Jack’s Walk

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Fungus grows so quickly it can be a bit astonishing. 3 days ago these weren’t here and today they’re not only here, they’re fully grown and aging. All it took was 2 days of rain and then, like magic, there they are. How does that happen and are faeries involved?

Sunday Facepalm: The Convenience of Conspiracy.

Liz Crokin, who has never met any outlandish idea she didn’t like immediately, jumped all over Kate Spade’s suicide. It’s certainly ugly enough to have no respect whatsoever for Ms. Spade and her loved ones, but Liz always has to take it one step further. Back in the first week of June, within hours of the news breaking about Ms. Spade, Liz was conspiratatin’ away:

…“The circumstances, just from the initial reports are very shady, they’re very suspicious, she allegedly hung herself with a red scarf and when I hear things like that I immediately think Illuminati and occult symbolism. The Illuminati is obsessed with the color red, we also know that the pedophile Satanists are obsessed with handkerchiefs, talk about handkerchiefs in the [John] Podesta emails,” Crokin said.

Crokin said that pictures of Spade and her husband show them to be “your typical creepy occult couple” and said the couple reminded her of “Tony Podesta and his ex-wife, who looks like Cruella de Vil.” She then urged viewers to search for images of Andy Spade and “pizza,” claiming that numerous photos of him delivering boxes of pizza were evidence that Spade is a pedophile.

That’s conspiracy number one, which she was pushing all over the place, including tweeting photos of Ms. Spade’s husband with pizzas. Gosh, that pizza thing, it’s so darn rare, why normal people never order pizza!

Apparently, conspiracy number one wasn’t good enough, or Liz just decided she could not leave it alone, so she came up with a new one:

…During her recent appearance on Dave Hodges’ “The Common Sense Show,” Crokin seized on the fact that Spade’s husband was spotted wearing a mouse mask in the days following her death, which she asserted was something he was forced to do in order to signal to others not to “rat out” the Clintons.

[…]

“There is so much symbolism to that,” she said, adding that she read a theory on the internet that this mask “was strategically left and he was instructed to wear that mask in public. It looks like a mouse but it is really supposed to represent a rat and he was instructed to wear it in public because allegedly Kate Spade was ratting on these people. That is why she was—quote unquote—a suicide and he had to wear that mask publicly to let the others know this is what happens to you if you rat any of us out.”

“I believe that because I know how these people operate and that’s how they operate,” Crokin said.

When Hodges asked Crokin exactly who Spade may have been ratting out, Crokin replied by noting that Spade had been “tied to the Clinton Foundation.”

“So there you go,” she concluded.

There you go indeed. This is conspiracy number two. I wonder how long before conspiracy number three shows up. That’s the convenience of being a conspiracy fan, you can simply switch things all about, and pretend it’s all connected in this ooga booga scary way. For thinking people, it’s a headache inducing eyeroll, and it’s hard to believe so many people are willing to buy such utter bullshit wholesale.

Behind the Iron Curtain part 11 – Ownership of the Means of Production

These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.

It can be argued that the regime in former Soviet bloc was never communist. I would agree with that and so did the regime itself. However to argue that it was not socialist or leftist would be false. The regime did try to provide for people and take care of them. And whilst it was agreed that the ideal of communism was not achieved yet, the means of production did belong to the people. Sort of.

The argument presented to us at school was a simple syllogism: Means of production belong to the state. The state consists of the people. Therefore the means of production belong to the people.

As it often is, it never is that simple and it did not work out. And the experience convinced me that ownership of the means of production by the people cannot work on grand scale. I think it might work on small-scale, on a scale of up to a few dozen or perhaps a few hundred people, not more. This is about the maximum where people can function as internally cohesive society (commune, if you wish), because at this small-scale people can manage to keep internal tabs of tits for tats. So cheaters and slackers can feel the negative consequences of their actions quickly either by being shunned by those they wronged, or by not getting their share of the produce etc. Thus people keep connection to each other and to the consequences of their actions, because those consequences – both social and economical – are nearby both in time and space.

I have already mentioned slacking at work, because nobody was motivated to work too much. What has thrived on the other hand was black market for labor. So for example if you wanted a house repaired, via official means it might take years and not be done properly. The only way to get things done was often to have “friends” help you to repair it in their free time. Such helps were paid cash without paper trail and artisans like plumbers, electricians etc. were highly sought after – and such illegal work was for them the only means to get extra money. So they skived off of work and often even stole materials from the state in order to make untaxed money on the side (immediate and personal reward – and also immediate and personal punishment if the word got around that one does a sloppy job).

Rarely anyone ever felt this is wrong. There was a great emotional disconnect between the State and its people. The above mentioned syllogism was not convincing enough. I mentioned the saying “who does not steal from the state, steals from their own family”. It was perceived by many people that since everything belongs to the state, it also belongs to ME and therefore I am entitled to help myself when the opportunity presents itself. One teacher tried to explain to us that such is not the case, that by stealing for example a sack of cement from the state of ten million people means one is only taking one tenth of one millionth of said sack that is their own, and the rest is stolen from the remaining 9.999.999 people, but I have noticed that none of my schoolmates was affected much by this logic. Those 9.999.999 people are a faceless crowd, an abstract concept too big to fit into human mind.

The problem here, as Terry Pratchett once brilliantly stated in Night Watch, was not the wrong kind of government, but the wrong kind of people. People on average are not kind-hearted, altruistic and rational. They are petty, selfish and short-sighted. Trying to make them connect with something as grand as a “state” or “nation” only works as long as they are personally and immediately affected. It cannot keep them motivated for long and for a reward that might only affect their grandchildren when the communism finally arrives and money is not needed anymore.