the multitude of responses to its presence become available as a choice vs a reflex. The time and place to interact with the fenceline occasionally becomes an option, instead of always a confused surprise.

The muse went profound today.

sub-faction of each alleged party on each issue through the alleged parties overall and probably the idea of and some of the third parties all the way up to Nation States and global alliances. Both divide and conquer as well as confuse and confound. The best response is to be counter-predictive and aware.

1) We aren't a democracy. Our history and various studies have shown that the elites get almost everything they want while the hoi polloi, the vast majority of the populace, get almost nothing of what they want. Our "representatives" don't represent us, don't need to, don't benefit thereby and even admit it now and then.

2) Our government is illegitimate. A legitimate government governs with the consent of the governed, but not by gulling and lulling them into a delusion based ritual of voting and writing letters and such. If the true choices and the true facts are not presented to the public then those few and far between opportunities for public choice and input are specious. Beyond that, if the public choice or input is ignored, the putative consent is a charade. A so called "representative democracy" where the public is not presented with true facts and actual decisions and the "representatives" do not abide by public choice isn't remotely any kind of democracy at all.

3) Consensus is hard to obtain, but significant majorities could exist where there is a lack of propaganda designed to divide, separate and prevent agreement.

This applies to global politics as well. "At least we aren't autocracies like Russia and China"? Bets? Greatest prison population as a percent of populace by far. Shitloads of police of multiple levels and types whose word and whim is law. The fact that a court may rule, 5 years hence that the order was improper and that you should not have been beaten and incarcerated doesn't change the fact that you were and that we all know the penalties for non-compliance. The so called possee comitatus act is bullshit. We have been using the guard to fight our foreign wars and armed conflicts for years. When it is then used at home for law enforcement, that is a violation of possee comitatus in substance even if not in form.

Re-education camps? Most obviously the prisons, but thanks to the propaganda and police, the entire damn country is one big re-education camp. We have sekret police too. The press is mostly captured and free speech is subject to "reasonable restraints" (arbitrary and capricious). Midnight no-knock raids. They've made a mockery of "reasonable suspicion", let alone "probable cause", and don't really require either for anything and everything and we have sekret courts that permit sekret testimony from sekret witnesses.

So what do you do? Don't buy any of it, even though some small portion might be true. Affirmatively withhold consent as much, often and in as many ways as possible. Be counter-predictive. Be aware that it is all a fraud and mostly, literally nonsense in the logical/empirical sense of the word. When you look at a politician, visualize Pe're Ubu and Ubu Roi - that's all that they really are underneath the surface, that and Joseph Surface from Sheridan's "School for Scandal".

I could go on, but shouldn't

be well and have a good one

https://thehill.com/news/administration/3256261-psaki-to-leave-white-hou...

White House press secretary Jen Psaki will leave her job for MSNBC this spring, two sources familiar with the deal told The Hill.

Psaki’s upcoming departure was first reported by Axios on Friday, with the sources confirming it to The Hill. Psaki will leave the White House for the network around May, according to Axios.

The news follows speculation over whether the press secretary was looking for a job at MSNBC or CNN and while Psaki has been out of the briefing room this week with COVID-19.

This pretty well sums it up.

JtC:

I joined your board a little less than two years ago. I came with an agenda -- a militant and unyielding hostility to certitude, especially with respect to the Mega News of the Hour, the edicts issued by established political authorities to deal with what was always labeled as a "novel" malady. It seemed to me that anybody claiming to know what would happen was totally full of shit, for the simple reason that "science" had not had an opportunity to study and experiment with the new phenomenon.

Two years later, this venue hosts a lively discussion of the ongoing study and experimentation by science of what is called Covid 19. Nothing is certain, even now.

Well, there are a lot of negative certainties -- some things are easy to spot lies, like Ivermectin is Horse Paste. I have no way of really knowing how well it works or if it works at all. All I have are accounts from conflicting sources. But it is easy to verify whether that shit is ONLY for animals. Yet that lie keeps being repeated by powerful institutions like NBC.

We have no way to know the truth. But lies are disprovable. I have read that in the final decade of the Soviet Union, average citizens had long since recognized State Run Media as purveyors of nothing but bullshit. So an underground culture formed and people sent mimeograph messages to each other that tried to reason backward from the official lies to guess what they were intended to conceal. This board has some affinity with that movement, but it is stationed on enemy territory -- cyberspace.

We will need to find our own version of the mimeograph machine sooner probably rather than later. But so long as we can post our thoughts and our versions of reality here, there is no reason to abandon the venue. But we should start to think through whether and how we want to continue communication. With luck, we will never have to use it.

Not much luck lately.
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What turned me into a gadfly in cyberspace in 2020 was the philosophy behind what I called at the time Team Lockdown. It was quite simple -- science should be and is, Thank God, privileged over democracy. Just as in wartime, no country can put military strategy up for a democratic vote, so in a time of pandemic, public health policy must not be set by ignoramuses who abuse their right to vote by opposing The Science.

(Of course, as soon as you put the determiner, "the," in front of the world science, you left actual science far behind. But enough windmills to tilt at in one post.)

That rationale is horse shit, coming and going. It asserts on its face that Science is a Finished Product with only one answer to every question. But far, far more ominously, it also abolishes democracy in one fell swoop. It is not exactly news that 50% of the population is below average intelligence. And, with racism, superstition and an infinity of mental aberrations running rampant through the brains of homo sapiens, democracy can produce utterly despicable results. A good enough example for this concept is the original draft of the American Constitution allowed for slavery and called slaves three fifths of a human being.

The Enlightenment was the impetus for our experiment in democracy. Religion had defined reality for centuries, impervious to the "experimental data" found in the lens of Gallileo's telescope. Eventually the gap between Official Truth and Objective Reality became unbridgeable. Yeah, if you allow the general public the "right" to speak out, it becomes impossible for the Official Truth to answer every question. This means that democracy prevents humanity from its best possible course through time.

From the Greeks through Winston Churchill, the response to this obvious Problem of Democracy is to admit that it sucks, but the alternatives are all even worse. Some small cadre of human beings, rather than a majority of human beings, will be tempted to use power for personal gain. This is elementary political "science" by the way.

I saw this primal political battle of the last several centuries decided by Talking Heads on televisions sets and computer screens. A new Priesthood appeared from the global health care bureaucracy and its "truth" suddenly grew teeth. Two years in: Mandates and passports. Forced relocation to carriers, suppression of other scientific opinions and assertions.

The totalitarianism was implicit in that "The" put in front of science. And, with this idiotic Trade War with Russia, we see the premise of Infallible Science now also applying to the question of War and Peace. Whoopi Goldberg demands jail for those who deny the story told about the troubles between Ukraine and Russia.

Here is the bottom line for civilization -- if you want your society to be run by experts, you ought to think through how one gets to be an expert, how you become a boss of other experts, and who pays the salary of those experts.

In the mean time, I agree with gripey old Winnie, "Democracy is the worst form of government on earth. Except for all the others."

on this side of the Atlantic (Europe) and then of the freaks oj your side of the Atlantic. They try hard to win the game in the sport of "who is controlling me better, your side of my side". Of course mimi's side is winning every game. They are fools no atter what. /s

Just a good eveing to all from here.