And “trans canine” is indeed a gruesomely hilarious result of the gender movement, and the left’s desperate anti-natalism which I see lurking behind its insane forms of trendy identitarianism.
Shakespeare’s Polonius advised: “To thine own self be true.” But few seek this kind of individualistic humanism any longer, and the cultural path led us to a place where fewer and fewer bother cultivating their own selves with any degree of success. So, as if to turn poor Polonius on his head, they have reversed day and night to become false to all people.
“I just want friends and a crowd” — this does capture the group categorization frenzy that youngsters seem unable not to engage in. Though this statement would have been more apt had she used “pack” instead of “crowd.”
Bestiality farded up as “trans caninism” is at least funny.
I haven’t been reading many satires recently since the artless satires of our reality appear daily for our amusement.
The cult of freak-flag sexuality seems to be approaching stefnal bizarrerie. And I confess: I am not in the least interested in coercing her not to fuck her dogs. I assume that if a male dog will eagerly go at it with her, it is consensual enough for me. But it remains absolutely vital for the main run of society to mock this bitch and laugh at her antics, and warn children from becoming as horrific as she is eager to become.
Of course, this could all be a joke: a sick, twisted joke. A parody of leftist transgenderist identitarianism. Or some come-on for an OnlyFans account. Hers is the first naked pussy I have seen on Twitter, so the chance that this is some form of put-on is quite high.
If so, congratulations? Made us look:
But the best part of all may be “her” claim to be a scientist, and thus smarter than the rest of us:
Would a practicing scientist say such a thing?
Not likely. Though Fauci came close. But that merely proved he was a trans scientist. Not a real one.
To repeat: anarchy is either a good name for something bad, or a bad name for something good.
The problem with “anarchism” is that it is defined, first and foremost, by utopians like this Twitter user:
There is no intrinsic human nature. Humans adapt to the societies in which they were born.
Capitalism teaches people that they must be evil and inconsiderate to succeed.
Take away capitalism and liberate the masses, and human nature will change with it.
— The Anarchist Turtle 🏴Ⓐ (@anarchoboognish) July 22, 2022
When Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari invented what today some call “libertarian anarchy” or “anarcho-capitalism,” he pointedly did not call himself an anarchist. He saw himself as a kind of liberal. “Anarchist” was reserved for the first people to homestead the term anarchy as a non-pejorative: Proudhon and Bakkunin and that ilk. Folks like “The Anarchist Turtle.”
Today, let’s respond to the propositions of this Twitter user:
There is indeed human nature, and one of its chief features is its ability to adapt to the environment, though with varying degrees of success, individual by individual, group by group.
Capitalism comes in several forms, but the core element of private property and market interaction does not teach people to be “evil and inconsiderate,” while the neo-mercantilist, statist versions do sometimes do that. What private property and markets encourage is service to others: if you don’t meet consumer demand, you fail.
“Take away capitalism” — how? By getting rid of private property and market cooperation? If you want to see the struggle of existence — society red-in-tooth-and-claw — have at it. One of the odd things about left utopians is their blindness to the basic temptation of human nature, to “defect,” to exploit or “get one over” on others, and that this is ultra-common where many people share a common resource. It’s not called The Tragedy of the Commons for nothing. And while humans do concoct and discover ways to avoid this tragedy sans private property or the State, these social mechanisms are not exactly free-wheeling “anarchy.”
What is it we really need “liberating” from? The need to work? Social pressure? Religion? Capitalism allows for human cooperation to flourish in the most astounding ways. Under expanded markets, whole blocs of the Third World have been brought up from dore poverty. I want more of that, not less.
But what’s my main beef with The Anarchist Turtle? “Human nature” doesn’t change, human behavior does. If you want to understand how our behavior changes according to circumstance and situation, study human nature. Don’t ball these concepts up. Which leftists like to do because, at bottom, most are Blank Slate/Tabula Rasa fantasists. They inhabit a world too irreal for me.
When I got interested in anarchism, in my teens, it was primarily to prevent warfare and mass exploitation. It wasn’t as a means of “liberating” “the People” from work or responsibility or all the difficulties with life. I was indeed concerned with bullying and tribal conflict, but I knew enough Big History to realize that getting rid of The State along with private property would just set us back to tribal and chiefdom organization: not my idea of liberation at all. And though I was fascinated by utopian experimentation, I never wanted to join any particular commune or “intentional community.” Families were enough along those lines.
But I did then and do now distrust and hate the Archons — the rulers behind the scenes and those in front of podia. They are liars and tempters [almost] all. They are always looking for ways to gain our servile compliance with their schemes, and they do so by enticing us into thinking we can both gain a special advantage and see ourselves as Good and Righteous.
I have much more to say about fighting the Archons — the dominations and powers — without falling into the goofy utopianism of “the anarchists.”
I got to 3:50 and had to stop. A woman — and she is clearly a woman, acting not at all manly in any way that I can discern — glories in her “coming out” as “non-binary.”
Dr. LocoFoco, on Twitter, expressed the standard case against my reaction to such things: “The goal — even if it means transhumanism as a tool to actually achieve it — is everyone deciding their lives for themselves. Why not help people get there instead of criticize them because they don’t fit with your idea of what’s right, proper, scientific, or whatever else?” First off, “living for ourselves” is not at issue. What is at issue is whether you are living “for yourself” or for anyone when you misidentify reality in a consistently irreal way. Pretending that you can “become” something you cannot become is no advance for anyone. That is just witless fantasy. It is madness. Men cannot become women, and vice versa. Sure: dress as you will, talk as you will, whatever — even chop off your penis and have the surgeons try to create a fake vagina, no skin off my nose — but there are consequences for actions that are devastating, making the acts themselves foolish, and it is no service to anyone to encourage such atrocities.
Are good, “well-meaning” people not aware of the horrors of sexual reassignment surgery? It is not uncommon, now, to take the malpractice of Seventies’ “sex change” quacks and continue it: helping a “non-binary man ‘feel’ more womanly” [which is my translation of what they actually say] by keeping the penis but removing the testicles and inverting the scrotum for the fake vagina, leading to horrific medical consequences. I think we can all agree that real vaginas do not have hair inside.
The sheer insanity of the sexually confused is interesting for many human reasons. Take “The Libs of TikTok”: I inflict these people on myself for good reason. This shows a hugely influential element of the social world we live in. Filled with fantasists. Lost souls who are grasping for some relevance. Or have they been so unloved or so ignored or so actually abused that they join the bandwagon of pretend sexuality. It’s pathetic, and I do pity them. I do not hate them. Indeed, it is in part for their interest that I deny them the reality of their fantasies or the health and wisdom of their choices. I have no specific answers for what ails them, but my philosophy — which does pointedly investigate the roles of fantasy in human life — insists upon acknowledging the actual and the materially real. And warns against the unintended consequences of actions taken under the mantle of the pretense of what they absurdly call “their truth.”
So why is this at issue now in our culture?
Maybe it’s all the loopy, unthinking naturalisms of the past that have spawned this insanity, in reaction. I opposed slippery naturalism most of my adult life — it’s why I’ve been so Stoic-resistant, Epictetus’s ethical naturalism being such a bundle of prejudice and loopy non sequitur. But I’d run screaming to Epictetus’ hirsuite arms before I accept the idiocy of today’s “gender” obsessed.
Maybe it’s those loopy naturalisms that spawned this, but I don’t think so. I think it is the logic of the memeplex of leftism and cultural Marxism, the pathetic need always to find outsiders and make them a “cause.”
But that is the social frame of the malady. At bottom, surely, these people are wounded souls suffering from insignificance or worse. “Trans” is like most religious manias: it puts them deep into the warp and woof of reality. And like religious manias — Hobbes called them “enthusiasms” — they say more about their suffering than about reality.
A conscientious, caring person would try to alleviate the real causes of suffering, not get caught up in the religious mania that is Trans Soteriology. There is no salvation here. It is only human folly taken to the remotest level of crazy.
Regardless: this woman’s purple stuffed animal does symbolize the ridiculous and wacky nature of this anti-naturalist movement.
And regardless: sex is a binary in the human biology, and a people that refuses to make the most of it is doomed to die out. This trans-genderist nonsense is decadence all the way down to its nuttiest kernel of falsity.
Further: my friends who are “soft” and even “supportive” of this trans acceptance movement are playing into the neuroses and psychoses of deeply damaged people, causing great, great harm while solidifying these souls’ detachment from reality, unfitting them from leading happy lives.
And doing this disservice in the name of liberty and autonomy is a grave indecency. An affront not against nature but against philosophy, against wisdom.
Oh, and then there is the parade of the pitiful. Do you have the stomach to go beyond 3:50?
I see lots of expressions on Twitter of Twitterers’ “feelings” about Elon Musk acquiring Twitter.
This is funny. But aside from mirth, I don’t have a lot of “feelings” about the change. I mainly have a number of questions.
Though I do indeed regard anyone who supports curated, censored political, medical, and “scientific” speech as an enemy of liberal civilization (which I’m for), I may have moved past anger on this subject. And Musk himself has so many ties to the Deep State, I am left with so many questions. Lots and lots of questions.
Here’s one: Elon, you’ve made billions by contracting with Never A Straight Answer (NASA) and the Pentagon — how do your buddies in the Deep State feel about your professed ”free speech” agenda?
Are there factions within the Deep State now at war with each other, and you’re on one side?
As an advocate of connecting brains directly to AI, how would free speech operate in a cyborg environment?
What security can there be against AI with (shall we say) less-than-transparent agendas and abilities?
So, no hosannas from me about our political savior, St. Elon. But I’ll be very glad to see woke corporatists cast out on their asses, as Twitter moves to better policies and ceases to serve as the butt boy to Klaus Schwab, Hillary Clinton, and their puppeteers.
2016 election. Rittenhouse. Covington. Russian collusion. Vaccines. Bounties on US soldiers. Lab-leak theory. Jussie Smollett. The Pulse shooting. The Atlanta shootings. Hunter Biden laptop. Inflation. Steele Dossier. The MSM got every single one wrong.
The major (Mockingbird) media didn’t merely get these stories wrong, they told untruths: they lied and spun and propagandized for the maximum state, for their beloved Woke Leviathan.
I confess to having thought that we had reached Peak Progressivism with the mass excoriation of the Covington kids, but O, how much lower journos could go!
when the sources of news keep getting things wrong, and all the errors lie in the exact same direction, and they are reluctant to acknowledge error, we have a problem. If you look back at the last few years, the record of errors, small and large, about major stories, is hard to deny. It’s as if the more Donald Trump accused the MSM of being “fake news” the more assiduously they tried to prove him right.
Regarding the Rittenhouse case, Mr. Sullivan tries to sound level-headed: “Almost immediately, the complicated facts became unimportant. The far right viewed Rittenhouse as a hero — which he surely wasn’t. He had no business being there with an AR-15.” This is very similar to Paul Jacob’s opinion, actually, who makes similar points in his most recent podcast:
But as I mentioned to Paul in this episode (I interview him for this project of his, every weekend), my position is far less centrist.
Now, when the Kenosha, Wisconsin, riots and Rittenhouse shootings occurred, I decided to wait until more information came in. I did not make a big deal of his innocence or guilt. I was willing — nay, eager — to let a jury decide. In that I was being as normal and centrist-civilized as one could hope for. But as evidence mounted, young Mr. Rittenhouse’s innocence looked quite likely. Then, after the prosecution has made its opening “case,” an acquittal seemed to me as obviously the only just result.
All those media mavens, Democrats and beltway libertarians who jumped on the bandwagon against Rittenhouse have lots of egg on face.
Rittenhouse acted in self-defense. The men he shot were trying to kill him. They were criminals and were very much acting in the wrong. Paul Jacob, being a nice person, states that it no one wants to see them killed, but — after the fact — I see no reason to shed the tiniest tear for these miscreants.
And while I am unclear as to the legality of Rittenhouse’s open carry, I admit: I do not much care. He was just to carry his weapons, and the rioters were in the wrong, generally, and politicians and cops who let it all happen were cowards at best.
Another major defeat for “woke,” riot-loving leftists. Good. They deserve nothing better than our spittle.
And as for Rittenhouse being imprudent for carrying an AR-15 — really? He had “no business” carrying it into a riot zone?
Everybody has by now seen the judge’s remonstrance of the prosecutor for a line of interrogation that is germane to the issue. The prosecutor was trying to show that Rittenhouse came to the event wanting to kill. The prosecutor was aiming to take a weeks’-old statement by KR about wishing he’d had his rifle with him to shoot some looters as evidence. The judge had declared that line of inquiry off limits earlier on, and, after removing the jury from the room, “yelled at” the prosecutor.
The principle the prosecutor relied upon (and got Rittenhouse to admit on stand) was that we do not have a right to defend property with deadly force. Democrats hold this as a bedrock principle. Perhaps that is why they let rioters riot. After all, a mob won’t stop mayhem upon mere instruction. Deadly force is required. So Democrats have convinced me that the use of deadly force to protect property must be at least sometimes OK.
Thanks, Democrats. You’ve changed my mind.
So I disagree with both Paul Jacob and Andrew Sullivan: when cops and politicians don’t do their jobs, it is up to citizens to take up arms and defend life and property. It is obvious that, contrary to the prosecutors, Rittenhouse did not go out hoping to shoot anyone. But taking a weapon did lead the crazies to attack him. And since Rittenhouse had been doing nothing wrong, their attacking him was a gross violation of his rights. His shooting of them was just. But I also go further: his arming himself in the melee was just, and more citizens should have done it.
Sure, it seems wrong for a 17-year-old to do this job. But that is not his fault. The adult officials who shirked their duty are to blame. And so are the fully adult citizens who should have taken up arms. And, if necessary, did what the prosecutor wanted to convince the jury that Rittenhouse himself itched to do: shoot at rioters.
Mobs are evil. That is, rioting mobs are evil.
At some point, they must be opposed just like we oppose marauding bands.
But Democrats are incapable of admitting that this is what a civilization must do. Democrats are so into “inclusion” that they look at all outsiders as “oppressed” and not, as rioters and illegal immigrant invaders are, themselves the actual oppressors.
Because Democrats no longer believe that the State is justified by the civilizational need to destroy those who would destroy us — hordes and mobs and criminals and even armies — they corrupt the institutions of police and courts and border guards and military so to disenable them from protecting us. I simply submit that when governments give up their prime task, citizens must take the necessary work.
Don’t want to see “vigilantism”? Then make sure the state does its Job One. When the State won’t do this job, it not only de-legitimizes itself, it legitimizes vigilantism.
Don’t want vigilantes? Then make sure the State (including local governments) does Its Job (their jobs) — or else consider institutional alternatives to the State. There are such alternatives, and maybe now is the time to talk about them.
Until then, young Mr. Rittenhouse may not be the hero we wanted, but he appears to have been the only hero on the streets in Kenosha that fateful day.
We just cannot expect the major media to even understand this. They have been trained to serve as (and are paid to be) the lickspittle of the Leviathan State.
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.
The odd thing about this m&m meme (post) is that the statement is completely inapposite.
The subject in question is allegedly whether women are overly sexualized “in media.” And we are given a funny m&m ad.
It is a candy being sexualized, not a woman.
Sure, it is a candy being sexualized to look like a woman dressing/acting “sexy” (sexily) — but it is still understood as a candy.
No one denies that some women (or most women some of the time) try to look sexy using the cultural norms we are used to. That is not the claim under consideration, here, though, is it? @fricknook’s m&m post doesn’t prove any point worth making.
Are women overly sexualized “in media”? Or, do women better succeed in media when they sexualize themselves? (Better question, eh?) Ask Ana Kasparian. (See for yourself.)
But candies being sexualized in a feminine as opposed to masculine way is mainly just comic. It proves nothing about “too much.”
The well-known George Mason University economist plies his tool to a current issue:
I’m deeply puzzled by the idea that mandatory vaccination is more morally objectionable than mask mandates. The benefits of vaccination are clearly much larger. The costs also seem much lower — 2 pinpricks versus a constant dehumanizing burden.
“I’m deeply puzzled by the idea that rape is more morally objectionable than unwanted hugging and kissing. The cost of rape seems so much lower — one insertion and a few thrusts and it’s over . . . versus constant dehumanizing burden.”
“Cops are taking selfies with the terrorists,” tweeted Timothy Burke. Another Twitterer quipped, “White privilege is . . . Being part of the mob while taking a selfie with the cops.”
After citing these two tweets, Heavy noted a third: “To be fair, you could see a cop doing the right thing to de-escalate by saying ‘all right, you can take your selfie now get the hell out.’”
That last thought is reminiscent of Paul Jacob’s Andy Griffith reference at Common Sense.
The protest-turned-invasion of the Capitol was, all in all, not very violent. One woman was shot and killed as she advanced upon police within the building. No one else was. The other listed deaths were outside the trespass event, on the streets.
Were the trespassers “terrorists”?
Well, terrorists are those who use violence upon civilians to gain some political effect. The breaking-and-entering incursion into where Congress works was illegal, and “violent” in the sense that breaking glass is violent, and marching into property without the owners’ permission is violent. So: not-very-violent. The woman shot was not brandishing a weapon. The oft-cited deaths outside the Capitol building turn out to be mostly . . . irrelevant. But, and this is key: this riot was turned against the government directly, not against the citizenry. Insurrectionists would be a better term, but even that is a bit much, since it is obvious that they just wanted to “make a statement,” not take over the government. The various riots over the summer lasted weeks, months. This lasted a few hours.
Now, is this general low-key quality of the whole affair — as exemplified by the selfie moment — an example of “white privilege”? That seems a little off. The protesters-turned-trespassers had no beef with the police. So the “privilege” consisted in not being a threat. Sounds like the wages of peace rather than the perks of privilege.
Their beef was with the machinery of vote counts and the whole system that they think stole the election for Biden over their candidate, the current president.
Most people in media and on the Democrat side — and many, many Republicans — say “there’s no evidence for a stolen election.” While it is possible that the election itself wasn’t stolen (I’ll abide by evidence rationally presented) to say “no evidence” is off. There’s a lot of evidence of voting schemes and ballot abuse. It’s just that the system isn’t set up to deal with it in the time allotted by the Constitution.
The proper time to deal with election fraud is before and while it is happening — definitely not a few weeks before inauguration. Even of a Manchurian Candidate.
A doctored photo of Hitler, by the way. He was not holding a Bible in the original photo.
The willingness — actually, eagerness — to equate Trump with Hitler is amusing. Folks have a fantasy life far stronger than their waking life rationality. Hollywood twitterers like Debra Messing, especially.
That being said, all political leaders have a little Hitler in them. The Führerprinzip is one entelechy among several. Trick is: don’t allow the Inner Hitler to dominate. And the other trick is: do not set up situations where our leaders feel compelled to let out their Inner Hitlers.
One of those situations is mass street violence.
Don’t be idiots, “protesters”! Only you can turn Trump into Hitler.
Wirkman Comment 