Synova

 From a Face Book post by Thomas Eastmond. Thinking about this: (Note after unpacking thoughts: “TL/DR seems inadequate here. Start your own blog, guy.”) The Western liberal tradition, with its principles of tolerance and freedom of thought and conscience, is almost four centuries old. It first developed as, basically, “Thirty Years War insurance.”* The West didn’t invent tolerance (something new and revolutionary in human history, whose rule ever since we were roaming the prehistoric plains had been “whatever you do, don’t talk back to the alpha male/headman/king” or he’ll get mad and smack you with a club”) because a bunch of unusually decent and smart people sat down and decided to reinvent the world. It happened because the particular social, cultural, geographical (Jared Diamond isn’t *all* wrong) and technological circumstances of seventeenth-century Europe has gotten people recognizing that continuing with the old model posed a real risk of actual, not rhetorical civilizati...

  They didn't really talk about Feinstein's bill at all in this piece. Colion Noir is always good, though. So watch it. My take away is this, and it's made obvious the last couple of days talking to people who ask what is wrong with the House bills. ALL of this depends on your ignorance of what the current laws are and it's designed that way. The polls that gun control advocates cite are dependent on the people who respond being ignorant of what the current gun laws are. The media deliberately misinforms you about those laws. Gun control advocates depend on you being misinformed. 1) The definition of "assault rifle" is primarily (if not wholly) cosmetic. 2) Magazine capacity is irrelevant for people committing crimes or mass shootings. 3) ALL commercial sales already require a back ground check. 4) Private sales to anyone who you know cannot buy a gun or have reasonable expectations is a sketchy dude are already illegal. 5) All firearms purchased "th...

Too many people believe that history has a Direction and as long as they're on the right side of it that what they propose will never turn around and come back on them, it can't. It can't come back at them because they are the good guys. And governing by whim and moral outrage is all about the bad guys. In the passage with Moore they're really not talking about the devil, they're talking about worldly human opponents. And the argument is that they are bad. No one actually thought that they were going to take Satan into a court of law and do something about it. It was just a way of saying, but what if we are talking about truly bad ideas and truly bad politics? And I'd say that absolutely every dictatorship and totalitarian horror began as a call for righteousness and the need to protect the people from a dire threat. What that threat was changes from place to place and time to time. But it always comes down to needing the power to do something about those bad pe...

It's shocking how collectivist ideologies claim to speak for your entire identity.  Though, maybe it shouldn't be shocking since it's more or less right in the description, isn't it.

  Somehow I never got this colored and posted.  Anyhow, everyone should be honest about what their goals are and what they have as intended results.   ADDENDUM: When I added Popper's Paradox to the "labels" on this, I did a quick check that I had his name right and saw the fast and dirty definition on wikipedia, that unfettered tolerance simply means that the intolerant will always win.  This is baloney, of course, because we can *contend* without being intolerant.  We can still advocate for tolerance among everyone.  But even so, it struck me just how Popper's Paradox plays into the Progressive/SJW ethos. Intolerance isn't wrong. Racism isn't wrong. "Punching" isn't wrong. Political violence isn't wrong. Hate isn't wrong. Not even fascism is wrong. The Progressive/SJW ethos is that none of these things are wrong, they only become wrong based on who is targeted by those things. Those who like to quote Popper believe intolerance a moral ne...

 

 I don't have a huge amount of time or desire to rail against the goose stepping cowards, but I thought I'd bring this comic to the front again.  I had another sci-fi convention comic, one of the very first ones that I drew.  I couldn't find it in archives here while I was on my lunch hour, but dug it up now that I'm home.

  We're told, these last few days, that a person should lose their job for making a comparison between current events and the Holocaust. That doing so is anti-Semitic.  That it's hateful. Multitudes of people have pointed to what Ben Shapiro calls "overwrought holocaust memes" that were posted by multitudes of people on the left political spectrum without any consequences all all.  Worst, they might be told that it makes light of the horror of the holocaust.  But that's the worst of it.  You don't lose your job or get accused of hate or racism. So lately when Gina Carano shared a post about how regular folks, even children, were encouraged to go after Jews, to hate, harass and beat them, and that without encouraging and accepting this the conditions where soldiers could come around and round up people would have never happened, it's suddenly oh so far beyond acceptable. Why? Because she was perceived to have been pointing out the acceptance and encourageme...

I’m particularly done with people who explain  that our rights and our values only apply to government and t hat it’s okay when it’s private citizens who try to punish their neighbors and family members for exercising those rights. I’m legitimately libertarian-ish and yes, I believe that all relationships should be voluntary. BUT! Free speech and liberty are an *ethos* that is not limited to government. Our rights can’t be limited to government and still exist as protections or even concepts. People are openly calling for the government to make laws against all sorts of speech they don’t like or opinions they view as bad for society. (I read my Dem Senator’s facebook.) Why do they think it’s okay for government to have laws to silence the bad people? Because they don’t *personally* value free speech or liberty AT ALL. The private and public on this can’t be divided because all that’s necessary to violate what ought to be our principles is for government to look the other way while ...

 I wanted to play with my new tablet a little bit because I won't get a chance for a while, so this is rough.  Still, it's something that I've been thinking about a lot and trying to figure out how to say in a way that is the most clear. Creating a label of "ANTI" and applying it to something is meaningless.  How often does someone say, "Antifa can't be fascist, it's right in the name?" So? And? I can call myself the Queen and it won't make me Harry's grandmother now will it. Along with the ridiculousness of "antifa" is the notion of "anti-racism", which if you examine it differs from "equality" in that it requires and demands a retaliatory racism.  There's nothing "anti" about it in any sense other than a mirror image. Which would work too,  I suppose.  Anti-fa is a mirror image of fascism.  Anti-racism is a mirror image of racism. In any case, here's my messy drawing of something that is c...

 

Because allowing people to say scary things in public (or mean things, or false things) doesn't inflame anyone.  It attracts people who are already inflamed. There used to be a joke that went more or less something like this:  There's a couple thousand white supremacist militia members in the US and two thirds of them are undercover FBI agents. And that's the second reason.  Because we actually want the scary conversations to happen in public. Driving those conversations underground doesn't make them go away. Inflamed people are still inflamed except now they are also legitimately aggrieved.  We have thousands of years of History that proves that this is true. Short of simply killing everyone of a certain mindset, ideology, religion, or culture, it's impossible to make them go away by forcing them to keep their scary ideas quiet.  Killing a few simply creates martyrs, not converts. Economic oppression, which was used against the Jews as well as endless other min...

  Do we really have to wonder what 21st century US fascism looks like? I mean, sure, there's the make believe sort that we're supposed to be all worried about while the real sort is right in front of our faces. Someone the other day said "Profa" which is the first time I heard that. As far as I could tell that's anyone who objects to the Realfa. Because lets look at what gets called fascism these days in the US, okay? Promoting free speech, liberty, and individual rights. Refusing to let other people tell everyone what to do and how to live. Refusing to have a "race consciousness" when demands are made that you have a race consciousness. Refusing to accept that the State must legislate morality. Refusing any possible collectivist social or political ideology. Disagreeing with the identitarian ethos and race segregation. I'm pretty sure that actual 21st century US fascism looks just like all the other fascism, it's just called something else and p...

  The fight has never been between good people or bad, or compassion or not, or racism or equality. It's always been the individual vs. the collective. Group politics, race theory, gender studies, demands for nationalized services, healthcare, universal welfare, and the destruction of individual rights, even something we'd never have imagined under threat such as free speech, the press, or the simple right to participate in the economy. The people accused of racism aren't racist you know, they're just not collectivist. They view every person as an individual, the same as they view themselves. Every individualist is a feminist because they believe in individual rights and equality, not group judgements. But they'll be called a sexist or misogynist. Racism is officially not about anyone's personal biases or beliefs or behaviors any longer. It's about your group. It's about compliance to a collectivist outlook on all issues. Lets be certain to address...

 It's time to play social media Wack-a-Mole.  I don't use this blog often and even blogs are vulnerable.  But plan for multiple connections to other people, pop up every time you're cut off. Bookmark blogs, add people on alternate platforms even if you never go there.  If you ever have to go, you'll already have those connections. I might not show up here often.  But I might.  Then this might go away, too.  Then I'll be some where else.

  Wow. Look at this. We're not even allowed to talk about what we see. The Ministry of Truth won't have it. We suspect that voting machine and computer shenanigans are a problem? Facebook knows that they can swing enough votes just by controlling information, what's allowed to be shared or discussed and what isn't. No one needs to hack a computer. All that has to happen is the "neutral" media debate moderators simply avoid asking *any* questions in areas related to the unfavored candidate's strengths. And this.

 Thanksgiving 2020. I've heard it's getting testy out there.

  I'm interested to see what happens with non-lockdown states and countries vs. lock-down states and countries. I'm in a lock-down state. Our Covid cases and hospitalizations in my state are now through the roof. What lock-down governors seem not to have understood is that you can't give orders to people who are not choosing to cooperate. Even the military understands this. So many on the progressive left think that the military is orders and obedience. Because they don't understand leadership AT ALL. It was not GOOD LEADERSHIP to push people through mental torture all summer. Without a reprieve, family, connections, and recreation, people are not ready NOW to do another "two weeks to flatten the curve." Can people who had no chance to regroup, endure another lock down now? It's not even that people are not willing. It's that they CAN'T.

North Korea really exposed priorities of a whole lot of people as far as I'm concerned. The need to tear down Trump was far far more important than the people of North Korea. Who really cares about Kim? No one on the Left. Who cares about the people of North Korea? No one on the Left. Trump accomplished an unprecedented bringing together of North and South Korean leaders and all of a sudden our media and Democrats wouldn't shut up about how immoral it would be to let Kim get away with past horrors. The *solution* was to insist that those horrors continue? Or maybe they wanted us to go in for some international assassination action? But no. Just months before, just a few months before, the media and Democrats were warning about how Trump wasn't nice enough! They were horrified that Trump insulted "Rocket Man" Kim! And they were praising Kim's elegant, cosmopolitan sister at the Olympic winter games and the *delicious* way she threw shade on Vice Presi...

The paradox of tolerance nearly disappears if we understand that "tolerate" isn't "celebrate". So "intolerance" isn't a "failure to celebrate." We've got people proclaiming, as if it's smart and means something, that we ought not "tolerate intolerance." But what they mean is that we must not tolerate those who fail to celebrate...whatever it is thing that they think ought to be celebrated. "Tolerate" is this...I may hate what you have to say but will defend with my life your right to say it. I can HATE your opinions and your choices, and still defend your right to have your opinions and make your choices. In the PARADOX the only person I'm allowed to show intolerance for is the person who doesn't allow other people that same freedom to have opinions or choices that they hate or even allow other people to have disapproval or dislike of opinions or choices that they think are right. We could say the same ...