We westerners are used to being gaslit by our leaders by now, but this particularly stands out to me for some reason.
A politician this hostile to his own citizens has got to go. And, the French being the French, maybe he will.
It's Atlas Shrugged in that a catastrophic decline in standards and competence is inevitable in a society that abandons (and vilifies) merit. It's not a 1:1 match with the circumstances of the book, but the spirit is the same.
Atlas Shrugged is about the rebellion of John Galt, but it's more about the ruin caused by weak, petty and jealous men with weak, petty and jealous ideas. That ruin didn't occur because the great men abandoned society - it occurred because society abandoned the great men.
It showed a civilization that destroyed itself over progressive ideals and then turned on the people who still had standards and principles, openly despising and devaluing them but parasitically living off their efforts. But most importantly, those parasites could never, ever admit that they were wrong, and that their worthless ideas had failed them. It's not a stretch to imagine that the worthless ideas of our own delusional progressives (mass immigration, affirmative action, rejecting standards as racist) directly led to this outcome.
Of all the fictional dystopias, our trajectory most closely matches Atlas Shrugged. With a heavy helping of 1984, of course.
True democracy would be pretty great.
As long as there's a reasonable way for people to opt out/leave if the majority becomes too tyrannical for them.
With the rise of cancelling people's bank accounts because they have the wrong opinions, I can see the need for some kind of guarantee of service, but at the same time, individuals should be able to refuse service or association for any reason.
Maybe a way to ensure that would be to make it so only larger companies, or better yet corporations, have to provide service to everyone (and that includes people guilty of wrongthink). Treating corporations like individuals is the opposite of what should happen.
Or let people serve who they want, but there has to be a guaranteed, government-backed option that people refused elsewhere can use. And there certainly needs to be a clear path for people to create their own infrastructure without being shut down by monopolies and legal bullshit.
None of which will happen, of course, when they can just destroy freedom of association by forcing you to serve and validate their sacred cows.
It's not the first time I've been told that, and it's probably correct.
No (yet) but a cervical cancer fund in the UK thinks vaginas should be called that in the name of gender-inclusive language.
Aside from a couple of justices I still don't quite trust the Supreme Court to be fair, honest, and independent. As such I'm concerned that rulings like this may just be attempts to lull us back to sleep so the slow decline can continue.
But this is a very good victory. Freedom of - what would you even call this? I think it's bigger than freedom of religion. But the right to refuse objectionable customers and especially objectionable work is extremely important to a society that even pretends to be free and fair. The idea that you can be forced to create a work that goes against your beliefs, religious of otherwise, is utterly repugnant and you can bet the unbelievably vile shitstains (My mistake, I assumed this was a result of someone trying to sue her for refusing them service. It's better this way, I probably would have run afoul of rule two.)
Even if they are just throwing us a bone in the hope we'll quiet down, if we're getting noisy enough to be heard that's a good thing. I think we can all feel a shift in the tide. People are waking up to the disgusting state of affairs we find ourselves in, and they are pissed. That's what gives me hope. It always comes down to the people, not the elites.
I mostly tuned out after she said we should listen to "elite experts" but wasn't she advocating for wealth distribution along racial lines?
What an absolutely disgusting moron that woman is. They couldn't have appointed someone less qualified to the Supreme Court if they'd chosen a random 12 year old.
self perpetuating
Interesting way of saying they squander every opportunity they have.
Affirmative action is not only unfair to hard workers (of all races) and inevitably destructive to society, it doesn't work. The kind of people who want to benefit from affirmative action have externalized responsibility, they'll take what you give them and demand more rather than work to improve their own situation.
Anyone else should hate affirmative action even if they benefit from it, because degrading. It's saying you can't make it on merit, you need to be coddled.
If only they'd use these surveys to figure out how best to serve the people, rather than which talking points to use to get elected.
Also some of those 'less likely' numbers are too high but it's a start.
And there were like two black people in medieval Europe, therefore anything set there needs 50% black people (they'll accept fewer if those blacks are in high status positions).
Unfortunately it's probably at the point where it needs to get ugly. That's what happens when you ignore a problem until that problem makes ignoring it impossible.
A shame too, because they hate the Pride Religion as much as we do. But that doesn't make their growing numbers good for our countries.
I know this logically, but the natural instinct is still not to make people feel judged/ostracized/whatever.
Which is the instinct that gets exploited to push terrible immigration and diversity policies that got us to where we are today. I'm well aware of that.
Did it ever occur to them that they wouldn't have to fear citizens and speech if they would stop being skeevy cunts working against 'em?
So play something else. If you do that instead of working to get it censored, you and I won't have a problem. But we all know your "call outs" are attempts to force alterations. So no, your position is not reasonable. And yes, you can fuck off.
Man I have occasionally worried about stupid shit like if I walk past someone without acknowledging them, they might think it's because of their ethnicity. It's because despite hating 'diversity', I'm an empathetic person and I know it must be tough sometimes to not be in the ethnic majority.
But if someone threatened me and ESPECIALLY my family with a knife, they'd be lucky to escape alive (not trying to sound tough) and I certainly wouldn't care what the hell they think.
What a pathetic man. Have some fucking balls and stand up for yourself and your family. Imagine caring about the feelings of the man who threatened you like that. It's not completely his fault, he's a victim of relentless propaganda, but even so, shape the fuck up.
Looking for Asylum in all the wrong places.
Reminder that “love has no age” is a part of that campaign
When you characterize everything you do as love, you can do anything you want and remain morally righteous.
When you characterize everything your enemy does as hate, all his actions are inherently evil and any kind of retribution against him is justified.
New definition of Genocide dropped: "Talking about people doing bad things".
That isn't new. Have you ever tried to talk about a Jewish person doing bad things?
They're children.
With power.
Who feel entitled, maybe even duty bound, to harm constituents who don't adhere to their ideology (and sometimes those who do).
Harsh consequences are required.
I'll be interesting to see how Japanese citizens respond to this. Their culture is very compliant, but they're also quite conservative, and this is an even harder shift for them than it was for us. On the other hand, much their media is already very, uh, zany? Bombastic? They might just see this as another manifestation of that, rather than the subversive push that it is.
That's a shame. It sounds like it was a great game once upon a time, but some things you just need to experience in their prime. Apparently it's simply impossible to leave alone something that isn't broken!
Speaking of incompetence, that link you gave actually loaded the content but then imposed a transparent black filter and a huge picture saying "500 Internal Server Error" over the top.
Maybe I don't need to finally get around to trying EVE after all.
Thanks, that's good to hear. It's tragic what boys go through in our schools (and in society in general) but it's good that some of them are rising to the challenge. Sadly the depressive girls will probably become ultra progressive as a result.
Admittedly I haven't read Brave New World yet, just a summary. I see what you mean about 1984, but it's scarily predictive of just how effective propaganda, the fabrication of enemies and emergencies, and the redefinition of words can be, and how effectively leveraging them (and plain old fear) can make people abandon their own interests.
People still have their bread and circuses, and without those I'm sure they would revolt, but they have been very quick to submit to their own subjugation even on things they truly hated, like lockdowns.
Getting the masses to accept squalor without comfort might not seem terribly likely right now, but I think on a long enough timeline, if you can gradually condition their expectations, tinker with their awareness until the truth is completely obfuscated, and turn them against those few who are capable of seeing through it, you can get them to accept anything.
The biggest mistake of our current overlords (aside from believing their their own propaganda and falling into the same decline of competence they're inflicting on the world at large) is moving too fast.
All that is to say I don't find a 1984 scenario particularly implausible, and it's more than a little relevant to our current circumstances. I'll make sure to read Brave New World, though.