Category: Comment

A whole generation is now dead. Russia was always the “favorite,” and the money needs to stop.

On the outskirts, Italy is dealing with a migrant crisis not unlike ours. The glories of Rome despoiled by desperate street merchants looks to be our fate.  The Western comfort of backcountry Italy is a casualty of human needs and a slim sign of capitalist remains. The European market represents the diversity of a fragrance. The beer, the pasta, the music. The inability to cope with immensity.

Why all the vitriol for any discussion of the hot issues?

1. Abortion
2. Transgender
3. Border Security/Immigration
4. Israeli Self-Defense
5. Election Integrity
6. Vaccinations

Fringe personalities may weigh in. But raising a question cannot be disinformation.

Do the revolutionaries (Jacobins) feel insecure when there is a potential they could be wrong? This type of certitude bears on a religion that cannot be questioned–accompanied by a public flogging and excommunication.

Questioning the censoring Left on any of these is patriotic, not misinformation/disinformation. The country was founded on free thought, not agreement.

Mentioning, linking to, caring about posts that don’t give a crap about others is a useless affair. In the name of sanity, I must exercise my right to disengage.

Local sites like Nextdoor cry out in vain for addressing my concern about regular citizens being mocked and told that their concerns are illegitimate or just unwarranted. The lawlessness is alarming.

Yes, I can see your channel with logo and background. Your great production value. Your giveaways. And your sponsors have an attraction to your audience reach.

But business would as soon sell out for cat videos. Checking Ask the Public and Ubersuggest will show the current searches.

Fickle are the keywords.

Is “each new technological medium, and the professions it spawns…more soulless than the last…no longer ‘reaching for the stars’ but aiming instead for the more lowly consolations of stardom?” While Wired’s concept of soul may emanate from a non-religious spirituality (and desire to be relevant), this has to give one pause. Technology will progress, but what does reaching for the stars mean?

They do have it right on the face of it: stardom does not console the soul’s reaching for relevance. Can’t the wisdom of masses be more than popularity? When does your truth voice have sway? What does mass-produced influencing bring to it?

1. Concealed competitive hierarchies.
2. Unreliable, concentrated-at-the-top spoils.
3. Becoming a vapid mascot for brands.
4. Failure to demand meaningful contributions to one’s community.
5. Blurring between personal and professional roles.
6. Mandated likes, shares, and follows of a life of frenetic people-pleasing and social conformity (Wired).

The author should be commended: people-pleasing and social conformity destroy. So question: what happens when your audience contradicts or exhibits fleeing your channel? What happens when you lose followers?

I do not want to say the obvious.

The time will come where you must say what you believe. Is your moral(ity) spread throughout the network? Have you lost yourself in cheers and accolades? The answers are as old as Augustus raising the thumb.

We understand the pressures, the shrinking of your circle of friends, but your dissolving self asks, what is next?

As I wrote in the poetry of my worst times, the top is here and there is nothing seen.

I am not (NOT) a trumpie, but the plain love of the photo op by this judge presents these proceedings as farcical. It’s a show worthy of Tiktok. You have MSNBC revelling in the fact that the personal property of the man could/should be taken. As an American, your sense of fairness and justice should be turned on its head, your stomache turned.

Revolutionaries destroy important documents. Their translations are more important.

The modern is the measure of all time.

Note: I’m a very casual gamer.

Since being in early access, Starfield has been in the sights of some gamers for reported woke elements to the game. While the Babylon Bee skewered the leftie content, TheGamer pilloried these gamers as “weirdos,” just confirming a non-argument. While yes, it’s “only a game,” there’s also nothing wrong with players who are sick of being preached to and having their gaming time infested with virtue-signaling politics. And yes, people may choose not to play the game or to play nonetheless, both their right to do so. But the question of “why?” the need to embed politics into every bit of our media remains.

Was reading this: https://www.wired.com/story/doug-rushkoff-survival-of-the-richest/

The writer’s comment that “In October 2011, when the rapidly spreading Occupy Wall Street protests were under scrutiny from establishment media, Rushkoff published some of the first words of support for the movement in the mainstream press. ‘Anyone who says he has no idea what these folks are protesting is not being truthful,’ he wrote in a column for CNN. ‘Whether we agree with them or not, we all know what they are upset about, and we all know that there are investment bankers working on Wall Street getting richer while things for most of the rest of us are getting tougher.’
” rings true. These people have good intentions, but good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes.

I’ve long been a capitalist and I am not optimistic about this movement that uses violence and intimidation to make its points. Some say, it’s pablum to criticize the movement in this way. Some reflection on the past is key.

I am just celebrating in my mind that the Trump era may theoretically be over. He has to go to jail/prison for at least a little while with so many counts.

There’s a certain amount of peace regarding this. I hope we stop rationalizing things.

This legal explanation is thorough. I will admit that I have erred on the side of the Trumpies, but this pretty much seals the cases.

On the other hand, I think the Biden crime family should also be investigated. It’s clear that they manipulated the voters through the hiding of the laptop story, the collaboration with social media in crushing opposition speech, and the Russia investigation. Trump is right in his anger over these and other factors that could have swayed the election. Unfortunately, he thought that gave him a good excuse to break the law numerous times. His supporters are willingly forgiving him for his actions before they know the whole story.

Both sides are blind. There should be equal prosecution. Prediction: this will devolve into tit for tat. I just want what most citizens want: new options.

This project is important:

“Today, most poor renting families spend at least half of their income on housing costs, with one in four of those families spending over 70 percent of their income just on rent and utilities. Incomes for Americans of modest means have flatlined while housing costs have soared. Only one in four families who qualifies for affordable housing programs gets any kind of help. Under those conditions, it has become harder for low-income families to keep up with rent and utility costs, and a growing number are living one misstep or emergency away from eviction.”

So I was in a situation of near-homelessness where my family had to come help. It was, however, a situation for which I was responsible.

When I was growing up, my family lived in HUD housing. I truly believed that most of the people there could have paid their own way, while some were not at fault. My family made it out of there miraculously–or rather through my mother’s determination to not stay on the dole. One-by-one we left that town and all became college and graduate school grads.

But I do have to keep aware that some people just cannot get out of a situation where they cannot afford the rent. The homeless many times are subject to things beyond their control, like mental illness and related substance control–but not all of them. I think the Eviction Lab’s point about the need for a “living wage” is important.

It’s just the mandating of that wage and denying the rights of landlords that are forgotten here. I have looked through the site (Google search “site:evictionlab.com landlord”) for any mention of help for landlords and business owners. I would like to see more on helping business owners pay their employees that wage and the landlords receiving the rent they need.

This piece by Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes from her unique perspective of being a Somali, under a socialist government system. Under that type of system, there is no bankruptcy to cull the poorly performing companies and organizations. This also leads to the public good suffering. Benefiting from the work of one’s hands and profiting from private property promotes progress.

The internet, for example, gives entrepreneurs more opportunities by “getting out of their way.” If a society has a functioning rule of law, a free press and expression, and an informed public, abuses can be mitigated.

I consider the topic of Scandinavian-style medicine a worthy topic to discuss. (Unfortunately, today’s youth envisions a socialism that “works,” not the actual versions in Venezuela and Cuba.) Along this line of critique, Ali mentions that there is no denying that our healthcare system is “messy.” Even though American healthcare leads in quality, innovation, and advancements, there is inefficiency and inequality.

But the woke mob destroys this exercise of American self-criticism in the name of “antifascism” and “antiracism.” We cannot improve or even function under the constant barrage of oppressed and oppressors. We were built on constant trial and error that recognizes our “human foibles.” The question should be, “How can we improve ourselves?”

“Democratic capitalism, in the framework of the rule of law and respect for individual rights, has benefited billions of human beings. It allows for gradual, incremental progress to remedy legitimate grievances as they arise. Until a better alternative can credibly be proposed, these are the institutions that we should celebrate–and defend.”