The cult of vaccination, and the death of the Republic

I've always thought anti-vaxxers were nuts.  Measles vaccinations work. Polio vaccines worked, smallpox vaccines worked.  And even thought it is impressive that they were able to come up with a vaccine so quickly (under president Trump's push to do so), the FDA usually takes years of testing before approving a drug.  They didn't do that this time in the rush to address the "COVID crisis". Insufficient testing and approval leads to problems. You want an example? I give you Thalidomide. So have I become an anti-vaxxer? No.  But I am highly suspicious of both the efficacy of the COVID vaccines and the potential side effects (both short term and especially long term).  I haven't had my shot yet.  I'm letting the woke crowd be the human lab rats.  Maybe I'll take it in a few years if nobody sprouts extra limbs.

I've also become an alarmist on the whole vaccine passport notion, and I think very justifiably so. The extended lockdowns were bad enough, damaging economies and lives, with little critical thinking into the the idea that the cure may be worse than the disease.  Faith in "The Science" has become it's own religion or rather a cult. Those who do not believe are ridiculed.  That's a cult. Those who disagree or ask questions are disparaged and punished.  That's a cult.  Those who follow blindly or are willingly brainwashed are praised and rewarded with being allowed to continue their jobs and not starve to death and/or become homeless. That's a cult.

This is what happens with cults:

COVID doomsayers who love "The Science" have become a cult.  And it's a foolish cult at that; science is not meant to become policy and beyond that, "The Science" is clearly not complete or settled when it comes to COVID. Jordan Peterson discusses just that with Steven Crowder.

Project Veritas has started a new undercover sting, this time on insiders on COVID.  This is my biggest concern, science happening (in this case human deaths or dangerous side effects) and reporting on that being stifled. It's like they want you take the vaccine and they don't care if they have to lie to you to do so.  How can you make an informed decision if you hide truthful information from you?

And if they can lie about this, if they can lie to our faces about the failures of the Afghanistan withdrawal they can lie to us about anything. They can lie to us about what happened on January 6th, 2020 at the Capitol.  They can lie about who won the 2020 election.  Anything. 

The American Republic, the one and only bastion of true individual liberty in the history of the world, is on the precipice of becoming just another authoritarian regime. As a non-American, I implore you - do not let this happen to your country. You are better than this.

Comic books and how to cancel cancel culture

I've never been a big comic book fan, and don't pretend to know the industry. But this video caught my eye and I watched it, and there's a lesson to be learned from it.

Let me preface the video by observing that in an age of increasing competition from video games and anime as well as the younger generation not reading as much as previous generations in pursuit of those other types of entertainment, the comic book industry was bound to lose ground.  But here's the thing, when that happens, you have to get better at your craft, not worse.  It appears the comic industry has doubled down on wokeness instead, putting that ahead of good storytelling.  From a progressive perspective I get it; get them young and brainwash them into your cult.  But thankfully that will not succeed long term because you are shutting down industry after industry in doing so.  People will look elsewhere for their entertainment instead of being lectured to by idiots.

The lesson here has to do with how to cancel cancel culture. If you don't like something, don't buy it, don't support it.  Change the channel.  Many on the right are loath to support the idea of boycotts because it's cancel culture and there is something fundamentally wrong with cancelling someone's livelihood just because you disagree with them.  Disagreement is fundamental to a free society, and that's what the Left really want to cancel; no disagreement means no liberty.  Why play that game?

But building parallel societies is a form of indirect cancellation. We'll use GETTR or  Parler and get off of Twitter. That is in effect causing Twitter to begin to wither and die.  Of course it's no longer our fault because as they double down on thought policing their product, they grow smaller by degree each time. Just as those fed up with woke comic books buy retro comic books instead, or turn to video games or sports or something else to take it's place, you cancel cancel culture not by engaging it but by building a strong, healthy and appealing alternative.  It's like that old saw that says you attract more flies with honey than vinegar, except it's not flies you are attracting, it's minds.

More on Mass Psychosis

 From Academy of Ideas.  Does this ring a bell to you at all?

Canadian election meant nothing, and American pundits getting it wrong

The votes are still being counted so there may be a small shift of one or two here and there, but Canada has just completed a snap election that did absolutely nothing, despite high turnout. You'll likely see news clips of Prime Minister Trudeau claiming he has a mandate, it's a lie. I'm not just saying that as a disgruntled conservative who had been hoping for a better outcome (though that does describe me).  Take a look at the graph below.

Every party has almost exactly the same number of seats as it did after the 2019 election.  The changes were insignificant.  The net effect of this election was basically to revert to the results of the previous election and remove the impact of minor changes including members of parliament who left the liberal party after Trudeau's mistreatment of female party members.  Trudeau called a snap election unnecessarily, hoping to capitalize on great polling numbers, that faded quickly after he called the election. People it seems did not care for his opportunism.

In Canada, the executive and legislative branches of government are the same.   In order to have a majority government and control all legislation, a party needs 170 seats of the 338 seat available. The Prime Minister is the leader of the party with the most seats, whether they form a majority government or have to create a coalition with another party.  The Liberals had a minority government prior to yesterday's election, so they worked with the socialist New Democrat Party to get legislation passed. They had hoped to change that, but they failed. The Conservatives hoped for much more success with a new leader, he was so forgettable that they too failed. 

Unfortunately, the status quo is bad for Canada, as it ensures that the Liberal Party will continue to work with the socialist NDP party and continue to drift the country ever further leftward.

I have seen a lot of American pundits claim that Canada's Conservative Party is still a left leaning party when compared to Republicans. That is a gross inaccuracy.  The conservative voters in Canada in large part would be considered conservatives in America.  The same is true of the members in the Conservative Party.  But there is a significant problem.  Canada is dominated by left-leaning liberals and when combined with socialists, that represents the majority of the electorate.  Conservatives have won majority governments in parliament as recently as Stephen Harper's leadership less than a decade ago. But in order to do so, they have had to moderate their conservative values. The high-water mark for conservative voters in Canada is about 40%. So in winning, the Conservative Party have had to moderate their platforms to be palatable enough to hit that 38% to 40% range.  But when they win, they have been able to push the center back towards the right somewhat.  Stephen Harper lowered taxes, pushed conservative values but had to walk a thin line to do so.  The difficulty with that is that in order to get back to where a right-leaning Republican would feel at home living in Canada, it would take about 40 consecutive years of Conservative Party leadership and slow change.

That sucks, but it is the reality of the situation.  Canadian Conservatives are like Democrats in the U.S., they have to be dishonest about their positions in order to have any chance to win.  We don't love it, so don't judge us.  Saying I am not as conservative as Lisa Murkowski is offensive (don't worry it doesn't bother me) but more importantly it's outright wrong (that does bother me).

One more aside on this, in order to vote I either need an election card or two pieces of identification, one of which must have a photo and both must have my current address.  Why does that seem so difficult to do in some states? (I know the answer, but it really should be a big focus for Republicans nationally).

It's just a COVID question; no cancelling allowed

I find myself asking why the unending COVID scare is becoming unending.  Is the virus mutating faster than we can keep up?  Possibly but I don't think that's it.  Neither is it that deaths from COVID are unsustainable for humanity globally.  But lockdowns and masks and vaccine mandates persist and ramp  up time and again.

Why?

Could it have something to do with the fact that the same party that  unilaterally foisted Obamacare on America is trying to use the pandemic to foist single payer (government) health insurance on the entire nation?  Are they trying to leverage the pandemic to evolve a scenario where centralized health care appears to be the only option? As the pandemic drags into towards a second full year, the administration that promised a quick end with the supposedly "nothing to do with Trump" vaccines available, is continuing to up the COVID problem with intense hysteria-generating hype and illegal mandates.  

Why?

Who benefits from COVID mutations and continuing lockdowns and mandates?  Mostly nobody.  But Big Pharma does.  And Democrats do too but only under certain conditions.  Continued use of the pandemic pits one leftist (Rahm Emmanuel) rule "Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste" against another leftist Alinsky Rule "A tactic that goes on too long becomes a drag".  Two years of COVID hysteria are a drag to everyone, leftist foe and ally alike.  They risk losing support from their base by dragging this on to long.  So what's the potential upside?  If they can nationalize health care, they can achieve a longtime socialist goal as well as regain, likely even up the level of support from their base of support.

But how?

It's going to be argued as the only financially viable option, as this obscenely progressivist Newsweek article, full of erroneous arguments claims:

When the benefits of one country's investments in public goods spill over into other countries, international coordination is needed. When these spillovers are global—as is the case with pandemic preparedness and early response—this international coordination must be global.

The same principles should hold to payments—contributions should be universal and progressive. All countries that benefit, which is to say all countries, should pay something. Countries with the largest and most open economies should pay the most—both because they are able and because they gain the most in economic terms from pandemic prevention.

Not only are they haphazardly arguing for nationalized health care, but rather globalized health care, at least relative to pandemics, with richer countries like the U.S. paying a disproportionate share of the global cost.

Is this what you progressives really want? 

BLM as useful idiots?

Black Conservative Perspective makes an interesting suggestion about using Black Lives Matter (BLM) over their reaction to a New York City restaurant incident, as useful idiots to show that vaccination passports are causing division in America. I've argued for this approach myself in my Rules For Patriots (Rule #9). But it's tricky because BLM clearly wants to portray this as a racially motivated incident. 

However leftist policies have not just unintended consequences, but seriously dangerous ones; they are promoting racial division at the same time creating ridiculous COVID policies that facilitate further division, creating an amplification effect.  This is setting up a liberal versus liberal altercation wherein it might just be better to stand back and let the left eat itself instead of stepping into the fray. Additionally, you are putting a business that has been squeezed by Democrat COVID regulations and lockdowns, trying to comply with mandates just to stay in business into further jeopardy if you enable BLM in order to point out how asinine liberal policies actually are.  So are they just collateral damage in the bigger picture? Even if Carmine's is run by ultra-leftists (and I don't know that it is), conservatism is about protecting the little guy in the face of an overbearing government.  They shouldn't just be dismissed as collateral damage.

Lastly, I am 99% certain that BLM won't turn this into a vaccine passport issue, because for them it's a race issue.  They will focus on that.

All that said, they can still be useful idiots.  In fact they already are.  You are going to have ultra-liberal NYC prosecuting three black women, and BLM fighting them on it.  Either way, a leftist liberal body is going to lose this fight) and it doesn't matter which one it is because they are spending time and treasure fighting each other.  My biggest hope in this case is that the fight drags on for a long time, costs a lot for all involved (except the restaurant) and derails as much as possible on both sides.

The best Canadian candidate (who won't win)

With the Canadian election tomorrow and the Liberal Party's mysterious late resurgence in the polls vs. the Conservative Party, I thought I'd share a video with an interview with the leader of the underdog People's Party of Canada (the closest thing we have to Trump).  

In a comment on a YouTube post I mentioned I thought it was a wasted vote to support a party with only ~6% support in the polls (which may be a mirror of that U.S. guy with a 17% lead over president Trump in 2020).  Unfortunately I still believe that's true, but Maxime Bernier is a smart guy and he should have been chosen as the leader of the Conservative Party rather than the current leader.  His positions make the most sense.  Rather than just giving him and his newer party short shrift, I thought it would be beneficial to share his interview by Jordan Peterson. 

The administration is anti-American and anti-humanitarian

These people are being used.  A good administration would not allow this to happen, let alone encourage it for political gain.

Ask yourself, if most of these illegal immigrants are Haitian, why are they at the Texas border?