Gangster Government

Another “fundamental transformation” success story

Posted on July 7, 2020July 7, 2020 by Mike

Even as the COVIDIOT panic continues to fades away into the nothingburgerness from whence it came, there are still plenty of fascists intent on flexing their Almighty State muscle. To wit:

The President of the Royal Society says that people who refuse to wear masks should be publicly shamed like drunk drivers, highlighting again how the entire issue has become another part of the ‘cancel culture war’.

“The message has not been clear enough, so perhaps people do not really understand the benefits or are not convinced of them,” writes Venki Ramakrishnan. “Whatever the reasons, we need to overcome our reservations and wear face coverings whenever we are around others in public.”

“It used to be quite normal to have quite a few drinks and drive home, and it also used to be normal to drive without seatbelts. Today, both of those would be considered antisocial, and not wearing face coverings in public should be regarded in the same way.”

Ramakrishnan’s demand follows two Royal Society reports that claim wearing masks significantly reduces the risk of COVID-19 transmission.

However, as Toby Young notes, the evidence cited by the reports is flimsy at best.

“I’ve had a look at the Royal Society paper that supposedly confirms the effectiveness of masks. It’s unimpressive. Note the threadbare evidence on which it bases its sweeping conclusion,” writes Young before quoting the report itself.

“We have found only two randomised control trials in the primary literature on the use of face masks to reduce onward transmission; one was underpowered, and the other showed significant reduction when adjusted for actual mask usage in a posthoc analysis.”

This all emphasizes once again how the issue of mask wearing has been amplified way beyond the entire coronavirus debate and has become a symbol of mass obedience.

Ummm, about those “benefits” and all:

The primary “benefit” of mask mandates is to the fascists exclusively: they get reassurance that We The Sheeple are all still firmly locked in their iron-fisted grip and under their control. But even if the Mask Of Submission DID provide anything like the protection people like Herr Ramakrishnan spuriously claim, one must ask oneself: is it really worth the price of relinquishing one’s precious liberty, one’s dignity, and one’s fundamental right to self-determination merely to reduce the risk of illness or death somewhat?

How many strikes do we have to give ’em before they’re out?

Posted on July 7, 2020July 7, 2020 by Mike

Glenn keeps saying how “sad” and horrible it is that the public no longer much trusts the goobermint’s health “experts,” but I don’t see it that way myself. I mean, come on: when your trust has been misplaced, your faith in over-powerful and unaccountable authorities betrayed, only a damned fool would continue to trust them.

We listened as bureaucrats like Dr. Anthony Fauci dictated economic, social, political and health policy from the widely watched White House stage, successfully shutting down businesses, sending people in fear to their homes, upsetting entire national industries and shuttering the doors on schools — all while claiming a complete hands-off approach to economic policy, political policy, education policy. All while claiming he spoke only to the “science” — all while waving his wand over the ever-changing “science.” All while pressing, pressing, pressing for patience until the development of a global vaccine. All while expecting his rapt, fearful audience to turn blind eyes to his own conflicts of interest with the development of a global vaccine — namely, that he sits on the board of the Bill Gates’ Decade of Vaccines campaign, aimed at developing and selling cure-all shots for what ails humans around the world.

And for the most part, the media did turn blind eyes.

Turn blind eyes, hell. They were cheering him on. And as long as what he says works to Trump’s and America’s disadvantage, they will go right on doing it.

The science was that the science was ever-changing, so to keep up, the rules, the regulations, the mandates, the orders, had to — simply had to! — change as well.

That’s not science. That’s flipping a flipping coin, again and again and again.

Well, in America, it’s time for the citizens to take back their rights from the charlatans. Scientists, on the coronavirus, have spent all the capital they have. They deserve to be drummed out and sent home. It’s time for the individuals to chart their own courses on personal health care.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me as many times as Fauci has since the AIDS scare back in the 80s—which he was wrong about too, along with every other damned thing he’s pronounced upon since, yet inexplicably still holds his powerful position rather than mopping a Wal-Mart restroom in Keokuk—well, I don’t even begin to know who gets shamed over that.

“Can We be Allowed to be Adults, Please?”

Posted on July 6, 2020July 6, 2020 by Mike

First mistake: you never ask. You fucking TELL.

Life is risk. No one makes it out of this thing alive. We take on risk doing benign, basic things daily. It’s time that the politicians recognize, and the media accepts that the adults in our country have the right to make decisions about risks they are willing to take as it pertains to COVID-19. This isn’t academic. The media and politicians focus exclusively on the lives that have been destroyed by the mortality rate of the virus, which is tragic. However, they ignore the greater and much larger destruction of lives it has caused for those who remain, many who haven’t even gotten sick. Millions upon millions of job losses. Businesses shuttered and lost, millions of children displaced from school and the parents who had to suddenly become teachers and the stress and despair that comes with it all.

This virus isn’t going anywhere; that’s a simple fact. It’s time that we start learning to live with it like we learn to manage the risk, as with so many other things in our lives. First thing that needs to happen is that we need to get some real facts about the virus so we can make informed decisions. We also need to stop allowing ourselves to be manipulated and led like children by the media and the politicians. We need to stop living in a fantasy world where we think it’s possible for most of the public to stay at home indefinitely and wear a mask for the rest of our lives when we venture out. This cannot continue and it shouldn’t continue.

I don’t want to live in this world. I want to go to the movies, attend concerts and football games. I want to go to a bar with my friends. I want to go to church and not have more than half the pews roped off. I want to live my life again, fully. I think that most people do and frankly we have a right to demand that we get our lives back. Not in a “new normal” but in the old normal.

We can go back to our lives, we can open the country and the world, the real question is, are we willing to be adults and stop cowering in our homes hoping in vain that we can weather a storm that’s not going away anytime soon.

With the contrived COVIDIOT CRISIS!!! being extended again and again and again with very little real resistance, current indications are…not encouraging, to put it mildly. Too many “Americans” have been trained too well, too thoroughly, for too long. They’ve accepted the bit completely, even eagerly. They’ve come to enjoy the taste, and will not be pleased should it ever be removed.

Sounds familiar

Posted on July 6, 2020July 6, 2020 by Mike

A chilling echo of an abhorrent past, even as it repeats itself.

After leaving China for America two decades ago, my father only returned to his homeland once. I had turned 18, and I think he wanted to show me something of his youth, of which he spoke little. In the dusty village where he grew up, we met an endless stream of old men who wanted to see the village’s prodigal son. Gifts were offered and extravagant greetings were swapped. Then, after each visitor had departed, my father would tell me, matter-of-factly, what they did to him during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The harmless-looking retired cadre, now an amiable old man who pinched my cheeks, had been the village party secretary who forced my father to perform manual labour — running after cows with a basket to pick up the droppings — because, as the son of a landlord, he could not be trusted with an education. The local businessman, now on his second wife and third Audi, had belonged to a gang of high school children who beat him for being descended from counter-revolutionaries.

Some of my father’s tormentors were blood relatives, who were especially keen to display their revolutionary credentials through violence, a situation that was sadly not uncommon: it was rumoured that Bo Xilai, who nearly supplanted Xi Jinping before being imprisoned, had broken his own father’s ribs as a Red Guard. Only the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 saved my father, who took the university entrance examinations a few years later, and never looked back.

Since the beginning of — shall we call it our 2020 cultural moment? — much ink has been spilled on whether there are similarities between the current protests-cum-riots and China’s Cultural Revolution. Even though some of its cheerleaders openly make the comparison, most commentators dismiss the idea, including UnHerd‘s Daniel Kalder.

To my father, and indeed to many of his contemporaries, the answer is clear. They had lived through it, and although they cannot put their finger on the why, they can feel a certain febrility in the air which reminded them of the events of half a century ago. But with their accented English and unfashionable politics (few, for some reason, are especially well-disposed toward the western Left), they have been largely excluded from the conversation. Or they could be biased, as western Marxist academics used to say of the testimonies of eastern European refugees who had been in Communist prisons.

The parallels are indeed nothing short of chilling, and unless you’re a serious student of this sort of thing there might be even more of them than you previously thought. Admittedly, though, there was one aspect of Red China’s horrifying and brutal societal purge that even as rock-ribbed an anti-Communist as myself can’t find a whole lot to argue with:

In America, students aren’t beating their teachers to death yet, as they did in 1960s China.

Well, hey, let’s not just abandon all hope for that quite yet. Hell, if Real Americans had been beating them to death since they went Red en masse back in the 60s, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.

Tailgunner Joe, though you may loathe his methods, was perfectly correct, one of many discrete pieces of evidence that add up to only one conclusion: no free society can coexist with Communism, nor even tolerate its propagation if it intends to retain its freedom. That may appear to contradict the traditionally-professed American values of free speech and a broad tolerance for dissent, sure enough. But at some point a firm line must be drawn and enforced, lest the Constitution be converted into a suicide pact for real. That line sits well to the right of Red.

(Via Insty)

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE!!!

Posted on July 6, 2020July 6, 2020 by Mike

Whatever you do, DON’T PANIC. Unless they tell you to.

A new pandemic is raging. Even before the Covid 19 pandemic has subsided, the WHO has now warned that a virulent form of Hoof and Mouth disease has “jumped” species in record time from horse to humans and is threatening to devastate the planet. It is even more deadly than the original. An appropriate name for the pathogen is being considered, as we speak. A tricky task, this, as it is imperative to avoid giving offense and fostering lasting grievance on the part of those who would level the charge of speciesism. After all, equine phobia is a thing. We must avoid maligning horses and their hoofs at all cost. Needless to say, the same consideration must apply to their owners, as well as their countries of domicile and origin.

Let us discuss the symptoms: Because we are confronted with a new disease, the syndrome and its various manifestations are still regarded as capable of impressive plasticity—that is, they are changing and changeable. The disease can rampage through every organ, bone, nerve, blood vessel and system in your body. The result is manifold noxious, painful, and deadly symptoms that appear to be unrelated to each other. Furthermore, these symptoms are similar to every disease, ailment, malady discomfort and inconvenience that you, or anyone else in the world, has ever experienced. Thus, it is easily confused with other morbidities. But, make no mistake about it, the underlying cause can only be one thing when testing indicates that the pathogen is present.

Curiously enough, the pathogen has an affinity for the right foot of its human host. At this early stage of the pandemic, we can already state, with confidence, that the microbe can be detected by the application of a simple laboratory test to the right foot. A swab administered between the big toe and second toe with a sterile Q-Tip is capable of rendering a true positive, false positive, true negative or false negative result, based on the suppleness of the skin. In short, the test is just as efficacious as the current Covid 19 test. A small fragment of DNA of the patient’s skin is sufficient for one of the above four possible diagnoses.

However, acute observational skills are also imperative! Let us describe what we definitively know: In addition to the laboratory test, the disease can also be diagnosed visually, if the carrier’s big right toe angulates away from the foot, upward by one fourth of an inch, in either or both directions.

Because an emergency has been declared, a vaccine is being rushed to market and will be ready between six months and two years from now. It will be administered alongside the greatly anticipated vaccine for Covid 19. By necessity, we have dispensed with the usual safety controls required for other drugs. Fortunately, therapeutics, such as hydroxychloroquine, widely in use for over 70 years for other diseases, and proven safe for them, is frowned upon by pharmacists. They are withholding the drug from the patients whose doctors prescribe them for Covid 19. Obviously, the pharmacist’s judgment should and does pre-empt the advice of the patient’s doctor! The pharmacist studied drugs in school. That is why he or she is called a pharmacist. What does a doctor know?

Now that we know what we are dealing with, what do we do to prevent the spread? We cannot simply wait for the vaccine. Patience is not an option. There is no time for that. We must act now!

Fortunately, our experience with Covid 19 has paved the way for imposing the additional discipline required for battle against the soon to be renamed disease originating from the beloved horse. First of all, we have become accustomed to sheltering in place. We now have learned to distinguish between essential and non-essential businesses. We wear a mask and we maintain social distance. Furthermore, we are intensely motivated to continue to observe the above admonitions, rules, and guidelines, thanks to our recent and current riots.

The riots have taught us that the nonessential businesses are the ones that the rioters have looted, ransacked, and burned. We know that they are nonessential because we are still alive even though those businesses are gone. If they had been essential, I would not be writing this essay and you would not be reading it.

This would seem to be satire worthy of the Bee itself…OR IS IT?!? No matter what, we must all proceed with extreme caution to eliminate all risk until we’re absolutely certain one way or the other. Therefore, I am pleased to join the author in her urgent call for a new national and/or state and/or local and/or neighborhood decree requiring every American to…

No, I can’t do it; you gotta go read the whole thing to find out.

Yeah, happy whatever

Posted on July 3, 2020July 3, 2020 by Mike

I was all set to uncork my annual rant about how the 4th of July should be a national day of mourning rather than a celebration of “freedom” we longer enjoy, but James Bovard raised the bar on me this year.

How many Americans will greet July 4th Day with gratitude that their governor is no longer compelling them to “shelter in place” or “stay at home” so they can celebrate their freedom? Most of the media is ignoring the fact that this Independence Day is occurring under the most dictatorial restrictions of the modern era. But anyone who values their liberty must recognize the Great Political Unleashing that has occurred this year makes a mockery of the Founding Fathers’ intentions.

Do America’s politicians and media have any special suggestions on how the tens of millions of people who lost their jobs due to the shutdowns should celebrate Independence Day? How should small business owners who have been bankrupted mark July 4th?

The media and many politicians heaped derision on people who publicly protested against the lockdowns that were destroying their livelihoods. But after a Minneapolis policeman brutally killed George Floyd, politicians cheered as mass protests exploded in cities across the nation. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio sent police to disperse attendees at an Orthodox Jewish funeral for violating his restrictions on public gatherings but endorsed mass protests against police brutality.

Twelve hundred health professionals signed a letter declaring, “We do not condemn these gatherings as risky for covid-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health.” Any tattered remnant of credibility retained by public health officialdom was shattered when they declared that supporting protests against police brutality “should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders.”

Who knew that COVID-19 only infects “deplorables” and reactionaries?

At the same time that politicians joined and cheered mass protests against the police, many states continue effectively outlawing religious services. Would church services be permitted to resume if parishioners promised to cuss the police? The “experts” might also permit a vast rally to confer sainthood upon Anthony Fauci, the media’s favorite lockdown hysteria monger.

The pandemic pried open authoritarian Pandora’s Boxes at all levels of government. Trump’s Justice Department asked Congress to approve suspending habeas corpus for the duration of the pandemic. Norman Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, warned, “You could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over.” The same type of pre-arrest power could be exercised to detain anyone suspected of being infected or failing to obey lockdown orders. Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee, one of the most principled members of the Senate, tweeted in response to the news of the power grab: “OVER MY DEAD BODY.”

I could easily (and happily) excerpt a hell of a lot more, but you really need to go read it all; his closing line is as forthright a call to resistance in the spirit of our revered Founders as one can imagine. And be sure to get out there and celebrate your “freedom” on the 4th—if your state or local government will allow that sort of thing, that is. Don’t forget to wear your Humiliation Mask. No fireworks, of course. Too scary.

A win is a win

Posted on July 2, 2020July 2, 2020 by Mike

Even the smallest victories count in these parlous times.

A southern Illinois judge on Thursday voided Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker’s Coronavirus lockdown orders.

The Illinois Attorney General’s office is expected to appeal.

Pritzker first declared a statewide disaster because of Coronavirus back in early March and continued to issue 30 day extensions — he has used the disaster proclamations in his restrictions in each ‘reopening phase’ dubbed “Restore Illinois.”

Recall, back in April Republican Rep. Darren Bailey sought a restraining order against Governor Pritzker and Clay County Circuit Judge Michael McHaney sided with him personally.

Judge Michael McHaney on Thursday said state law does not give governors the authority to extend disaster proclamations past 30 days or activities and businesses via executive order.

Mo’ bettah still:

The immediate implications of Clay County Circuit Judge Michael McHaney’s order, which stemmed from a lawsuit filed by state Rep. Darren Bailey, were not clear.

“That’s gone as we stand here right now,” said Bailey’s attorney, Thomas DeVore.

“This is a victory for freedom. This is a victory for the people of Illinois,” Bailey said Thursday outside the courthouse, where he was greeted by supporters, some of whom wore T-shirts that read “My governor is an idiot” on the front and “Fire Pritzker” on the back. None of them appeared to be wearing the face coverings required under Pritzker’s executive order

At the risk of seeming churlish, I’d like to remind those good folks that they’re the ones who hired the “idiot” in the first place.

Following the science

Posted on July 1, 2020July 1, 2020 by Mike

Wherever it may lead.

Denis Rancourt, PhD, has published over 100 peer-reviewed studies in his career, but ResearchGate choose to censor and remove this paper because it didn’t fit the narrative of the Great Panic of 2020 over COVID-19. Such censorship proves the existence of an alternative agenda.

Again, this underscores the Technocrat methodology of shaming, ridiculing and censoring anybody that comes forth with real science that refutes their pseudo-science. ⁃ TN Editor

That’s the lead-in to the deepest of deep-dives into the (actual, not pseudo) science confirming the abject folly of wearing the Mask Of Submission to stave off the Shanghai Sniffles.

Masks and respirators do not work.

There have been extensive randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies, and meta-analysis reviews of RCT studies, which all show that masks and respirators do not work to prevent respiratory influenza-like illnesses, or respiratory illnesses believed to be transmitted by droplets and aerosol particles.

Furthermore, the relevant known physics and biology, which I review, are such that masks and respirators should not work. It would be a paradox if masks and respirators worked, given what we know about viral respiratory diseases: The main transmission path is long-residence-time aerosol particles (< 2.5 μm), which are too fine to be blocked, and the minimum-infective dose is smaller than one aerosol particle.

The present paper about masks illustrates the degree to which governments, the mainstream media, and institutional propagandists can decide to operate in a science vacuum, or select only incomplete science that serves their interests. Such recklessness is also certainly the case with the current global lockdown of over 1 billion people, an unprecedented experiment in medical and political history.

Yeah, well, that would be that “alternative agenda” mentioned above rearing its ugly head. Hinderaker offers further confirmation from his own home turf, which also applies nationally:

Politicians love to say that they are “following the science.” To hear them talk, you would think they spend hours poring over data and they go where the numbers drive them. If only.

The COVID epidemic has brought out politicians’ faux reliance on “science” in spades. As good an example as any is my state, Minnesota, where our governor, Tim Walz, has offered one tribute after another to “science” as he has driven our state off the road and into the ditch with an irrational shutdown that protected all but the vulnerable.

When Walz issued his harsh shutdown order, he attributed it to “science” in the form of an allegedly super-duper Minnesota Model that forecast doom from COVID in terms of infections, hospitalizations and deaths. It later turned out that the model was created by a couple of graduate students over a weekend, but never mind. It was “science” and it was the basis for the governor’s assumption of dictatorial control over six million lives.

When Version 1 of the model turned out to be an embarrassment, woefully wrong by every metric, it was succeeded by a less pessimistic Version 2. Version 2 then fell to Version 3, which was issued on May 13, less than seven weeks ago. Version 3 was supposedly “science” informed by experience. How did it fare?

So the model was off by a factor of 24. This might be funny, except for the vast damage that our governor has inflicted on Minnesotans in reliance on politicized “science.” A dart board would have produced a far more accurate result than the much-touted “Minnesota Model.”

A cynic might suspect that Governor Walz knows the model is ridiculous, but simply enjoys exercising dictatorial powers under his own emergency decree–a decree that apparently continues in force in perpetuity. He also knows that he has the press on his side. If a Republican governor bungled an issue as badly as Walz has bungled COVID, in reliance on a pathetic arithmetic construct that is wrong by a factor of 24 times, it would be the the scandal of the age. But every reporter in Minnesota, with one exception (not counting Scott) runs interference for Governor Walz and his brutally failed policies. Why? Because they are loyal Democrats, and they went into journalism to serve their party.

Bingo. As John notes, “science” has nothing to do with any of this. And it hardly require a cynic to recognize the dictatorial push behind this sham. In fact, with every passing day it requires a fool NOT to.

The Mask Of Submission has worked beautifully, alas, at its actual intended purpose: as a FUD generator, and as public evidence of what compliant, docile little lambs most Amerikans have become.

Go ahead and try it

Posted on June 29, 2020June 29, 2020 by Mike

Stupid, corrupt, raddled Commie whore says this:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday a nationwide mandate to wear face coverings to prevent the spread of coronavirus is “definitely long overdue.”

“Definitely long overdue for that,” Pelosi told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” “And my understanding that the Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention] has recommended the use of masks but not required it because they don’t want to offend the president.”

The speaker called on President Trump to “be an example” to the U.S. and wear a face covering, saying “real men wear masks.”

Don’t you just love how the article very carefully weasel-words it , calling the proposal a “nationwide mandate” for people to don the useless masks, rather than the more accurate “FORCE” them to? Do please note, also, that the despicable old lush isn’t being much of an example herself in the accompanying video. One law for me, and another for thee, eh, Your Highness?

Then again, maybe Stretch is afraid all the botox propping up her sagging visage might overheat under a mask and melt away, causing a scarifying plastic-surgery disaster of extraordinary magnitude as her artificial face literally decomposes on-camera, dissolving into a puddle of noisome goo just like the Wicked Witch of the West did. The OTHER Wicked Witch of the West, that is. Sundance applies the coup de grace:

If only House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the highest ranking leader in congress who could immediately create; immediately schedule; and immediately pass a House law that required every member of the United States to wear a face mask… No, wait, wha?

Nancy Pelosi says today that every American should be forced to wear face masks. However, proving that her position is purely a political division strategy, notice how she is not asked about passing a law that demands it then. The reasoning is simple.

First, Pelosi knows a law forcing Americans to wear a mask would never pass; and even if it did it would be an unconstitutional, and unenforceable demand. Second, Pelosi would never attempt such a bill because it would put Democrats in a minority position; Americans do not support such nonsense. Third there is no factual evidence showing face masks prevent COVID-19 spread; even the boxes of masks specifically state: “will not provide any protection against COVID-19.” Instead, by playing the politics of COVID Pelosi presents the nonsensical face mask issue as a political virtue-signal.

Mandate whatever the fuck you like, you villainous scoundrel. Matters not a whit to me. I will not comply, I will not obey, I will not bow, I will not yield. Not now, not ever.

A change of heart

Posted on June 27, 2020June 27, 2020 by Mike

I’ve thought it over a good bit, influenced by the leanings in the “let it all burn” direction of our esteemed regulars Barry and Ironbear, and I no longer think Trump should lift a finger to save Democrat-Socialist-run cities from reaping the fruits of their own stubborn folly.

But I’m gonna go even further to express my specific and unalloyed support for tearing down every last remaining statue of the Founders of this ruined nation as well—not because I despise them and all their works, but because We The Sheepul are no longer worthy of them. Every American should hang his head in abject shame at the sight of any reminder of these brilliant, courageous men, because of the way we’ve disgraced their noble legacy. Erase all memory of them, their proud history and achievements, their lofty ideals, their blueprint for proper governance. We failed utterly to live up to any of it, and can only further embarrass ourselves by pretending to be deserving of the incalculable benefits those ideals and institutions yielded up, gifts we purblind ingrates took for granted for so long.

Via WRSA, Fred Reed expounds at some length on more reasons to throw up our hands and just enjoy watching the collapse.

What fun, what entertainment. And rare: One seldom sees the collapse of a landmark society in a rush of wondrous idiocy. Would I could sell tickets. Don’t look at it as a loss, but as a show, an unwanted but grand amusement.

The coup de grace in our ripening decadence is the current uprising purportedly, though implausibly, over racism. But never mind. The causes don’t matter. The deal is done.

Still, it is interesting to recognize that the protesters are, perhaps deliberately, confusing the incapacity of blacks with systemic racism. In truth, America has made the greatest effort ever essayed by one race to uplift another. Reflect: In 1954 an entirely white Supreme Court unanimously ended segregation. Later it found the use of IQ tests by employers illegal because blacks scored poorly, then found “affirmative action,” racial discrimination against whites, legal (hardly oppression of blacks, this). An overwhelmingly white Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Voting Rights Act the next year. A white President sent troops to Little Rock to enforce desegregation. There has been an enormous flow of charity to blacks: Section Eight Housing, AFDC, Head Start, hiring quotas, set-asides, sharply lowered standards in police and fire departments. We now have free breakfasts for black children, then free lunches, in addition to outright welfare. In aggregate they resemble a distributed guaranteed basic income. Which is interesting.

These measures sprang from the best of intentions. Most I think should continue. I for one do not want to evict blacks from public housing or have their children go hungry. Yet none of these programs has had its desired effect. The crucial academic gap has not closed, crime remains horribly high, illegitimacy verges on universal. This is a great shame. Blacks are decent enough people, likable if they don’t hate you, and phenomenally talented. But it hasn’t worked.

Nothing has worked. There is no indication that anything will. The great black cities are in something approaching custodial care.

Many cities are routinely out of control, with seven hundred homicides in Chicago and three hundred in Baltimore every year. Increasingly criminals are released without bail and small crimes, such as evading subway fares, are ignored when committed by minorities. The hordes of derelicts grow, the New York subways become a homeless shelter. These are not problems seen in civilized countries. Which America no longer is, to the astonishment and amusement of the world.

Perhaps this was to be expected. The American practice of choosing its leaders every two, four, or six years by popularity contest worked, after a fashion anyway, in a sprawling continental country in which government had very little local influence. In a world far more complex, with little ability to plan when those in charge change with paralyzing rapidity, and everything intensely regulated by people unfamiliar with problems, results are poor. America’s competition with large countries having intelligently authoritarian and stable governance will prove a losing proposition proposition. The inevitable decline in standard of living, already well underwater, will promote unrest. Here we go again.

We have done what Marx couldn’t: Achieved communism, a true dictatorship of the proletariat, of a rabble jacquerie of much noise and no wit, the rule of the unfit. It is a rule only of the culture. The moneyed would not grant it power over anything else. Yet rule it is. We shall hear much of the authenticity of the illiterate, the purity of ghetto urges, the wisdom of the people, the need to lay low the pretensions of the mansion.

As a philosophic emollient one may reflect that all empires and civilizations must end, and ours is. America will remain as a place, a military bastion, a large if declining economic force. It will never again be, even by the low standards of humanity in such things, a relatively free and vigorous society. The world will not again credit its charades of moral leadership. The rot, the tens of thousands of derelict people living on the sidewalks, the looting and fire setting, the censorship, are now visible to the entire earth. Oh well. It was a good thing while it lasted.

Amusingly enough, after Fred’s article there’s an ad for his book with an Amazon blurb that also serves as a listing of the freedom we threw away:

Essays on America, life, politics, and just about everything. The author chronicles among other adventures an aging stripper in Austin, dressed in a paper-mache horse, who had with her a cobra and a tarantula like a yak-hair pillow with legs and alternately charmed and terrified a room full of cowboys sucking down Bud and…. Fred was an apostle of the long-haul thumb during the Sixties and saw…many things. He tells of standing by the big roads across the desert, rockin in the wind blast of the heavy rigs roaring by and the whine of tires and dropping into an arroyo at night with a bottle of cheap red and watching the stars and perhaps smoking things not approved by the government. He tells of..well, that’s what the book is for. Join him.

Sounds kinda crazy, kinda wild, and completely wonderful, don’t it? Hard to imagine today’s milquetoast, man-bunned Millenials having any such adventures, or even wanting to. And it’s a dead cert that in the extremely unlikely event that Pajama Boy ever attempted such frolicsome hijinks, The Power would put a stop to the idea most ricky-tick. Good ol’ George sure did have the right of it all along, didn’t he?

“Talking about, and being it, that’s two different things.” Fucking ouch. The wisdom and clarity expressed in the above clip still gives me goosebumps, even after having seen it about a thousand and one times over the years.

The science is settled, the facts are in

Posted on June 26, 2020June 26, 2020 by Mike

COVID is a sham, and masks are the bunk.

I wore surgical masks daily for 36 years as an anesthesiologist. Their purpose was to reduce the chance that I would infect an open wound with bacteria from my mouth. This article of faith has been shown to be false. If staff who are working outside of the immediate sterile field do not wear masks, there is no increase in wound infections. And this is in a closed environment where staff will be present for hours. This casts a very large cloud of doubt on the utility of masks for COVID-19.

Another problem arises when we look at the use of masks by the public. Even accepting the uncertain premise that masks are useful, “incorrect use and disposal may actually increase the risk of pathogen transmission, rather than reduce it, especially when masks are used by non-professionals such as the lay public.” Given that most “masks” are simply kept handy for use when required, set aside, and then re-used, most mask-wearing by the public is likely to increase virus exposure, not reduce it.

But do properly used surgical masks reduce disease spread in the general public? To say there are almost no data would not be overstating the case. When households with sick kids were examined, even rigorous mask-wearing provided no statistically significant improvement in adult infections.

Let’s put that in plain English. Even if you did everything to protect yourself with surgical masks, even keeping it on when your kid wants to see your face, it might reduce your chance of getting sick, but we can’t prove it. And that’s in a well designed study intended to get a meaningful result. “[H]ousehold use of face masks is associated with low adherence and is ineffective for controlling seasonal respiratory disease” (emphasis added).

What about homemade cloth masks? In a study using influenza, masks made from cotton T-shirts “should only be considered as a last resort to prevent droplet transmission from infected individuals.” They were only one third as effective when worn by the sick person as a surgical mask. If you’re sick, they’re better than nothing, but that’s not much. The CDC says, “Cloth face coverings may slow the spread of the virus and help people who may have the virus and do not know it from transmitting it to others.” Translation: It might help, but we don’t have any data to back that up.

As we can see from other studies, even surgical masks have minimal benefit in preventing you from getting sick. This was confirmed in a hospital study. Cloth masks had a “relative risk” of flu infection thirteen times greater than medical masks. “Moisture retention, reuse of cloth masks and poor filtration may result in increased risk of infection.”

What about the fabled N95 respirator masks? “Respirators work as PPE only when they are the right size and have been fit-tested to demonstrate they achieve an adequate protection factor.” Translation: If you haven’t gone through the fit-testing I’ve been through (the first model didn’t fit!), N95s won’t reduce your exposure to the virus. Sorry.

Of course, smarmy, grasping little pétit dictators like NC’s own Comrade Cooper almost certainly know all this, and issue royal decrees mandating universal mask use anyway. Might there be an explanation for that, you ask? Oh, there certainly might at that.

Merriam-Webster defines pseudo-science as “a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific.” The Oxford dictionary clarifies by stating, “a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.“

Pseudo-science quickly emerged as the principal domain of Technocrats, but they soon found that scientific debate with those promoting real science was most inconvenient to their social engineering goals. The solution was simple: claim that their own pseudo-science was indeed the real science, and then refuse debate by excluding all other voices to the contrary.

The American public is being spoon-fed a steady diet of pseudo-science in order to justify the wearing of face masks, social distancing and contact tracing. Yet, the actual science points in the polar opposite direction.

Furthermore, those who try to present the real science are shamed, ridiculed and bullied for having such narrow-minded views.

This is a clear sign of Technocrats-at-work. Instead, these are the ones who should be exposed, shamed and ridiculed.

In sum, these dangerous and destructive policies are designed to curtail economic activity, break down social cohesion and control people.

There you have it, folks. And yet somehow, as I always say, here we all are.

Discourse On Voluntary Servitude

Posted on June 21, 2020June 21, 2020 by Mike

That’s the best-known work of French judge and philosopher Étienne de la Boétie, a passionate and uncompromising advocate for human liberty and against tyranny. As y’all reprobates and nogoodniks may or may not have noticed, I have been stealthily expanding the “Notable quotes” section with some more good stuff lately, and ran across a memorable one from de la Boétie via a WRSA link to yet another excellent Robert Gore piece, which I will get to excerpting anon in its own post. But seeing the one I plonked into the sidebar mentioned in a comment at SLL inspired me to revisit some of de la Boétie’s work myself, which I admit to having all but forgotten about after his having been glancingly mentioned back in my college French class back in the Pleistocene or thereabouts.

So without further ado, enjoy (if that’s the right word; it makes for pretty uncomfortable reading, actually) these bits from his seminal Discourse On Voluntary Servitude, also known as “The Against-One.” It’s somewhat lengthy, but quite rewarding; you should bookmark it and read it all when you get the time. Written in around 1548 when de la Boétie was only 18 years of age (!), the central thrust is that tyrants hold power only because and for as long as the people concede it to them. Its relevance to current-day America’s self-inflicted contretemps is self-evident.

To achieve the good that they desire, the bold do not fear danger; the intelligent do not refuse to undergo suffering. It is the stupid and cowardly who are neither able to endure hardship nor to vindicate their rights; they stop at merely longing for them, and lose through timidity the valor roused by the effort to claim their rights, although the desire to enjoy them still remains as part of their nature. A longing common to both the wise and the foolish, to brave men and to cowards, is this longing for all those things which, when acquired, would make them happy and contented. Yet one element appears to be lacking. I do not know how it happens that nature fails to place within the hearts of men a burning desire for liberty, a blessing so great and so desirable that when it is lost all evils follow thereafter, and even the blessings that remain lose taste and savor because of their corruption by servitude. Liberty is the only joy upon which men do not seem to insist; for surely if they really wanted it they would receive it. Apparently they refuse this wonderful privilege because it is so easily acquired.

Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good! You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you? What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you, if you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if you were not traitors to yourselves?

It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement. It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born…Nevertheless it is clear enough that the powerful influence of custom is in no respect more compelling than in this, namely, habituation to subjection. It is said that Mithridates trained himself to drink poison. Like him we learn to swallow, and not to find bitter, the venom of servitude.

By this time it should be evident that liberty once lost, valor also perishes.

Like I said, uncomfortable reading—not least for how thoroughly it reinforces the truth behind the hoary old saw which claims that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite how desperately the Left would like to believe otherwise, some verities really ARE eternal.

A new low—even for them

Posted on June 18, 2020June 18, 2020 by Mike

Annnnd it’s official: we have now reached the absolute nadir of liberal/SJW absurd stupidity.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Oakland’s mayor said five ropes found hanging from trees in a city park are nooses and racially-charged symbols of terror but a resident said they are merely exercise equipment that he put up there months ago.

Mayor Libby Schaaf said Wedesday that a hate crime investigation was under way after a social media post identified a noose at the city’s popular Lake Merritt. Police said they searched the area on Tuesday and found five ropes attached to trees.

The Police Department provided five photographs of trees, some of which showed knotted ropes and one that appeared to have a piece of plastic pipe attached to a rope, hanging from tree limbs.

They have been removed by city officials.

“A piece of plastic pipe attached to a rope” will, of course, be entirely familiar to anyone who has ever spent a single moment inside a gym, who will immediately recognize that it bears NO FUCKING RESEMBLANCE WHATSOEVER to a noose of any sort. With this embarrassent, which will of course embarrass them not one whit, the SJW/Race-Warrior Left has beclowned itself so spectacularly as to have become the Evel Knievel of shark-jumping. Congrats on that sterling “achievement” there, guys. Ace gets jiggy with it:

Artist’s Depiction: White supremacists performing Alt-Right Exercises with TRX suspension nooses in a Boogaloo Brigade training facility

Ahh, but the guy who hung these “nooses” would just about have to be some kind of super-Nazi, Aryan Nation-type RAYCISS, wouldn’t you say?

Victor Sengbe, WHO IS BLACK, told KGO-TV that the ropes were part of a rigging that he and his friends used as part of a larger swing system. He also shared video of the swing in use.

“Out of the dozen and hundreds and thousands of people that walked by, no one has thought that it looked anywhere close to a noose. Folks have used it for exercise. It was really a fun addition to the park that we tried to create,” Sengbe said.

“It’s unfortunate that a genuine gesture of just wanting to have a good time got misinterpreted into something so heinous,” he told the station.

Ooooops. Emphasis mine, natch. But of course, even in the face of such a numbingly preposterous overreaction from Oakland Leftard city authority, AP can’t help but get in a little sermonizing regardless. It’s who they are, it’s what they do.

Nooses have been associated with the lynching of black people and used as symbols to taunt or terrorize African Americans.

Oh yesyesyes indubitably, in literally dozens of fake “hate-crime incidents” artifically contrived by mentally-disordered, attention-seeking Negroes all across the nation, none of which I will bother looking up links for because I no longer give a shit.

But then we come to the truly dangerous part. Emphasis, again, mine:

Schaaf said officials must “start with the assumption that these are hate crimes.” However, the mayor and Nicholas Williams, the city’s director of parks recreation, also said it didn’t matter whether the ropes were meant to send a racist message.

“Intentions don’t matter when it comes to terrorizing the public,” Schaaf said. “It is incumbent on all of us to know the actual history of racial violence, of terrorism, that a noose represents and that we as a city must remove these terrorizing symbols from the public view.”

“The symbolism of the rope hanging in the tree is malicious regardless of intent. It’s evil, and it symbolizes hatred,” Williams said.

Even when, as in this case, it actually doesn’t.

That we even have officially-designated and defined “hate crimes” in the first place is a crime, as un-American a notion as I can think of. That we have “people” in positions of authority who think like the excrescence Schaaf is downright terrifying. That we continue to meekly tolerate humbug as patently offensive and degrading as this—and take the panty-soaking hysterics who pimp it against all rationality, decency, and common sense seriously—is a national disgrace.

ZOMGRUFKM update! A lot of it going around these days.

Gov. Cuomo Rips ‘Evil Icon Of Our Nation’s Racist Past’ When ‘Noose’ Found In Harlem Park. Then The Truth Comes Out.

The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force investigated this incident thoroughly. According to the park director, it was left over from a construction scaffold that was removed in the fall. The rope was used to hoist construction materials. @NYPDDetectives @NYPDShea https://t.co/kWCBCbI1qd

— NYPD Hate Crimes (@NYPDHateCrimes) June 16, 2020

Time to ban rope entirely, I suppose. Sounds ridiculous, I know—right up until you recall how ban-happy shitlibs are anyway, just as a matter of reflex. IF EVEN ONE LIFE IS SAVED…!!!

A lot of egg, on a lot of faces

Posted on June 17, 2020June 17, 2020 by Mike

Still waiting for the mass apologies that are due for inflicting the COVID idiocy on all of us. Not holding my breath, naturally.

In the early days of the pandemic, there was debate over whether lockdowns were worth the economic costs. Now, with months of data, we know the verdict: Lockdowns did very little to save lives, were not worth their economic costs, and their collateral damage could lead to far more deaths worldwide due to social turmoil and disruptions in medical care and food supplies.

The COVID-19 lockdowns may be one of the biggest medical and economic blunders of all time, and those who supported them may have a hard time reconciling their past views with new data. However, it’s not too late to have an open mind.

It’s understandable that so many people were early supporters of lockdowns when fear and panic drowned out data and reason. We should not, however, be so forgiving of experts who led us astray, nor to leaders who were so quick to destroy people’s livelihoods without strong evidence, without due process, and without full consideration for the unintended medical, societal, and economic consequences of their decisions; all this for a virus which the CDC now estimates has a survival rate above 99.9% for people under 65.

As the world awakens to how fear and panic drove unnecessary lockdowns, we will also witness political fallout as leaders are exposed for how they turned medical decisions into political ones. For example, U.K. political leaders and their scientific advisers are now pointing fingers at each other over who was behind the quarantine policy.

The Danish Health Authority is also trying to exonerate itself from Denmark’s March 13 lockdown order after a leaked March 15 email stated: “The Danish Health Authority continues to consider that COVID-19 cannot be described as a generally dangerous disease, as it does not have either an usually serious course or a high mortality rate.”

Lots, lots more here, all of it adding up to one thing:

It is early and we don’t yet know exactly how this will play out, but the false narrative of lockdowns and the efficacy of their underlying models is disintegrating by the day.

The Clampdown isn’t about any silly-assed virus, and as time goes on I begin to doubt that it ever was at all. It was about an opportunity for the authoritarians to flex their muscles, to see what they could get away. Sadly, that turned out to be one hell of a lot, as millions of purported “Americans” proved all too eager to take counsel of their cowardice and throw away what precious little liberty they still enjoyed.

But the signs were all there almost from the very beginning, and they still abound, as those same authoritarians who piously proclaimed all along that they were only “following the science” double down on fascism yet again, despite the actual science now serving to expose them for what they really were all along. To wit:

Mecklenburg leaders pushed for a mask mandate Tuesday as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to escalate in the county, and asked county health officials to return with an official recommendation by next week.

County commissioners say cloth face coverings are crucial in preventing COVID-19 outbreaks — and could be the deciding factor in avoiding another stay-at-home order.

The Raleigh City Council made a similar step Tuesday toward possibly implementing a mask mandate. In Durham and Orange counties, residents already are required to wear face coverings in public settings where social distancing may be difficult.

Looking like three hots and a cot, bread and water, and steady work making license plates and/or picking up roadside trash are in my near future, I’m afraid. Because I ain’t putting on no face diaper, and I do not give a skinny shit what some whey-faced, lying commie—be he in Charlotte, Raleigh, or Washington—may require of me.

Arbitrary update! Bullshit, plain and simple.

When he announced on May 1 that masks would be worn in public places, Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker was emphatic.

“We view this as common sense. This is going to be basically a way of life. No ifs, no ands, no buts, no doubts.”

Yeah, go fuck yourself, little Stalin.

First, Baker’s order said to wear face coverings when in public places and unable to keep a social distance of six feet. Why’d he pick six feet? There is no research showing that six feet means anything in a public space.

That six-foot idea is an arbitrary guess that was “conjured up out of nowhere,” according to Professor Robert Dingwall, a top scientific adviser to the British government, which like the U.S. has adopted six feet as a safe social distance. The authorities guessed that it might be a good distance because some study had shown that a cough could travel six feet in a tightly closed dead-air space. The relevance of that to everyday life — who knows?

Anyone claiming the six-foot rule is not arbitrary should explain why the World Health Organization suggests a three-foot distance and why Austria, Norway, Sweden, and Finland have adopted that rule, and why Germany and other countries use a 4.5-foot rule. Does the coronavirus behave differently in Europe?

Second, the order never defined public places. Did it mean indoors or outdoors? No one knew, and Baker probably didn’t know himself. It seemed as if he was talking about indoor spaces with other people nearby. However, upon hearing Baker’s poorly defined order, anxious people extended it and ran with it. Suddenly, we saw multitudes wearing masks and bandannas everywhere, even when it didn’t make sense because no one was around. They jogged and rode bikes with them on, walked in the parks with them, wore them in their cars. When crossing a street alone, carrying groceries home, or even climbing mountains, they burdened themselves with all kinds of masks.

The disease isn’t contagious in the open air, but the mask-wearing anxiety sure is.

Not at my house, it ain’t.

Not knowing about this disease, people anxiously want to do something. Eight weeks ago, it was buying mountains of toilet paper, and today it’s needless masks. There’s social pressure — the unanimity is worrisome. And Governor Charlie Baker is looking at you. And there are busybodies who will be masked when they light into you. Yikes.

Oh, how I hope one of them tries. They’re gonna get one hell of a lot more than they bargained for.

Mask-wearing is not benign, either. (1) Masked faces feel hostile because you can see no relaxation or smile in the person you’re facing. (2) People feel disconnected, and a national survey shows that depression and suicidal thoughts are way up. (3) Public misbehavior is amplified when actors are anonymous — riots, anyone?

People make mistakes, but rigidly sticking with a mistake is inexcusable.

It is that, at minimum. High time Real Americans stopped excusing them, then, and started confronting and defying them instead, openly and aggressively. There’s way more at stake now than any health concerns, real or imaginary, can account for.

Fake, phony, fraud

Posted on June 12, 2020June 12, 2020 by Mike

Much ado about very little.

The Covid-19 death toll may be less than half of what has been recorded because many victims of the pandemic would have died soon anyway, one of Britain’s leading medics has said.

Professor Karol Sikora, a senior oncologist who has built a huge Twitter following for his positive takes on the virus crisis, said doctors were sometimes too eager to put Covid-19 on death certificates.

Speaking to The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast – which you can listen to on the player above – Prof Sikora said the virus would be mentioned on death certificates when there was “any hint” that it could have been the cause, without proof, as well as retrospectively over the phone.

The total number of deaths, rather than what is on the death certificates, should be used to judge the impact of the virus, he said, estimating the real death toll to be 20,000 to 30,000.

He said: “It could end up that more people have died because of lack of medical care directly caused by the unavailability of it, because its facilities have been taken over for Covid.

“If we look at the numbers, how many people have really died from Covid that wouldn’t be dead at the end of the year? The numbers vary enormously. The current ONS data suggests 60,000 people have died from Covid. I’m sure that’s not really the case, it’s because of the counting we discussed earlier.”

Ahh, but even though our masters temporarily suspended the COVIDIOT panic so as to allow for the Black Lies Murder/PantiFa riots, don’t dream it’s over. Sundance sees what’s coming.

If we think they’ve thrown the kitchen sink at us, just wait. The Trump campaign has announced the restart of Keep America Great rallies to begin in Tulsa Oklahoma on June 19th. And with that announcement we can immediately predict the apparatus of the resistance forces will once again start pushing the COVID-19 narrative.

My response, SCREW ‘EM.

I refuse to live on my knees.

“Rally to the standard” is a call to arms when a situation is critical, there is no time for lengthy debate, and optimal solutions are needed. The COVID-19 virus was weaponized for political purposes against us and our economy. Nothing they attempt now to try and retake that position should be taken seriously.

Given their overlong record of incompetence, dishonesty, and utter failure, I can scarcely believe how seriously they were taken the first time, myself. The simple truth:

Is there going to be a second wave? Maybe. It doesn’t matter. We know enough about COVID-19 to realize that it’s not an excuse to continue to destroy the economy and send people into destitution. It’s not enough of a threat to destroy jobs, tank companies, and push people into another panic. We need precautions for the most vulnerable among us, namely the elderly and those with preexisting conditions. For the rest of us, we need (the) freedom to live our lives, go to work, go to church, or essentially whatever else we want to do.

It’s about choice. Just because lockdowns are not implemented again doesn’t mean people will be forced to venture forth into the coronavirus-ridden world if they prefer to stay locked down. But their choice to stay at home should not influence our choice to live our lives. The coronavirus didn’t kill the initial estimate of 2.2 million. It didn’t come close. It wasn’t a nothingburger, but it was nowhere near the existential threat we were told it would be.

Patriots need to stand strong against the next wave of lockdown attempts by government. Those of us in blue states or Democratic-majority cities need to be especially vocal with our unwillingness to comply with draconian mandates. We need to protest and take it to the courts if necessary. We need to engage in civil disobedience at times, and that doesn’t mean riot like the left is wont to do. We don’t need more riots. We need more common sense, and fighting Lockdowns 2.0 is a common sense play.

The fight isn’t over. We must keep the pressure up and make sure Democrats and mainstream media know we’re not going to fall for their fearmongering this time. Whether there’s a second wave or not, we must stand strong against authoritarianism.

We ought to be doing that anyway—continually, reflexively, every day and in every way.

Another thing we very much need to do is to stop granting the premise of the nefarious panic-mongers: squirming around about how we can reopen for business and still “maintain adequate social distancing,” “providing hand sanitizer,” wearing masks, etc—as if we were children begging an indulgence from mom and dad by making extravagant promises about what good little boys and girls we’ll surely be.

To hell with all that rot. Anyone who must beg his masters to grant him a little bit of freedom has already lost it. The Clampdown was an outrageous affront to American Constitutional principles; our supine response provided a grim demonstration of exactly how moribund that document really is…and why. The state and local officials who imposed those illegal edicts far exceeded their legitimate authority, and of right ought to be punished severely for that audacious power-grab. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty certain groveling and forelock-tugging about “safety” is NOT the way to go about that.

Defiance, not compliance, people. It’s the American way. Or it was.

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