Those who hide from the world due to their fear of suffering, suffer from their fear. There's no escape from suffering.
One of the other reasons, in addition to elite convenience, that we're trapped in the safetyist tyranny is that the neurotic ninnies who demand it are so damn loud. Their screeching drowns out the healthy, who are less inclined to yell. They have to be shouted down, mocked, shamed, made to feel low status. Until they shut up and leave the rest of us to get on with life.
Or put another way, “a life lived in fear is a life half lived”. I’d rather half a life lived in full than a whole life un-lived. “No pain no gain”. “No reward without risk”. No life without freedom to live it. How did the snowflakes become snowflakes? Political Correctness. Half & Safety. Human Resources... All happened before the Snowflakes were born. This is our mess and we have to fix it or there is no hope for our children and grandchildren, they will be serfs...
There was a piece of dialogue on a TV show a few years ago - it might've been "Game of Thrones".
It went something like -
"My god doesn't want me to be happy - he wants me to be strong."
I've never been able to track it down because the Jesus blood-porn cult clogs up every search engine, and I don't have the patience to search the entire GoT transcript database ... and people who run sites hosting the transcript database don't allow regexp searches because that's part of a 'vanilla' SQL-injection-prevention strategy.
Anyhow... even though I'm anti-religious (and atheist; not the same thing), I liked that bit of dialogue.
Then again, I'm a Nietzsche/Schopenhauer/Mencken kinda guy - basically a mildly-misanthropic kinda-arsehole.
Huh. I remember watching Hemlock Grove, mostly because it had a Skarsgard in it, and even though it was a Lesser Skarsgard, there's no such thing as too much Skarsgard.
I watched True Blood for similarly ridiculous reasons: it met the "Skarsgard Criterion"... plus Anna Pacquin is almost a Kiwi; Ryan Kwantan is an Aussie (which is like a Kiwi who was dropped on its head as a baby)
There were no Skarsgards in "The Boys", but there were a bunch of Kiwis. Karl Urban's accent was diabolical.
Anyway... now I must find out which episode and see why it made an impression. It'll be the "Skarsgard Effect", I bet.
Don't know what the "Skarsgård effect" is, but if you want to see Stellan Skarsgård's best performance, watch "Den enfaldige mördaren" (I think it is available with english subtitles).
It has to be seen to be believed. I'll nick the blurb from IMDB;
"A mentally challenged man escapes from his tyrannical master and finds happiness when a poor family takes him in."
That's on my watch list - although I am an absolute philistine in that I tend not to watch films where I need subtitles. It's partly because my eyesight's so rubbish, and partly because I tend to fixate on the subtitles themselves... and I can't stand dubbed movies.
As a result I pretty much only watch films where the dialogue is in French and/or English (including Yanklish).
It also interests me that your a-ring works, but mine didn't; I find that diacritics are a bit 'hit and miss' - they work when I'm composing (which I do outside the textbox), but often they don't render properly. The forced-display font I use for the browser - Quicksand - has a glyph for U+00E5, so it ought to render.
Generally I just assume that the sites where it doesn't work are stripping out non-ASCII characters... and the comment infrastructure on Substack is so appalling, amateurishly third-rate that I assumed that was the case here - not so, obviously.
å ([AltGr]-a-*) seems to work - I composed this inside the comment textbox.
wait until a woke pilot crash crashes a plane with 150+ people on board. Then they will shut down the airports so we never leave our neighborhood. it's coming
There was a comedian who used to mock people like her by saying that only those who could prescribe penicillin should use the title of "doctor." Can't remember who that was.
As a guy with a Ph.D in a hard science, not a descriptive science like biology, and as someone who spends a lot of my time fixing problems for physicians (JD), I think it is too easy to think anyone who isn't a physician is "Dr. Jill" material. If the last 3 years taught us anything, it is that the vast majority of physicians are compliant fools. So, yes, I agree she is mentally ill. But, it is too easy to. make fun of her for calling herself "Dr." How about thinking about what it means to have "earned" a post graduate degree. Some of us really did. My critical thinking skills enabled me to protect my family from the vaccine. Now, I don't insist people call me Dr. But, I make a point of calling all of the physicians that I have to help by their first names.
I have a PhD in the most rigorous of all known sciences, history, and I always call myself "doctor" at the supermarket. "Do you have any coupons DOCTOR," I demand that the cashier ask.
Anyway, I understand the use of Dr. in professional settings, but there's a limit. I did have a neighbor dad, as a child, who was a plumber, but liked to say, "Yes, this is DOCTOR Heffner" on the phone when he really wanted someone to give him what he wanted. I think it worked!
My brother in law, he's one of the foremost Geologists in the Western World. He literally travels the globe, giving talks and lectures on... well, about rocks and shit. I don't know, I'm a duck who rides a bike.
Anyway, of course he has PhD. But he refuses to be called a Dr., won't allow it.
I think your brother-in-law has EARNED the right to be called a Doctor. He knows shit, has studied, and uses his knowledge as a Doctor, who is established, to teach others.
"A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once." Shakespeare.
I would hazard a guess that I have died a few dozen times. And I thought I was not nearly as brave as I ought to be. But these folks seem to commit suicide constantly.
That quote came to my mind immediately, and I was just about to post it, but you beat me to it! The world is not able to be made into a safe place. It is an asinine endeavor.
The irony is these are the very same people who will cut you to "death' with a thousand paper cuts, to avoid being perceived as the "orphan" amongst a thousand false victors.
After all they will fight forever, from their office chair, in the most important forever war, of all wars, to win The Forever War On Viruses that finally end the scourge of viruses forever....and ever.
Of course the University of Pennsylvania removed their portraits of Shakespeare-- something about him being white... I went to Penn State University so I don't know that Ivy League thinking although I fear PSU is probably becoming like U of P. Pretty soon they will change their school colors to blue and silver instead of blue and white.
I would wager that this mind virus of safetism affects mostly, if not only, the affluent and the better educated (and the Karens who miss their nagging delegated powers). This also explains the required masks in the temples of health and science, hospitals.
It's 100% a class-centered behavior. I see it when I drive between different communities with different demographics in Los Angeles County. Pacific Palisades, many masks; El Monte, no masks. It's AWFL.
It’s a clique. It’s a cult. It’s about the people most desperate to be included in the power class. If you’re already at the top, or you are one rung down and looking to move up, you better act like you like the Koolaid. Mmmm, this Cherry Petrodollar flavor is delicious!
As Tucker Carlson said the other day while reflecting on the political polarization in the USA, the Guatemalan housekeepers don’t hate him, the 45 year old hedge fund wives with law degrees hate him.
100% correct. Just drive through a lower class neighborhood when elementary school lets out. You will see children walking and riding bikes home from school, by themselves. Like me and all my friends did when we grew up. You'll see kids being dropped off the bus, and walking home alone. Meanwhile even in my mostly working class neighborhood, you may see 1 kid walking home alone. A car line a mile long. Parents driving there kids to the bus stop, and waiting with them in the car until the bus comes, and these are high school age kids. The majority of people think evil lurks around every corner, and one can never be too safe. Thus, as Chris so eloquently stated, most wanted the lockdowns, and its why few fought against any of the ridiculous measures foisted upon us.
Funny. Here, the divide was not class or race-based but geographical.
City-dwellers masked up voluntarily (say 1 in 5 to 2 in 5 when the hysteria peaked), us here in the countryside saw maybe 1 in 100 at the most, and then only when in town of course.
The county (swedish eq.) considered making it mandatory for their employees, then saw the cost and decided not to.
Covid affluenza brought to you by mealy-mouthed bureaucrats, political SCIENCE and the virtuous Tiger King Laptop Set.
Simulated heroism based on a contrived virtuous belief system of "phrenology" that is accepted as tribute to saving grandma, at others expense, while scapegoating/shaming the people who had the cojones to pay the price for doing the right thing.
Yes, their sense of worth, sadly, derived from imitating and obeying the latest dictates of the current thing cult (because they're ever evolving so as to maximize manipulation and power). There are no eternal truths in this progressive (regressive) world, and it is most certainly inhumane and cruel.
Well at least they bought a new 10 foot Ukrainian flag for their lawn to replace the 5 foot one they bought when they started bravely fighting, from their lazy-boy, for Ukraine a year ago.
The commitment to democracy is humbling. The Founders would be proud! Lol.
I have to admit I am a user of high-visibility jacket, flashlight carrying guy when I'm out in the morning with my fur baby. But it's usually dark at 6:30 am where I live, north of the 49th, from November to January. I've seen many "Ninja pedestrians" literally camouflaged against the dark asphalt!
As someone who lives in a neighborhood pretty close to the one Chris is talking about, I have to say I appreciate the reflective vests and flashlights, especially on streets like mine that do not have sidewalks or streetlights. Plenty of stealth pedestrians who think it's a good idea to go out for a walk after dark in dark clothing! And of course they don't know the rule/guideline about walking AGAINST traffic, either. Not to mention they're plugged into their phones and oblivious to their surroundings.
Oh. That is so disturbing. But thanks for the heads-up. I now feel of pre-dinasaur era. I think I will just find a nice niche in the rock and snuggle in with the other fossils.
Pure and unadulterated sarcasm of Chris's part! Goes well with the spirit of the piece. By the way, my dog is a Border Collie that chases cars, bikes, trains and motor-boats!
I used to work border collies on sheep and cattle. My favourite breed. I would get one but I live in the monsoonal tropics, which would be cruel for a border collie. They need hard work and training or they go stupid.
Our border collie is a cross; the mother is a "hangin' tree cowdog" (https://www.hangintreecowdog.net). We had the dog on agility for a year, but she lacks the drive, and somedays would simply refuse to do the work. We had a good, accomplished trainer coaching us, but we don't have the space required to do our part of the deal as handlers. So, the routine now is a four mile hike every morning (snow, rain or shine) and a couple days a week on a farm with a pack of dogs and a trainer. But she's a people's dog...
Stephen, perhaps you should have quotes around "safe spaces". I believe that's a medical term referring to one of the symptoms of a particularly loathsome mental illness
holy yikes! what was that deranged man talking about and what was he wearing on his head? and who voted for him??
i went with some out of town guests today to a historic house museum. two young women were OUTSIDE touring the grounds, both wearing MASKS. outside!! in march of 2023!!!!
when i got a bit closer to them to read the museum signs about the history of this particular garden (outside), they visibly backed away in fear of being less than 6' away from an unmasked person (me) while OUTSIDE.
i'm almost 70 (and not afraid of them) and i'd guess they were in their mid to late 20's, looked pretty healthy, not overweight. but TERRIFIED of normal basic human traffic patterns OUTSIDE.
I know it's mean but I cannot help but throw a terrific fake coughing fit when I come across the young, masked and fearful. Fun!
While shopping, the tactic will usually clear the crazy people out of the aisle, and you might get a wink or smile from other normal humans who saw what you did. 🤗
ah, ok. still weird. lots of men without cancer are bald and don't cover their baldness. women with cancer generally do cover their heads with hats, scarves or wigs because women generally aren't bald. baldness in women signals cancer treatment; baldness in men signals nothing. he's calling much more attention to himself with that odd thing than if he just allowed himself to be bald.
still, that's his choice. and is far less important a choice than the one he seeks to remove from us
i just looked him up and saw a photo of what he looked like with hair. honestly his hairline was so far back that he probably looks better completely bald
Mar 12, 2023·edited Mar 13, 2023Liked by Chris Bray
I would venture, for those people, there's a strong triangular valence of piosity, safetyism and victimhood that orbits a nucleus of acquiescence by the majority, in a culture where even innocuous words can offend someone, but the imposition itself gives the very same people a false sense of meaning to their lives.
That is sort of out of body because it requires others to feed the crazies center of gravity; to feel important for living in mom's basement and having no real sense of accomplishment.
Their accomplishment is to avoid accomplishment by virtue of either acceptance or encouragement externally, with no effort. They can remain in a safe "virtual reality" of a mental state, where the void is filled by being a net "taker". They require this from without, because they lack a key to a healthy human mind and body:
Purpose
They seek getting their essence tickled outside of their body, because in our culture, its no longer acceptable for someone to feel shame and/or guilt for being a loser.
Mar 12, 2023·edited Mar 12, 2023Liked by Chris Bray
Another thought: These people may be the loudest, but even in California, are they the majority? If there were a referendum on masking, would it win? I can't remember whose Substack republished it, but there was a nice piece earlier this week about how groups that are a majority on Twitter are maybe 8% to 13% of the actual population, the same percentage that believe Paul McCartney is dead and Elvis is alive.
Wow. It's not at all like that here in my city in FL. Like, not at all. I would say it's too far the other way sometimes (if a homeless dude lights a fire on the porch of an abandoned building, literally nobody cares), but the choice appears to be lockdown or occasional homeless porch fires, so I'll take the latter.
rofl! I don’t see anyone on the Left criticizing Newsom for punishing Walgreens in California, which millions of Medicaid (Medi-Cal in CA) recipients depend on for prescriptions. It’s also the only pharmacy so ubiquitous in California that most residents don’t have take a long trip to go. To get rx’s by mail you need a credit card and address. If branches close, people could die. They have stated his precious abortion pills will be available. Does Newsom? Nope, virtue signaling is all that matters. MSNBC cares about Disney World because MSNBC belongs there as a display.
Even better are the pieces on my H alumni magazine about how he's pure evil. I mean, he went to HLS. Is there no limit to the demagoguery? Apparently not.
The thing is, Florida is one of the few states requiring African-American history to be taught to *all* students, not just AP kids taking a class with "queer studies" shoehorned in. (Reference here: https://www.wftv.com/news/9investigates/most-florida-school-districts-florida-struggle-teach-african-american-history-experts-say/PV7MGRG7LVBGTJL5UW77EKWETU/ "In 1994, Florida became one of the few states to require African American history to be taught across all courses. [...] Tony Hill, a former state lawmaker, knows Black history and Florida’s connection to it. That’s why in 1994, he and other Black lawmakers fought to make sure Florida students learned about it. The African American History Task Force he chairs through the Florida Department of Education is charged with helping districts incorporate the history of Ocoee. White supremacists burned property and forced Black residents out of town after some of them tried to vote. Three years later, it happened again to the Black community in Rosewood.")
The *Harvard Gazette,* on the other hand, gives plenty of ink to the guy who thinks "As someone who has spent his entire career in the field and who used to lead the oldest research and cultural archive dedicated to Black studies [the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture], the governor is absolutely wrong. His claims are **an open attack on everything that African American studies has fought hard to achieve,** both in its position within higher education and the histories of the people who make contributions that African American studies both acknowledges and is built upon. It is a **complete erasure and denigration of the contributions of people of African descent** in this society and around the globe."
Yeah... I mean, attacking black history and erasing black people? That's a pretty big charge. I'd have thought the *Gazette* would want a bit of substantiation, but nope.
Every communication I receive from H makes the place more of a sad joke... I hereby present the list of candidates for the university's board of overseers and board of directors (https://elections.harvard.edu/candidates). The man (Satcher, Jr.) who is both a doctor and an astronaut must wonder what the heck he's doing on a list with people whose main qualification is coming up with a list of politically correct companies (whoops, I mean "gender equity index"). There was occasional buffoonery from the Left when I was at college there, but it wasn't as completely separated from reality as it is now. Imagine spending the price of a house to send your kid to major in the grievance industry.
I thought for sure the tweet from Dr Sho Jacobs was satire. Surely, this was a clever parody account. No way this could be a real-life adult human being -- and supposedly a doctor no less! -- saying this in 2023. So I clicked on it, and...holy shit. Most Monty Python sketches are less absurdly surreal than Western culture is today. Tell me how this ends? I don't know, but it can't end soon enough.
Not to shit on a point, but I’ve been carrying a compact and powerful flashlight in my pocket for almost 10 years now. When we lived in the suburban glow you described, I used it to cross streets and communicate with drivers who were paying more attention to their phones than pedestrians.
I’d also recommend a folding knife and pistol for every day carry.
You will find me pacing the house chanting ‘wallet, keys, phone’ until they are all accounted for before leaving the house, but the other three go on when the pants go on.
Mar 13, 2023·edited Mar 13, 2023Liked by Chris Bray
Absolutely! We get the government we deserve. We would have found it intolerable if medical "science" at the beginning of the pandemic said, "we don't think there is much we can do about a respiratory virus. Get plenty of rest, drink lots of liquids, as much fresh air and sunshine as you can stand. Get a hold of us if your symptoms get worse"
We wanted them to make it go away. We believed the horror stories that were obviously not true. We believed in therapies that don't work and can't work. It's who we are. The whole world is medicalized.
Chris, just the first 'tweet' reply by the masked one above was enough to seriously consider pouring petrol over my computer and lighting her up. Somehow she/they had 'ableist', 'anti-semetic' and 'trans' something in a single sentence. I think there was a rant about anti-vaxxers, also.
The foaming, rabid, mania hasn't gone away. The NPCs are like the dormant zombies in World War Z, just waiting for a hint of a micro-aggression, the presumption of gender, or a joke at the expense of Fauchi before they lurch into action and strike out at whatever is closest. They are beyond reason.
If the conditioning was going to wear off it would have worn off by now. With the drip feed of (morphine)fear through MSM/SM, I think we're going to be going to war with the numbers we have, not the numbers we'd like to have.
Regarding flashlights - and I'm sure this doesn't truly apply to your article - they can be a legal tool to help protect oneself in a particularly virtue-signalling area/state. A 6D Maglite can level the playing field against a methed up assailant. Once. Possibly. But better than nothing.
But I suspect that isn't the reason, based on the high-vis accessories.
That people are even touching masks - when it says on the BOX they don't protect from viruses - in 2023 has to be some kind of globally coordinated joke. A parody, surely? Marine mammals are not laughing.
I've really started thinking that the America Spirit is real and it is what they are trying to snuff out. When I speak with people from other countries, they say they came here for freedom. But after talking with them, it becomes obvious that most of them don't understand freedom at all and they don't want the responsibility that comes with it. What they really came here for was to replace a bad daddy with what they perceive to be a good daddy. Most of them are fine with being herded around and told what to do as long as good daddy makes them feel safe. We are not the same.
Those who hide from the world due to their fear of suffering, suffer from their fear. There's no escape from suffering.
One of the other reasons, in addition to elite convenience, that we're trapped in the safetyist tyranny is that the neurotic ninnies who demand it are so damn loud. Their screeching drowns out the healthy, who are less inclined to yell. They have to be shouted down, mocked, shamed, made to feel low status. Until they shut up and leave the rest of us to get on with life.
"There's no escape from suffering" is as an important observation, and our response to it makes us who we are.
Amen. Suffering and joy are BOTH baked into being human.
Or put another way, “a life lived in fear is a life half lived”. I’d rather half a life lived in full than a whole life un-lived. “No pain no gain”. “No reward without risk”. No life without freedom to live it. How did the snowflakes become snowflakes? Political Correctness. Half & Safety. Human Resources... All happened before the Snowflakes were born. This is our mess and we have to fix it or there is no hope for our children and grandchildren, they will be serfs...
There was a piece of dialogue on a TV show a few years ago - it might've been "Game of Thrones".
It went something like -
"My god doesn't want me to be happy - he wants me to be strong."
I've never been able to track it down because the Jesus blood-porn cult clogs up every search engine, and I don't have the patience to search the entire GoT transcript database ... and people who run sites hosting the transcript database don't allow regexp searches because that's part of a 'vanilla' SQL-injection-prevention strategy.
Anyhow... even though I'm anti-religious (and atheist; not the same thing), I liked that bit of dialogue.
Then again, I'm a Nietzsche/Schopenhauer/Mencken kinda guy - basically a mildly-misanthropic kinda-arsehole.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/802777-god-doesn-t-want-you-to-be-happy-he-wants-you
Huh. I remember watching Hemlock Grove, mostly because it had a Skarsgard in it, and even though it was a Lesser Skarsgard, there's no such thing as too much Skarsgard.
I watched True Blood for similarly ridiculous reasons: it met the "Skarsgard Criterion"... plus Anna Pacquin is almost a Kiwi; Ryan Kwantan is an Aussie (which is like a Kiwi who was dropped on its head as a baby)
There were no Skarsgards in "The Boys", but there were a bunch of Kiwis. Karl Urban's accent was diabolical.
Anyway... now I must find out which episode and see why it made an impression. It'll be the "Skarsgard Effect", I bet.
Don't know what the "Skarsgård effect" is, but if you want to see Stellan Skarsgård's best performance, watch "Den enfaldige mördaren" (I think it is available with english subtitles).
It has to be seen to be believed. I'll nick the blurb from IMDB;
"A mentally challenged man escapes from his tyrannical master and finds happiness when a poor family takes him in."
That's on my watch list - although I am an absolute philistine in that I tend not to watch films where I need subtitles. It's partly because my eyesight's so rubbish, and partly because I tend to fixate on the subtitles themselves... and I can't stand dubbed movies.
As a result I pretty much only watch films where the dialogue is in French and/or English (including Yanklish).
It also interests me that your a-ring works, but mine didn't; I find that diacritics are a bit 'hit and miss' - they work when I'm composing (which I do outside the textbox), but often they don't render properly. The forced-display font I use for the browser - Quicksand - has a glyph for U+00E5, so it ought to render.
Generally I just assume that the sites where it doesn't work are stripping out non-ASCII characters... and the comment infrastructure on Substack is so appalling, amateurishly third-rate that I assumed that was the case here - not so, obviously.
å ([AltGr]-a-*) seems to work - I composed this inside the comment textbox.
wait until a woke pilot crash crashes a plane with 150+ people on board. Then they will shut down the airports so we never leave our neighborhood. it's coming
*applauds*
Karentocracy: government by the neurotic, for the neurotic
Let me get this straight...the gal with pink hair, green eye glasses and a black muzzle is a DOCTOR???? Lmfao!!!!
I’ll pass.
She's a biologist with a PhD who uses Dr. as a title, which is even better.
There was a comedian who used to mock people like her by saying that only those who could prescribe penicillin should use the title of "doctor." Can't remember who that was.
As a guy with a Ph.D in a hard science, not a descriptive science like biology, and as someone who spends a lot of my time fixing problems for physicians (JD), I think it is too easy to think anyone who isn't a physician is "Dr. Jill" material. If the last 3 years taught us anything, it is that the vast majority of physicians are compliant fools. So, yes, I agree she is mentally ill. But, it is too easy to. make fun of her for calling herself "Dr." How about thinking about what it means to have "earned" a post graduate degree. Some of us really did. My critical thinking skills enabled me to protect my family from the vaccine. Now, I don't insist people call me Dr. But, I make a point of calling all of the physicians that I have to help by their first names.
I have a PhD in the most rigorous of all known sciences, history, and I always call myself "doctor" at the supermarket. "Do you have any coupons DOCTOR," I demand that the cashier ask.
Anyway, I understand the use of Dr. in professional settings, but there's a limit. I did have a neighbor dad, as a child, who was a plumber, but liked to say, "Yes, this is DOCTOR Heffner" on the phone when he really wanted someone to give him what he wanted. I think it worked!
Thank you DOCTOR!
And you most certainly passed the IQ test for common sense… a very rare pass rate these days.
I never cared for being called Dr. I did have PHD on my business cards when o had them.
Ohhhhh…kinda like DR. jill bye-done.
A “doc” of education.🤥
My brother in law, he's one of the foremost Geologists in the Western World. He literally travels the globe, giving talks and lectures on... well, about rocks and shit. I don't know, I'm a duck who rides a bike.
Anyway, of course he has PhD. But he refuses to be called a Dr., won't allow it.
I think your brother-in-law has EARNED the right to be called a Doctor. He knows shit, has studied, and uses his knowledge as a Doctor, who is established, to teach others.
Yeah, I agree, he has earned it...
"She's a germfree adolescent, cleanliness is her obsession, cleans her teeth seven times a day, scrub-away, scrub-away, scrub-away, the S.R. way."
"A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once." Shakespeare.
I would hazard a guess that I have died a few dozen times. And I thought I was not nearly as brave as I ought to be. But these folks seem to commit suicide constantly.
That quote came to my mind immediately, and I was just about to post it, but you beat me to it! The world is not able to be made into a safe place. It is an asinine endeavor.
excellent!
The irony is these are the very same people who will cut you to "death' with a thousand paper cuts, to avoid being perceived as the "orphan" amongst a thousand false victors.
After all they will fight forever, from their office chair, in the most important forever war, of all wars, to win The Forever War On Viruses that finally end the scourge of viruses forever....and ever.
Of course the University of Pennsylvania removed their portraits of Shakespeare-- something about him being white... I went to Penn State University so I don't know that Ivy League thinking although I fear PSU is probably becoming like U of P. Pretty soon they will change their school colors to blue and silver instead of blue and white.
I would wager that this mind virus of safetism affects mostly, if not only, the affluent and the better educated (and the Karens who miss their nagging delegated powers). This also explains the required masks in the temples of health and science, hospitals.
It's 100% a class-centered behavior. I see it when I drive between different communities with different demographics in Los Angeles County. Pacific Palisades, many masks; El Monte, no masks. It's AWFL.
Lol. Yep. People with real problems in life? No masks.
It’s a clique. It’s a cult. It’s about the people most desperate to be included in the power class. If you’re already at the top, or you are one rung down and looking to move up, you better act like you like the Koolaid. Mmmm, this Cherry Petrodollar flavor is delicious!
As Tucker Carlson said the other day while reflecting on the political polarization in the USA, the Guatemalan housekeepers don’t hate him, the 45 year old hedge fund wives with law degrees hate him.
100% correct. Just drive through a lower class neighborhood when elementary school lets out. You will see children walking and riding bikes home from school, by themselves. Like me and all my friends did when we grew up. You'll see kids being dropped off the bus, and walking home alone. Meanwhile even in my mostly working class neighborhood, you may see 1 kid walking home alone. A car line a mile long. Parents driving there kids to the bus stop, and waiting with them in the car until the bus comes, and these are high school age kids. The majority of people think evil lurks around every corner, and one can never be too safe. Thus, as Chris so eloquently stated, most wanted the lockdowns, and its why few fought against any of the ridiculous measures foisted upon us.
I kinda think their brains are all broken....
Funny. Here, the divide was not class or race-based but geographical.
City-dwellers masked up voluntarily (say 1 in 5 to 2 in 5 when the hysteria peaked), us here in the countryside saw maybe 1 in 100 at the most, and then only when in town of course.
The county (swedish eq.) considered making it mandatory for their employees, then saw the cost and decided not to.
Covid affluenza brought to you by mealy-mouthed bureaucrats, political SCIENCE and the virtuous Tiger King Laptop Set.
Simulated heroism based on a contrived virtuous belief system of "phrenology" that is accepted as tribute to saving grandma, at others expense, while scapegoating/shaming the people who had the cojones to pay the price for doing the right thing.
Yes, their sense of worth, sadly, derived from imitating and obeying the latest dictates of the current thing cult (because they're ever evolving so as to maximize manipulation and power). There are no eternal truths in this progressive (regressive) world, and it is most certainly inhumane and cruel.
Well at least they bought a new 10 foot Ukrainian flag for their lawn to replace the 5 foot one they bought when they started bravely fighting, from their lazy-boy, for Ukraine a year ago.
The commitment to democracy is humbling. The Founders would be proud! Lol.
I have to admit I am a user of high-visibility jacket, flashlight carrying guy when I'm out in the morning with my fur baby. But it's usually dark at 6:30 am where I live, north of the 49th, from November to January. I've seen many "Ninja pedestrians" literally camouflaged against the dark asphalt!
As someone who lives in a neighborhood pretty close to the one Chris is talking about, I have to say I appreciate the reflective vests and flashlights, especially on streets like mine that do not have sidewalks or streetlights. Plenty of stealth pedestrians who think it's a good idea to go out for a walk after dark in dark clothing! And of course they don't know the rule/guideline about walking AGAINST traffic, either. Not to mention they're plugged into their phones and oblivious to their surroundings.
Please tell me you don't usually use the term "fur baby."
Never!!
Or "skin parents." 😖
*Ninja pedestrians
my day is now complete. lol!
I like that term too.
What the hell is a "furbaby?"
https://holidaybarn.com/blog/furbabies/
It's what DINKs call their pets.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dinks.asp
I think Cris was making an allusion to "walking their dogs"...
Oh. That is so disturbing. But thanks for the heads-up. I now feel of pre-dinasaur era. I think I will just find a nice niche in the rock and snuggle in with the other fossils.
Pure and unadulterated sarcasm of Chris's part! Goes well with the spirit of the piece. By the way, my dog is a Border Collie that chases cars, bikes, trains and motor-boats!
I used to work border collies on sheep and cattle. My favourite breed. I would get one but I live in the monsoonal tropics, which would be cruel for a border collie. They need hard work and training or they go stupid.
Our border collie is a cross; the mother is a "hangin' tree cowdog" (https://www.hangintreecowdog.net). We had the dog on agility for a year, but she lacks the drive, and somedays would simply refuse to do the work. We had a good, accomplished trainer coaching us, but we don't have the space required to do our part of the deal as handlers. So, the routine now is a four mile hike every morning (snow, rain or shine) and a couple days a week on a farm with a pack of dogs and a trainer. But she's a people's dog...
There's a time and a place for those things. I think Chris was ranting about the inappropriate places.
I wear one too (it's an old work coat), but there are no streetlights on my block and it's usually dark when I'm out.
I appreciate them when I'm driving at night as well- nice to be able to see people before I'm 5 feet away.
Freedom and liberty are incompatible with safe spaces.
Stephen, perhaps you should have quotes around "safe spaces". I believe that's a medical term referring to one of the symptoms of a particularly loathsome mental illness
holy yikes! what was that deranged man talking about and what was he wearing on his head? and who voted for him??
i went with some out of town guests today to a historic house museum. two young women were OUTSIDE touring the grounds, both wearing MASKS. outside!! in march of 2023!!!!
when i got a bit closer to them to read the museum signs about the history of this particular garden (outside), they visibly backed away in fear of being less than 6' away from an unmasked person (me) while OUTSIDE.
i'm almost 70 (and not afraid of them) and i'd guess they were in their mid to late 20's, looked pretty healthy, not overweight. but TERRIFIED of normal basic human traffic patterns OUTSIDE.
scarred for life, no hope for them.
I know it's mean but I cannot help but throw a terrific fake coughing fit when I come across the young, masked and fearful. Fun!
While shopping, the tactic will usually clear the crazy people out of the aisle, and you might get a wink or smile from other normal humans who saw what you did. 🤗
brilliant! i'll remember that
He has cancer so I guess it’s to cover chemo hair loss. It is unusual to see men doing that!
ah, ok. still weird. lots of men without cancer are bald and don't cover their baldness. women with cancer generally do cover their heads with hats, scarves or wigs because women generally aren't bald. baldness in women signals cancer treatment; baldness in men signals nothing. he's calling much more attention to himself with that odd thing than if he just allowed himself to be bald.
still, that's his choice. and is far less important a choice than the one he seeks to remove from us
i just looked him up and saw a photo of what he looked like with hair. honestly his hairline was so far back that he probably looks better completely bald
His hair was was scary. I think it was a bioweapon.
Why can’t he just wear a hat? There are many great hat styles for men. Fedora, tam, bowler...anything!
Because Little Stevie Van Zandt gave it to him.
Maybe there's some kind of rule in Congress about wearing hats? Maybe he decided to get double-duty out of his mask and wear it on his head?
If so, just call it a religous requirement, yes?
Referring to that always garners more rights and respect than a simple "Because I want to and it doesn't hurt anyone".
Which is weird, no?
I would venture, for those people, there's a strong triangular valence of piosity, safetyism and victimhood that orbits a nucleus of acquiescence by the majority, in a culture where even innocuous words can offend someone, but the imposition itself gives the very same people a false sense of meaning to their lives.
That is sort of out of body because it requires others to feed the crazies center of gravity; to feel important for living in mom's basement and having no real sense of accomplishment.
Their accomplishment is to avoid accomplishment by virtue of either acceptance or encouragement externally, with no effort. They can remain in a safe "virtual reality" of a mental state, where the void is filled by being a net "taker". They require this from without, because they lack a key to a healthy human mind and body:
Purpose
They seek getting their essence tickled outside of their body, because in our culture, its no longer acceptable for someone to feel shame and/or guilt for being a loser.
I wish I could express myself this succinctly and with this clarity and crispness.
Your words are like when one steps out barefoot in the morning and feels the frost against the skin.
Ryan, I can honestly say I've never seen this issue so conscisely descibed and defined.
Thanks Rikard!
These people would've been ridiculed mercilessly 40 years ago. Now they're celebrated.
The future looks so bright we're gonna need safe spaces to tolerate that "shining beacon on the mole hill".
Another thought: These people may be the loudest, but even in California, are they the majority? If there were a referendum on masking, would it win? I can't remember whose Substack republished it, but there was a nice piece earlier this week about how groups that are a majority on Twitter are maybe 8% to 13% of the actual population, the same percentage that believe Paul McCartney is dead and Elvis is alive.
It was you, Chris, who republished it :-)
https://oxfordsour.substack.com/p/subject-to-change
Wow. It's not at all like that here in my city in FL. Like, not at all. I would say it's too far the other way sometimes (if a homeless dude lights a fire on the porch of an abandoned building, literally nobody cares), but the choice appears to be lockdown or occasional homeless porch fires, so I'll take the latter.
I don't know if you've seen this, but Florida is a miserable hellscape of fascist brutality:
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/matter-ron-desantis-florida-rcna73792
rofl! I don’t see anyone on the Left criticizing Newsom for punishing Walgreens in California, which millions of Medicaid (Medi-Cal in CA) recipients depend on for prescriptions. It’s also the only pharmacy so ubiquitous in California that most residents don’t have take a long trip to go. To get rx’s by mail you need a credit card and address. If branches close, people could die. They have stated his precious abortion pills will be available. Does Newsom? Nope, virtue signaling is all that matters. MSNBC cares about Disney World because MSNBC belongs there as a display.
Even better are the pieces on my H alumni magazine about how he's pure evil. I mean, he went to HLS. Is there no limit to the demagoguery? Apparently not.
Send me links if those pieces are online. Very interesting that the alumni magazine is attacking an alumnus.
Here's one nicely misinformed piece: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/02/historian-says-fla-dispute-shows-need-for-ap-class-in-african-american-studies
The thing is, Florida is one of the few states requiring African-American history to be taught to *all* students, not just AP kids taking a class with "queer studies" shoehorned in. (Reference here: https://www.wftv.com/news/9investigates/most-florida-school-districts-florida-struggle-teach-african-american-history-experts-say/PV7MGRG7LVBGTJL5UW77EKWETU/ "In 1994, Florida became one of the few states to require African American history to be taught across all courses. [...] Tony Hill, a former state lawmaker, knows Black history and Florida’s connection to it. That’s why in 1994, he and other Black lawmakers fought to make sure Florida students learned about it. The African American History Task Force he chairs through the Florida Department of Education is charged with helping districts incorporate the history of Ocoee. White supremacists burned property and forced Black residents out of town after some of them tried to vote. Three years later, it happened again to the Black community in Rosewood.")
The *Harvard Gazette,* on the other hand, gives plenty of ink to the guy who thinks "As someone who has spent his entire career in the field and who used to lead the oldest research and cultural archive dedicated to Black studies [the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture], the governor is absolutely wrong. His claims are **an open attack on everything that African American studies has fought hard to achieve,** both in its position within higher education and the histories of the people who make contributions that African American studies both acknowledges and is built upon. It is a **complete erasure and denigration of the contributions of people of African descent** in this society and around the globe."
Amazing. Thanks!
Yeah... I mean, attacking black history and erasing black people? That's a pretty big charge. I'd have thought the *Gazette* would want a bit of substantiation, but nope.
Every communication I receive from H makes the place more of a sad joke... I hereby present the list of candidates for the university's board of overseers and board of directors (https://elections.harvard.edu/candidates). The man (Satcher, Jr.) who is both a doctor and an astronaut must wonder what the heck he's doing on a list with people whose main qualification is coming up with a list of politically correct companies (whoops, I mean "gender equity index"). There was occasional buffoonery from the Left when I was at college there, but it wasn't as completely separated from reality as it is now. Imagine spending the price of a house to send your kid to major in the grievance industry.
In California we have lockdown lunatics and homeless porch fires lol
I thought for sure the tweet from Dr Sho Jacobs was satire. Surely, this was a clever parody account. No way this could be a real-life adult human being -- and supposedly a doctor no less! -- saying this in 2023. So I clicked on it, and...holy shit. Most Monty Python sketches are less absurdly surreal than Western culture is today. Tell me how this ends? I don't know, but it can't end soon enough.
Careful what you wish for, Daniel. At the rate we're going...
Not to shit on a point, but I’ve been carrying a compact and powerful flashlight in my pocket for almost 10 years now. When we lived in the suburban glow you described, I used it to cross streets and communicate with drivers who were paying more attention to their phones than pedestrians.
I’d also recommend a folding knife and pistol for every day carry.
You will find me pacing the house chanting ‘wallet, keys, phone’ until they are all accounted for before leaving the house, but the other three go on when the pants go on.
Absolutely! We get the government we deserve. We would have found it intolerable if medical "science" at the beginning of the pandemic said, "we don't think there is much we can do about a respiratory virus. Get plenty of rest, drink lots of liquids, as much fresh air and sunshine as you can stand. Get a hold of us if your symptoms get worse"
We wanted them to make it go away. We believed the horror stories that were obviously not true. We believed in therapies that don't work and can't work. It's who we are. The whole world is medicalized.
Very insightful article
Chris, just the first 'tweet' reply by the masked one above was enough to seriously consider pouring petrol over my computer and lighting her up. Somehow she/they had 'ableist', 'anti-semetic' and 'trans' something in a single sentence. I think there was a rant about anti-vaxxers, also.
The foaming, rabid, mania hasn't gone away. The NPCs are like the dormant zombies in World War Z, just waiting for a hint of a micro-aggression, the presumption of gender, or a joke at the expense of Fauchi before they lurch into action and strike out at whatever is closest. They are beyond reason.
If the conditioning was going to wear off it would have worn off by now. With the drip feed of (morphine)fear through MSM/SM, I think we're going to be going to war with the numbers we have, not the numbers we'd like to have.
Regarding flashlights - and I'm sure this doesn't truly apply to your article - they can be a legal tool to help protect oneself in a particularly virtue-signalling area/state. A 6D Maglite can level the playing field against a methed up assailant. Once. Possibly. But better than nothing.
But I suspect that isn't the reason, based on the high-vis accessories.
That people are even touching masks - when it says on the BOX they don't protect from viruses - in 2023 has to be some kind of globally coordinated joke. A parody, surely? Marine mammals are not laughing.
Peace.
I've really started thinking that the America Spirit is real and it is what they are trying to snuff out. When I speak with people from other countries, they say they came here for freedom. But after talking with them, it becomes obvious that most of them don't understand freedom at all and they don't want the responsibility that comes with it. What they really came here for was to replace a bad daddy with what they perceive to be a good daddy. Most of them are fine with being herded around and told what to do as long as good daddy makes them feel safe. We are not the same.