just a hypothetical you understand
Soccer-mom; rushing to get the kids to soccer practice,,, 6 kids in her 7 passenger mini-van and as raucous as 6 excited kids can be,,, Rushing, running late, pushing that speed limit just a touch,,,
Blows through a yellow that turns red as she passes the middle of the intersection,,,
Gets to the soccer fields ‘just in time’ for the kids to make practice or game or whatever,,, Watching the kids, her phone starts beeping with messages.
“Distracted Driving 1PT”
“Excessive speed 2PT”
“Failure to heed traffic device 2 PT”
“Running Redlight 2PT”
“More than 4PT in 30 days, License suspension, 6 month”
“Driving without a DL, Misdemeanor, bench warrant issued”
“This is your friendly neighborhood Insurance agent; due to an increase in the points against your license, we have suspended your insurance policy on all vehicles,, have a nice day’
“Driving without insurance, 2PT”
“More than 8PT in 30 day period, Second misdemeanor, Bench warrant issued”
and as she is reading these, blood pressure rising, the Police cruiser pulls up to her mini-van followed by a tow truck and another larger van with the sign “Child Protective Services” emblazoned on the side,,,
Guys, I like my tech, but I don’t trust it with my life,,, and every time I go into pay my insurance premiums, I see that ‘red-dot’ thingy that would track my vehicle and allow me a ‘significant discount’ on my insurance,,,, Um, NO, and not just NO, but FUCK NO,,,, I have enough bad mojo in a ‘smart phone’ that has become so ubiquitous in our everyday lives,,,, and yah, I know they track me that way too, but so far, they haven’t TOTALLY turned it into a weapon,,, The above scenario is NOT freedom,,, Its a prison without walls, where you are permitted certain liberties until such time as they say you aren’t,,,
and there are days where I wonder just how far away that scenario is from reality.
And no, I didn’t get a ticket or anything today,,, Just saw way too many “Legally Authorized” Highwaymen out today. Enough that the main drag of 25E looked like a Kmart with dozens of blue light specials going on.
sumpin to lead into a positive weekend
What if, the adage of “If its from Government, its all bullshit” is more true than you understand and far BIGGER than you ever suspected?
I refer you to the post by the indomitable Sarah Hoyt so you have something to work with. It’s on the long side for some of my readers, but I highly encourage you to do so. PLEASE RTWT.
What if, and I have no way to verify, no one does, but logic and historical precedents tell me its highly likely, that UN figures are complete bunk and Sarah’s estimate of Less than Half stated figures of world population are correct, then literally every talking point on Gorbalworming/Peak Oil/GreenEnergy will save the planet/we need to reduce the population (why if its already half of what they claim?) etc etc etc,,, Every! Single! Point! they try to use to keep things in line is bullshit if just that number is off by half. And I have every reason to think Sarah is center target from 10000 yards on this one. I have seen US examples of her examples from Portugal, where people would ‘borrow’ children for census purposes to get a little more on the dole: I have seen it our own ghettos here, and I would bet there are more than a few Social Service workers that ‘turn a blind eye’ on it, yet know full well what the game is. And of course there is the padding of the numbers by representatives to make sure they can rightfully claim proper share of the spoils of FedGov. Most of that crap is based on census numbers. Heck, I recall in 2010 me having a fight with a census taker over how many times they were going to count my household. I saw 7 census workers in less than two weeks and none the same and they counted the people in our apartment each time. What if the actual numbers of people in the US is closer to half the 330 million they claim. Maybe not 1/7th as would be indicated by how many times they counted heads in my ‘hood that year, but half could be expected from such heavy handed applications of number counting.(half would be 165 million. 1/7th would be roughly 47 million. Claimed Census numbers when I was a pre-teen were 226 million. Dunno, but it seems to me that even with ‘urban sprawl’ there hasn’t been that much growth. Less people living in inner cities these days as there were when I was a kid. That exodus from the cities was evident by the Mall, suburbs, and a growing network of highways and loops to make urban areas more accessible for those that required commute to the inner city where the offices were still located. )
One quote hit home in an almost personal way, though it was written broad brush.
In other fields, I have friends who overshadowed by the big-group-of-boomers, were treated as “the young kid” well into their fifties, and now suddenly find themselves being called “the old man/woman” and finding they are too old to be affordable.
I have been ‘The Kid’ at so many jobs, and now, suddenly, I am the “greybeard”. I knew I was on my way out in the Audio field when I was called ‘Granpa’ on a Gospel tour. It wasn’t a one time thing either, I carried that title the whole tour. (and I wasn’t a grandpa YET, that came a few years later after I had moved on to I.T. at the hospital.)
And that last sentence ‘and finding they are too old to be affordable’,,, I fear having to find a new place of employment because of my age. I know most managers would see my DOB and think, ‘too old, gonna cost us a fortune in medical insurance coverage’ or sumsuch. OR, Too much experience for this rate of pay,,, (and I have tons of experience in many different fields, and refuse to list half of them, for that very reason.) I found out early forties that people don’t believe I have done a third of the things I have, until I start pulling out the medals, certificates, pictures with entertainment peeps, and backstage passes, or pictures of my builds, like my house and kayaks.
But I digress,,,
World population as I am writing this is Guesstimated at close to 8 billon people. That number is up 2 billion since 1998. This link will open up a wormhole for those so inclined. (I know, wikipedia, *eyeroll* ).
I think their model is WAY off, personally. and the world population sure looks suspiciously like a certain ‘hockey stick’ graph that has gained a bad reputation the last decade or two.
And I drive backroads around SE KY a lot. I don’t see a lot of Urban Sprawl going on in most cases, but I do see a buttload of Abandoned homes, burned out shells, and vacant foundations that never were rebuilt. I see empty barn/warehouse/business buildings that haven’t seen a key in the lock in decades, as indicated by the Kudzu growing over the building. If we were expanding at such a rate, don’t you think we would have more need of those residences and businesses to keep things up?
I know when I was at the Hospital in the IT department, we had a HUGE ObGyn department. I think there were over a hundred cribs in it. I know there were 40 in NICU. I never, NEVER saw more than a handful of cribs with occupants. And NICU virtually matched the regular ward, because we were on the edge of Ghetto/Whitetrash areas and there were always Preemies and babies born addicted to some substance. This in a city with a supposed population near 2 million. Granted, this was ONE hospital in an area loaded with hospitals (I recall I could look out our office windows and see three others, and that was in ONE direction. Still, a hospital that was seeing less than 5% occupancy of its ObGyn units, while seeing near full occupancy in its Cancer wards and Heart wards,,, Seems to me we are better at keeping people alive than making new ones,,,,
And that goes right back to what Sarah is talking about. Our current FRAUD is part of that.
And if those numbers are as skewed as Sarah, and now I, suspect,,, Makes ya wonder just how F!up the numbers are when you see our Deficit spending, National Debt and GDP. Something is off, WAY OFF.
Have a good weekend all. I have a race that needs to be attended to, and a kayak that gets her cherry popped in it. I’ll have some more up as I decompress while off doing frivolous things, drinking beer and conversing with NOT KATS, (and I have a short story I am plugging in and editing right now about a KAT conversation,,,, Tease!!!!!)(seriously, there will be a shorty on that.)
Yup, decadence
Guest post over at Sarahs,
Just a quote.
So they think I’m a sexist or a racist or whatever. Fine. They do not use those words to mean the same things I mean, so it’s a pointless argument, and they are beneath my explaining myself to them.
Lets be the barbarians. They already want to label us, fine, lets choose the label.
And thats what we need to be telling these usurpers that hate our country.
Some damned good stuff over at Claire’s as well. Go soak up some sanity , we could all use a shot of it in this asylum.
Lane Change for a day.
It’s domestic duty Sunday. That means laundry, groceries, what not. It also means that I am working on the book as we speak. (Kinda, its break time for a few. can only look at the edit screens for so long before I want to throw the computer through the wall.)
All of this brings up a peeve of mine though. I am sure that some of us older types that have been around since the Commodore 64 days can all feel for this. UPDATES! I hates ’em! Remember when your computer was top of the line with 128Meg Hard Drive? Yeah, me either. Not anymore. This laptop I have been using has a Solid state Terabyte drive in it, and the operating system covers almost a quarter of that. My very first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. It didn’t have an operating system, it was a programmable chip with video interface to learn Basic on. it had a WHOLE WHOPPING Kilobyte of memory! ROFLMAO. These days, you can’t write a message to your buddy without hitting that kilobyte limit.
Back to that peeve for a minute. Most of the updates we see these days, aren’t really ‘updates’, they are security patches. So many of our programs/apps allow access into some pretty private areas in our little electronic universes, that the app writers have to constantly keep up on security patches to keep one step ahead of the thieves that would do us harm. MY PEEV is this. Blockchain would eliminate almost all of the security issues, but the Government and several corporate types resist that tech and discourage its use. They tell the masses that blockchain will make crime easier or some such shit.
No, sorry, the real reason is this: Blockchain removes their ability to collect your information at whim and use it to prosecute whatever schemes they have this week. (and the shit is now rolling on a weekly change basis. Gotta keep the masses reeling with the blows or they may wake up to the fact that the powers that ‘wanna’ be are out of control.) You may recall a court trying to order someone to give up their password protection on their encrypted files? That wasn’t a blockchain thing, but the encryption is similar. They have to ask YOU for permission and that eats at their withered blackened souls to no end. They will posture and threaten with incarceration, but in the end, it comes down to YOU giving them permission and, Oh! Hell! To! The! NO! is their position on that!
Blockchain is a bottom up security model, YOU control who has access to your information, not the guy on the other end. That irritates people like Bill Gates, who has a stranglehold on almost all of your information (especially now with Win-DOH!!s 10) And blockchain is the foundation for crypto-currency that may be the saving grace of our planet, if we can keep our shit together long enough.
Long enough for ‘What’, Dio?
Long enough for the majority of people to wake up to the fact that GOVERNMENT is the real problem, and that PEOPLE are the answer. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but I seriously believe that if we could reduce our GOVERNMENT to a local condition where people KNOW PERSONALLY who is trying to do what, then we would eliminate so much of the bullshit we have now. The disconnect we see in people like PElousy, Sloe-Joe Biden, and others would go away because they would be our neighbors and if they started slipping the leash,,,
The parallel between our program complexities and how fat our Governments have grown are obvious to me. It’s all, and I do mean ALL about control. The government has to grow to keep burying its shit so the masses don’t catch whiff of it. (and its not enough anymore) and the programs have to grow to keep the patches on top of patches functional. It’s like a hemorrhaging wound. You don’t take off the first bandage when its soaked, you have to add another on top of it and keep applying pressure. But if the wound is arterial, you’re gonna need a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.
And with the way things are bleeding out right now, I don’t think a tourniquet will suffice. It may be time for that third level of triage: Make the patient comfortable while they die.
Aftermath (speculative short story)
“Stumbled my way on the darkest afternoon,
doo, doo-dee-doo
Got a beer in my hand and I’m draggin’ a stogie too
bud-budda-bud-bud.
The back of my brain is tickin’ like a clock,
boo-da-dee-doo-doo
I simmer down gently but boil on ‘what the fuck?: “1
Never said I was the greatest singer, but in this sun, scratchin’ out the lines of beans I’m planting; singing makes it go by so much faster. Gotta make our own music now, and it is just me out in this field today.
Who knows what year it is, I lost track a few seasons back. After things went to shit in the 2020 joke of an absentee election cycle, put in place by the countries new ‘Coronaphobia’, people like me retreated to the hills and never looked back. Even my democrat friends knew something was wrong when Biden took the election with 480 electoral college votes. They had written in for Bernie. Not sure what the hell they were thinking but even Bernie was looking like a better bet than Smokin’ Joe Biden. Smokin’ ’cause thats what bearings do when they run without lube for so long under so much pressure.
Then they inaugurated the senile ol groper. Two days later he had an aneurysm in the Oval Office. Interim President Obama, Michelle, not Barry, then nominated Hillary for Vice.
By April, it was chaos. Barry killed Michelle in a ‘pique of passion’ and HRC became the new President of the United States. Every swinging dick on asphalt in the world KNEW that Barry hadn’t killed O. Who had was never answered, and Barry burned in the chair before appeals could be ran, despite his being a former president himself. The Clinton death list had gained a couple new members. And some I know say that Bidens death was on that list as well.
But don’t none of it matter. America was sold off piece meal to the Chinese, the Russians, South African conglomerates: whoever could pay the geld.
“Rule of Law”? Ayah! That’s just a fairy tale these days. Hell, If I get caught growing these beans, they’ll shoot me on sight, plow me under for the fertilizer and harvest them come August for themselves. Of course they would have some political prisoner or two working the rows until, then plow them under for the next batch next year. Not the beans, the prisoners. That’s what America turned into when Queen Clinton enthroned herself. Heck, some don’t believe she is even alive anymore. That they use Computer Graphics to piece together news feeds of her talking, and that its actually Soros doing the driving up there. That he is still alive is amazing too. I guess with all that money, he can afford some radical age stopping treatments, like total blood replacement from young children or some-such,,,
It’s easier out here in what was once the Daniel Boone National Forest. It’s hard to get to where my group is, and with the old fire tower, we have a chance of seeing incoming further out. Used to be that we were scared of the drones looking for us, but a few older Ranger types coming here told us that they can’t keep the drones airborne now. No good pilots, no Techs to keep them working and they don’t trust the pilots they can get to not use the drone as weapon against them. At first I was afraid of the Rangers coming here. Thought that they were looking for us. One of them told me that this section of the woods was once used as a training area for Army Rangers and they all know the area well. If we see them now, they are definitely on our side, and by God, the amount of shit they know,,,
And they bring some really nice toys with them.
I don’t figure I will live to see all of this wrapped up, Ghost said people started fighting in the cities shortly after ‘Her Majesty’ took over, suspended congress and SCOTUS, eviscerated what was left of the Constitution and had every State Governor not on board with her, arrested for pedophilia or drug running or money laundering. The fighting didn’t last long. Just like in Medieval times, siege was a waiting game, shut off essentials like water and food, the people on the inside fold or fail in pretty quick order. Ghost told me some of what he saw before he packed his shit and left. Hollywood couldn’t write the level of horror he had seen.
That was at least a year ago. He still has spells where he just sits and looks at nothing, seeing the back of his head is what he says.
Maybe this batch of beans will keep us going for another 10 months or so. We have enough, but I sure do miss a bigmac these days. Beef just doesn’t happen much and venison is so damned lean. Funny, how all those things we were told were so bad for us, are now essential to good health and avoiding things Beri-Beri. That affliction hadn’t been seen in the US since before the great depression. Its hovers around us now.
“well, Old Mr. Heffer
I’m really pleased to meet you
I didn’t mean to scare your blue-eyed child
but Billy wouldn’t talk to me
and Susie wouldn’t look at me
it made me so doggone crazy
I had to chase them for a mile
all wanted was change for a buck “
Now for the stinky part. Gerry brought me up a load of old carp and I’m giving each plant it’s own fish. Two quarts of honey for 50 dead fish. We’ll have Mead by this time next month, and soon a whole ton of beans. Just a bunch of crazy Deplorables running around drunk and farting in the woods, scaring off all “her Majesties” hired help from third world countries..
Well I’m back and I’m feelin’ good tonight
yea I’m back and I’m feelin’ right
so get back ’cause I’m feelin’ right
Jesus! “
1Four Non-Blondes, Ol’ Mr Heffer.
Where the anarchists’ play
Just a little thought in my head that needed brought forward by a running conversation amongst peers in one of the dreaded social media apps.
Further aggression against the Bill of Rights. It may not need said among those I am conversing with, but for clarity, I will say it here. Our Bill of Rights is in peril. Has been for years, since at least the Thirties of the last Century, when the Second Amendment started getting assaulted with infringements, in direct violation of the Amendment itself (Shall not be infringed!!!!) SO, I am going to cover my stance on things as I see them, hopefully clarifying some things for others, and maybe, just maybe sending a memo to the remainder of the country that there are those of us with a like mind, and you really don’t want to piss us off. (Don’t Tread On Me, isn’t a threat, its merely a warning, just like the rattlesnake in the picture gives a warning first, before striking. FYI, a rattlesnake will rattle only after it can’t move away anymore. The people of this country that only want to make their way in life, can’t move away anymore, and this is our rattling that warning.)
There are only three rights1 and three rules that need to be addressed here, everything else is details.
Right #1: The right of Individual pursuit of Life, Freedom, and Prosperity2. Everyone of us gained that right by simply being born. How we address those three items is entirely up to us as individuals with certain precepts that guide us. Some of those are cultural, some religious, and some are inherent in the governments we happen to be burdened with, but there is always a choice: the difference between the truly free and the oppressed is how much are they willing to bear, or shrug off, and what sacrifices are they willing to make to be free. Freedom (liberty3) is NEVER Free. You must fight for it, either at the ballot box, on the soap box, or with the bullet box, but you will fight for it. Knowing a former Soviet Escapee, one that happened to get out from under that nightmare before it fell apart for the better, she sees what is going on in this country and warns others as best she can what is coming. She is fighting for freedom in her life yet again. The first time she sacrificed her entire family (they actually sacrificed themselves so she could escape, ) now she has only herself to give for the freedom, and is willing to give it for others to be free. Freedom is accepting responsibility; being accountable for your choices, decisions, and actions. In our current society, there are few that understand just how uplifting and burdensome freedom can be. We bury our responsibilities by accepting assurances we will be taken care of, at the promise of others. By accepting that promise, we surrender another slice of our freedom.
Right #2: The right to self-defense. This is not the second amendment cry. I don’t give a rats ass about whether a gun or rock or club is legal or not when it comes to self defense. The powers that wanna be can outlaw everything under the sun, and if I have the need to defend my life, I will use whatever is at hand to do so. Be it rock, limb of a tree, butchers knife from my kitchen counter, or that AR that just happens to still exist even though there aren’t any numbers on it and no paper-trail describing its existence. The right to self-defense is inherent just by drawing breath, and to deny that fact is to deny living. There is no creature under God’s Eye that isn’t interested in maintaining its existence. Even the damned virus’ that are running rampant across the world are interested in living, breeding, a continued existence past the here and now. Even a cornered rat will stand its ground and fight back. Not because it can win, but because it has to at least try! And sometimes that attempt is enough to make the aggressor back off and the rat gets to live another day. They can outlaw all the guns, but they can never get all the guns out of circulation. They can tax or outlaw the ammunition, but they will never be able to get rid of whats out here, nor stop people from making their own. Even if they did somehow manage to do both, and there were no more guns in the world (a self defeating attempt because you will need guns to enforce the decree), someone, somewhere, will find a way to eliminate another person’s life, if that is what their intentions are from the start. You can’t stop that, no matter how many laws you enact. Proof positive of concept: its already illegal to kill another person by any means, yet it still happens. Taking the tools away doesn’t stop the deed, it only makes the aggressor more creative in the deed. That’s all a gun is, a tool; its the person and their intent that make the tool deadly. In other words: I am the weapon!
Right #3: The right to self-segregate. This is one that has been getting skipped over way too often in our Civil Rights Era. It’s not a racist thing, in any way shape or form, its a personal choice, and one that I see others ‘guilty of’ more often than not4. You don’t see wolf packs integrating with wildcat prides, and you never hear about some zoologist crying about how racist the wolves are. I choose who I want to integrate with, on terms of my choosing, just as those I do or do not integrate with do the same in reverse. If I choose to mingle with people of color, or different cultural backgrounds, I do so on terms I decide upon, that are mutually (verbally or physically by actions) agreed upon by the people I am mingling with. If I choose to retreat to some mountain hide-away where all of my neighbors are the same color or breed, or cultural whatever, that then is self-segregation and there is nothing at all wrong with that. Even now, in a world where being a white male is the ultimate form of racial segregation and negative bias, the right to self-segregate is inherent even in the same breath of those screaming for racial equality. And yet those same screamers can’t see the dichotomy of their words. You see predominantly White neighborhoods, predominantly Black neighborhoods, Asian neighborhoods, etc. There may be the ‘odd’ duck in any of the above, and they may or may not be an asset to the community, but for the most part, the community is a homogeneous unit. This isn’t racial bigotry, it just how people do things. I believe strongly that it is a genetic impulse as well. (side note into another discussion, but won’t delve into deeply here: We may be “civilized” but we are only one or two generations away from that beast in the cave. Some individuals may be closer still.)
And that leads way into the rules that IN MY OPINION, should guide everyone, and is much shorter than the Ten Commandments,
Rule 1: Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff. Simple as pie, harder to live by when others don’t want to follow suit.
Rule 2: If it hurts none, Do as you will.. This is much harder and is NOT the ‘if it feels good, do it” attitude of the late Sixties hippie commune era. The concept of hurting none, applies to yourself as well. A corollary of this is “Live and let live.”
Rule 3: No matter how inconvenient, speak the truth. Obviously, there are times where this one may violate the second one, and at those times, omission is the côte du jure; just shut your trap. And there are many a time where keeping your jaws wired shut is the only option to keeping the peace and liberty we so wish for in life.
Some may say that those three rules will be violated if I exercise my second right of self defense. No. My right to self-defense is inherent to maintaining my right to life and liberty, and if some other decides to break the rule of leaving me in peace, then what actions I take to maintain, are justified so long as they are not unreasonable. If someone were to try and shout me down in a crowded room, obviously I do not have the right to kill them(even if doing so would unburden the rest of the species of a cancer. My opinion aside, that would be unjustified and unreasonable). But I DO have the right to try and shout them down as well: “In Kind” is a term that was used often in courts of old, when justice tended to be swifter and much more intimidating to violators.
Now, with my right to self-defense, if someone were to attack me, whether it be for theft, rapine, or whatnot: any physical attack on my person, or family, or property; I would be justified in use of deadly force to protect the above. My personal opinion of this is that if someone is making the decision to hurt me, either by damaging/killing my person, or my people, or stealing my property, they have chosen to take the risk of dying to do so. There have been too many silly word games played in recent years in the courts systems that twist that simple premise into a labyrinth of illogical and emotional trauma for the damaged parties. (and this falls under a piece of advice as given my family at one point in history, by a member of the Law Enforcement Community; If you have to, kill them, don’t wound them, or maim them. KILL THEM. Dead men can’t counter-argue. This is also supported by the Gun-cultures meme of “I’d rather be judged by twelve, than carried by six.”)
A slight digression here. Heinlein is often quoted as saying “An armed society is a polite society,” I think a civilized or polite society has to have a certain amount of Barbarism held in check, ready to be unleashed as may be required, to maintain that civil decorum. If law breakers knew that they would be held liable with their very lives, not just a short term in jail, a slap on the wrist and maybe some new restrictions (that they will ignore the same way they ignored the original set of restrictions), they would be more apt to keep an even keel with the rest of society. The ones that did ‘go over the rainbow’ would be dealt with, and there it would end. In short order, crime would become much less a problem in our world. That is not to say it would go away completely, human nature being what it is, there will always be someone that wants more, and tries to figure a way to gain it without earning it. People are inherently lazy: they will try to find the easiest route first, and some will have little issue with doing so at some others loss.
I have seen others vision of a more perfect world5, where people are the catalyst to growth and Government is stymied by sacrifice, not encouraged by allowed force. Where the individual is the building block, and to achieve a status in government means proving yourself in as many fronts as possible, achieving success, then sacrificing it all for the privilege of serving the community. That privilege supported by the sacrifices made, basic taxation in the form of Fees assessed in disputes of business departures, and resident fees (voluntarily made by residents, but enforced by needing the services of said citizens that make the sacrifices for leadership.) No one is “entitled” to anything, especially not someone else’s profits. An individual has to make their way, and the whole society is self-regulating. If someone is producing a faulty product, public response would drive that person out of the business. If someone were to be hurt by that product, baring self-inflicted wounding through mis-use, The producer would be liable for damages, to be determined by a Citizens Court where the defendant could counter sue to determine operator negligence, etc. Actual cases of damage through theft, vandalism, assault, rape, etc, would be handled at the societal level, either through arrest by others in the area (not law enforcement, as that should be a responsibility of all able bodied persons in a truly free society) or action by the intended victim at that time. In the case of assault or rape, if the criminal were killed, the victim would only need to show reasonable cause. (again, held by the citizens court if need be: usually in the case of a family filing wrongful death charges)
The problem with that more perfect world becoming reality is in our current mental state as a society. No one wants the responsibilities that such a society would force on the individual, even though it would be far easier and safer to live in such a world. So few are willing to accept that their personal choices have led them to where they are in life, and would rather blame everyone around them for their misery. “If they would just promote me,,,” “I didn’t choose to be born this way,,,]”, “If I had a better education,,,”, etc. It’s always easier to shift the blame, then to turn and look in the mirror and try see that person behind the mask we all wear. So many have been wearing the same mask for so much of their life, they aren’t even aware that they are hiding their reality from themselves. The responsibilities those three little ‘rights’ and three little ‘rules’ would force on people are too heavy a burden for a vast majority of people in this world. The choices they would have to make are too ‘hard’, and the road to that ‘easy’ life of true freedom and personal potential would require ‘too much work’. That state of mind leads society into Entropy, a steady decline of rewarding incompetence, and eventual failure dragging across decades.
Sadly, it appears we are at that cusp.
Without going into details that most everyone would know from our recent history, current trends in the world show we are on the cusp of something much much bigger than just a Pandemic. Observing how society is reacting to the events of the day, I think that understanding is much deeper than just a simple fear of a disease, and a temporary shutdown of society as a whole. I think the current actions of our present Government are a cover for something much more serious in the background, and while signs of that larger event are obvious, I feel that that what we are seeing has been coming for a long while yet, and is still being held back by the simple tactic of slapping another bandage on the bleeding wound. Time will tell how all of this pans out, and it will be up to the historians in the future to piece it together and make sense of it all. Unfortunately, no one will learn from our mistakes, the same way we haven’t learned from the mistakes of our ancestors, and all of this will be repeated again, in some fashion similar to this and other events.
1Freedom of speech is one of the most misinterpreted and misunderstood rights in our current world. Every one has an opinion, and everyone has a right to state it, but no one has a right to be free of being offended by the words of another. In the words of a friend, “I don’t have to agree with, or even like, what you say, but I will defend your right to say it with my life.” There are many now in the world that do not want to reciprocate that sentiment.
2This differentiates from the Declaration of Independence in something more inline with what Jefferson had originally written but was voted down on. His words were for Life Liberty and Property, which the Abolitionists argued encouraged slavery, and the Federalists felt undermined the Government as a whole. The compromise settled for ‘happiness’. Happiness is a personal perception, Property is a tangible. I am writing ‘Prosperity’ as it fits in the middle of the two, being able to be measured in scale with society.
3Freedom and Liberty are not interchangeable terms in my opinion. Doing so illuminates a certain amount of ignorance on the part of the speaker. Liberty is an agreed upon state by a group, and can be rescinded by said group at the expense of an individual, without the individuals consent. Freedom is self-enforced and carries weights and responsibilities that are not necessarily carried by the society as a whole. The differences are quite profound for two terms thrown around with such abandon.
4I find the whole ‘discussion’ of racism to be unstable. I see people stating ‘facts’ that are really just statistics, ignoring scientific facts as hyperbole, and twisting the entire discussion with circular logic from a previously determined goal, never seeing the contradictions, nor mental contortions they have to go through to achieve ‘the dream’. I have found it much easier the last few years when such a conversation comes into my world to just say “I’m Racist.” and stop the whole thing cold. I am not Racist though. I base my decisions on whom I congregate in Meritocracy. If you can , do: if you can’t, learn or go away. It’s that simple for me. Race is never a factor.
5Micheal Z Williamson. Freehold Series of Science Fiction/libertarian novels. He explores such a world through protagonist/antagonism using the Freehold as protagonist, and “UN” as antagonist; each novel covers aspects to the premise, and analyzes through ‘war gaming’, potential conflict of existing thoughts with those that would be needed to bring that world into reality.
Dio's Workshop 