I'm glad you ended with that Solzhenitsyn quote. Since early 2020 my motto has been, "Let a lie come into the world. Let it even triumph. But not through me."
In late 2020 a friend (now former) told me about going to a picnic and meeting a woman whose nine year-old son thought he was a girl. My friend, who *never* ruffled feathers, no matter how stupid the thing she was asked to endorse might be, was still referring to the boy as "she" four days later, when she related the story to me. That's a big part of why we're no longer friends. So much of the crap that has to be fought now has its origins in the refusal of "nice" people to say "no" to absurdities and obscenities. FFS, if you can't even tell a grown woman that you won't help her play make-believe, then what good are you? If that's all it takes to terrify you, you'll never stand up to anything or for anyone, including the people and things you claim to love.
Nothing open to human choice is inevitable. We might be f*cked even if we fight back, but we're definitely f*cked if we don't. In fighting, the right mindset is critical. Men who go to war can't fight effectively--can't protect their team-- if they expect to live through it. The key to winning is balancing resolve and resignation. Evil is impotent and destruction is its only skill, but that doesn't make opposing it painless or free.
This Michel de Montaigne quote is a close cousin to Solzhenitsyn's "and how we burned in the camps later" idea, and I try to keep both in mind these days: "It is not certain where Death awaits us, so let us await it everywhere. To think of death beforehand is to think of our liberty. Whoever learns how to die, has learned how not to be a slave. Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint."
I am dismayed by the number of commentators - generally on the right of centre - who see clearly the abyss into which Western civilisation is toppling, and yet they sit around interviewing one another and telling each other how awful things are.
Analysis by itself is rather impotent; what is needed is much bolder work in the field of prediction, because if you can warn people what is going to happen before it is implemented, you have a much better chance of warding it off or deflecting it.
A prediction: There will be a merging of Critical Race Theory with mass immigration policy, so that the immigration status of an individual will become the new 'axis of oppression'. Immigrants (legal or otherwise) will be the oppressed class, the native-born population will be the oppressors, with all the retributive activities that go along with these oppressor-victim narratives.
So says the prominent US author James Lindsay, who recently excoriated the smug dullards of the European parliament to their faces.
As predictions go, this is not a very bold one - the signs are already there to see - but I think it is an example of how sentient citizens should be thinking.
It is no good just to continually be reacting to the latest Woke outrage, and dancing to their tune. We know that the "elites" are incapable of stopping their march to destruction, and it is important that we try to figure out in advance where they will go next.
I'm totally grossed out that I may have interacted with one of those "Intelligence" weirdos.
Here in Thailand, where I arrived a year ago, I wanted to get away from that stuff and decided to plant flowers. I ordered seeds off of Lazada and they came from China, which made me a little unhappy, but I decided to plant them anyway, and did a Google Translate of the Chinese instructions.
In addition to the company name and address, it actually listed their social credit score identifier. I threw away the seeds because it felt dirty using a product like that, but this is seeping into everything and getting so hard to avoid.
I'm glad you ended with that Solzhenitsyn quote. Since early 2020 my motto has been, "Let a lie come into the world. Let it even triumph. But not through me."
In late 2020 a friend (now former) told me about going to a picnic and meeting a woman whose nine year-old son thought he was a girl. My friend, who *never* ruffled feathers, no matter how stupid the thing she was asked to endorse might be, was still referring to the boy as "she" four days later, when she related the story to me. That's a big part of why we're no longer friends. So much of the crap that has to be fought now has its origins in the refusal of "nice" people to say "no" to absurdities and obscenities. FFS, if you can't even tell a grown woman that you won't help her play make-believe, then what good are you? If that's all it takes to terrify you, you'll never stand up to anything or for anyone, including the people and things you claim to love.
Nothing open to human choice is inevitable. We might be f*cked even if we fight back, but we're definitely f*cked if we don't. In fighting, the right mindset is critical. Men who go to war can't fight effectively--can't protect their team-- if they expect to live through it. The key to winning is balancing resolve and resignation. Evil is impotent and destruction is its only skill, but that doesn't make opposing it painless or free.
This Michel de Montaigne quote is a close cousin to Solzhenitsyn's "and how we burned in the camps later" idea, and I try to keep both in mind these days: "It is not certain where Death awaits us, so let us await it everywhere. To think of death beforehand is to think of our liberty. Whoever learns how to die, has learned how not to be a slave. Knowing how to die frees us from all subjection and constraint."
I am dismayed by the number of commentators - generally on the right of centre - who see clearly the abyss into which Western civilisation is toppling, and yet they sit around interviewing one another and telling each other how awful things are.
Analysis by itself is rather impotent; what is needed is much bolder work in the field of prediction, because if you can warn people what is going to happen before it is implemented, you have a much better chance of warding it off or deflecting it.
A prediction: There will be a merging of Critical Race Theory with mass immigration policy, so that the immigration status of an individual will become the new 'axis of oppression'. Immigrants (legal or otherwise) will be the oppressed class, the native-born population will be the oppressors, with all the retributive activities that go along with these oppressor-victim narratives.
So says the prominent US author James Lindsay, who recently excoriated the smug dullards of the European parliament to their faces.
As predictions go, this is not a very bold one - the signs are already there to see - but I think it is an example of how sentient citizens should be thinking.
It is no good just to continually be reacting to the latest Woke outrage, and dancing to their tune. We know that the "elites" are incapable of stopping their march to destruction, and it is important that we try to figure out in advance where they will go next.
I'm totally grossed out that I may have interacted with one of those "Intelligence" weirdos.
Here in Thailand, where I arrived a year ago, I wanted to get away from that stuff and decided to plant flowers. I ordered seeds off of Lazada and they came from China, which made me a little unhappy, but I decided to plant them anyway, and did a Google Translate of the Chinese instructions.
In addition to the company name and address, it actually listed their social credit score identifier. I threw away the seeds because it felt dirty using a product like that, but this is seeping into everything and getting so hard to avoid.
Here's the translated package:
https://imgur.com/a/DCbYzRZ