The Oasis for
Rational Conservatives
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
When I was 16 years old, I went to the Amazon by myself and was adopted into a clan of Jivaro headhunters – the ones who shrink the heads of their enemies killed in murder raids.
I learned that their sense of reality was the polar opposite of ours. This week I learned that it’s not.
Two weeks ago, the theme of the HFR was derangement. Last week’s was absurdity. We’re way beyond both this week. We’re into hallucinatory reality.
The Jivaros’ religion, you see, is based on taking a hallucinatory drug they call natema made from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine which they boil to make a tea.
The hallucinations experienced under natema are very similar of those of LSD. The experience is orchestrated by the clan’s uvisheen or shaman, so that when he directs the participants to see the Jaguar God or the Snake Goddess leap out of the campfire, they do – and know it’s real because they can confirm with each other they are seeing the same thing.
It turns out that use of banisteriopsis tea in religious rituals is widespread among native peoples in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil – such as the Quechua (descendants of the Incas), who call it ayahuasca, the vine of the soul.
The basis of their religion is that the drug enables them to “part the veil” of what we think is reality, and see a “higher” reality. In other words, they believe that the hallucination is reality, the real reality, while what normal people call reality is a hallucination, that “reality” is an illusion.
This inversion or hallucinatory reality is of course a form of full-blown insanity – and is what we are experiencing now in America, from believing that homosexuality is normal and heterosexuality is not to “Islam is a religion of peace.” Yet this week we seem to have reached an apotheosis of this reality-inversion.
Merry Christmas! And welcome to the fourth annual TTP What to Read.
We initiated this tradition with a list of the books I read and recommended in 2012, the first What to Read. That was followed a year later with What to Read 2013, then What to Read 2014.
It’s a week before Christmas to give you a chance to provide a Christmas present from the list. The links are to the Kindle edition on Amazon, each with multiple comments and quotes.
You can inexpensively gift someone instantly with the Kindle edition – I read all of these on my iPad – while there’s still time for Amazon to deliver a hard copy, or there’s your local bookstore.
I kept the list not to all the books I read this year, but to just those I thought would be of real interest to TTPers. There are several I think it quite important for you to consider.
I’m sure you’ll find at least one or two fascinating either for yourself or someone you care for. Or a regressive libtard you want to educate and/or infuriate.
And, please let us know on the Forum what books rang your bell this year. Here we go.
Sometimes I wonder how the left can remain so woefully ill-informed on the subject of climate change.
Then I read articles like this piece of complete Chait that one of America’s leading liberal commentators has just produced for New York magazine and all becomes clear: because ‘progressive’ journalists who write about the environment don’t do research or due diligence — only fluffy sentiment and green propaganda.
Let me show you, with reference to Jonathan Chait’s article — excerpts from which I’ll put in italics, with my gloss below — what I mean.
This weekend, leaders from 196 countries approved the first global agreement to limit greenhouse-gas emissions in human history. The pact is a triumph of international diplomacy shared by diplomats across the planet.
The agreement is non-binding, carries no penalties and is entirely voluntary. That’s why everyone signed: because it meant nothing — not because any diplomatic skills were necessary.
Obama’s climate agenda has lurked quietly on the recesses of the American imagination for most of his presidency. It is also probably the administration’s most important accomplishment.
That last sentence is probably true — but only because from Syria to Russia to Obamacare to Benghazi to Common Core to the proliferation of divisive #blacklivesmatter identity politics lunacy, everything else on the administration’s watch has been an even bigger fail.
The chance of dying in a terrorist attack in any year in the United States is less than one in a million (even including the terrible attack of the approximately 3,000 killed on Sept. 11, 2001).
Many in the media over-hype the chances of dying in a terrorist attack while at the same time underestimating the number of potential terrorists and terrorist cells among us. At times like these, it is important to be rational about relative risks and prudent in mitigating them.
Most people have little understanding of the relative risks of dying when using various forms of transportation. Commercial airlines are by far and away the safest form of transit per passenger mile. In fact, you are about 62 times safer in an airplane than an automobile for a long-distance trip.
What most people have even less understanding of is the relative risks to our freedom that Washington bureaucrats and politicians create compared to those of Islamic terrorists. The former, it turns out, is far greater.
And, I'm sorry to say, it is now pointed at you.
We more or less know this, of course. It's been beyond dispute since the Snowden revelations. What most people haven't done, however, is to face the fact.
Before I get into three examples of a Weaponized Internet being pointed at you, I'd like you to understand the most common problem with this material: When I explain these things, it's almost never the intellectual aspects of it that turn people away. Rather it's the psychological aspects, and denial in particular.
If you hold to an imperative that “it can't be that bad,” or, “the US military can never do wrong,” you'll find any number of ways to conclude that I'm going too far, misunderstanding, and so on.
So, make of this as you will, but please do so honestly and do your best to avoid living along that river in Egypt.
Europe has been going demographically bankrupt for awhile now because of its falling birth rates, so the socialists who run it have come up with an absolutely amazing plan they say can't possibly fail.
They're going to solve this demographic bankruptcy and this resulting economic bankruptcy when there's nobody to do the work or pay the bills or even write the welfare checks by bringing in millions and millions of Moslems to fill in the gap.
There's just one, tiny, little, minor problem with it, and I'm not talking about the terrorism, the Sharia, the no-go zones, the attacks on Jews, or all the other fun stuff. There's just one other minor problem, which is that the people coming in don't actually work.
There’s a basic cultural difference between the Western world which is a work ethic culture, and the Moslem world which is a slave culture. And when people from a slave culture come into a country where it has generous socialism, that has generous welfare policies, they're coming there not to work. They are not refugees – they are welfare migrants.
We cannot allow this to happen in America.
A theme of the last two HFRs has been derangement. This week it’s absurdity.
So how exactly does this work, Donald Trump’s plan to keep America safe from Islamic terrorism by barring entry to all Muslims? He explained it Tuesday on TV. The immigration official will ask the foreigner if he’s a Muslim.
“And if they said, ‘yes,’ they would not be allowed in the country?”
Trump: “That’s correct.”
Brilliant. And very economical. That is, if you think that bloodthirsty terrorists will feel honor-bound to tell the truth to an infidel customs officer.
That’s Charles Krauthammer this morning (12/11), who can’t believe anyone is taking Trump seriously any longer, much less going into a freak-out frenzy over what he says…
We know Zero is a pathological liar, a fascist, an anti-American traitor – but is he a murderer? Yes, he should be prosecuted for murdering the American Dream. Almost half of young Americans (18-29) believe the American Dream is “dead,” reports the Harvard Institute for Politics today (12/11)…
Franz Kafka is alive and well, living in Paris. Or if he were, he’d be ecstatic, for you can’t get more Totally Laughably Absurd than what’s going on there this week…
No to spoil the fun, but we have a series of Of Course updates for the week. Plus a great history lesson, another Darwin Award, the Idiot of the Week, and a really sexy Hero of the Week – the HFR’s kind of woman. Here we go…
Who’s playing who? Is Trump playing the libtard media as the master publicity-seeker, or is the libtard media playing him with their nonstop coverage of his every utterance month after interminable month?
The answer is Yes. The only real financial asset Trump has – on which 90% of his claimed wealth is based – is the PR value of his name, so that companies will pay him oodles to put the label “Trump” on their products from neckties to real estate developments.
Trump’s genius is to take the old adage of Hollywood movie stars regarding publicity – “Good or bad, I don’t care what you (the media) say about me, as long as you spell my name right ” – to the max. Just exactly like Kim Kardashian or Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner.
Trump plays the libtard media like a Strad – just like he does the GOPE (the E is for Elite), most of the conservative punditry, a dishearteningly large number of conservatives, and all Pub prez candidates with the one exception of a guy who’s smarter than he is.
That’s Ted Cruz. We’ll get back to him in a moment. Let’s get back to the other half of the Yes above. True, Trump is good for ratings so it makes business sense to run stories about him. But the libtard media aren’t just in business, their purpose in life is to advance their libtard political agenda. So what’s the libtard media’s agenda for constantly providing Trump with publicity?
More specifically, how does it advance their agenda of getting Hillary Clinton elected in 2016?
Are you happy?
Uncountable millions have asked that of themselves or of others for thousands of years. Yet depending on when in history this question is asked, it would mean something very different.
Today, we live in a time where our overall health, opportunities, and options would be considered nothing less than miraculous to our ancestors.
In addition, the practical knowledge we have today of how our choices, thoughts, and habits affect our own experience allows us to be active participants in our own happiness in ways that would have mystified most people through history.
For the Ancient Greeks, happiness was being lucky or blessed (makarios) -- favored by the gods to enjoy prosperity and avoid suffering.
This puts the thoughts, choices, and actions that can lead to happiness outside of our own direction, outside of our own personal agency.
Happiness from this perspective is a matter of luck, not something you can actively influence. But you can. Let’s talk about how you can.
The foundations of American Jewish life are under assault today in ways that were unimaginable a generation ago. Academia is ground zero of the onslaught. The protest movements on campuses are first and foremost anti-Jewish movements.
In the past month, for example, students channeling Hitler Youth at Hunter College in New York demanded that all supporters of Israel be kicked off campus. A member of the UC Santa Barbara student council was told he could not vote on an anti-Israel resolution because he was Jewish.
In a recent column, Dennis Prager noted that “the American university is now closer to fascism than to traditional liberty.” Prager is right, of course. But the fascist takeover of American academia will not affect all Americans equally.
Jews are the greatest victims of this state of affairs. That’s because there is an intrinsic link between Anti-Semitism and the Fascism of the Left.
The West doesn’t really want to defeat Islamic terrorism.
It responds to terrorism while ignoring the ideology. And then it roots around for “root causes” that coincidentally turn out to all involve progressive policy priorities like economic inequality and global warming.
The left sees Islamists as an anti-colonialist minority lobby rather than theocratic supremacists. Moslem Brotherhood front groups, like Communist front groups, are willing to use “useful idiots” on the left. But rather than forming a common front, Communists and Islamists hijack left-wing causes and make them their own.
So, for example, Moslems turn #BlackLivesMatter protests into anti-Israel campaigns
Can the Islamic State evolve into another Soviet Union? Yes, it could – and how often did we see American leftists take the side of Moscow or its proxies like Castro’s Cuba against the US?
The OPEC cartel is to continue flooding the world with crude oil despite a chronic glut and the desperate plight of its own members
Brent prices have tumbled $3 a barrel to below $41, US crude over $4 to below $38, as traders tried to make sense of the fractious OPEC gathering in Vienna last Friday (12/04), which ended with no production target and no guidance on policy. It reeked of paralysis.
Prices are poised to test lows last seen at the depths of the financial crisis in early 2009. The shares of oil companies plummeted in London, and US shale drillers went into freefall on Wall Street.
“Lots of people said OPEC was dead. OPEC itself has just confirmed it,” said Jamie Webster, head of HIS Energy. Instead, there is now a new world order of three and only three oil superpowers. Guess who they are…
When you hear politicians speak (the president or members of Congress) and they tell you that the science or facts are settled, do you tend to believe them or treat their comments with skepticism?
Those who survey such things show that faith in government and politicians has fallen to record lows. But many other professions have also seen a decline in public trust.
The government produces a "food pyramid" and dietary guidelines telling us what is good for us to eat and what is not. But it keeps changing -- eggs and whole milk were bad, and now they are good.
Global warming alarmists keep telling us the science is settled -- but doomsday keeps being pushed back. Not one of the major global warming models predicted the recent 18-year pause in global warming. Is it any wonder most of us now ignore the constant warnings of warming by Mr. Obama?
