If only voters were as smart as that doggie and could realize so quickly that they’d been duped.
PSA: I’m guessing everyone on my mailing list is a subset of el gato’s list, so if you read the title of my piece yesterday and immediately unsubbed without bothering to read the article, PLEASE take a moment to actually read it and then share like crazy to help get this in front of every parent in the world and save some kids’ lives:
Margaret Anna Alice, if people think you would write a pro vax screed, they really really really need to read your Substack...letters to a tyrant, letters to....etc.
They are missing some of the best writing ever....unfailingly polite, courteous, both right to the nub, and piss-ant (excuse my french) elegant.
Really, people unsubbed?!? Good Lord, have they never read you? Honestly, I do not know what has happened to satire and irony in today's world. Do these modes of expression, dating back to the Greeks, need to be taught? Must everything be followed by /sarc because people have lost all discernment? How disappointing.
Yeah, I was pretty surprised by the backlash. It never even occurred to me that anyone on my mailing list could think I would write such a title without my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.
I admit I did blink when I saw the title, then came the thought, "Oh, this is going to be good." Which it was. But then I'm a massive fan of satire; I find the Onion and the Babylon Bee very pleasant refuges in time of trouble.
Which is why anti-state humor is nonexistent in totalitarian systems - to mock is to utterly destroy. A related topic - Scott Adams has done a lot of informal research and talks often about his serious conclusion that a significant portion of the human population has no sense of humor, which he means quite literally. Not that they're grumpy or mean, but that they just don't get jokes.
It would never have occurred to me that anyone--on your list or not--would just jump to a conclusion based on the headline without at least looking at the first "reason" on the list. Seriously, when they say most people never read beyond the headlines, I guess they really mean they NEVER read beyond the headlines. I for one, on reading the headline, was immediately looking forward to high level satire and snark. And I wasn't disappointed, even if much of the information was terribly depressing.
I thought the same thing, Grandma Bear—I figured people receiving the newsletter would at least scroll down out of curiosity and read #1, at which point any misperceptions would be quickly dissolved.
I've had a few people who do the same thing... read the title and one sentence and then either unsubscribe or immediately go to the comments to bloviate about how much they disagree with me. The childishness of this (especially in the "liberty" community) shows just how much work we have to do. If we in the liberty community get triggered just as quickly/badly as the monsters who want to destroy everything good in the world do, what hope is there? MAA's post was incredible and should be required reading.
Well, I would think anyone who has subscribed to your stack KNOWS your views on all this, so the unsub reaction is odd. Your title is a teaser, it immediately seems uncharacteristic of your expressed viewpoints, so you would think the FIRST thing would be to READ what you actually wrote in the article. Duh! So many people seem to have totally lost their sense of humor and irony. Not that the article was humorous because it wasn't, but the black humor of all the craziness of what is going on under everyone's noses requires reminders now and then about the horrifying events that have been occurring in terms of vaccine damage. It's so hard to get these ideas through the thick walls of some brains. Personally, I enjoyed the article while being sickened by the content and reminders. Seems like the title would have prodded people to read the article rather resorting to a knee-jerk reaction thinking it was a literal opinion. Good grief.
As I take these thoughts in, I wonder if those unsubbing ever were commentators. IOW were they ever active readers? Quite odd to understand their actions.
Good question. I didn’t recognize any of the names—they may have been newer readers who signed up based on a recommendation and weren’t familiar with my work. That’s the only thing I can guess as anyone who knows me would *know* it was satire.
I replied to all of the disgruntled emails explaining that it was satire and encouraging them to actually *read* the article (or scroll down once and at least read the first reason! 😆), and only one replied with an apology for reacting without reading.
Same thing has been happening on Twitter, but more people have followed up with penitent retractions there, at least.
Well you went out of your way which is refreshing. Good that you had a least one real response. I admire your work and efforts don't let the b@ast@rds....
To continue the doggie allegory, we are soon to be taken for a walk to the forest by our government, while they would be bringing along their F-15s :P.
Covid jabs for kids, 5-11 quietly dropped in UK, um, ah, mutter, nothing to see here.........Parents have been shunning them anyway. We might all have bad teeth, but many of our kids aren't full of the mRNA poison, thankfully.
I'm not a fan of sarcasm, and I believe it would take more effort to write those 50 reasons using kindness. You were incredibly cruel to the parents who lost their children.
I know you are brilliant, and I am a subscriber. I think you can do better.
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback, April, and I’m very sorry that is the impression you got as it is the opposite of what I intended. I think the parents who lost their children would agree the thing they want most in this world (besides getting their children back) is to stop this from happening to other children, and that is the goal of this piece.
While you may not personally like satire, it is an incredibly effective tool for awakening people to the absurdity of what they have come to believe. If a parent who is wanting to inject their child sees that title and clicks on it looking for information to affirm their confirmation bias, they will be confronted with the brutal truths they have been working diligently to avert their eyes from for two years. When you are dealing with cult members, sometimes a slap in the face is what it takes to shake them out of their menticide.
I have used kindness in the past and will do so again in the future, but this particular piece uses satire because it has a better chance of penetrating the programming. Thousands of people have already found value in it and are sharing it accordingly, and my hope is it will help save the lives of children as well as adults.
Black humor has been the weapon of the oppressed for centuries. Do you think the poor Irish parents whose babies had perished from famine felt Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” was cruel, or did they appreciate that he was using humor to expose the cruelty of their situation in his attempt to effect change?
As noted in this article (https://allthatsinteresting.com/a-modest-proposal), “by making such a shocking and distasteful suggestion, he meant to call attention to the severity of the problem that was at hand.”
No good deed goes unpunished! There’s ALWAYS someone who will be offended. It took me awhile but I’m learning to live by the famous quote “what other people think about me is NONE of my business”! You shouldn’t have to explain yourself to ANYONE! You are doing great things in a time when we need it the most. Thank you for your service to humanity!! ❤️
Please April, if you haven't already, read Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal'.
There are few weapons we can use in this asymmetric class warfare. Satire might be more than a mere choice of packaging invective, anger, or despair. It is all three ... but with intelligence.
Margaret is as good as they come, and I would hope to think at least some of those parents have the capacity to strategically weaponize thought against an overwhelmingly evil enemy. Think about the target audience Margaret had in mind. It is not those parents. Their grief is her weapon. Their intelligence and empathy for others is their assent.
I am not one of those parents, but as a teacher for some 2500 elementary and Jr. High kids in Japan with no family of my own, they are a poxy for the kids I never had. Rather than a 'real' parent, I am something of a cross between a Taoist dance with nature and a Platonic idealist, and so I believe 'love' and 'compassion' are the ideals from which we should be coming and going.
But 'kindness' is not the only tool in the box, and certainly one of the least appropriate tools for dealing with those high in Cluster B behavior traits ...those dark triads among us — the pathological narcissists, machiavellian opportunists, and morphologically defined psychopaths — who would either be oblivious to kindness, or weaponize it against us.
'Incredibly cruel' would silence the Jonathan Swifts of this world. And the rich would eat us as surely as Saturn devoured his children.
I have just enough skill to appreciate your posts, not enough to create them ... yet. But you are proving to be a good teacher as well as leader. Will now go back and check for my inevitable typos, with your level of integrity in mind ... beginning with getting the spelling of your name 🤣.
"You vill eet ze buhgs, and you vill bee hahppie!", remember?
Personally, I try to follow grandma's advice: "Always be polite at first; it is very hard to be walkback from being rude and obnoxious". I think in english you say "Good manners cost nothing", right?
I 've always been diligent at reading food labels but I think I'm gonna keep a dictionary with me too in case they try to fool me with Latin terminology...
Make sure it's a paperback dictionary - might never know when the Evil Overlards edit the digital copies.
I mean, they write "aqua" on the table of contents for womanly make-up proucts here, instead of "vatten" - and apparently it works, making it sound lah-dee-dah fancy.
Me grumbling: "It's water, petroleum jelly, paraffin, sterain, and assorted similar stuff - it's basically a runny scented candle you rub on your face."
Cue p-od looks from the wife's friends. However, when I accidentally mentioned what a certain red colouring agent is made from, and where the fat in skin crémes comes from... oh dear.
"Don't you have /something/ to do out in the yard, dear?!"
If only voters were as smart as that doggie and could realize so quickly that they’d been duped.
PSA: I’m guessing everyone on my mailing list is a subset of el gato’s list, so if you read the title of my piece yesterday and immediately unsubbed without bothering to read the article, PLEASE take a moment to actually read it and then share like crazy to help get this in front of every parent in the world and save some kids’ lives:
• “50 Reasons to Give Your Child the COVID Shot” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/50-reasons-to-give-your-child-the)
Margaret Anna Alice, if people think you would write a pro vax screed, they really really really need to read your Substack...letters to a tyrant, letters to....etc.
They are missing some of the best writing ever....unfailingly polite, courteous, both right to the nub, and piss-ant (excuse my french) elegant.
Haha, thank you, Duchess 🤗
Really, people unsubbed?!? Good Lord, have they never read you? Honestly, I do not know what has happened to satire and irony in today's world. Do these modes of expression, dating back to the Greeks, need to be taught? Must everything be followed by /sarc because people have lost all discernment? How disappointing.
Yeah, I was pretty surprised by the backlash. It never even occurred to me that anyone on my mailing list could think I would write such a title without my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.
I admit I did blink when I saw the title, then came the thought, "Oh, this is going to be good." Which it was. But then I'm a massive fan of satire; I find the Onion and the Babylon Bee very pleasant refuges in time of trouble.
Same here—one of the reasons I so appreciate CJ Hopkins and JP Sears.
The topic of humor as a mechanism of healing and resistance came up in comments at these other posts recently, too:
• https://drtesslawrie.substack.com/p/humour-may-be-our-best-defence (https://drtesslawrie.substack.com/p/humour-may-be-our-best-defence/comment/8835173)
• (https://jessicar.substack.com/p/do-we-really-want-to-live-in-a-world/) https://jessicar.substack.com/p/do-we-really-want-to-live-in-a-world/comment/8614705
Keep being you, you’re good at it!! 🙌🏻
Thanks, Dan 😌🙏
Which is why anti-state humor is nonexistent in totalitarian systems - to mock is to utterly destroy. A related topic - Scott Adams has done a lot of informal research and talks often about his serious conclusion that a significant portion of the human population has no sense of humor, which he means quite literally. Not that they're grumpy or mean, but that they just don't get jokes.
Precisely the point I made recently here (https://drtesslawrie.substack.com/p/humour-may-be-our-best-defence/comment/8835173), and I do believe much of the population has lost its sense of humor (casualty of wokeism + totalitarianism).
Too bad Scott is such a douchebag, tho:
• https://www.bitchute.com/video/gjZqilI35av1/
Thank you!!
It would never have occurred to me that anyone--on your list or not--would just jump to a conclusion based on the headline without at least looking at the first "reason" on the list. Seriously, when they say most people never read beyond the headlines, I guess they really mean they NEVER read beyond the headlines. I for one, on reading the headline, was immediately looking forward to high level satire and snark. And I wasn't disappointed, even if much of the information was terribly depressing.
I thought the same thing, Grandma Bear—I figured people receiving the newsletter would at least scroll down out of curiosity and read #1, at which point any misperceptions would be quickly dissolved.
So glad you appreciated it, in any case!
Grandma, once again you've said it perfectly.
I'm afraid I would have seen this un-subbing event as welcome Darwinism. Good grief. What morons.
😳
Another really great piece! Thank you. I've passed it on everywhere I can.
🙏🧒🙌
I shared it! loved it!
🙏💓
Same here :)!
Thank you, Hubris!
Not at all; thank you...
The deceiving title might lure a few pro-vaxxers to read the post :-)... I am counting on it :-)!
Ha, ha...
That's my hope! 🤞
I've had a few people who do the same thing... read the title and one sentence and then either unsubscribe or immediately go to the comments to bloviate about how much they disagree with me. The childishness of this (especially in the "liberty" community) shows just how much work we have to do. If we in the liberty community get triggered just as quickly/badly as the monsters who want to destroy everything good in the world do, what hope is there? MAA's post was incredible and should be required reading.
Attention span of a goldfish :)... but, on the bright side, it shows the deep adversity to the hackcines... I think your work here is done, Rob :-)...
💯 The biggest lesson I've taken away from this is how many people knee-jerk react to a headline without *reading* what they're actually reacting to.
Well, I would think anyone who has subscribed to your stack KNOWS your views on all this, so the unsub reaction is odd. Your title is a teaser, it immediately seems uncharacteristic of your expressed viewpoints, so you would think the FIRST thing would be to READ what you actually wrote in the article. Duh! So many people seem to have totally lost their sense of humor and irony. Not that the article was humorous because it wasn't, but the black humor of all the craziness of what is going on under everyone's noses requires reminders now and then about the horrifying events that have been occurring in terms of vaccine damage. It's so hard to get these ideas through the thick walls of some brains. Personally, I enjoyed the article while being sickened by the content and reminders. Seems like the title would have prodded people to read the article rather resorting to a knee-jerk reaction thinking it was a literal opinion. Good grief.
My thoughts exactly, CMCM, and thank you for reading and appreciating!
As I take these thoughts in, I wonder if those unsubbing ever were commentators. IOW were they ever active readers? Quite odd to understand their actions.
Good question. I didn’t recognize any of the names—they may have been newer readers who signed up based on a recommendation and weren’t familiar with my work. That’s the only thing I can guess as anyone who knows me would *know* it was satire.
I replied to all of the disgruntled emails explaining that it was satire and encouraging them to actually *read* the article (or scroll down once and at least read the first reason! 😆), and only one replied with an apology for reacting without reading.
Same thing has been happening on Twitter, but more people have followed up with penitent retractions there, at least.
Well you went out of your way which is refreshing. Good that you had a least one real response. I admire your work and efforts don't let the b@ast@rds....
My friend Barbara who follows Lew Rockwell's site just sent it to me saying she was going to "read the whole thing." So it's getting around MAA!
MAA: I went to LewRockwell.com and there's the article! Third one down!
I adore Lew and am so grateful for his faithful readership and reposting 😇
🙌
Hi Margaret, just read it. Excellent, thank you!
Shared with my brother & sister who have kids.
The title of the article is rather misleading....
Thank you, Distantobserver!
Indeed, it is my hope that the title will entice Covidians to click through …
To continue the doggie allegory, we are soon to be taken for a walk to the forest by our government, while they would be bringing along their F-15s :P.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGqQSJFgGqfWlKchlvDdxRwvLzp
Covid jabs for kids, 5-11 quietly dropped in UK, um, ah, mutter, nothing to see here.........Parents have been shunning them anyway. We might all have bad teeth, but many of our kids aren't full of the mRNA poison, thankfully.
I'm not a fan of sarcasm, and I believe it would take more effort to write those 50 reasons using kindness. You were incredibly cruel to the parents who lost their children.
I know you are brilliant, and I am a subscriber. I think you can do better.
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback, April, and I’m very sorry that is the impression you got as it is the opposite of what I intended. I think the parents who lost their children would agree the thing they want most in this world (besides getting their children back) is to stop this from happening to other children, and that is the goal of this piece.
While you may not personally like satire, it is an incredibly effective tool for awakening people to the absurdity of what they have come to believe. If a parent who is wanting to inject their child sees that title and clicks on it looking for information to affirm their confirmation bias, they will be confronted with the brutal truths they have been working diligently to avert their eyes from for two years. When you are dealing with cult members, sometimes a slap in the face is what it takes to shake them out of their menticide.
I have used kindness in the past and will do so again in the future, but this particular piece uses satire because it has a better chance of penetrating the programming. Thousands of people have already found value in it and are sharing it accordingly, and my hope is it will help save the lives of children as well as adults.
Black humor has been the weapon of the oppressed for centuries. Do you think the poor Irish parents whose babies had perished from famine felt Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” was cruel, or did they appreciate that he was using humor to expose the cruelty of their situation in his attempt to effect change?
As noted in this article (https://allthatsinteresting.com/a-modest-proposal), “by making such a shocking and distasteful suggestion, he meant to call attention to the severity of the problem that was at hand.”
No good deed goes unpunished! There’s ALWAYS someone who will be offended. It took me awhile but I’m learning to live by the famous quote “what other people think about me is NONE of my business”! You shouldn’t have to explain yourself to ANYONE! You are doing great things in a time when we need it the most. Thank you for your service to humanity!! ❤️
Loved it. It was very clever and very effective.
I thought so, too. And btw - I love your name.
I appreciate that, uselesseater.
Satire was never my thing. I disliked it. Until 2020.
Please April, if you haven't already, read Jonathan Swift's 'A Modest Proposal'.
There are few weapons we can use in this asymmetric class warfare. Satire might be more than a mere choice of packaging invective, anger, or despair. It is all three ... but with intelligence.
Margaret is as good as they come, and I would hope to think at least some of those parents have the capacity to strategically weaponize thought against an overwhelmingly evil enemy. Think about the target audience Margaret had in mind. It is not those parents. Their grief is her weapon. Their intelligence and empathy for others is their assent.
I am not one of those parents, but as a teacher for some 2500 elementary and Jr. High kids in Japan with no family of my own, they are a poxy for the kids I never had. Rather than a 'real' parent, I am something of a cross between a Taoist dance with nature and a Platonic idealist, and so I believe 'love' and 'compassion' are the ideals from which we should be coming and going.
But 'kindness' is not the only tool in the box, and certainly one of the least appropriate tools for dealing with those high in Cluster B behavior traits ...those dark triads among us — the pathological narcissists, machiavellian opportunists, and morphologically defined psychopaths — who would either be oblivious to kindness, or weaponize it against us.
'Incredibly cruel' would silence the Jonathan Swifts of this world. And the rich would eat us as surely as Saturn devoured his children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=247HdXb0Rdw
Cheers April, despite the despair. Cheers.
Beautifully articulated. Thank you, Steven 🤗
The honor is mine Margaret.
I have just enough skill to appreciate your posts, not enough to create them ... yet. But you are proving to be a good teacher as well as leader. Will now go back and check for my inevitable typos, with your level of integrity in mind ... beginning with getting the spelling of your name 🤣.
Cheers through it all, Margaret!
The morning after Election Day.
A cat would take both.
A Government Minister, a Daily Mail reader and an immigrant are sat around a table with a plate of 12 biscuits.
The Minister takes 11 biscuits, turns to the Daily Mail reader and says "careful, that immigrant is after your biscuit."
poor pooch, how could you be so cruel to that sad face
Somehow, though, I kinda feel one should never piss off one's cohabitants. They ain't gonna clean up the shit themselves.
Sound advice.
To paraphrase a friend who drives a garbage truck:
"Never ever piss off the people who handle your food, your garbage or your cleaning."
People who don't get that or why, well... they usually deserve what they get, whether they ever find out or not.
Yes, I am very unlikely to send a restaurant dish back to the kitchen unless its contents are visibly wriggling and trying to walk off the plate.
In which case of course I will be walking out the door...
But but but...
"You vill eet ze buhgs, and you vill bee hahppie!", remember?
Personally, I try to follow grandma's advice: "Always be polite at first; it is very hard to be walkback from being rude and obnoxious". I think in english you say "Good manners cost nothing", right?
Guess that one is a hate crime nowadays.
I 've always been diligent at reading food labels but I think I'm gonna keep a dictionary with me too in case they try to fool me with Latin terminology...
Make sure it's a paperback dictionary - might never know when the Evil Overlards edit the digital copies.
I mean, they write "aqua" on the table of contents for womanly make-up proucts here, instead of "vatten" - and apparently it works, making it sound lah-dee-dah fancy.
Me grumbling: "It's water, petroleum jelly, paraffin, sterain, and assorted similar stuff - it's basically a runny scented candle you rub on your face."
Cue p-od looks from the wife's friends. However, when I accidentally mentioned what a certain red colouring agent is made from, and where the fat in skin crémes comes from... oh dear.
"Don't you have /something/ to do out in the yard, dear?!"
Yes, cochineal is one of those things I pretend not to know where it comes from.
No fear about the dictionaries though. I got some pocket-sized ones ready to hand.
I take very good care of my garbage guys - they in return take very good care of us
😂😂😂😂 The look on that poor pup's face is priceless! Thanks for making my day.
All I can say is... that dog, he knows where you sleep at night!
And I don't think you want to end up immobile in your bed for any reason....He looks hungry....
Stock Market reality.
THAT'S THE BEST VISUAL EXPLANATION I'VE SEEN THUS FAR! "EVERYTHING'S A RICH MAN'S TRICK."
Ha, perfect!
Oh, come on. Poor dog!
Aren't you supposed to be in vacation??
Excellent! 😆 It’s funny until you apply it to our political process!
Brilliant and made my day!!! Thank you!
https://changeandevolve.substack.com/p/special-issue-29
The look on that doggie's face is priceless.