Existential This!

For a long while now the main stream media has been staging professional wrestling matches with day-of-reckoning plots. The scrappers include Hurricane Climate Change, Mysterio Misinformation, Equalizer Inequality, Undertaker Pandemic, and The Hammer “Democracy!” Opponents will take the fall.

A lot of sponsor money is backing the theater. So, a team of writers pen the storylines. And though the plots are predetermined and the moves choreographed, the staged spectacle must appear real to wrest control of the public’s interest. The rigged and scripted matches must provide the illusion of legitimacy of an actual unprecedented threat.

The wrestlers’ character and in-ring actions must look authentic and connect with the audience. Even so, Joe Blow is not watching as a critical thinker. He’s partaking in the bloodlust.

The nature of the high-stakes fiction captures his full attention. He is soon whipped into a state of frenzy. Animal spirits, “the spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction” (M. Keynes), are released. He can barely contain himself.

What’s this! In tonight’s audience is another professional wrestler. The Snake! wants in on the action:

Former FBI Director James Comey posted a photo of sea shells arranged into the numbers “86 47” on his Instagram account today, before shortly deleting the post.

“86 47” – Former FBI Director Comey Posts-Then-Deletes Creepy Threat Aimed At Trump

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OK. The pro wrestling imagery is not perfect, but here’s the thing . . .

High-stakes fiction – existential threats posed by climate change, misinformation, inequality, democracy, and who knows what’s next – is meant not only to capture the full attention of Joe Blow but also to overwhelm and exhaust his resolve. Such is the nature of psychological oppression. To wit:

“A gleeful, self-satisfied Mr Punch was often heard to remark: “That’s the way to do it.” Today we examine how Mark Poynting, one of the BBC’s top doom-mongering Net Zero activists, uses the trusted ‘scientists say’ message to turn a centennial sea level rise of around 30 cm into prose stating: “The world could see hugely damaging sea-level rises of several metres or more over the coming centuries””

Per Chris Morrison at the Daily Sceptic; The BBC’s Mark Poynting Shows How to Spread Climate Alarm

The constant messaging of threats – “It creates a state of utter helplessness, a state in which you are far more pliant.” So writes Thomas Buckley, of the Brownstone Institute in the web article The Existential Threat of the Existential Threat. Why do this? Buckley continues:

And those invoking that dread are waiting nearby to do just that – take society by the shoulder, offer it comfort on the form of entertainment, medication, and basic sustenance, and lead it away.

The real existential threat, as Buckley notes, is that which denies our individual human agency and seeks to combine us into communitarian compliancy with “the ethereal economy of government agencies, civil society actors, non-governmental organizations, foundations, and academia, all aided by the information cabal. Together they do, in fact, currently have the power to foist something upon civilization that truly is transgenerational, global, and terminal.

The benefit of a pliant public is all theirs, as Buckley writes:

The democracy being threatened is “their” democracy, not “our” democracy.

The climate being threatened is their silver sheened scrubbed personal environment – the actual environmental destruction that is occurring is out of sight, the denigrating of the sub-Deltas who inhabit other places, is immaterial.

The information being threatened are the lies being told to prop up the societal transformation. 

The equality being threatened is their right to be more equal than others forever.

And the pandemic being threatened is the right to declare a pandemic on a whim, terrifying the public into ceding basic rights in the name of safety.

Be aware of the conditioners of society! They want to put you into a permanent headlock!

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Climate Realism

A new paper by Dr. Judith Curry, one of the world’s most prominent scientists skeptical of a looming human-caused climate catastrophe, and economist Harry DeAngelo cautions investors and the public that “the apocalyptic climate narrative is a seriously flawed guide for public policy.” Why? “Because it radically overstates the risks to humanity from continued global warming.” Wide-scale suppression of fossil fuel use will not measurably change future temperatures, but “a sharp decline in quality of life would surely ensue.”

You can download the podcast here:

A Critique of the Climate Apocalypse with Dr. Judith Curry — The Climate Realism Show #156 – The Heartland Institute

About Climate Etc.

A Critique of the Apocalyptic Climate Narrative

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Josh Blackman:

SCOTUS to CASA to A.A.R.P.: In Case Of (Perceived) Emergency, Ignore The Rules, And Make Stuff Up

“The past 24 hours have been something of a Rorschach Test for the Supreme Court. In the birthright citizenship case, the Court made clear that in emergencies, the judiciary must retain the power to enter universal injunctions, even if Article III does not otherwise permit such injunctions. And in A.A.R.P. v. Trump, the Court made clear that in emergencies, the court should certify a class without going through Rule 23, and grant an ex parte tro without considering any of the usual TRO factors.

“What lesson should lower court judges take away? In cases of perceived emergencies, forget all the rules and make stuff up. When the executive branch takes such actions we call it an autocracy. When the courts do it, they call it the “rule of law.””

Intersectional in All the Right Ways

Merriam-Webster’s Definition of intersectionality

: the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.

I am intersectionality challenged. I am a white woman who was born into a lower middle-class family. I have not chosen a gay lifestyle. I haven’t experienced racism; I may have experienced sexism but I wasn’t looking for it. I don’t think I qualify, as a white who was only given a Christian heritage and a work ethic and who has worked all her life to be successful, to be a victim of classism. Maybe next year it will all come together for me and then I can claim to be marginalized and dip into the slush fund of rights. I am already being marginalized for not being gay affirming. And hated by some presidential candidate wannabes for being capitalism affirming and pro-life.

Who is the most oppressed? That hotly contested matter was solved when intersectionality was given life. The Frankenstein monster was created by a mad critical race theory scientist in her ivory tower laboratory. The monster was stitched together from several kinds of oppressed bodies. “Behold! It’s alive!” The townsfolk are terrified.

The monster was created to promote social and political equity, according to its creator. Of course, the opposite effect occurs. Claiming layers of victimhood is the means to claim layers of power over others (e.g., racial, gender and diversity quotas; affirmative action; Title IX abuse). The townsfolk are terrified.

I am intersectionality challenged. But for now, I’ll do what I have to do come hell or high water or a Frankenstein SJW roaming the village streets.

Every day I encounter someone doing what they have to do. Just this morning there was a woman, a mother of six children, working the checkout at the grocery store. She mentioned to another customer that she had worked to eleven the night before and then they called her in to work at six this morning. Someone had called in sick. She took it in stride.

Doing what you have to do is not glamorous. It doesn’t put you on TV (unless you are featured on Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs and Somebody’s Gotta Do It). There are folks who do what is required regardless of their skin color or gender or social status. Day in and day out people do what they have to do in the context of the randomness of life. They don’t label themselves as “oppressed” or “intersectional”. They make demands on themselves and not on society. They don’t submit to the Groupthink of the victim class. Because of this, they are not featured on the main stream media. Their lives are matter of fact and routine. Their stories don’t fit the narrative talking points of talking heads.

Potato Harvest – Jean-Francois Millet

Here’s one prime example of positive intersectionality within the Kingdom of God on earth. A father and mother raising children, a family connected with each other and to God and to their church and to the community is horizontal and vertical intersectionality. The hurting and oppressed are addressed within this intersectionality. Christians are mandated to “be steadfast, immovable and always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that their work in the Lord is not in vain”. Christians don’t let life run roughshod over them. They actively infuse life with good.

Status, whether as victim or as privileged, is not found in the Kingdom of God. The poor were not called victims by Jesus. The poor were ennobled by his words. Jesus changed their focus. James and John, the sons of thunder, were rebuked by the Lord for wanting special status in his kingdom. Jesus changed their focus. Jesus was not about to create any Frankenstein monsters on his watch. Those who are poor in spirit have kingdom status.

As someone in the kingdom “Do what you have to do” continues to be my mantra, even when tomorrow looks like last Monday and like the Monday before that. And that makes me intersectional in all the right ways.

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Thomas Sowell is someone who could be labeled “intersectional” by definition. Yet, he is defined by and revered for his long scholarly career as an economist and as a common-sense conservative.

As for bad luck, there were years of that, too. But I learned a lot from that bad luck, so I am not sure that it was all bad luck in the long run.

-Thomas Sowell

You Don’t Need a Ph.D. to Help Your Child Get an Education

Thomas Sowell Biography

Fair Enough

https://youtu.be/FKlu9DJa5PM

“Listen,” Louie says. “You’re never gonna get the same things as other people. It’s never gonna be equal. It’s not gonna happen ever in your life, so you must learn that now, OK? The only time you should look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have . . . as much as them.”

I Will Not Be Denied Showing You This Nonsense

From the Occupy Myself Movement, an absurd and sappy video warning us that women will not be denied anything because, lo and behold, they are women. 

Here is yet another example of the gushing narcissism that is encouraged by BHO’s White House. (BTW:  I’m surprised that Al Sharpton has not yet called the White House a racist building!)

BHO’s explicit message to Americans:  

“America is all about equality and fairness, about getting what I want when I want it at any cost to someone else, about stealing from the rich and giving to the “poor.” America is all about creating a big intrusive government to make this happen for you, the Obama supporter.”

This is a twisted and perverse version of capitalism and the free market system and is eerily similar in motive to Wall St.’s “fat cats” “greedy” motives that BHO hubristically denounces. Why the hypocrisy, Mr. Obama?

 I find it completely ironic that the proponents of Left (Progressives and Democrats) so want to help others with their pseudo-humanitarianism and talk of “fairness”, “fairness”, “blah, blah, blah”, that each of the Left’s namby-pamby “afflicted” groups starts by helping themselves, forgetting that someone else has to unfairly pay for their desired self-absorbed utopian lifestyle.

The best thing for this video would be to deny it the oxygen of publicity.

 BTW:  Who is denying you anything, ma’am?  Who is telling you what to do, ma’am? If someone was telling you what to do would you even hear them?