"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Many, many people worship Satan without ever considering their actions as such worship. As an Authority on the subject once said to some such,
“You are of your father, the devil (diabolos = slanderer, false accuser), and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of lies.”
Just sayin’. . .
Is it wrong to experience a sort of “zloradstvo”1 when evil experiences a setback, no matter how small? Let me introduce the “poster children” for so-called “Net Neutrality.”
And if you think that’s an extreme argument, then let me remind you of Lord Acton’s pithy adage, Parkinson’s Law, Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, and the Eight Most Dreaded Words in the English Language:
“I’m from the government. I’m here to help.”
I don’t really want to crack a smile at the puling whines of “net neutrality” advocates, but I just can’t help myself. . . (OK, I could suppress it, but I don’t. 😉 )
[“Net Neutrality” is nothing more than a “bureaucrappic” scheme to place a 5,000-pound government thumb on the scale to determine market winners/losers, thus improving the market for. . . graft, and worse. h.t. to Perri Nelson for the clarification that genuine net neutrality is different to the bureaucrappic scheme Title II enabled.]
1Russian. An order of magnitude beyond the German “schadenfreude,” as only Russians can do. . .
Gee. . . Kurt Schlichter commenting on the fact that the Sun rose in the East again this morning, or some such. *psst* Kurt: the FBI has been a disgrace for DECADES in its over-reach and selective persecution of citizens. What’s “news” is that some folks are just now noticing.
“Liberals Have Turned the FBI Into a Disgrace”
Kurt (and other pseudo-conservatives) have only noticed it now that their own ox is being gored.
Living the 1970s dream: A lesson in critical thinking
This is an excellent exercise. I spent my childhood in the 50s, teens in the 60s. Nowadays, even most on “welfare” live in more creature comfort, with many more convenience factors and just flat-out luxuries than we could even have imagined. Whenever I feel a yen for more (of whatever), I still try to ask myself just how much what I desire is really necessary. *shrugs* I still succumb all too often to the siren call of “more,” but recalling just how satisfied I once was with much, much less helps keep things a wee tad more restrained.
[I’m still not commenting about facts known/unknown about the LV shootings, mmmK?]
I’ve seen some folks blustering about how they would have reacted had they been in the target area in LV while shots were being fired. Unless you have previously been a “live target,” or in another situation threatened with legitimate (REAL) sudden threat of imminent death, just shut up.
Thatisall.
Puerto Rico is broken. It’s the US’s “corruptocratic third world county” territory.
Of course, a large part of the infrastructure issues resulted from years of neglect and graft (“repairs” and “maintenance” that have been more graft than actually effective maintenance and repairs to previous damage) resulting from “well-intentioned” leftist kakistocrats who, very naturally, have seen most of the benefits of decades of “feddle gummint” paternalism.
Puerto Rico is broken.. . and broke. It’s a look at the future of “Left Coast” Kalifornication” and has only missed being America’s Venezuela by means of sucking funds from the mainland.
Puerto Rico has wonderful natural resources and a people who are not afraid of working (as those who have worked on the “mainland” have demonstrated for decades). It’s not quite the “beggar sitting on a gold mine,” as the one-time reference to Mexico’s natural wealth once put it, but it is choked by bad governance.
The feds “broke” Puerto Rico, and now we own it. . .
If the people who say they are protesting cops killing blacks were serious about the matter, they’d be protesting the Democrat policies that have been oppressing blacks and leading directly to these problems in the cities where, by an large, almost all such killings occur. They should be “burning down the plantation”* as it were, but instead they are simply hand-waving.
The hellholes of the US are Democrat-run cities.
They are not protesting such, therefore I discount their protests as hypocritical BS. (And no, I don’t give them “credit” for their ignorance, because any such ignorance is willful.)
8Metaphor alert!
For years you have probably seen and heard folks mock “Duck and Cover” as a stupid response to a nuclear attack. Yeh, mocking good advice is really easy to do.
What? “Duck and Cover” is good advice?
Yep. But it takes someone who’s willing to stop, do their own homework, and actually think to recognize that, which is why I won’t do your homework and thinking for you.
I will say that Dean Ing’s fictional account of surviving a nuclear attack in Pulling Through (also here) might be one of the easiest pills to swallow to combat the infection of stupid mockery from those who have NOT done their own homework and who cannot (or will not) think.
Meanwhile,
Just about no matter where I go on the Interwebs (a few bloggers aside), I have from time to time been chastised by poorly-read folks for my vocabulary. Hey, lazy-asses! I work HARD to dumb it down for you!
Thatisall.
II Timothy 3:1-9:
3:1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: (2) For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, (3) unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, (4) traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, (5) having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! (6) For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, (7) always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. (8) Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith; (9) but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was.
This really seems like a case of “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” because when I consider what is known about people throughout history, this seems pretty. .. normal. *sigh*