I’ve been leaving CovidLand every weekend now for about eight weeks. It started with my vacation in western New York, then continued as I started the “restoration” of the dining room (i.e., removing the old wallpaper and painting) in the family’s western Pennsylvania home. Mom has set the deadline as Thanksgiving, when we expect about a dozen or more family to come to dinner. A far cry from the 30 or more that was a regular feature of my childhood, but a vast improvement over last year’s six.

Funny thing about that. We never asked if we should limit it to six last year. It was before any vaccine, and the family is aging to the point it just seemed prudent not to expose a lot of the older members of the extended family to the risk. Another funny thing. This year mom was shooting for 20, and we didn’t ask anyone about that either. You see, we don’t live in CovidLand.

I often throw around the “completely corrupt” theme somewhat flippantly when talking about our beltway betters and the charade they perform for us while enriching themselves. Unfortunately, as definitive as that simple phrase may be, it really does understate just how much the operations of this Potemkin constitutional republic have been distorted and bastardized into one hell of a joke on us, We the People.

Before I dive in, it is worth noting up front (via my quick, morning internet search) that the current annual salary for both a U.S. Senator and a U.S. Congressman is $174,000. It is also worth noting that all of the quotes to come are from a 2013 book called Extortion – How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Your Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets by Peter Schweizer so it may be somewhat dated. If there has been a major government reform movement since then that I have missed, please accept my apologies and disregard this entire post.

Atlantic.com, Molly Jong-Fast:

I’m here to tell you Thanksgiving is terrible, and if you at least spend the time trying to deprogram your niece, you won’t be bored or depressed (though you might be enraged that Fox News or Infowars has convinced her Trump can ‘save America’ from Joe Biden’s radical agenda of giving people hearing aids and free pre-K). Maybe it won’t work. Maybe you’ll leave Thanksgiving dinner as divided as you were when you sat down at the table five hours and 4,000 calories ago. Or maybe you’ll plant the seed, sow just a little doubt about whatever Tucker Carlson is saying now. Maybe you’ll even change a heart or a mind. Maybe you’ll bring the temperature down just a tiny bit. Or maybe you’ll need to report a relative to the FBI! Either way, it’s something to do besides just eat.

Gratitude is an admission of weakness, of need. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why children have such a hard time saying, “thank you.” “Thank you” is proof of the existence of what a woke person would call a power imbalance.

But “thank you” is also so important because it is part of what makes a good society. In a primitive or nature-worshipping society, might makes right. Nobody powerful needs to be nice because they can simply take what they want.

Someone called “Senator Kayse Jama (He/Him)” (apparently Jama is an Oregon State Senator**) has linked–on his Twitter account–to this person:

Augustine in a sermon on Psalm 41 (Psalm 40 in the Septuagint-based numbering system he used):

Et vide beatitudinem tuam–And look at your blessing!

We’ve all seen them, the Medicare TV ads exhorting seniors to apply for enhanced benefits. Government appears to be coaxing often reluctant retirees into greater dependence.

But this is a colossally bad idea, even for those of us who support helping citizens in their sunset years. It stimulates greed (it’s freeeee!) and entitlement in the demographic which government programs have already made into the most wealthy. It expands the reach of government into our lives.

Ladies and Gentlemen (and the rest of you too, of course), start your engines!

I’ve handicapped myself (because whatever privilege the English enjoy, cooking isn’t it, as many of you have kindly reminded me over the years), and I’ve given myself a head start. Because I need one. So far, I’m three Christmas puddings (should do this Christmas and the next two) and a fruitcake in.

The pudds are this recipe. It’s not one I’ve tried before, but I thought I’d give it a whirl.

Is the simulation playing with us? Scott Adams (although not exclusively) speculates that we live in a simulation in which we are all characters operating under the direction of a program. As a character within the simulation, we cannot comprehend our existence as program objects but for our ability to notice some events occurring that seem inexplicable other than as humor on the part of the system operating the simulation. (A humorist such as Adams would find this theory quite appealing.)

There are two events occurring in a suitably compressed time period to make one wonder whether this is the simulation winking at us yet again:

Reprising the disastrous assumptions of Field Marshall Haig that the enemy could not sustain a war of attrition, General Westmoreland’s strategy in the Vietnam War put us on a path in which our primary goal quickly mutated into a desire to achieve the appearance of not losing while desperately looking for an exit.

Trying to appear not to lose is now the sole basis for our COVID-19 policy.  “Losing” does not mean the disease spreading until herd immunity reduces it to endemic status (which was always going to happen anyway).  Losing would be a forced admission that the suppression strategies failed and all the evolving, temporizing nonsense deployed to protect the illusion of effective leadership was not based on science but on vanity, a love of the spotlight, and possession of the levers of policymaking power.