Limericks – You’re Already Defeated

Dear Friends,

Once trust is lost it’s not quickly re-earned,
Actions of the state leave the people burned,
Claiming to be woke,
They’ve made a joke,
Out of the idea of consent of the governed.

Very soon no one will be alive,
Population collapse news at 5,
It’s been done before,
The arrogant adore,
Now we have entered Universe 25.

Scientists are singing a lilting song,
After taking a hit from a glass bong,
A soulless cut,
It’s inhuman but,
There’s no way it could go horribly wrong.

Appeal to authority is really swell,
Invincible armor a security shell,
Authorities are few,
Censorship for you,
And no independent thinking as well.

Your consent is simply not ______,
Your posterity you will be _______,
We’re lab rats,
To red ____,
So shut up your already defeated.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Consensus is Opinion Management

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, manufacturing consensus is just another way of telling us what to think. Who has the hubris to tell another what to think? Someone who considers themselves superior. An inferior never presumes to tell a superior what to think. So those who manufacture consensus consider themselves to be our superiors, not only in political power, but intellectual, spiritual, and moral. This is the definition of pride, considered by sages to be the “root of all sin.” Moreover, just because someone considers themselves to be superior, that doesn’t make them superior. That’s the fallacy of the rights of kings. Station doesn’t denote superiority as a human being, human heartedness and pragmatic outcomes do. Superior people improve the lot of everyone. Inferior people lower everyone’s lot.

Those who speak nasally through their lower teeth while pointing at us with beak hands, are constantly calling for “consensus.” Such people epitomize entitlement as an attitude. Entitlement entails pride, envy, greed, and sloth, the fantastic four sins. Only an extremely entitled person would expect to get victims to agree to being victimized, to benefit the entitled. They must consider themselves above the normal run of man. Anything anyone else has, must also be theirs. Such people extract from the nations they rule until there is nothing left to extract. Then they enact a wealth tax to clean up the remaining crumbs. Moreover, entitled people shouldn’t have to toil in mundane tasks. There are other people more suited to such work. The mindset of the arrogant is in stark contrast to that of the humble.

Human hearted people are the mirror image of arrogant people. They lead by example. They don’t demand from others, they step up and do what needs to be done, while making room behind them for helpers. Humility is obviously the opposite of pride. A humble person thanks even the chickens for their eggs. A kind person is happy at the gains of others, for the increase in the stock of mankind’s wealth. Human hearted people are happy with what they have and so are rich. Moreover, the diligent work for what they have, and so never feel they are parasites who must hate their host… along with the resulting cognitive dissonance. Human hearted people then never seek consensus. They diligently lead by example, and make room for help.

Telling others what to think is the role of a parent not a political leader. A representative of the people is a representative, not a ruler. The problem is that any time there is power at play, the arrogant will push to the head of the line. Meanwhile, the human hearted have no inner desire to rule. So power devolves to the arrogant who then create the acme of Aristotle’s wrong government. Where the rulers serve their own interests at the cost of the people and the State itself. As the fortunes of the nation decline due to being run by the arrogant, they need ever more “consensus,” to enact ever more despotic laws. Such rulers would argue the car is in the ditch not because the driver put it there, but because the guy sleeping in the backseat snored. So they need even more power… to stop the snoring.

So when any political leader laments a lack of consensus to empower himself or herself, know they epitomize arrogance. They are openly telling you what to think. If you don’t warp your view to match the narcissistic ruler’s views, they will attack you as a hater, racist, or of promoting misinformation. Power attracts the arrogant like a chest of drawers does moths. Human hearted people do instead of tell, and so are the best suited for power, but they eschew it. Power must be thrust into the hands of the human hearted, while the arrogant seek it with gusto. The examples of Solon, Numa Pompilius, and George Washington show that human hearted people serve their nations. Listen to your politicians. Do they seek consensus or do they lead by example? Once those are answered, vote accordingly.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Limericks – Make Them A Memory

Dear Friends,

The deep state is power root and stem,
Utterly lacking any semblance of wisdom,
Zagged and zigged,
The thing is rigged,
And ruination is built into the system.

The deep state is truly a bog and a fen,
Perverting law making a filthy pig pen,
Corrupt you see,
The dirty laundry,
And no consequences so it’ll happen again.

Taxes are the government’s feed,
It’s filled with avarice and greed,
No matter how fat,
Remember that,
Smart farmers don’t eat their seed.

Liars lose power if we don’t believe,
That’s when they cry fret and grieve,
It’s how they feel,
Here’s the deal,
It’s past time to give them the heave.

The deep state is its own worst ______,
Above the law are they without _______,
The golden goose they killed,
A black hole can’t be ______,
So the wise would make them a memory.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Will Of The Governed

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, we need to ask ourselves, what is the meaning of the will of the governed? Is it the actual will of those who live in a nation? Maybe the will of the people is a perception. It doesn’t exist and so it can be whatever those in power wish it to be. Then there are the advances in public manipulation pioneered by Edward Bernays. If elites with unlimited money for public service ads can’t swindle us into whatever mindset the elite want us in, that mindset must be pretty bad. At this point, we use voting as an analogue of the will of the governed. Elections, however, can either show the actual will of the people or the will of the elites superimposed on the people. So I ask again, what is the meaning of the will of the governed? Is it a perception or do we have agency?

Since the Enlightenment, the will of the governed has been a guiding principle in industrialized Western style governments. Human philosophy transitioned at that point from the rights of kings to the will of the governed. Prior to Enlightenment we were ruled by a series of false arguments. One was that the king’s power devolved from God himself. Whatever god you happen to worship will do. Another was appeal to authority. Where the authority of the speaker denied questions. If the King or Pope said a thing, no matter how absurd, you were obligated to believe it. They were the legitimate authority at the time. The will of the governed, and questioning authority, upended those fallacies. The idea that people should not be imposed upon unless they accede to it is the opposite of the rights of kings.

Now that the will of the people is a foundational ethos of governance, every civilized nation on Earth has elections… even if simply for show. The idea is that they can point to a 100% approval rating by election as proof that the people accept their divine rule. Indeed, the legitimacy of any State is now dependent on its serving the will of the people, whether they do or not. So while every nation claims to exist at the will of the governed, very few do. Most governments today use strategies to manipulate the will of the governed to the will of the governors. They rationalize this by claiming to be smarter, better educated, and more moral than the common run of man. So they feel justified in subverting the will of the governed to their own will. How to do it is their question.

The answer for despots is to pervert elections, censor the people, and use mass media manipulation. This way they can appear to be serving the will of the people, when they only serve their own will. A system that truly exists at the will of the people cannot censor the people’s voice… no one knows the will of a mute. Good government doesn’t use mass manipulation to drive consensus… because a mark is not a free agent. Moreover, States that serve the will of the people never allow vote fraud… since the will of the people cannot be known if the mechanism to find it has been corrupted. Those systems that are corrupted, then, have reverted to the rights of kings. Censorship and manipulation are a reversion to appeal to authority. So we are coming full circle since the Enlightenment.

Today elites manufacture consensus with propaganda, censor the plebes, and election tamper. The term will of the people has no real meaning anymore. Even nations that espouse democracy as a core ideal engage in propaganda, censorship, and election tampering. In the EU, whole parties are banned, election winners are removed by unelected bureaucrats, and people go to prison for tweets. In the US, election fraud is canonized into law. For example, the recent LA election, and those who were charged as being insurrectionists for protesting the 2020 election fraud machine. So let’s drop the act. We are silenced, manipulated, and defrauded. We come full circle, returning to appeal to authority and the rights of kings… or in our case, the authority of experts and the rights of bureaucrats.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Limericks – Fun And Profit

Dear Friends,

America was called land of the free,
Ruled by fairness polity and decency,
Come the progressive,
With ideas impressive,
So now it’s called bureaucratic tyranny.

Cutting regulation makes the elite frown,
They consider you as but a mere clown,
The ten percent,
Seeking our rent,
So they have to keep the little guys down.

I’ve heard God works in mysterious ways,
And being in his employ really pays,
The alternative is an upper cut,
Here and eternity suffering but,
None will know till the end of his days.

Being tough shows strong character,
Building ideas and enemies peculiar,
But ideas alienate,
They investigate,
So one must beware of logic circular.

Perverting a system for fun and ______,
Extracting from the little Miss Moffit,
But there is a ____,
To the spirit lost,
As the good do paint their own ______.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Are Cultures Equal?

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, the difference between a successful culture and a failed culture is not in genetics but in its incentives. A barbarian acts as the barbarian due to his or her philosophy of life. The same is true of a civilized person. Civilization comes from culture just as barbarism comes from it as well. Take a Viking from Leif Erickson’s crew and bring him to today… and he will act a barbarian. Not because there is anything deficient in him, but in the culture he adheres to. Moreover, there are cultures that inculcate stupidity. They encourage actions that harm the actor and the audience. Rare is the culture that promotes pragmatism, thrift, and an entrepreneurial spirit. That’s why most cultures are corrosive of prosperity, freedom, and peace. This is why I say, cultures are not equal.

The only way to judge a culture is pragmatically, by outcome. Cultures have incentives. Every culture creates incentive structures that drive behavior. These incentivized behaviors determine if a culture is self-destructive, successful, or somewhere in between. Moreover, the more isolated a culture is the more self-destructive it is able to become. Isolation need not be geographical, it can also be ideological. A culture that has an isolated elite siloed off in an ivory tower is just as isolated as a tribe deep in the Amazon. The isolation is mental instead of geographical. That’s how successful cultures turn on themselves leading to civilizational collapse. Cultures that are not isolated, however, have to deal with other cultures. This competition has a winnowing effect on the absurdity that leads to failed cultures.

Cultures, for the most part, are not chosen… they are inherited. A child has no choice as far as we know in what culture he or she is born into. Once they grow, they might attain the knowledge to weigh cultures and choose one or an amalgam of cultures that best suits them. Most, however, never have the time or inclination to seek out a better way of living. So we mostly stick to the one we were born into. This means that unsuccessful cultures can live on for a long time, especially if subsidized by successful cultures. So a culture can do everything wrong and yet survive, even the competition of cultures if it is isolated or subsidized. The problem with subsidizing a failed culture is that it is often barbaric. That barbaric culture then can turn on its benefactor like the Goths on the Romans.

There are two ways a culture can expand, one is by war and the other is by success. Cultures that spread by the sword or gun will say so. Mao for example said, power flows from the barrel of a gun and so the communist party must never lose control of the guns. Islam is filled with Hadiths urging constant warfare against non-believers. These are barbaric cultures that can’t survive the competition of cultures unless subsidized. Special treatment is so ingrained in their psyches that if a subsidy is cut off they complain they are being choked to death. Without oil in the Middle East or progressives capturing the institutions in the West, Islam and communism would collapse everywhere. Even Communist China had to convert to fascism to survive. In order to seek trade subsidies.

Wise people don’t simply inherit a culture, they seek and cultivate the best parts of the best, as judged pragmatically. Just because someone is born into a failed culture doesn’t mean they’re condemned to it. If your culture inculcates ignorance instead of knowledge, hate instead of equanimity, war instead of peace, central planning instead of freedom, laziness instead of diligence, and political favor rather than merit, your culture is holding you back. It is not the equal of successful cultures. If a culture needs subsidies to keep famine from the door, it is a failed culture. Keeping it going by subsidy is just extending its harm to humanity. The solution is double-pronged, one is for the individual to adopt the best qualities of the best cultures, and the other is for successful cultures to stop subsidizing failed ones.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Central Planning Unites All Dark Systems

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, central planning unites all dark systems. If one were to draw a Venn diagram of every system of government that has delivered evil, they would overlap at central planning. Communists and fascists are notorious enemies yet both share central planning as a core element. The Islamic Caliphate invests all power in the Caliph, which is central planning taken to the extreme. This is because real evil can only happen when power is centralized. Distributed power allows for distributed evils but only centralized authority provides the mechanism for genocide, world wars, and all other crimes against humanity. While evil exists in decentralized power, the scale of a dark system, however, is impossible. To the future central planner the promise of central planning is too good to pass up.

A dark system is one that results in systematic evils visited on the people. The Nazis built a dark system by that definition. It promised a golden age but delivered genocide, crimes against humanity, and total destruction. Mao’s Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, promised a classless utopia and delivered famine on a national scale, industrial mismanagement of the economy, and a one-child policy that has devastated China’s demographics. The Caliphate Ataturk inherited was in absolute decline. He tried to change it to follow the Christian model of capitalism and freedom. Meanwhile, the Young Turks visited their inhumanity on mankind under his reign. There are plenty of other examples in history. Every empire and civilization rose in virtue and freedom, then declined in corruption and central planning.

Central planning is any system where power is elevated to the elite and away from the people. The more decisions are made by an elite the more centrally planned it is. Meanwhile the more decisions left to the people the more decentralized it is. Intellectuals for generations have touted the advantages of central planning. They argue if decisions are made by the most qualified, then the best decisions will be made. They then define the most qualified as the experts. People who have credentials, educations, and proven intellect should make the decisions. They further argue that decentralized authority leaves important decisions in the hands of laymen and laywomen. Would you rather have a trained doctor removing your appendix, or a janitor? Their logic goes on in this fashion.

Plato suggested a centrally planned system could work if the central planners were “philosopher kings.” Our central planners consider themselves those philosopher kings. Creating a dark system couldn’t be further from their minds. Many earnestly strive to improve the lot of man by totalitarianism. They diligently work to make the best decisions they can, but with so many decisions to make about so many arcane subjects, no expert can put the proper time into them. So they do the best they can. Even irrelevant questions like how long, wide, and what material to make replacement shoelaces are daunting. So, would you rather have a heartless doctor take five seconds to remove your appendix with a jackknife… or a janitor who loves you, with unlimited time, training, and equipment?

This is why central planning always ends up creating a dark system. Not only is it impossible to make all the decisions in an economy by an expert, but the incentives feed back into the nature of humanity to bring out the worst in us. If you know your decision will harm thousands, but it will help millions, it hardens you. Cognitive dissonance demands it. As one makes ever more heartless but “necessary” decisions, Arendt’s Banality of Evil arises. Evil gets baked into the system, not out of malice but out of efficiency. It turns out the most qualified to decide are those with the most to win or lose and first hand knowledge, not a distant bureaucratic expert. This is how and why central planning leads to a dark system. The answer is to decentralize power and leave decisions to the most qualified.

Sincerely,

John Pepin

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Limericks – It’s Just Modernity

Dear Friends,

Bureaucrats demand you comply,
The world is getting ready to fry,
It’s for posterity,
This is clarity,
Only idiots cut off their food supply.

Government is cloaked while we are transparent,
Minding our thoughts like a smothering parent,
A censorship empire,
Is a despotic umpire,
That’s when the tyranny becomes apparent.

Normalcy bias is a terrific thing,
It keeps us sane in a chaos ring,
But it’s also a tool,
To control a fool,
As we close our eyes to the evil king.

There was a cover up so corrupt,
The actors were just out of luck,
Black as a flue,
Dirty as one too,
Stars skating on a lake of muck.

Those who believe in __________,
Abstain from political _________,
Our rights are ____,
Just soldier on,
As we’re told it’s just modernity.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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The Revenue Tell

Dear Friends,

It seems to me, one way to tell if your government is extractive is by their rhetoric. Is every problem a “revenue” problem? If so, then you are being extracted from. Elites who run an extractive government are always looking to increase revenue. Equal governments limit themselves, their appetites, and their vision so they live within their means. Extractive governments do the opposite. They don’t limit themselves, their appetites, or their utopian vision. The result is extractive governments are perpetually in debt and constantly in need of revenue, to maintain their profligate spending, let alone fund their newest utopian idea. Extractive governments promise the Moon and stars but deliver debt and dysfunction. Not because the people running them are evil, but because extracting is a trap.

Equal government would be what Aristotle called “right government” in his Politics. Such a government serves the interests of everyone. What he called wrong government or what I am calling extractive government, serves the interest of politically favored factions. Clearly, most who are in one of the politically favored factions prefer extractive government. This is because they are the recipient of that extraction. Those who are extracted from are opposed to it, but have no power to stop it. We see this in Europe. The EU rides roughshod over the rights, demands, and property of the European natives, while it bans political parties and exploits the courts to chastise problematic people. This is an attribute of an extractive or wrong form of government.

Indeed, if you see your government exploiting law to keep itself in power, you can presume that it is a wrong form and is extracting. When there is a double standard… there cannot be equality. This is proof enough of a wrong form of government. Censorship is another tell of a wrong form or extractive government. If someone is silenced, they are not equal and so the government that practices censorship does not serve everyone equally. It serves some specially. At no time is this more true than when the censors are found to have censored truth to promote lies. A government that engages in sub human acts is not a right form. That would be a contradiction in terms. Such a government is clearly a wrong form that extracts. How do the extractors stay in power though?

Olson in his idea of the logic of collective action illustrated a quality of extractive or wrong forms of government. He said that if a government policy affects you a great deal you will put a great deal of effort into it, but if it has little visible effect on your life you will put little effort into it. This idea has the beauty of simplicity. It follows human nature like a river does a valley. People are at heart pragmatic. We seek the most efficient means to good. This means if a little effort results in a lot of effect then we will put that effort in. If, however, a great deal of effort leads to little reward, we put that effort elsewhere. It’s just pragmatism. So the extractors put maximal effort into extracting, while the extracted from put in little… until the balance is tilted.

Once it becomes efficient to put effort into stopping the extraction, because it has got so bad, the extractors need to use law, censorship, and sub-human actions. The extractors will have no choice. The further they go down that rabbit hole the more entrapped they get. The sunk cost fallacy only adds to the self-interest. Wrong forms of government, or extractive governments, become more despotic the more threatened they feel. If the spigot of opulence is touched, you can expect them to go apoplectic. The rhetoric of helping the downtrodden and denying the extraction becomes accusations and criminal charges of perjury. Such governments run perpetual deficits because they are extractive, not equal or right forms. So if you hear your government ever lamenting it needs more revenue it is extractive.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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Limericks – Corrupt To The Core

Dear Friends,

This one thing should make you sober,
Human heartedness is close to over,
Here is a retort,
Nothing is as short,
As compassion for the seventh of October.

A lackadaisical attitude will leave it up to fate,
As time passes the foolish just sit and wait,
Emotion in a jar,
It’s gone too far,
When civil war does break out it’ll be too late.

Many people try to keep abreast,
Staying in the know is their quest,
But agency is in remission,
They need permission,
To even vote for their self-interest.

Experts claim to be an infallible proctor,
Of brilliant ideas what a great concoctor,
Opinion you can buy,
On them you can rely,
Just like the chanting’s of a witch doctor.

Sympathy is now a tool of ___,
Withhold it and experience ____,
Is agency in remission,
You don’t need __________,
From charlatans corrupt to the core.

Sincerely,
John Pepin

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