One thing to be considered regarding the weirdness of today's people: Psychiatric drugs. One can assume that most people under 40 have been on them at some point. Prescription medicines, not joints or lsd or mushrooms. Just plain anxiety drugs and depressants and psychosis-inducing drugs. As much as 85% of those under 30 may not be an exaggeration. It is a commonly commented that SSRI's and SNRI's cause low testosterone.
Actually, anything that causes lowered cholesterol production will cause underproduction of cholesterol-derived hormones. Thus creating unusual behavior, emotional instability, and lower fertility. Duh.
The bomb was thrown two decades ago, maybe three, and most didn't notice. The vaccine is just the tip of the iceberg, and the most recent attack against normal life development and normal human sexuality.
You describe the administrative state in all of its the banality, fatuity, condescension, and amorphous, ill-defined smothering unopposability. An administrative state that is everywhere and governing everything through crushing amounts of rules and yet nowhere, always hidden and unseen. Whose actions are felt and seen by the their effects, much like the way the wind is seen only by the bend of the trees and the blowing of dust and leaves. Most sinister of all, it is a government actor whose policy actions are most often enforced by the very entities who must obey the dizzying, suffocating, and all-encompassing regulatory edicts under the threat of administrative enforcement in a forum where the administrative state acts as legislator, judge, jury, and executioner. These commandeered "agents" are both the victim and victimizer, forced to do the government's bidding and helpless to do anything to stop the incremental violations and pointless humiliations they are commanded to perform each day. The public can complain and argue with these commandeered agents, but to what end? The people in the store - the employees and the public together - have zero power to change anything. Complain to the legislators - they've proven impotent to get the ballooning administrative state the heel. And complain about what exactly. These slights are so very small, and you look like a crank for complaining and get hit with questions like "Is this the hill you want to die on?" Meanwhile, the administrative policy makers remain hidden and protected from all feedback and blowback. This is doubly problematic because the type of conceited personality arrogant enough to think he can competently regulate all aspects of any portion of our extremely complicated modern society is the type already prone to immunity from feedback anyway. But the total lack of feedback to ignore just makes this petty, conceited tyrant even more self-assured. This is the totalitarian mindset so aptly described by Hayek in the Fatal Conceit or in the Gulag Archipelago. This is our modern administrative state.
Who do you complain to, exactly? And when? The innumerable encroachments, the humiliations, the boundary-violations are so subtle and small its not really worth it. Its the equivalent of fighting against a fortune 500 company for being overcharged a penny on your monthly statement? What sane person does such a thing? No one. So you swallow down the barely noticeable rising feeling of injustice and violation, with the swallowing down part of the felt injustice being swallowed. Only this gets multiplied by 10, by 100, by 1000 times a month. Petty, incremental tyranny everywhere, and nowhere at all. You feel it but can't quite define it. A feeling of being attacked from all sides at all times, but you look around and can't find an attacker to repel and swat away. The people slowly start going insane.
Who or what exactly are the people to revolt against? The cashier? The store manager?
And what are your options for revolt? Not buy the wine? You must comply. They are the terms of existence. They will be followed.
The Canadian government's response to the trucker protest should be THE news story of 2022 and should frighten the shit out of everybody. What we saw was ultimate and final fulfillment of administrative state tyranny. An emergency is declared by the head of the executive branch, and then policy edicts were put in motion by various lower level administrative agencies: banks were empowered and "asked" to freeze the bank accounts of protestors and given immunity for doing so; insurance companies were asked to cancel insurance policies of truckers, and so on. All very clean and civilized. The velvet covered fist. All hidden and almost impossible to see. No need for nighttime arrests and raids like the old soviet regime. No gulags. No jackboots literally stepping on the necks of the people. That kind stuff can be seen and reported - we saw the horse mounted police trample that lady. That was too visible and won't be repeated. Instead, the jackboot and horse's hoof takes the form of a few clicks of mouse in some quiet government office somewhere. And then when the real evil occurs, it is invisible to country. There is no news crew on hand when the trucker's debit card is declined in the McDonald's drivethru. Same when he is at the QT gas pump. Or the Safeway checkout aisle. He is all alone when he stands at the mailbox holding the insurance cancellation notice. All of this happens very quietly and out of view. Not newsworthy. And his private complaints won't be reported by the news, and might even be fact-checked if the underground conspiracy theory news sources run with it. Anyway, such actions could literally be a death sentence or the equivalent of confiscating all of one's property. And what recourse exactly does the trucker have? He has not been arrested? There is no lawsuit or administrative action to defend in court. Who was it exactly that took this action against him? What government branch does he need to complain to? And even assuming he can figure out the correct agency, he now faces something much worse than dealing with the DMV to get a drivers license renewed. No, this man has essentially been cast into a type of prison, but one without walls. He is in society, in our midst, and yet completely cast out into utter darkness. This is our future. It is almost here. The pieces are coming together, and one of the last is the digital ID. When that comes - and it will come and it will solve real problems and look like a good thing - well, when this Trojan horse comes it will be the way the state can monitor and control every single person at the individual level and will enable the state to cut you from your access to EVERYTHING; your money, your email, your facebook, the news, your electric car, everything!. And also watch out for central bank digital currency, because this money can also be programmed at an individual level, thus preventing others from being able to help those who have been cast out. And one by one, anyone who won't comply with every last word and whim of the government will be deleted from the system - an effective death sentence. The coming digital enslavement.
I had nearly the same conversation a few years ago also buying wine. The lady asked me my birthday. I told her the year, 1957. She was kind of pissed saying I need to know the rest of it day and month. I told her January 1st. She then narrowed her eyes and said, "were you really born on New Year's day?". I told her no, I had lied. And also told the truth about the year, so why do you need more. She insisted I show her my ID then. Making it short I asked and was given most of the answers you did. Now the same store requires not just showing it, but taking it and scanning it. I shop elsewhere.
A few years ago, a bank I had used for more than a decade asked for my ID to deposit a paycheck. Something I'd done every two weeks for that decade. I refused, and they said I couldn't deposit a check. I asked why getting no reasonable answers, one of them being someone else might pretend to be me and put money into my account. I then asked to see the manager requesting that he make an exception, and that I most definitely wanted anyone who wasn't me to be allowed to put money into my account and I would be most happy for the donation. A bit more of my queries and he became tongue-tied and could no longer find anything to say, even he couldn't pretend any longer. I told him I would never agree to the policy and would withdraw all my funds within two weeks when I found a new bank. Asking again if he could make an exception for a loyal customer. He said it wasn't possible. One week later I did withdraw my funds, and the manager was beside himself pledging to do anything to keep me as a customer. I let him know he wasn't intelligent enough to do that or his bank policy wasn't. He was begging at this point. I told him he had his chance to make it right and I wasn't bluffing so his chance was gone.
These kind of inanities are oozing into everything I do now. I am wondering are people getting this stupid? Asking for things and mumbling for your safety or privacy without a thought in their head about how illogical most of that is.
I remember being in Boston a year or so before the covid thing, which I no longer want to grace with term term"pandemic".... At Fenway Park they asked a 90+ year old disabled guy in a wheelchair for his ID to buy a beer... The blue states were already on their way to lunacy before the oligarchs reallty got rolling
Safetyism is unsafe and will destroy the West.
One thing to be considered regarding the weirdness of today's people: Psychiatric drugs. One can assume that most people under 40 have been on them at some point. Prescription medicines, not joints or lsd or mushrooms. Just plain anxiety drugs and depressants and psychosis-inducing drugs. As much as 85% of those under 30 may not be an exaggeration. It is a commonly commented that SSRI's and SNRI's cause low testosterone.
Actually, anything that causes lowered cholesterol production will cause underproduction of cholesterol-derived hormones. Thus creating unusual behavior, emotional instability, and lower fertility. Duh.
The bomb was thrown two decades ago, maybe three, and most didn't notice. The vaccine is just the tip of the iceberg, and the most recent attack against normal life development and normal human sexuality.
 too bad you weren’t there to vote. The ID wouldn’t have been a problem then.
You describe the administrative state in all of its the banality, fatuity, condescension, and amorphous, ill-defined smothering unopposability. An administrative state that is everywhere and governing everything through crushing amounts of rules and yet nowhere, always hidden and unseen. Whose actions are felt and seen by the their effects, much like the way the wind is seen only by the bend of the trees and the blowing of dust and leaves. Most sinister of all, it is a government actor whose policy actions are most often enforced by the very entities who must obey the dizzying, suffocating, and all-encompassing regulatory edicts under the threat of administrative enforcement in a forum where the administrative state acts as legislator, judge, jury, and executioner. These commandeered "agents" are both the victim and victimizer, forced to do the government's bidding and helpless to do anything to stop the incremental violations and pointless humiliations they are commanded to perform each day. The public can complain and argue with these commandeered agents, but to what end? The people in the store - the employees and the public together - have zero power to change anything. Complain to the legislators - they've proven impotent to get the ballooning administrative state the heel. And complain about what exactly. These slights are so very small, and you look like a crank for complaining and get hit with questions like "Is this the hill you want to die on?" Meanwhile, the administrative policy makers remain hidden and protected from all feedback and blowback. This is doubly problematic because the type of conceited personality arrogant enough to think he can competently regulate all aspects of any portion of our extremely complicated modern society is the type already prone to immunity from feedback anyway. But the total lack of feedback to ignore just makes this petty, conceited tyrant even more self-assured. This is the totalitarian mindset so aptly described by Hayek in the Fatal Conceit or in the Gulag Archipelago. This is our modern administrative state.
Who do you complain to, exactly? And when? The innumerable encroachments, the humiliations, the boundary-violations are so subtle and small its not really worth it. Its the equivalent of fighting against a fortune 500 company for being overcharged a penny on your monthly statement? What sane person does such a thing? No one. So you swallow down the barely noticeable rising feeling of injustice and violation, with the swallowing down part of the felt injustice being swallowed. Only this gets multiplied by 10, by 100, by 1000 times a month. Petty, incremental tyranny everywhere, and nowhere at all. You feel it but can't quite define it. A feeling of being attacked from all sides at all times, but you look around and can't find an attacker to repel and swat away. The people slowly start going insane.
Who or what exactly are the people to revolt against? The cashier? The store manager?
And what are your options for revolt? Not buy the wine? You must comply. They are the terms of existence. They will be followed.
The Canadian government's response to the trucker protest should be THE news story of 2022 and should frighten the shit out of everybody. What we saw was ultimate and final fulfillment of administrative state tyranny. An emergency is declared by the head of the executive branch, and then policy edicts were put in motion by various lower level administrative agencies: banks were empowered and "asked" to freeze the bank accounts of protestors and given immunity for doing so; insurance companies were asked to cancel insurance policies of truckers, and so on. All very clean and civilized. The velvet covered fist. All hidden and almost impossible to see. No need for nighttime arrests and raids like the old soviet regime. No gulags. No jackboots literally stepping on the necks of the people. That kind stuff can be seen and reported - we saw the horse mounted police trample that lady. That was too visible and won't be repeated. Instead, the jackboot and horse's hoof takes the form of a few clicks of mouse in some quiet government office somewhere. And then when the real evil occurs, it is invisible to country. There is no news crew on hand when the trucker's debit card is declined in the McDonald's drivethru. Same when he is at the QT gas pump. Or the Safeway checkout aisle. He is all alone when he stands at the mailbox holding the insurance cancellation notice. All of this happens very quietly and out of view. Not newsworthy. And his private complaints won't be reported by the news, and might even be fact-checked if the underground conspiracy theory news sources run with it. Anyway, such actions could literally be a death sentence or the equivalent of confiscating all of one's property. And what recourse exactly does the trucker have? He has not been arrested? There is no lawsuit or administrative action to defend in court. Who was it exactly that took this action against him? What government branch does he need to complain to? And even assuming he can figure out the correct agency, he now faces something much worse than dealing with the DMV to get a drivers license renewed. No, this man has essentially been cast into a type of prison, but one without walls. He is in society, in our midst, and yet completely cast out into utter darkness. This is our future. It is almost here. The pieces are coming together, and one of the last is the digital ID. When that comes - and it will come and it will solve real problems and look like a good thing - well, when this Trojan horse comes it will be the way the state can monitor and control every single person at the individual level and will enable the state to cut you from your access to EVERYTHING; your money, your email, your facebook, the news, your electric car, everything!. And also watch out for central bank digital currency, because this money can also be programmed at an individual level, thus preventing others from being able to help those who have been cast out. And one by one, anyone who won't comply with every last word and whim of the government will be deleted from the system - an effective death sentence. The coming digital enslavement.
Now THAT is what I call a "comment!"
"Who do you complain to, exactly? And when?"
This is it.
I had nearly the same conversation a few years ago also buying wine. The lady asked me my birthday. I told her the year, 1957. She was kind of pissed saying I need to know the rest of it day and month. I told her January 1st. She then narrowed her eyes and said, "were you really born on New Year's day?". I told her no, I had lied. And also told the truth about the year, so why do you need more. She insisted I show her my ID then. Making it short I asked and was given most of the answers you did. Now the same store requires not just showing it, but taking it and scanning it. I shop elsewhere.
A few years ago, a bank I had used for more than a decade asked for my ID to deposit a paycheck. Something I'd done every two weeks for that decade. I refused, and they said I couldn't deposit a check. I asked why getting no reasonable answers, one of them being someone else might pretend to be me and put money into my account. I then asked to see the manager requesting that he make an exception, and that I most definitely wanted anyone who wasn't me to be allowed to put money into my account and I would be most happy for the donation. A bit more of my queries and he became tongue-tied and could no longer find anything to say, even he couldn't pretend any longer. I told him I would never agree to the policy and would withdraw all my funds within two weeks when I found a new bank. Asking again if he could make an exception for a loyal customer. He said it wasn't possible. One week later I did withdraw my funds, and the manager was beside himself pledging to do anything to keep me as a customer. I let him know he wasn't intelligent enough to do that or his bank policy wasn't. He was begging at this point. I told him he had his chance to make it right and I wasn't bluffing so his chance was gone.
These kind of inanities are oozing into everything I do now. I am wondering are people getting this stupid? Asking for things and mumbling for your safety or privacy without a thought in their head about how illogical most of that is.
In Australia we call it the nanny state. Government "protection" from cradle to grave.
Still at least we can by booze when we are 18.
I remember being in Boston a year or so before the covid thing, which I no longer want to grace with term term"pandemic".... At Fenway Park they asked a 90+ year old disabled guy in a wheelchair for his ID to buy a beer... The blue states were already on their way to lunacy before the oligarchs reallty got rolling
Idiocy on steroids.
And in the background, your James-Bond-super-villain-style base from which all the p-values in the world are going to be destroyed.
I told my people to edit that out.