Category: Decline and fall

We’ve been living in a counterfactual world since at least 1960. Nixon won the election, but in our space-time continuum, Kennedy was inaugurated president. It looks like we’re at another inflection point. So, what now?

Francis X. Maier:

What may be coming our way is an odd kind of “new colonialism,” with flyover country—that Dark Continent formerly known as places like Kansas, Alabama, and Tennessee, largely inhabited by reactionary troglodytes—reduced in effective power to mission territory for our enlightened coastal elites; who, after all, are much smarter than the rest of us and have the expert skills to run our complex technocracy.

And of course, they’ll do all this unselfishly, heroically really, for the benefit of us natives.

Severian:

What’s going to come of the electoral mess? Nothing good, as we’ve discussed ad nauseam. The likely outcomes — the ones produced by humans, excluding meteor strikes and plagues and other acts of God — range from “bad” to “inconceivably horrible.” There really aren’t any Forces of History, my friends, but something out there wants what it wants, and what it wants, apparently, is rat utopia, the kinder gentler police state, Karen uber alles. Even the increasingly unlikely event of a total Trump victory in the courts only delays it a few years, tops. We all know which way the world is heading.

So… what do we, as individuals, DO?

Tend your gardens. Raise your children. Be loyal to your friends. Pray. Meditate. Read the great books, view the great artworks while that’s still permitted. Enjoy your time in the sunshine, because that’s all any of us ever really get in this world. Amor fati.

See also Edward Feser.

Areorobonekomimiocracy (noun)
Government by robot catgirls from Mars.

Today’s useless word

Moderate (adjective)
A term used in political advertising. It doesn’t actually mean anything.

(Via Ratburger.)

***

For the record: Judge Harold Haley.

From the comments here:

No-one EVER fakes being white. Interesting, nu?¹

The entire post is worth reading before you head out to vote next week.

TS:

The larger issue is that Trump is an unwitting revealer of character – just ask the many “journalists” who have been outed as frauds and hacks by him. You could call Trump a one-man honest-broker detector, a tester of character, like whether your house can stand up to really strong winds. In Catholic parlance, Trump is a near occasion of sin for reporters.

Pixy Misa, in the comments here:

They’ve gone full 1985.

It’s 1984, but one louder.

The Wichita city council this week extended the “mask mandate” into October. Why stop at masking?

How can I avoid the risks of drowning while swimming?

Recommendation: if you must swim, always wear a life vest, face mask and snorkel. This can interfere with swimming laps and draw comment at your local swimming club (assuming they reopen after a coronavirus vaccine is available) but your health is more important!

SER best practice: don’t swim at all. In fact, try not to go near bodies of water larger than a bathtub. Avoid hot tubs, especially if you are very short or have trouble maintaining your balance.

Pro-action: organize your fellow zero-risk activists to complain to pool operators about persons insensitive to your need for complete safety. Demand that the your health club or swimming pool have two trained lifeguards on duty at all time. Lobby local officials to fence off all ponds and lakes where people might swim unsupervised.

***

If you really want to do something about the CCP virus, Joseph Moore has the most practical suggestion I’ve come across:

Turns out that the majority of the population, those under 50 and in reasonably good health, have an IFR [infection fatality rate] of about 0.0001% – one in a million chance. (1) With this bit of information in hand, we should rejoice, throw away the damned masks, and throw a huge, sweaty, 2 week-long street party – for all those who are under 50 and in reasonably good health AND anyone else who would rather party and face a minuscule risk of death than cower like rabbits.

Because – pay attention here – after than 2-week party, we’ll have reached herd immunity! Huzzah! And it would cost us fewer deaths, maybe around 100, from COVID, far fewer than are going to kill themselves coming and going to the party, drinking too much and falling on their face, or in any of the myriad other mundane yet fatal ways healthy people routinely die.

***

Some perspective on our historical moment:

In 2005, Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben published the book State of Exception. The title refers to an old idea, traceable at least to the Roman dictatorship, which holds (to coin a phrase) that extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.

Of course, sometimes extraordinary times do require extraordinary measures—e.g., the American Revolution. The problem, of which ancient thinkers and jurists were well aware, is that there are always people wishing to proclaim any and every time “extraordinary” so they can grant themselves extraordinary powers which they resist ever giving up. The Roman solution was to limit a dictator’s term to six months and to enforce a strong political-cultural norm that the sooner a dictator surrendered his office, the more honor he gained. Whatever the precise solution, for law and liberty to endure, some means has to be found to deal with extraordinary moments without permanent recourse to lawless power.

Agamben argues that few, if any, countries—and virtually none in the West—have any such means anymore. And all the elites like it that way. Hence the “state of exception” has everywhere replaced the rule of law and is, de facto, the rule.

Nothing has made this clearer than the COVID-19 lockdowns, mask mandates, and other executive directives by governors and mayors who make no pretense of even consulting legislative bodies, much less going to the trouble of passing actual laws. They just decree what they want, and that’s that.

Americans initially were willing to go along because they feared that COVID-19 would turn out to be what the ruling class and the “experts” still lyingly insist that it is: a once-in-a-century plague primed to kill millions within months. By now it’s obvious that this virus is not that. But the “state of exception” remains.

***

And that’s enough. I am beyond disgusted with the viral hysteria and the gangsters who exploit it. From here on out I intend to completely ignore it and return this weblog to its original focus on trivia like literature, cartoons, the end of civilization, botany and music.

*** Update: I wasn’t happy with the original title, so I changed it. (This was in the back of my mind.)

***

Update II: Edward Feser is ferocious.

While I was technically a member of the Stupid Party for many years (you have to declare an affiliation to vote in a primary in Kansas), I never, ever considered joining the Evil Party². Therefore, I was a bit surprised to find the above in my mail this week. I think I detect a whiff of desperation in the air.

A few weeks ago I announced my intention to never mention the CCP virus again. Unfortunately, the creeps and nitwits who run the country⁷ and their media accomplices won’t leave me alone, so here’s another small collection of notes from the medical front of the war on civilization. I’m putting the rest of the post below the fold, so those who are sick of this nonsense can skip it.

Continue reading “The maskerade”

Let’s run a little poll.

I’m not totally averse to masks, by the way. Something like the above would be perfectly acceptable, though I’d leave off the cape when I’m out on my bike. However, it doesn’t obstruct breathing and thus would not pass muster with the multitude of petty tyrants.

(Illustration from here.)

… George Orwell.

(Clarification: This is not my hat. I found the picture some time ago, perhaps at Dad’s Deadpool Blog, and kept a copy for a suitable occasion, such as June 25. I’m not a hat-wearing person, but if I were, this is a hat I would wear.)

An important message from TS:

In the coming days, I encourage each of us to step away from the nonsense, ignore the division sought by the enema⁸, and engage in productive conversations about the weather. Our goal must be to stamp out “national conversations”. Instead, converse with your family and immediate neighbors only please.

David Breitenbeck:

I am determined not to comment on the news. I despise mobs, mass movements, and those who enable them, and my great desire is to be able to move to a nice little corner of the country where there aren’t enough people to form moving blobs of collective stupidity and then shut out as much of the insanity as I can.

Fr. Boniface Endorf (Via TS):

The other threat to our hearts is despair. What can we do when faced with centuries of injustice – indeed, injustice stretching all the way back to Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel? First, do not look too long into the Palantir. The Palantir is an object from the Lord of the Rings used to see what is happening far away. One of the characters in that story, a leader of a nation, looks into it and sees the evil surrounding and besieging his nation. He sees only the evil, not the good, and amidst that darkness, he falls into despair. His despair cripples him spiritually and prevents him from fighting for the good. The same can happen to us. Through the Internet, we can see what’s happening all over the world at any moment, and the sheer volume of evil and darkness can spiritually cripple us too. Despair is stalking us and we must make sure that we grasp for hope instead. Do not focus solely on the darkness! Do not let it fill your mind and sow despair within you.