I have a low regard for that quote for the simple reason I’ve seen it breathlessly posted for decades as though it’s some new discovery or insight, when the simple fact is that nobody gives an eff, really.

I suppose it’s the same sort of psychology of not paying too much regard to accident scenes with mangled human bodies strewn all over, because that’s the shit that happens to other people.

The bromide I’ve always prefered is the one where the power to burn the books you don’t like is the same power to burn your Bibles.

This all speaks to operating by principles but the so-called principled actors—Republicans, conservatives, religious—only give lip service to their core principles. They have little choice. While most can respect another’s religious or core beliefs, it’s hard to take seriously stuff like God said or The Bible says.

1 – In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.

2 – In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins.

“The Anatomy of Compromise,” Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand, p. 145; bold emphasis mine for differentiation

We’ve been watching that play out since 1917 globally. The above was written many decades ago. Do note that capitalism has zero to do with statutory and/or publicly traded corporations. That’s corporatism, i.e., fascism, properly defined—an alliance and partnership between state and big business. Does that ring a bell?

The difficulty of the political right and left being at odds principally, is that the former loses credibility when they admit their principles come from God or The Bible—no matter how good and decent they may be in practice (a gulf libertarians have always tried to bridge)—and the latter gains credibility when asserting that their principles are based on The Science!—no matter how awful in practice and no matter how much counter-science there is.

This has been going on for a hundred years, since the Bolshevik Revolution.

And having gained such permeation throughout all of global society over the last 50 years, the tide has even turned on moral grounds such that we now witness an hilarious spectacle where the left doesn’t need to talk about science so much anymore—they can exercise moral condemnation, which used to be the stock in trade of the right.

That sort of thing has been subtle and nuanced over decades but since Trump in 2016, has fully reared its head to where gradually, the right is trying to bring the better science to bear; whereas, the left is screaming don’t kill my gramma you evil euthanasiaists.

So, over the last couple of years:

• Anti-mask (you’re Hitler)
• Anti-lockdown and house arrest (you’re Stalin)
• Anti forced experimental drugs (you’re Pol Pot)

In the wide swaths of histories and in my calmer moments, I can see how that’s a gift. Call me whatever you like. Since that’s not me, nor anyone I know, the chances are that the haunting won’t be on me.

Oh Lord, calm my soul.

Then the other pretty simple thing is the realization and understanding that this is less about righteous moral outrage—which righties understand well—and more about gratuitous outrage couched in moral parlance…along with all the tools available by the internet and social media to practice it on a global scale. Your thoughts matter to everyone in the world, so you tell them. It used to be that only mom and dad would give you an audience to vent childish tantrums. They understood how to tolerate them but today, that’s unsatisfying and so the whole world gets it, and sadly, there exists too many in the same boat. Those are all your Likes. Lots of them.

The left is nothing if not politically clever and has been running circles around the right for decades. The right has always been so inept and compromising that the left, now, holds all the “moral” high ground.

And make no mistake. The right has always been about cancelling people. Always. Since the fucking Spanish Inquisition. What goes around comes around. The left is simply showing how much better they can do it. And it’s not a Come To Jesus thing.

There are signs that the left has pushed the pendulum so far in one direction that it might swing the other way. Midterm elections will be the tell tale and I’m quite optimistic, especially in local and state elections.

…But the biggest unknown now is the shift in narrative from how evil those opposed to any measures “against” Covid were evil grandma killers, to how now all Russians are evil conquistadores—even Russian cats, if you caught wind of that hilarity. Or even if so, you’re allowed another belly laugh.

I suppose that in some ways I’m undercutting my own thesis by showing the ridiculousness and hilarity of it all but here’s what I would say.

Those with religious dispositions have always had a tough row to hoe, in spite of whether their religious and ancient scriptural values are actually practically effective (and I’m in full agreement that many are). You simply aren’t going to prosthelytize the majority of the world to your beliefs. It’s not that they’re anti-science, it’s that they disregard science. Religious people do respect science, and good on them for that, but only up to a point where it conflicts with ancient scriptures and faith. That is and will always be a total non-starter in modern practical politics.

On the other hand, moral proclamations are very powerful and influential in the social and political sphere and so the left has gradually, over decades, shown how best to co-opt and use that. By basing it on “science.”

Was has really taken place since secularism was possible for individual thinkers—meaning no particular belief or allegiance—is the recognition that humans are not evolved enough to function well that way. They seemingly need a cause. Religion always filled that role and in many ways did a fine job for families and local communities. You could take your pick because each of them were exemplars of good families and communities. From a bird’s eye view, doctrine and scriptural differences aren’t important.

People think that’s an issue of the right but it’s even more pronounced amongst the left. The right relies upon scripture and faith, admittedly (even implying an understanding of its limits); the left relies upon science. But they do so using words like settled science (the same as scripture) and denier (same as heathen, infidel, and blasphemer). This is fundamentalist religion by other means.

Science seeks truth. It never ever gets there. It only gets closer when done properly. In this sense, the right and honestly religious have not been much of a threat to scientific discovery in a long time. The Catholics were superstars in that vein. By contrast, the left has been the driving corruptive force for decades and from what I see, large swaths of science are nothing more than religious text now, and people fight over doctrinal interpretations they call a new study.

It’s all still a wholly moral play and always has been.

Their 2-year extravaganza of scouring social-media posts for signs of evil in terms of Covid…so they can jump on the bandwagon with a me too—like Praise The Lord breaking out during a revival—the Covid nonsense is on death’s door, so what’s the next bandwagon?

THE RUSSIANS!!!

I guess since that’s a proven hoax in terms of Trump—though few seen to know and acknowledge that—it’s ripe for a revival and so disappointment turns to rejuvenation. I don’t know. I’ve always found it curious how the the left wing that was so enamored over the Soviet Union for decades has, for about 7 years now, been so judgemental of Russia.

It’s an honest mystery to me. Russia, in spite of its large landmass and natural resources has done very poorly in terms of development over the last 30 years. Why not encourage and help where you can in getting them to world class status? They are the 2nd nuclear power to the USA. Do people forget this? Wouldn’t you want a very stable, secure, and prospering Russia and use politics and diplomacy to hold back the biggest threat in all of human history…communist/fascist and authoritarian China…the nation and race of ants that build hills, bees that build hives, and Borg that assimilate?

Compare the cultural production of Russia vs. China. I’ll just cover literature and playwriting.

1. Alexander Sumarokov
2. Gavrila Derzhavin
3. Denis Fonvizin
4. Alexander Radishchev
5. Nikolay Novikov
6. Nikolay Karamzin
7. Ivan Krylov
8. Vasily Zhukovsky
9. Alexander Griboyedov
10. Alexander Pushkin
11. Fyodor Tyutchev
12. Nikolai Gogol
13. Alexander Herzen
14. Ivan Goncharov
15. Mikhail Lermontov
16. Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin
17. A. K. Tolstoy
18. Ivan Turgenev
19. Afanasy Fet
20. Nikolai Nekrasov
21. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
22. Alexander Ostrovsky
23. Mikhail Saltykov-Schedrin
24. Leo Tolstoy
25. Nikolai Leskov
26. Anton Chekhov
27. Aleksandr Kuprin
28. Zinaida Gippius
29. Leonid Andreyev
30. Fyodor Sologub
31. Valery Bryusov
32. Alexander Blok
33. Marina Tsvetaeva
34. Sergei Yesenin
35. Velemir Khlebnikov
36. Boris Pasternak
37. Maxim Gorky
38. Ivan Bunin
39. Andrey Bely
40. Vladimir Mayakovsky
41. Anna Akhmatova
42. Osip Mandelstam
43. Yevgeny Zamyatin
44. Mikhail Bulgakov
45. Vladimir Nabokov
46. Andrei Platonov
47. Varlam Shalamov
48. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
49. Vasily Aksyonov
50. Joseph Brodsky

To name just a few. There are more. Russia has probably the deepest literary history in our world history, so deep they choose that to highlight in the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi. I watched that with delight and thought it an excellent celebration of Russian culture going way back.

China has a literary history too. But who that’s not Chinese know fuck all about it? Perhaps a few. If you scan down the list of Russians, my guess is that a lot of people around the world would recognize 5-10 names.

Who hasn’t read some Dostoyevsky? Solzhenitsyn? Nabokov? Tolstoy? Chekhov?

…But if you’re born Russian—even a Russian cat—you’re now cancelled worldwide because of where you happened to be born.

It is perhaps the greatest puerile injustice I have ever seen in my life. Before I get more into that, here’s more laughable cancelling. Expect McDonald’s to pull up chocks any day now.

Luxury brands halt sales in Russia: Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and Cartier have ceased operations in the country amid the Ukrainian conflict.

A number of major luxury brands announced late on Friday that they would be closing their stores and halting their operations in Russia. They cited logistical difficulties and concern for staff safety amid the invasion of Ukraine.

The Kering Group said it would be temporarily shuttering its boutiques, including those of Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, and Balenciaga, “due to growing concerns regarding the current situation in Europe.”

LVMH, the world’s biggest luxury company by sales, with a stable of more than 75 brands, including Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton and Moёt, released a statement to the fashion news outlet WWD. It said its stores would be temporarily closed in Russia from Sunday.

RT News

I’ve not linked it directly. Telegram banned RT yesterday, because Russian. I’ve had RT News as a feed source for a while. It’s Russian. it’s also the most objective news source in all my feeds. Fox “News” is laughable by comparison and all the others, a complete joke. Actually, if you want to see what some objective journalism looks like, check out RT. Also Al Jazeera; at times, at least.

Vacuums will be filled.

Way back at the advent of social media, performative moral exhibitionism existed a little bit. As everyone adopted social media—lured in by cat videos, hookups, and oh my balls—there arose an opportunity to morally condemn strangers across the world in a way that was psychologically satisfying. The entire world saw your moral righteousness and surely got a taste of how upright and virtuous you are. A cut above even the most vaulted cuts above.

The world didn’t materially change. Covid did squat and anyone with an honest brain knows that. A respiratory virus? Yawn. What changed was that every stupid fucking thought in the walnut now goes around the world to every other stupid fucking walnut; and then, if enough stupid fucking walnuts like and share, it attains the status of Oracle. That goes for all the blue checks, too. Especially the blue checks.

So what comes to pass is not another real crisis—let Russia and Ukraine, and neighbors, sort it out—but another opportunity for a world exposed as mostly walnut brains to keep doing whatever dose it is that dopamine satisfies for a walnut brain. Seems to be damn little, judging by hours spent online to perform moral exhibisionism.

When I see Russian expat folk with adorable children down at our local 7 Eleven unable to check out because the electrons in their cards are Russian, and the ATMs don’t work either, then I get really perturbed—regardless that I don’t socialize with them. Russians generally socialize only with other Russians. Not my way. Their absolute right.

The real harm of Covid was that real, innocent folk in the billions all over the world got hurt bad for the financial benefit and enhanced power of elites, corporations, politicians, and institutions. It was cheered on predominantly by the left around the world.

Now that that is gloriously crashing down with lies and criminality being exposed daily, it’s time for the same left to have a new outlet for their performative moral exhibitionism, and that shifts the burden from being someone who doesn’t want to be masked, doesn’t want to be under house arrest, and doesn’t want to have an experimental drug injected into them…onto anyone born in Russia, with only a few dispensations for Russians who condemn their homeland.

What fucking world is being crafted here, and when does it finally come for you?