Good news: A judge just granted a stay in the implementation of vaccine mandate on NYC employees. The case is Marciano v. De Blasio. Our legal team is also going after the vaccine passports.
There is a certain ugliness and cynicism to the acts of politicians who create rules that they are aware are likely illegal. Worse they might even have their legal team inform them the rules are likely illegal. They pronounce the rule and some in the public praise their strong action, others scream foul. They depend on the delay in the legal process. Once the illegality is exposed, the politician may not even have any consequence as public memory fades. Those who praised the strong action lament politicization of the courts, reducing public confidence in courts. Sadly the press seems to support the strong action.
If you respond with violence, you give them an excuse to use force...and more rights will be infringed. Peaceful but undeterred resistance is the way until and unless there is no other option.
At least JP is finally waking up from his comatose compliance to Covidian measures. He of all people should have recognized it instantly given every book he’s ever recommended.
Speaking of, it was his recommendation of “Ordinary Men” that led Joe Van Steenbergen to recommend it to me, and it subsequently became the central text driving my “Letter to a Colluder” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-colluder-stop-enabling). And it is most certainly a must-read for today’s totalitarian gallop.
I published a little cartoon book the other year about authoritarianism but I think what actually allowed me to see through the covid veil was actually time. Not having to get the vax or make a haste decision about it allowed me the time to read about immunology, the technology and unravel the ensuing connection to creeping authoritarianism.
Wow, I read your post. I would love to share it with all my co-workers on my last day at the company. After reading about the concepts in Ordinary Men, it makes more sense to me that I am one of about 5 people in our entire company that didn't go along with the jab mandate.
That would be phenomenal if you would blast that out to your coworkers and maybe even spark a pandemic of courage! Please let me know if you do that as I’ll be curious to hear the responses.
Thank you for being one of the few brave ones willing to stand up to tyranny. We need more people like you to turn the tides.
Google is doing that a lot. It's remarkable how they can keep tweaking their algorithm. Is there an army of informers at work or do they just assume all substack spaces are deviations to the ordained ideology.
I am growing increasingly concerned that Substack is being targeted by BigTech in various forms. The scariest I’ve heard are reports of companies like Comcast blocking emails from certain Substackers (e.g., Alex Berenson), but I wouldn’t be surprised if they and other companies simply start flagging Substack in general since email is how we communicate with our readers. Everyone needs to get off Big Tech platforms and start using alternatives like Proton Mail to ensure we can continue communicating without censorship.
I use Comcast and haven't observed any blocking. Technically it's possible for an ISP to block mail generally via Internet Black Lists for spam but adding the sender to your contact list is supposed to allow receipt anyway. I do think that G-mail's spam engine goes crazy periodically so users need to check their spam folder. In terms of reliable, non-snoopers Fastmail is my choice but their free service is only IMAP or web based. I have business accounts there and have found them quite reliable.
I remember reading this awhile back, but the refresher is good, especially to put in my doc of links as I can already think of a few people to share it with at some point. Attended a dinner the other night at my husband's employment and the entire time felt like I was surrounded by people (like 150) living in an alternate reality. A woman sang a song titled "All is well" as the evening began and that sums up quite well this bubble they live in. I'm not sure they are awake enough to collude. It was very refreshing though to talk with a former colleague and his wife (retired) and hear they'd not gotten the jab and in my conversation with the wife, it was obvious she was AWAKE. The highlight of an otherwise barely tolerable evening.
BTW, MAA, made our 300th batch of cat food tonight. 😺
I know it’s hard to have conversations with these people that are still in the bubble of delusion and denial…I find that a certain strata (economic) in our country are going about their lives with the ‘business as usual’ plan, with little to know clue that “the you know what” is coming down! Planning trips next year to Europe, cruises, expensive vacation holidays. I was at an Anniversary Party this summer with these types and several people were taking trips to France & Europe & NYC in late summer & early fall, going concerts & music events that required proof of vaxx status. (And may I say the 99.9% of the people at this party got The Jab, making me in the remaining percentile!) I have a saying for it ‘Fiddling While Rome Burns”!!
Yes, my husband was talking with a colleague today who had gone to Iceland bc his wife wanted to go SOMEWHERE and since they'd both had the jabs, they could go. Not long afterwards, that almost 100% jabbed country locked down again. I don't believe it crossed his mind how that could be. The thing that remains a complete puzzle to me is how many people I know with advanced degrees who clearly never looked at ANY information before they got the jab.
Oh I know…I have three cousins with wives & husbands who all have ‘advanced’ degrees, and a couple are these high brow intellectual types in the ‘sciences’ who gladly got the Jabs. One cousin & husband who are 77, had Covid in March of 2020, were told to go home and stay there, we’re pretty sick but recovered, went and got the Jab as soon as it was available even thought they have the antibodies! The other ones got it so they could travel. That cousin couple took an ‘exclusive cruise’ on a small boat in France this summer. Guess what they had to do everyday? Take a friggin Covid saliva test each morning. Now that’s my idea of exclusive high end travel! 😜 The Covid cousin’s daughter (who is an assistant Dean Of Academic Affairs at a small university where they live in CO) is planning a trip to London with her kids & husband next spring? WTH? Do they even understand what London may be like next spring? Do they even think about it! No! I don’t know if she or the husband got the Jab, but as far as I know the kids have not. So what if the UK requires all international travelers to be vaxxed? Will they give their darling, smart & very healthy 10 & 13 year old kids The Jab in order to go there? The insanity and delusional thinking of this class of people never ceases to amaze me!
I don't think I'll ever get over being stunned by the fact that most people's brains have fallen out of the backs of their heads - for example, getting the jab w/natural immunity. You had chickenpox as a child. Did you rush out to get the chickenpox vax when it came out in the 90s??!! I started reading Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" recently to try to understand this phenomenon, but had to set it aside b/c there are too many other urgent reads. The exclusive cruise story totally cracks me up. Bet they didn't bat an eye at it either. I'm not into horror genre so never watched any zombie stuff, but I'm starting to understand when people use the illustration for these people.
First off, #300 is quite a milestone—congratulations! (I find it hilarious that you’ve been keeping track 😹)
Wow, that dinner sounds like unadulterated hell 😂 I agree—people like that are not knowingly colluding, but they are nevertheless enabling tyranny by complying and enforcing authoritarian measures in their own small ways. Still, “Letter to a Covidian” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-covidian-a-time-travel) may be a better fit for them ;-)
What a joy to find a kindred spirit and independent thinker amidst the madness of the crowd! Sounds like someone you should keep in touch with :-)
Yeah, it's because we want to pat ourselves on the back for doing it for so long! 😸 But it also helps if there are multiple batches in the freezer to use the oldest first OR if there is problem with the batch (like everyone is puking all over) to throw that one out. It has never happened in 10 years of doing it, but that doesn't mean it can't.
I'll read your essay above - haven't read that one yet, even though I "free subscribed" last week. 🐱 I have SO much to read (and so little time) it's starting to get overwhelming.
Ran to the vet this a.m. with the 15 year old toothless wonder. She had another extraction in August, had some swelling, so was on antibiotics and was rechecked, then a few days ago, I noticed a lump/abscess? on that side and got an appt for the 13th, but they said if something changed, they could squeeze me in. Well, it opened up overnight so that was that. Our vet doesn't think it's related to the extraction...yet. Could have been caused by anything - scratching, spider bite any type of abrasion. One of the boys decided to scratch off fur on his head and around his ear, so now he's on ear drops, which he LOVES of course. Oy, it's always something.🙄
After reading it I sent it out…then I realized I had sent the same post previously…oh well…the people I resent it to could use a ‘refresher’ on the subject, as a number of them are still “going along to get along”, wearing masks in stores and with clients (they live in Sonoma County , which is a way woke, too groovy/hippie/alternative lifestyles for words County in CA) and then work down in Marin County (super liberals with $$$), selling and leasing residential real estate to all the high end liberal & woke Silicon Valley types who are fleeing San Francisco in droves! (We wonder why they are feeling SF?) They say they can’t jeopardize their income stream, by standing up against the all the BS! I told them well we shall see what the future holds for them, when the you know what really starts coming down because they sat back and did NADA!
*lol* That is so funny. If it makes you feel any better, Lew Rockwell accidentally published that piece twice, too 😆 I told Lew I didn’t mind, tho, as I got a bunch of new signups after that ;-)
I know exactly the type you’re describing, and good luck talking sense to them!! 😹 I admire you for trying, though, and I’m grateful to you for sharing my essays!
I know a feeble attempt to get people to wake up…me thinks it will take a a major cataclysmic event to get these types of people to wake up to the ‘you know what’ that may be coming down! 😬😵💫
Browning’s Ordinary Men is a brilliant and disturbing book that should be required reading. It absolutely shows how to governments and, really, fanatics, create compliant monsters out of every day people. A few said “No freakin way” - the contrarians, the free thinkers. The rest? Went along.
The scary part about the Nazis were they said exactly what they were planning to do 15 years before they did it. People still gladly went along. The current generation of fascists literally say they are violating our rights, and their followers still claim they are not. It's bizarre
I was discussing with a friend how this happened in sports. Heck, it was only a couple of intersex African track & field athletes, 'n it wasn't their fault they were born in a place where their condition wasn't understood, and 'n wasn't their fault they went through a male puberty with those sneaky internal testes, and they were raised as girls 'n all, so what's the harm in finding ways of allowing them to compete? Yeah, you don't need to see their genitalia. Just look at those shoulders and torsos. Any child could correctly identify their sex.
And now here we are. Laurel Hubbard, Sportswoman of the Year! Lia Thomas, smashing those collegiate swimming records right out of the park--uh--pool!
The statement, "We are never going back to normal" was being normalized as early the original Two Weeks that started this debacle - it's as if they had a plan? It's called the Anaconda method... squeeze, let go, squeeze, let go. That way the serfs never really mount a defense.
Renormalize. Take advantage of the basic agreeableness of reasonable, well-intentioned people. Leverage good impulses into abominable actions. Demand the poor man's lamb to slaughter for your dinner party while your own flock is untouched.
One shred of cloth, one shelter-in-place, one fortnight, one <1-millimeter-thin needle, one QR code at a time.
Yes. My dog usually falls asleep in the middle of the bed. I feel sorry to move her over and get onto the side. And in the morning, she has 2/3 of the bed and I hang on in there
Oooh, neither of you are the alpha dogs in your house! I have a pile of three medium to large-sized dogs on my bed and a single stern "excuse me" gets everyone in their optimal position.
Our mastiff will cuddle with the Mrs before I come to bed. As soon as I finish brushing my teeth and walk out of the bathroom, she sees herself of the bed and out the door.
I dunno. Not get killed by agents of the government of the country I love?
Seriously, the scope of my whole life has been reduced to "survive this or take a bunch of them with me and do dad (who believes in Valhalla).
Really. That's what my arc is anymore. I don't plan for the future beyond the next few weeks and months anymore. I expect them to take it all away as soon as they find an excuse.
I don't smile nearly as much as I used to. I miss it and my husband does too.
Interesting! We don’t have a cat managing our house, because my husband is allergic. But our two rescue dogs do a pretty good job of controlling things.
Especially the younger one, who used to start barking and carrying on at 4:30 am to be fed. Husband got an ultrasonic box thingy to put outside of the bedroom door, and we’re able to “sleep in” a little later. 😬
Aaaand … my employer, a small liberal arts university in So Cal, just announced the booster mandate by Feb 15. So, there's that.
The problem is that when bureaucrats are trained to focus on moving a metric to a desired outcome (flatten the curve, zero covid. no child left behind!) and that metric is an ignorant, utopian ideal, the bureaucrat is trained to go to more and more extreme policies to try and force reality to conform to the metric. The problem is that human beings and human lives are considered the means to achieve the measurement outcome, and therefore those human lives are entirely expendable in the bureaucrats eyes so long as they are pursing the utopian metric ideal.
Healthy political systems recognize this tendency for bureaucratic depravity and so institutional checks are built in to correct and punish the bureaucratic class. Hopefully we in the US are seeing this start to work in the courts, and of course it has already worked in the federal system of diverse states who hold powers that are constitutionally protected from the state. The US political system, overall, seems to be self correcting (alas it is too late for the millions the bureaucrats have already killed to maimed)
Western Europe, UK and the commonwealth states are in total freefall into brutal true fascism. There are clearly no balancing mechanisms in those states. The EU bureaucrats' zero covid obsessions cannot ever be realized, and so they must punish their populations with harsher and harsher measures in their fanatical pursuits. Their police are equally depraved and I suspect so is the military (anyone see that disgusting and bizarre military sendoff for Merkel in Germany?). I see no chance for Europe, the protests will be crushed with violent crackdowns … and concentration camps for enemies of the state are now inevitable in my jaundiced view. Sigh … at least the US could be a beacon of hope for a darkening world.
If you wish a more distressing video to ruin your day, watch the German Swat Team arrest of Dr. Andreas Noack, who was "Dead in Cells" within 8 hours. His apparent violent crime was resisting lockdown, or alternatively disclosing facts about the mechanism of damage from Graphene Hydroxide in the mRNA injections. Try: https://insiderpaper.com/german-doctor-andreas-noack-arrest-video/
The world might have been a better place if we had had Dr. Peterson's voice during the plandemic. Sadly, he was recovering from a sickness that nearly killed him, but he seems to be getting better now. Would that we had been able to listen to his insights during the darkest days of the ordeal.
This is the definition of grooming a person to accept the once unacceptable. The other piece to the social hypnosis that is ongoing right now is where an absurd idea is introduced and repeated by authorities over and over and over again. The mind is more susceptible to highly absurd suggestions (repeated in this way by authorities) than it is even to slightly absurd suggestions. Closing down schools for A YEAR even though children and teachers were not susceptible to illness and death was just such an example of the absurdity that we accepted.
As to grooming and desensitizing the populace to absurdities, consider that much of Europe is rife with civil protests and has been for weeks. The peaceful protests are being categorically ignored by Euro leaders as they continue to promulgate more and more restrictive, coercive executive rules to punish the unvaxxed into submission (while reinforcing their strong leadership with the already compliant portion of the populace). They are doing exactly what Peterson suggests: taking their power to the edges repeatedly until they have relaxed the muscles of social aversion to coercive rules, and moving the Overton Window in the process.
In parallel, by imposing confusing rules and changing them at intervals, protest is dampened and has difficulty forming. The confusion obfuscates the incremental losses.
«I fear that we live in a world [...] in which the powers of government mobilization and legitimization are powerful and increasing, in which a sense of personal responsability is increasingly attenuated by specialization and bureaucratization, and in which the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms.
In such a world, I fear, modern governments that wish to commit mass murder will seldom fail in their efforts for being unable to induce "ordinary men" to become their "willing executioners".»
Christopher R. Browning «Ordinary Men - Reserve Police Batallion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland»
Ha I knew this would be the ROGAN/JBP interview even before I saw the linked video.
This is why I can't stand the gatekeeping of the "How Dare You!" crowd when we compare today's atmosphere with the Weimar Republic and early Nazi Germany that preceded the Holocaust.
It wasn't Peace & love -> Gas chambers, they spent 15 years dehumanizing and sowing hate but these idiots refuse to see the parallels. They say it's hyperbolic but, as JBP also famously said, "The ideology that drives their utterances is the same".
My dear Pittie and I (at 5'9") "shared" a twin-sized bed in my teen years. And by shared I mean sometimes he let me sleep on my own pillow. I miss my little dude. 😢 I have also been gassed out of my own queen-sized bed by my former roommate's Chihuahua. Miss him too.
This is where the cat has the dog beat. I've reached a level of general crankiness where I didn't think twice about flipping my old pup out of the blankets wound around him & onto the floor.
But a cat wound around my face with paw perched over eyeball?!? YIKES!!!!
Ordinary Men was a real wake-up moment for me. Been a while since I read it but something like 10% of those police units were dyed-in-the-wool Nazis. Another 30% went along to get along, and the rest got drunk (literally) and found themselves too caught up to back out. Very few (single digits) walked away from their task of systematically killing men, women, and children.
LOL great clip that Montaigne ! Thanks for sharing. But indeed, that is what is going on. I think though, that in the Southern US this is no longer working but for a few needle worshipers, who will do anything to get another couple boosters.
Dr. Prasad just posted about how a Covid recovered 6 year old isn't allowed in a NY Restaurant until she is double vaxxed.
The shark is jumping the Fonz at the moment.
Only one thing to do. Leave NY and move somewhere else.
Good news: A judge just granted a stay in the implementation of vaccine mandate on NYC employees. The case is Marciano v. De Blasio. Our legal team is also going after the vaccine passports.
There is a certain ugliness and cynicism to the acts of politicians who create rules that they are aware are likely illegal. Worse they might even have their legal team inform them the rules are likely illegal. They pronounce the rule and some in the public praise their strong action, others scream foul. They depend on the delay in the legal process. Once the illegality is exposed, the politician may not even have any consequence as public memory fades. Those who praised the strong action lament politicization of the courts, reducing public confidence in courts. Sadly the press seems to support the strong action.
The phrase "Have you no decency" returns.
Done, and my life was saved by it.
wish I could.
Me too. This is not the NY I once knew.
I wish I could take you guys with me.
Wrong. Fix your shit. Stop moving.
Nah, I don't have to stay somewhere I hate that doesn't feel like home to please you, and neither does she.
Many ways to fix it, and not feeding it is one of them.
yeah, it sounds good, but I ran near ten years back, and couldn't be happier about it (different city, infinitely better than NY, different country)
Makes one feel a little like a spectator, but I knew the cities would / will fall. There's more going on than just the 6uild 6ack 6etter scheme.
wait it out in the mountains
Hopefully have a chance of being an elder in the post apocalyptic wastelands.
teach the kids once the screens go out.
it's not the end of humanity but I damn hope it's the end of homo colossus
Maybe homo sapiens sapiens could eventually live up to it's (self granted) name
Evil.
Why aren't people throwing bricks through the restaurant windows yet?
If you respond with violence, you give them an excuse to use force...and more rights will be infringed. Peaceful but undeterred resistance is the way until and unless there is no other option.
Very wise comment imho
I know, especially since so many who can't enter are minorities with a less vaccination rate
The City would shut down completely if the unvaxxed simply stand their ground.
We need a new MLK to step up.
did you seriously never wonder how a 12 pound cat kept winding up with 90% of the bed and you were hanging off the side?
--------
Since the cat owns the house, he can sleep wherever he wants. By contrast, I only keep the place up so he remains comfortable.
At least JP is finally waking up from his comatose compliance to Covidian measures. He of all people should have recognized it instantly given every book he’s ever recommended.
Speaking of, it was his recommendation of “Ordinary Men” that led Joe Van Steenbergen to recommend it to me, and it subsequently became the central text driving my “Letter to a Colluder” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-colluder-stop-enabling). And it is most certainly a must-read for today’s totalitarian gallop.
I published a little cartoon book the other year about authoritarianism but I think what actually allowed me to see through the covid veil was actually time. Not having to get the vax or make a haste decision about it allowed me the time to read about immunology, the technology and unravel the ensuing connection to creeping authoritarianism.
Wow, I read your post. I would love to share it with all my co-workers on my last day at the company. After reading about the concepts in Ordinary Men, it makes more sense to me that I am one of about 5 people in our entire company that didn't go along with the jab mandate.
That would be phenomenal if you would blast that out to your coworkers and maybe even spark a pandemic of courage! Please let me know if you do that as I’ll be curious to hear the responses.
Thank you for being one of the few brave ones willing to stand up to tyranny. We need more people like you to turn the tides.
I don't know how big your company is, but five not submitting sounds like a lot.
Your refusal must discombobulate the injected.
Agreed! 👏
Amazing, but no surprise that Google won't let me paste your link their search engine. I pasted it into DuckDuckGo and "tada!" your article appeared.
Haha, well that’s interesting, Susie :0)—glad you figured out a workaround! I wouldn’t put it past Google to shadow-ban my content ;-)
Google is doing that a lot. It's remarkable how they can keep tweaking their algorithm. Is there an army of informers at work or do they just assume all substack spaces are deviations to the ordained ideology.
I am growing increasingly concerned that Substack is being targeted by BigTech in various forms. The scariest I’ve heard are reports of companies like Comcast blocking emails from certain Substackers (e.g., Alex Berenson), but I wouldn’t be surprised if they and other companies simply start flagging Substack in general since email is how we communicate with our readers. Everyone needs to get off Big Tech platforms and start using alternatives like Proton Mail to ensure we can continue communicating without censorship.
That's frightening, but check Webster's collegiate dictionary for the definition of Fascism
Within the last year they removed one defining characteristic
The merger of business/ industry power with the state/ Gov
Yeah, Not good
Not quite Fascism without it lol 😅
Global corporate power must've thought it too obvious to leave in
😲🤦♀️
I use Comcast and haven't observed any blocking. Technically it's possible for an ISP to block mail generally via Internet Black Lists for spam but adding the sender to your contact list is supposed to allow receipt anyway. I do think that G-mail's spam engine goes crazy periodically so users need to check their spam folder. In terms of reliable, non-snoopers Fastmail is my choice but their free service is only IMAP or web based. I have business accounts there and have found them quite reliable.
Good to know, and I hope that is indeed the case! Here is the post from Alex about it if you’d like more details: https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the-censorship-from-email-providers/comments
I remember reading this awhile back, but the refresher is good, especially to put in my doc of links as I can already think of a few people to share it with at some point. Attended a dinner the other night at my husband's employment and the entire time felt like I was surrounded by people (like 150) living in an alternate reality. A woman sang a song titled "All is well" as the evening began and that sums up quite well this bubble they live in. I'm not sure they are awake enough to collude. It was very refreshing though to talk with a former colleague and his wife (retired) and hear they'd not gotten the jab and in my conversation with the wife, it was obvious she was AWAKE. The highlight of an otherwise barely tolerable evening.
BTW, MAA, made our 300th batch of cat food tonight. 😺
I know it’s hard to have conversations with these people that are still in the bubble of delusion and denial…I find that a certain strata (economic) in our country are going about their lives with the ‘business as usual’ plan, with little to know clue that “the you know what” is coming down! Planning trips next year to Europe, cruises, expensive vacation holidays. I was at an Anniversary Party this summer with these types and several people were taking trips to France & Europe & NYC in late summer & early fall, going concerts & music events that required proof of vaxx status. (And may I say the 99.9% of the people at this party got The Jab, making me in the remaining percentile!) I have a saying for it ‘Fiddling While Rome Burns”!!
Yes, my husband was talking with a colleague today who had gone to Iceland bc his wife wanted to go SOMEWHERE and since they'd both had the jabs, they could go. Not long afterwards, that almost 100% jabbed country locked down again. I don't believe it crossed his mind how that could be. The thing that remains a complete puzzle to me is how many people I know with advanced degrees who clearly never looked at ANY information before they got the jab.
Oh I know…I have three cousins with wives & husbands who all have ‘advanced’ degrees, and a couple are these high brow intellectual types in the ‘sciences’ who gladly got the Jabs. One cousin & husband who are 77, had Covid in March of 2020, were told to go home and stay there, we’re pretty sick but recovered, went and got the Jab as soon as it was available even thought they have the antibodies! The other ones got it so they could travel. That cousin couple took an ‘exclusive cruise’ on a small boat in France this summer. Guess what they had to do everyday? Take a friggin Covid saliva test each morning. Now that’s my idea of exclusive high end travel! 😜 The Covid cousin’s daughter (who is an assistant Dean Of Academic Affairs at a small university where they live in CO) is planning a trip to London with her kids & husband next spring? WTH? Do they even understand what London may be like next spring? Do they even think about it! No! I don’t know if she or the husband got the Jab, but as far as I know the kids have not. So what if the UK requires all international travelers to be vaxxed? Will they give their darling, smart & very healthy 10 & 13 year old kids The Jab in order to go there? The insanity and delusional thinking of this class of people never ceases to amaze me!
I don't think I'll ever get over being stunned by the fact that most people's brains have fallen out of the backs of their heads - for example, getting the jab w/natural immunity. You had chickenpox as a child. Did you rush out to get the chickenpox vax when it came out in the 90s??!! I started reading Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" recently to try to understand this phenomenon, but had to set it aside b/c there are too many other urgent reads. The exclusive cruise story totally cracks me up. Bet they didn't bat an eye at it either. I'm not into horror genre so never watched any zombie stuff, but I'm starting to understand when people use the illustration for these people.
First off, #300 is quite a milestone—congratulations! (I find it hilarious that you’ve been keeping track 😹)
Wow, that dinner sounds like unadulterated hell 😂 I agree—people like that are not knowingly colluding, but they are nevertheless enabling tyranny by complying and enforcing authoritarian measures in their own small ways. Still, “Letter to a Covidian” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-covidian-a-time-travel) may be a better fit for them ;-)
What a joy to find a kindred spirit and independent thinker amidst the madness of the crowd! Sounds like someone you should keep in touch with :-)
Yeah, it's because we want to pat ourselves on the back for doing it for so long! 😸 But it also helps if there are multiple batches in the freezer to use the oldest first OR if there is problem with the batch (like everyone is puking all over) to throw that one out. It has never happened in 10 years of doing it, but that doesn't mean it can't.
I'll read your essay above - haven't read that one yet, even though I "free subscribed" last week. 🐱 I have SO much to read (and so little time) it's starting to get overwhelming.
Ran to the vet this a.m. with the 15 year old toothless wonder. She had another extraction in August, had some swelling, so was on antibiotics and was rechecked, then a few days ago, I noticed a lump/abscess? on that side and got an appt for the 13th, but they said if something changed, they could squeeze me in. Well, it opened up overnight so that was that. Our vet doesn't think it's related to the extraction...yet. Could have been caused by anything - scratching, spider bite any type of abrasion. One of the boys decided to scratch off fur on his head and around his ear, so now he's on ear drops, which he LOVES of course. Oy, it's always something.🙄
*lol* That makes sense, and you do deserve a big pat on the back, indeed!
I was happy to see your name on my list, and I thoroughly empathize with your dilemma of too much to read and too little time!!
Oh goodness, your poor kitties! Glad it’s not too serious and all is under control. Take care of yourself and your babies :-)
Magnificent job, Margaret. Thank you.
Thank you so much, dear Vida! Happy to hear you appreciated it.
Just read your linked post MAA! VERY GOOD my friend! 😼😻
Aww, thank you, Frontera Lupita chiquitita! 🤗
After reading it I sent it out…then I realized I had sent the same post previously…oh well…the people I resent it to could use a ‘refresher’ on the subject, as a number of them are still “going along to get along”, wearing masks in stores and with clients (they live in Sonoma County , which is a way woke, too groovy/hippie/alternative lifestyles for words County in CA) and then work down in Marin County (super liberals with $$$), selling and leasing residential real estate to all the high end liberal & woke Silicon Valley types who are fleeing San Francisco in droves! (We wonder why they are feeling SF?) They say they can’t jeopardize their income stream, by standing up against the all the BS! I told them well we shall see what the future holds for them, when the you know what really starts coming down because they sat back and did NADA!
*lol* That is so funny. If it makes you feel any better, Lew Rockwell accidentally published that piece twice, too 😆 I told Lew I didn’t mind, tho, as I got a bunch of new signups after that ;-)
I know exactly the type you’re describing, and good luck talking sense to them!! 😹 I admire you for trying, though, and I’m grateful to you for sharing my essays!
I know a feeble attempt to get people to wake up…me thinks it will take a a major cataclysmic event to get these types of people to wake up to the ‘you know what’ that may be coming down! 😬😵💫
Too true!! 🤦♀️
Browning’s Ordinary Men is a brilliant and disturbing book that should be required reading. It absolutely shows how to governments and, really, fanatics, create compliant monsters out of every day people. A few said “No freakin way” - the contrarians, the free thinkers. The rest? Went along.
The scary part about the Nazis were they said exactly what they were planning to do 15 years before they did it. People still gladly went along. The current generation of fascists literally say they are violating our rights, and their followers still claim they are not. It's bizarre
Equally terrifying is that Hitler was democratically elected.
"A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is."
~Thomas Paine
Also a part of that free thinker category, "Ordinary Cats." Not likely they would have went along either.
All cats are extraordinary
I was discussing with a friend how this happened in sports. Heck, it was only a couple of intersex African track & field athletes, 'n it wasn't their fault they were born in a place where their condition wasn't understood, and 'n wasn't their fault they went through a male puberty with those sneaky internal testes, and they were raised as girls 'n all, so what's the harm in finding ways of allowing them to compete? Yeah, you don't need to see their genitalia. Just look at those shoulders and torsos. Any child could correctly identify their sex.
And now here we are. Laurel Hubbard, Sportswoman of the Year! Lia Thomas, smashing those collegiate swimming records right out of the park--uh--pool!
Never Give an Inch.
The statement, "We are never going back to normal" was being normalized as early the original Two Weeks that started this debacle - it's as if they had a plan? It's called the Anaconda method... squeeze, let go, squeeze, let go. That way the serfs never really mount a defense.
Renormalize. Take advantage of the basic agreeableness of reasonable, well-intentioned people. Leverage good impulses into abominable actions. Demand the poor man's lamb to slaughter for your dinner party while your own flock is untouched.
One shred of cloth, one shelter-in-place, one fortnight, one <1-millimeter-thin needle, one QR code at a time.
I think about this JBP clip a lot. It’s exactly what’s going on.
Indeed. Fascism by a thousand paper cuts. Pass the lemon.
That's a dog move. My cat respects my space. She just harasses me if she feels like eating at 3AM.
Yes. My dog usually falls asleep in the middle of the bed. I feel sorry to move her over and get onto the side. And in the morning, she has 2/3 of the bed and I hang on in there
Oooh, neither of you are the alpha dogs in your house! I have a pile of three medium to large-sized dogs on my bed and a single stern "excuse me" gets everyone in their optimal position.
LOL ! sometimes mine moves over. But I am so smitten with her lovely face....
You absolutely have to give them their own way sometimes, even if it's just them manipulating you with sad eyes.
One medium and one large lab, six dog beds around the house, all of which are more comfortable than mine.
It has been crystal clear to me for some time exactly who has domesticated whom.
Same! I fully admit to being an absolute cream puff when it comes to the doggos.
Our mastiff will cuddle with the Mrs before I come to bed. As soon as I finish brushing my teeth and walk out of the bathroom, she sees herself of the bed and out the door.
Three is a crowd !
GM, you must have attained mastery of the Bene Gesserit "Voice".
In my junior high yearbook that was my aspiration.
Well done! What's your next one?
I dunno. Not get killed by agents of the government of the country I love?
Seriously, the scope of my whole life has been reduced to "survive this or take a bunch of them with me and do dad (who believes in Valhalla).
Really. That's what my arc is anymore. I don't plan for the future beyond the next few weeks and months anymore. I expect them to take it all away as soon as they find an excuse.
I don't smile nearly as much as I used to. I miss it and my husband does too.
@Eric,
Interesting! We don’t have a cat managing our house, because my husband is allergic. But our two rescue dogs do a pretty good job of controlling things.
Especially the younger one, who used to start barking and carrying on at 4:30 am to be fed. Husband got an ultrasonic box thingy to put outside of the bedroom door, and we’re able to “sleep in” a little later. 😬
Aaaand … my employer, a small liberal arts university in So Cal, just announced the booster mandate by Feb 15. So, there's that.
The problem is that when bureaucrats are trained to focus on moving a metric to a desired outcome (flatten the curve, zero covid. no child left behind!) and that metric is an ignorant, utopian ideal, the bureaucrat is trained to go to more and more extreme policies to try and force reality to conform to the metric. The problem is that human beings and human lives are considered the means to achieve the measurement outcome, and therefore those human lives are entirely expendable in the bureaucrats eyes so long as they are pursing the utopian metric ideal.
Healthy political systems recognize this tendency for bureaucratic depravity and so institutional checks are built in to correct and punish the bureaucratic class. Hopefully we in the US are seeing this start to work in the courts, and of course it has already worked in the federal system of diverse states who hold powers that are constitutionally protected from the state. The US political system, overall, seems to be self correcting (alas it is too late for the millions the bureaucrats have already killed to maimed)
Western Europe, UK and the commonwealth states are in total freefall into brutal true fascism. There are clearly no balancing mechanisms in those states. The EU bureaucrats' zero covid obsessions cannot ever be realized, and so they must punish their populations with harsher and harsher measures in their fanatical pursuits. Their police are equally depraved and I suspect so is the military (anyone see that disgusting and bizarre military sendoff for Merkel in Germany?). I see no chance for Europe, the protests will be crushed with violent crackdowns … and concentration camps for enemies of the state are now inevitable in my jaundiced view. Sigh … at least the US could be a beacon of hope for a darkening world.
If you wish a more distressing video to ruin your day, watch the German Swat Team arrest of Dr. Andreas Noack, who was "Dead in Cells" within 8 hours. His apparent violent crime was resisting lockdown, or alternatively disclosing facts about the mechanism of damage from Graphene Hydroxide in the mRNA injections. Try: https://insiderpaper.com/german-doctor-andreas-noack-arrest-video/
Update- apparently that was last year's arrest. Still a martyr to truth.
The world might have been a better place if we had had Dr. Peterson's voice during the plandemic. Sadly, he was recovering from a sickness that nearly killed him, but he seems to be getting better now. Would that we had been able to listen to his insights during the darkest days of the ordeal.
But now the House passed a vaccine database bill. Next it goes to the Senate. Call your Senators now or live forever under tyranny.
This is the definition of grooming a person to accept the once unacceptable. The other piece to the social hypnosis that is ongoing right now is where an absurd idea is introduced and repeated by authorities over and over and over again. The mind is more susceptible to highly absurd suggestions (repeated in this way by authorities) than it is even to slightly absurd suggestions. Closing down schools for A YEAR even though children and teachers were not susceptible to illness and death was just such an example of the absurdity that we accepted.
As to grooming and desensitizing the populace to absurdities, consider that much of Europe is rife with civil protests and has been for weeks. The peaceful protests are being categorically ignored by Euro leaders as they continue to promulgate more and more restrictive, coercive executive rules to punish the unvaxxed into submission (while reinforcing their strong leadership with the already compliant portion of the populace). They are doing exactly what Peterson suggests: taking their power to the edges repeatedly until they have relaxed the muscles of social aversion to coercive rules, and moving the Overton Window in the process.
In parallel, by imposing confusing rules and changing them at intervals, protest is dampened and has difficulty forming. The confusion obfuscates the incremental losses.
All according to plan by design
Gorgeous Cat ! My Seal Post Burmese cat & her black and white sister moved to LA when I came to PR. Maybe Cats have the answers we seek ?
«I fear that we live in a world [...] in which the powers of government mobilization and legitimization are powerful and increasing, in which a sense of personal responsability is increasingly attenuated by specialization and bureaucratization, and in which the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms.
In such a world, I fear, modern governments that wish to commit mass murder will seldom fail in their efforts for being unable to induce "ordinary men" to become their "willing executioners".»
Christopher R. Browning «Ordinary Men - Reserve Police Batallion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland»
Ha I knew this would be the ROGAN/JBP interview even before I saw the linked video.
This is why I can't stand the gatekeeping of the "How Dare You!" crowd when we compare today's atmosphere with the Weimar Republic and early Nazi Germany that preceded the Holocaust.
It wasn't Peace & love -> Gas chambers, they spent 15 years dehumanizing and sowing hate but these idiots refuse to see the parallels. They say it's hyperbolic but, as JBP also famously said, "The ideology that drives their utterances is the same".
My dear Pittie and I (at 5'9") "shared" a twin-sized bed in my teen years. And by shared I mean sometimes he let me sleep on my own pillow. I miss my little dude. 😢 I have also been gassed out of my own queen-sized bed by my former roommate's Chihuahua. Miss him too.
Give someone an inch, and they will take a mile.
Great post. Is that actually you and your cat?
The best part is, if I am not mistaken, is that episode of JRE was filmed WAY before the COVID-19 pandemic theater.
The sad part is that he fell for it!
Yay another step forward ! The ball is rolling !
This is where the cat has the dog beat. I've reached a level of general crankiness where I didn't think twice about flipping my old pup out of the blankets wound around him & onto the floor.
But a cat wound around my face with paw perched over eyeball?!? YIKES!!!!
Ordinary Men was a real wake-up moment for me. Been a while since I read it but something like 10% of those police units were dyed-in-the-wool Nazis. Another 30% went along to get along, and the rest got drunk (literally) and found themselves too caught up to back out. Very few (single digits) walked away from their task of systematically killing men, women, and children.
We should take a lesson from this cat when our spaced is encroached on:
https://newtube.app/user/gabichannel/PsA6M8B
hahaha.. so true. Laughing about the cat not the world sitch
Ordinary men is a brilliant and terrifying view of how the German govt made the killing machine that was its soldiers. Great read.
We must stand firm and not let these crazies encroach.
Thank you cat!
VERY apt analogy.
Who is the guy talking to Rogan in the clip
That's funny
I’m serious. I don’t know who it is. Can you tell me?
The most reasonable logical person to speak up over the last 5-6 years about what the far left libtards are trying to usher into western society.
Does that person have a name?
Jordan Peterson, famous psychologist from Canada
His name is Jordan Peterson
Thank you
LOL great clip that Montaigne ! Thanks for sharing. But indeed, that is what is going on. I think though, that in the Southern US this is no longer working but for a few needle worshipers, who will do anything to get another couple boosters.