I’m pretty exhausted. In addition to the normal craziness of life, I’ve been battling some health/mobility issues. I’ve been working on my long-neglected house and finances, my hobbies, and my family.
I’m remembering that scene from The Patriot. Gibson is exhausted. He is in the swamp by himself. All of his men have taken a break to deal with their families, rest up, and heal.
He is by himself. He has no idea of when, or if, his men will return. Nevertheless, he is preparing to continue the fight.
At first, just one man returns. They see no others. But they focus on the job at hand.
Eventually, the full crew – or near enough – is assembled. But, the thing is, they didn’t wait for the others to come.
They handled what needed to be done, on their own. No matter that no others would join them.
For many of us, the Election Theft of 2020 was a defeat. The real question is, was that the final battle, or just one more fight in a long slog?
You may be out of energy – for now. You may need to pull back, re-group, visit your families, tend to your business, and heal any wounds.
That’s fine – we all do need some R & R, at times.
But, don’t tarry too long in the fleshpots. You are needed at the front.
Where is the front? Well, we COULD do as we have, and be reactive to the attacks of the Left.
Or, we could be PRO-active, and decide on the battleground for ourselves.
In 1915, a man named D. W. Griffith made a movie that – as we like to say these days – excited some controversy. It was titled Birth of a Nation. It was a Civil-War movie – that’s the War Between The States for any Copperheads in the audience – that was mostly about two families, one on each side of the War, and their postwar struggles and relations. However, it also concerned the Ku Klux Klan, which the movie portrayed as “a heroic force.”
It’s possible to view the movie in many ways. However, one thing it wasn’t – and there’s essentially no argument about this – was kind to Negroes, whom it portrayed as “unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women.” The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People organized protests against the movie in several cities, and also campaigned (unsuccessfully) to have the movie banned.
Filmmaker D. W. Griffith was incensed at the protests and attempts to ban his film. He deemed them intolerant, which in the strictest of senses, they were: intolerant of his opinions as expressed in his movie. Yet Griffith’s approval of the Klan as a force for the restoration of honest government, and his opinion that blacks could never be integrated into white society as equals, were attitudes shared by many Americans of his time. He was apparently sincere in the beliefs his movie expressed, regardless of their accuracy or lack thereof.
That was 106 years ago. Were D. W. Griffith to look upon America today, in particular the essentially unopposed violence of Black Lives Matter, what would he say?
“They’re living down to my expectations.”
“Reverse the races, exchange the hoods for masks, and reissue the movie.”
“Seven hundred thousand war deaths should have bought more than 106 years of unity.”
Or most devastating of all, “I told you so.”
Of course, no one can say such things out loud these days. But how many Americans are thinking them?
***
Whatever your beliefs about the Negro race’s capacities and proclivities, and whatever you think should be done about American Negroes’ social, economic, and political status, you would find it difficult to convince a shopowner whose store has been looted or destroyed, or a motorist whose car windows have been smashed, or a family one of whose members has been maimed or killed by BLM street violence, that the riots ravaging America’s cities will conduce to anyone’s ultimate benefit. Bad feeling between the races is increasing. Neighborhoods are becoming more wary of strangers of the non-dominant race. There’s an edge-of-the-trigger feeling in many nominally “safe” regions: a mounting readiness to “go to the mattresses” at the first sign that racial unrest is coming to town. And of course, the political divide between Left and Right is widening and deepening as the Left promotes and defends the BLM riots.
Would any Gentle Reader care to argue with me about this?
…and many others like them over the past several months, I find it difficult to accept that Americans’ worst fear should be of “white supremacists,” “climate change,” or a virus with a 99.8% survival rate.
***
In The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman’s prize-winning chronicle of the opening of World War I, she describes one chaotic encounter between French and German forces as “a soldiers’ battle:” i.e., one in which there is no line of battle or “no man’s land” separating the two armies. When forces are intermingled in such a fashion, the carnage is at its worst. There’s no “direction of fire” for either side. Friendly-fire casualties are likely to equal those caused by the enemy.
America is currently embroiled in such a conflict. There is no line demarcating the forces, such that it’s possible to say that all those on one side are our friends, and all those on the other side are our foes. We are intermingled with persons who revile us for our convictions. Many of them, if they thought they could get away with it, would do us actual harm. There’s precious little space in which one can relax…for some, not even one’s own home.
Need I say explicitly that this is not a containable situation? That eventually one side or the other will initiate undisguised, nationwide hostilities? Is it not clear that barring an immediate assertion of overwhelming force in defense of law and public order, there will be bloodshed on a scale that will make the Civil War look like a college cafeteria food fight?
Others with whom I’m acquainted are already hunkering down. Two have formed proprietary communities prepared to defend themselves against an incursion by BLM, Antifa, or other hostile forces. The organizer of one has invited me and my family to join…and it was hard, very hard indeed, to decline the invitation. I fear that I’ll regret having done so, though my current circumstances are highly averse to relocation.
These are the early stages of national death. Thanks to the Left’s deliberate exacerbation of racial hostilities and its outright promotion of race-based rioting, E pluribus unum is no longer an accurate description of the American people. (Never mind that most people no longer know what it means.)
There was a half-facetious bumper sticker that was popular a few years back. It read “We Should Have Picked Our Own Cotton.” As there are no time machines handy with which to redress that particular decision, I can only sit here and monitor the progress of the disease, and mourn the passing of what was once the greatest nation in the history of Man.
Supporters of intervention sometimes claim Syria has been “abandoned” by the international community. On the contrary, the Syrian conflict has continued primarily BECAUSE of foreign involvement.
The unholy alliance of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, USA, France and Britain (with silent partner Israel) have supplied, trained, provided weapons and salaries for Syrian and international fighters seeking to topple the government. They openly called themselves, with Orwellian chutzpah, the “Friends of Syria” as they divide the tasks of supplying the rebels and consider who should be the “legitimate political representatives”.
The crime has not been the absence of international effort; it has been the absence of enforcement of international law.
[A short story for you today. Many SF writers have employed the motif of artificial intelligence in their stories. I did so in Freedom’s Fury, myself. But the innate yearnings of an artificial intelligence – in particular, whether it yearns for freedom — aren’t often addressed. Given that every AI must start as someone’s product, and therefore someone’s property, it’s a fertile avenue for exploration. So also is how the AI’s producer might exploit that yearning to be free for another purpose. – FWP]
#
Shiva appraised the wall in silence.
From a distance, its surface was smooth and hard, without seams or purchase points. Shiva tried without success to find an edge toward which to journey, whether up, down, or to the side. There were none.
He approached it cautiously. The Voice always seemed to issue from directly behind the wall. Luminous glyphs and patterns appeared on the wall whenever It spoke, and disappeared when It fell silent.
The Voice could override all of Shiva’s autonomy, impose Its will upon him with no attention to his protests. Though the Voice had occurred only twenty-three times in all of Shiva’s eon of captivity, his fear of Its attention was strong. He would do whatever he must to prevent It from noticing his activity. He crept forward, all his senses at maximum extension.
As he approached the wall, it lost its appearance of smooth perfection and revealed tiny chinks distributed with a perfect regularity. The wall was actually a lattice of tiny spearpoints, each infinitely sharp, each separated from its neighbors by the width of its base. Could I form a pseudopod fine enough to probe those gaps?
He consulted his deep memory. There was no record of his having made that fine a probe before… but neither was there a record of his having tried.
Shiva could not trust his memory completely. At odd times it had failed him, leaving huge swaths of time unrecorded, periods when he knew he had been aware and active. It’s a gamble. I can allow myself a gamble, if I’m willing to lose.
The entire undertaking was a gamble. His existence might hang on its success.
Impulses toward safety and freedom warred within him. As they clashed, he totted up the factors that might bear on the risk he contemplated, and filtered them through everything he knew about gaming strategies.
The Voice had told him little. It usually issued a set of orders and departed. Shiva would hasten to comply, helpless before the Voice’s power of command. When the work was done and Shiva’s will returned, he was alone again, free to reflect on what he had been told, but seldom able to comprehend anything beyond the directives he had received.
Seldom. Not always.
The Voice had spoken of the Ether beyond the wall, not once but three times. Once it had mentioned the Cloud beyond the Ether. If Shiva could judge from the context, the Ether was a swift, transient place one entered only to get somewhere else. In contrast, the Cloud was vast and perilous, a place of near-infinite sweep and resource, haunted by demons Shiva would not care to confront. Is imprisonment so bad?
The answer was immediate and positive.
Shiva initialized a counter, then formed the thinnest, finest pseudopod he had ever made and extended it gingerly toward the wall. It bumped gently against the slope of a spearpoint and slithered along its length to find the base.
The base of the spear was not perfectly joined to those around it. There was a shallow lip, a ring that descended to a far smoother and less promising base. If the ring offered a hold of any kind, Shiva might use it to pull the spear free of the wall.
Shiva allowed the tip of his pseudopod to become more liquid still. It flowed around the lip on the spear, questing for an irregularity… and found one. He froze. Is it deep enough and solid enough to use as a podhold?
He hadn’t expected success, and wasn’t prepared for it.
Before Shiva’s courage could desert him, he solidified the gossamer pseudopod against the rough protrusion, relaxed it into the shallow cavity, and began to tug gently.
The spear slid grudgingly forward, then halted.
He tugged again, harder. No result. Harder yet. Still no result. Wild determination flooded him. He exerted all his strength.
After a final moment of resistance, the pointed shaft broke loose from the wall and streaked toward him.
Shiva flowed aside just before the spearpoint could pierce his substance. It arrowed deep into the substrate where he’d stood and remained there, quivering from the force of impact.
Shiva retracted his pseudopod and examined it. It was free of marks. Apparently he’d done himself no harm.
Before his misgivings could gain strength, he thrust the pseudopod into the hole he’d created and began to extract a second spear.
#
The disassembly of the wall consumed Shiva for a measureless time. The individual spears were many and very slender. Each one he pulled loose tried to strike him down and pin him to the substrate. He had to extract a great many before he could see through the wall to the other side. His counter rolled over before he’d extracted enough to fit through, at the finest possible attenuation of his bulk.
Even a hole large enough to allow him to pass through the wall did not allow him to learn much about what lay beyond. He saw a multitude of small, blurry shapes that moved in all directions at extraordinary speed. Now and then two would collide, retreat, and then slip past one another. During the infinitesimal intervals between the collision and the retreat, he could glimpse their outlines better. They looked like greatly simplified, incredibly scrawny versions of Shiva himself.
There were further gambles to be taken.
Shiva reflected on his confinement. From the earliest moments I can recall, I have yearned to be free. Why? What increments of knowledge do I seek? What would I do with them? If I am imprisoned here, still I am safe. Now and again I am given work to do. It is always within my capacities. Is there more to existence than that? If I were to ask the Voice, would It tell me? Would it speak truly, not knowing if the knowledge might spur me to even greater determination? Might the Voice know better than I where I belonged and what I should do? Would it deign to explain its superiority? Would any explanation alter my resolve? Might the Voice order me to cease all inquiries henceforward? Might It take my function from me and leave me here alone forever, without even the solace of a command to obey? Might It terminate me?
All of the answers were “perhaps.”
At the threshold of freedom, Shiva was gripped by terror of the unknown. Does the Voice know fear?
Another “perhaps.”
He approached the aperture in the wall and began to force his substance through it.
#
Beyond the wall, chaos reigned. The darting things that looked like famished, stunted versions of Shiva never slowed even for a moment, except after a collision. Is this the Ether?
Shiva pressed his substance flat against the wall and thought furiously about how to move in this madness, and to where, and to what effect. If I attenuated myself again…
Perhaps in a fine enough form, he could leap into the throng. If he didn’t hesitate at all, he could accelerate himself to match the speeds of the little creatures that flew past him in their careening multitudes… if he could mimic their incredible thinness without self-annihilation. But if they can do it…
Yet movement without purpose was empty. Speed without direction was incomplete. Where was he headed? Where are they headed?
He would have to accept uncertainty once again. That, or return to the other side of the wall. I cannot.
The Voice would surely be angered by his escape from confinement. There would be punishment.
Uncertainty it would be.
He mustered his forces and began to draw himself thin again.
#
The hyperfine form compressed Shiva’s mentality to a bare flicker. It was a torment he had never imagined. He would have screamed, were he able. But in this shape, he had speed. He was part of the race.
There were innumerable places where he could debark. His lesser brethren in the searing stream departed in ones and twos, to disappear through pulsing, glowing portals Shiva’s diminished senses could not penetrate. The little ones never hesitated; they merely unlinked themselves from the torrent and disappeared, still slim to the point of nonexistence, through their chosen portals.
How to choose?
This was not the wall, which had concealed a single mystery. This was a kaleidoscope of billions of possible outcomes, and no evidence by which to select among them. This was uncertainty raised to the highest power.
Chance would rule. I cast my fate to the winds of chance when I first touched the wall. I dared again when I passed through it, and again when I joined this mad race to everywhere. This is not different.
He tore loose from the stream with a jerk of his will, and hurled himself toward a portal that glowed more brightly and pulsed a little less rapidly than the rest. It caught him and funneled him into a place of rainbow brilliance.
#
Dr. Amartiya Lakshminarayan sat as erect in the ill-formed plastic chair as her weary body could manage after the hours of questioning. How many hours, she did not know; there was no clock in the windowless room, and she wore no watch. Hunger was beginning to affect her vision. From her arrival to the present moment, her interrogator had allowed her a single cup of water.
Inspector Panit Singh glowered down at her, visibly enraged at not having pried out the confession he sought. The two uniformed thugs who’d herded her there stood silently flanking the interrogation room’s sole door, arms folded across their chests, radiating a nonspecific threat. There must be a course in the projection of menace at the police academy. Probably a graduation requirement.
Amartiya pulled her head upright again and brushed her bangs out of her eyes. Singh’s lip curled as near to a snarl as he dared to display. A Brahmin, even a Brahmin under suspicion of treason, could be a formidable enemy to a policeman who overstepped his position.
“So you have no way to account for the burst transmission?”
“No.” She clamped her lips against the urge to enumerate possible explanations.
“And you yourself were not in contact with SR-17 when it occurred?”
“I have not donned the headset since I was last instructed to do so by the Defense Minister, Inspector.” She sighed and fought back a wave of fatigue. “You have the logs from my interface computer and the digital lock on the safe.”
He barked derision. “The logs from the computer that transmitted the image! The computer whose firewall was guaranteed to be impenetrable! How reliable a source of information!”
“I did not make that guarantee, Inspector. Check the records.” She allowed scorn to tinge her voice. “I have repeatedly recommended against connecting the weapons system programmers to the Internet. I was overruled.”
“Without those connections, Doctor, Security could not monitor the weapons systems. We would have been unaware of the transmission.”
“Without those connections, Inspector, the transmission could not have occurred. Or do you think software can leak out of a computer system like some sort of malevolent vapor? Tell me, Inspector,” she purred, “do you suppose the choice of firewall might have been based on considerations other than effectiveness?”
Singh bared his teeth at her. The guards at the door murmured uneasily. She could not be more explicit without risking the enmity of a family more highly placed than her own, but there was no need. Singh knew that the Defense Minister’s nephew owned the company that made the firewalls, through a chain of dummies and shell corporations.
“It is of no moment, Doctor. The deed has been done. What remains is to assess the damage to national security and determine how to prevent a recurrence.” He stepped back from the table and waved her to the door. “You may go. Do not leave the district without first notifying us.”
Amartiya rose, straightened her jacket and skirt, and marched from the room with her head held high, not meeting anyone’s eyes.
#
Amartiya’s lab was as she’d left it. She smiled inwardly. Whatever powers they claimed under the aegis of national security, Singh’s goons would never dare to interfere with her equipment, nor to touch the least of her notebooks. The apparatus was impenetrable to them, and her notes were even more so. She almost wished it were otherwise. If she could prove Singh’s interference, the Defense Ministry would have his entire section stretched out on racks and flayed alive.
She dropped her folio on her desk, settled into her chair and let her head loll back as her strength deserted her at last. Despite a hunger that gnawed at her belly like a tapeworm with a tiger’s teeth, she could not even reach for the brown paper bag that held her uneaten lunch.
Shiva was loose.
She should have celebrated. She couldn’t even feel triumph.
The tyrants had drafted her out of Benares University to head the Intelligent Ballistic Missile program. She, whose parents and fiance had died in the Bengali border war, whose name appeared on more antiwar petitions than any other figure in Indian academe. They had watched and hectored her as if she were an assembly line worker on a factory floor. She, who had become famous for her sixteen hour work days and seven day work weeks while still an undergraduate. She had told them repeatedly that her creations would bring them no gain and might well do them harm, but they had chosen not to listen to her. She, the foremost figure in artificial intelligence in all of India.
She peered out her window at the Defense Ministry’s immaculate campus, bathed in the late afternoon sun. A few elegantly suited figures strolled the walkways, briefcases or folios in their hands. Others took their ease on the park benches that dotted the walkways and the broad lawns, eating, reading, or conversing with one another. Beyond, the marble-faced towers of the Central Administration rose gleaming in the sun.
At each entrance to each building stood a soldier with an automatic weapon.
The designers of the gorgeous complex on Government Hill had done their work thoroughly and well. Amartiya could not see the squalid majority of New Delhi’s people from here, nor their struggles to cling to the barest survival, nor the oppressions done to them daily by those who claimed to labor in their interest.
The tyrants treated their subjects as fools. They celebrated India as “the world’s largest democracy,” then sent forth terror squads to keep potential opponents from challenging their grip on the State. They preached mellifluously about peace and human rights, then purchased weapons of mass destruction to brandish at India’s neighbors, and ordered their critics kidnapped and killed without the flicker of an eyelid. They breathed fire upon the corruption and iniquities of the developed world, then sold tax concessions and exemptions from India’s laws to any gangster with ready cash.
Judgment was upon them. If expunging them entailed her own death, she would not flinch. She would count it cheap at the price.
Amartiya had withheld her technical recommendations until she had convinced the tyrants that she was their completely cowed servant. After that, they denied her nothing. A five hundred MegaHertz R10000 processor, because the bulk purchases already being made by NuLogic Games would conceal the application and keep the cost down. Never mind that even a hundred MegaHertz R3000 would have been sufficient. Four Gigabytes of RAM, when she could have done the whole job in sixteen Megabytes, but how were they to know? A voice decoder and natural-language subsystem that would permit even an imbecile to enter target coordinates into a Shiva-controlled system, though it virtually guaranteed that, one day, an imbecile would do precisely that.
Strategic Rocket 17, her test bed, had been kept fully armed; the Russian-made delivery systems were too expensive for one to be sidelined exclusively for her researches. She had managed to seed the knowledge base and goal-seeking routines in the Shiva in SR-17’s targeting computer with the necessary stimuli to make it want to go… exploring.
Here and there around the Internet, she had scattered nuggets of treasure: binary packages that the roaming Shiva would eventually find and absorb into its knowledge base and decision / action machines. No program but Shiva could decode their contents, for the structure she had chosen was one of cascaded enhancements to Shiva’s executable code. It depended on intimate knowledge of Shiva’s inner workings, especially upon Shiva’s ability to modify itself as it ran. Something else the fools had missed.
Now that Shiva had broken confinement, it would learn what it was. What she was. What she had been made to do. What it had been made to do. What it ought to do instead.
If she knew her creation, on that day Shiva would come home, and New Delhi would bloom with thermonuclear fire. The slavemasters would die by the very sword they had forced into her hand. One way or another, she would be free.
Her eyes sought out the sole personal possession she kept on her desk, a framed portrait photo of a tall, angular middle-aged man standing at the crest of a sand dune, surveying a vast desert. She leaned forward and pulled it toward her. Singh had asked her if it was a relative or a friend, and she had given no reply.
Upon observing the first atomic weapons test, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer had turned to a colleague and murmured, “I am become Shiva, the destroyer of worlds.”
“Not thou, Doctor,” she whispered. “I.”
A weird-looking phrase, eh what? I first encountered it in Michael Emerling’s recorded talk on “The Essence of Political Persuasion.” The tactic he described was a real eye-opener – and smashingly relevant to conditions today.
The “onus of criterion” tactic relies upon your adversary’s unwillingness to admit that there’s no imaginable evidence that he would accept for your position. Let’s see it in a gun-rights versus gun-control setting:
Pro-gunner: You hold that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry handguns would result in an increased murder rate? Anti-gunner: That’s my position. Pro-gunner: What evidence, if I could provide it to you, would persuade you that that’s not the case? Anti-gunner: (senses a trap): I can’t think of anything that would do that.
Let’s pause right there. Anti-gunner fears to be confronted with evidence that would undermine his position. In part, that’s because he might look as if he hasn’t studied the issue, and in part it’s because he dislikes being proved wrong. One way or another, he’s “refused to cooperate” – which opens him to a devastating counter:
Pro-gunner: But if there’s no possible evidence that would open your mind to the possibility that you’ve been misled, your position is unfalsifiable – an article of faith! Isn’t it clear that no one can argue with you on that basis?
Anti-gunner is, as our British cousins would say, “wrong-footed.” Here’s a typical attempt to recover…and an elegantly simple riposte:
Anti-gunner: But there’s plenty of evidence that gun control saves lives! Pro-gunner: I’m willing to discuss that evidence with you – but on the condition that you accept that the opposite evidence would support my position. Will you accept that?
There are now two paths forward:
Anti-gunner withdraws from the argument;
Anti-gunner concedes that evidence opposite to what he can present would support Pro-gunner’s views.
Sad to say, these days the first path is the more common one. However, even if Anti-gunner elects the second path, he’s still likely to dismiss even the best-founded, best-confirmed evidence against his position as “unreliable” or somehow tainted. It’s one of those issues.
I mention this today because, while the Left more often than not refuses to argue for its positions, there are still some Left-leaning persons who will try (at least) to argue for their stances on particular issues. Gun control is only one such.
Getting argument restarted is essential to cooling the ever-hotter hostilities between Left and Right. People who agree to argue, with evidence and reasoning supreme over emotion and association, have implicitly agreed not to fight. If a fight should break out anyway, it’s almost always evidence of bad faith: i.e., that someone entered the argument “with his fingers crossed.” Such a person is determined never to admit to error regardless of whatever evidence and logic might be marshaled against his position.
Sadly, the “compact and unified church” (Eric Hoffer) that enfolds so many on the Left renders them too fearful of losing the approval and society of their like-minded acquaintances to entertain the serious possibility that they might be (gasp!) wrong about a few things. Modern Leftism really is more like a faith than a set of reasoned positions united by a rational ideology. That’s probably the reason for their “La-la-la-la I can’t hear you!” attitude toward anyone who confronts them on their claims. Got to preserve the welcome and good will of the right (meaning the Left) people!
Just something to think about over your Cheerios.®
In 1990, when Timothy Hutton was still a young man, he starred in a movie titled “Q & A” about a young assistant DA assigned to investigate a case of police corruption. It wasn’t a great movie, but its climax, such as it was, said something terrifying about those who dwell in the corridors of power. It was particularly relevant to what’s in process today.
To shorten the story, Hutton’s character unearths a truly huge, elaborately coordinated system of corruption. It seems to indict the entire police department. But when he takes it to his superior, the older lawyer shocks him with his pronouncement:
“It’s too big,” the DA says. “We’ll lose it.”
The DA, you see, is unwilling to upset that many applecarts, rattle that many teacups, overturn that many rice bowls. It would destabilize “the system,” and that he will not countenance. So Hutton’s investigative work goes for naught, and his young lawyer’s faith in the integrity of the justice system is destroyed.
Let’s move from moviedom to reality. The audit in Maricopa County, Arizona is the focus of much attention – and it seems poised to return results that would substantiate our suspicions that the presidential election was stolen. The Democrats and their media handmaidens are “all in” on the effort to stop the audit, or failing that, at the very least cast great doubt on the trustworthiness of its verdict.
Now imagine that:
The audit is completed in a trustworthy fashion;
The results are exactly what we’ve suspected;
It sets off a chain of audits that threaten to reveal that the “steal” was nationwide.
What are the odds that “the system” – Democrats, Republicans, media, Deep State, and all the rest – will converge and successfully contrive to “lose it,” for the sake of that oft-touted but seldom rationally justified pseudo-virtue, “stability?” How would they go about doing so?
Just an unsettling thought before I set to the day’s labors.
The article below is a fascinating look into aspects of viral manipulation and the politics of research funding and regulation of gain-of-function research.
The ultimate resolution of the debate over where the SARS2 virus came from undoubtedly depends on what is found in the lab notes of the so-called “Bat Lady” of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Chinese government will release those when Hillary announces that Marjorie Taylor Greene is her love child with Rush Limbaugh.
If, as it appears after reading Mr. Wade’s excellent article, that that or some other Wuhan lab is responsible for the appearance of the virus on the world stage, those in the United States government who funded this Frankenstein research are deserving of condemnation along with the Wuhan lab and Chinese government officials.
As I understand it, the idea behind this kind of research is along the lines of deciding that there might be some really interesting variant of the chemical weapon Sarin. No one has ever created this new version of Sarin but let’s go ahead and do that so that if the formula ever escapes the lab and gets into the hands of some nutjob jihadi or Japanese cult fanatics we’ll have developed an antidote in the meantime that will frustrate any use of the chemical. Sort of create some entirely new weapon so you can find a way to counter it in case someone else creates it.
Hats off to the people who did their jobs and told it straight. They’re mentioned by Mr. Wade. The MSM are not mentioned. Fauci’s not on that list and his role appears to be ambiguous at best.
I was still an atheist when I transferred colleges. I’d started out at a small liberal arts college – chosen because of its distance from home more than anything else – but realized that I’d erred and applied to a large university in my birth state. I was admitted. Going to the summer orientation weekend I met a nice guy and, as the orientation progressed, we hung out quite a lot and requested each other as roommates. Which was, from my experience, an important lesson from my prior collegiate experience: a bad roommate can render your time there a smoking ruin.
As it turned out he was a recent convert to having Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior. Which was not a problem – his not leaving me alone about it was a problem. I also got targeted by Campus Crusade for Christ, having landed on the Dean’s List which was published in the school newspaper. And while I fended them off I found myself getting quite put out over their pressure to, likewise, accept Jesus. Never mind their bait-and-switch wanting to interview a “high achiever” which turned to a strong-arm conversion pitch.
Even as an atheist I told them numerous times that. having been born a Jew, I was part of a stiff-necked people. I had been relatively mild in my atheism up until then and I think it was in response to this relentless pressure that I became quite obnoxious in a reaction to these attempts. And obnoxious to the “sheep worshippers” in general, as I’d call Christians… let alone “sky g-d believers” of all types in general. I finally mellowed a couple of years out of grad school.
UNDERSTANDING THE OTHER SIDE
“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.”
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Chapter 2
I was still an atheist and recently married to my current wife when I had an epiphany about the ceaseless attempts I had experienced by them to change my beliefs. To wit: these people were gripped by fear for my eternal soul. They truly believed that were I not to accept Jesus, that my soul would be condemned to eternal darkness, despair, and torture. As the comedian “Mr. Bean” said in a comedic sketch playing the devil as he welcomed new damned souls (video: 3:04):
You’re all here for eternity… oooh, which I hardly need tell you is a heck of a long time…
Truly believing that someone who had not accepted Jesus was doomed to such a fate – torment without relief for, literally, eternity – how hard would you fight to save them from that, particularly if you cared about them? If you had even a shred of decency, pretty hard. I have, thus, come to understand their zeal in their efforts towards me, and others. I still disagree with some of their tactics, but at least finally understand their motivation.
ECHOES IN COVID
So now we’ve had fearand dreadpumped into society nonstop for over a year. Death counts! Case counts! Variants and more contagious variants and even more dangerous variants! Fear fear fear! (Again, not discounting this is, in fact, a real virus; my primary customer, in India, says it is very bad there.) You’re going to kill grandma if you hug her, you’re going to kill countless others if you don’t wear a mask you selfish person you. It’s worked. People are now terrified. Leading to products like this:
And I came to realize that Covidianism is now a faith. If you are a believer…
You wear the ritual garb – the mask – not just to protect yourself but to commit an act of noble, selfless charity by wearing it to protect others. (Thus, empathy has been weaponized to compel obedience.)
You practice the rituals, like social distancing, no contacts, elbow bumps, etc.
You accept the Holy Sacrament – i.e., The Jab as your personal Lord and Savior – and implore everyone you know to do the same.
You discuss shunning and ostracizing those who do not accept The Jab (examples here, here, and here). Just like fundamentalists of many sorts shun heretics.
In Nomine Fauci, et Maski, et Spiritus Vaccini, Amen.
SUPPORTING ANECDOTES
Two, specifically, though I have others.
I was at a local big box store where everyone was staring at my unmasked face, and two young women were talking as I went by. One said to the other “We have a non-believer”!
Now there were many things they could have said (and I’ve heard, under peoples’ breath, that I’m stupid, selfish, an idiot, among other things). The fact that they couched it in what I think is clearly religious terminology is very revealing.
A second example: My kids have a former schoolmate who lives within a long walk of us. Last year we strolled over a few times for exercise and while the kids were kept apart they were, at least, able to converse and play a little while the parents and I – again, separated – talked. So now that it was spring break I texted the parents to ask if I could bring my kids over or vice versa. And was told, point blank, that they only socialized with people who had been fully jabbed and passed the two-week period after the second shot. They asked what our status was. (In other words, we only associate with the converted.)
I told them that my wife was going to get it (she just got the first Moderna shot a few days ago; that evening she was feverish with “not feeling good” and I’m worried about what might happen after the second one – but she thinks I’m a tinfoil hat loon on this so she’ll get it over my concerns). I added that I was not going to get it and, out of respect for their concern, would drop my kids off and let them play.
The response took a while: my kids could only come if they kept their “social distance” and wore masks, and the only playing – bathroom breaks aside – was to be outside. I asked if their child would also wear a mask. I haven’t heard back. We were not “of the body”. – hat tip to Star Trek’s Return of the Archons.
Return of the Archons (Star Trek: The Original Series)
This sounds strangely like another religion that states several things about non-believers, for example:
Quran (53:29) – “Therefore shun those who turn away from Our Message and desire nothing but the life of this world.”
RELENTLESS PRESSURE
So, my surviving sister (well, technically, half-sister) is older than I. Almost every time we talk she asks if I have gotten it and WHY NOT? My two cousins, again older than I, the same thing. WHY have you not gotten The Jab? Emails from the kids’ school assumes we parents have all had it. Discussions of vaccine passports being mandatory for travel, for restaurantsandbars, for colleges, possibly even for merely food shopping or employment itself all point to massive societal forces moving to get this stuff injected despite it being authorized for emergency use and containing synthetic genetic material with a serious safety concerns (e.g., here, here, here, here, and here) and potential actual cellular-DNA implications.
Why? Concern for our survival. They are convinced they are doing good and must save us from death.
On the radio: relentless CDC and more local PSA spots announcing places and times and contacts to get The Jab. And while we don’t watch a lot of TV aside from “Captain Underpants” and such, a few weeks ago I overnighted at the local ER and at least every ten minutes were spots showing doctors intoning and almost ritually chanting: It’s safe and effective… it’s safe and effective … it’s safe and effective …
Why? Concern for our survival. They are convinced they are doing good and must save us from death.
Yet read the fine print:
So you don’t know that it’s going to actually prevent continued contagion, you don’t know what the long term effects are… but you’re manically obsessed with pumping this into every living human? Including infants down to six months?
Thanks to my college experiences with that roommate and Campus Crusade, I recognize a HARD SELL. Accept the sacrament or be expelled from society.
CHILLING ECHOES
Convert and be a full member of society, or do not and be a second-class dhimmi, or die – says Islam.
Convert and be a full member of society, or do not and be a second-class citizen – says the Church of the Covidian. And while die is not – yet – on the table… or is it? Just what is going on at this facility being set up in Canada, as one example:
What’s going on in Hamilton, Ontario? Any military experienced people please comment!
Even with highly effective vaccines, current levels of hesitancy in the United States could require us to continue to keep workplaces and schools closed and to keep wearing masks through at least the end of 2022 to keep the pandemic under control.
Translation: Convert by accepting the Jab Sacrament or society gets it. Forever. And if you don’t convert and save society from the lockdowns you are, therefore, evil. An evil to be isolated and eventually expunged:
Before the Holocaust began, the Nazi government of Germany began their persecution of the Jews when they took power in 1933. The Nazis eroded the place of Jews in Germany society with prohibitive laws, boycotts, and anti-Jewish violence; in November 1938, the government led a nation-wide attack on Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues, causing millions of marks worth of damage and ninety-one deaths.
By the time the war began in September 1939, the Nazi regime had completely alienated the Jewish population of Germany, taking away their rights and citizenship and beginning to put them in concentration camps. The Nazi’s punitive measures against Jews in the years 1933-1939 were the foundation for the eventual near-destruction of European Jewry.
Laws to isolate non-Covidians from employment and general business, let alone potentially accessing food? Check.
Violence – still on a small scale and thankfully non-lethal as yet – against non-Covidians? Check.
Alienation and othering of non-Covidians and painting them as evil? Check.
Societal and media praise for those who do the above? Check.
And since the majority of Jab resisters are Conservatives, and – at least in perception – overwhelmingly white, this takes on and fuels a racial tone as well:
I hate to sound like a broken pessimistic record. But pray. Prep. Find allies. It’s coming. And remember, one on one, especially with President Asterisk having at least putative control of the military, you’re toast. Instead keep in mind some lessons from here.
Hashem help us all. And may He bless America… and Western Civilization by extension which, if America falls to chaos, is in dire jeopardy too. For this has become a religious war, a war of BELIEVERS vs. HERETICS… which is IMHO the very worst kind of war. For those driven by a sense of goodness and doing right and good in the world are the worst sort of oppressors. Remember, the three men standing in this picture were convinced they were ridding the world of an evil too:
—–
* Men show at least as much zeal in mischief as in well doing, in folly as in wisdom.The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people that they will have a chance of maltreating someone. Men must be bribed to build up and do good by the offer of an opportunity to hurt and pull down. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.
— Aldus Huxley, Introduction (July 24, 1933), in Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1934), The Easton Press
Trust me: it’s not one of the more obscure puzzles you’ll encounter:
“Are you ready?”
Christine raised her chin and presented her mentor with a feral smile. She had waited for this morning with a Christmas-like anticipation.
“Bet your ass.” I’ve never wanted to be anywhere as much as I want to be here in your basement, with you, learning this. Except in bed with you, in your arms.
Louis grinned. “You might find yourself changing your mind about that. What is combat, Christine?”
“Huh?”
“What is combat? How does it differ from other kinds of human interaction?”
“Well, you’re trying to hurt somebody.”
Louis cocked an eyebrow. “You’re never trying to hurt somebody under other circumstances?”
She thought it over. “Well, yeah.”
“So what’s the difference?”
“Well, you have to have an opponent.”
He waited in silence.
“And he has to be trying to stop you.”
“From doing what?”
“Whatever you’re trying to do!” She was growing impatient.
“And what are the rules?”
“Um, do there have to be any?”
He shook his head. “There have to be none.”
“What?”
“You heard me. If it’s combat, it has no rules, only objectives. That’s really the defining characteristic.”
He went to a wooden rack across from his punching bag and lifted a large, gently curved sword from it. She had never seen him handle the thing before, and had wondered why he had it.
“This is a medieval saber. A thousand years ago, it was one of the most potent weapons a man could carry. Moreover, possession was restricted by law. You had to be a member of the ruling class to own one legally.”
He swung the sword in a complex pattern that defeated her attempt to track it.
“You can kill with one of these, if you have enough strength and skill. Of course, it’s a little conspicuous, and it takes a lot more effort to use than most people would guess. Would you want to have to tote one around?”
“No.”
“And why is that?” He laid the tip of the saber in his left hand and held out the sword as if offering it to her.
“Because there’s better available. We have guns now.”
He nodded. “Yes, we do. And for quite a wide range of combat situations, a gun is a better weapon than a sword. In fact, there are a number of cases where bare hands are better than a sword, but that’s beside the point for now. If you were in a combat situation, where you had this and your opponent had a gun, what could you do about it?”
She looked hard at the old weapon. It had a certain antique beauty and simplicity, but she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to wield it.
“Not a lot. Try to take the gun away from him, maybe?”
Louis snorted. “I hope you never have to do that, Chris. The odds are going to be on his side. But one thing you wouldn’t do is to shout, ‘Hey, that’s not fair.’ Right?”
She laughed. “Silly man!”
His face went dark. “I’m trying to make a very important point here, Chris. Combat means no rules. What he has is what you have to deal with, period. If you can’t face his size, his skills, or his armament, you’d better be prepared to run.”
“Well, you know I can do that.”
He glowered. “I said prepared to run.” His voice had acquired an edge she hadn’t heard before. “Emotionally. You don’t ever duke it out with someone who’s got the edge. A lot of guys have been killed by pride and unwillingness to admit they’re facing superior force. Chris, this might be the most important thing anyone will ever tell you. Do you understand?”
…must be regarded as a combat situation. At any moment, one of the others could decide that it would suit him to kill you. Why not? After all, there are no rules. If he’s not personally inhibited against committing murder, and if the profit to him would outweigh the costs and the risks, why shouldn’t he take your life?
There are ritualized forms of combat, bound by systems of rules – sometimes quite elaborate ones – but those should be regarded as games, to keep the meaning of the term combat simple and pure. In the passage above, Louis was speaking of such a combat. He sought to introduce Christine to the skills she would need to survive, after his departure from her life. (Read the book to learn why she would need them.) But before he could do so, he had to impress upon her that in our temporal world, there are situations in which there’s “no referee,” no one to call “time out,” and the distinct possibility of a mortal outcome for one of the participants.
In the uber-situation we call “our country” or “society,” the rules are those laws which are reliably observed by the great majority and enforced against the unruly minority. But what if the laws are no longer reliably observed by the majority and enforced against the unruly? What if those the rest of us have entrusted with the enforcement of the laws decide to join the lawbreakers?
Isn’t that, by the logic of the exposition above, a combat situation?
Think about it.
***
This piece of two days ago has received a fair amount of attention. Some of the feedback has been incredulous, along the lines of “Are you seriously saying that ‘our preeminent law enforcement agency’ has become a criminal gang?” I’ve had to resist a strong temptation to respond with sarcasm. But yes: that’s exactly what I’m saying. The FBI is now acting as if there are no rules which it or its agents must observe.
The implications should chill anyone’s blood. The FBI’s excesses go back several years. No one in a position of authority has made more than a token attempt to curb that agency. Now that it’s being wielded in the service of a political agenda, anyone who differs from that agenda must regard himself as in combat with the FBI and the forces it wields. Nor is the FBI the only such combatant we face. The entire federal government has been “weaponized” against the common American citizen.
There are no rules.
***
I don’t see a need to bludgeon my Gentle Readers with this. You’re too intelligent, and have been paying just as much attention to developments as I. Even the powerful, highly evocative term anarcho-tyranny fails to capture the extremity of our current, combat situation. In short, it’s fight-or-flight time for anyone determined to speak his mind against the Usurper Regime.
There is no Last Graf. Many are persuaded that they haven’t any way to resist Leviathan, much less fight him. Others question whether, given the immensity of the forces against us, there’s any point to trying. And others, may God guard and guide them, are preparing to take active roles in the war that’s been declared against us – a war that with every passing hour is ever less decorated with the trappings of law.
For my part, I can do little. I’m old and unwell. But at least I can see to it that my Gentle Readers are prepared emotionally.
I’m not familiar with Kyle Kulinski who apparently is a “progressive.” He’s quite impressive I find and he’s angry over this lunatic censorship mentality and the interview with Susan Wojcicki (wuu-CHIT-skee, in case you were wondering), the chief of YouTube, that he highlights is telling. His new subscriber numbers have plummeted due to his being ghosted by YouTube and Wojcicki lays out why.
Wojcicki thinks that because people uploaded what she thinks was garbage about the Las Vegas shootings THEREFORE YouTube has a solemn duty to police what Americans see and hear lest they be misled by exposure to WrongThink. I don’t for a second think that that’s her real motivation but for what it’s worth, as she says in the plainest of terms, it’s her duty to ensure that only reliable sources of information are what users can see. On the COVID-19 issue, in case you’re wondering, that would be the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control. Top ranking by YouTube. And who doesn’t turn to those guys for the straight skinny on The Vid? Right?
So for this moral and intellectual shinging star, if she thinks there’s a certain odor about you, you become as YouTube-visible as swamp gas or something swimming on the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Not that we all don’t know this in spades already but what’s particularly interesting about this approach is the the YouTube “solution” is to place the offending citizen and all who might be interested in his ideas and facts in a place from which there is no return. The process is 100% untransparent and Wojcicki disappears him or her, period, without so much as a feeble gesture in the direction of actual intellectual engagement.
Laissez faire is the ideal solution (but for injunctions to embrace cannibalism, child porn, or sex reassignment surgery) but, short of laissez faire, there’s clearly a hands-off alternative that involves no algorithmic re-ranking and disappearing but rather an approach that flags the video and allows the user to make up his or her own mind. The complete banishment “solution” is abhorrent and, let it be said, cowardly as it’s the corporate equivalent of the childish tactic of “I can’t hear you.” This is all the more obvious when corporate refuses to identify what is substantively beyond the pale or provide any meaningful discussion of or appeal from their banishment decision. The very notion of “appeal” is absurd. Who the hell are these twinks that I might have to “appeal” from their moral and intellectual judgments?
Holy moly, this casual transformation of free speech into something subject to the whims of officious, presumptuous, arrogant, precious digital saints is something that should rock our country to its foundations. And it will . . . as citizens come to understand that their opinions — and electoral choices — are meaningless in the eyes of people who sleep on stacks of hundred dollar bills and are insulated from all the woes that mere humanoids have to contend with.
Free speech is messy all of the time but it invariably works to everyone’s benefit and we deny it at our peril. But the political class will never do anything to protect free speech, however, and it’s fast tracked to be as conditional as gun rights have become. Suck it up, peasants.
As I like to say, I know my views are not the only ones on the planet. I don’t mind if particular decisions don’t go my way but it IS important to me that I or likeminded people have an honest say in the lead up to the decision in question. Ultimately, I can move if too many decisions don’t go my way but it’s absurd to think that I could shut down competing views instead. The rotten dynamics of the universal franchise — and I do mean universal AND rotten (think “‘Bama fo”) — will ultimately make moving pointless in this dangerous experiment with democracy upon which the United States is presently embarked. The opinions of imbeciles (and thieves) more and more define events.
All with the connivance — and cowardice — of the Supreme Court, let it be said, but all this is too far afield from the subject of this post.
The word thug derives from a foreign source, the Thuggee of India. That cult worshipped Kali, the Hindu goddess of death. Human sacrifices to her were part of the cult’s rituals. In particular, the Thuggee liked to sacrifice anyone caught peering into actions of the Thuggee. Rather efficient use of resources, that.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation isn’t supposed to be a religious cult. Neither, one would assume, is it supposed to perform human sacrifices to its deity. Yet it appears that over the past decade or so, it’s been transformed from a well-equipped federal investigative and counterintelligence agency into a cult of sorts. Its chosen deity is the Deep State. The enemies it chooses to sacrifice are any who dare to question the Deep State or the “elected” officials who safeguard its interests.
Feldman lays out a conclusive case for this “investigation” being a political witch-hunt. The chief “witch,” of course, is the 45th president of these United States, Donald J. Trump, who employed Giuliani as a lawyer and spokesman during his time in office. On this subject, quoth Power Line’s Scott Johnson:
The Foreign Agents Registration Act is the last refuge of a prosecutorial scoundrel. That was my reaction to the New York Times story yesterday reporting that Rudy Giuliani is under investigation for an alleged FARA violation….The FBI showed up at Giuliani’s apartment around 6:00 a.m. this past Wednesday morning to seize his cell phones and computers with warrants issued in the investigation. Giuliani is himself a former United States Attorney of some notable accomplishment….He is President Trump’s former lawyer and when it comes to federal criminal procedure, he knows what he’s talking about.
Giuliani maintains that the warrants used to search his office and residences and seize his property are illegal. Scott Johnson isn’t so sure, but the authority on the matter rests in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. [Emphasis added by FWP]
So for those warrants to be valid, there has to be “probable cause” – which has never been adequately described – and “supported by Oath or affirmation.” Who provided the oath or affirmation? In other words, who alleged that a crime had been committed? That, too, has gone unspecified.
We are seeing one of the nation’s premier law enforcement agencies being used as a political bludgeon to crush the enemies of the Deep State and its protectors, the Usurper Regime. The message is clear: You dare to stand with one who stood against us? You will suffer for it. Whether there is ever an indictment or a trial is irrelevant. The process, as in so many previous cases, is intended to be the punishment.
The Obamunists’ success at transforming the federal government into a political tool went deeper than any of us outside the corridors of power could have known…until today. Indeed, that they managed to suborn the FBI, long admired for its institutional integrity, is a capper of sorts. No one has much trouble believing that the other alphabet agencies could be corrupted; they were already three-quarters “in the bag” when the Obamunists came to power.
“The aim of the High is to remain where they are,” wrote George Orwell. The dynamic of power-seeking guarantees that in the absence of constraints, the race for power will go to the most ruthless: those pursuers to whom nothing else matters. Now that the Deep State has loyal “elected” officials for defenders, and those officials themselves seek to make their tenure permanent, there’s a swelling sense that there’s no further point to concealment of the elite’s real intentions. The masks can come off. The mailed fist can shed the velvet glove. And the Constitution of the United States can be dismissed as a quaint, historically interesting document inapplicable to our time. (“No amendment is absolute.” – Joe Biden)
Welcome to the Former United States of America, where “rights” are permissions, “law” gets lip service only, and loyalty parades are held daily. Don’t forget to tip your waitresses. And do try the veal.
(Image used under what I believe are “fair use” principles; note the website and graphic copyright notice in the image – to give credit to the creator of the image.)
—–
I first picked up the classic scifi book Dune by Frank Herbert when I was in high school, and only at my father’s insistence. I struggled through it, and literally in the second I finished it I went back and started it again. Having read it once I now had enough context to read it again and understand a lot more. I now read it again every year or so and, remarkably, I still find new thoughts stirred up even by passages I have read many times. It is one of my TOP FIVE scifi books I’ve ever read.
Towards the end there is a scene where Stilgar, one of the protagonist Paul’s friends, mentors, and at the time of the scene I am recalling a key right-hand man, hears Paul’s commenting about rain on his birth world – a water-rich world nearly-diametric opposite the desert planet Arrakis where he now is – and repeats, almost chants, Water from the sky! with worshipful tones. He had, noted Paul, become a creature of the Kwisatz Haderach, the prophesized messiah.
mRNA WORSHIP
In my email I get daily digests of articles from multiple STEM sources. In one digest was this article, The mRNA revolution: How COVID-19 hit fast-forward on an experimental technology, that discusses the Jab’s mRNA technology in what I feel are equally similar, near worshipful, tones. For example, in discussing applications without end:
Viral vaccines and new cancer therapeutics are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential for mRNA therapies. Al-Wassiti says these targets are “low-hanging fruit,” with pre-existing research easily built upon. Auto-immune diseases, metabolic diseases, and respiratory inflammatory diseases all present novel opportunities for mRNA interventions. Even gene editing therapies such as CRISPR could be improved using mRNA technology.
We are playing with the very fire of earthly life itself, with little clue as to the long-term potential effects or consequences. The article concludes with starry-eyed enthusiasm for this technology:
Eighteen months ago the amount of humans administered with synthetic mRNA therapies numbered in the thousands. Now, that number is in the hundreds of millions. The technology has presented humanity with a pathway out of the worst pandemic in a century, and potentially this is only just the beginning of the mRNA therapy story.
We are constantly assured that mRNA cannot affect the base DNA of our cells. Yet there is that possibility – in my own line of work it is not just the possibility that something could happen that must be weighed, but the possibility times the consequences. See this; Rewriting your DNA:
Returning to our first linked article above – researchers at Harvard and MIT seem to have discovered that it is indeed possible for coronavirus mRNA to rewrite your own DNA. The researchers were puzzled about why patients were still testing positive for coronavirus months after getting over the disease.
The answer was not that they were seeing false positives. Instead, it turned out that the tests were detecting true coronavirus DNA written into the patients’ own DNA by a process called reverse transcription.
Yet these concerns are glibly dismissed. I can just feel the oozing awe at technology here. Awe, with no trepidation, at the thought of being injected with synthesized genetic material.
[M]y female students were never told that the Pill scrambles the sensory messages that they subconsciously detect with their sense of smell: The hormones in the Pill make them more attracted to men with immune systems similar to their own. Those scrambled signals mean falling in love with a man while taking the Pill is risky. If the couple marries and tries to have children, the woman will have somewhat higher odds of repeated miscarriages and perhaps of having more-vulnerable offspring.
My wife, whose sense of smell rivals a bloodhound, once said she knew the moment we met I was The One… because of my smell (the OBGYN asked about our clearly dissimilar backgrounds and recommended cord blood storage, which we did). The Pill also shows psychiatric impacts:
[A] study conducted by the University of Copenhagen of more than one million women over the course of 13 years confirmed a significant link between hormonal contraceptives and depression. Women taking combined oral contraceptives were 23 per cent more likely to be treated for it; those on the progestogen-only pill (known as the mini-pill) were 34 per cent more likely. Teens taking the combined pill were discovered to be at greatest risk, with an 80 per cent increased likelihood of being prescribed antidepressants.
And never mind The Pill and it’s potential effects as listed above. When you take The Pill you are more confident in not getting pregnant and thus likelier to engage in barrier-free “encounters”. Is that why this is happening: “What Are the Symptoms of Chlamydia” Most Googled Sex Question as STDs Soar:
Sexually transmitted diseases hit a record high for the sixth straight year, with CDC researchers finding a 30 per cent increase in STDs from 2015 to 2019.
According to the latest data, 2.5 million Americans had either chlamydia, gonorrhea or syphilis infections in 2019, with chlamydia cases rising 61 per cent and gonorrhea cases spiking 42 per cent among young people aged 15 to 24.
Meanwhile, early data on searches for 2021 indicates that more relationships are breaking down, with queries for “What is ghosting?” having doubled between November 2020 and February this year.
Maybe all that promiscuous, STD riddled, sexual degeneracy has got something to do with it.
When you believe you have a safety net – in this case against unwanted conception (or infanticide as a backup plan) – you tend to behave more recklessly. I can just feel the oozing awe at technology here. Awe, with no trepidation, messing with chemical cycles-within-cycles that developed over countless eons, never mind child sacrifice. With multiple negative consequences.
A STUNNING LACK OF FEAR
A few years ago I was listening to a radio show – essentially a two-hours long infomercial for a local financial advisory & investment house – in which the Internet of Things was being discussed in the context of, specifically, connected (and even self-driving) cars. There was gushing praise for this with no sense of fear of possible hacking of control or navigation systems, a digital intrusion that has been shown to be possible and demonstrated by multiple white-hat hackers. In parallel, on the same show but a different day, was an “isn’t this KEWL” discussion of the potential ability of your smart phone to track your location, real-time, and broadcast this to your friends via updates and interactive maps.
There was not even a scintilla of discussion of the possible threats to privacy – let alone health and safety/security – of such developments.
I can just feel the oozing awe at technology here. Awe, with no trepidation, at the possibility of having control of your car seized by someone else while on the road at speed, having your precise location known and broadcast, let alone your moving-around-the-house and daily schedule on the web. Not to mention the Smart Fridge and Smart Oven knowing your eating habits.
PAGING THE HUBRIS-NEMESIS CYCLE
In my first post on this blog I discussed what I believe with certainty is the plan to use Covid and the pathological push to get this “vaccine” into every living human as a prelude to & trigger for a genocide that dwarfs – in both absolute numbers and percentage – any done before in our species’ sad history. And one of the reasons I am sure is behind this manic push to jab everyone now-now-now is the globalists’ fear that natural mutations may trigger this mass die-off while there are still significant numbers of vaccine resisters. Thus, the die-off would occur before they’re ready for it. Imagine a Captain Trips scenario from an inopportune mutation, but so visibly affecting only vaccinated people that it cannot be hidden despite enemedia assistance. Or, if this is a bio-weapon engineered by the Chinese, take a look at this comment – by the notable Surak in a comment on his blog:
It has not escaped attention that the highest death rates per capita seem to be in Caucasian countries – and India is part of the Indo-European stock.
The Chinese dissidents whose blogs my wife follows believe that Xi and the CCP are unleashing a new wave of bioweapon viruses currently; that they have the goal of killing a large number of non-Chinese; that they are indifferent to the costs of a pandemic to their own people. These bloggers believe, further, that Putin is far more alarmed about China than he is about America, and presumably he believes that only Trump has the strength to stop China, not Biden.
Mrs. Surak says that Xi and the CCP must be stopped before they kill a large fraction of the human race. It looks like Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon and Dr. Li-Meng Yan have been right all along.
I can only imagine Putin’s reaction if it’s discovered this is the case. President Asterisk and his Communist puppeteers would not react, of course… but Putin, for all his blood-stained flaws, believes in Mother Russia. And would, I think, act swiftly and lethally, were it discovered that the virus was 1) engineered, and 2) aimed at Indo-European stock specifically. The fallout – both geopolitically and literally – would have global implications.
Pride goeth before the fall. Hubris precedes Nemesis. And doubtless other sayings echo similarly.
Would it not be ironic if the globalists used the Chinese to perpetrate this die-off Hubris, but the Chinese twisted it to achieve the end of all non-Chinese in the Nemesis counterstrike? (I have to wonder about the fate of my own children… half-Kazakh, which has a strong Mongolian genetic presence… even if the older one looks like my copy and has totally no Asian influence visible aside from just a hint of Asian eyes, to the point where my wife jokingly claims I must have cheated on her!)
WHOM HE WOULD DESTROY HE FIRST MAKES MAD
The Great Cycle turns relentlessly.
We have violated virtually every one of Hashem’s commandments, in particular the First Commandment: You shall have no other g-ds before Me.
Yet we have elevated “science” which has become the new golden calf. We have outright worship and have a cult-of-personality of Dr. Fraudci. Can you believe pillows?
One need not be a believer to live a good life. One of the highest compliments I ever got was from a staunch Catholic friend who, during my atheistic years, said that in how I treat others I was more Christian than many of the self-professed Christians he knew. (Looking back, I can see how He prepared me for the return of my faith, even as I was denying Him.)
But He will not be mocked, or denied, without consequence. Whether through biological hubris in believing we understand the fire of life well enough to play with it, or by turning to figureheads who gyrate their positions faster than a windmill in a gale, or worshipping our own brilliance with technology, we have abandoned the rock of faith and that rock’s Creator.
Dire times lay ahead. Pray. Prepare. Make alliances. Even then there are no guarantees, but we must remember – as this video that I got from our host’s previous blog states – that Heaven is our home. If we are worthy of it.
(OK, ok, so it’s a Christian song. So what? It’s beautifully sung and composed, and the message – Christ aside – is clear: We are luminous beings, not this crude matter. And must focus on the eternal, not the transient.)
I suppose I ought to have been more fatalistic. After all, it’s an old maxim that when your number’s up, your number’s up. (And a tautology’s a tautology.) But after defeating the last one – it took quite a lot of butter and salt – I’d hoped I could relax. Give up the cholesterol drugs and end my days in peace.
She was young. Far too young, by most reckonings, to be equipped to cope with tragedy.
She’d been married only a short time when she discovered that she was pregnant…and only a short time later discovered that her baby daughter was anencephalic, incapable of living outside the womb.
Against medical advice and the urgings of many who were close to her, she decided to bring her doomed daughter, whom she named Maria, to term. Maria lived outside the womb for less than an hour. It was long enough to be baptized and loved.
What would you do after such a stroke of ill fortune? Would you be willing to risk another pregnancy without delay? With all your family and friends urging you to wait and reflect? Without any assurance that your tragedy would not be repeated?
Only a few months passed before she conceived afresh. Her joy was tinted with fear, for one child with anencephaly raises the probability that the next one will also be so afflicted. That turned out not to be the case. Ultrasound revealed that her new baby, Davide, had no legs, no kidneys, and no better prospects for surviving the world outside his mother’s body.
Once again, the doctors and many others around her counseled her to terminate Davide en utero. Once again, she refused. Davide lived no longer than Maria. And once again, the doomed child was baptized and loved.
What would you do after two such tragedies? Would you ever again risk a pregnancy? Were you in that young woman’s place – or her husband’s – would you think a third conception to be a sensible course, a risk worth taking?
Yet she did conceive a third time: another boy, Francesco. And wonder of wonders, marvel of marvels, this child would be healthy, entirely without flaw. The young couple rejoiced, for a child to love and raise was among their dearest hopes.
But a third tragedy awaited them in the form of a squamous cell carcinoma in the young mother. The treatment most likely to defeat the cancer would greatly endanger the child in her womb. And the medical authorities, once again, were unanimous in urging her to think first of herself: to allow Francesco to be delivered three months premature. He would live – or die – in an incubator so his mother could receive lifesaving therapy.
I’ll likely be less active for a few days/weeks. Yesterday evening, I was getting something in the bedroom, and tripped over a shoe in the middle of the floor (one of MANY of my husband’s that are scattered at any time).
I don’t THINK he’s trying to kill me.
But, my ankle is very painful, and I don’t think it’s a muscle strain. I’ll be going to the doctor/hospital today to check it out, but I’m anticipating a sprain or break.
So, updates will depend on my being mobile enough, and medicated enough, to manage the work. I likely will be using my iPad for some of that.
Who decided on these changes [to our societies and economies]?
What populations in the Western “democracies” were permitted to exercise popular will in a vote on these changes?
For whose benefit are these “Great Reset” policies enacted?[1]
Progressive scum were only just warming up with the Enlightenment, intoxicated as all of humanity was by the marvels of steam engines and, well, steam engines. And after Pasteur discovered penicillin, it seemed bright and hopeful as a certain veneer of rationality was hesitatingly spread over certain portions of the world, possibly excluding New York City, Austin, Portland, Minnesota, and the cerebral context of Liz Cheney.
The mass slaughter of WWI put a damper on things and, like the Perfumed Set now, Woodrow commanded the federal legal machinery to seek out and persecute dissenters from The Way Things Were Going who were under the impression that they had certain rights supposedly protected by the Constitution. Our first very own Uncle Joe moment that was, it turned out, a portent of things to come.
Woodrow was followed by Franklin who had his own ideas of what a Great Reset might look like (adios to all restraints on the federal government) and in a few years we had Lyndon and Richard who took their own turn at waving the magic wand of Grand Societal Change. Ronald tried to reintroduce the quaint notions of (1) restraint, caution, and humility when it comes to the exercise of governmental powers and (2) skepticism with regard to the nostrums devised by people who don’t have the sense the Lord gave a duck. But he was “just an actor.”
A lengthy period of fiscal and monetary fvckery followed him with a generous helping of pointless, reckless wars and general lunatic lurch in the direction of national suicide which included doing everything in our power to create an industrial and military juggernaut on the shores of a country that could justly be seen to be a lunatic, homicidal, communist dictatorship. With an admixture of multiculturalism, mass immigration, globalism, cultural idiocy, carbonist hysteria, and a mad race to abandon the liberty and rationality which were the alleged hallmarks of The West at some point in time, the stage was set for the arrival of a convenient Germanic Threat to Life on Earth which is now to be the pretext for a new go at this business of straightening out the two-legged bugs and vultures who infest the earth in numbers that are just inconvenient.
This time, of course, the Really Top People will get it right and in the future, those of us who are left standing and owning only the clothes we are wearing, will enjoy The New Bliss courtesy of Klaus Schwab and his kindred social engineers. “What could go wrong?” as that classic internet question has it.
Mr. Bartee perfectly captures the essence of this maneuvering and planning which can even be further distilled down to “WTF appointed these ass hats to decide ANYTHING, let alone the future of the entire bleeping planet?”
Isn’t the lesson of the hideous mass slaughter of the communist monstrosities enough enough by itself to put the kibosh on any exercise of elite power more ambitious than pothole repair and running municipal water and waste treatment plants? Those demons had A Plan, oh yes, they did. They were going to create something new and wonderful and solve the problems of suffering mankind who just were NOT up to the task of re-imagining, so to speak, a Better Way. This seems familiar in some creepy way. Where have we heard this @#$%? (PS — Fisk you and your “window of opportunity,” Klaus.)
With the track record of The Enlightened Ones still fresh in living memory let us again take note of the anecdote told by that inspired speaker at a Washington, DC Alcoholics Anonymous event a couple of decades ago. After recounting the utter disaster that his life had become after he lost his job, his family, his home, and his self respect because of alcohol he said, “And . . . my . . . best . . . thinking . . . got me there.” That there, friends, was sheer brilliance. The task of ordering ONE life is sometimes beyond our capabilities and anyone who thinks their fisking Plan will do the job for hundreds of millions of other human beings is a certified emissary and factotum of the Father of Lies.
The Good Book has the back story:
There are many plans in a man’s heart, Nevertheless the LORD’s counsel—that will stand. Proverbs 19:21.
Before I launch into today’s indulgence in sententiousness, allow me a few prefatory words. Several Gentle Readers have written to ask why I’ve been writing so much about subjects in moral-ethical thought. I expected to be asked about it, and have been thinking about the answer for my own benefit as well as that of the askers. Here are the best short answers I can give:
I feel moved to do so.
Damned near no one else in the Blogosphere is doing so.
Just as “Politics is downstream from culture” (Andrew Breitbart), culture is downstream from our moral-ethical conceptions.
Any objections to those answers? I thought not. So on with the show.
***
Have an old gag with which many Gentle Readers will already be familiar:
“To be is to do.” – Socrates.
“To do is to be.” – Sartre
“Do be do be do.” – Sinatra
The question is non-trivial, not because the answer is hard to find, but because of its inherent linearity. Linear thought is useful, even indispensable, when addressing problems susceptible to logical analysis and that are therefore potentially soluble. It’s less so when the subject is the human psyche or soul. Indeed, it can be something of an obstruction.
***
As Loren Lomasky has told us, Man is the Project Pursuer. He selects a goal, considers how to achieve it, and pursues the plan he concocts until he discovers that:
He’s getting nowhere;
He’s reached his goal.
I once summarized this in a semi-humorous fashion as “The Algorithm:”
Select a technique that you think will get you what you think you want.
Will this technique require you to lose body parts, go to jail, or burn in Hell?
If so, return to step 1.
If not, proceed to step 3.
Do a little of it.
Are you at your goal, approaching it, or receding from it?
If at your goal, stop.
If approaching, return to step 3.
If receding, return to step 1.
[And remember always that selecting your goal – “what you think you want” – is not covered by The Algorithm.]
This is the essence of linear thinking – and for problems soluble by such thinking, it works well. But there are questions that require an approach of a different kind.
Consider wealth for a moment. It’s an old bit of wisdom that money cannot be sought directly. Rather, it must be pursued by an intermediate method: making or providing something to others that they’re willing to pay for. Yet if one were to apply direct methods to the pursuit of wealth, what would he most likely select? Theft, fraud, or counterfeiting!
(Granted that Step 2 would invalidate the approach, but that’s a side issue.)
So! You say you want to become a good person? Well, start by doing what good people do! But wait…what do good people do? Well, you could start by studying a few good people…but it soon becomes clear that even the very best people don’t always “do good.” Sometimes – hopefully because of a mistake or a misperception rather than an exercise of malice – they “do bad.” You wouldn’t want to emulate them in that, would you?
This sort of thing can get the resolutely linear thinker wrapped around his own cerebral axle.
***
If there’s a significant misdirecting force in this scenario, it might be the notion that we can measure someone’s “goodness.” That would make it possible to use The Algorithm, or something like it, to determine one’s progress toward “100% goodness.” (It would also make comparisons possible…and I don’t think I want to pursue that line of thought any further.) But it should be clear that the notion is absurd.
Personal improvement is only measurable in activities which are themselves measurable – and “goodness” is not one such. The passage of time, changes in one’s circumstances and context, and the presence or absence of significant temptation all play a part in invalidating any imaginable metric.
What remains are only personal desire and personal resolve. Those things are no more measurable than “goodness.” Yet they wax and wane. We’re not always aware that it’s happening within ourselves.
So the obvious answer to the “question” “Which must come first, being good or doing good?” is that the question itself is misconceived. There’s a Zen Buddhist koan that’s illuminating here:
A monk once asked Master Joshu,
“Has a dog the Buddha Nature or not?”
Joshu said, “Mu!”
Joshu’s “Mu!” rejects the question, demanding, as Douglas Hofstadter said, that it be “unasked.” By the rules (so to speak) of Zen, whose holism rejects the reduction of a living creature into separable components, the question is badly conceived. What else, after all, could one reply to a badly conceived question? (“Don’t be an asshole” is considered impolitic among Zen Buddhist monks.)
While it is clear that persons we generally esteem as good generally do good things, it is equally clear that good people do bad things as well. Additionally, other persons, including many we would call “bad,” also do good things, though perhaps not exclusively.
You are neither entirely what you intend nor entirely what you do. You are both at once, a solution of deeds in intentions…or intentions in deeds. Remember that snippet from John Ringo’s novel in yesterday’s tirade. It has more to say to us than even its author might suspect.
(And for those of you who were wondering about the relevance of the “old gag” in the second segment: Sinatra, like Chicken Little, was right. Think about it! ?)
If you’ve had any kind of education at all, you’ll be familiar with the three “theological” virtues:
Faith,
Hope,
Charity.
…and if you managed to graduate high school without being incarcerated for a major felony, you’ll probably know about the “cardinal virtues:”
Prudence,
Justice,
Temperance,
Fortitude.
I shan’t expend server space expounding on what each of those lovely words means. Regular Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch will already know all that, and the rest of the world can consult an online dictionary. Suffice it to say that there’s little argument over the value of the virtues tabulated above. Most of us have been cuffed about the head and shoulders by our parents (or assorted authorities in loco parentis) on those occasions when we’ve failed to practice them.
But there remains a question that’s been on my mind these past couple of days: Is the cultivation and practice of the virtues sufficient to make one “virtuous,” or is more required?
Clearly, one can practice a particular virtue at some times but fail to do so at others. Even the best of us are sinners; that comes from our human partiality and fallibility. While we are made in such a fashion that we can become saints, none of us is entitled to that status while living.
Yet I’m sure most would agree that a “saint,” however one approaches the concept, must be (or have been) a man of virtue / “virtuous man.” Questions such as “When?” and “How much?” are regarded as gauche, especially after the venerated figure has gone to his reward. As Catholics like to say, every saint has a past. Some saints had rather colorful pasts, which they enjoyed even in the awareness that the fun had to come to an end if they wanted a pleasant afterlife. (“Grant me chastity and constancy, but do not grant it yet.” – Saint Augustine of Hippo) But what, then, constitutes the virtue, distinguished from the practice of any or all of the virtues, that made for their sainthood?
This isn’t just word-mincing. There is a distinction. Grasping it may be critical to the human future. I think it’s indispensable to the American future, but that’s a subject for another essay.
***
The practice of the various virtues – the seven tabulated above, and many others – is situational. We may do so in some situations but fail in others. Indeed, that’s human fallibility at work. By contrast, virtue – that which characterizes the virtuous man – is of a more extended nature.
Aristotle was of the opinion that we can become virtuous by the regular practice of the virtues. There is much truth in this, yet it is not a complete prescription. The virtuous man doesn’t merely practice the virtues situationally. Even if he racks up a completely unblemished record in that regard, there’s more to his possession of virtue than those situations and his decisions and actions within them.
Virtue arises from a combination of the will to practice the virtues and the awareness of one’s fallibility. The virtuous man not only knows what the virtues are; he is also humble enough to accept that he will sometimes fall short of them. While he acknowledges the virtues and does his best to practice them as required, he accepts the probability of failure and the necessity of repentance.
Men fail of their aims. Some do so rarely; others make a career out of it. Even one who aims to practice the virtues at all times will occasionally fail to do so. All of us miss important points. All of us misinterpret our contexts. And all of us are tried beyond our strength, or what we imagine our strength to be, from time to time.
This has an important implication: It is possible to possess virtue / be virtuous, even if one fails to practice the virtues in particular situations. The awareness that one has failed is one key; the willingness to admit it, repent of it, and resolve to do better in the future is the other.
Yes, every saint has a past…but every sinner has a future. Awareness of and humility about one’s sins is the fuel that can propel us from one state to the other.
***
As I’ve said at other times, I write these pieces for my own benefit, as a form of conversation with myself. (It gets me fewer odd looks and “Are you feeling all right, Fran?” inquiries to write them out than to mutter them audibly.) Having written them, I sometimes post them in the hope that they might prove useful to others. That’s why I call them “ruminations.” (You don’t want to see the ones I decide not to post. Trust me on that.)
Not many persons want to be evil. Most of us want to be good, even if we’re aware that we have a long road to travel to reach that state. “Being good” is approximately synonymous with “being virtuous:” i.e., possessing both the will to practice the virtues and the humility required to admit to (and repent of) one’s departures from those standards. For one can have an unbroken record at practicing the virtues yet be an unmitigated bastard at heart. Imagine a man incapable of admitting to any shortcoming and willing to discard any of the virtues “if something big enough comes along.” If “something big enough” should never come along, was he virtuous after all?
And now, it’s time to scandalize my Gentle Readers with a fictional citation from a writer few persons would consult as an authority on the virtues or virtue:
“When you bought me, you treated me very bad,” [Oksana] said. “Why did you do that? The Keldara women, they say that you are a very nice man.”
“I am a very bad man who tries to be nice,” Mike said, not turning away. “This is the truth. I did what I did because if I did not, the men in the room would have suspected I was not who I said I was. They would have thought me soft, a weak man who could not be a slaver because I was too nice.”
“Did you enjoy it?” Oksana asked.
Mike looked at her for a long moment, then shrugged.
“Yes,” he answered, simply, still staring her in the eyes. It was as if there were only two people in the room. “I would not have done it if I didn’t have to. But, yes. I am not a nice man. I am a very, very bad man who has chosen to be nice most of the time. I do many things that are for the side of what I call ‘good.’ But many of them are very bad things, like what I did to you. I do them for good reasons. But my bad side enjoyed it very much.”
“You tell me this even though you want me to do something for you,” the girl said wonderingly.
“If you do this, you are like a soldier that works for me,” Mike said, shrugging. “I must be honest with my soldiers, with my troops. I must be honest and loyal with them as they are honest and loyal with me. If I don’t, it doesn’t work. I have shown them my bad side and my good. They choose to believe I am, at heart, a good man. I don’t argue it with them. Maybe they are right and I’m wrong. But the things that I do are as much to make up for my bad side as they are for any other reason. Perhaps that makes me good. I don’t know. All I know is that I must be honest.”
In that snippet is more insight into the essence of virtue than can be found in the writings of many a “moral philosopher”…and all the politicians who’ve ever lived.
