One thing I like about Trump is he is a player character, he has his views and his vision. He might be wrong, he might be gauche, but he is a person. And he is trying to do things as he sees fit. Like he’s been talking about unfair trade practices and tariffs for decades. Whether that will help or hurt, I don’t know. But it’s his vision. This is actually an exception for politicians. Mostly they are NPCs, playing a role at the behest of someone else, part of a bureaucracy that is angling for “the greater good” as defined by itself, i.e., usually what perpetuates its own power. If you want a country that favors the individual, you are better off with a leader who is one, however flawed, than a leader who is not, however polished.

The constitution, the Bible, works of stoicism, Austrian economics, they are all just maps, provisional (and often useful), but not the territory. Once you familiarize yourself with the actual terrain, you might glance at the map as needed to re-orient yourself, but mostly it’s folded and put away.

Relatedly my friend posted this on other social media I’m not on (wife sent it to me):

Too many established facts unaccounted for by the official narratives. Too many demonstrable lies. The conspiracy theorists might sometimes be wrong in the specifics, but they are 100 right to question the transparently bad explanations we’ve been given. My question was whether this questioning itself has now become something to exploit on purpose, that crumbs are dropped, falsehoods allowed by design. View quoted note →

I'm getting a bit of conspiracy theory fatigue. Every major event like this JFK/9/11/Vegas shooting/Trump assassination attempt/Kirk assassination just has endless loose ends, unanswered questions, unexplained facts. It’s almost like a huge part of the psyop is to make everyone waste their time becoming online detectives. It’s like fucking Wordle for critical thinkers. New puzzle every few months.

The reverse cancel culture going on for the people celebrating Charlie Kirk’s assassination is really fascinating to me. The liberals being cancelled are so used to being on “Team Good” they can’t believe what they’re saying is subject to consequences. That’s only for racists and anti-vaxxers. At least when I was posting about covid, I KNEW I was saying something with which sycophantic pearl-clutchers and virtue signalers would probably take issue. Feels like these clowns have policed the cultural discourse for so long they're totally blindsided. Getting canned from their jobs left and right, didn’t see it coming at all. I don’t know if this is a good thing — yes, these people would cancel you in a heartbeat for expressing even the mildest dissent regarding evil totalitarian policies, and yes it’s classless and vile to celebrate the death of someone who engaged in peaceful discourse just because you don’t like his view, but losing your livelihood for making a stupid and classless post is draconian. They too are just engaging in speech we don’t like. They didn’t shoot Charlie Kirk. On the other hand, it’s hard not to have some schadenfreude seeing the intolerant subjected to their own medicine. As I said I don’t know if it’s a good thing, but it might be necessary. More just a fascinating thing because unlike people who dissented during covid and knew the compliant mob was coming, seems like these idiots hadn’t the faintest clue.

Last night, before going to bed, I had to finalize my pick in the Redskins-Packers game for my against-the-spread picking pool. I checked, saw that I had the Packers, but changed my mind at the last second, picked the Redskins, went to bed. Woke up this morning, watched the 40-minute edited version of the game (it's on in the middle of the night in Europe where I live), and the Packers won (and covered the spread) easily. I was beside myself -- what an idiot switching it at the last second! What the hell was I thinking? I was pissed for about 20 minutes, then went to check something else on that page, and realized it had me as having picked the Packers! I had neglected to *save* the change! Sometimes things just go your way.