Political Browbeating circa 1876
“So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
Revelations 3:16
Motivation
One of the most predictable things about modern American politics is the refrain about voting for the “lesser of two evils”. This is often used in attempt to cajole undecided voters about how important it is to stop “the other guy (or gal)”. If the decision were between good or evil, every moral person would choose good, but we live in a fallen world, and our only choices are between these two fallen and flawed options. Once again if you put a gun to the head of the moral person1, they would accept that voting for the lesser evil is better than for the greater evil. Even the most moral will concede that their can be a strategic reason for voting for the lesser evil.
However I think that there is a flaw in that thinking. To speak about voting for the “greater” evil is to considered to be a sociopath, or even worse, a collapsitarian. However, I think there is more to be said to argue for the greater evil than mere love of chaos, and may well be a better strategy.
The Methods of Evil
Now I might be waxing too religious here, please bear with me, I’ll attempt to make this as generic as possible. Outright evil is something that humans are clearly able to discern and reject. Take even some of the basest of humans, and you will get them to concede that cold blooded murder is wrong. It was not rape and murder that the Devil attempted to tempt Christ with. Whether you call it the Devil, or the inherent corruptibility of man, those who seek out to do evil understand that they must do so by degrees. This is why murder is justified by things like revenge, national pride and dehumanizing those murdered, or why slavery is justified as Christianizing the savage, civilizing, or “National Service”.
In his book Strategy2, Lawrence Freedman explains that there is a classical dichotomy in Strategy, presented by Homer as the dichotomy between Achilles (in The Illiad) and Odysseus (in The Odyssey). Achilles represented the brawn and might. A strategy that wins on merits of it’s strength. Odysseus represents the trickster, who wins through guile and lies. It is not through the might of Achilles that Troy falls, but by the designs of Odysseus. Likewise, we may stand a better chance, strategically, confronting evil outright, than letting it slip past our gates.
A Concrete Example
Like a lot of my bad and not well thought out ideas, this one came from thinking about a discussion on this very board. The discussion was about gun control, and how Trump’s record on gun control has been. I had posited that the actions of the ATF has shown that Trump was either impotent or complicit/uncaring in the gun control moves by the federal bureaucracy. Our esteemed thinker, Q, pointed out that Trump knows he doesn’t need to care, after all who are gun rights supporters going to vote for? Trump or Biden with his preselected gun control Czar Beto? Well for the gun rights single issue voter, voting for Biden is probably the better option. Biden will staunchly present a stark anti-gun agenda. He will attack gun rights openly and out loud. Such an attack would surely bring together the opponents of gun control to defend them, and solidify them against any attempt to subvert those rights. Because Evil is easier to confront the more blatant it is.
Conclusion
The critical among you may be pointing out that I am not arguing for voting for the greater evil, but that the evil that is harder to perceive is the greater, because it is more likely to tempt the good man. And you’d be correct. The options are not between evil and slightly less evil. It is between evil outright and evil hidden. The ends are the same, the presentation is different. I’m arguing that we let our yeas be yea, and our nays be nay. Let’s not succumb to evil because it is cleverly dressed up.
__________
1. Excepting those “Pull the Trigger” absolutists. Damn Purists.
2. https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-History-Lawrence-Freedman/dp/1501227726
That was good, thanks Leon, Gotta walk Bella,,
/exit stage left……………………
Thanks, Yusef. Stay cool out there!
“Biden will staunchly present a stark anti-gun agenda. He will attack gun rights openly and out loud. Such an attack would surely bring together the opponents of gun control to defend them, and solidify them against any attempt to subvert those rights. Because Evil is easier to confront the more blatant it is.”
Except it won’t be any more “openly and out loud” than what the Democrats are already doing. The opponents of gun control are already opposed to gun control, and wouldn’t be any more opposed to gun control facing a larger opponent.
I’d rather face an opponent who is openly attacking me than one who is trying to do so secretly. The point is that for Gun Rights, Trump is secretly implementing gun control, and the conservatives are going along with it because “He’s our guy” and “He’s not as bad as Biden”.
Whatever gun control Trump is trying to do is limited by the support of his followers.
Trump is secretly implementing gun control
Is there more to it than bump stocks? I don’t care about bump stocks. At all. I’m not going to vote for Biden because of them.
He has backed away from his earlier support of suppressors, and he supported red flag laws for a period of time.
Mostly because he’s not real principled.
To me, Trump likes to feel things out in the public space, and then use the feedback in his consideration set. He is certainly not principled, nor really an ideologue.
Right. I forgot about red flag laws. They are much worse than banning bump stocks.
Actually, Biden will not do any of those things. He’ll appoint the people he’s been told to appoint, to do those things for him. So, Beta on the gun grabbing, and She Guevara to kill what’s left of the economy with climate change stupidity. All of that will be done while Biden sits drooling in a chair somewhere in his basement.
How is that strategy working out in Virginia?
“Good.
Her racist behavior could have had dire consequences for a Black man.
Glad she’ll face consequences of her own.”
https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1280267244157755395
CWAA
The replies aren’t having it. Good.
This is a good reason why I keep coming here. This is one of the few places on the Internet where I’m actually challenged to think about stuff. Thanks for writing.
As I read this, I also thought about the ratchet affect of choosing the lesser of two evils. There is no incentive to be good, just *slightly less bad* than the other guy, so candidates just keep getting worse.
Thanks Kevin! I agree completely about the incentive problems.
The other ratchet is that, if the (in the given example) blatant gun control advocates get into office, and they are able to enact some of their gun control measures, those measures are not likely to go away, no matter how much their activities rally the pro 2A folks.
Yeah if the Democrats getting their way spurred the Republicans to push back twice as hard next time, that would be one thing. But the Republicans are just the controlled opposition.
the refrain about voting for the “lesser of two evils”. – weevils but I get the point
If the decision were between good or evil – it is though. Socialism is good. the rest is evil.
Outright evil is something that humans are clearly able to discern and reject. – are you really sure about that? I would say justifying evil means that humans cannot discern it. Otherwise you could not justify it.
Our esteemed thinker, Q – well that is certainly one way of phrasing it
Such an attack would surely bring together the opponents of gun control to defend them, and solidify them against any attempt to subvert those rights. – what is the genral trackr ecord of such things? because I think not good.
Let’s not succumb to evil because it is cleverly dressed up. – let me know how that works out for you.
Terrible.
I don’t buy this theory – at all. Look at any city/state under one-party left rule. Doesn’t one think that they intend the same nationwide? Voting Democrat is how you get there. Because they play the long game, they are disciplined, and they have no scruples about getting what they want.
And what they want is absolute power.
Also this pic needed o be in the article
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/031/793/cthulhu4prez-preview1.png
A a resident a R’Lyeh at the time of the formation of the republic, Cthulhu is not a natural born citizen and thus ineligable to run.
I think R’Lyeh lies sleeping somewhere under Scranton, so he may be all right.
Ya Birther!
You gonna be the one to tell him that?
This guy had the “conservatives” figured out 130 years ago and would probably agree with your theory.
American conservatives worship dead liberals
NTTAWWT
The only good ones?
It would be useful, but not easy, to distinguish between the conservative impulse and the conservative political position. The conservative impulse is loathe to discard what has worked and is in perpetual tension with the progressive impulse to try novel approaches. Tradition v innovation in a nutshell, and while in any particular situation you can be wholly on one side or the other, only an idiot believes that one side of that divide is always correct. They are necessary and complimentary aspects of a conscious pproach to the world.
The conservative political position (in so far as such a thing can be identified among the various political ideologies using the term) and the progressive political position use those terms to associate themselves with those two impulses, and there may even be some actual association, but there is significant divergence as well. The progressives for example are deeply devoted to a political theory that was ancient even when Marx distilled it into its modern form, a theory of human perfectibility and a static utopia of equality. Conservatives in the present milieu may wish to conserve aspects of our past traditions, but more often want to make significant changes to the milieu, because the progressives have implemented a slew of programs actively hostile to those past traditions. Is that a conservative impulse or a progressive impulse?
In 1776, 1781, and 1789 the position I advocate for, a limited, but potent in the areas marked off for it, constitutional republic was beyond merely progressive. It was the creation of wild eyed radicals. In 2020 it is once again only supported by wild eyed radicals, yet those radicals (inculding me) refer to themselves as conservative. Naming political movements for basic impulses in human consciousness is perhaps inevitable, but it is unfortunate and leads to serious confusion.
As to leon’s position, I disagree completely. It is effectively saying that you give your outright enemies power so that you can better oppose them, and that is incoherent. The Republicans are not our friends, that much is true. But the Democrats are, either from malice or blind ignorance, implementing socialism and socialism is death.
Conservatives in the present milieu may wish to conserve aspects of our past traditions, but more often want to make significant changes to the milieu, because the progressives have implemented a slew of programs actively hostile to those past traditions.
I’m trying to think of significant changes soi-disant conservative politicians actually want to make to the current milieu.
Deregulation, devolution of power back to the States, dismantling of adminsitrative law, and disbanding of the departments, … oh wait you said politicians… yeah I was talking about human beings.
I count those as fringe positions (which I hold), and was thinking more about what changes mainstream “conservatives” are pushing for.
You are correct that the circle has turned and the Constitution as written is once again a radical change.
If man is inherently evil, there really is no greater or lesser, is there? Voting for either is a vote for Team Evil.
Spend the money and effort on building the appropriate underground defiance instead.
Thanks, leon!
Yeah but if we all vote for the greater evil, it gets the majority and we get to repeat Virginia on a national scale. Massive resistance and pushback was brushed aside and as soon as everyone was cowering in place because of the commie cough, they passed their full wishlist. Puke. I’ll vote for the squish on gun rights, if that’s the best option I’m going to get.
The trick is to get a completely Republican Congress and more Republican Governors who will talk tough and really dig in against President liberal crazy-pants. As soon as another Republican is elected President, they will inevitably turn into Paul Ryan and stab their voters in their collective backs.
This is really where the premise of the article comes up against resistance. it would be one thing if a nation of “good” people were forced to vote between two “evil” candidates. The gambit is more likely to succeed by tearing the mask off of evil in that scenario.
What about when a vast majority of the people are “evil”? What happens when we tear Biden’s gun control mask off and there is broad support for unconditional gun confiscation? Then the gambit fails. You just elected your destroyer.
We had lockdowns and continue to have various restrictions because a large majority of people support them.
What LemonGrenade said…we have seen this right in front. When you give a supermajority to the Greater Evil, it doesn’t matter how easy it is to point out they are evil. They will just jam the evil down your throat and its over.
To which I would add that the example Leon uses, “Biden will staunchly present a stark anti-gun agenda. He will attack gun rights openly and out loud” is not one that would be seen as openly evil by a large number of people.
If Biden were to run on a platform, say, of “everyone who criticizes black people” will be locked up indefinitely, I doubt he would get close to winning (although he would still get far too many votes). But, if Biden runs on a platform of “locking up people who practice hate speech,” a lot more people are going to be on board with that. IOW, even when something is far more evil, people see it as a good thing, because it’s not blatantly, objectively evil.
Or, to use more current example: taxing the rich at 100% above a certain income. That, to me, is evil, unconstitutional, and unjust. But there are a hell of a lot of people who would be cheering it on.
IOW, even when something is far more evil, people see it as a good thing, because it’s
not blatantly, objectively evil.fashionable.Make no mistake, with enough indoctrination, any objective evil can be turned fashionable. WWII is an obvious example.
Genocide? ✔️
Mass rape? ✔️
Internment by race? ✔️
Indiscriminate killing of civilians? ✔️
torture/execution of POWs? ✔️
cheap shots after the enemy surrenders? ✔️
some of these may be excused by some as excesses of war, but they were all popular to some level or another.
All but the genocide and the POW’s were not excesses of war, they were happening in 1933 a matter of hours after Hitler became Chancellor. And he said exactly what he was going to do months (and years) before – and the basic response was to be more concerned about possible lesser evils on the assumption that the obvious blatant evil would never happen. Kristallnacht was blatant, objective evil, and the chickenshit press and politicians of Germany behaved exactly as the chickenshit press and politicians of the US behaved a few weeks ago.
That’s never going to happen. What will happen instead is that the middle class will be taxed at 50-60% of their income, with a pile of new taxes on top of that, national VAT tax, national greenhouse gas taxes, etc, etc. The middle class as we know it, will cease to exist. There will 2 classes, a ‘common’ class and the ultra wealthy and political class. The common class will be equal in every way economically through redistribution of wealth and will be jam packed into high density cities with high crime and no mobility to get away.
This is the dem’s plan and they are not trying to hide that. Oh, they’re trying to hide the tax the rich myth, but outside of that, they are right out in the open about it.
This is the dem’s plan and they are not trying to hide that.
Agreed. Just look at the cities and states controlled by Dems. That’s exactly how it plays out – they have hollowed out middle classes, large dependent classes, and a ruling class of very wealthy people. Their only concern for the middle class is to keep their tax cattle on the feedlot.
“One man’s evil is another man’s virtue.”
To speak about voting for the “greater” evil is to considered to be a sociopath, or even worse, a collapsitarian.
Hoping for something better to arise from the ashes is undoubtedly wishful thinking, but maybe it’s worth a shot, as a strategy. Voting to sustain the status quo hasn’t exactly been a raging success.
The first sprouts of ashes tend to be autocrats and warlords.
It worked once. Once.
So it might work again!!!
You make a very good argument. Excellent article.
Your suggested strategy would be very painful. Thus, like working yourself up to jump from a height at the swimming hole, or rip off a bandage people tend to delay pain until the last possible second.
We currently have marxist cockroaches attempting some chickenshit revolution with the aid of the media and a major political party that openly hates the country refusing to condemn the rioting and violence, in some cases even aiding it. There is a great deal of fear and anxiety in what I believe is a mostly silent majority. I dont think the more obvious evil is going to come out on top in November.
Let’s see what happens then. I suspect it will make the last four years look like a snooze.
You know what’s truly evil? Starting your week off in the ER!
Know what’s better than glibbing? Glibbing on morphine!
So I’m sitting here drugged and taking in 2 lactated ringers. ?
What happened?
Apparently I’m drinking too much alcohol and not enough water. I drank last night, and not in moderation. So now I have DVT, and I’m full of shit too. Who knew?
It may be tough, but stay hydrated. I’ve had to get a new water filter and stock up on flavorants just to be able to force myself to drink enough to offset how much I’ve been sweating this summer. Can’t imagine how much more trouble I’d be in if I were drinking alcohol too.
Oh, and DVT is no joke. It can lead to free floating clots and embolisms. But your doctor probably already told you as much.
The ride home with Nursey Nurse is going to be pleasant.
I hope I don’t bite my tongue off.
DVT?
Looked it up….ok.
First thing that popped in my head was diverticulitis and I thought….huh? Drinking can cause that?
Clot in a vein, leg or lungs most likely.
Yes leg. The first thing the PA asked me last week after I told her I had been “frustration” walking about 3 miles a day, was whether or not I was staying hydrated. I had heard that just because you are not thirsty, doesn’t mean you are hydrated. Guess it’s true.
Apparently it is also true that just because you made a healthy #2 this morning, does not mean you are not constipated.
By the time you are thirsty, you are already very dehydrated.
I’ll assume they put you on aspirin or coumadin or somesuch.
Eliquis. $$$ Tier 3 drug.
*sigh* Naturally.
But IANAD.
on morphine – are you legally allowed to grope nurses while drugged? that at least would be something.
That would be nice. There are some young hotties here. I wonder if they take trade-ins.
Oof. I’m sorry TARDIS. Get better soon!
WHAT HAPPENED?!?!?!?
The evils of alcohol. You are safe!
Maybe Mojeaux is. The rest of us, OTOH…
Hope you get better, TARDIS.
Get better soon!
Good and thought-provoking, leon. I personally will be willfully blind as to which evil is dressed up and which is on display. Is Trump evil? Meh, I don’t know. He’s unfocused, undisciplined, and hires all the wrong people.
And then there’s this little gem I ran across: “You have to accept that you are the villain in someone else’s story.” We don’t want to do that. Few people will admit that they are or have the capacity to be evil and they do not want to accept that they are ever the villain.
I am the villain in my own story.
Sadly that is true of most people, they just can’t see it.
That is going in my book of sayings.
I’m the evil of several lessers.
Then that should make you a major evil then.
Mo, I believe that people are capable of just as much evil as they are good (yes, you, and most certainly me). A first step toward being good, and maybe doing good, too, is to stop lying to ourselves about who we are and what we want.
I agree. Now I’m not sure if I came off wrong.
Jordan Peterson lectures on this extensively. If you know you’re capable of evil, you can choose not to make evil choices. If you don’t know/want to know you are capable of evil, then you are more likely to do evil. Then you become capable of enacting things the Nazis did. At least, that’s what I got out of it.
The virtue is to recognize this and to choose not to do evil.
Then you become capable of enacting things the Nazis did.
Im not sure that I can condense the thoughts in my head into anything coherent, but I’ll try.
Did the Nazis know they were the bad guys? I’m sure there were some that were caught up in fervor and regretted the worst parts of it, but their value system was very different than ours today. Aryan supremacy was considered a good supported by science. European expansion was billed as a correction of past injustices. The Jews were seen as conspiratorial mercenaries, profiting off of the misery of the Germans.
I don’t think those were hollow rationalizations. I think they were core pillars of the Nazi value system, and many of the atrocities flowed out of “righting the wrongs” that they perceived.
Similarly, does an enviro-fascist recognize the destruction they cause? Or, is the damage seen as collateral damage and/or retribution for environmental injustice?
The hubris of infallibility can lead to some particularly evil actions, but people with broken moral compasses can recognize their fallibility while also justifying even more (objective) evils because in their view, those evils come up as good to their broken morality.
According to your thesis, “Take even some of the basest of humans, and you will get them to concede that cold blooded murder is wrong”, they did, somewhere in the bottom of their souls, know that murder is evil; thus, they chose to do what they did and rationalized it by saying that “these people are not human and thus, they are fair game”. (I can accept that there are those who can see that what they are doing is evil, but that they delight in doing it.)
Did the Nazis know they were the bad guys? “Similarly, does an enviro-fascist recognize the destruction they cause? Or, is the damage seen as collateral damage and/or retribution for environmental injustice?”
“They deserved it” is always a popular justification. So is, “Capitalism is evil and must be destroyed.” It boils down to this:
1) “X people” are not human and therefore fair game.
2) “X people” deserve what they get because they are Bad Thing X and/or in the past they did Bad Thing X.
3) “X system” is wrong and must be dismantled. “People? What people?”
And yet, they have one thing in common: Power over someone else to dictate and direct their behavior and thoughts.
Sorry, Mo. I should have replied to Unciv’s comment. One of the reasons people do evil is that it simply isn’t…convenient to do what’s right. Suthen said below that we are the good men who do nothing. He’s right. We refrain from doing good out of fear, or laziness, or for some perceived short-term advantage even though we can see what the good is. Eventually, Reality catches up with us and sinks its teeth in. To borrow a line from RAH, this is known as ‘bad luck’.
Her racist behavior could have had dire consequences for a Black man.
Glad she’ll face consequences of her own.”
What are they charging her with, prank calling 911?
I’m not sure, because some of the things he said to her could reasonably be considered threats.
The first sprouts of ashes tend to be autocrats and warlords.
You always say that. Besides, I’ll take an honest greedy warlord over some deluded “savior”.
It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. — CS Lewis
Today is the NJ primary. I can’t be bothered to go vote for either milquetoast Republicans – the winner will then face off with the “moderate” Democrat in our gerrymandered district.
There is no incentive to be good, just *slightly less bad* than the other guy, so candidates just keep getting worse.
Nobody ever ran for office so he could leave me the fuck alone.
“Please do not let Halle Berry play a trans man”
https://twitter.com/Jezebel/status/1280302351337885696
She isn’t now, because of this bullshit. Same with that movie with Scarlett Johansson that isn’t being made.
https://twitter.com/halleberry/status/1280304782528311296
https://babylonbee.com/news/to-promote-inclusivity-hollywood-actors-pledge-never-to-take-a-role-where-they-have-to-pretend-to-be-someone-theyre-not
“Please” seems a little disingenuous coming from Jezebel.
I saw blackface on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” last night. IIRC Netflix memory-holed it but apparently not FXX.
PS. it was funny as hell.
Netflix pulled it from outside the US. Here in the US, Hulu is where you could watch it. Past tense. Hulu purged five episodes for racism/blackface. Here’s a list of shows that have been pulled so far.
Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson have lately been slamming the Republicans, I mean really slamming them and taken a few shots at Trump.
Both made me think the same thing: The Republicans are not the lesser of two evils. We are. Pols do what will get the elected. The reason they haven’t been doing so is because we have been the good men who do nothing. We have to push them. Having that pop in my head makes me think voting the greater evil would be a mistake. We need to get off of our asses and stop leaving it up to them.
I was thinking the same thing so I researched the Republicans running in my district as mentioned above. Both have websites made by marketing people with positions so vague and full of platitudes I can’t tell them apart. Want to “support Veterans” and “affordable healthcare without medicare for all”? Vote for McCann or Pallotta, whichever.
Ah, the school board election approach. Choose 5 from a slate of 20. Who are they? What do they believe? What will they do? Who knows. The papers might publish some generic blurb where they all talk about how much education and children are important. If you’re “lucky”, the local teachers’ union will publish a list of who they want you to vote for. But that still tells you nothing about the rest except that the union didn’t like them enough to be the top 5.
With regards to school boards, what could a conservative or libertarian actually do? The entire sphere of education is leftist. The teachers, the administrators, the schools that train them, the “scholars” who write textbooks. The entire sector is government controlled as well.
Your best case is to play whack a mole with the more egregious examples of leftist idiocy, but that’s shooting gators, not draining the swamp.
Wars over, they won.
Setting aside the self-defeatism of that attitude, I think the problem is different.
Despite initially wanting to be a math teacher, I ultimately didn’t want to teach because the bureaucracy was terrible. That it was infested to hell and back with leftists did not even enter my mind at the time (and it wasn’t so bad then, anyway). Education programs are glorified daycares for pseudo-adults so that they can go on and run other glorified daycares for perpetual children. The advisor who showed us Stossel videos and had us volunteer at a charter school was laid off by the university, and the mentor teacher I worked with who enjoyed his subject and craft left the school after the end of the semester. In both cases, they wanted to do better things but the establishment wasn’t interested. Maybe politics played a part in but I think good old union mentality did far more. Everybody who didn’t ease into the bureaucratic mentality was a threat. This drove a lot of people out well before the leftist takeover, though I’m sure it played an important part in enabling it.
We don’t value competence in anyone who holds a position of “public trust” anymore. Affirmative action and qualified immunity are but two of many symptoms of a larger mentality that public service jobs are entitlements. Politicians reap the greatest personal benefit of this mentality, but they are hardly the only beneficiaries.
Same here, with English. My cooperating teacher was wonderful. My student teaching experience was wonderful. But I saw that this woman, who only wanted to teach, was burdened with so much more than teaching: bureaucracy, further education requirements (grad school), school boards, parents insisting that their children were perfect…
She told me in no uncertain terms that if I loved teaching (sorta, maybe not; I’m not very good at it, I’ve come to realize), I needed to get the hell out of Dodge.
I never got far enough to encounter that, though I have a good friend who went through the program too a few years after me who has (he decided to stick with it).
My personal end came when the ed. dept. at my university decided that everybody in the program had to have the same advisor. I already had an education program advisor whom I liked (apart from the one who was laid off), but no, for whatever idiotic reason, only the department chair could advise people past a certain point. That in and of itself wouldn’t have been so bad except that the dept. chair was impossible to get a hold of. I called, I emailed, I even showed up in person to the dept. office during normal hours (“she’s not in right now”) and left a message. I heard nothing back. You had to major in your subject area anyway, and so as a math major with a teaching focus I just decided to drop the teaching focus. This also freed me up to get a decent math advisor, as the only math advisor who was allowed to advise would-be teachers was terrible (there’s a pattern here).
Nobody ever asked me my politics, and libertarians weren’t so well known and disliked back then anyway. I enjoyed the times I got to teach, and who knows maybe I would have been a terrible teacher anyway. But I was weeded out by a pointless process and was left overall with the distinct impression that this was a well established clique for halfwits that sometimes grudgingly tolerates more competent people but only because they need to keep test scores up.
“Nobody ever asked me my politics, and libertarians weren’t so well known and disliked back then anyway.”
I would submit that stultifying bureaucracy and impossible to fulfill byzantine requirements that make no sense will weed out the vast majority of non-statists.
If I required every teacher I hired to pass a marksmanship test, do math without a calculator, and spit on a picture of Bill Clinton, I probably wouldn’t have to explicitly ban the proggies from working there.
Somewhat related with regard to teaching ability.
I had a Biology prof once who FLOVED his subject. I mean, he was utterly passionate about it. It was infectious.
Except…he couldn’t teach it worth a damn. He got so disheartened by our test scores, it was like a parent being disappointed in you.
We WANTED to do well, but he just couldn’t teach this thing he loved so much. One of the saddest things I’ve ever experienced.
Now, I didn’t realize at the time that he wasn’t a good teacher. I took it on myself that I just didn’t get the concepts and of course that is true.
However, the next semester I had a math teacher who loved math and was also a brilliant teacher and I could do things I never thought I’d be able to do, mathematically speaking. He’s the one who caused my crush on higher math.
Anyway, I compared and contrasted. Two profs who adored their subjects. One could teach it. The other couldn’t.
And, oh, my cooperating teacher only told me to get out after I showed her my fantasy lesson plans. She loved them. That’s when she said, “You’ll NEVER be allowed to teach that.”
I think you’ve hit on the crux of my argument. Why are the good men doing nothing? because they have been convinced that they are not facing off against evil. And in part electing someone who is “Less bad” helps towards that. Trump has expanded on the powers of the Presidency, that were expanded by Obama, that were Expanded by Bush, ….; In each case the people who voted for them always justified that evil by contrasting it with the evil they fought against. I’m tired of evil being portrayed as virtue and settling for evil because it’s not as bad as the other guy. The End is the same, we are just choosing our method of destruction to be slow and more effective.
Trump has wanted to expand the powers of the Presidency. He seems pretty consistently unable to get away with it, and also to do things that some of his predecessors could do without challenge.
I’d say diverting appropriated funds for the military to pay for his border wall was an abuse of power that conservatives will come to regret under President Biden/Harris/Rice/Ocassio-Cortez
Is that an actual precedent or is it just something he wanted to do that his predecessors would have been able to do without much fooferaw? It’s not like ACA funds or timetables were executed how the bill said they were supposed to be.
I’m sure his predecesors could have gotten away with it. That doesn’t really have a bearing. He did, and he used the “National Security” bullshit reasons for it. The Democrats pretty much guaranteed that they will retaliate by implementing the green new deal using Military Funding.
Retaliate implies they care about the appearance of legitimacy. They don’t. They enjoy the presumption of legitimacy from their supporters. The use of “public health” to enact a whole host of infringements sets up a terrible precedent, and Trump had nothing to do with it. Put another way, they’ll do whatever they want anyway.
I don’t think my last comment gets the point I intended across. I don’t think they care about precedent anymore. They’re not going to use “national defense” as a justification then point to Trump as the source because frankly they are going to forget all of this by then and they won’t need a prior precedent to use as a justification.
Yeah, the need for many in power to justify themselves is over. A leader can be screaming about the need to stay indoors and away from others or you’re imperiling the health of others one moment, and a moment later walk in the streets arm-in-arm with thousands of people. They will do what they want, rub your face in it, and dare you to object.
But, also, in typical Trump bumbling fashion, has made cases for limiting the power of the president, along with attempts to end wars, only to be slapped like a petulant child for daring to go against ‘tradition’.
I think he could have grabbed a lot more power during the initial Corona scare if he had wanted. He was fairly restrained. It was the Governors who became dictators.
Hell, Evil Authoritarian Dictator Trump was being criticized by some on the left for not being dictatorial enough.
Choose the form of the destructor.
Good men are doing nothing because most everyone is fat and happy in the most prosperous place in the history of the world. We’ll see what kind of pushback there is when our budding revolutionaries kill large swathes of the economy and the hurt is real.
“Trump has expanded on the powers of the Presidency”
People keep asserting that, but offer no examples that were originated by Trump. Executive Orders were a minor thing until Regan, then each subsequent POTUS issued more than the previous one.
I’ve read all of those orders, and every single one them I can remember the press buildup and opposition party whining for a week or two before the order was issued. Even the power-mad Obama was reluctant to issue some of these until the external pressure was applied.
I disagree that the “good men” are doing nothing. The good men do plenty – and the press and politicians who could promote them ignore them because it’s not dramatic and it doesn’t sell.
Years back I learned about the fallacy of “managing by exception” because people learn to make everything an exception to the point where nothing improves. Pardon the pun, but American society is no exception.
No matter how bad Trump is now and will be later regarding gun control, Bide would be worse. Because SCOTUS.
Unless you are actually hoping for a shooting war, no amount of “activism triggered by putting the big bad out front” will counter the damage caused by letting Biden put people on SCOTUS.
The hot Catholic Judge lady is probably the best reason to vote for Trump.
i dunno. the passing of obamacare was deeply unpopular so not only was it repealed, a whole host of regulations were removed with it so Obama moved US healthcare in a much more free market direction. It may be the same with gun control.
What repeal?
Indeed.
Certain provisions of the law were struck down by the courts. But it was a 1500-page bill that hasn’t been repealed in its entirety, and most states’ insurance regulators haven’t rolled back the changes they made to jump on the PPACA bandwagon, and probably won’t any time soon.
Same time they pushed through universal CCW reciprocity. Thanks Paul Ryan.
Thank god. National reciprocity would have morphed into federal CCW regulations and then into straight up gun control. Dodged a bullet on that one so far.
thatsthejoke.jpg
That SCOTUS picks are so important in the first place is ridiculous in and of itself.
what is the alternative?
Civil law, I guess. The law is whatever the legislature says it is, and judges have no discretion to interpret it. Of course, in actual civil law jurisdictions, there has been drift away from that principle.
Monarchy, too. The law is whatever the monarch says it is. Of course, one need only look at extant and extinct monarchies to see how well that works out.
The problem with greater evils is that they tend to like killing people to solve problems. And killing people has a strange habit of working, as dead people can’t fight back and scared people won’t fight back (they flee instead, generally). Now, I won’t say Biden is going to unleash a tide of open civil warfare, despite whatever the crazies think, but iterate “choose the greater evil” enough times and genocide is the general result.
Why vote for the lesser evil? Chtulhu 2020!
Oops. Pie beat me to it.
Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro Tests Positive for Coronavirus
The Brazilian president has minimized the severity of the pandemic
Wait, wasn’t he the one they said exposed Trump to Corona cancer months back?
Someone form Bolsonaro’s entourage had the virus and met with Trump in Florida. But apparently it’s only now that Bolsonaro got infected himself.
Mountainside Fitness request for a stay has been denied. All Arizona gyms have to close because the governor said so. Judge says that’s totes constitutional.
https://twitter.com/FOX10Phoenix/status/1280546772746674177
Good lord, the comments.
I was listening to Rippetoe’s podcast the other day and he commented that the only chance these types of businesses have is to en masse refuse to submit.
I just don’t see it happening.
Being able to go back to the gym has been a godsend for my mental health. I will not take well to another shutdown.
Gyms like these got me down from 375 to 185 and likely saved my life. Apparently that counts as non-essential. The mountainside CEO says he’s opening on July 27. But there’s literally nothing stopping the Governor from extending the order indefinitely. Executive Orders appear to scrutinized less by the courts than actual passed legislation. How’s that for “through the looking glass?”
Wow, dude, that’s spectacular! Are you holding steady?
And yes, the people that frequent gyms are there to push death out as far as possible. But to the same fucksticks who brought us the low-fat, high carb diet, Home Depot and liquor stores are essential, gyms and all sporting opportunities are not. Insanity.
I wish that guy luck.
Well no, I went from 375 down to 161, but wasn’t thrilled with my strength, energy or appearance. Switched from a cardio heavy approach to strength training and gained some of the weight back. Lost most of the initial weight by 2014, so there’s not much danger of me ballooning back up.
Nice.
666 2020!
How’d you get that phone number? I thought it was unlisted.
I just tried it after 976 -3845 came back as not out of service.
I fucked that joke up. Time for bed.
Were you expecting Jenny?
Or Peggy?
With link this time.
I’ll note that there are ways in which you can construe voting for Trump as voting for the greater evil. I just used the example as it was the motivation for my train of thought.
We had lockdowns and continue to have various restrictions because a large majority of people support them.
This, on stilts. The mobocracy will steamroller us, principles be damned. See my AM link. 1100 people signed an on line petition. Bring on the mandatory mask diktat.
We’re fucked.
I’m getting a little annoyed with the prevailing attitude of, we have to inject politics into every single aspect of your life, but how dare you play politics on issues we deem off limits!
The problem is that far too many people don’t see it as politics, they see it as “the right thing to do” or “patriotism.”
“It’s not politics, it’s unpatriotic to burn an American flag.”
“I refuse to play politics with children’s lives. We need to ban [X] for safety reasons.”
Uh, those two examples are not the same thing. The first one would require supporting the flag burning bag in order to match the second one.
But yeah, the amount of people who think the actions of elected officials and legislators can somehow be nonpolitical is fucking stupid.
For most people, that’s a purely semantic distinction. “This is wrong” and “the government should ban it” go together like mom and applie pie.
Yeah, I kind of short-handed that one. Sorry.
What I was getting at was that far too many people take political positions and then try to cover them up by appeals to some kind of moral high ground. And, yes, you’re right: a better way to phrase my first point would have been, “it’s unpatriotic to burn and American flag so we need to amend the constitution to stop people doing it.”
When I was in Baptist school, it was a given that it should be made illegal to burn the flag. I bought that because it’s BAD to disrespect the flag and thus, the US.
The concept of “free speech has to include speech that you hate” was not a part of the curriculum. Of course, they were very selective about the other things they taught, mostly because they hadn’t bothered to read deeply enough because they weren’t intellectually curious enough. (Aside: What do youth in Asia have to do with anything?)
It took me a while, but I realized that the right wants to control people’s behavior just as much as the left does. They just have different rules.
To me, the difference is that the right wants to control our behavior (which is authoritarian), but the left now wants to control our thoughts (which is totalitarian).
In my book, totalitarianism is far and away the greater evil.
Even after 30 years, it’s still jarring to me when I walk into a church and see the American flag at the front.
Do you think the right DOESN’T want to control our thoughts?
Thoughts lead to behavior.
I don’t think they’re all that different really. Some factions of the right want to control your thoughts as well, for the whole world needs to be saved and can’t be as long as dissent exists. It’s just that the left is culturally ascendant and the more dangerous factions of the right have been marginalized (media scaremongering about “boogaloo” notwithstanding).
Do you think the right DOESN’T want to control our thoughts?
Not really, no. I think they want you to obey, but the left has gone beyond mere obedience. It has been clear for awhile now that mere tolerance, silence even if you disagree, is not acceptable to the left. They demand conversion to their woke ideology/cult. You must express affirmative belief in their catechism. You must admit that all whites (and only whites) are inherently and irredeemably racist, that there is no biological reality to sex, only socially constructed and mutable gender, etc, etc. The left is actively engaged in a campaign of demoralizing people, of demanding that you not just do what they say, but believe what they believe.
The left acts like quasi-religious fanatics who demand conversion, by the sword if need be. I just don’t see that on the right.
Thoughts don’t necessarily lead to behavior. The right cares less what you think about racial equality, than that you don’t discriminate in your actions. The left cares not at all that you don’t discriminate in your actions, but insists on your belief in their ideology. A great many people have been caught flat-footed by this, believing that the woke mob will leave them alone if they haven’t actually discriminated against anyone because of their race. The woke mob goes after people who don’t recite the catechism, regardless.
I don’t think they’re all that different really.
To some extent, its a difference of degree, not kind, sure. Everybody wants other people to agree with them. I think the right is much more willing to settle for obedience, rather than conversion, though.
Random question time:
What are the odds those “spiking hospitalization rates” are a result of people who test positive being bundled off to the ER as a “precaution”, and admitted mostly for purposes of quarantine?
My understanding is that parts of it is this:
1. Hospitals are admiting patients for regular “elective” surgery again/ as well as people are visiting the ER’s hospitals at higher rates again after the drop off during the lockdowns
2. All patients admitted are tested for CV
3. Anyone who tests positive is marked as a CV patient hospitalized, even if they are asymptomatic and not there for CV.
Also, people who have the anti-body are being reported as new cases.
I was suspecting that too, especially since there are a lot of free beds lately. Not to mention incentives.
I’m still trying to find the definition of a spike. Is it 10%? 50%? 100%?
In global warming it is about .1 centigrade, sit’s all a matter of how you set the scale on your graph.
If you want an example of what I’m saying see the Presidency of Trump. To the left Trump is the quintessential greatest evil. He is evil incarnate, out loud and in the front. When he was elected he had a Republican legislature. And what was he able to accomplish? A Tax Cut. and that’s it?
Trump and the Congressional Republicans are only nominally in the same party.
The biggest thing Trump has revealed is just how many of the Congressional GOP are controlled opposition. Like, remember Paul Ryan the deficit hawk, the green eyeshaded fiscal conservative? What a conjob that was.
Eddie Munster likes spending other people’s money just like the rest of them.
The Republican Party is just a lag filter.
Yeah, Reagan killing the Dept of Education, boy, that was a great victory against the centralized bureaucracy.
I will say for Reagan, that if he had Congress with him, he might have actually done that. He ended up having to trade the domestic agenda for tax cuts, deregulation, and the military buildup. But Tip O’Neill was always going to hold the line on the New Deal and the Great Society.
The only time the GOP in Congress has actually attempted to live up to their rhetoric was from 1994-1996. By 1997 they had gotten so full of themselves they put us through the first version of impeachment theater. I’m not saying Clinton didn’t deserve impeachment, but they knew damn well it would never pass the Senate. If they had won in 1980 or 1984 I think they would have settled in comfortably such that by the start of their second session they’d be passing the same bullshit the Democrats were, and Reagan would have signed it just like Bush did from 2000-2006.
Hmm, Congress takes session in odd-numbered years, so those ranges should really be 1995-1996 and 2001-2006 respectively.
Imagine if Newt had impeached Clinton for the Waco Massacre. That would have been, as the kids say *chefs kiss*. Might have even stopped McVeigh from blowing up the federal building.
the argument Trump did not accomplish much so the next guy will not accomplish much is flawed. Especially if the guy is supported by the entrenched bureaucracy and interests.
Also look at what the left thinks trumpy accomplished with 2 you SC judges. Is there anyone on the left saying good thing Trump was elected?
And as my example on obamacare, many bad laws and regulations, once passed, are hard to repeal. Sadly, tax cuts are not in that category. Ethanol requirements for fuel are considered bad by many, including some environmentalist. Once passed… or No Child Left Behind or common core or a lot of other regs. Trumps repealed a few, but very few. And with huge opposition.
You need 60 Senate votes to pass things, and that includes repeal. It’s one of, if not the main reason the ratchet only turns one way. To repeal anything, you need 60 actual Republicans, not a single one of them squishy moderates. They have never, and will never actually get that. There’s always four or five McCain/Romney/Murkowski type Republicans who can be counted on to “reach across the aisle” to preserve leftist victories of years past.
Most bills need to have a sunset provision. There’s very little that actually needs to be a perpetual law, like say laying out the structure of the federal courts or criminalizing interference with a federal official’s duties. But most things nowadays end up being perpetual even though they could function perfectly well with 1, 2, or 5 year sunsets.
Easily circumvented with a bill re-approving all laws scheduled to be sunsetted.
You need 60 Senate votes to pass things, and that includes repeal.
A rule that can be disposed of with 51 votes.
Wellity wellity well, Zuckerberg caved:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/facebook-folds-will-now-police-speech-after-advertiser-exodus
I’d like to be able to fellate myself for calling it, which I did, but only a blind fool didn’t see this coming.
And I’m calling that the only way right-leaning normies are going to be able to communicate in the future is mimeograph machines in the basement.
You can fellate yourself?
That’s some flexibility, right there.
Or a really big cock…..or both.
Whatever the case, I hope he can see it coming.
If I was so inclined I’d have to use a hose. Maybe back when I was in my twenties…
You know he can’t because he’s posting here rather than sucking himself off.
Given that the entire business model is “make money through targeted advertising” I’m not sure we could really have expected this to end any other way.
Didn’t Weimar Germany run a political experiment along these lines? Or did they mistakenly believe they were electing the lesser evil?
Pretty sure they were content with calling Hitler the lesser evil compared to the communists.
and (((them)))
Were they wrong?
The Germans spent the entire first half of the 20th century being wrong… spectacularly wrong.
They were spectacularly wrong to think international communism and national socialism were the only choices.
So Germans didn’t read Mein Kampf before going to the polls. It was pretty clear what his ambitions were.
Near the end of “Decline and Fall of the Third Reich,” Schirer commented on all the people who were consoling themselves by asking the rhetorical question, “who could have known what Hitler was going to do?” To which Schirer’s response was “everybody. He’d been telling people for 15 years.”
If in 1934 I had to chose between Mussolini’s Italy and Stalin’s USSR, and there were no other choices… I would reluctantly go with Benito.
He was a snappy dresser, at least.
Is that… a narrowed gaze?
Some were content. The rest who weren’t were threatened, jailed, or killed. The Center Party of Germany bears great responsibility for enabling Hitler’s rise as a “lesser evil” compromise but had Hitler and Goring not already been able to game the Reichstag’s rules in their favor it wouldn’t have mattered. If anything, Hindenburg is the one most guilty of “lesser evils” thinking; he hated Hitler but let the man manipulate him into getting everything he wanted (though how “with it” Hindenburg was at the time is debatable, he died not long after).
Heinrich Böll was placing blame on Hindenburg since at least 1959.
The critical among you may be pointing out that I am not arguing for voting for the greater evil, but that the evil that is harder to perceive is the greater, because it is more likely to tempt the good man. And you’d be correct. The options are not between evil and slightly less evil. It is between evil outright and evil hidden. The ends are the same, the presentation is different.
But they aren’t remotely the same. It’s not between “evil outright and evil hidden” or even “evil and slightly less evil”. If the Democrat push to end gun ownership in America was analogized as decapitation, then Trump’s gun-control endeavors would be tantamount to a superficial paper cut.
Your argument is flawed that even more gun control will somehow mobilize opposition against gun control supporters and convince them they are wrong (when they are winning no less with a Biden presidency!). Unless you are arguing for rebellion, which is the only possible way I see your argument playing out. You can see the evidence of refutation happening right now in VA. The mask is dropped in VA and the Dems are gutting the 2nd Amendment with everything they’ve got. 2nd Amendment supporters are pushing back as hard they peacefully can. No efforts by 2nd A supporters in VA will repeal gun control by an inch no matter how galvanized their support.
My understanding is that parts of it is this:
1. Hospitals are admiting patients for regular “elective” surgery again/ as well as people are visiting the ER’s hospitals at higher rates again after the drop off during the lockdowns
2. All patients admitted are tested for CV
3. Anyone who tests positive is marked as a CV patient hospitalized, even if they are asymptomatic and not there for CV.
That makes sense, in a perverse sort of way.
If you’re a hospital, and your normal income streams are radically curtailed, but you get paid for CVs, it also makes plenty of sense to you to find as many as you can (anywhere you can), admit them and discharge most in the same day, to keep that CV money coming in.
Wellity wellity well, Zuckerberg caved:
But we can be certain hate speech will be policed in an evenhanded apolitical way. No hammers, no sickles, for instance.
Let’s posit a few scenarios that also involve Congress.
(1) The Dems take full control of Congress. I think the odds are very good that they will do what they have done in Virginia – balls to the wall gun control. The Dems seem to have dropped the mask on gun control when they can actually pass their wish list. They appear to no longer be concerned about a backlash, about losing marginal seats, because they have learned that once its on the books, it never gets repealed, and that marginal seats lost in this election will be picked up in a future election.
(2) The Dems keep the House (or lose the House but take the Senate). I think the odds are very good that they will pass gun control laws in the house the control, and they will die in the other house (which I think has been the pattern for awhile, mostly).
Under scenario (2), the President makes no difference. Under scenario (1), the President might make a difference by vetoing the gun control bills. Because we have been under scenario (2), Trump has never been tested on this. A further confounding variable is, Trump isn’t up for re-election after this year. Will he care about keeping that part of his base on board? As ever with Trump, who knows what he will do.
Scenario (1), if Biden wins, is the entire gun control wish list goes into law and most likely stays there. SCOTUS is a weak reed, and even if the Repubs ever get control again (which I seriously doubt), they won’t take those laws down.
Well for the gun rights single issue voter, voting for Biden is probably the better option. Biden will staunchly present a stark anti-gun agenda. He will attack gun rights openly and out loud. Such an attack would surely bring together the opponents of gun control to defend them, and solidify them against any attempt to subvert those rights.
This assumes one, or both, of two things:
First, that opposition to gun control can actually prevent Biden from signing a bill, or prevent a Dem Congress from passing them. I see no reason to believe it would. Trump is a crapshoot, but Biden is a guaranteed loss.
Second, if Dem overreach would provoke a Repub reaction of completely remaking our gun control regime into something more in line with, oh, I dunno, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, I think there would be something to the strategy of letting the greater evil shoot itself in the foot. But I don’t think it will play out that way.
I think there would be something to the strategy of letting the greater evil shoot itself in the foot
Let us examine how that’s been working in California. What have they learned from their experience?
There are a whole lot of people out there totally willing to become criminals to keep their Constitutional rights because gun control laws are simply bad laws. Relatively few people are going to hand over their guns and the rest will die on that hill because it’s a worthy hill to die on.
Guns will be confiscated in job lots, and not because gun owners will turn them in after being asked nicely. When the door-kickers come for your guns because ATF has been illegally keeping records of all gun purchases for decades, very, very few will shoot them as they come in. Hardly anyone, in the big scheme of things, is willing to literally die on any hill.
I don’t think there will be door kicking, for the most part. Good brainwashed proggies will box up grandpas evil assault weapons and take them to the local cop shop after he moves into a nursing home, and they will be shredded there.
I think the model for gun control will be what they did to cigarettes.
I guess it depends on how patient you think the left will be to disarm the deplorables once they have power. Will they wait a generation or more?
People on moral crusades aren’t known for their patience. How many leftists now think gun control is another one of their moral crusades?
Honestly, the smart ones, the string pullers, they know by now that the gun owners won’t actually do anything about their other rights and freedoms as long as you leave them their guns.
How many gun owners in this country have meekly sat there while the government bankrupted their business over the Commie Cough? Not a single one of these mayors or governors has caught a bullet. Not one.
Gun owners, as a group, will pay 8 dollars a gallon for gas after the Green Nude Eel is in affect, and they’ll take their children to mandatory drag queen story hour, and they’ll insist that since they still have their ARs, that everything is fine. Vote Pence 2024!!!!!!
That’s a great point. Are most gun owners are more worried about personal security and a sense of self? It’s important to realize that most people believe in most government: they think Social Security and Medicare are good ideas; they want the cops enforcing lots of laws, especially drug laws. The delusion of security through government is a rock few care to turn over. No one is getting shot over taxes on tea or trade embargoes.
Untill the cops decide to make the occasional example and kick some doors. It will not affect many just the unlucky few
Swating will increse in popularity. Anonymus tio x has a bunch of guns
As I’ve watched this play out this year, I would be very concerned about “executive orders” moving forward. What I’ve seen suggests that legislatures can be rendered moot if the executive can declare an open ended “emergency” in which whatever he says goes, until he declares the emergency over. Now this will only work if the media and then the people are compliant, so that hamstrings Trump’s ability to behave in such a way. It would not, however, hamstring a Democratic president (as it didn’t with Obama).
I am not a Republican, and have no desire to ever be one; they offend me deeply. But what the Democratic party has done this year in attempt to seize power for themselves is truly obscene. This isn’t the “lesser of two evils,” this is one party actively ruining my life as we speak, and I’m powerless to stop them. Find me somebody who can and they have my vote.
Senior Citizens Will Be the ‘Deciding Factor’ in 2020 Election
If this is correct, we’re looking at a Dem sweep in November. Seniors love them some lockdowns and mandatory masking. Seniors love big government handouts (to themselves). Seniors don’t have jobs and care less about the economy. Seniors will (likely?) be less receptive or even resistant to attacks on Joe as too old and decrepit.
If Bernie taught us anything, a candidate depending on the youth vote will fail
There aren’t enough youth, especially with the seniors living longer and longer.
Makes me wish we had more Governors giving them the Cuomo treatment.
Republicans will reap the whirlwind for
/ allowing populist voters to crowd out a sane platform
/ nominating someone they know is a clinical case
/ sitting silent while his excesses alienate the middle
Outrageous behavior is now codified, sanctified.
A republic if they can keep it
Old people also don’t like rioting.
I think that might be the only thing that swings their votes away from the Dems.
As for masking, I live in a town and an area with lots of old people. They are all masked; its almost unheard of for me to see an old person who isn’t wearing a mask these past few weeks. The people I see who aren’t wearing masks are generally more middle-aged. The hyper-risk-averse younger generation is also all in on the masking.
Neither does Karen.
So they don’t care about their (grand)children’s livelihoods? Color me skeptical.
Zardoz 2020?
Finally someone gets me.
So you are infectious?
A fusion candidate? Something for the deplorables (the gun is good) and something for the woke (the penis is evil)?
Seniors love them some lockdowns and mandatory masking.
Based on my totally nonrepresentative observations, I would say I see more young (<50) people wearing masks than old crabs like me.
Absolutely. Most of the oldsters I see out and about are unmasked.
I am flying to visit my family in Oklahoma this week. My sister (who is healthy) told me they haven’t been back out at restaurants yet. She is trying to avoid the COVID19.
Seems a bit paranoid to me, but it’s her choice.
I saw a very young couple (20 ish) masked up and gloved to go food shopping.
Now, gloves are just plain stupid. Wash your hands.
UCS has a sad.
My mom and her sisters (72-80) think it’s all bullshit.
My parents and all their friends (70+) think it’s bullshit too. Though it is a biased sample…
Yup. Most of the people in my community are retired, we’re like the younguns around here, and the elders openly congregate outside in the hood and I have never seen one of them wear a mask, only the very few younger people in the hood. And (((them))), (((they))) ain’t having none of that mask shit, period.
My father refuses to wear one and is vehement about it. My mother usually doesn’t but is much less strident about it. They’re in their late 60s.
This is a good take and why I think it’s valuable that the masks are being ripped off. No longer can the DemSocs and their enablers in academia, entertainment and the media claim plausible deniability of their leanings. It will galvanize #resistance.
Even though I made the opposite argument wrt Trump and gun control, I agree with leon. Unfortunately, the average voter will not see it that way.
I hear the mask phrase often but am not sure the masks were that on in the first place…
https://www.azfamily.com/news/court-denies-mountainside-fitness-request-to-throw-out-duceys-executive-order/article_1dc239bc-c073-11ea-97a7-33e80c06ed3b.html
Apparently, while the court sympathizes with the businesses that are being closed as a result of the new lockdown, it is not up to the court to determine who is right or wrong, and the governor was not acting irrationally when he ordered gyms closed for another month.
Mountainside Fitness did not demonstrate how being closed by government decree will harm its business. (Ruling within the link)
“Mountainside Fitness did not demonstrate how being closed by government decree will harm its business.”
Clown world.
“The kulak capitalists claimed, without evidence, that being closed down for months would limit their ability to exploit their workers.”
Somehow not government taking.
I bet this judge can tell us what brand shoe polish the governor uses.
Totally rational to close gyms, period, full stop, while allowing restaurants and personal services establishments to be open under restrictions.
Assuming the gym can stay solvent despite being closed indefinitely, exactly where does the judge think the money is going to come from to make up for all the lost revenue?
He’s way too big to qualify for PPP, he’s stayed solvent through debt and working with his landlords. He can’t do this for long.
He’s a fucking judge. As far as he can tell, money falls out of the sky.
Actual quote from the decision:
“Certainly Mountainside was damaged greatly by the initial shutdown andis being damaged again by the latest temporary shutdown. The only damage, however, is lost money. This is not irreparable.”
Let them eat cake.
Also, the decision contains more to-be-sures than a Robby Soave visit with a priest.
According to that fine reasoning any negative consequences are acceptable. Is it irreparable if the business goes teats up or does the death of the owner have to be involved?
FUCK. THAT.
According to my dictionary, its not irreparable only if it can be repaired. So how can the lost revenue be restored, ya feckin’ idjit? Who is going to make up these losses? You? The Governor?
According to his definition, the only thing that’s irreparable is death.
*puts woodchipper away*
Its actually pretty typical for “mere” monetary loss to be disregarded in motions for temporary injunctions, because the plaintiff has a claim for damages that they can bring against whoever they are seeking the injunction against.
That is not the case here, so I am baffled by the judge’s casual dismissal of monetary loss as something “reparable”. There is no claim for damages possible in this case, so the usual reason for not issuing an injunction doesn’t apply.
If that judge winds up beaten in some alley with a barbell, well, I won’t say its right, but I will say its understandable.
The only damage, however, is lost money.
Be sure to tell the gym owner that when he’s living out of his car because his business went belly-up.
This shit makes me sick. No wonder I’m imbibing more than I used to. The mendacity is off scale high.
Mountainside Fitness did not demonstrate how being closed by government decree will harm its business.
If you can’t deal with a little bit of government supervision, you shouldn’t be in business.
Point taken. Gun rights in this election is probably going to be kept on the back burner due to this “summer of love” we get to watch from the confines of our living room. Gun sales are through the roof as a result.
We live in the age of supercharged EOs…if you’re a gun rights voter then voting for Biden is nuts.
Particularly since noted “moderate” Joe Biden has already said he wants Rob O’Rourke setting gun policy should he win.
I’d like to see the “shadow cabinet” that the presidential candidates would make up if elected and then to keep the winning party on their toes.
The USA is too large for a president to rule on everything himself. Besides the VEEP, who else would Biden bring? And Trump?
Shadow Cabinet.
Didn’t IB McGinty do an article on building a shadow cabinet? Maybe it was a Murphy Bed.
Either way- Shadow Dancin’
I know what that’s going to be.
Trump brings back John Kelly at State; after all, “he’s a tremendous guy.”
Jared Kushner, “my star,” to FBI as soon as he’s done “fixing policing.”
I’m starting to miss John Mitchell.
“The USA is too large for a president to rule on everything himself”
It’s almost as if the founders came up with an amendment in the BoR designed to address this issue…
It’s just an old scrap of paper written by racist white men. Who cares?
/dumbass millennial
I know, I know. And Congress is just supposed to meet for a short session before going home to a real job too.
But as long as we are dumbing this down to a popularity contest, show us more than a couple of speeches and debates.
meet for a short session to enhance the CCP Virus grift before going home
“Such an attack would surely bring together the opponents of gun control to defend them, and solidify them against any attempt to subvert those rights.”
Great, if it goes down that way.
If it doesn’t go down that way, then those gun rights are gone, forever. I won’t criticize anyone who thinks that those stakes are just too high.
This is why I continue to donate to the NRA; not because they’re perfect, they’re so not, but they are the biggest and they need to be a powerful visible presence.
FWIW, I also donate to the smaller organizations too, but I’m definitely not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to the NRA.
I’m very much with you on that. I’m a voting life member of the NRA. Not because I agree with them on everything, but because they can be useful, and I want to have some say in how the ship steers.
(Also, I have occasionally entertained ideas of running for the Board of Directors, under the campaign flag of, “Shut the Fuck Up, Boomer…”)
My donation money goes to SAF and FPC, and some local orgs.
White people using poor Blacks as human shields.
https://spectator.us/gentrification-revolt-black-lives-matter-instagram/
White people using poor Blacks as human shields.
https://spectator.us/gentrification-revolt-black-lives-matter-instagram/
wtf
It’s only counts as 3/5 of a post.
Well at least it’s not NSFW link fail.
leon, I’m late in saying I liked it. Because of the specific dynamics of politics and governance in the US, I think “the worse the better” won’t fly, but its an interesting thought experiment. I think what we are lacking is a principled opposition to the left, one that is interested in more than just maintaining its perks and privileges by acting as a (modest) brake on our headlong rush leftward. As it is, we have a ratchet, so that even strong opposition against overreach results in, at best, a modest retrenchment of some fraction of the overreach, with the net result being the left wins, again.
“what we are lacking is a principled opposition to the left”
I disagree. We have many people who understand the hazards of the left and are able to articulate arguments against them; there just aren’t enough and “the people” don’t like them.
It’s been tough to face the fact that while people talk a big game, the majority really don’t like freedom that much. See: lockdowns, Kung Flu.
The Libertarian party would have been much better off infiltrating and influencing the Republican party, just as the progressives have very successfully done to the Democrat party. Demanding ideological purity instead of working with the cards on the table has been the libertarian Achilles heel.
Well since I’m the only real libertarian, you’re wrong.
*throws pineapple deep dish pizza at Q*
*uses circumcised penis to block pizza*
Great, now there’s sausage on the pizza too.
It’s easier to follow rules. People want rules. They want boundaries. Freedom (options) are paralyzing.
!
Clearly, that’s a “MOJO YOU ARE TOTALLY RIGHT!” sort of “!”.
!!
Indeed.
See, when I think I’m being crabby and depressed, this is the kind of thing that makes me realize I’m actually a starry-eyed optimist.
The ‘Vid has been a real eye-opener. Our ruling class has thoroughly beclowned itself in ways that directly impact everybody, and the reaction has shown just how weak most people actually are.
It’s also shown how powerful a drug delusion is. Eat your cookie and by the time you reach the door, you’ll be relaxed and happy again.
Well I think it’s more complicated than that. The majority love freedom, as long as it’s the freedom to do the things _they_ like to do. A critical mass of people love sitting at home and watching Netflix or surfing the internet or whatever. TPTB have, of course, not even come close to infringing on any of that. As for things they don’t like to do (but others might), well of course who gives a shit? If I can inflict my personal preferences on everybody else, what the hell good are they?
The ‘Vid has been a real eye-opener. Our ruling class has thoroughly beclowned itself in ways that directly impact everybody, and the reaction has shown just how weak most people actually are.
Yes. Instead of outrage, it’s “Please Sir, may I have another?”
Very thought provoking, Leon. My belief is that the economy will tank with all this flagrant deficit spending and the gun issue will be far down the list of problems. It wasn’t too long ago that the Southern border crossing was the biggest problem to face man kind, covid is only a problem ’cause there is money being thrown around. Take money out of the equation and people with guns get hungry and covid falls away to nothing. Guns will look like a solution, as it appears to be in some circles with some people today.