Month: July 2020

He’s been consistently attacking the election process since before he was first elected. Repeated cries of election fraud, voter fraud, etc. Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, he’s been banging that drum from day one. Then it was term limits, a “3rd term”. Now it’s delaying the election combined with casting more doubt on the validity of any result – well, any result that doesn’t have him winning, anyway. And all this coming from a guy that voted by, you guessed it, mail in ballot…

Our politicians, and the citizens that support them, have been breaking rules, big and small, for a long time. To my knowledge, that’s never ended well for us, I’m pretty sure this won’t, either.

I came across this one today –
“Charlie Stross
@cstross
“Libertarianism” is one of those red flag weasel-nouns like “people’s republic” or “democratic republic” which indicates that whatever entity it is printed on is the exact opposite of the label on the can.”

I spent quite a bit of time exploring the Libertarian world. At first blush it seems like a pretty reasonable philosophy, certainly better than the Republican Conservatism that’s been pushed for the last few decades. Lots of personal freedom and responsibility, so it’s hard not to like it. At least, until I realized a few things.

I have a love hate relationship with most documentaries. On the one hand, there’s a lot of information, perspectives and amazing tales you can pick up on when you watch them, especially of the biographical types.

On the other hand, they are selling you a carefully crafted narrative. Everything-, from the scenes they use, to the background music, the lighting, the words – even the very cadence they are spoken in. All of that is deliberately used to draw you in and convince you that what you are seeing and hearing is the Truth. Conspiracy based media is especially good at doing this.

When this is the autobiography of Meatloaf, the greatest singer to ever be a vegetarian, this isn’t much of a problem. When it’s trying to convince you of something regarding a complex subject, or an unpopular view point, say vaccines causing autism or the benefits of being Vegan. Well, you honestly can’t ever be skeptical enough.

Skepticism has its own benefits, too. If you catch an interesting documentary, like the one I just watched titled, “I Am Not Your Negro”, you get to go down various rabbit holes and learn more about people from history. You get to take their words and listen to them outside the context of the documentary, maybe even compare them to your own experiences and come to your own conclusions. Those rabbit holes become more instructive than the documentary itself.

Happening right now, complete w/ video. Where’s the accountability? Where’s the due process? These troops aren’t there at the invitation of the governor, or the mayor. So now we have Federal operatives just doing whatever they want, wherever they want.

I’m waiting for all these guys that were up in arms just a couple weeks ago to show up now. Gotta say, doesn’t look like much of a crowd.

I don’t care what your personal stance on COVID or masks are, that’s not relevant here. What does matter is making sure that our government, under any administration, remains transparent and accountable. Or, at least, doesn’t become less so. Anytime a government demands that people not have direct access to important public information, that it must go through their filters first, that’s a problem.

Remember when the Georgia governor deliberately put infection rates out of order so that the graph would look like there was a decline? Yeah, he was caught because the public had access to that information too. Well, that and the governor was a damn moron, but you can’t depend on that being the case every time. There’s no beneficial reason here for our government to control the information, to massage the narrative. None.

It’s an illustration, but a good one. Real common sense will tell you that you don’t go to a plumber when you need a pacemaker. The typical “common sense” people post about on Facebook would not only have you talking to your plumber about your heart problems, the plumber would claim that they actually know more than the surgeon because you just can’t trust opinions by those doctor guys anyway.

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