Panic the peasants sufficiently, and you'll rule them for life
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fire and brimstone have always awaited the sinners on earth
Back in May, 2020, Joel Kotkin described what was coming in this article entitled, The Pandemic Road to Serfdom
Even before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, America, like most higher-income countries, was already heading toward a neo-feudal future: massive inequality, ever-greater concentrations of power, and increasingly widespread embrace of a uniform (albeit secular) religion. The pandemic, all too reminiscent of the great plagues of the Middle Ages, seems destined to accelerate this process.
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The oligarchic class now owns as much as 50% of world’s assets. Just five companies—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft—account for over 20% of the market capitalization of the entire S&P 500 index.
Today’s new oligarchs constitute a modern-day equivalent of the Medieval aristocracy. Like the barbarians who seized control of land during the demise of Rome, they seem well-positioned to benefit from the emerging social distance-driven recession. The dislocation caused by the pandemic has greatly expanded the financial assets of the country’s increasingly hegemonic giant banks. But the biggest long-term winners are the big tech firms that dominate digital pathways at a time when the analog world, already failing, now faces inexorable obliteration.
Today’s other ascendant class is what I call the clerisy, who today fulfill the role played by the clergy in the Middle Ages. Known as the First Estate in pre-revolutionary France, the clerisy today is largely secular but consists of the key influencers in the media, academia, the upper bureaucracy and the ever-expanding “non-profit” sector. This new middle class enjoys something of a symbiosis with the oligarchic elites who mainly finance non-governmental organizations and the universities, and tends to a share a similarly progressive world view.
Kotkin’s article focuses on the pandemic hysteria and how it’s being employed to control the masses, but a greater game’s afoot, and the battle for freedom involves more than just a Chinese virus. The goal is control and power, and the panic is the tool being employed to achieve that. Who would have imagined, twenty-years back, that a population enjoying the world’s highest standard of living would willingly, nay, meekly, consent to giving it up in order to sink to a Third World life of poverty, cold, and starvation, but thanks to the global warming fraud foisted on the masses by the ruling clerisy, that’s what we’re doing. COVID’s only a proof of concept exercise, with the real fun just beginning.
I forget which reader posted this but if she’ll speak up, I’ll be happy to give her credit. It’s long: 21 minutes, but very instructive.
Maybe if we promise him Corn Pop as a Co-Pilot
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Problem, solution: There’s a nationwide school bus driver shortage, and we’ve got a guy doing nothing but dozing naked by his pool in Delaware. Can we lure him into a pair of pants and get him back to work?
Good Lord
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Greenwich got hit by the remnants of Ida, I see — 6” of rain at Tod’s Point, roads closed, and so forth, but Not the Bee’s got some truly awesome videos posted of what happened to NYC. Here’s just one of them:
Riverside sale
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14 Pierce Road, one of Brother Gideon’s listings, asked $1.4 last April and immediately found several interested buyers, one of whom closed on it yesterday for $1.5 million.
The owner did well here. Represented by that same brother, he paid $540,000 for it in 1997 and has rented it out ever since, at a monthly rental, on average, of $4,500. That’s about $1.3 million received, plus tax benefits, and if he spent any money on upgrades, they were well hidden.
these are known as “gourmet kitchens” in REALTOREASE™
It's a wog-eat-dog world over there
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Hopkins: He’s what’s for dinner tonight!
Okay, that’s an attention-getter headline (using a term which usually refers to Indians and Middle Easterners, once derogatory, but now, according to Wikipedia, considered an acceptable term, at least in Australia), but it puns, so I’m going with it.
I was struck by this article I saw just now about Jay Leno, and how he apologized for joking about Koreans eating dog meat.
During the filming of an [America’s Got Talent] segment, Leno joked about a painting that featured Simon Cowell surrounded by dogs. Leno joked that the dogs looked like something one could find "on the menu at a Korean restaurant" — much to the chagrin of "the very few Asian staffers" on the show. The comment was later edited out of the episode.
Guy Aoki, founding member of the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition, allegedly threatened Leno's new run, however. The LA Times reports that Aoki planned to launch a boycott against the new show if Leno didn't issue an apology to Asian Americans.
Leno apologized and took it one step further by giving Aoki a personal call.
"After the Zoom meeting, Jay called me back and said, ‘I want to do whatever I can to get back the respect you once had for me,’" Aoki said. "And that meant a lot to me. And then he ended up calling me back 20 times. We had a lot of time to talk about stuff."
But what’s to apologize for? In fact, Koreans do eat dogs, and they do serve man’s best friend in restaurants. That may or may not offend Western sensibilities, but I figure it’s the Korean’s (and Obama’s) choice. Heck, some people like cilantro.
What does offend me is the endless extension of wokeness so that we’re now expected to apologize for pointing out facts which might embarrass the listener; for all I know, Muslims don’t like hearing about female circumcision and honor killings, or New Guineans are squeamish about discussing cannibalism. There’s no accounting for tastes, but that shouldn’t mean we can’t mention them.
From the link:
Yes, dog meat is available in South Korea for consumption, however it's important to note that there are other countries which also eat dog, such as China, Thailand, Vietnam, and many more. But, each year, more locals are opting not to consume dog meat.
If the thought of eating dog is unconscionable to you, you may need to do your due diligence before going out to eat. Definitely reconsider buying that unmarked meat kebab being sold in the city square.
Many restaurants will serve a dish called "bosintang", which stands for "dog meat soup". It's a popular dish in South Korea, and is said to act as an aphrodisiac for men.
If you're unconcerned about whether or not to eat dog meat, it's recommended you go to a decent restaurant and try the dog meat soup for a taste of South Korean popular culture.
So yes, they eat dogs, to the tune of a million-or-so a year, according to USA Today.
About 2.5 million dogs are raised in South Korean dog farms each year. About 1 million are killed and eaten. The rest are used for breeding with many dogs dying because of the farms' high mortality rate, according to Humane Society International, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates for animal protection worldwide.
From an $11.9 ask in 2016 to a $5.5 sale today, it's finally sold
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Title to 61 Lower Cross Road has changed hands. The listing information’s been pulled, but we’ve discussed this place often enough over the years for y’all to have a good idea of what it looks like.
David Frum: The Canadian Neo-con who was wrong on the Tea Party, wrong on Trump, wrong on Iraq, wrong on everything, has a new idea
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So I bought this CZ P-01 Omega yesterday, just to spite him (But I lost it overboard while fishing, along with all my other guns — nothing left, promise)
“Responsible Gun Ownership” is a Lie
As more Americans recognize the lie, they may notice a powerful new possibility. Once emancipated from the false myth of the home-protecting gun, they will find it easier to write laws and adopt policies to stop the criminals and zealots who carry guns into the streets. Win enough elections, and the federal courts will retreat from their sudden gun advocacy—and return to their historic deference to state regulation of firearms.
Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Greek writer Thucydides described the progress of civilization. It began, he said, when the Athenians ceased carrying arms inside their city, and left that savage custom to the barbarians. It’s long past time for Americans to absorb this first lesson from the first democracy.
Who are these barbarians Frum wants us to leave in care of our streets? I think he knows, because he so studiously avoids mentioning who, exactly, is committing the carnage he so deplores, and recounts instead weepy tales of grandmothers who forgetfully leave their loaded, cocked pistols under their pillows.* But in case he really is as naive, and stupid, as he pretends, here’s an illustration of his preferred people in action:
Two men are knocked out, robbed by crowd, while women twerk
The attack took place in Chicago around 1:30 a.m. local time in the bustling 400 block of North State Street. Traffic stops as one man is accosted and attacked by two men. He tries to make his escape, but that doesn’t work. Before long he is unconscious in the middle of the street. Two women then arrive in the street and begin twerking just as a passerby wanders into the scene and is knocked out by a punch he didn’t see coming. As they lie unconscious in the street, a mob swarms and robs both men, including taking their shoes, while more “ladies” twerk in the street. No one appears to help.
*here’s a grandmother story, also from Chicago, for Frum’s further education:
UPDATE: For those resisting the demands for a national gun registry, here’s some ammunition: names and addresses, together with an interactive map to locate them of 110,000 British gun owners are hacked from a national database and published online by animal “rights” activists.
