Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

I  hate in between states.

I don’t know anyone who loves them, to be fair. Oh, maybe kids because they’re not aware of everything that can go wrong.

And yeah, grandma used to have her hens hatch chicks, and I can’t tell you the number of times we spent waiting for the little chick to peck its way out and the chirp chirp chirp.

Apparently, btw, you’re not supposed to help them, because they’re more likely to die. The effort of pecking to get out and what not actually releases some kind of hormone that helps them survive. (Yeah, you could make tons of comments on kids from that, but more importantly on nations, and on free nations most of all.)

Now, most chicks, like 98% of them just peck peck peck and then you hear the chirp chirp chirp.

But sometimes…. Well, sometimes the chick is too weak. Or malformed. Or whatever. And it can’t make it out. It won’t live even if you lend a little bit of help. Other times, for whatever reason the shell is too thick. And the chick, though perfectly normal, doesn’t make it out before running out of oxygen.

I don’t know—though I’m sure people here, better informed than I—what makes the chick up and start pecking one day. Perhaps it’s running out of nutrients. Or getting just a little too tight in the egg. I suppose it’s the same sort of thing that causes kids to be born. Not that I would know much about that, mind you, since both of my kids were induced (arguably the second one didn’t need to be, as I’d gone into labor early in the morning of the day he was born, it’s just that the doctor believed his colleague’s (lying) description of my first birth, and thought it would stop for no reason, so gave me pitosin…. and the kid was out in an hour, with a perfectly round head, and in former days I would probably have died. (Then again in former days they wouldn’t have given me pitosin, right?)

I know that from the outside, you’re never sure when they’ll start fighting their way out. If the nest is near you, you’ll hear the chirp chirp chipr very faintly sometimes before they peck.

As a little girl, with more misguided compassion than brain, I often tried to help the stuck ones. (Do you know that a hair pin is fine for pecking a hole from the outside. Though you have to be gentle, so you don’t stab the chick.) Sometimes it worked. In one signal case, a little fluffy yellow chicken born on Easter morning practically on my hand became one of the ugliest (though not mean) naked-neck roosters known to man, who had an habit of following me around, and head bumping my leg for pets. (Yes, I’m allergic to feathers. But I didn’t know it. Also I was so sick all the time that it was assumed to be a cold or flu or something.)

The ones who lived after being helped were usually the ones who had got stuck because the shell was too hard or they were too big, of course. (They need to be able to move their head to peck.) I think that was my pet chicken’s issue. He was a massive boy.

I didn’t understand, and grandma might have, but didn’t want to tell me, the evolutionary/breeding reasons not to help THOSE. Because when you help those, and they reproduce, you get more stuck chicks. I’m glad if grandma knew she didn’t seek to balance it by sending my rooster to the pot before adult age.

Anyway: as we sit here, in this ridiculous summer of 2021 (or at least you sit there. I’m sitting now to type this, but will be on my feet and finishing packing the art area before long) a lot of us wonder when the pecking will start. And is that chirp chirp we hear coming from inside the egg? Oh, and will the chick survive. And is it an eagle being born?

Sure, it was an eagle once. And now looking back, of course, we knew it would be an eagle and it would live. It’s always easy when you are holding the chick and it’s fluttering its little wings and looking for something to peck to say “it will live.” And of course it’s an eagle.

But it could be a turkey. Or a malformed chicken. Perhaps one of those with extra legs or something. (watching village chickens gives you a practical view of the problems with inbreeding.)

And even if it gets out of the egg, it might flop on its side and die quietly.

Look, I don’t think so. Not for us, not if it is an eagle.

But this is worldwide, and let’s face it some of those countries out there started out as deformed chickens with eight legs, no wings and a row of teeth. And some might be trying to be mini-dinosaurs. And the time for dinosaurs is past.

Look, guys, since the middle of the 19th century, the idea of “scientific government” has been running around with pants on its head screaming insults at passerbyes.

I like to say we’re still suffering from the consequences of WWI, but things were if not terminal very ill before then. Kings and emperors and Lord knows what else had got the idea of “science” and “permanent progress” stuck in their pin like heads, which frankly couldn’t retain much more than the correct fork. And there were pet “scientists” and philosophers (the distinction was sometimes arguable. I mean, after all while doing experiments on electricity the 18th century was also fascinated with astral projection and other such things, and made no distinction. And the 19th was not much better.)

By the 20th century with mechanics and the Industrial Revolution paying a dividend in lives saved and prosperity created, these men of “science” were sure that it was only a matter of time till humanity and its reactions, thoughts and governance were similarly under control. And in the twentieth they expected us to become like unto angels.

Now, is there science that saved lives and created the wealthiest society every in the 20th century. DUH. Who the hell is arguing it. Oh, wait, there’s an entire cohort of people denying it. Not so many in the US—I think it’s hard to tell the real thing from foreign idiots posing. But in any case a minuscule contingent—but in France I know there’s a ton of them. They’re running with the bit in their teeth against rationality (I swear to bog) and thought and science. And trying to rebuild the religion of the middle ages. I read them and shake my head.

You see, you have to separate rationality and science from what the government and experts TELL you it’s rationality and science.

Yes, I know that France built a “Temple to Reason” and you know what? That by itself tells you their revolution was self-copulating and not right in the head. But you don’t need to go that far. Anyone who says they’re “for science” and want equality of results among disparate humans is not reasonable. Or reasoning. Or rational. They are however for sure completely and frackingly insane.

But I do understand the temptation, because so much of what’s being sold as “science” in the schools is not science but the worn out dogmas of people too stupid to know science if it bit them in the fleshy part of the buttocks.

I mean, never mind 2020. Which…. you know? Remember how the flu vanished? Turns out the rat bastards were using a test that diagnosed flu as COVID. No, seriously. Malice of stupidity? I don’t know. And neither do you. Probably yes in most cases, though a lot of people have a ton of “learned stupidity.”

Even before 2020 a lot of our ideas on how things worked were lies, particularly those that hinged on or supported the leftist ideas of human kind. Things like Zimbardo’s (Is he dead yet? I need to know when to mark myself safe from being kidnapped by Zimbardo for crazy experiments. No, he really did that.) prisoner experiments; or the rat habitat experiments that supposedly showed that overpopulation had all sorts of bad effects, and therefore we should stop having kids. Turns out those effects are from the loss of social role. Which honestly, anyone who has looked at a conquered country could tell them. Of course, anyone who had looked at mice would also know they’re not humans, but never mind that. (And no, I don’t have time to look for the links today—no, you don’t want to know how far behind I am on everything. But Foxfier found them before. (And hopefully doesn’t kill me.))

In fact, practically everything we think we know about psychology or sociology is likely to be a load of crap, if not outright faked.

And history, which is not really a science. Oh. Dear. Lord. Like, you know, the early form of internationalism, with international supply chains and empires caused WWI and…. nationalism was blamed for it. Makes perfect sense…. in hell.

In fact all this “science” stuff needs to be judged on one thing only: Does it make human lives better/save them? Or is it the astral projection of economics, sociology and psychology? By their fruits, etc….

The fruits are in. And they’re pretty rotten. What we have right now, across the world, is a science as religion priesthood who hates the people who live in the real world, because the real world keeps proving them wrong, over and over again.

And they’re outright trying to do away with us, because being as stupid crazy as the kings of old they don’t realize they need us to survive.

Here’s the thing, even a chick knows when it’s starving in the egg, or it doesn’t have enough oxygen.

And then the chirp, chirp, chirp starts.

We are not as…. tight or starving as the rest of the world, which has put up with a ton more crap than we did. (Don’t argue. It’s all relative. I’ve been known to say that for the lack of one particular publishing house, science fiction would be as badly off as mystery. Now, it’s all relative, and that house too partakes some of the problems of traditional publishing. But the difference is startling and in the absence of other options—like indie—enough to keep the field going. In the same way, the US has been taking in more and more poison, but compared to the other nations, what a difference.)

And now, particularly for the touristic countries, with their own governments trying to cure the common cold by keeping tourists out, they have to rebel. They really don’t have any other choice.

And whether you realize it or not, because the newsmedia is a mess, the rebellions have been happening and picking up speed.

Now the thing to remember is that …. well…. these world wide movements tend to seduce even sane countries into their embrace.

It’s important not to be France (yes, France in particular. Deal. Lovely country. Lovely people, even (one of the ancestries husband and I share) but that culture has been running around sans coulottes, because they wear them on their heads since Louis XIV at least, and probably before that) and not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Real science matters. Real science matters when it’s not corrupted and swayed by politics. And it should be judged by its results.

But it should be questioned relentlessly and examined. Questioning, doubting and examining is not being anti-science. IT IS THE PROCESS OF SCIENCE.

Science is not a religion with dogmas to believe in. It’s a set of steps for finding out the truth. Or sometimes, for finding out what we believed was the truth …. isn’t.

And no laws should be made that impose this “science” on others, particularly when recommendations change every week with no reason.

Done now.

Whatever the global grand pubahs think, it’s hot enough to hatch a stone, let alone an egg.

And we ain’t talking “climate change.”

Ça Ira!

Be not afraid.

PS – Totally unrelated: boxes being assembled. The follies medicinales of the last two days have set the schedule a leetle back. But it will happen. Soon

 

Reprinted from According to Hoyt for July 27, 2021