The God That Failed
Ever noticed what a complete fraud democracy is? Let’s go right on ahead and notwithstand that even on its own terms, it’s rubbish; rather, I’d prefer to focus on the utterly phony way "democracy" is leveraged as a scare tactic; it seems as though, whatever happens, it’s a "threat to democracy" or it will "undermine democracy" or perhaps it will even be "the end of democracy." By my count, all the democracy everywhere should have ended about eleven times over since election day, yet it apparently struggles onward, facing new existential threats every day.
The latest threat to democracy, of course, is the dreaded Fake News. As any fule kno, but as only the kind of fule who works for a government school will breathlessly explain to you, the entire reason for the evil Donald Hitler’s victory over St. Hillary of Clinton is that the internet was so infested with fake news that everybody forgot how great Hillary is. I am compelled to agree with this thesis, since your humble narrator seems to have forgotten that quite thoroughly.
A form of mass propaganda more insidious than anything used in the 20th century is being used to manipulate global politics, according to the latest research. The culprit is social media and the lax regulation that allows voters to be bombarded with politically slanted misinformation — fake news.
‘Ruling elites have often used propaganda to sustain their power, but this latest wave is different,’ says Professor Philip Howard, Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute and a Fellow of Balliol College…
Meanwhile, he believes, ‘Conservative groups tend to be more aggressive and creative in applying new technologies to target voters, and more willing to violate privacy norms to get messaging across.’ They are, in other words, more likely to play dirty with spam emails and calls, direct mail campaigns, push polling (where the question pushes the voter towards a given response) and, now, social media messaging.
Sure, fine. Everybody you don’t like is a Russian hacker. I’ve heard that before. The one interesting thing about this, though, is in the header image. Did you click through to the full story? It opens with this picture, seemingly just a random "interwebs 3.11 for workgroups" stock photo:
Great, fine. Interwebs picture. No problems there! Except maybe you were so distracted by all the ranting about how "conservatives" are "playing dirty" in an attempt to disparage the honest and wonderful progressives that you overlooked the fact that they smuggled an honest-to-god swastika into that header image!
So remember: leftists would never play dirty and use fake news to smear their opponents. Never ever!
But in the first instance, Professor Howard says, we need governments to organise juries of randomly sampled citizens representing the diversity of society to meet with experts, thoroughly evaluate both sides of an argument and then produce a public document outlining the facts. ‘Voters can still ignore or disagree with the document, but this would be one of the few ways of improving referendum outcomes.’
Oh, yes please professor, let’s have that. Honestly, if I didn’t think you were corrupt and evil, I’d suspect Oxford University of admitting a downright moron into its faculty. But then, we all know that can’t be! "Experts" are always brilliant and smart and right and correct!
First they came for the YouTube celebrities, and I did not speak out
Except that the joke’s on them, because I sure did speak out. And here I am again, speaking out, when the Internet Moral Outrage Police have once again decided to attack a random dude who makes jokes about video games. This time around, it’s Jon Jafari, d/b/a "JonTron," who committed the mortal sin of saying entirely true things that aren’t very popular on college campuses. Let’s ask an entirely objective Gizmodo piece with a title too profane to reprint here, because if there’s one thing that doesn’t smell of fake news at all, it’s potty-mouth headlines!
Jafari began his descent into madness on Sunday, when he tweeted a defense of Iowa Representative Steve King’s controversial claim that "[we] can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies," a remark that has since been condemned by just about everyone except for white nationalist and possible fish-human David Duke…
In addition to his ludicrous claim about Mexicans attempting to somehow recapture American land, he said that "we don’t need immigrants from incompatible places" and that white people were going through a "demographic displacement" due to immigration, which he likened to apartheid South Africa.
I like name-calling as much as the next guy, but, honestly, sometimes it pays to do a little bit of research, and formulate maybe a slightly coherent argument. That "ludicrous claim" about Mexicans attempting to recolonize the American southwest? It’s called "reconquista," and it’s very much a real thing. Even the far-left editors of Wikipedia can’t scrub it out of reality! "Demographic displacement" of white Americans, meanwhile, is mathematically undenable; a few years ago, according to the notorious right-wing extremists at The New York Times, white births became the minority in the United States, and the trend has continued. Now, one could argue that this isn’t a bad thing, but to deny that it’s happening at all is idiocy.
As for Steve King’s comments, well, I’m pretty sure I can find one or two people other than David Duke who didn’t "condemn" them. Me, for one. Pretty much everybody I know, for another. The staff of Gizmodo evidently not so much. Also apparently not the case at the ever-classy Time magazine, which I’m honestly surprised is still around.
Jon Jafari, a popular YouTube host, sparked outrage this week after making controversial and false claims about immigration and race in the U.S…
Throughout the debate, Jafari made a number of claims about race and immigration, including false assertions that minority communities are "turning everyone against each other."
Journalism! Note the rather striking disparity between the number of times Time flatly asserts that Jafari’s statements are false with the number of times any actual refutation is presented. Dear Oxford University professor Philip Howard: this is fake news. Of course, Time also delves into the horrible, crushing consequences Jafari is suffering, mentioning that he’s lost "a few hundred subscribers" from one of his YouTube channels. Jafari’s channels altogether have more than twelve million subscribers. To call this a non-issue seems to be to understate the point.
Of course, not all is sunshine and roses. Jafari had recorded some pro bono voice work for Playtonic’s upcoming game Yooka-Laylee — which, to my knowledge, had nothing to do with the question of immigration into the United States — which has since been removed from the game because he’s a horrible evil person and don’t you forget it. Here’s Playtonic’s mealy-mouthed statement:
We recently became aware of comments made by voice artist JonTron after development on Yooka-Laylee had been completed. JonTron is a talented video presenter who we were initially, two years ago, happy to include as a voice contributor in our game. However, in light of his recent personal viewpoints we have made the decision to remove JonTron’s inclusion in the game via a forthcoming content update. We would like to make absolutely clear that we do not endorse or support JonTron’s personal viewpoints and that, as an external fan contributor, he does not represent Playtonic in any capacity. Playtonic is a studio that celebrates diversity in all forms and strives to make games that everyone can enjoy. As such, we deeply regret any implied association that could make players feel anything but 100% comfortable in our game worlds, or distract from the incredible goodwill and love shown by our fans and Kickstarter backers.
Playtonic is apparently a studio that "celebrates diversity in all forms" except when it’s diverting from the officially-sanctioned left-wing political viewpoints. It’s enough to make me want to divert my money away from Yooka-Laylee altogether, but, since I’ve already paid for it, I’m a bit stuck. Shame on you, Playtonic. The end.
Corporations aren’t people
I’m sure you know that, right? Drippy leftists never shut up about it as part of their brainless ranting about how "corporations" can be taxed and censored and controlled in quite frankly illegal ways. It’s not like we’re doing any of that to people, after all! These corporations consist entirely of space robots! How ridiculous to think otherwise.
Yet the new law that declares the Whanganui river, New Zealand’s third-longest, a legal person, in the sense that it can own property, incur debts and petition the courts, is not unprecedented. Te Urewera, an area of forested hills in the north-east that used to be a national park, became a person for legal purposes in 2014…
For the Whanganui iwi, the idea of the river as a person is nothing new. The iwi professes a deep spiritual connection to the Whanganui: as a local proverb has it, "I am the river and the river is me." The law acknowledges the river as a "living whole", rather than trying to carve it up, putting to rest an ownership dispute that has dragged on for 140 years. When it was passed, members of the iwi in the gallery of parliament broke into a ten-minute song of celebration. [Emphasis and stupidity original]
So, quick question: if I declare that I have a "deep spiritual connection" to Citizens United, does that put the endless whinging to rest? What if I sing a really long song on the floor of the House? Oh, I forgot, I’m white; I’d go to jail for that.
Days after the law passed, an Indian court declared two of the biggest and most sacred rivers in India, the Ganges and Yamuna, to be people too. Making explicit reference to the Whanganui settlement, the court assigned legal "parents" to protect and conserve their waters.
Days! Days! Nothing spurs the government to action like the opportunity to seize power.
Crime and punishment
Our Heroes In Blue. Don’t you just love them? They’re out there night and day protecting us from dangerous criminals, like people who grow plants the government doesn’t approve of, and people who drive faster than the government approves of, and people who pay less tribute to the government than the government approves of, and people who post rude notes that the government doesn’t approve of. Where would we be without them?
A man in Virginia was arrested for wearing a "Joker" costume in public…
Jeremy Putman was later charged with wearing a mask in public, which could land him in jail for up to five years.
He is being held on $2,000 bond.
I just… what? I must be missing something here. He must have knocked over a liquor store or burned down a liquor store or bought something from a liquor store without presenting the appropriate paperwork. I mean, something, right? A crime of some sort?
It is a felony. To wear a mask. In public. A felony. I guess on Halloween we should all remember to stay in and read a book instead of doing what absolutely everybody has always done on Halloween, since that’s evidently a felony.
Ignorance is strength
GP: Is Eris true?
M2: Everything is true.
GP: Even false things?
M2: Even false things are true.
GP: How can that be?
M2: I don’t know man, I didn’t do it.
From an interview with the great philosopher Malaclypse the Younger, reproduced at the very beginning of the Principia Discordia. This principle was all fine and good for its day, but has apparently been superseded by the principle that only false things are true, turning all of reality into an impossible zen koan. Why do I say such a thing?
In a Friday email to subscribers listing updated entries for its style manual, the Associated Press is urging journalists to avoid making references in news stories that suggest there are only two sexes in the human race…
"Not all people fall under one of two categories for sex or gender, according to leading medical organizations, so avoid references to both, either or opposite sexes or genders as a way to encompass all people. When needed for clarity or in certain stories about scientific studies, alternatives include men and women, boys and girls, males and females."
One can only assume those "leading medical organizations" that assert that there are more than two sexes — and here the AP is specifically talking about actual, real, biological sex and not made-up fairy genders — are the exact kind of "experts" professor Philip Howard says the government should put in charge of distributing the Official Truth. Yea verily, this "truth" sounds rather "official," does it not?
And what’s all this about "scientific studies" there in the second sentence? I thought that "science" had declared a multiplicity of biological sexes. Didn’t you tell me that in the first sentence? Man, "official truth" is a whole lot harder to keep track of than is actual real truth.
For its part, the AP advises writers that while "[i]n most cases, a plural pronoun should agree in number with the antecedent …. when alternative wording is overly awkward and clumsy" it may be permissible to use they, them, or their to refer to an individual. "However, rewording usually is possible and always is preferable" because "[c]larity is a top priority" in news reporting and "gender-neutral use of a singular they is unfamiliar to many readers."
Well thank heaven for small favors. I’m compelled to note, however, that, thanks to the politically-driven rubbish from the government schools, nearly everyone is altogether too familiar with the utterly awful "singular they." No, the problem is not that people aren’t familiar with it; the problem is that it’s wrong. Which I guess is too actually true for the AP to admit, so they invent some official truth instead. Aces.
Shaq attack!
I mean, while I’m all for assuming that literally everything the government says is a lie — denying all the official truth to the maximum extent possible — sometimes one can go a bit too far.
"It’s true," O’Neal said on his own podcast when Kincade asked what he made of Irving’s theory. "The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. Yeah, it is. Yes, it is. Listen, there are three ways to manipulate the mind: what you read, what you see and what you hear. In school, first thing they teach us is, ‘Oh, Columbus discovered America,’ but when he got there, there were some fair-skinned people with the long hair smoking on the peace pipes. So, what does that tell you? Columbus didn’t discover America. So, listen, I drive from coast to coast, and this is flat to me. I’m just saying. I drive from Florida to California all the time, and it’s flat to me." …
"I do not go up and down at a 360-degree angle, and all that stuff about gravity, have you looked outside Atlanta lately and seen all these buildings?" O’Neal continued. "So you mean to tell me that China is under us? China is under us? It’s not. The world is flat. The world is flat."
Some people speculate that Shaq was goofing around. That may be true. Even if so, however, it’s still worth highlighting here in Last Week in Weird if for no other reason than because the entire second paragraph is completely incoherent. Shaq is the basketball player most likely to kill your dog and steal your money, though, so I’d best be careful about making fun of him too much!
Social justice
The student alleges that he became uncomfortable when a biologically female student claiming to be a transgender "boy" began undressing next to him in a school locker room.
The plaintiff and several other boys reported their feelings to the school’s assistant principal, but were verbally assaulted by the school official for being "intolerant."
"Dr. Foley [the assistant principal] told [the plaintiff] to ‘tolerate’ it and to make it as ‘natural’ as he possibly can," the lawsuit states.