And so our “awkward stage” continues. The awkward stage is that excruciatingly, endlessly frustrating phase in which tyranny, brutality, and bigotry against freedom grow ever more oppressive but the oppressed feel powerless to act effectively on a large scale. Moral though it may be to string lawless, dictatorial rulers up on lamp posts, it isn’t what good people do — at least not until provocations and deprivations exceed endurance. Yet without effective options, we good people find ourselves ever more bound and restricted. In the 25 years since I opened 101 Things to do ‘Til the Revolution with my infamous…
19 CommentsCategory: Official thuggery, bad prosecutions, and bad law
I’m sorry for going so long without posting. I didn’t intend to, but for weeks every time I’ve thought of blogging, I’ve been overwhelmed with disgust. If my disgust were only about politics and the current woeful state of the world, I’d blog my way through that. That’s mere business as usual. Politics and its attendant idiocies, however, are only a minor component of the bile that rises in my soul. The much larger component of my disgust continues to be triggered by the depleted and degraded state of freedom in the minds of so many who ought to be…
27 CommentsThe problem of free speech Gab, the free-speech social network, has suffered yet another blow. Visa has yanked their merchant account, preventing people from using Visa cards to make payments to the company. Worse, the ban also extends personally to Gab founder Andrew Torba AND to any members of his household. Gosh, can anybody think of other times and places when family members were punished for the politically incorrect deeds of others? Oh yeah … the Soviet Union, Communist China, and Nazi Germany. Fun times, fun places. Of course, this is just Visa, a private corporation, and not the work…
19 CommentsOkay, after months of madness and rants, time for some (mostly) upbeat news. So here we have positive political developments, scathingly rational commentary, and even a couple of charming monkeywrenches. Enjoy. “The Rebellion of America’s New Underclass” by Joel Kotkin. Sooooo very typically politically sneaky and snaky, if true: Money donated to Black Lives Matter, specifically earmarked to defund police, is going straight to the Joe Biden campaign. (I haven’t verified this.) Glenn Greenwald (who, along with Matt Taibbi is one of the few rational, liberty-respecting voices remaining on the left) excoriates the politicians and so-called medical experts who performed…
27 CommentsMany times over the last two weeks I’ve attempted to blog. Each time, useful thought gets blocked by the same perception: The crazy; it’s just too thick. Each day I think I’ve processed the latest craziness enough to blog something coherent. Useful even. But then new waves of craziness wash over the world. I don’t know what to say. I can’t write good sense against the onslaught of the crazy. I don’t know how civilization is holding together under tsunamis of crazy. But then, of course civilization isn’t holding together — and I’m not just talking about the one-two punch…
33 CommentsI’m fully aware that lots of people have bigger problems due to the current political lockdown. If you’re one of the suffering, you have my outraged sympathies. I’m not in a league with the impoverished, the busted, the ones in dire need of “elective” health care they’ve been forbidden to get, or the about-to-go-bankrupt entrepreneurs. But I reserve the right to be ticked off at the small stuff that keeps getting shoveled daily into all our faces and I’m presently irked because I can’t get away from the crazy. This is a small town. Other than the occasional village idiot…
11 CommentsSo two “very smart people” walk into a bar the Oval Office. Bear with me. This is the biggest joke ever. So in they walk and they say to the prez, “Hey, prez. There’s this guy in England with a long, long history of overblown and hilariously wrong predictions of health disasters. He says 2.2 million Americans are going to die of Covid-19 if we do nothing, and a million will still go even if we do. No better scientists have backed up his work. “What say you recommend shutting down the entire country, and especially its small-business economy, based…
8 CommentsPardon the sappy subject line, but after last week’s angry rant it seems right to post some rays (even if they are just very little pinpoints) of good cheer. Life goes on despite every petty act of totalitarianism from every petty politician or bureaucrat — and both real rebellion and creative monkeywrenching appear and grow. —– On the personal front, shortly after I ranted last week, a longtime Commentariat member and friend-I’ve-never-met wrote to remind me, in the nicest way, to follow my own advice. That is: Not to let the bastards grind me (you, us) down. Stupid, evil bastards…
16 CommentsI dreamed last night that I was in Portland with a dozen or so blog friends when The Big One hit. We had gone to the city searching for Covid-19 supplies, which was tough enough. But now we were trapped by Mother Nature — in a world where people had been ordered to fear and avoid each other. In a world where natural instincts to help had been crushed. For some reason, I had a large collection of books with me, which two of my friends quickly “borrowed” without permission. I knew they immagined my collection would be loaded with…
22 CommentsShamelessly stolen from Maggie’s Farm. Dunno who they may have stolen it from 😉 but it’s a good one.
6 Comments