Category: politics

It Goes Both Ways

, , , 12

We’ve spent the last 4 years on the butt-end of Trump Derangement syndrome, a very real psychological phenomenon affecting millions of people worldwide, not just Americans. They’ve been conditioned to vacillate and quiver by a constant stream of emotionally-charged “information” (using that term loosely, because as I have pointed out, most news is false even when the journalists aren’t lying, which they often are). What I think we forget is that these things can go the other way as well, not so much in “Democrat derangement syndrome” but in viewing Trump as something more than he is. To most of…

Continue reading

Appeals to Processes

, 4

For anyone reading this in the future, the US is in the midst of a highly contested election. I don’t have the space to go over all the details, but the short version is that Donald Trump appears to be the victim of election fraud, as hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots, all for his opponent Joe Biden, were “discovered” overnight, only in key battleground states and districts controlled by the Democrat party. This, however, provides a great time to talk about systems, processes, and the appeal to processes as a stand-in for the good. “Democracy” is something the American…

Continue reading

Trump will win

, , , 6

Like anything, I could be wrong, but as of All Saints Day, I see Trump winning. This is based on two things: Energy Alignment I’ve noticed an immediate and insane uptick in energy the last few days, and all of it is coming from people clustered in several political alignments, namely rural and suburban dwellers who are opposed to the various measures intended by the government to stop the spread of the Wu-flu, aka Covid19. I live in California, specifically, rural California, though I’m not too far from a mid-size city (Modesto), and not far enough from a large city…

Continue reading

Adaptations

, , , , 3

It’s not hard, or at least, it shouldn’t be when you have 100 million + dollars to fling around. So why so much failure? Because “Hollywood,” as the collection of producers etc. that run the business, doesn’t care a lick about the stories that they adapt. They adapt things like books and movies for two reasons: There is already a built-in fanbase (in other words, some guarantee on a return on investment). The key elements of the story have already been filtered in the free market to have wide appeal. In other words, the book was already successful, so a…

Continue reading

Stuff is not “Just Stuff”

, , , , 5

These argument have been popular lately with the fallout from the Black Lives Matter (sort of, now antifa) riots and banditry: that you can replace your stuff and that crime arises from conditions the criminal has no choice over. These arguments are actually totally incoherent. Let’s dive into them, both as they are articulated here as well as the wider “debate.” First, the premise that physical goods are replaceable is false. Some things are replaceable, other things are not. I can replace my copy of Lord of the Rings. I cannot replace the photographs of my dead grandparents. Even goods…

Continue reading

Politics: Coalitions of Ethnicities and Ideologies

, , 4

There is no “Republican” position on any issue. There is no “Democrat” position on any issue. This is because the two major political parties in the USA are not coherent wholes, but are coalitions made up of disparate, often conflicting, groups which each have their own particular position on particular issues. What you end up with, at best, is a general compromise from within the group on some issue, like Republicans being, in general, for free markets and Democrats, in general, being for welfare benefits. I line those two up because what you quickly find is that there is rarely…

Continue reading

ECONOMIC ARGUMENTS

, , , , , 1

The obsession with the material… That’s what the vast majority of “conservative” arguments are these days – appeals to the material. I write this article on a state-of-the-art (from five years ago) computer powering two huge monitors whose inner workings might as well be magic, surrounded by walls full of guitars – and not just any guitars, some of the best ever made. I have a magical electronic drum set a few feet from me, just in case I want to play drums without bothering my neighbors. I live in a huge house in one of the most expensive states…

Continue reading

Converging Energy and the Blessings of the Hermit

, , , , , , 5

I’ve been seeing a bunch of posts like this lately: This is widespread across my YouTube subscriptions, and I’ve talked to a few author friends who feel the same way, either about content or just work in general. I’m part of this. Prior to getting sick, I purposely took a step back from YouTube to focus on drafting a new book. I figured it was a natural time because it was summer and, more relevant to this post, I just wasn’t feeling enthusiastic about turning on the camera. That lack of enthusiasm has persisted, and while getting an illness is…

Continue reading

Schools and COVID

, , , , 5

As the new school year approaches, there are lots of concerns over Coronavirus spreading through schools. While the virus isn’t dangerous to children, it is potentially dangerous to those they might be in contact with, such as grandparents and other relatives with high-risk profiles. This has caused lots of scrambling. How can we continue the current school arrangement when schools are and always have been a giant pathological petri dish? If we abandon the current paradigm of grouping children by age in small boxes, how will they get “socialized”? How will our children learn without school? This pulls the mask…

Continue reading

Why we don’t object to Trump’s “Secret Police”

, , 6

In standard fashion, the Death Cult is appealing to morality that it itself does not recognize or care about. It does this most potently by co-opting organizations that officially are dedicated to some sense of “morality”: The Libertarian Party has been a clown show for some time, but this tweet really says it all. They were silent when it came to mobs of “anarchists” (really, bandits) destroying swaths of private property and stealing indiscriminately during “protests.” They certainly didn’t call for individuals to use force to defend their property. Instead, they speak up when one organization level of government (federal)…

Continue reading