Atomic Biscuits - 20241201 - Vector

I want you to think about how often in the hobbyist broadcast world we see chat's with "5x5"... do you know where it comes from? We take if from old radio to mean that everything is working great that we can hear loud and clear. But of course there are those who will see what they want to see in patterns and so there is a contingent of people who is say that the term "5x5" is code for SS and therefore a Nazi salute.
It's a tactic taught and often deployed without much thought by all types of people. Broad brush strokes liket this are a disservice to anyone making a case, as it creates many non-true cases with sweeping generalization; to shame people by bulking them into a pile. Don't be herded like sheep and let's not be guilty of these types of dirty tactics. Giving people dignity and respect, meeting them on the battlefield of ideas, and challenging them one-to-one rather than dismissively, making your case with facts and compassion can have the best long-term consequences. In this holiday season we are meeting with friends and relatives. For many it will be difficult to understand how we arrived at this new world, where DEI is getting kicked out of Walmart, where MSNBC is getting kicked out of the Comcast portfolio, and where their ideas have been kicked out of the way for a while.

In criticism we should be specific for both with whom with agree very little and with those with whom we generally agree; only in this way can targeted improvement occur as consensus is built, opinion shaped, and constituents can be heard...then represented by those we've chosen to speak in our stead... when they do not voice our opinions and concerns they should be replaced rapidly with recall, snap or new elections as no-confidence in their actions means they no longer stand to represent their constituents.
How strange it is that with the cresting of a strong President, suddenly peace is on the horizon, while weak leaders caused havoc in our country, along our borders and abroad...selling peace as the remedy to the chaos they made in a never-ending cycle of grift and power-brokering.

There have been some Trump nominations that have raised eyebrows. How soon people forget his method. A person who has a great deal of experience may be put forward as a potential leader...and then all of their past deeds are brought to light...shredding their ability to serve, and forcing someone else into position. That is no accident. Trump knows exactly how sunlight bleaches clean so much of the dark corners of the administrative state...he's not ignorant, he's showing you the rotten fish so you can cheer as they are chucked out.

Believe what you see.
Believe what you experience.
Believe what you know to be true.
Challenge what comes at you from the boob tube.

It's sometimes interesting to listen to how "science" is challenging the belief system. I think we know why "programming" is called such, why propaganda is folded into nearly all media like sugar in cereal grain. It pollutes and fattens. There is a reason I call it slopstream media...it's meant for pigs and sheep, to make the herd fat and docile and easy to cultivate and harvest.

We are now living with many, many people whose belief systems have failed them. A substack this week about "The Left Are Not Alright" by Dave Reaboi says:

"For the Left, it all seemed to end, as it did at Kamala Harris’s victory party at Howard University, with a whimper. There was no defiant or fiery speech that night; in fact, the candidate wasn’t seen at all, unwilling to face even the dedicated supporters who had worked hardest for her candidacy. Over the next few days, while there was some hissing and a few entertaining misfiring synapses at MSNBC and CNN — including some angry denunciations of elements of the Democrat coalition — the emotion seemed forced and perfunctory.

For many, though, the downbeat response to Trump’s victory seemed out of place, given the feverish severity of how Democrats had articulated the stakes of this election. In her final month, Harris’s campaign dispensed with messaging on any issues, leaning hard into explicit comparisons of Trump with Adolf Hitler, and of MAGA politics with fascism and Nazism, evoking the specter of American death camps in the event of the ex-president’s victory.

Using a strategically-timed news-hook from former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly, Harris stared gravely into the camera outside her residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory, warning that her opponent was no longer simply a “threat to democracy” but, as a Hitlerian-Nazi-Fascist, was openly dedicated to its destruction. The setting, too, was significant: rather than simply reaching down into the rhetorical gutter at a campaign stop, she was using the trappings of her role as vice president to make an official pronouncement on a rival domestic political leader, using language usually reserved for foreign enemies with whom we are at war. The bloody result of a Trump victory, Harris and her media surrogates assured us, was certain.

While some in the press had never been shy of slandering Donald Trump as a “fascist,” the message coming from the candidate herself marked a serious escalation.

After all, when faced with an enemy that would extinguish all freedom in America and usher in a holocaust, procedural resistance in courtrooms or acts of civil disobedience are plainly inadequate. With the evil of a Hitler, there is no negotiation, comity, civility, or ordinary politics; only violent resistance is commensurate with the threat.

Some on the Left received the message clearly, as intended. Even before Harris herself began referring to him as a “fascist,” Trump had already been the attempted victim of two failed assassinations. Immediately following the first shooter’s very near miss, the New Republic all but endorsed this violent, final solution to the Trumpian problem, revealing a menacing, monochrome drawing of the former president on its cover complete with Hitler mustache. And below the image — subtle, in the color of dried blood — was the headline, “American Fascism: What It Would Look Like” in faux-Germanic typeface. Scandalously, law enforcement disappeared any information about the would-be assassins’ motives, saving the Democrats having to address the fact that their manifestos dovetailed too closely with the party’s messaging.

All this gathered momentum and intensity in the press until, on the evening of November 5, “our sacred democracy” simply ended. Donald Trump won the electoral college and the popular vote by wide margins, and his party was in control of every branch of the Federal government. The people had spoken with a clear and resounding voice. If you’d been following the speeches of Vice President Harris, you’d assume that what they wanted was Nazi Germany."

What we're going to need to do is move swiftly forward, knowing that the changes we make will be the correct ones; and reassuring the children, carsick in the back, that we know where we're going, how to get there, and they will be alright after a nap.