless-pub-crawl/
Fanatics?
I never got along well with my dad.
Kids used to come up to me and say, "My dad can beat up your dad."
I'd just say, "Yeah, when?"
*.*
Front page of BBC News: Man who drowned at beach was amazing, says family.
Clearly not at swimming he wasn't.
*.*
In England, The Labour Party have put the protection of children from Islamic grooming gangs as their top priority.
They've started handing out condoms to Muslim men in Rochdale.
*.*
A local charity had never received a donation from the town’s banker, so the director made a phone call. “Our records show you make $500,000 a year, yet you haven’t given a penny to charity,” the director began. “Wouldn’t you like to help the community?”
The banker replied, “Did your research show that my mother is ill, with extremely expensive medical bills?”
“Um, no,” mumbled the director.
“Or that my brother is unemployed? Or that my sister’s husband left, leaving her broke with four kids?”
“I … I … I had no idea.”
“So,” said the banker, “if I don’t give them any money, why would I give any to you?”
*.*
I don't usually brag about going to expensive places...
But I just left the gas station.
Quote of the Times;
Christopher Columbus going ashore in the Antilles, was struck by the profound well-being of the island Arawak. He called them indios, not because he imagined them to be inhabitants of (which in the fifteenth century was still called Hindustan) but because he recognized that these friendly, generous Taino people, soon to be extinct, lived in blessed harmony with their surroundings - "una gente in Dios, "a People in God. – Means
Link of the Times;
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/most-devastating-video-internet-frontpagemagcom/
Issue of the Times;
Fanatics by Leighton Woodhouse
Politics has become a religion.
It’s not hard to see why wokeness is so frequently compared to a religion. The metaphors are everywhere: the washing of feet, the prostrations, the proclamations of faith, the sacraments, the martyrs, the confessions, the heretics, the hallowed ground, the Original Sin, the evangelism. Last summer’s protests for racial justice often had the look of a religious movement. Many of its practitioners saw it explicitly in those terms. Even the snarky phrase for this moment of mass political enlightenment, “The Great Awokening”, is derived from the name of an early American religious revival.
Like its eighteenth century namesake, our current awokening has arrived at a time of increasing secularization in the United States. While still a comfortable majority, the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian has dropped by double digits in the last decade, while the percentage who are unaffiliated with any religion has risen by nearly ten points. The biggest drop in religiosity by far has been among liberals.
If religion gives meaning to the lives of the faithful, there are a lot more Americans now who lack that meaning than there used to be, and they’re concentrated on the left side of the political spectrum. It’s not difficult to imagine these people seeking the kind of meaning that religion would otherwise have provided them — a sense of belonging to a larger community; a feeling of collective purpose; an affiliation with a temporal reality that transcends the duration of a single human lifespan — in other things. In their politics, for example.
The problem is that politics is, in important ways, the very antithesis of religion, and in a democratic society, the more politics takes on the shape of faith, the more intractable and dysfunctional it becomes. That’s because politics, when put to its proper use, is the search for what disparate groups share in common, and the bargaining over their differences. Religion is practically its inverse; at its root, it’s tribal. And so as our politics have taken on the character of religion, they have become tribal, too.
As a cultural invention of the United States, woke ideology bears a specifically American religious stamp: that of Calvinism. The Calvinists believed in Predestination. From the moment of your birth, they were convinced, you were destined for Heaven or Hell, and you could do nothing over the course of your life to change that. As the German sociologist Max Weber explained in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, this doctrine bred in the Calvinists of the early United States an obsession with discerning who among them was saved and who was damned. They surveilled each other constantly, searching for signs of who did and who did not belong to God’s “elect.” They policed their own behavior relentlessly, guarding against any possible indication, both to themselves and to others, that they stood outside of God’s grace and were hellbound. Desperate to reassure themselves, they became ostentatious in their displays of austerity, humility, the sacrifice of their egos to a higher calling, and other visible signals of their devotion to God. Their lives became a performance of piety and virtuousness, born of constant, pervasive dread.
Nobody believes in Predestination anymore. Many of us don’t believe in God. But the cultural residues of Calvinism and other puritanical Protestant sects remain with us, in our binary moralism, which divides humanity between the virtuous and the damned, in our scrutinizing of ourselves and others for ethical imperfections, and in our use of public shaming to enforce moral conformity. All of these tendencies fit as comfortably into American left-wing social justice culture as they did in right-wing Christian evangelical culture in the 1990s. Liberal Twitter in 2021 is one big digital Calvinist village, everyone trying to out-virtue-signal one another to prove their ever-tenuous membership in an amorphous club of the morally elite, picking over everyone else’s tweets for signs of political heresy, and calling them out to the mob in a desperate attempt to deflect scrutiny from themselves. The same political culture prevails on college campuses, media outlets, and the non-profit industrial complex. Increasingly, it is becoming the norm in Congress.
Weber once wrote that politics is the “strong and slow boring of hard boards” (the phrase from which Matthew Yglesias, who coined “The Great Awokening,” derived the name of his substack). By that he meant it is tedious and incremental, not an activity for those who dream of heroic feats, of quick and radical change, or of utopian outcomes. It is the business of transaction and deal-brokering over profane and parochial interests. It is not the arena for saving souls. But from Obama to Bernie to Trump, a politics of salvation is the bill of goods we’ve been sold. And it’s what the most rabid political partisans have come to expect, whether they’re MAGA or DSA, as politics has come to supplant religion as the way we imagine communities of kinship into being.
In “The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life,” Émile Durkheim, the early 20th century French sociologist, analyzed the patterns of ancient tribal religious rites in order to ascertain the social function of religion. Durkheim focused in particular on the traditional rituals of Australian aboriginal tribes, whose cultures developed largely in an age that predated a modern division of labor. Today we live in an infinitely complex network of relationships of production and exchange. As soon as we get out of bed and make ourselves a cup of coffee, we are relying on the labor of a thousand strangers: the farmers who grew the coffee beans, the shippers who brought them to us, the municipal workers who maintain our supply of water, the plumber who installed our pipes, et cetera. In pre-modern times, by contrast, each individual, along with his or her immediate family members, had to tend to each life-sustaining task by themselves: dig the well, grow the crops, carry the water, build the fire. This meant that although they belonged to a tribe, each tribal member led a fundamentally solitary existence. Aside from self-defense in the event of an invasion, there was no material reason for the mass of individuals in a geographical area to come together as a group, much less to identify themselves with that collective. How, Durkheim wondered, did a society emerge out of this bunch of disconnected individuals living isolated day-to-day lives?
Religious rites and rituals, Durkheim argued, stood in the breach of the absence of bonds of material necessity. The Australian aborigines worshipped the divine by participating in intensely physical rituals, such as long, frenetic dances around bonfires, in the presence of totemic objects. These rituals sent their participants into ecstatic convulsions. Durkheim called this experience of hypnotic group enchantment “collective effervescence.”
While in that state, individual members of the tribe ceased to perceive themselves as individuals. They transcended their mundane sense of selfhood, feeling themselves viscerally connected to one another, on a higher plane of existence. They saw themselves as one. They regarded that realm, that experience of collective being, as the realm of the sacred, and they conferred that sanctity upon the totem, which represented this intangible sacred entity known as the tribe. They worshipped the sacred totem, but in doing so they were really worshipping themselves — their existence as a social collective.
When they returned to their homes, they carried the experience of this transcendental collective existence, this sacred identification with the tribe, with them back to their isolated lives. Over time, the intensity of these emotional attachments would fade, and it would be time to gather again to recreate it anew. This is how religious ritual generated and re-generated, from discrete individuals, the social reality of the tribe.
As societies became larger, denser, and more urbanized, material production and exchange became more complex, and work became specialized. Vast and intricate networks of material interdependency emerged. This division of labor created a material basis for social cohesion; accordingly, the need for religious ritual as a mechanical means of generating the collective dissipated, and modern societies became increasingly secular.
But collective effervescence never vanished entirely. We see it every time chants and costumes and choreographed motion are used to generate a collective spirit, to transform disparate individuals into a unitary group identity. We see it, of course, in churches, but also at football games, political protests, and military marches, at raves, cosplay conventions, Phish shows, Burning Man festivals and Juggalo gatherings. And, I would argue, we see something akin to it in digital format on Twitter.
Over the last year, we have suffered through as profound an experience of mass social isolation as global civilization has ever undergone. Locked down in our homes, we turned to the internet to recreate our stymied lives online. With internet usage jacked up by 40%-100%, we experienced one of the most chaotic periods of political tumult in living memory largely through our computer screens. Trump, pandemic, Black Lives Matter, riots, impeachment, a presidential election, the January 6 “insurrection” — all of this melodrama processed through the polarization-inducing algorithms of Facebook and Twitter. If our politics were already moving toward tribalism, the pandemic turbocharged our velocity along that trajectory.
For the Aboriginal tribes, the ecstatic rituals that engendered in individuals’ minds the consciousness of the collective served to obviate their sense of social isolation. But they also did something else: they allowed tribal members to conceive not just of their in-group, but of their out-group. In a region populated by people who looked, sounded and lived not too dissimilarly from one another, religious rituals forged distinctive social groupings out of demographically uniform populations.
But later religions found other, negative ways to generate the same effect: through prohibition and exile. By regulating social behavior, condemning the heathens and executing the heretics, Christian sects starkly delineated the boundaries of their communities of faith. In so doing, they reified the community as such. By designating who lay outside of it, even by entirely arbitrary standards, they constituted the in-group as a social reality.
It’s a dynamic that’s familiar to anyone who has tested the ever-constricting boundaries of permissible speech on Twitter. By perpetually improvising new, often arbitrary rules of language and belief, ideologues on Twitter generate the in-group of those who willingly abide by those rules by banishing the out-group of those who are either ignorant of the rules or who defy them knowingly. These rules and protocols are sufficiently elaborate and non-intuitive to guarantee that the only people really capable of following them are those who are already intimately acculturated to the particular social milieu from which they stem. Upon those who are in the know is thus conferred a select social status, masquerading as political virtue — not unlike the Calvinists who secured their social prestige by proving their standing among God’s favored by way of ostentatious shows of righteous living and religious conviction. It’s elitism, but it looks like piety.
The Twitter dogpile is the political equivalent of the banishing of the heathens — perhaps not in the gravity of its consequences, but in the function it serves of reproducing the community of the elect. And given the sadistic glee with which so many partake in it, it may also serve as a virtual experience of collective effervescence. We revel in the ritual of casting out the sinner, because it affirms the existence of the Tribe of the Woke, and our membership within it.
Do we actually care whether or not @MissLibra1984 believes that trans women are women, or whether @DonkeyKongNYC is indeed a bootlicker? Is that why we heap scorn upon them — because it does a thing to improve the lives of trans people, or to hold the police accountable? Is it the gratification of protecting the marginalized that makes it so fun to join the mob, pick up a stone and chuck it at the poor sap who didn’t know the rules? Is it in the service of our political principles that we @ some Karen’s employer and demand she be fired from her job? Is it our commitment to creating a better world that inclines us to laugh at her misfortune when we read about it in The Daily Beast? Is she really the asshole? Or are we?
Once upon a time, politics served the purpose of weaving together livable compromises out of divergent interests and values. We didn’t rely on political identities to give our lives meaning. Political parties, factions, and institutions were merely the instrumental means through which we brokered a relatively peaceful co-existence with those who didn’t see eye-to-eye with us. Occasionally, and often heroically, it was the basis upon which we mobilized opinion to annihilate those with truly anti-social agendas. But ultimately, it was the toolset with which we built a practical working peace.
Today, politics is a competition for tribal allegiance, the means by which we proudly declare our intractable differences with others. Like religion, it is an instrument we use to forge communities of kinship with one another, but only by declaring war on those who lie outside of them. It is no longer the basis for co-existence in a pluralist society, but the stick with which we draw our battle lines. It is the domain of sectarian holy war. In a democratic society, it will be the vehicle for our undoing.
News of the Times;
https://americanlookout.com/surprise-hunter-bidens-art-dealer-has-ties-to-china/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/top-democrat-indicted-nm-house-majority-leader-charged-embezzlement-total-may-top-954000/
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/cascade-consequences
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2021/07/26/la-times-maybe-we-shouldnt-follow-californias-example-on-electric-cars-n404705
http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/july/26/the-jan-6th-show-trials-threaten-all-of-us/
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-conservative-case-for-cyberbullying-americas-generals/
https://www.dailywire.com/news/5-times-more-children-died-by-suicide-than-died-from-covid-in-the-uk
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-end-of-merit/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/lightfoot-absolutely-exclude-white-journalists-interviews-again
https://www.thecollegefix.com/harvard-downplays-role-in-no-whites-allowed-music-seminar-sponsored-by-nike/
https://www.commentary.org/noah-rothman/americas-deep-divisions-that-werent/
https://videos.whatfinger.com/2021/07/28/the-truth-about-simone-biles-paul-joseph-watson/
https://coloradopeakpolitics.com/2021/07/26/aurora-officials-wave-magic-wand-to-invalidate-city-charter-provision/
https://bucksexton.com/2021/07/the-cdcs-mask-reversal-is-bull-and-everybody-knows-it/
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/cdc-justified-new-mask-guidance-based-vaccine-study-listed-failing-peer
Kids used to come up to me and say, "My dad can beat up your dad."
I'd just say, "Yeah, when?"
*.*
Front page of BBC News: Man who drowned at beach was amazing, says family.
Clearly not at swimming he wasn't.
*.*
In England, The Labour Party have put the protection of children from Islamic grooming gangs as their top priority.
They've started handing out condoms to Muslim men in Rochdale.
*.*
A local charity had never received a donation from the town’s banker, so the director made a phone call. “Our records show you make $500,000 a year, yet you haven’t given a penny to charity,” the director began. “Wouldn’t you like to help the community?”
The banker replied, “Did your research show that my mother is ill, with extremely expensive medical bills?”
“Um, no,” mumbled the director.
“Or that my brother is unemployed? Or that my sister’s husband left, leaving her broke with four kids?”
“I … I … I had no idea.”
“So,” said the banker, “if I don’t give them any money, why would I give any to you?”
*.*
I don't usually brag about going to expensive places...
But I just left the gas station.
Quote of the Times;
Christopher Columbus going ashore in the Antilles, was struck by the profound well-being of the island Arawak. He called them indios, not because he imagined them to be inhabitants of (which in the fifteenth century was still called Hindustan) but because he recognized that these friendly, generous Taino people, soon to be extinct, lived in blessed harmony with their surroundings - "una gente in Dios, "a People in God. – Means
Link of the Times;
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/most-devastating-video-internet-frontpagemagcom/
Issue of the Times;
Fanatics by Leighton Woodhouse
Politics has become a religion.
It’s not hard to see why wokeness is so frequently compared to a religion. The metaphors are everywhere: the washing of feet, the prostrations, the proclamations of faith, the sacraments, the martyrs, the confessions, the heretics, the hallowed ground, the Original Sin, the evangelism. Last summer’s protests for racial justice often had the look of a religious movement. Many of its practitioners saw it explicitly in those terms. Even the snarky phrase for this moment of mass political enlightenment, “The Great Awokening”, is derived from the name of an early American religious revival.
Like its eighteenth century namesake, our current awokening has arrived at a time of increasing secularization in the United States. While still a comfortable majority, the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian has dropped by double digits in the last decade, while the percentage who are unaffiliated with any religion has risen by nearly ten points. The biggest drop in religiosity by far has been among liberals.
If religion gives meaning to the lives of the faithful, there are a lot more Americans now who lack that meaning than there used to be, and they’re concentrated on the left side of the political spectrum. It’s not difficult to imagine these people seeking the kind of meaning that religion would otherwise have provided them — a sense of belonging to a larger community; a feeling of collective purpose; an affiliation with a temporal reality that transcends the duration of a single human lifespan — in other things. In their politics, for example.
The problem is that politics is, in important ways, the very antithesis of religion, and in a democratic society, the more politics takes on the shape of faith, the more intractable and dysfunctional it becomes. That’s because politics, when put to its proper use, is the search for what disparate groups share in common, and the bargaining over their differences. Religion is practically its inverse; at its root, it’s tribal. And so as our politics have taken on the character of religion, they have become tribal, too.
As a cultural invention of the United States, woke ideology bears a specifically American religious stamp: that of Calvinism. The Calvinists believed in Predestination. From the moment of your birth, they were convinced, you were destined for Heaven or Hell, and you could do nothing over the course of your life to change that. As the German sociologist Max Weber explained in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, this doctrine bred in the Calvinists of the early United States an obsession with discerning who among them was saved and who was damned. They surveilled each other constantly, searching for signs of who did and who did not belong to God’s “elect.” They policed their own behavior relentlessly, guarding against any possible indication, both to themselves and to others, that they stood outside of God’s grace and were hellbound. Desperate to reassure themselves, they became ostentatious in their displays of austerity, humility, the sacrifice of their egos to a higher calling, and other visible signals of their devotion to God. Their lives became a performance of piety and virtuousness, born of constant, pervasive dread.
Nobody believes in Predestination anymore. Many of us don’t believe in God. But the cultural residues of Calvinism and other puritanical Protestant sects remain with us, in our binary moralism, which divides humanity between the virtuous and the damned, in our scrutinizing of ourselves and others for ethical imperfections, and in our use of public shaming to enforce moral conformity. All of these tendencies fit as comfortably into American left-wing social justice culture as they did in right-wing Christian evangelical culture in the 1990s. Liberal Twitter in 2021 is one big digital Calvinist village, everyone trying to out-virtue-signal one another to prove their ever-tenuous membership in an amorphous club of the morally elite, picking over everyone else’s tweets for signs of political heresy, and calling them out to the mob in a desperate attempt to deflect scrutiny from themselves. The same political culture prevails on college campuses, media outlets, and the non-profit industrial complex. Increasingly, it is becoming the norm in Congress.
Weber once wrote that politics is the “strong and slow boring of hard boards” (the phrase from which Matthew Yglesias, who coined “The Great Awokening,” derived the name of his substack). By that he meant it is tedious and incremental, not an activity for those who dream of heroic feats, of quick and radical change, or of utopian outcomes. It is the business of transaction and deal-brokering over profane and parochial interests. It is not the arena for saving souls. But from Obama to Bernie to Trump, a politics of salvation is the bill of goods we’ve been sold. And it’s what the most rabid political partisans have come to expect, whether they’re MAGA or DSA, as politics has come to supplant religion as the way we imagine communities of kinship into being.
In “The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life,” Émile Durkheim, the early 20th century French sociologist, analyzed the patterns of ancient tribal religious rites in order to ascertain the social function of religion. Durkheim focused in particular on the traditional rituals of Australian aboriginal tribes, whose cultures developed largely in an age that predated a modern division of labor. Today we live in an infinitely complex network of relationships of production and exchange. As soon as we get out of bed and make ourselves a cup of coffee, we are relying on the labor of a thousand strangers: the farmers who grew the coffee beans, the shippers who brought them to us, the municipal workers who maintain our supply of water, the plumber who installed our pipes, et cetera. In pre-modern times, by contrast, each individual, along with his or her immediate family members, had to tend to each life-sustaining task by themselves: dig the well, grow the crops, carry the water, build the fire. This meant that although they belonged to a tribe, each tribal member led a fundamentally solitary existence. Aside from self-defense in the event of an invasion, there was no material reason for the mass of individuals in a geographical area to come together as a group, much less to identify themselves with that collective. How, Durkheim wondered, did a society emerge out of this bunch of disconnected individuals living isolated day-to-day lives?
Religious rites and rituals, Durkheim argued, stood in the breach of the absence of bonds of material necessity. The Australian aborigines worshipped the divine by participating in intensely physical rituals, such as long, frenetic dances around bonfires, in the presence of totemic objects. These rituals sent their participants into ecstatic convulsions. Durkheim called this experience of hypnotic group enchantment “collective effervescence.”
While in that state, individual members of the tribe ceased to perceive themselves as individuals. They transcended their mundane sense of selfhood, feeling themselves viscerally connected to one another, on a higher plane of existence. They saw themselves as one. They regarded that realm, that experience of collective being, as the realm of the sacred, and they conferred that sanctity upon the totem, which represented this intangible sacred entity known as the tribe. They worshipped the sacred totem, but in doing so they were really worshipping themselves — their existence as a social collective.
When they returned to their homes, they carried the experience of this transcendental collective existence, this sacred identification with the tribe, with them back to their isolated lives. Over time, the intensity of these emotional attachments would fade, and it would be time to gather again to recreate it anew. This is how religious ritual generated and re-generated, from discrete individuals, the social reality of the tribe.
As societies became larger, denser, and more urbanized, material production and exchange became more complex, and work became specialized. Vast and intricate networks of material interdependency emerged. This division of labor created a material basis for social cohesion; accordingly, the need for religious ritual as a mechanical means of generating the collective dissipated, and modern societies became increasingly secular.
But collective effervescence never vanished entirely. We see it every time chants and costumes and choreographed motion are used to generate a collective spirit, to transform disparate individuals into a unitary group identity. We see it, of course, in churches, but also at football games, political protests, and military marches, at raves, cosplay conventions, Phish shows, Burning Man festivals and Juggalo gatherings. And, I would argue, we see something akin to it in digital format on Twitter.
Over the last year, we have suffered through as profound an experience of mass social isolation as global civilization has ever undergone. Locked down in our homes, we turned to the internet to recreate our stymied lives online. With internet usage jacked up by 40%-100%, we experienced one of the most chaotic periods of political tumult in living memory largely through our computer screens. Trump, pandemic, Black Lives Matter, riots, impeachment, a presidential election, the January 6 “insurrection” — all of this melodrama processed through the polarization-inducing algorithms of Facebook and Twitter. If our politics were already moving toward tribalism, the pandemic turbocharged our velocity along that trajectory.
For the Aboriginal tribes, the ecstatic rituals that engendered in individuals’ minds the consciousness of the collective served to obviate their sense of social isolation. But they also did something else: they allowed tribal members to conceive not just of their in-group, but of their out-group. In a region populated by people who looked, sounded and lived not too dissimilarly from one another, religious rituals forged distinctive social groupings out of demographically uniform populations.
But later religions found other, negative ways to generate the same effect: through prohibition and exile. By regulating social behavior, condemning the heathens and executing the heretics, Christian sects starkly delineated the boundaries of their communities of faith. In so doing, they reified the community as such. By designating who lay outside of it, even by entirely arbitrary standards, they constituted the in-group as a social reality.
It’s a dynamic that’s familiar to anyone who has tested the ever-constricting boundaries of permissible speech on Twitter. By perpetually improvising new, often arbitrary rules of language and belief, ideologues on Twitter generate the in-group of those who willingly abide by those rules by banishing the out-group of those who are either ignorant of the rules or who defy them knowingly. These rules and protocols are sufficiently elaborate and non-intuitive to guarantee that the only people really capable of following them are those who are already intimately acculturated to the particular social milieu from which they stem. Upon those who are in the know is thus conferred a select social status, masquerading as political virtue — not unlike the Calvinists who secured their social prestige by proving their standing among God’s favored by way of ostentatious shows of righteous living and religious conviction. It’s elitism, but it looks like piety.
The Twitter dogpile is the political equivalent of the banishing of the heathens — perhaps not in the gravity of its consequences, but in the function it serves of reproducing the community of the elect. And given the sadistic glee with which so many partake in it, it may also serve as a virtual experience of collective effervescence. We revel in the ritual of casting out the sinner, because it affirms the existence of the Tribe of the Woke, and our membership within it.
Do we actually care whether or not @MissLibra1984 believes that trans women are women, or whether @DonkeyKongNYC is indeed a bootlicker? Is that why we heap scorn upon them — because it does a thing to improve the lives of trans people, or to hold the police accountable? Is it the gratification of protecting the marginalized that makes it so fun to join the mob, pick up a stone and chuck it at the poor sap who didn’t know the rules? Is it in the service of our political principles that we @ some Karen’s employer and demand she be fired from her job? Is it our commitment to creating a better world that inclines us to laugh at her misfortune when we read about it in The Daily Beast? Is she really the asshole? Or are we?
Once upon a time, politics served the purpose of weaving together livable compromises out of divergent interests and values. We didn’t rely on political identities to give our lives meaning. Political parties, factions, and institutions were merely the instrumental means through which we brokered a relatively peaceful co-existence with those who didn’t see eye-to-eye with us. Occasionally, and often heroically, it was the basis upon which we mobilized opinion to annihilate those with truly anti-social agendas. But ultimately, it was the toolset with which we built a practical working peace.
Today, politics is a competition for tribal allegiance, the means by which we proudly declare our intractable differences with others. Like religion, it is an instrument we use to forge communities of kinship with one another, but only by declaring war on those who lie outside of them. It is no longer the basis for co-existence in a pluralist society, but the stick with which we draw our battle lines. It is the domain of sectarian holy war. In a democratic society, it will be the vehicle for our undoing.
News of the Times;
https://americanlookout.com/surprise-hunter-bidens-art-dealer-has-ties-to-china/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/07/top-democrat-indicted-nm-house-majority-leader-charged-embezzlement-total-may-top-954000/
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/cascade-consequences
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2021/07/26/la-times-maybe-we-shouldnt-follow-californias-example-on-electric-cars-n404705
http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/july/26/the-jan-6th-show-trials-threaten-all-of-us/
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-conservative-case-for-cyberbullying-americas-generals/
https://www.dailywire.com/news/5-times-more-children-died-by-suicide-than-died-from-covid-in-the-uk
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-end-of-merit/
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/lightfoot-absolutely-exclude-white-journalists-interviews-again
https://www.thecollegefix.com/harvard-downplays-role-in-no-whites-allowed-music-seminar-sponsored-by-nike/
https://www.commentary.org/noah-rothman/americas-deep-divisions-that-werent/
https://videos.whatfinger.com/2021/07/28/the-truth-about-simone-biles-paul-joseph-watson/
https://coloradopeakpolitics.com/2021/07/26/aurora-officials-wave-magic-wand-to-invalidate-city-charter-provision/
https://bucksexton.com/2021/07/the-cdcs-mask-reversal-is-bull-and-everybody-knows-it/
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/cdc-justified-new-mask-guidance-based-vaccine-study-listed-failing-peer
Several animals were savagely beaten in the making of this page, including but not limited to; kittens, rabbits, zebu, skunks, puppies, and platypus. Also several monkeys where force fed crack to improve their typing skills.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.