Stray Thoughts #5

Showdown at the JK Corral; Gimme a Break;

I apologize for my weeks-long absence. As you’ll hopefully see — and as anyone dealing with a loved one in poor health will hopefully understand — it was morally unavoidable.

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Showdown at the JK Corral

🪒🤠😨

So, this happened…

…and then this happened…

…and then this happened…

…and then…

A vote to secede? A Constitutional Convention? A bloody, intramural shooting war along the banks of the Rio Grande?

Nah. Nothing like that.

In fact, some might claim nothing “happened” at all. Red lines were promptly drawn, then promptly crossed, then promptly ignored. A fine time was had by all.

But that’s not exactly true. Something happened, alright. Instead of blinking, the “federal government” — who-or-whatever that is, nowadays — made its own bold countermove.

And by “bold”, I of course mean “utterly fucking stupid and self-defeating.”

In response to the most serious challenge to its authority in our lifetimes, the federal government basically ran away while punching itself in the face. Or I should say, while punching itself and its European gas customers — who they only recently finished kicking in the balls by blowing up their competitor’s pipeline.

Heckuva job, Brownie.

So what’s next?

Don’t know. But I know what isn’t coming next is any sort of sane or even minimally coherent argument against what Texas is currently doing at the border.

On a recent T7 podcast that’s yet to air, I made the argument that persuasive writing — whether it’s “rhetoric” or “propaganda” — is at least in part a form of arms dealing. We supply word-based weapons to folks who don’t have the time or skill to build those, but who nevertheless need to defend themselves against ideological goon squads and their mindkilled thralls. The Enemy does that too, as well as it can. Our disadvantage is that they control major resources and powerful institutions. Their disadvantage is that they are constantly lying.

In the final analysis, their disadvantage is worse. The lies pile up and up, until the story they’re meant to sell starts sounding so patently absurd that only the most zombified of NPCs will dare repeat it.

As the imitable

Chris Bray

recently noted:

There are a bunch of things happening at Eagle Pass that merit analysis, like the much-repeated but factually incorrect claim that Texas is “defying federal authorities” by placing razor wire at the border, but at the moment I find the idea of analyzing any of it ridiculous. The people who run formally declared sanctuary states and sanctuary cities are very very upset that state and local officials are refusing to acknowledge the federal government’s supremacy in matters of immigration and border security. It’s too stupid to honor by pretending to think about it carefully.

The Border Patrol exists to make sure the border is open. That’s it. That’s the current condition of American institutions, neatly summarized.

“It’s too stupid to pretend to think about it carefully,” yes. Or even to pretend to think about it at all, really.

Tonight’s debate question: ‘Fire departments exist for the purpose of setting buildings on fire.’

Okay, let’s hear from the pro-side first...

Let’s not, and pretend we did. Because the people who subscribe to such theories aren’t merely out of ammo. It’s no longer a matter of asymmetric firepower at all, of the regime’s rhetorical rubber bands and spitball-straws versus our column of giant Japanime Robo-mechs. The Enemy’s armory lays fully bare. Every stockpile has been shipped off to Ukrainian freedom-fighting Nazis, or burned to warm the tents of Taliban veterans and their goat-girlfriends. There’s nothing left for their beloved masters to supply, aside from a tall glass of STFU laced with empathy poison.

As for those on the mindkilled side who now pray for Civil War? For Biden to carpet bomb Fort Worth, or send a legion of Bud Light mercs to lay siege to downtown Austin?

I would remind you that you aren’t only rhetorically disarmed, my fine, feathered friends. You allowed your benevolent masters to strip you of all weapons and armor — not to mention the will and/or legal right to defend yourself at all.

Fractal alignment, as per usual.

But I bet you still lock your front door, you filthy bigot. So don’t come crying to us when the Department of Door Security shows up one night to bust it down, the cops all rush in to rob you, and some rainbow-haired judge pronounces you guilty of obeying the Law.

By that time, I suspect we’ll be very, very busy.

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Gimme a Break

☀️😷🌙😂

Over the holidays, a close family member — let’s call him Jim — suffered what medical professionals would call a “health emergency”. But that’s an understatement. What happened to Jim might be better described as a health plane crash, in the middle of a perfect health storm.

I recently visited Jim at the hospital twice in the same day. The first time was in the afternoon, during visiting hours, then again in the evening, when civilians aren’t normally welcome.

The reason I wasn’t shooed away or shot on that second visit was thanks to a mutual doctor friend who worked there — let’s call him Matt. Matt is a man with special access, special privileges, the power to break the most nonsensical rules and regulations.

Except for one, apparently.

While we were parking that first time, he informed me that the hospital was “back on mask protocol,” then tossed one of those ridiculous paper snotrags my way.

I chuckled and said, “Yes, yes. Very scientific.”

This one little aside prompted a mini-lecture from my good buddy. He spoke of relative risk reduction, about mask effectiveness not being “black-and-white,” etc. We’ve heard all of this before, of course. It was the same white noise generated to backstop every ridiculous and massively destructive element of COVID theater.

The fact that Matt was still condescending to me in 2024 was a little infuriating, and under other circumstances I might have taken him to task for it. For instance, that first bit about relative-versus-absolute risk might have prompted a very pointed question from yours truly, with regards to the planetwide mRNA jab campaign. I might have noted how the issue was indeed “black-and-white” in his mind at the time, to the extent he had no trouble with the notion of injecting healthy teens, pregnant women and little kids.¹ I guess all that relative-vs-absolute risk assessment was for pussies back then. Monkey CDC, monkey CD-Do.

Same goes for The Masquerade itself. If I wasn’t so sure of his newly acquired immunity to fact-based arguments, I might have pointed him to this Cochrane study from last January, among others:

We pooled trials comparing N95/P2 respirators with medical/surgical masks (four in healthcare settings and one in a household setting). We are very uncertain on the effects of N95/P2 respirators compared with medical/surgical masks on the outcome of clinical respiratory illness (RR 0.70, 95% CI 0.45 to 1.10; 3 trials, 7779 participants; very low‐certainty evidence). N95/P2 respirators compared with medical/surgical masks may be effective for ILI (RR 0.82, 95% CI 0.66 to 1.03; 5 trials, 8407 participants; low‐certainty evidence). Evidence is limited by imprecision and heterogeneity for these subjective outcomes. The use of a N95/P2 respirators compared to medical/surgical masks probably makes little or no difference for the objective and more precise outcome of laboratory‐confirmed influenza infection (RR 1.10, 95% CI 0.90 to 1.34; 5 trials, 8407 participants; moderate‐certainty evidence). Restricting pooling to healthcare workers made no difference to the overall findings. Harms were poorly measured and reported, but discomfort wearing medical/surgical masks or N95/P2 respirators was mentioned in several studies (very low‐certainty evidence). 

It’s kind of like advertising the effectiveness of a pocket protector as anti-ballistic body armor. Given a precise set of distances, trajectories and luck o’ the Irish, there perhaps exists a nanoscopic shred of a possibility that the bullet will glance off.

Whether this outcome exonerates the adman from being diagnosed as “loony tunes” is perhaps a matter for debate. But I didn’t feel like having one of those with him. It felt like even more of a fool’s errand than it was four years ago. As I said to end a similar argument we had back then: “We’ve picked our ponies and placed our bets.”

And besides, he was doing me a favor, so I didn’t want to be a dick about it.

Long story short:

I wore the stupid thing.

It seems like everyone else did too, on that first daylight visit. That included the janitors, the cafeteria workers, the secretary pool, all those cops and security guards who might’ve tackled me Sarah Connor-style later that evening, if it wasn’t for my special escort.

I still spotted the various heretics and cheaters, of course. Even as we entered the ICU, the short hallway harbored two of these filthy, unmasked MAGA villains, furtively chewing their lunches at little workstations tucked off to the side. I didn’t ask Matt why they couldn’t eat someplace else — or at least put their masks back up in between their sips and bites, as they commanded us plebes to do back in COVID’s salad days. “Relative risk reduction,” and all that Science shit.

Still, the whole Mission Impenetrable: Mask Protocol charade was more or less kept up for the entirety of that daytime visit. Every staffer who stopped in wore a strategically retarded antivirus amulet, including two (male) nurses that my doctor buddy knew personally. He advised me that these guys represented “the best of the best,” the ICU Gold Standard in his expert opinion. And while I wouldn’t know how to gauge their nursing skill in any technical way, I do recognize professionalism when I see it. Both men had the look, the posture. That calm, efficient cadence, with just a hint of justifiable swagger. That was a relief, too; our Jimmy didn’t look so hot.

We stayed with him for several hours, trying our best to lift his spirits. I briefly stopped home afterwards, to try to get some work done before our evening visit. Since I’d literally ripped off my mask the moment I cleared the exit, my friend was more than happy to provide me with a fresh one on that second ride.

Almost everything about that nighttime visit was the same.

We traced the same path through the hospital through the same side door, journeyed back to the same ICU, to visit the same patient in the same room.

And — lo and behold — the same two nurses were already standing inside of it.

Except, this time, neither of them wore masks.

What happened next was slightly comical. Taken by surprise, one nurse gave me a slightly panicked glance, and his hand shot reflexively to the mask dangled around his throat. But I guess we must’ve mind-melded in that moment, because he left it hanging.

An instant later I was peeling down my own mask, revealing what must have been the biggest Cheshire grin he’d seen all week. He couldn’t help but return it. So did the other nurse. It seemed like all three of us knew what was really up.

The only guy who didn’t seem to be in on the joke was my buddy Dr. Matt — the same guy who’d lectured my ignorant, unscientific ass just a few hours prior. He offered no similar oratory about this fresh act of deadly rebellion, either to the nurses or to yours truly. While the three of us stood there unmasked and conversing like we were free citizens of a sane country or something, the only doctor in the room sat down glumly on a folding chair, his Science Shield still set to maximum power against the endless flak of 0.08 μm photon torpedoes.

Whenever he did speak up, it was in that muffled tone, like Charlie Brown’s teacher bound and gagged down in some congressional staffer’s S&M dungeon. As a consequence, he had to repeat certain questions, and express himself in a louder voice than usual.

This got me thinking.

Let’s assume that wearing masks in a confined space includes some benefit against contagion, however slight. When taking into account factors like fluid dynamics, vocal repetition and the increased PPI respiration from heavier breathing and louder speech, what if even this already negligible benefit is not only erased, but inverted? Given the extraordinary and social-deforming demands of the Mask Mafia, it stands to reason that such a question should be asked, if not gifted a sizeable grant for proper scientific study.

But, again, these are foolish thoughts. The compliance cult was never founded on science at all. It was rooted in various forms of magical thinking and mental illness, buttressed by authorities who weren’t accustomed to anyone questioning their orders. Caught in between you had men like Matt and the nurses, who refused to rock the boat for fear of drowning. They were also “authorities” of a sort, but were reduced to pocket-protector armor in the middle of a global warzone. But they tended to get angry when you pointed this out.

In fact, when we left a couple of hours later, he still seemed to be surly about the whole affair. I imagine the nurses’ rebellion must have been somewhat embarrassing, given the longtime dynamic between us. Matt is smarter and more educated than I am, not to mention much more successful and socially admired.

He is a Doctor. I am a nothing.

And yet, I had seen through the Mask once again.

So had the hospital’s operational staff — those “little people” who worked in the shadow of the mighty MDs, the underappreciated Morlocks who kept the whole show running topside 24/7. They danced the regulatory Dance of the Seven Veils for no other reason than to keep those paychecks rolling in, keep their head above the waves. I can respect that: That’s what almost all of us are doing, almost all the time.

In fact, that’s exactly what I’d hoped my doctor friend would say. After all, he’s got bills and burdens like anyone else. You might even say that by having more to lose, he has even greater incentive to toe the line than most. Matt didn’t grow up wealthy, wasn’t a “legacy” med student like so many of his peers. I know that he took on extreme loans and risks, made many sacrifices to achieve his current position in life. It’s not something a sane man would casually throw away.

In other words: I get it, Matt. I just wish you’d concede this is the real reason you wear the mask, rather than insult my intelligence with a bunch of “non-binary risk-reduction” bullshit. I can respect an argument that simply says:

“Yes, I know this is fucking retarded beyond all belief. I’m doing it cuz I got bills no honest man can pay.”

On the ride home, it was clear no such concession was coming. To be honest, that made me a little surly, too.

So I busted his balls a little bit, about those Gold Standard Nursing-Chads of our burgeoning rebel alliance. Why didn’t he chastise them? Would he report their crimes to the King of Masks? Had these antiscience Rethuglican Muh’freedumb maniacs just put their jobs — not to mention our lives, and the life of our mutually beloved patient — at an absolute risk? Why on God’s Green Earth would they do that?

Matt shook his head and snapped back at me:

“Maybe they just needed a BREAK, okay?”

So say we all, Doc.

So say we all.

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CONFWOOSUS SAY:

“Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day.”
”Sell a man a fish, and you’ll eat for a day too!”

In other words (ahem):

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1. That last category in particular was instructive, given the virtually non-existent risk of COVID fatality in the young. Never mind the shockingly stupid (ab)use of mass PCR testing, the ramifications of mass school closures, the rampant destruction of small businesses, the immolation of all institutional trust upon the altar of Safety Cultism, and so forth. The Science™ had declared toddlers fair game for this uncontrolled global experiment, and so Matt blithely signed off on it as well.