122 Comments

is LA really a city or is LA just a very large county w 100 different neighborhoods pressed together? are we citizens in any coherent or communal way or just people who sit next to each other in traffic? or is the problem that both the city and state are one-party operations and have been for quite awhile (and will be for the foreseeable future) so there's no credible opposition to fight the covid permanent emergency? there just seems to be a very odd and heavy apathy here, maybe because so many of us are from elsewhere, and politics is just a choice bw 31 flavors of NPR.

there's nothing ive seen so far that leads me to believe that just about everyone won't passively go along with just about anything. we are a lazy hazy people here, and hey, what's another shot or 2 as long as we have weed and wifi?

is sad because under all those masks is a lot of expensive plastic surgery.

Expand full comment

This is too complicated for me to answer at whiskey cocktail o'clock. I've never liked LA, but lately it's producing depths of hate and rage in me -- I should probably throw disgust in there, too -- that I didn't know I could achieve. I've never personally seen so many people working so hard to produce so much avoidable ruin.

Expand full comment

The ruin they're working on is worldwide. This is now Atlas Shrugged territory. Got a flyer saying they'd buy our house and let us move out at a flexible date. I really want to do it. Hubs still shackled to his job tho. Getting out of CA is a step in the right direction.

Expand full comment

It's sort of Atlas as Global Arsonist with wars, plague and yes hunger thrown in.

What Green did to Sri Lanka the destruction of trucking via no DEF will do to us..

Expand full comment

why are we all sitting around watching this demise come to us? the people need just rise up, stop paying tax, and outlaw the globalists so they are on the run for the rest of their lives.

Expand full comment

Sir,

I ❤️ the Galt’s Gulch Vibe.

The real life Galt’s Gulch was Donner pass. Not to worry, cuz we’re at CONUS sized Donner Lake, (aka Dinner 🍲 Lake) where the really interesting stuff happens. 🇺🇸 are in the Libertarian Paradise, and no Utopia but most assuredly HERE.

The people did rise and were brushed off.

That was it, its over.

The Elites have stopped paying taxes and are almost done collecting them, they have Outlawed we the people- Outlaw means outside the law and has no appeal to the law even surrender- and...there’s no people. There’s just people.

Americans are too selfish to unite to act together and all except others to do the dirty work and suffer, die, kill, go to jail, worst of all lose precious property. I was one of the dirty work others for over 2 decades and Sergeant Says you have no fight in you, its over. Many of you will die (as AR’s LOL turn to rust) and the survivors will not be proud of what they did (see Donner Party).

And all American fathers are castrated slaves of their women.

Let the women fight, we have no stake in it.

Women can’t fight BTW.

Seen it.

I’m not alone in this judgment.

We can’t defend you, you didn’t have our backs. Too late.

We are all Uvalde PD now.

But at least the Pergo floors will survive.

We see what Sherman saw at Shiloh, that the South were all Libertarians and if their property were damaged the fight went out of them, in that moment the war’s resolution was formed.

Freedom means killing and death and worst of all destruction of property. So...No.

LOL LMAO ☠️

That’s why.

Expand full comment

I know this easy to for me to say. I lived in Los Angeles for two decades and finally extricated myself and family ... you should consider a move at some point. LA is a bubble and everyone there is living inside the manufactured bubble. It is not the real world. Join us out here.

Expand full comment

nahh i didnt move here for anything man-made and man-made politics and stupidity wd have to get much worse to budge me. my current manufactured bubble includes mostly squirrels, birds, butterflies, and the sun setting over the Santa Monica foothills.

"the real world" will never dissuade me from believing that Cali is the most beautiful part of America and the natural beauty of the Pacific ocean and coastline is my current drug of choice.

Expand full comment

I've long believed that it's precisely *because* California is so physically perfect that a lot of well-off Americans with a real choice in the matter will continue to put up with its lunacy. Can't get away with the same kind of nonsense in Detroit - people just move away.

California's natural gifts carry a lot of water for it's terrible manmade policies.

But at some point those policies will go too far. Endgame: Mass exodus or political revolution? Time will tell. My money is on revolution, because Big Sur is inherently a much more worthy prize than 8 Mile Road.

Expand full comment

yeah absolutely, this state is a golden goose (natural beauty + natural resources + the legacy industries of Hollywood and Big Tech + all the people drawn here for both), which is why gavin is sitting on a $100 million surplus he can dole out to his supporters and keep the golden gravy train running.

i forgot who said 'there's a lot of ruin in a nation' but there is possibly almost inifinite ruin in cali, at least until the inevitable cataclysm arrives.

but as far as exodus v revolution, i think another poss future is the complete brazilification of cali, w a small ruling class of upper-crust paler people insulated from the social chaos inside walled mansions w armed guards, helicopters and private planes, and bulletproof limos, while the darker-skinned peons who nanny their babies, tend to their lawns and prep their food live surrounded by violence and squalor.

stay tuned!

Expand full comment

"Come join the insane clown cult, that I FINALLY got away from!" No thanks.

Expand full comment

I’ve lived in LA County almost my whole life; since the early 1970s. When I think what life here was like then versus now, I feel like I’ve been transported to another planet.

Expand full comment

When I lived in LA I felt the same way--but because it's a city in many ways founded on fakery, there's always a way "around" the problems and that's why people don't protest...someone will hook you up with whatever you need, for a price. Is the population really vaccinated, or did they just get hooked up with fake cards?

Expand full comment

hey i know which one i did but can't say because i might get in trouble ;)

like i said, LA is many different places pressed together, from the postcollegiate hipster crowd of the East side, to the hot Milfs of the West, and then of course all the various ethnic enclaves.

there are of course a ton of phony freaks here, but i find them more ridiculous than malevolent.

Expand full comment

For all the creatives out there in that “performative society,” looks like there’s barely any creativity and a whole lotta non-performance.

Expand full comment

That's the way I've always pictured LA. Lots of vacuous people that think they're more important than everyone else on Earth, because they're from....ELL AEE! 🤢🤮

Expand full comment

they are sort of potemkin people, shiny and pretty on the outside but flat and empty on the inside. they may act important but are deeply insecure and easy marks for the next hot trend or cult leader. LA (among many other things) is really a repository of lost souls, whether they sleep on the street or in a giant mansion, whether they're addicted to crack or botox.

but hey im just here for the nature.

Expand full comment

We in the USA are well along the path to becoming a 3rd world country.

It didn't have to be this way.

Expand full comment

We left LA for New England in June, after 17 years as a family in Malibu (and, for my husband, 55 years as an LA native). I can’t properly describe the elation I felt when the plane left the runway at LAX and, a month or so on, the profound sense of peace and the palpable joy at experiencing real freedom again. We fled to a purple state, since I feared the perils of deep redstate groupthink as much as I loathed that of the fascist uniparty that runs CA. The idea that now our votes may actually *matter* in elections makes me giddy. If you can leave California, I exhort you: do it! You won’t be sorry.

Expand full comment

Glad you went to a purple state where you can help with it's destruction to blue hell.

Expand full comment

I’m pretty sure you didn’t understand what I wrote. We fled the “blue hell” that is California for a more peaceful existence in a purple state. Having to debate and compromise is, at least for me, a plus in society.

And it’s “its,” not ‘“it’s” destruction,’ BTW.

Expand full comment

You're still there to vote in more communism. Congrats..

Expand full comment

There are even more levels of grift. The test itself is essentially a coin flip. I saw a panicked, symptomatic family of five. I told them “We don’t need the test, you probably have covid”. They insisted. . . . results -> 3 positive, 2 negative. The problem . . . They didn’t want to all ride back home in the same car, because the “negative” ones didn’t want to “catch it”. I reiterated, “YOU ALL HAVE COVID, and it’s going to be okay”. Their solution, the “negatives” took an Uber. Just a small slice of life in fear pornlandia.

Expand full comment

My wife and I had a similar experience with one of her cousins. We were all good, standing within a couple of feet, shook hands, all the usual stuff. Then, I made a comment about not getting the shots and suddenly we were pariah. When we went to lunch they insisted on taking separate vehicles as they didn't want to ride in the same car with us and they were sure we'd understand. Then at lunch we were sitting across from each other at a table not 3' wide. The stupidity and mindless acceptance of the fearporn is very angering. Here was a supposedly intelligent man who was very concerned that "covid would tear up his lungs because he plays the trombone". Sigh...

Expand full comment

I suspect he plays the flute too

Expand full comment

The absolute faith people have in these rapid tests is amazing.

Expand full comment

this Captcha pretty well describes it....=text= 'select all images with scary convid'

avatars.mds.yandex.net/get-images-cbir/488019/Bc6ApWjpAKfoFdsq1ZlM9w8802/ocr

Expand full comment

“Fear Pornlandia—pretty tired of this series.

Can somebody change the channel, please?!

Expand full comment

A "vaccine" that you're required to take several times a year, that only lessens symptoms (and that's debatable) but does not prevent infection or transmission, isn't a "vaccine", It's a Ponzi Scheme. This whole charade is now a Ponzi Scheme.

Expand full comment

British comedian recently said “what are we on now, our fifth shot? That’s not a vaccine, that’s acupuncture”

Expand full comment

That is funny.

Expand full comment

It’s ALWAYS been a Ponzi scheme! Right from the get go!

Expand full comment

The new movie, Braver New World, has the lying elites lined up as they are injected repeatedly with the vaccine purchased by the government….till it’s all gone.

Expand full comment

Now that's an idea I could support.

Expand full comment

“Lookin to score some neggies?”

😂👏🏽🙌🏽

All of this pisses me off and weighs me down but the laughter from that line helped lighten the load. Thank you 😊

Expand full comment

Lest we forget, waay back in2020, the only honest politician in the history of the world, the late,great Tanzanian President 'Magufuli instructed security forces to blindly test coronavirus PCR test kits for quality on goats, papaya, sheep, and motor oil. All of them, he said, had been found to be positive for COVID-19.'..'Magufuli earned his Bachelor of Science in education degree, majoring in Chemistry and Mathematics as teaching subjects from the University of Dar es Salaam in 1988. He also earned his masters, and doctorate degrees in chemistry' en.wikipedia.org /wiki/John_Magufuli

Expand full comment

God bless him. He was a respectable politician. (Usually an oxymoron, at best.)

Expand full comment

Great article Chris. One of the things I find I've really changed my mind on in the last 2 years is the whole concept of 'corruption'. As a Canadian, I used to somewhat look down on countries where bribes, tax avoidance and black markets were common; seeing the corruption as some sort of moral failing. Increasingly though I see these things as simply a response to overbearing or irrational government behaviour. If the government is going to show contempt to the people via unjust or discriminatory laws, why shouldn't they expect the people to take creative measures to deal with it ?

Expand full comment

This kind of corruption actually makes me kind of hopeful.

Expand full comment

Agreed!

Expand full comment

Gavin Newsom’s California, everyone. Nancy Pelosi’s bastard and abused step-child. I watched my own California family (San Diego area) go from sane and practical and questioning to just “do it so I can live and not be a pariah” to just accepting this is how it is. And my sister-in-law most definitely has a vaccine injury and I can’t tell her that. She doesn’t think that’s a thing. But mysterious onset of numbness in her arm? That doctors can’t figure out? A VERY specific amount of time ago? But at least she can go places easily. She just may lose use of her arm. You know. The lies we tell ourselves to protect ourselves.

Expand full comment

This happened to my uncle after a flu shot. He lost function of his arm and needed months of pt to get back to normal. It can happen from improper administration of the vaccine into the bursa, not from the vaccine itself. She might consider this, given that the CDC admits this type of injury. https://www.cdc.gov/eis/conference/dpk/Deltoid_Bursitis_Following_Influenza_Vaccine.html

Expand full comment

That’s helpful - thank you. I’ll chase that a little.

Expand full comment

For now it’s just her arm...

Expand full comment

Kind of like my home country used to be in the years I was growing up there. We falsified everything and bought documents on the black market; it was a theatre of absurd. You could also walk into any government office, slide an envelope (with cash) towards the clerk and walk out with whatever document you needed .

I grew up in communist Poland.

Expand full comment

Bet you had to slip doctors envelopes, too, so they didn’t let you die on the operating table.

Expand full comment

Like when you are 16 and the bartender accepts your fake ID that says your a 55 years old...the hospital KNOWS the testing requirement is a sham and is thankful that "capitalism" has stepped in to to "supply real world solutions" to the "testing bottleneck."

This is one of the situations that reveals: "this is not a real emergency." If this was a real emergency, then fake testing would lead to the hospital being full of people spreading covid and there would be repercussions from that (death? street vendors shut down?) AND the hospital would institute REAL testing (if it's so damn important.)

Expand full comment

So some enterprising researchers should step up and use this to create a publishable study.

Expand full comment

I'm given to understand that this is basically what the final decade or so of the Soviet Union was like but with even more state murder.

Expand full comment

and I think the USSR was easier to navigate because everyone knew that the society was based on favors, lies and exceptions to "the rules." You didn't have many true believers clogging up the system by trying to "really" doing anything. A couple of sausages or theater tickets in the right hands and you were good to go....

Expand full comment

The Soviets were a cluster (still are) after all they were in Afghanistan for 8 years and never took over the heroin trade. The US had locked it down within a few months and production skyrocketed.

Expand full comment

So far they had more murder. So far...

Expand full comment

“ What kind of society has this kind of sidewalk grift, street hustlers who sell you your official-looking documents so you can pretend to comply with the meaningless rules that institutions pretend to enforce?”

Jerusalem, 2,000 or so years ago had exactly this, in the main temple. It, and some events relating to it on a particular day, are described in the New Testament. The people cheered when the temple was cleared, but the kleptocracy was incensed.

The similarities are surprising, and an illustration of how little moral advancement has been made.

Expand full comment

I think it’s time we let go of the idea of any kind of advancement for humans. It would probably make for less pressured living and would get rid of a lot of utopian junk.

Expand full comment

Well it seems like we might be going through a bad patch. We no longer sanction throwing young women into volcanoes, so that’s a step forward. Although there does seem to be a peculiar retrogression back to ritual child sacrifice among the “vaccine” cultists.

Nonetheless, history demonstrates moral and intellectual enlightenment are always two steps forward and one back. A new Renaissance awaits.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
Jul 16, 2022
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

I feel that it’s more likely he drove the animals out with whips. From a careful study of his teaching, and from thinking about what his attitude to those who tortured, beat and ultimately killed him must have been, and why, when he personally pleaded for the Father’s forgiveness of them, I simply can’t see the Master using violence no matter how righteous his indignation.

Expand full comment

Remember, Jesus Christ was also a human being.

Expand full comment

And the profound, earth-shaking significance of that cannot be overstated.

Jesus was truly “the way, the truth and the life”. He lived his life ever-faithful to the will of his Father, our Father, brilliantly illuminating the path of righteousness so that we may follow him with confidence and certainty of the love of God. Though we may stumble, make mistakes, temporarily lose our way, Jesus is, in spirit, by our sides, ever ready to extend the brotherly/fatherly hand of comfort and forgiveness to all those who sincerely seek it.

Jesus was indeed the Son of Man, and thereby demonstrated that we are destined to be Sons of God.

I believe Jesus lived the perfect life, as a man, if you judge his life by the highest possible standard: unwavering commitment to the will of God.

Expand full comment

Covid industrial complex. Making too many people rich, they'll never give it up

Expand full comment

My friend/colleague in China says, "test, test, test, Every day, test".

The Chinese authorities don't care about their vaccine too much anymore. Everybody has to test. Then your phone updates: "green" is good. Green means go. If your phone is yellow, you gotta test, because you can't go in anywhere. The virus doorkeepers keep you out. If you are an ancient grandmother and have no phone? No problem, go home. You can't be out without a smartphone. If the phone is red? Stay in your apartment until they come and test you there. If your phone is red, you are famous. Your building is famous. Everyone knows that you are the virus.

"In China, if you get the virus, you don't tell anyone"

"ever"

There are testing sites on every block, every street. Testers enveloped head to toe in white tyvek.

Expand full comment

omg

Expand full comment

Hell on Earth.

Expand full comment

Sadly, Toronto hospitals are also nuts. Lots of plastic screens still in emergency waiting rooms -- as if the droplet theory was still in play after being debunked two years ago. If these temples of science can't get it right -- or just prefer keeping the government happy -- we are all doomed. This is a game I can not play.

Expand full comment

God bless the white market (cue the sound of a million wails of “Racist!”).

Expand full comment

It's trending gray, but if you squint hard enough or get an administrative job....

Expand full comment

😆

Expand full comment

It's a subtle chromatic distinction, and it might even prompt more outrage from the Wokesters, but here's a modest solution...

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BFAC2kYIUyQ

Same hue in Paris

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWAioanoqCw

White knuckles in Paris

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeEeyOCJ1OA

Expand full comment

"The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them." - Elena Gorokhova in her novel "A Mountain of Crumbs."

Expand full comment