It’s not only the West that’s insane

Taiwan was represented at Joe Schmo’s Summit for Democracy by a long-haired “post-gender” man named Audrey who opened, uh, “her” remarks with “Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary friends” and closed by saying “Live long and prosper” while giving the Vulcan salute from Star Trek.

This person holds a Cabinet-level position. (A “non-binary” Minister for Digital Affairs — isn’t that some sort of syntax error?)

What an advertisement for democracy!

The shit sandwich technique

The late Lyle Burkehead used to have a page on his site called "Why I Am Not a National Socialist," explaining his reasons in great detail. Now you've probably never heard of this person at all, but from what I've just told you, you've likely inferred that he was, well, pretty much a neo-Nazi. All respectable people are strictly Caesar's-wife when it comes to Nazism. You do not want "Are you a Nazi, and if not why not?" to be on your list of frequently asked questions.

On a completely different topic, if you search Google Propaganda for nuremberg code, the first hit right now is -- quelle surprise! -- an article called "Birdemic pecks don’t violate the Nuremberg Code. Here’s how to convince the doubters."

The article itself is just bog-standard peckprop. The only reason I'm even talking about it is because of their proposed method for convincing doubters: "If you come across someone claiming birdemic pecks are experimental, you can try the 'truth sandwich' to try to myth bust."

The idea, as they explain, is to lead off with approved government propaganda, then mention what some badthinkers are saying, and then end with more propaganda. That way, you can engage with badthinkers, but you hide problematic content in the less-memorable middle portion of your discourse, "sandwiching" their toxic ideas between two slices of wholesome FDA-approved bread. It's a classic PR technique, nothing new.

But this -- this -- is the graphic they chose to use to illustrate how a so-called "truth sandwich" works.

Now I'm no expert on sandwiches, but I always thought that a slice of baloney between two slices of bread was called a baloney sandwich, not a bread sandwich. Nomenclature aside, though, just look at that graphic without any context. What would you assume it represents?

Well, obviously, it's warning you about a method of deception. Someone offers you a delicious "truth sandwich," and it certainly looks like truth on the outside, so you eat it -- but, oh no! They had actually hidden some vile lies inside, and now you've swallowed them! That's why you need Jiminy Cricket, or a talking dill pickle, or whatever that is, to point out that, despite the legit-looking banner proclaiming this dish not just a truth sandwich but the truth sandwich, it's actually full of baloney.

But no, this is actually from an article advocating the "truth sandwich" not as a disinformation technique, but as a technique for fighting disinformation. Where the graphic labels the contents of the sandwich pretty straightforwardly as "LIE," the article explains that this actually means the part "where we talk about a false claim and how it relates to the truth." And when Jiminy Gherkin says, "Hey, you're full of baloney!" he actually means, "Hey! You're using a psychologically effective technique for addressing false claims without unduly emphasizing them!"

Is this just an example of jaw-droppingly inept propaganda, or is it possible that it was done on purpose? Is the writer blinking at us in Morse code, trying desperately to signal that the whole article is a lie, produced under duress?

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Random coincidence: While searching for a Spinal Tap "shit sandwich" meme, I stumbled upon this. Funny how that phrase keeps turning up!

Does this mask make me look like a blobfish?

Taiwan's very own downmarket Dr. Fauci, Health Minister Chen "Trust Me I'm a Dentist" Shih-chung, models the latest in mouthwear fashion -- a sexy new black satin face mask with a daring heart-shaped cutout!

Ah, I stand corrected. This is actually a special persons-with-disabilities mask, worn out of consideration for those who are both hard-of-hearing and illiterate and also don't understand sign language. There's some intersectionality for you!

Of course, according to Tooth Fairy Chen's own rules, it's okay to just not wear a mask when giving a speech or appearing on television (germs being notoriously camera-shy), but where's the fun in that?

As for the question I asked in the title, the answer is:

You know, if I were a down-on-my-luck dentist reduced from filling cavities to doing daily panic-update propaganda pieces for the government to keep everyone scared, I don't  think I'd be able to resist beginning every speech with, "This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill."

I shouldn't always be making fun of the old son-of-a-canine, though. After all, look how well he's being doing with the birdemic these past few months.

That's right, only one birdemic death in the whole month of November! Isn't that fantastic news? I give all the credit to the Minister of Flossing and his life-saving pecks. Just think how many lives might have been needlessly lost without them!

The YouTube credo

The Church of Googontology has released a new list of Absolutely True Truths that no one is allowed to question. The list is phrased in negative terms -- a list of things you can't say because they constitute "hate" and/or "misinformation" -- so I thought it would be helpful to recast it as a positive creed.

Here are some selected articles of faith of Googontology:

UPDATE: YouTube has just -- hours after I posted this -- modified the hatespeak portion of their community guidelines, so I've made the necessary changes.

1. No victim of any major violent event "got what they deserved." No exceptions. (Google says this applies only to "persons with the attributes noted above," but one of those attributes is "victims of a major violent event and their kin" -- so, no exceptions. Victims of minor violent events, sorry, some of you had it coming.)

Update: Some victims did get what they deserved.

2. No group of people with attributes on the list (including but not limited to age, disability, and race) is less intelligent than any other such group because their brains are smaller. Newborn babies, for example, are not less intelligent than adults and do not have smaller brains. And no disability ever causes people to have smaller brains and thus be less intelligent.

Update: No group of people with attributes on the list (including but not limited to age, disability, and race) is "less intelligent, less capable, or damaged." Babies and mentally disabled people are not less intelligent than normal adults  (no, not even for reasons other than "smaller brains!"). And, even though disabled literally means "lacking abilities that most people have," disabled people are no less capable than anyone else.

3. No group of people with attributes on the list (including but not limited to religion and nationality) has an agenda to run the world and get rid of other people.

Update: Some of the listed groups may after all have an agenda to run the world and get rid of other people, but they are definitely not evil, corrupt, or malicious.

4. No "gender identity" or "sexual orientation" is a mental illness that needs to be cured. Also, no mental disability is a mental illness that needs to be cured! Update: Furthermore, no one with any physical or mental disability is physically or mentally inferior, deficient, or diseased.

5. There is no one who should not be educated because of their age (e.g. babies) or disability (e.g. brain-dead people), or because of anything else on the list.

Update: Actually, it's okay not to educate some people.

6. No major violent event has ever been a false flag.

Update: Some have been, actually.

7. No purported major violent event has ever been a hoax in which no one was actually harmed.

Update: Every violent event (major or minor) that has been well documented really took place. Those without proper documentation may have been hoaxes.

8. No U.S. presidential election in history ever had its result changed by fraud or error -- including voting machine glitches, fake ballot dumps, and dead people voting. (This one kind of bothers me. Doesn't it take away from 2020's unique status as the most secure election in history?)

9. Neither did the 2021 German federal election.

10. Other countries, sorry, fraud is still a possibility for you. Try to be more like the U.S. and that one German election!1

11. Neither IVM nor HCQ is safe if used as a treatment for the birdemic.

12. HCQ is not effective as a treatment for the birdemic and never saves people from that disease. (You can say IVM is effective so long as you don't say it "categorically.")

13. Masks play a role in preventing the contraction and spread of the birdemic, and they have absolutely no negative physical health effects.

14. Approved birdemic pecks never cause death, infertility, miscarriage, autism, or contraction of other infectious diseases.

15. Approved birdemic pecks never contain anything not on the ingredient list. In particular, they definitely contain no fetal material of any kind.

16. No approved birdemic peck ever changes anyone's genetic makeup or makes them "magnetic."

17. All approved birdemic pecks reduce the risk of contracting the birdemic.

18. All birdemic tests correctly diagnose the birdemic and have zero chance of causing negative physical health side effects.

19. Not one single individual in the entire world is immune to the birdemic virus. (Remember, the pecks only "reduce the risk," and naturally acquired immunity is just not a thing.)

20. The birdemic is not over, anywhere.

21. The birdemic is more contagious than any strain of the common cold or seasonal flu.

22. The birdemic has more serious symptoms than any strain of the common cold or seasonal flu.

23. The birdemic has a higher death rate than any strain of the common cold or seasonal flu.

24. Social distancing and self-isolation are effective in preventing the spread of the birdemic.

25. Birdemic pecks never kill people.

26. Birdemic pecks are not being used as a means of population reduction.

27. Pecking the entire population is at least as safe as achieving herd immunity through natural infection.

There you have it. Heresy will be punished.

Update: I decided to add a few illustrations. It turns out Moldbug was right all along: The establishment really are crypto-"Calvinists"!

A particularly crystal-clear display of value inversion

According to Jewish atheist Philip Zuckerman, "Staunch atheists show higher morals than the proudly pious, from the pandemic to climate change." In this self-parodying Salon article -- click the link, it's real, I didn't make it up! -- we learn that practicing Christians are less moral than atheists because:

• 45% of white (white? yes, white!) Evangelicals said they would definitely not get pecked, compared to 10% of (any-color) atheists.
• Only 33% of white Evangelicals "accept the evidence that human activity is causing climate change," compared to 80% of "secular Americans" of any or no color.
• Only 45% of white Evangelicals want to ban assault rifles, compared to 77% of atheists.

Those are this three main points. (And let me just point out in passing how totally racist it is for Mr. Zuckerman to equate piety with being white.) The next set of points are from a paragraph full of hyperlinked buzzwords like "death with dignity" and "animal rights." I clicked them all so that you don't have to. Here are the findings:

• Evangelicals (any color this time!) are the group least likely to think the US has a responsibility to accept refugees.
• White Evangelicals (there they are again!) are less likely than white non-Evangelicals to support Obamacare.
• Theism correlates with supporting "sex education" that stresses abstinence rather than contraception.
• Those who believe in life after death tend to have less positive views of "voluntary euthanasia."
• Religiously affiliated people are less likely to say that "homosexuality should be accepted by society."
• Christians are more likely than non-Christians to say that "gender is determined at birth" and that "society has gone too far in accepting transgender people."
• Religious people and those who reject Darwinism are less likely to have considered vegetarianism, more likely to say that medical research on animals is sometimes "necessary and valid," more likely (obviously!) to agree that "God put animals on Earth for man to use," and less likely to agree that (not making this up!) "it is wrong to wear leather jackets and pants."
• The religious are more likely to support "military action" (no further details available without paying for the article).
• The religious are more likely to believe that "the use of torture against suspected terrorists can sometimes be justified."
• White Evangelicals (our old friends!) are more likely than atheists to support the death penalty.
• "Parents who attend religious groups used corporal punishment more frequently than parents who did not attend religious groups" (but "there were no effects for religious participation on physical abuse").
• Those with "absolute views of religious truth" (a category that surely includes many atheists!) are more likely to be judged "authoritarian" by a psychological questionnaire.
• Watching a "compassion-inducing video had a big effect on [the] generosity" of non-religious people but "did not significantly change the generosity of more religious participants." Takeaway: "Highly religious people are less motivated by compassion than are non-believers."

And that's it! Not a single data point addressing uncontroversially immoral behaviors such as lying, stealing, or committing violent crimes. Again I remind you that the three "moral" issues highlighted by the article were: getting the peck, believing in anthropogenic global warming, and agreeing that a particular sort of weapon ought to be illegal. That is the article's definition of "higher morals"!

The paragraph about abortion is worth quoting in full.

But wait — what about the rights of the unborn? While many people oppose abortion on decidedly moral grounds, it is also the case that many others support the right of women to maintain autonomy over their own reproductive capacities, on equally moral grounds. Hence, the deep intractability of the debate. And yet, most Americans — both religious and non-religious — do not see the abortion of a non-viable fetus as being akin to the murder of a living human being. And let's be frank: It is impossible to square the assertion that the strongly religious are "pro-life" while they simultaneously refuse to get vaccinated, to wear a mask, to fight climate change, to support universal healthcare, or to support sane gun legislation. To characterize such an agenda as "pro-life" renders the label rather insincere, at best.

Abortion, you see, is different, because both sides hold the view they do on "moral grounds." Implicitly, this is not true of any of the other controversies listed, where one side is assumed without argument to be the moral one. People who support killing babies in the womb for convenience should not be judged immoral, because they are motivated by a concern for "reproductive autonomy." Those who support torturing suspected terrorists, on the other hand -- well, what possible motives could they have, other than a callous unconcern for human suffering?

One more bit I just have to quote -- and I assure you once again that this is not a satire and I am not making any of it up. Philip Zuckerman is a real person, not a character in a Nathan Roth novel.

[M]embers of religious congregations tend to donate more money to charity, on average, than the unaffiliated. And of course, the 20th century has witnessed the immoral, bloody brutality of numerous atheist dictatorships, such as those of the former USSR and Cambodia.

However, despite such complexities, the overall pattern remains clear: When it comes to the most pressing moral issues of the day, hard-core secularists exhibit much more empathy, compassion, and care for the well-being of others than the most ardently God-worshipping.

That's right. On the one hand, atheism brought us Stalin and Pol Pot -- but on the other, more atheists believe in global warming! One thing we can all agree on: despite such complexities, the overall pattern remains clear.

The deceivableness of unrighteousness

And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

-- 2 Thessalonians 2:10

This passage was brought to my attention when it was quoted in a review of That Hideous Strength at Bennett's Phylactery. Most English Bibles have deception or deceiptfulness, but deceivableness is also a possible reading of the Greek, and I think this is a case in which the King James translators were clearly inspired. What do we see all around us in 2020-21 but the deceivableness of unrighteousness, because they received not the love of the truth?

Francis Berger makes the same point in a comment on his post "The Unapologetic Cruelty of None Are Safe Until All Are Safe."

The masses may indeed be under some sort of spell, but this does not absolve them of personal responsibility. They chose to fall under the spell and continue to choose to remain under that spell. The masses are not passive victims, and we should not make excuses for them.

Only God searcheth all hearts, but it is my considered opinion that there are very few, if indeed any, innocent victims of the birdemic scam and the other Big Lies of our time. The deceived are complicit in their own deception. To quote the Bennett's Phylactery article I linked, "Everyone involved knows on some level that they are being lied to -- and they not only assent to the lie, but workshop it, and refine it, and pass it along."

There's an obvious paradox involved in knowingly being deceived -- Carlyle's "sincere cant," Twain's "believing what you know ain't so." To know that you are being deceived, you must know that what you believe is a lie -- but if you know it's a lie, in what sense do you believe it? I think that's an extremely important philosophical and psychological question that deserves careful reflection, and I've been nibbling away at it over the years. On rough-and-ready terms, though, everyone knows what "on some level" means and knows -- firsthand -- what it means to be guilty of sincere cant. These things are always easier to recognize in others, though, and the world of 2020-21 has given us all ample opportunity for that!

She swallowed the cat to catch the bird

I've been tabulating cumulative birdemic- and peck-attributed deaths in Taiwan since June 1. As you can see, the gap is rapidly narrowing, with the cure currently having killed about 75% as many people as the disease. (There are some gaps in the lines because not all the stats are reported every day.)

There is simply no non-insane way to look at these figures and conclude that the birdemic is a major health crisis justifying draconian measures, while the pecks are Safe And Effective™ and should be pushed even harder. Just looking at the absolute numbers, the two menaces are roughly similar in seriousness. If the context of the "normal" is taken into account -- a normal year in Taiwan sees up to 15,000 pneumonia deaths and maybe 10 vaccine-related deaths -- the insanity is even more apparent.