After the Freedom of Information Act was established, government officials were surprised by one of the most persistent sets of FOIA requests: UFO inquiries. Though not all requests have been met with release of information, an astounding amount of documentation has indeed been made public on UFOs.
From my reading, “UFO skeptics” ignore most of this.
Here’s the deal, though: FOIA’d documents include memos to and from top brass in the military for over seven decades: generals, admirals, etc. Also released have been many UFO reports from military bases, particularly nuclear missile installations. These make for astounding reading.
I’m more than willing to concede that these are all fakes, as apparently UFO “skeptics” must insist. But then I insist that we hold the military and bureaucracies into account for faking documentation of a UFO presence on the planet that is not there.
It’s one way or the other: the Deep State has been mostly hiding and lying about UFOs for nearly a century, or, instead, it has been faking UFOs, “pretending” to hide them, and then “revealing” their fakeries in leaked and FOIA-released documentation which then never receives official discussion.
It’s a deep psy-op either way.
The FOIA-released information either shows a puzzling and perhaps alarming UFO presence on the planet, or the released documents are fakes and elements within the Deep State want SOME of us to believe in weird SOMETHINGS, leaving us to speculate wildly.
Either way: conspiracy.
This is indeed a conspiracy theory. But it is more than that. It is a logical puzzle, the evidence pointing to one kind of conspiracy or another. The evidence is such that no other conclusion is viable.
For UFO “skeptics” not to confront this strikes me as a shameful cowardice and dishonesty.
But one of the things that most interests me about the psy-op (whichever one it is) is how it divides society into in-groups and out-groups. It has been a point of cultic behavior in academic circles, for example, where inquiries are routinely ridiculed, and disbelief in UFOs has been used as a shibboleth.
This makes academics — and all who pass through the academy — morally compromised in interesting ways, and has contributed to the current ideological division in society.
But it has been part of the mechanism by which the Deep State has controlled the minds of intellectuals, and increased their allegiance levels.
The extent to which these effects were planned, or just “evolved,” would be worth careful study.
But of course we cannot trust academics with this, for they are still deeply, deeply compromised. Morally. Intellectually. And in the realm of manners. The military-academic-industrial complex, of course, is wholly unreliable in terms of truth. Secrecy and disinformation are integral to these enterprises.
I contend that UFOs are only the most intellectually puzzling element of this disinformation complex. I also believe that the medical-industrial complex is also now deeply into disinformation, even as its mavens complain about the dangers of “misinformation” by those outside its tight embrace.
Also, it is worth mentioning that the dribs and drabs of “UFO disclosure” now ongoing from the Pentagon have been released in such small bundles of information that it allows those intellectuals who have prided themselves on their intellectual purity by scoffing at UFO reports to continue their campaign of ridicule, if at muffled levels. Thus the disclosure remains a psy-op, stringing along of past useful idiots — the useful ones being those who call all who take UFO reports seriously “UFO nuts,” the inutile ones being those who believe every last allegation and report. But those useless idiots are also useful, in a way, for they allow the useful idiots to puff themselves up with pride, and thereby support the Deep State and its insidious presence in our pseudo-republic.
I’ve been annoyed with Tulsi Gabbard’s past and repeated use of “aloha” massaging, but maybe I should judge it apt for a Hawaiian, and acknowledge that by her use of it she is reviving the traditional American principle of federalism, asserting a substantive localism into America’s pernicious nationalist culture that afflicts both left and right.
So, ‘Aloha’ all around. Except I am from the Evergreen State, the Chinook State, and our motto is Al-Ki — ‘by and by.’ Which means, I think: ‘maybe some day.’
Now that’s a motto, up there with ‘festina lente’!
I am a conspiracy theorist. I theorize about conspiracies. I construct and appraise conjectures about conspiracies. I am interested in the data that might falsify conspiracy conjectures. But I am also interested in the data and arguments that falsify (or at least undermine the applicability of) invisible hand theories.
Indeed, I generally oppose the meta-theories about conspiracies that are frequently promoted by invisible hand theorists. I am underwhelmed by them. I also consider them as possible expressions of an adaptive strategy to the conscious stigmatization of conspiracy theories, which have been promoted by bureaus of our federal government’s intel agencies. Which we know exist and which we know engage in stigmatization as a means of social control.
I consider this all so obvious that my usual reaction to quick-react anti-conspiracy “skepticism” is eye rolls.
Something I used to engage in as an invisible hand theorist.
One reason I changed my mind is that I noticed my own prejudices, and who was most served by them.
This all being said, I recognize that much of stigmatization on these matters is an invisible hand process. Spontaneous, you might say.
This is a good beginning for the New Year, a serious discussion of UFOs and parapsychology. Eric Weinstein makes epistemic points that I’ve been making for six years, but most of my friends simply ignore. I share Weinstein not because I like him — I don’t know him, and he often borders on pomposity — but because maybe my friends will listen to him since they won’t confront my points. Weinstein’s basic attitudes are close to mine.
Clarke’s Third Law is in play here:
It has been really helpful, in my case, to have always existed in a political-cultural minority. I can easily believe that governments do some things well but not others, while generally opposing governments, and therefore contemplate competence in the keeping of secrets.
What I find odd are all my fellow individualists falling for fairly obvious psy-ops, and for continuing a long legacy of government-managed stigma to protect government secrets. This latter I judge to be spooky.
People who want to rule other people are more dangerous than those who don’t. One problem with democracies is that they elicit leaders from all strata of society, and the most desirous ”to lead” are those with the strongest itch to rule. Over time and generations, more power accrues to narcissists and egoists and other shady people-pushers, and the spirit of ruling others suffuses whole populations, where greed and hatred and pride get covered over with the garlands and fig leaves of “morality,” but merely as disguise. So we have the desire for advancement encouraged, not curbed, by conscience — conscience becomes an excuse for outrageous enormities, and the people increasingly believe deeply perverse things, twisted.
Which is where we are at now.
“One idïôt is one īdîôt. Two īdíots are two ídïóts. Ten thousand ídíöts are a pòlitical party.” — Franz Kafka
A great “quote” that I stumbled upon in social media. But Kafka did not say this. The correct quote appears to be:
Fanfare, bandiere, parate. Uno stupido è uno stupido. Due stupidi sono due stupidi. Diecimila stupidi sono una forza storica. Leo Longanesi, Parliamo dell’Elefante: Frammenti di un Diario (1947).
The issues upon which I have most changed my mind in recent years are about how people handle “memes” (mimicked and repeatable behaviors) within institutions and organizations. I now believe there is no enormity a normal person in a privileged position in the academic, government, or medical realm will not help do, just so long as that person can go about calling him- or herself a ”good person” while retaining his or her position. They will fool themselves into thinking that the latest study must be correct (if it agrees with their political allegiances), censorship is free speech, or genocide is salvation. It will all be calculated in a series of nested marginal moral excuses, and they will send the Jews to the ovens, children to the castrator’s knife, dissidents to the gulags, and the farmers and their customers to starvation. The enormities of the 20th are now building up for an exciting and perhaps excruciating reprise. Though this time most of it will be covered over, a bit. The idea is to get the Jews to march into the ovens with eagerness; parents to sacrifice their children’s sexual futures with fervent hope of being ”in” while doctors receive their normal paychecks; dissidents to engage in self-shackling; and the farmers will be bought off, with their farms left to produce oil substitutes or . . . plastics . . . or open space for ”wildlife.”
So my medium-level alarmist predictions appear to be emerging as instantiations in reality. Remember all my arguments how insane a “vax“ policy would be in a new pandemic? I expected a number of negative outcomes. Here they come: excess deaths; mortalities labeled “unknown.” In one post, I guessed it’d be a clear pattern in three years. We’re one year in. The pattern is becoming fairly clear.
The malefactors at Facebook gave me a warning on fact checked pandemic info, but they are indeed liars, and they probably want you to die. Especially if you hold the wrong beliefs.
You see, humans are a cancer on the planet, and killing off a few billion is an entelechy buried deep within many moderns — leading to a death wish. Which nudges them at the margins of their consciences to commit genocide. An astounding thing.
Here is Paul Jacob on the subject, from his daily program:
The safety and efficacy of the coronavirus vaccines has been disputed from the beginning.
What this usually means is that those of a skeptical mind challenge the confidence of the pro-vax mantra — “safe and effective” ad nauseam — and, when they find stats that run counter to this official position, they publicize those stats. Then, major media outfits make a few carping criticisms of the new studies and quickly proceed to assuredly re-state as fact the original and now more-dubious propaganda.
Meanwhile, social media censors dissidents. And when more studies come out casting grave doubt on either the safety or the efficacy of the new drugs, those receive little public attention.
How Alex Berenson was treated is a good example of the methods of the orthodoxy. Take Wikipedia’s judgment: “During the coronavirus pandemic, Berenson appeared frequently in American right-wing media, spreading false claims about COVID-19 and its vaccines,” the article confidently runs. “He spent much of the pandemic arguing that its seriousness was overblown; once COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, he made false claims about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.”
False claims! In olden times — why, it seems like just a few years ago — a major news and history resource would not baldly call some contentious matter “false” or “true.” It would state the claims and then let the counter-claims carry their own weight.
In the case of “the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines,” though, it has become clear: their efficacy wanes, diminishing quicker with each dose, leaving the unvaccinated with proportionally fewer infection and spreading events than the “boosted.”
The government has admitted that there are not infrequent sightings of anomalous UFOs (“UAPs”) that feature “the five observables”:
hypersonic speeds
instantaneous velocity
trans-medium travel
displaying stealth mode
positive lift
This admission — to Congress (what any president has been told is unknown) — blows the lid off of the Official Position from the Pentagon from the 1940s through the aughts. The scorn given de rigueur by academics to anyone who professes even mere agnosticism on the issue is now known to be either a cultic move to protect the dominant naturalistic paradigm, outrageously anti-scientific ignorance, or a lie.
The world may seem to be crazy, but this element of the crazy is at least understandably uncomfortable. And I reiterate what I’ve said before: the reason for the blanket of silence and prevarication directed (the evidence clearly suggests) by the CIA and the Pentagon is likely that it upsets two powerful groups: materialist scientists and religious people.
These two quotations remind me of Augustine’s confession of his younger days: “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet!” Communism is the holding of orgies by those who insist upon the ideal of celibacy.
“We are waiting for the withering away of the state . . . The highest development of state power in preparation of the preconditions for the withering away of state power — that is the Marxist formula. Is that ‘contradictory’? Yes it is ‘contradictory.’ But this contradiction is inherent in life and it completely mirrors the Marxist dialectic.’” —Joseph Stalin
“‘Don’t you want to abolish state power?’ Yes we do, but not right now. Why? Because domestic reaction still exists, because classes still exist. Our present task is to strengthen the people’s army, the people’s police, in order to protect the people’s interests.” —Mao
The Netflix show Midnight Mass:
was not based on F. Paul Wilson’s vampire novel of the same name;
is a vampire story where the word “vampire” is never used and the lore is not ever discussed (thus is a de facto “alternate history” story where Polidori and Bram Stoker never wrote their most famous works);
is the most religious-based vampire story I’ve yet encountered (the religion in this case being Catholicism);
is more “daring” in its religion-referencing than even Dracula 2000, which I regarded as terrific;
has one of the best vampires on screen I’ve ever seen;
has really good writing and acting throughout;
has the best hymn-singing finale to a TV show (that I can recall);
nevertheless ends with a sort Buddhist/pantheistic message, but it is
not as overtly anti-Christian as it often feels like; and, finally,
has a chilling, Nurse Ratchedy-type character in the oh-so-sanctimonious Bev Keane, played by the brilliant Samantha Sloyan. But all the actors were great, definitely not excepting Hamish Linklater, who plays the bloody (yes, this is apt) priest.
The self-fulfilling prophecy often rests on a more basic trap: the self-reinforcing policy.
You support a policy because you are alarmed at how awful x is, so you support policy A, which you say fights x. But policy A increases x. So when x increases, you double down on policy A. Demand more measures of an A-ish nature, and continued support of policy A. Because x!
This makes you a fool, of course, but most of us are fools about something, and it is impolite to call each other foolish, since there never would be an end to it. So, in politics, folly increases.
Here are some examples:
1. Low-skilled worker unemployment is bad, since it leads to crime, drug-use, family breakdown, and, of course, more unemployment. So, policy A: Raise the legal minimum wage rate! This of course increases unemployment, as economists have explained for two hundred years, requiring more state aid. But most people don’t listen to economists except when economists back up their prejudices. And since state aid is obviously designed to help the afflicted, we are not unreasonably distracted from noticing that policy A is responsible. Now focused entirely on intentions, not on means or results, when someone like me suggests getting rid of A, oh, the outcry! Raise A instead! This ensures more unemployment, more state aid, and a great deal of Pharisaic posturing. Forever and ever amen.
2. Terrorism is bad. Terrorists often come from foreign lands. So policy A: ‘let’s fight terrorists over there, not here!’ But bombing innocent weddings and children and the like in the War on Terror increases resentments that lead to terrorism here and elsewhere in the First World. But terrorism spurs resentment here as well, thus increasing support for policy A, the War on Terror. Which ramps up the violence, and. . . .
3. The latest contagion is bad. Undoubtedly. The standard way to deal with this is to quarantine the infected, isolate the at-risk population, and let the healthy part of the population get infected and handle the disease with their immune systems, and then build up herd immunity. But that is not a very woke way of doing things, so a new policy, let’s call it . . . A . . . would isolate the healthy population. Now, that is taking x seriously! Of course, we are now on a new course, and we aren’t concentrating on the at-risk populations, like those in nursing homes, and are even sending those who should be quarantined into nursing homes, leading to alarming death rates. This panics the proponents of the new policy A, so they demand . . . more of policy A, not the older policy, which is so passé — or should I say ‘pass-A’? The panicky folk demand evermore A, which prevents herd immunity. But when suppport for A diminishes, and a return to normalcy occurs, the number of cases of infection increase. Entirely to be expected, but it is ‘proof’ of a need for more A! So, A is re-introduced. Sure, it’ll decrease herd immunity and mean that more people will die later on, but hey: ‘at least we tried’!
Policies that reinforce themselves by their ‘failure’ are the favorite kind of policies of fools. Whole ideologies congeal around them. And certain unscrupulous people encourage them in full knowledge.
It is so easy to manipulate fools.
And since it is folly to tell fools of their folly — what is the percentage in that? — folly is self-reinforcing.
And it is my own folly that I persist, since there is a good chance that when they come to take me away to the new concentration camp — let’s call it camp A — many of the people I have called fools will shout huzzahs.
This was pushed at me on Facebook by Pfizer. This is cultic cringe.
“Believing in science” is parodic of Christian phraseology — but sans satiric intent or even mockery, making it itself mockworthy.
The idea is salvific: “Believe” in Big Science . . . and thou shalt be rewarded with a glass-and-steel utopia right out of science fiction.
But everybody knows what we actually get: designer drugs made to counteract designer diseases that make the designers ultra-rich while those who take the jabs still get the disease even though they were told they wouldn’t.
Do you need more evidence that insiders of the technocracy belong to — and run — a cult? And no one is more inside-the-cult than the subsidized-and-protected biggest gun in the Big Pharma corporate arsenal.
This new cult, though, is worse than the corruption that set Luther to rebel against the Papacy — the selling of indulgences — for no buyer of an indulgence could prove the deal a fraud, while Pfizer’s and Moderna’s “vaccines” have been shown to provide almost no immunity. The only recent cases of COVID among my adult friends and family were all “vaxxed.”
…as asked by a libertarian historian on Facebook….
…but answered here:
How do we enforce the law against murder in a foreign country? We don’t. Someone else does.
The difficulty regarding abortion is that it is private, within the womb. This makes the issue become a micro-political jurisdictional problem. Most anti-abortion libertarians I talk to are not interested in a police state to track every pregnancy or period. That’s absurd and they know it. Only one lunkhead in a hundred suggests it seriously.
We all know that prosecution of murder usually depends upon a corpse. Most murders go unsolved and unprosecuted — that’s my take-away from 600,000 people going missing each year in the United States (some unknown number of whom are murdered) compared to the relatively minuscule official murder count and a falling rate of solutions to police-designated homicides. Abortionists in a pro-life society would no doubt go to great length to dispose of corpses. Right now, however, the corpses are incinerated, put in dumpsters, used in industry for cosmetics, medical experimentation and drug development, and much more — all legal. In a legal environment where that goes away because occasionally prosecuted in the courts — abortionists would likely become quite clever in disposing of bodies.
In the hypothesized anarcho-capitalist (ancap) society, certain crimes would be rarely prosecuted. Just as today. There’s always a selection bias in any system. My guess — and this is gleaned not merely from my own speculation also from talking to ancaps who are against abortion — is that they don’t expect it to be often enforced — just as Ron Paul, a minarchist, doesn’t expect laws against abortion to be enforced often against individuals. But ancap anti-abortionists as a matter of principle aren’t going to pretend that poisoning and grinding up fetuses in or out of the womb is anything but murdering a human being, because they see themselves as the opposite of callous nazi-like progressives, who sacrifice offspring for their own pleasure and convenience, and perhaps (this is something I’ve encountered in discussion, left and right) as a mass sacrifice to their pagan deities.
Much of the oomph of the question goes to the problem of who has standing in Ancapistan. Well, that question has been explored in the literature, but a lot would probably depend upon the form anarcho-capitalism takes. Writers as different as Stephan Kinsella (not anti-abortion) and David D. Friedman (I don’t remember his position) admit that “anarchist” societies could be quite diverse, legally. This ends us in Hoppe-land, actually, where private societies differ in complexion, and every society would have issues upon which expulsion from said society would be de rigueur. A controversial position, but hard to argue against on the basis of elementary libertarian principles.
I am not a professed and committed anarchist, so I regard these questions as interesting avenues to explore. I am “against abortion” somewhat like I am “for liberty,” as a general position. Specifics often get difficult. We should explore these questions rationally, if we can.
Cultural schisms in the libertarian movement make this difficult.
There is an element of fairness embedded in the idea of justice. The vice of the left is to think that fairness can be imposed upon society by correcting for nature and chance, which operate heedless of human preferences. This is such an awesome task — impossible, really — that the motto of the left could be “everything is political.”
The left’s characteristic form of righteous indignation is envy. And there is no intellectual humility in sight.
There is an element of vengeance to the idea of justice. The vice of the right is to think that this is the whole matter, and that extremity of retaliation for a wrong is usually better than moderation. The motto of the right could be “there is no kill like overkill.”
The right’s form of righteous indignation is wrath.
And intellectual rigor is rarely welcome.
Of course, the terms left and right, relating to politics, are also outmoded and flimsy, and your mileage may differ, simply because of the inherent relativity of “left and right.” It all depends upon which direction you are looking.
But it is astounding how unidirectional most folk are, hence the ability to plot politics, if clumsily, in bi-directional terms. And name the vices.
Government has always been eager to save you from the problems it has caused.
Now, with gain-of-function research proved under NIH’s aegis, we know this is quite literally true regarding the pandemic.
The only way to break free of statism’s ratcheting circular non-argument is to openly disbelieve and to mock government officials and disobey their orders.
“The state is the coldest of all cold monsters, everything it possesses it has stolen and every word out of its mouth is a lie.”
Nietzsche’s great observation, from memory.
Supporting state coercion because you are afraid of a disease the government gave you is to be a pathetic weasel, unfit for civilized discourse: you should be shunned, not praised.
Don’t be a weasel. Don’t be a slave. Break free of the slaver’s mill, which goes round and round and round and breaks you.
A Facebook friend gave me push-back for this: Stirring up fears is certainly a recurring pattern in electoral politics, and democratic practices are, to varying degrees, everywhere flawed, but why, several generations on from representative government being seriously attempted, is it still part of entirely normal discourse to regard “the State” (hence any state) as wholly other?
My response: It is a system with its known properties, and I don’t regard it as wholly other. It is in some sense a representation of a certain type of human soul, one we all sometimes also represent: the repackaging of vice as virtue. I do not regard it as wholly other from humanity. Though I do regard it as something wholly other from me. I am not the State. I mostly criticize the states that say I am theirs. I try to get those who are in my same pickle to stop thinking of the State as their Savior, and see it for its actual qualities, and consider, where we can find them, alternatives.
Why would you believe anything from people who suppress debate? Why would you trust the expertise of those who will not honestly respond to criticism?
None of the information we are told is reliable, much of what has been said as official truth has been proven to be lies, and the people who push all this ”information” couple it with draconian policy that just so happens to advance their their careers and their class at the expense of the non-professional majority. The whole pandemic has been managed as if to show the extremity of Franz Oppenheimer‘s theory of The State as an exploitation system, coupled with Molinari’s Terrorism theory of the State, and explanations of special interest politics by Pareto, Mises, Buchanan and others. Going in, I was deeply suspicious because I was more than aware of the possibilities for abuse by “experts.” I was not suspicious enough.
And now comes forced vaccination of a vaccine that cannot possibly induce herd immunity, and may very well induce immune escape.
But it is a good way to end the republic. So there is that.
We are told to believe things all the time that stink of a lie from the beginning, but which people just blithely accept.
One such story? That Seal Team Six killed Osama bin Laden and threw his body into the ocean so that it wouldn’t cause problems.
Yeah, right. That makes sense.
A more likely scenario? One of Osama’s lookalike doubles was discovered, and the Barack Obama administration decided to tie up a “loose end” in the war on terror. So they sent in soldiers not to arrest the man — that would have left things quite untied — but to shoot him, and then they got rid of the DNA evidence so to not show what happened.
Maybe this was the moment that I stopped believing any official story. Because I bought the 9/11 explanations as they came at us fast and furious, and for a long time. But the Osama bin Laden assassination was a dumb story. If true, that makes Obama look like a cretin. He was many things, and many things bad, but he was not a cretin.
Then again, people bought the story, so. . . . Reality looks more and more like a very bad paranoid movie, one where even your greengrocer is a conspirator.
The President declared that the unvaxxed in workplaces put the vaxxed at risk.
This either shows you how bad the vaxxes are, or that the president just wants an excuse for tyranny.
I shared a thought from last year today.
Credulity. “Being a mark.” The study of how cons are pulled off should then be applied to policy discussion in modern times.
The current con job that has been rolled out worldwide is to force vaccination onto people, even when it is obvious it would not help them, even when it would hurt them. You know, “to save other people.” You know you are talking to a con artist when he narrows the spread of options, focusing tightly onto an issue and never bringing in obvious and quite salient factors.
Re: vaccination? When they don’t talk about natural immunity and when they push vaccination on the immunodeficient. These vaxxers, then, are either con artists or the deluded-by-same, and spreading their idea pathogens “rationally.” What I remember most about 2020 is how governments ginned up fear but never once advised people to eat healthy, get plenty of sunshine, take the apt vitamin and mineral supplements, and exercise. This really is the marker. If there’s a contagion spread by breath, and they tell you to stay indoors, they are probably evil.
Other clues: they suppress debate and information-sharing and curb the search for treatments. When they scorn a treatment as, say, “horse de-wormer” or just unapproved, and then demand everyone accept jabs of experimental, under-studied drugs made in tandem with gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, then the level of psy-op has gone beyond the madness of crowds level. We are dealing with more than just the gullible.
What would we call it?
Please excuse me if I speculate about civilizational death wish.
A friend commented on the above: In addition to all their civilization ending death wishes, the normies have absolutely no understanding of immune function and its importance to dealing with v viruse. There are numerous immune related topics to which they respond as if I were explaining the same subjects to my cat. They do not understand that the deadly ARDS stage of lung clogging is the result of an impaired immune systems’ over-reaction to the virus. Therefore, they did not understand the importance of immune boosting to preclude that phenomenon. They don’t understand that immune boosting occurs with high doses of vitamin D3, vitamin C and zinc along with HCQ and/or quercetin. They don’t understand that ivermectin is safe and has antiviral properties. Therefore, they do not understand the importance and efficacy of early treatments. They don’t understand that the vaccine is not an antibiotic that simply kills the virus. I could go on and on because they understand nothing about the medical science aspects of the virus and the illness that it causes. Whenever any of these points are made even with a peer reviewed medical study, their response 98% of the time is a laughing emoji.
Bob Roddis, Facebook, September 13, 2021.
I’ve known this all my life. Its play in in-group hierarchies and out-group marginalization is what led me to consider political philosophy.
I never bought into the idea that government is primarily established and maintained to provide unequivocal public goods, benefitting all. I have always known that human being are far more warped than that, and that government provides a perfect machinery for advantaging a few at the expense of the many, and then churning the issue and doing it for a different set of exploiter/exploited. This was obvious to me at age 14. Why it is not obvious to everyone puzzles me.
Maybe it was my sensitivity to small betrayals by friends in school that led me to a realistic view of human nature.
The demented president of the federal union of states, humiliated by his own false assurances and lies about the Afghanistan pull-out, is trying to fix his plummeting approval ratings by sparking the ultimate Us vs. Them panic. His expressions of disgust for those who refuse to vax up, in the context of a witlessly mad and madly spooked population, may prove the uncorking of the shaken bottle of our civil war. “Our patience is wearing thin.”
This could be the modern equivalent of Goebbel’s Beer Hall Putsch speech of November 9, 1938.
Goebbels spoke in [Hitler’s] place and announced to those assembled the news of the diplomat’s death. Then he reported on the antiJewish manifestations that had erupted in Kurhesse and Magdeburg-Anhalt, adding that Hitler, after hearing his ideas, had decided that the party should do nothing either to help prepare or organize such demonstrations. However, he added, should such outbursts take place spontaneously, no attempt ought to be made stop them.
Books that just came into my library, or that I have just begun reading.
Two months ago or so, my little sister was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in its later stages. Though she had had a tough case of the COVID in 2020, the hospital required her to take one of the “vaccines.” She chose the Johnson & Johnson, and then, in early July she endured her first chemotherapy treatment. In eight days she was dead.
I have been as listless as many who have taken the pushed treatments, since. No desire to make a podcast or write anything of much importance. But the times are not waiting for me. The onslaught of medical tyranny is coming.
Last night, my dog woke me up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I went on a binge of posting to Twitter and Facebook, doing little on Gab. My previous day’s Twitter foray was described as crazy by one Twitter follower:
I take my alarmist cue in part from seeing what is happening Australia and New Zealand and taking these societies as bellwethers. The tyrannies being set up there are quite horrific. I’ve been catching occasional news about it all, but one YouTuber — a fascinating and extremely odd gentleman going under the name Theoria Apophasis — has been engaged in a string of videos on the subject of Pandemic Over-Reaction Down Under:
Though things look grim, the logic of it all is so fractured that it is hard not to laugh. Somebody satirized the logic in a fine parody:
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO’S ‘WHO’S BEEN VACCINATED?’
Bud: ‘You can’t come in here!’
Lou: ‘Why not?’
Bud: ‘Well because you’re unvaccinated.’
Lou: ‘But I’m not sick.’
Bud: ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Lou: ‘Well, why does that guy get to go in?’
Bud: ‘Because he’s vaccinated.’
Lou: ‘But he’s sick!’
Bud: ‘It’s alright. Everyone in here is vaccinated.’
Lou: ‘Wait a minute. Are you saying everyone in there is vaccinated?’
Bud: ‘Yes.’
Lou: ‘So then why can’t I go in there if everyone is vaccinated?’
Bud: ‘Because you’ll make them sick.’
Lou: ‘How will I make them sick if I’m NOT sick and they’re vaccinated.’
Bud: ‘Because you’re unvaccinated.’
Lou: ‘But they’re vaccinated.’
Bud: ‘But they can still get sick.’
Lou: ‘So what the heck does the vaccine do?’
Bud: ‘It vaccinates.’
Lou: ‘So vaccinated people can’t spread covid?’
Bud: ‘Oh no. They can spread covid just as easily as an unvaccinated person.’
Lou: ‘I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. Look. I’m not sick.
Bud: ‘Ok.’ Lou: ‘And the guy you let in IS sick.’
Bud: ‘That’s right.’
Lou: ‘And everybody in there can still get sick even though they’re vaccinated.’
Bud: ‘Certainly.’
Lou: ‘So why can’t I go in again?’
Bud: ‘Because you’re unvaccinated.’
Lou: ‘I’m not asking who’s vaccinated or not!’
Bud: ‘I’m just telling you how it is.’
Lou: ‘Nevermind. I’ll just put on my mask.’
Bud: ‘That’s fine.’
Lou: ‘Now I can go in?’
Bud: ‘Absolutely not?’
Lou: ‘But I have a mask!’
Bud: ‘Doesn’t matter.’
Lou: ‘I was able to come in here yesterday with a mask.’
Bud: ‘I know.’
Lou: So why can’t I come in here today with a mask? ….If you say ‘because I’m unvaccinated’ again, I’ll break your arm.’
Bud: ‘Take it easy buddy.’
Lou: ‘So the mask is no good anymore.’
Bud: ‘No, it’s still good.’
Lou: ‘But I can’t come in?’
Bud: ‘Correct.’
Lou: ‘Why not?’
Bud: ‘Because you’re unvaccinated.’
Lou: ‘But the mask prevents the germs from getting out.’
Bud: ‘Yes, but people can still catch your germs.’
Lou: ‘But they’re all vaccinated.’
Bud: ‘Yes, but they can still get sick.’
Lou: ‘But I’m not sick!!’
Bud: ‘You can still get them sick.’
Lou: ‘So then masks don’t work!’
Bud: ‘Masks work quite well.’
Lou: ‘So how in the heck can I get vaccinated people sick if I’m not sick and masks work?’
Bud: ‘Third base.’
And…scene…
The illogic of it all is the astounding thing. Paul Jacob captured this yesterday by showing how challengeable the official line is:
A recent Reasonarticle on New York’s new vaccination passport informs that “there’s a case to be made . . .” yet neglects to mention that the opposite case can also be made.
What case is it?
Well, the Mayor Bill de Blasio-sanctified case is that “these [totalitarian] measures are important for getting as much of the population vaccinated as possible in order to reduce virus mutation and prevent more harmful variants from taking root.”
Yet the inverse is perhaps more persuasive. Several important figures in the medical and scientific community have been crying Cassandra* for some time, arguing that an ineffective vaccine, like the mRNA treatments sponsored by Pfizer and Moderna, may, according to epidemiological principles long understood, pressure the spreading viruses into the thing we don’t want: more deadly variants.
The normal course for a new contagion is for it to mutate into easier-to-spread but less deadly variants. Killing a host isn’t good for the virus, so it changes over time. Oddly, I rarely hear this mentioned.
Herd immunity, which is the prevalence in a community of enough people who can fend off the virus preventing transmission to weaker people, can only be helped by vaccination when the vaccines increase hosts’ immunity to obtaining it and spreading it — neither of which clearly applies to the current vaccines.
“From their very first conceptualization,” claims Geert Vanden Bossche, one of the biggest names in the industry to object to the vaccination campaign, “it should have been very clear that these ‘S-based’ Covid-19 vaccines are completely inadequate for generating herd immunity in a population, regardless of . . . the rate of vaccine coverage.”
Sans herd immunity but with universal vaccination, he says, deadlier variants could arise.
Is he right? I don’t know.
But the case against vaccine passports might reference epidemiology and virology from sources outside establishment-approved “scientific” opinion.
Totalitarians rarely have “the science” on their side.
The Reason article Paul quoted notes that there are no exceptions given, under de Blasio’s regime, for natural immunity. You have to take “the jab” no matter what, or no society for you. You will be kept out of all public buildings. Including “private” businesses. An astounding thing. My Facebook reaction to this policy was brief:
The irrationality here should be obvious. The consequences of the irrationality are perhaps less obvious, because Americans have never really seen their own society break into pure terror and mob-fueled totalitarianism before. They are unprepared. And most will deny the warning, calling the warning itself irrational. But Folly now calls to its own, and we can expect the madness to grow exponentially. It has been fun, so to speak. Now it gets grim. The end of the republic is at hand. Woo-hoo? (Ugh.)
Theoria Apophasis calls the process underway “bringing a people to its knees.” But it is not just the madness of crowds. There are guiding hands, as I argued, and it has been going on a long time. Take the vaccines. Vaccination has been hyped and the case for their success grossly overstated:
We are propagandized about vaccines for reasons of power: medical and political. More important than vaccination in [nearly] eradicating traditional major diseases was the automobile replacing horses (which shat everywhere) and the development of good plumbing and sewage systems.
“Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his own excreta.” Brian Aldiss, The Dark Light Years
Folks who like public Uplift could take credit for these two major developments, since government was involved in strategic ways. But why don’t they? Because there is scant more power to be gained by their promotion. The next ramp-up of power is from the medicalization of everyday life. Therapeutic tyranny is, as Thomas Szasz predicted, the next big thing.
And fabulism about vaccination efficacy is a key propaganda point to ushering in the new form of control.
New York’s vaccination passport is merely the first step. Politicians, bureaucrats, doctors and Big Pharma will take it all — take away as much freedom and dissolve as much distributed responsibility as possible — if we let them.
The rationales for masks, lockdowns, and the vaccines are all very bad. Courtesy of historian Tom Woods, I shared an important chart:
Here are the death numbers for Germany and Sweden. Sweden is at about 9% mask compliance; Germany has a medical-grade mask mandate. Yet same trajectory, same numbers. £ It’s almost like the virus does what it will, regardless of our “I feel better if I’m doing something even if it’s pointless” interventions. [Tom Woods]
My comment on this was succinct:
I’m so tired of the way most folks argue for masks. That is, like religious zealots. I argue against masks every which way — except one: I think masking when sick would be socially useful; masking when not showing symptoms, on the other hand, is socially detrimental. I’ve made the case before. It’s fairly obvious.
My view of the near future is quite bleak. But I do agree that not all hope is lost:
An intransigent minority can win. And did. In Afghanistan.
And, just so, if Americans wish to regain freedom, the would-be free must become intransigent, or they shall be ground down quickly. The grinding machinery of mob government is at the door….
And I do have a vision of how a freer society would handle contagions like the current one — and worse:
A free people would negotiate with each other openly and rationally on matters of how to handle sociality during a contagion.
They would not mandate coercive policies with ambiguous effects and then stick to their “sides” as if the issue were Eternal Security and the proper way to settle arguments were to point at specific Bible verses.
They would not revise their history books to conform to the latest policy whim, as the author of that history of the Spanish Flu did this past year. They would not blithely suppress ideas they disagree with. They would not scream at those whom they disagree with in public, and sic the cops onto children to pepper spray them for non-compliance with an ineffective mask mandate.
But we are not a free people. We are a disgraceful one.
That reference to a cop pepper-spraying a child who wasn’t complying with an idiotic mask mandate came from Australia, actually. But I feel at one with Australia. This is not just one country utterly pissing away freedom, here. It is most of a civilization. Ours. “Western,” so to speak.
I’m one of those people who don’t much care for public fondling. Half the population seems really into hugging, for example. Me, not so much.
So, what do I think of Andrew Cuomo’s “That’s Italian!” defense of his behavior?
He pretty much convinced me. I am very skeptical about the worst of the accusations, and I doubt if the bulk of his gropings and fondlings were primarily of a sexual nature.
Were they “inappropriate”?
That depends upon culture. I don’t think men should be kissing each other in public — but he did kiss other men in public. Many people do. Many people in Europe today do. And in the Middle East. “Kiss each other with the brotherly kiss” is in the Bible. Human beings tend to be very hands-on/lips-on in their basic ceremonies, and pretending otherwise is I guess kind of stupid.
While I think Biden’s gropings and hair-sniffings of girls and women in public is ultra-creepy, he may be innocent — though his whoremonger son suggests that the Big Man’s lesson was not taken innocently. Which decreases my subjective probability of Joe’s innocence.
We who do not like to be groped by strangers, or kissed by acquaintances in public, and suchlike, need to come up with graceful ways of brushing off the over-huggers and kissy-kissy folks.
And when it gets to genital or other gropings, a good kick in the crotch always works.
Hey, I’ve been the subject of unwanted sexual gropings — in my younger days, I assure you — but I never squealed or even protested. I merely removed the offending hand, saying “no thanks.” This was not difficult. It wasn’t traumatic. But I’m a man, and I was at full 5’10” the first time it happened. Drunken sluts and horndog pederasts seemed easy to rebuff. And they are nothing like the public displays of over-touching that Cuomo engaged in.
Should he have resigned? He should have over his horrific COVID failures. But note the cultural difference here: he was widely praised for his COVID policies! Oh, how the cuomosexuals drooled over his dreamy “leadership”! Talk about offensive.
It is amusing that he was concerned with lockdowns when he couldn’t lock down his hands or his lips when greeting someone.
There’s a lot of humor in this situation. But it is not just that Cuomo is a perv. He probably is. I think old men with nipple rings are pervs. But whatever. Seeing him kiss Bill Clinton should put all this #metoo stuff in context.
I still think that he is bowing out because the investigation revealed actual criminal behavior. That Democrats prefer to sacrifice him on the grounds sexual harassment is a good example of their cowardice and lack of integrity.
But hey: hug the monster you want. Consensually.
Yet, in politics, consent is barely an issue. And the left may regret pushing it to the front. For the very nature of the state denies consent at a fundamental level. Individually we do not consent to the state. We accommodate power. And we call our accommodations “consent.” The average citizen behaves like those battered spouses who cling to their abusers. I have always thought that these sexual and ceremonial issues should be dealt separately from politics. As in the Cuomo kissery and banter and such, but maybe not.
Like at the end of the Planet of the Apes, a warning applies: if you push the consent issue to its logical conclusion, “you may not like what you find.” Your beloved cult of the omnipotent state falls apart. The State itself may crumble under the critique.
Wirkman Comment 