World no closer to answer on COVID origins despite WHO probe - expert

StillLessons · 2021-03-05T13:47:22+00:00

We know where it came from. The question is will there ever be the political climate for that information to be publicly endorsed by TPTB in the west? Collusion between the western PTB and the CCP is the big story of our era. In the current climate, truth is toxic for outlets like reuters if CCP works against it.

StillLessons · 2021-03-05T12:06:28+00:00

Sowell is the best demonstration that, just as in other areas of our society, there is a serious divide developing within the black community. This is precisely why the "racism" argument doesn't work. I would gladly accept Sowell in a decision-making position. So when I loathe Maxine Waters or Al Sharpton, it's not about their skin. It's about the culture they are promoting. I equally (no, actually more) loathe Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. The racism trope is the purest form of garbage in our politics today.

I wish Sowell and those like him the highest success.

StillLessons · 2021-03-05T11:58:28+00:00

/u/Magnora7:

How many times has this same meme been posted in the past few days? There's something off about this. I commented more in detail in the last iteration (about 5 hours ago).

StillLessons · 2021-03-05T11:46:45+00:00

The humor behind this misses an important point.

Putting the mandates in place was a mistake. They fed an on-going group-think panic among the population which allowed the authorities to censor alternative perspectives demonstrating the lack of effect of mask/distancing policies on viral transmission. In most states, this panic continues to one extent or another.

But - and this is a super important but - Abbott is willing to change policy based on evolving information. That's huge. While he made a mistake putting the mandates in place, he is now willing to undo that mistake. That demonstrates a flexibility of thought that is sadly lacking in today's politics. Given the huge unknowns about the virus as it was spreading around the world, I can understand that decision makers were desperate to CYA and take the most conservative course of action.

Even though that was a mistake, I celebrate Abbott using the excuse of dropping rates to end the earlier mistake now, upon seeing the data evolving more solidly toward what some recognized from the beginning: masks/distancing demonstrate no significant benefit in practice (not even according to the strict medical perspective), while leading to significant harm in the form of massive spikes in mental illness and of the obvious associated economic disaster.

Better late than never, and I look forward to the results of this new Texas policy continuing to put nails in the coffin of the pro-state-mandate ideology.

If something doesn't work, stop doing it. That's a big and very difficult thing for a politician to do. Good for Abbott for doing so.

StillLessons · 2021-03-05T11:30:26+00:00

Why is this being posted daily? My instinct tells me this is a vehicle of the pro-mainstream fanboys to demonstrate that "truthers" are morons ("see the stupid reasons they have...?!"). I find this more and more likely the longer they keep hammering at this meme.

If you want to understand the truth of what happened on 9-11, it's not obscure; it's staring us in the face in the direct downward trajectory of collapse of the towers. That is intuitively, scientifically, and statistically "exceedingly improbable" (read: impossible) as a result of a locally focused injury to the buildings' structural elements. On the other hand, the manner in which the buildings collapsed is 100% consistent with controlled demolition. Just watch a few videos of demolitions, and then watch the Twin Towers go down. These elements are even more glaringly obvious with the collapse of building 7.

What is perhaps most interesting is that TPTB still feel the need to work to convince people of the sanctity of their story using memes like this. The entire facade of legitimacy of the western corporate/state system is collapsing, and they realize this even more than we in the cheap seats do.

The sad part is that so many say, "hmm... well this system doesn't work. What can we replace it with? Socialism!" True government socialism is, however, only a further distillation of precisely the elements that make our system not work in the first place.

Experiments in giving humans genuine individual freedom are so rare and so exceedingly fragile.

StillLessons · 2021-03-05T11:10:10+00:00

Corporate values have destroyed meaning for populations in the west. Mental illness is skyrocketing as a result, and as this ad acknowledges, birth rates are dropping like a rock. Rather than offer individual freedom, however - which is the place where meaning is found - the state doubles down with an advertisement like this. They tell you to make the most important decision of your life - having a child - for them. Not because it is in your interest, because it is in the interests of "Denmark", which is to say the government and the corporate interests who behind the scenes are funding advertisements like this.

All part of the ongoing civilizational suicide ongoing among caucasians.

StillLessons · 2021-03-05T10:53:17+00:00

Thank you for posting this. Where we spend our money (=the storage of our personal energy) is far more important than the spectacle of a "vote" put on periodically.

StillLessons · 2021-03-04T14:44:04+00:00

Both.

StillLessons · 2021-03-04T14:39:18+00:00

Someone gave Elon the "tap on the shoulder"...

StillLessons · 2021-03-04T14:28:02+00:00

It means what you see around us...

StillLessons · 2021-03-04T14:26:14+00:00

I hope you understand the reasoning behind its removal? The problems with "hate-mobbing" are real, and I far prefer it this way.

StillLessons · 2021-03-04T14:24:16+00:00

One party state, here we come...

StillLessons · 2021-03-04T14:22:54+00:00

His incompetence (speaking in a technical sense, as in "not possessing the cognitive facility to maintain an active and continuous grasp of social relation to those around him") is becoming clearer each day. That we have as a figurehead a man who is the classic "helpless elder" is perhaps appropriate as a representation of what our society today reflects. I'd be curious to know who is actually making the decisions, but that's beyond classified of course. That's the information we are never to be allowed to know, as we haven't been allowed to know for many decades now.

StillLessons · 2021-03-04T14:14:04+00:00

While the chance of randomly putting people like you describe in office exists with random citizens, I still believe it would be superior to the current system. While under a random system, some percentage of sociopaths of various stripes would be selected, under the current system, those sociopaths are preferred. In other words, the current system (which is to say those who want power figure out how to convince people to let them have it) selects for the exact personality which is most destructive - the personality who wants to dictate how others live their lives and knows best how to lie to others to achieve that goal. So while there will be a percentage of sociopathic control freaks under either system, I am comfortable with the concept that there would be far fewer of them if randomly selected than by designing the system to reward them.

All of which is pointless, because it's never happened before in human society, and it never will. The human instinct to "lead" and "be led" appears to be genetically hardwired. While it is one of the elements making our species the most successful on the planet (for the moment), it is also our undoing.

Our species is on its way to extinction. It's actually kind of fascinating watching a species-level suicide. Killed by the very traits that got us where we are. The world, the solar system, and the galaxy will continue to spin after we are gone, and some other manifestation of conscious activity will take our place.

It's a beautiful universe.

StillLessons · 2021-03-02T16:07:30+00:00

Ah, deflection. He is ashamed in some part of his brain he still hasn't excised yet of being John Brennan, because he knows the evil he's done. But the only way he can think of to express this that wouldn't completely unravel the weak personality at his foundation is to claim it's because of his race and sex.

Forget your race and your sex, John. Who are you? Yes, you should be ashamed, but as a fellow white male, I assure you your shame has nothing whatsoever to do with your race or your sex. Look at your actions. Magic! We find your shame.

StillLessons · 2021-03-02T16:00:32+00:00

Okay, so I watched about 120 seconds of the video, enough to hear him speak. But it doesn't matter.

I have a masters degree in a technical science, and my department was actually pretty solid, mostly intelligent people doing their best to solve complex problems. That said, even in what I consider a very grounded department, I witnessed some of the most pathetic thinking I have ever seen in my life. In particular I am thinking of a formal scientific talk given by a graduate student (who went on to receive a PhD) to the faculty that was frankly embarrassing. He was rightly torn apart in the questions period. My advisor said to me after it was done, "Don't ever do that to me. Ever." As I say, that guy went on to become a PhD.

And this was at a relatively solid department. Beyond that, remember that diploma mills are a thing. They do exist. There are schools which exist to graduate students, and the more students they graduate, the more funding they get.

Combine that with the out of control push for "equity", which is to say a certain percentage of students must come from certain racial, ethnic, gender backgrounds, and I find it entirely believable that this guy has multiple masters degrees.

"Higher" education no longer means much. Education made a fork into indoctrination post world war II, and here we are 80 years later. Some good work is still coming out, but less and less. Meanwhile, the number of people like this guy being released into the world spouting about social "science" which is really just jargon-laden bullshit is frankly shocking.

But that doesn't mean he hasn't received degrees. It just means you shouldn't give people with "degrees" any more credence than anyone else. As you are doing, judge them based on content rather than the letters after their name. You are practicing the now heretical act of critical thinking. Soon you will be imprisoned for this. Congratulations.

StillLessons · 2021-02-24T03:01:46+00:00

I have most consistently used the CDC numbers. In this case, however, my numbers are based on the following site: https://covidtracking.com/ This is from the Atlantic. I'd hardly call them a source aimed to make republicans look good.

BTW: I have no horse in the race, finding both parties to be corrupt beyond redemption. I publicly endorsed not voting in this past round, and I feel based on the results, my rationale has played out exactly.

I don't care who says the reaction to Covid is bullshit. If the Democrats say it, hallelujah. But someone needs to point out that the rationale behind the policy of the past year is beyond simplistic and pathetic.

StillLessons · 2021-02-20T17:49:58+00:00

The numbers that are similar are cases/million residents, hospitalizations/million residents, and deaths/million residents. These numbers are all reported as per million residents precisely to account for population size.

StillLessons · 2021-02-19T19:33:55+00:00

Given that the cultural momentum no longer runs west->east but east->west, the idea of "state ideology is sacred" is also now the fastest growing ideology in the United States. Goodbye First Amendment. The best idea I have witnessed die in my lifetime.

StillLessons · 2021-02-19T19:30:10+00:00

"If we can't have it, burn it down!"

This says all we need to know about the current anti-racists. They're not kidding, it is burning quickly, and it will continue to burn until college-educated whites wake up and recognize the suicidal nature of the ideology they are supporting.

StillLessons · 2021-02-18T20:20:35+00:00

Basically, this official accepts as fact that FL (low regulation re: Covid masking and social distancing) and CA (high regulation re: Covid masking and social distancing) have similar Covid numbers.

He then proceeds to say "What we do know is that the more careful people are, the more they mask and social distance and the quicker we vaccinate, the quicker it goes away and the less it spreads."

These two statements are logically not compatible. I have friends who live and have traveled in both California and in Florida. It's not just the regulation. People are behaving accordingly. My friends who visited Florida said notably fewer people were wearing masks. My friends in California tell me people are almost universally masked. So beyond just regulation (what people should do), there is a real-world behavioral experiment in place (what people are doing). The numbers suggest no difference is being made by the masking/social distancing efforts California has put in place and enforced strictly. This official accepts this as fact.

That cannot be squared with his above quote.

These are also a good pair of states to compare because the societal/population/wealth/cultural(outside politics) parameters are not overly dissimilar. This seems like a pretty good "real world" laboratory to me, as close to "apples to apples" as we are likely to get in the real world.

As such, this is a precise data point for the problem with Covid policy around the world: the refusal to accept the null hypothesis (i.e. when your hypothesis - masks and social distancing make a difference - is not supported by the data).

StillLessons · 2021-01-29T16:17:28+00:00

Fully agree that the "models" are garbage, given the poor understanding of the inputs on which the results are based. 100% on board there.

The one thing which keeps me from being as ruthless as you in trashing the whole field is that while past climate cycles were triggered by solar cycles (we agree on that), the correlation in the core records is clear: when temperature began rising, it was associated with an increase in atmospheric carbon. That carbon then appears to have reinforced the warming in past episodes. There are no historical analogs to a situation where a bunch of carbon associated with industrial activity is relatively suddenly (from a planetary perspective) moved from the lithosphere to the atmosphere. In the past, carbon has been a product of warming cycles, but also likely acted to reinforce those cycles. I'm not quite as willing as you to completely dismiss the effects of a new pool of atmospheric carbon when this has never happened before. We truly are in uncharted territory regarding how the planet will react / is reacting.

That said, I am far more closely in tune with your perspective than I am with the patently false narrative being promoted in the popular/political arena regarding climate. John Kerry - just yesterday - said, "We have nine more years!" [shocked gasp, oh God, honey, get the kids!!!]. Thinking of climate in this way is the height of ignorance.

Who was it who recently said the Enlightenment is over? Sounds about right to me.

StillLessons · 2021-01-29T15:51:10+00:00

You have dug into details on an area I chose to stay out of in my comments. You clearly have more than a passing knowledge of the nitty-gritty of the concept of what was one popularly called "the greenhouse effect". In your other comment, below, however, you say that this is complicating a "fairly straightforward process". Your comment, however is anything but straightforward. I mean that as a compliment. You are addressing the actual physics/chemistry of how this "process" is supposed to work. Even in your comment, these physics have many layers, which makes them not "straightforward".

The reason I didn't want to get bogged down in what is actually a technical discussion is that I wanted to make only one point, which none of what you write (about which the people in the field spend careers arguing over) alters: when you dump a bunch of dust in the atmosphere, you cannot get it back. That's all I wanted to say. I found the details of climate fascinating when I was involved in the technical side (I also am a recovered environmentalist; I like the phrase), but those details in this case can serve only to distract readers without the technical background from the intuitive simple truth that "solutions" like the one posted by the OP are more likely to cause harm than good, even if you accept the premise of the change in the first place.

I, like you (though perhaps not quite as strongly), am deeply skeptical of the original premise of anthropogenic warming, but even if I weren't, even if I accepted it as we are directed to daily by our Dear Leaders!, the solution posited in the article on which this thread rests is still a monumentally stupid idea.

StillLessons · 2021-01-28T21:11:21+00:00

It took a long time, but the false "market" we've seen in place for more than ten years is being quite explicitly exposed with this fiasco. I am a little surprised that someone was able to organize enough small fish to act quickly enough and in a concentrated enough fashion to create such a dramatic effect. I haven't paid close attention to this, but I'm guessing Gamestop's market cap can't have been that big? These are some crazy moves. Sure big enough to catch the hedge funders' pant's down.

Another data point in the final stages of the current fiat money system. How much will they print to paper this one over?

StillLessons · 2021-01-28T20:59:32+00:00

Back when "science" hadn't been put in such a straitjacket, you could have gotten a variety of replies to that question, with the potential for good information, and demonstrating just how complicated it is to predict climate reaction to a given input. In today's world, on the other hand, you will receive either "Yes!" or "No!" answers, neither of which is remotely helpful in the real world. The concept that science doesn't "know" absolute answers (which is the truth of what the philosophy of science used to be) has gone out of fashion. No one wants to admit how little we really know. Politicians in particular love to claim one side or another of <pick your highly complicated debate here> as an irrefutable absolute, often with disastrous consequences. They all have visions of being throned as the "science expert", like Al Gore. Now multiple branches of science are a clusterfuck beyond imagining as this cultural shift has very real funding consequences.

StillLessons · 2021-01-28T16:41:55+00:00

Thanks for seeing where I'm coming from. What part of what Breitbart says about this bothers you? I prefer to be as suspicious as possible of any source of information; this is far more important, in fact, if I am sympathetic to the perspective they are presenting. So if you're willing, I'm happy to hear reasons to doubt what they say.

StillLessons · 2021-01-28T16:19:01+00:00

The fact that it is due to Covid restrictions is actually precisely the point.

Ignoring all the controversy about the numbers, there is one fundamental point on which all sides agree: the virus we are talking about is contagious via contact with other people either through airborne droplets and/or aerosols or through contact with mutual surfaces where those aerosols might collect. Can we agree on that?

If so, then the primary strategy for diminishing spread of the virus should be diminishing social settings with high density of gathered people. An equally important part of this strategy is that areas where people come together must be as well ventilated as possible to avoid developing high concentrations of the virus. The amount of virus a person is exposed to makes a difference in the likelihood of becoming ill.

Now I will admit to an assumption, based on the experience of my own life, but I don't think my assumption is particularly "far from center". I go to farmers' markets a lot. In my experience, farmers' markets are usually outside (outdoor air is the definition of the best "ventilation" available to us on the planet), and they usually involve far lower density of people/space than do supermarkets.

With that assumption behind my thinking (the stand photographed with the article is an outside location; if Breitbart is mis-using the photo, that would be a legitimate criticism, but I haven't seen that said), then the idea that moving people from an outdoor low-density shopping environment (relatively low transmission capacity) to a supermarket - an indoor more poorly ventilated and higher person/space density environment (relatively high transmission capacity) - is going to be worse for transmission of Covid.

This fits with the cops ticketing people out walking their dogs in parks far from any other people. There is zero logic to this kind of enforcement if the goal is to prevent transmission of an air/surface-borne respiratory virus.

Why bring fascism and state support of corporate entities into the argument? Well, given that I see no honest rationale to prevent disease spread, and the rules are there, then why? The de-facto effect is to advantage the corporate chains over the individual farmers. I give credit to those running the show that they are arranging things to their advantage. This is advantageous to them, and I credit them with the intelligence to say this advantage is intentional, not accidental.

Edit to add: Incitement to hatred? I have no hatred for any people. If incitement to hatred is incitement to hate the exercise of irrational and soul-crushing government power, then I plead guilty. I do hate the arbitrary use of state power against individuals acting in good faith.

StillLessons · 2021-01-28T15:35:46+00:00

As a person with a history within the belly of the "climate science" apparatus, I can tell you this idea has been around for a long time, longer than the particular project this article discusses.

This kind of thinking puts its finger on a bunch of the central themes in climate change. The first problem is that if we accept that CO² is actually the driver of our current change (a more debatable proposition than how it is presented in the press or in the groupthink of current "climate science"), then simply stopping the input of additional CO² - which is what almost all the mainstream strategies are geared toward - would be insufficient. The CO² that is already there will continue to warm the planet - again, important to note the assumption that CO² is the thing creating our problems, which is a massive simplification of an extremely complex system.

This is where ideas like this come from. More than "stopping CO^2" would be necessary. We would need to counter the warming from what is already there. Enter geo-engineering, such as what is described here.

The major problem I have with a strategy such as the one described is that it is irreversible. Once dust would be released, you can't get it back, and we are stuck with consequences that we honestly understand or can predict extremely poorly.

If we want to do geo-engineering, I would be far more interested in strategies that are reversible. There is, for example, an idea out there of "artificial trees", which are chemical stands placed in high-wind areas designed to leech CO² from the air; said CO² would then be injected underground (where it originally was, before we dug it up and burned it). What I like about this idea is that if we discover unexpected negative side-effects to our tinkering, we would be able to tailor it as necessary (remove "trees" or other adjustments).

But dumping a bunch of dust in the air with no possibility to undo what is done as an engineering solution to solve an engineering problem we created by thinking we understood the world better than we clearly do? These morons keep coming up with ways to add potentials of making a bad situation exponentially worse.

StillLessons · 2021-01-27T11:39:51+00:00

This is why I don't like "-isms", and I should have stayed away from using one.

I did use it intentionally, meaning that under fascism, there is no "public" and "private" because the interests of business are the interests of the state. That's why Mussolini described it as corporatism. Corporate leaders are simply an extension of the power of the central authorities. Thus, when I see police being used to enforce corporate monopoly (forcing citizens to use supermarkets - i.e. centrally controlled production/distribution chains - is considered in the state's interest, and supersedes the individual farmers' rights to make a living), I see fascism: state power used to enforce corporate profit.

That said, as you point out, communist systems are also about central power being enforced on their populations at the expense of individual freedom.

Like I said, I should have stayed away from the "-isms". All terms that have such broad reach are inherently useless because of the amount they bleed into each other, describing the same negative elements of human nature with subtly different emphasis.

There is one overarching theme. When faceless bureaucracies mandate individual behavior which is counter to the individual's best interests, and they use the force of the state to do so, we are entering one form or other of totalitarian system. The raw insanity of police preventing citizens from being in a place that is almost certainly a safer environment in "Covid" terms to force them into supermarkets has zero to do with public health. This is about the state enforcing centralized economic power.

StillLessons · 2021-01-26T17:26:11+00:00

Christianity speaks to individual human experience. I am not a Christian, but I very much enjoyed listening to Jordan Peterson's interpretation of the philosophy behind the Biblical stories posted here a few days ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBBhxrJYsU4). If people in China shift to believing that individual dignity trumps group loyalty, that would be a game changer.

But I've been hoping for the downfall of the CCP for a decade now, and I've been sorely disappointed so far. Instead, I see their philosophy being increasingly reflected within our own government and society. Most humans are inherently susceptible to groupthink, and the CCP are the world's best masters in how to manipulate this tendency.

StillLessons · 2021-01-26T17:14:27+00:00

This piece falls under the category of How It Used to Work.

It used to be that the two Parties^tm competed to cobble together platforms that appealed to the broadest segment possible of the citizenry. The Party^tm that appealed to the most effective cross-section of the population won, and the direction of policy reflected a move gently in their direction until the next electoral shift.

That's the old model.

The new model (evolved between 1992-2016) is much more absolutist. In 2021, the Party (the real rulers, spread across both Parties^tm ) is no longer interested in incremental shifts in policy. It's now about maintaining raw control. There is no aim to represent anyone. Just get the reins of power and hold on. The Democrats have a huge advantage in this process because of which sectors of the population they have in their camp. Democrats have the communications sector completely, the education sector completely, and the political centers completely. People in those three areas are Democrats. With these groups solidly in their camp, they have all the tools to mold people's opinions and world-view actively, and they are doing so to maximum effect. This makes the current Democratic party insanely dangerous. They are demonstrating in real time their ability to suppress (with violence if needed) any opposing story to the story they want told, making their story a totalitarian one.

We are witnessing the results. They want One-Party rule, they are dangerously close to getting it, and they are making it eminently clear that they will do what single-party states always do: they will purge their enemies.

All praise Dear Leader!

StillLessons · 2021-01-26T16:46:46+00:00

"A GoFundMe page set up to help Jackson attend college has raised over $84,000 at the time of writing. You can donate for yourself here."

Holy shit. This is insane, and it has zero to do with whether what the kid did was the right decision. None of us has any idea of the particular details in this situation, the family dynamics, the father's long-term behavior, etc.

But that quote is how the article ends. The message is crystal clear: turn in a family member to the state security forces and you will be rewarded.

That is the most evil message possible to send. No matter what happened, this was a tragedy. The breakup of a family is a tragedy. It's not a fucking opportunity for career advancement!

True evil.

StillLessons · 2021-01-26T16:15:18+00:00

Welcome to the full flowering of fascism: the murderous irrationality of central planning. Kafka, Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, Gilliam... they were all pointing at this. We're there.

StillLessons · 2021-01-26T15:34:41+00:00

The evidence that Pelosi and Hillary in particular are emotionally unstable is now conclusive. I agree.

StillLessons · 2021-01-26T15:31:58+00:00

They're being drawn out into the open, and there is hope in that.

The imagery that the government does not feel safe from its own population - needing to have the military for their "bodyguards" - is not a good look for them. Suddenly they don't look so "representative", do they?

StillLessons · 2021-01-26T15:23:56+00:00

Remarkably enough, this just might be true. Dear Leader! is on the record multiple times saying that Hunter is the "smartest guy in the room."

It all fits within one of the themes the Democrats have been hammering for 30 years: "Even if we are totally out of control in our personal lives (Hi! I'm Bill Clinton. Hello Monica Lewinsky and Jeffrey Epstein...), that has nothing to do with our professional judgment! Trust us!"

This line they are feeding us is shockingly threadbare by this time, but as masters of propaganda, they have managed to keep themselves in power this way.

Basic timeline: Hunter Biden - based on evidence collected from his own laptop (which Dear Leader!'s team has never denied being his laptop) - receives millions from people connected to the CCP. Per Bobulinski, a personal participant in those deals, Dear Leader! himself was directly, personally involved.

It's totally consistent with this background that Hunter would now be advising Dear Leader! regarding how to treat the CCP's policy regarding Taiwan: "Don't challenge them, Dad."

In other news, water is wet.

StillLessons · 2021-01-26T14:46:59+00:00

It's always useful to see these men/women in their own words, with their own gestures. His speech is very emotional when you watch the body language.

One of the greatest masters of the media declaring that the panic he has done so much to engineer is a natural phenomenon. Again, his body language shows his panic, and his goal is to transmit that to us, so the burden is lifted somehow from him.

Zero acknowledgment that people form their opinions based on information and interpretation he gives them. He tells the population to panic - using a variety of channels to amplify the message, the population panics, and he then says they did so as a natural phenomenon.

The raw arrogance is depressing, because it works. People trust him and believe him, willing to accept his opinion as the standard rather than allow healthy debate within the medical community which he is so actively suppressing.

Gates plays God, and far too many allow him to get away with it.

StillLessons · 2021-01-26T14:30:35+00:00

I don't think you read my comment very carefully. I said I have great sympathy for those with gender dysphoria. I will always treat them kindly and politely, and have no trouble with anyone earning a living.

If that were all that is being demanded, you and I would not be having this conversation, for I would never have been drawn into these threads to begin with.

The spiritual cancer is the direct rejection of observed reality to accord with a quasi-religious belief structure. Male and female sex is a directly and intuitively understood classification of biological life backed by literally thousands of years of scientific inquiry. It is one of the fixed elements of the physical world in which we exist. We don't control it, and we never have. Sex is not and never was a human construction. We may describe it, but we did not create it, and we do not have the power to alter it.

The cancer is the arrogance to think that because our minds can conceive of a thing called gender - a set of behaviors we commonly associate with each sex, but which changes given cultural and environmental demands - that this conception of gender should be superior to sex, and it is mandatory that if someone wishes to cross their gender, that should be treated as superior to their natural sexual existence, up to and including medical interventions which cause physical harm to their body. Individuals (not all transgenders, but more than I'm comfortable with, for their sakes) are willing to go so far as to medically counter the natural progression of their physical form. When you counter a natural biological growth pattern, that is damage, because it's not programmed to work that way. Doctors of all people should know that we in truth understand so very little about how our bodies function in the first place. The fact that our bodies do what they do is insanely complex, and even left to their own devices, things far too often go wrong. To take such a delicately-balanced machine and make it more difficult for it to function?

That's the insanity. I describe it as cancerous, because cancer is rapid growth of non-healthy cells at the expense of healthy tissue. People mandating that doctors physically damage bodies that would - left to their own devices - likely grow naturally and in a healthy way as bodies have done for thousands of years? That strikes me as growing unhealthy cells (of society, if we look at it as a spiritual construct) at the expense of the naturally programmed healthy ones.

That's the cancer.

StillLessons · 2021-01-25T19:53:52+00:00

Looked at from the present, can you catalog any lies he has told so far?

StillLessons · 2021-01-25T19:45:38+00:00

Honest question here.

For the people on here consistently supporting mainstream Democratic positions. You know who you are. I'm not intending to attack with this; I'm trying to understand your perspective more clearly.

Do you trust John Brennan? Do you think his goal is a tolerant, representative society?

By the fact that I am asking the question, it is clear that I do not believe a single word that utters from his mouth, ever. So I'm not trying to make a "gotcha" kind of point here.

I just am curious if when you hear him speak, you trust him.

Probably the most useful responses would be "yes" or "no". I will not follow up with additional comment from this point forward. I will check for responses, but will not respond myself again.

Maybe the question will be viewed as a waste of time. Whatever response or non-response I get, so be it.

StillLessons · 2021-01-25T19:20:16+00:00

The insanity of mandating the acceptance of elective life-changing medical procedures on confused (by definition) individuals is a symptom of a massive spiritual cancer in our society. Much more than the individuals trying to obtain these services (for whom I have sympathy for their extreme confusion and pain), I am horrified by the people in positions of authority (school administrators, parents, and DOCTORS, most especially) who are willing to irreversibly alter these people's lives to support an ideology that has almost no scientific proof of benefit. The medical professionals involved in this assault on people's bodies, in particular, are committing a massive breach of the most important tenet of responsible medicine: the benefits of the intervention must be demonstrably greater (real, solid evidence) than the potential associated harms. They are not even close to meeting this standard.

StillLessons · 2021-01-25T18:54:47+00:00

The disconnect between "the party" (includes both Parties^tm) and the people is becoming difficult to hide.

The allies of the CCP model are busy working to cement our new reality: i.e. challenging the legitimacy of the party is simply illegal, enforced with sufficient violence that people's fear keeps us in check.

Opponents to this model need to figure out a schema around which to organize, yesterday, because without one, the CCP model is where we are going.

The good news is that the Soviet Union chose a different path, and there is greater freedom in Russia and its satellites today than there is in China under the CCP. Is it heaven on earth? Of course not. Putin is not a saint, and it's not a model of pure freedom by a long shot. Disagreeing with Putin is dangerous. That said, it is an infinity more free than is China under the CCP.

The Russians achieved this "better than the alternative" result by enduring the chaos of entirely de-legitimizing and destroying the increasingly stifling leadership they had been living under. It was ugly, and to some extent, ugly it remains, but again, it's better than the worst model we've got: the CCP/North Korea model.

Lesser of two evils.

StillLessons · 2021-01-25T18:47:05+00:00

When violence was destroying livelihoods, killing and intimidating non-politically-connected civilians, a large part of the most powerful elected officials in Washington were taking a knee to the perpetrators of that violence. They were logistically encouraging it. This isn't a "conspiracy theory". The photos are burned in all of our minds, and Harris's payments for her allies to get out of jail - literally - are public record.

The violence that hit the capitol was not greater than what I describe above. Measured by lives and livelihoods lost, and by physical plant damage that occurred, even according to the hysterical media, the Capitol violence doesn't even begin to approach the same level of destruction.

No. The difference is simple: location. The people running the show have zero loyalty for the citizenry of this country. If you - in your neighborhood far from them - get killed or have your life ruined, that is simply not an issue for them. They literally don't care. BUT, if there is so much as someone who sneezes on one of them, THAT is treason.

Long story short, threats against the members of the ruling class are defined as treason, and will invoke domestic terrorism charges. Threats against citizens (who need do no more than disagree with this ruling class intellectually) will be encouraged and acted upon with the help of the ruling class. Make no mistake. These people rule. They do not represent. If they represented, the above statements would not be true. And the above statements are not ideological, they are observational.

StillLessons · 2021-01-25T14:56:04+00:00

This is a very good point. Unfortunately, because the trans-activists have so attacked the language, they make it difficult not to force clarification. Basically, though, I agree with you.

StillLessons · 2021-01-25T14:52:57+00:00

The problem with "-isms" is that everyone defines them differently. One person's feminism is another's "anti-trans". By using broad terms such as these, a whole bunch of unrelated arguments get brought in where they are not helpful, and the water gets muddied.

StillLessons · 2021-01-25T14:27:58+00:00

Good point. I particularly like:

"Not because he's sexualised everything about them down to even their socks."

I am a very women's rights kind of man. I believe women's thought is every bit as useful and powerful as that of men. BUT our thoughts are different. Just like our bodies are different, our emotional experiences are also very very different.

As a heterosexual male, my first reaction is to categorize every woman I see sexually. As I said, intellectually, I 100% respect women, and I'm not "fooling myself" when I say that. Simultaneously, my sexual response to a woman is my first response. It is my job as a welll-socialized human to work around that, acknowledge it, and not let it determine my behavior. But to ignore it and pretend it isn't true? That's stupidity. These two parts of how I view the opposite sex must be understood properly for safety.

Team Biden wants to pretend that the biological attraction to women that biological males feel is subservient to their "preferences".

That is bullshit. This is biology, and there's a shit-ton of biology that we don't control. There will be consequences to this.

Trans sympathizers, please understand this. Being sympathetic to trans doesn't mean you should ignore basic biological drives. While I have been accused of being "anti-trans", that's actually completely untrue. I'm sympathetic as well. I don't really have a problem with trans as a concept (though I think it's a mistake, I have no visions of "hell" for anyone because of such a mistake, and I wish no violence toward anyone.) The key point, however, which has been lost by the activists is that Trans is trans. MtF Trans are not females and WtM Trans are not males. Biology works, and we don't get to have shortcuts.

StillLessons · 2021-01-22T17:46:48+00:00

Dear Leader!

StillLessons · 2021-01-22T15:34:16+00:00

Well said. We have crossed the Rubicon. What voters want is entirely irrelevant to what our overlords will do.

btw: sometimes, the uberhumans (our Dear Leaders!) will happen to want the same things we will. Don't be confused, however. This means nothing regarding them actually giving a shit what you think. It's just coincidence. A broken clock shows the right time twice a day...

All Praise Dear Leaders!

StillLessons · 2021-01-22T15:16:40+00:00

Your point is correct, but people get bored when they hear "The Powers That Be" or "The Elites" or "The Establishment" or any of the other more accurate terms. Personal names keep people tuning in. Whether that's a good thing or bad I honestly don't know, but I fully agree with you that if anyone thinks any of these "leaders" is better/worse than any of the others, they must have a very short attention span...

StillLessons · 2021-01-22T15:11:41+00:00

I have an edit for the headline:

Biden Just Began the Biggest Assault on Female Equality in American History

Subtext: Having completed the demoralization of men in the United States, the Biden administration has decided it's time to make sure that women are equally de-legitimized. In a sweeping order yesterday...

etc.

StillLessons · 2021-01-22T15:02:27+00:00

StillLessons · 2021-01-22T15:00:53+00:00

This is an executive order. As such, I believe the theory is that the congress has already written the law, and that it is now up to the executive (the president) to interpret and implement what congress wrote. What we have here is the new administration's interpretation. Unless the congress comes back and corrects the administration's interpretation (or the courts declare it unacceptable per the constitution), this is immediately the law of the land. Someone with more legal knowledge than I have can correct me on this, but I believe this is where we are in the process.

StillLessons · 2021-01-22T14:51:08+00:00

Too many "-isms". This isn't about any -ism. It's about respecting objective reality and accommodating ourselves to it rather than trying to legislate it away to fit the yelling of a small group of people who find themselves unable to function in a society designed around the 99+% of people who accept reality as it has been conceived of for thousands of years.

StillLessons · 2021-01-22T14:38:08+00:00

I realized after I wrote my first comment above that the second element you note here is far more damaging than the first. The sports question is an absolute rejection of biological observation and is notable for that, but the damage that is being done to biological females by the elimination of spaces where they can be safe from male sexuality is insanely traumatic. This will affect their sense of safety in ways beyond calculation. Trans activists are destroying so much more than they even begin to understand.

StillLessons · 2021-01-22T14:20:22+00:00

Once upon a time in a long-ago far off land, science was the activity of observing our world and the skies, noting and classifying the different types and kinds of materials and processes, and discovering how they interacted so as to better understand said world and where we fit into the scheme of things. Among the most basic classifications, clear enough that even the youngest of children recognize it, is that of male and female. A child seeing a pair of dogs, for example, male and female, will notice that one has a penis and the other doesn't. Naturally, that child will ask why? And guess what? The answer has nothing to do with what the dogs wanted or chose, or how they identify. The dogs are male and female. They were born that way, for reasons that have absolutely zero to with their individual perception of the world. They were never given a choice, and there is nothing they can do about it, nor is there any reason they should have any desire to do anything about it. End of story. This is the simplest of concepts. I am still - even after several years of witnessing it - in shock that so many people are willing to complicate the simplest observation in the universe beyond the point of all recognition. Either there is an objective natural world to observe (the intent of true science), or there isn't. Which is it? If male and female don't exist, then you might as well throw out animal, vegetable, and mineral as well. There is no more science behind that classification than there is behind male and female. The fact that a small portion of humans have a psychological or psychiatric (not sure which, probably some with one, others with the other) glitch which leads to their personality not matching their biological sex does not negate the original classification. But the Biden camp (which is not necessarily the same thing as Biden, who is observably senile) has here declared precisely that. There is no greater anti-science stance possible.

StillLessons · 2021-01-22T01:35:42+00:00

What a slap in the face to biological women.

You should never be forced to do this, but if this anti-female environment proves durable, I wonder what the possibilities are for creating private clubs with private funding where only biological females are allowed to compete. Women, you unfortunately may need to look into this. Otherwise, as the headline says, girls' sports are no longer allowed.

What a mindset. They really hate the universe as it is naturally configured, just hate it.

StillLessons · 2021-01-22T01:27:52+00:00

Wow. Just wow. This company is evil. It's one thing that the material got posted in the first place, but then after explicitly being informed of its source, they refused to remove it. Pay attention. This says everything we need to know about Dorsey and his lieutenants. Wow.

StillLessons · 2021-01-21T19:59:18+00:00

The commentary from the MSM about Biden would be hilarious except we've seen it before.

This is how the North Korean "media" talk about Kim Jong-Un. This is how the Chinese media talk about Mao.

For years, we in the U.S. believed it was our job to spread our freedom to the rest of the world, but the mask is now off. It was never going that direction. We didn't export the ideals of our system; we imported the worst of theirs.

All praise Dear Leader!

StillLessons · 2021-01-21T17:23:41+00:00

Yes. I particularly appreciate the term "managerial class". This is a useful way of conceiving what has happened. This isn't just about "Trump" or "Biden" or "Pelosi", etc, etc. This is about class dynamics, with the classes looking slightly different than what Marx proposed, but firm "classes" nonetheless. The group of people (numbering in the tens of millions) who were told over and over again at our college graduations "You are the leaders of tomorrow!" also received massive social conditioning during our time learning to "run things". The majority of these people adopt the dominant set of beliefs - the worldview - from that environment and they are convinced this is how the world must work. Their beliefs are reinforced daily through news intake and other propaganda channels, and they are unwilling to compromise on any of it. I've said many times this is the same part of the brain that used to be occupied with religious dogma. Now it's what we can call "intellectual dogma", but it's the same defining the world, which very much includes a moral component. These are not just ideas; they're ideas reinforced by deep feelings of moral superiority. This is why it's so ironic how much so many of them hate Christianity, when they themselves represent the next iteration of the same phenomenon they so firmly reject from its history.

This group is now in charge. And they feel quite justified treating anyone who disagrees with their moral stance in the way that heretics have always been treated. When any group so morally rigid gains the political power to enforce their worldview - this has happened countless times throughout history - their behavior is that of a mob. The most organized mob, to be sure, but a mob nonetheless. Mobs are not rational, they are not peaceful, and they hunt down and destroy any perceived "threat" with heartless cruelty.

StillLessons · 2021-01-21T16:44:30+00:00

The have no desire to avoid doing ballot fraud again; it worked, and is now protocol.

StillLessons · 2021-01-20T21:30:55+00:00

We want diversity!

Wait... not that diversity!

Only the diversity that agrees with us...

StillLessons · 2021-01-20T21:23:19+00:00

The language doesn't work.

If they were trying to "hold the country together," they would be looking for common ground alongside those with whom they disagree. That is very clearly not the plan. Instead of trying to find common ground, they are busily working out the details of how to suppress "terrorism".

That's not unifying; it's divisive. The tech elite need to get over the delusion that they are "the good guys", start listening, and stop dictating. I see zero evidence of their willingness to do so.

StillLessons · 2021-01-20T21:01:14+00:00

This site provides a good collection of data from all 50 states with the ability to visualize change over time and to do so comparing different states side by side. In talking about strategies of how to address this bug, we need exactly this: comparisons of how different strategies have fared. As I look at these numbers (it's a LOT of data, so nothing detailed, but from a "first run-through" sort of perspective), the broad patterns look quite similar in character in all states. This suggests that the bug is spreading and making people sick in fairly similar ways without regard to the different mitigation efforts in different states. In other words, there is not obvious evidence here to show that "more" effort against the bug has led to better sustained outcomes. If there are differences, they are at the margins. The timing of when different states do better relative to other states in any given snapshot of time of this epidemic seems at first glance random.

If someone sees a clear pattern that goes against what I have just said, I'd be interested to hear it. If what I say here is true, it is basically the statement of a negative result. It would suggest not that one particular strategy (greater or lesser interference in people's daily lives) yields a sustained benefit (or the inverse, a sustained harm), but that the strategies we have employed provide no better results than random chance.

These numbers do not catch - very important to note - ancillary effects. In other words, these are measures of direct disease expression. Effects on people that are not directly disease-related (e.g. unemployment, social depression, social disintegration, other non-covid medical issues delayed because of covid regulation, etc) do not show up here. If I am correct and we are looking at a negative result in difference in disease expression directly with the various Covid strategies, then the only effects we will see will be in this secondary set, and these effects are already abundantly clear.

StillLessons · 2021-01-20T02:47:17+00:00

With many more "grim new milestones!" yet to come...

StillLessons · 2021-01-20T02:10:19+00:00

Statistics like these are more useful as propaganda than they are as an accurate picture of our interaction with a new pathogen.

When I hear them stated "naked" like this (which is to say without any context or complex debate which is actually quite necessary to give real meaning to numbers), I hear an emotional appeal to authority rather than a well-articulated call to rational policy.

Let's just say for the sake of argument that these numbers are accurate (which is in truth debatable, though that debate is not being permitted, because of precisely the anti-science thinking I refer to in my original comment), what do they mean? Numbers of dead tell us nothing about options. They tell us nothing about alternate scenarios, and whether those numbers might go up or down depending on different strategies.

When I see these numbers, I see a call to urgency. They are usually stated with the intention of refuting the "hoax" argument of covid. They mean when used this way, "Look at all the dead bodies! This is real; it's not a hoax!"

They tell us nothing, however, about what matters: which strategies work to protect which populations against a respiratory virus? Are the strategies the authorities are mandating actually achieving the goals they are designed to achieve? What are the unwanted "side-effects" of these policies? In other words, what's the "cost" in what is (if debate were permitted) a hugely complex societal cost-benefit analysis?

These are all the kinds of questions (among many more) which in our current environment are strictly verboten. The reaction to the Great Barrington Declaration says it all. The primary signatories of that letter are epidemiological experts with decades of experience in addressing these kinds of questions. What is the reaction of the authorities to genuine scientific inquiry and debate of what is the most effective scientific response to a dangerous new pathogen? Censorship. Censorship and "Look at all the dead bodies!"

This is not science. It's a call to submit to authority, and it will lead not to safety (what they are selling) but paradoxically to more death and suffering, both from the disease itself and from the societal costs which the authorities pretend don't exist when they sell us their "solution".

StillLessons · 2021-01-19T16:23:18+00:00

As stupid as this sounds, it is deadly dangerous, being the next step toward the dystopias with which we are all familiar. This may seem trivial, but notice, this is precisely the same setup as is active in China, where dissidents post Winnie the Pooh as a stand-in for Xi Jinpeng. There is still some difference: in China, if the authorities discover the identity of the person who posts Pooh, that person is likely to disappear in the state-security apparatus for years; we're not there yet in the US. But it's the same path, make no mistake. Dissent is now viewed as "domestic terrorism", no matter what form that dissent takes.

What looks like a joke today long-term is very much not a laughing matter.

StillLessons · 2021-01-19T16:13:13+00:00

Agreed. The left (the only base Biden has, and that one is shaky...) will celebrate any symbolic move by Biden to silence pro-life sentiment. He will simply cancel this and move on. No story here.

StillLessons · 2021-01-19T16:07:07+00:00

You explained much more efficiently than I did.

StillLessons · 2021-01-19T15:54:05+00:00

Herd immunity for a century has been understood to be achieved through two methods: first some portion of the population is infected with the agent (perhaps geting sick, perhaps not) from which the immune system learns how to fight it (among the survivors), and the next time people are exposed to the same pathogen, people's immune systems kill the pathogen before it can reproduce. The second path (which was widely recognized as inferior, it is important to note) was to vaccinate, which is to introduce a substance similar enough to the original pathogen to awaken people's immune system so that if they later came in contact with the real pathogen, the body would be "trained" to fight it already. So two paths to herd immunity: natural infection and spread through the community, leading to a group of immune people having had it, or vaccination providing a group of people whose bodies should recognize the pathogen if they encountered it.

The WHO - in its infinite politicization - decided within the past couple of months to eliminate the natural method of developing herd immunity. In other words, the only way (per our policy overlords) for herd immunity to develop is through vaccination. According to them, the people who get the bug, survive, and provide a population of bodies that now recognize the actual pathogen, don't count. Not useful. If you're not vaccinated, you are not "immune", as they now use the term.

This is the single greatest piece of stupidity I could ever imagine, because it flies in the face our understanding of thousands of years of human evolution. Natural immunity is precisely why we are resistant to the literally thousands of potential "pathogens" that surround us in the biome. We are exposed to uncounted microorganisms daily, and we don't get sick because we naturally evolved to live alongside them.

But Gates and the WHO don't want that. They want CONTROL.

If this change in thinking is successful, it will be responsible for millions of deaths, as our understanding regresses hundreds of years.

StillLessons · 2021-01-19T15:16:41+00:00

I've got to hand it to the CCP. They are smart. Evil as all fuck, but very smart.

For fifty years, they have engineered the economic transfer of production from the west to China. Along with that production has come the associated influence. Using that influence, they have been able to encourage the "Russia!" story, which provided a remarkably effective distraction from the genuine take-over of the US establishment by the CCP.

Now we have Swalwell ascending, and Biden bought and paid for.

It's genius. Evil genius. Individual freedom going the way of the dodo bird...

StillLessons · 2021-01-19T15:11:36+00:00

It's "stupidity" if the intention is to benefit the existing citizens of the United States. If the purpose is to ensure the satisfaction of the international corporate borg - which cares absolutely zero about human dignity, survival or happiness - stupidity is not the right word.

StillLessons · 2021-01-19T15:01:17+00:00

The greatest casualty of the Covid panic has been the destruction of the word "science".

Regulatory bodies around the world have re-defined "science" to mean "policy". This is a very rapid, very effective way to undo hundreds of years of learning made possible by critical analysis. In its place, we find ourselves in the same environment in which those who disagreed with the the Catholic Church found themselves in the middle ages. To say the health consequences of this are going to be severe is a radical understatement.

The WHO's re-definition of the phrase "herd immunity" is singularly the most destructive change in thought I've seen in decades.

The suicide of the enlightenment. It's logical, given the guilt embedded in our social consciousness associated with the carnage of centuries of Europeans slaughtering millions of people around the world militarily, but it's still so hard to watch all the good that Europeans accomplished be flushed down the toilet in our desperate effort to purge this guilt. Is it not possible to acknowledge the damage that was done without simultaneously destroying all the real positives that Europe also brought to human thought?

StillLessons · 2021-01-19T14:44:31+00:00

Censorship and masks are precisely the same instinct: the desire to separate us from each other.

There are two possibilities for human interaction: cooperation or conflict. When we choose to engage with each other, we approach disagreement and danger together, using discussion and debate to find a the best way forward we can agree on. When we choose to fight each other, we approach disagreement by dismissing the "other" as "illegitimate", and we approach danger by forcing "solutions" on those who disagree.

Which are the elites choosing now?

StillLessons · 2021-01-19T14:29:25+00:00

When they subordinate individual responsibility and agency to an inconsequentiality caused only by the intersection of the infinity of groups to which we all belong, this is what remains.

The fundamental question is as old as humanity itself: what is the meaning of our individual actions in this world? Not our actions as black, white, gay, straight, trans, cis, male, female, etc. What is the meaning of my actions today?

At least traditional religions respect a personal relationship with God, wherein there is a realm untouched by social pressures and co-equal with those pressures. The modern woke is working to obliterate respect for individuals entirely.

We need to help everyone around us develop self-respect, most especially those we think are our "enemies". Self-respect is the only way out of the trap that is being laid for us.

StillLessons · 2021-01-17T00:45:41+00:00

We're way past "fishy".

The true motivations of these actors are not remotely as described to us. There is a game to which we (I certainly anyway) have no input at all. What we see is only the shadow of that game.

StillLessons · 2021-01-16T23:08:12+00:00

It's an interesting dynamic. As you say, I work to unplug to the greatest extent possible. I've been trying this for years.

What I am noticing is that every time I pull back, they become that much more invasive. They feed on our attention. We must give them legitimacy. When we ignore, that causes real damage. So they force us to pay attention.

With this perspective, the societal Covid reaction (note: not remotely the same thing as the bug itself) appears to me more than anything else a vehicle to force us to react to them. When we start figuring out how to operate our lives in a way that we don't need anyone's input, the establishment will go out of their way to fuck things up and make such independence impossible. Then people look to the same people who are quite intentionally fucking things up to solve the problems they created. As a metaphor for this, I highly recommend the film "How to Get Ahead in Advertising". It describes this dynamic beautifully.

Attention and validation whores creating their market by making chaos for people then to ask them to fix. An uglier system I cannot imagine.

One thought that helps me regain perspective when I spin out too far:

The world's been going around the sun for millions of years. It will continue to do so whether any of us is on it or not. And with or without humans, such process and organization will remain unimaginably beautiful.

StillLessons · 2021-01-16T22:27:36+00:00

It makes perfect sense when you shift your lens and recognize that the United States government is now effectively a client state of the CCP.

StillLessons · 2021-01-15T16:16:44+00:00

For those of you who are more technically minded, what the hell is going on with e-mail? My e-mail is truly bizarre. It marks people as spam sometimes. Some messages get through from people sometimes. Other times, they get filtered. The same people. In my brief foray into looking into the technical aspects of setting up a personal e-mail server for myself, it became clear e-mail has a lot of technical complexity. That to me says there is a major "vetting" process in this communication channel. The idea that our e-mail is remotely "private" when it comes to official actors strikes me as absurd. Meanwhile, the complexity they've built into it in order to assure their ability to tap into the flow creates tons of weird side-effects.

StillLessons · 2021-01-15T16:05:46+00:00

This brings up a wider phenomenon.

Since the 1960s, there has been a well-recognized but never addressed bifurcation of how we handle illicit substance use.

The poor are run through "the system" and destroyed for use of drugs.

The rich are untouched and often even celebrated for the same behavior. Think the David Crosby phenomenon, or Elon Musk, and now as you point out Jack Dorsey. But these are not just the famous. I have acquaintances from the upper classes of California who are not famous, but are financially secure. They are largely engineers, and they used drugs for twenty years like nobody's business. They were basically untouched from a legal standpoint, as long as the work got done.

Using drugs - not occasionally but constantly - in itself creates a completely fucked-up world view. Then, using these drugs while simultaneously being rewarded as "the best and the brightest"? This takes this effect and creates a really bizarre mutant culture which we are now being subject to as our censors. The idea that these people are now considered the judges of "acceptable morality" leaves me at a loss for words. They have no sense of what non-drug-induced reality looks like. How they hell are they supposed to exercise judgement?

I'm guessing a similar culture was in place at the end of the Roman Empire, when wealth allowed one group to so distance itself from the foundation on which their "wealth" was premised that they lost touch with reality. It looks like it has happened again in the west.

The interesting piece to me is China. The CCP has clearly worked their way into the corruption at our highest levels and is now in a position to pull the strings. What I don't know is if the high members of the CCP are similarly "drug-compromised" or if they still hold sufficient sobriety to maintain the control they have gained.

The US as a client state of the CCP. I didn't see it coming, and maybe we won't get there, but it is the current trend.

What crazyness can follow this? The story just keeps surprising us.

StillLessons · 2021-01-15T15:41:02+00:00

Interesting post.

Yes, I've noticed this trend as well, though I had not thought of interpreting it as you are here.

Given that there are now so many threads of evidence showing the US being quite deliberately removed from its "special nation" status, what you say fits right in.

As an over-ambitious attempt to summarize the overall thinking of "the controllers" (whoever they might be):

The United States was viewed for a hundred years as "the land of individual freedom", which was a brand. Whether or not it was true is not actually important. It was the brand the country ran under, and this had domestic (optimism) as well as international (migration) consequences.

Individual freedom is now being explicitly associated with racism, sexism, all other -isms and generally bigoted behavior. Again, this has nothing to do with whether such a link actually exists. What matters is that these two ideas are being linked in the corridors of propaganda, and a sizable portion of the population is on board with the change. In order to raise the "groups" they champion relative to the groups they disdain, the concept of individual liberty must be destroyed.

The entire brand of the United States is being thrown under the bus in order to achieve their "more important" goals.

Egalitarianism. So enticing a goal... It sounds so nice, who could be against it?

Unfortunately, given the hardwired heterogeneity of the universe, aiming for equal outcomes is completely un-natural.

Claiming to be for a more peaceful inclusive world (and in a few cases, sadly, still actually believing it), these utopians are in the process of unleashing holy Hell upon us as the entirely predictable violence results.

I've gone off your topic, but as I said above, letting the entertainment complex fail is a completely integral part of killing the myth of the United States.

It's too bad, because although the myth was never real (there has never been true individual freedom in the US), it was a more productive idea than its replacement. Allowing individuals to express themselves freely - if it were allowed to occur - would let nature produce what it is capable of through our species.

But the sociopathic control freak portion of the population is a natural phenomenon too, I suppose.

Forward, ho!

StillLessons · 2021-01-15T15:00:34+00:00

Did she break "the rules"? No. Does the fact that she made setting rules discouraging gendered language her first priority in the new session - and then went on to try and garner political sympathy using that very same gendered language - make her a complete hypocrite? Hiding behind technicalities doesn't change the reality.

StillLessons · 2021-01-14T20:53:56+00:00

You're a hypocrite, Jack. It's that simple, and that obvious.

StillLessons · 2021-01-14T20:48:23+00:00

Hypocrisy.

Next question?

StillLessons · 2021-01-14T20:43:57+00:00

I honestly don't understand how hypocrites this blatant have any followers at all. It mystifies me that anyone listens to them. Yet I personally know people who do listen to them. What a bizarre world we live in.

StillLessons · 2021-01-09T02:50:56+00:00

I like that at the end of the article, they say "Editor's note: Facebook is among NPR's financial supporters."

Lines are hardening fast, and it is quite clear to all who is on which side.

StillLessons · 2021-01-09T02:46:09+00:00

Equally important as the communication channels is the judiciary. When parler or a parler equivalent is explicitly shut down, for example - or closer to home, if saidit is shut down - are the courts going to recognize the first amendment issues or will they twist the law to fit the modern zeitgeist? This is the level we are at now.

StillLessons · 2021-01-09T02:39:45+00:00

There is absolutely zero evidence they have any intention of including the latter.

StillLessons · 2021-01-09T02:36:07+00:00

The fact that they are engaging in rampant censorship demonstrates their complete lack of legitimacy. If the establishment was acting in a measured way - maintaining itself within the limits of natural social change - then they would be able to converse openly with the citizenry, having natural give-and-take discussions. But the establishment is not representing natural social evolution. They have defined 50% of the country as terrorists and intend to impose "order" on them using whatever means necessary. Do they really think this is what it means to "represent"? Representation does not need to be enforced with anti-terrorist crackdowns.

StillLessons · 2021-01-09T02:18:46+00:00

In many ways I agree with you. But all the same I do think something major has shifted in the past 4 years. Having lived through the past several decades in the US, I have never before seen the culture (popular, not just political) shift away from freedom of speech. The establishment has always worked to suppress it, but never before were they explicit about it. They would pretend they weren't doing precisely what they were.

That's the change. No more pretending. There is now an explicit conversation that the first amendment should be annulled. They aren't yet putting it in those exact terms, but the meaning of the rhetoric is 100% identical with that goal.

That is a huge change. The origins of the US model were individual rights being superior to group rights. In the past four years, that foundational idea is being explicitly cast aside. The ignorance which allows a change like this is mind-boggling.

StillLessons · 2021-01-09T01:23:46+00:00

At the cost of freedom of speech. That is clearly no longer going to be tolerated.

StillLessons · 2021-01-08T00:17:49+00:00

This is why the activity yesterday at the Capitol has freaked out the governing class of both parties.

This is the first large-scale protest where a crowd was actually questioning the legitimacy of our governing class. They're not asking for more freebies; they're saying the people in that building don't represent them and that the system is beyond fixing.

Yep. The establishment supporters are freaking out today. The game is changing, and for the first time, a moderately correct battle line is being drawn. Even some of Trump's supporters themselves may not recognize what's going on; they think they're supporting Trump. But some are quite aware this has next to nothing to do with Trump. This is about the government and its supporters being illegitimate.

The established powers are going to pull out all the stops to crush this line of thought. But they may just be too late.

StillLessons · 2021-01-08T00:09:48+00:00

Anyone want to argue that this is not precisely the same thing that the MSM, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google, and Amazon are doing?

StillLessons · 2021-01-07T17:33:18+00:00

Half the country does not realize that this is not about Trump.

The problems and the massive corruption they wish to ignore - while it certainly includes Trump - long predates him, and will continue to cause major social unrest for the indefinite future.

If they really think getting Trump out is going to make people magically ignore the slime they continue to generate (wars, death, poverty, crime, etc), they demonstrate for the billionth time their lack of understanding of the raw popular rage which made Trump's election possible in the first place.

StillLessons