Joking verboten
Viva Frei discusses the MSM doxxing of the man who dared to say “Let’s go Brandon” to Biden:
We are getting closer and closer to this, are we not? And we don’t even need government or laws against it, people will enforce a modern-day version of it voluntarily:
In the 1930s-40s, it was not safe to tell jokes about the leaders of the Communist Party or, God forbid, about Stalin himself. Such jokes were regarded as a crime under a provision of “Anti-Soviet propaganda and counterrevolutionary jokes” and could land the joker in a prison camp for between six and 10 years (!) and, in time of war, he or she could pay with their life…
Those who listened to anti-Soviet jokes could also be punished, unless they reported it to the security authorities. Otherwise, they faced up to five years in a prison camp under the provision, “For failure to inform the authorities”.
And then there’s this great scene from “The Lives of Others,” a movie I strongly recommend if you haven’t seen it yet:
And what of Brandon Brown, the NASCAR driver who was inadvertently the start of it all? How’s he – the completely innocent Brown – faring? Not so well:
‘It got extremely difficult for us,’ Brown told Sports Business Journal. ‘If you’re a national corporation, that means you sell to all consumers … and unfortunately, when you get dragged into the political arena, people want you to take a side.
‘I’ve never been put in a position where it’s, “OK, what side are you on? Left or right?” So it’s hard for a brand to want to attach to somebody who might be kind of divisive in their consumer base. If I’m going to divide Coca-Cola, why would they want to talk to me?
‘So the short answer is it’s been tough to connect with partnerships just because it’s kind of viewed as a ticking time bomb: “What is he doing to choose or say and how would that effect our consumer base?” It’s too much of a risk. I understand it on their side but it’s made it really hard to tie everything down.’…
‘The issue is, I don’t know enough about politics to really form a true opinion, so I really focus on racing,’ Brown added.
Let’s go, Brandon. The left wants you to choose a side – and it better be the left, or you know what will happen.
The Left is relentless. They politicize everything. This NORAD “Let’s Go Brandon” guy lives in OR and he will be hounded for the rest of his life.
The Nebraska Bar is proposing a change in the rules of professional conduct. I won’t go into details, but it sure appears to me that the new rule could be weaponized by the Left against conservatives as they have done it in other jurisdictions. Rudy’s bar license was yanked without a hearing!
Of course, I made a public comment in opposition to the proposed Nebraska rule and had a very good example of why it shouldn’t be adopted by the Supreme Court. I have little hope that I will be successful.
The guy is from Central Point, OR which is on I-5 in the far southern part of the state which I imagine has far more balanced political viewpoints than Portland.
Like WA Oregon is a purplish state with a couple of deep, deep blue areas that over power all else so I would bet this guy has more local supporters than he can imagine.
Blue check twitter is not the real world.
“The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left” Ecclesiastes 10:2
Which does not mean that the Fools cannot dictate our behavior. Or try to anyway.
Refreshing. Lithuania tell China to “buzz off”. As far as they are concerned, Taiwan is a a separate entity, and they will not be bullied into saying otherwise.
The big corporations are all Left. Nike is a perfect example. Is there any corporation – other than My Pillow – that really identifies with conservatives?
Speaking of China, Big Tech, the NBA, Nike, The Street and Hollywood are all backers of the CCP. Recall back in the Cold War when he had essentially no corporate ties to the USSR. It was a big deal when Pepsi (or was it Coke?) got to sell in the USSR. Hollywood regularly made movies about the USSR and they were good movies too. Has there ever been a film critical of China?
Today, there can be no criticism of the murdering CCP other than a basketball player for the Boston Celtics.
The worst of it is that China owns 85% of the rare earth elements (REE) that are essential to wind turbines and electric car batteries. And China just formed its own REE cartel to restrict supply.
How stupid is the US? We are handing the keys of our economy over to the ChiComs and the only person who talks about it is Tucker Carlson. We have sold the CCP the rope on which it will hang us. But, hey, Hunter and the Big Guy got their cut.
Remember the circus clown who made fun of Obama and lost his job? This has been happening for a while.
Every time NASCAR gives NBC broadcast rights, the network does what it can to attack the base audience of NASCAR. I used to only watch the first half of the season, but NASCAR kept letting NBC then ESPN insult viewers, so I quit watching altogether. F1 and Sky Sports seemed like a good alternative until the last couple of races this year. Like many things, particularly dangerous ones, the drama taking place on the field isn’t enough for the media producers, so they create fictional drama with WWF like results.
I used to enjoy the NORAD Santa tracking thing, but my daughters are grown now. This guy in Oregon made the event more memorable than anyone else that participated.
“The Lives of Others” is a powerful movie – I’ll second the recommendation to watch it. And pay attention to the details of how the East German government controlled every aspect of their people’s lives. Scary stuff.
Also, I’d say we are not close to that situation – yet! But, we do seem to be moving closer to it each day.
As for those who dox others I do hope that a major lawsuit comes along that will put the doxxers on notice that this is NOT a game. They do endanger people’s lives – and I believe they knowingly do so. I’d love to say it is because they just don’t care; except, I believe it is that they are hoping that something bad happens. They are that malicious.
Remember the circus clown who made fun of Obama and lost his job? This has been happening for a while.
Rodeo clown.
What happened was he was banned from future performing by the Missouri State Fair (who also announced they might take legal action against the trade association for which he worked). The director of the Fair at that time was a man named Mark Wolfe, who reported to (Democrat) Jay Nixon’s commissioner of agriculture. The electorate transferred the Governor’s chair to the Republicans at the end of 2016, but, for some reason, Mark Wolfe is still the director of the state fair. The commissioner of agriculture has been since January 2017 one Chris Chinn. What’s Chris Chinn’s excuse? And what’s the excuse of the pair of Republicans who’ve occupied the governor’s chair over the last five years?
The people we elect don’t give a sh!t about us.
One important thing to remember whenever talking about “The Lives of Others” is that the per capita GDP of East Germany in 1991 was less than one-third the per capita GDP of West Germany.
There is a price to be paid for that kind of control and a bunch of upper-middle-class and even rich Americans will be paying it if they don’t wise up.
Mike
I think there are a lot of people on the Left that would be quite happy to be able to declare people they don’t like to be Lebensunwerte Leben. The Left is so consumed with hate.
I can’t take anyone seriously who says “let’s go Brandon,“ is a slur. if they truly think that, I hope they never say phrases like, “oh my gosh/goodness!“ “What the heck?“ “Shoot!“ “Oh fudge!” or “Kiss my butt!” After all, we know what they are “really“ saying. And I certainly hope these people never use those phrases in front of children. THE CHILDREN THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
MBunge,
That is part of why the communists hate capitalism, especially in nearly identical examples like East and West Germany or North and South Korea. No one’s really sure what the GDP of their country should be. It’s in comparison with other economies that one notices.
And it’s the same reason why Leftists want total control. What should the reading comprehension of 14 year olds be? You can set any goal or target you like and the majority will accept it. Unless there are other schools with better achievement. How long should it take to develop a vaccine? How safe should automobile travel be? Train travel?
By the 1980s it was obvious to every Russian that Americans had a better quality of life, more disposable income, lived in better homes, drove better cars, had great rock and roll bans and wore Levi’s jeans! It collapses in on itself if there are viable alternatives. That’s why Lefties don’t like viable alternatives.
“The left wants you to choose a side – and it better be the left, or you know what will happen.” neo
Not to dismiss the consequences of openly choosing opposition to the left but there are much worse fates than being doxxed, canceled, imprisoned or even losing your life.
What price your Soul? For to dismiss that consequence is to effectively declare that in principle, nothing is worth fighting against. In which case, you’re already enslaved. They just haven’t ‘officially’ put your collar and chains upon you.
Cornhead,
“it sure appears to me that the new rule could be weaponized by the Left against conservatives”
Every area is being weaponized by the Left against conservatives.
Case in point, the military’s new regulations are designed to purge the military of anyone who isn’t willing to accept the Mark of the Beast.
“Biden Bans Conservatives and Christians from the Military”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/biden-bans-conservatives-and-christians-military-daniel-greenfield/
Nor is it just the military; “The Biden Crackdown on Thought Crimes”
https://noqreport.com/2021/11/26/the-biden-crackdown-on-thought-crimes/
“The worst of it is that China owns 85% of the rare earth elements (REE) that are essential to wind turbines and electric car batteries.”
Not quite. It’s true that China produces and thus controls 85% the rare earth elements (REE) that are essential to a range of important products. However, the US has large deposits of rare earth elements. It’s just not economically competitive to produce them here. Federal subsidizing production as in the national interest is the appropriate rationale, one that Trump was staring to implement and which Biden cancelled.
We have handed over the keys to our economy to the ChiComs.
Which from the Left’s ideological viewpoint makes perfect sense. If you hate America, then destroying her in every area, especially in the economic sphere is sound (though monstrous) strategy.
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Abraham Lincoln
Ideological fanaticism, gullibility, willful blindness and greed are the four horsemen who threaten liberty across the land.
Cornhead: How stupid are we? Unbelievably stupid.
But then… I wonder about this: many, many years ago I worked for a design firm that was hired by another design firm to work on an enormous “hospitality” project in China, just outside of Peking. (I’m boycotting the revised latinization.) It was owned by some oligarch in China, (really a front for the Chinese government), and the only guests were going to be Western businessmen by invitation only, and the issuer of those invitations? The Chinese government.
This thing was monstrous. But the really interesting / horrible thing was that a major portion of it was clearly a brothel. Yes, some of those businessmen could bring their families and stay in the family-friendly part of the place. But there was another part that was completely separate — no one could ever just accidentally wander over from the family-friendly hotel portion. (There were underground service tunnels connecting them, however.)
So, are all those Chamber of Commerce idiots and politicians eager to send everything over to China being blackmailed or enticed?
No one ever investigated Dianne Feinstein or Eric Swalwel.
I used to “collect” jokes that were told in places under relative regimes. It started with reading Emmanuel Ringleblum’s Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto. I found it fascinating that people in the Warsaw Ghetto we’re telling jokes. And then friends told me some of the jokes people told in the Soviet Union. I found them fascinating.
Teacher: “Masha — Who is your mother?”
Masha: “Russia is my mother!”
Teacher: “And who is your father?”
Masha: “Comrade Andropov is my father!”
Teacher: “And what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Masha: “A good Soviet citizen!”
Teacher: “Misha — Who is your mother?”
Misha: “Russia is my mother!”
Teacher: “And who is your father?”
Misha: “Comrade Andropov is my father!”
Teacher: “And what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Misha: “A good Soviet citizen!”
Teacher: “Moishe — Who is your mother?”
Moishe: “Russia is my mother!”
Teacher: “And who is your father?”
Moishe: “Comrade Andropov is my father!”
Teacher: “And what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Moishe “An orphan!”
NS, lol
“bless their heart”
Lee Also:
How did you know it was a whore house? Details! Hidden cameras?
Far simpler to just get Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Mossad, and the Three Letters doing the necessary underage bonking pics Kompromat work on the installment plan instead of building a gigantic over-specified concrete Whore Palace cum Pleasure Dome in Xanadu. But then China *does* have a gigantic problem with misallocating capital into concrete and rebar.
Anyway, and this may come as a shock to everyone’s delicate sensibilities. East and South East Asia are chock-full of whorehouses to suit all tastes and budgets from Jakarta to Jilin.
There’s a huge Ottoman style mosque in Tokyo. First time I saw it was convinced it must be just a bigger than average Love Hotel.
Cornhead:
There were lots of little “guest houses” and the most prominent feature of each guest house was the bedroom. The bathroom was also pretty, uh, interesting. The layout of both on each guesthouse was all about sex. Custom beds that were HUGE, enormous showers with multiple heads, enormous tubs…
(Another designer worked on this project. We’d worked with him on another project that was an orgy house. I unfortunately learned a lot about that sort of stuff working at that firm. I quit not long after we started work on the Chinese project. I felt so disgusted with the projects we worked on.)
Brandon: “‘If you’re a national corporation, that means you sell to all consumers … and unfortunately, when you get dragged into the political arena, people want you to take a side.”
Yet, all too many companies have *chosen* to insert themselves into that arena…almost always on the Left…to a much greater extent than they needed to.
Cornhead: I’m sure there were hidden cameras. Positive. But any telecom work was done after our input, and probably by a Chinese consultant.
re China and the materials required for solar/wind/batteries, etc…it has been said that ‘green’ energy is *materials-intensive* rather than fuel intensive. And many of the required materials are either not found in the United States, or are not allowed to be mined/processed here for environmental reasons. Plus, China is engaging in what is effect colonialism to control these resources in other areas, such as Africa.
Also, ‘green’ energy is far more capital-intensive that our present energy sources, which I think is likely to exert an upward impact on interest rates.
See my post “‘Green’ energy: Materials-Intensive…and it matters”, which links a very detailed EIA study on resources required and where they are found & processed:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/66042.html
@ Rufus > “It collapses in on itself if there are viable alternatives. That’s why Lefties don’t like viable alternatives.”
It’s not the existence of the alternatives that is their problem; it’s their people finding out about them.
That’s why censorship was so important, and why the travel of Soviet citizens to the West, especially to the US, eventually broke the Iron Curtain.
North Koreans are locked in for a reason.
“What price your Soul? For to dismiss that consequence is to effectively declare that in principle, nothing is worth fighting against. In which case, you’re already enslaved. They just haven’t ‘officially’ put your collar and chains upon you.”
Exactly. But telling conservatives…”conservatives” that they need to speak up more, to just verbally stand for something and they go into existentialist meltdown mode. Brandon has indicated he is “conservative” yet with all his money he’s unwilling to take a stand here. Nowhere man doesn’t have a point of view, knows not where he’s going to. Which I suppose is why he considers driving around in circles too good of a job to risk losing.
david foster wrote, “re China and the materials required for solar/wind/batteries, etc…it has been said …”
I think the answer is obvious. (Am I missing something?)
Anyone heard from Joe the Plumber lately?
@NS
“I can’t take anyone seriously who says “let’s go Brandon,“ is a slur.”
It’s a two-fer:
1] FJB, obvs.
2] The MSM will tell the most ridiculously obvious lies in support of the narrative.
The difference now is that this tactic has gone “wide release.” Doing this to people on the local level to get your way, to get money, to cow others into silence if not support, was the very essence of what we have come to call “Community Organizing.”
It used to be only small time, local, and so not reported on widely. But since the Obama years the training has gone out from places like the “Midwest Academy” to being taught at colleges everywhere. The Left sowed this and we all get to reap the harvest and weep.
Brandon could instantly catapult himself to celebrated liberal icon simply by declaring hostility to all conservatives and outrage over being used to mock Biden.
Will be interesting to see if he caves.
It wasnt that soviet russians werent funny…
they were hysterical once they arrived to the US and could talk…
Many people are suprised to hear that we have comedians in Russia, but they are there… they are dead, but they are there…
In america, you can always find a party
in soviet russia the party can always find you…
I believe that laughter is a language of God, and that we can all live happily ever laughter!!! (Yakov Smirnoff)
Not suprising that in these places that espouse no god, the language dies..
“In Russia, if a male athelete loses he becomes a female athelete.”
~ Yakov Smirnoff
IF you all only knew what those who previously experienced what your trying to understand… you would see history repeat like a pickle that gives you the puc
“My father described this tall lady who stands in the middle of the New York harbor, holding high a torch to welcome people seeking freedom in America. I instantly fell in love.” ~ Yakov Smirnoff
The entire book, “My Life in the Soviet Army, The ‘Liberators’ ” by Victor Suvorov is one long black comedy starting with the preface.
Choose. The time for fence sitting is over.
AppleBetty…”I think the answer is obvious. (Am I missing something?)”
Perhaps obvious, but not as well-recognized as it needs to be. And concerning the possible influence of the massive capex on interest rates, I’ve seen almost no discussion of this in the financial media & sites.
WTP on December 28, 2021 at 6:55 am
“driving around in circles”
I love it when people create juxtapositions like this. And English is already such a rich language.