Communist Insist
If you're small enough, you always speak softly, and any stick you carry is big
What goes around comes a duckstack
Its the Duckstack Olympic games! So glad you could make it, you may never have an opportunity like this again1 so lets make the most of it. We’ve got a lot of events lined up- birthdays, parades, a hat eating contest. But you don’t care about any of that stuff. You’re gamers.
First game: Pin the tail on the donkey. And we’ve got Michael Phelps, the famous man who is very fast- but can he pin the tail on the donkey blindfolded after being spun around until he is dizzy? Okay, he has charged and smashed the tack straight through your computer monitor. Judges? 7 points2.
Next up we have the bunny-sled combined shot put event. So the goal here is to throw the ball as far as you can once the sled is in the air after that jump there. This is a crowd favorite as those silly Olympic athletes really do try to spin around in a circle on the sled in mid air to try and give the ball more momentum. Here’s famous Olympic athlete Morgan Freeman riding the sled down the hill. He’s got his legs tucked in and is hugging them with his arms to decrease wind resistance, always good form. Okay, the hill is starting to level off now so he’s kicking himself up to his feet just before the jump ohhh! He was too late, now he’s flailing around on the sled in the air to try and get the ball to salvage anything he can from this, but he can’t seem to get a grip on the ball! He’s approaching the apex of his jump, if he doesn’t manage something here he’s probably lost his shot (put) at the bronze medal. Well he’s got it! A halfhearted toss and yes I think he’s at least got it off of the sled, putting him in the top 1% of athletes. Big round of applause for Morgan Freeman.
Last up we have the Duckstack reading competition, where contestants must speed read this week’s Duckstack, out loud, in one breath if possible, in public. This one’s open for everyone, so even audience members can participate! Good luck chasing that medal!
Cult Classics
Cultural Marxism is when you dress like him
I wish to make some propositions here, which you may disagree with at your leisure3 My credentials are that I have started numerous successful cults4 and am highly respected by my peers.
Now there’s a breed of conservative that loves to call things “cultural marxism” because that sounds like a more sophisticated accusation than saying someone is a filthy commie, even if the latter is more true. So the commies have a defense mechanism for this, which is to just say “what’s marxism” and of course the conservative doesn’t know, he’s just reading his entrails because his gut is usually right about “this sort of a thing” but he doesn’t know this is what he’s doing because basically nobody thinks about logic as something you apply post-hoc. BUT IS HE RIGHT? I believe so.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is a slogan that according to a google search just barely Marx wrote. I think a lot of “communism” can be distilled this way, its basically the idea that altruism/selflessness should be not just a virtue but something enforced structurally. And of course Marx’5 whole program was about money and like, manufacturing plant rights. So what would a cultural marxist look like?
“From each according to his status, to each according to his despicableness” So a system where whatever culture favors is taken from, and given to whoever the culture disadvantages. Right? That would be “Cultural Marxism”. Does this sound familiar? I have heard the words “privilege” one or two times6, a system designed to instead favor the workers and the poor of cultural acceptance would be… Blacks and gays, wouldn’t it? Maybe women, if there was some sort of authority oppressing them by some metric? That’s what Cultural Marxism would look like. Would this “cultural marxism” lead to better results than economic marxism7? This is just my personal opinion: No
Is True Communism Finally Being Tried? Yeah, I’d say so. I mean its not totalitarian yet in America, but that’s mostly because some states are holdouts, but its pretty much there in like, Canada. And they’re only mostly in shambles as long as you don’t see state-sponsored suicide for back pain and anxiety and stuff as a sign of decline.
There is a lie native to democracy, the lie is that democracy is rule by the people. Democracy is not rule by people, because people are not ruled by people. People are ruled by culture, and democracy is rule by culture. It is by culture that people decide right from wrong, and it is by culture that people enact policy. Law is a framework for enforcing culture.
And Liberals will play an identical game when conservatives talk about “wokeness”- “define wokeness” which might be a reasonable request, if the liberal actually cared what the definition was, but they’re more just kind of there to evangelize so they don’t actually read any answers they’re given. Its okay- the conservative categorization of wokeness isn’t for them. The taxonomy is so that *we* can see what we’re up against, and what to do about it, and there’s a lot of truth to the idea that wokeness is a fundamentally religious impulse.
It is nationalistic- LGBT has a flag, which includes stripes for various races, and they have what the Old Testament would call “feast days”, religious holidays practiced by believers hidden throughout the calendar. You can imagine someone living their whole lives by these- I knew several people like that in high school, who would stay silent on the national LGBT day of silence, or change their profile pictures on the national day of LGBT visibility and so on.
Wokeness is mythic- it includes multiple “original sin” doctrines from slavery and the holocaust to construct a narrative of blood guilt, and you can even observe liberals going to “confessionals” over these things, confessing their “privilege”, and renouncing it publicly. They demand sacrifices to “atone” for these ancestral sins. But most importantly, and most in condemnation of Christianity at large, they believe in these things8.
When a Christian prays, they invoke the name of Christ, to bring in his spirit and authority. When a liberal prays, they do it the name of their gods, to invoke their presence and authority. In other words, it says “this is what this is about”, even if it wasn’t previously about that at all. You’re dedicating the thing to your crusade. That’s what it means to take Christ’s name upon yourself, and its why Egyptians would dress up as their crocodile god in their ceremonies, and its why liberals put on labels like “queer liberal transwoman of color” before delivering sermons. Names are important, and should be held with gravity and respect. And when you see religious behaviors, that’s an indication of an unmet religious need, and you can learn a lot by examination with the question “What impulses are starving?” All vice is a broken attempt to meet needs.9
Histry
Big emotions and Big Halloween Plans
Our son Jethro got a part in the church primary program, where he’s supposed to say the line “I can try to be like Jesus by learning all I can about him.” and he’s changed it quite a bit in his head, he always says “I can try to be like Jesus by praying!” Can you try to be like Jesus? “I already know how to be like Jesus. A little bit. I can say prayers! That’s all I need to know.” I’m not sure where he’s pulling some of this from but its not bad for a 4 year old
The kids have been fighting a lot this week, mostly just play getting out of hand but Jethro has a hard time tempering his reactions to things which is why play got out of hand in the first place, I suppose. I had a good conversation with him about how anger is good, God feels anger, but anger can hurt yourself and others, so when you feel yourself getting angry you should really stop and think if you have better options available. Anger can be good for protecting people, but if you get angry too fast then you tend to make things worse, just like Hulk10. Jethro seems to really value these types of explanations
We bought him a spooky pumpkin mask which is actually pretty scary because he loves that sort of stuff and he ran in the other day and said “your house is now: haunted!” And then put the mask on
His brother was giving everyone kisses and Jethro very politely told him “thank you but I don't want kisses on the head right now”
My wife proposed making Halloween mummy cookies, which Jethro was very excited about. “mummy cookies? I will kill them by EATING THEM”
Gave the toddler a mint in the car and he held it with two fingers with both hands and then just sort of rubbed it all over his tongue
Duckstack Cooking: Scrambled Egg
ingredients:
1 egg
put in pan
smash it a bunch (pan must be hot)
eat
“We’re never letting you host the Olympic games again. Sincerely: The Olympics.”
Since a monitor “could”, retroactively, well not anymore of course, but it could have had a donkey on it, we're going to go ahead and assume it was close, or that he was aiming at the donkey that may have been there. Its called the “Schrodingers Rule” in Pin the Tail and is just as real as en passant in chess
don’t you dare try doing it professionally though
group chats
Marx’s. Marxes. Marxses? Mark’s
in the last 5 minutes
Hitler killed like, 17 million I think, and his communist contemporary killed something like 110 million, right? So you just need to beat actual Nazism in outcomes. (we’re failing)
Do most Christians act as though they think God will hold them accountable for their actions at the last day? Do they act as though they are destined to live in heaven? Do they act as though they believe God will answer their prayers if they need something? Sometimes. But I think its easy enough to throw a rock at any random liberal (do not throw rocks at liberals) and find one who is far more zealous than your average Christian both in their beliefs and their behaviors regarding those beliefs.
This includes conservative vices, of course. But I, being a conservative, find them naturally more tolerable. I do try to address them when they come up though
Jethro has always liked the Hulk. Maybe its the anger issues, maybe its that Jethro was born 99th percentile for both height and weight