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Strangle?
Someone asked me what I would like from the 1970s to be brought back.

I said, "My hair."

*.*

Remember how Park Rangers in Australia found the world's largest toad last week, weighing just under six pounds?

Shortly after its discovery, it was put down because it's part of an invasive species.

Either that, or the world's second largest toad paid them off.

It's competitive out there.

*.*

Little Johnny ran into the room sobbing as through his heart would break.

"Whats the problem Johnny?" asked his mother.

"Oh, daddy was hanging a picture and he dropped it on his toe," replied Johnny.

"Why, that's nothing to cry about. You should be laughing at that," said his mother.

"I did," Johnny replied.

*.*

Archeologists in Norway say they have found the world's oldest runestone, over 2,000 years old.

Just a reminder, runestones aren't as old as Rolling Stones, but they're close.

*.*

I'm not a complete idiot.

Some parts are still missing!

Quote of the Times;
"Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out." - horowitz

Link of the Times;
FBI Agent Behind Trump-Russia Hoax Arrested For Illegal Russian Bribes, Money Laundering:
https://valiantnews.com/2023/01/fbi-agent-behind-trump-russia-hoax-arrested-for-illegal-russian-bribes-money-laundering/

Issue of the Times;
Ending the Stranglehold of Public Employee Unions by Mark Pulliam

The threat of faction - a “mortal disease,” James Madison warned in Federalist 10 - has plagued popular government since time immemorial. The eternal desire to improve one’s economic position at the expense of others without the benefit of consensual exchange has long tempted mankind into (again, using Madison’s words) “mutual animosities” that eventually found voice in Karl Marx’s toxic class consciousness. In the pre-industrial era, the “dangerous vice” of rent-seeking often consisted of debtors seeking to avoid their repayment obligations through the use of worthless paper money. During the 20th century, the New Deal institutionalized economic warfare between employers (capital) and employees (labor) in the guise of collective bargaining.

In the 1960s, the private-sector model of unionization was imprudently extended to government employees, and in the ensuing decades - coinciding with the meteoric growth of local, state, and federal employment - public employee unions have become one of the most powerful factions in America. James Madison would be astonished and chagrined. The number of unionized government employees now rivals that of their private sector counterparts, forming a special interest group that in many cases controls the dynamics of representative self-government. Unions representing government workers plunder public treasuries, hamstring elected officials, hinder efficiency and reform, and aggressively lobby to benefit the narrow interests of their members over those of the taxpaying public.

The baleful effects of public-sector unionism are particularly evident in the field of K-12 education, where unionized teachers dictate a self-serving agenda. In America’s major cities, government employee unions such as SEIU and AFSCME have replaced Boss Tweed as political power brokers.

Yet, despite the dysfunction resulting from the indefensible extension of collective bargaining to government workers - something that both FDR and George Meany opposed - the topic of public-sector unionism has largely been ignored by the legal academy as if self-interested public employees tilting the playing field of democracy in their favor is no different than the influence of K Street lobbyists or climate change activists. The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Janus v. AFSCME drew fresh attention to the subject of public-sector unionism, but the focus was generally limited to agency fees and compelled speech. Unlike, say, the administrative state or campaign finance regulation, there is a dearth of current legal scholarship on public-sector unionism.

Into that vacuum steps well-respected lawyer and veteran public policy analyst Philip K. Howard in his latest book, Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions. Howard, Chair of the nonpartisan reform group Common Good, is a serial best-selling author with a knack for explaining complex problems in simple terms and identifying common-sense solutions. In Not Accountable, Howard boldly takes on the juggernaut of public-sector unions and concludes that collective bargaining by government workers is an unconstitutional subversion of sovereign power.

Not Accountable explains the problem in a nutshell:

Union power in government happened almost by accident in the 1960s, ostensibly to give public unions the same bargaining rights as trade unions. But government bargaining is not about dividing profits, but making political choices about public priorities. Moreover, the political nature of decision-making allowed unions to provide campaign support to friendly officials. Public bargaining became collusive. The unions brag about it: “We elect our own bosses.”

Sitting on both sides of the bargaining table has allowed public unions to turn the democratic hierarchy upside down. Elected officials answer to public employees. Basic tools of good government have been eliminated. There’s no accountability, detailed union entitlements make government largely unmanageable and unaffordable, and public policies are driven by what is good for public employees, not what is good for the public. Public unions keep it that way by brute political force - harnessing the huge cohort of public employees into a political force dedicated to preventing the reform of government.

This critique echoes the work of public-sector union critics such as Daniel DiSalvo, Manhattan Institute senior fellow, CUNY professor, and author of Government against Itself: Public Union Power and Its Consequences. The only solution, Howard argues, is to declare public-sector collective bargaining unconstitutional: “America’s republican form of government requires an executive branch that is empowered to implement public policies, not one shackled to union controls. Public employees have a fiduciary duty to serve the public and should not be allowed to organize politically to harm the public.”

Not Accountable is not a dense treatise or a legal brief. In 200 pages of text, including a Foreword by Mitch Daniels, former Governor of Indiana and President of Purdue University, Howard ably distills the issues into a five-point indictment. He argues that public employee unions have:

1. Severed the links of accountability;
2. Rendered government substantially unmanageable with detailed rules and veto powers;
3. Made government unaffordable with opaque benefit packages and compensation manipulations;
4. Changed public policies to the harm of the public good; and,
5. Entrenched these abuses, and made reform practically impossible, through organized political power.

Howard elaborates on each of these points in a series of concise, elegant chapters, with anecdotes drawn from current events, references to classical political theory, and supporting end notes for readers wishing to dig deeper. For the most part, a 30,000-foot overview is enough to convince the reader that we face a serious problem - loss of sovereignty coupled with what Howard aptly calls “bureaucratic kleptocracy” via a “union spoils system.” The more difficult issue is crafting a solution. Political reform is stymied by unions’ pervasive rent-seeking and institutional capture of state and local government.

Howard’s constitutional objections, while - to my mind - compelling, are not particularly original; he mainly cites scholars who made similar arguments decades ago, including the prolific Sylvester Petro (who unsuccessfully argued Abood v. Detroit Board of Education [1977] before the U.S. Supreme Court, only to be posthumously vindicated when the decision was overturned 41 years later in Janus) and Edwin Vieira, Jr. However, the legal case against public-sector unionism (other than Abood, Janus, and similar agency fee challenges) was never fully litigated, has been all-but-forgotten, and unfortunately vanished from the public conversation - until now. Howard has resurrected formidable but neglected legal arguments so that they may, hopefully, gain the overdue airing they deserve.

One of the reasons public-sector unionism has not attracted the attention of many legal scholars is that the subject is governed by a patchwork quilt of state laws and regulations. The federal National Labor Relations Act applies only to private-sector employees. Nationally-prominent scholars tend to be drawn to uniform schemes of law, such as the NLRA. Collective-bargaining rights for federal government employees, first conferred (via Executive Order 10988) by President Kennedy in 1962, were later expanded by Congress in the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978.

Although seldom noticed, government employee unions are a major issue at the federal level. Howard notes that “All told, the executive branch must bargain with a dozen different unions, each focused on specific cohorts. Together 25 percent of federal employees belong to unions, with total coverage somewhat higher.” These unions contribute to the Beltway morass.

Unlike some critics of public-sector unionism, Howard does not overlook congressionally-mandated collective bargaining by federal government employees, which he contends usurps the executive branch’s authority under Article II of the Constitution. Moreover, Howard ingeniously argues that the states’ surrender of sovereignty to unions representing government employees violates the Guarantee Clause of Article IV, which guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” Stripping elected officials of their authority, and conferring it instead on self-interested representatives of government employees, robs the voters (“we the people”) of control over state and local government. The Founders would surely object to a collective-bargaining scheme that structurally empowered union officials at the expense of governors, mayors, and other public executives. Therefore, Howard maintains that the issue should not be deemed a non-justiciable “political question.”

Whether these - and other - constitutional objections to public-sector unionism will find a sympathetic hearing in court remains to be seen, but this much is clear: Absent a constitutional challenge, the dysfunctional status quo will continue or even worsen. Howard ends Not Accountable with these words:

No one elected unions to co-run American government. No democratic principle gave legislators and other officials the right to surrender governing powers to unions. No ethical value allows public employees, having taken an oath to protect the public, to organize politically to harm the public. Democracy under union restraints can’t work as the framers intended. That’s why union controls on the operating machinery of government should be ruled unconstitutional.

Judging from the enormous impact of Howard’s numerous prior books, including the critically-acclaimed national bestseller The Death of Common Sense (1995), and The Collapse of the Common Good (2002), Not Accountable will be widely read and find a large and receptive audience on both sides of the partisan aisle. (His 2010 Ted Talk entitled “Four ways to fix a broken legal system” has been viewed over 770,000 times.)

Howard’s thoughtful perspective and well-deserved reputation for dispensing non-wonkish common sense make it likely that his message and proposed reforms will not be ignored. A half-century ago, when America began the failed experiment of public-sector unionism, a small group of perceptive scholars predicted doom, in heavily-footnoted jeremiads that were largely ignored. It turns out they were prophetically correct. One hopes that Philip Howard’s Not Accountable will motivate Americans to pay closer attention and heed his sensible recommendations.

It is not often that public policy disasters offer a second chance at correction. Getting it wrong a second time would be unpardonable - and tragic.

News of the Times;
The Missing Babies of Europe:
https://defending-gibraltar.net/t/the-missing-babies-of-europe/4423

We’re in the midst of a coup. Who the hell’s behind it:
https://archive.is/SeUcY

Ukraine Rocked By Corruption Scandal, Wave Of Top Officials Resign:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraine-rocked-corruption-scandal-wave-top-official-resignations-sports-cars-mansions

American Airlines cuts flights due to covid jab-induced pilot shortage:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2023-01-12-american-airlines-cuts-flights-covid-jabs-pilot-shortage.html

More than ONE MILLION children sought NHS treatment for depression, anxiety and eating disorders last year:
https://davidicke.com/2023/01/03/more-than-one-million-children-sought-nhs-treatment-for-depression-anxiety-and-eating-disorders-last-year-as-mental-health-referrals-soared-39-per-cent/

Migrants Living for Free in NYC Hotels are Fighting Staff, Drinking All Day, Having Sex in Public:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/01/14/whistleblower-migrants-living-for-free-in-nyc-hotels-fighting-staff-drinking-all-day-having-sex-in-public/

Boulder’s Main Library Closes Due to Meth:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/01/02/can-you-check-out-a-pipe-too-boulders-main-library-closes-due-to-meth-n1657982

Creep tries to abduct boy from NYC synagogue, thwarted by mom:
https://nypost.com/2023/01/25/man-tries-to-abduct-kid-from-nyc-synagogue/

“Rape the White Girls” Poet Included in Florida’s Black AP Course:
https://www.frontpagemag.com/rape-the-white-girls-poet-included-in-floridas-black-ap-course/

A Mad Rush to Build More EV Factories, But Where are the Minerals?:
https://mishtalk.com/economics/a-mad-rush-to-build-more-ev-factories-but-where-are-the-minerals

Chinese Communist Party Aggression against America:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/chinese_communist_party_aggression_against_america.html

Why Was Hunter Paying Joe Biden $50k Per Month To Rent House Where Classified Documents Found?:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/why-was-hunter-biden-paying-joe-50k-month-rent-house-where-classified-documents-found

Inspector Report Found Hundreds Of Chicago Teachers Allegedly Sexually Groomed, Raped Students:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/inspector-report-found-hundreds-of-chicago-teachers-allegedly-sexually-groomed-raped-students/ar-AA163iKE

Jamie Lee Curtis Deletes Instagram Post Showing Photo of Naked Child Stuffed in a Box:
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/01/18/jamie-lee-curtis-deletes-instagram-post-showing-photo-of-naked-child-stuffed-in-a-box/

How White and American SLAVES Were Treated In Africa:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbWBHMerbvU
Monsters?
My going out clothes missed me so much.

I put them on and they hugged me so tightly, I could barely breathe.

*.*

SHE: Why don't your socks match?

ME: Why don't your kid's last names match?

*.*

Oneliners:

Hello darkness, my old friend, I just stood too fast again.

As you get older, you begin to suffer a series of increasingly humiliating micro-injuries, including: I slept wrong, while I was driving, I happened to yawn while checking my blind spot and the classic, I drank water too hard.

The best sign of a healthy relationship is no sign of it on Facebook.

Pretending to be a functioning adult is exhausting.

I just saw a TikTok video that claims the reason Millennials love Charcuterie boards and Mimosas so much is because they grew up on Lunchables and Sunny D!

It was a lot more fun being 20 in the 70s, than being 70 in the 20s.

I hope when I'm gone, they'll say, "Well, at least he was committed or should have been."

Our town is so small, we don't have a town drunk, so we all take turns.

I feel like getting something done today, so I'm just going to sit here until that feeling passes.

Remember, you can't be late until you show up.

*.*

Top ways high egg prices are changing the world:

Only the wealthy can now afford to walk on eggshells.

Eggs are now considered too good to scramble.

"Laying an egg" is now a compliment.

People are starting to ask for a cost-of-mayo raise.

You can have a steak. Or, for $2 more, an egg salad sandwich.

*.*

HELP WANTED at a Wisconsin dairy farm.

Must work well with udders.

Quote of the Times;
Those who assign to either stupidity or pecuniary interest the actions of the wicked simply fail to understand either the objectives or the nature of evil. This may sound like a criticism, but it is actually a testimony to the fundamental decency that makes it difficult for them to give credence to the true depths of human depravity. - Vox Day

Link of the Times;
Illegal Alien Gang Member Arrested For The Rape And Murder Of 20-Year-Old Maryland Woman With Autism:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/illegal-alien-gang-member-arrested-rape-murder-20-year-old-maryland-woman-autism/

Issue of the Times;
Destroying Monsters by Helmholtz Smith

A lot of the people who comment on this blog seem to me to be patriotic Americans. And, it’s clear, if you read the comments, that many of them – probably the majority – want Russia to win the war. This is not because they like Putin or Russia particularly, and certainly not because they’re on the “Putin payroll”. Not at all. These people understand what is really at stake.

These are people who know that the American war party (one of many names – deep state, borg, neocons, one percent, MICIMAC) is responsible for pushing Russia to the decision that it made last February. That it is the war party that expanded NATO despite the promises, that arms Ukraine, that encourages the fanatics driving that country, that blocks all routes to a peaceful settlement, that encourages Kiev to squander the lives of its people. But what really concerns these patriotic Americans is the damage the war party has done to their country.

An America of war all the time everywhere, of tent cities and full jails, of open borders, disappeared manufacturing, opiates, misery, poverty, corruption. An America with endless money to spend abroad but none to spend at home. (The hundred billion dollars dumped into Ukraine would give a $200,000 house to every one of the estimated half million homeless in the USA!) An America failing, no longer the American they loved, served and believed in. The Twitter revelations show some of the activities of this enemy embedded in the American polity. It’s very late and many fear that it is too late.

How to get this leech off America’s back? Voting can’t make much difference if both parties are manipulated. Is the voting system itself corrupted? Can the judicial system be trusted? Special counsels who report when it’s too late to matter? The managed media? Some may still believe in these things but the people I’m talking about don’t any more.

They can only see one way that the power of this internal enemy can be broken – complete and utter defeat. Defeat that cannot be ignored, cannot be explained away, defeat too big and too obvious for the obedient mass media to bury.

And that is why these people want Russia to win. They don’t necessarily like Russia or Putin or dislike Ukraine – it has little to do with either. It’s because they see this as the opportunity for the humiliating defeat that will shatter the power of the internal enemy. The war party assumed that Russia was weak and sanctions would crash its economy and bring down Putin. When this didn’t happen, they doubled down on their failed bet arrogantly certain they were right because everybody they allowed to speak agreed with them. If (when) Russia scores a decisive and undeniable victory, the perpetrators of the disaster will be revealed as corrupt fools wasting your money on their worthless fantasy.

Russia is also fighting a bigger war against the so-called rules-based international order. This shiny label covers the assertion that whatever America and its allies/subordinates do is right and whatever its opponents do is wrong and is the war party’s license to interfere everywhere. The hope is that the defeat – following on the Afghanistan debacle – will so weaken the war party that it will fall.

This far I have talked of patriotic Americans wanting Russia to win but I believe that every country in the West has people who also want Russia to win because utter, obvious and undeniable defeat is the only way that they can see to get their leeches off their backs.

The West is ruled by corrupt fools who are sending it to disaster – it is circling the drain of history. The hope is that Russian victory will burst the bubble, the internal enemy will be got rid of and these countries will start to mind their own business, care for their own populations and forget about the (mostly imaginary) monsters out there.

News of the Times;
Comedian Leaves Oxford Union SPEECHLESS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKIOSnKX96E

Roomba Robot Vacuum Testers Find "Intimate" Photos Of Themselves On The Web:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/roomba-robot-vacuum-testers-find-intimate-photos-themselves-web

MIT Adopts Free Speech Resolution: “We Cannot Prohibit Speech as Offensive or Injurious.”:
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/12/30/mit-adopts-free-speech-resolution/

Jihadi Who Murdered Eight People in NYC Was In the U.S. on a Diversity Visa:
https://gellerreport.com/2023/01/jihadi-who-murdered-eight-people-in-nyc-was-in-the-u-s-on-a-diversity-visa.html/

Pipe bomb found in Seattle underground garage, suspect Osman Ibrahim in custody:
https://thepostmillennial.com/pipe-bomb-found-in-seattle-underground-garage-suspect-osman-ibrahim-in-custody

Mexican president thanks Biden for not securing American border with 'even one meter of wall':
https://www.theblaze.com/news/mexican-president-thanks-biden-for-not-securing-american-border-with-even-one-meter-of-wall

Biden Covering up: More Americans Killed During Afghan Withdrawal Than Reported:
https://floridianpress.com/2023/01/biden-covering-up-more-americans-killed-during-afghan-withdrawal-than-reported/

Tracking CIA-Backed ‘Zero Units’ in Afghanistan:
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/01/12/tracking-cia-backed-zero-units-in-afghanistan/

US Navy SEAL killed in Ukraine:
https://www.rt.com/news/570237-us-navy-seal-killed-ukraine/

Echoes from the first Neocon war in Europe and some music:
https://thesaker.is/echoes-from-the-first-neocon-war-in-europe-and-some-music/

Hundreds of UK police face sack as part of clean-up - top officer:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/482619/hundreds-of-uk-police-face-sack-as-part-of-clean-up-top-officer

Ukrainian Refugees In Britain Are Going Home For Medical Treatment Rather Than Endure NHS Waiting-Times:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ukrainian-refugees-britain-are-going-home-medical-treatment-rather-endure-nhs-waiting

Radio stars criticize George Soros-backed move to ‘silence conservative Hispanic voices’:
https://nypost.com/2022/12/20/inside-george-soros-backed-move-to-silence-conservative-hispanic-voices/

Southern Poverty Law Center Got Busted Again Sending Millions To Offshore Accounts:
https://thefederalist.com/2017/09/01/southern-poverty-law-center-got-busted-sending-millions-offshore-accounts/

The matrix is malfunctioning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gHwe180s-U
Occam?
My boss told me this is the fifth time this week that I'm late.

I smiled and thought to myself, it's Friday!

*.*

To avoid straining your eyes at work, use the 30-30 rule.

After 30 minutes of work, quit your job and buy a 30 acre farm in the middle of nowhere.

*.*

While at the World Economic Forum, rightful President Al Gore delivered a stern warning on climate change, saying the world will not make it past the year 2012 if something isn't done immediately.

"The situation has never been more dire," said Gore while wiping the lipstick of a Swiss hooker off his face. "It's more dire than it was yesterday, and more dire than it was the day before and even more dire than the day before that."

Sources say the crowd began to fall asleep as he continued.

"By 2012, we will have reached the point of no return, and trillions of people will die painful deaths and the polar bears will have to grow gills and live in the water because there will be no more ice and Kevin Costner and his friends will have to help us escape from artificial islands in the ocean and lead us to the mythical 'Dryland' unless someone builds a time machine back to the year 2000 to warn the world of its impending doom! Trust the experts!"

The consensus of climate scientists voiced their agreement with Gore by accepting his funding and then booking CNN to warn of the imminent disaster 11 years ago.

*.*

Oneliners:

Records had a side A and a side B, so it only makes sense that their successor would be the CD.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance, the five stages of waking up.

For a song called, "Piano Man", the guy with the harmonica won't shut the hell up!

Okay, I just found out a dry red wine doesn't count when you're doing a Dry January.

Another update: Dry Martinis are also not allowed during Dry January.

I got so drunk last night, I walked across the floor to get another drink and won the dance contest.

I want to start juicing, but I'm not exactly sure how to juice tacos.

In my defense, I was left unsupervised.

In my day, we played family-friendly board games with questions like, "Who murdered this guy with a pipe?"

My favorite childhood memory is having energy.

*.*

That winning $1.35-billion lottery ticket was sold in Lebanon, Maine.

Which means there's now one person in the state richer than Stephen King.

Quote of the Times;
“Look at what they’ve done over the past few years and ask yourself: If they hated us, what would they do differently?” - Reynolds

Link of the Times;
Abraham Lincoln: American Dictator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pZG7snE7tU

Issue of the Times;
What I saw in Occam's Mirror by Martin Geddes

I have discovered in the last year or so that my most popular essays are not those on philosophical discernment, analysis of geopolitics, or the minutiae of information warfare. What resonates most is when I speak from the heart, and my own experience echoes that of the reader. It is cathartic to have our hopes and hurts acknowledged, and for someone to bear witness to our shared struggle.

In a sense the title of this essay is odd, given that introduction. Occam’s Razor is a tool of pure logical thinking: a heuristic that directs us towards the explanation with the fewest assumptions. This divides the more plausible answer from the less plausible one, encouraging us to keep our cosmology simple and not invent magical interventions to justify our beliefs. It is imperfect, can be misused, and the problem misframed: that is why it is only a helpful heuristic, and not a hard law.

My view is that the struggle of the past few years has been a kind of “Occam’s Mirror”, which has shown us the world more clearly, including ourselves and those around us. One part of humanity has sunk deep into a hypnotic psychosis, and performed the most absurd and dangerous rituals on themselves and their children. The other part of humanity has looked on in horror at the engineered fear, trashing of human rights, and mass participation in a death cult.

This mirror has helped us to see far more clearly who we are, and what we stand for. I sometimes wonder what those who come after us will make of this bizarre period in history. Just as Occam’s Razor divides the likely true from the likely false, “Occam’s Mirror” separates the real from the unreal, and helps us to tell that story. A spiritual war depends on you substituting a false reality for the observed one, and dedicating your energy to wickedness. So what have I observed gazing into this reflected horror show of deceit and dissidence, and what have I learned?

The easiest place to begin is with myself. A (now former) friend once observed that I am very “values-driven”, as if it were a charming defect in a world of realpolitik. What I have learned is that nothing will make me sell out to lies or wickedness, or sacrifice a fellow human for my own selfish interests. I have many faults and failings, and make endless mistakes that are a cause for embarrassment. Just none of that really matters; those are issues of personal morality, and not an ethical failure in dealing with the innocent, notably children.

The refusal to budge is extremely painful in a context where the masses have been brainwashed and hoodwinked into supporting downright evil authority. I have lost sleep many nights churning over the personal betrayals, the stunning self-justified wrongdoing, and the absence of love and care in my direction. Those who have adopted collectivist ideals and communist methods are willing to try to break my will for my apostasy from their depraved mania.

They have tried to force me into subjugation to sustain their own delusions. It saddens me, but I have found that I can live with persistent sadness. I have discovered that I cannot be broken by ostracism, false witness, denouncement, hijacking of my parental role, loss of normal family joys, neglect, or lack of resources. Quite the opposite: the more they try to control me, the more determined I become not to let it happen. The quiet and sensitive person I am in private has located a warrior inside, and unleashed him. Circumstances have forced me to fight, and I have come to rather relish it.

The same former friend taught me in any upheaval to pay attention to what isn’t changing. I tend to avoid writing about my own spiritual beliefs in public, especially as there is little agreement over terminology, and easy misunderstanding. Occam’s Mirror has, however, greatly clarified where I stand. What you worship — i.e. hold in such esteem that you are willing to die for — is your invariant “pole star”. I do not worship temporal institutions, and do not accept them as arbiters of morality or reality. The distress of the last few years has forced me to look inside and grasp my spiritual core, and acknowledge its unchanging relationship to the cosmos.

When I survey those around me, what do I see in the mirror? On the one hand, there are the egotistical ones, whose surface veneer of good manners and civil discourse hides a ruthless dedication to lazy selfishness and cowardly unaccountability. I now understand why pride is the worst of the sins, since it triggers an endless doubling down; the person who was conned cannot admit to it, so they magnify their error until the cost becomes catastrophic. Looking back, I can now see the origins of their own downfall, in a mix of wicked spirit, and early life trauma.

The people who we thought were friends turned out to be merely acquaintances with a shared context and past. They didn’t understand who we really are in terms of our values, and neither did we see them clearly for who they are. The scamdemic in particular has resolved such misconceptions, as you cannot hide whether you are a colluder or resister. Those with whom we share a blood relationship may have notionally been family, but many have belatedly realized there was no true love there, and that duty was one-way.

We are having to build new families of choice, as our families of origin have abandoned our delight in life for an adulation of death. Once someone starts to suffocate and imprison children, indoctrinate them into premature and perverse sexualisation, and inject them with poisons, there is no going back to how we used to relate. Occam’s Mirror has shown the stark divide between those willing to engage in human sacrifice, and those who will resist it with all their might - and make sacrifices to do so.

To discover that your parents or siblings will maim and sterilize their own children for group approval is disturbing, but at least we now know. No matter how difficult things have been, there is no way I would want to go back to the world we had 5, 15, or 25 years ago. I have looked in the mirror, and seen both the beauty and ugliness in far starker terms than ever before. I am no longer confused by claims that prettiness is putrid or vice versa. The transvestigated false idols in the mass media look hollow and pathetic. In contrast, fluffy clouds and fruity bushes have become magical wonders of everyday living.

I have found who my true friends are, and it is those who will not compromise when it comes to harming children. Each of us faces personal strife, life setbacks, and the occasional sagging morale. There has been a toll extracted by this psychological warfare, social division, and barbaric genocide. Yet none of these loyal friends ever discusses with me whether we should switch from the narrow to the broad path. The protection of the young from predation is literally the issue we are willing to die for. This clarity of purpose engenders a deep mutual trust; there is no cheap virtue signaling.

Whether it is photographic art, doggie rescue, shoe making, protest meetings, or vegetable gardening, there is always some kind of activity that we can turn to in order to generate routines, order, and stability among the chaos. When I look in the mirror at me and my collective, we have jettisoned a lot of the baggage of “successful professional progress”, and narrowed our lives down to a few things that really bring us joy through care and creativity. There has been a shift in what generates meaning, and the leisure pursuits of those still “in the matrix” seem bizarre and irrelevant.

For many of us, the dominant theme of The Great Awakening so far is “The Grating Waiting”. We know that the election fraud in America is being exposed; we know that the demon jabs will bring untold woe; we know that the mass media’s lies will collapse; we know that we’ve been subjected to biocide and poisoning; we know that everything hidden is being brought into the light for cleansing. Eventually…

The timelines are long because the alternative is civil war or relapse into tyranny; only the slow attrition of mind control can spring us from this prison of degraded consciousness. I have had to reframe patience from being a form of existential punishment into an achievement, in order for it to appeal more to my own attainment-seeking and impatient character. The waiting has become such an embedded feature of life one almost wonders how we will cope when the final torrent of shocking events hits us.

What I see in the mirror is how I and those close to me have found a (sufficient) place of inner peace and calm. We have been forced into radical acceptance of what is, and that all events, however awful, may have a higher purpose. From necessity we have had to learn forgiveness and detachment, while not abandoning unconditional love. The attacks upon us have made us police our boundaries vigorously, and let go of those relationships which no longer serve us. We may not be happy on any particular day, but we can always choose to be grateful and aim for a more realistic contentment.

If anyone from the future wishes they could have been here to experience these events, I urge you not to get into that time travel machine for a temporal vacation in the early 2020s. It is a mess, and not a particularly endearing one. We have had to go through this difficult process of seeing ourselves, those close to us, and our society in the mirror, and it is not a pleasant picture. The paradox of change says we only transform when we fully identify with what is, so this “vision of the vile” was a mandatory preparation for the storm to come.

We are about to be called upon to comfort those whose illusions are shattered, bodies wrecked, and children poisoned. This process of uncomfortably staring at our own reflection has given us the grounding to know what is real and what is not, and what is “our personal nonsense” to own versus the madness of others. We have learned how to navigate ethical labyrinths by refusing to take the dead ends that lead us into harming others for our own interest. I trust future generations benefit from our critical self-examination in the mirror, but please - don’t regret having missed out.

News of the Times;
45 Highlights the Trugh: "Trump was Right about Everytyhing.":
https://www.rsbnetwork.com/news/45-highlights-the-truth-trump-was-right-about-everything/

“A New System” – Inside The Davos Summit 2023:
https://truthpress.com/news/a-new-system-inside-the-davos-summit-2023/

Declaration of North America (DNA):
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/01/10/declaration-of-north-america-dna/

Musk rips 'Satanic' ESG as World Economic Forum meets and discusses controversial investment regime:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/musk-rips-satanic-esg-world-economic-forum-controversial-investment-regime

CSX condemns alleged anti-Semitic display on building Saturday night:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/csx-condemns-antisemitic-display-building-112843905.html

USDA Reveals US Corn-Harvested Acres At 2008 Levels Amid Megadrought:
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/usda-reveals-us-corn-harvested-acres-2008-levels-amid-megadrought

We Investigated a Suburban LGBTQ Pedophile Ring. Here's What We Found:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/miacathell/2023/01/17/zulock-case-pt-1-n2618219

Catholic diocese lays down the law in Iowa:
https://www.theblaze.com/news/catholic-diocese-lays-down-the-law-in-iowa

Woke Fail: Disney Lost $123 Billion in Market Value in 2022 as Shares Drop 44 Percent:
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/12/31/woke-fail-disney-lost-123-billion-in-market-value-in-2022-as-shares-drop-44-percent-worst-year-since-1974/

MLK in Oslo: It was the Blondes:
https://vdare.com/posts/mlk-in-oslo-it-was-the-blondes

Newlywed brutally hacked to death with a machete:
https://national-conservative.com/newlywed-hacked-to-death-with-machete-ohio/

Black Career Criminal Murders White Baby And His Father:
https://national-justice.com/missouri-black-career-criminal-murders-white-baby-and-his-father

NYC trans and HIV activist, 39, is arrested for 'soliciting pedophile hunter posing as a 14-year-old boy on Grindr':
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11385913/NYC-trans-HIV-activist-arrested-soliciting-pedophile-hunter-posing-14-year-old-boy.html

Migrant Muslims on the Prowl: 'These Men Act in Groups and Start Hunting:
https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2021/february/migrant-muslims-on-the-prowl-these-men-act-in-groups-and-start-hunting-treating-the-women-like-prey

Illegal immigration into Europe soared by 64% in 2022 to reach six-year high:
https://rmx.news/migration/illegal-immigration-into-europe-soared-by-64-in-2022-to-reach-six-year-high/
Interested?
I saw a diet ad that claimed, "In 7 days, your pants will no longer fit you."

They don't fit now!

*.*

My body is not a temple.

It is, at best, a decaying cabin in the woods with a horrifying past.

*.*

After urging from environmental activists, the World Economic Forum, and Bill Nye the Science Guy, Arby's has changed its slogan to "We Have The Bugs."

"We felt it was time for us to shed our archaic, meat-centric image and promote a more environmentally-friendly cuisine," said Samber Rothborg, the new Chief Diversity Officer for Arby's. "It's important that we acknowledge our shameful past while charting a course forward into a more sustainable future for all of us." Rothborg's eyes then glazed over and she seemed to shut down like an android.

Arby's will now offer roast mealworms, roast crickets, and roast Pfizer mRNA protein cubes instead of their traditional offering of delicious food. Climate experts agree this move could, maybe, conceivabily contribute to a 0.0000000000003 degree global temperature drop within 9 trillion years. "Vee are pvoud of ze steps Arby's iz takink, vork vill set you free," said WEF Chairman Klaus Schwab.

At publishing time, Burger King had announced they were changing their slogan from "You Rule" to "Easily Digestible Protein Sources Such As Fried Grasshoppers Rule."

*.*

My buddy Joe has lost a lot of weight on the new Dolly Parton diet.

It's made Joe lean, Joe lean, Joe lean, Joe lean.

*.*

My church serves noodles for communion.

We're Ramen Catholic.

Quote of the Times;
“Whites will be an absolute minority in America... that’s a source of our strength." – Joe Biden: https://vimeo.com/554324166

Link of the Times;
“Wants Crime To Flourish”: Joe Rogan Slams Soros As An ‘Evil’ Villain In Superhero Movie:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/wants-crime-to-flourish-joe-rogan-slams-soros-as-an-evil-villain-in-superhero-movie

Issue of the Times;
It’s Official: Leftist Researchers Lie. That’s Why Universities Are Doomed by Edward Dutton

With a few glaring exceptions, such as the late James Flynn, leftists are systematically less interested in the truth than conservatives. Or to put it more bluntly, they lie more often. Thus a major research project has shown that, when findings in psychology have proven fraudulent, the findings almost always support leftist ideology.

Leftists lie for myriad reasons. One is that they are systematically more mentally unbalanced than conservatives. High in Machiavellianism and vulnerable Narcissism, they crave status and adoration to deal with their feelings of low self-esteem, powerlessness and high mental instability. Those feelings cause them to fear a fair fight, and they therefore seek power covertly by virtue signalling about such matters as “equality.” This is particularly true for women: Over half of young, female leftists suffer anxiety or depression.

An example of their dishonesty: the way in which their actions speak louder than their words. “I think all races have equal intelligence,” a leftist will say in denying average IQ differences between whites, blacks, and Asians. But he will then speak to blacks more simply than to whites, implying that he believes black people are less intelligent. See Self-Presentation in Interracial Settings: The Competence Downshift by White Liberals, by Cydney H. Dupree and Susan T. Fiske, psyarxiv.com, September 7, 2018.

In contrast, conservatives will say “treat everyone equally” and so speak to blacks and whites in exactly the same fashion, regardless of perceived intelligence differences.

Another example: Despite their oft-stated affection for minorities, wealthy leftists are often like Bill and Hillary Clinton, who live in overwhelmingly white Chappaqua, New York. A university education gave them all the right attitudes about minorities, as Joe Sobran quipped, and the money and means to move as far away from them as possible.

The point is, leftists score higher on the “lie scale” than conservatives. They are more inclined to lie, especially to present themselves in a positive light [Corrigendum to “The nature of the relationship between personality traits and political attitudes [Personal. Individ. Differ. 49 (2010): 306–316), by B. Verhulst et al., Personality and Individual Differences, September 2016].

So we shouldn’t be surprised to find that when an academic assembles research findings in psychology that do not replicate—often due to initial data manipulation and other dishonest techniques—they turn out overwhelmingly to be studies that purport to prove left-wing ideas.

The University of Bristol’s Gavin Leech’s ongoing “Reversals in Psychology” project has found precisely this trend, although it fails to focus on this leftist-conservative difference. For helping with the project, Leech thanks such psychologists as Stuart Ritchie of Edinburgh University, who virtue-signals with a Ukraine flag in his Twitter bio and has blocked me for some reason.

But rather than speculate on Leech’s motives, let’s have a look at some of his noteworthy findings:

1. No good evidence shows “tribalism” forms around arbitrary characteristics, which would mean strong groups develop for purely environmental reasons. Social groups are a way of indirectly passing on genes, so even friends tend to be more genetically similar than chance would predict, as J. Philippe Rushton proved [Ethnic Nationalism: Evolutionary Psychology and Genetic Similarity Theory, by J. Philippe Rushton, Nations and Nationalism, September 27, 2005].

2. The evidence that “implicit bias” training helps combat “racism” is so weak as to be virtually meaningless, and the reliability of the test instrument is unacceptably low.

3. The “Pygmalion Effect”—that a teacher’s expectations improve a pupil’s performance, or colloquially, that a student will rise to the level of the expectations he is given—which would explain why “marginalized” pupils don’t do very well, is generally nonsense.

4. The evidence for “stereotype threat”—that individuals absorb a stereotype that their group isn’t good at something, which in turn makes them bad at it—is so weak as to be meaningless.

5. The concept of “multiple intelligences,” which suggests that everyone is “intelligent” in his own way—such as “emotionally,” athletically, or existentially—is inaccurate, and even the academic who proposed it in the 1980s now admits this.

6. Studies that find that IQ is mainly environmental, and can be permanently increased by environmental intervention, do not replicate and are “highly suspicious.”

7. No good evidence shows that teachers who tailor their teaching methods to the supposed specific needs of pupils—such as teaching black and minority students differently than whites and with less discipline—has any positive effect.

8. One finding that I found particularly interesting: There is no correlation between the prestige of an academic journal and the likelihood that its findings can be replicated. Leftists have taken over all of the most prestigious journals and will duly mock research, and try to dismiss it with appeals to authority, if it is published in low-status journals. But this is pretty much compulsory if the findings question leftist dogmas. Yet here we have clear evidence that the findings published in “prestigious” journals are not guaranteed to be correct. The relationship between “correctness” (in that it can be replicated) and “journal prestige” is zero.

However, for me the most interesting finding: the political skew to fraudulent, poor-quality, or otherwise unreplicable research.

As far as I can tell, Leech’s project highlights 23 instances of research that is either highly environmentalist, or substantiates left-wing ideas that do not replicate or for which there is, at best, “very weak evidence.”

By contrast, the project highlights 11 cases of such questionable research in evolutionary psychology or research that appear to substantiate conservative perspectives, including studies on the possible existence of a spiritual world. (A number of the studies, such as those with regard to the influence of brain hemispheres, led to neither leftist nor conservative results}.

So, if we’re being generous to leftist researchers, then their research is three times more unreliable than research that leads to conservative findings.

But what if we’re simply fair?

The 23 leftist research findings include the case of Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel, who has so far retracted an astonishing 58 fraudulent studies. Stapel deliberately concocted data, including such findings as people who eat meat being more selfish and that being exposed to litter, or an abandoned bicycle, promotes stereotyping:

• Committee: Dutch professor faked data for years, by Toby Sterling, Associated Press, November 3, 2011

• Coping with chaos: how disordered contexts promote stereotyping and discrimination, by D.A. Stapel and S. Lindenberg, Science, 2011

The 23 leftist examples also include studies by Brian Wansink, formerly of Cornell University, no less than 50 of whose studies contain “fatal errors” due to the “gross malpractice” of manipulating data.

In terms of “conservative” research, studies by the German-British psychologist Hans Eysenck have invited 26 “expressions of concern.” These include “the validity of the datasets, including the ‘recruitment of participants, administration of measures, reliability of outcome ascertainment, biases in data collection, absence of relevant covariates, and selection of cases analysed in each article’” [Expression of concern: Articles by Hans J. Eysenck, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2020]. A number of Eysenck’s papers have been retracted due to these “expressions of concern” [Retraction Notice, Perceptual and Motor Skills, 2020].

But an “expression of concern” is not proof of fraud or malpractice and Eysenck can’t defend himself because he died in 1997.

But even so, we can now say that 78 percent of the instances of fraudulent, manipulated and otherwise poor research led to results that are in line with leftist ideas. If we dismiss the “expressions of concern,” as justice to Eysenck demands we must—then 92 percent of the cases of bad research involve leftist findings.

Put simply, fraudulent, manipulated research is overwhelmingly conducted by leftists. These results, as I have discussed before, suggest that universities—now dominated by leftists—are no longer interested in the pursuit of objective truth, but instead are more interested in enforcing dogmatic compliance with leftist ideology.

Leftists are liars and if they take over universities, then research by academics can be expected to be lies. And this is exactly what’s happened.

Students who pay hefty tuition will be increasingly subjected to lectures and material that are nothing but leftist lies. Which is another reason why we can expect the College Bubble to burst.

News of the Times;
TEACH Your Kids, and LEARN Yourself:
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=247716

NYC Electric Garbage Truck Plans Hit Wall After Trucks "Conked Out" Plowing Snow After Just Four Hours:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/nyc-electric-garbage-truck-plans-hit-wall-after-trucks-conked-out-plowing-snow-after-just

Even AI Is Suspicious of the Military-Industrial Complex:
https://bracingviews.com/2022/12/26/even-ai-is-suspicious-of-the-military-industrial-complex/

U.S. Plans Combined Arms Training for Ukrainian Soldiers:
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3248075/us-plans-combined-arms-training-for-ukrainian-soldiers/

Immigrant Kids Outnumber Swedes In Major City, Swedish Now Minority Language In Schools:
https://valiantnews.com/2022/12/sweden-two-thirds-of-malmo-kids-are-from-immigrant-backgrounds-swedish-shouldnt-be-used-in-schools/

Kirk Cameron's Christian book reading draws record numbers of parents, kids after Indianapolis Public Library refused to host him:
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-kirk-camerons-christian-book-reading-draws-record-numbers-of-parents-kids-after-indianapolis-public-library-refused-to-host-him

Court Documents Reveal Grisly Details in Butcher-Knife Slaying of Couple in Florida Retirement Home:
https://lawandcrime.com/crime/court-documents-reveal-grisly-details-in-butcher-knife-slayings-of-couple-in-florida-retirement-home/

Professor advises students to report scholars who bash white people or Christians to DEI office:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/professor-advises-students-to-report-scholars-who-bash-white-people-or-christians-to-dei-office/

Brazil's First Corn Shipment To China Indicates Shifting Trade Flows Could Endanger US Dominance:
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/brazils-first-corn-shipment-china-indicates-shifting-trade-flows-could-endanger-us

Egg Prices Hit A Record High and Are Still Going Up:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/egg-prices-hit-record-high-still-going/

Mass Chicken Culling Is An Attack On The Food Supply:
https://www.naturalblaze.com/2022/12/mass-chicken-culling-is-an-attack-on-the-food-supply.html

Today’s blacklisted American: Black scientist blacklisted for doing good research:
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/todays-blacklisted-american-black-scientist-blacklisted-for-doing-good-research/

Racist thug who hurled boiling water at Ealing police officer avoids jail:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/racist-thug-who-hurled-boiling-water-at-ealing-police-officer-avoids-jail/ar-AA15K6Rq

Black-On-White Homicides in Gas Stations, Parking Lots, and Living Rooms:
https://www.unz.com/article/37-black-on-white-homicides-in-gas-stations-parking-lots-and-living-rooms-december-2022-another-month-in-the-death-of-white-america/

NOFX - "Kill All the White Man" at Camp Anarchy 2019:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=OJNOs42NC8U
Real?
What do you call a man who sprays things?

Mister.

*.*

I was sitting in a bar the other night. This girl came in that was really built. And she was wearing the tightest jeans I think I’ve ever seen.

I said, “Damn! How do you get into those jeans, girl?”

She said, “You can start by buying me a drink.”

*.*

A perfectly triangular lake has 3 kingdoms on its 3 sides.

The first kingdom is rich and powerful, filled with wealthy, prosperous people, the second is humbler, but has its fair share of wealth and power. The third kingdom is struggling and poor, and barely has an army.

The kingdoms eventually go to war over control of the lake, as it's a valuable resource to have. The first kingdom sends 100 of its finest knights, clad in the best armour and each with their own personal squire. The second kingdom sends 50 knights, with fine leather armour and a few dozen squires of their own. The third kingdom sends their one and only knight, an elderly warrior who has long since passed his prime, with his own personal squire.

The night before the big battle, the knights in the first kingdom drink and party into the late hours of the night. The knights in the second kingdom aren't as well off, but have their own supply of grog and drink well into the night.

In the third camp, the faithful squire gets a rope and swings it over the branch of a tall tree, making a noose, and hangs a pot from it. He fills the pot with stew and has a humble dinner with the old knight.

The next morning, the knights in the first two kingdoms are hungover and unable to fight, while the knight in the third kingdom is old weary, unable to get up.

In place of the knights, the squires from all three kingdoms go and fight. The battle lasts long into the night but by the time the dust settled, only one squire was left standing - the squire from the third kingdom.

And it just goes to show you that the squire of the high pot and noose is equal to the sum of the squires of the other two sides.

*.*

My dad said I have no sense of direction in life.

So I packed my stuff and right.

*.*

A new study shows 9 out of 10 vegans have continuous problems with constipation.

What happens in vegans stays in vegans.

Quote of the Times;
“To be informed about how best to protect ourselves and our loved ones is the smartest thing we can do. I chose the vaccine.” - Lisa Marie Presley, 12 March 2022.

Link of the Times;
Ukrainian Defense Lines And What Happens When They Are Breached:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/01/ukrainian-defense-lines-and-what-happens-when-they-are-breached.html

Issue of the Times;
Real Life Does Not Fit The Narrative by Amanda Fortini

Brooklyn. Among a roomful of scenesters about a decade older than me, I felt unworldly, underdressed, self-conscious, so I went into a bedroom to sit on a pile of coats and think. There, I met a graying man attired as a Wildean dandy—purple coat, lace cuffs—who seemed to have had the same idea as I did. We perched on the edge of the bed, shoulder to shoulder, and talked. “I like you,” he announced after a while. “You’re the only person at this party who isn’t pushing a concept.”

I think of that moment all the time these days, when every person, every story, seems to be pushing a concept of some kind.

When I teach college journalism classes, I tell my students to go out and report on events as they unfold, letting their stories arise from whatever they find, while ignoring the expectations or preconceived notions they had at the start. The real world, I tell these impressionable young writers, is always more fascinating than the ideas we hold about it. Reality, truth, the bizarre behavior of people in the wild—they will always surprise you.

In our current media climate, where facts are subordinated to various master narratives, and everything is viewed through an ideological lens, my advice might seem obsolete, I realize. For a while now, on broadcast news, in magazines and newspapers—and certainly in “content” that goes viral on social media—there is a conspicuously growing lack of stories that are complex, surprising, and seemingly told for their own sake.

The “narratives”— to use the fashionable term for what was formerly called “the party line”—often feel manipulative, intended to advance agendas. Usually, you know the moral of a tale the moment you begin to read or watch. Remember those stories about Covid patients begging for a vaccine on their deathbed? Or the operatic re-casting of Ivermectin, a well-known antiparasitic drug, as a dangerous “horse dewormer”? It was said that rubes who had overdosed on it were clogging up emergency rooms, and, according to one story in Rolling Stone, preventing gunshot victims from getting treated at an Oklahoma hospital. Not surprisingly, this story turned out to be spurious—based on the unsubstantiated claim of a single doctor—but it was glaringly so to me at the time, not least because multiple people I knew in Hollywood had been prescribed the medication by their fancy doctors as an off-label early treatment for Covid.

I can’t help laughing as I write this. Such stories seem even more absurd in retrospect, transparent attempts to influence behavior. As a journalist I know that it’s rare to find people and situations that dovetail neatly with the messaging favored by the powers that be, yet these curiously convenient tales crop up all the time now. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” Joan Didion wrote in The White Album, famously, but in our present era of narrative manipulation, one might instead say: “They tell us stories about how we don’t live.”

If you live in the West, as I do, you are well versed in the ways that commonly held stories are often untrue. Your neighbors are not all bigots, and most people who drive pickup trucks are not brutes gunning to run over toddlers—many are just farmers or ranchers with equipment to haul, or regular drivers who must travel rough dirt roads.

There are so many of these false narratives, in every realm: The economy is healthy even though prices are soaring. Having a Zoom party is fun. Taking a virtual tour of an art museum is almost like being there. Viruses aren’t transmitted among people protesting injustice. #HillaryOnHulu was an organic “trending topic” on Twitter.

My root objection to these fictions isn’t about politics or even ethics, purely; it’s one of aesthetics. Not only are these narratives untrue, they’re also uninspired and formulaic. They feel engineered with a takeaway in mind, assembled from a kit—with a moral, a villain, and a hero. They lack the pleasing strangeness of reality and the uncanny rightness of mimesis. As you consume them, there’s no sense of discovery or revelation. I find them pat, predictable, deadening. They bore me.

What’s the antidote? It’s a renewed focus on the real, the concrete, and the specific. This past summer, I decided to stop immersing myself in all the “narratives” and put my cell phone in a drawer. I actually did this, but it’s also a metaphor. Meanwhile, my husband and I began to spend time at my late father-in-law’s airy old cabin in rural Montana. Out there, beyond cell service and without neighbors as far as you could see, I dragged a plastic lawn chair from the garage onto the deck and sat reading for hours at a time in the blazing sun.

I read Annie Dillard, a writer who, in her granular attention to the natural world, felt like a remedy to all the blather. She portrays people, animals, landscapes, and insects in all their particularity and uniqueness, resisting, with every word, the clichés society hands us. “Examine all things intensely and relentlessly,” reads The Writing Life, which I devoured in an afternoon. “Probe and search each object in a piece of art; do not leave it, do not course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength.”

Her words helped me to see the world again in all its mystery, rather than constantly noticing how this or that phenomenon was being mined and manipulated to dubious ends. My surroundings felt distinct and almost enchanted. I sat on the deck and did little but watch animals. There was a baby rabbit who liked to huddle near our pickup truck, as though the tires might protect him from predators. And a neurotic chipmunk who twitched and fretted, flitting to and fro, then went absolutely berserk whenever a breeze rustled the nearby bushes. One day, upset over an argument, I prayed to God for a sign that it would resolve itself and, seconds later, a yellow butterfly landed on my index finger and stayed there, opening and closing its wings for a full five minutes. Life is always so much stranger than anything we could make up.

The more I paid attention to what was tangible, the phonier the narratives began to feel. In September, my husband and I attended a tech conference in Miami where no one even talked about politics. Instead, we swam, ate, and discussed books, drug trips, herbal remedies, UFO sightings, beauty, privacy, surveillance, and the best places to visit in Utah. I once again realized what I already knew—that no one I encountered in person ever fit into a prefabricated narrative.

It is almost as though the purpose of the stories we are told is to obscure reality, not to reveal it. Because to observe reality is to trust your own perceptions. You might even start to notice that most stories are not tidy parables with morals. “The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright,” Dillard writes. A satisfying true story tends to be complicated and irreducible. Reality is messy. People have obscure and contradictory motives; we misbehave, screw up, and rarely do what we should.

News of the Times;
Who’s Attacking Our Power Grid?:
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/whos-attacking-our-power-grid/

EU bans imports of products linked to deforestation, freezing Europeans cut down forests to survive:
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2022/12/27/eu-bans-imports-of-products-linked-to-deforestation-freezing-europeans-cut-down-forests-to-survive-n520199

German property market plummets:
https://www.rt.com/business/569591-germany-real-estate-plunge/

Germany Arrests Iranian National Planning “Islamist-Motivated” Chemical Attack:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/01/report-germany-arrests-iranian-national-planning-islamist-motivated-chemical-attack/

Ohio Newlywed Allegedly Killed by Machete-Wielding Man While Working at Dollar Tree: 'Beautiful Soul':
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/ohio-newlywed-allegedly-killed-by-machete-wielding-man-while-working-at-dollar-tree-beautiful-soul/ar-AA15Vs3R

Autopsy Shows FBI Agents Executed ‘Domestic Terrorist’ in Michigan Days Before Fake Whitmer Kidnapping Plot was Rolled Out:
https://bigleaguepolitics.com/autopsy-shows-fbi-agents-executed-domestic-terrorist-in-michigan-days-before-fake-whitmer-kidnapping-plot-was-rolled-out/

Biden Held ‘Stolen’ Classified Docs at His Delaware Home AND the Secret Service Kept No Records of Visitors While They Were There:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/01/exclusive-biden-held-stolen-classified-docs-delaware-home-secret-service-no-records-visitors/

Students Speak Out On Anti-White, Anti-Christian, Anti-American Culture At Florida University:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/students-speak-out-anti-white-anti-christian-anti-american-culture-florida-university

210 Democrats vote against bill requiring medical care for babies born alive after abortion attempt"
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democrats-vote-against-bill-requiring-medical-care-babies-born-alive-abortion-attempt

The Year in Fantasy:
https://arkhavencomics.com/2022/12/31/the-year-in-fantasy-2022/

The Future of Holocaust Education:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181202215245/http://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/docs/paper32.html

Sweden Ditches Barbaric 'Gender-Affirming' Care for Kids:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/12/27/sweden-ditches-barbaric-gender-affirming-care-for-kids-n1656568

British police spend tens of thousands of taxpayers’ money on LGBT paraphernalia amid crime boom:
https://europerenaissance.com/2023/01/11/british-police-spend-tens-of-thousands-of-taxpayers-money-on-lgbt-paraphernalia-amid-crime-boom/

New Zealand admits it has direct access to Facebook takedown portal:
https://reclaimthenet.org/new-zealand-government-facebook-content-takedown-portal/

Zelensky strips ex-opposition leader of citizenship:
https://www.rt.com/russia/569678-zelensky-medvedchuk-ukrainian-citizenship/
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