Marginalia 2021-02-08

1. Missings.

     Just about the only way to know how important something, or some activity, really is to you is to go without it for awhile.

     The C.S.O. and I were once pro-football addicts. Sunday during the NFL season, we would watch at least two, and more often than not three games. It hardly mattered who was playing. But several years ago, when the kneeling-during-the-anthem BS started, we decided we would forgo it. Neither of us would tolerate disrespect toward the country that had made those players wealthy and famous. I expected that we’d miss it. I was wrong.

     When the Wuhan Virus Panic overtook the country and shut down the other two sports we followed – Yankee baseball and New York Rangers hockey – we had to adjust to their absence as well…and wonder of wonders, that proved no more stressful than forsaking pro football. Shortly after that, as those three things were our only reasons for subscribing to cable television, we “cut the cord.” The savings have been nice, but even nicer is the increment to our time to do other, more productive or pleasurable things.

     The Chinese Coronavirus scare has been horribly destructive to American life – it’s cost us a stolen national election, among other things – but as you can see from the above, it’s also been an education of sorts. I wonder what else we’ve learned from it?

2. Politics Uber Alles.

     No doubt you’ve read about this little morality play already:

     Oh, heck no. The Trumpites next door to our pandemic getaway, who seem as devoted to the ex-president as you can get without being Q fans, just plowed our driveway without being asked and did a great job.

     How am I going to resist demands for unity in the face of this act of aggressive niceness?

     Of course, on some level, I realize I owe them thanks — and, man, it really looks like the guy back-dragged the driveway like a pro — but how much thanks?

     These neighbors are staunch partisans of blue lives, and there aren’t a lot of anything other than white lives in neighborhood.

     Miriam Weaver notes:

     [Virginia Heffernan] goes on to suggest, and I’m not making this up, that the kind act of her neighbors is comparable to Hezbollah caring for its elderly and sick population in Lebanon – as a way to gain loyalty….

     Amazingly, Virginia ends her piece with an almost incomprehensible amount of arrogance. She says she can’t offer her neighbors absolution for their support of Trump, but she can offer an invitation for her neighbors to “recognize the truth about the Trump administration” and “work for justice for all those whom the administration harmed.” Because, as she insists, “Only when we work shoulder to shoulder to repair the damage of the last four years will we even begin to dig out of this storm.”

     These…persons, for whom political affiliations and policy differences are cause enough to hate, are the reason for the polarization of the American people. Never, ever believe for a moment that their spokesvermin’s calls for “unity” are anything except a coded demand that we in the Right cease to oppose and resist them.

3. Weaponized Hypochondria.

     I wish I could justify driving to Virginia and buying a car from Eric Peters:

     I went to the live – and let live – store described in my most recent Diaper Report ( see here ) where “masking” isn’t asked about, much less insisted upon, with a friend of mine. We rode in her car, together – Undiapered – neither of us being sick nor afraid of sickness the other hasn’t got.

     We went to this store and enjoyed the company – as well as the sight – of other Undiapered folks, people not turned into quivering hypochondriacs living in panicked dread of sickness and afflicted by the belief that the wearing of a rag over their portals will prevent them from getting a sickness others haven’t got and so can’t give them….

     Later, I got a call from this friend who told me her daughter would not come over for dinner that evening as planned – having learned her mother rode in a car with an Undiapered, Undiapered.

     This friend-of-mine’s daughter – who is a grown woman – was absolutely mortified that her mother would take such a risk as to be in a car with me and in a store with others like me. And like herself as well, since she also doesn’t Diaper.

     The daughter, you see, is a Weaponized Hypochondriac: made so by a campaign of fear porn that’s aimed at destroying American social cohesion and interpersonal trust.

     Please read the whole thing, and reflect on the deeper agenda of those who would frighten us out of our families, friends, and faces.

4. Too Much Data, or Not Enough?

     Several statisticians have presented compelling cases that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. As their cases are probability-based, those who insist on believing otherwise simply dismiss them.

     Several analysts of American electoral results have noted deviations from previous patterns that aren’t “merely” unprecedented, but are so radical as to be all but impossible. But “all but impossible” isn’t quite the same as “impossible, so once again, those who insist on believing otherwise simply dismiss them.

     Many affidavits about underhandedness by election officials have been sworn under oath, all to the effect that systematic cheating occurred in the last six states to file their results. Others have reported on truckloads of ballots being imported across state lines, and voting machines that underweighted votes for Trump and overweighted votes for Biden, or simply transferred Trump votes to Biden. Yet again, those who insist on believing otherwise simply say “they’re lying,” and dismiss them.

     The presidency was stolen. The mountains of evidence and testimony are well beyond conclusive. But really, all you need to know to reach that conclusion is this:

     One candidate hardly campaigned at all. The other was on the stump almost continuously, at dozens of rallies attended by tens of thousands. The former is a mentally deficient corruptocrat barely capable of getting all the way through a sentence without lapsing into gibberish, yet the mainstream media worked tirelessly to suppress all discussion of his many low dealings and those of his family. The latter, whom the media hated and defamed at every opportunity, was the most effective president since Grover Cleveland.

     The rest, as they say, is an exercise for the reader.

5. A Pre-Announcement.

     From 12:00 AM (PST) Saturday February 20 through Monday February 22, my most recent novel will be free of charge at Amazon:

     Gail was a has-been singer from a forgotten band, surviving by performing for small crowds in coffee houses and bars, near to giving up on everything.

     Evan was a venture capitalist, widowed by cancer and robbed of his only child by a car crash, who kept going on momentum alone.

     They were going through the motions, barely clinging to life, until one Friday evening in a central New York bar, when a faint and a spontaneous rescue brought them together.

     Then the music really started.

     Get it while it’s free – and if you enjoy it, please, PLEASE review it!