Over the weekend, I started making some changes to the Youtube channel. Now, here, it’s just one intro link, sidebar left. I don’t really use it anymore, the subscriber base has dissipated, and, honestly, I’m just not a video person (hence, this site, the columns, and the books). In the channel’s infancy, I called it The Perrin Lovett Show. Later, it morphed into a Freedom Prepper outlet. Today, it largely sits idle. So, I removed about 90% of the videos – the Prepper News Weekly episodes, other FP matters, and a few related to TPC – are unlisted (still accessible from the various base links elsewhere); the majority of the rest are still there, just private now (for now).
About a dozen of the most popular videos and those related to my books remain. I also stopped the comments, such as there were. And, I simplified my own YT account considerably. Call it winter cleaning. In not unrelated news, I have a housekeeping post coming later today about the blog.
It takes courage to write a book. Few things are as intimidating as sitting down in front of a blank computer screen day after day and trying to fill it with something worthwhile. Perrin Lovett is doubly brave. He has written an original, exciting, entertaining story. But he also had the courage to take on the most sacred cow in the vast American herd – the public schools. THE SUBSTITUTE gives us a vivid, realistic, inside look at the failing public schools based on real, day-to-day experience. Many non-fiction studies of public education have been appeared in the past few years. But THE SUBSTITUTE is the only novel on the subject I’m aware of that compares to the famous “muckraker novels” of the early 20th Century that exposed such social evils as child labor, worker safety, and political corruption. Writers like Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffens changed America by using fictional truth to expose the social ills they addressed. I hope that Perrin Lovett’s novel will have a similar effect on how we look at public schools, which demand an ever greater bite of tax revenue while producing an ever worse result.
Perrin Lovett is a natural story-teller, with a superb command of language and a tone, sardonic at times, that is appropriate to his subject. And he has created a splendid protagonist, Dr. Tom Ironsides, the substitute of the title. Dr. Ironsides is also Colonel Ironsides, retired from the Marine Corps and from subsequent “black ops” with the CIA. He is an academic, trained in the Classics, and a warrior, trained to function in a world where survival demands competence.
At first I was concerned how Lovett would get such an engaging character from the battlefield against terrorism to the battlefield against ignorance. But he does it quite well, quite credibly.
Ironsides is one of those people with the self-confidence and the idealism to want to spend his later life setting things right. What better venue for his knowledge, skills, and natural authority than the schools? But since he’s not officially certified, he has to start out teaching as a full-time substitute. As a substitute, he covers many different grade levels and subjects, giving the reader a genuine cross-section autopsy of an unsustainable system. It’s crushed by its own bureaucracy, treats its students more like inmates of a prison, destroys love of learning, and drains the heart out of the teachers. Most of them love their kids and aspire to teach them well, but they’re over-burdenedwith ever more testing and data-keeping and bureaucratic procedure. Instead of making the classroom a place of excellence in learning, public schools are creating sinkholes of mediocrity.
I won’t spoil the ending except to say it’s very satisfying. It’s fictional, of course, but it ends the only way the whole national public school debacle can end if America is to remain a strong, free, prosperous, self-governing nation. Only a well-educated people can keep it that way. If we do follow the new course described in THE SUBSTITUTE, we’ll have Perrin Lovett to thank.
My channel’s languishing and I don’t really care. But, there are good videos in danger. I already know of a few removed. SJWs don’t sleep.
YouTube announced Wednesday it would ban videos promoting or glorifying racism and discrimination as well as those denying well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.
The announcement by the Google-owned video-sharing platform was the latest of a series of tech industry moves to filter out hateful and violent content, which have spurred calls for tougher regulation.
“YouTube has always had rules of the road, including a longstanding policy against hate speech,” a company statement said.
“Today, we’re taking another step in our hate speech policy by specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status.”
Blah, blah, blah. Hang yourselves faster, social masters. The alternatives are out there.
It’s no secret that my YouTube channel is kind of in a suspended hiatus. I may have to do an update. Thursday is the one-year anniversary of my Prepper’s Venezuela video, my most popular by far. Just the other day I got a friendly Spanish note in the comments – from Venezuela. It’s my most watched, most commented on, most liked, and most disliked episode. Watch again for old time’s sake:
There’s been a lot going on down there of late – most of it for the worse. Therefore, I think I shall consider a sequel update. Maybe this weekend. Stay tuned. And, yes, the update will feature better sound tuning – the biggest complaint about the original. Should also post as a NEW! FP feature.
It’s not your imagination. People are really getting dumber.
Over the weekend I started a draft on a similar subject, something I noticed. Here and now, I finish it with a few changes. Those were brought about by several stories which surfaced yesterday, which largely validated what I was suspecting all along.
Young people’s IQ scores have started to deteriorate after climbing steadily since Wold War Two, a new study has found.
The fall, which equates to about seven points per generation, is believed to have begun with those born in 1975, according to the first authoritative study of the phenomenon.
“Wold” War Two is likely a plain, old error and not an example of the point…
It’s true. But it’s not technology causing the trend. It’s not the fish or lack thereof. And it is not some nebulous social “force.” There are three causes:
1) Smarter people are having fewer children, passing on fewer genes. This has particularly dire consequences for the West. This works in conjunction with the other two.
2) Lower-IQ peoples are increasing in number, passing on their genes.
3) Modern Western immigration is geared toward the importation of non-Western peoples from countries with populations known to correspond with number two, immediately above.
What prompted my drafting earlier is immaterial. Last fall I reported on the various national IQs and the world average (86). Then, I wrote:
“I’m a little surprised the USA came in as high as it did. I would not be surprised if that number (and the global average) slips a little with each coming decade and/or generation. …”
Back then I had it in my head that the US was somewhere in the mid-90’s, I’d have settled for 95 (and this wasn’t via random guessing). 98 is just too high. More likely, it’s around 94.5. It’s not that big of a difference but, as its a point on a downward trend, it’s especially troublesome.
Last year I quipped: “98 will have trouble returning to the moon. 86 will not go the first time. 72 might have trouble finding the thing with a telescope.” This principle applies to all areas of society. Space travel is one thing. Running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, gasoline refinement, and relative judicial stability are others.
It’s become a vicious cycle – and yes, 1975 would be about the time it should have started manifesting itself. A crazed and deteriorating culture drives brighter people to work longer and harder while embracing the selfish and the trivial and delaying or foregoing starting families. They pay taxes to support the others, who keep having children. This is, obviously, not sustainable. Those on the right tail of the curve are increasingly squeezed by those in the shifting middle.
And, societally, it’s the middle, the average that really counts. If you’re reading this and understanding it, you’re above average. Surely you have noticed the decline of late during your interactions with the masses. It’s real. And it’s a real problem.
Others have noticed as well. Vox Day on the subject yesterday:
Vox Day/Youtube.
By the way – related good news here: Youtube assigns “related” channels to a particular creator. How? I’m not exactly sure. Regardless, I now have three related channels:
Vox appeared last night. It’s an honor to be algorithmically included in his and Stefan’s company. Banshee Moon was a prepper-esque channel. Now it’s more a bikini lifestyle channel – which I am also proud to associate with…
Note: the decline in the schools does not really factor into the general lowering. It fits with the general decline, however. Children with less base intelligence have less need for real education.
Today’s Prepper News Weekly, with a cool interview about Bee Keeping (we aim to please around here…):
Perrin/YT.
Many thanks to Mr. Michael Rigdon, a really cool and dangerous man.
In other news! I just embarked on my most unusual and ambitious venture yet. I applied for a part in an upcoming Clint Eastwood movie. Everyone knows my acting skills (as demonstrated in so many low-budget YT vids) and my deep love of film and popular culture… Heck, it’s Eastwood. When I’m famous, you can say you doubted it….
See, this is a “serious” headshot. Selfie. Shaggy.
And, a welcome of sorts to the wonderful readers over at The Piedmont Chronicles:
A few remain hidden but the YT editor tells me that last one is No. 100. Wow…
Additional thought of the day: Reverse Mortgages:
Tom Selleck is hawking reverse mortgages, equity loans aimed at seniors. He says older Americans are woefully under-saved (they are) and the solution is a loan on the equity! Why not?! These things have been around a while. And all that while I’ve thought the smelled funny.
Without much research, my gut reaction is that this is a terrible idea. It might be helpful to some at times, but it looks like, feels like the end of the debt-ification game. Literally, the banksters grab up the last of the assets, issuing new debt in its place. Cannot be a good idea for the economy as a whole: ownership only by the financial elite only benefits the financial elite. Beware.
