Lately I’ve been thinking again about Desistance. The idiot politicians who claim to be Resisting Trump are actually Assisting him. Everything they do creates more reasons for normal people to want the opposite. If this is “democracy”, give us a king.
Resistance is Assistance.
I handled Desistance in a deeper way in 2021 when the “virus” monsters were still ferociously torturing in some places (including here) while other countries and states had moved on.** Rehashing and mixing a few previous items, mostly this 2021 piece..
= = = = = START 2021 REHASH:
I went to sleep listening to 1940 news broadcasts, when US was trying to benefit from neutrality without getting involved in the war.
Woke up after only two hours, with a bad dream about being pursued by two sides. Then the next item in the playlist was this episode of Calling All Detectives, where the detective is working for two stamp collectors.
The detective is called simultaneously by two high-dollar stamp collectors who are accusing each other of theft. He uses constants and variables expertly, determining that a crooked stamp dealer is playing these two against each other to manipulate prices.
At the end the narrator says:
When two clients accuse each other, always look for the hand of a third party.
Excellent advice. We won’t hear this moral today, because the entire world is based on Symmetrical Scapegoating as designed by Machiavelli.
Nevertheless, the rule is universal. When you’re supposed to argue about a specific question, look elsewhere.
When you find yourself arguing the details of Question A, you can be PERFECTLY SURE that Question A has been provided for you by the rulers and robber barons, to keep you nastily divided so you don’t notice that Question A simply DOES NOT FUCKING EXIST.
Question A is NULL. There may be a real subject lurking behind A, but you can be damn sure that the details of A are meaningless.
Why is this error so persistent? Natural language doesn’t have a grammatical representation of nullity, but it’s easy to express in sentence form. This issue is meaningless. The emperor has no clothes. Just don’t go there.
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Who gained from WW1 and WW2? The serious non-combatants. South America stayed resolutely out of both wars, and supplied both sides with oil and minerals and beef and wheat. Spain and Portugal (the cultural forebears of South America) played a different game, going along with the Axis but not actively aiding the Axis. They also escaped destruction.
The current “virus” holocaust is not Nation A versus Nation B. It’s nearly all governments versus their own people.
There are only a few neutrals this time. Tanzania and Belarus started out fully and OFFICIALLY neutral, and it appears from a recent ‘stringency map’ that both have mainly held the line. Dixie and a few midwestern states pulled out early, and they are benefiting in the same way that South America benefited before. Young productive people are moving to Texas and Florida and Tennessee. Young productive BUSINESSES are pulling up stakes and moving from California and Washington to Texas and Florida and Tennessee.
Aside from the moves, non-combatant states prosper directly. In WW2 the neutrals didn’t have to suffer bombing and sieges. In the current war, the noncombatant states continue working and living normal lives without muzzles and mandates and Lucite and constant fear of new crazy lockdowns. The state gains revenue and doesn’t have to spend money on welfare, and doesn’t have to clean up riots and suicides. The governor gains popularity.
The neutrals gained from each war. Does this mean they started the war? Should we apply Cui Bono? No. The neutrals aren’t the stamp dealer in the detective story. South America didn’t start WW2, and South Dakota didn’t start the 2020 holocaust. Bush Junior started it in 2005, following a long Bush family tradition. But cui bono is a hugely important LESSON for states and nations that must decide whether to participate in a war.
Moral:
If you want to stay relatively intact, with a chance of prospering afterward, don’t start or participate in wars or arguments.
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** ‘Moved on’ reminds me of a then vs now difference. Many of the hardass Resisters against Trump’s “virus” holocaust, including RFK and the governor of South Dakota, later flipped and became Trump cultists or Trump employees. Were they working for him in 2020? For RFK the answer is Yes, because he signed up to work with Trump back in 2017. For Noem and the others, probably not. They’re just dividers, stuck inside Question A, forced to be either FOR the question or AGAINST the question.
Machiavelli wasn’t nearly as absolute in the ’60s. A few of the hardass Vietnam resisters kept their activism going after China won and Nixon surrendered. Most simply moved on and returned to normal life. None of us flipped into Nixon employees. Desistance was more common then.
Polistra's Mill 