A little TOO close to the truth

 Slate is concerned that Amazon’s Utopia is letting the cat out of the bag in full view of the public:

A group of comic book fans discover an unpublished manuscript for a graphic novel that they believe holds clues about the future, shadowy forces are also looking for the same manuscript, and eventually the comic book fans uncover a global conspiracy. So far, so run-of-the-mill.

But the nature of that conspiracy plays very differently in 2020 than it did in 2013, and the results are catastrophic.As the characters discover, the reason the comic book contains clues to things that haven’t yet happened is that it was drawn by one of the architects of a plan designed to stave off planetary collapse as the population rises and fossil fuels run out. Here’s the plan:

  1. Convince the general public that there is an outbreak of a deadly new virus. To sell the story, poison or otherwise kill people, then attribute their deaths to the phony virus.
  2. Once the fake pandemic is up and running and the public is terrified, announce that there is a vaccine that can defeat the virus.
  3. With the help of global elites, NGOs, and world governments, inject everyone on the planet with this “vaccine” as quickly as possible.
  4. Surprise! The vaccine is designed to permanently sterilize all or all but a certain percentage of the people who take it. Sit back and relax as the global population drops from 7.8 billion to about 500 million in a single generation, ushering in a new era of plenty.

You can probably see the problem here, and it’s an insurmountable one. We are in the middle of an actual pandemic, a staggering number of Americans sincerely believe that that pandemic is a politically motivated hoax, and an equally staggering number believed vaccines were harmful years before COVID-19 emerged. It’s not the filmmakers’ fault we’re in this mess, it’s not their fault so much of the public is superstitious and gullible, and it won’t be their fault if Utopia gives some dumbass the confidence they need to quit wearing a mask and infect and kill you or the people you care about. Make whatever art you like—the audience isn’t your problem! But if you’ve made something about a scrappy group of kids uncovering a giant conspiracy, and it turns out that in the time since you finished shooting, that exact conspiracy theory has suddenly revealed itself to be a) believed by a significant portion of the population and b) deadly, it might not be a bad idea to push the release date.

Conspiracy Theory is just a name for the reality that the Promethean establishment doesn’t want you to know about. If the story didn’t reflect what was actually happening, they wouldn’t care if you saw it or not.

Demon State desperation

 As Q predicted, it’s all hands on deck time for the Demon Staters. This leak of Trump’s 2016 campaign data is an extremely risky move, because it almost certainly involves lawbreaking on the part of numerous government employees.

Channel 4 News has exclusively obtained a vast cache of data used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign on almost 200 million American voters. It reveals that 3.5 million Black Americans were categorised by Donald Trump’s campaign as ‘Deterrence’ – voters they wanted to stay home on election day.

Tonight, civil rights campaigners said the evidence amounted to a new form of voter “suppression” and called on Facebook to disclose ads and targeting information that has never been made public.

The ‘Deterrence’ project can be revealed after Channel 4 News obtained the database used by Trump’s digital campaign team – credited with helping deliver his shock victory to become president four years ago.

Vast in scale, it contains details on almost 200 million Americans, among more than 5,000 files, which together amass almost 5 terabytes of data – making it one of the biggest leaks in history.

What’s interesting about this action is that it’s clearly aimed at keeping blacks and white liberals within the Democratic fold. Literally no one who was a Trump voter in 2016 will care about the fact that the Trump campaign sought to reduce turnout among the strongest anti-Republican demographics. And if the Demon State is desperate enough to risk sacrificing a few high-level assets inside the FBI or NSA just to prevent blacks from voting for Trump, the Biden campaign must be in very bad shape indeed.

How’s that postchristianity working out for you?

Richard Dawkins is discovering that the postchristian society he helped bring about isn’t necessarily to his liking:

The College Historical Society (the Hist) has tonight rescinded its invitation to Richard Dawkins to address the society next year.

Auditor of the Hist Bríd O’Donnell announced the cancellation in a statement on her Instagram page, saying that she had been “unaware of Richard Dawkins’ opinions on Islam and sexual assault until this evening”, adding that the society “will not be moving ahead with his address as we value our members comfort above all else”.

“The invitation to Richard Dawkins to speak at the society was made by my predecessor and I followed up the invitation with limited knowledge of Mr. Dawkins”, O’Donnell said. “I had read his Wikipedia page and researched him briefly. Regretfully I didn’t look further into him before moving forward with the invitation.”

“I want to thank everyone who pointed out this valuable information to me”, O’Donnell added. “I truthfully hope we didn’t cause too much discomfort and if so, I apologise and will rectify it.”

No Christianity, no inquiry, no science. Dawkins’s central thesis was not only wrong, it was backward. Christianity and science are not only NOT at war, Christianity is a necessary condition for science, logically, historically, and observably. 

UPDATE: Bruce Charleton notes that Richard Dawkins simply lacks the intellectual courage to question his godless convictions, or even to contemplate the relevant evidence.

A few years ago I met Richard Dawkins at a small, relaxed party.

I had a question I wanted to put to him.

At the time I was not a Christian, but I was interested in religions and was (for example) studying religiosity and atheism in relation to personality.

I had discovered that over the same period of the twentieth century that the US had risen to scientific eminence it had undergone a significant Christian revival.

The point I put to Dawkins was that the USA was simultaneously by-far the most dominant scientific nation in the world (I knew this from various scientometic studies I was doing at the time) and by-far the most religious (Christian) nation in the world.

How, I asked, could this be – if Christianity was culturally inimical to science?

Dawkins simply shook off this point, with a literal shake of his head looking downwards, and the comment to the effect that the scientists and Christians were two entirely different groups of people.

A lesson in failed leadership

I haven’t watched a single minute of the NFL this season, but I’m moderately well-informed because I read Outkick. Jason Whitlock, who has been on a roll lately, astutely observes why the Saints are unexpectedly underperforming this season:

Brees has never been the most talented NFL QB. His intangibles, particularly his leadership, are what made him great. The guy’s reputation was impeccable. 

He was the guy New Orleans and the Saints rallied around. Jenkins and Thomas ruined that when they publicly criticized Brees because Brees had the audacity to defend standing for the national anthem. 

Brees is no longer the leader of the Saints, who fell to 1-2 Sunday night. He’s a player on the team. It’s a tragedy what Jenkins and Thomas did to Brees, the NFL’s modern-day Walter Payton. If the Saints miss the playoffs, blame Jenkins, Thomas and the media race hustlers.

Leaders have to lead. Leaders have to face down challenges to their authority. Leaders who back down and submit to the demands of their followers also give up their leadership. Once a leader abdicates his position, especially if he does so under duress or out of cowardice, he is very unlikely to ever get it back, even if his leadership is in everyone’s best interest.

Drew Brees had an obligation to the team to stand his ground and stare down his critics. Because he failed in his responsibility to do so, his teammates no longer have confidence in him or his leadership.

The psychopaths of Silicon Valley

The big tech cartel is run by a series of literally psychopathic mediocrities. It’s not only worse than you think, it’s crazier than you would ever imagine:

Like many people during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, Ina and David Steiner took a hobby and turned it into a business. Ina worked at a publishing company and collected books. David, a video producer, had been going to yard sales since he was a kid. He liked advertising collectibles, antique tools — anything that caught his eye. In 1999, four years after eBay was founded, when the notion of transacting with strangers online was still for the bold, they started a modest website offering advice to buyers.

They called it AuctionBytes, which later morphed into EcommerceBytes. Eventually, by tracking trends and policy updates across the industry, it became a resource for sellers on a number of platforms, from Etsy to Amazon — a kind of trade publication for anyone whose business is auctioning items out of a garage or storage unit. Today, Ina is in her late 50s and does the writing. David is in his early 60s and is the publisher. Neither has spoken to the press since eBay’s alleged plot against them came to light.

EcommerceBytes may not have been well known, but it was required reading at the highest levels of eBay. In early 2019, Ina Steiner shared the news that eBay had hired a new communications chief, Steve Wymer, who would report directly to Wenig.

The two men shared an aggressive streak. Wenig had spent most of his career in East Coast financial media, as a lawyer and executive at Thomson Reuters, and he maintained a certain New York alpha quality. Before working as a technology spokesman, Wymer had spun for three Republican senators in Washington, and he kept up an interest in politics. When Rep. John Lewis tweeted about the civic importance of getting in “good trouble, necessary trouble,” for instance, Wymer replied that he had “another view on how the USA should be governed. My view is equal to your view.”

Publicly, Wenig celebrated eBay’s five community values — among them, “People are basically good” and “We encourage you to treat others the way you want to be treated.” But together, he and Wymer worked to forge a more combative eBay, one that drew less inspiration from the Golden Rule and more from “The Sopranos.” (They did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and eBay would not make any executives available for interviews.)

While neither Wenig nor Wymer have been charged — both have denied involvement in the intimidation campaign — they clearly loathed Ina Steiner. In April 2019, she wrote about the chief executive’s compensation, noting that his haul of $18 million was 152 times what the average worker got, and mildly suggested it was coming at the expense of eBay sellers. After her post was published, Wymer texted a link to Wenig, adding: “We are going to crush this lady.”

Whether Steiner was breaking news about questionable expenditures, such as a pub eBay built on its campus, or marking more innocuous developments, Wenig seemed to find her existence infuriating. On May 31, 2019, she wrote that he had “promised to give sellers greater protection” from fraudulent buyers.

“Shockingly reasonable …” Wymer wrote to Wenig.

“I couldn’t care less what she says,” the CEO responded, adding: “Take her down.”

It’s pretty obvious who are the ticket takers in this story. The two men who were most responsible for the criminal actions are not only not facing criminal charges like their subordinates, they have been parachuted into plum positions elsewhere.

In June, Wenig was reelected to the board of General Motors, a position that pays $317,000 a year. Mary Barra, GM’s chief executive, called the cyberstalking scandal “regrettable” but noted “it didn’t involve any GM business.” Wymer has a new job, as chief executive of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley. The chair of the board said the nonprofit was “aware” of what happened at eBay, but believes Wymer is “a leader with integrity” and was the unanimous choice for the job.

The importance of discernment

I wouldn’t go as far as Bruce Charlton in calling a lack of discernment a sin, but then, there is a qualitative difference in being unable to discern evil and being unwilling to do so:

I suspect that the discernment of evil is maybe the most important thing to do about evil; much more important than (supposedly) ‘fighting’ evil. We absolutely need to identify, and correctly, what and who is on the side of evil: who are evil-allied. And these evil-allied may well turn-out to be almost-everything, and almost-everybody – we should be prepared for that possibility. 

If I am right, this widespread and determined self-blinding to evil, the refusal to identify and acknowledge evil; may be one of the most prevalent and significant of our many modern sins. 

He is correct, however, to observe that the refusal to identify, acknowledge, and oppose evil is both prevalent and significant in society today. I have no patience or respect for those who insist on blathering about “stupidity” or how the Left “just doesn’t understand”. At this point, the inability to discern evil looks a lot more like a refusal to accept the reality of evil. Because rich and powerful individuals are not abusing children and offering them up to demons out of stupidity.

He’s also right to point out that you have to spot the target before you can FFE on it.

Tinkerbell is black too

To precisely no one’s surprise, blackwashing Ariel the Little Mermaid proved to be insufficient, because the SJW appetite can never be sated. At least this way, when the Devil Mouse movie inevitably flops, they will have the excuse of blaming racist audiences:

Yara Shahidi is getting her wings.

The actor is set to play Tinkerbell in Disney’s “Peter Pan and Wendy,” the studio’s latest live-action adaptation. Shahidi joins a cast that features Jude Law as Captain Hook, with Alexander Molony as Peter Pan and newcomer Ever Anderson as Wendy.

“Pete’s Dragon” director David Lowery is on board to direct and co-wrote the script with Toby Halbrooks. Jim Whitaker is producing.

Though there have been many adaptations of the Peter Pan story, Shahidi will be the first Black woman to take on the role on screen. The decision follows recent moves by Disney to diversify their casting. 

I’ll call it now. Disney is going to go bankrupt. Not today, not tomorrow, and not next year, but it is now apparent that their convergence has reached a point that the corporate cancer simply cannot be excised. It’s really rather remarkable that in the face of all the various complicated challenges that the Devil Mouse is presently facing, they have concluded the answer is moar negroes.

And they are certainly creating opportunities in the wake of their death spiral.

Just because I am cruel

I enjoy publicly posting 538’s presidential election forecasts for future reference. These are 538’s predictions as of September 27, 2020.

Chance of winning

Biden 77 percent, Trump 22 percent

Electoral votes

Biden 331, Trump 207

Popular vote

Biden 52.9 percent, Trump 45.8 percent

My prediction remains exactly the same as it was on November 9, 2016. Donald Trump will win the presidential election in a Trumpslide that is bigger than his 2016 victory. #Trumpslide2020

Whatever shall they do?

It’s very hard not to laugh at the difficulty liberals have with the idea that people genuinely support Donald Trump’s presidency:

Let me start by saying, I get it. I understand the confusion. The anger. The heartbreak.

Someone you thought was a good and kind person has revealed themselves to be… something different. Someone you love has exposed their support for or tolerance of bigotry, hatred, selfishness, narcissism, bullying, racism, sexism, abuse and violence through their support of Trump.

Maybe you found out directly. Or maybe you always had a hunch but were never quite sure. Regardless of the way you find out, the realization is, quite simply, devastating. Horrifying. Confusing. Embarrassing. Maddening. Demoralizing.

I know. I get it. Truly, I do. And sadly, so do plenty of other people.

So here’s the reality you’re – that we’re – currently facing: someone we love is supporting Trump.

So what the hell do we do about it?

As always, I recommend responding to any friend or family member who tests the waters with a dismissive reference to “Trump” or “Drumpf” with “I think you mean the God-Emperor!” Stops them in their tracks and shuts them down every single time. Finish them off with a straightforward declaration of fact: Trump is the greatest U.S. President since Andrew Jackson.

I, for one, certainly don’t have any problem with their solutions.

Let me be very clear, just because someone is family, they do not get the privilege of being in your life. “But they’re family” isn’t a reason to give someone access to your life and jeopardize your wellbeing. What these boundaries look like are different for everyone. For some people, it might mean a shift, but you’re still able to maintain some kind of relationship. For others, it might be cutting them out completely. Believe me, it is not easy at all. It hurts bad when your MAGA-hat wearing cousin calls you all kinds of names on social media. But this is why the unfollow, unfriend, and block buttons were created. You do not need to subject yourself to bullies and toxic relationships just because someone is related to you.

If any friend or relative of mine ever decided to remove the privilege of being in their life and having access to them due to my outspoken support for the greatest U.S. President since Andrew Jackson, I would sincerely thank them. And then I would happily go about living the rest of my life without ever giving the moron another thought. I don’t waste my time on stupid people.

Could be worse

 President Trump appoints Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court

President Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Saturday, capping a dramatic reshaping of the federal judiciary that will resonate for a generation and that he hopes will provide a needed boost to his reelection effort.

Barrett, a former clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, said she was “truly humbled” by the nomination and quickly aligned herself with Scalia’s conservative approach to the law, saying his “judicial philosophy is mine, too.”

Barrett, 48, was joined in the Rose Garden by her husband and seven children. If confirmed by the Senate, she would fill the seat vacated by liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It would be the sharpest ideological swing since Clarence Thomas replaced Justice Thurgood Marshall nearly three decades ago.

I don’t particularly like that Barrett is Catholic or that she has adopted Haitians, but she appears to be sincere in her faith, she is almost certainly reliable on abortion, she doesn’t seem to have a plethora of questionable decisions behind her, and she appears to be sound on guns and immigration. While it is simply wrong for a white Protestant nation to be ruled over by a haphazard collection of Catholics and other minorities, there is no question that Barrett should be a marked improvement on the late, unlamented Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 

But we will have to wait and see how it goes. We simply can’t know if she is a ticket-taker or not, or what the ramifications of that will prove to be.