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DuplexFields

Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

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joined 2022 September 05 05:51:34 UTC
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DuplexFields


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And there it is. The deaths of people who have been injected with the vaccine, but who are not yet immunized to Covid, have a huge death rate.


Calling people within that fourteen day window “unvaccinated” is blatantly disingenuous. Playing with words for political reasons is dangerous. Sticking with the moneyed narrative in a time of total narrative collapse can be deadly.


Those of us who were paying attention to the biology of the effects of SARS-CoV-2 were screaming to high heaven that vaccinating humans to replicate the spike protein was a Bad Fucking Idea. But since we were red-tribe coded, our words fell on stone-deaf ears.


How can we do better as a civilization next time (assuming for the sake of discussion Global Pandemic II won’t be deliberate)?


EDIT: Spike protein mechanism for causing myocarditis detailed in my reply here, for those who think I’m just being a reactionary.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Jewish communists and Jewish fascists




…Jewish libertarians, Jewish Objectivists, Jewish capitalists, Jewish socialists, Jewish eugenicists, Jewish Muslims, Jewish Christians, Jewish atheists, Jewish Ukrainian Nazis, Jewish CEOs, Jewish actors, Jewish news editors, Jewish bloggers, Jewish poor people on welfare, Jewish homeless drug addicts.


Jews are so fully integrated into mainstream culture in every respect that they’re in every profession, creed, and political group. To assign any collectiveness to Jews as a whole at this point is as fallacious as making the same list with Irish-descended or German-descended people. That’s my answer to “the Jewish Question.”


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Russians might or might not manage to keep Donbas and/or the Crimea but the rest of Ukraine has remained an independent country and that is not going to change.




When Putin said all he wanted was Crimea and the Donbas, people called him a liar, an imperialist, and a murdering conqueror. If the bear stands down and leaves Ukraine alone once it’s finished biting off those two chunks, as he stated, I won’t be surprised.


If Belarus is next for a weird contested election, I expect to see a repeat of wars and rumors of wars.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
HCQ, when taken with zinc, has always been the silver bullet. It worked wherever it was tried. People were sneaking it into the hospitals to give to their relatives. I guess the Mayo Clinic finally had to bow to actual science.


Anecdote:


Since I couldn’t get any HCQ, I took tonic water (quinine water) with lots of zinc, plus horse paste (ivermectin), vitamin D, and vitamin C during my first bout (probably Delta, Nov. 2021). I remember the final night of the fight, when I felt the characteristic flu-like aches, and took aspirin. The next morning, I felt far better than the previous week, and I was on the mend; I lost my sense of smell for a year, but didn’t have brain fog or long COVID. My dad and mom, squarely in the risk zone of their 70’s, took a similar medicine regimen and also both survived without long COVID.


On my second bout (summer 2022, Omicron), I got a week’s groceries and prepared for another long haul. Vitamin D and zinc, plus tonic water and walking outdoors in direct sunlight, but to my surprise it was over in three days. Not only that, I felt great afterward! I felt better than I had before the illness, oddly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’d just like to register my repugnance with your axioms and your conclusions. Statistics are not people, and people who believe in eugenics and dysgenics believe (in my experience) in genetic destiny far more than statistics does.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Part of the joy and sorrow of Heaven I anticipate is having no illusions.


This means I will remember the full depths of the public and secret sins I’ve been saved from by Jesus’ sacrifice. I will be made aware of the kinds of sins I would have committed if I hadn’t been sealed by the Holy Spirit and motivated by love instead of spite or greed. I will be left knowing just how righteous God would have been to condemn me away from His presence for eternity.


With no illusions, I will also be able to see the righteousness of the condemnation of all who chose to reject the Way of love-for-all and the damage they willingly cause wherever they may be. If one of the dwellers in misery is a close relative or even a lover, I will mourn them, but I will be disgusted by the depths of the evil they chose and agree they deserve their fate, just as I would have.


This all assumes the particular variant of Christianity I’ve been taught is theologically and cosmologically accurate. I’d like to be pleasantly surprised that all humans throughout history have ended up accepting Jesus’ forgiveness either before or after their death, and Hell ends up holding only the demonic angels who rebelled. I pray nightly that all will have ended up saved. But having watched both Sound of Freedom and the documentary Anne Frank Remembered this month, I don’t have hopes quite that high.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the problem you're having with the terminology here is due to trying to describe a coalition with varied heritages, interests, and purposes as a single group with solidarity.




The most commonly reported ancestries of non-Hispanic White Americans include German (13%), Irish (12%), English (9%), Italian (6%), French (4%), Polish (3%), Scottish (3%), Scots-Irish [Borderers] (2%), and Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and Russian, each (1%) respectively. (Wikipedia)




Add in the Spain-ish whites, German-Mexicans (but not the German-Mexican Jews), Greeks, non-Jewish eastern Europeans, and the Roma, and now you have the entire pale rainbow.


Except the Ashkenazi.


I’d like to see people make noise about how underrepresented the Roma are in the Biden White House, for a change. Or perhaps overrepresented, but we don’t know because those aren’t the stats you wanted to retrieve and publicize.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do find myself wondering which of the COVID vaccines Navalny had taken. It’s almost more “scissor statement” than Navalny’s death itself.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Some time during my initial philosophic/theological foray into what I now call Triessentialism, I encountered the idea of the anti-Trinity:


    

  • 

    Where the Father is ultimate power and causal impetus, the atheist universe can only have endless void and the inexorable flow of all usable energy over time into its maw.
    

    • 

  • 

    Where the Son is ultimate logic and infinite planning, the atheist universe can only have coincidences piling up through combinatorics over uncountable stretches of time to generate the unlikely human thinker.
    

    • 

  • 

    Where the Spirit is ultimate purpose and strong love, the atheist universe can only have cosmic purposelessness and apathy for those who abuse free will for their own reasons.
    

    • 



Were we to find “Copyright 4004 BC Jesus Christ” encoded in English or Hebrew in the DNA of nerve proteins, there would be someone explaining how it’s a total coincidence, an artifact of decoding and combinatorics. Were scientists able to summon a tangible demon (who can throw lightning bolts and use telekinesis) reliably through ritual, there would be someone explaining it as a purely naturalistic phenomenon, citing Arthur C. Clarke.


Baileys abound in cosmological discussions, and mottes are few and far between. Thank you for helping us keep our epistemologies tidy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
it’s been known for quite a while that Covid itself leads to heart attacks, arrhythmias, and other heart problems.


Research presented at the American Heart Association’s Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Scientific Sessions 2022 suggests SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein can lead to heart muscle injury through an inflammatory process:




“It’s already known from the clinical side that COVID-19 infection can induce heart injury, however, what we don’t know is the mechanistic details of how this occurs. What we suspect is that the spike protein has unknown pathological roles,” said Dr. Zhiqiang Lin, lead author of the study and an assistant professor at the Masonic Medical Research Institute in Utica, New York. “Our data show that the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 causes heart muscle damage. That’s why it’s important to get vaccinated and prevent this disease,” he added. [emphasis mine]




But that's old news to amateur followers of virology news; doctors were warning early on that the spike protein itself was not just a highly identifiable piece of the virus, it was also likely the mechanism behind COVID-19 heart attacks — and thus any rise in heart attack deaths among vaccinated people not normally considered at risk for heart disease:




[Researcher Byram Bridle] claimed the information shows that the spike protein produced by the vaccines, which is intended to prevent the coronavirus from infecting the body, does not remain in the shoulder muscle but gets into the blood — and can lead to clotting, bleeding, heart problems and neurological damage.  "In short, the conclusion is, we made a big mistake," Bridle said. "We didn’t realize it until now. We thought the spike protein was a great target antigen. We never knew the spike protein itself was a toxin, and was a pathogenic protein. So, by vaccinating people, we are inadvertently inoculating them with a toxin. Some people, this gets into circulation, and when that happens in some people, they can cause damage, especially in the cardiovascular system. And I have many other legitimate questions about the long-term safety, therefore, of this vaccine."




Politifact rated these claims False because “Experts say there is no evidence that the spike protein produced by the vaccines is a toxin that could cause heart problems and neurological damage. The Canadian viral immunologist who made the claim has not produced evidence to back it up.”


Reading between the lines, the cited experts are saying the spike protein is not toxic because the vaccine and vaccinated cells stay at the injection site and never reach the heart to cause myocarditis. If further research shows that claim to be false, it’s the last link in the chain giving strong evidence that the spike-producing vaccines were indeed a Bad Fucking Idea.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Rationality and Religion
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I remember being nine (or so) and trying to figure my way through theology with my dad, with whom I had watched a great deal of Star Trek TNG. I started with "So, God is an entity-" and that's where my dad cut me off. He didn't like me using the word entity, because to him it was a fancy word for "thing" and God is not a thing.


My revelatory moment about God-as-reality came while thinking through the implications of the Trinity and the multi-omni-ness of God. Axiomatically, nothing came before God. Well, what about that very "beforeness"? Did causal sequence exist prior to God? Axiomatically no; so therefore causal sequence must either be a creation or an inseparable attribute of God. The same was true of logic; "before" God created anything, there were no things which weren't God; but "not" is logic, which means either there was a "time" before He invented logic where there was not even an implication of "not-God", or logic itself is a fundamental attribute of God.


These thoughts lead inexorably to the idea that every good and right choice is somehow tied to God on a level I can't apprehend with my merely physical senses, and that sin must be a terrible contagion indeed to even theorize it separates a small and fallible human from God forever... and that free will and consciousness are so important and glorious that it required the possibility (and resulted in the eventuality) of humans becoming so depraved that they would prefer Hell to Heaven.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks! Clarification: …but I will be disgusted by the depths of the evil they chose and agree they deserve their fate, a fate I would have shared were it not for grace.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Whenever reviewing the stats on Trump’s first term, I haven’t seen much disambiguating between BC and DC - Before Covid and During Covid. Consequently, both sides can point to the term and say they were right about Trump.


    

  • 

    BC stocks soared, DC they plummeted.
    

    • 

  • 

    BC employment hit record highs, DC it tanked.
    

    • 

  • 

    BC a rising tide floated all boats, DC the megacorps were the sole allowed source for America’s goods and services.
    

    • 



So, what evidence are you citing for the very general statement “If you want to punish generic "people in power", the evidence suggests that electing Trump seems like a bad idea.”?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Cool rhetorical trick, calling poor Black boys raised by single mothers “socially deprived.” I’d argue these kids are the most socialized by their peers, who pass down toxic masculinity through their culture of guns, gangs, grifting, and seeing the police as just a gang keeping the wypeepo’s stuff safe.


Bill Cosby tried to change the culture, but the people who overlook the sex crimes of Roman Polanski, Kevin Spacey, Woody Allen, and Bill Clinton decided that this comedian would be the one they’d ruin.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


once you cripple that industry and make it illegal, why wouldn't you prosecute them?




At that point, I’d consider it, because at that point, it’s legally considered murder with conspiracy to murder, and they’d know it without excuse. I’d gladly go after PP for RICO today and the abortion providers for conspiracy to murder right now, with impeachment for any legislator voting down a single-issue “born-alive” bill.


I’ve met two women who murdered their child in the womb far past the “kid has an active brain” stage, one a wife on reddit for economic reasons and one a single IRL for emotional reasons (her ex was revealed to be a jerk and she wasn’t ready for single motherhood). Neither considered the child a real person yet. Would I treat them like baby stranglers at worst or concentration camp guards at Nuremberg at best? The first, yes, the second, no. The cognitive dissonance would be too shattering for her and send her to suicide.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So it’s aiming for the Kevin Costner’s Yellowstone viewership. Got it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for July 19, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
High quality and recent: Rick McGough’s Faith & Reason Made Simple (Rationally Defend What You Believe In A Culture of Skepticism) is from 2018, and is quite comprehensive. Here’s a sermon from the author of the book. Message starts around 42:40.


Here’s a link to recordings of a 60-hour church apologetics class on the book with the teacher citing additional material when appropriate. Each video is around an hour, and the media library is arranged recent-first.


And yes, I’d be interested.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ever since hearing that the word “politics” is best understood as “power”, I’ve been watching ridiculous and insane policies asking, “who benefits?” Since 2015, I’ve included what is and isn’t covered on the news. Layoffs might just be economically-forced layoffs, or a consolidation of something of value: indirect coordination of the like-minded/agreeable (power), programming and/or management competence, tribe/class membership, and so forth. I can no longer afford to not be cynical.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In such a universe, “free will” more properly means the ability to consider multiple courses of action, and to reject any given potential choice based on conscious reasons, such as moral principles. In practice, our human wills are constrained by unconscious (“subconscious”) reasons, and not perfectly free.


FYI, I’ve had great success consciously removing unwanted reasons from my unconscious using Fourth Step tools from the Twelve-Step recovery method. I feel more free now than ever before.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Let’s try bringing the pills to this world of wallets and guns.


Would I rather live in a place where everyone is armed and can protect their own wallet, and because everyone knows armed robbery has a high likelihood of bloody death, nobody commits armed robbery?


Or would I rather live in a place where I have to rely on the police to a) keep everyone but the police from having guns, including organized people good at hiding secrets and doing crime, b) be close and aware enough to prevent all robberies (armed with a gun, armed with another weapon, or unarmed except for literal arms and hands), c) not accidentally shoot me or mine, d) not ever be corrupt robbers or tyrannical imprisoners themselves despite being the only armed people in the place.


Occam’s Razor suggests the simplest answer is the best. In the first place, I only have to rely on other people’s sense of self preservation. In the second, I have to rely on the competence, capability, capacity, and honor of people whose job is partly to prevent me from gaining the means to defend myself.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Necessary is the bare minimum to escape condemnation. It defies belief that you can have misunderstood this when user rolfmoo was talking about the many specific rituals and beliefs he thinks one must hold to enter Heaven and escape fiery damnation. The thick book, huge buildings, many rituals, and ancillary beliefs all serve the minimums, but have additional purposes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No, I believe because I’ve experienced God’s love when I was at my most doubtful, because I received His revelations of philosophy at my most confused, and because I received His healing in the most unexpected ways when I was at my lowest. But to you that’s anecdotes, not evidence.


I also believe that there’s a Heaven and a Hell just on the other side of death, that there’s enough forensic historical evidence to show a coherent picture of a young Earth created by the Hebrews’ God, and that Jesus’ forgiveness and baptism in water and the Spirit have a miraculous, transformative effect on the human animal.


Unlike Puddleglum the marshwiggle, I’d rather be right than happy. Like Thomas the skeptic, I trust Him who surprised me with more evidence than I asked for, and joy besides.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
“Winning” the supernaturalism discussion is one of the philosophically/scientifically unfalsifiable questions on both sides, and to progress beyond strawmen, both sides must grudgingly acknowledge it.


The anti-supernaturalist can point to any time a miracle or magic seems to have occurred, and say it can be attributed to delusion, improbable coincidence, as-yet unexplained natural phenomena, or trickery. Fire, lightning, planetary motion, cellular biology, pulling the Queen of Hearts from a deck of cards on the first try, the hand in His side by Thomas, a narrative vision of the four future world empires beheld by Daniel, and a single yellow rose in a flowerbed comforting a woman who lost her Texan mother in a car accident years ago; nothing is undoubtable. Even being able to reliably summon a visible, tangible demon through ritual could be explained away as completely naturalistic, given a clever enough arguer.


The supernaturalist can look at any miracle of science or coincidence and say how marvelous are His ways, how complex His plans, how infinitely intelligent He must be to set things up so that moment or phenomenon can have occurred just so in order that someone might become more aware of the glory of God, His righteousness, His forgiveness, and so on. The supernaturalist can also always find another example of the unexplained or the absurdly improbable and call it evidence (or, as a bailey, “proof) of the supernatural.


So we find ourselves once more weighing Pascal’s Wager against the Cosmic Ogre, the Pink Unicorn, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and asking not “which is more probable” but “whose explainers do I believe are credible, knowing all that I do about human self-delusion and motivated reasoning”. We will always be able to find evidence for a conclusion we’ve already reached.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thank you. I despise the subtle consensus-building here about the Imperatives of the Implications of Noticing, but I didn’t have the words to say it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Baphomet Has Fallen


How much good faith is required for an American state government respecting a religion's symbols?


The Satanic Temple, specifically the Satanic Temple of Iowa, put a statue depicting the pagan idol Baphomet in the Iowa Capitol, following the letter of the law allowing religious symbols. Thing is, it's explicitly an atheistic (or rather "non-theistic") religion; they have as much belief in the reality of Baphomet as they do the Flying Spaghetti Monster (mHNAty). They use literary symbols and provocative symbols to promote science and promote humanist atheist goals of tolerance and justice. It was designed to provoke a response, and it has; a Christian broke it. Deseret News reports that:




Jason Benell, the president of the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers, described the “targeting” of the display as “encouraged by legislators.” He wrote in a news release, “This is unacceptable. When our leaders make it permissible to destroy religious — or non-religious — displays they find religiously objectionable, they are abdicating their responsibility to safeguard the freedom of expression of the citizens they represent.”




The state of Iowa finds itself in the position of avenging the rights of atheists to display a pagan idol they don't even believe in, which mocks people of genuine Christian faith with a dark symbol drawn from mythology.


Take that to its logical conclusion.


A Christian church could create a parallel object to be installed in the Iowa Capitol, a similar deliberately provocative anti-atheist symbol to be promoted as a sacred symbol of a pseudo-atheist "Church of the Human Condition" which exposes the failures and tragedies of the Enlightenment and promotes learning how to morally philosophize using the Jefferson Bible and select readings from Ayn Rand in after-school clubs. I can think of a few:


    

  • A statue of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx in their best suits, French kissing atop a pile of human skulls
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  • A statue of Margaret Sanger and Madalyn Murray O'Hair standing back-to-back, dressed as Greek priestesses, each holding a knife in one hand and together holding the corpse of a Black baby
    • 

  • The Invisible Pink Unicorn (possibly made of pink-glazed blown glass, in the style of My Little Pony) as the steed bearing the returning Jesus, depicted as a Super-Saiyan, His head and hair burning white, His eyes like a flame of fire, His feet like fine brass
    • 

  • Or, if we want to avoid humanoid and animal statues entirely per the Third Commandment, an orrery (representing science) surrounded by gravestones bearing the names of Marx, Darwin, O'Hair, Sanger, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Christopher Hitchens, and other prominent atheists.
    • 



Desecrating any of these would bear the same fourth-degree criminal mischief charges, with up to a year in prison and a $2,560 fine, and exposure to lawsuits by the artists and owners of the symbols.




But aside from the turnabout, I'd like to remind that atheism is treated as a religion de facto by its adherents and proselytes, and de jure by the government in having Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment. Anyone who says it is not a religion must, by implication, accept that the broken Baphomet statue is only a violation of Freedom of Expression (under the same Amendment) so any cries of Christian hypocrisy at its destruction are inaccurate on their face due to the uneven parallel. Only by accepting that atheism is a religion can atheists claim a sacred right to offend Christians.