09-23-2021, 06:39 AM
All in all...
people refusing to take the vaccine have been making life miserable for the rest of us. But those are the people dying of COVID-19, and those are the people who will never be around to shout "Stop the Steal", call homosexuals "sodomites". or push quack medicine instead of a simple, safe, and effective inoculation with perhaps some annual boosters.
I got my first shot in February, and I got some nasty side-effects, but those convinced me that I had done right until then in avoiding COVID-19 and that if I ever got the disease I could easily end up quite seriously dead. Communities that have done the rational thing have set themselves up to thrive when things go well.
Beyond doubt, we are in need of major reforms of our society. Most obviously we must make at least two years of college a norm instead of an exception for anyone with the intellectual ability to handle the survey courses of a 4-year degree (typically in the freshman and sophomore years of a 4-year college) that are not offered in high school: economics, philosophy, psychology, comparative political systems freshman composition, a foreign language or a different one if one did not get one in high school. Maybe some appreciation courses in art, music, and cinema will teach people how to better use their free time. With the reality of much shorter workweeks to meet basic needs (the only things making life more expensive is a housing shortage where the jobs are and monopoly and corruption among America's Commie-style nomenklatura). Blue-collar workers have nothing to lose by learning to write coherently, understanding formal logic, being able to reject psychological manipulation, and to recognize that there is no free lunch. Oh yes -- and that fascism in all of its manifestations (including Ku Kluxism) and Marxism-Leninism suck badly.
I'm getting sick of the garbage that proclaims that Muslims worship some "Moon God" and that "Allah Akbar" means something as horrid as "Heil Hitler!" Well, maybe if we got some comparative religion into the mix, Christians would recognize that their god is Allah, and that the best thing for them is that God be great (a near translation of Allah Akbar".
In the end we are going to need to build plenty of inexpensive apartments, probably where many of the postwar suburban development has left behind housing that has become terribly obsolete even if not past its serviceable life, with good park-and-recreation facilities. Global warming makes the car culture unsupportable. We are going to need to see small business flourish as bureaucratic behemoths die for their waste, inefficiency, corruption, and lack of innovation. Solar power in place of what Herb Caen called "Profiteers, Grafters, and Extortionists" back in the 1970's (California's Pacific Gas and Electric is expert at buying politicians and gouging a captive clientele of about anyone who lives in California; even if it relies upon the cheapest source of electricity for the generation of electrical power -- hydro-electric power, it still charges some of the highest rates in America because it has a rigid monopoly).
The 4T is far from over. I see plenty of Trump banners still flying just one level below the US flag... and even banners that read "F--- BIDEN". Had Trump won, then it would be time for all Americans to accept the Slavemaster's Offer (Pie In the Sky When You Die, But Only If You Comply), praising our economic elites for the generosity of allowing us the generous perquisite of survival in miserable conditions so that we could be spared damnation that makes a Soviet Gulag or a Nazi KZ-Lager look like a paradise by contrast. Just toil, toil, toil, and always be thankful for the privilege of survival.
The Hard Right failed because it cannot convince people that their self interest is grave sin as did feudal elites.
people refusing to take the vaccine have been making life miserable for the rest of us. But those are the people dying of COVID-19, and those are the people who will never be around to shout "Stop the Steal", call homosexuals "sodomites". or push quack medicine instead of a simple, safe, and effective inoculation with perhaps some annual boosters.
I got my first shot in February, and I got some nasty side-effects, but those convinced me that I had done right until then in avoiding COVID-19 and that if I ever got the disease I could easily end up quite seriously dead. Communities that have done the rational thing have set themselves up to thrive when things go well.
Beyond doubt, we are in need of major reforms of our society. Most obviously we must make at least two years of college a norm instead of an exception for anyone with the intellectual ability to handle the survey courses of a 4-year degree (typically in the freshman and sophomore years of a 4-year college) that are not offered in high school: economics, philosophy, psychology, comparative political systems freshman composition, a foreign language or a different one if one did not get one in high school. Maybe some appreciation courses in art, music, and cinema will teach people how to better use their free time. With the reality of much shorter workweeks to meet basic needs (the only things making life more expensive is a housing shortage where the jobs are and monopoly and corruption among America's Commie-style nomenklatura). Blue-collar workers have nothing to lose by learning to write coherently, understanding formal logic, being able to reject psychological manipulation, and to recognize that there is no free lunch. Oh yes -- and that fascism in all of its manifestations (including Ku Kluxism) and Marxism-Leninism suck badly.
I'm getting sick of the garbage that proclaims that Muslims worship some "Moon God" and that "Allah Akbar" means something as horrid as "Heil Hitler!" Well, maybe if we got some comparative religion into the mix, Christians would recognize that their god is Allah, and that the best thing for them is that God be great (a near translation of Allah Akbar".
In the end we are going to need to build plenty of inexpensive apartments, probably where many of the postwar suburban development has left behind housing that has become terribly obsolete even if not past its serviceable life, with good park-and-recreation facilities. Global warming makes the car culture unsupportable. We are going to need to see small business flourish as bureaucratic behemoths die for their waste, inefficiency, corruption, and lack of innovation. Solar power in place of what Herb Caen called "Profiteers, Grafters, and Extortionists" back in the 1970's (California's Pacific Gas and Electric is expert at buying politicians and gouging a captive clientele of about anyone who lives in California; even if it relies upon the cheapest source of electricity for the generation of electrical power -- hydro-electric power, it still charges some of the highest rates in America because it has a rigid monopoly).
The 4T is far from over. I see plenty of Trump banners still flying just one level below the US flag... and even banners that read "F--- BIDEN". Had Trump won, then it would be time for all Americans to accept the Slavemaster's Offer (Pie In the Sky When You Die, But Only If You Comply), praising our economic elites for the generosity of allowing us the generous perquisite of survival in miserable conditions so that we could be spared damnation that makes a Soviet Gulag or a Nazi KZ-Lager look like a paradise by contrast. Just toil, toil, toil, and always be thankful for the privilege of survival.
The Hard Right failed because it cannot convince people that their self interest is grave sin as did feudal elites.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.