Intermarkets' Privacy Policy Support
Donate to Ace of Spades HQ! Contact
Ace:aceofspadeshq at gee mail.com Buck: buck.throckmorton at protonmail.com CBD: cbd at cutjibnewsletter.com joe mannix: mannix2024 at proton.me MisHum: petmorons at gee mail.com J.J. Sefton: sefton at cutjibnewsletter.com Recent Entries
Shadows Cafe
Quick Hits Semafor: The Washington Post Has Lost 90% of Its Daily Online Readers Since 2021 Update: The Post Lost $100 Million in 2024 Alone -- an Election Year, For Crying Out Loud!!! Judge Knocks Down Biden's Unconstitutional Effort to Rewrite Title IX's Protections Based on Sex to Protect "Gender Expression" Karen Bass Pledged That, If Elected, She Would No Longer Travel Internationally. She, Get This, Lied. Israel and Hamas Reach "Breakthrough" on Hostage Deal? Jen Rubin "Exits" the Washington Post; Chuck Todd "Exits" NBC Politico Panics: Trump Set to Unleash "Shock and Awe" Executive Orders THE MORNING RANT: Major Federal Court Ruling - Corporations Allowing Their 401(k)s to be Used for ESG Purposes Are Engaging in Illegal Fiduciary Misconduct Mid-Morning Art Thread Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024 Captain Hate 2023 moon_over_vermont 2023 westminsterdogshow 2023 Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022 Dave In Texas 2022 Jesse in D.C. 2022 OregonMuse 2022 redc1c4 2021 Tami 2021 Chavez the Hugo 2020 Ibguy 2020 Rickl 2019 Joffen 2014 AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups
|
« Cute, Fuzzy Animals Doom America to Energy Dependence |
Main
| I've Got Some Good News and Bad News »
April 30, 2010
The Government Created Dustbowl & DepressionAs I was saying: choices. The delta smelt, I'm sure, is a fine, upstanding fish, and I certainly have no racism against the delta smelt. Indeed, some of my best friends are delta smelt, and I mean "friends" in the traditional sense of "money-grubbing accountants." Still, as wonderful as the delta smelt is -- I hear they are hard-working and have strong families -- I sort of think that human beings are more important. It started with a 2008 federal court order that stopped water flowing from northern tributaries on a supposed need to protect a small fish the delta smelt that was getting ground up in the turbines of pump stations that divert the water south. The court knew it was bad law, but Congress refused to exempt the fish from the Endangered Species Act and the diversion didn't help the fish. If I could choose the Miracle Solution in which no delta smelt were harmed and farms weren't destroyed, and human lives weren't left in wreckage and ruin, sure, of course I'd choose that, and protect the delta smelt. But that option is not on the table. We can choose between protecting a pretty minor fish, or allowing farmers to actually live, and not see their farms destroyed in a government-mandated dustbowl. Of course we've chosen to destroy people's lives. Am I allowed to say that it's a lot like Stalin's rule to decide that common people should be destroyed in order advance some abstract, speculative goal that has seized the imaginations of the political class? They're just dirty, low-education farmers anyway. Who gives a crap about them. Eggs, omelette, break. Sometimes I think the biggest cleave in politics is between the Abstract Party and the Concrete Party. The Abstraction Party is largely, but not entirely, the liberal Democrats, and the Concrete Party is largely, but not entirely, the conservative Republicans. The Abstract Party thinks, of course, in abstractions, and elevates these abstractions -- often speculative or plain fantastical -- over real-life human lives, the concrete, the real, the demonstrable, the solid. And part of what sustains the Abstract Party is their faith, a religious faith, really, that what they "know" abstractly they know with 100% surety, so if they're told by their priests (their politicians and pundits) that it's better in a the long run that some dirty farmers are bankrupted and die penniless than we allow the delta smelt to die off, then they just believe that, on faith (as it's speculative, and who has anyway of knowing what's best in the long run; in the long run, as they say, we're all dead), and simply push forward with plans that result in catastrophic ruin for real-life people because they are so damn sure their belief in a speculative abstraction trumps any of that. As a member of the Concrete Party, that gives me great pause. I don't really possess that level of intellectual arrogance. I can't believe in speculation and abstraction enough to think that, when the rubber meets the road, I can choose obliterative poverty for an entire region of the country with the confidence that I'm doing the right thing by basically ending human lives. The Abstract Party has done an awful lot of evil in the world. I'm going full Godwin here to note that the Nazis were a party of abstraction, fueled by the unproven belief, which they nevertheless were willing to kill for, so sure of it were they, the Jews were somehow responsible for just about every ill in Germany and that some abstract and speculative Utopia would arise if only the lands could be purged of the Jews. Elevating, again, a belief in some dreamy abstraction over the real and inarguable suffering created by it. You've got to be borderline crazy to do this. Seriously. I'm sure Lee Harvey Oswald had some belief he was quite sure of -- Kill Kennedy and the World Becomes A Wonderful Place -- and you have to be pretty insane to be sure enough of that proposition to kill someone you've never met and have no actual quarrel with. At some point you'd think that the testimony of their own eyes -- seeing people suffer and die in the real world -- would shake them out of their unshakable belief in the abstract "Good" they're pushing for, but you'd be wrong. They have a religious conviction about it. They are religious zealots-- lunatics, cultists -- who believe in Paradise on Earth and if you have the chance at Paradise on Earth human lives are small potatoes in the scheme of things. And they tend to call this lunatic religious passion "reason" and "science." And they're quite serious about that. I don't mean to suggest that actual reason and actual science are bad. I just mean that when they follow their religious-maniac dogma, they call it reason and science. As with Marxism. The doctrine that's killed... what, 100 million? That was, of course, a scientific analysis of history. It was scientific. It was a critique, as they say, of pure reason. You can murder an awful lot of people when you're religiously-convinced you're doing God's work.
| Recent Comments
[/i][/s][/b][/u]Oddbob:
"[i]...with several women accusing him of being abu ..."
Mike Hammer, etc., etc.: "China is considering selling TikTok to Elon Musk. ..." Oglebay: "I wonder if the Canadian unknown activists are som ..." Boswell: "Just heard on Fox News: China considering selli ..." steevy: "150 Early on the UK commenters were very positive ..." Don: "I will just write this anyway. My wife just texted ..." Joe Kidd: "120 Why is the head so small? Posted by: Boss Mos ..." Oldcat: "hahaha China is considering selling TikTok to E ..." runner: "*the test was a success ..." GWB: "The dicks are a fantastic addition! Especially sin ..." runner: "Funny story , a few days after Russia tested its h ..." gKWVE: "oh man, amazon.com/Feminism-Worlds-Neil-Gaiman-Ess ..." Recent Entries
Shadows Cafe
Quick Hits Semafor: The Washington Post Has Lost 90% of Its Daily Online Readers Since 2021 Update: The Post Lost $100 Million in 2024 Alone -- an Election Year, For Crying Out Loud!!! Judge Knocks Down Biden's Unconstitutional Effort to Rewrite Title IX's Protections Based on Sex to Protect "Gender Expression" Karen Bass Pledged That, If Elected, She Would No Longer Travel Internationally. She, Get This, Lied. Israel and Hamas Reach "Breakthrough" on Hostage Deal? Jen Rubin "Exits" the Washington Post; Chuck Todd "Exits" NBC Politico Panics: Trump Set to Unleash "Shock and Awe" Executive Orders THE MORNING RANT: Major Federal Court Ruling - Corporations Allowing Their 401(k)s to be Used for ESG Purposes Are Engaging in Illegal Fiduciary Misconduct Mid-Morning Art Thread Search
Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Primary Document: The Audio
Paul Anka Haiku Contest Announcement Integrity SAT's: Entrance Exam for Paul Anka's Band AllahPundit's Paul Anka 45's Collection AnkaPundit: Paul Anka Takes Over the Site for a Weekend (Continues through to Monday's postings) George Bush Slices Don Rumsfeld Like an F*ckin' Hammer Top Top Tens
Democratic Forays into Erotica New Shows On Gore's DNC/MTV Network Nicknames for Potatoes, By People Who Really Hate Potatoes Star Wars Euphemisms for Self-Abuse Signs You're at an Iraqi "Wedding Party" Signs Your Clown Has Gone Bad Signs That You, Geroge Michael, Should Probably Just Give It Up Signs of Hip-Hop Influence on John Kerry NYT Headlines Spinning Bush's Jobs Boom Things People Are More Likely to Say Than "Did You Hear What Al Franken Said Yesterday?" Signs that Paul Krugman Has Lost His Frickin' Mind All-Time Best NBA Players, According to Senator Robert Byrd Other Bad Things About the Jews, According to the Koran Signs That David Letterman Just Doesn't Care Anymore Examples of Bob Kerrey's Insufferable Racial Jackassery Signs Andy Rooney Is Going Senile Other Judgments Dick Clarke Made About Condi Rice Based on Her Appearance Collective Names for Groups of People John Kerry's Other Vietnam Super-Pets Cool Things About the XM8 Assault Rifle Media-Approved Facts About the Democrat Spy Changes to Make Christianity More "Inclusive" Secret John Kerry Senatorial Accomplishments John Edwards Campaign Excuses John Kerry Pick-Up Lines Changes Liberal Senator George Michell Will Make at Disney Torments in Dog-Hell Greatest Hitjobs
The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny More Margaret Cho Abuse Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed" Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means Wonkette's Stand-Up Act Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report! Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet The House of Love: Paul Krugman A Michael Moore Mystery (TM) The Dowd-O-Matic! Liberal Consistency and Other Myths Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate "Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long) The Donkey ("The Raven" parody) |