We were millions of raindrops but we were unchanneled, unfocused. We needed a leader--one leader--to say, "Join me in the streets tomorrow and everyday for a week. We shall shut this country down. Nothing will move until this tyrannical outrage is stopped dead and those pushing it are removed from their positions of authority."
BLM / Antifa could raise a stink because they were led and coordinated. We millions of raindrops could have made a flood of outrage that swept away the tyrants. We needed a leader. We got Mike Pence appointed to Covid Czar with Fauci and Birx in supporting roles...this is why we need somebody smarter than Trump in 2024.
I'm afraid we're not voting our way out of this. Color me cynical, but I don't even know if we'll have midterm elections, let alone a presidential election in 2024.
Jeffery Tucker of the Brownstone Institute did an awesome article about the 4th branch of government that's unelected and can't be controlled by our elected leaders. It's the 2 million or so civil servants whose jobs are protected for decades under the Pendleton Act written into law when a disgruntled person assassinated President James A Garfield in 1883, basically saying no civil servant can be fired. It's all the sitty 3 letter organization NIH HHS FDA CDC, DARPA (ok 5) DOD etc etc.
Trump was shocked when he couldn't fire the POSs Fauci and Brix.
"Trump was shocked when he couldn't fire the POSs Fauci and Brix."
Maybe an ececutive order suspending provisions of the Pendleton Act. Then fire all the dead wood. While it's tied up in court the idiots would at least be neutered for a while.
I guess that depends upon whether they think they have the hearts and minds of the military rank and file on their side. I don't blame you for your state of mind. They are Cloward-Pivening the country to death.
With wokies like horrible Austin & Millie & their inspiring “withdraw” from Afghanistan & no heads rolled, they definitely have the hearts & minds of the brass. Those on the ground are hopefully another story.
Agreed. My son is in USAF; absolutely LOATHE that he’s serving under such horrible people. Did you see the unintentionally hilarious Navy infomercial about using correct pronouns???? The Navy got justifiably roasted for it.
Yeah, the military rank and file. They have benefits, right? And some have pensions? I'm not holding my breath. The only way that they go against their orders if we keep reminding them that we know where THEIR families live.
This is why they will use soldiers or contractors from other countries. Think UN troops in white hats.
But also, they want to defund the police so they can replace it with a surveillance state & robot cop dogs.
It wasn't until lockdowns started that I truly startedto appreciate the 2nd ammendment. There is a reason they want to disarm us... I don't know specifically what it is, but it seems the govt intends to do something to its citizens... something that will make us want to defend ourselves.
Now is the time to pull your kids out of public school and teach them how to become self-sufficient & fiercely independent.
Was it ever confirmed if the heavily-armed goons Trudeau brought into Ottawa to clear the truckers protests were even Canadian? There were rumors they were brought in from Europe.
I think they have been cheating on elections for a while. I used to not like Trump because I used ot believe corporate news, but he's looking good to me now.
Why vote for a new CEO of USA inc.? Instead just quit working for their company. They are a broke ass company and their dollars are shit. The USA company has nothing to offer Americans anymore. Washington DC is the enemy of Americans and the enemy of the States. The USA is an evil corporation and good people should quit being their employees (or citizens).
I have to say that what you've said is pretty much true except that the USA is still the cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry hamper. I took that line from Michelle Makori of Kitco news videos. It remains to be seen if the dirtier ones will become cleaner or if the cleaner ones become dirtier.
I certainly can see the opposite of your point. The USA has done plenty of evil. Did you see the Errol Morris series about chemical weapons in the Korean War--Wormwood? Are you familiar with the Vietnam war? The USA human rights record is pretty good compared with many other countries and I think that's what you're driving at. The USA does (funds) all the illegal biological research that there is. We're the NAZIs now, and we have been since Operation Paperclip brought Nazi science to the USA.
Not always. In Canada, the truck protest in Ottawa certainly was not 'for hire protestors' and I don't think we were useless idiots caught up in it.
I've written lots of letters and emails too. It seems my country is largely run by opinion polls so I try to make my opinion known at least. I've sent letters to politicians, school boards, church leaders and doctors. Prayer helps too.
I'm going to add: my background is Croatian. During the war there, I attended many very peaceful protests. They were held close to where I worked so I just popped over on my lunch hour, carried a sign, listened to a speech and went back to work. I remember going to one that was held in Ottawa: back then, we were allowed to protest right on the Parliament steps. There were bus loads of 'little old ladies' for that. During the truck protests, the entire Parliament grounds were fenced off so the street was the only place to protest. I was somewhat surprised by that but obviously times have changed over the last 30 years. I definitely grew up in a more innocent time. I think George Soros had already made his fortune then but wasn't throwing it around as much.
Yes, I think I commented about those 2 as well. They're funded from on high. Too bad you couldn't attend the truck protests; I wasn't there at the end when it was NOT fun but at the beginning, it was one big block party! The people were great. I also attended the truck protest in Toronto. It wasn't as big and only lasted 1 day but equally as fun if you didn't mind the cold.
This post states exactly why I am planning on homeschooling my 3 month old daughter. Schools only teach kids how to follow orders and forces them to become computer addicts in order to “learn”. There are zero critical thought skills being taught, schools are nothing but gladiator academies who cause life long mental health issues in the majority of the students. why parents ever decided to allow the raising of their children to be done by government employees has to be one of the most disturbing lapses in judgement in modern times. I say these things and I come from a family who has generations of teachers in its history, including my mother who taught for 53 years in the Chicago Archdiocese. The state of education in the US truly disgusts me and am glad that people are starting to awaken to this nightmare.
Keep your eyes open for opportunities to contribute to collective schooling that is run by parents, e.g. homeschool collectives, or cottage schools which are a hybrid model -- part of the week in a physical classroom with children with likeminded parents, part of the week at home (or on the road).
I homeschooled my children who are now 29 and 31 years old. It was BY FAR the best decision I’ve ever made. We joined a co-op like this, it was so much fun. Lots of great camping field trips and wonderful memories. 🥰
I don't have any kids of my own, do you think I could still be a homeschool teacher? Or help parents manage their homeschool pods?
I live in LA/OC, so I am sure there are families around me that are pursuing alternative forms of education. I hear the public school enrollment has been dropping, esp since CA had some of the most ridiculous school closures. And the schools are pushing the transgender/CRT agenda super hard. Even in Catholic schools. It seems inescapable in my state.
My kids are all graduated. I do not know of start-ups that might be getting into the business of helping people organize learning pods, or of homeschool groups in search of (very) part-time teachers. But they've got to be out there, after the last two years of covid shutdowns.
I have friends in a Catholic homeschool group, and they look first for parents in that same group, with specialized knowledge and skills to teach children. That is the biggest first step for a good fit: they share a common vision of the common good and the pedagogy that will get children where they want children to go. The next step is screening a teacher to ensure the privacy and security of the children in that physical classroom.
One place to start an internet search for connecting with the new demand would be homeschool advocacy groups at the national or state level, or within a faith tradition.
Do you know the names of any homeschool groups in SoCal?
I feel like this is the kind of thing where you want a personal referreral so you connect with like minded people, as opposed to relying on Google search.
Sorry I don’t know of any groups here. I did all of my home schooling in Washington state. I just moved to SoCal only ten months ago to be closer to my mother. I agree that you’d want some sort of referral. Best of luck to you in your home school journey, there truly is no greater joy❤️
One of our friend's daughter is just shy of three years old and she attends a daycare/school thing where the kids all have chores outside, like feeding chickens, helping with gardening, etc. I joke with them that they are paying for the privilege of making their daughter an slave, but in actuality, I think all of the tasks are great life lessons.
Good luck with the homeschooling. If nothing else, you can avoid the 1,234,567 vaccines that Fauci is pushing on kids.
I am in the middle of reading "Dumbing Us Down" by John Taylor Gatto. The first edition was published in 1992. Anyway, I haven't verified this, but apparently parents DID resist sending their kids to institutionalized school. One community held out for 30 years. These people were armed, of course.
You are correct about the state of education in America. I have two children. The public school, regarded as one of the best in the state, was terrible. My husband and I switched the kids to a Catholic school for its smaller class sizes but were not impressed with many of the teachers. From there, we sent the kids to an expensive private day school only to discover that the liberal globalists were in charge there. After three years of that, we actually moved to a different public school district in the hopes that things would be better. I would say that they were marginally better but then the pandemic was upon us. My daughter was in college at that point but my son was still in high school. Virtual “learning” was awful for him so we sent him to an all boys boarding school where classes would be in person. It was our best education experience by far. I wish we had done it sooner. My son loved it and really thrived there. He just graduated and is headed to his top choice university in the fall. I wish you all the luck with your daughter. Be prepared for people around you to question your choices and don’t be afraid to tell them that you are doing what is best for your child. The followers in our midst will be angry with you for not following what they consider to be the norm.
I asked my nurse friend how she is able to continue administering remdisivir now that even she has started calling it "rundeathisnear".
She says her hands are tied. The nurses have tried to convince the doctors remdisivir is useless & causing more harm than good, but they keep prescribing it. She says some doctors have seen the light, but they are under pressure from the hospitals to keep the IV drugs flowing.
I told her there is financial incentive for hospitals to continue with this ineffective, dangerous drug, but that's where she drew the line. She doesn't see how the hospitals could be profiting during COVID-- she called it a "baseless conspiracy theory." 🙄
She did concede that a bunch of nurses are out on medical leave right now for "long COVID symptoms," but she doesn't think the 3-doses of mandatory jabs have had anything to do with it.
She had never heard of VAERS before I showed it to her. She is too exhausted after her shift to bother "doing her own research".
I can't help but feel like this is all by design. Keep healthcare workers overworked and in the dark. That way they are clueless about the actual science & all the money transfers happening behind the scenes. And when shit hits the fan, they can claim they were "just following orders."
Did you show her a copy of the CARES (not at all) Act? I saw it and read it on some substack or another, when I first found substack. It's all there in black and white how much the hospitals would be paid for each act they performed on their covid patients, including death.
Keeping all us peons overworked and in the dark is by design. Make life so exhausting that following orders (rather than becoming self-reliant, informed, and responsible for one's life) feels like a massive, welcome relief. At least, until it isn't...
Yeah, there is a point where people will say fuck it.
But I don't know about the 'just following orders' thing. I walked away from a job over mandates. Everyone's situation is different, but there was no question for me, what I would do, if my work mandated jabs.
Some say this is the time that tells you how you would have acted in Nazi Germany....lot of just following orders then, too.
My daughter was a teacher (usually 6th grade) for 10 years. She left teaching in 2016 because she got disgusted with what was happening in the schools, on many different levels, and including her continual frustration with far too many parents who didn't want their badly behaved children disciplined in any way.
"the true education teaches HOW to think, not WHAT to think."
Told my kids this for their entire schooling days - Catholic school, Episcopalian school, private and public college.
Finally one time during my son's private college days, after he told this to yet another professor, that professor actually said, "You know, Nick, you're right!"
Best summary statement of the article. Unfortunately, most individuals employed in the ‘teaching’ profession never learned the first part of that sentence, so it is beyond their ability to pass on a capability which they don’t possess.
I care more about embedding images in comments than text formatting.
But even reddit doesn't have an easy way to attach imgs. So I'm not holding my breath over substack. I am just grateful to finally connect with likeminded people.
You guys are like family. Without you, I felt like I was going insane.
Right. That's what I meant with the ellipsis. "I hashtagged editing, and now we can edit, so I'm hashtagging formatting now, because clearly I get results"!! ;-)
Ooooo, I want me #Writer-EditorCollaborationFullyTooled on substack. The whole nine yards (think word processor, with review comments, yah, 9 yards). I’m editing side. It’s awful here. Impossible really. That hashtag is too long tho. What’d work do you think? Thanks for any input!
Thank you Gato for continuing to tackle the incredible cowardice that rocked society for two years. This is the Number One issue in my opinion... the 'go along to get along' gang also snitched on Jewish neighbors and hoped for a nicer Nazi uniform. Everyone who participated in the insanity any level, including masking, is responsible. I sense people just want to have a fun summer and not think about it but I do hope at some point there is some self reflection.
i get the sentiment and the anger, but people are, at the end of the day, just people.
they cannot all be superheros or super human. they fear and they doubt.
presuming implausible levels of courage to resist concerted efforts by the state to threaten and cow and then attacking those who fail to measure up is both an unsound system to secure liberty and a great way to alienate the allies we need.
you cannot make humans different or better or more perfect. we have to work with what we have and that means the win is to devolve choice to the point where herculean courage is not required to reach good outcomes.
i think we win far more with solutions and paths forward than by recrimination or demands for utopian heroism of the masses.
Disagree. My dad and his friends did not fight on the beaches of Normandy and through out the Pacific, so grown men would not step of and say “hell no I’m not wearing a stupid mask.” I’m a middle aged woman and had more back bone than the majority of men around me.
in a perfect world, sure, everything you say is true, but it's easy to play ideological edge lord if you don't plan to ever actually change anything.
demanding more of the masses than the masses can provide is just the path to stagnation.
utopian absolutism is always seductive, but rarely terribly productive. the change will be incremental and people will come to their courage as they practice using it. to do this, we must get these systems off their necks.
any system that cannot be run by idiots and the go along to get along gang fails to flourish.
wish i had better news, but that's just humans for you.
you cannot have a powerful state checked by constantly brave and stand up citizens. it's a utopian idea.
what you CAN do is take the power away from the state and replace it with consent based free markets.
people do not change, so systems must and effecting that change requires the middle to be with us.
you don't win people over to joining a gym by belittling their bench press.
Thank you for this clarity. As a person whose kids were kicked to the curb from school for not being 100% vaccine-overdose compliant in NY 'way' back in 2019, my family got a head start in being cast out. It was extremely difficult, but I think of it as practice for resisting the covid lunacy that followed.
Best conversation starter with the masses is when I explain how my kid delayed college (went to work 'in person' for a year, and gave up a scholarship) to avoid the NY mandates and be free to make his own choices. He banked some tuition, moved to a red state, and is happily attending college in person, no mandates, in a much more open-minded setting (imagine that?). He will also be nearly debt free and not an indentured servant to NY state for years under the oppressive excelsior program. And we will end up owning a good chunk of a house there for our part, instead of just a bill for room and board paid to the state. It's not perfect, but it's a start to moving the $ away from oppressive policy and policymakers, and it's something people will listen to. Some of his friends parents are still hostile, but his young adult peers are starting to wake up.
I still privately hold people accountable for their part in going along with so much, but I also take every opportunity to subtly get points across when possible. Find the common ground when you can and use it...
"people will come to their courage as they practice using it."
I know this to be true because I was part of the cult/herd and only woke up as a result of my decades-long hatred/distrust of Big Harma, which has never wavered (nor been given a reason to). In becoming one of the dirty unvaxxed, I soon discovered how readily "my tribe" will eat its own, at which point the veil was lifted.
I take comfort in the belief that, once people wake up (e.g., from a nightmare), they rarely go back to sleep.
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.” — Charles MacKay
My wife and I didn't do any of it here in the Dominican Republic, and the restrictions were far more stringent than the states.
No one was permitted into any public space, including food stores and clinics without either a vaxxx card or 3-day old PCR test ($85 here.)
In our act of "civil disobedience", we got one PCR, photoshopped the date. The lab uses non-flattened PDF for a digital record which made the editing easy and perfect.
That said, it's one thing to spoof a PCR to some minimum-wage drone at the door of a grocery store in the Third World. We won't try faking a xaxxx card with US Immigration or the counter Nazis of the airlines, since the US disallows foreign nationals (my wife) from entry with being "fully vaxxxed.".
Faking a document is in the "non-compliance" strike zone, like a fake ID in college to get into a bar.
Read Thoreau's' treatise on civil disobedience. Or better yet, read Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World."
I don't have to douse myself with gasoline and strike a match to show by disagreement with a policy intended to deny access to food without gubmint compliance to dangerous poison.
I'll keep my "f@<k you's" private. Especially as a gringo in the Third World.
I want food and access to things to live life denied by bad governance, not a blanket political statement.
Yes, and that was my Road to Damascus moment, when I saw proof of God. He saw we were destroying ourselves, and he sent out a variant that would not kill everyone but would defuse the situation by infecting everyone, regardless of shot status. Not trying to proselytize on a school post, but I do think there are reasons to be hopeful.
I never wore a mask, only had two tiny dust ups of anyone saying a word at stores. Never got swabbed, never took a jab. It wasn't fun, in fact it was like living in a hellscape Zombie apocalypse, but I'm fine.
Just curious where you live? I lived in California but never wore a mask (except when I had to fly to TN to look for a new house) but was kicked out of 3 stores. I would not call it a dust up- Walgreens being one of them. I had the cops called on me for taking down police tape around a park (I did it again the next day.)
My two best friends (who now believe as I do/did) were not allowed to see me for two months because their husbands were giant cowards who were afraid of Covid. I “didn’t take Covid seriously enough.”
My neighbors crossed the street to the other side when my kids and I were outside. I still told my neighbor it was child abuse to force children to wear a mask as her grandson stood wearing a mask.
I have a personality conducive to not giving a damn but not everyone does. That is the problem. We have way too many who have fallen into the “be kind” trap and now won’t even stand up for what is right. It’s so depressing seeing the world my children will grow up in.
Yes. Everyday maskless was like gearing up for battle. Working as a leper at my job was like living in a prisoner of war camp. Thank God I was tossed to the curb at that job. I could have put in a religious exemption to stay but my soul screamed to not use God to prop up an immoral tyrannical system.
And if more people pushed back, the amount of punishment would have decreased proportionally. But more didn’t so those of us who did took the brunt of the blowback. But at least I can live with myself and not feel the shame that will one day be theirs of those who didn’t fight back.
They won't feel shame. This was not their fight. There comes a time in all our lives when we do have to stand up for what is right. For some people like you, me and others, the time is now. For others who went along to get along the future may be their fight.
The military is not a particularly good example of a free-thinking mindset. They recruit from the ranks of the most conformist and malleable society has to offer. Conformity is required to raise in rank. They are ALL vaccinated and they ALL wear masks if ordered to do so. They will jump out of a boat under a shower of enemy bullets if ordered to do so...which is to take nothing away from their understanding of/commitment to the mission and their bravery in carrying it out.
I'm just shocked and a little disappointed that my kids never got into any trouble. Never to the principal's office, nothing. My 27 yo son has never had a speeding ticket!! The oldest of that generation are raising kids and we are going to indoctrinate another generation. This time with the full endorsement of the parents. That scares me.
I know. In my Southern California high school (class of 1980), there was so much smoking in the restrooms the administration put up a smoking area outside in the quad.
I agree with you. We will not convert people by shaming or humiliating them, and we need converts. But today is a hard day. Today, parents are taking their very young children to be injected with an experimental gene therapy that isn't safe, doesn't work, and targets a long extinct variant. It's hard not to be enraged. Really hard. Some children will be disabled. Some will die. The people who remain silent...who go along to get along...are as responsible as the "public health" liars and their media enablers. Missing school is bad. Being injected with dangerous substances is worse.
I think you are wrong about the cowardice of the normies. There was plenty of cowardice on the part of the influential, but there was literally nothing I could have done to change anything. And I was looking for the moment to be brave in an influential way. It didn't happen.
I did what I could--took my family on fun trips in open states, patronizing places with no or few restrictions, ate out at restaurants *more* often than before, and posted on facebook to the point where most of my contacts have obviously muted me. I emailed the school board and got no response. The local protests of the school board had no effect. They were strategic about not allowing people in, so even 10,000 parents wouldn't have changed a thing because nobody would ever see them. The media successfully convinced people that the unmasked were responsible for prolonging things, so when I went unmasked in stores it didn't help anyone.
If being brave and stepping out would have had any effect I probably would have done it. But that was never the situation. And I work in tech--showing my political colors publicly likely would have gotten me fired. There was no upside.
Yes. Because I saw no alternative. And I still see no alternative.
This was not by accident. "They" were very careful to make sure I had no avenue to push back.
And you have to understand--this is coming from someone who lost all of my friends and alienated my sister and almost my parents by arguing about restrictions and masks. I was not someone who just let bygones be bygones. I was angry. I was ready to fight (figuratively). There was nobody *to* fight. A lot of it in my area was driven by middle-aged moms who were being told daily that their kids were going to die if I didn't wear a mask. I was aggravated at them but ultimately it was the fault of the people lying to them. But the people lying to them *knew* they were lying so people's protests had no effect on them.
I can only hope that millions will push back in the voting booth. But people have short memories.
This war will not be won at the voting booth, don't waste your time. This is a war of ideas and you are right to engage whoever will listen. You delivery, however, may need some work if you have driven away your friends and family. Politicians are a mealy bunch, they will endorse whatever they perceive to be popular opinion. We have an uphill battle against a government-indoctrinated populace that is continuously fed by the group-think of social media. Occasionally we are treated to a political or cultural figure who will show their middle finger to the establishment to change the conversation (like Trump DeSantis, or Musk...all who also have their own deep flaws).
It wasn't my approach. I promise I was pretty subdued. I just demonstrated that I was not part of their tribe anymore and thus must be excluded. I was sent an email telling me I wasn't welcome anymore unless I was vaxxed. It just so happens that I had gotten the J&J but that was enough for me to be done with them. I've read many stories on twitter similar to mine--people were convinced that their side was right and my side was somehow responsible for everyone who got sick.
Voting is all we've got. To a smaller extent we can vote with our dollars but that rarely has much impact. Beyond that I just try to focus on my immediate family and make sure my kids aren't affected by this to the extent I can prevent it. Thus--private Christian school next year, and more vacations in the last 2 1/2 years that ever before just so we could get out of NC.
I'm hoping the group of lefties that are ready to punish the Democrats for what they did is representative of a larger group, but we'll see. It seems like we're making a dent but it may just be my bubble.
Yes, I had elementary age children (one is out of elementary now). Their whole lives the pediatrician has asked us about screen time and recommended we keep it to a minimum, and all of a sudden my children are required by law to sit in front of a Google machine 7 hours a day. School was essentially optional so while my kids' classes were mostly full, this was not the case across the school system, so now standards have dropped. We consistently asked the kids if they would prefer we homeschool them, but they were incredibly lonely and the thought of not talking to *anyone* all day was worse for them. As I said, all of our friends were gone at this point. Homeschool groups weren't meeting, so they would have been home with nobody. My wife and I were both forced to work from home for nearly two years. My church only stayed closed for ~3 months so we spent as much time there as we could. I wish the church had stood out as a beacon for all of us who wanted freedom, but instead they were worried about alienating people and strongly encouraged masks, at least at the beginning. It did eventually be the one place where I would go and see few masks, even while the stores were still at 90% or more.
I started looking for a private school once I realized the public schools weren't going to reopen any time soon. They were all full. Overflowing. There was no availability. The school we got into next year had 2 slots in my son's grade. 2. So "just switch to private" isn't an option for most. And as I said, homeschooling can work great when you have a good support mechanism but they closed down most of those at the same time they closed the public schools.
I'm part of the "laptop class". Most of my coworkers have enjoyed this. They are introverts and they were happy to stay home. This made me all the more angry because they literally never stopped to consider what went on with the working class during this. They literally never once thought about them.
In the end all you could do was move, and vote. And being a tech guy I can't exactly move just anywhere. And I already vote red so there won't be any change there. My buddy is running for school board so I sent him some money. But otherwise I think I'm mostly powerless.
I think it needs to be both: recognize that in the height of insanity with the most significant PsyOp, perhaps ever, deluging people's every moment that everyone failed. That was the point, the PsyOp worked. We have to acknowledge what happened and sift through the emotions to recognize the pattern so that if this happens again, people might behave differently.
Isn't this still happening? Shot mandates are entrenched, babies are being poisoned, the fall will bring back slave masks and closures. Nothing has really changed.
The "go along to get along" aspect of human nature is fundamental and has been long known. Thinking this is the root cause of tyranny or that it can somehow be altered risks engaging in the same sort of hubris and delusions of the left.
The fundamental issue is power.
The fact of the matter is that most people are completely oblivious to, or even supportive of, the incremental usurpations of power orchestrated by the progressive left over the last century that have brought us to the point where the last two years were not only possible, but inevitable.
A basic axiom is that whatever power is usurped by the State will be abused, sooner or later. That power corrupts, and must be severely constrained to preserve liberty. This used to be widely known, but over a century of Prussian-style State "education" has not only largely eradicated it, but actually replaced it with the idea that the State is benevolent and omniscient, and therefore should be omnipotent.
For the Common Good™, don't you know.
We are never going to get out of this mess until this pseudo-theological faith in the State is broken, and it is once again seen for what it truly is, at best a necessary evil that must be chained down by the rule of law.
School choice is a large part of the solution, as it will subject government schools to much more open competition, which they will lose.
Among the best political treatises of the 16th century.
"Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books. Roman tyrants invented a further refinement. They often provided the city wards with feasts to cajole the rabble, always more readily tempted by the pleasure of eating than by anything else.
The most intelligent and understanding amongst them would not have quit his soup bowl to recover the liberty of the Republic of Plato. Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, ‘Long live the King!’ The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them.”
~ Etienne de La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, 1548
The masses of Georgia just re-sElected the Corrupt Rino Coup Repubs in "our" state gov.
Raffensberger is going to "testify" for the 1/6 Commissars this week amplifying Trump's "requesting" his finding another 13,000 votes.
2000 mules proved the sElection Fraud, but Raffensberger Approved and then Covered Up the democRat Fraud. The Rinos are going to sabatoge themselves as Quislings always have done. I hope and pray it's not so, but the JoBama Regime just took 5.56 ammo out of public production. Unavailable, more tyranny to come.
Yeah, I know. But, wanting to have a fun summer and not think about it is part of the problem. We can have a fun summer and think and do something about this too.
I didn't stay silent. I spoke out and was greeted with blank stares of disbelief and denial. And now, aside from my wife, I am essentially alone. I chose solitude over the company of the weak and obedient . . . and I'm good with that choice.
You are not alone but indeed the sharp relief of standing in opposition to the death cult makes for a quick arbiter of social bonds.
The fact as I came to see it, is that many of these modern relationships of convenience were just that; transactional, conditional, and situational arrangements that would not survive the test of moral courage, faith, or reason itself.
Losing or compartmentalizing blood relatives into the camp of the insane is more painful but likely more valuable as the stakes become survival. And under duress, relationships with cultists, like addicts or the insane, always end in your suffering because they will choose their drug/delusion over you every single time.
The banal, modern consumer culture is cruising on nothing but momentum. And its pervasive monopoly on status holds tenuous sway over people that has usurped actual character, moral fortitude, and human decency. Accordingly, the "covid" machinations pulled this facade thin for those prone to noticing.
Stripped bare, we can see that the culture is already dead and so what animates the cultists is not just their own fear and weakness of "covid" or "climate change" or [insert current year crisis] devouring them, but their own sense of impending doom and nihilism spawned from the spiritual vacancy of modernism coupled with its obvious precipitously declining ability to fill that void. Even those not prone to noticing cannot evade their innate intuition. So the spice of lies must flow.
Not to diminish the cost of this, however. I too lost "friends", a business, half my life savings - which wasn't a whole lot to start, and what was left of my faith in the institutions. (The least of my loses). I left a whole life behind and moved out of state - at great cost. Took major economic risk. Have hit many potholes since.
Most of these are gifts in which the real value is not immediately revealed. So, we have faith and grace until such time.
But in the wake of all that I forged a new friendship with a wonderful family and have come to regard this great sorting of the masses as a long overdue necessity in not just my own peace but in what is required to build our own communities once again.
We are on the side of Truth. Thats pretty good company. But we are also legion. Another truth the serpents are desperately trying to suppress.
The problem is that credentials are meant to serve an important function: enabling employers and customers to verify that a prospective service provider has mastered the necessary skills and knowledge base. That's been subverted so heavily that we all kind of know that credentials are frequently meaningless aside from being an indicator of successful indoctrination. Which of course contributes to the incompetocracy that's causing everything to break down.
Just setting up alternative elementary and high schools isn't enough. Useful, yes, but I suspect that universities would happily erect even more explicit ideological loyalty tests if they became more common. The monopoly of the universities on higher education needs to be shattered; doing that requires a parallel, and superior, credentialing system.
Dh and I were pioneer homeschoolers in our Cdn area years ago. We knew no other homeschoolers and bought our program from an accredited US homeschooling school. It consisted of books and detailed course outlines. One child went on to nursing + a degree, and the other a 2 yr tech course leading to good tech jobs. They both discovered many of their fellow college students were woefully lacking in maturity, self discipline and literary skills. Both of them went on to marry, and now homeschool their children. They use the same US school as we did, but the courses have evolved to attractive, professional workbooks. I am in awe. They also use many wonderful online resources and courses. The sky is the limit. The world is their classroom.
For the last 10 yrs, I have taught an online grammar + writing program with an American school. The students from this school have benefitted from small online class sessions and, in my course, one-on-one guidance. There are many good online schools like this out there.
With a plethora of resources and large homeschooling communities rising up, many children and families are benefitting richly. As for “socialization,” children are not closeted with same-age students and friends six hours a day. They interact and socialize with all age levels. Real life.
Our children are steering their children towards the trades + tech. They do not want them to lose their souls in ivyland. In many cases the homeschooled are able to go on to survive the college jungle, but, alas, there are more than a few subsumed by the cultural and societal siren calls.
As for credentialing, the same could apply to the professions. Zoom university courses - employing only the very best teachers with genuine teaching skills - can go far. Parents would be able to look in to see what’s going on in young mister or miss’s classes to ensure they are not inundated with a subtext of CRT/Marxism.
Modern credentialism has become an adjunct to the Church of Woke. The more mysterious letters behind your name, the more meaningless certificates on the wall, the greater status you can claim in the 'progressive' community.
I went to a protest in summer 2020 to keep schools open. There were a lot of other parents there. I recall older people driving past, reading our signs, then shaking their heads and yelling at us--why in the world would you be mad about parents wanting what's best for their kids?! Some people are just lost. My favorite moment was when one of the School Board members showed up to be the sole member of the counter-protest, yelling at us about racism or something. As if public schools closing wasn't going to disproportionately affect minorities.
The silver lining is all of this exposed the rot in the school systems. The public schools won't be able to recover from this. And my kid is already expressing an interest in foregoing college!
My wife went to Harvard. She didn't have perfect grades (she got a C in typing and a C in a required "consumer education" class). She didn't have perfect SATs. She didn't have all 5s for her AP scores. She cut almost all of her classes in her high school senior year. She handed in all her assignments and showed up for tests and for some reason her teachers let her slide.
She says she got into Harvard on a good line of bullshit. And I can confirm it was a great line of bullshit. But if she hadn't gotten in, she wouldn't have cared. Harvard was the only school she applied to because she didn't really want to go to college. She wanted to read, on her own, exactly what she wanted to read. She wanted to follow her own thoughts for a while. She knew she was good at finding mentors when she needed them. You can always find professors who will work with you, even if you're not a student at their institution.
But she got into Harvard, full scholarship, all costs covered. So she kind of felt she had to go. She said the students were mostly rich kids who had average IQs or a bit lower (roughly 10% seemed retarded to her). Their chief talent was wearing the right clothes. Some of them were foreign royalty. Their IQs dropped during their years at Harvard and they are the people ruining the world now.
There were a few middle class geniuses, always awkward and unpopular. There were some middle class grade grubbers. And there were the smart affirmative action cases, who usually dropped out fast. One of her roommates freshman year was from a Mohawk reservation. She had come to Harvard hoping to avoid working in the reservation sweat shop. By Christmas break, even the sweat shop looked better than Harvard, and she didn't return to finish her freshman year.
I dropped out of college after my freshman year, made a major discovery in a math-related field not long after, and went on to have a great life in that field, with more important discoveries.
My son stopped going to school at age 13. He hung out all day on the streets of Berkeley, getting into trouble. His only degree is a GED. Now he's a devoted husband and father making an upper-middle-class income in a technical field he learned on his own.
If I were raising a child now, I'd let him be raised by wolves in the forest before I would send him to these schools.
We are the ones who empower these horrid institutions. And once you submit to them, they've got you by the b*lls for life. Look at what happened with the vax mandates. Everyone I know who capitulated to keep his job went through the grind you describe. They don't know how to live outside that system. They're hothouse flowers.
Better to be free. Better to go on strike. Just turn your back on them and ignore them and follow your interests in life. There is literally nothing you need them for.
Pledge was written by a Commie, Francis Bellamy. The whole point was to brainwash people to pledge allegiance to some sort of meaningless icon rather than swearing to uphold the principles of the Constitution.
Now I know that some will take offense at my reference to the flag as a 'meaningless icon' (happened once when I was talking to a US Army major about freedom of expression including things we might find offensive, like flag burning), but in comparison to the principles stated in the Constitution, it is exactly that. Would we prefer a nation with the Constitution and no flag, or a different one; or one with no Constitution but proudly flying the Stars and Stripes and insisting everyone pledge allegiance to it? Because we are on the road to the latter right now.
There is nothing in the constitution about "forced loyalty."
I think you guys are going too far in your condemnation.
When I see the flag, I don't see indoctrination and evil. I see a symbol of all that was sacrificed before.
America is not perfect, and even the preamble states efforts for a "more perfect union."
I don't equate "flag burning" with pledging "to the republic for which it stands."
Besides, America was vastly stronger before "Americans" decided to trash flags and symbols. I also think focusing on symbols is weak sauce vis-a-vis those who intend real evil on the republic.
We were founded by ruffians and thieves and the rebellious fruit of every crazy offshoot breakaway sect in Europe and it was living words that forged us into something worth fighting for. Saluting a flag is like believing someone is "the science." Takes your eyes off the heart of the matter.
Those "ruffians and thieves" were the ones who created that document. They bled for it.
Saluting a flag is symbolic recognition of their sacrifice, not accepting any order given by corrupt gubmint officials, or agreeing with acts of a corrupt gubmint. (FWIW, SAR member here.)
You may disagree, but I choose to pick more important fights in life that have actual, and not philosophical, impact.
As a college teacher, whenever I saw a student with a 4.0 GPA, I always wanted to cry. They usually risked nothing and always took the safe route to protect the GPA. How many missed opportunities to actually learn something?
"evil may or may not be banal, but banality is always the carpet upon which evil strides."
Puurrrrrrrfect.
Mic drop. Right?
My cat peed all over that carpet.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -Edmund Burke
We were millions of raindrops but we were unchanneled, unfocused. We needed a leader--one leader--to say, "Join me in the streets tomorrow and everyday for a week. We shall shut this country down. Nothing will move until this tyrannical outrage is stopped dead and those pushing it are removed from their positions of authority."
BLM / Antifa could raise a stink because they were led and coordinated. We millions of raindrops could have made a flood of outrage that swept away the tyrants. We needed a leader. We got Mike Pence appointed to Covid Czar with Fauci and Birx in supporting roles...this is why we need somebody smarter than Trump in 2024.
I'm afraid we're not voting our way out of this. Color me cynical, but I don't even know if we'll have midterm elections, let alone a presidential election in 2024.
Jeffery Tucker of the Brownstone Institute did an awesome article about the 4th branch of government that's unelected and can't be controlled by our elected leaders. It's the 2 million or so civil servants whose jobs are protected for decades under the Pendleton Act written into law when a disgruntled person assassinated President James A Garfield in 1883, basically saying no civil servant can be fired. It's all the sitty 3 letter organization NIH HHS FDA CDC, DARPA (ok 5) DOD etc etc.
Trump was shocked when he couldn't fire the POSs Fauci and Brix.
https://brownstone.org/articles/elections-wont-fix-this/
"Trump was shocked when he couldn't fire the POSs Fauci and Brix."
Maybe an ececutive order suspending provisions of the Pendleton Act. Then fire all the dead wood. While it's tied up in court the idiots would at least be neutered for a while.
Good point but EO'S are abused and have potential for real danger.
Imo they should be divested
Don't forget the CIA and FBI
I agree, but I am going to vote against every incumbent, anyways, they all earned it.
That is becoming my own approach. No incumbents.
LOL. That was my Dad's theory.
How about we just vote with our tax dollars. Whatever government program you want to fund, you can with your own money.
I guess that depends upon whether they think they have the hearts and minds of the military rank and file on their side. I don't blame you for your state of mind. They are Cloward-Pivening the country to death.
With wokies like horrible Austin & Millie & their inspiring “withdraw” from Afghanistan & no heads rolled, they definitely have the hearts & minds of the brass. Those on the ground are hopefully another story.
Let's hope so. We're screwed if they're not. There's a cauldron brewing in Ukraine
Agreed. My son is in USAF; absolutely LOATHE that he’s serving under such horrible people. Did you see the unintentionally hilarious Navy infomercial about using correct pronouns???? The Navy got justifiably roasted for it.
Yeah, the military rank and file. They have benefits, right? And some have pensions? I'm not holding my breath. The only way that they go against their orders if we keep reminding them that we know where THEIR families live.
This is why they will use soldiers or contractors from other countries. Think UN troops in white hats.
But also, they want to defund the police so they can replace it with a surveillance state & robot cop dogs.
It wasn't until lockdowns started that I truly startedto appreciate the 2nd ammendment. There is a reason they want to disarm us... I don't know specifically what it is, but it seems the govt intends to do something to its citizens... something that will make us want to defend ourselves.
Now is the time to pull your kids out of public school and teach them how to become self-sufficient & fiercely independent.
And accurate marksmen.
Was it ever confirmed if the heavily-armed goons Trudeau brought into Ottawa to clear the truckers protests were even Canadian? There were rumors they were brought in from Europe.
Look at Australia and Canada for your musings on 2A. it's scary and happens fast.
Re-read the amendments. You'll see that all of them, except 2A, were neutered and rendered useless, during the last two years.
We'll have the election, but will it be fair?
I think they have been cheating on elections for a while. I used to not like Trump because I used ot believe corporate news, but he's looking good to me now.
Why vote for a new CEO of USA inc.? Instead just quit working for their company. They are a broke ass company and their dollars are shit. The USA company has nothing to offer Americans anymore. Washington DC is the enemy of Americans and the enemy of the States. The USA is an evil corporation and good people should quit being their employees (or citizens).
I have to say that what you've said is pretty much true except that the USA is still the cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry hamper. I took that line from Michelle Makori of Kitco news videos. It remains to be seen if the dirtier ones will become cleaner or if the cleaner ones become dirtier.
I certainly can see the opposite of your point. The USA has done plenty of evil. Did you see the Errol Morris series about chemical weapons in the Korean War--Wormwood? Are you familiar with the Vietnam war? The USA human rights record is pretty good compared with many other countries and I think that's what you're driving at. The USA does (funds) all the illegal biological research that there is. We're the NAZIs now, and we have been since Operation Paperclip brought Nazi science to the USA.
You need someone smarter than Mike Pence, too, IMO.
BLM & Antifa aren't great examples. Those are not grass roots movements and receive funding from on high, or so I've read.
They are for-hire protestors & professional shit-stirrers, with a lot of useless idiots caught up in the middle.
Not always. In Canada, the truck protest in Ottawa certainly was not 'for hire protestors' and I don't think we were useless idiots caught up in it.
I've written lots of letters and emails too. It seems my country is largely run by opinion polls so I try to make my opinion known at least. I've sent letters to politicians, school boards, church leaders and doctors. Prayer helps too.
Sorry, I was referring to the BLM & antifa agent provacateurs.
If I Iived in Canada, I would have been standing with the truckers & face painting FREEDOM on all the kids.
I'm going to add: my background is Croatian. During the war there, I attended many very peaceful protests. They were held close to where I worked so I just popped over on my lunch hour, carried a sign, listened to a speech and went back to work. I remember going to one that was held in Ottawa: back then, we were allowed to protest right on the Parliament steps. There were bus loads of 'little old ladies' for that. During the truck protests, the entire Parliament grounds were fenced off so the street was the only place to protest. I was somewhat surprised by that but obviously times have changed over the last 30 years. I definitely grew up in a more innocent time. I think George Soros had already made his fortune then but wasn't throwing it around as much.
Yes, I think I commented about those 2 as well. They're funded from on high. Too bad you couldn't attend the truck protests; I wasn't there at the end when it was NOT fun but at the beginning, it was one big block party! The people were great. I also attended the truck protest in Toronto. It wasn't as big and only lasted 1 day but equally as fun if you didn't mind the cold.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for men to keep their head up their ass."
- Pussyfucius
Haha, I love my Pussyfucius books.
This is my favorite:
Life is really simple, but soy boys insist on making it complicated.
Gold Medal!
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/how-to-be-a-pioneer?r=7csq7&utm_medium=ios
MUST READ homeschooling story!! What an amazing kid!!!
This post states exactly why I am planning on homeschooling my 3 month old daughter. Schools only teach kids how to follow orders and forces them to become computer addicts in order to “learn”. There are zero critical thought skills being taught, schools are nothing but gladiator academies who cause life long mental health issues in the majority of the students. why parents ever decided to allow the raising of their children to be done by government employees has to be one of the most disturbing lapses in judgement in modern times. I say these things and I come from a family who has generations of teachers in its history, including my mother who taught for 53 years in the Chicago Archdiocese. The state of education in the US truly disgusts me and am glad that people are starting to awaken to this nightmare.
Keep your eyes open for opportunities to contribute to collective schooling that is run by parents, e.g. homeschool collectives, or cottage schools which are a hybrid model -- part of the week in a physical classroom with children with likeminded parents, part of the week at home (or on the road).
I homeschooled my children who are now 29 and 31 years old. It was BY FAR the best decision I’ve ever made. We joined a co-op like this, it was so much fun. Lots of great camping field trips and wonderful memories. 🥰
I don't have any kids of my own, do you think I could still be a homeschool teacher? Or help parents manage their homeschool pods?
I live in LA/OC, so I am sure there are families around me that are pursuing alternative forms of education. I hear the public school enrollment has been dropping, esp since CA had some of the most ridiculous school closures. And the schools are pushing the transgender/CRT agenda super hard. Even in Catholic schools. It seems inescapable in my state.
My kids are all graduated. I do not know of start-ups that might be getting into the business of helping people organize learning pods, or of homeschool groups in search of (very) part-time teachers. But they've got to be out there, after the last two years of covid shutdowns.
I have friends in a Catholic homeschool group, and they look first for parents in that same group, with specialized knowledge and skills to teach children. That is the biggest first step for a good fit: they share a common vision of the common good and the pedagogy that will get children where they want children to go. The next step is screening a teacher to ensure the privacy and security of the children in that physical classroom.
One place to start an internet search for connecting with the new demand would be homeschool advocacy groups at the national or state level, or within a faith tradition.
Thanks for the motivation! I am going to search on Facebook Groups for pods or homeschool groups in my area.
YES! Please get involved
❤️🇺🇸❤️
Do you know the names of any homeschool groups in SoCal?
I feel like this is the kind of thing where you want a personal referreral so you connect with like minded people, as opposed to relying on Google search.
Sorry I don’t know of any groups here. I did all of my home schooling in Washington state. I just moved to SoCal only ten months ago to be closer to my mother. I agree that you’d want some sort of referral. Best of luck to you in your home school journey, there truly is no greater joy❤️
One of our friend's daughter is just shy of three years old and she attends a daycare/school thing where the kids all have chores outside, like feeding chickens, helping with gardening, etc. I joke with them that they are paying for the privilege of making their daughter an slave, but in actuality, I think all of the tasks are great life lessons.
Good luck with the homeschooling. If nothing else, you can avoid the 1,234,567 vaccines that Fauci is pushing on kids.
I am in the middle of reading "Dumbing Us Down" by John Taylor Gatto. The first edition was published in 1992. Anyway, I haven't verified this, but apparently parents DID resist sending their kids to institutionalized school. One community held out for 30 years. These people were armed, of course.
GREAT book!
👍
You are correct about the state of education in America. I have two children. The public school, regarded as one of the best in the state, was terrible. My husband and I switched the kids to a Catholic school for its smaller class sizes but were not impressed with many of the teachers. From there, we sent the kids to an expensive private day school only to discover that the liberal globalists were in charge there. After three years of that, we actually moved to a different public school district in the hopes that things would be better. I would say that they were marginally better but then the pandemic was upon us. My daughter was in college at that point but my son was still in high school. Virtual “learning” was awful for him so we sent him to an all boys boarding school where classes would be in person. It was our best education experience by far. I wish we had done it sooner. My son loved it and really thrived there. He just graduated and is headed to his top choice university in the fall. I wish you all the luck with your daughter. Be prepared for people around you to question your choices and don’t be afraid to tell them that you are doing what is best for your child. The followers in our midst will be angry with you for not following what they consider to be the norm.
This is awful. Sorry you had to experience that. Especially your children
This may not be popular. But here it goes.
90% of the teachers in America can go FUCK themselves.
They should be shamed, shunned and held with the deepest contempt!
I have nothing but disgust for them. Too many knew and sold their souls IMO.
Also doctors
I asked my nurse friend how she is able to continue administering remdisivir now that even she has started calling it "rundeathisnear".
She says her hands are tied. The nurses have tried to convince the doctors remdisivir is useless & causing more harm than good, but they keep prescribing it. She says some doctors have seen the light, but they are under pressure from the hospitals to keep the IV drugs flowing.
I told her there is financial incentive for hospitals to continue with this ineffective, dangerous drug, but that's where she drew the line. She doesn't see how the hospitals could be profiting during COVID-- she called it a "baseless conspiracy theory." 🙄
She did concede that a bunch of nurses are out on medical leave right now for "long COVID symptoms," but she doesn't think the 3-doses of mandatory jabs have had anything to do with it.
She had never heard of VAERS before I showed it to her. She is too exhausted after her shift to bother "doing her own research".
I can't help but feel like this is all by design. Keep healthcare workers overworked and in the dark. That way they are clueless about the actual science & all the money transfers happening behind the scenes. And when shit hits the fan, they can claim they were "just following orders."
Did you show her a copy of the CARES (not at all) Act? I saw it and read it on some substack or another, when I first found substack. It's all there in black and white how much the hospitals would be paid for each act they performed on their covid patients, including death.
Keeping all us peons overworked and in the dark is by design. Make life so exhausting that following orders (rather than becoming self-reliant, informed, and responsible for one's life) feels like a massive, welcome relief. At least, until it isn't...
Yeah, there is a point where people will say fuck it.
But I don't know about the 'just following orders' thing. I walked away from a job over mandates. Everyone's situation is different, but there was no question for me, what I would do, if my work mandated jabs.
Some say this is the time that tells you how you would have acted in Nazi Germany....lot of just following orders then, too.
You are brave. And you are correct about your Nazi comment.
Look how fast we created 2nd class citizens. Many people know it's wrong, but now they're getting off on it.
This is not behind us.
🎯 She's not a good, moral person, either.
My daughter was a teacher (usually 6th grade) for 10 years. She left teaching in 2016 because she got disgusted with what was happening in the schools, on many different levels, and including her continual frustration with far too many parents who didn't want their badly behaved children disciplined in any way.
💯
"the true education teaches HOW to think, not WHAT to think."
Told my kids this for their entire schooling days - Catholic school, Episcopalian school, private and public college.
Finally one time during my son's private college days, after he told this to yet another professor, that professor actually said, "You know, Nick, you're right!"
Only one in 33 years' worth of schooling.
Best summary statement of the article. Unfortunately, most individuals employed in the ‘teaching’ profession never learned the first part of that sentence, so it is beyond their ability to pass on a capability which they don’t possess.
One of the best memes, IMO, is the one that says (paraphrasing):
"You comply so this will end
This won't end, because you comply"
#BeUngovernable
#DoNOTComply
#StandYourGround
#Defend2A
#WITCOHE...
#IHateSubstack'sPrimitiveFormatting
Hahaha
#IHateSubstack'sPrimitiveFormatting
When I first found Substack last year, I started hashtagging #SubstackNeedsToEnableEditing or something like that...
I care more about embedding images in comments than text formatting.
But even reddit doesn't have an easy way to attach imgs. So I'm not holding my breath over substack. I am just grateful to finally connect with likeminded people.
You guys are like family. Without you, I felt like I was going insane.
You can edit.
Right. That's what I meant with the ellipsis. "I hashtagged editing, and now we can edit, so I'm hashtagging formatting now, because clearly I get results"!! ;-)
Ahhhhhh. Got it!
Ooooo, I want me #Writer-EditorCollaborationFullyTooled on substack. The whole nine yards (think word processor, with review comments, yah, 9 yards). I’m editing side. It’s awful here. Impossible really. That hashtag is too long tho. What’d work do you think? Thanks for any input!
Bold, italic, and proper spacing between lines/paragraphs when you hit "Enter". Emphasis (without SHOUTING) and appearance.
That's all I want.
It's a good thing my first car didn't have power steering, or I might not have the patience or resiliency to withstand this rickety platform.
Profound. Must. Not. EVER. Happen. Again. Period. Full. Stop.
Thank you Gato for continuing to tackle the incredible cowardice that rocked society for two years. This is the Number One issue in my opinion... the 'go along to get along' gang also snitched on Jewish neighbors and hoped for a nicer Nazi uniform. Everyone who participated in the insanity any level, including masking, is responsible. I sense people just want to have a fun summer and not think about it but I do hope at some point there is some self reflection.
go a bit easy on the opprobrium.
i get the sentiment and the anger, but people are, at the end of the day, just people.
they cannot all be superheros or super human. they fear and they doubt.
presuming implausible levels of courage to resist concerted efforts by the state to threaten and cow and then attacking those who fail to measure up is both an unsound system to secure liberty and a great way to alienate the allies we need.
you cannot make humans different or better or more perfect. we have to work with what we have and that means the win is to devolve choice to the point where herculean courage is not required to reach good outcomes.
i think we win far more with solutions and paths forward than by recrimination or demands for utopian heroism of the masses.
Disagree. My dad and his friends did not fight on the beaches of Normandy and through out the Pacific, so grown men would not step of and say “hell no I’m not wearing a stupid mask.” I’m a middle aged woman and had more back bone than the majority of men around me.
masks are an easy one though.
having your kid tossed out of school is harder.
in a perfect world, sure, everything you say is true, but it's easy to play ideological edge lord if you don't plan to ever actually change anything.
demanding more of the masses than the masses can provide is just the path to stagnation.
utopian absolutism is always seductive, but rarely terribly productive. the change will be incremental and people will come to their courage as they practice using it. to do this, we must get these systems off their necks.
any system that cannot be run by idiots and the go along to get along gang fails to flourish.
wish i had better news, but that's just humans for you.
you cannot have a powerful state checked by constantly brave and stand up citizens. it's a utopian idea.
what you CAN do is take the power away from the state and replace it with consent based free markets.
people do not change, so systems must and effecting that change requires the middle to be with us.
you don't win people over to joining a gym by belittling their bench press.
Thank you for this clarity. As a person whose kids were kicked to the curb from school for not being 100% vaccine-overdose compliant in NY 'way' back in 2019, my family got a head start in being cast out. It was extremely difficult, but I think of it as practice for resisting the covid lunacy that followed.
Best conversation starter with the masses is when I explain how my kid delayed college (went to work 'in person' for a year, and gave up a scholarship) to avoid the NY mandates and be free to make his own choices. He banked some tuition, moved to a red state, and is happily attending college in person, no mandates, in a much more open-minded setting (imagine that?). He will also be nearly debt free and not an indentured servant to NY state for years under the oppressive excelsior program. And we will end up owning a good chunk of a house there for our part, instead of just a bill for room and board paid to the state. It's not perfect, but it's a start to moving the $ away from oppressive policy and policymakers, and it's something people will listen to. Some of his friends parents are still hostile, but his young adult peers are starting to wake up.
I still privately hold people accountable for their part in going along with so much, but I also take every opportunity to subtly get points across when possible. Find the common ground when you can and use it...
"people will come to their courage as they practice using it."
I know this to be true because I was part of the cult/herd and only woke up as a result of my decades-long hatred/distrust of Big Harma, which has never wavered (nor been given a reason to). In becoming one of the dirty unvaxxed, I soon discovered how readily "my tribe" will eat its own, at which point the veil was lifted.
I take comfort in the belief that, once people wake up (e.g., from a nightmare), they rarely go back to sleep.
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.” — Charles MacKay
To have the masses rise up first they have to know they have God given rights and free will.
When you throw God out of society the rights and free will follow.
How do we change this? Bring God back to the forefront of life.
Sorry for the edgelord interjection:
looks good on paper. facts on the ground, without a keyboard, are different.
I agree with your sentiment. My objective is to fool people into believing they're bench-pressing 180 lbs when it's actually 200 lbs.
speaking of keyboard. I'm looking forward to answering your other questions, when I get there
love how you question everything.
This is vacation for you! lol
Same. People need to understand it wasn't impossible to just not do it. Any of it. We still made it through.
My wife and I didn't do any of it here in the Dominican Republic, and the restrictions were far more stringent than the states.
No one was permitted into any public space, including food stores and clinics without either a vaxxx card or 3-day old PCR test ($85 here.)
In our act of "civil disobedience", we got one PCR, photoshopped the date. The lab uses non-flattened PDF for a digital record which made the editing easy and perfect.
That said, it's one thing to spoof a PCR to some minimum-wage drone at the door of a grocery store in the Third World. We won't try faking a xaxxx card with US Immigration or the counter Nazis of the airlines, since the US disallows foreign nationals (my wife) from entry with being "fully vaxxxed.".
Faking documentation is pseudo conformity, not heroism. Unless you're using it to flee persecution rather than avoid it.
I never claimed heroism.
I do claim non-compliance.
Faking a document is in the "non-compliance" strike zone, like a fake ID in college to get into a bar.
Read Thoreau's' treatise on civil disobedience. Or better yet, read Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World."
I don't have to douse myself with gasoline and strike a match to show by disagreement with a policy intended to deny access to food without gubmint compliance to dangerous poison.
I'll keep my "f@<k you's" private. Especially as a gringo in the Third World.
I want food and access to things to live life denied by bad governance, not a blanket political statement.
But have you taken a moment to imagine the world we would be living in today had Omicron not arrived?
Yes, and that was my Road to Damascus moment, when I saw proof of God. He saw we were destroying ourselves, and he sent out a variant that would not kill everyone but would defuse the situation by infecting everyone, regardless of shot status. Not trying to proselytize on a school post, but I do think there are reasons to be hopeful.
ALL of the people who pushed back were punished publicly.
I never wore a mask, only had two tiny dust ups of anyone saying a word at stores. Never got swabbed, never took a jab. It wasn't fun, in fact it was like living in a hellscape Zombie apocalypse, but I'm fine.
Just curious where you live? I lived in California but never wore a mask (except when I had to fly to TN to look for a new house) but was kicked out of 3 stores. I would not call it a dust up- Walgreens being one of them. I had the cops called on me for taking down police tape around a park (I did it again the next day.)
My two best friends (who now believe as I do/did) were not allowed to see me for two months because their husbands were giant cowards who were afraid of Covid. I “didn’t take Covid seriously enough.”
My neighbors crossed the street to the other side when my kids and I were outside. I still told my neighbor it was child abuse to force children to wear a mask as her grandson stood wearing a mask.
I have a personality conducive to not giving a damn but not everyone does. That is the problem. We have way too many who have fallen into the “be kind” trap and now won’t even stand up for what is right. It’s so depressing seeing the world my children will grow up in.
Yes. Everyday maskless was like gearing up for battle. Working as a leper at my job was like living in a prisoner of war camp. Thank God I was tossed to the curb at that job. I could have put in a religious exemption to stay but my soul screamed to not use God to prop up an immoral tyrannical system.
SAME
And if more people pushed back, the amount of punishment would have decreased proportionally. But more didn’t so those of us who did took the brunt of the blowback. But at least I can live with myself and not feel the shame that will one day be theirs of those who didn’t fight back.
They won't feel shame. This was not their fight. There comes a time in all our lives when we do have to stand up for what is right. For some people like you, me and others, the time is now. For others who went along to get along the future may be their fight.
So what?!
EXACTLY
YES. Same with my grandfather. He would've been out in the streets shouting from top of his lungs
Here! Here!!!
The military is not a particularly good example of a free-thinking mindset. They recruit from the ranks of the most conformist and malleable society has to offer. Conformity is required to raise in rank. They are ALL vaccinated and they ALL wear masks if ordered to do so. They will jump out of a boat under a shower of enemy bullets if ordered to do so...which is to take nothing away from their understanding of/commitment to the mission and their bravery in carrying it out.
#flamesuiton
True but the WWII soldiers, etc were largely drafted and understood the threat of tyranny. Men these days are too comfortable.
*People these days are too conformist.
I'm just shocked and a little disappointed that my kids never got into any trouble. Never to the principal's office, nothing. My 27 yo son has never had a speeding ticket!! The oldest of that generation are raising kids and we are going to indoctrinate another generation. This time with the full endorsement of the parents. That scares me.
I know. In my Southern California high school (class of 1980), there was so much smoking in the restrooms the administration put up a smoking area outside in the quad.
I agree with you. We will not convert people by shaming or humiliating them, and we need converts. But today is a hard day. Today, parents are taking their very young children to be injected with an experimental gene therapy that isn't safe, doesn't work, and targets a long extinct variant. It's hard not to be enraged. Really hard. Some children will be disabled. Some will die. The people who remain silent...who go along to get along...are as responsible as the "public health" liars and their media enablers. Missing school is bad. Being injected with dangerous substances is worse.
the"parents"....... injecting, grooming, transistioning, killing, murdering, their children.
Such a society does not last long, philosophically but Certainly Physically........ and that is a Good Thing for Heaven and Earth.
Good angle
I think you are wrong about the cowardice of the normies. There was plenty of cowardice on the part of the influential, but there was literally nothing I could have done to change anything. And I was looking for the moment to be brave in an influential way. It didn't happen.
I did what I could--took my family on fun trips in open states, patronizing places with no or few restrictions, ate out at restaurants *more* often than before, and posted on facebook to the point where most of my contacts have obviously muted me. I emailed the school board and got no response. The local protests of the school board had no effect. They were strategic about not allowing people in, so even 10,000 parents wouldn't have changed a thing because nobody would ever see them. The media successfully convinced people that the unmasked were responsible for prolonging things, so when I went unmasked in stores it didn't help anyone.
If being brave and stepping out would have had any effect I probably would have done it. But that was never the situation. And I work in tech--showing my political colors publicly likely would have gotten me fired. There was no upside.
Would you do it the same way again?
Ask yourself that.
Look around man
Yes. Because I saw no alternative. And I still see no alternative.
This was not by accident. "They" were very careful to make sure I had no avenue to push back.
And you have to understand--this is coming from someone who lost all of my friends and alienated my sister and almost my parents by arguing about restrictions and masks. I was not someone who just let bygones be bygones. I was angry. I was ready to fight (figuratively). There was nobody *to* fight. A lot of it in my area was driven by middle-aged moms who were being told daily that their kids were going to die if I didn't wear a mask. I was aggravated at them but ultimately it was the fault of the people lying to them. But the people lying to them *knew* they were lying so people's protests had no effect on them.
I can only hope that millions will push back in the voting booth. But people have short memories.
This war will not be won at the voting booth, don't waste your time. This is a war of ideas and you are right to engage whoever will listen. You delivery, however, may need some work if you have driven away your friends and family. Politicians are a mealy bunch, they will endorse whatever they perceive to be popular opinion. We have an uphill battle against a government-indoctrinated populace that is continuously fed by the group-think of social media. Occasionally we are treated to a political or cultural figure who will show their middle finger to the establishment to change the conversation (like Trump DeSantis, or Musk...all who also have their own deep flaws).
It wasn't my approach. I promise I was pretty subdued. I just demonstrated that I was not part of their tribe anymore and thus must be excluded. I was sent an email telling me I wasn't welcome anymore unless I was vaxxed. It just so happens that I had gotten the J&J but that was enough for me to be done with them. I've read many stories on twitter similar to mine--people were convinced that their side was right and my side was somehow responsible for everyone who got sick.
Voting is all we've got. To a smaller extent we can vote with our dollars but that rarely has much impact. Beyond that I just try to focus on my immediate family and make sure my kids aren't affected by this to the extent I can prevent it. Thus--private Christian school next year, and more vacations in the last 2 1/2 years that ever before just so we could get out of NC.
I'm hoping the group of lefties that are ready to punish the Democrats for what they did is representative of a larger group, but we'll see. It seems like we're making a dent but it may just be my bubble.
i wonder if you had young children during this nonsense? Maybe I missed that?
Yes, I had elementary age children (one is out of elementary now). Their whole lives the pediatrician has asked us about screen time and recommended we keep it to a minimum, and all of a sudden my children are required by law to sit in front of a Google machine 7 hours a day. School was essentially optional so while my kids' classes were mostly full, this was not the case across the school system, so now standards have dropped. We consistently asked the kids if they would prefer we homeschool them, but they were incredibly lonely and the thought of not talking to *anyone* all day was worse for them. As I said, all of our friends were gone at this point. Homeschool groups weren't meeting, so they would have been home with nobody. My wife and I were both forced to work from home for nearly two years. My church only stayed closed for ~3 months so we spent as much time there as we could. I wish the church had stood out as a beacon for all of us who wanted freedom, but instead they were worried about alienating people and strongly encouraged masks, at least at the beginning. It did eventually be the one place where I would go and see few masks, even while the stores were still at 90% or more.
I started looking for a private school once I realized the public schools weren't going to reopen any time soon. They were all full. Overflowing. There was no availability. The school we got into next year had 2 slots in my son's grade. 2. So "just switch to private" isn't an option for most. And as I said, homeschooling can work great when you have a good support mechanism but they closed down most of those at the same time they closed the public schools.
I'm part of the "laptop class". Most of my coworkers have enjoyed this. They are introverts and they were happy to stay home. This made me all the more angry because they literally never stopped to consider what went on with the working class during this. They literally never once thought about them.
In the end all you could do was move, and vote. And being a tech guy I can't exactly move just anywhere. And I already vote red so there won't be any change there. My buddy is running for school board so I sent him some money. But otherwise I think I'm mostly powerless.
You did more than most people. Thank you.
Way more than most
I think it needs to be both: recognize that in the height of insanity with the most significant PsyOp, perhaps ever, deluging people's every moment that everyone failed. That was the point, the PsyOp worked. We have to acknowledge what happened and sift through the emotions to recognize the pattern so that if this happens again, people might behave differently.
AMEN: The objective is to never let this happen again.
Well said Ki!
Mass Formation Psychosis + Terror Management Theory.
To this day, I still see people voluntarily wearing masks and face shields.
Outside with no one within 10 feet....
I want badly to at least ridicule them, but don't. jack daniels helps, however.
Gato -
On the flip side, I don't know if you had young children, during this nonsense.
I get your "opprobrium" comments.
But, you may have a different perspective if you did have young children.
Just a thought.
i would tend to argue that having more reason to be enraged does not make being engaged any more productive, just a more tempting pitfall.
aren't you basically making an appeal to emotion and to vengeance?
Driving. I'll answer later.
You pose one of the most critical question for making sure this never happens again
Isn't this still happening? Shot mandates are entrenched, babies are being poisoned, the fall will bring back slave masks and closures. Nothing has really changed.
The "go along to get along" aspect of human nature is fundamental and has been long known. Thinking this is the root cause of tyranny or that it can somehow be altered risks engaging in the same sort of hubris and delusions of the left.
The fundamental issue is power.
The fact of the matter is that most people are completely oblivious to, or even supportive of, the incremental usurpations of power orchestrated by the progressive left over the last century that have brought us to the point where the last two years were not only possible, but inevitable.
A basic axiom is that whatever power is usurped by the State will be abused, sooner or later. That power corrupts, and must be severely constrained to preserve liberty. This used to be widely known, but over a century of Prussian-style State "education" has not only largely eradicated it, but actually replaced it with the idea that the State is benevolent and omniscient, and therefore should be omnipotent.
For the Common Good™, don't you know.
We are never going to get out of this mess until this pseudo-theological faith in the State is broken, and it is once again seen for what it truly is, at best a necessary evil that must be chained down by the rule of law.
School choice is a large part of the solution, as it will subject government schools to much more open competition, which they will lose.
Etienne de la Boetie wrote exactly what's happening now a few hundred years ago in "The Politics of Obedience".
https://cdn.mises.org/Politics%20of%20Obedience.pdf
Indeed.
Among the best political treatises of the 16th century.
"Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books. Roman tyrants invented a further refinement. They often provided the city wards with feasts to cajole the rabble, always more readily tempted by the pleasure of eating than by anything else.
The most intelligent and understanding amongst them would not have quit his soup bowl to recover the liberty of the Republic of Plato. Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, ‘Long live the King!’ The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them.”
~ Etienne de La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, 1548
You going to the Supporter's Summit?
It is prohibited for me to fly into the USA without a gene-jab. I'll try to get rich enough to ignore that in the meantime.
[Edit] It is said that Boetie almost lost his head for writing that treatise. The best books tend to be by those who have been threatened or killed.
Just get yourself to Juarez and join the mob crossing the river.
Once you arrive you'll get flown to some red state.
The masses of Georgia just re-sElected the Corrupt Rino Coup Repubs in "our" state gov.
Raffensberger is going to "testify" for the 1/6 Commissars this week amplifying Trump's "requesting" his finding another 13,000 votes.
2000 mules proved the sElection Fraud, but Raffensberger Approved and then Covered Up the democRat Fraud. The Rinos are going to sabatoge themselves as Quislings always have done. I hope and pray it's not so, but the JoBama Regime just took 5.56 ammo out of public production. Unavailable, more tyranny to come.
"When in the course of human events....."
Yeah, I know. But, wanting to have a fun summer and not think about it is part of the problem. We can have a fun summer and think and do something about this too.
Just making the point that people are early in the grief process - denial. This is going to take years to unwind.
Months until the economic wheels come off, but sheeples will not believe their lying eyes.
2nd that!
I didn't stay silent. I spoke out and was greeted with blank stares of disbelief and denial. And now, aside from my wife, I am essentially alone. I chose solitude over the company of the weak and obedient . . . and I'm good with that choice.
One of the best things about covid is that I can break ties with the people I thought were decent but would have turned in Anne Frank.
Do you believe her diary wasn't a work of fiction?
You are not alone but indeed the sharp relief of standing in opposition to the death cult makes for a quick arbiter of social bonds.
The fact as I came to see it, is that many of these modern relationships of convenience were just that; transactional, conditional, and situational arrangements that would not survive the test of moral courage, faith, or reason itself.
Losing or compartmentalizing blood relatives into the camp of the insane is more painful but likely more valuable as the stakes become survival. And under duress, relationships with cultists, like addicts or the insane, always end in your suffering because they will choose their drug/delusion over you every single time.
The banal, modern consumer culture is cruising on nothing but momentum. And its pervasive monopoly on status holds tenuous sway over people that has usurped actual character, moral fortitude, and human decency. Accordingly, the "covid" machinations pulled this facade thin for those prone to noticing.
Stripped bare, we can see that the culture is already dead and so what animates the cultists is not just their own fear and weakness of "covid" or "climate change" or [insert current year crisis] devouring them, but their own sense of impending doom and nihilism spawned from the spiritual vacancy of modernism coupled with its obvious precipitously declining ability to fill that void. Even those not prone to noticing cannot evade their innate intuition. So the spice of lies must flow.
Not to diminish the cost of this, however. I too lost "friends", a business, half my life savings - which wasn't a whole lot to start, and what was left of my faith in the institutions. (The least of my loses). I left a whole life behind and moved out of state - at great cost. Took major economic risk. Have hit many potholes since.
Most of these are gifts in which the real value is not immediately revealed. So, we have faith and grace until such time.
But in the wake of all that I forged a new friendship with a wonderful family and have come to regard this great sorting of the masses as a long overdue necessity in not just my own peace but in what is required to build our own communities once again.
We are on the side of Truth. Thats pretty good company. But we are also legion. Another truth the serpents are desperately trying to suppress.
Some people won't discuss Event 201. Moral cowardice.
The problem is that credentials are meant to serve an important function: enabling employers and customers to verify that a prospective service provider has mastered the necessary skills and knowledge base. That's been subverted so heavily that we all kind of know that credentials are frequently meaningless aside from being an indicator of successful indoctrination. Which of course contributes to the incompetocracy that's causing everything to break down.
Just setting up alternative elementary and high schools isn't enough. Useful, yes, but I suspect that universities would happily erect even more explicit ideological loyalty tests if they became more common. The monopoly of the universities on higher education needs to be shattered; doing that requires a parallel, and superior, credentialing system.
Dh and I were pioneer homeschoolers in our Cdn area years ago. We knew no other homeschoolers and bought our program from an accredited US homeschooling school. It consisted of books and detailed course outlines. One child went on to nursing + a degree, and the other a 2 yr tech course leading to good tech jobs. They both discovered many of their fellow college students were woefully lacking in maturity, self discipline and literary skills. Both of them went on to marry, and now homeschool their children. They use the same US school as we did, but the courses have evolved to attractive, professional workbooks. I am in awe. They also use many wonderful online resources and courses. The sky is the limit. The world is their classroom.
For the last 10 yrs, I have taught an online grammar + writing program with an American school. The students from this school have benefitted from small online class sessions and, in my course, one-on-one guidance. There are many good online schools like this out there.
With a plethora of resources and large homeschooling communities rising up, many children and families are benefitting richly. As for “socialization,” children are not closeted with same-age students and friends six hours a day. They interact and socialize with all age levels. Real life.
Our children are steering their children towards the trades + tech. They do not want them to lose their souls in ivyland. In many cases the homeschooled are able to go on to survive the college jungle, but, alas, there are more than a few subsumed by the cultural and societal siren calls.
As for credentialing, the same could apply to the professions. Zoom university courses - employing only the very best teachers with genuine teaching skills - can go far. Parents would be able to look in to see what’s going on in young mister or miss’s classes to ensure they are not inundated with a subtext of CRT/Marxism.
Points for "incompetocracy".
Modern credentialism has become an adjunct to the Church of Woke. The more mysterious letters behind your name, the more meaningless certificates on the wall, the greater status you can claim in the 'progressive' community.
We already have a parallel, superior credentialing system. It's called apprenticeship.
I went to a protest in summer 2020 to keep schools open. There were a lot of other parents there. I recall older people driving past, reading our signs, then shaking their heads and yelling at us--why in the world would you be mad about parents wanting what's best for their kids?! Some people are just lost. My favorite moment was when one of the School Board members showed up to be the sole member of the counter-protest, yelling at us about racism or something. As if public schools closing wasn't going to disproportionately affect minorities.
The silver lining is all of this exposed the rot in the school systems. The public schools won't be able to recover from this. And my kid is already expressing an interest in foregoing college!
Ha, counter-protester must have taken a page out of our Prime Menacer's handbook.
My wife went to Harvard. She didn't have perfect grades (she got a C in typing and a C in a required "consumer education" class). She didn't have perfect SATs. She didn't have all 5s for her AP scores. She cut almost all of her classes in her high school senior year. She handed in all her assignments and showed up for tests and for some reason her teachers let her slide.
She says she got into Harvard on a good line of bullshit. And I can confirm it was a great line of bullshit. But if she hadn't gotten in, she wouldn't have cared. Harvard was the only school she applied to because she didn't really want to go to college. She wanted to read, on her own, exactly what she wanted to read. She wanted to follow her own thoughts for a while. She knew she was good at finding mentors when she needed them. You can always find professors who will work with you, even if you're not a student at their institution.
But she got into Harvard, full scholarship, all costs covered. So she kind of felt she had to go. She said the students were mostly rich kids who had average IQs or a bit lower (roughly 10% seemed retarded to her). Their chief talent was wearing the right clothes. Some of them were foreign royalty. Their IQs dropped during their years at Harvard and they are the people ruining the world now.
There were a few middle class geniuses, always awkward and unpopular. There were some middle class grade grubbers. And there were the smart affirmative action cases, who usually dropped out fast. One of her roommates freshman year was from a Mohawk reservation. She had come to Harvard hoping to avoid working in the reservation sweat shop. By Christmas break, even the sweat shop looked better than Harvard, and she didn't return to finish her freshman year.
I dropped out of college after my freshman year, made a major discovery in a math-related field not long after, and went on to have a great life in that field, with more important discoveries.
My son stopped going to school at age 13. He hung out all day on the streets of Berkeley, getting into trouble. His only degree is a GED. Now he's a devoted husband and father making an upper-middle-class income in a technical field he learned on his own.
If I were raising a child now, I'd let him be raised by wolves in the forest before I would send him to these schools.
We are the ones who empower these horrid institutions. And once you submit to them, they've got you by the b*lls for life. Look at what happened with the vax mandates. Everyone I know who capitulated to keep his job went through the grind you describe. They don't know how to live outside that system. They're hothouse flowers.
Better to be free. Better to go on strike. Just turn your back on them and ignore them and follow your interests in life. There is literally nothing you need them for.
Love this 💕
Walking on the University of Texas campus I saw a sign that sent a chill down my spine:
"UT's Core Purpose:
To transform lives for the benefit of society."
"training good global citizens" is another popular one.
blech.
Took me all the way to fifteen years old to start refusing to say the pledge. Still ashamed of all those years of prior compliance...
Well, the abyss is before us. People who will vaccinate their infants will never fight a school. Betting odds, anyone, on how this goes?
Pledge was written by a Commie, Francis Bellamy. The whole point was to brainwash people to pledge allegiance to some sort of meaningless icon rather than swearing to uphold the principles of the Constitution.
Now I know that some will take offense at my reference to the flag as a 'meaningless icon' (happened once when I was talking to a US Army major about freedom of expression including things we might find offensive, like flag burning), but in comparison to the principles stated in the Constitution, it is exactly that. Would we prefer a nation with the Constitution and no flag, or a different one; or one with no Constitution but proudly flying the Stars and Stripes and insisting everyone pledge allegiance to it? Because we are on the road to the latter right now.
"And to the republic for which it stands" means the republic based on the constitution.
The pledge is not about loyalty to gubmint; it's loyalty to the Constitution.
I have no problem with that.
How about a constitution AND a flag?
Road to hell. The words are real but they can always change the symbol and try to enforce your loyalty. A lot of that going around lately.
There is nothing in the constitution about "forced loyalty."
I think you guys are going too far in your condemnation.
When I see the flag, I don't see indoctrination and evil. I see a symbol of all that was sacrificed before.
America is not perfect, and even the preamble states efforts for a "more perfect union."
I don't equate "flag burning" with pledging "to the republic for which it stands."
Besides, America was vastly stronger before "Americans" decided to trash flags and symbols. I also think focusing on symbols is weak sauce vis-a-vis those who intend real evil on the republic.
We were founded by ruffians and thieves and the rebellious fruit of every crazy offshoot breakaway sect in Europe and it was living words that forged us into something worth fighting for. Saluting a flag is like believing someone is "the science." Takes your eyes off the heart of the matter.
Nice deflection.
Surrender noted.
Those "ruffians and thieves" were the ones who created that document. They bled for it.
Saluting a flag is symbolic recognition of their sacrifice, not accepting any order given by corrupt gubmint officials, or agreeing with acts of a corrupt gubmint. (FWIW, SAR member here.)
You may disagree, but I choose to pick more important fights in life that have actual, and not philosophical, impact.
You may own a Kaepernick jersey. I do not.
My man!
I used to argue with a friend about that, exactly.
I thought about this issue when I see the butt-ugly Pride flag blowing in the breeze. What does that flag stand for?
Destruction of The American Family.
As a college teacher, whenever I saw a student with a 4.0 GPA, I always wanted to cry. They usually risked nothing and always took the safe route to protect the GPA. How many missed opportunities to actually learn something?