We’re going to need some rope,
pt. 2 

Conservatives didn't invent hypocrisy, but they do hold many of the patents.

I understand, to a certain degree, "social conservatism". Some people don't like change. Some people want things to be the way they used to be. That's fine for them, and if they don't like things like gay marriage, no one will force them into a gay marriage, but why be a buzzkill on someone else's life? I don’t expect anyone else to be as interested in pencils as I am. If someone doesn’t want anyone to tell them how to live their life then they shouldn’t tell everyone else how to live theirs. Like telling them what books they shouldn't read, who they shouldn't love, how they refer to themselves, or how to handle their own body. Conservatives can't get enough of telling other people what to do. It can sometimes feel like Conservaties don't stand for anything but have a laundry list of what they are against. Conservatives didn't invent hypocrisy, but they do hold many of the patents, trademarks and copyrights.

For illustration, here are a few choice articles from the very conservative and absurd Epoch Times that appeared, free of charge and entirely unsolicited, in my mailbox. To be clear, someone thought these articles would win me over to getting a subscription. By the way, a Wikipedia entry on this paper describes it as: "…a far-right international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement." And to think I thought Falun Gong followers just wanted to do Tai Chi in the park?

"A Word of Advice to the PM on Wealth Creation" An article argues, rather poorly, that during a crisis, providing relief to citizens is a disincentive for the mechanisms of wealth creation by lessening the reward for bringing innovation into existence. Um, here's another word of advice, someone using a food bank probably won't get around to innovating until after they've had lunch.

"The Destructive Fallout of Male Emasculation" I'm pretty sure I saw Jordan Peterson wearing this headline on a t-shirt. If you can't see where this article goes, I have an optometrist I can recommend.

An article by Conrad Black says, he isn’t saying the Coronavirus was created in a lab in Wuhan and propagated to the rest of the world, but he is saying someone else is saying it (“anti-regime scientific sources” - well, that's specifically non-specific). Dear Conrad, at least have the courage to own what you want to say that others are saying.

"Socialism: The Preliminary Stage of Communism" - excerpted from a book published by Epoch Times, How the Spectre of Communism is Ruling the World. Note the use of the present tense. This isn't a book about some 1950s McCarthy-era American anti-Communist witch hunt. I think the conservative trope that socialism is a slippery slope to Stalinism is so old the British Museum is accused of stealing it.

"Treat Her Like a Lady: Let’s Bring Back Chivalry" “For 35 generations this code of chivalry regarding women and how men should treat them was a given of Western civilization.”
Live in the twenty-first century much, Sir Galahad? Where art thy blinders that you didn't notice that abuse of women is probably older than "35 generations"? Oh, and just say “about a thousand years” like a normal person.

When I was a kid, it seemed that any “conspiracy nut” from the “tin foil hat crowd” was considered very left-wing. Anti-government conspiracists and UFO chasers etc. were either socialists or communists. Today that dial has turned. Very left-wing groups today might still have disagreeable ideas or methods (think of how critics will lump antifa groups, environmentalists or animal rights activists together and their questionable protest methods) but they don’t use the misinformation or disinformation the way far-right provocateurs do or have well-funded, widely available news networks to do it. The weird thing is the political spectrum isn’t a straight line but is circular. Theocrats behave so similarly to Fascists, they can be hard to tell apart, because that's where the "opposite" ends of the far right and far left meet.

It goes sort of like this, starting from left to right: Fascism - Communism - Socialism - Liberal - Centrist - Conservative - far-right - Libertarian - Dictatorship – Theocracy - Fascism. Now it’s getting difficult to distinguish the far-right from fascism (See Umberto Eco’s list of 14 properties of fascism).

I read recently that people are more inclined to articulate their negative emotions than positive ones and that is what we typically call venting. I suppose that’s what I’m doing here. Letting my angry humors vent out so they aren’t trapped within. I will apologize for that, and maybe I really should've just left the table, gone to the bathroom and vented as much as I like.