Jim: The logic of court eunuchry explains far, far too much of America c. 2026.
Phileas Frogg: Jim, Absolutely. The state’s willingness to employ coercive measures, even non-violent coercive measures, to achieve ends well beyond their prescribed scope should shock everyone with a conscience or self-respect. But then, they don’t want their court eunuch’s to have self respect, so all the better.
Jim: You know, compulsory and quasi-compulsory schooling is also a form of hostage-taking.
Not Fauci: Antibiotics work quite well. Panic only drives voter turnout to increase government power ‘for your safety’.
Bob Sykes: Hirsch is badly misinformed and confused. The function of the Ivies, and most modern “elite” schools, is not education but networking. They are the places where the children of the Ruling Class meet each other and begin to form alliances, or at least a common set of goals. The Medieval royal courts did the same job for the nobility, although the basic reason noble children were schooled and fostered at the royal courts was hostage taking to ensure against noble rebellions.
Jim: Is America actually worthy of this sort of knob-slobbering? Is the United State?
Bill: Even further back, in the 19th century, sodbusting American pioneers faced mental challenges in the plains: “Prairie madness or prairie fever was an affliction that affected European settlers in the Great Plains during their migration to, and settlement of, the Canadian Prairies and the Western United States in the 19th century. Settlers moving from urbanized or relatively settled areas in the East faced the risk of mental breakdown caused by the harsh living conditions and the extreme levels...
Phileas Frogg: If a government official is emphatically calling something, “evil,” that could, if pursued, accrue more power to the government, you know it’s evil.
Jim: Yeah… maybe. But Russia invaded the Ukraine, and some shady motherfuckers were running a billion bioweapons facilities there. As far as I know, nothing was ever released—and the war continues to grind on, I assume.
Phileas Frogg: When I was a child and I had all of the time in the world to be bored getting driven around in the backseat of a car, I used to look out at large buildings with strange corporate names and wonder what they did in them. I’d concoct stories about secret government programs, or occult meetings, or weapons research, etc. Then I’d imagine sneaking into them and discovering their nefarious schemes. As an adult I’ve come to realize, my boredom induced imaginative ramblings may...
Bob Sykes: “Reported” A nice weasel word. “I didn’t say it” Very nearly every news story out of Ukraine that is published in the western media is an outright lie, and the publishers know it. Those deep strikes are being ordered, directed, and conducted by actual US/NATO officers servicemen. Ukraine itself is a proxy and has no say in what is done. They just provide local meat for the Russian grinder. US/NATO troops have been active on the ground in Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union, well...
Phileas Frogg: Jim, I agree, but as a Catholic I still want the house cleaned up over at the Lateran Palace. With regard to bioweapons, you might be right, but I always liked to think of them as the, “Poor Nations Nuke.” I could be wrong, but I don’t think we’ve actually tried invading a nation armed with them, so they’re at least sufficiently dissuasive as to prevent American military intervention.
Jim: Phileas, we don’t need to further expand the power of the Vatican to resuscitate manly honor and suppress the women and the olds. Even the Congress’s Commerce, Equal Protection, and Naturalization Powers, properly understood, could do that. As for bioweapons, they have radically different properties and a much-different activation curve. I frankly doubt that they are actually all that useful.
Phileas Frogg: Jim, Funnily enough that’s one of the reasons I’m in favor of re-establishing the Papal States as key step in the remediation of the Roman Curia, despite the fact that it’s administered by dubiously Catholic individuals at present. As for modern bioweapons, it’s inevitable and stupid, but perfectly rational. Not every nation can afford, develop, or manage to sneak a nuke into operational existence, particularly under the watchful eye of the various Great Powers, so...
Jim: A law without a court, without an army, is hardly a law at all.
Bob Sykes: The Russians have already set up a separate combat arm for drones.
Isegoria: I’m getting strong Terminator-future vibes from drones hunting survivors in the rubble.