Millennials v Boomers - Part 2: Digital vs Analog thinking
Posted On: Wednesday - January 5th 2022 2:16PM MST
In Topics: Preppers and Prepping Americans Artificial Stupidity Muh Generation
(Thanks much to Adam Smith for the appropriate graphic!)
This post is not really a continuation of Part 1, as the previous post was just an argument against disparaging or praising an entire generation based based on politics. This was to BE the post, and the meme given above given to me by Mr. Smith pretty much gives the point away.
First, let me insert a quick point here based on commenter E.H. Hail's comment regarding the generational names and definitions. The Strauss & Howe books that I will someday review (well worth reading, IMO - Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 and The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us about America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny) are not the be-all-to-end-all. In fact, the reason the Boomer generation is smaller* by their definition is only to fit in with their theories of the cycles of history, archetypes, cohorts, ahhh, I'll review the book later...
Additionally, Mr. Hail points out that perhaps the Zoomers v Boomers is the real battle. I will keep "Millennials" for reasons of:
1) I've already got the nice graphic up!
2) The animosity I read and hear is usually between the Millennials and Boomers, or at least written/said that way.
3) Laziness aside, I believe the oldest age cut-off of 40 by S&H, and 38 by E.H. Hail** works fairly well for my point here. The youngest age cut off would be 18 by S&H and 25 by Mr. Hail with the latter's "transition" period to the solid Zoomers of 20 y/o. (Oops, I didn't define the Millennial in the previous post, except for referring to the ages near the end.)
Please think of both Millennials and adult-age Zoomers, any by S&H and 7 years worth by Mr. Hail, when reading this post.
I won't get too specific about pointing to a comment under an Unz Review John Derbyshire article that I want to address. I know the commenter neither by his writing nor his handle. The comment itself is here, and it's one I agree with for the most part except the one paragraph below.
The main point of the comment was something I've read and written about before. That would be the real misunderstanding by some Boomer-age people about the economic situation for the Millennials. The economics of America during the young adulthood of Millennials are simply not the same as they were for Boomers. No, you CANNOT just get a mail-clerk job at a big corporation and work your way up to upper management! No, you CANNOT work full-time each summer to pay for college! No, you CANNOT have two new cars and a 2,000 square-foot house and raise 3 kids on your middle-middle class salary For these, I should add ... or not bloody likely, anyway.
That's where the commenter starts, but I'll address the part in (my) bold.
Pay them a decent wage, train them, then watch the magic happen. The zoom crowd has been processing tremendous amounts of data every day of their lives. Watch a boomer try to play Minecraft or a FPS, it will mentally defeat them. Growing up on a farm (or the 1960s) will not allow your brain to reach its full potential simply due to lack of stimulation (Flynn Effect).OK, well first, you know how I feel about video games. They should have freakin' quit while they were ahead with Space Invaders, Asteroids***, and Tetris. See our old post Video Games, great and stupid.
Yes, there video games before Minecraft, ones that required hand/eye coordination, quick reflexes, and visualization. The rules are simple, but to get better and better takes lots of skill. That is different in a major way from most of those new ones I've seen. Now, the idea is to memorize different tricks, get points in all kinds of different ways, and play with more than one opposing player, with much more interaction between players.
The commenter, astute enough, IMO, is probably referring to all the other electronics that Millennials (yeah, and especially Zoomers) are much better at making use of. Yes, young people are great at thinking digitally. It's If you do this, this happens, it may look a bit gay, but swipe over here, then click there, remember this .. next app, it works about the same except if you click this other thing, you get a menu in which you can swipe this other thing up … and so on .. You can move information around with little manual effort like nobody could before. Bye bye filing cabinets, paperwork, and even handwriting****.
Their world might be made up of nothing but information now, but the real world is not. Physical things must work for the world to run. Will the Millennials be able to keep the real world running? You can swipe here, tap here, or more seriously, add this software routine here and reprogram this other device, but real things have a structure, electrical circuits, sensors, etc. and must work under conditions of force/pressure, temperature, vibration, and so on.
What the Millennials have lost (or never had) is lots of analog thinking that the Boomer and older generations have/had. I’ve had a young lady teaching a class who got the Bernoulli principal backwards. She was great at saying how “if this happens and this is set, this other thing would happen.”, but she told us that the fluid flows from the low pressure to the high. She didn’t actually UNDERSTAND, Jack Squat! (I didn't bother to argue, as she wouldn't have understood and she'd already blew me off on another, even simpler thing.)
Without talking about engineers here, that guy on the tractor would know how a carburetor works, understand torque, speed, and power, and lots of things that a Millennial could not wrap his mind around. He'd inherently understand things something about static fluids, heat transfer, structures, and lots more concepts, not in an engineering calculation sense, but just in the practical sense.
What happens when the STHF? What are the, even smart, Millennials going to do when the iCrap craps out? Maybe right now they don't need to simply jump-start a vehicle, fix an appliance, or drill a hole, but simple skills that the Boomers have had for most of their lives are ones that many Millennials can't help with. Those electronics only help in looking up the answers, but without a deep understanding, "searching it up" won't cut it.
To me it'a a matter of digital vs analog thinking. I don't refer to the digital devices vs obsolete analog ones, but the real world is still analog. It's 2 types of understanding: "If this happens, then those 2 things are set, and you have turned off this other thing, this whole deal will work" is digital thinking. "Is this thing gonna hold up?", "What will the water do if I build it like this?", and "what am I actually doing when I let up this clutch pedal?" are analog thinking.
As I wrote in the previous post, differences between these generations are not inherent in the individuals. They have just grown up in different environments. When the SHTF, we may not hear any more of that "OK, Boomer." bit. "OK, Millennial, shift your gears."
* I meant to write this back to you in my reply comment, Mr. Hail.
** His comments are under the previous post - one can't link directly, as you have likely all gathered.
*** I can't tell you how much I respect the job they did with Asteroids - you had monochrome vector graphics and two buttons. Yet, the game made sense, you needed reflexes and speed, and those rumbling sounds from the sub-woofers, it was intense, man! (Especially at the Circle-K while you're consuming a 64 oz. Big Gulp.)
**** John Derbyshire just wrote something on this the other day as one segment of his December diary.
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Millennials v Boomers - Part 1: Political Differences
Posted On: Tuesday - January 4th 2022 4:50PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Humor Americans Muh Generation
(As is often the case, this post was going to be about something else. Then I digressed enough to make it long enough to be 2 or 3 posts.)
Today Peak Stupidity talks about m-m-my g-g-g-generation* a little more. I am not quite a Boomer**, but I tend to root for Team Boomer in the bouts between them and the Millennials, Zoomers, whomever. ("Zoomer" has gotten especially appropriate in the last 2 years, as before it had nothing to do with the Zoom remote meetings program.) I may have written this before on Peak Stupidity, but I don't believe that there are stark differences in the basic make-up of each generation. Each is a product of its environment at the time the individuals within were most impressionable. With the exception of the changing demographics, which IS another factor, people are people.
Let's talk political differences, as that's often what the complaints are about, going both ways. For this I always think about voting results. In general things have shifted left, of course, or toward Totalitarianism anyway. There have been those fighting this, not the politicians, but real people, all the way. There's never been an overwhelming majority of people on either side, as if there had been, "we"'d have voted ourself into Communism long ago.
In elections in which there are stark differences, there have always been plenty of individuals in each generation voting for each side. Even in the very important (notorious, I'd say) Scumbag Johnson over Barry Goldwater presidential election landslide in 1964, there were 43 million votes cast for the Scumbag and 27 million cast for the great Libertarian/Conservative AuH2O. Yes, it's a landslide in American election terms, but still 38.5% of those generations voted Conservative/Lib and 61% Socialist. Those generations were almost all NOT Boomers, BTW.***
It'd be a time consuming, but not particularly difficult, task to find out when these Boomers made up the biggest share of the electorate. I'm not doing it, based on the fact that an estimate will do fine here. I'm just going to pick 1996 through 2016 as a fairly big range that should cover the highest point. Boomers ranged in age from 36 to 53 in 1996, and from 56 though 73 in 2016. Somewhere in there, probably 2000 or 2004, is likely when they had their largest share of all the votes.
In those 6 elections, with the exception of 1996, there has been no Presidential election with the results wider than 7 percentage point difference in popular vote****, and if you except '08 each had less than a 4 percentage point difference in vote numbers between the 2 squads. 1996 was a special case because Ross Perot (proto Donald Trump, with brains) received 8 1/2% of the popular vote, with Bill Clinton getting 49% and Bob Dole getting 41%. I'm sure most of Ross Perot's voter's would have held their noses and voted for Dole, were Mr. Perot not in the running. It would have been another very close one. Good on Ross Perot and his voters for trying, and R.I.P., Ross Perot .
From just this Presidential election business, not all of politics by any means, we can see that the Boomers aren't lefties, they aren't Conservatives, they aren't Libertarians, and they aren't flat-out Commies. However, that generation includes all of these ... and, WAIT, there's more! These younger generations, say, the Millennial one, do not lean all one way either and contain people of all ideologies.
Back to the race/ethnicity demographic factor though, yeah, you're not going to find as many Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan fans among the Hispanics, the Chinese, and the •Indians that are the bulk of recent immigrants. They do make up a much larger percentage of the Millennial generation than the Boomer one.
You could impugn some of those in the groups of new arrivals for not "getting" America. As for the different generations of Americans, there are plenty of people on different sides of big political divides as they were for the Boomers. "You Boomers voted in this ____, destroying this country!" "Well, PEOPLE did, but lots of US voted against it." It's silly to put the blame on everyone now between the ages of 61 and 77. It's silly for Boomers to put the blame on everyone now between the ages of 18 and 40.
See, this started out to be just the intro, but I will get to some differences between the 2 generations in Part 2 of Millennials v Boomers next time. Part 1 is hereby ruled a rain-out.
* There's a big The Who kick going on here as of late. I mean, for you Millennials, The Who is trending. If you don't know (or if you do), that phrasing above comes from one of the iconic songs from The Who and one that has probably held the top spot in the Billboard Stutter-Rock charts since, well my whole life - that's because they're not quite my g-g-generation. Maybe they took the top spot on the chart from Buddy Holly?
** That's by Strauss' & Howe's definition which includes those born from 1943 to 1960 as "Boomers". Strauss & Howe are the 2 guys whose prescient books I am going to review Some Day Soon™.
*** That comes from a discussion with, you could have guessed it, good ole Reg Caesar in the Unz Review comments with the details such as that some States did allow people under 18 y/o to vote already, so, the very youngest of Boomers in some States could have voted in November of 1964. Even in the States with 21 as the voting age, 10 months of young people born in the year 1943 could have voted.
*** There's more to it than just that, I understand, as perhaps the choices were much more Tweedle-Dee v Tweetle-Dum -like over the last generation as compared to in 1964.
Comments (11)
The evolution of the Omicron narrative
Posted On: Monday - January 3rd 2022 2:58PM MST
In Topics: Globalists Media Stupidity Liberty/Libertarianism Healthcare Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
Don't let the Greek letters freak you out.
Not very long ago the Establishment narrative was "OMΓ!" in regards to the newest variant of the Flu Manchu. It was just another brick in the PanicFest wall that they could pull out and throw at us. Very recently, I'd say within the last 2 weeks only, the story from Panic Leader Anthony Fauci and his minions and sackhangars has evolved.
Now, even the top dog (from what I read 2nd-hand, anyway) is saying that this new variant will not hospitalize or kill so many people. It just hits the upper respiratory tract. It's like the cold or a flu. What a change from the MUST! PANIC! MOAR! talk up near the end of last year! Why the Jim Rockford J-turn in the middle of the PanicFest car chase down the hairy mountain road from San Berdoo to Temecula?**
The pandemic has become an endemic now, we are being told, I guess the term epidemic was never scary enough, or did they use that during the initial China madness phase? From the first blurb that popped up in a search for "Covid endemic"* I got to this page from one T.H. Chan at the Harvard School of Public Health.
The expectation that COVID-19 will become endemic essentially means that the pandemic will not end with the virus disappearing; instead, the optimistic view is that enough people will gain immune protection from vaccination and from natural infection such that there will be less transmission and much less COVID-19-related hospitalization and death, even as the virus continues to circulate.Would an email reply with the simple subject line of "NO SHIT, SHERLOCK! We told you this 2 years ago." be proper? This guy is at HARVARD, mind you.
I won't include much discussion of the vaccine again right here, but, of course, these EXPERT health officials will tell us that it's the vaccine that prevented more deaths during the transition from the pandemic to the endemic. That doesn't really seem to jive with those increased '21 excess death numbers so well (something I looked at months ago for '20). It also doesn't take into account the real worries about a vaccine with thousands of times the bad health results as any other vaccine before has given us, without being yanked off the market with prejudice, not to mention unknown long-term effects.
Most people with common sense and perspective knew 2 years ago that these type of viruses don't just get beat down dead.*** We've seen these before, mostly out of the Orient. They are deadly for a while to the most vulnerable, and then they mutate into less deadly variants. They've never before been a reason to introduce more Totalitarianism and still aren't unless, oh, that's it, now you WANT more Totalitarianism.
OK, then, why is the narrative being changed abruptly? Did all the Totalitarians just change their minds? It's not that, of which I'll write more.
Is it national politics? Frankly, I don't think these people are smart enough to be thinking long-term, to election '22. Yes, the continuation of this narrative has pissed off the multitudes, but that's 10 months away still. As Peak Stupidity has noted before, People Forget. (It's an Eminence Front, whatever the hell that even is ... doesn't matter, hypnotic keyboards, great guitar by Townsend - before he probably smashed it, and great vocals by Daltrey.****) They've been having the time of their lives scaring the daylights out of people who still fall for it.
That's the answer, though, I think. People were simply not falling for the Omicron scare in great numbers. I guess they quit being freaked out by the Greek letters (easy for you, if you haven't had a run in with quantum mechanics ...).
Oh, government people and all of the Establishment have been still pushing it (so sorry for commenter Ganderson there in the People's Republic of Mass). The average American may be waking up or just too jaded to keep falling for it after 2 years. The big lies were working, but if the masses of people are seen to be scoffing at them, that looks bad. The idea now is to change the narrative to "we handled this" (that DOES help with the national politics) and "it's almost over for now, but we're gonna keep those 'safeguards' in place, cause, you know .. like the TSA..."
However, because the very recent narrative was still filled with Panic-inducement, the Totalitarians have still been doing their thing. Australia is still a Totalitarian shit-show. In Holland there have been big anti-LOCKDOWN rallies with the cops getting violent against these protesters. Why are the Dutch getting riled up now?
Not to pick on the Dutch here, but what is happening now is that even those who bought into the whole thing for 2 years may be now wondering "hey, we flattened the curve, or at least kept wearing those masks. We wiped off the door knobs and washed our hands for 30 seconds 50 times a day. We stayed inside and shut our businesses when you told us. We, or all besides those nutcase anti-vaxxers, got our 3 shots - or is it 4 now? Why are you still trying to control us like we are in a Totalita... ohhhh!"
We anti-panickers may get help now from those who are finally hearing from the official sources that this
The Establishment is only backing off to make the narrative match more closely with the public's own lying eyes. They've accomplished their evil by setting these precedents in Totalitarianism. Like Motherland Security and the TSA, it won't go away easily
* I tried "Kung Flu endemic" but got muddled results.
** The geography has been changed to protect the innocent Los Angelenos... if any. And, yeah, we pushed the metaphor pretty hard here, like Jim Rockford on the pedal of his Pontiac Firebird.
*** The very serious polio virus WAS eradicated for the great benefit, but I don't know what was fundamentally different about that type. Was it the method of contagion?
**** BTW, while searching for the Eminence Front video on this site, I came across a post from March 7th, in which I got on the other WHO about pushing PC regarding the terminology of contagion. The post is WHO Cares. Don't stigmatize me, Bro!. I do see that on March 7th, Mr. Hail, no, I didn't understand this thing as being overblown, yet. There was a related similar previous post entitled WHO Cares..
By March 19th, I posted The Kung Flu - SHTF or Infotainment Panic-Fest?, which leaned greatly toward the latter, and by March 30th I'd read Mr. Hail's writing and by April 2nd (almost the appropriate date!) I was already putting up Monty Python clips - as in Bring out your dead.. By mid-April Peak Stupidity was onto the whole scam.
Comments (48)
Happy New Year- 2022 - can it GET any worse?
Posted On: Friday - December 31st 2021 5:13PM MST
In Topics: Humor Kung Flu Stupidity Holiday from Stupidity
Quick answer: Yes, it sure can, if we let it. See below, in which we hear about the FIRST DEATH from OMICRON!
Another year of stupidity, and what have we done ...? Well, I'll tell you, per a promise made somewhere in a post or comment early this year - probably a New Year's resolution, haha - about updating the top banner, here you go, JIT, last day of the year. (You may need to ctrl-F5 or whatever to do a full refresh and clear the cache). Now this isn't much*, but just working on something may get me motivated to first get my "sandbox" up running, and then try to reprogram this site to make it more search-optimized and, more importantly, more user friendly.
Now, though, one can see that, through the use of quantum computer technology borrowed from the geek in the basement across the street, we have revised our mathematical models and we forecast Peak Stupidity happening approximately in the year 2026. We were wrong before, due to the work of an intern**. Though this site went on the air near the end of '16, a friend of mine had made the banner, per my specs, a couple of years before that.
How can it get worse though? Aren't things stupid enough yet for everybody?! Apparently, it can. There are great efforts being made in the West to bring Stupidity levels up to levels never imagined by the puny minds of our ancestors.
Here's the latest bad news to start 2022 off with: People are dying with or from THE OMICRON! At least one guy, anyway. That's a case fatality rate of, let me see, let delta approach zero, raise omicron to the power of iota + 1 .... and it approaches ... A LOT. People will die!. C'mon guys. Whaddya' need a refresher course? It's all Calculus-based stupidity nowadays!
OK, I gotta start this thing at one spot, but just move the time marker or mash replay to see it all:
(Virtual socially-distanced hat tip to Instapundit's Ed Driscoll.)
I went to the airport and realized I had no face diaper anywhere, not the usual one in my pocket and nothing in the luggage. Over at the ticket counter I asked for one: "Hey, can I get a new mask for this year?" They liked that - "here's a brand new '22 model". ... someday, this stupidity's gonna end...
* I didn't have any of the original parts to the image, do not have Photoshop, and didn't want to crank up Gimp, but I was able to back some stuff out, and use MS Paint to the fullest of its abilities. ("If you're not careful, you might learn something", as the man said.")
** It was that guy Josh in Bombay, who we mentioned in our about page. Turns out, his degree is in Sociology, not Computer Science, and even that, he got via mail order. The Peak Stupidity HR Department has been trying to fire Josh, but our hands are tied, due to Josh's minority and ungendered status, plus, what's the point of firing an intern? It's no fun - he doesn't lose any money anyway.
Comments (60)
Peak Rockford Files
Posted On: Thursday - December 30th 2021 9:36PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Movies Curmudgeonry
You've reached Peak Stupidity. In the comments, leave a fake name and message. I'll get back to you.
There I was, trying to watch a movie at home, and I get to this one part ... OK, I'm not going to beat this dead horse here. Peak Stupidity readers could have already read at least twice our complaints of how much of a bear it is to obtain a decent non-PC/woke movie to watch*. This post will be about curmudgeonry and nostalgia rather than relating another saga about having to bail out on one.
I will mention it though. Nights in Rodanthe, from 2008, looked liked a chick flick from the box. Well, they're "free" from the library, see, and I did have some back-ups, as I'm very careful to have nowadays. Yeah, strangers Richard Gere and this decent-looking but not nearly 1990s Cameron Diaz-level chick ended up sharing a large beach house in Rodanthe, NC (a real town on the outer banks north of Hatteras), a hurricane was coming, they were both divorced or separated, and man, I really think LarvaeMan, prequel to Spiderman, would have a more creative plot.
I gave these people the benefit of the doubt ... for a while. I noted that early in the movie, the owner of the nice piece of property was a black lady who had her act together like, sorry, no black lady of that look that I've ever seen or heard of in my life. She had to go off though (hence the main actress taking care of the beach house and the one guest), so I knew I'd be free from hard-core wokeness. Yea! Ahh, but you know what's going to happen, and then the hurricane came with high winds but no storm surge (really?). That additional suspension-of-belief along with the typical modern behavior of our leading lady who could do no wrong as a single Mom** had me realizing that I'd rather watch The Rockford Files.
After a conversation in the unz.com comments about it, I checked and saw I could watch my favorite old detective show off library DVDs. Season 1 had 21 to 23 episodes (depending on how you count doubles, I think), and there were 6 seasons, so this will hold me for a while. I had watched some of the original episodes on the TV back in the day, but I remember more watching re-runs nightly a decade later.
I guess this show's having the ex-con private detective showing up the cops, and its not showing the cops as someone we must all look up to, is what got me liking it. Yeah, and there was the 2nd generation Pontiac Firebird. I like the Jim Rockford J-turns***, the chases, and the LA scenery of the 1970s is great. There's the great Mike Post/Pete Carpenter theme song. There are running jokes, such as Jim Rockford seemingly never ever getting paid any of his $200 a day plus expenses, the funny phone answering machine (newest thing around in '74) messages, and then, Angel is hilarious.
I had never seen this first, 2-part, episode - maybe I've never seen the 1st season - we'll see. Lindsey Wagner was Mr. Rockford's first client, and, no, she didn't pay him, though there was some deal in which she was going to pay $25/week on the installment plan. Yeah, right, she was pretty hot back then, and it was assumed they did get it on... by me anyway.
This nostalgia here does have me noticing action in the show that is not as believable to me as it was many years ago. This first episode had a car chase scene out in the desert (per the show, out of Las Vegas). Well, it wasn't quite a car chase scene. The bad guys took off in a single-engine Cessna, N9487M****, and used it to strafe Jim Rockford and Lindsey Wagner in that Firebird about 4 or 5 passes with a full-auto rifle of some sort. OK, that's not so easy. Of course they didn't hurt Jim or the girl, but the Firebird, sorry, blown to bits, on the first show, no less!
Well, Jim Rockford, doing his best George-Patton-taking-charge-after-Kasserine-Pass imitation, used his Colt revolver to shoot at this Cessna. After his Firebird bought the farm, he took more shots as the plane was hauling ass directly away from him and somehow managed to punch 2 holes in the middle of the right side of the cowling, upon which oil started pouring out, from exactly where (not the oil pan) I can't tell you. At least, the plane didn't blow up (wait!), and, seeing as this was flat desert, the pilot came around, put the gear down, and landed it.
Then, the 2 bad guys got out and ran like hell. I first thought they were running after Jim, but I guess their familiarity with Hollywood saved their butts, as they knew this plane was going to blow to smithereens. It did. Why it did is another thing I can't explain, seeing as they had accomplished a decent forced landing.
That was fun, but yeah, not too realistic in the action scenes. The point of this post is to analyze whether these old TV shows are actually better than the modern stuff. This brings me back to Peak Stupidity's very first post Am I a curmudgeon?. Is the problem just that I don't want anything new anymore, or is the new stuff truly crappier. I have to say the latter again here, but it has nothing to do with cool unrealistic chase scenes and great Los Angeles scenery (I forgot to mention all the great cars just in the real-life background).
It may have been right at this time of Season 1 of The Rockford Files when Archie and Edith started off their show with a song with the lyrics "... goils were goils, and men were men."***** That was in nostalgia of the time of Herbert Hoover - going back almost 100 years now, but only 50 then. In The Rockford Files, I would say it was still that way. Contrary to what his Dad Rocky****** wanted, Jim didn't ever settle down, but at least the relationships were more natural per natural sex roles. He's not the sensitive guy, as it was really insensitive of him to keep bugging his first client multiple times about his fee! (Well, in fairness, she would have bounced her first check.)
I can compare that now to the movie that I watched half of, Nights in Rodanthe. In the movie, the guy has to be the sensitive one to have a chance with the always-in-control single Mom. It's just a movie, but there are guys who will think what works in the movies (and TV) is what works in real life, and this kind of crap will steer them wrong.
Yeah, enough of the modern cultural crap - it's Peak Rockford Files time for me.
PS: I've featured the musical artist Ben Folds and his 3-man band The Ben Folds Five before, but I'll put in one out of many cynical songs with some really great lyrics, saying "you think the Rockford Files is cool". The song is called Whatever and Ever, Amen.
* See our recent post Nine Days to Patton - movie non-review and the much older post Tried to watch a movie - here's 3 reviews in one!.
** The Dad had only been gone from the family a few months, yet he failed to give his 12 y/o (estimated) son his inhaler as a bumbling TV/movie Dad is wont to do, etc ...
*** Ha, upon looking up something, on wiki, I see that I'd independently come up with the same term for this turn (makes sense anyway). James Garner did lots of the driving for the show.
**** It's no longer in the FAA database. I can't imagine why, after seeing the end of the airplane/car chase scene. ;-} I did want to make sure it was a Cessna 210, because it looked a bit sleeker, though the windscreen still wasn't as sloped as in a Cardinal (177).
***** That'd be All in the Family, and "goils" is my interpretation of how the Queens (Brooklyn?) resident Archie Bunker pronounced "girls".
****** This first episode had a difference actor as Rocky.
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Just sit there with a fuckin' stick.
Posted On: Tuesday - December 28th 2021 2:47PM MST
In Topics: Student and other Snowflakes Humor Educational Stupidity
My apologies for the cussword in a post title, but there was no other way to summarize this one. I've got my favorite George Carlin clips - I'd never seen him or heard an album (I guess it'd have been an album, right) in his heyday - but I knew the baseball vs. football routine and more recently the "Save the Bees" bit.
This one is new to me. I can't find a date for it on the internet, but Mr. Carlin looks fairly old there, so maybe mid-00's? (He died in '08.) Mr. Carlin did a great take here on helicopter parenting, which can turn out lots of young adult snowflakes. To think this was at least a decade and a half ago - things have not gotten better in this regard.
I noted that Mr. Carlin said a little bit about the big deal about getting the kids into the best kindergartens. That's mostly just a NY City (maybe San Francisco or LA) thing. I wonder if Steve Sailer has seen this, as he is very into the struggles of the upper middle class to get their young ones into the best schools, from kindergarten and up to the Ivy Leagues. I get neither the bug struggle nor the fixation of Mr. Sailer's with the whole thing. Let the elite do their thing. Beat 'em, don't join 'em.
Hey, and if you want to learn a little Spanish, here's a start.
I've got some more anecdotal Kung Flu stupidity coming, but other than that, I think Peak Stupidity will lay low until 2022.
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Merry Christmas from Peak Stupidity
Posted On: Saturday - December 25th 2021 6:08PM MST
In Topics: Music Bible/Religion Holiday from Stupidity
Luke 2: 10-14I don't know how anyone of any religion couldn't at least appreciate the Christmas holiday and all it entails.
And the angel said unto them:
"Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger."
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."
Commenter usNthem suggested the Trans-Siberian Orchestra for Christmas music. I remember this band getting a lot of play some years ago but don't remember exactly when that was. It's some arena rock sound, you might call it, as they do their arrangements of the traditional Christmas carols. I went through a number of them that I was no longer that impressed with, but I like their Joy to the World.
If that's not your thing, here's Christmas music with a more traditional sound:
Comments (6)
White House Christmas greetings troll
Posted On: Friday - December 24th 2021 11:57PM MST
In Topics: Humor Zhou Bai Dien
I almost felt sorry for Creepy Joe here, but then he's already been a politician for half a century, and I think of how much hate he has for Americans and the his anti-White talk. I thank the caller. Let's hope he doesn't wind up in a dark hole underneath Washington, F.S. for years as yet another political prisoner.
Brandon: "I think we lost him."
Dr. Jill: "Yeah, I think we lost somethin'."
They used to claim old Ronnie was pretty far gone, dementia-wise, during the latter half of his 2nd term. This sort of thing didn't happen, though.
Comments (2)
Chappaquiddick, the movie, the man, and the manslaughter(?)
Posted On: Thursday - December 23rd 2021 6:28PM MST
In Topics: History Movies
Over 3 1/2 years back, Peak Stupidity noted with interest that a movie was coming out shortly about the late politician Ted Kennedy's negligent manslaughter of a young lady trapped in a submerged car back in the summer of 1969*. This happened on the island of Martha's Vineyard, south of Massachusetts' Cape Cod peninsula, or, really, on a tiny part-time** sub-island called Chappaquiddick, part of the town of Edgartown. I was looking forward to seeing Chappaquiddick then, as VDare's brought it to my attention in a discussion of the "what if"*** politics, in this article.
I wrote a post at the time titled The Lion of the Se
That all said, the movie is pretty decent. Of course, there is no real suspense. That also means I don't have to worry about spoiling the ending. Yes, Mary Jo Kopechne dies of suffocation in the air pocket that was left in the submerged Oldsmobile Delmont 88, after Kennedy drunkenly slid it off a bridge that crosses Poucha Pond. The movie does a nice job of sticking to the story over just a couple of days. This was from the day in which the newest Knight of Camelot wannabee (actually, per the movie he wasn't sure if he wanted to be) sailed a regatta and partied with the campaign staffers of his late brother Robert, and got friendly with staffer Miss Kopechne, through the night of the wreck, the cover-up, hand-wringing, and decision-making (i.e. spinning) through the night, the discovery of the car and body in the morning, and a little bit on the local political fallout, or lack thereof.
I read a complete book on the Chappaquiddick incident about 15 years ago. I don't remember many details, but the general gist of it is adhered to pretty well by this movie. Besides the part about all the young Democrats believing having ANY of the Kennedies in office was best thing since sliced bread for America, all true, I guess, Chappaquiddick, the movie, doesn't get into national politics very much except for a nice scene in which the narrative from Ted Kennedy's screw-up is developed. .
The movie doesn't make too much effort to cover for Ted Kennedy's own cover-up of his negligence. This is not ancient history, after all. Though it wasn't the era of ubiquitous video yet, there were witnesses to various sightings of Kennedy before and after he drove the car off the bridge. In one case, Mr. Kennedy made an effort to HAVE a witness, as an alibi. The movie shows Kennedy walking outside of his hotel room to make small talk with some guy, so that guy would be a good witness to Kennedy's having slept at the hotel with no alarm or anything out of the ordinary going on. That wasn't necessary, though, as it didn't fit any of the lies that were bandied about by Kennedy and his accomplices in spin, cousin Joseph Gargan and Gargan's friend Paul Markham. Therefore, I don't know if it would have been easy for the movie makers to have spun the whole thing, though oftentimes they just figure the lies will get through.
The movie shows the local police chief as a complete shill for the Kennedy family. The chief even hooked up Ted Kennedy with a pilot friend to fly him back to mainland Mass (well, semi-mainland, as in the Cape, where the compound was) so that he could avoid questions for the press near the scene of the crime.
Back to Gargan and Markham, accomplices-at-lies, the movie has a scene showing some powerful national political figures**** making a serious effort at coming up with a narrative that doesn't suck. They even deride and laugh at the efforts of Kennedy and his cohorts. I guess the future Liar of the Senate learned more about how to spin and lie from this event which had to have helped him in his future long career in politics.
The movie covered the cover-up activities well, but did not show exactly what went down in the car submerged in the pond that night. That is fair, as it will now never be known to this world exactly what Ted Kennedy did in those moments. The movie shows Gargan and Markham both diving into the pond hours later (after Kennedy finally told them what happened) and trying to get the doors of the Oldsmobile open.
I keep wondering how Kennedy got out of the car, yet, after that, there was no getting in. Was he able to get out before it sunk, yet whichever door he opened closed behind him before the car went down? This pond wasn't very deep, and it'd be an easy dive. Yet, even at 10 ft. down, though that old-timey car was nothing near water-, much less air-tight, it could have taken longer for pressure to equalize than there was Oxygen for Miss Kopechne, and a couple of psi differential would have made it impossible to open a door.
He couldn't have swum out an open window, I don't think. I would imagine Miss Kopechne could swim, but if not, then she may have stayed in the remaining air pocket, were she lucky enough for the floorboards to allow one. Would she stay in the cabin of the upside-down car out of fear, rather than try to get out. In this case, the doors would have no pressure differential. Anyway, the movie shows the windows closed.*****
Could the doors have been jammed shut due to the low-speed impact of the roof hitting the bottom of the pond? That's another possibility.
Ted Kennedy had never "had any recollection" of this important piece of the story, from the time he told anyone about it. I don't believe that. Then again, I don't know if I've ever been as drunk as a Kennedy either.
No matter about all that, Ted Kennedy purposefully put off telling anyone who could have helped rescue Mary Joe Kopechne while he came up with his narrative, yet I read that she may have been alive for a few hours! I am no lawyer, so my "negligent manslaughter" wording is probably not so accurate. As for the morals of this guy, when push came to shove, he showed that they were poor. Yet, that's the kind of people that become Lions of the Senate in this country.
Wait, that was no movie review. Since this is supposed to be a movie review, after all, Peak Stupidity will make one small effort to make this sound like a professional review:
The actors do a good job representing young people of the era. I guess that credit should go partly to the costume department. A guy named Jason Clarke plays the lead, Ted Kennedy. Maybe it's too much to ask, but could he have tried to sound like a Masshole from the Boston area? He only talked with the right accent ONCE, as I recall. Here's what you do, if you're the director: You sit Mr. Clarke down in front of the computer and play Simpsons Mayor Quimby clips over and over until he GETS it. Can't do the accent? Get off the set, man! We'll get someone who can.
That's all I got. The lighting was fine, the casting was fine, production values, whatever they are, were apparently fine, as the DVD didn't get stuck in the player. ;-}
I recommend Chappaquiddick as an engrossing movie and a good history lesson. As opposed to Ted's older brother Jack's book Profile's in Courage, this movie could be part of a series called Profiles of Politicians.
* What else happened that summer? Well, the first men to ever do so, 2 Americans, set foot on the moon. That mission was happening at the same time - the landing was 2 days after Kennedy's actions and 1 day after it's discovery. That was very timely for young Ted, as press coverage went, and this was pointed out in the movie.
** It's connected by sand part of the time, as it for some years at a time. (I guess one good hurricane can change that completely.)
*** "What if" meaning, what if Ted Kennedy had gotten actual justice and pushed out of politics. That's a no brainer - we'd have been better off, all else being equal.
**** Some of these are men still known as important political figures of the time even now. You can watch the movie and see if you have heard of them.
***** An engineer friend and I had a 20 minute helpful discussion on this whole thing. (He liked my text message: "Hey, I need to ask you something about pressure differentials and Ted Kennedy's car.") One thing I brought up is that it's no given that windows would roll down under that differential as, say, 2 psi on 3 or 4 ft2, that's a half ton possibly of a normal force resulting in lots of friction on the window rubber seals.
Comments (11)
The booster shot scam revisited
Posted On: Tuesday - December 21st 2021 7:09PM MST
In Topics: Humor Scams Kung Flu Stupidity
This post is a correction of Peak Stupidity's 2 week-old post The Booster Shot Scam. In fact, it turns out that that previous post was erroneous in its main point. That point was the people were arranging their Kung Flu booster shots in a manner to guarantee them something like a week of paid time off. Well, that's true ... in a way ...
I worked with a another fairly young guy (mid-to-late-20s) who has taken the vaccine and a booster shot. In this case, his wife had been required to due to her teaching job, and this guy went with the flow. I'm not at all endorsing this sort of thing, mind you, but that's not the story. He told me that he had gotten a paycheck that was not to his liking, i.e., it didn't seem to add up. During the pay period, he had taken that booster shot to get a couple of paid days off.
Oops, nope. This guy is no dumbass, but he had also been under the impression that he would get this time off paid. What it is, is that this sick "occurrence", as its called, is not counted for any kind of discipline for people making way too many sick calls. But, at the very bottom of the memo, it says that this time off will not be paid. Yes, it is in fine print.
I can't think of any words more descriptive of, and appropriate to, how I feel about this news than those of American sage Nelson Muntz:
See, people indeed WERE arranging their Kung Flu booster shots in a manner to guarantee them something like a week of paid time off. as I stated in that previous post. However, they haven't been reading the fine print! They won't get it!
Comments (18)
More Ron Paul Goodness
Posted On: Tuesday - December 21st 2021 8:30AM MST
In Topics: Pundits Liberty/Libertarianism Kung Flu Stupidity
Ron Paul's latest is Omicron: the Lockdowners’ Last Stand. I wish. Can we wipe them off the face of the country like the last of the Mohicans?
As to be expected, Fauci reveled in the emergence of the new variant, warning of “record deaths” for the unvaccinated. Similarly, President Biden warned that this would be a “winter of death” for the unvaccinated.Is it possible to have a very city-specific Winter of Death? You can probably guess what city I am (of course), just speculating about.
But here’s something the media isn’t reporting about the omicron outbreaks: they are taking place among the fully vaccinated. Cornell University, with 97 percent of the campus fully vaccinated and a mask mandate, has announced that it would return to online only instruction after a massive Covid outbreak. Likewise, the National Football League has postponed several games this weekend due to Covid outbreaks, even though the League is virtually 100 percent vaccinated. And the National Basketball Association, which is above 95 percent fully vaccinated, has just announced that due to a surge in Covid cases it too will postpone games.Here's the gist of it from the, as usual, quite optimistic Dr. Paul:
Fauci loves to say that to question him is to question science, but this has nothing to do with science. It’s about power. Fauci, the political authoritarians, and the corrupt Big Pharma billionaires are trying to make a last stand, desperate to push omicron as a justification for further tyranny and profits. But actual science is not cooperating.I hope, but I kind of doubt, it's a last stand. What I hope also is that Ron Paul can stay around without cancellation for a long time to come. His Liberty Report is worth taking 1/2 an hour for each week.
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Immigration M.A.D.ness
Posted On: Monday - December 20th 2021 3:50PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Music History World Political Stupidity
Anyone younger than 35 y/o today would not know anything of this fairly recent history from any personal experience or following of what were current events. That was a long period of time, enough for most of us to think it was the way it would always be, that there was a Cold War with a continuous threat of nuclear annihilation between the two principals, the USA and the USSR. From 1949, when the Soviets successfully test-blew their first atomic bomb, stolen from the Americans, and only 4 years after the American's first success, until 1989, that was 40 years even of this threat.
From barely having enough fissionable material to come up with enough bombs to have a small chance using long-range bombers, to having so many thermonuclear (fusion) warheads that they almost didn't know what to do with them, the situation changed rapidly. Yet, the constant was that the Americans felt the need to have enough of a threat to prevent the Soviets from thinking about starting nuclear war, and, per the left, vice versa*.
From the threat of nuclear attack via strategic ultra-long-range bombers, to the creation of ICBMs, to the establishment of the "nuclear triad" (which included the former plus submarine-launched nuclear missiles), along with the invention of MIRVs (Multiple Independent Rentry Vehicles), i.e. a dozen warheads sent separately off of one missile, things escalated rapidly. It was a hell of a time to be a mechanical engineer!
With this escalation, a new strategy of both sides solidified. This was called Mutually Assured Destruction. The idea was to have enough destructive power** to wipe out enough of the enemy's civilization, such that the enemy would not think of striking first and "winning" a nuclear war per any meaning of "winning". One way to win a nuclear war could have been to strike the enemy's nukes out of commission before they got into the air and then launch at its cities. This resulted in the strategy of "hardening" one's missile silos in huge amounts of concrete and earth. Thereafter, one needed even more megatonnage to blow up said ICBMs, with that being perhaps the primary game and blowing up of cities being a no-brainer afterthought(?!)
The subs were another story, hence the high-stakes game of better silencing and better detection of underwater sounds. Then, there were still the strategic bombers, the American BUFFs (8-engined B-52s) and the Russian Bears (Tupolev-95s), and the detection equipment such as the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line in the Great White North.
As for M.A.D., it may have been made fun of by the left, but was not "MAD!" in the British sense, as in crazy. Nobody with any sense wanted this thing to start. (The question was, "did everyone in power have enough sense?")
Well, that was fun, but I haven't gotten to my point of this post yet!
Peak Stupidity gets behind on CURRENT "current events", as we used to call what's now just constant stupidity. The topic today is month old news now and not something I am particularly interested in. As a Libertarian isolationist, I don't feel the need to give a rat's ass what's up with the Russia and the Ukraine, or Belarus and central/western Europe. However, I am an avid VDare reader, and they sometimes cover some topics that aren't America-related but are examples for us on what to do or (usually, lately) what NOT to do.
(Or perhaps, these should be called Multiple Iimmigration Re-entry Vagrants.)
This story is amusing too, as another "hoisted on one's own petard" deal. It seems that a flap between Belarus and Poland and the EU, has resulted in Belarus using immigration as weaponry. Steve Sailer had two posts excerpting the NY Times. It's almost as if Mr. Sailer enjoys reading the Grey Hag, as he snarks NYT: "Risk For Leader Of Belarus: Migrants He Lured May Want To Stay" and NYT: E.U., Accept Your Punishment By Belarus. Then, the excellent reporter Washington Watcher II (yes, there was a "I") had much more of this story in Immigration Is A Weapon, EU Says. Democrats Using It Against The Historic American Nation.
This is rich. We've been told for 30 years that "Diversity is Strength". Immigration is supposed to be so good, the more the better. Why DOES the rest of Europe see Belarus' actions as a threat? It's not like they send over immigrants who destroy your own immigrants first and then blow up your cities, right? Wait ...
If you see something as a weapon to be used against you, then you cannot at the same time believe you need more of it. That's causing massive headaches in the brains of the left in Europe now.
If we admit that ballistic immigration, strategic immigration bombing, and, in general, the triad of land-based, sea-based, and airborne immigration is bad, is it not time to look into how this was handled during those 4 decades of the Cold War?
Firstly, we don't need unilateral disarmament! It was a stupid idea as advised by the American ctrl-left during the Cold War (we were asked "if the Russians love their children too - yeah, no shit, Sting, just sing and play the bass), and it'd be a stupid idea now. "You send in 100,000 Iraqis, we''ll launch an equal megatonnage of Haitians." That's the way it ought to go.
Should we institute a new SALT treaty, to be hashed out at the UN? That would be Strategic Arrival Limitation Talks. Let's do more than talk. Let's cut down the numbers!
"No Pukes!"
"Arms are for cuffing to the border fence!"
"Berzerkely is a Refugee Free Zone."
... bumper stickers should be issued. OK, I got that last bit from a song (Union Man) on the same Neil Young album as a song Peak Stupidity featured years ago*** that mentions "the old DEW line".
For today, we have a not quite as old Rush song, from their Grace under Pressure somewhat-of-a-concept album from 1984. This one, Distant Early Warning was written in the heyday of music videos, and I'll always remember the video with the song. (Shoot, I didn't even get to cruise missiles in that very short MAD discussion!)
* This point hinges on the question of whether the Soviets really believed that the (at that time) reasonably under-control US Gov't would have wanted to initiate war against the core of Communism. Mostly, the American policy was one of "containment", keeping it from spreading further. On the other side, it's more credible that the Soviet (and Red Chinese, perhaps) government, under zero control by its population, would have taken out the West via nukes if it could have.
** Regarding the history of nuclear weapons in the Cold War, the destructive power of the weaponry was put in units of "Megatonnage". It's not a unit of power, though, but of energy, and is not about the mass of the weapons. One Megaton is the amount of energy equivalent to the exploding of a million tons of TNT. Yes, there was plenty to blow up the man-made works of the world!
*** See Oh, this country sure looks good to me... but these fences are coming apart.
Comments (8)
Step into Christmas
Posted On: Saturday - December 18th 2021 6:43PM MST
In Topics: Music
I had another post I was going to write, with the pictures already saved, links stored, and everything. It's too much for today though, so here is some music to end the blog-week.
It's already a week till Christmas day. We'll have some real Christmas music later, but for now, let's Step into Christmas with Elton John. I really like that country-style guitar lick played by Davey Johnstone. This one is from Christmas time 48 years ago:
That's a great "wall-of-sound" sound by Elton and his usual band:
Davey Johnstone - guitar
Dee Murray - bass guitar
Nigel Olsson - drums
and it sounds all 3 singing backing vocals. Elton's lyric writer, Bernie Taupin appears in this video playing bells at 2:00.
Next week, Peak Stupidity will have the post I had in mind today, on immigration as weaponry, a beyond-Steve-Sailer-level fisking of one of the pieces of sheer stupidity he presented from the NY Times, a movie review, maybe something about the R.C. Christian Guidestones Guide, and then some time off. Thanks for reading and commenting!
Comments (8)
Revisiting Shen Yun
Posted On: Saturday - December 18th 2021 10:40AM MST
In Topics: Commies Immigration Stupidity China
No, no, no, not Shen Yang! That's a city* in Manchuria. I'm never goin' back. We're not talking about a Chinese MSG-based delicacy either. I'm getting confused myself. I asked for some Shen Yun, hold the MSG, and I got Mu Goo Gai Pan, ... the comedy duo, Mu is the straight man, and Goo is the funny guy. Mr. Gai Panned their whole routine in the Chinatown Daily Worker, saying it was too Bu Wai Zhee.
Sorry, that one came straight outta the comments in Peak Stupidity's previous post on this Shen Yun crowd. Commenter MBlanc46 noted back then that'd he'd seen loads of ads in his area for this anti-Commie ballet troupe. The ad above is for the same, but for the '21-'22 ballet tour.
Note the anti-Communist theme of this year's tour. Inside, the brochure, it says:
Come see what the Chinese Communist Party doesn't want you to see. Every year since its inception, Shen Yun has had to overcome the CCP's attempts to sabotage the performance.So, you're taking the fight over here? But, per last year's FAQ, there will be no Kung Fu (hence our preference for the Monster Truck show instead...). Fighting Communism by ballet dancing - well I've heard it all now.
For millennia, China' s dynasties were home to a world of profound and bountiful culture. That all changed in 1949 when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seized power. Viewing China's spiritual and artistic heritage as a threat to its atheistic and materialistic ideology, the communist regime spared no effort to eradicate traditional Chinese culture and anyone who stood firm to defend it.,
Then Shen Yun came with a mission to revive this 5,000-year-old [John Derbyshire says 3,600 years, so I'm goin' with that, sorry.] culture
Look, I've got no problem with ballet dancing per se. I've definitely got no problem with anti-Communists. The thing is though, well two things, they want a couple of hundred dollars a ticket for them to fight Communism in China by performing ballet, and why don't you keep this fight in China?! Per the previous post on this Shen Yun crowd, they are allied in some way with the Falun Gong, who, per the CCP, were fighting the CCP by stretching and calisthenics. There was that old Chairman Mao saying, power comes from doing lots of jumping jacks. No, that wasn't it.
Peak Stupidity wrote a post a couple of years back about the stupidity of importing a civil war, in Sweden. That one was about importing ~ equal numbers of Iraqi and Iranian Moslems who don't particularly get along back in the Middle East, so there's no strict guarantee that they will get along in Sweden. Now, we have a large number of Chinese people living in America as citizens or in various stages of the immigration process, legal or illegal. I suppose it's good that they can get some influence from the other side of the story vs. the CCP propaganda. However, I think it would be better if the Chinese people living here for good would live as Americans, concentrate on the American Communists, and leave that whole China scene behind.
Really, are there Americans in China performing ballets or just having rallies, pro-Trump or anti-Zhou Bai Dien? Pick some random countries that have a few Americans. Do Americans in Germany have political events about American politics? If you're living in Germany or in China, you lay low (especially in the latter case), you live as the Germans/Chinese do, and you ask yourself "why in the heck would the average German/Chinaman want to go to my special political ballet?"
There's been so much of this in America done by Americans over the recent years, since the 1960's (hmmm, what bill was passed in 1965?) The Cold War, American influence for its sake, and pushback against this, was one thing. At this point in history, I don't know what foreign places have anything going on that is our business. Bomb the Serbians, kill Kudaffy, protect some rocks off of Japan from the Chinese, protect one group of Koreans from another group of Koreans, c'mon man, we're flat broke!
For years you'd see those Free Tibet! (or was it Free Tibetan Coffee!.) bumper stickers. You want to free Tibet? Good on you. Go to Tibet and free Tibet - your bumper sticker is not helping free Tibet.** Now, the deal is we have so many people from foreign lands that are not going to leave their old animosities behind.*** Unless their politics affect America, I don't care. Leave it behind on the border, at the airport, in that shipping container you came in ...
No thanks, Shen Yun, I'll save my $200 for "Let's Go Brandon" signs.
* Formerly Muckden, but even Chinese people don't know that, cause, Mao.
** Whichever side they were on, you've gotta give those idealist young men in the mid-1930s that went to Spain to fight in that civil war some credit. Even Eric Blair, aka George Orwell, a clueless fool at the time, decided to fight on the "Republican", aka Communist side, picked up a gun, and spent months on the battle lines. See our review of Homage to Catalonia.
*** It's nothing really new. This goes back over a century to the southern Italians - It should have been "No, Vito Corleone, you have to go back." (It's hard to say "no" to a man named Vito.) It's all good now, but it's been a century!
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America's Ruling Class of the early '20s
Posted On: Friday - December 17th 2021 8:01PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Music Pundits Globalists Books
The political cartoon above was drawn by Elliot Banfield whose work is often published in Claremont Review of Books. Writer and frequent Peak Stupidity commenter E.H. Hail has a very interesting analysis of this depiction of America's current elites here on his Hail to You blog.
It's great to read another post by Mr. Hail (been too long!) I'll leave it at that here and ask the reader to check out his take on the types of people represented there in the balloon and possibly comment.
I've always wanted to take my family up for a balloon ride just once. As a non-member of the Ruling Class, I will forego the champagne and just bring a six-pack of Miller High-Life instead.
I also always liked this song. It's by The 5th Dimension from 53 years ago. They weren't Ruling Class, but they did clean up at the Grammies.
Lastly, for the kids, I had a favorite book back in my childhood from the Time-Life "Yearling" series called The Twenty-one Balloons. I highly recommend it for 9 to 12 y/o boys.
Comments (9)
The Potomac Regime
Posted On: Friday - December 17th 2021 10:45AM MST
In Topics: Pundits Globalists US Feral Government
I had never run into the term "The Potomac Regime" for the heart of the US Feral Gov't in Washington, F.S. before reading VDare's James Kirkpatrick's article An American Warns Eastern Europe: The Potomac Regime Is Not Your Friend (Or Ours) a couple of days back*. I really like this terminology.
As a Chinaman in Mao's Red China, a regular
Along with that, the namesake of the city Washington, F.S. (see what I mean, that's Federal Shithole, in Peak Stupidity parlance) takes a real beating based on our disgust with the, yes, "regime" there. You've got the "Father of our Country", a guy who could have remained President for life, who did the right thing, and that's after leading the American Revolutionists to victory after 8 years of war. Yet, a large portion of the citizens of the country he founded revile the word "Washington". Yeah, leave it out.
No, we have nothing against the Potomac River, per se, but that's where this Federal Shithole of a city happens to lie. I assume that he coined it**, so I thank James Kirkpatrick for a very appropriate term for the evil cabal who run things in the nation's capital. In fact, we will appropriate it, with attribution till (fingers crossed) the term comes into common use. Then, we actual Americans can talk more clearly about "regime change", as seems to have been a big thing for this very crowd.
The Potomac Regime.
* That article delves into more US involvement in places that we have no business being in, but also one other topic that will result in a humorous post to come.
** I just duckduckwent it, and other than a guy at What Really Happened who excerpted a small part of Mr. Kirkpatrick's article - with no attribution, but his title links to the article on VDare, I got nuthin'.
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Peak Stupidity Field Trip - The Georgia Guidestones - Part 2
Posted On: Wednesday - December 15th 2021 7:05PM MST
In Topics: History Globalists Geography Peak Stupidity Roadshow
(Continued from Part 1.)
I started reading the ..pdf file book that commenter Adam Smith kindly found and linked to in the comments for us that "Robert Christian", creator of the Georgia Guidestones, wrote. It's only 125 pages of fairly large text and easy reading, so I got about 1/4 of the way through in 1/2 hour before life intervened today. Because I'm not through, I'll leave plenty of other interesting discussion about the Georgia Guidestones - some already started/covered in the comment under Part 1 - aside till I am.
This post is as close to a tour-guide version as Peak Stupidity can get. Really, that's not very close, as for example, the first advice for the visiting tourist from us is, as usual*, Don't spend the whole time taking selfies! It's not like there aren't pictures of this monument on the internet - just look at the top right here. You can photoshop yourself in and save the gas for airfare, but you really ought to have more trust from your friends, family, and blog readers such that they will believe you really were there. It's not like a picture of your finish in an Ironman. Even Peak Stupidity readers, as cynical as they are likely to be, will believe I was there without pictures that would destroy anonymity. You do, right?
Why go here at all nowadays, since one can get everything on these stones, and the base and plaque, off the internet? I guess one could say that for historic tourist destinations of all sorts, but there's something about being there. I'm glad we went.
If you're driving an hour or 3, I'd say just give yourself about an hour at the site before you get bored and need to drive into Elberton for Taco Bell (then, because it was locked up due to PanicFest after-affects, we crossed the street to KFC). Granted, if you came across the ocean because this is something you just HAD TO see, well, go to lunch, come back for another coupla' hours and sit in the sunshine to show that it was all worth it.
As I wrote, nobody came from too awfully far during the hour we were there. Two 20-something guys came from Upstate South Carolina, about an hour and a half drive for them, and one of them told me he was pretty into this thing, and he had come a few times before. He was no fanatic of any sort. There were families from the eastern suburbs of Atlanta, one from Lawrenceville. The kids of various ages got bored after 20 minutes and went running around the 5 acre property. (I believe that is the brighter green area shown in the aerial photo last time - that'd be a square 467 ft each side - looks about right.)
Seeing as there were about 5 "parties"** there at a time, maybe 8 during our hour there, I suppose that day could have seen a couple of hundred visitors trickle in. However, this was a really nice day.
There's no visitor's log. What kind of Globalist illuminati types wouldn't leave a visitor's log that they could use to come get us later? Just sayin'...
Besides the "just being there" thing, as witness to something kinda different and a little spooky, there is the construction of it to admire. Of course there are buildings, bridges, and towers that are much more impressive, engineering-wise. It's still something that this J.C. Christian and his backers spent the effort to make this modern-day Stonehenge. When we compare the quality here to the Stonehenge in England, we can really take to heart the complete BS inherent in the believers in the noble savages or just primitives of pre-modern times and their "building with their bare hands, what we still can't do today". C'mon, man! See our old post The great works of the ancients ... with no Caterpillars for more, but I'll just say for now that, 41 years later, these polished stones with professional engraving have stood up nicely. Well, Stonehenge 1.0 is a lot older, come to think of it, so that'll be a great comparison post for later: Stonehenge v Georgia Guidestones. There was one slight screw up in manufacturing on one of them, I noticed.
Speaking of all that, there is that astronomical aspect to this monument. Really, it isn't much, and the .pdf that Mr. Smith rounded up doesn't have too much to say about this part. I guess if you build something like this, you feel obligated to include a sundial...
Nah, don't pay for an airline ticket just for this. If you can include a stop by while on a trip taking you within 100 miles, well, why not? The best things about a visit to the Georgia Guidestones - there are no mouthy tour guides, and this one must have been left out of the Chinese charter tour routes! (Too many drivers getting lost and letting the GPS steer them toward the other Stonehenge?)
* For starters we have at least 2 posts that mention this: At the Beach and The Ugly Chinaman.
** Hey, that might be a really good place for a party at night, UGa students! (The gate gets locked, but it doesn't mean much.)
Comments (22)
Ron Paul goes the extra mile
Posted On: Wednesday - December 15th 2021 6:42AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Pundits alt-right/MAGA
Dr. (real Doctor, that is) Ron Paul is the penultimate Libertarian/Constitutionalist. Had we a few hundred Ron Pauls in Congress for significant portions of the last century, Peak Stupidity would not have to exist. (If at all, we would have had to confine ourselves to the topic of World Stupidity, with the bigger travel budget that that would require.) However, in holding onto a great nation, Libertarianism alone does not cut the mustard. There must be the RIGHT population and Conservative ideas must reign too. Peak Stupidity explained this in the long-ago self-reflective post What's the deal with Peak Stupidity - Libertarian or Conservative?.
I tried. In the late winter of 2012, during his campaign for the GOP Presidential nomination, I told Ron Paul in person "Hey, if you want to win REDACTED State, you need to talk about illegal* immigration." That was in front of a bunch of people, so Dr. Paul felt obligated to respond with something about "I'm all about following the law..." It kind of faded out, because he was leaving the rally anyway, but I don't think he was trying to simply blow me off. Ron Paul does understand the problem.
In 2012, perhaps Dr. Paul figured that bringing up this type of topic would get him even worse media coverage. Sure, it does. But any publicity is good publicity, so could Ron Paul have Trumped Donald Trump on this issue 4 years earlier and just rocketed to the top, damn the Lyin' Press? Nobody will ever know.
As much as I agree with and enjoy Ron Paul's weekly columns and Liberty Report videos (the latter only when I have time), I have not expected him to go all the way down the road of alt-right Conservatism and talk about race/ethnicity wrt the subject of immigration. (I am glad to see that Tucker Carlson has started down that road.)
Well, I was pleasantly surprised by Ron Paul's 2nd-to-latest column** Biden’s ‘Democracy Summit’ Is a Joke***. In this one, yes, he went the extra mile down the road on the racial/ethnic angle on immigration, further than I'd ever read him go before. The rest is for background and quite good, as always, but the (my) bolded part is what I'm talking about here:
European Union member country Hungary is the only EU country not invited to participate in the “Summit for Democracy” even though it has undeniably held fully democratic elections since the end of communism 30 years ago. There is no question that Hungary is a democratic country, but it is not invited to Biden’s “Summit for Democracy.”OK, he doesn't write "race", but you get the idea.
Why? Because the Biden Administration does not like Hungary’s democracy. It does not like the fact that the Hungarian people have voted for a conservative government that occasionally pursues foreign and domestic policies at odds with the dictates of Foggy Bottom and Langley.
The Biden Administration does not like that Hungary resisted the mass invasion of refugees from countries and cultures absolutely alien to Hungary’s history. Biden does not like the fact that Hungarians have voted time and time again for a conservative government that openly professes Christian values. But what they hate most is that when Washington says “jump,” Budapest doesn’t always ask “how high?”.
Nice job, Ron Paul! (I wish you'd have said this sort of thing on the campaign trail in '12, though I guess if it were in 1992 or something, it would have been even more beneficial.)
* I will give my usual caveat here that I DO understand the the legal immigration invasion is just as important of a problem, maybe even more so sometimes. I didn't have time to spout out a thesis abstract in this particular situation.
** We do tend to get behind here sometimes.
*** BTW, as you may see from the title, the main subject matter of that column matches what we wrote here.
Comments (14)
The Emergency is over.
Posted On: Tuesday - December 14th 2021 1:37PM MST
In Topics: Americans Liberty/Libertarianism Morning Constitutional Kung Flu Stupidity
So, says D-squad Governor of Colorado Jared Polis. I don't agree that ANY of the ginned-up PanicFest from this latest virus out of the Orient constituted an emergency of any sort, much less an almost 2-years-long emergency. (Is there such a thing as a long-term, possibly life-long emergency?).
Per Fox News' Jessica Chasmar, as published on the The New York Post site, Colorado governor declares COVID-19 emergency 'over' despite Omicron. With her use of the scare single quotes*, it doesn't seem like this Jessica Chasmar is perfectly OK with this. "Despite Omicron", she worries in the headline. Yeah, well, there's a new strain of influenza out too, Jessica. How do I know that, you ask? They come out all the time. Yet, we'd be long out of Greek and Latin letters, and hell, probably Chinese characters too, if we kept "emergencies"** going on for influenza.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, declared in a new interview that the COVID-19 emergency is “over” and that he won’t be implementing another statewide mask mandate in response to the spread of the Omicron variant, explaining that if people aren’t vaccinated at this point, it’s their “own darn fault” if they get sick.Indeed, it's not always the case, but people often get sick due to their own damn*** fault. Oh, and I suppose you could say, Governor, that if they keel over from blood clots after TAKING the vaccine, it's their own darn fault. I would hope you'd agree.
Governor Polis went on in this interview (audio on the NY Post page) about how easy it is to get jabbed. Yeah, you betcha' it is. It might be too easy, in fact, but I'll get back to that. The guy is enamored with these vaccines. OK, I've got no problem with his opinion, due to:
"And at this point, I think it’s almost like they made a deliberate decision not to get vaccinated,” he added. “I still encourage everybody who hasn’t been vaccinated to get protected. And for those who are, make sure to get that booster after six months. The data shows it’s important and very likely even more so with this Omicron variant.”Right you are, Guvna! Yes, that's it! There's no "almost like" to it. It was a deliberate decision. Us anti-vaxxers, in Unzian terminology are not lazy about it. How perceptive of Governor Polis! We deliberately chose and still choose not to get vaccinated.
Polis said he supported local jurisdictions instituting their own mandates according to their individual needs, but that the state should stay out of it. [My bolding.]Excellent! See, now, even though I imagine Jared Polis, being a lefty from the D-squad, is otherwise an idiot and terrible for the State of Colorado, I give him lots credit for the American attitude seen here. By "American", I mean Constitutional Republic understanding American, as were lots of us in the old days.
It's real simple, folks. If it doesn't affect you, mind your own business, and leave others the hell alone. It's one thing to try to affect change as a community, leaving others to voluntarily comply or not, but government should have no part in it. "Encouragement" of Coloradans to take that vaccine? Fine. However, as Governor Polis said, "the state should stay out of it".
"The emergency is over,” he said. “You know, public health [officials] don’t get to tell people what to wear; that’s just not their job. Public health [officials] would say to always wear a mask because it decreases flu and decreases [other airborne illnesses]. But that’s not something that you require; you don’t tell people what to wear. You don’t tell people to wear a jacket when they go out in winter and force them to [wear it]. If they get frostbite, it’s their own darn fault.Darn straight is is! Though, actually, it's probably the lack of gloves or socks/shoes that would result in frostbite. Most people get it on their extremities, not on their torso. Hey, I don't expect this guy to understand the human circulatory system, when he can't even ... OK, I did not plan to bad-mouth the guy here.
There IS plenty to argue with this guy about regarding his opinion on the vaccine. We who see problems with it are "in a bubble", he says. There's more. However, I will not argue here but praise Colorado Governor Jared Polis for being an American here. And he's on the Blue-squad, no less. Thank you, Sir!
Would you find much of this talk by politicians in other countries, especially of the left? I mean, they could state this, but what do they have to back it up with? We've still got those little scraps of Amendment X that some of us have rescued from the shredder.
PS: Denver, Colorado is a long way from Margaritaville in the Florida Keys, but this "it's your own 'darn' fault" bit has put the song in my head. If you remember the lyrics, Jimmy Buffet, always a great lyricist, ended the choruses thusly, in order:
"It's nobody's fault.",
"Hell, it could be my fault.", and finally
"It's my own damn fault."
"Yes, and some people claim that there's a woman to blame...
but I know, (steel drums), it's all Fauci's fault."
There was to be no music today, but, well now, whatdya', you know? It's 5 O'Clock on some server somewhere.
Yeah, the song's been overplayed. There are plenty of good ones from the same album Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.
* Just single-'s, at least, so there's that ...
** See, I'm using double-"'s because continuing PanicFest "emergencies" ARE worriesome.
*** Peak Stupidity bloggers are not in high government positions, so we can say "damn" instead of that darn "darn".
Comments (13)
Then they came for Santa Claus...
Posted On: Monday - December 13th 2021 8:32PM MST
In Topics: Music Humor World Political Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
... and I said nothing, because all I got last year was a stupid fruitcake anyway ...
From Info Wars Army*, we read Santa Claus Arrested By German Police For Not Wearing Mask. I'd have thought they'd have had to extradite him from the North Pole, or stake out a fireplace somewhere on Christmas Eve.
Really, this is beyond Clown World now. I am amazed that there are really places in the world that require one in seriousness to wear these face masks outside. As for America, as I wrote in Accessorize, accessorize, accessorize!, I really don't think there are many people left who take the masks seriously, health-wise.
But, rules are rules, I suppose, and Santa Claus, long white beard and all, can spread germs like the best of them. I wonder if this guy has little children sit in his lap and tell him what they want for Christmas (probably simply "my life back"). There's not a whole lot of social distancing going on there. I couldn't blame the guy if he threw down the towel, the red suit, and the beard, after this, figuring this PanicFest has destroyed pretty much all fun now.
(I got this picture off a tweet on the same InfoWars page.)
How shameful for this to happen in a place that is so much a part of Christmas culture and tradition and Christianity period. Well, we've still got this song on youtube ... for now...
(Couldn't find the American pop standard on youtube, what was it I saw Mommy bailing out Santa Claus,.)
* I'm not familiar with the "Army" bit, but this may be others taking over for Alex Jones, since he's been cancelled, or just a different URL for the same reason.
Comments (20)