In the Little Ice Age, witches were a popular scapegoat for climate change
"To the envious it offered redress; to the bully, power; and to the sadist, pleasure"
Modernity is more barbaric; we respond to imperceptible warming by blaming fossil fuels, the source of prosperity
Then as now, timeless climatic processes were blamed on social ills, and elites trotted out all kinds of sumptuary laws, from which they themselves were naturally exempt
The "Great Reset" and hygiene lockdowns are ancient superstitious urges:
18 months of global pandemic policy has almost entirely ignored the existence of acquired immunity
Chinese rulers in the 1660s were not so stupid:
Chinese Soyjack
"We must protect the tonsured from the untonsured"
When people talk about poverty, they often picture something rustic and even a little romantic: a family growing its own cucumbers and maybe dealing with a leaky roof
Which is why I think all K-12 social studies should be replaced with diary accounts of poverty before capitalism
People love to point out that FDR's New Deal was explicitly modeled on fascism, but maybe his real inspiration was Qing despotism?
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The Boer's ability to stand up to the British makes sense when you meet proper South African dutchmen. In the US, survivalism/DIY/prepper guys come across as LARPers; there's that gleam in the eye as they wait for your reaction to hearing that they retread their own tires. But...
..in the African dutchman you get this childish diffidence paired with Scandinavian literalness. Guy will talk about building his own house the way you talk about going to the store for bananas. "Sure I make my own knives, nothing fancy, but I had those leaf springs lying around"
And Saffas of British descent talk about them the way you might talk about the Borg, kind of a grudging awe. "Yeah, that town was all right once the Dutch boys showed up, you know they'll just do their own civils, put in their own sewerage and so on..."
A sample of white Rhodesians in the 1960s suggested a mean IQ of 108. From personal experience in that part of the world, I find this believable. South Africans laugh when I tell them that Saffas are the most impressive whites I've met anywhere.
The first thing you notice in English southern Africa is the physical robustness of the whites. The second thing you notice is the entrepreneurial spirit. In Rhodesia, maybe it was selection from among competent and bellicose Scots.
Pakistanis are not weird, Europeans are weird. Australian aboriginals ritually gang rape prepubescent girls, 30% of Africans in convenience surveys *admit* to having raped, Amerindians set records for child pregnancies, Gazan civilians came through the fences to join the raping
Bus just disgorged 50 "inner city" youth onto quiet exurb playground, 17yos now brachiating over play equipment, yuppie parents scattering with toddlers like leaves before a sudden wind
This is the noise from 110 yards away
We are waiting for 20-something scholar to finish using the swing as some sort of surfboard