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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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