Repeating the repeats

If you've been reading my blog for a long time- or even just living in the world- you have probably noticed that the same things have to be explained over and over again. Once is never enough. People don't get any smarter.

When I was writing yesterday's blog post, I was thinking of how many times I have already explained that same thing. I'm not sure exactly, but it is probably several. But, people "out there" aren't getting it. 

That's not the only example, either. Nearly every post I write, dealing with some simple reality that shouldn't be hard to understand, is a re-statement of things I (or others) have said before, addressing bad thinking that has taken root and is still there despite all attempts to uproot it.

I know that almost no one "out there" in the world, percentage-wise, has been exposed to my blog, but I also know that if I can see and know something like that, many others do as well. I don't claim to be the only individual who can see these things. The opportunities are all around. Freely available.

I also know that when people say something dumb and demonstrably wrong, they often get pushback. I see it happen. They resist learning, though.

So, we repeat ourselves. Endlessly. And each time, it's as though no one has ever addressed the broken thinking before. Are these concepts not being explained well? Or have those who refuse to learn built defenses to protect their strange (often, political) beliefs, which results in the same result.

So, if you start reading this blog, or something else, and you get a feeling of deja vu, it's probably that you really have read something very similar before. We have to keep repeating ourselves for the slow kids in the back.

-

Thank you for reading.
Subscribe or donate.

The Script

I've discovered that when responding to statists online, they follow a few rather rigid scripts. It could also be thought of as executing a program, but to think of it as a script seems more human.

This is one of the most common scripts:

Ignore the mountain of evidence all around.
Demand evidence.
Receive evidence.
Say "I'm not reading all that!"
Demand more specific evidence.
Receive more specific evidence.
Say, "That's an isolated case."
Demand different evidence.
Repeat.

Once they start following The Script, they've shown they are immune to reason and can be ignored. It's a waste of time to try to reason with them.

-

Thank you for reading.
Subscribe or donate.

I have an unplanned vet visit coming up this afternoon.

Beware The Blob – its mission is creepy

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for May 20, 2026)

If you give government an inch, it will take a mile. Or, in most countries, 1.60934 kilometers. Some people refer to this as "mission creep"- government's tendency to keep moving the goal posts and grabbing more power over more things; things government has no business having any involvement with...read the rest...

-

Thank you for reading.
Ways to tip.

Not a perfect system...

This illustration could be my parents talking to me. We actually had this conversation- although it was decades ago. Most likely while I was in high school; before I'd heard of libertarians and when I probably thought anarchists were bushy-mustached bomb throwers.

But, that assumption about the system is wrong. Anyone who thinks this way is wrong. It’s the best system they can imagine or are willing to consider; not the best there is or could be. Not even close.

They are far from being alone in this belief. The vast majority of humans, regardless of the specific system they find themselves yoked with, share this delusion.

Only govschooling or some other intensive cult indoctrination could brainwash people to this point. 

Again, as happens so often, I wonder how I dodged that bullet.. or if I'd be better off believing the lies with the rest of them.

-

Thank you for reading.
Tips, please. 

If not, that’s OK.

Maybe I can help

For those who think they've won some debate by saying "America is a continent!", maybe I can help.

America is a country- I would prefer the term "region", but it is what it is. America is the land and the people of that specific region. Once, it was also a culture; for some, it still may be. Few understand the foundation of that culture anymore, but imagine it was something cheaper that they prefer.

North America is a continent; a land mass- just like South America and Australia are different continents. America is located on the continent of North America, along with Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, Honduras, and several others.

The US (or "USA") is a government, a criminal organization infesting the country of America on the continent of North America. The US is the greatest enemy America has ever faced. It is opposed to everything America once stood for. Either you love America, or you support the US; trying to straddle that fence is impossible.

Govschool and other schools modeled after govschgool are the reason most people are unable to understand distinctions such as these.

-

Thank you for reading.
Tips, please. 

If not, that’s OK.

It's not a "theory" when you watch it happen every day

Over the years, my opinion of conspiracy theorists has evolved.

There's a joke that says conspiracy theorists are just early.
Another says conspiracy theorists are running out of conspiracies because they have all been proved true.

Maybe not quite, but it's not nearly as joke-like as it used to be.

I definitely don't think of conspiracy theorists the same way I used to.

No, they can't all be right. Many of their theories are mutually exclusive; if one is true, another can't be. Some seem crazy to me, but who am I? 

I can't know everything that's going on. No matter how evil a conspiracy might sound, I know if government employees can do it, and if they believe it benefits them, they will do it. No matter how many people it hurts.

They aren't good people, even if they are "nice".

You already know they'll conspire against you, your life, liberty, and property. They show you every single day. 

When many of them join together to commit an act and protect each other in the process, that is, by definition, a conspiracy.

Taxation is a conspiracy to commit theft and get away with it.
Anti-gun rules are a conspiracy to punish you for exercising your right to self-defense and the proper tools with which to carry it out.
Govschooling is a conspiracy to dumb down the population and pretend they are being educated.
Driver licensing is a conspiracy to violate your right to travel and turn it into a privilege they can suspend at will. If you can't travel without their permission, you're a prisoner.

So, would government murder a president, lie to start a war, release a pandemic, sell you and me out for the benefit of another government, or have a secret space program? You know they would if they could. The only questions- could they do it, and would it benefit them?

-

Thank you for reading.
Tips are nice.

Fatal involvement

The looming food stamp riots show one thing clearly: Government shouldn't be involved. In anything. It doesn't matter what the topic is.

Government shouldn't be involved in food distribution. When it is, look what happens.

That's not all, though.

Government shouldn't be involved in healthcare, justice, security, business/economy, money, making rules, education, transportation, arbitration, defense, or any of the other things government tries to involve itself in.
Even more dangerous are the things which government decides to enforce its artificial monopoly over.

Central planning is always a flop. Every time it is tried, it fails. If you believe it didn't fail in some instance, it's because government got involved in (and destroyed) education.

Also, I have no objection whatsoever to anyone decisively ending a food thief who believes they are entitled to the food in a store. That person can choose whether or not to be a thief, and if that's the choice they make, I have no pity when that choice has deadly consequences. There is ALWAYS a better option than theft.

-

Thank you for reading.
Donations would be appreciated at this time

Are you 'gatekeeping' liberty?

While writing my newspaper column, I run it through an analyzer to check the reading/comprehension/"grade" level. A few years ago, I mentioned this to someone and got immediately scolded. The gist was that if people aren't smart enough to understand it, they don't deserve it.

This feels like "gatekeeping" liberty. 

I understand the argument for challenging people to think better. To grow smarter. Most people won't be challenged; they'll just move on to something simpler. I don't have to like this to accept it.

I don't want to be seen as smart; I want everyone to understand and desire liberty. Sure, I know not everyone will, no matter how it is offered to them. Still, I want to give them the chance. If this makes me appear dumber to elite readers and writers, I can live with it.

-

Thank you for reading.
Leave a tip?

A hunger for competence

I want to be capable of anything I need to do, and I want to be good at the things I value.

It's hard to admit when I'm not good at something- but if you've been reading this blog for a while, you've seen me admit to many things I'm not good at, or in some cases, apparently incapable of. Just know I hate admitting it.

YouTube- as much as I hate their draconian and hidden policies- has helped me do many things I didn't think I was capable of doing. Saving hundreds of dollars for me and for my parents (I have repaired more things than I can count for them- they just pay for the parts).

I have learned I'm able to do more things than I thought. Often, when I really can't do something, it's a lack of the proper tools or an inability to find the parts. It's not me!

Saturday, while I was grieving a feline friend I wasn't able to fix, my parents' car- which my sister was depending on while she got her car repaired (or not- the dealership service department is famously incompetent and is going to have to try again)-developed a problem that made it unusable.

But, with the help of Grok and YouTube, I was able to diagnose the issue and make a temporary (maybe?) fix that saved the day- or the week. And saved my parents hundreds of dollars, at least for now.

Long ago, I worked with a girl who shocked me one day when she told me she had replaced the fender on her car over the weekend, all by herself. These days, I shock myself by doing things I never imagined I could do.

I would still pay someone else to do most of these things if I had the money, but I'm glad to have options. It's nice to feel a little more competent all the time.

-

Thank you for reading.
Leave a tip?

Prickly statists

Statists don't like being recognized as statists.

They really don't like it when you point out the implication that this means, in this specific area, they are intellectually lacking.

They may be a rocket scientist, but as long as they believe there exists a "right" or "authority" to govern others, they aren't as smart in this specific area as those who realize no such right or authority exists or can exist.

I don't know trigonometry, but I don't get mad if someone points this out. That would be silly. I can't know everything (as much as younger me wanted to). So, when someone who does know trigonometry tells me something related to that specialty, I don't get mad at them or try to mock them for thinking they know more about it than I do. That would be stupid, because they do. Ignorance is guaranteed; stupidity is a choice.

I realize people can't just stop believing what they believe, nor can they just start believing something they don't believe. It's really not an option or how the brain works. Maybe they can eventually learn their way out of it, but statists aren't often motivated to do so. They believe they're right, so they avoid learning anything that might show them otherwise. Whether it's history, economics, or ethics.

We all start out as anarchists, most of us (including me) become statists to some degree as we grow, then some of us manage to learn our way out of it if given the opportunity. Those adults who don't mature out of statism are to be pitied, and only mocked if they strut around being a statist clown who advocates violating others to promote their superstition.

-

Thank you for reading.
Leave a tip.

A govschooling victim

A while back, I saw someone get angry and lecture a person who called this place on the map "America".

He "educated" them that "America is a continent. This country is the United States!".

I guess he's another poor victim of the govschools.

I gently pointed out that the continent is North America, but there's no continent that is simply "America".
I should have gone on to say there's also a South America.
America is this country- the region, the land, resources, people, etc., as set apart according to agreements between political criminals for purposes of plundering without getting in each other's way too much.
The United States [sic] is the government currently ruling over (violating and plundering) the people of America.

No, I never checked back to see how he reacted to this news. Probably exactly as you'd imagine.

-

Thank you for reading.
Show your support.

Nothing is truly forgotten

I recently experienced another example of a long-buried memory popping into my brain. Even more buried than the nearly forgotten onions I mentioned a while back.

This time, for no reason I'm aware of, a theme song from a television show that was on the air when I was 3 years old, and that disappeared to never show up in reruns (as far as I know), suddenly started running through my mind. The song brought with it a dim memory of the show.

I hadn't thought of the show since it aired. No one ever mentioned it to me again. But the theme song was in my head and made itself known, and when I looked it up on this electronic wonder, it was just as I remembered. 

Brains are kind of amazing!

Again, this gives me hope that things you and I have said to other people, including to our kids when they were young enough to listen, will stay with them far into the future. Maybe pop back into their minds when they least expect it, but when it's needed. 

If you value liberty and have talked about it to anyone, there's a good chance it's still embedded somewhere in their neural network. Maybe long after you and I are gone, words we once spoke will still be doing some work behind the scenes. (That's not counting things we've written down for posterity.) I think liberty gets in your head and makes a home there, waiting to be called up to work. 

Stranger things have happened.

Liberty is a natural human need, even if most people have been brainwashed to think it's not. Keep infecting those around you with the liberty virus. Your great-grandchildren will need it.

-

Thank you for reading.
Show your support.

DOGEd suddenly

DOGE may actually be doing what it promised.

It has hit home: a relative's federal government-financed "job" (in govschooling) has been DOGEd.

I would have more sympathy if I hadn't spent a lifetime being scolded for not finding a "good" government "job". Not by this individual, but by others who held this person up as an example I should aspire to.

I mean, I do have some sympathy. But I know this person is a Trump supporter, so I'm not sure how she feels about this. If she's consistent and principled, she'll accept this as necessary. The TDS-sufferers in the family will have a different take on events.

I've warned family members about accepting government "jobs"- but most of them either work in govschool or are retired from govschool. It was pointless and counterproductive to keep hammering the point, but if asked, I didn't hide my opinion. I'm not going to say "I told you so", or really make any comment at all. This is a time to hold my tongue and observe.

UPDATE: DOGE failed.

-

Thank you for reading.
Show your support.

Daylight "Saving" Time is a lie

Trump says he wants to abolish Daylight "Saving" Time. Hopefully, he isn't like most people; confused about which is which. Standard Time is the one in effect now; DST is the other setting where everything starts an hour early and pretends it doesn't.

Even a Google search result that relies on AI got it wrong, saying something about "the transition to autumn DST". Yes, it was focusing on "Autumn DST" [sic] to argue there is no increased mortality due to that particular clock change. No, the autumn transition is to Standard Time. That's the one that doesn't have increased mortality. DST is the one that kills people.

Daylight "Saving" Time, and every argument in favor of it, is based on lies.

Supposedly, farmers needed that imaginary "extra hour" of daylight. That was a lie. Farmers never started work by the clock anyway; they go by the sun and weather. Your clock settings are irrelevant to their workday.

People say they want more sunlight after work/school. I suggest they just wake up earlier, and petition their job to open earlier in the summer and they say they can't. But that's EXACTLY what's happening anyway. Businesses are opening and closing earlier, it's just that self-centered people demand everyone mis-set their clocks to hide the fact. That doesn't change it. It's a lie.

Plus, DST is the summer setting, when most govschools are closed anyway. Another lie.

When anyone argues in favor of Daylight "Saving" Time, I'm always reminded of the old joke about the old Native man observing that only the paleface are stupid enough to try to make a blanket longer by cutting a foot off the top and sewing it to the bottom.

It may have been a joke, but it's still true.

It takes me a month or more to adjust to DST (if I ever truly do), but a day or less to adjust to Standard Time. I'm not a morning person, and every person I've ever seen who insists on forcing everyone to pretend businesses aren't just opening and closing an hour early, but that "time changed", is a morning person.

I hate DST. I've always hated it. I hated it when I was a kid in school. I hated it when I had a normal job. If there wasn't much daylight left after I got home, I didn't demand everyone else change their clocks to suit me. I just lived with it. In the summer, there was plenty of daylight left (here, it doesn't get dark in the summer until nearly 10pm during part of Government Wrong Time). In the winter, it's just winter. The sun goes down earlier regardless. Mis-setting your clocks won't fix that.

Set your clocks however you want. Just don't coerce others to adopt your setting. 

DST affects me more than most people because I live on the western edge of the Central Time zone where solar noon is already an hour late most of the time. I can live with that because there's a reasonable argument for time zones. There is no such argument in favor of DST. During DST, my clocks are wrong by up to 2 hours. 

Daylight isn't being "saved" by mis-setting clocks for most of the year. It's all lies.

-

Thank you for reading.
I appreciate any support.

"Why do the highly educated lean Left?"

It is commonly observed that highly educated people tend to lean Left. Some people would like to believe this means that’s the smart position.

They'll tell you this all the time. Often with a dash of smugness.

It's not necessarily true.

Since most "educators" lean Left, their students are influenced in that direction. Some of those students end up being "educators" and the cycle not only continues, but accelerates. Partly because they feel Left is the wise position since the "smart people" they know all lean in that direction, so to prove they are also smart, they lean Left. Maybe even a little further Left than those who taught them. Or brainwashed them.

The truly smart people reject archation. They lean neither Right nor Left, but toward respecting the rights and liberty of everyone around them. Politics makes people stupid, especially when they think they are being smart.

———-

(I’m struggling through a disastrous computer problem, using a combination of someone else’s computer and my phone. This is not sustainable, but I’m still trying to get back into my laptop. Wish me luck!)

-

Thank you for reading.  

Show your support?

Make Statists irrelevant

It's fun to poke statists, to mock and ridicule their insane ideas, but the best way to make them irrelevant in the long run is through education.

And one of the best sources of the good kind of education is still TOLFA.

It has been a while since I recommended it to you, and I needed to fix that. So here it is: Go to http://tolfa.us/ and learn. It's not hard and it's fun. 

You'll be glad you did, and you'll be making the world a better place.

-

Thank you for reading.  

Show your support?

Save the future: send kids to the camps

People today aren’t good at thinking. Critical thinking skills seem to be rare-- more rare than is good for the species.

It’s probably too late for most adults. The only hope lies in helping young people develop the ability to think at an early age. 

There should be a summer camp to help kids learn to focus their thoughts; to concentrate. It could be called Concentration Camp.

Wouldn’t you love to send kids there?

-

Thank you for reading.  

Show your support?

Opinions built on loose sand

Someone expressing a difference of opinion with me doesn't really bother me. What bothers me is a difference of opinion when the opinions are based on objectively incorrect "facts"; hallucinations. Things that can easily be found to be false, if one looks into it.

A personal friend of mine holds many opinions of this type. She's not interested in hearing anything that would challenge her opinions, so I rarely bother, but it is really strange to me. I don't understand this at all. Normally, I just take note of it and move on.

I know she's highly influenced by "public opinion", especially those expressed by the customers and coworkers she's around every day. She doesn't pay attention to "the news", but she still absorbs the narrative. And when their opinions are baseless, hers end up there, too. But, "everyone knows...", so what can you do?

My first observation of this phenomenon was back in 2020 when she was sure Covid was going to kill off all the old and weak, and that the shots were the only thing that might save us all. I nearly broke her brain when I didn't get the shot(s)-- she was sure I was doomed. She wouldn't listen to anything I had to say on the matter. I was foolish and was spreading the plague to the innocent.

In a recent conversation, she expressed a few different opinions of this sort in a short period of time, which is what got me thinking about it. Some of these opinions could actually be dangerous for her to act on, but when I tried to say something about it, she shut me down. She's not interested. Others could save her from a huge amount of future problems, while solving current problems. Nope. Not interested. Others probably won't make a difference in her life, but it's odd to not even be curious enough to want to find out the truth. She's the most incurious person I've ever known.

It seems odd to me. 

That's probably more common in modern humans than I'm comfortable admitting, but if this is a fact, my opinion should change to reflect it.

-

Thank you for reading.  

Show your support?

Statists don't understand

Statists don't understand economics or inflation.
They don't understand how (and why) cops cause crime.
They don't understand rights.
They don't understand legislation.
They don't understand how foreign meddling creates enemies.
They don't understand anything they want to regulate or ban.|
They don't understand simple language.
They don't understand human nature.
They don't understand history.
They don't understand the difference between the state and society.
They don't understand why free speech matters, or what it is.
They don't understand ethics or morality.
They don't understand physics or science in general, or how science works.
They don't understand democracy.
They don't understand how children learn or what inspires them.
They don't understand liberty.
They don't understand much of anything that matters when people live around other people.
They don't understand why people chafe under their control.
They don't understand government.

This list isn't close to comprehensive. The list of things statists don't understand, but think they should be in charge of anyway, is staggering.

And, despite this monumental lack of understanding they've built their entire government-supremacist edifice upon, I'm expected to let them run my life?
I don't think so.

I'm better off taking care of myself. And so are you.
I understand that you're better off making your own mistakes.

-

Thank you for reading.  

Show your support?

Once you see it…

…You see it everywhere.

I’m talking about all the problems people obsess over that have one core cause: government.

I’ve written about it many times, so no need to rehash it here.

I see it everywhere, from just about everyone. They see some of the problems (the ones that bother them), and they are resigned to the problems being unsolvable. Or they suggest approaches that will make it worse. All because they can't let go of the cause.

I suppose you could point out that the root cause is actually archation, but then I'd point out that archation has a known solution: defense. And I'd also point out that government is institutionalized and "acceptable" archation, which is said to be above any "violent" solution. Defending yourself from government is said to be wrong. (It isn't, but it may sometimes be unwise.)

So, the solution to all the problems they dwell on is off the table.

They'd much rather thrash at the branches (or the shadows of the leaves) than dig out the diseased root. That's how captured their brains are. They can't even see how silly they look.

-

Here are some of the best ways to help me