What grinds my gears

If there is one thing that "triggers" an American police officer the most, it's if they signal a car to stop, and it doesn't immediately stop. Note that in most states this is indeed against the law, but it's just a misdemeanor. Not much worse than eg. refusing to show ID when lawfully required to do so. While it may technically speaking be a crime, it's a relatively small one, as it's just classified as a misdemeanor (assuming that the delay in stopping the car is not reckless and does not cause danger to anybody). Yet, even though it's just a misdemeanor, most American police officers immediately treat it like the driver is an extremely dangerous armed-to-the-teeth hardened criminal who is fleeing from a mass shooting scene where he killed ten civilians and twelve cops, with the car full of illegal hard drugs and stolen money. You might perhaps think that I'm exaggerating a bit there. I'm not. When the car finally stops, guns will usually be...

There's a saying, "salting the earth", which is a reference to the ancient Romans, who were in a long time war against Carthage, finally succeeding in attacking said city state and completely destroying it and, according to the claim, spreading salt all around the fields so that they would become infertile, ie. impossible to grow any crops on (and, thus, deliberately causing a famine to all peoples living around the city.) This "salting the earth" by the Romans has been considered a historical "fact" for at least a century. Turns out that it's just complete fiction. Turns out that there's literally zero historical evidence of it having happened. There are many writings by contemporary historians who describe the Roman invasion of Carthage in great detail, but none of them make even a remote mention of them spreading salt. Nothing. Historians also consider it a rather ludicrous idea. Back in ancient times salt was actually quite valuable. Perhap...

Continuing my previous blog post about "anti-frauditor" YouTube channels , where I express how I really can't understand why these people oppose so strongly what even the nicest and most professionally-behaving First Amendment auditors are doing (to the point that they outright cheer and celebrate when the auditor gets arrested, regardless of whether the arrest is lawful or not). As mentioned there, the largest of those channels have usually hundreds and hundreds (even thousands) of comments from people fully agreeing with the channel author, mocking and deriding the auditors and openly and loudly celebrating when the police arrests them. Do you know what's one particular type of commenter that baffles me the most? The citizen of another country writing things like "these things don't happen in my country", and "in my country the police would just arrest the guy and throw him in jail", etc. Always in the context of it somehow being a good thing...

So-called "First Amendment auditing" is the practice that some people in the United States engage in (and similar practice in some other countries), where someone goes with a camera to a public place or a publicly accessible area of a governmental building in order to see if his rights to film in public are respected by police officers and other government employees (as well as the occasional private guard). I could classify "First Amendment auditors" into three distinct categories (although, of course, the line between them can be blurry at times): The auditors who not only know and obey all the relevant laws, but always act very professionally, cordially and respectfully, never incite anything by themselves starting an encounter with someone (and thus only interact with other people if they engage first), and who maintain a calm, respectful and professional demeanor as far as possible when conversing with someone, be it a police officer, a governmental employee, o...

Or at least some conservatives, as it may be. You see, it's an extremely common sentiment among American conservatives that taxation is theft (their exact wording). Many of them think that taxes are unconstitutional and thus illegal. There even exists a movement of American conservatives who refuse to pay taxes for this exact reason. They think it's unconstitutional, illegal and thus just theft. Apparently these people have never actually read the Constitution of the United States, which they love so much. You see, Article I, Section 8, first paragraph says: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; I don't think it could be any clearer than that. The right for the government to collect taxes is not some kind of "loophole", or "reading bet...

A policewoman is driving down a road when she sees someone on the side of the road from behind, who looks from that perspective like maybe a 10-year-old girl. As this is highly unusual, the officer stops to see if the girl is perhaps lost or needs help. Turns out that it wasn't actually a 10-year-old girl, but just a small adult woman. Ah, so it was just a simple case of confusion. It wasn't actually a lone child, so there's nothing to do, especially since the woman says that she doesn't need any help. Just say goodbye and keep driving... Except that, of course, that's not what ends up happening. That's because American police officers have an ID fetish. They just need that ID in the same way as a drug addict needs his next fix. So, for no reason whatsoever (and against state laws), the police officer asks for the woman's ID. There was literally no reason for her to ask for it, as there was absolutely nothing suspicious whatsoever going on, but because Amer...

I have written many times in this blog how the far left loves to engage in the tactic of deciding on a particular sociopolitical point, and regardless of whether it's actually true and factual, they just repeat it over and over, again and again, for years and years. They just keep inserting the claim everywhere and repeating it, never letting it go. The goal of this is, of course, to make it true by repetition. It's classical tactic of: If you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes the truth. (In other words, when enough people start believing it to be true, it becomes so for all intents and purposes. It may end up in history books as a fact of history, even though in reality it's a complete distortion or fabrication.) To be fair, though (and I have to look at the other side too, else I would be intellectually dishonest), the same tactic is often used by the right, by the conservatives, as well. There are many examples, especially among the American conservatives, but one of...