Marching Science Televangelists

Science & Politics -- Left’s Religion | National Review:

A quick review of the differences between rhetoric, dialectic and facts would be wise before delving into the linked  ... the REALLY tiny summary:

rhetoric -- sales speech
dialectic -- philosopher discussion speech
facts --  inductively verifiable pieces of data

Bill Nye and Neil "The Gassy" Tyson are Televangelists for the religion of Scientism -- the belief that 2+2=4, ergo "I am become god" (science as religion). Their stock and trade is rhetoric, not facts ... and I doubt if they would know dialectic if it bit them in the posterior.

The article does a good job of covering some of the seaminess of Scientism, I highly recommend it.

Freeman Dyson is an actual scientist, so nobody cares what he thinks ... he states the obvious that anyone with a junior high understanding of climate knows:

The most questionable of these beliefs is the notion that the science of climate change is settled and understood. The biggest of all climate changes have been the ice ages, which have covered half of North America and Europe with kilometer-thick sheets of ice. Ice ages happened repeatedly in the past, and we are about due for another one to start. A new ice age would be a disaster far greater than anything we have to fear from climate warming. There are many theories of ice ages, but no real understanding. So long as we do not understand ice ages, we do not understand climate change.

 In order for the left to win, ALL institutions have to be destroyed. If even 20% of the public understood basic philosophy, theology, politics, and junior high science, we would still live in America rather than BOistan.

Alas ... the set of people that have that level of understanding is more like 1% -- so we perish in BOistan ... but as always, the perishing scream and march loudly.

Oh, and if you are video oriented, go see what Scientism is peddling -- yes, Tammy Faye's makeup was horrific, but seriously?

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A Nation Gone Under

https://www.facebook.com/Area51.US/videos/10154174843304555/

Go off and watch the little video ... the rest of this will make more sense.

Reagan warned us that when we were no longer "One Nation Under God", we would be a nation "gone under". As per usual, he was right.

I could quibble with a lot in the video -- the profanity (although the "F word" is basically just a part of speech today). The statistics are mostly hooey ... take out the REALLY failed black Democrat sub-culture, and most of those clean up.

Infant mortality is a complete crock ... we count ANY baby "born alive" ... most of the countries on the planet just count "babies to term" ... they don't even try to keep many of the ones we do alive, and we do it even with the poor, the black, the fetal alcohol syndrome, crack, etc  -- compare "white middle class births within 3-4 weeks of term" and we are #1 ... damned close with life expectancy as well.

Defense? My book bill is pretty huge -- but compared to my income? Nothing of any interest ... same with the US. Compare defense to GDP and we are fourth ... behind Saudi Arabia, Israel and Russia ... India, France, UK and China are right behind us in the same ballpark. The official NATO goal that ALL the NATO countries are supposed to meet is 2%.

The fact remains, BOistan is NOT the greatest nation -- Russia, Israel, Iran and China would all be in the running ... maybe Germany. At least the rest of them have some pride in their own existence.

More education is no use ... knowing everything about nothing is counterproductive at best. WHY?? That is the question. What is it that is supposed to be unique about BOistan? We are the only nation where a majority of the youth have been taught (brainwashed?) to hate their own countries history? What would our goal be? Our people are absolutely the same and have no distinguishing features? We love everyone and believe everyone will love us because we love them? We are the only people that can't figure out if we are men or women -- or what it would even mean to "act like men"?

Perhaps our goal is "We are clueless, pity us" .... Maybe the "natural evolutionary path" of BOistan is to develop into a nation of leeches like the Pacleds from STNG ... "We look for things we need ... things to make us go .."

Kill The Innocent, Save The Guilty

Neil Gorsuch and the State’s Power to Kill - The New York Times:

I'm sure Satan regularly reads the Times, if he didn't write the editorial himself. Inversion is his favorite mode, and this column is a study in it.

First of all, it gives you the impression that the Constitution is against the death penalty, when it specifically allows it in the 8th amendment saying nobody can be  "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." ... if "due process" can't be handled in 22 years, then we don't have any "due process' at all, and even deprivation of "property" (taxes) is unconstitutional.

Then we have:

In short, the first significant decision by Justice Gorsuch, who was sworn in to office less than two weeks ago, was the most consequential any justice can make — to approve a man’s killing by the state.

Seriously? To affirm what the Constitution clearly says in the 8th Amendment so that a murderer found guilty over 20 years ago can finally receive his sentence is MORE important than Roe V Wade, which declared the death penalty for 60 million of the most innocent life imaginable?
The cackling in Hell at that howler must be deafening!



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Trump Seduced 15 Year Old At 39

A Strange Fact About Emmanuel Macron | Power Line:



Oh, oops ... it was what the media tells is the likely next first lady of France who picked up a 15 year old guy named Macron while she was his theatre teacher -- never mind.



I understand this is no issue at all -- we are SO uptight to even notice!



"Morality" is completely arbitrary in this world -- some locker room talk is unconscionable when we are told it is supposed to be, while BJs in the oval office with an employee are just fine when we are told they are. At Fox News -- oh, NOT there!



Get your mind right, THINK WHAT YOU ARE TOLD TO THINK ... your life may depend on it at any moment!



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Vet Dodges BOistan Prison for Flag Placement

75 year-old vet acquitted of placing American flag at VA facility | Power Line:



If you were raised in America, this provides you proof that you no longer live there.



In BOistan, the flag of the old US that has not yet been officially replaced is something that borders on hate speech. It is a symbol of what BOistan certainly is not; "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave", or "One Nation, Under God".



BOistan is the land of the dependent and home of the snowflake. It is a failed tribal state, divided and in complete rejection of God. Many BOistanis find the flag of the old nation to be offensive -- almost "hate speech". Burning it is NOT "hate speech" ... displaying it borders on it.



Can Trump begin a restoration to the defunct Constitutional Republic? That is certainly the hope of most of those that voted for him -- the task has a long way to go, however at least not imprisioning a Vetern for displaying the old flag is a tepid sign that the precipitious decline may have been arrested.



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Normalizing Trump

At the White House with Trump | Power Line:

One of the Power Line guys was at the WH for a conservative media briefing. Since I listen to MPR/NPR all the time, including snippets of "Indivisible", the thinly disguised left wing call-in for "The Resistance" trying to make sure that Trump is NEVER normalized, it is really strange to see him covered as "just another POTUS".

The MSM has spent most of the first 100 days running around screaming "the sky fell" as if nobody had ever read Chicken Little. Day after day, everyone finds themselves still here -- so it doesn't really seem like the world ended -- only America ended, but that is old news -- it turned into BOistan in BO's 2nd term. I understand that NPR is worried BOistan could be damaged, but as long as the BOistani Adminstrative State is still in power, BOistan will live on.

It's worth going and reading the article just because of how normal it is. It is like zillions of left wing friendly news outlets reporting on their meetings with BO -- a normal, intelligent guy that maybe makes one cringe from time to time about how many times he says "I" and everything being about him.

Strangely, BO and Trump are so similar on the narcissim scale it makes one wonder if narcissism isn't the main requirement for BOistani leadership.

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Screaming Against Speech

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446995/ann-coulter-berkeley-speech-howard-dean-dubious-legal-argument-fighting-words?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202017-04-24&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

Good old "Scream Dean" is back saying that conservative speech ought to be banned. How wonderful it is of him to call out conservatives for saying what they want to say. "The Right loves to be able to say anything they like, no matter how offensive it is."

True, and so does the left -- the difference is that as in the case of offensive art and some of the things taught in public schools, the left believes that those that disagree ought to also have to pay for their speech (arts endowments), or be forced to listen to it as in the joys of gay sex for school children.

While the right has issues paying for the left's speech, or with the left forcing it into the public square, especially on minors, the left represented by Dean believes that speech the left doesn't like can be censored from being ALLOWED to be VOLUNTARILY viewed at a public institution.

Naturally, the legal precedent he quotes is as daffy as Dean himself and Geraghty covers that well in the article. Screamer would have us believe that burning a flag in the pubic square is Constitutionally protected speech, but a skinny blond woman talking in an auditorium where you can decide to attend or not attend is Constitutionally phrohibited because he doesn't like what she has to say.

There Will Be A Substantial Reward

Democrats Turned Off by Ossoff’s Falloff And Need for a Runoff Face-Off | National Review:

The column presents a little out of the box thinking relative to the Republican party being able to weed out meaningless candidates a bit sooner after 2016 and Georgia ... I think disitegrations would be OK. Why limit our options?

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US Debt vs Global Warming

The Problem No One in DC Wants to Talk About  |  Ricochet:

Does anyone want to bet what the biggest problem for the US will be for the next 20 years? Global Warming or Debt?

Well, we are still closer to an ice age than a record warm period accoring to the Greenland ice cores.

BOistanis in their wisdom however find that Climate Change is more important than the economy ... they don't really care if they are poor comparted to if they are cold. They want to be cold rather than warm at all costs!

I'm betting that they really haven't thought cold and poor through as much as they think they have, and that after a few brown outs, 50% inflation, 60% unemployment and such vs a few tenths of a climate degree, they will have second thoughts.

Let's hope it isn't too late.


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Berkeley Campus On Lockdown After WSJ Scare

Berkeley Campus On Lockdown After Loose Pages From ‘Wall Street Journal’ Found On Park Bench - The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

Apparently some pages of the WSJ were found lying on a bench on the campus -- serious stuff! ;-)

I believe we have a really good indicator of what "progress" means to "progressives" in BOistan. We are having a giant argument about wether a white woman that weighs all of maybe 110 lbs is too scary to put behind a podium at a major BOistan university. It looks like for the moment they are thinking that they will take this gigantic risk!

I look at the hordes of violent protesters dressed in black and wonder if we have forgotten what automatic weapons are for? Six hundred thousand Americans died fighting over slavery. If freedom of speech can be held hostage by mobs without order being taken back by whatever means are needed, what does "freedom" mean? As Jefferson put it "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".

The tyranny of the mob certainly qualifes in my mind -- but maybe they are patriots? Either way, they are outside the law, and civilization demands law -- it certainly seems that our tree of liberty is very short on it's natural fertilizer.

Is BOistan even supposed to be civilized? It's founding principles outside of "destruction of America" are very unclear -- perhaps the biggest mob is an approved form of speech in BOistan?

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NYC Crosses, Easter 1956

The New York City skyline the evening of Easter Sunday in 1956. : nyc:

1956 was the America that I was born into -- we don't live there anymore.

Engle vs Vitale removing prayer from the schools would not be decided by 9 men in robes until 1962. In a nation with a Constitution and a Supreme Court that followed it, it would have taken a national discussion and a Constitutional Amendment to remove voluntary prayer from our schools.

Naturally, "progressives" (regressives) will talk of (Democrat) Jim Crow in the South, their gains in the killing of babies and the joyful life of gays in America ... about 4x more suicides than the general gay population, UP from 1956.

Regressives would tell us that "things were worse for gays in the 1950's" ... statistics would tell us that there is a marked increase in earlier suicides after 1970 ... actual results of the application of regressive beliefs is not one of their strong interests.

Despite the stable prevalence of reported parasuicide over the different birth cohorts of men studied, the trend for younger mean ages at first attempts and increased rates over time of suicide attempts before age 25 is striking. Although ample evidence documents a marked recency bias with respect to the recollection and reporting of serious psychiatric symptoms,74 this does not fully explain the dramatic decline in mean age at first suicide attempt after 1970. The increase in rates of attempted suicide noted among adolescents in the past several decades75,76 may play some contributing role but by itself does not seem sufficient to produce these changes. Although no evidence is available to explore this question, it is possible that historical context had an effect, given that the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots in New York City are widely viewed as a marker of the birth of the modern “gay liberation” movement.77 The parallel declines during this period in age at self-identification as gay or bisexual along with age at first or only suicide attempt48,57 provide further suggestive evidence relating suicide attempts to stresses associated with “coming out.” This evidence seems to run counter to expectations regarding the effect of an emergent gay culture and the prospect of earlier self-identification as gay or bisexual, including those expectations raised by Humphries78 2 decades ago.

To anyone familiar with human nature since Old Testament times, the results of the change from America to BOistan experienced over my 60 years are exactly what God and those that fear him understand always happens.

Things like the Voting Rights act would have broken the stranglehold of the Democrat Party in the South, and thus Jim Crow in fairly short order without SCOTUS further messing up States Rights. Has abortion made women better off? Was it worth 60 million lives for that "improvement"? How about the destruction of the family? Has that been a "big win"?

We have ALL sinned and come WELL short of the glory of God. Heterosexual sex within marriage is God's standard ... and lusting after the woman that wears her yoga pants well is just as eternally damning as a lifetime of gay sex -- sin is sin.

It is also not really our "desires" that are the issue. It isn't the alcoholic's desire for alcohol that is the problem -- it is that alcohol comes to control his life, so he must with the grace of God be able to resist that desire in order to live in this life. That has nothing to do with heaven -- I'm quite certain there will be many alcoholics in heaven that were not able to beat the bottle on earth, but relied on the grace of God and were most heartily sorry for their sin.

My belief is the same for divorce and remarriage. They are against God's will and remarriage is "living in sin" -- much as I have my own persistent sins that give me ample opportunity to be "most heartily sorry" at each communion. Even when I fully beat my sin of gluttony and approach the altar lean and with washboard abs, I can assure you that my contrition well will not go dry.

Perhaps the male whose eyes never settle too long and appreciatively on the female form can cast a stone here that my standards are set too low. For women, I do not know -- I have been assured that they don't sin and are always right.


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Democrats Winning Streak

Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, Narrowly Misses Outright Win in Georgia House Race - The New York Times:

The Democrats are on a winning streak that started last November when Hillary captured the all important popular vote. The hits keep on coming as a week ago, Democrats won by losting by 6 points in a district that Trump had won by 24.

Now the big event, the one that Democrats really poured the money into. A Democrat ALMOST won a seat in Georgia! They now go into a runoff where their chances are not so good.

Listening to MPR has been like listening to "The Hopefull Gospell Choir" -- as each of these special elections came up, the ecitement built, because if the D's could only prevail it would mean; "A referendum on Trump"!, D's likely to pick up seats in 2018, Trump as a one-termer, people are "waking up" ... well, it would mean A BUNCH of good things!

For some reason though, when they lose, the story just goes away ... other than them quietly saying that they still "won". Because if a WIN would have meant all the things they told us about with so much excitement, then what does what actually happened mean?

Since they call each loss a "win", the media isn't saying -- reality is just not one of those things often don't have anything to say about.

Perhaps Osshoff leading all night and then fading at the end will endear him to Atlanta Falcons fans.

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Old News, Fake News, Good News

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2015/10/manuscript-evidence-nt-vs-plato-etc.html

The linked article covers a discussion on the evidence for Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and Christ. Rather unsurprisingly if one thinks for even a second, the evidence for Christ is huge in comparison. If one questions the existence of Christ, then Plato, Socrates and Aristotle are near certain fiction.

The graphic is from here, he didn't source it, however it aligns well with the top linked article which is excellent.

In Matt 28:12-14 we have the official tale of how the tomb came to be empty.

12 After the chief priests had met with the elders and formed a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money and instructed them: "You are to say, His disciples came by night and stole His body while we were asleep. 14 If this report reaches the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”…

To the casual observer, this piece of ancient Fake News is more reasonable than "You are to say the Russians did it", but it still has some rather large issues:

1.  We find that on the evening of the day of the resurrection, the supposedly brave grave robbers were in hiding. (John 20:19) On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" The Romans were the most feared fighting force of the day ... our intrepid disciples were in no state to take on that force prior to the Holy Spirit's arrival.
   
2. The penalty for falling asleep on guard duty for Roman soldiers was "Fustuarium" ... being beaten to death with a cudgel publicly. The logical thing to do if you were caught in dereliction of duty was to avoid the beating ... Acts 16:27 "The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped." (quick and private is better than slow and very public)

We all know that if the Jewish leaders had the body, the skull and bones of Jesus would have been prominently displayed! They would no doubt be a favorite Jewish artifact even today

As I've covered before, the air tight proof of Christ's resurrection is the fact that if it were NOT true, the disciples would have KNOWN it was a lie, and would not have each went to his death as a martyr for a lie.

Atheists will naturally say this is idiotic ... people go to their deaths for religious reasons all the time! They do indeed -- because they actually BELIEVE. They have had experiences, strong enough desire, are easily influenced, or whatever reason to be certain of their faith. We all live by faith -- the atheist stakes his eternal soul on not having one by FAITH.

That is COMPLETELY different from following a guy around for about 3 years, watching him whipped and crucified as a criminal and then taking part in some plot that SOMEHOW gave MANY people the impression that he had been resurrected.  (1 Corinthians 15:6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.)

Being willing to die for something you BELIEVE to be the truth is not that uncommon -- 10+ people going to painful deaths for what they knew to be a lie, totally aware that they hid the body some place and if any of them talks, it is a complete waste of time. (plus you have to pull off the "impersonation" to the 500)

We won't go into "the odds" that in addition to that air tight proof, a known persecutor of Christians would accidentally go insane on the road to Damascus and join up as a disciple, writing much of the New Testament and also going to his death as a martyr. In an atheist world, a TRULY miraculous coincidental happening that someone like Paul could have such a strange psychotic break and then live out his life traveling, preaching and writing.

Oh well, if you are a true atheist, your existence is based on odds of something like 1 in 10 to the 500th, so essentially, ANYTHING can happen in an atheist universe.

Fake News is some of the oldest news there is. The Good News of Easter is so well known that our calendars mark the new covenant of AD "anno Domini"  ... in the year of our Lord.

If you are determined that Christ and the resurrection are fiction, would it not be better to convince the rest of the world that Plato and Aristotle never existed, so the concept of Western civilization is a COMPLETE LIE! There never was any such thing as Western civilization ... there is no hope, no resurrection and no eternal life. Yes, that is a sad state, but if you worship only the physically provable, the Greeks need to go as well. Well, maybe none of us exist ...

Fortunately, the GOOD NEWS is TRUTH, and the Fake News is just Fake News.

Hallelujah! Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed, Hallelujah!

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Death, Life, Politics

I’m Supposed to be Dead Today | The Resurgent:

A good column for Good Friday -- I had to look up the author, conservative NeverTrumper ... not that it matters. Here is the closing paragraph ... don't use your floor wax for a desert topping and don't use politics as your religion. You will be eternally better off.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/shimmer-floor-wax/n8625?snl=1

"This past year, I have recognized something important. The people who have turned politics into their god are the most miserable, malcontented people I know. Not everything is political and when you think it is, you have turned politics into religion. Life is not supposed to be political and death coming to visit me showed me how much more to life there is."

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Healthcare, Universal Suffering

iCanada’s Single-Payer Health Care System: A Cautionary Tale | National Review:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2011/04/29/why-switzerland-has-the-worlds-best-health-care-system/#53dce0507d74

Healthcare is one of the most frustrating things to talk about. Some of the reasons include:

• We all have to use it, and none of us really want to use it, let alone pay for it. It is like having to fix your roof, plumbing or siding, only WORSE because it lets you feel your own mortality and vulnerability while spending money you would prefer not to spend. This sort of situation plays very well into our immature natures to throw up the hands and say "I just want this taken care of by SOMEBODY!".
• When we fall into the compliant "JUST FIX IT!" mode, politicians and other charlatans rub their hands with glee. The rubes are filing in the pen to be sheared -- there may be a lot of bleating as their funds are taken for little result, but when you are in the shearing of freedom and funds from the masses business, it doesn't really get any better than this!
• Like inflation, healthcare is tailor made for government control. They control all the statistics on costs and results, so unsurprisingly, they end up looking pretty darned good. (Hey, there is no inflation, so we don't need to give you a COLA on your FICA, nor any inflation adjustment on your "inflation protected bonds" ... trust us!) They will give you PLENTY of statistics to show you "beyond all shadow of doubt" how good a deal you are getting and how great the results are.  Go online for "rankings" and you will find "the gospel truth" from "non-partisan sources" like the Commonwealth Fund!

One primary factor that could start the journey back to America from BOistan is the old motto of IBM; "THINK!", or as put by Henry Ford "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few engage in it!"

Thinking about things that are HARD, and do not agree with our idea of pleasure, or even being on the PATH to pleasure, is especially difficult. When the majority of those around you decide to write off personal freedom and responsibility in favor of the herd, that can make it even tougher.

The two articles linked at the top provide some alternative views which I suspect we all know to be true if we just THINK rather than "feel or hope" for a few minutes ... here are the highlights. 

• The Canadian system has loads of problems, is way more expensive than is realized, and only really works because those that can afford it can go south -- Mayo in Rochester is one of the places they go. Canadian healthcare is trending just like BOistan FICA.
• Like in virtually everything else in the world, Switzerland is really number 1, and nobody on the left really wants to talk about that model very much ... lots of individual responsibility kinds of stuff. 

The Godzilla in the room that neither of the articles covers is the plight of the black population in the US. Essentially, they are living in the 3rd world, while the white population enjoys being essentially in Switzerland or Norway. I could also spend a lot of time on the fact that infant mortality is one of the big measures used for quality of healthcare, but it is also one of the areas where there are HUGE differences in how the statistics are done. This is an EXCELLENT article that points out those difficulties, however if you have already made up your mind for Universal Suffering, reading it would be too painful -- better to write it off. 

Oh, and in the interests of how bad being "taken care of by the government" works no matter what your race, it turns out that there is an epidemic of poor white people dying. Broken families, loss of community, leaving religion, welfare, not being employed, etc is just as as terminal if you are white as if you are black -- only time will tell if orientals have a stronger resistance! 

The bottom line here, that I really think we all know to be true if we calmly THINK for a few minutes is essentially this: 

• "Someone" is going to pay, and "someone" is going to decide on healthcare choices. Most of us are willing to keep up our homes and cars on our own dime and understand that the consequences of not doing so are grave. Inherently, we actually DO understand that health care is NO DIFFERENT, we just don't want to accept it!
• The majority of my acquaintances have not decided to hand over ALL of their retirement finances to the government ... nor their housing, transportation, food provisions, etc. That more of them are considering handing over their healthcare to the government is a strong sign that our ability to self govern is perilously low. In our hearts, we know that "outsourcing" really doesn't solve the problem, we just WISH it would.
• "Everyone else is doing it" is the saddest "argument" of all. In a nation that is supposed to rule itself, one of the reddest of red herring arguments would never be proffered by someone with over an 8th grade education. "Bandwagon argument", "Argumentum ad populum" -- it is such an obvious fallacy that it's use is mostly a marker for the sadness of the intellectual state of our nation. "97% of scientists agree" ... when even the fallacies become popular, you truly know that intelligent dialogue is dead.
• It has been often said that if you are not a liberal at 20 you have no heart, but if you are not a conservative by 40 you have no brain. A better way of looking at is that life used to tend to school people in reality a lot more than it does now. If you didn't work, things REALLY sucked, there were more accidents, diseases, etc that impinged on rosy views of reality -- at one time, almost everyone had to deal with the death of a child.
  
  In this vale of tears, EVERYTHING of mans creation has a dark side (not everything created by man has a light side though). Not having to live with as much pain is what we all desire, however as we are discovering with the immune system, not having to deal with as many pathogens as child results in a weaker immune system. Nietzsche was overboard on "That which does not kill you makes you stronger", but there is a nugget of real truth there. Without the struggle of escaping from the cocoon, the moisture is not worked out of the wings of the butterfly and they are unable to fly. Much of this world depends on struggle.
  
  Can human beings actually mature without adversity? Humans have both hearts and brains, and maturing both takes effort. To wish it were otherwise is to fail to understand our condition.

In my current line of work, one of the biggest mantras is NO FIXING. Our mental health system is loaded with people that have lost their ability to think independently. They have been so "fixed" by doctors, institutions, family and government that they no longer  believe they have any personal power remaining. They have stopped struggling. 

For most of those that read this blog, the struggle will not be given up -- yet. We will continue to live in private housing, tend our retirement funds, keep up our private transportation, and if the suffering of healthcare becomes "universal", we will opt out of that for a much more expensive private option as long as we can. 

Some of us may feel positive about that -- much like choosing to feel positive about paying into the giant FICA ponzi scheme in the same manner as the optimistic man having fallen off a 100 floor building yells out to the person on the 20th floor, "all good so far"! 

Does anyone with over a 100 IQ NOT understand all this? I personally don't believe that. I believe that in our bones, we totally "get it", just like we understand that we and our loved ones most certainly will die! However, we are masters of compartmentalization and when the whole government, media, education and entertainment is marketing to us to just settle back and enjoy the ride on the gravy train, it is EASY to do. 

It is easy, but of course it is deadly -- to people, to families, to nations, to civilizations. 

It certainly happens to companies -- IBM was spiraling down in the late '80s, Gerstner leveled it off and gave a little uptick in the mid '90s, but the bureaucratic forces were too strong and all that remains is the corpse of a once great company. Much like here in BOistan, the corpse of something big can hang around a long while -- sure it stinks, but much like pumping hog manure, most people get used to it!

As we say in DBT, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. By accepting basic truths like "80-90% of people have to pull their own weight in EVERYTHING ... food, shelter, transportation, clothing, healthcare, entertainment, etc" or the system is going to break at some point., we deal with the "pain" of that truth, but we avoid the suffering of the disaster when the truth is ignored. 

When systems go the way of the US and Europe, they become corrupt as more and more seek rent from the transfer of funds from the makers to the takers and the ranks of the makers dwindle while the takers swell. Naturally, the folks doing the transfers become greedy/wealthy, so they demand that their wealth rise (see Davos, Wall Street, 4 wealthiest counties in the US suburbs of DC), thus there is less and less for the swelling ranks of the takers, while the take from the makers has to ever rise ... thinning their ranks and making their lot less and less palatable. 

Universal Suffering -- the inevitable outcome of socialism of all types in all times and places. 

(other writing on the topic). 

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