151 Comments

Just this once you should have closed off comments

Expand full comment
author

I thought about it, but I wasn't 100% sure everyone would get the joke.

Expand full comment

But that would be even funnier! Then we could have stewed in righteous indignation!

Expand full comment

Or assumed righteous indigna... whatever, but yes, funnier.

Expand full comment

It's the Gods' on Mount Olympus who are having the really big joke. On US. They've gone: "OK guys, so let's round up all the stupidest, most intellectually and morally corrupt people in America and put them.......in the UNIVERSITIES! Now that'll be fun".

Expand full comment

I am beginning to wonder if this may in fact be the case. It is analogous to rounding up fat middle aged men for the Olympics and watching them wheeze their way through the races then forbid anyone to say anything negative. What, are you ageist?

Even in such a blatant situation we now know there would be a willing army of minions happy to fortify the decision. They'd write thesis after thesis explaining real athleticism was watching fifty year olds compete because it is too easy when they are 25 and fit. Only the actual athletes can manage in middle age etc.

I definitely think of the scene in Clash of the Titans where Lawrence Olivier is looking down at his chess pieces and moving them about for the hell of it. Rule by whim.

Expand full comment

Or, or, or men dressed as women and competing against women!!! How stupid do "they" think we are. Ohhhh, wait a minute.

Expand full comment

It’s one of the stronger arguments in favor of the “universe as a simulation” theory.

Expand full comment

I said the same thing in a slightly different way. 😁

Expand full comment

Hahaha! I thought the exact same thing.

Expand full comment
founding

Love it!

Then have struggle sessions the next day where Chris posts each subscribers all-time worst comments in a free speech forum so a subscriber can receive feedback from everyone on why censorship is freedom from humiliation.

Expand full comment

Yet another instance of VERY IMPORTANT RULES suddenly not being quite so important when they affect a specific segment of the population. This is why I laugh at the people who say "Republicans must learn to ballot harvest!" -- the rules will be vigorously enforced on any conservative who tries to 'play by the new rules'.

Expand full comment
Dec 12, 2023·edited Dec 12, 2023

"the rules will be vigorously enforced on any conservative who tries to 'play by the new rules'."

This is the case with everything the "left" argue, at least for the last 15 years or so. These people had their primary stolen by Hillary Clinton in 2016, and again in 2020, yet still vote for the people who stole it and then scream at their opponents like they're the ones who did it.

Expand full comment

Narcissists are NEVER the ones at fault. Only the "other" in the relationship is ever at fault.

Expand full comment

They do love rules and do see them as important. But they love them because they are tools to be bent in any direction necessary to advance their own power, not out of any reverence for fair play or maintaining order.

Expand full comment

"There are no rules, only weapons." -- a Reason commenter I can't recall at the moment.

Expand full comment
Dec 12, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

I need to be the asshole (pun intended) – the term is “coprophagia,” not “coprophilia.”

Coprophilia is sexual interest in poop, while coprophagia is the eating of it.

On second thought, based on what we’ve seen over the last 7 days, maybe coprophilia IS the right word.

Expand full comment
author

Thanks! Totally right. I'm actually kind of pleased that I didn't know the correct word for shit-eating, but I'll correct it.

Expand full comment

In Gravity´s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon is able to combine both.

Expand full comment

Thank you for the warning. By the time I die, there will be many books I haven’t gotten to, and I’ll make sure that’s one of them. 🤣

Expand full comment

I got about fifty pages in and decided it was definitely not for me. The reviews on Amazon are full of people 800 pages in asking what the fuck is this book about? Does it improve? They are too far in to quit but know the time is now lost, lol.

Expand full comment

🤣

Expand full comment

Somewhere a long time ago, I read where Hitler had coprophagia AND coprophilia.

Expand full comment

Now that’s a factoid with which I have no idea what to do…

Expand full comment

I will fight to the death for the right to tell you your opinion.

Expand full comment

Your comment deserves much more attention. All fighting-for-democracy statements issued by uni-party-in-power spokesmen boils down to your description of the underlying oxymoron guiding principle to which they cleave. Very good.

Expand full comment
founding

Your opinion matters, please provide a more detailed explanation of your opinion when the firing squad calls your name.

Comrades of our team are committed to immediate feedback.

Expand full comment

Customized blindfolds on sale in the prison commissary.

Expand full comment

Finally, a good use for those millions of surplus Covid masks.

Expand full comment

Channeling Command Master Chief John James Urgayle?

Expand full comment
Dec 13, 2023·edited Dec 13, 2023

Now, see, an elitist would say "I will fight to YOUR death for MY right to tell you your opinion". Sort of like Biden in Ukraine.

Expand full comment

Look, Harvard isn’t going to admit that their carefully cultivated DEI affirmative action President is a person of modest gifts who happens to be a plagiarist. Now Stanford just canned their Prez for much the same stuff after discovery and reportage by an undergrad on the school paper, albeit in the hard sciences, not the fuzzy social sciences. But Harvard is Harvard after all and they’re going to try and brazen it out. Because they know exactly what she is and what she did, but you peasants don’t get to tell Harvard what to do. And she is an identity politics victim checking lots of boxes.

You mentioned Commentary magazine. In the late 70’s I was at a fancy prep school in New England. Norman Podhoretz came to school and gave a lecture and the school invited me to the dinner in his honor and sat me next to him. To this day I have no idea why they chose me, an unremarkable high school junior, who did not ,most assuredly, have a Norman Podhoretz poster over his bed. I knew who he was because my dad subscribed to a lot of magazines, including Commentary, and I was a voracious reader. As near as I can figure, they needed a token student Jew to show their commitment to dinner diversity, and they drew my name out of a hat or something. Norman was ferociously intelligent and he let everybody know it. It was interesting enough to listen to him do the pro forma intellectual gymnastics required at these sorts of things, but it was one of many moments that made me realize that the faculty and administration were actually quite provincial and very afraid even then of looking too WASPy. Today this school has a black, gay physician as its headmaster. As near as I can tell there is no reason for any physician to be the headmaster of a secondary school these days, but that’s not likely the point of his appointment is it? I’m guessing the people at Harvard probably know why he’s the headmaster. The prep school, which probably has an endowment in the billions at this point, also has boys in skirts in the cheer squad. I know these things because I get the alumni magazine. The magazine, like the magazine from Stanford features multi page spreads on woke garbage. Students lobbying the legislature on climate change! Alumni with their enviro- passion projects! Everybody is saving the world from problems that don’t exist. The brilliant guy who dies with a Nobel prize in biochemistry gets a one graph in the back pages if he was white and old. This is one of the reasons the Ivy League produces such woke BS graduates. A lot of kids from schools like mine go to Harvard etc. Soon I think the woke enterprise is going to come tumbling down. Don’t let these asshats forget what you think of them. They sure tell us what they think of us every day.

Expand full comment

A year or so ago, Georgia Tech’s alumni magazine had a little blurb on the school’s research into racist AI robots. Even the technical schools have been infected.

Expand full comment

Reports like yours make me sure that science projects funded by Federal $$$ should have to be approved by a committee composed of people drawn randomly from the telephone book.

Expand full comment

The same people who don’t know what a transistor is and couldn’t name a single element on the periodic table? You have a lot more faith in the citizenry than I do.

But a discussion worth having is what role should the government play in funding science. Gain of function coronaviruses, for example.

Expand full comment

Someone who wants to spend my money at least owes me a clear explanation of why it’s the highest And best use of that money. “Shrimp on a treadmill” etc. suggest that the experts don’t warrant much faith either. But the primary reason for inserting “civilian” control is to prevent Fauci-level control of funding and dissent. This can never, ever be allowed to happen again.

And lastly, we trust random people to judge our criminal guilt, so why not the wisdom of avant-garde expenditures?

Expand full comment

Of course, Harvard's statement completely ignores the fact that, for her entire unimpressive career prior to be named President, Ms. Gay has been the primary driver in cancelling those directly above her on the totem pole.

Expand full comment

We seem unable to state clearly and bluntly the obvious resentment driving some sections of society. When given some power there is no magnanimity or gratitude, it is perceived as weakness. We can no longer stop them etc.

This is the strong impression I get. Ilhan Omar is a vocal example. No sense we saved her from a life of poverty or hardship. Just pure hatred of it all.

To them this is the sign of a weak country. And they are right.

Expand full comment

But of course! What other talents do such ppl have, but the art of the stiletto?

Expand full comment
Dec 12, 2023·edited Dec 13, 2023

Every major city I've lived in used to have at least two, and usually more, main newspapers. In Houston it was the Chronicle and the Post. In San Francisco it was the Chronicle and the Examiner. In Seattle it was the Times and the Post-Intelligencer. In Honolulu it was the Star Bulletin and the Advertiser. While they would often report the same facts (back when we had real journalists), they almost always had divergent views on those facts...referred to as editorial opinions. Readers often read both newspapers to better inform themselves of the various viewpoints. The idea that we should only be allowed to embrace one viewpoint on the facts (the "government's" viewpoint), is a sign of just how far this once free country has fallen.

As an aside, every time I see Al Gore open his mouth and say something, I'm reminded of just how lucky we are to have dodged that particular bullet.

Expand full comment

From Al Gore to George Bush is a "frying pan to the fire" move. A monkeypox on their houses.

Expand full comment

Had Algore (I can only hear Rush saying his name...) been elected, I believe we would be further down the “green energy” road to ruination. At least Bush the Younger was an oil man (ish).

Expand full comment

I thought it was funny when Al Gore said the word algorithm with a straight face. What a wonderful man he is. IDK/just a thought, is he fat simply because he is full of himself?

Expand full comment

suspect that the harvard which admitted me in the previous century would have promptly booted me as a freshman if i indulged in "inadequate citation."

have never felt so validated for being probably the only person alive who put harvard's fat envelope aside and opted for a different university.

Expand full comment

Yeah “inadequate citation” ie plagiarism would have prevented my Masters at UofK and my Doctorate at UofN. But hey that was in the 20th century Probably acceptable in today’s Enlightened century.

Expand full comment
founding

My husband heard on the radio yesterday that schools ignore obvious plagiarism by students of color because “white people stole all the ideas.” I laughed and laughed but he insisted it was true, and terrible.

Expand full comment

Does this mean that students of color have no ideas? I’m sure that’s not what they mean.

Expand full comment

It means white liberals assume that students of color have no ideas.

Expand full comment

guess it's ok as long as you cite wikipedia or chat gpt

Expand full comment

God I wished I’d have had them. Such accurate sources.

Expand full comment

think of all the keggers we missed. kids today are so lucky

Expand full comment

"when it becomes serious, you must lie"

Expand full comment

You're far from the only person to ever reject an acceptance from Harvard.

Expand full comment

that's encouraging.

Expand full comment

I turned them down, too, in favor of a much less expensive public institution. Zero regrets.

Expand full comment

me neither. funny how my much less amply endowed alma mater gave me considerably more money

Expand full comment

Congratulations and Way To Go!

Expand full comment

Fire. All of the regime propagandists on Substack also block their comments. Putting themselves in echo chambers and intellectual straight jackets. In the old days they'd be in a room with padded walls and supervision.

Expand full comment

In the hunter gatherer days they'd find themselves mysteriously gored by a wild boar by age seventeen. A tragic loss to the tribe of course.

Expand full comment
Dec 12, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

Babylon Bee is not parody, it is precognition.

bsn

Expand full comment

That’s only b/c the nut jobs use it as their daily task list…

Expand full comment

"Harvard’s mission is advancing knowledge, research, and discovery that will help address deep societal issues and promote constructive discourse"

Fuck you, liars.

To put it in the most generous and charitable way possible, Harvard's mission is to optimize the boot stamping upon the face of humanity, and concoct mind-viruses that subjugate and demoralize the populace.

Expand full comment

You had me at the “Fuck you…”

Expand full comment

It’s not even that. It’s a tax-free hedge fund with an indoctrination center attached.

Expand full comment

And get that same populace to publicly spew “can I have more, please, ma’am “.

Expand full comment

"The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"The simple act of an ordinary courageous man is not to take part, not to support lies! Let that come into the world and even reign over it, but not through me. Writers and artists can do more: they can vanquish lies! ... Lies can stand up against much in the world, but not against art." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

https://drp314.substack.com/p/stay-safe-or-stay-free

Expand full comment

Chris, don't kid yourself: It's not just parrots like Claudine Gay doing this. The smarter (more clever?

more devious?) folks, who won't perform the public self-flagellation Gay does, still rub elbows with her and quietly repeat her views, in exchange for access and benefits. She's there because elites can manipulate her for specific benefit. She's an avatar for the elite, professional class, who work to pull power and public spending toward themselves. They just don't do it out loud. They have her as a puppet for the talking part.

Hopefully, the FBI or the Dept. of Agriculture won't kick down my door for participating in open discourse. I put the odds at 50-50.

Expand full comment

"At Harvard, we champion open discourse and academic freedom..."

Too funny! Never mind Harvard got a ZERO on free speech in a recent study.

Expand full comment

Do you know why she hasn't quit yet?

Because no one has written the resignation letter for her yet...

I'll see myself out.

Expand full comment
Dec 13, 2023Liked by Chris Bray

I was reading a Harvard student interview about the toxic environment. The individual was a republican leader at the university and states the obvious - there’s been a toxic double standard there for a very long time. But he also states that he loves Harvard, it’s a great opportunity and that he would still encourage people to attend because there’s some good people there.

Until that attitude changes Harvard will survive. Until the very people that hold the institution high realize the institution is just the name and no longer a place of truly higher learning, whatever that even means in this day and age.

People have to abandon the idea that these Ivy League institutions are anything other than clever marketing traps.

Expand full comment