Recent posts.

facebook and youtube and twitter are ACTING like they've got something to hide. That's the thing. That's what they don't get. You may or may not have had an opinion about HCQ and C19, you may or may not think Stella Immanuel is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. But when the tech platforms suddenly come marching along in jackboots and disappearing articles and screaming about MISINFORMATION!!!! - they you've got to think something looks suspicious. They are showing with their own actions that there's something there.

*

A lot of young people and wanna-be young people came to Portland from small towns out of state, and bought into the hipster myth. Their conservative old towns and churches and families weren't cool enough for them. They deserved better. So they set about the task of making over themselves - and the city - into something ever more exciting, exotic, glamorous, and dangerous. And we've seen the result.

*

My observations about debating. (1) All of us have a filter in our brain, like the spam filter in your email inbox. What looks like junk, gets filtered out. If they are programmed to filter out your message, all the facts and logic in the world will be of no avail. Their thinking will not change until they update their spam filters.

(2) Visibility is the key thing. The left used its influence to exaggerate its own numbers, and to keep conservatives believing they were few and isolated. When this illusion collapses, the left's power to shame disintegrates.

3) At the end of the day, people go by experience. When day-to-day experience conflicts with the accepted narrative strongly enough and consistently enough, the narrative will have to go. People can only watch riots and Bible burnings for so long. At this point, a coherent, articulate alternate narrative will help them make sense of their world, and will be welcomed.

(4) Putting all of these factors together, what's going to win the day is for all of us to keep speaking out, courageously and clearly, and putting the lie to the leftist establishment's castle of illusion.

*

"Stay home, stay safe." Because if we could come out of hiding, we might learn how many more of us there are. And then their spell of fear would lose its power.

*

If I convince myself that most people are ignorant bigots, then I get to feel "special" just by not being a bigot.

If I believe the other guy is a nazi, then I only have to be 1 percent better than a nazi to be the good guy.

*

You put a whole population of law-abiding citizens under indefinite house arrest, sooner or later incarceration is gonna lose its value as a deterrent.

*

Recent posts.

The riots were never about a police killing, and the lockdowns were never about a virus.

Institutions and their petty rules are the refuge of the emotionally immature and the mentally unstable. They look to bureaucracies for the validation they are unable or unwilling to find in healthy human relationships and community.

The filter. We all have an information filter in our brain that acts like the spam filter in your email program. Its purpose is to filter out junk information so that your processor doesn't get overwhelmed. What looks like junk, gets ignored. It is the reason we screen out noise like the crazy guy ranting on the street corner. And thank G-d it's there, because we wouldn't be able to function without it. But like the spam filter in your inbox, you have to check it once in a while, because its algorithm is not infallible. You have to update your assumptions about what's reliable and what's junk; otherwise you could miss important information.

I don't have a lot of specialized expertise. Instead, I look at what I can observe directly. What I can observe directly is the people in power and their actions; what I can observe directly is the media and their actions.

The left used its influence in culture and social media to inflate its own numbers and to create the illusion that conservatives were few and isolated. They got into trouble when they started to believe their own propaganda. There were never as many of them as they wanted everyone to believe, and their Potemkin village has collapsed like a house of cards. Their tactic of shaming and ostracizing their opponents will backfire: in the end, they will be the lonely ones.

Dismantle systemic leftism.

Your body is made of bones and flesh; a robust system includes a rigid component and a flexible component.

Time is an economic good: a scarce commodity with alternative uses. Use it wisely.

If the hipsters would just stick to the things they do well - brewing craft beer and riding unicycles - it'd be great.

The leftists are destroying their own centers of power. It's almost as if they already know they've lost - like a retreating army burning everything behind it.

Covid doesn't scare me; contact tracing does.

Establish good habits - it's easier than breaking bad ones.

They say history is written by the victors. I say history is written by people who can write.