Very few people *really* care about conflicts abroad.
I remember talking about this 20 years ago, like you hear a bomb blows up in a market in Baghdad, 40 people die, and you think, “Oh man, that’s awful.” Then five minutes later you find out the best player on your fantasy football team tore his ACL and is out for the year, and it sours your mood for half the day.
It’s just reality — you can’t get wrecked by every horror that goes on around the world, most of which you are actually blissfully unaware. The minority that make your radar *should not* ruin your mood, either, and this does not make you a bad person. On the contrary it makes a normal one.
It follows that most people going on about conflicts and tragedies that neither involve nor directly affect them are doing it for other reasons. There is some *other* psychological, emotional or social payoff for it. They don’t care any more than you do about the actual humans involved.
There are probably a tiny minority who actually do feel strongly enough to go to the affected places and do something, out of sight of social media and their peers, but you have probably never encountered these rare people and likely never will.
Charming, enthusiastic young dental hygienist makes me promise to do a whole bunch of things to improve my gums. She tells me to rub this special oxygenated gel on every night. I agree to all of it — she is so earnest, cares so much!
Get to the receptionist, tells me the cost of the cleaning, says the gel is extra. How much? 40 euros! Asks if I still want it. Tell her no, but just don’t tell the hygienist!
Like anyone else, I care what people think. But only when I’m thinking about it. The key isn’t not to care, but not to think about it. You won’t even know what you’re missing.
Least volatile 24 hours of price movement I can remember. Seems almost fake. Like if someone had 100 coin flips that went heads/tails/heads/tails 50 straight times, you’d know something was off.
People are defending the indefensible because the alternative is they were wrong about everything on which their lives were based.
It's amazing to me there are people in this world who think they can do evil and get away with it over the long haul. I mean don’t you know by now?
This is bad obviously, but sometimes I think necessary if we’re going to have a widespread awakening.
If the state never pulled the 2008 bailout, if it never censored on social media, if it never tried to impose digital IDs, we’d have stayed with the old system much longer.
But as the system nears collapse, and the ruling class desperation grows, they overplay their hand.
The response of the people is to build and use uncenorable hard money and unstoppable speech protocols.
Yes, it’s every bit as nefarious as described below, but remember Frodo wasn’t willing to destroy the ring and only did so due to Gollum’s desperation.
The state overplaying its hand is part of the process.
View quoted note →This whole under 110 charade is retarded.
Trump's FBI/DOJ are finally going after the mafia. I hope they get all of them, especially the big bosses. Comey is the first "made" guy to get got. Let's see who squeals once they realize they're no longer protected.
PARADOX OF TOLERANCE
The topic that’s been on my mind of late is the idea that after Charlie Kirk’s assassination we need to find a way “come together,” “heal the divide” or “tone down the rhetoric.” I think that kind of therapy-speak will only perpetuate the divide and paper over the central issue: that too many regular people who know better are unwilling to uphold basic standards required for a functioning civilization.
I am not talking about the cultists justifying (or even celebrating) Kirk’s murder because he expressed views with which they didn’t agree. The people who during summer of George Floyd thought it was okay to burn down cities for “racial justice.” I don’t believe those people can be reached, and I genuinely feel sorry for them living with so much hate and delusion. I fear many of them will never make it back.
I am talking about the average person, the one who in private expressed misgivings about disfiguring minors, committing them to a life of pharmaceutical interventions before they were old enough to drive, but said nothing. The person who didn’t necessarily want the covid shot, but felt he had to take it for his job and travel and said nothing. The person who saw colleagues being shunned and cancelled simply for dissenting and went along with it — even to this day, paling around with the most ardent advocates for coercion and cancellation while treading carefully with their once-cancelled friends.
I am talking about the non-brainwashed person, the one who knew in his gut things had gotten out of hand, but refused to stand up for himself or his family. There are basic standards in a civilized society — things like medical treatments of any kind always being voluntary, established after WWII via the Nuremberg Code. Things like free speech, the right to express dissenting views. Like protecting the innocence of children, not exposing them to the perversions du jour of adults working out kinks and fetishes peculiar to their particular psychologies.
I believe for healing to take place, we need to return to these basic standards like civil discourse, wherein those who disagree with you are not “nazis” or “fascists” whose murder is justifiable but actual humans who simply don’t see the world as you do. If we don’t re-establish these basic norms, there is no “coming together,” no possibility of healing. The paradox of tolerance is you cannot tolerate the intolerant lest tolerance be lost forever. And that’s exactly what you are doing by enabling these derangements, hoping it’ll all pass without affecting you, nice, reputable, decent person you believe yourself to be.
It’s not a question of forgiveness or judgment. Whether I personally in my heart of hearts forgive a violent drug addict from a broken home is irrelevant. It’s about upholding standards for yourself and those with whom you interact. Just as you wouldn’t spend time with a person who hated and was openly cruel to black people, why are you spending time with one who wanted to put pharmaceutically non-compliant people in camps?
And I don’t mean the (rare) person who got caught up in a mania, admitted his error and expressed genuine contrition, but the unrepentant, those who would double-down in a heartbeat as soon as it were to their social and professional advantage to do so. You still tolerate the intolerant, and you say nothing. You still tread carefully around them, sure not to offend or upset, even though they would turn on you and your family just as quickly if you ran afoul of the next edict du jour.
What’s lacking isn’t compassion and kindness but courage. The courage to stand up for what’s right, the courage to do so even if it’s not in your social and professional interest, the courage to be disliked.
I can’t tell anyone what to do — every situation is individual, and the appropriate response is always case by case. But generally speaking, the problem I see is not mostly with the far too large minority of people who have irretrievably lost their minds this last decade, but with the majority who enable them.
Going to be annoying and post my long-form piece in a regular note because no one reads them in long form. Next post. Not my fault if you attention-span-deficient retards have no interest in clicking and only read if something already captures your attention!
The issue is not forgiveness but basic standards. It doesn’t matter whether you personally forgive the deranged. What matters is whether you hold people to a standard of decency and civil behavior.
I don’t care to judge or forgive some guy who has a drug problem or a deranged leftist who cheered Charlie Kirk’s murder. It’s irrelevant to me. What is relevant is to interact only with people who have basic morals and ethics, decline to spend time with people who look the other way or tacitly support it to the greatest extent practicable.
People think the problem is polarization and toning down the rhetoric, but the real problem is regular people with common sense enabling things that should never be enabled, tolerating the intolerable and intolerant. Child sex changes, men in women's sports, coerced injections, assassination of people with whom you disagree. It's the silent majority who wants to be above it all, not speaking out when it's time to say something.
You're never going to get through to the cultists. They don't care when they're dead wrong (like when they said that douchebag Jimmy Kimmel's suspension was censorship!) They'll just move on to screaming about the next outrage, memory-holing what happened entirely, one day to the next.
It's up to regular people to ditch those lunatics, to let them know they are not on board with an insane and destruction agenda of crime, degradation of living conditions, undermining of family life and protection of the innocence of children.
But mostly they haven't. They are STILL more likely to be chummy with those who wanted to coerce the jab, than those who paid a price for speaking out, still tolerate all the derangements of the hateful woke over people who wanted to be left alone.
This is the key issue -- the incentives were warped for so long, and each non-brainwashed person is part of getting them back on course. I feel sorry for the cultists -- they've destroyed themselves, become hateful, delusional shells, have no idea about anything in reality. But my annoyance is starting to grow with people who know better, who weren't brainwashed, but they just decided to take the "above it all" tack to avoid rocking the boat.
Dude the boat is already rocked af, and it's time to put your weight on the side of stability, basic common sense and your own values.
Propagandist posing as comedian Jimmy Kimmel is getting his show back, turns out no one forced ABC to shitcan him. All the ululations over Hitler’s fascist regime were fake as usual, already memory-holed. Onto the next outrage!
Let me translate: we are bankrupt, we know the crisis is coming, we know the money isn’t real, we need to keep the delusion going. For your own good.
View quoted note →If you’re into doom, this is one of the best cases I’ve seen made for it. Maybe the scientific basis for the Book of Revelation. Do not watch if you are on the edge. (Actually maybe it’ll give you a sense of peace as there’s not much you can do about it.)