I feel awful even asking but I don’t have a choice.
Don’t expect anything from me for a few days. I sent in my newspaper column this morning before I left for the procedure, so watch for that on Sunday. I’ll post it if I can, if not you should be score able to find the link using older columns. I‘ll post before that if I’m up to it.
Exercise your liberty, my outlaws. I love you guys.
Update 2-10: I'm still alive and feeling better. Not there yet, but in a day or two...
The doctor scheduled my colonoscopy as his last of the day so he could take his time. And he took a lot longer than usual. He was disappointed that he wasn't able to get it all and apologized for that. Anyway, during the procedure, I developed some sinus drainage that filled my throat (pharynx, I suppose) and they had to suction it out. My pharynx was torn up and was pure agony-- especially after the effects of the anesthesia wore off. The doctor was concerned that I may have aspirated some, and I think I did. In that case, he prescribed antibiotics but with the condition of my throat I couldn't swallow anything bigger than a water molecule, so I had to ask for the prescription in liquid form. Thank goodness texting is a thing because I had no voice at all from about an hour after the procedure until Thursday morning. I napped a lot yesterday and never got dressed. I'm still coughing up a lot of gunk from my lungs but they are clearing up somewhat. And I actually slept fairly well last night. So, I'm doing better. Not looking forward to the surgery, though.
My daughter has a comic-con scheduled for this weekend-- back in the same town I was just in. I am not up to it, but she's already paid for her ticket and made plans long before the colonoscopy was scheduled. All I want is to stay home and rest. If I can, I may buy a box of ammo while in the Big City since that's kind of a tradition when I can afford it-- and that would give me something to look forward to.
Posting from my phone isn't ideal. Auto-incorrect inserts strange word choices and the phone interface generally makes everything harder, but I wasn't going to get out of my chair to get the laptop Wednesday night, so you got what you got. I've edited the original post now.
I'll try to have something scheduled for tomorrow morning.
The doctor has changed plans somewhat-- he's not scheduling a surgery for tomorrow "just in case", anymore. I'm going to ask why he changed his mind (if I remember to ask), since this means I'll have to go through all this again if surgery is necessary-- and that doesn't make me happy at all.
This is also likely to be a financial disaster, even with insurance. Due to deductibles and whatnot. And who knows what insurance-related nightmares I'll have to wade through before they even go through with the procedure. The thought makes me sick, especially with recent experiences in that regard.
Keep me in your thoughts and prayers.
And they're correct.
When you say someone "has a right" what you're really saying is that others have no right to do something to that person.
There is no right to murder, to rape, to kidnap, to tax/steal, to trespass, to ban or regulate anything, or to govern others. However you wish to express this is fine.
Saying "You have a right to..." is just shorthand for saying "no one has the right to" do something to you. Some people get twitchy over shorthand. It doesn't make it incorrect.
You have the right to free speech (and "reee speech") because no one has any right to shut you up. No one has the right to archate in any way, for any reason. The imagined right to do so-- as an individual or a corporation/government-- is not real. It doesn't depend on the target having any rights whatsoever.
As long as those who say "Rights aren't real" understand this, they are correct.
If they imagine rights aren't real because someone somehow "has a right" (that can't exist) to do something to other people, then they are being hilariously inconsistent and wrong.
I’m not talking about a situation similar to someone living isolated deep in the Amazon today who could possibly know of the modern world out there somewhere, but a parent living in the actual Stone Age, trying to prepare their kids for a world that doesn’t yet exist. A world they can’t possibly imagine.
I suspect that may be the human situation today.
In that case, the best education you can give your kids is how to be adaptable. Anything else will be obsolete before it is used.
This is almost the case with everything I was taught as a youngster. It's only going to get more true.
It’s possible that the next few years will bring changes we can’t even imagine. If so, how can you be ready? How can you help young people be ready? What you would consider a good education might be worse than useless. It's something to at least consider.
When I first heard about the one over Montana I thought "Seriously? No one in Montana has shot it down yet?" Then I heard that it was like a weather balloon and realized it would be out of range.
I'd be willing to bet someone has shot at it already, though. Especially after the news came out that it was a Chinese spy balloon (not that this means that's what it really is-- I just wouldn't want to be flying in a balloon right now).
I saw someone asking who had "Chinese spy balloon" on their 2023 Bingo card. I didn't.
I also saw someone else wondering why "our" government wasn't doing something to protect us from a spy balloon sent by "our existential enemy". But I thought it was sent by the Chinese government, not the US government. Maybe someone is confused about which government poses the greater threat to average Americans. It might be me, but I don't think so.
Letting government keep its fingers in the issue only makes it worse. There is no government solution and there never will be.
Don't add socialism or legislation and punishment-- which is what all government supremacists propose every time.
Handing out free drugs or needles is socialism. That's not going to help anything. You get more of what you subsidize. You have to steal money from people to pay for anything "free". You're making things worse.
Harsher legislation or more draconian punishment is just evil. And it doesn't work anyway. Prisons are funded with stolen ("tax") money. Even the pretense that prison is to protect you/society is a lie. You're making things worse.
I'm not talking about "legalization"; I mean stop letting government say or do anything about drugs. Any and all drugs.
Respecting the defense of person and property from any archator using any excuse-- drugs or "authority"-- would go a long way toward making the problems associated with drug abuse go away, too. This is something else government needs to release and leave.
Government is always the wrong tool. Trying to fix anything with government is barking up the wrong tree at an imaginary squirrel.
I guess there's something to be said for saying something at the right time rather than too early or too late.
I have this experience a few times a year now. I doubt they ever saw what I wrote. But, even if they did, and it got into their head, I probably got the idea from somewhere else, too. There are very few original thoughts that haven't been thought of multiple times by multiple people.
Great minds think alike. Great ideas make themselves be thought.
I don't care where the ideas come from. If they are good, I want them to spread. Even if I truly were the first person in human history to ever have the thought, if it's good it doesn't matter if I get credit, as long as it spreads. Right?
That's why I don't care if you copy and paste anything I write and claim an idea as your own. If you think it needs to have a life of its own, that's what matters. Some ideas would do better separated from me-- I'm not everyone's cup of tea. Hard to believe, I know! But it's true.
I'm not going to get rich off of any of my ideas. If they are useful and can increase liberty, that's the main thing. If someone else can get rich off my ideas (not that I believe it would happen), I might wish I got a cut, too, but liberty matters more. Liberty is more important than I am. Liberty > life.
Some will tell you this, as a matter of fact, to try to keep you alive when bad guys unfortunately have the upper hand. As cops nearly always do.
A second type will tell you this as part of a dishonest narrative that cops are good guys who are just doing their job of keeping you safe, so you owe them your respect and immediate compliance.
Both admit that cops can and will kill you. This is objectively true and saying otherwise makes you look like an idiot who lives in a rotten log.
The second type is telling you a partial truth, but is letting you know he's your enemy.
This type will sometimes admit, when pressed, that immediate compliance is no guarantee because cops murder (innocent) people all the time, even when they are doing their best to comply fast enough to keep the cop from getting scared. Mistakes are made, but it's still the victim's fault because the other guy is a cop!
There's one long-time "expert" in the gun community and in gun magazines who will always take this second path-- or always did back when I paid any attention to him. He would tell you to comply (and how your compliance should be choreographed) and let the court sort it out later. (Or let your estate sort it out if the cops murder you anyway. But I doubt he would ever admit that as a possibility).
He was always so over-the-top copsucking that I haven't paid him any attention in more than a decade-- maybe a couple of decades now. I just saw him pop up in a suggested video on YouTube. No, I'm not going to watch any video he's in. His pro-cop attitude (he's a cop or former cop) destroyed his credibility with me long, long ago. Now I hate even seeing his face.
Around mid-December, our town's contract with a garbage collection company ran out. The company that has had the contract for decades lost the bid. So before the end of December, they started hauling off the dumpsters around town.
The new company wasn't supposed to start collecting trash until mid-January.
So, we were without any trash collection for 2 weeks. The new company did put a large bin on the town's lot (where the water towers and other town utilities are) for people to use. I stashed my trash in my shed.
When we finally got a new dumpster, after being without one for over 2 weeks, instead of placing it in the ugly scar where the old one had sat for decades, they carefully placed it underneath the guy-wires of a utility pole, about a dozen or so feet away. Where, conveniently, the truck can't lift and dump the dumpster without hitting the wires. So they don't.
Total incompetence.
This means, we have a dumpster, but it is overflowing and hasn't been dumped since it was placed there. The others down the alley have been dumped twice. I'm using them, but my irresponsible neighbors will just keep piling trash on top of the dumpster. I know because it's what they always do. Often, they don't even bother to bag it. Then it falls off/out and no one will pick it up if I don't. Including the dirty toilet paper they dump loose in-- or on-- the dumpster. (OK, maybe you can't flush it for some reason, but put it in a tied bag!)
Back when I lived in a different state there was no monopoly on trash collection. I hired my own trash collector. If they missed my house, I could call and they'd come back and get it, and they'd apologize.
With this company only answering to the town government, they don't care. The government doesn't care. Yet, we are still forced to keep paying the fee for the service we aren't getting-- for more than a month now.
Yeah, I'm irritated over it. If I were this incompetent I'd have to pay a price.
UPDATE 1-31-2023: They moved it late this morning and used a backhoe to press down the trash so it didn't stick up. I guess enough people complained. It was the town that moved it, not the trash collector-- I'm sure they weren't going to travel 90 miles one-way to move a dumpster. I also think it was the town which placed the dumpster in the wrong spot to begin with. I had tried to walk the dumpster out from under the guy-wires the first time it got skipped, but it was too heavy to budge. Couldn't even rock it.
I have conditional empathy for others-- such as addicts.
If you started down a path you knew would likely lead to a particular destination, my empathy is shallow. I probably don’t want bad things to happen to you, but I’m going to balance that with “You knew where this was going”.
That's part of the reason I don't support prohibition. I don't want to harm everyone by trying to protect someone from themselves. I know that there's probably no one who decides to become addicted, but they knew the chance was there when they took their first dose.
I'll save most of my empathy for those who didn't choose to start down the path they find themselves on.
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ANYTHING.
Nor to control or regulate anything.
Yes, there are things that probably shouldn't exist. There are things you should not allow in your life. There are things that can hurt or even kill you.
Government power is one of those things. Probably the worst one among many. But government won't ban government power-- it would only ban lesser dangers.
It is your right and responsibility to ban things from your own life if you think you need to. Not from other people's lives; not as an individual nor through political action.
Later I dared state there can be no such thing as "too much liberty" so someone decided to educate me on how "too much liberty" is a real threat, and that people's liberty can be in conflict. But they immediately pivoted away from arguing about liberty toward freedom.
In other words, they changed the subject so they could pretend they proved their point.
I have always said there can be such a thing as too much freedom. And your freedom can conflict with someone else's rights.
You might be free to arbitrarily kill someone, which would violate their rights, but you don't have the right to do so-- you don't have the liberty to kill them until they choose to violate you and put you in a position to need to defend yourself.
Similarly, you might be free to live on money stolen from others-- the slave labor of others--, but you have no right to do so.
There is no conflict.
But, I don't doubt this would make a certain type of person-- a type which is prevalent in societies around the world-- "happier" than the alternative.
It's the follow-up colonoscopy to the one last summer that had some troublesome results. If that colonoscopy isn't better than the last I'll be going in for surgery-- possibly the next day. If the surgery is necessary they'll be removing a section of my colon.
I hope it all goes better than the last appointment I had.
I recently went in for a follow-up on my liver issue, but I was turned away at the desk because they said my referral had expired. They never even looked at my insurance or anything, just looked at the sheets of paper they had on the desk in front of them (that apparently they'd never glanced at). Why they couldn't have said something before I drove 90 miles, one way, I don't know. They wouldn't even call to get a referral; just "Nope. We can't see you". This was the second time-- out of four appointments-- I arrived only to have them refuse to see me for some bureaucratic nonsense. I told them I will not be coming back.
I realize that choice may kill me.
At least I'm still pursuing the colon problem.
I'd be lying if I said this is having no effect on my attitude and ability to write. It is. I'm trying to not let it, but I can't get it out of my mind. I apologize to you all, and especially to my supporters.
Some DemoCRAPublicans want a "flat tax". This faction pretends this would be more ethical, while the other pretends this "flat tax" would be in addition to the IRS and other taxing scams. The latter are quick to accuse the former of robbing poor families (but they'll pretend the poor families aren't being robbed now).
Taxation is theft; it is extortion.
All of that is beside the point.
Taxation is unethical because it funds the state. You can't make it right as long as it helps keep a state alive.
A civilized society is what humans sometimes manage to create in spite of uncivilized acts such as taxation.
When you mix politics with anything you are left with nothing but politics. “Everything is political” only if you choose to make it that way. If you mix politics with education you are left with schooling, which is the opposite of education.
This is why the most highly “educated” are often the most wrong on topics that have been or can be politicized.
Yes, there are people who manage to avoid being damaged this way. Not many, but some. The quickest way to tell the good ones from the bad ones is to see who's making the issue political; who is advocating policies and government action. Don't listen to those people. They're the ones getting it wrong.
I know someone who is rude to people and then wonders why other people don't seem comfortable around them. They refuse social invitations and then complain that others don't include them. They'll make a point of not participating, and then get angry that the world wasn't revolving around them.
I can see it. Others can see it. But not the person who's doing it. It's everyone else who's to blame. This doesn't seem to be a good life strategy.
When I notice something like this, it always makes me think about myself. What am I doing to sabotage myself right now? Some things are obvious to even me. Sometimes I am able to stop. Those times I am not able to, I am sabotaging myself again; sabotage on top of sabotage. But at least I'm aware of it. I don't blame others.
“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.” ― Robert A. Heinlein
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I don't. I consider it revenge.
I understand the desire to punish someone who has violated you-- I've felt it myself many times. But, I now think that feeling goes beyond what I have a right to do or demand. If I punished someone (or had the state do it on my behalf) I would feel I had created a debt.
To me, justice refers to the attempt to restore a victim to their pre-violation condition, or as close as possible. This could include restitution. I also realize some things are beyond restitution, but in those cases, punishment also falls short. It seems to me that punishment is desired because "you hurt me so I want to make sure you, hurt, too". This seems inherently vengeful. Am I wrong? I could well be wrong.
If you think punishment is a required part of justice, please explain to me in the comments why you believe it is and how they are related. I might not be convinced, but I'd like to see the other side from rational perspectives.
L. Neil Smith had said that government secrets should be the only capital crime. Of course, since government is the entity that carries out capital punishment (killing in defense isn't capital punishment), that would never work. Nor do I believe capital punishment is anything other than murder in revenge.
Since I don't believe in the right or "authority" of government to do anything (kill people, keep secrets, exist, etc.), I'm not on board with that, but I do agree that government keeping secrets from its superiors (anyone you could think of) is an unforgivable wrong.
You and I have a right to privacy from government's prying eyes and probing fingers, but governments have no rights at all-- they can't.
You may point out that what I consider wrong isn't going to change the criminal gang's behavior one bit. True.
Government cares about my opinions exactly as much as I care about its opinions. Still, I think it's a useful observation to make so you know where someone stands-- if they'll stand with you when the chips are down or if they're likely to sell you out because government says so.
