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author

It's Saturday night, and I will now be mixing cocktails. Way behind on email. If you haven't heard from me about something, apologies, and hang in there.

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I'm just now reading this Sunday night and I appreciate the fact that you looked into this nonsensical paper and made me laugh with your conclusion.

Thank you for making me smile.

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author

This is excellent. Thanks for posting.

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I had a long explanation written out for this behavior but I realized I was just describing monkeys throwing their own excrement.

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author

Poorly. Monkeys throwing their own excrement with bad aim.

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I will withhold my usual objections of unfair comparisons to monkeys, poo, Hitler, Dr. Strangelove, and Marmosets.

Amen, it is Sunday.

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When I was a kid back in the Pleistocene era, if you talked shit about somebody, you might end up under the big tree in the playground after school with a fist saying hello to your nose. If you were rude to your teacher or your parent, you might get a paddle from the principal or a belt on your butt. Corporal punishment.😱

Crude? Yes. Unfair? Sometimes. The solution to everything? No. The end of the world? No. Bad behavior had consequences. You learned to think about consequences. Maybe you had to calculate which battles to fight.

Now, if you’re on the Left, you can abuse the legal system with minimal risk. Lawfare is a strategy, whether a case has merit or is unfounded and malicious. You can break many laws with relative impunity. Shoplift, attack people in blue cities especially if they are Asian or white, and you’re a victim.

We have to reintroduce consequences. We have generations of libtards who are unfamiliar with the concept. It doesn’t mean a punch in the nose, although a punch in the nose when you’re 10 years old is preferable to learning at 40 that you shouldn’t push certain people too far. A little discipline and moral education to civilize one when one is a little kid (we are all tiny savages at that point) have been preferable to the kind of conflict I fear is approaching. Narcissistic, selfish, immature adults didn’t predominate in the past because they would have learned early that it was unacceptable to behave like a spoiled little shit all the time. Now they run the show. No bueno. If what I think is going to happen in the next election happens ( stolen-again) I’m afraid about what happens next.

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Embrace what you say you fear.

Consequences.

The only fear I have is they’ll be no consequences. They certainly think so and why not?

As far as making feral Eloi who think they’re Morlocks into men, not our failure, not our duty, not even an option.

They know full well what they’re choosing, to choose their path is as clear as becoming a Nazi in 2023. They’re adults choosing tyranny, murder, war against their own.

Harden your Heart.

Amen

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And PS yes I grew up with consequences too. Most boys still do, it’s just most have learned to hide their normal nature. We sent them into Marxist Kindergartens through PhD, this isn’t on them, their day comes.

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and PSS - Sometimes I say certain things in certain ways for certain reasons.

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Let the young get busy it’s their turn

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". . . adults choosing tyranny, murder, war against their own."

Absolutely right.

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I have to say, I am beginning to agree with this idea. As we see adults acting like school children, constantly taunting and picking on others then crying foul when someone is looking - I can't help but feel they never learned these lessons 40 years ago.

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Res ipsa loquitur.

The point is that If nobody says "no" to you enough, stands up to you enough when you're a kid, you aren't going to learn how to deal with disappointment, which has serious consequences for dealing with reality. The hysteria around Trump is not mentally healthy behavior. For the upper echelons it's obviously contrived, since they are degenerate at a level orders of magnitude beyond anything that Trump has ever done or contemplated. We know this because they've been desperately trying ( and failing miserably) to pin something serious on him for 8 years, spending at least $100,000,000 dollars and thousands of man hours in the process. And we also know about Biden's crimes and Epstein and the exposure of all the subterfuge around Russiagate. The power class already knows that Trump didn't do anything wrong. But the followers are emotionally labile, infantile, fanatical, and seemingly unable to process information around all this, eg, they've been continuously lied to for years by the people the claim to trust, but can't figure this out. Interestingly, a good percentage of these TDS sufferers are otherwise functional, intelligent, successful people. It's like Trump qua Orange Man Bad flips a switch in their brains and their inner 4 year old rage center switches on. It's bizarre.

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More & more of them are waking up.

Check out Brandon Straka's Walk Away channel on YouTube.

That -- & many of the reaction video channels featuring blacks, gays, lesbians, and even trans -- give me hope for the future.

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Interestingly THE SCIENCE has discovered that monkeys 🙊 throwing Poo 💩 is a sign of intelligence, and that the monkeys with better aim have more developed brains and are better communicators within their group.

I have no question they are better at administration.

https://phys.org/news/2011-11-poop-throwing-chimps-intelligence.html

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🗨 How stupid and primitive everything has become. They are all so rotten that they are not even able to lie beautifully. The dark ages have arrived...

(by way of Rolo oops Rurik Skywalker)

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I know! I feel deeply insulted at the increasingly-poor quality of the power grabs. It's offensive at an aesthetic level, like some chinese gim-crack with bad welds or rough plastic seams.

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'Tis aesthetic dimension itself that's storming out of human town in a huff, bags hastily packed, irate at jarring insults raining cats & dogs from every direction 🤦

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That’s a good quote, even though Slavland a mixed bag.

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Mixed implies a mandatory portion of good 😏

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Hey now. Recall the monkeys picking better stock portfolios than the stock brokers back in the day.

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Yes , it’s Sunday so I won’t object to yet another unfair comparison of these wretches with the noble primate.

Amen.

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Ditto

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Aug 27, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

You have discovered what I have been claiming for decades: 95 percent of everybody is below average, and the high-performing top five percent are the ones keeping the entire world running.

I know it sounds crazy and condescending, but I swear it has to be true; how else to explain the world as it exists?

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author

We're going to have to recalibrate the Pareto Principle.

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I updated my own personal 80/20 to 95/5 after considering that of every group of 20 folks with whom I interact, there is invariably only about one person in the bunch who is worth spending time in conversation.

(Like Holly Hunter's character in Broadcast News, I find the situation awful. 😉)

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Peter Principle is currently dominating.

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I think you’re being far too harsh – most ppl achieve their level of competence in society. There is no dishonor in being an unskilled worker if you’re maximizing your potential. To be blunt, of what incremental societal use is an “above average” garbage man? As a CPA specializing in corp tax, I’ve encountered a far greater % of incompetent lawyers than I have of any other profession. It is the one profession that is unpoliced. These exemplars of mediocrity are barnacles on society.

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Garbage man is a really poor example, as it is an essential job.

Lawyer, attorney, stock broker, tax shyster, et cetera are not. Their absence would be felt about as much as the Hollywood writers' strike.

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BTW, lawyer & attorney are the same thing. And your view that “tax shysters” are not essential suggests you don’t pay much income tax.

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You’re defining “essential” from your personal perspective. A job is “essential” to the person willing to good money pay for it. But essentialism was not the topic, which was the proportion of ppl who’re “below average.”

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Garbage men take away hazardous waste, it’s all hazardous.

Lawyers generate it.

As far as people being willing to pay for it confers legitimacy or value.... 🤣🤣🤣

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Where do you propose we find these angels who will wisely sort out essential vs superfluous roles in society?

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Men or boys with guns who want something better... so we shall sort.

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Funny you mention garbage man. In our condo building, in which I rent a unit to a family member, our (lazy) association board engaged the worst possible property manager. The person who has fronted the legal fees and provided the evidence to rid us of this pest is - of course - a garbage man working for the city. Can't write a decent sentence but "gets it" in spades.

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I stand corrected – an above average garbage man DOES have “incremental societal value.” 😀

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Remember the garbage man in Dilbert who was a MENSA member?

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An above average garbage man may, at the very least, perform his own job in a competent manner, & do extraordinary things during his off-hours.

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I don’t think ill of garbage men. I use their job as an economic reference point – limited body of required technical knowledge, limited variation in work required per address visited, minimal discretion needed or permitted. The opportunities to exhibit excellence are minimal. A VERY high percentage of the general population is eligible to fill the rare vacancy.

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Aug 27, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

'Tis 1.5/8 percent who're capable of running complex things on scale. A small group with high general competence, those most hated by officialdom today 🤷

Here's a deep-dive to peruse how the maths checks out (oh it does!) --> sonar21.com/why-is-the-west-so-weak-and-russia-so-strong-the-role-of-human-capital-and-western-education. Just leave out the bunkum about Russia at the end 🤸

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This is very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

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Great article. Everyone who reads Chris should read it.

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For a great read (that is, frightening) the short story Pump Six speaks to this very thing.

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You may have something there. . .

It certainly explains a lot.

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No wonder you're disappointed. If 95% of people are below average, then you need to revisit the meaning of "average."

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Most people are ok. Most of them have a skill or talent they are very competent to excellent in doing.

Then we have the outliers of both high competence and very low, then we have another set of outliers who are actively good or actively evil. They don’t overlap naturally, but it’s possible with unnatural social engineering.

Our present awful situation is by democratizing mediocrity* we’ve arrived at a confluence of Deep Malice and Evil people who are incompetent at anything else but stealing, lying, doing harm.

*We may call this democratization of mediocrity the 19th Amendment, and later the Affirmative Action programs of Civil Rights.

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Ha! I've heard that before!

My late husband claimed that everything went downhill after the 19th Amendment was passed.

There are times I have to agree. . .

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Go look up the word "satire."

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Perhaps you meant "mean", not "average". If it was truly satire, do you rescind your follow-up comments defending the 95/5 incompetent/competent principle?

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Aug 27, 2023·edited Aug 27, 2023

No. Nineteen out of every 20 people I know/meet is a verifiable dumbass in some way, surely not smart enough to go inside when it rains.

Stop cross-examining my smartass comments, please.

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Aug 27, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

When I was on a hiring committee for new nurse practitioners, I refused to interview any candidate with a typo in his/her CV or cover letter. Attention to detail matters in medicine. Yet, this person has seemingly had a long career in law--which demands solid writing skills--and is still in practice? Turning out trash like this? To answer your question: we are in hell.

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Good to know that I'm not the only grammar Nazi.

I began my training in first grade under one of the most rigorous of tutors, Sister Loretta Madonna, who let not a single grammar error go uncorrected. She taught us to diagram sentences. In first grade. We were forty in that class, all terrified of her, although she was smaller than any of us and at least 105 years old. God bless her.

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You are not alone! My favorite mug says, "I am silently correcting your grammar." ;)

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Another double puzzle: is running a basic spellchecker on your text outlawed? what kind of lawyer doesn't have a lowly intern to brew coffee, shuffle files, and source quotes?

Turbo clown world cranked up to 11. On power steroids, shrooms & synth-subs 😵

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True, that it's deemed worthy of front page news?! Ugh...

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I agree, although I would get accused of expecting perfection. FWIW I was an telecommunications software engineer, and everything matters there, too.

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Link on the brief and you will understand.

Interestingly his first name is Laurence yet he misspells it in the brief.

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Aug 27, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Thanks for wading through the cesspool of ignorance for us all, once again.

I once hated the movie Idiocracy for its Jr. High level story. Little did I know it was foreshadowing our present state. I suppose I need to watch it again, in order to learn how to survive the live re-enactment.

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Aug 27, 2023·edited Aug 27, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Next thing you know we will be drinking Brawndo -- cuz it's got electrolytes.

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Where can I get that?

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I’m sure the government will be delivering gallons directly to our houses once they get us locked in for the BS24/7 variant.

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The government has lost the ability to deliver. They’d have to contract it out...

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Came here to make an Idiocracy reference but you beat me to it. Used to love it, but I can’t stomach watching that movie anymore--hits too close to home.

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Aug 27, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

This is just another sign of the crisis of competence. For at least a generation now, DIE has been the name of the game. Oh it was a slow and subtle thing at first, but as former Personnel departments converged into HR departments and mid-level management filled with midwits. Just like with any complex system with growing errors, the oscillations will increase until it all comes apart.

Form has taken control over substance. That lawsuit was just virtue signaling. This guy just rushed to be first. It doesn't matter if you just burned half an island; what matters is that you spent your maintenance budget on state-mandated green energy initiatives. It doesn't matter if you wreck your EV at high speed that you and anyone nearby will likely be burned to ash; what matters is you're saving Gaia (ignore the horrors of African cobalt mining too).

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"...what matters is you're saving Gaia..." As I see it, there's the key to our societal immolation: we've become worshipers of Baal. Was there evil and foolishness before our turn away God? Of course - but it manifested in an "establishment" way, different from today's utterly nonsensical depravity...

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I am slack-jawed. Is it some sort of sick satire?

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author

It's the only explanation that wouldn't cause despair, isn't it?

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Well it may be a deliberate demoralization op, but I think its real.

Chris in Iraq repeatedly the Iraqi army would look the other way, melt away or even defect.

In Mosul in 2014 when ISIS approached the Iraqi army Officers got on the plane and resistance collapsed.

We just saw what happened in Kabul when we left. Poof.

A friend at Bagram air base said they looked around one night and all the local guards had deserted at once (they then went on full alert until evac).

You’re looking at same now, it’s ending slowly now , then all at once. For those of you who thinks that means peace...🤣🤣

No. There’s no succession.

It means a power struggle and real war.

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Aww, man.

I love your posts, but sometimes you do make me nervous -- cuz you sound like you know what you're talking about.

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I thought about this one. I fear you may be right

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Incompetence is the rule these days, at nearly all levels of everything.

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Fed to us with a smirk. You'll take it because you have no choice.

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In humility I’m competent.

And we’re doing the work.

We’re also trying to hide from the others and pop up when needed then vanish... this is a running joke at work.

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We needed a couple panels replaced on the sidewalk to be ADA compliant.

Less than two months after install they are a tripping hazard because the screws they used were too small. They’ve begun to come out

I see this all the time.

People can’t do basic stuff anymore.

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I'm not sure this is entirely recent. Beloved husband worked as an electrician, industrial construction (schools, hospitals, retail stores, power stations, etc.), and he was let go from one job a few decades ago because he insisted upon putting grounding wires on all the outlets he was installing in an office building. The foreman said (correctly) that the outlets were grounded with proper installation, but Husband knew that over time, plugging and unplugging equipment cords would loosen those connections and someone could, at some future point, get a jolt, so he wanted to include the ground wire as a backup at a time cost of a minute or two per outlet. The foreman wasn't having it.

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Sounds like my hubby, who wanted everything "up to or exceeding code."

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Boy, do I understand.

He built an 8x12 poultry coop. The floor is supported by 4x4s such that a tractor trailer could roll over it and it wouldn't buckle. The studs are 16" on center, just like a people house, and there's 1" foam insulation in the walls and ceiling. The interior walls are finished so the chickens and geese don't eat the insulation. It has a real, double paned window and the attached pen has a steel roof supported by 2x12's to shed rain and snow. We don't do anything by halves around here. Oh, and it has power through underground pipes too.

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No, they can’t.

The ones that can do out of sight.

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Absolutely right, but sometimes 'out of sight' isn't possible; that foreman caught him doing it and told him to stop. It was a union job, by the way, Husband is IBEW, as was his father before him.

We've got a small farm now, it's a different sort of crazy. :)

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. . . and the worst part is, they don't even seem to care.

Incompetence is seen as nothing to be ashamed of.

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You've been good about pointing out all the problems in our society caused by stupid, incompetent, lazy, racist, corrupt, and otherwise unqualified people throughout our system in your many postings. Since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which addressed some flaws in our system, a systemic program of racial/ethnic/gender quotas has been enforced by law throughout our society, where blacks, Latinos, white women, Native Americans, and lgbtq'ers, etc., have been pushed into, and through, all institutions, hired on the basis of their identity rather than their abilities. These people are then promoted up into higher positions, then they hire people like themselves. I started noticing about 10 years ago all the people I had to deal with that couldn't be relied upon to complete their tasks with any level of certainty and competency. It crossed all racial, ethnic, and gender boundaries. This has been done to our country in the name of equity and civil rights. Plus, we've exacerbated this by importing scores of millions of illiterate, unskilled, non-English speaking poor people from all over the world, which serves as another drag on all of our institutions and businesses.

So, your lawyer example of being unable to complete a coherent English sentence and just being dumb, as well, is not the exception, but the rule. Justice Sotomayor got to the Supreme Court and among other things, doesn't know the difference between de facto and de jure. Justice Jackson is the most overturned judge in the history of the Second Circuit and most of her opinions read, as one legal expert pointed out, like an emotional diatribe from a middle school teenage girl. How does all this end? Not well, as we collapse, slowly but surely, from having incompetent, stupid, lazy, racist, sexist, and otherwise impaired individuals making daily decisions which are wrong. And in some cases, lethal ones, where people can, and will, be injured and killed.

To paraphrase the great Bismarck, the founder of the modern German state, observed that God watches out for drunks and the United States. Maybe we can muddle along and somehow maintain some semblance of a civilized and free society. But the hour is very late, and the "D"s, with the help of some "R"s, are driving us towards the cliff, with the pedal pushed to the metal.

Pray for the Republic.

Danny Huckabee

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Somehow, we have 'evolved' from a more or less functional republic to a kleptocratic victimcracy. Those who identify as the designated 'victim of the week', or can at least make the loudest claims to be "victims" are entitled, (or allowed/encouraged) to the spoils of a disintegrating society.

Which begs the question: How did we get here? How do we stop this slide into the abyss?

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This court challenge perfectly illustrates the depths to which we have fallen. Once, not so very long ago, we enjoyed a 'rule of law'. Everyone was, (more or less), equal under the law. America was a shining beacon in a world full of petty, and not so petty, tyrants, totalitarian dictators and kleptocracies.

Was our system perfect? Hell no. Far from it. Money can buy the necessities of life, and fortunately, the luxuries. Sadly, money also can, and does, buy bureaucrats, judges, and even policemen. But overall, for a few short decades, most Americans, (except for the underclass, the very poor), had a "reasonable expectation" that laws would be applied more or less equally.

This is no longer true. Our legal system has been weaponized. By the Administrative State. We appear to have essentially discarded the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Our courts have come to resemble Stalinesque kangaroo courts.

The newly coined term "lawfare" aptly describes the now common application of laws, twisted, distorted, perverted laws, to impose the will of those who control "the system" on others who would dispute the narrative of the day, OR, and this is perhaps the most terrifying thought of all, on anyone who dares to *question* the regulatory edicts of the day.

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The current regime can put former president Trump and his lawyers in jail for 500 years on false charges, and there will be no consequences. Will the people revolt? No, and if anyone tries they get the Jan 6th treatment. Will the Supreme Court intervene? No. Will other countries condemn the US? Probably not, but it would have no effect. Would they impose sanctions on the US or restrict trade? Please. Totalitarianism is here, and no one is coming to "liberate" us.

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Unless we "liberate" ourselves. And right now, half of the population seem to be perfectly happy with their bread and circuses. "First they came for the communists ..."

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Lawfare has been used against the police and military for generations, its just now catching the commons.

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Change that to "decades", and I'll agree with you. I'm old enough to remember when the police were highly respected, and military service was still honorable.

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Much as I'd like to be confident this incompetent and badly done lawsuit will go nowhere, I cannot be. If this goes in front of a left-leaning judge with TDA, I can see this suit moving forward and even succeeding.

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As an ICU nurse in the late ‘70’s, I was caring for an elderly gentleman with severe vascular disease and infection in his legs. The cardiovascular surgeon off-handedly commented to me privately that he thought “these people should just be euthanised.” I remember being shocked that an MD could hold this view. Medical depravity has always been with us. Covid hospital care perpetuated and normalized it. This sickens me but I am no longer shocked. Come quickly Lord Jesus.

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So we aren't up against Einsteins?

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More like Juan Epstein.

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We’re up against the last dregs of the Democratic Party, the Talent is dead or fled. The New Deal government is dying.

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author

"Mazie Hirono."

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Oh good lord!

And Ted Lieu, Eric Swallwell, Maxine Waters, Hank Johnson -- we could go on forever.

These people are morons.

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She’s such a Samurai why aren’t heads flying off ?

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They're sorta like the troll in LOTR: dumb, but very, very powerful.

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Aug 27, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

The crisis of competence surrounds us. I have a digital design leader who can’t create a website. A program manager who can’t do arithmetic and a CEO who’s pronouns we know, but his plan we do not.

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