91 Comments

Thank you very much for the guest post today, tritorch!!

Expand full comment

Thank you, SimulationCommander. And thank you for your continued and tireless hard work to make the world better than it would be otherwise!

Expand full comment

One does what one can with what one has!

Expand full comment

The unvarnished truth of where we are, thank you.

Expand full comment

The Berlin Wall fell when enough people no longer feared the awesome power of the State. We aren't there at present. With apologies to Niebuhr, we are at the point where they're coming for the MAGA terrorists, but most of the people aren't MAGA terrorists, so they say nothing.

Expand full comment

They don't understand the definition will continue to expand.

It's honestly pretty hilarious coming from the group that just playacted as #THERESISTANCE for four years. They think they'll always be on the side of government from now on.

Expand full comment

That's why the Niebuhr plaint is so poignant. They are coming for everyone eventually. All of us "useless eaters."

Expand full comment

it already has expanded, MAGA terrorist simply means anyone that disagrees with the current administration. Joe Rogan is a MAGA terrorist to these people. Bill Maher is also. Words have no meaning to these people.

Expand full comment

To fight is to live.

Apathy is death.

Expand full comment

I think as long as we think in War and Fight, there will be no winning. We have to trick them with their own tricks. they have infiltrated everything and do not War. They manage around inconspiciously and pretend to be the good ones. Let us follow suit. Only we ARE the good ones LOL

Expand full comment

Yes indeed!

Expand full comment

“The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Expand full comment

What an excellent montage on the CovidCon, going from the absurd to the horrifyingly brutal. Thank you tritorch for this powerful guest post and to SimCom for the invitation!

Expand full comment

I sure wish that first video could be downloaded.

Do you know where I can find that video elsewhere?

Expand full comment

Thank you, TriTorch!

Expand full comment

Also, if you use Brave/Chrome or another chromium based browser, this extension will allow you to download most videos from websites when activated in the extension bar: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stream-recorder-download/iogidnfllpdhagebkblkgbfijkbkjdmm

Expand full comment

I assume tritorch has it saved locally since it was uploaded directly to the substack video server. If he doesn't have an easy way to upload/access it, I can host it on my Rumble after I get the raw video file.

Expand full comment

I appreciate your help, SimulationCommander! It looks like TriTorch's link will do the trick.

Expand full comment

Thank you both for this great post. I will be sharing it with my frens 🐸

Expand full comment

well done, Tritorch!

Expand full comment

Ah, but how to fight?

Mass noncompliance is a physical way.

Summoning together our power to not only rage, but to love one another. To serve one another. To defy their hate and violence with loving service. So much love will crack hardened hearts.

This non-physical force FAR OUTSTRIPS the frenzy of hate and destruction.

We must start within ourselves, for that is where the most epic battle we will ever face is happening.

Expand full comment

Thinking up ways of withdrawing support (esp. financial) while also being a (financial) draw on the system is an old anarchist classic, from before the "Great War" even.

Specifics will have to vary with locale, of course.

Principle being, if the state forbids fumigation? Breed and release termites while selling "termite-repellent" thingamjigs.

Expand full comment

Great guest post by tritorch!

Expand full comment

We have been making these same remarks to our assembly here. Our side in this war has already suffered losses, millions dead, many millions more injured, probably to death. It is high time the invading side started suffering losses.

Saying NO, long since ceased to be anything more than the precursor to action.

Torches and Pitchforks, or whatever else you find to hand, and use them as and when required.

ANY agent of the corporates (govt) is our enemy.

They will kill you and yours.

If you don't think that is the case, read a bit of history, wake up, get frightened, and then get mightily fucken angry.

Expand full comment

Instant follow. The best, most powerful article I've read in a long, long time. Thank you so much.

Expand full comment

That is very kind of you to say Morticia, thank you!

Expand full comment

I don't know if it is an "awesome power of the state." I think the power is a ridiculous power, fraught with irrationality, and born of a bludgeon than a fine surgical instrument. It tends to cause a lot of collateral damage, and is brutish.

Expand full comment

There's a reason I say that the only tool government has is a giant sledgehammer of force......

Expand full comment

except people are always quick to think right is on their side.

who has courage to examine themselves too? more honesty all around would be good first step.

Expand full comment

You make a good point SCA. Taking a good long and honest look in the mirror can be a very difficult thing to do for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is:

---

A mental conflict occurs when beliefs are contradicted by new information. This conflict activates areas of the brain involved in personal identity and emotional response to threats. The brain's alarms go off when a person feels threatened on a deeply personal and emotional level, causing them to shut down and disregard any rational evidence that contradicts what they previously regarded as "truth". —Unknown

---

This is a personal battle each must overcome, and given enough time I believe most usually do. This struggle reminds me of this quote:

If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain —Edmund Burke

Expand full comment

I hope you are right that most can win the personal battle to change the ideas they have held for most of their lives. This is a society that promotes immaturity, and far too many are proud of the fact that they have stayed true to the ideas they absorbed when they were 16. I know quite a few of them. It makes me want to scream “Doesn’t it concern you that you still spout the same s*** we did when we were getting high in your Mom’s basement?”

Expand full comment

Haha I love that last sentence!

They are going to have to make the adjustment eventually Heyjude, because reality is going to turn their head into a punching bag before another a year or two falls off their Justin Beiber calendar. As someone far smarter than I once noted:

"They can ignore reality, but they cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality."

We just need to make sure we're there to help get them up to speed and transform them into soldiers of truth and courage once they've pulled themselves off the mat.

Expand full comment

The biggest price to be paid will be overcoming the fear of social tyranny and accepting the heavy toll/loss by doing so.

That it is a binary decision - a burn the ships decision. The first decision.

Standing up to social tyranny can require more courage than shedding blood on a battle field.

Folks will have to find the courage to understand that the only thing worse than shame is being a coward.

It empowers a person to recognize that being shamed, for example with covid, is a joyless victory over cowards, but at the same time gives them the wherewithal to understand character is revealed in the crucible.

And that not compromising character is a barrier to the seduction of cowardness.

It is hard to be brave when the best outcome is the least penal. Courage and character are hard to find in a scenario where you will necessarily "lose" in order to "win" a victory void of joy.

Nonetheless it will require both

Expand full comment

i'd be a little more elastic with the latter timeframe. maturity is often late on the horizon.

Expand full comment

Touche, agreed. Although to be fair, in Burke's time the maturity time-table was likely greatly accelerated.

Expand full comment

If I may be so bold, I might suggest that in the past people matured quicker than now because those in the past did not suffer the intellectual and emotional retardation of first television and then social media. They had to actually use their brains to both survive and grow as individuals, while the inverse is more common today.

If religion was the opiate of the 19th century masses, TikTok is the opiate for the 21st.

Expand full comment

I think you just hit the nail right on the head BradK. As Vonnegut sagely said:

"Future generations will look back on TVas the lead in the water pipes that slowly drove the Romans mad."

Today, television does almost nothing but spill toxic waste into the living rooms and minds of the people all over the world.

Expand full comment

I have never heard that about Romans and lead in the water before. Was that a real thing?

Expand full comment

This article examines the possibility from a range of studies: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/did-lead-poisoning-cause-downfall-of-roman-empire-the-jury-is-still-out

Conclusion: the jury is still out.

Expand full comment

I'll have to read the whole thing later, but just skimming over it it seems like they make a very good case for it. Especially the bit about increasingly erratic rulers.

Caligula, meet Joe Biden.

It sort of reminds of the theory put forth a couple of decades back now that suggested a correlation between leaded gasoline and violent behavior. As leaded gas began to be phased out during much of the 1990's, a nationwide drop in violent criminal behavior -- especially so in Giuliani's NYC -- was also occurring. Haven't heard much about it for some time now so I'm guessing it has been dismissed. Still, a curious notion.

Expand full comment

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Stop and Frisk had a little more to do with NY crime going down than leaded gasoline but, sure, maybe. Been kinda violent there as of late. Did leaded gasoline make a comeback?

Expand full comment

"Did leaded gasoline make a comeback?

No, just leaded mayors.

Expand full comment

disagree a lot. people love to denigrate their own generation's entertainments. good and bad quality in every form of creative media.

Expand full comment

I wasn't critiquing specific content so much as the effect of mass media in general on intellectual development, especially among the young. Whether it's cat videos on TikTok or the endless parade of T & A in MTV music videos, it is purposely designed to numb the mind of the viewer or to stimulate certain reflexive impulses like consumer spending or sex.

Pre-20th century cultures did not have such distractions and I am suggesting that they may have matured at an earlier age because of this. But I'm no expert. Not by a long shot.

Expand full comment

Pre-20th century folks were quite obsessed with plain old survival so not a lot of time for watching kittens frolic.

Expand full comment

no. in the olden days scriptures of one's culture was shoved down the throats of the young and you got flagellants and self immolators of all nations.

nothing new anywhere. just the latest delivery system.

Expand full comment

Agree that there is certainly both good and bad in most creative endeavors, however TikTok - as one example - is deliberately used by the globalist cabal to dumb down, kill the attention spans, and fill the minds children and teens with nonsense. This video sheds some light on the subject:

https://bitchute.com/video/MW67NcNlJhFs [1:29mins]

Expand full comment

we were discussing tv.

but you think the ancients didn't write lots of crap too?

oh woe is us is a very old social lament.

how we raise our kids is how we armor them even in a sea of dreck. how we teach them to eat less junk while acknowledging the allure.

Expand full comment

It's sort of how everybody thinks "music was awesome in the [x0s]"....well, yeah, the music that has SURVIVED from that era is pretty good.....but there was plenty of junk that clogged up the airwaves at the time......

Expand full comment

what *was* on those shelves in the library of alexandria?

Expand full comment

You don't like "Putting on the Ritz"? Were you a Culture Club fan?

Expand full comment

Ah, I thought we were discussing, "every form of creative media", and Tik-Tok can be watched on a television so.... potato potaato? Regardless, sure there has always been a lot of junk floating around. The difference is that now it has been heavily weaponized and is everywhere.

Expand full comment

oh heck. imagine my surprise learning why esther forbes wrote Johnny Tremaine. what the purpose behind the Little House books was. what a henchman for the tudors shakespeare was.

Expand full comment

ha yes.

Expand full comment

Except in the case of what Bonhoeffer proposes. it's not a right or wrong issue. It's a "did I love or not love." I've done some shitty things in my time, the remedy is love. Not only an honest apology but a desire to seek to mend rather than blame.

Expand full comment

we'll need to spend a lot of time on def of love and my left hand not up to it today.

i will not pretend to love more than a few but i want right done everywhere, regardless.

Expand full comment

Would you want right done everywhere even if it was not considered to be what you determine is right? As you say, people are quick to think that "right is on their side." Do you believe you are the arbiter of what is right?

Expand full comment

that's sort of a trick question.

when it comes to what is not in my own sphere of action, i request of Whomever might be listening that there be justice for the innocent and judgment for the guilty, and it ain't my place to figure out who is who. sticking to that keeps me as sane as can be hoped for.

i might possibly be more humble than i seem.

Expand full comment

"who has courage to examine themselves too?"

I do. See my comment to KurtOverly's discussion for elaboration.

Expand full comment

Appears a tad obtuse for me. Then again, it's past my bedtime.

Expand full comment
Error