Nobody Said It Was Easy


Posted On: Saturday - November 20th 2021 7:42PM MST
In Topics: 
  Music

What a great song for these times! This song was a hit almost 40 years ago. Perhaps there are times for every generation that look just as bleak, but I have a hard time believing it. We're trying to get through it intact, but, nobody said it was easy.



When I looked up this song, I couldn't find it at first. Even via recognition (forget recall), I wouldn't have been able to remember it was a band called LeRoux for the life of me. Nobody Said It Was Easy was a Billboard magazine #18 top single from this Baton Rouge band's 4th album, Last Safe Place in 1982. The song has a sub-title, as it were: (Lookin' for the Lights).

LeRoux:

Jeff Pollard – lead vocals, guitar
Tony Haselden – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, lead and backing vocals
Leon Medica – bass, backing vocals
David Peters – drums, backing vocals
Rod Roddy – lead and backing vocals, keyboards, synthesizer
Bobby Campo – backing vocals, percussion

Next week: maybe that book review finally, something on China and the vax policy over there, speculation on Globalist evil pushers of the vax to the world, a series of short posts taken from just 20 minutes in front of the TV, and, OK, yeah, maybe some current event or something. Thanks to everyone who reads Peak Stupidity and especially to the commenters.

Comments:
Hail
Monday - November 22nd 2021 4:26AM MST
PS

Mr Moderator, I am surprised to hear you'd already seen the "Ballad of Kyle Rittenhouse" given that it only went up three days ago. It was posted up after the trial verdict. Word travels fast? But searching using the Unz.com search function, I cannot find it. No results for the Youtube URL of the original (https://www.unz.com/?s=ZVYFu57T58c&ptype=all&commentsearch=include&sortby=latest&Action=Search).

When I posted it here, the original/main upload was at 70,000 views, I think, but is now fast pushing towards 100,000.

Will Youtube delete it? With this in mind, I uploaded a backup on Bitchute.

A post on "The Ballad of Kyle Rittenhouse" with lyrics, bitchute backup version, and a few other comments.

https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2021/11/22/the-ballad-of-kyle-rittenhouse-2021/
Moderator
Monday - November 22nd 2021 2:22AM MST
PS: BIADB, thanks for that info. Here is the quick part of that interview of Mr. Attali in a pdf. It is written on-line that this 1981 interview referred to a French book simply called "The Future" - "L'Avenir de La Vie" - by one Michel Salomon.

The .pdf: https://covfefebakery.org/pdf/The_Future_of_Life.pdf

That book itself is of "Interviews with eighteen distinguished scientists from around the world offer forecasts of future human physiological, psychological, and philosophical developments" I can't find it on GoodReads, but here it is on amazon with no reviews at all:

https://www.amazon.com/Future-English-French-Michel-Salomon/dp/0026067706/

We're gonna visit the Georgia guide stones. Why not?
Moderator
Monday - November 22nd 2021 2:11AM MST
PS: Should be "... THEIR shit, errr, numeracy together."

Yes, I have seen the video of that modern folk song, Mr. Hail. It was in the comment section of unz, mostly likely Steve Sailer's, but possibly under a John Derbyshire post. The latter has written a few posts about Mr. Rittenhouse and the trial, and most of them gathered more than the usual number of comments.

BTW, back to the economics, I think your putting the financial numbers into the context of a wealth transfer is a very good way to show the evil of this. We should keep in mind that this is just one bill, and there will be plenty of others. The latter ones won't really do this damage, because I believe that they will bankrupt the country in an accelerated manner (the 2nd half of Ernest Hemingway's explanation).

Alarmist, the Lionel Shriver book, "The Mandibles" that I have a (no less than!) 6 part review on, has the young people resentful of the old Boomers, but their money is not confiscated. I thought that scenario was not likely. OTOH, the economy in this prepper and female-oriented-SHTF novel goes bad pretty quickly to where anything other than hard assets* is worth nothing shortly anyway.

* One of these ends up playing an important role in the surprise ending. Please nobody spoil it, if he has read it. If you read the reviews, watch out in Part 5, as it has a big spoiler section between two lines of *************.
Moderator
Monday - November 22nd 2021 2:00AM MST
PS: I forgot to write, Mr. Hail, that I also agree with the idea of writing out the numbers in full. I have done that in iSteve (and other Unz Review) comments most times, but the guys here have got the shit, errr, numeracy, together.
Moderator
Monday - November 22nd 2021 1:59AM MST
PS: Mr. Hail, thanks for laying out these numbers. Peak Stupidity got into this type of calculation on "how screwed we are" way back in the early years - see way down (early) under the Global Financial Stupidity topic key.

Parts 1, 2, and 5 of "Primer on the state of Global Financial Stupidity" We still figure, if the US economy goes down, the world is in trouble. (This is not so much out of hubris, but also out of thinking that other big economies are doing lots of this same overreaching.)

https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=144

https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=146

https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=167

I have no argument with your denominator, Mr. Hail. I used 100,000,000 families that not only FILE income tax, but actually are net PAYERS. That number is a guess, so one could put a +/- 25% tolerance on that. For my numerator, I used the total national debt*, which at that time (almost 5 years back) was around $20 Trillion.

I concluded with an easy in-your-head calculation, that to make a significant enough dent in that national debt via personal income tax, each of these taxpaying families would have to pay $20,000 yearly EXTRA in taxes for 20 years - that's not agonna happen! (That was to do it over 10 years, so that, with this significant re-payment the world would still believe in the US dollar. Oh, deficits would have to stop cold too, of course. Hahahaaa!)


* Later post in this series (and a few others) discussed the fact that this is only a portion of the big problem - there are other government unfunded obligations, and then there is consumer debt too. We (I DO NOT include me here) are up to our proverbial eyeballs in debt.)
Burn It All Down Better
Sunday - November 21st 2021 8:19PM MST
PS “The future will be about finding a way to reduce the population. We start with the old, because as soon as they exceed 60-65 years, people live longer than they produce and that costs society dearly. Then the weak, then the useless that do not help society because there will always be more of them, and above all, ultimately, the stupid. Euthanasia targeting these groups; Euthanasia will have to be an essential tool in our future societies, in all cases. Of course we will not be able to execute people or build camps. We get rid of them by making them believe that it is for their own good. Overpopulation, and mostly useless, is something that is too costly economically. Socially, too, it is much better when the human machine comes to an abrupt standstill than when it gradually deteriorates. Neither will we be able to test millions upon millions of people for their intelligence, you bet that! We will find or cause something a pandemic targeting certain people, a real economic crisis or not, a virus affecting the old or the fat, it doesn’t matter, the weak will succumb to it, the fearful and stupid will believe in it and seek treatment. We will have made sure that treatment is in place, treatment that will be the solution. The selection of idiots then takes care of itself: You go to the slaughter by yourself. ” [The future of life – Jacques Attali, 1981] Interviews with Michel Salomon, Les Visages de l’avenir collection, éditions Seghers. “
Hail
Sunday - November 21st 2021 1:58PM MST
PS

"What a great song for these times!"

Allow me to submit a song you probably have NOT seen yet but which is even more applicable to these times, and by these times I mean this past week -- and was written this very year...

_____________

The Ballad of Kyle Rittenhouse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYFu57T58c

lyrics

Come all you friends and neighbors
a story I will tell!
concerning Kyle Rittenhouse
and the criminals that he killed,
and the criminals that he killed.

While in Kenosha, Wisconsin
in sorrow and in strife!
A gang of thugs flew up on him
they tried to take his life,
they tried to take his life...

The raper, Joseph Rosenbaum
was first to strike a blow!
But Kyle turned and faced the foe,
with his rifle laid him low,
with his rifle laid him low...

Then little Tony Huber
(or woman-beating Huber)
came skating to the fray...
But Kyle drew a bead on him
and he took his life away,
He took his life away.

The last to try young Rittenhouse
was pistol-packing Gaige!
But Kyle blew his arm in two
and Gaige did run away...
Gaige did run away.

Kyle Rittenhouse is innocent,
It's only common sense.
For he did not do nothing wrong,
he fought in self defense.
He fought in self defense!

(fadeout)

__________

THE BALLAD OF KYLE RITTENHOUSE.
by Clifton Hicks, 2021.

__________

A commenter (TurtleMarcus) says: "Fantastic! I study folklore and folk music at an academic level. This is literally a folk song in the making. This process of telling a contemporary story in the form of a song, is how we got many of the Medieval ballads from Europe."

AV1611 Jimmy says: "That was a wonderful straight up Ballad. Really carries on the real spirit of american story songs."

My comment:

The only mistake the balladist made is that Anthony Huber was NOT "little" -- at 6'1" -- except in a moral sense, in which he was a true midget.

The guy among the three who was unusually short was the worst of the three, the convicted multiple-child-rapist called Joseph Rosenbaum, who was only 5'3".

(We know both their exact heights because they were measured during their multiple arrests for their many crimes and in public record.)

The third guy, Gaige Grosskreutz, who also has a criminal record, is much like Anthony Huber in that he is of normal height but also strikes the pose of the moral defective of skinny-anarchist sub-variety. Gaige is the one who survived but after losing a piece of his arm made him unable to continue physical violence or mayhem or raining blows on Kyle Rittenhouse. After being shot, Gaige "did run away," as the balladist has it.

From the hospital in coming days, Gaige Grosskreutz told several people he regretted "not being able to kill" Kyle Rittenhouse that night with the pistol he packed.

"Pistol-packing Gaige" is a longtime cadre member of the People's Revolution Movement, a maoist outfit in Milwaukee --- described in some media as a "social justice group." (Yes, that's "where we are.")

And that's the footnoted version of THE BALLAD OF KYLE RITTENHOUSE for you.
Dieter Kief
Sunday - November 21st 2021 10:19AM MST
PS - Yep Mr. Hail, you give impressive examples how these matters can be communicated.

I wish that the way you explain these financial facts here would be widely used. - In ever more examples in the news too. People need such numbers broken down this - and lots of other ways. This is the kind of enlightening thinking, that works, I'd hold.
The Alarmist
Sunday - November 21st 2021 8:08AM MST
PS

If the rest of the Western world hadn’t gone batshit crazy, I’d drop my affiliations to the US in a New York Minute. There’s no fixing what Bai Den and The Squad are doing to the USA, short of tanks rolling into DC in the coming weeks.

To Mr. Hail’s point, we know who they are going to make pay (White Christians make good beasts of burden nowadays), but they’re coming after the old folks too. If the Satanic Stabs don’t cull them early on, the impact of the Great Inflation will finish them off in short order.
Hail
Sunday - November 21st 2021 7:52AM MST
PS

Okay then, continuing with the Coulter and "Trillion" Talk:

The quoted number of $1,850,000,000,000 (One trillion, eight-hundred fifty billion dollars) for the BBB bill.

If the leftmost three-quarters or more of the bell curve of mathematical-skill-or-inclination cannot understand numbers higher than those they work with on some regular basis, then "one trillion" is the same as "one quazillion," a number I made up. But repeat the nonsense-word "one quazillion" to the same interlocutor in a serious way and if they do not call your bluff, their reaction will be no different from if you'd said "one trillion" or even "one billion."

Dealing with per-capita figures can be useful for understanding, especially for the average person.

Here is one way we could do it:

__________________

By my calculation, there are 55 million effective households of White Christian-ancestry Americans resident in the USA whose primary earner (head of household) is below age 75 (i.e., excluding retirees living alone) and who are financially independent and earn their own way, no matter how low their earnings. (Will revisit shortly why "White-Christian households" should be the denominator).

1,850,000,000,000 divided by 55,000,000

= $33,600.

That's the financial burden per White-Christian household.

Divided even over ten or fifteen years, that's still several thousand dollars per year, or hundreds of dollars per month. For anyone who even is semi aware of his or her own household finances---as generally any functioning adult must needs be, even those many who are said to be "bad with money"---tell them the BBB bill's mysterious "$1.8T" is equivalent to them losing a few hundred dollars a month for a decade or more, to be spent by the government on a long list of goodies and handouts, which if they are in a disfavored class will generally not return to them, by policy.

This is a simplified explanation, but the numbers match. It's an imposition of hundreds of dollars per month on you for the rest of the 2020s and into the 2030s.

To restate it, the 2021 BBB bill can be seen as **a $33,600 tax on White-Christian households**, of which they primarily do NOT derive benefit themselves. What's a plausible estimate for benefit they see? 15%-20%? With nonwhites/nonchristians seeing 80-85%. If so, that means a deadweight loss to White-Christian households equivalent to $22,000. ($33,600 total burden * 0.65 deadweight loss (benefit minus no-benefit) = $22,000.

$52,500 is about the typical (median) White-Christian net household income per year now in the early 2020s---the money people have in their hands every year, after all deductions---which is lower in many pro-Trump rural areas, higher in big metro areas.

Therefore, the $22,000 "BBB tax," the defacto wealth transfer imposed on White-Christians, is equivalent to 40% of one year's White-Christian median-household earnings (22/52). That's 800 man-hours for a sole-breadwinner for the same household. Even though stretched out over time, it's still in addition to the previous effective tax burden.

The reason to calculate based on White-Christians alone in the denominator is that, as Ann Coulter and Peak Stupidity argue, a large majority of the $1.85 trillion goes to others with White-Christians explicitly or implicitly excluded. Conceptually it is like a tax on White-Christians some of which they might indirectly benefit from but most not.

If everything were much simpler, and if sums were stated in these terms or understood in these terms as they would have HAD to be in a medieval-like society (i.e., "the King has proclaimed that White-Christian subjects shall pay an additional tax of ____ this year to build bridges and stables for the privileged noble classes and upkeep for their servants, steeds, and pack-animals---Under command of the King and of God"), it would likely inspire a revolt.

Peasant revolts down through the centuries usually had their origins in obviously unfair and onerous taxation which fell heavily on a disfavored class.
Moderator
Sunday - November 21st 2021 7:13AM MST
PS: I did it on purpose, Mr. Hail, as only one guy was saying anything under the Ann Coulter post. I can't speak for Mr. Kief.

It's all good - we can continue here, as what is there to say about LeRoux, really? This one brought back memories though.

Alarmist, thanks for that link. I'd seen the graphic before, per some commenter on unz.com, maybe you?

"A bundle of $100 notes is equivalent to $10,000 and that can easily fit in your pocket. 1 million dollars will probably fit inside a standard shopping bag while a billion dollars would occupy a small room of your house." Well, I've carried around $10,000 in twenties in my pocket before, but it was kind of cumbersome - no room for my phone, and I didn't carry it very long.

It's funny how there used to be thousand dollar bills and even higher. As much inflation as there's been, logic would say that at least the thousand ought to come back. Hell, they don't even swipe the twenties with that odd marker anymore at the stores - it's not worth enough to bother. A Twenty is the new Fiver.

Of course, I realize that our elites and governments don't WANT us to have larger denominations. That goes against everything they are trying to do. In China, the hundred is the largest, but it's only about 15 bucks. The Chinese people have changed from "cash is king" to "scan my phone" in 15 years time. #SAD! and #STUPID!
Hail
Sunday - November 21st 2021 6:53AM MST
PS

These comments belong under not this post but the the Coulter post:

https://peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=2108

By one of those mysterious technical comment-system gremlins, maybe, they landed on the wrong post.
The Alarmist
Sunday - November 21st 2021 6:50AM MST
PS

BTW, I have absolutely no memory of that song, but
I was roaming the world staring down the international communist threat in those days, so Top 100 was literally not on my radar.
The Alarmist
Sunday - November 21st 2021 6:46AM MST
PS

An interesting visualisation of $1 Trillion is found at

https://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/
Moderator
Sunday - November 21st 2021 5:59AM MST
PS: I know you're a big fan of hers too, Dieter. She's been on a roll the last few months, MO.

Yes, most people can't deal with these numbers. Worse, the news people are worse at math than the average American. Now, if they could just make some pie charts - like those at the back of the .pdf IRS 1040 booklet - scroll to page 110 of this -

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf

and you'll see what I mean - maybe people would have a clue. Perhaps people would want colors. Let's splurge, Bai Dien Administration IRS head, and use colors on the pie charts. It's not like you have to print 100 million of these damn things anymore! It's a .pdf, for crying out loud. Go color - this is not 1965.
Dieter Kief
Sunday - November 21st 2021 1:22AM MST
PS To make numnbers better understood means to make them more approachable, more imaginable and - more debatable.
Thanks Mod. for your recapitulation of the Coulter post.

1,85 trillion vs. three trillion in collected taxes is one of those relations, that - haha - really count (= matter).
VIS = VIP (Very Important Subject = Very Important Post).

(The masses get lost in these numbers, something I stumble across often times, when talking to - firly well doing - middle class regulars, even. They are lost if you mention one trillion.
Most of them have no idea, what a billion actually means not only in mathematical , but also in real world terms. The confusion seems to start as soon as the numbers go beyond the sums they personally deal with in day to day contexts. That's why all kinds of real world contexts are helpful to make these numbers - visible (come to life...), so to speak. You're right on the spot here, Mod.
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