The people who refuse to control themselves and the people who refuse to defend themselves from those individuals who refuse to control themselves are a real problem.
They are the opposite sides of the same counterfeit coin, and they are the justification used by so many government-supremacists for government. It's disgusting!
My sympathy for both groups is just about depleted.
Which is really not good, since so many people I otherwise respect fall into the second category. They are the people who can't imagine society without police. Those who use any means possible to justify continuing to have, and to dishonestly fund, police.
They lie and justify and whine and blame others-- but the reality is they are just begging for a police state with the power to murder on a whim. And they got it.
But I neither want nor need it and they can't leave me out of it.
If I could opt out, I wouldn't care how much they allowed themselves to be abused to have their fears calmed, but they can't let me opt out more than I've already done.
I'm just tired of the criminals and the cowards being in cahoots, and the rest of us being forced to suffer for it.
I feel like a SHTF event is imminent. Notice I don't say I think it is, rather it's just a feeling. Possibly triggered by the upcoming election.
I don't have a crystal ball. I'm almost definitely wrong.
If you can see it coming, it's not going to happen. That's almost a guarantee.
Just like the Coronapocalypse came at us out of nowhere, triggered by unexpected government overreactions to a fairly normal virus, a more serious event will also be a surprise. Consider the Coronapanic a practice run. It should have shown you the holes in your preps if you were paying attention.
I lucked out with the panicdemic because I was ready. Well, maybe it wasn't completely luck; I've prepped for years "just in case", and it finally paid off. I was pretty sure I wouldn't see it coming when it finally happened, and I didn't. But it didn't matter because I stay ready all the time-- and I have done so since well before the Y2K fizzle. I intend to be just as ready, if not more ready, the next time something ...
Sometimes it's good to just listen to people's stories without interrupting, even when you know the stories are nonsense.
My 2nd wife used to tell of a ghost that lived in her house when she was a kid. It was an interesting story even though I didn't believe it. I learned quickly that her family was very prone to believe anything as long as it fit with their magical worldview.
Other people tell me stories about beneficial things political government can do. These stories are no more true-- in the sense of being objective reality-- than ghost stories, but they can still be informative if you want to know which particular superstitions a person is living under.
Interrupt and you'll never hear the whole tale. Listen and you might be entertained by some fantastical tales of magical realms. Just don't bet your life on them being true.
My nature is such that I simply can't see government as a solution to anything. This puts me at odds with most of the rest of my species.
Yes, I think "social media" has become a horror. This doesn't mean I want government to regulate it; it means I think people who don't like it (or are too dumb to know not to take it at face value) should probably stop using it.
The same is true of so many other things I don't like.
Litter/pollution, scammers, sexual predators, abortion, animal cruelty, Hillary Clinton, poverty, drug abuse, pandemics, crime, and all manner of awful things.
I may hate them, but that doesn't mean I want government to step in. Look how often that has the opposite effect anyway; making the original problem worse-- or at least not solving it-- while also creating a host of new problems that never would have existed otherwise (anti-gun legislation being a perfect example).
And even if government intervention doesn't make this specific problem worse this particular ...
