Moderates United

 Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, 

and remember what peace there may be in silence. 

As far as possible, without surrender, 
be on good terms with all persons. 
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; 
and listen to others, 
even to the dull and the ignorant; 
they too have their story. 

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; 
they are vexatious to the spirit. 

If you compare yourself with others, 
you may become vain or bitter, 
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. 
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. 
Keep interested in your own career, however humble; 
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. 

Exercise caution in your business affairs, 
for the world is full of trickery. 
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; 
many persons strive for high ideals, 
and everywhere life is full of heroism. 
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. 
Neither be cynical about love, 
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, 
it is as perennial as the grass. 

Take kindly the counsel of the years, 
gracefully surrendering the things of youth. 
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. 
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. 
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. 

Beyond a wholesome discipline, 
be gentle with yourself. 
You are a child of the universe 
no less than the trees and the stars; 
you have a right to be here. 
And whether or not it is clear to you, 
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. 

Therefore be at peace with God, 
whatever you conceive Him to be. 
And whatever your labors and aspirations, 
in the noisy confusion of life, 
keep peace in your soul. 

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, 
it is still a beautiful world. 
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

 It occurs to we define ourselves by our tension. This is how we create ground beneath our feet, and fixity generally. Without feet, without ground, the innate Verworfenheit of the human condition becomes obvious.

I think I do no violence to the Buddhist doctrine of Anatman by summarizing it as “throw yourself out there and wait. Eventually you will be glad you did.”

And how do you do that? Deep relaxation, to the point where you feel yourself getting lighter, and then floating.

Within Kum Nye theory, the Nye does the work. All you have to do is show up, witness and participate.

 Well, A truth: what your governor in announcing at regular intervals is that, on a “bad” day, NEARLY FIVE PERCENT of yesterdays deaths came from the reason we are destroying your economy.

I just bought a marvelous pie—two small chocolate cakes with fresh whipped cream in the middle—from an Amish bakery. None of them were wearing masks. Why would they be? They dont watch TV, and they eat a lot of fresh vegetables every day, exist among friends, and live a low stress, faith based lifestyle.

And I think in most States (and countries) 5 percent is on the HIGH side. The actual epidemic—defined as 7% or more deaths—has been over for months everywhere.

And what if a “second wave” drives numbers over 7% again for a second? It will not come CLOSE to justifying this massive criminal act.

The West German government became increasingly concerned that hostile communist states may flood the country with counterfeit banknotes. This would devalue the Deutschmark and destabilize the country’s economy as a precursor to an invasion from the East.

So Bundesbank launched a cunning plan. They printed an entirely new secret currency and put them in storage. If Russia and its allies launched an economic attack, the old bills could be withdrawn and new banknotes issued within a matter of days. This would cancel out counterfeit currency. 

 To take one obvious example, World War 2 was a very tough period in America. We had millions of men fighting overseas and dying, rationing stateside, and pervasive uncertainty and doubt.

But even though our government was no doubt sometimes stupid, at times in all places and all contexts, I dont think anyone doubted that FDR—his many enumerable faults notwithstanding—loved America and its peoples—plural intentional—and that he was fighting to win.

In this undeclared war, we are more or less literally being attacked BY OUR OWN GOVERNMENTS—plural again intended—and find ourselves equally fighting the more or less reified, concretized, and weaponized forces of madness It is far beyond mere stupidity.

Our enemies are educated, situationally competent, and living next door to us.

This is a new kind of fight. In my view, if Trump relinquishes power for any reason, we will never have a fair election again,  This is far, far beyond “the truth is in the middle”, and “all views have at least some merit”.

It is between fallible but intact reality testing and outright ideational hallucination; it is between wholesome dialogue, and political violence; it is between rule of law and outright fascism.

Let us all pray sanity prevails. It will take a fight, but this is the only fight worth any of our energy right now.

The enemies of sanity do not want “justice”. Black people and their lives are a stage prop for their theater, mere tools to be cast aside and ignored whenever their usefulness is at an end.

And the means right now is an engineered economic disaster, and voter fraud on a scale never before attempted.

I keep trying to distract myself, to back away, but continue failing. Every morning when I wake up I wonder: how can SO MANY people, the ones caught on the middle, be so fucking stupid? Figuratively and sometimes damn near literally, I keep pinching myself.

Where is the sanity? Trump gets it, as do many others, but why has everyone not figured this game put yet? I do not get it.

I know I repeat myself often, but I still seem to be in some degree of psychological shock.

 The psychological value of fatalism is obvious: the future is out of our hands, so why worry?

Perhaps the purest expression of this is the Arabic saying Maktub, which means “it is written”. The story is already told. We are waiting to see what our role on all this is. We will be given the script whenever it is our time on stage.

To be sure, this can breed passivity. As one Ranger Medic acquaintance of mine once quipped while in Iraq: “The Will of Allah seems to be inversely proportional to work.”

And of course, often, there is some small detail—or to be sure, the CHANCE of some small detail—which could make a difference. This is what drives me crazy. I think often maybe there exists some argument, some idea, some action which might make an unexpected and completely unpredicted difference.

But for all of is spectators, which is really all most of us are, most of the time, you need the ability to just let it all go, to “allow”—as if that were really what is happening!!—everything to work out the way it is going to work out.

Our modern world, with all it success—empowers us, but I think many of us take this too far. It is Life after all, and Ray Kurzweil will never succeed. Thoughts do not originate in the brain. William James called it over a hundred years ago, on “ Principles of Psychology”, and none of the important facts have changed since.

 Lie. Lie a lot. Self evidently, begin by lying to yourself, or few people will buy what you are selling. Then lie to them, about who you are, and what you want.

Avoid silence and honest companionship like the plague (or this thing, if you are true Covidian).

Speak continually of virtue, and regularly subject to scorn those who fail to live up to standards you also don’t live up to.

This is the easy way. There is another way, but it is much more difficult, and the path often includes honest confusion and anxiety, for which there are no truly good remedies, other than accustoming yourself to their company, and inviting them in from time to time for coffee or cocktails.

 I think all the businesses affected should band together and file a lawsuit against all local and even national media outlets which both A) Failed to share all the known details of the case; and B) Consistently ran stories which, absent that context, could reasonably be expected to inflame tensions.

I would argue that in intent and effect, many if not most media outlets covering this tragedy—but not this crime—have in effect acted as seditious agents by fomenting and inciting riots.

Until the bastards start paying a price, none of this will stop. It will on the contrary get worse.

 What happened in the Vietnam Era, as we tend to call it, was we were asked by an ally to help them repel an invasion by their northern neighbor, North Vietnam, which had been conquered by the Communists in the 50’s, with the usual purges, gulags, and Commissars put in place to monitor everyone, and the schools of course taken over for use in Communist indoctrination.  To teach madness, in other words, and an aggressive madness at that.

We helped South Vietnam, which in the early days was run by an unattractive dictator, but which in later days was run by a much more benign group of folks, who actually started implementing much needed reforms in the direction of political liberalization and what might then have honestly been described as social justice.  Land reform was undertaken, in specific, to overturn centuries of what I recall as de facto feudalism.

We won the war.  We kicked the NVA and VC’s asses in 1968 and 1969, and forced them to the negotiating table.  In 1972, the war was over in the South.  You could drive anywhere in the country without protection safely.  The invading troops were destroyed and incapacitated.

Then we lost the war over here. Communist propaganda caused OUR OWN PEOPLE to give up, willingly, even enthusiastically, the gains won with so much death, so much pain, and after the expenditure of so much treasure.

The effectiveness of the propaganda was such that I would argue VIETNAM INVADED AMERICA.  Rather, Communism as a creed did.  They tried to take over our nation, and failed.  Barely, but only after many, many gains in our social sphere.

Today, we are seeing the same madness in our streets, the same counter-rational slogans, the same pointless destruction, and same alliance forged with madness, decay and death.

I really think the riots could be seen as the second phase of the conflict fought all those years ago.  I CERTAINLY think this is how all the old radicals, the old lunatics, see it.  They could have learned from our chosen failure in Vietnam.  They could have seen the boat people and realized that they were siding with violent fascists.  But they didn’t.  They haven’t.  

It is unfathomable to me, the sheer extent of this betrayal of basic morality, basic good sense, and basic humanity.  None of this is complicated, and most of these assholes have high IQ’s.  The leaders, I mean.

 For some years now, if a conservative was talking, they were wrong, as far as the Left was concerned.  “Open your mouth, get slapped”, was the de facto slogan and tactic. “If I wanted your opinion, I would tell you your opinion.”

It doesn’t matter how well reasoned what you say may be.  It doesn’t matter that they are lying and all you are doing is pointing that out to them.  It doesn’t matter that the lunatics are destroying the lives of the people they are claiming to protect and care about.

There is no good way for a divorce, but CLEARLY conservatives need to stop pretending that the Left EVER, EVER, EVER wants dialogue, intelligent policy discussions, actual success, or anything but the marginalization and destruction of anyone who stands between them and absolute power.

Battered women make excuses for their husbands.  Maybe he really does need his cookies in two precisely aligned rows.  I knew that.  It must be my fault.

None of this shit–or almost none of it–is our fault.  Free markets work.  The black community has been abused and destroyed by the Left.   The Global warming “emergency” and the necessity of COVID lockdowns are both bad jokes.  We made more economic progress in 2 years of Trump than we had since the Clinton era, which saw government limited by a  Republican Congress, and the following internet boom.

All of us, ALL OF US, need to stop trying to pretend that any of us can win a game with the Left which does not involve submission to lies, bad ideas, psychopathic thugs, and the continued ruining of America, and by extension, much of the world.  Say what you are thinking out loud, or not, but stop pretending any of this is our fault, or Trump’s fault.  He’s just the first one to talk back to them, and like the abusive bullies they are, they can’t stand it.