“Far right” apparently means “stuff that connects for normal people.” Humor and art were a huge problem for the Soviets, because socialist realism isn’t funny or beautiful. We’re 5 minutes away.
I think it's worse than that. "Far right" is what they label anyone opposed to the desired narrative. Whether you are actually conservative or liberal doesn't even matter.
Exactly, Epaminondas! And if that doesn’t work, they drag out the “racist” label, or the “you’re a Nazi” label….and the list goes on and on…whatever fits their current narrative!
Seriously. They call Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald far-right nowadays; these guys were the heart and soul of Rolling Stone and The Guardian (and before that, Salon) back in the Bush era.
The comrade authors look exactly how you'd expect. I will find a way to sneak my "humorous far right communicative arsenal" into a Trojan Horse and share it with them so they have inspiration for their next paper: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-make-a-trojan-horse-meme
I've read about supporters of communism and Mao in China being snared by the revolutionaries for some reason or other, marched to the gallows and declaring their love for Mao and communism, their understanding, support and forgiveness for their own execution right up to their own deaths. Their minds that twisted by the propaganda.
But when I've tried to go back and find those stories the sources escape my searches. Any suggestions, Yuri?
Well, there is the case of Zhang Zhixin. This young woman was a member and passionate supporter of the Communist Party right up until she was executed on April 4th, 1975. On the way to the firing squad she would have cried out her loyalty to the Party, but the prison doctor had already slashed her vocal cords.
We can't fool ourselves that we're better humans, more evolved, more educated, more peaceful in the US than they were in China. Or Germany. Or Russia. Everywhere totalitarian regimes rise their supporters become zealots. We see it in the crazy eyes of Antifa/BLM/Climate/Trans/Hamas/Mask/Vax nuts. If we don't stop them now, when they accrue more and more power they will be the same humans here. And swear their loyalty to the regime and declare their own sacrifice is necessary for the revolution they believe in to succeed.
Come to think of it, we're the same human species as the Aztecs, who believed and did just that. We're no better beings at our cores. Only our shared belief in our system that has kept us safe and prosperous since the US Constitution and Magna Carta before that has made us better. Which is why these sociopaths are doing everything they can to destroy those human rights-asserting documents.
I just keep asking myself how so many of these people became such sociopaths. When and where did so many get brainwashed Into this way of thinking? I read somewhere that a huge portion of the population value security over freedom.....they prefer to be taken care of in some way by the government and they will choose that over freedom. Maybe. When I was young people seemed to value freedom and all that goes with it....including the ever present possibility of failure. People weren't so fearful as now. There was a shift in our culture, but I'm not quite sure when it happened.
I'd say Freedom Fox gives a good insight. We human beings are (for all practical purposes, e.g. at the scale of one -- or a hundred -- human lifetimes) essentially unchanging. Homo sapiens (the physical species) have been around at least 200,000 years and our close ancestors way before that. One implication, if one accepts that human traits are essentially static, is that at any given time there must be a certain percentage of sociopaths or other dysfunctionals within a population. What varies with time is how effectively (ruthlessly?) such abnormals are restrained or otherwise prevented from causing trouble.
None of the above is to say that human institutions cannot change. Of course circumstances, economies, cultures, religions, and so forth evolve with time and circumstance. A key failing of any idealist or reformer, though, is that with a wish that human being’s (or outer reality’s) inherent natures can be altered to taste, that Reality will bend to the command of the powerful merely because they have been designated “leader.”
Absolutely true. There may be a few screwballs knocking about who do deserve the tag 'far right' but the really bad JOKE is that virtually the whole non-STEM academy is FAR LEFT....not to mention large parts of the civil administration bureaucracy and NGOs: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
I was recently berated by a (possible bot) on substack for making a tasteless satrical joke about another tasteless comment that might have been in earnest. I say possible bot, beacause I just found out AI can't read for humor/satire and it confuses the poor thing. It took me way too seriously.
Humor is one of the few weapons we got left, use it!
To understand humour (not to find something funny, just to understand what it is and when something is intended as it) one must be able to handle paradoxes.
AI can't do that, and neither can "lefties". They simply get stuck in an unsolvable loop, and gets frustrated and angry.
And since it's quite natural to want to remove sources of frustration, they have to make up a rationalising framework as to why said source is WrongBadEvil just for existing, no matter actual reality.
That's why a "lefty" is more angry at someone calling a school-shooter "he" than at the actual shooting, f.e. Their feelings and perceptions matter more than reality (or: their feelings and perceptions /is/ reality to them).
As it was explained to me sometime ago, the Far Right they talk about are actually the Far Right of the Left, with Communists/Marxists being the Far Left of the Left. The actual Far Right would be someone who believes in minimum government and regulation, strong private property and self-defence laws and basically would be touching on anarcho-capitalist. Someone who detests Collectivism.
I'm just a regular American, raised in the urban South, public schools and universities, played college and some pro ball, grew a business that employed a gaggle of people (95% womyn), retired early and just enjoying a normal life riding motersickels and coaching HS football.
I don't drink or smoke, but enjoy the occasional ribeye and baby backs. I have dogs and cats, and a wonderful wife. I don't watch television beyond football.
Never in trouble, 3 tickets in my life. I don't owe money and do my best to honestly pay taxes.
All I want is to be left alone in freedom and liberty. I pledge to leave others alone, and not affect their life, person or property if they pledge the same.
Nothing special.
But without doing anything, I'm now a radical right-winger rayssis, homophone, transphobe, bigot and threat to democracy and global warming.
Before this..only small pockets of people occasionally had to participate in the "theater." We could scroll past the social media posts, turn off the news, turn away our heads to the woke bs in TV shows and movies, take off our shoes at airports, and watch as Grandma got the pat down. And then they forced us to participate in the pandemic puppet show.
Before we watched the lies on the TV news usually telling us things from far away...and somewhere else, but now it's here, and its now. We see it by the evidence of absence on the store shelves...and in our pockets.
So then how do we get to be that guy wearing a digital watch in a movie about ancient Rome? If we're unpaid extras anyway we might as well cause a hiccup in the matrix.
You would think that people would be considerate enough to leave well enough alone those who want to be left alone. Stop poking the snake. I don't think its too late...because of the very story we are dealing with. If it's too late and pack up and go home, then why burn calories?
Before the 2020 elections, this was the most disturbing part. It was already too late. They pulled back the curtain and I believe it was meant to demoralize us. The message I received was "elections were a sham." No offense...but Trump was the Harlem Globetrotters vs. Biden's Washington Generals. But at the end of the game...it was like all players were wiped off the board and they declared the generals the winner.
My ooint here is not taking a partisan side one way or another. The game was already rigged. Like professional wrestling or Reality Television.
But for some reason, they can't stomach being laughed at. So it's time to go full Carlin on their asses.
Theodore Dalrymple is credited with the quote (I've not read any of his work) that goes something to the effect that the purpose of propaganda is not necessarily to deceive, rather it's to shame or demoralize the populace. That's certainly one possible view, presumably implying that the Inner Party is basically bragging about its power and rubbing the noses of the Proles in their powerlessness.
However, some authors pose another interesting variation. That is that, at least in the case of our present government, the incoherent pronouncements of "narrative" are basically that -- the ever-shifting utterances by a ruling elite that is anything but competent or evil. It's a sign of a failing system, not of a powerful authoritarian one.
The poking is done intentionally in order to elicit our coerced responses which feed the machine learning for Artificial Intelligence thus creating our digital twins. Our digital twins enable our social control via Game Theory and Cognitive Warfare tactics.
It was that minding our own business leaving the work of governing to those who wanted, really wanted to do it that's brought us here.
Our system was designed to be citizen-run, participatory. Not left to a professional political class. WaPo's adopted motto, "Democracy dies in darkness" is true, despite them being a part of the darkness.
If we don't participate, and that means more than just vote or write checks to the professional political class then governing stays in darkness. They told us we were lucky to be living during a "timeout from history" where we were prosperous and safe under the direction of a political class that was benevolent in a system of freedom that was indestructible no matter who was in power. And most of us believed them. And most still do.
"I just want to be left alone and I'll leave others alone." Those days are over. A time for choosing has arrived. We have to be pissed off enough to do something. And that means not leaving supporters of this insanity and control of these systems alone. We have to take control from them. Or we will surely live out the remainder of our days under their boot. Power hates a vacuum. Our absence from it sucks in the radical left and sociopaths. Playtime is over. History is today.
We can take control at the local level much more easily that the ultra-corrupt national level.
Remember, it was your county "health officials" who actually implemented the death jab mandates. They were "just following the advice" from Pfauci the snake. Both levels are guilty, but it's the local level where we can realistically block their agenda.
This is true! And especially important is the Sheriff in your community. In whom the power is vested to protect you from even bad health officials. KrisAnne Hall has some good videos and resources for taking local control away from the ultra corrupt sociopaths.
Voting would at least be a start, at least for local stuff. My local elections this year had a 26% turnout, and most of the ballot items went the way that I didn't want them to go. I'm certain mine is the _true_ majority view, but when most of that majority don't bother to even vote, it's tough to make that a reality. The left has a larger portion of their base that consistently vote, and it shows.
Your words are true enough. Problem: when things have deteriorated to a certain point, the individual citizen who would "do something" that would actually address the underlying issues is left with few options that don't incur a high risk of personal injury, death, loss of all his worldly wealth or -- perhaps if he were lucky -- spending the rest of his life in prison.
As the political regime further deteriorates, many citizens face those and other risks even if they do nothing.
Indeed. We are at the edge of a cliff right now. Teetering. Either we help society back away from it or we'll go over the edge, crashing down into the ravine below. We'll never have more power to do something about our fate than now, today. What are we - you, readers, me, doing about it?
Should we have to participate though? And what is defined as participation?
Our system was supposed to be run by citizens, but upon what basis is that participation? The first group of people I would rule out of participating in government are those who want to participate in government. In my utopia that would be a way to weed people out similar to jury selection. You don't pick a recovering alcoholic (with notable exceptions) to watch the bar, or a fox to guard a henhouse. What could go wrong?
Anytime Democracy is mentioned. There is the almost boilerplate response that this is a republic. Anyone who has experienced the last three years though, do you really want policy decided by group consensus? What about a vocal minority? Should decisions affecting Washington state be decided in Washington DC?
Generally speaking, aren't better decisions made the closer they are made. Wouldn't I be able to determine what I consider to be "hot" versus what someone else determines is a comfortable temperature?
While the days of being left alone are over, the dream should be kept alive. I think it goes further than leaving the insane with access to the levers of power, it is either removing the system itself, or dismantling it. I wouldn't mind giving the CDC a clown car to run. But its days of determining what others can do should also be over.
And these Legion ofDoom wannabes of the WEF, let them have their ceremonial dinners and convocations...and then we publish all their ideas in Mad Magazine where they belong.
Before 2020 the CDC was largely ignored. It's best known recommendation that was (and still is) widely mocked is to cook hamburgers and steaks into hockey pucks and shoe leather, respectively. To kill all of those icky dangerous parasites that might be lurking in those delicious, mouth-watering carnivorous delights. It was commonplace a most high-end restaurants to toss a chef who'd serve a medium-well or well-done steak into the alley along with their final check. Even worse in Texas, where they might end up hanging from tall timber. You don't mess with beef in Texas.
The fact that ANYBODY listened to the CDC with that resume has been shocking to anyone who knows and appreciates great meat. They're clowns, indeed.
Peregrine is certainly not alone. You and I and millions more share his convictions, lifestyle, ethics and philosophy. I know it seems to work against us, because we do not live to meddle in and screw up other people's lives, or our own. We are the backbone of this country, the salt of the earth and without us, dystopia rules.
"The side that wants to win will always beat the side that wants to be left alone." --Auron McIntyre
If we'd understood this maybe 15 years ago and started fighting back then, we might've stood a chance to deal with this semi-peacefully. I fear that ship has now sailed.
Or those that have this impulse to rue the day they messed with us. I would rather it be that. I don't want to end these people. Some of them are sincere moral busybodies. But others actually think their calling in the world is to control others. It's not.
Often true in authoritarian times. The court jester or "fool" of old literature really did exist. At least in theory he was under the King's (Queen's) protection and could speak freely on any topic, even insulting honored guests etc. since nothing he said was to be taken serious, but in jest. This in an era when to merely insult the King or other important people would get your head chopped off or some other unpleasant outcome. The Fool was often a trusted advisor to his lord. Alas, the Fool’s immunity was not absolute and he did sometimes die for his impudence if he lost his lord’s protection. To some degree, our First Ammendment gives us much the same protection as a Fool in his prime enjoyed.
In a broader sense, the comment was already made that humor is a powerful tool to oppose tyranny. That is true and humor is one of many literary devices used in authoritarian times to say what would otherwise be unsayable in that culture.
This move sure is calling the kettle black. As a recovered 50 year Democrat who is now a registered Independent, I would say trying to slander the right with this concept, while the left has been using the tactic of comedy throughout media for decades and decades, to normalize many perverted agendas, is hilarious in itself. 😊
AND did you see that stupid Atlantic mag article claiming that Substack is awful bad and needs to be brought under control by Censorship Industrial Complex Queen Renee DiResta (CIA/Stanford) like all the other platforms, because it supposedly embraces Nazis and white supremacist writers?
Prof Mattias Desmet did say that humour was the only way we had a hope of breaking through the Mass Formation state. I think the perpetrators have realised the same and are trying mitigation strategies like publishing random papers without saying what they fear.
Well I don't really watch TV but the left seems to have obliterated humor from what used to be comedy shows. I USED to watch Johnny Carson, Saturday Night Live and some of the old sitcoms that were genuinely funny. I don't think there is much to laugh at any more. So memes it is!
I couldn’t possibly get through this entire piece but I read enough to realize that the authors are serious. Incredibly, the inability to meme might actually be the left’s undoing.
“Far right” apparently means “stuff that connects for normal people.” Humor and art were a huge problem for the Soviets, because socialist realism isn’t funny or beautiful. We’re 5 minutes away.
"Far right" now means anyone more conservative than Pol Pot...
I think it's worse than that. "Far right" is what they label anyone opposed to the desired narrative. Whether you are actually conservative or liberal doesn't even matter.
Exactly, Epaminondas! And if that doesn’t work, they drag out the “racist” label, or the “you’re a Nazi” label….and the list goes on and on…whatever fits their current narrative!
When they break out the "nazi"-card, ask them if they are for communal tax-funded kindergartens.
The real national socialists were.
So if they are for that...
Seriously. They call Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald far-right nowadays; these guys were the heart and soul of Rolling Stone and The Guardian (and before that, Salon) back in the Bush era.
Exactly!! Someone recently said to me “ I didn’t know you were such a staunch Republican “..... huh?
Good day, Epaminondas!
The comrade authors look exactly how you'd expect. I will find a way to sneak my "humorous far right communicative arsenal" into a Trojan Horse and share it with them so they have inspiration for their next paper: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/how-to-make-a-trojan-horse-meme
I've read about supporters of communism and Mao in China being snared by the revolutionaries for some reason or other, marched to the gallows and declaring their love for Mao and communism, their understanding, support and forgiveness for their own execution right up to their own deaths. Their minds that twisted by the propaganda.
But when I've tried to go back and find those stories the sources escape my searches. Any suggestions, Yuri?
Well, there is the case of Zhang Zhixin. This young woman was a member and passionate supporter of the Communist Party right up until she was executed on April 4th, 1975. On the way to the firing squad she would have cried out her loyalty to the Party, but the prison doctor had already slashed her vocal cords.
We can't fool ourselves that we're better humans, more evolved, more educated, more peaceful in the US than they were in China. Or Germany. Or Russia. Everywhere totalitarian regimes rise their supporters become zealots. We see it in the crazy eyes of Antifa/BLM/Climate/Trans/Hamas/Mask/Vax nuts. If we don't stop them now, when they accrue more and more power they will be the same humans here. And swear their loyalty to the regime and declare their own sacrifice is necessary for the revolution they believe in to succeed.
Come to think of it, we're the same human species as the Aztecs, who believed and did just that. We're no better beings at our cores. Only our shared belief in our system that has kept us safe and prosperous since the US Constitution and Magna Carta before that has made us better. Which is why these sociopaths are doing everything they can to destroy those human rights-asserting documents.
I just keep asking myself how so many of these people became such sociopaths. When and where did so many get brainwashed Into this way of thinking? I read somewhere that a huge portion of the population value security over freedom.....they prefer to be taken care of in some way by the government and they will choose that over freedom. Maybe. When I was young people seemed to value freedom and all that goes with it....including the ever present possibility of failure. People weren't so fearful as now. There was a shift in our culture, but I'm not quite sure when it happened.
I'd say Freedom Fox gives a good insight. We human beings are (for all practical purposes, e.g. at the scale of one -- or a hundred -- human lifetimes) essentially unchanging. Homo sapiens (the physical species) have been around at least 200,000 years and our close ancestors way before that. One implication, if one accepts that human traits are essentially static, is that at any given time there must be a certain percentage of sociopaths or other dysfunctionals within a population. What varies with time is how effectively (ruthlessly?) such abnormals are restrained or otherwise prevented from causing trouble.
None of the above is to say that human institutions cannot change. Of course circumstances, economies, cultures, religions, and so forth evolve with time and circumstance. A key failing of any idealist or reformer, though, is that with a wish that human being’s (or outer reality’s) inherent natures can be altered to taste, that Reality will bend to the command of the powerful merely because they have been designated “leader.”
😳
You are a lean, meme, fighting machine!
love that
Absolutely true. There may be a few screwballs knocking about who do deserve the tag 'far right' but the really bad JOKE is that virtually the whole non-STEM academy is FAR LEFT....not to mention large parts of the civil administration bureaucracy and NGOs: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
It's seems the left is pro stabbing now.
Anti-gun, duh!
I was recently berated by a (possible bot) on substack for making a tasteless satrical joke about another tasteless comment that might have been in earnest. I say possible bot, beacause I just found out AI can't read for humor/satire and it confuses the poor thing. It took me way too seriously.
Humor is one of the few weapons we got left, use it!
I'm stating the obvious... but isn't it interesting that AI has no sense of humour, and the Left has no sense of humour?
Just goes to show they are both programmed.
Authoritarians in general have no humor.
To understand humour (not to find something funny, just to understand what it is and when something is intended as it) one must be able to handle paradoxes.
AI can't do that, and neither can "lefties". They simply get stuck in an unsolvable loop, and gets frustrated and angry.
And since it's quite natural to want to remove sources of frustration, they have to make up a rationalising framework as to why said source is WrongBadEvil just for existing, no matter actual reality.
That's why a "lefty" is more angry at someone calling a school-shooter "he" than at the actual shooting, f.e. Their feelings and perceptions matter more than reality (or: their feelings and perceptions /is/ reality to them).
verrrry interessting!
"Far Right" means "Not Far Wrong".
As it was explained to me sometime ago, the Far Right they talk about are actually the Far Right of the Left, with Communists/Marxists being the Far Left of the Left. The actual Far Right would be someone who believes in minimum government and regulation, strong private property and self-defence laws and basically would be touching on anarcho-capitalist. Someone who detests Collectivism.
We've all been sucked into the Left Bubble
When you are that far left everything looks far right.
Elon Musk to Joe rogan
"I understand what my government is trying to do. But I support it!"
-A common comment of Russians in the Soviet Union, according to some Russian friends.
Also reflected in their architecture!
I'm just a regular American, raised in the urban South, public schools and universities, played college and some pro ball, grew a business that employed a gaggle of people (95% womyn), retired early and just enjoying a normal life riding motersickels and coaching HS football.
I don't drink or smoke, but enjoy the occasional ribeye and baby backs. I have dogs and cats, and a wonderful wife. I don't watch television beyond football.
Never in trouble, 3 tickets in my life. I don't owe money and do my best to honestly pay taxes.
All I want is to be left alone in freedom and liberty. I pledge to leave others alone, and not affect their life, person or property if they pledge the same.
Nothing special.
But without doing anything, I'm now a radical right-winger rayssis, homophone, transphobe, bigot and threat to democracy and global warming.
And it's beginning to piss me off.
Before this..only small pockets of people occasionally had to participate in the "theater." We could scroll past the social media posts, turn off the news, turn away our heads to the woke bs in TV shows and movies, take off our shoes at airports, and watch as Grandma got the pat down. And then they forced us to participate in the pandemic puppet show.
Before we watched the lies on the TV news usually telling us things from far away...and somewhere else, but now it's here, and its now. We see it by the evidence of absence on the store shelves...and in our pockets.
All the world's a stage, Jimmy.
Smile for the camera!
I am an unpaid extra in a dystopian movie about a world turning towards tyranny.
So say we all!
So then how do we get to be that guy wearing a digital watch in a movie about ancient Rome? If we're unpaid extras anyway we might as well cause a hiccup in the matrix.
Yep. We have to make them work for it.
"I am an unpaid extra in a dystopian movie about a world turning towards tyranny."
Hear, hear!
^^^THIS^^^
Yup.
Hard if not impossible to ignore.
But is it too late?
You would think that people would be considerate enough to leave well enough alone those who want to be left alone. Stop poking the snake. I don't think its too late...because of the very story we are dealing with. If it's too late and pack up and go home, then why burn calories?
Before the 2020 elections, this was the most disturbing part. It was already too late. They pulled back the curtain and I believe it was meant to demoralize us. The message I received was "elections were a sham." No offense...but Trump was the Harlem Globetrotters vs. Biden's Washington Generals. But at the end of the game...it was like all players were wiped off the board and they declared the generals the winner.
My ooint here is not taking a partisan side one way or another. The game was already rigged. Like professional wrestling or Reality Television.
But for some reason, they can't stomach being laughed at. So it's time to go full Carlin on their asses.
You misspelled "Carthaginian."
Theodore Dalrymple is credited with the quote (I've not read any of his work) that goes something to the effect that the purpose of propaganda is not necessarily to deceive, rather it's to shame or demoralize the populace. That's certainly one possible view, presumably implying that the Inner Party is basically bragging about its power and rubbing the noses of the Proles in their powerlessness.
However, some authors pose another interesting variation. That is that, at least in the case of our present government, the incoherent pronouncements of "narrative" are basically that -- the ever-shifting utterances by a ruling elite that is anything but competent or evil. It's a sign of a failing system, not of a powerful authoritarian one.
Mayor Pete comes to mind.
Cannot it be both incompetence and demoralization? And in a sense, isn't the incompetence itself demoralizing?
The poking is done intentionally in order to elicit our coerced responses which feed the machine learning for Artificial Intelligence thus creating our digital twins. Our digital twins enable our social control via Game Theory and Cognitive Warfare tactics.
https://rumble.com/v3r6l3x-fundamentals-of-todays-technology.html
This could mean great things. My digital twin could very well cause system crashes.
It was that minding our own business leaving the work of governing to those who wanted, really wanted to do it that's brought us here.
Our system was designed to be citizen-run, participatory. Not left to a professional political class. WaPo's adopted motto, "Democracy dies in darkness" is true, despite them being a part of the darkness.
If we don't participate, and that means more than just vote or write checks to the professional political class then governing stays in darkness. They told us we were lucky to be living during a "timeout from history" where we were prosperous and safe under the direction of a political class that was benevolent in a system of freedom that was indestructible no matter who was in power. And most of us believed them. And most still do.
"I just want to be left alone and I'll leave others alone." Those days are over. A time for choosing has arrived. We have to be pissed off enough to do something. And that means not leaving supporters of this insanity and control of these systems alone. We have to take control from them. Or we will surely live out the remainder of our days under their boot. Power hates a vacuum. Our absence from it sucks in the radical left and sociopaths. Playtime is over. History is today.
We can take control at the local level much more easily that the ultra-corrupt national level.
Remember, it was your county "health officials" who actually implemented the death jab mandates. They were "just following the advice" from Pfauci the snake. Both levels are guilty, but it's the local level where we can realistically block their agenda.
See https://patrick.net/post/1379996/2023-08-23-the-lesser-magistrate-doctrine
This is true! And especially important is the Sheriff in your community. In whom the power is vested to protect you from even bad health officials. KrisAnne Hall has some good videos and resources for taking local control away from the ultra corrupt sociopaths.
https://www.krisannehall.com/
Very true.
This is one reason we have chosen to move back to the US. My country needs me.
> that means more than just vote
Voting would at least be a start, at least for local stuff. My local elections this year had a 26% turnout, and most of the ballot items went the way that I didn't want them to go. I'm certain mine is the _true_ majority view, but when most of that majority don't bother to even vote, it's tough to make that a reality. The left has a larger portion of their base that consistently vote, and it shows.
My little township--only 41%, and everything went to D party
Learning to crawl, right? Thing is, by the time they're able to put one foot in front of the other we won't have a nation left.
Your words are true enough. Problem: when things have deteriorated to a certain point, the individual citizen who would "do something" that would actually address the underlying issues is left with few options that don't incur a high risk of personal injury, death, loss of all his worldly wealth or -- perhaps if he were lucky -- spending the rest of his life in prison.
As the political regime further deteriorates, many citizens face those and other risks even if they do nothing.
Indeed. We are at the edge of a cliff right now. Teetering. Either we help society back away from it or we'll go over the edge, crashing down into the ravine below. We'll never have more power to do something about our fate than now, today. What are we - you, readers, me, doing about it?
Should we have to participate though? And what is defined as participation?
Our system was supposed to be run by citizens, but upon what basis is that participation? The first group of people I would rule out of participating in government are those who want to participate in government. In my utopia that would be a way to weed people out similar to jury selection. You don't pick a recovering alcoholic (with notable exceptions) to watch the bar, or a fox to guard a henhouse. What could go wrong?
Anytime Democracy is mentioned. There is the almost boilerplate response that this is a republic. Anyone who has experienced the last three years though, do you really want policy decided by group consensus? What about a vocal minority? Should decisions affecting Washington state be decided in Washington DC?
Generally speaking, aren't better decisions made the closer they are made. Wouldn't I be able to determine what I consider to be "hot" versus what someone else determines is a comfortable temperature?
While the days of being left alone are over, the dream should be kept alive. I think it goes further than leaving the insane with access to the levers of power, it is either removing the system itself, or dismantling it. I wouldn't mind giving the CDC a clown car to run. But its days of determining what others can do should also be over.
And these Legion ofDoom wannabes of the WEF, let them have their ceremonial dinners and convocations...and then we publish all their ideas in Mad Magazine where they belong.
Before 2020 the CDC was largely ignored. It's best known recommendation that was (and still is) widely mocked is to cook hamburgers and steaks into hockey pucks and shoe leather, respectively. To kill all of those icky dangerous parasites that might be lurking in those delicious, mouth-watering carnivorous delights. It was commonplace a most high-end restaurants to toss a chef who'd serve a medium-well or well-done steak into the alley along with their final check. Even worse in Texas, where they might end up hanging from tall timber. You don't mess with beef in Texas.
The fact that ANYBODY listened to the CDC with that resume has been shocking to anyone who knows and appreciates great meat. They're clowns, indeed.
not alone.
Peregrine is certainly not alone. You and I and millions more share his convictions, lifestyle, ethics and philosophy. I know it seems to work against us, because we do not live to meddle in and screw up other people's lives, or our own. We are the backbone of this country, the salt of the earth and without us, dystopia rules.
Amen
"The side that wants to win will always beat the side that wants to be left alone." --Auron McIntyre
If we'd understood this maybe 15 years ago and started fighting back then, we might've stood a chance to deal with this semi-peacefully. I fear that ship has now sailed.
I don't know about that...what happens when the side that wants to be left alone really wants to be left alone?
They make it so they're not just left alone, but are the only ones left.
Or those that have this impulse to rue the day they messed with us. I would rather it be that. I don't want to end these people. Some of them are sincere moral busybodies. But others actually think their calling in the world is to control others. It's not.
Just gonna leave this here.
https://checkmyprivilege.co/product/my-far-right-extremist-manifesto
(There are also mugs. Just saying.)
"It's alive!" Gene Wilder -Young Frankenstein. Good to see you around.
You sound like this guy ... still one of my favorite people on the internet.
https://twitter.com/timerolde/status/1525612744363606016?s=21
Yeah, well, I am getting really tired of this crap.
I like that guy.
I want to live in peace, but if that is not possible, if the alternative is tyranny, I'm in for the struggle.
"All I want is to be left alone"
[under construction]
Quite an article Sir.
WTH?
"And it's beginning to piss me off."
And it's the kind of people who don't normally get pissed off... that you shouldn't piss off.
That’s the exact argument my liberal best friend and I had today. Reduced me to tears. I am so sick of it all. Just leave me the F alone…..
Have tickets to see Leanne Morgan. If I wasn't already a TI, certainly will be.
She's darling. What is a TI?
Targeted individual.
Join the club.
Embrace it, though - most liberating!
You’re “queerphobic,” too!
Yeah. Me too. For over thirty years.
https://l5news.substack.com/p/search-and-rescue
Awesome! A link to my post will be most appreciated!
https://www.igor-chudov.com/p/humor-is-a-danger-to-our-democracy
Thanks Igor! I subscribe to too many substacks now and missed this one!
I read Igor's post on this and shared it but I know what you mean I have subscribed to way too many as well and now I can't keep up
I'm still chuckling over your post, Igor.
:-)
Oh for goodness sake....now HUMOR is far right.
Has to be. Leftys have NO SENSE OF HUMOR. BUT then neither did the nazzzzzi's....😒
I think it was Oswald Spengler who said that fanatics have no sense of humor.
Often true in authoritarian times. The court jester or "fool" of old literature really did exist. At least in theory he was under the King's (Queen's) protection and could speak freely on any topic, even insulting honored guests etc. since nothing he said was to be taken serious, but in jest. This in an era when to merely insult the King or other important people would get your head chopped off or some other unpleasant outcome. The Fool was often a trusted advisor to his lord. Alas, the Fool’s immunity was not absolute and he did sometimes die for his impudence if he lost his lord’s protection. To some degree, our First Ammendment gives us much the same protection as a Fool in his prime enjoyed.
In a broader sense, the comment was already made that humor is a powerful tool to oppose tyranny. That is true and humor is one of many literary devices used in authoritarian times to say what would otherwise be unsayable in that culture.
Look, they thought Amy Schumer was funny.
The left is funny, just not funny "ha ha".
How true. Rob Reiner makes me laugh every time he flaps his gums!
The Meathead!
Are we grading on a curve?
My money is that Reiner’s real reason for being so apoplectic is that he’s on the Epstein guest list.
"Everybody I don't like is far-right."
and since theses type of people are unlikable I expect a lot of "far right" wins when votes get counted.
Depends on who's doing the counting.
Exactly! As long as we allow the inmates to run the asylum, we should expect insane results.
But as long as we’re REALLY SERIOUS and PEDANTIC in expressing our exclusion of all things traditional, it’s OK…
In defining themselves by their opposition to anything normie, such people are as conformist as The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit.
That’s because they are virtuous do gooders and we are not....😉
That’s because they’re virtuous and we are not......😉
I guess these guys aren't going to like the movie Lady Ballers.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py2MzGtmaJ0
Nope, this movie will send them into First Amendment denial convulsions. And, what's funnier than that...
Wanna bet anyone who downloads that movie gets visited by the Hate Police?
Can't wait for that movie lol
This move sure is calling the kettle black. As a recovered 50 year Democrat who is now a registered Independent, I would say trying to slander the right with this concept, while the left has been using the tactic of comedy throughout media for decades and decades, to normalize many perverted agendas, is hilarious in itself. 😊
Memes are the new magic...... you are a wizard!
AND did you see that stupid Atlantic mag article claiming that Substack is awful bad and needs to be brought under control by Censorship Industrial Complex Queen Renee DiResta (CIA/Stanford) like all the other platforms, because it supposedly embraces Nazis and white supremacist writers?
whoa.
The haters are fully on fire.
Here it is:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/substack-has-a-nazi-problem/ar-AA1kF0ef
O Lord, help me!!
Prof Mattias Desmet did say that humour was the only way we had a hope of breaking through the Mass Formation state. I think the perpetrators have realised the same and are trying mitigation strategies like publishing random papers without saying what they fear.
I thought it was that...and speaking the truth in earnest...not necessarily speaking the truth as Ernest Goes to Pandemic Quarantine Camp.
Some days after Hemingway had the unfortunate incident with the shotgun, the maggots arguing in his rotting corpse fought it out in dead Ernest.
Well I don't really watch TV but the left seems to have obliterated humor from what used to be comedy shows. I USED to watch Johnny Carson, Saturday Night Live and some of the old sitcoms that were genuinely funny. I don't think there is much to laugh at any more. So memes it is!
Igor did a great article on this paper.
Here's Igor's article: https://www.igor-chudov.com/p/humor-is-a-danger-to-our-democracy
Agreed check ot out!
I couldn’t possibly get through this entire piece but I read enough to realize that the authors are serious. Incredibly, the inability to meme might actually be the left’s undoing.
When I read the headline, my immediate thought was “Waaaaahhhh, don’t make fun of me (us), it’s not fair! We suck at memeing!”