A propaganda effort backfires on its originators

I can't help laughing cynically at the outrage expressed by US Congressional representative Bobby Rush (D - Illinois) and Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot (christened "Groot" by the always useful Second City Cop blog, which has chronicled her missteps and foibles since she took office, including some rather revealing history).

The story begins with this news report.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush on Thursday condemned images they said depicted Chicago police officers making popcorn, drinking coffee and sleeping on a couch in the congressman’s campaign office while nearby businesses were being looted amid unrest nearly two weeks ago.

The revelation came at an unusual City Hall news conference where the former political enemies stood united, with Rush praising Lightfoot’s leadership and the mayor apologizing to the veteran congressman on behalf of the city.

“That’s a personal embarrassment to me,” Lightfoot said of the scene that played out inside Rush’s Fuller Park political office. “I’m sorry that you and your staff even had to deal with this incredible indignity."

. . .

Lightfoot pledged to hold them accountable for their actions.

“Not one of these officers will be allowed to hide behind the badge and go on and act like nothing ever happened,” she said.

There's more at the link.

Sounds bad, doesn't it?  I wasn't surprised to read it, though.  When the Mayor and her city administration spend most of their time bad-mouthing the police (and blaming them for problems largely caused by their elected and appointed administrators), it was no surprise to me that officers would prefer to remain somewhere peaceful rather than risk being publicly pilloried yet again for trying to do their jobs.

However, the story didn't end there.  Second City Cop confirms that the officers were assigned to Congressman Rush's office, to protect it after it had been burglarized (presumably by rioters).  They weren't sheltering from the riots or ignoring them - they were where they were supposed to be, on duty.  As SCC notes, "The officers were wrong in availing themselves of popcorn and coffee that wasn't theirs, but they were ordered to hold that position with no relief and, tactically, no ability to stop hundreds of persons bent on mayhem."  Puts a different complexion on the matter, doesn't it?

Now the news media are becoming aware of the real story.  For example:

Second City Cop notes, "It was an assigned detail. Rush has been lying his entire life, from the "racial profiling" that didn't happen, to being the insider who set up Fred Hampton. Groot's hatred of the CPD has blinded her to this fact."

I think there's a whole lot more to this case than meets the eye.  It looks very much as if Rush and Lightfoot were trying to manufacture more "dirt" with which to smear the Chicago Police Department.  I await further developments with interest, and I'll be reading Second City Cop to get the inside story.  If you're not familiar with Chicago, and want the lowdown on its crime and law enforcement situation, SCC is the place to go.

Peter

Heh

Fellow blogger Eaton Rapids Joe says he's "just installed our new security system at the end of the driveway".

Yes, that should give low-lifes pause for thought!  You'll find a larger version of that placard at the link above, if you want to print it out for your own use.  (The phone number, needless to say, is not his - but I like where it directs callers!  Look it up online for yourself.)

Nice one, Joe!




Peter

Quote of the day

From Tamara:

Peter

"Normal has flown out the window, never to be seen again"

Frank and Fern are a prepper couple who blog about their lifestyle and their perspective on current events.  Recently they took a long, hard look at the effects of the pandemic on our society - and they don't like the implications of what they see.  On the other hand, they also see signs of hope for the future as people wake up to what's going on, and realize that in many states and cities, Big Brother is trying to treat them as subjects rather than citizens.  Here's an excerpt.

This is about the changes some people appear to be making in their lives. For instance. Why are the Mom & Pop mail order chicken hatcheries unable to fulfill orders until late summer now? Why are seed companies out of seeds? Why are gun and ammo suppliers seeing record all time sales and shortages? There are shortages of radios - alternate forms of communication. Why are the shelves at the store that hold beans, rice, pasta, flour and other staples mostly empty? Why are the news stories on the mainstream sites showing how to make bread, how to bake, how to cook?

Frank and I have discussed for years that if just a tiny percentage of the population of our country woke up one day and realized they would run out of food, went to the store and bought enough for a week that the shelves would be empty. Then along came COVID19. And it happened. And it continues to happen. And the prices of everything are going up, except for oil and gasoline. It appears they will continue to go up. Excuses for that? Supply chain disruption, it's China's fault, it's...... It really doesn't matter what caused "it" and what is going to continue causing our new normal to unfold. The fact of the matter is the future will unfold whether we like it or not, vote for it or not, or deal with it or not.

. . .

... the whole world is in a time of change with no real sense of the direction it will take. A true time of cognitive dissonance where normal has flown out the window, never to be seen again. Where did it go? How did it leave so fast? Amazing, isn't it?

Now people are searching for ways to manage, ways to provide for their families, ways to continue to be independent without leaning on the government, food banks, or other means of income. Will this lead to a new era of individual responsibility or an ever growing population that expects everything to be provided? ... Will this be a wake up call for some that priorities need to be changed and focused on the real things in life? I think once the restrictions are lifted there will be a rush to regain the old normal, only to find it no longer exists.

. . .

Control of the food supply can and will control you. Period.

What can you do to supplement, stretch, extend your food supply to the maximum extent possible? What do you need to learn to increase that supply even more?

. . .

We're all in this together folks. Some days it looks like we have fallen over the cliff of no return to soon crash at the bottom with a resounding thud. Other days? It just looks real dicey. We have yet to see if more serious food shortages and economic calamities are right around the corner. At this point, I think the virus is the least of our worries. I can only hope it is a new era of individual responsibility which will lead more people to step up and take care of their own instead of holding out their hand for more while they scream about someone not wearing a mask.

Pay attention. Take notice and take stock of your shelves and yourself. No one is coming to save you. If They show up at all, don't get on the bus.

There's more at the link, and it's all worthwhile reading.  Recommended.

Peter

Heh - gravity edition

Courtesy of Aesop, here's a collection of Wile E. Coyote's encounters with gravity, compiled from the Road Runner cartoon series.

I giggled.




Peter

Thinking for ourselves, rather than being told what to think

Last week, we talked about "The corruption of the 'news' media into the 'propaganda' media".  In that context, I was interested to come across an article by my friend in meatspace and cyberspace, author Cedar Sanderson.  I think she makes a very good point.

The death of critical thinking and logic in our culture has become more and more evident in the last few years, reaching a feverish peak during the recent crisis ... if we do not start exercising our abilities to think clearly, skeptically, and seek truth, we can and are giving up much of what our ancestors fought and worked so hard to gain.

We have got to figure out how to think for ourselves again. And it seems the first step toward doing that is to reach over to the remote and turn off the news. Also, switch off Youtube if you’re trying to use that for ‘news’ and definitely flee the flaming dumpster that is Twitter.

What’s left?

That’s a good question. A very good question, and one I don’t fully have an answer for ... When I hear some tidbit of information, I spend a few minutes to track it back and verify it. Yes, this is a lot harder than simply letting the talking heads fill my mind with what they want to allow me to hear and think. On the other hand, with the world wide web of information at my fingertips, and a little knowledge of how to read critically, I can be a lot closer to the facts and finding the truth than I ever can if I rely on the mass media to think for me.

There's more at the link.

Cedar quotes from an article by William Lehman, in which he considers the damage done to human society by the increasingly-cut-off-from-reality press.

There once was a time when the “traditional” press was in service to the community.  Seems for the most part, that ship sailed.  Newspapers, the oldest mass media existent, are going the way of the dodo… well, they helped themselves become extinct, and I shall not much mourn their passing.  When the news existed to serve the community, and SURE, to expose corruption, and malfeasance, they served their purpose.  After Watergate though, it seems like the press got drunk on their own power.

. . .

Where once there were thoughtful articles weighing both sides of an issue, the “USA TODAY” and others of their ilk developed the Splash box, the Text box in a box, and all of the other things designed in a most P. T. Barnum way to excite, to stir the emotion, to catch your attention for mere seconds and then on to the next thing, in the style of “THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS!” “SEE THE EGRESS!” “THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD, THE EGRESS!” until you find yourself dumped out at the end having passed through to “the egress” which of course, means EXIT, knowing no more than you did when you started, and wondering, “just what happened here?”

In short, they forgot their roots.

. . .

I desperately want you to question.  Take nothing, including what I say, at face value.  Always assume there’s a motive, an agenda.  My personal agenda I will be quite clear about, I want freedom, freedom for my nation, freedom for my people, and for my family.  I want people to THINK.  If I am trying to win your thoughts, it’s to cause you to question, to examine, and to reason. And I want you to question, including questioning me.

Again, more at the link.

I think both articles have the right of it.  Recommended reading.

Peter

Heh

Courtesy of a link from Tamara, I came across this tweet and response:

Oh, well . . . what can I do in response but post this?

Peter

"The COVID-19 Boogaloo Opus"

That's the title of a very long and, frankly, very worrying article over at Handwaving Freakoutery (a blog we've met in these pages before).  I strongly recommend taking the time to click over there and read it in full.  (In case it's deleted by politically correct administrators, an archived copy may be found here.)

To whet your appetite, here are a few excerpts.

As the sensemaking crisis goes into overload on COVID-19, many people are shutting down, many people are hyperventilating, and many people don’t know what’s real and what’s not. The signal to noise ratio on this is very badly weighted towards noise, with our mainstream media sources and politicians failing to be particularly helpful. And while COVID-19 could kill you, other things could kill you too, such as unemployment, starvation, or national civil war, and we need to look at all of those things honestly to pull the signal out of the noise. There are a lot of things to consider.

. . .

The USA lost 45 days as compared to South Korea, at the same starting gun, entirely due to pencil pushers at the FDA and CDC. The important thing to take away from the Tale of The Second National F***up, is that no politician could have prevented this, unless they were willing to unilaterally step in, deplatform the FDA, burn HIPPA sooner, and bust the CDC down into an “advisory only” role. Not Trump, not Hillary, not Biden, not Bernie. The one politician who might have been able to do it, is the hypothetical caricature of Trump for which many Trump voters voted. And knowing how government works in the USA, it is unthinkable that this will get fixed, or that this won’t happen again the next time, because our universal bipartisan answer to government failure is more government.

And the government’s final response to needlessly wasting 45 days reacting to this, is to issue a 2 trillion-dollar bailout to pause the national economy for 56 days, so we can catch up, while everyone loses their jobs.

. . .

The math is all wrong. For one, we have some dead people who probably had COVID-19 and didn’t get counted because they didn’t get tested. For another, we have a lot more people who caught it and survived, but never got confirmed, because of the testing SNAFU. For a third, we have some currently alive cases who haven’t resolved in our numbers. This means the numerator in the fraction is wrong, and the denominator is very wrong. It is likely, on speculative analysis, that the final CFR for this thing will turn out to be very similar to the flu, as we see in South Korea and Iceland which have good testing. It’s “just” a flu that everyone gets all at once because nobody started with any immunity to it, which leads to more dead people. The spike of COVID-19 deaths we will see in the coming months are going to be several times higher than the flu deaths, because basically they’re several years-worth of flu victims squeezed into one year.

. . .

Most [gun store owners] estimate around 75% of gun sales in March 2020 were first time buyers. That would constitute 2.8 million people, almost 1% of the total US population buying their first gun. Many foreign nations only have 1% gun ownership rate nationwide. We may have that many who became first time owners a month ago. And now the ranges are closed, and they can’t practice or train with their new purchase, and they’re sitting at home losing their jobs reading a stream of social media anxiety.

These numbers don’t even count peer to peer sales or gifts of prior owned firearms. And the other things people are buying? Nonperishable food, medicines, seeds, things to use at home. Prepper stuff.

The makeup of COVID-19 America now constitutes the following classes:

1) Previously armed previous preppers
2) Previously armed new preppers
3) Newly armed new preppers
4) Unarmed new preppers, lovingly referred to as “targets.” Bless their heart.

Nobody’s not a prepper anymore. Certain corners of the internet might call this a “Boogaloo Soup.”

. . .

Be very clear, at the peak of the Syrian Civil War, the total number of combatants on all sides only numbered 2% or less of the population on a per capita basis. We have 1% new gun owners alone, a national gun ownership rate around 30%, and a projected number of Red or Blue tribal goons who support terrorism to be up around the 15% range before COVID-19 entered the picture ... Put simply, the Red Tribe / Blue Tribe cultural divide in the United States is thicker than mid-20th century racism. We have all the dehumanization we need for a civil war, and all the gear. We’re just not motivated yet.

. . .

A lot of people I speak to don’t seem to understand that the economy is not just something we do to manipulate a stock market. It is the fundamental way that humans provide for our needs, including food, and has been since we came down out of the trees and settled on this idea of “labor specialization” ... The calculus of when to come off lockdown is different everywhere, and the damage the lockdown does must be accounted for in this calculus ... If the lockdown doesn’t actually save that many people anyway, because our treatments in the hospital don’t help that much, then this entire calculation gets a lot muddier. And all this ignores the hunger element, which for the USA is tied in with both the Potential Boogaloo and the food service industry.

. . .

According to the New York Times, tens of millions of pounds of fresh food are being destroyed by the nations farmers because we closed restaurants, hotels, and schools ... Farmers are currently plowing under fields of fresh produce, because they have no choice ... the terrifying thing lies below the surface. It’s conceivable that bailout money could keep those industries alive, but there is no amount of bailout money that will dig that onion out of the ground. And the onion served a more important purpose than farming revenue. It was food. It prevented hunger. That’s what the economy is for, remember? ... in a very real way, if we don’t open the restaurants up soon, and get the prior supply chains working again, we are very likely to end up with long term food shortages here.

And that’s the last element we need to start shooting each other.

There's much more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

The author argues his case cogently, persuasively and convincingly.  I wish I could find more in his article with which to disagree . . . but I can't.  What's more, I'm seeing more and more every day to confirm his thesis.  Just as one example, consider the actions of local and state governments in response to this pandemic.  On balance (although not always), most Republican governments appear to be focused on getting back to work as quickly and as safely as possible, to keep their local and regional economies going.  On balance (although not always), most Democratic governments appear to be focused on enforcing their authority over their constituents, whether or not that authority is being constitutionally and legitimately exercised.

Progressives are also using this opportunity to even further cement their ideological positions into law, whether or not those positions are widely accepted among their people.  Their attitude appears to be, "Now that we've made it the law, you will obey, or else! - even if you disagree."  Let South Park sum it up, for such ideological hard-liners and those who enforce their will:

To that attitude, many Americans have a visceral and emphatic response, often associated with a single finger, duly extended.  If progressives are so unwise as to push the issue, some of the hands behind those fingers might soon wield something a little more emphatic in its disdain.

Let Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform summarize what many Americans are thinking and feeling right now.

The time is approaching when we will need to separate the wheat from the chaff. This ongoing test of character will reveal the true nature of our political, financial, corporate, religious, and neighborhood leaders. You will be able to determine what type of person they are by whether they are willing to violate moral and ethical codes to achieve their objectives. It is times like these where your true nature is revealed.

So far, virtually every national leader, and most certainly Powell, Mnuchin and Congressional leaders, have failed this test miserably. They have confirmed we are run by one party, beholden to corporate and banking interests, and perfectly willing to destroy the livelihoods of the 99.9% to keep the 0.1% enriched and empowered. The ruling class has violated every moral and ethical code known to man, and will continue to do so until they are stopped through violent means. The chaff will need to burn.

. . .

I, along with many other like minded people in this country, have been stoically living our lives, prudently managing our affairs, working and saving, not being lured into the rigged markets, preparing for the challenges we saw ahead, and viewing everything spewed by politicians or media talking heads as nothing but hot air and propaganda.

I’ve hated the road this country has been on for the last twenty years, but with the actions taken by the Fed and government in the last few weeks, they have pressed down hard on the accelerator as if they want to take the country over the cliff and into the abyss below. What is the end game to these machinations and schemes? Do they have some master plan for a global world order, or are they just arrogant psychopaths flailing about trying to retain their wealth, status and power? Whatever the purpose, it is not going to end well.

I’ve been able to live my life without much interference from the surveillance state until now. When the State purposely destroys the economy, endangering my ability to earn a living, imprisons me in my home with threat of sanctions if I don’t obey, uses technology to monitor my movements, and then throws a couple grand of my own tax money back at me as compensation to shut up and submit to their shitting on my Constitutional rights, I’ve got a problem.

I’m not willing to sacrifice my liberty and freedoms for the safety and security of a corporate fascist oligarchy disguised as a government of the people, by the people and for the people. This farce has gone on for far too long. Once we acquiesce and surrender our liberty, it can never be recovered.

. . .

Those who would give up essential Liberty,
to purchase a little temporary Safety,
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

                                Ben Franklin

Again, more at the link.

Go read the first article above, think about it, and - if I may so suggest - consider preparing yourself accordingly.  I wish I could say the author was way out in left field in his appreciation of what's going on . . . but I can't.

Peter

Does marriage have value anymore, monetary or otherwise?

Aaron Clarey, a.k.a. Captain Capitalism, offers an intriguing look at whether dowries are something that may become part of the modern "marriage market" in the Western world, just as they were in the not too distant past (and still are in some other parts of the world).  I don't necessarily agree with his arguments, but I have to admit that he poses questions that require an answer.

If you don't know (or never knew) what a dowry was, it was a payment the father usually made to his would-be son in law to take his daughter off his hands and care for her into the future.  This was based on the premise that women did not work, would likely bear children, would stay home to rear said children, and would in a purely accounting sense be a financial liability to the family, earning no income.  And so, the would-be husband would be entitled, if not required, to some kind of financial recompense to take the financial liability of a woman off the hands of her father.

Fast forward 300 years later and I ask a very simple question;

How is it any different today?

If there was a time young women were not a financial liability, but an asset, it was the boomers and Gen X'ers.  These women were workers, they were employed, and they did take care of themselves.  But today's generation of young women (who are also at the age of marriage) do not present young male suitors a similar financial proposition or condition.  Matter of fact, most young women today are horrifically bad financial liabilities, and any young man who commits to them risks tanking his own finances.

This isn't primarily due to young women not working.  They most certainly do, and at labor force participation rates higher than any generation of women past.  But the financial liability nature of most young women today is due to student loans and the education scam that destroys their finances.  Young women ... are lured too easily to go $120,000 in debt for worthless liberal arts degrees that offer them no employability.  Worse, the indoctrination they receive in college weaponizes them against men, instead of making them partners and lovers in life to help one another.  And with the repeated indoctrination that women should NEVER rely on a man, the end result is not only often a girl who is a financial risk, but is a girl no man wants.  Indebted, talentless, unemployable, and ideologically programmed to be against men, marriage, family, and love. Even women trained in STEM, who are eminently employable, are often times indoctrinated to be antagonistic towards men, increasing the risk of divorce, adding a huge legal risk to a financial one as well.

Traditionally, logically, and "accountingly," such a proposition would require some kind of financial compensation for the legal and financial risks of committing to a modern day western woman.  And today, young men (or any man) is well within his rights to demand such a modern-day dowry.  But since most boomer and Gen X fathers have no money (and are likely financially compromised through matrimony as well), demanding a dowry today is moot.

. . .

Most men simply cannot afford to take on that risk, and even with a dowry the non-financial risks are just as costly and daunting as the financial ones.  Yes at the same time, men are biologically programmed, nay, compelled to want to get married and have kids. And so what is likely going to happen is what's been happening for quite some time now - men are balking.  They're going to punt.

The increase in cohabitation and the abandonment of marriage is a sign of men waking up and eschewing the legal and financial risks marriage presents to them ... And such marriage-avoidant behavior will continue as the internet educates men about the unacceptable legal and financial risks marriage presents to them (or, frankly, they just saw their dad get butchered in divorce court).

And so what we've seen this past 20 years, certainly the past 10 will continue. With no "theoretical dowries" and marriage being such a bad deal, more and more men will simply leave the marriage market because they can't afford it.

There's more at the link.

Modern marriage is weighted heavily against a man in our legal system.  I'm aware of one situation going down right now, where a divorced father, with legal custody of his children, has seen his former wife simply take them and refuse to return them.  She's gone so far as to interfere with his bank accounts, file false charges against him, and try to wreck his life, out of spite and vindictiveness.  I repeat - she has no legal right to custody of the children, but because she doesn't want him to have them, she's more than prepared to use them as a weapon against him (including lying to them that he doesn't want them any more), and destroy his reputation in the process.  What's more, law enforcement authorities appear powerless.  They've told him to get yet another court order for them to enforce, ignoring those he already has.  I don't understand that.

When men see that sort of thing happening, and realize that our legal system is predisposed to believe the mother rather than the father, is it any wonder that many men are afraid to commit themselves to a relationship that may have those consequences?

There's also the very real problem that a hyper-sexualized society, where a "hookup culture" has taken root, is anything but the ideal climate in which to foster traditional marriage.  When both partners in a marriage come into that relationship with a past history of dozens, if not scores of lovers, and probably having lived with several of those partners, how can they pretend that there's anything unique about their relationship?  There isn't.  They're just going through the motions they've been through many times before.  There's nothing "special" to bind them together, because they've done it all before.  When it comes to arguments, they can put each other down with comments like, "Oh, so-and-so was much better at that than you are!"  There's no foundation of "special" intimacy on which to build, because intimacy is no longer special.  It's been trivialized.

Perhaps, if a dowry was required prior to marriage, both sides of the equation would realize that it signifies the value of their relationship in monetary terms.  Perhaps they might then attach more intrinsic value to marriage, instead of seeing it as an arrangement that may, or may not, endure, depending on one or the other party's whims.  To me, of course, there's also a deeply spiritual element to marriage;  but that's not shared by many people, so I won't emphasize it here.  I'll simply note that I think it's essential.

Aaron Clarey poses some very good questions, that force us to confront unpleasant realities, and which deserve answers.

Peter