Governor Klink lies about “censorship”.
Hey, he’s the head of the Democrat Governors Association. He’s got to serve as a model for the rest of them.
Now, I think I read “Charlotte’s Web” in fourth grade. So it’s been a bit.
And I’d forgotten this bit – which is something that makes me seriously wonder…
…if there’s a Democrat school district out there that’s banned it because of its violent overtones?
The SF City Council voted to clean up all the sh*t on the streets.
Hahahahaha. Just kidding. The Cantina Band voted to throw their immense weight and foreign policy power behind a cease fire in Gaza:
No word if a pre-emptive stolen land declaration on behalf of Hamas was included in the decree.
Question: what is it about white “progressives” bobbing and lurching around like they’re at a “Phish” concert that makes me hope a pack of wild boars happens into the room?
It’s been a rough 3-7 years to be a conservative, a Republican, an originalist.
An American who believes in what America was intended to be, really.
But let’s enjoy some good news. This past two weeks have been a speedbump – it’s way to early to say “Battle of Waterloo” – for “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI), the Neo-Marxist corporate obedience training and consultant-enrichment racket masquerading as a business practice.
Charles C.W. Cooke on why Claudine Gay’s pre-emptive ouster at Harvard matters:
That Harvard lost this one ought to serve as a warning to those who have convinced themselves that the purpose of the American citizenry is to furnish a few members of a distant caste with ever-increasing tithes and never to ask how they are being spent. Commenting on the affair, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, “a professor of history, race and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School,” told the New York Times that the architects of Claudine Gay’s ouster “will only be emboldened by Gay’s resignation.” If, by this, Muhammad means that they will no longer be willing to tolerate brazen double standards, open racial discrimination, and the subjugation of the entire human experience to a vicious scheme of antediluvian identity considerations, then he is absolutely correct. They will be emboldened, and they deserve to be. Claudine Gay did what she was accused of having done, and nobody has denied it. The critics were the good guys. Let’s hope they come back for more.
That was a nice appetizer, to be honest.
I do want more.
One of the moments that made me realize my old former friend known to all of you as “Dog Gone” had slipped the surly bonds of reason was their claim that gender reassignment surgery altered the patient’s biological makeup at the DNA level – that it changed gender-related chromosomes [1]
I told myself “nobody can possibly be this deluded”…
…even while knowing deep in my soul that there’s always someone more delusional out there.
And sure enough:
Part of me wants to say “someday we’ll look back on this whole period of Western history and shudder”. But I realize that’s optimistic.
[1] Side issue – if they did have surgery or medication that altered the human body’s entire chromosomal makeup, it occurs to me that curing cancer would be a pretty trivial matter, wouldn’t it?.
…who the real victim in the Claudine Gay flap at Harvard (according to the university’s governing “Corportation”) actually is.
It’s Claudine Gay:
“And she’d have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for those darn meddling pouncing conservativesI”!
And while Gay is gone, let’s remember that it’s not for the reason she should have been tossed:
And that’s the real atrocity, here.
UPDATE: The “community” is speaking:
My question: Is the AP proverbially “saying the quiet part out loud” – is plagiarism the new norm among “elite academics”?
In a conversation with a couple of other conservative alternative media pluggers a few months ago, the question of where the trans argument goes from here popped up.
The consensus was that eventually, given the exceedingly experimental nature of the “treatments” involved, is that eventually the courts are going to settle this – making a lot of plaintiffs attorneys exceedingly wealthy.
Exhibit for the plaintiff provided – the initial tweet is included with the entire thread unrolled in text below (numerous attached references available in the Tweet thread):
To understand what PBs [puberty blockers] do to cognitive development and IQ, you first need to understand what IQ is, how it is constructed and how it’s measured. The following explanation is of one model of IQ. There are others.
Definition: IQ is a property of the mind encompassing many related intellectual abilities, eg the capacities to reason; to plan, to solve problems; to think abstractly; to comprehend ideas; to use language; and to learn.
Definition: When aggregated, these factors determine the individual’s ability to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with their environment. This is their IQ, or their level of cognitive functioning. The average IQ falls between 85 and 115.
Types of IQ: Intelligence can be split into two subtypes: Crystalline (Gc) and Fluid (Gf). Gc (Crystalline IQ) is LEARNED or ACQUIRED knowledge: eg ‘When was the Magna Carta signed’?; ‘What is the name of the Earth’s satellite’? It is heavily dependent on education.
Gc remains stable and/or increases over time as knowledge is gained. Gf (Fluid IQ) is related to novel problem solving, eg, how to put up an Ikea wardrobe, or how to plan a journey from say Cornwall to Aberdeen. Gf increases as the brain matures from childhood to adulthood.
Because Gf measures NOVEL problem-solving it is largely independent of educational attainment.
IQ is usually measured using the 3 Weschler scales:
WIPPSI young children (2-7); WISC children (6-16); and WAIS adults (16-91). There are between 10 and 15 subtests, aggregated to give the overall FULL SCALE IQ score (FSIQ). The test also yields separate Index scores.Impact of PBs: PBs are given when the brain is maturing, through the creation of neural connections and the laying down of fatty tissue (Myelination). PB’s interrupt this process. The following table shows the cognitive decline in a Brazillian child over 3 years on Lupron
Her FSIQ fell from 80 to 70. From Low Average to Borderline Learning Disabilities. Her performance also fell on EVERY Index score. This is unprecedented. It is really important to know that IQ is a very STABLE construct. It does not change significantly over the lifespan.
Using the various Weschler scales, IQ should be roughly the same measured at ages 5, 25, 55 or 85. There will be some small changes (depending on external factors like fatigue, rapport, testing conditions, etc). These are accounted for by reporting the Confidence Interval
But generally, IQ does NOT change significantly over the lifespan. Unless there is an ‘insult’ to the brain: eg head injury, infection ordisease etc, IQ absolutely SHOULD NOT be dropping by 10 points over 3 years!!!!!
In 30 years of giving hundreds of IQ tests, I have only seen such a decline ONCE (a few weeks ago), in a man with severe Autism. Otherwise, a fall of this magnitude, without a head injury, tumour or other disease process, is simply unprecedented.
This finding ALONE, in this single child, should have been enough to immediately halt ALL administration of PBs worldwide until more data was collected. In medical terms, this is almost as unusual and alarming as if her blood type or fingerprints had changed.
But here’s more evidence: Below shows an average 7-point drop in IQ of 25 kids after 2 years on PBs. This rate of decline is consistent with the Brazilian finding. It’s not an ‘artefact’ of testing. Something very serious and dangerous is happening as a result of PBs.
This data is known. This information is out there, yet PBs are still being pushed as ‘Affirming’ and ‘lifesaving’ care for children. In reality, PBs are causing significant and possibly IRREVERSIBLE BRAIN DAMAGE. They are impacting both Gf and Gc.
ALL children should routinely have their IQ tested at the beginning of ‘treatment’ and periodically whilst on PBs. But gender clinics are not collecting this data, so the true scale of the disaster in terms of the cognitive damage to children is not yet known.
It’s possible these children’s IQs are CONTINUING TO FALL. A 10-point drop is the difference between getting a degree or not. A 20-point drop is the difference between living independently or staying at home with parents because you cannot manage life without help.
This is a scandal of unprecedented and unimaginable proportions. But there’s also mounting evidence that X-sex hormones are also causing a decline in IQ in adults even AFTER the critical Myelination process is complete (age 25 to 30). I will do another thread on that.
Please Rx. Transgender ‘healthcare’ for children is a Crime Against Humanity. It MUST be stopped. By us.
PBs do have a role: For a 4-year-old who starts menstruating, the risk of cognitive impairment is less than the psychological consequences of CPP. But they have absolutely NO place in ‘treating’ the psychological dysfunction of otherwise perfectly HEALTHY children.
Somehow, shockingly, puberty is now seen as an illness which must be blocked. Regardless of the consequences to children. But PBs affect the ENTIRE body. Not just sexual development They don’t mysteriously and miraculously stop working above the shoulders!
And, before I get all the usual, nonsensical pushback: I am a ‘real’ psychologist; I do have a DClinPsych; I am not, and have never claimed to be a medical doctor; I’m not a ‘crackpot’; my views are not outliers; every clinical psychologist knows the truth of this thread.
Side question: so what do PBs do to the adult brain?
And in the case of adults – is transition a treatment for mental illness, or a symptom? Or self-medication?
…that 45% of current university students will think that this…
…is a documentary.
I’m going to go out on a short, sturdy limb and say that either…
For his sake, I’m going to cross my fingers and hope for “b”.
Among the “setter projects” that Americans established as we (yes) conquered the North American continent, along with representative democracy, were universities.
And I’m thinking that those are among the “settler projects”…
…that actually need to be dismantled.
Or at least, it’s time for an actual honest-to-god McCarthy-style purge of Universities.
To: The Minnesota Republican Party
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Stragegery
Republicans,
Wanna cause a stampede of voters outside the 494/694 loop?
Make this person – Rep. Sandy Feist – the face of the MNDFL.
Her and her pet billl (I’ve added emphasis):
The Minnesota Legislature is considering a bill that would require all public and charter schools to make menstrual products available in school bathrooms, including boys’ bathrooms.
The bill, House File 44, would make it so “A school district or charter school must provide students access to menstrual products at no charge. The products must be available in restrooms used by students in grades 4 to 12.” …
“There are a lot of schools that are moving towards gender-neutral bathrooms, and if we add ‘female,’ we might become obsolete very quickly,” Feist said.
“Second, not all students who menstruate are female,” Feist continued. “We need to make sure all students have access to these products. There are obviously less non-female menstruating students and therefore their usage will be much lower. That was actually calculated into the cost of this.”
Business output is down 9%. Investment is cratering.
And Sandra Feist’s priority is giving middle-school boys lots of materials for practical jokes.
Sincerely,
That is all.
This fellow – a Doctor of Intersectional Grievance Studies – is sure nuff gonna show his neighbors what’s what:
Where to start:
Having spent at least eight years getting a PhD in Intersectional Grievance Studies, it’s understandable he’s not clear on the nuts and bolts of Christian theology – and, being an academic in a field built on fomenting social nastiness, that he’d post a sign and a Tweet so deeply steeped in toxic condescension.
It’s forgivable.
CORRECTION: I’m sorry, I read that wrong. Hef’s not a Doctor of Intersectional Grievance Studies, but rather a PhD in some variety of Theology. He also describes himself as a “Pastor”.
I’m gonna go out on a short, sturdy limb and guess that either he’s the “pastor” of a very sparsely-attended Episcopal parish, or that he’s more of a professor these days.
I’m no expert, but it looks to me that keeping the southern border open is more important to the Biden administration than either Ukraine or Israel.
Again – no expert. But those seem like strange priorities for the American executive branch.
The Governor of Oklahoma has abolished the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office at all state institutions of higher education:
Let’s roll this snowball.
One the current tropes among the populist right is that “college is useless, and you should send your kids to learn a trade”.
There’s a truck loaded with cinder blocks full of truth in there – for many 18 year olds, a year or two spent learning how to weld, be an electrician or mechanic or tool and die maker would be a much faster path to self-reliance than four years at college racking up debts while learning little or nothing that one needs to succeed in the world.
Now, let’s be clear, here – I don’t think college needs to be a longer more expensive trade school; there can be value to learning a “liberal art”, something traditionally intended to teach one to think rather than strictly to design, build or fix something…
…provided that that that education actually teaches how to think.
We’ll come back to that.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, my father was a great teacher. He taught. high school speech, writing and literature, and college-level education classes. He was one of the two best teachers I ever had. He also used to agree, at least hypothetically, with the likes of Mike Rowe – the ideal education, he said, was spending a few months or years learning a trade, and then going on to some other course of more abstract study after one could pay the bills.
This, of course, may have been a little idealistic projection from a man who, on good day, knew which end of a screwdriver to hit the nail with. He was and remains a brilliant teacher – and one of the least handy people I’ve ever met, myself included.
When I was in high school. and college, I had not the slightest interest in going to trade school – not out of any sense of college being “above it all” or “better” – I was every bit as peripatetic back then as I am today, and if could have squeezed in learning how to machine metal or be an electrician, I would have.
But to my Dad’s point, I also figured I already had a trade; I’d started in radio when I was 15, and had learned a lot. I figured my fallback would be working at some station, somewhere. It wasn’t the dumbest idea, at a time when radio was a tough but viable way to make a living. It’s not advice I’d give a kid today, but that was then.
With the “trade” part figured out? I sought a life living in my head; I majored in English and minored in History and German. I also majored in Computer Science almost long enough to get the minor, but I hated it, and didn’t touch a computer for seven years after I graduated – but that’s another story. And for me, at least, the promise of a “liberal arts” education was fulfilled; I learned how to think, and when the opportunity to jam a bunch of different facets from my background together into a new career fell into my path, I was able to jump on it.
Of course, I’m not sure colleges today teach critical thinking the way Dr. Blake did.
But I come here not to wallow in nostalgia, but to weaponize it.
While I don’t disagree in the least with my Dad, or Mike Rowe, I also think this is a lousy time for conservatives who are so inclined to completely abandon the academy, if only because it’s people from Harvard and Penn and MIT who will write the histories and the textbooks and play an inordinate role in defining our culture…
…and if you see the people who are driving our system toward collapse and calamity today, that should be pretty terrifying. Because just as Califonria-style government followed Californians who fled to Colorado, a society run by the products of our crypto-Maoist university system – the judges, politicians and culture-definers of tomorrow – will follow you into your shop van or plumbing business.
Big Left has been ‘marching through the institutions” for over fifty years; they’re not going to be set back to square one by a season of scrutiny. But it’s an opportunity. And the future of a free society demands that some young conservatives, and the older ones that still control some levers of power (if only their checkbooks) take a shot at that tackle, before the current wave of barbarism completely rewrites the definition of “freedom” for a few more generations.
The rhubarb between the DFL “Democrat Socialist” Fascist Symp Caucus attacks on Ron Latz reminds us that while consistency (to say. nothing of morality) aren’t leftist values, they do have some consistencies.
For example, a tendency to coddle the most ghastly dictators:
I always wondered about the leftist intellectuals who supported Stalin, and those aristocratic sympathizers and peace activists who excused Hitler. Today’s Hamas apologists and atrocity-deniers, with their robotic denunciations of “settler-colonialism,” belong to the same tradition but worse: They have abundant evidence of the slaughter of old people, teenagers, and children, but unlike those fools of the 1930s, who slowly came around to the truth, they have not changed their views an iota. The lack of decency and respect for human life is astonishing: Almost instantly after the Hamas attack, a legion of people emerged who downplayed the slaughter, or denied actual atrocities had even happened, as if Hamas had just carried out a traditional military operation against soldiers. October 7 deniers, like Holocaust deniers, exist in an especially dark place.
The “de-colonization” narrative may different, in that it is better organized, and western academics, “journalists” and the non-profit industrial complex are even more pro-communist than they were from the 1930s through the 1980s.
Blue City governments apparently think banning matches will prevent fire.
No, it hasn’t quite gotten that stupid ytet. But give ’em time.
Banning guns (in the hands of the law-abiding citiizen, at least) is a pretty common…conceit? Deflection? Fig leaf? Anyway – the notion that barring law-abiding citizens from using legal things to do things they weren’t going to do in the first place will affect crime (positively) is the sort of thing you have to believe to be a modern Democrat.
But that sound you hear?
It’s the bottom of the intellectual barrel being scraped.
Philadephia bans ski masks in some public places.
“The City of Philadelphia has been under siege with individuals who use ski masks to commit crimes. It’s caught onto not just young people, but young adults who have made this a particular thing to do,” Phillips told CNN. “The Philadelphia Police Department can’t tell who’s a criminal and not a criminal, which makes it difficult for crimes to be solved in Philadelphia.”
Sarah Peterson, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, told CNN, “The administration will review the legislation, and in the meantime looks forward to our ongoing work with City Council on the urgent matter of ensuring public safety.”
The Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in people wearing various face coverings including ski masks, “complicated policing” because mask mandates made it easier for criminals to conceal their identities, Philadelphia Police Department Deputy Commissioner Francis Healy said during a committee hearing in November.
Philadelphia has a crime problem.
Too many ski masks? Could be.
Could also be all the depraved leftists:
Place your bets.
I was warned that if I voted Republican, there’d be an explosion of Fascist sympathizers.
And they were right.
Berg’s 7th Law is called a “law” for a reason.
Senator Ron Latz – an anti-gun zealot about whom I’ve never, not once, said anything good or complimentary – came out in support of Israel finishing the job of removing a terrorist group that has spent decades training its children to hate Jews, and is currently not only deliberately using civilians as human shields, but bragging about it.
And his DFL colleagues were not amused:
The DFL responded “Nuh-uh” in defense of a group that has created a generation that in fact is trained to venerate killing Jews. Because the truth about “Palestinians” is to DFLers what sunlight and garlic is to vampires.
The Senate DFL Caucus went full-on fascist symp in response:
CAIR is trying to put the squeeze on.
I’d say this makes a good electoral “hit list”, although of this entire list of genocide symps, the closest to one to a “contestable” seat is Erin Maye Quade. One hopes Apple Valley does better. I, for one, am going to do my bit to make sure they remember this.
Just to be clear, this is what the MNDFL supports. It’s a long thread.
If you happen to know a “progressive” who supports this mob, push their snout to the screen and make them read the whole thing. :
Our times aren’t as genteel and civil as…
…(checks notes)…
…World War 2.
So perhaps it’s fitting that the closest thing we’ve had from a major figure in the culture war to Churchill’s “Dunkirk” speech is this interjection from Elon Musk to the companies who are yapping about boycotting him for supporting free speech on the platform he owns:
But I”ll take it.
Politics is downstream of culture.
And this is a message that the parts of this culture that care about free expression, critical thought and liberty in general need to say, in one form or another, to the parts that don’t.
In addition to football, we saw last week the annual “progressive” tradition of wrapping one’s self and others in un-earned victimhood.
It was “Trans Violence Awareness Week”, during which Leftis pols conjured up victims from the ether to rally the soft-minded to their cause.
Senator Smith, for starters (with a riposte from Shawh Holster)
If the Human Rights Coalition says it, its worth fact-checking:
The only catch is that no such systemic violence exists. According to Jean-Pierre herself — and, presumably, to an LGBT-rights group with every interest in magnifying the phenomenon — the total number of trans-identified Americans known to have been killed in 2023 is 26. If we round that up to 30 (to account for December) and assume that just 1 percent of the U.S. population is trans (given that, as one very limited survey shows, around 3 percent of young Americans are), we obtain an annual transgender-murder rate of 30 in 3.32 million, or just 0.9 people per 100,000 people. Even if we, alternatively, assume an American trans population of just 1.6 million — to gel with one high-quality but conservative recent estimate — the resulting murder rate would be merely 1.9 per 100,000 people.
To put that in context, the murder rate for blacks in the U.S. is currently 30–33 per 100,000 people. The African-American community is an outlier but not necessarily a remarkable one: In a representative recent year, 4.5 percent of black-male deaths were the results of homicide, versus 2.3 percent for American Indians, 2.2 percent for Hispanics, 2 percent for Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders . . . and 4.9 percent for all whites under full majority. To say the obvious, all of these groups are currently living far more dangerously than “trans women.”
Holster ran down the HRC’s numbers in this twitter thread:
Long story short – like iron ore, Big Left wants to take the raw material of intra-relationship and street violence, and try to refine it into yet another social grievance to keep the ignorant and uncritical in a hot lather.
Joe Doakes emails:
From Ace of Spades on Thursday the 23rd:
**
So I’m going to say something that is considered racially rude, but I’m sick of the bullshit.
Conquest without morality was the rule of all peoples and nations until a couple of hundred years ago. Only in the very recent past has morality become a major consideration in warfare.
And the people most responsible for adding moral considerations to the law of conquest were… Europeans.
People pushing the Victim Narrative pretend that their ancestors were morally superior to their conquerors. In fact, they were not. Their ancestors conquered everyone they could conquer. The Comanche Empire conquered other Indian tribes, which is why Indian tribes allied with the American government to fight the Comanches.
If Indians had advanced shipbuilding, navigation, and steel-working, they would have conquered Europe.
Native Americans’ ancestors did not refuse to do this because they were more moral. They didn’t do it because they simply couldn’t do it. They were not superior in morality; they were simply inferior in technology.
And all of this endless bullshit whining about generations-old conquests is just a nasty cope.
You’ve heard of “Victor’s Justice,” in which the winner of a war can vindictively set the terms for peace…? Well we live now in an age of Loser’s Justice, when the losers of the war can, somehow, endlessly torment the great-great-great-grandchildren of the winners of their ancestors having won in war.
And we’re sick of it, and we’re done with it. We never point this out, because we don’t want to upset people who are clearly insecure about their ancestors’ failures. Who wants to pick on the fat kid?
But by not shutting this bullshit down, we have invited endless demands on us. Endless reparations and payoffs, endless “land acknowledgements,” endless affirmative action programs, endless demands for apologies (which are endlessly offered, and endlessly rejected as insufficient), endless demands we change our lives to “honor” people we don’t even fucking know, endless demands we “center” other people and endlessly think about what we owe complete fucking strangers.
Enough. Enough.
The fact that my ancestors were good at war is no credit to me. I can’t take racial credit for what people that lived 200 years ago did.
But neither do I have to take responsibility for the actions of ghosts.
And the fact that some people’s ancestors were bad at war is not a credit card with no limits entitling the bearers to make endless demands on others.
I’m done with walking around eggshells because some people just cannot get over their distant ancestors having been shit at fighting.
***
Could not agree more. The last man to have clear title to land was Adam, and he lost it when he got evicted for breaking the terms of his lease. Everyone after him has title-by-right-of-conquest (nowadays called “adverse possession” by lawyers and “colonizer” by activists) including Noah, who didn’t do his own slaying but moved into a world where his patron had slain everyone for him.
Joe Doakes, no longer in Como Park
I would like to throw in a claim for my Viking ancestors and their history of fomenting what we now call democracy, along with their incredible facility at conquest.
But I can’t, because justice, the sins of the fathers are not visited on the sons, either their achievements.
“The Devil’s greatest achievement was convincing the world he didn’t exist”
— “Keyser Söze”, The Usual Suspects
One of the greatest achievements of the modern Big Left is convincing the world, and itself, that the Nazi movement of the 1920s and 1930s was, like today’s “American” “Nazi” party, a movement of ignorant blue-collar and no-collar losers.
It was in fact a youth movement, led by academics and artists. Besides Hitler himself, most of the cabinet that ran Germany from 1933 to 1945, much of the party’s senior leadership were writers, playwrights, journalists, painters and academics.
Same as the Communists before them.
And same as today’s Big Left. This is Judith Butler,
And if you wonder if today’s Big Left is bigger and more powerful? You’re not alone.
SCENE: It’s September 1, 1939. In the command post of the Republic of Poland Armed Forces. Poland’s Minister of War, Jozef BECK, and the Marshal of the Polish Military chief Marshal Edward SMYGŁY-RYDZ, General Szymon NOWACKI of the Armored Force,, are at the center of a gaggle of staff officers, poring over a wall full of maps showing a dire situation.
SMYGŁY-RYDZ: The Germans have cut off Gdańsk, have broken through west of Krakow, and are threatening to cut off the Poznan Army.
GENERAL NOWACKI: Marshal, we’ve got the Seventh Armored Brigade in reserve. They could hit the breakthrough from the flank.
SMYGŁY-RYDZ: We’ll need the Sixth Corps to support them on the left.
STAFF COLONEL: They’re in OK position for that.
Corporal Filip PRZYBYL, the headquarters Administrative assistant, enters the command post and salutes.
PRZYBYL: Marshal, the MInister of Social Justice has arrived .
(The officers groan)
SMYGŁY-RYDZ: Show him in.
(Social Justice Minister Evgeny LYBRZELSZ enters the room and doffs his French-style top hat)
LYBRZELSZ: Marshal Smygły-Rydz? I’m told you’re planning a counterattack against the Germans.
SMYGŁY-RYDZ: Well..yeah, The Niemcy attack threatens Poland’s very existence.
NOWACkI: If they break past Poznan, there is no obstacle between them and Warsaw.
LYBRZELSZ: We can’t launch the attack.
SMYGŁY-RYDZ: (Stops short, dumbfounded) What now?
LYBRZELSZ: There is no humanitarian corridor for German civilians.
(As an air raid siren goes off in the background, the officers stand, agog).
NOWACKI: What on earth are you talking about?
LYBRZELSZ: Attacking the Germans when there’s no allowances for humanitarian aid to German civilians is immoral.
SMYGŁY-RYDZ: This is a literal threat to our existence, by a nation that’s completely mobilized for war.
LYBRZELSZ: So you are committing genocide against Germans.
Entire room falls silent. The sound of bombs in the distance swells.
SMYGŁY-RYDZ: So, see to the destruction of Poland, then
LYBRZELSZ: What are you, a bigot?
And SCENE
SCENE: Mitch BERG is cleaning out his garden boxes. Busy hauling stalks to the truck, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE, patrolling the alley, looking for over-filled recycling bins to report to the city.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Hey, Avery…
LIBRELLE: Shut up. The GOP’s new Speaker of the House is anti-science. I have proof!
BERG: Huh. So since the Speaker’s job has nothing to do with developing theories, formulating hypotheses, designing and conducting experiments and documenting results, much less trying to figure out how the universe “really” formed, what difference does it make?
LIBRELLE: Who wants our leaders to believe fairy tales?
BERG: Let’s ignore for a moment that theology, like mathematics, logic, physics, even history, are different ways of analyzing different evidence about the universe. Let’s say that you have a brain tumor, and you need brain surgery, or you’re going to die, but quick. So you go to the world’s leading brain surgeon – the one person who can save your life. So far so good?
LIBRELLE: OK…?
BERG: That person has got to be a person of impeccable scientific credentials, right?
LIBRELLE: Of course.
BERG: So you meet that surgeon, and he explains his record – overwhelmingly successful – and his technique, his reasoning, and his plan. And everything sounds right. So far, so good?
LIBRELLE: Right…?
BERG: Then he tells you he believes the universe is 6,000 years old and was created in six days by an imnipotent God.
LIBRELLE: Oh, I’d cancel the surgery instantly!
BERG: Why?
LIBRELLE: He clearly doesn’t believe in science! But why are you wasting time with a hypothetical example?
BERG: Nothing hypothetical about it.
LIBRELLE: When I know more about science than the world’s leading brain surgeon…
BERG: Your degree was in what?
LIBRELLE: Grievance studies with a minor in Sociology!
BERG: Right. Hey, look (points down the alley) I think the Gruenbergs mixed green glass in their clear glass…
LIBRELLE: (Looks down the alley. BERG makes his escape. LIBRELLE doesn’t notice, heading down the alley and getting his…er, her…er, a smart phone camera ready to go…).
And SCENE.
I’ve seen a bit of a resurcence of the traditional 20-something paranoia about “the draft” that pops up whenever the world seems turbulent.
Example:
But this post isn’t about Selective Service.
We’ll come back to that.
Minnesota’s “Peace” creep community isn’t any smarter than it’s ever been
My first response: Our GenZ “activist community” has gone from “Punch a Nazi’ to unquestioningly supporting a literal fascist government that obsesses over race and advocates and practices the annihilation of the Jews.
You’ve come a long way, Zeepers!
But let’s go back to the top of this post, with the other Zoomers fretting about the draft.
The draft – being flooded with and responsible for paying, training and managing hordes of unwilling recruits who’ll spend a year or two as mediocre to poor soldiers – is the last thing our military wants.
I’d always assumed – mostly correctly – that that was for doctrinal reasons; willing soldiers are better, more trainable, more capable soldiers.
But looking at the caliber of the demographic pool, at the top and especially in the second videos above, I can think of a other reason…
Someone walks up to you with a baseball bat. They say they want to kill you.
Your response is “no, I don’t want to get beaten to death with a baseball bat”.
Looks like you have a standoff. A controversy. A conundrum.
Someone else steps in and asks “How about we compromise? Will you settle for a traumatic brain injury?”
It’s the middle way, after all. The guy with the bat might even say “sure, I just wanna hit you, hard!“
You might respond “No – in fact, I don’t want anyone hurting me in any way. At all”
And the buttinski responds “Why won’t yiou compromise?”
Who’s right?
You?
The guy with the bat?
Or the person striving to find the middle ground between the two of you?
If your response is “I’m putting my foot down; nobody is hitting me with a bat for any reason at all“, and the other to ask “why do you hate the guy with the bat?“, does that change anybody’s mind?
Point being, sometimes the middle path, the compromise, is not the most moral path forward.