Sex: the final frontier. This is the endgame of totalitarian progressivism. It's 200-year mission: to conquor humanity and crush its spirit. To seek out and discover new forms of authoritarian control. To boldy enslave humanity at a level that no one has before.
"Alice Eve Refuses To Apologize For Star Trek Underwear Scene, Even Though Others Have"
https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/alice-eve-star-trek.html
We all know what thought control is.
Puritanism is pleasure control dishonestly disguised as promoting self-discipline and it always has been. This is easily confusing because most forms of self-discipline involve voluntarily delaying gratification (pleasure) in favor of greater long-term rewards, in the same way that people easily confuse socialism with people voluntarily working together for a greater good.
Puritanism, like socialism, is totalitarianism. If you choose that specific abstinance or project, it's voluntarism.
But it goes deeper than that.
Pleasure is a human need, as it is an underlying requirement for happiness. When an authority proclaims that people are only allowed to seek happiness through proscribed means, it gives them literal ownership and control over those people.
Puritanism has been used and abused by both the religious and secular authorities: just think sex, drugs, and rock & roll. All can be used and enjoyed safely. All can be abused for self-destruction. As always, it comes down to individual circumstance. Whenever somebody claims otherwise, look carefully at the chains they are trying to attach to you. They are never for your own good.
It should not be surprising that the left is turning to sexual puritanism. They have long been promoting environmental puritanism (you may not enjoy the environment if it means you disturb a single blade of grass), linguistic puritanism (words may only have one context, as decided by the academics), humor puritanism (we must replace laughter with anger), racial puritanism (the races must not share culture and enjoy each other's company as equal human beings), medical putitanism (take the jab or be refused treatment and be removed from society), and financial / resource puritanism (socialism).
Sex is their final frontier, because sexual liberation from religious puritanism was one of their major wedges into mainstream society. Now they are doing a 180º turn on that position and taking sexual puritanism (look at California's sexual consent laws for college students) to levels that would make the Spanish Inquisition jealous.
Don’t worry!
His “very smart people” are totally right about things this time when it comes to trade.
There is zero - I repeat, zero - moral difference between the people who pushed for "experimenting" with lockdowns because "we have to do something!" and the people who push for "experimenting" with trade wars because "we have to do something!"
Musk is out.
Musk put himself in a corner where he can't rip into Trump and he has to play nice probably at least through the midterms, but just look at the guy's face and watch him refuse to give a straight answer here. He put a lot on the line with endorsing Trump and starting DOGE, and Trump absolutely stabbed him in the back. Trump's supporters will blame congress, but Trump has very openly and loudly endorsed all of the DOGE-defying moves that congress has made, and has viciously attacked the one congressman (Thomas Massie) who has stood against it.
The reason is simple: Trump cares about trophies. Cutting the budget is not a trophy. DOGE trying to take a chainsaw to government was a trophy, but as soon as DOGE became more of Musk's than Trump's trophy, Trump stopped caring about it because congress offered him a Big, Beautiful Bill as a trophy instead. Just like the FBI offered the opportunity to build a Big, Beautiful new headquarters building for them (Trump loves buildings!). ...
As comedy slowly slides into unfunny wokeness hell, the last comedian standing (assuming he doesn't drop dead first, I mean just look at the guy; he's a trainwreck) will be Doug Stanhope. He closed out his recent special "The Dying of the Last Breed" with this bit on how important it is that we be able to make fun of anything. Because making fun.
Language warning, duh.
Preliminary Q2 numbers for Argentina are in. This is still subject to adjustment but so far their preliminaries have been pretty accurate under the Milei administration.
Slashing spending works. Trump and Bessent are very optimistically projecting economic growth of 3% doing the opposite of what Milei is doing to deliver 7.6% - and climbing!
