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That’ll Learn ‘Em

March 6th, 2022 No comments

In only a week’s time, the entire focus of media hand wringing and angst surrounding the melodrama which was Covid, has all but disappeared. It has now refocused on the new disaster du jour, which is the military conflict in the Ukraine brought on by the Russians.  Fauci has so quickly disappeared from his regular offerings of inane utterances that he may be in witness protection.

You can almost see and hear the cartoon vapor trail as experts clamber to get on board the next media shiny thing.  Like the Covid narrative before, the usual and predictable cast of pundits are all on one side of the conflict.  To sum it up, Putin bad, Ukraine good.  When asked about the reason for this position, they tell you that it’s obvious: Ukraine is a democracy and Russia is about Commie despotism, it’s an easy call. We have a madman in the guise of Putin against the reasoned, democratic voices of the West.

Or is it?  The incredible irony of people in the coddled West who willingly submitted to 2 years of forced lockdowns in their activities and movements, of being forced to wear masks and endure harm from unproven vaccinations (now proven and documented) as well as being beaten and arrested by their own governments for failing to comply, or to even voice opposition is tragically comical.   But to fight for democracy in a nation far away, which actually isn’t one, proves beyond any residual doubt that, yes, people are as dumb as they seem. People who wouldn’t fight for their own right to breathe air are suddenly up in arms about freedoms.  The same crowd that wants patriotic Ukrainians to fight back and protect their homeland borders,  want people to disarm here and leave the borders unprotected.  While nationalism is considered a bad idea in America, Ukrainians need to fight for theirs.

Like the one sided views on the Covid farce at its peak,,  every news outlet, politician and even opportunistic corporations are now publicly expressing their outrage at Putin’s aggression over a helpless neighboring nation.  Governments have imposed economic sanctions against Russia and in particular, the banking industry, to cut off Russian activities with the west.  Not to be outdone, a veritable who’s who of International commerce have announced their withdrawal from doing business with Russia as per the graphic above.  In addition, Russian vodka and products are being removed from sale and people with any Russian lineage are being ostracized.  The great protector of democracy in North Kanadia even detained a planeload of Russian nationals while in Canada.

If you have a look at the companies haughtily cutting Russia off, you’d be hard pressed to find any more than a fraction of them that Russia couldn’t live without. If you think about it, this in fact would be true for most nations.  How devastating a blow would it be to the average Russian not to have access to Porno hub or TikTok? How will they survive not being able to view the latest cat videos on Facebook and Instagram?  Coca Cola is hardly a loss because it doesn’t go with vodka anyway.  Playstation and Nintendo are toys.   Sony, Disney, Paramount and Netflix are essentially pushing Western propaganda ( with no recent good products ) so that’s no loss.  Danone yogurt; ok that’s a blow.  Harley Davidson is a blow to the 5 customers they have in Russia because the 3 week riding season will be all but dead.  Nike and Adidas; they can buy their stuff under the table and much cheaper right from the factory next door in China.  Auto companies including all of the major brands have declared their cessation of doing business in Russia.  We doubt this will last more than 3 weeks because that business is so mercenary.  We’re not even sure if Ford or GM sell any cars there.

Come to think of it, there’s a darn good chance that Russians will ultimately wind up a better nation without exposure to so many of the useless things that seem to have such a hold on Western societies.  These companies may learn that they aren’t needed in any society. That’ll learn ’em.

Safe From Extremism

July 6th, 2021 No comments

link:  https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/pretty-weird-facebook-starts-sending-extremist-content-warnings-to-users_3883194.html?v=ul

The big side benefit of childhood is that any and all major decisions affecting your day to day life needs are taken care of by others, usually parents.  As you get older, you appreciate in hindsight that the mundane necessities of life were automatically in place without any effort or input from you at all.  No need to worry about what to eat, where to live, and all of the usual creature comforts of life including toilet paper and clean clothes were provided for.

The flip side to this benign life is that you have little influence on these very things that are presented to you as conveniences. If you didn’t happen to like liver and onions for dinner, or living in a double wide, it was too bad.  It wasn’t until mid-adolescence that the inner urge to express your own choices became overwhelming and the urge to pull away from the dictates of parents needed to be addressed.  We could date girls with tattoos, go to late night bars and even buy sketchy tech IPO’s.

In the past few generations in western societies, this natural need for people to break free from the tethers of childhood has been eclipsed by an acceptance of protracted adolescence.  Sadly, the arrival of affluence has made people more risk averse and unwilling to cross natural life milestones.  The overbearing mother has taken a place of significant prominence in western society.  Through many generations of subtle and now not so subtle coercion, the role of males has been overshadowed by the smothering mother.

We may have noticed the predilection towards ‘safety’ in whatever we do these days and thus, the avoidance of all things unsafe is paramount in our activities.  It’s hard to quantify if the world has actually become so unsafe in recent generations that it’s necessary to place ‘safety’ above all else in our lives. Add lawyers to that and now you have a recipe for a neutered society.

In our pre-adolescent years, we were advised to avoid activities or people that were likely to compromise our ‘safety’. With the coming of age, we made our own decisions on such things for ourselves.  In our modern information era, the ubiquitous social platforms have taken it upon themselves to be our permanent nannies by directing us against undesirable information….you know, to be safe.

It’s the greatest irony that living in a ‘free society’ actually creates the environment for a controlled population.  The ‘free exchange’ of information that we notionally have access to on-line for example has been used as a tool to impose conformity among those who profess to seek independence of thought.  In fact, the on-line community is high school writ on a grotesque scale.  Coercion of views is so powerful that it’s as if you were escaping from the Scientologists if you dared to have opposing views from accepted norms.

Now we have official corporate nannies guiding your views, as your mother may have done during your childhood. As the linked article notes, we are warned off by the Facebook nannies if we even consider consuming views not of the accepted narrative. In fact such views are labelled as extremist.  YouTube has also implemented such guidance as well as other popular platforms such as Instagram who warn you of “unverified” sources.  This is the present day version of “eat your broccoli” by the mom surrogates of the online world. We are coerced to stay away from people who dare to even talk about things not approved for civilized people; the adult version of don’t hang out with the boy down the street with long hair who spends his days playing music.

As people move from adolescence, the constraints of behavior and thought imposed by their parents dissipate as they move on to their own sense of self. It’s called growing up.  We are now in a novel phase of civilization wherein people refuse to grow up and instead live in a world of protracted adolescence. A society that promulgates pre adolescent conformity will result in one in which only a handful of savvy adults will control them.