Note: I would be very glad to have experienced health-care workers jump into comments with any additions, corrections (however savage), reality checks, bright ideas, personal insights, or other forms of enlightenment. —– One thing about the hardest systems to route around: Being HARD, lacking flexibility, they develop a lot of cracks. Take a look at any heavily institutionalized or subsidized medical system. I’ll use the U.S. system because the U.S. is home-not-so-sweet-home. But despite the claims that various socialized systems (e.g. Canada’s and the UK’s) are inherently better, many of the same or equally awful drawbacks apply to them. We…
21 CommentsMonth: September 2021
As I contemplated getting down to brass tacks on this topic of creating alternative systems to route around the corrupted, despotic, or just plain broken ones of oligarchy, I quailed. Such huge needs. Such a small blogger. Even with the savvy of the blog Commentariat at my back, merely writing about this, let alone doing anything about it in the real world is a colossal task. At first my thought was, “Shall I write first about the hardest systems to create or the easiest?” That is, do I plunge straight into the rock-and-hard place of how to route around the…
15 CommentsPolitics is downstream from culture. — Andrew Breitbart Culture is downstream from character. — Me —– Last week I wrote that an important job ahead of us is to build parallel systems, and even parallel societies. We need these to sustain ourselves and sustain freedom as utterly corrupted, immoral, self-serving government and corporatist systems crumble. I promised a series on that. Here it begins. As with my earlier series, “In Praise of Men” (which ended up running to seven segments), it seems best to lay some groundwork. My premises for everything that follows … follow. —– 1. Alternate systems are…
25 CommentsThis will be brief. I have company this week. Though my guest and I have brainstormed through a world of perils and generated vast amounts of blog fodder, I planned to wait until next week, then begin a new multi-part series on bringing down totalitarianism. A moment has come up this afternoon, so here’s a beginning. First, please take a cruise though these links that I’ve been collecting in preparation for the upcoming series, most especially the last in the list. Adaptive Curmudgeon sums up everything that needs saying about the obnoxious, unconscionable, cruel, inciting, totalitarian, and exceedingly dangerous speech…
25 CommentsSince L. Neil Smith died on August 27, many people he influenced have paid their tributes. Kent McManigal’s is one of the most heartfelt. Sarah Hoyt said a touching goodbye to her friend. Neil’s daughter Rylla wrote his obituary. Wendy McElroy and her husband Brad Rodriguez were among the first to speak. Me, I’m slow. Eric Oppen and others who gave me the news when it first came out on the Monday after Neil’s death must have wondered whether I cared. I just needed to reflect before saying my thanks. —– I met Neil in 1982 or 1983. I’d read…
19 CommentsThere’s a strange paradox at the heart of our unique and growing totalitarianism. On one hand, our ruling classes are as putrescent as any powdered princeling from France’s ancien regime. They have been for a very long time. Marie Antoinette may never have said, “Let them eat cake” when informed the deplorable masses had no bread. But today public and “private” figures like “let them eat ice cream” Pelosi, “take your jabs and pay no attention to my depopulation dreams” Gates, and “fighting climate change by blasting hydrocarbons from my private jet” Kerry are an undeniable fact of our lives.…
Continue readingDealing with our new totalitarian reality, part II</br>(We have just two jobs to do)
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