I’m typing this the morning of Christmas Eve, which is rainy – and warm – here in The Woods of rural SW Virginia. Just a quick few lines to thank all of you for being a part of this traveling sideshow. In particular, I’d like to thank you for the quality of your contributions, which often get me thinking along new lines. It’s like wiring batteries in series; we get more juice together than individually.
Also, for the psychological boost I get from knowing there are other “kooks” out there who want to live according to the moral principle of voluntary interaction and peaceful coexistence. That not everyone is a Clover. And that those who aren’t are almost always of a much higher caliber, intellectually as well as personally. I find it of great significance that the non-Clovers can discuss without resorting to personal attacks; respond with facts when challenged and will acknowledge facts when presented with them… whereas the invariable pattern with Clovers is … derision, evasion and obfuscation. Almost as invariably delivered in mangled English.
This gives me hope because while we’re outnumbered, we’re not outgunned.
An elephant can defeat an army of ants.
So, Merry Christmas to all of you. Even Clover.
Not that he’ll have the grace to respond in kind!
-Eric
A few days late, but Merry Christmas to everyone.
🙂
Even Clover, who I hope was leaves-deep in “fertilizer.” 😀
It was Christmas Eve babe. In the drunk tank. An old man said to me, won’t see another one. And then he sang a song. The Rare Old Mountain Dew. I turned my face away. And dreamed about you. I’ve got a feeling. This year’s for me and you.
So happy Christmas. I love you baby. I can see a better time. When all our dreams come true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jbdgZidu8
The Story Of The Pogues & Kirsty McColl – “Fairytale of New York”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUSNzqqLFT0
Merry Christmas Eric and everyone else that visits here,
May next year be better than last.
Bevin,
I share your sentiments about the FBI show. (More hero worship) I put the show in the same vein (probably not fair since I have not seen either show) as Blue Bloods (I liked Tom Seleck better as Magnum P.I.).
I miss shows that ridiculed cops and other authority figures. I pray for the day when anyone who refers to a cop as a “hero” will be looked upon as tetched in the head.
My favorite cop show was “Car 54, Where Are You?” Of course that was made in a very different time, before government ran totally amok and cops became a militarized occupying force.
Hopefully everyone here had a great holiday without running afoul of the kostumed klowns.
I watched an old episode of CHiPS recently. Halloween; kid walks up to cop, points squirt gun at him and sprays away. Cop (Ponch) accepts it with good humor.
Today’s Hero Cop would have killed the kid,said he feared for his “safety.”
Dear eric,
What you just wrote is 100% true.
It is not hysteria. It is not hyperbole. It is hard fact.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. This is something many of us predicted would happen based on logical extrapolation.
When we made this prediction, a couple of decades ago, it was still a “head trip”. We knew the forces were all lined up. Things logically had to go this way. But it was all so theoretical. It all felt unreal. I for one, didn’t quite believe my own projections.
Today, it has actually come to pass. It is no longer something that can be dismissed as “tinfoil hat paranoia”.
How sad is that?
Sic transit gloria mundi.
I been watching reruns of chips lately too, it shows how much not just how cop shows have changed, but real police since the late 1970’s.
Both Jon and Ponch (the main characters) never draw their guns. Not one time over the whole shows run (one minor character does in one episode after being knocked to the ground) . Not even when they are attacked.
They would take defensive moves (stepping back, taking cover), and put their hands closer to their guns, but they never touch them. It’s what real cops once did, but no longer do.
I have heard that many departments in the past would require an investigation and report into ANY time an officer would draw his gun (even if it is not fired). I imagine that hassle kept guns holstered at times. I think that should be standard practice again. If its out, the officer should be held accountable to why its out.
That is true. Back in the day police would generally draw a weapon only as a last resort and in most departments there would be a thorough investigation any time a weapon was fired. Public safety was upheld to be more important than officer safety. Today’s SOP is shoot first and ask questions later, whitewash as necessary with “I felt threatened.”
The old shows “Dragnet” and “Adam-12” are pretty much love letters to the LAPD, but producer and star Jack Webb was a stickler for accurately portraying police procedure. Any time a weapon was fired for any reason the officer(s) involved would be sweating the outcome of an investigation.
Dear Rich, Jason,
Agree.
The key question of course “What led to this change?”
The answer is the Myth of Authority, the unexamined and insidious premise that underlies all government, even well-intentioned “limited government”.
Until a critical mass of humanity realizes it is under no obligation whatsoever to obey complete strangers merely because don funny costumes and flash shiny badges, this trend will not end.
Thing is that hollywood ideal of cops doesn’t even exist any more. The ideal itself has fallen. I’ve typed it before but I’ll repeat it, “COPS” has been on the air so long doing the same thing it has become a record of the decline in the nature of police work in this country. Because it’s a constant, the way the show is done, produced, etc we can accurately judge the change, the delta, between then and now. Sure both end points are idealized but the difference isn’t.
Dear Brent,
Just checked.
COPS began its 28th season in the summer of 2015.
Ironically, it has inadvertently provided the public with a video record of the fascist militarization of police activity.
Dear Mith,
Agree on all points.
Sickening authority worship. Ever wonder what Nazism would look like if it ever came to Amerika?
Well wonder no more. It’s here.
Ditto Seleck. Von Mises wrote about how private detectives were always smarter than the dumb flatfeet in the old “noir” crime novels and films.
Bevin,
One can still find old radio programs of Phillip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Gunsmoke, Have Gun — Will Travel on the net. (Archive.org is one location)
I usually enjoy the noir style films and radio programs.
Gunsmoke’s Marshall Dillon is the example of how a peace officer should act. Paladin in HGWT is the knight without armor in a savage land.
regarding VonMises — Private detectives needed to be smarter or they would soon be out of work.
Dear Mith,
Yep.
As usual, the NAP means merciless market discipline. Merciless market discipline ensures that the customer is king.
The free market place “protects and serves”, the way Big Brother and the Nanny State were supposed to, but don’t.
No government will ever protect the public from evil, because the government is the very evil the public most needs protection from. https://anenemyofthestate.wordpress.com/quotations-from-chairman-zhu/
bevin, it keeps me up at night…the very reason I’m an insomniac. I can rarely block it out and think nice, pleasant things.
Dear 8sm,
I remember how many decades ago, people pretty much dismissed the premise of Sinclair Lewis’ dystopian novel “It Can’t Happen Here”.
Back then, when I was still a minarchist, and unaware of how “Minarchism always becomes maxarchism”, I pretty much dismissed the possibility.
I never imagined I would live to see it actually materialize.
Which of the current candidates doesn’t resemble Buzz Windrip in one way or another?
Donald Trump probably comes closest.
In 1936 Senator Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, a charismatic and power-hungry politician, wins the election as President of the United States on a populist platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, and promising each citizen $5,000 a year. Portraying himself as a champion of traditional American values
But none of the others from either wing of the War Party are far behind.
Merry Christmas Eric, to you and all the regulars here who help keep my sanity by knowing there are others who recognize how far off course we are in the Amerikan police state. Hoping 2016 will bring some improvement but looks pretty bleak so far.
Maybe it will be one of those “it’s darkest before dawn” timelines. But somehow, the people on this site(esp. eric), help me maintain a bit of sanity in a world turned upside down. Peace and prosperity to all.
Amen to that!
Irony intended.
As far as 2016 is concerned, the S may very well HTF this year.
The Fed has got to be pretty close to the breaking point by now. The whole rotten mess could “collapse” sometime this year, the way the WTC towers “collapsed” on 9/11.
bevin, I just hope it can hang on to spring. I guess I should be listing what I can grow in freezing weather. There is one crazy old white cow that won’t get into the pen to be hauled to another place. I reckon her owner, myself and a few others could make short work of her and make a lot of jerky and sausage(shoot a few hogs)….boil the sausage and hang it with the jerky……have a few “fresh steaks” right off.
Well, we have the Siberian Express moving in on us today. It’s already had me working on sealing the pumphouse better. Wish I could wrap the house and barn with clear plastic. I have oxygen bottles if need be.
Since I used to be a bottle tester for compressed gas of all types and a certified oxygen technician, I’ll let everyone in on a not so well kept secret, no matter what bottle oxygen is in, it all came from the same big tank. I haven’t had time to gather the materials to build that used oil heater but I always think of it at times like this.
Dear 8sm,
“make a lot of jerky”
Funny you should mention that.
Check this out.
How to make a nutritious superfood for survival that lasts decades
Tuesday, December 22, 2015 by: Daniel Barker
(NaturalNews) It may come as a surprise to learn that the most nutritionally-complete food on the planet is not only easy to make at home, but can also be stored unrefrigerated for many years without spoiling.
Dubbed the “original MRE,” or, “Meal, Ready-to-Eat,” pemmican is a survival superfood that was developed by Native Americans many centuries ago. It contains everything the body needs to sustain itself in a healthy fashion for an extended period of time.
Pemmican consists primarily of powdered dried meat mixed in equal amounts with rendered animal fat. The early Americans used meats such as buffalo and elk; today, pemmican is typically made with beef.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/052403_pemmican_superfood_recipe_nutritious_survival_food.html#ixzz3vTJFbiaZ
bevin, when I was a young teen we were hauling hay one year and filled an old ranchhouse full of it. On the NE corner there was a room with screen wire for walls to the outside that contained old hanging meat that appeared to be fine. We looked at it a lot and determined it was probably very tough but edible although we didn’t try it. The house hadn’t been occupied for quite some time…..years at least.
“although we didn’t try it”
I wouldn’t have either.
After all, I saw the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”.
I hadn’t considered that. Times change in 50 years though so it might be a thought these days. The wife and I were considering what movies to watch on Christmas day. I opted for Christmas Vacation but we didn’t have it on DVD so we watched CV2 which was pretty funny. Then we looked for other things. Natural Born Killers, a movie with some serious thoughts in the theme won out over The Devil’s Rejects, a true story. Hangover 2 was next up and that’s nothing but hilarious, even better than Hangover.
Well, it’s about to be a “white” or otherwise holiday, high winds, frozen rain with 12 ” of some sort of white stuff predicted. I’ll try to dream of south Pacific islands, drinks with little umbrellas and native girls wearing next to nothing.
It was difficult to dream of tan native girls and drinks with little umbrellas listening to the sheets of sleet hitting the house and being “dogpiled” by one dog and a plethora of cats. At 2 am when the power failed it got right chilly. CJ couldn’t get close enough and cats continued to pile up on me. At 6am when the power returned the house was in the 50’s since the wind was blowing 35mph.
And now it’s worse today after a brief respite. Winds from 35-45 gusting above 50.
As the yankee in the Chicago office said one year “You don’t get enough cold weather in Texas to justify rear window de-icers”. The guy in the Lubbock office laughed since nobody could get out of the parking lot for the deep snow and ice. Naw, it never gets cold here.
Except we call your cold days ‘average’ or even ‘warm’.
“You don’t get enough cold weather in Texas to justify rear window de-icers”.
Hahaha…
Having lived in Ottawa, Canada for two years, I know what he means.
Thanks, Mike!
eric, good cheer and good New Year. May you and the rest of us achieve more of our collective and individual goals this next year and remain true to libertarianism and seek freedom together.
To those of you who believe (like I do) that Y’shua (Jesus) came to save the world, “Merry Christmas and Peace on Earth.”
Those who do not, I can only say, “Good Luck.”
PtB, why not say merry Christmas to all anyway? There’s never too much good will no matter what your belief. While some may celebrate Christmas, celebrations at this time of year began at least as far back, and probably much further back, six thousand years ago or more.
A celebration of food and good cheer during these cold, short, dark days of the year(for a great part of the world) are surely welcomed by all.
No matter what you want to call a celebration this time of year, it’s certainly good to get together in good spirit and wish everyone on earth a happy, healthy and prosperous future.
In that vein, I say to all, good cheer, good health and as you said “good luck” and as I think all of us here would say, FREEDOM!
Now pass the eggnog, fire up the Kush and pig out!!!
8 – you are right (as usual). I apologize for my narrow-minded ‘greeting.’
I guess instead I should cue Tiny Tim (not the one with the ukelele) and say, “God bless us, everyone!
I’m right there with you my friend, right there with you. God or not, let’s bless each other and as tiny Tim says, one and all. amen…..no pun intended.
Dear Phil,
I agree with 8sm.
I’m a hardcore atheist, but I say “Merry Christmas” to people anyway.
The fact that the term “Christmas” refers to “Christ” is in my view, not terribly important.
” Pagan, or non-Christian, traditions show up in this beloved winter holiday, a consequence of early church leaders melding Jesus’ nativity celebration with pre-existing midwinter festivals. Since then, Christmas traditions have warped over time, arriving at their current state a little more than a century ago.
Read on for some of the surprising origins of Christmas cheer, and find out why Christmas was once banned in New England. “
Pagan Roots? 5 Surprising Facts About Christmas
by Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | December 22, 2012 08:39pm ET
http://www.livescience.com/25779-christmas-traditions-history-paganism.html
Bad news, kids.
http://imgur.com/JCKyqrD
Jihad and rubber duckies
http://i.imgur.com/Z82EhBS.jpg
Christmas snow angel
http://i.imgur.com/BrZM4pd.gifv
Dear Tor,
I can’t help it, but that picture of what’s her face from “Quantico” just cracks me up.
That show is the biggest joke on TV. It’s even more ridiculous than NCIS. It’s a cross between a copsucker show and a high school show.
It’s so horrible, I know.
Another good laugh is watching Priya as boxer Mary Kom with english subtitles. Pretty ridiculous that’s for sure. At least the UK narratives have a vestige of humanity left in them. America films and TV shows seem targeted towards pre-cogs, cyborgs and drones or something.
Soon the only jobs remaining in the homeland will be foreseeing crimes while watching surveillance cams and lounging in our photon milkbaths in our iTubs. Who even cares what the Minority Reports think and say.
What a waste of time and lives it all is. Collecting evidence. Establishing a narrative. Educating everyone on what each persons version of events is. I say kill or wound someone in the act of a “crime”, or else just move on and forget it. What a load of moronic nonsense.
Chaoro (Lori) Full Video | Mary Kom | Priyanka Chopra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyreLU0-60Y
American TV is almost universally unwatchable at this point. I’ve been in Houston area for several weeks, and just the other night, I sat thru an episode of Blue Bloods where the bloated Magnum DHS threw a reporter in jail for failing to reveal her source. Pretty sure Streicher and Goebbels wrote the script and music.
The crushing dumbness used to dissipate when I moved from place to place, but I think the entire homeland is a lost cause now.
America: Dumb all over… a little ugly on the side
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIVuULbLySU
– – – –
Blue Bloods Season 6 Episode 10 “Flags Of Our Fathers”
Danny is interrogated by the District Attorney’s investigator when his ex-partner is accused of planting evidence in order to wrap up a homicide case. Also, when radical anti-government activists threaten to publicly burn an American flag, Frank grapples with the limits of free speech.
– – – –
I don’t think even a starving North Korean could take these TV plot lines seriously, or keep from laughing after reading the headlines of the the Houston Chron though I’m sure he’d try so at least he’d get his dinner rations.
Dear Tor,
William Brugh Joy, a great Jungian psychologist I had the privilege of being friends with, used to say that motion pictures, and by implication, TV shows and other popular entertainment, were essentially “collective dreams” that reveal where a society’s “collective head” is at.
Shows such as the ones we’re talking about suggest that ‘Murcans today are in a pretty sorry state in terms of evolutionary consciousness.
The worse trait of ‘Murcans? The more competent and value producing. The more they seem willing to submit to enslaving agreements and systems.
I find this unforgivable. Unlike Jean, I won’t kill or even lightly wound anyone over this defect. Nor do I hope for any third parties to do this for me.
Instead, I will take what I want despite them. If my skirting of agreed protocols ends up weakening them and thwarting their ability to rule. I’m not going to worry about it.
If you are a cooperating part of an organism that violates laissez faire. Then you can’t absolve yourself or ask for mercy, just because its against your will, this really is not much of an excuse. To some extent this covers all nations, but I am only incarcerated in a single nation, so that is all I concern myself with.
I will refuse to officially or beneficially cooperate with every single one of them, since for all intents and purposes, they’re each inseparable. They each cling to some idiocy or lunacy of some sort, and they each prefer to drown in their preferred ignorance, rather than let go of their Sisyphean stone of choice. And live for themselves.
Anyway. I’m 30 minutes into Trumbo, and this film illustrates the current impasse perfectly. Bryan Cranston is brilliant as the titular protagonist. The delusion that there ever was a “cold war” is insane.
The version of communism presented in the film. As being about sharing and cooperation. Is absolutely laughable, in my eyes. But that isn’t the point.
But that will never mean I am on “the side” of capitalism, and against communism. It doesn’t even mean I would be on some side, if crony capitalism were to fall, and true capitalism were to emerge.
I reject the notion of pre-cognition. That I can label something as bad, and then turn off my brain afterwards. War mongering, De facto royalty and ruling classes, crony capitalism, all these things exist, and compete in the same arena with what I’d like to gain traction.
Each has its good points and bad points. Its costs and benefits. Nothing need be out of bounds to discuss or contemplate. Anything worth having, doesn’t need any approbation from me.
Nor should it need my loyalty or protection. The local agora is in fine form and doing what it does best. Any busy street corner has all manner of things available for sale. If that’s not the best place to get eggs and milk, that’s our fault, not the agora’s failing.
No one is restraining you from
But be that as it may, it will never mean I am on some side against such a utopian folly.
If China, Russia, Brics, Caliphate, whatever other nations should “win” some war against the Federal reserve bank alliance, I won’t care one bit.
As fond as I am of everyone here, I am not a pledged part of any “we” with any of you, in even the most basic sense. I reject all forms of the “Grand Fairytale” and if you are similarly inclined to do so, great. If not, that’s fine.
Maybe clover killed his parents, and is living in their basement collecting their social security checks as he spews his hatred and ignorance on the webs.
I am not against this. I have nothing to do with whatever the Leroy, IL cretin chooses to do with his life.
Compiling some kind of dossier on clover is meaningless the way its currently done. Of what significance is it to say that clover is part of the 7 billion “evil” or “immoral” people.
When you agree there are nothing more than sides to be chosen, you are dehumanizing yourself and everyone else. When you lessen your scope of intellect, into deciding which compulsory moral system is the best, you are pretty much a lost cause philosophically.
Being merely less of a clover than clover, is still being a clover. Still sub-human, demoralizing, and an absolute horror to behold by any self-sovereign, individualist, being, who guards his ego against any mass moral ponzi scheme, no matter how popular.
Dear Tor,
“The more competent and value producing. The more they seem willing to submit to enslaving agreements and systems. ”
Yes. What Rand referred to as “the consent of the victim”.
Who, sad to say, are also victimizers.
Jobs. Gates. Musk.
Even the smallest businessman who stays “within the law” will find himself forced to victimize his customers. And periodically play the victim as he fills out and submits his required reports and payments to the thugs of record.
Let’s say I want to make a few bucks preparing tax returns around this time of year.
I used to meet all kinds of great guys doing this seasonal chore but not nearly as often anymore. It’s become ridiculous at this point to do such things.
Black Market Tax Preparers Continue To Defy IRS
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2013/11/18/black-market-tax-preparers-continue-to-defy-irs/
What are they even talking about. All tax preparers are presumed innocent only if a PTIN and vetted and examined. Fuck that.
This is true of almost any profession. Why should flying a plane need anymore oversight than riding a bike. There is no valid reason, only the slippery slope of the better off you are, the easier it is to just comply and not even care. Or better still, pay someone to comply for you.
There’s still a great life to be had here. But to say you can just follow the rules and be moral, just doesn’t seem possible anymore. Larken Rose’s escalators, have escalated every lucrative thing to defcon 10 where the only moral action is to evade and avoid and not comply with the evil bloodsucking psychopaths.
Imagine wartime Nazi germany. No where to hide and exist really, while being in compliance. Yet after the war a few years, it was absolutely possible to be a good guy and play by the rules, because things were mostly back to normal.
In terms of autos and bikes…
It’s one thing to do some repair work as a paying hobby in your garage. And another thing entirely to fill out reams of big brother paperwork and demand everyone’s papers and keep logs of all your customers and be part of the whole criminal injustice economic prison guard system that reports on car owners to stay in compliance.
There’s not even a word for how evil it is to be a successful businessman anymore. These bastards have made it nearly impossible to perform the simple act of exchange without simultaneously performing several acts of police procedural enforcement and merciless inhuman prole control and abuse.
I wanted to fly, once.
Love airplanes; love the idea of being free up there. But that’s the problem. You’re not free up there. Much less down here. Flight plans, endless paperwork and micromanagement.
Dear Eric,
The film “The Great Waldo Pepper” dealt with that to some extent.
The Great Waldo Pepper basically depicts barnstorming activity in the 1920s and the accidents that led to aviation regulations by the Air Commerce Act.
As many of us have noted before, It is in the nature of “limited government” to become unlimited government.
Imagine building your own plane and flying wherever you’d like. It’s certainly technically possible.
One could even concede no fly zones around large urban centers and sensitive industrial and urban areas.
But it’s not socially possible, because of the Great American Fairytale. Where the “excess” is taken from men at gunpoint to do the things the great oppressors deem critical to being done.
There would have been millions of individuals like Howard Hughes, who could have done unimaginable things.
But America has gone full soviet retard, and there’s no known way back from full soviet retard that leaves much of anything intact and usable.
We steal from the great men not because its easy, but because its hard. A great nation without any great men. What a horrorshow it’s all been since 1861.
Another name for the “civil war” and “southern reconstruction” might be the war on wealth.
Then there was the war on silver at some point. The people who held their wealth in gold managed to screw over the people whose wealth was held in silver.
And then the crushing blow to successful people. The income tax. Old money people and high earners found themselves picked clean by the government vultures.
The term Gay Nineties itself began to be used in the 1920s in the United States and is believed to have been created by the artist Richard V. Culter, who first released a series of drawings in Life magazine entitled “the Gay Nineties” and later published a book of drawings with the same name. (Prices begin at $500 for a used copy.)
Novels of authors like Edith Wharton and Booth Tarkington documented the high life of the “old money” families. By the 1920s, the decade was nostalgically seen as a period of pre-income tax wealth for a newly emergent “society set”. The railroads, the agricultural depression of the Southern United States, and the dominance of the United States in South American markets and the Caribbean meant that industrialists of New England seemed to have been doing very well.
But by the year 1900. The American Frontier was closed, and more and more people were being ensnared in the Tax Slavery system.
Gone were the days of enjoying the fruits of your labor. Gone were the days of finding an unoccupied spot of land and trying to build something from scratch.
No more world’s fairs. And Eiffel Towers.
Belle Époque
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_%C3%89poque