In the current cycle its more effective to "allow" a population to "choose" what they can say than it is to mandate what you can't say.
Why?
Because a generalized/arbitrary threat induces an "abundance of caution", thereby INCREASING/EXPANDING organically through "crowdsharing" (word of mouth/networking) of what is acceptable and what isnt.
Nazi Germany employed the same insidious/sinister tactics; they didn't ban certain books, rather they let people "choose" what they THOUGHT might be verboten.
There's a progressive ratcheting effect in this tactic because anything that is considered "adjacent" becomes off limits....leading to an ever expanding adjacents of adjacents that starburst from that which everyone knows is off-limits.
And guess what?
This gives the "henchman" next door more options for which they can call in the jackboots, thereby giving even more control, tacitly, over what can be said. In this way, there is both an implied threat, in general, and explicit threat when you or your next door neighbors get the "knock"....a feedback loop, tightening the focus of what is ordained and what COULD be problematic to say.
And most insidious of all is it encourages people to accept, or even say, that which they know not to be true or that which they disagree with...leading to people unconsciously believing the lie over time...because they no longer have a way to seek truth.
the other key is that it avoids creating "martyrs"
back in 2021, getting thrown off twitter was a badge of honor and a credibility enhancer. it made people ask: "why are they afraid of this speaker and what they have to say?"
it helped build some of the large early substacks.
but having them simply "fade" you so no one sees you is far more insidious and effective. it makes it look like your fault, not theirs. there is no clear event to point to and say "i was wrong" just low engagement and impact.
It has a lot of carry-on consequences because, ultimately, making it seem like your fault leads to a situation where, what were once rights become perceived "privileges". And if your actions jeopardize others "privileges" the state has its own enforcement arm in the agora; the public who seeks "protection" of privilege by elimination/dimunition of the RIGHTS of others. .
Not always. Depends on the bully. Some just bully because they bully. They may be portrayed by others as the victim, and very often there are things in their lives where mistreatment of them led to mistreatment of others. But there are other bullies who simply learn that "might makes right."
I recommend watching the doc "Bully" when you get a chance. During that film there are definite thinking points that may have been unintended by the documentary makers. One such is "what did the victim of the bullies do to intentionally/unintentionally draw attention to themselves?
It's verboten to ask this question in terms of rape. I disagree that a woman is "asking for it" if she is dressed provocatively. Because no matter how we present ourselves, it does not excuse bad behavior. If I walked around outside wearing clothes with stacks of money protruding from my pockets, does that make me acceptable to rob?
It does make thieves lives easy though. And the question is then "Are you willing to, in your presentation of who you are ot the world, accept the consequences of your actions?"
In the case of Covid, the answer for me is yes.
I am willing to be subjected to all sorts of scrutiny and insults as a result of my behavior, which is telling others simply that masks don't work, that experimental vaccines were also ineffective, and that regardless, the restrictions were ridiculous, capricious, and unwarranted.
I have made it a point to avoid euphemisms whenever/wherever possible and in the very public forums to always use my name. Fear is one of the most effective tools in the totalitarian fascist kit, so I make an effort to scorn it, hopefully setting an example for...? Much of what we say is preaching to the choir, also known as pissing into the wind, but I do it anyway. If we can annoy only one leftist, it's worth it!
Exactly. We got into this mess by allowing the imposition itself to become the point because most of us are the "live and let live" and "leave me the eff alone" types.
But once you start self censoring or assent by silence then the former only makes the later worse.
And that's why, for the last 5 years, a lot of us have felt alone...but never so alive...just trying to get back to a place where we're comfortable just being left alone.
Good points Mickey and Ryan. I use the 'nom du web' Swabbie Robbie, not because I won't use my name, because just signing up for things gives my e-mail and real name on such platforms.. But it is fun to just go by a handle people recognize. It also stops the casual troll from becoming a pest. I have learned by bad experience. That said, I also do not make comments to start fights or dis other commenters. I enjoy engaging in discussions and know we speak to a larger audience than the ones we are engaged with. I also keep in mind that I learn nothing when I am speaking. That comes from engaging with others. even if what they say are anathema to me, I learn others hold their differential opinions. and it is a valid part of the human spectrum. Be they assholes, turkeys, or worse, politicians. :)
You do learn things by speaking though. At times, I am tasting my opinions and re examining them in the process of speaking/writing/expressing. And I will also get called out on things as well. So speaking means vetting as well. And other times we are also asking "am I being the a-hole here, or what?" Because it is a legitimate question.
I know they already think I am all sorts of things, selfish, idiot, moron, uneducated on Twitter. And after awhile it can take a toll (of course it does, that is part of the intent). So coming back to the well to drink and to discuss is an important part of the recharging process.
In fact, I'm not sure reading out loud would help me. I have a terrible time with homophones. Speaking it in my head might be was causes the sound-word confusion.
I suppose the drugs could factor in here too. *Occam has entered the chat*
It takes all kinds. I use my actual name, and completely understand others that don't. I am also against ad hominem attacks of others, but understand the legitimacy of such tactics. They are effective, hence the reason they are used. I also recognize that when I create parody, am I not making fun of the people who are employing these arguments that I am making fun of?
It's always the misleading target because for example "Heather Has Two Mommies" is harmless in the library. The harm is the drag queens reading it to toddlers and destroying the natural sense in children to be repulsed by the grotesque. But how many have the wit to understand that?
This has always been true since humans invented language. It doesn't matter how fancy we get. Power and resources and who controls 'em and doles 'em out to henchlings.
That's all it is. Really I laugh at all the book recommendations one gets to be educated on what can be fully described in my last sentence above. Navel-gazing can be profitable if you find the right marks for your repackaged basic truths.
Nobody really likes free thinkers. Every Substack we read, there's always something that enrages some of the subscribers because they expected full doctrinal compliance and weren't prepared for deviance from the cherished belief.
Those dissidents? Many of them, too during our Plague Era have been trying to smack down each other because there's only The One True Cause or the One True Cure etc. etc.
Human nature is everywhere and there will never be a cure for its worst parts.
This is the problem with being a hierarchal species. One is fortunate to get a wise alpha pair but some of those relegated to beta-hood might have the genes for leadership too and aren't going to take kindly to the suppression of their talents.
An egregious green shitload of money was also spent promoting the lizard people crowd, the flat earthers, and the Ain’t No Sech Thang as Virusez cretins, whose whole job was to smear scamdemic dissent by association.
Who says that these things will smear by association?
Timothy Caufield on Twitter makes his whole account a "by association" character assassination of anyone who dissents the narrative. Same with another guy who blocked me on his feed Jonathan Stea. He had to block me, no other recourse, because I simply did not bow to the ad hominem and continued to ask the legitimate questions concerning the "vaccine" and Covid itself.
"Heather Has Two Mommies" would only be harmless in a university library. When it is in a grade school library and possibly/probably pushed on children with absolutely no concept of the implications of the story, it is being used specifically to shape the minds of an extremely vulnerable group. That really should have no place in education until the university level and possibly not even then. Before that I think it is more appropriate for parents, family members and friends to shape the developing minds of children - for better or worse. This goes to a point made in this Substack - who is to decide what is right or wrong and which issues should be supported or suppressed, especially on issues as complex as human sexuality? The comparison of the book to the drag queen readings is merely a classic example of the slippery slope.
Banning books is always bad. That's why the book can be safely on the shelves of the school library. It should not be part of the elementary curriculum. If Sally who is being raised by a lesbian couple wants to read a book about families like hers, the librarian can give it to her.
SCA - I totally agree about not banning books and I think I would also support your suggestion that a book like "Heather Has Two Mommies" should be available but not promoted. It is a tricky area and I guess my main concern is that we live in an environment where too many people are involved in pushing their views and agendas on inappropriate audiences. I am generally very supportive of free speech and expression but I get concerned when the target audiences are young and easily manipulated.
And where the "target audiences" are dealt access by the school librarian who will most certainly also be curating reading choices based upon the librarian's personal viewpoint(s).
I feel bad for kids forced into the Sunday schools of every persuasion teaching kids to be terrified of a sado-masochistic God if they have the nerve to think for themselves about anything.
Except for the very bare outlines of any field of human knowledge--and hardly even there--propaganda is always creeping its way into anything we teach our children. Every few decades the "facts" get their little selves revised by new discoveries or retractions of old untruths.
If we got batshit-crazy teachers away from our kids altogether, no matter what they're crazy about, the children might have a fighting chance.
Are all the many Christian books, including fiction, available in elementary school libraries? I couldn’t find any in my kids’ libraries back when they were in school because “separation of church and state” misapplication. So it angers me that all the books with rape and incest, as well as lifestyles I myself don’t agree with, are while my own lifestyle is always kept out.
PPS: Are you supportive of books of all religious perspective being available in elementary school libraries? Books teaching little girls, for example, how best to wear their hijabs? Copies of the Quran in every available English translation? Hindu delineations of the eternal divisions of caste?
Whether secular or sectarian, there's lots of stuff best purchased by parents if they want their kids to read them. I think that Heather Has Two Mommies is as inoffensive a book as I think A Child's First Bible is, though I find the perspectives of each to be silly.
The problem is that having such a book in the library available to children who might be interested implies that it is acceptable in the curriculum, and this is the argument used. It's the "consitancy" argument. You could put rules and guidlines on the curriculum, but that's another huge can of worms.
Back in the good old days everyone gets misty-eyed over, my wretched fifth-grade teacher, in our public school assembly, came and pushed my head down in the posture of Christian prayer because I had kept it upright during some hymn portion of our Thanksgiving schoolwide celebration.
Teachers of every persuasion have been pushing their propaganda/agendas on kids in our public schools forever.
I, as the relative of people murdered by Nazis in Uman, am sorry that it's impossible for kids in public schools to be able to read "Mein Kampf" without outrage and that book is unlikely to be on school library shelves. We ought to be mature enough to separate "available to read" from "promoted as being [insert anything here].
In fact all of us know, and children will learn eventually too, that Heather has a father somewhere who contributed the necessary biological material. But adopted children call their parents "mommie" and "daddy" because those are the people raising them in those roles. So OK, Heather has two women, one of whom may or may not be biologically related to her, acting as her mommies.
We don't need to tie ourselves in knots over these things and become outraged because some child does want to read about a family that exists just as hers does.
That's not why the outrage occurs. I have no problem with Mein Kampf being in the library, though I don't think that most teenagers have the level of intellectual and moral development to look at it critically. The outrage would be if it was used in class by a teacher who would interpret it based on their own opinion. That Heather has two mommies is not the point. It's that some people will see it as normal, some as preferable, some as depraved, and some don't care. The teacher and each parent wants to control the narrative. The question is based on their values, who's children get "the truth" and who's get "propaganda"?
Except is preventing something in a certain venue "banning?"
Stephen King is right on with you on the whole banning thing, but should Pet Sematary be child's reading?Should it be available in a children's library?
We know that all books are not available in libraries. Are those that are not selected to be part of the library being "banned?"
PS: I do not think tax-supported libraries must carry every book ever published anywhere.
I do think any private person should be able to purchase any published book and that it is another project for free speech advocates to curate lists of hard-to-find books with links to where they can be obtained, if the giants like Amazon wish to play games with us.
If a parent is fine with his kid reading Pet Sematary then the kid should be able to check it out and read it.
And if the parent isn't fine with it, I should certainly hope the enterprising child manages to get it from the kid with parents who think otherwise. Subverting the parents' will is an imperative of the maturing young, and the nightmares, of course, may be the earned credit.
Well if there were any semblance of common sense left in education (and more broadly, society) we'd all have, more or less, an understanding of what children, of varying ages, should be exposed to.
But that's what the education system, the state, the elites, and the scolds want to eliminate:
A parents instincts...by way of subbing it outside the nuclear family, to external agency.
"Ass-u-me" is written all over this. I know too many people who "just trust" because they were told so. It happens on a smaller scale within families and businesses unless someone yells "The Emperor has no clothes!" except as the fable goes, too many are afraid to say it and when we do, we get censored! We are all Haters!
Ah, c'mon thats dissing Hitler. At least he could string a sentence together, arguably had charisma of a sort and didn't bother waxing his upper lip...
I've been saying forever that the obvious intent of 230 was to protect service providers from liability for content provided by others. The moment they engaged in outright censorship of entirely legal speech or throttling dissemination of same, they've violated the law. They have been acting as editors and publishers for years now.
Given their demonstrated ability and willingness to censor based on viewpoint discrimination and "preventing harm", they need to be sued by everyone who has has experienced actual harm from clearly illegal activity hosted on their sites. There's a lot of it.
Theres a lot of child pr0n on a bunch of those platforms, I'm told. You just haveta know where to find it. But OK, crack down on women who don't think men are women.
Yes say it now. After the vote-counters present their tally in Nov. we might begin a new era of suppression. First step will likely be an attempt to stack the SCOTUS with additional members, then the mechanisms introduced to term-limit SCOTUS justices. Following that adventure, the Bill of Rights should be expected to collapse like dominoes.
"that fact that the rules are unclear is not a bug, it’s a feature. the capricious, arbitrary nature of what will and will not bring down the wrath serves to render each and all their own jailors, their own thought police for if you have no idea where the line lies, you fear to even step in that direction and you keep yourself well back from anywhere such tripwires might prove to be underfoot."
Random punishment is one of the worst things to do to any thinking creature. A rat in a cage that has the bottom of the cage randomly shock him will end up a quivering ball in the corner. He can't come up with anything he can change to fix the situation and just gives up and breaks down. If you have ever learned to train a dog well and watched how other people reward and punish their dogs randomly and end up with really disturbed dogs, you have seen this.
And if you have ever seen yourself look at something you just typed online, and close the browser without submitting it because you REALLY don't know what bad effect it might have on your life, you have seen yourself responding to random punishment too.
I was bemused into stomach cramps when St. Elon the I Bought This! was adulated by the giddy adn joyful.
Autistic geniuses are not saviors. They have useful purposes but are dangerous with too much power because they are obsessional to the infinite power. We didn't leave enough trash on the moon, we should start creating landfills on Mars?
And Teslas are deathtraps and turn your attached garage into the deathtrap-maker of your house. The guy who wants everyone to drive one is not our friend.
And do we think that the owners of Substack will never ever sell the site if an irresistible offer comes from some bad entity with lotsa lotsa money?
The smart uncapturables amongst us must always be inventing workarounds no matter how good a place might seem in the moment.
Xitter user @DocNetyoutube started a series of posts implicating Tim Walz in fellating one of his former students and he got, as the current rumor goes, a 3-day "timeout", derailing the news dump. Yes, the emails and videos he posts look doctored and inauthentic, and he's obviously a partisan hack, but this info is being corroborated by others on the platform, and silencing Doc is election interference on the same level of the HB laptop "debunking". Whoever is first to come up with an easy-to-use, decentralized and uncensorable, alternative social medium will be the hero of the new age.
I don’t know if the accusations are true or not. But Tim sure looks and acts like they could be. I wouldn’t let him or Grandpa Badfinger anywhere near any child of my family.
I saw those posts before their suppression. This is the same guy who claimed to have the "goods" on ABC news. So likely unreliable. But so what? Others were (IMHO) doing a good job debunking, and the solution is ALWAYS more speech, not a "timeout".
It wouldn't need funding if there's enough open-source rebels to do the work for free. I was working on mine, kybyz, for a couple of years before I got derailed. I'll get back on it eventually, but have a few dozen other projects to which I'm also committed.
Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro are real examples of attempts to cancel and shadow ban using lawfare. Both got put in prison for misdemeanors despite having appeals of their convictions. They would both very likely won those appeals. Now after release if they win those appeals, how will the just-us system make them whole? recompense all their legal costs? compensate for lost income plus penalties? Give them an additional 4 months of life? Prosecute those that used lawfare on them to take them out of play thereby doing election interference? I think we all know the answers to those questions. But, Bannon's WarRoom continued with guest hosts, Navarro wrote and has published a new book.. They became famous martyrs to the cause and probably made millions aware of them that otherwise wouldn't be.
Like all things Elon, the reality falls short of the hype. For example, I’m still waiting for the first person to create generational wealth by owning a fleet of Tesla self-driving taxis.
The Zuck is no different from IBM and many other American capitalist corporations in the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s. Business is business no matter the flag or the head of state, and capitalism cares about profit and power, not people.
On the individual level, follow your ethical and moral code. Beyond that, it's all collectivist in some manner, whether cultural or ideological or spiritual/religious.
Personally, I cleave to two tenets, have done for more than half my life now:
Do not cause suffering
Increase the Good
What's funny is, I decided on this long before I ever read Aristotle.
Zuckerberg, just as you and me, has a choice: sell data with no consideration for what it is used for, or by whom it is used - or to not sell data the way he has been doing. A middle ground would e to limit the sales somehow, to not cause suffering and to try and increase the Good.
But the choice must be his, therefore I have no good answer for how to "make" people choose to not cause suffering and to increase the Good.
(This is also why I tend to reason that you do Good by not doing Evil, but also that one cannot force Good to come about, only allow it to grow from refraining from Evil.)
I really appreciate you asking, Ryan. A principle or theorem or some other big word is worth nothing if one isn't challenged to explain.
(And I'm not meaning to imply this was unique to American capitalists - the Wallenberg family was so deep in the pocket of the German regime that Sweden had to pay post-war reparations /to/ Germany. Not something you'd want as part of your national history, let me tell you.)
Nothing against you, but for years google's moto was "Don't be evil". It is now "Do the right thing". How did either of those work out? Without any sort of moral framework to fall back on, I guess "evil" and "right" are in the eye of the beholder.
Oh I remember the old one - really telling that they dropped it, no?
The idea is, "Do not cause suffering" helps out with what the Good in the other phrase is, since causing suffering cannot be Good, even if you don't have a specific credo of what is Good, Evil, and so on, since "suffering" is rather difficult to get around or rationalise.
Good discussion points. But it brings to my mind the "do no harm" phrase in the oath that doctors and nurses take upon having their credentials bestowed upon them. As a former nurse who worked in the public healthcare sector during the 80s, I saw those oaths to "do no harm" transition away from "do no harm to the patient" to "do no harm to the system." And now we have doctors knowingly poisoning their patients to protect the pharmaceutical industry, while the nurses are synchronized dancing in the halls in collusion with the healthcare system machine. We’ve ended up with the senior medical professionals exiting as fast as they can to preserve some semblance of oath integrity, and we’re left with the ones who either don’t care or don’t have a clue that phrase refers to the patient not the machine, or they’re too afraid of blowing up their career to make noise.
IMO the answer is to create viable and effective alternatives that will allow people to bypass the machines altogether…but that takes a lot of courage and effort and it does seem like those 2 things are in short supply these days.
Best feature of X is to use Lists. For example: i have a list for weather, another for tech and business. Also have list for local and state government. This way it’s easier to see the posts from folks i really want to see, like this cat….
Remember the lady who wrote this is only for disaffected teenage boys:
“There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
~ Cardinal Richelieu
"You bring me the man, I'll find you the crime."
~ Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria
Such are the historical foundations and goals of the modern "progressive" regime that afflicts us, in the realm of public speech particularly, and generally, respectively.
Thanks to the pesky First Amendment, the American leviathan has been driven to develop increasingly sophisticated and veiled mechanisms, documented here and elsewhere, but which vast numbers apparently have neither the capability nor interest in understanding.
This is rarely, and sometimes amusingly, admitted by our leftist overlords, such as when Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson laments that "[m]y biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways", seemingly oblivious to the fact that that is the Amendment's sole purpose.
As for the general, the almost incomprehensibly gigantic body of laws insure that everyone, everywhere is in violation of one or more edicts pretty much at all times, thus making us all in continuous danger of prosecution by a legal system that, thanks to the despicable practice of plea bargaining, some 90% plead guilty, contributing to a conviction rate of over 99%, with only 0.4% acquitted at trial*.
The phrase 'travesty of justice', simply does not do this state of affairs justice.
In the current cycle its more effective to "allow" a population to "choose" what they can say than it is to mandate what you can't say.
Why?
Because a generalized/arbitrary threat induces an "abundance of caution", thereby INCREASING/EXPANDING organically through "crowdsharing" (word of mouth/networking) of what is acceptable and what isnt.
Nazi Germany employed the same insidious/sinister tactics; they didn't ban certain books, rather they let people "choose" what they THOUGHT might be verboten.
There's a progressive ratcheting effect in this tactic because anything that is considered "adjacent" becomes off limits....leading to an ever expanding adjacents of adjacents that starburst from that which everyone knows is off-limits.
And guess what?
This gives the "henchman" next door more options for which they can call in the jackboots, thereby giving even more control, tacitly, over what can be said. In this way, there is both an implied threat, in general, and explicit threat when you or your next door neighbors get the "knock"....a feedback loop, tightening the focus of what is ordained and what COULD be problematic to say.
And most insidious of all is it encourages people to accept, or even say, that which they know not to be true or that which they disagree with...leading to people unconsciously believing the lie over time...because they no longer have a way to seek truth.
the other key is that it avoids creating "martyrs"
back in 2021, getting thrown off twitter was a badge of honor and a credibility enhancer. it made people ask: "why are they afraid of this speaker and what they have to say?"
it helped build some of the large early substacks.
but having them simply "fade" you so no one sees you is far more insidious and effective. it makes it look like your fault, not theirs. there is no clear event to point to and say "i was wrong" just low engagement and impact.
Ooh good point.
It has a lot of carry-on consequences because, ultimately, making it seem like your fault leads to a situation where, what were once rights become perceived "privileges". And if your actions jeopardize others "privileges" the state has its own enforcement arm in the agora; the public who seeks "protection" of privilege by elimination/dimunition of the RIGHTS of others. .
Yes, the bully always portrays themselves as victims.
Not always. Depends on the bully. Some just bully because they bully. They may be portrayed by others as the victim, and very often there are things in their lives where mistreatment of them led to mistreatment of others. But there are other bullies who simply learn that "might makes right."
I recommend watching the doc "Bully" when you get a chance. During that film there are definite thinking points that may have been unintended by the documentary makers. One such is "what did the victim of the bullies do to intentionally/unintentionally draw attention to themselves?
It's verboten to ask this question in terms of rape. I disagree that a woman is "asking for it" if she is dressed provocatively. Because no matter how we present ourselves, it does not excuse bad behavior. If I walked around outside wearing clothes with stacks of money protruding from my pockets, does that make me acceptable to rob?
It does make thieves lives easy though. And the question is then "Are you willing to, in your presentation of who you are ot the world, accept the consequences of your actions?"
In the case of Covid, the answer for me is yes.
I am willing to be subjected to all sorts of scrutiny and insults as a result of my behavior, which is telling others simply that masks don't work, that experimental vaccines were also ineffective, and that regardless, the restrictions were ridiculous, capricious, and unwarranted.
Trust me. I get it. I became a bully to my "conservative" friends during c19 to wake their asses up. Nothing else worked...but "bullying" did.
The alpha side of me could not abide people I care for being cowards.
They needed bullying to be encouraged. They didn't like it...but they understand, now, that it was necessary.
Yeah...the only weapon these people know how to operate is military grade blame-throwers.
The tantrums are a result of reality clashing with their fictitious worldview.
::Heads explode::....
Fading is the Orwell nonperson.
*unperson
I have made it a point to avoid euphemisms whenever/wherever possible and in the very public forums to always use my name. Fear is one of the most effective tools in the totalitarian fascist kit, so I make an effort to scorn it, hopefully setting an example for...? Much of what we say is preaching to the choir, also known as pissing into the wind, but I do it anyway. If we can annoy only one leftist, it's worth it!
Exactly. We got into this mess by allowing the imposition itself to become the point because most of us are the "live and let live" and "leave me the eff alone" types.
But once you start self censoring or assent by silence then the former only makes the later worse.
And that's why, for the last 5 years, a lot of us have felt alone...but never so alive...just trying to get back to a place where we're comfortable just being left alone.
Good points Mickey and Ryan. I use the 'nom du web' Swabbie Robbie, not because I won't use my name, because just signing up for things gives my e-mail and real name on such platforms.. But it is fun to just go by a handle people recognize. It also stops the casual troll from becoming a pest. I have learned by bad experience. That said, I also do not make comments to start fights or dis other commenters. I enjoy engaging in discussions and know we speak to a larger audience than the ones we are engaged with. I also keep in mind that I learn nothing when I am speaking. That comes from engaging with others. even if what they say are anathema to me, I learn others hold their differential opinions. and it is a valid part of the human spectrum. Be they assholes, turkeys, or worse, politicians. :)
I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that your real name isn't Swabbie Robbie.
When I was young and misbehaving, my mother would yell, "Pi Robert Guy - you get in this house right this minute!"
😂
The really weird part is His real name is Swabbie, it's "Robbie" that is the fictionalized part.
You do learn things by speaking though. At times, I am tasting my opinions and re examining them in the process of speaking/writing/expressing. And I will also get called out on things as well. So speaking means vetting as well. And other times we are also asking "am I being the a-hole here, or what?" Because it is a legitimate question.
I know they already think I am all sorts of things, selfish, idiot, moron, uneducated on Twitter. And after awhile it can take a toll (of course it does, that is part of the intent). So coming back to the well to drink and to discuss is an important part of the recharging process.
I like to read what I wrote out load before I post. that is my 1st filter - It also catches some of my typos and thinkos.
I should do this. I'm a terrible proof reader.
In fact, I'm not sure reading out loud would help me. I have a terrible time with homophones. Speaking it in my head might be was causes the sound-word confusion.
I suppose the drugs could factor in here too. *Occam has entered the chat*
There just aren't enough iterations to suss out my typos.
"So speaking means vetting as well."
Yup.
It takes all kinds. I use my actual name, and completely understand others that don't. I am also against ad hominem attacks of others, but understand the legitimacy of such tactics. They are effective, hence the reason they are used. I also recognize that when I create parody, am I not making fun of the people who are employing these arguments that I am making fun of?
Are you the musician Mickey Free?
It's always the misleading target because for example "Heather Has Two Mommies" is harmless in the library. The harm is the drag queens reading it to toddlers and destroying the natural sense in children to be repulsed by the grotesque. But how many have the wit to understand that?
Not many, and even less who will dissent for fear of social tyranny.
And that's why the most powerful form of resistance, is the resistance of one, who tells many.
That's why they came after the skeptics of the plandemic.
The core strategy was to isolate the dissidents so they could not confer with each other.
This has always been true since humans invented language. It doesn't matter how fancy we get. Power and resources and who controls 'em and doles 'em out to henchlings.
That's all it is. Really I laugh at all the book recommendations one gets to be educated on what can be fully described in my last sentence above. Navel-gazing can be profitable if you find the right marks for your repackaged basic truths.
Nobody really likes free thinkers. Every Substack we read, there's always something that enrages some of the subscribers because they expected full doctrinal compliance and weren't prepared for deviance from the cherished belief.
Those dissidents? Many of them, too during our Plague Era have been trying to smack down each other because there's only The One True Cause or the One True Cure etc. etc.
Human nature is everywhere and there will never be a cure for its worst parts.
True. Bondage is default.
This is the problem with being a hierarchal species. One is fortunate to get a wise alpha pair but some of those relegated to beta-hood might have the genes for leadership too and aren't going to take kindly to the suppression of their talents.
And lo, America was settled...
An egregious green shitload of money was also spent promoting the lizard people crowd, the flat earthers, and the Ain’t No Sech Thang as Virusez cretins, whose whole job was to smear scamdemic dissent by association.
And yet, does it?
Who says that these things will smear by association?
Timothy Caufield on Twitter makes his whole account a "by association" character assassination of anyone who dissents the narrative. Same with another guy who blocked me on his feed Jonathan Stea. He had to block me, no other recourse, because I simply did not bow to the ad hominem and continued to ask the legitimate questions concerning the "vaccine" and Covid itself.
They can spend all the money they want.
"Heather Has Two Mommies" would only be harmless in a university library. When it is in a grade school library and possibly/probably pushed on children with absolutely no concept of the implications of the story, it is being used specifically to shape the minds of an extremely vulnerable group. That really should have no place in education until the university level and possibly not even then. Before that I think it is more appropriate for parents, family members and friends to shape the developing minds of children - for better or worse. This goes to a point made in this Substack - who is to decide what is right or wrong and which issues should be supported or suppressed, especially on issues as complex as human sexuality? The comparison of the book to the drag queen readings is merely a classic example of the slippery slope.
Banning books is always bad. That's why the book can be safely on the shelves of the school library. It should not be part of the elementary curriculum. If Sally who is being raised by a lesbian couple wants to read a book about families like hers, the librarian can give it to her.
SCA - I totally agree about not banning books and I think I would also support your suggestion that a book like "Heather Has Two Mommies" should be available but not promoted. It is a tricky area and I guess my main concern is that we live in an environment where too many people are involved in pushing their views and agendas on inappropriate audiences. I am generally very supportive of free speech and expression but I get concerned when the target audiences are young and easily manipulated.
And where the "target audiences" are dealt access by the school librarian who will most certainly also be curating reading choices based upon the librarian's personal viewpoint(s).
I feel bad for kids forced into the Sunday schools of every persuasion teaching kids to be terrified of a sado-masochistic God if they have the nerve to think for themselves about anything.
Except for the very bare outlines of any field of human knowledge--and hardly even there--propaganda is always creeping its way into anything we teach our children. Every few decades the "facts" get their little selves revised by new discoveries or retractions of old untruths.
If we got batshit-crazy teachers away from our kids altogether, no matter what they're crazy about, the children might have a fighting chance.
Are all the many Christian books, including fiction, available in elementary school libraries? I couldn’t find any in my kids’ libraries back when they were in school because “separation of church and state” misapplication. So it angers me that all the books with rape and incest, as well as lifestyles I myself don’t agree with, are while my own lifestyle is always kept out.
PPS: Are you supportive of books of all religious perspective being available in elementary school libraries? Books teaching little girls, for example, how best to wear their hijabs? Copies of the Quran in every available English translation? Hindu delineations of the eternal divisions of caste?
Whether secular or sectarian, there's lots of stuff best purchased by parents if they want their kids to read them. I think that Heather Has Two Mommies is as inoffensive a book as I think A Child's First Bible is, though I find the perspectives of each to be silly.
PS: Rape, incest etc. are very well represented in the Old Testament.
Aren't the Chronicles of Narnia available in school libraries?
The problem is that having such a book in the library available to children who might be interested implies that it is acceptable in the curriculum, and this is the argument used. It's the "consitancy" argument. You could put rules and guidlines on the curriculum, but that's another huge can of worms.
Back in the good old days everyone gets misty-eyed over, my wretched fifth-grade teacher, in our public school assembly, came and pushed my head down in the posture of Christian prayer because I had kept it upright during some hymn portion of our Thanksgiving schoolwide celebration.
Teachers of every persuasion have been pushing their propaganda/agendas on kids in our public schools forever.
I, as the relative of people murdered by Nazis in Uman, am sorry that it's impossible for kids in public schools to be able to read "Mein Kampf" without outrage and that book is unlikely to be on school library shelves. We ought to be mature enough to separate "available to read" from "promoted as being [insert anything here].
In fact all of us know, and children will learn eventually too, that Heather has a father somewhere who contributed the necessary biological material. But adopted children call their parents "mommie" and "daddy" because those are the people raising them in those roles. So OK, Heather has two women, one of whom may or may not be biologically related to her, acting as her mommies.
We don't need to tie ourselves in knots over these things and become outraged because some child does want to read about a family that exists just as hers does.
That's not why the outrage occurs. I have no problem with Mein Kampf being in the library, though I don't think that most teenagers have the level of intellectual and moral development to look at it critically. The outrage would be if it was used in class by a teacher who would interpret it based on their own opinion. That Heather has two mommies is not the point. It's that some people will see it as normal, some as preferable, some as depraved, and some don't care. The teacher and each parent wants to control the narrative. The question is based on their values, who's children get "the truth" and who's get "propaganda"?
Except is preventing something in a certain venue "banning?"
Stephen King is right on with you on the whole banning thing, but should Pet Sematary be child's reading?Should it be available in a children's library?
We know that all books are not available in libraries. Are those that are not selected to be part of the library being "banned?"
PS: I do not think tax-supported libraries must carry every book ever published anywhere.
I do think any private person should be able to purchase any published book and that it is another project for free speech advocates to curate lists of hard-to-find books with links to where they can be obtained, if the giants like Amazon wish to play games with us.
If a parent is fine with his kid reading Pet Sematary then the kid should be able to check it out and read it.
And if the parent isn't fine with it, I should certainly hope the enterprising child manages to get it from the kid with parents who think otherwise. Subverting the parents' will is an imperative of the maturing young, and the nightmares, of course, may be the earned credit.
Well if there were any semblance of common sense left in education (and more broadly, society) we'd all have, more or less, an understanding of what children, of varying ages, should be exposed to.
But that's what the education system, the state, the elites, and the scolds want to eliminate:
A parents instincts...by way of subbing it outside the nuclear family, to external agency.
"Ass-u-me" is written all over this. I know too many people who "just trust" because they were told so. It happens on a smaller scale within families and businesses unless someone yells "The Emperor has no clothes!" except as the fable goes, too many are afraid to say it and when we do, we get censored! We are all Haters!
Too often disagreement is seen as hate. Because who wants to be a hater?
I do. I am perfectly fine with distaste for broccoli. Does that mean I am going to burn broccoli crops and try to ban it from menus?
Don't salt the broccoli fields.
Just salt the broccoli! Yummy!
Although I may have been in favor of nuking every vegetable "field" up until I was an adult.
Spot on
Would sure like to see a detailed response by Musk..
He's busy launching spaceships and running a campaign.
Like OrangeManBad™ in the past 8 years, there are no doubt "friends" around him undermining his operation (if we can assume good will on his part).
As election day draws near and early voting starts it's now OrangeManHitler....
gosh we are living is despicable times.
For real, it should be Harris the wh ore is Hitler
Ah, c'mon thats dissing Hitler. At least he could string a sentence together, arguably had charisma of a sort and didn't bother waxing his upper lip...
yeh
"Im gon win" she said🤯
I've been saying forever that the obvious intent of 230 was to protect service providers from liability for content provided by others. The moment they engaged in outright censorship of entirely legal speech or throttling dissemination of same, they've violated the law. They have been acting as editors and publishers for years now.
Given their demonstrated ability and willingness to censor based on viewpoint discrimination and "preventing harm", they need to be sued by everyone who has has experienced actual harm from clearly illegal activity hosted on their sites. There's a lot of it.
Theres a lot of child pr0n on a bunch of those platforms, I'm told. You just haveta know where to find it. But OK, crack down on women who don't think men are women.
Preach it Bad Cat! Preach it!
Yes say it now. After the vote-counters present their tally in Nov. we might begin a new era of suppression. First step will likely be an attempt to stack the SCOTUS with additional members, then the mechanisms introduced to term-limit SCOTUS justices. Following that adventure, the Bill of Rights should be expected to collapse like dominoes.
"that fact that the rules are unclear is not a bug, it’s a feature. the capricious, arbitrary nature of what will and will not bring down the wrath serves to render each and all their own jailors, their own thought police for if you have no idea where the line lies, you fear to even step in that direction and you keep yourself well back from anywhere such tripwires might prove to be underfoot."
Random punishment is one of the worst things to do to any thinking creature. A rat in a cage that has the bottom of the cage randomly shock him will end up a quivering ball in the corner. He can't come up with anything he can change to fix the situation and just gives up and breaks down. If you have ever learned to train a dog well and watched how other people reward and punish their dogs randomly and end up with really disturbed dogs, you have seen this.
And if you have ever seen yourself look at something you just typed online, and close the browser without submitting it because you REALLY don't know what bad effect it might have on your life, you have seen yourself responding to random punishment too.
That randomness really is key, isn't it? Abuse and terrorism come to mind.
I was bemused into stomach cramps when St. Elon the I Bought This! was adulated by the giddy adn joyful.
Autistic geniuses are not saviors. They have useful purposes but are dangerous with too much power because they are obsessional to the infinite power. We didn't leave enough trash on the moon, we should start creating landfills on Mars?
And Teslas are deathtraps and turn your attached garage into the deathtrap-maker of your house. The guy who wants everyone to drive one is not our friend.
And do we think that the owners of Substack will never ever sell the site if an irresistible offer comes from some bad entity with lotsa lotsa money?
The smart uncapturables amongst us must always be inventing workarounds no matter how good a place might seem in the moment.
Amen.
I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
It is free to read with or without a subscription which just gives me stat satisfaction.
Even if Elon weren't "in on it" he's likely being undermined by troupes of gubbmint goons and traitorous insiders.
They may actually be the same people.
They are the same people.
Xitter user @DocNetyoutube started a series of posts implicating Tim Walz in fellating one of his former students and he got, as the current rumor goes, a 3-day "timeout", derailing the news dump. Yes, the emails and videos he posts look doctored and inauthentic, and he's obviously a partisan hack, but this info is being corroborated by others on the platform, and silencing Doc is election interference on the same level of the HB laptop "debunking". Whoever is first to come up with an easy-to-use, decentralized and uncensorable, alternative social medium will be the hero of the new age.
I don’t know if the accusations are true or not. But Tim sure looks and acts like they could be. I wouldn’t let him or Grandpa Badfinger anywhere near any child of my family.
Hey! Nine out of ten Cat Ladies say Joe and Tim are nice guys!
I saw those posts before their suppression. This is the same guy who claimed to have the "goods" on ABC news. So likely unreliable. But so what? Others were (IMHO) doing a good job debunking, and the solution is ALWAYS more speech, not a "timeout".
I heard an interview with another exchange student that Tim Walz was grooming. Start at 12:30 https://rumble.com/v5hlftp-grooming-allegations-against-tim-walz-by-former-student-on-sat-night-livest.html
Thanks! I wish Rumble had closed-captioning. I'll watch it at home later.
And who figures out a way to fund it...
It wouldn't need funding if there's enough open-source rebels to do the work for free. I was working on mine, kybyz, for a couple of years before I got derailed. I'll get back on it eventually, but have a few dozen other projects to which I'm also committed.
The world runs on commerce, not altruism...
I would help build a shrine to whoever comes up with an unfettered parallel system!
I follow Tucker Carlson on X and he NEVER shows up in my feed.
Two I follow - Elon and Libs of TikTok show up. Oh, and Penn State football. Tucker, no. El Gato, no. Others - infrequently.
I have notifications turned on for both gato and tucker. That way I always see when they post something. Have never seen them in my feed. Not once
It’s a good thing I wasn’t drinking coffee while reading your first Fedboi meme today! I would have splurted it out all over the computer screen🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Ah! that would have been your punishment.
Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro are real examples of attempts to cancel and shadow ban using lawfare. Both got put in prison for misdemeanors despite having appeals of their convictions. They would both very likely won those appeals. Now after release if they win those appeals, how will the just-us system make them whole? recompense all their legal costs? compensate for lost income plus penalties? Give them an additional 4 months of life? Prosecute those that used lawfare on them to take them out of play thereby doing election interference? I think we all know the answers to those questions. But, Bannon's WarRoom continued with guest hosts, Navarro wrote and has published a new book.. They became famous martyrs to the cause and probably made millions aware of them that otherwise wouldn't be.
Well done!
Like all things Elon, the reality falls short of the hype. For example, I’m still waiting for the first person to create generational wealth by owning a fleet of Tesla self-driving taxis.
Johnnie Cabs, here we come!
The Zuck is no different from IBM and many other American capitalist corporations in the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s. Business is business no matter the flag or the head of state, and capitalism cares about profit and power, not people.
Obligatory soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L397TWLwrUU
What's the alternative?
On the individual level, follow your ethical and moral code. Beyond that, it's all collectivist in some manner, whether cultural or ideological or spiritual/religious.
Personally, I cleave to two tenets, have done for more than half my life now:
Do not cause suffering
Increase the Good
What's funny is, I decided on this long before I ever read Aristotle.
Zuckerberg, just as you and me, has a choice: sell data with no consideration for what it is used for, or by whom it is used - or to not sell data the way he has been doing. A middle ground would e to limit the sales somehow, to not cause suffering and to try and increase the Good.
But the choice must be his, therefore I have no good answer for how to "make" people choose to not cause suffering and to increase the Good.
(This is also why I tend to reason that you do Good by not doing Evil, but also that one cannot force Good to come about, only allow it to grow from refraining from Evil.)
I really appreciate you asking, Ryan. A principle or theorem or some other big word is worth nothing if one isn't challenged to explain.
(And I'm not meaning to imply this was unique to American capitalists - the Wallenberg family was so deep in the pocket of the German regime that Sweden had to pay post-war reparations /to/ Germany. Not something you'd want as part of your national history, let me tell you.)
Nothing against you, but for years google's moto was "Don't be evil". It is now "Do the right thing". How did either of those work out? Without any sort of moral framework to fall back on, I guess "evil" and "right" are in the eye of the beholder.
Oh I remember the old one - really telling that they dropped it, no?
The idea is, "Do not cause suffering" helps out with what the Good in the other phrase is, since causing suffering cannot be Good, even if you don't have a specific credo of what is Good, Evil, and so on, since "suffering" is rather difficult to get around or rationalise.
(Well, for me at least.)
Good discussion points. But it brings to my mind the "do no harm" phrase in the oath that doctors and nurses take upon having their credentials bestowed upon them. As a former nurse who worked in the public healthcare sector during the 80s, I saw those oaths to "do no harm" transition away from "do no harm to the patient" to "do no harm to the system." And now we have doctors knowingly poisoning their patients to protect the pharmaceutical industry, while the nurses are synchronized dancing in the halls in collusion with the healthcare system machine. We’ve ended up with the senior medical professionals exiting as fast as they can to preserve some semblance of oath integrity, and we’re left with the ones who either don’t care or don’t have a clue that phrase refers to the patient not the machine, or they’re too afraid of blowing up their career to make noise.
IMO the answer is to create viable and effective alternatives that will allow people to bypass the machines altogether…but that takes a lot of courage and effort and it does seem like those 2 things are in short supply these days.
Best feature of X is to use Lists. For example: i have a list for weather, another for tech and business. Also have list for local and state government. This way it’s easier to see the posts from folks i really want to see, like this cat….
Hmm I have the basic paid account. Do we get lists with that? I know I have bookmarks now, but didn’t see lists yet …
Basic accounts get them too.. that’s all i have.
Remember the lady who wrote this is only for disaffected teenage boys:
“There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
~ Cardinal Richelieu
"You bring me the man, I'll find you the crime."
~ Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria
Such are the historical foundations and goals of the modern "progressive" regime that afflicts us, in the realm of public speech particularly, and generally, respectively.
Thanks to the pesky First Amendment, the American leviathan has been driven to develop increasingly sophisticated and veiled mechanisms, documented here and elsewhere, but which vast numbers apparently have neither the capability nor interest in understanding.
This is rarely, and sometimes amusingly, admitted by our leftist overlords, such as when Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson laments that "[m]y biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways", seemingly oblivious to the fact that that is the Amendment's sole purpose.
As for the general, the almost incomprehensibly gigantic body of laws insure that everyone, everywhere is in violation of one or more edicts pretty much at all times, thus making us all in continuous danger of prosecution by a legal system that, thanks to the despicable practice of plea bargaining, some 90% plead guilty, contributing to a conviction rate of over 99%, with only 0.4% acquitted at trial*.
The phrase 'travesty of justice', simply does not do this state of affairs justice.
* https://www.perplexity.ai/search/us-conviction-rate-federal-G4am_cYZT8izsfF4ZlCubw
This is by design, and is well documented in Harvey Silverglate's book "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent"
Only marginally related: I loved reading The Three Musketeers when I was a young lad of about 12.