The Longest Night

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I don’t know when Solstice was this winter. I think it was around the 23rd.

However, I do know I woke up at my normal time this morning – 6:30 am, and thought it must be three. The darkness around the room was impenetrable, a combination of snow and being close enough to the winter Solstice as makes little difference.

I could say that I understood why our ancestors might think the sun would never come back, except I don’t think our ancestors were that stupid. It flatters us to think so, but no.

Even before we were “human” as we understand it, our ancestors had some form of symbolic art, which implies a form of communication. Yes, it’s possible that like one or two tribes in the Amazon, they had no language with concept of time, and no memory of events.

I beg to doubt it. In all but the most favorable of environments, the inability to communicate from generation to generation dangers and patterns and habits would have made it unlikely we’d survive.

To put it another way, that caveman had a grandfather whom he might very well have met. He knew in his grandfather’s day, in his father’s day, and in his own day, since we’ll presume he was older than one, the light diminished to this point in the year, and then it came back slowly.

That said, having woken and looked at the clock, and seen no glimmer of light, I can say there is something of awe to the feeling. The night has passed, but the darkness persists. And there is a very foolish inner thought that goes “what if it were never to come back again.”

One knows better but one still thinks it.

Of course, I’m not sure Mike Walsh knows better. At least, one wouldn’t think it from his post.

Oh, sure, it’s not as easy to read history – and real history at that, not the expurgated strangeness of school books – as it is to remember the sun does eventually come up. And historical epochs and movements take longer than that.

However, if he spent some time reading, oh, the bound periodicals of WWI or a biography of Woodrow Wilson – a real one – or of FDR or even LBJ, he would see what we’re seeing from Obama is really nothing new. Oh, sure, it’s a new way of being a little tyrant, but it’s not particularly menacing and scary, particularly because unlike the people dealing with his wanna-be dictator “ancestors”, most people in America don’t buy what he’s selling. And fewer and fewer believe it every day that passes.

Mr. Walsh, however, is upset that we haven’t had bloody revolution, yet.

(Makes gesture of slapping one hand with the back of another, in a way that her mom forbid her to do when she was six and imitated a fisherwoman.) I ask you – is this sane?

Let’s add to the history Mr. Walsh hasn’t read in any depth an history of the American revolution.

I keep running into this “it’s time for another revolution. Why isn’t anyone rising?”

Because the people don’t rise that easily. Not even in a nation that had its birth in blood and revolution. Arguably the people don’t even when a majority of them is starving. Revolutions are not usually – most of them – a thing of “the majority of the people rose up and took up arms.” Sorry. Hollywood has lied to you.

Revolutions are usually – and this is why most of them end in horrible – the work of a small, privileged, organized band of intellectuals and conspirators with some ability to raise some muscle. The French revolution was an uprising of the bourgeois. What it unleashed was the elements of any civilized society that are always hoping to do mischief: the psychopaths, the sociopaths and the radical losers. It put them in charge and tied back the forces of order. This is because the bourgeois of the time were taken up with the idea of the noble savage, partly because it upended a social order that kept them unfairly down.

The result was a beast that ate itself.

Look at any of the South American revolutions: the “revolution” usually was a small cardre, usually military, who seized power and made it clear the wobbly week knees should be on their side. That’s it.

Americans… are different, and made of different stuff. And our revolution was different. That thing in the declaration of independence about the outrages? Yeah, there was a sloooooowwww simmer. Even when some hot heads – the Sons of Liberty—started committing counter-outrages, all the right thinking Americans shunned and condemned them. Until things got so bad that they had to rise.

Even then, it is estimated only 3% actively fought for independence.

People like Mr. Walsh – and many of his commenters – need to take a powder and read some real history. If there were a revolution NOW it would be a revolution of the upper classes against us. They are the ones organized and in position to deploy force rapidly, with overwhelming force.

This is not out of the question. It’s not likely, mind, because their acquaintance with the real world is, mostly, through television and Marxist tracts. Which means the real world has as much resemblance with their imaginings as cheese has to chalk. Or maybe less. So the actions they initiate hoping to bring about the same sort of flare up as the French or Russian revolutions will only work in the imaginary France and Russia they’ve seen in movies and read about. “The oppressed population will rise up” – and pose fetchingly for the wide angle shot. (Now I think about they should talk to Mr. Walsh. I predict they would deal extremely.)

Their first attempt was OWS and yep, that is their vision of a starving population, may G-d have mercy on their souls. Now, like good internationalist Marxists, they have decided real oppressed peasants are those who can tan, and they’re doing their precious best to ignite a race war.

I’m not going to say they can’t do mischief. Oh, they can. For one they can costs the lives of countless young people who can tan slightly better than I can, because the young are foolish and don’t always know when they’re being gaslighted. And they can cost a million black-on-white and vice versa friendships and marriages. They can make our social interaction gritty for a generation. (More if some hothead rises up and kills Obama, which will give agitators the ability to paint all white people as hating all black people for generations. No? Look at Kennedy murdered by a communist and the right in this country still being blamed for it.)

But even if they managed – they won’t – to make all of the black population rise up (instead of mutter, write unconsidered editorials, act like asses, and ignite a Muslim convert to kill two innocent cops, what would it gain them?

Nothing. Except maybe giving the white supremacists the upper hand for a generation.

Guys, a minority is called so for a reason. And in the melting pot, a lot of people that call themselves black do so because they had a black great-grandparent. It won’t work. You’ll never get those riled enough to do more than make a speech on campus.

The ones the left can get riled up enough are those who have no sense of time or the future, those living in the urban hell holes the left has created.

They’ll rise up. And set fire to their own neighborhoods. And it will make for interesting footage, but G-d forbid their revolt goes out of their enclaves. Because they’ll be destroyed and suddenly white supremacists will have credence.

Armed revolution is even less likely to happen from our elites against us than us against our elites. Revolutions are great for books and movies. But REAL revolutions which bring about a change anyone wants are few, slow, and most of them usher in worse stuff.

I know to a certain type of mind the idea of us all setting to and fighting each other till the last remnants of the sixties ethos are six feet deep is a great fantasy. Heck, even to my mind, at my worst moments. BUT what is the rest of the world doing, while we’re all killing each other? Has anyone thought of that?

There is a reason Heinlein’s revolutions are in planets hard to reach by the rest of humanity. Our Civil War was ALMOST a war of partition among foreign powers. That we managed to bring it off without the continent being divided between France and England is another of those reasons to believe G-d has a soft spot for us.

Yes, Obama is intending to govern by memo and executive order. Yes, he can do a horrible lot of damage in that time.

But, like his attempt to make the black population (or college students – snort) rise up, the results will be more unintentionally damaging than intentionally. No, I’m not saying he’s not doing it on purpose. It’s just that to do the damage he’s trying to do, we’d need to be a world out of a Marxist cartoon, where those who have less are permanently SIMMERING at their oppression, rather than you know, watching TV and working and having love affairs and stuff.

Most of his intended damage will fail, but most of his orders will do other damage, like his wife’s precious lunch program is doing damage to school budgets and students’ health. His orders have already bound out economy up in so much red tape we’re practically immobile.

But most of the damage he’s doing is to himself and his own party, in the long run. Look, it used to be if you heard strangers talk, in store or street, they’d say things like “Well, Obama means well.”

There was never the swelling of love for the Obamas that the press portrayed. The popularity of the name Michelle FELL when he was elected. (Interestingly, despite all the articles about the love for the Clintons, the first first lady’s name to FALL in popularity during the president’s tenure, was Hilary. Which makes you wonder what the people REALLY felt.)

However people either gave him the benefit of the doubt or said so in public.

No more. It’s impossible to be out in public for long without hearing someone near you rant about the “socialists” who are destroying the country. Sometimes they rant TO you – a total stranger – and dare you to say anything against it. I imagine this is what my husband’s ancestors were doing around the seventeen sixties, “D*mn King George and d*mn his eyes, and I will not drink his health, and I don’t care who knows!”

Yeah, I know what the polls say. You believe them? You tell the truth to a stranger over the phone? Besides, you’ve seen what the main stream Izvestia does with more solid numbers: production, consumption, employment. And you think they’re HONEST about the polls? Oh, child. Go over there and talk to Mr. Walsh and the commies. You’ve seen too many Hollywood movies.

I’m told vast swaths of the population most hit by Obama’s actions, doctors, nurses, tax preparers, students, are becoming radicalized. I don’t know. I get this third hand at least. But they’re becoming radicalized in a “read drudge and reason and go to the range on the weekend, and I ain’t afraid of nobody.”

The more he piles on, the worse it will get. Already, as Glenn has pointed out once or a hundred times, Irish democracy is setting in. “Yes, I know what the regulations say, but we can’t live that way.”

Look – people have always done it. This is why caught between minimum wage and immigration laws they hired illegals (and why we have an illegal immigration problem) when the alternative was going under. Also, I remember in the late seventies (I was an exchange student) most handy men would offer you half off if cash. Irish democracy.

And then there’s ingenuity and thank the Lord American can do. Which has denied the tin-pot president a chance to make our energy costs “skyrocket.

Let me say it: things are bad. Things will get worse.

But by historical standards, Mr. Obama’s actions are nothing new. Oh, the means are different, partly because we pay closer attention to our presidents and because he hasn’t – malgre him – managed to create a world war under which to sweep what he’s doing as “special powers.”

They’re also rare, which is a good thing, as too many of these presidents a century and it would eventually destroy us.

But that’s the thing about America. The branches are always trying to usurp power to just one of them, and the executive is the worst for clever foolishness.

But Mr. Obama will be ignored, contravened, built around and built under. People who think he’s followed with absolute devotion are reading too many articles from Izvestia and get all their news from Tass.

This has happened before and will doubtless happen again.

But beneath the would-be dictator’s actions, there is the real action. The real action is that the tide of public feeling is turning harder and faster than ever and is a complete rejection of the statism of the twentieth century.

Will we win the next election? Who knows? There’s fraud and the GOP’s Boehner for suicide (Jeb fracking Bush? Are you kidding? Christie? Are you high?)

But possess your souls in patience. If we elect (for given values of “elect”) Hilary it will just complete our transformation into “H*ll no, to socialism we won’t go” nation.

And yes, it might come to revolution. But if it’s our revolution, like the first one it will be decades in the making and it will be the revolt of those who just want to be left alone to make a living. A very effective moment, but by its nature taking decades of simmering. Because “the people” don’t “spontaneously” do anything. And it’s most likely to come in reaction to a frontal attack from above, to be fair.

So let’s hope it doesn’t have to come. Let’s hope either in the next two years the socialists totally discredit themselves, or if not that in the four after. You see, that which nourishes destroys them.

They have been beaten everywhere else and the process of kicking them out of Europe is starting. (Though what replaces them will be statist, of course, it’s Europe.)
But paradoxically they’ve come here. They’ve come here and squatted in our colleges, our bureaucracy, our upper classes, in those places that are so well off no cold breath of reality intrudes.

Which is the only place they can survive.

Even now the artistic class and the upper class and the “radical chic” class are their refuges here.

But because those classes have clout, our people have come to believe “socialism has a point.”

Seeing them in action is not only destroying that illusion: the economic disasters they create are making people too uncomfortable to aspire to being chic.

I’m not saying it won’t get worse. It’s not yet solstice in politics, and it makes sense to wak in the dark and be fearful.

But this has happened before, and light came back. And light was brighter than before. And we found our balance again.

And we will this time.

Better than in the twentieth century, we know that statism doesn’t work, that the rule of the “technocrats” is a lie. Our technology, our lives, our beliefs don’t lend themselves to that dream of the past that these people are trying to impose. 1984 is an unimaginable ideation in the States, with our open spaces, our guns, our personal technology. Farenheit 451 is more believable, but I think mostly we’ve turned the corner where it’s no longer possible. Not with our personal communications technology.

Stop shivering in the dark and muttering of revolution.

Socialism had to come here to die, because like an infection hiding in a far-flung organ, it had come here to live. Ours is the honor and the glory of defeating it.

It will get darker before the light comes.

And when the great battle comes, it might not be the big clashing of weapons in a battleground attended by Valkyries. In fact, it likely won’t be. The great battle will be “oh, ignore that, or we can’t live.” It will be “F*ck king George and F*ck his edicts.” It will be Washington losing power because no one is doing what it wants us to do, and raving like King Lear – in vain.

It’s not yet midnight. It’s not yet solstice. It’s going to get very dark.

But we know history and we know the light will come again.

And we also know we’re blessed with 4th generation red diaper babies which, like the kings of old are so dumb they couldn’t put a crown on their own head if you gave them ten tries. More likely they’d either wedge it on their foot or eat it.

Be not afraid.

If it comes to revolution, it will, but the time is not anywhere near yet. And if we end up doing that it will be because they started it.

But if they start it, we’ll win. And if they don’t start it, we win, anyway.

Reality is on our side.

It will get dark, it will get scary.  It might get bloody and deadly.  But we operate in the real world, and they don’t.  That gives us an enormous advantage.

In the end, we win, they lose.

302 thoughts on “The Longest Night”

  1. Maybe the motto of our revolution will be “Non Serviam”. You want us to do what? OK. Good luck with that. You’re going to seize my land? You and what army? Oh, those cameras? They’re live streaming. You’re going to take my company because of some obscure law that you’ve bent for your purposes? I’ll shout from the highest rooftops about it and let everyone know that they’re next. But I will NOT just submit to your will. I will not be a good little sheeple. I will not serve.
    The most powerful word in any language is NO.

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    1. I don’t believe he was ever intended to lead a revolution. Be a proximate cause, useful idiot, and convenient fall-guy? Sure. but hasn’t got the stones or the moxie to storm the barricades.

      Agent provocateur, maybe. Rabble rouser, possibly. Leader? No.

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        1. When your entire life is one of minority leftist privilege your ultimate encounter with reality can be a truly harsh taskmaster.
          You can see it clearly in his tendency towards: “The truth is what I tell you today. Pay no attention to what I said last week. I don’t care if you have me on tape, I never said that, I didn’t mean it that way, you fail to understand the real meaning behind my words.”
          In other words, the attitude of a young juvenile caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

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          2. I worry that what we see is not all there is, though. Oh, aye, the child in the chair of the highest office *thinks* he is The One True Leader, but who pulls his strings, who put him in that chair in the first place?

            I’m torn between “never ascribe to evilness what can be explained by stupidity adequately well” and “no good comes from underestimating your opponent.”

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            1. Oh, don’t underestimate them. They’re all over the world and they’re evil. That said, I’ve come to believe he has multiple string pullers — which is almost funny. I think Iran, Saudi Arabia AND Russia all paid for his election (that vaunted highest fund raising ever, etc) and he’s realizing he can’t serve three (or maybe half a dozen) masters.

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              1. You know the problem with being bought by several people is the horrible competing agendas. Somehow I don’t think that the Russians and Iran are all that happy that he couldn’t find a way to stop the oil flowing. I have wonder what the calls to Valerie were like over that. Do they still have a tape system at the whitehouse?

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                  1. Remember all the trouble when he first took office because he insisted on using his unsecured Blackberry?

                    Bet it will crush quite nicely at the end of his term too.

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      2. I note how the bien pensants are mentioning how suicidal it wold be for the republicans to try impeaching him. I think that means they’re scared he might be impeached or be forced to resign to avoid it. If they impeach him and slow Joe remind me who pops up as the POTUS?

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            1. In all seriousness, what would that look like? All I can see when I look at Smilin’ Joe is everyone’s crazy uncle. He has to have more to him than an inability to process what he says before he thinks. What does he really stand for? What would he do if he had the presidency?

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              1. The only thing that comes to my mind when I think of Joe Biden is that snarky retort he made to the fella who said his AR was his baby. If he thinks gun owners need psychological help, that[‘s pretty much all I need to know.

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                    1. As a long-time resident of the Senate, Biden is capable of cutting deals — especially if he is convinced that would be the route to his (re)election. There are numerous reports of the Obamites shutting Biden down to prevent an agreement with Republicans.

                      Opinions of whether this would be better or worse than the current situation differ.

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              2. Seriously Byron, it’s a thing of “no matter what the real Biden is”, he can’t be worse than what we have now.

                Of course, we’d have “President Biden” for only two years.

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              4. What if what we get is a public persona to offset the “cool, intellectual aloofness” of President Obama? I remember catching a very little bit of his VP debate with Palin and noted that he was able to turn off the goofiness and affability when it suited him. It made me think there was a lot more behind that mask.

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            3. I think that the best part would be the fact that President Biden would be eligible to run for two terms on his own merit. There’s no way he’d pass that up and there’s no way Hilary could wait until 2024. The Democrat primary would be Thunderdome with walkers.

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    2. From the beginning I don’t think he was supposed to be the “tyrant.” He was a fore-bearer… A John the Baptist for the Anti-Christ… so to speak (using it as a metaphor only)

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      1. Perhaps not. According to Wikipedia, one of the translations of lucifer is “lignt bringing”. Was one of Obama’s accolades during his first election not “The Light Bringer”?

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        3. Since my legal name roughly translates to light bearer, I’m necessarily a bit hardened to the suggestion.
          That said, he and his followers managed to give me a severe case of the creeps, and flashbacks of reading The Late Great Planet Earth as a young teenager.

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  4. If I’m understanding you, you’re saying that a revolution will start as something very similar to the Fascist plot Prescott Bush was associated with? That resistance by the people will consist of more barter, more discounts for cash, more “What John Law don’t see, don’t matter”? Damn, that’s the most optimistic take on the future of the US I’ve heard in a long time. Thanks, you’ve made my day.

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    1. Partly? I think it might come to be a shooting revolution IF the elites make a move.
      Oh, and I think rule of law will return — it will just be a smaller and scared government. Whether this gets to shooting or not.

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      1. But aren’t you saying that OWS, Ferguson et al are the elites attempts at starting something, that have so far fallen flat? Do they have some hidden reservoir of competence from which to draw which will make their future efforts more fruitful?

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          1. So it would take several more years of liberal/progressive control of regulation to put us in a place where shooting would start? That is so much more optimistic than what I normally hear. Things like “The country is sliding downhill, and there’s nothing to be done!”. This really is a breath of fresh air. It’s so good to hear the point of view of someone who actually knows what a revolution looks like. Sitting and wondering makes one crazy.

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            1. Read history set during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. If we didn’t shoot then, and it recovered — well.
              And at the same time remember their philosophy is falling apart AND being defanged by new tech. BE NOT AFRAID. We win this. It will take generations to fully fix the damage — maybe — but America will go on and we’ll be free.

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                1. well, what opened my eyes recently was a book called The League. (America defense league.) The other stuff tends to drop out of my head because I buy my American history books at ARC and trade them back in. (Not research. Yet.) so…. But I’m sure others — RES? CACS? — have advice.

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                  1. Andrew Napolitano’s _Theodore and Woodrow_ comes to mind, about how those two presidents weakened the constitution (which gives one ideas about what needs to be rolled back/eliminated) in order to restore the (IMHO) proper balance between federal branches and the states and the people at large.

                    Don’t have anything else that pops quickly to mind, since my work looks at a different aspect of US politics and history.

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                  4. Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism offers a good overview, although those of us who lived through the Sixties find the portion covering that period excruciating.

                    Amity Shlaes’s books Coolidge, The Forgotten Man and The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy and What to Do About It might be of interest.

                    Burton W. Folsom, Jr of Hillsdale College “has written several books that revise commonly held views about the role of capitalism in the social developments of the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age” (Wikipedia) amongst them being The Myth of the Robber Barons, New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, FDR Goes to War: How Expanded Executive Power, Spiraling National Debt, and Restricted Civil Liberties Shaped Wartime America and A Republic–If We Can Keep It . If you have a spare hour, watch him on youtube:

                    Admittedly it is not a era I have read nearly as much in as I would like.

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              3. We didn’t shoot then because
                1. There wasn’t a legal and regulatory structure in place. No 1934 NFA, no ATF, etc. I could have ordered a Tommy gun from Sears and Roebuck, and no one the wiser.
                2. We didn’t have three or four generations brainwashed by the public schools to hate the country and embrace the government. Assimilation and shared values are not taught anymore.
                3. We also didn’t have a large and growing section of the populace whose ability to keep themselves fed didn’t depend on the government. It is not an accident that there have been NO new jobs created that are filled by American citizen; immigration has taken them all.
                4. Brandon Eich wouldn’t have been hounded from his job; there wouldn’t have existed the tech to track him.

                We live in a different culture now, and that must be reckoned with.

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                2. Um… no. Read the contemporary books. A lot of people hated the culture — being recent and hostile immigrants.
                  #4 is not the government but the people. We need to deal with culture, yes, but don’t confuse that with governance. What I mean, the social issues are an issue, but as long as they didn’t (and they didn’t) use the government to hound Eich out of a job, it’s not the same thing. Needs to be dealt with, yes, but separately.

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                  1. If the legal system will support using the continued employment of Brandon Eich as evidence for “hostile environment” harassment suits, or to deny the opportunity to compete for government contracts, or to justify increased government scrutiny of the business and everyone who works there, how is that not a government problem?

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        4. Look at some of the police shooting “protests” we’ve seen so far. “Die-ins” at malls, people trying to prevent Christmas shopping. What does this have to do with the police and race in America? Nothing. What does it have to do with anti-capitalism? Everything.

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              1. I have lots of friends who do Halloween makeup and costumes. Imagine your “dead” protesters being descended upon by realistic looking zombies. Add in a few plants in the protesters screaming like they are being eaten alive, and…

                Profit!

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          2. Follow the money — these protests are organized and paid for by ANSWER and similar opportunistic Red Diaper groups, eager to employ any fissures in America’s social fabric to attempt to rend our garments. Their real object is elimination of “Capitalism” and substitution of an economy they manage for a few percentage points off the top.

            And yes, the MSM are participants in this sham, giving these protests a legitimacy they denied to the TEA Parties. Increasingly the general public is noticing that the emperor has knobby knees, a skinny butt and no balls, as evidenced by increased Republican control over governance in this country.

            Sure, the Republicans are not much better than the Democrats, but they are better and they know they have to at least pretend to heed us, meaning we are in the room as deals get cut. It is always better to be in the tent pissing out.

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        5. No, they don’t. All the elite leadership comes from Ivy Covered Snob Factory types and the few that are in any competent mess up companies. The others go into government sinecures and the truly useless trust fund kiddies become community organizers and wannabe revolutionaries. I’ve been watching their antics in Union Square for decades. But the problem is that their very incompetence means that people don’t take them seriously even when they get some power.

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        6. OWS was an attempt by the elites at “starting something”, yes, but it was an attempt to get people to start demanding stuff, not to start violence. Ferguson my be an attempt to start violence, but it’s really too far out in the boonies to make anything happen, unless some protesters in a big city get killed and something erupts from that.

          As Sarah alluded to in the post, they’ve watched too much Hollywood movies, or else read too many “butterfly effect”-style stories. The only way they will be able to get the proles to rise up will be to get a highly charismatic leader to go out and speak directly to their intended audience and start whipping up a frenzy. And they have destroyed Obama’s chances to do this. It would have to be a relative unknown.

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          1. Um… you’ve not looked at where Ferguson is actually located…. have you……

            40 miles and parts of are practically suburbs to St. Louis. That’s not exactly in the boonies.

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            1. Wayne may be thinking media boonies – anything 25 miles outside the 5 Boroughs, the Beltway, or the central San Francisco Bay area. *shrug*

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                1. Robert interviewed at NYU medschool — um… if he gets accepted, (We’ll know Jan) we’ll go up with him, and should probably get a Hun get together going? — and found out that most of the time, the most far flung students were from… Connecticut. Being from CO everyone considered him an alien. Questions posed “is everyone in CO that tall and big?” and “How many thousand people are there in CO?” In self defense kid started developing Coloradisms. “Well, shoe mah horse with butter.” And “I studied anatomy right after helping pa plow the back forty.”

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                  2. It has long been recognized by most of (the rest of) the nation that the most parochial of our citizens call New York City* their home and themselves sophisticated.

                    *Be it stipulated that Connecticut is these days a suburb (bedroom community) of New York, thanks largely to enlightened rent control and affordable housing policies that create a gross shortage of middle-class** housing in NY City itself.

                    **i.e., housing which can be afforded on what constitutes middle-class wages.

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                    1. As my Brooklyn born wife will gladly attest. To all of those things. When we got married and she moved down South,

                      a) several of her New York friends and family thought the Klan would meet her at the airport.

                      b) she found out that she had been paying more in rent for her 500 foot off the books basement apartment than I was paying as mortgage on a 1500 square foot house with yard, taxes and insurance included.

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                  3. “No, I won’t have a problem dissecting a pig — we dissected a couple every fall and hung ’em in the smokehouse.”

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                  4. TINS: My under grad college in Georgia listed me as a foreign student. Dad had great fun explaining that Texas had joined the US in 1846 and had been allowed to stay following Reconstruction. So apparently Texas Tourism was right when they said that “Texas is a Whole ‘Nother Country!”

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                    3. Heard in New York when I traveled there with the band one year:

                      “Omigosh, they’re wearing *shoes!*”

                      “They’re Southerners. Why do they have a Mexican with them?”

                      “Where’s your banjo?”

                      etc., etc…

                      On a side note, same trip, I got to meet a few new Americans visiting the Statue of Liberty, and took photos for them. Was in a couple, too, actually. It gives you a new perspective on citizenship to know that some people have fought, bled, and endured unimaginable privation just to get here, to call this land their own. Humbling doesn’t even begin to describe it.

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      2. To anticipate how the libs currently in power would react to passive defiance just look to the evil they claim they feared done by conservatives. Martial law, suspended elections, camps for the defiant, all those have been thrown at the Republicans at one time or another.
        Never forget, they are rats, and their ship is sinking. Every failure simply inspires them to yet another attempt at some ill fated scheme or policy to somehow return them to the glory days that never were and never could be anywhere except in their pointy little heads.

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        1. I have had personal experience with thought control – i.e. “don’t look at me like that” to “talk to me!!!.” It is not a fun, comfortable experience. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy – or maybe my worst, but not if it hurt my friends.

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    2. There’s an interesting book called Stealth of Nations that talks about the emergence of the Grey/Black Market in various places around the world. The thing I thought funny was the author coming to the conclusion that people dodged regulations and taxes not because they were a burden but because they didn’t have anyone in government helping them follow the rules.

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        1. Not only that, I’ve lived through the disproof of that theory. Australia… Has a relatively well-run government welfare system and a moderately sane tax system. *Sensible* politicians pay close attention to the growth of tax avoidance schemes, under the table dealings and the like, because they know damn well that means they’ve let the rates get too high.

          And *that* was said by an Oz leftist politician. Who went on to reform the tax system, reduce tax rates and government regulations, and clean up the labor market.

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  5. And I noticed the Useful idiots, er, excuse me, German media are saying that for 17,500 people in Dresden, and equally large numbers elsewhere, are all just evidence of N-zi anti-Semitism coming back to life and the far right and tut tut how horrible they don’t understand the needs of the poor, downtrodden Moslem refugees, blah, blah.

    Except those 17,500 people understand the Moslems, and the media, very well indeed. Sweden may be a lost cause, but a growing number of Germans are digging in their heels. And I really believe we’re seeing the same thing over here, just without signs and banners . . . yet.

    Liked by 1 person

        1. They also have memories of actual oppressive regimes in living memory, and that generation isn’t about to let *anyone* else do the oppressing, thank you.

          Liked by 1 person

    2. The Useful Idiots might be more properly termed the Committee to Re-elect Adolf Hitler. People are going to whatever party addresses their concerns.

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      1. The Flight of the Valkyries definitely added to that. It was surprisingly stable for drone footage.

        If you try to view it on YouTube, they claim it’s been taken down for violating the policy on violence. I was hoping it ended with a missile strike.

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        2. I bet the Israeli drone operators were rolling on the floor laughing. I showed it to the younger Marine son who was home this week, and he said he saw a lot of drone footage like that when he was in Djibouti last year. Most of the footage was taken in Yemen.

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  6. In reading the recent biography of Napoleon I was reminded of just how nucking futz the French Revolution was and I understood how Napoleon had such massive popular support when he took over. Bringing order from chaos is something that makes you really popular. Once can see similarities in Putin’s popularity in Russia today, though Putin has nothing like the intellect or courage of Napoleon.

    If there is a revolution in the US (or other anglosphere nations) then the first against the wall may well be the 1%ers (OK maybe not the first, that honor goes to the marketing department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, but close). The fact that they are the ones inciting revolution only makes this more delicious.

    I think that it is more likely that the nation will essentially fracture between the majority area of conservative/libertarian/traditional liberal “flyover land” and the mostly urban pockets of vile progs, cronies and clients.This will likely lead to problems for the urban pockets, because they produce nothing that the world needs and so can be starved into sense (after the brief civil war in these areas where the ghettoes rise up and slaughter their 1%er neighbors) but it won’t be nice for the urban pockets

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  8. “There was never the swelling of love for the Obamas that the press portrayed. The popularity of the name Michelle FELL when he was elected. (Interestingly, despite all the articles about the love for the Clintons, the first first lady’s name to FALL in popularity during the president’s tenure, was Hilary. Which makes you wonder what the people REALLY felt.)”

    I must point out that differential fertility is probably at least part of that. Leftists don’t go for having kids.

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        1. I wonder if the 20% is evenly distributed. Are children of liberal parents more likely to vote conservative than vice versa?

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                  1. Remember, they turn into liberals. By the time they finish changing into what liberal women want, they aren’t even MEN any more.

                    (Oddly, at that point, even the Liberal women don’t want them any more, and start cheating on them.)

                    Liked by 1 person

                2. Given the typical militant liberal woman’s view of everything surrounding heteropatriarchy, they’d have better odds of winning the Powerball, moving to Thailand, and setting up a hareem.

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            3. Unfortunately, I suspect that’s more a case of sample selection than anything else. If liberal to conservative were really more common than the reverse then why have the folk elected to office in Washington gotten progressively more liberal?

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              1. Politicians pursue power. If cannibalism brought them power they’d hire fresh interns.

                The actions of politicians can’t rightly be seen as reflective of anything but the self-serving and corrupt, hardly representative of larger population trends.

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                1. The actions of politicians can’t rightly be seen as reflective of anything but the self-serving and corrupt, hardly representative of larger population trends.

                  Except that “larger population” keeps. voting. them. into. office.

                  While the recent midterms are a potentially hopeful sign, I’m not convinced it’s any less “flash in the pan” than the “Gingrich Revolution.”

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                  1. That’s a critical disconnect, no argument from me. The only comfort I can offer on that point stems from the size of the voting population relative to the total population.

                    Alternately comforting and frustrating, I’ll grant.

                    Most Americans, most people period, don’t live their lives for/around/about politics. They want to get on with the getting on and are disassociated from the process. It’s a good and bad thing.

                    The disassociation has allowed far too much drift and shift, but the self-same drift and shift is poking the disassociated in the side, hard. I’m seeing things that might indicate a few percentage points increase in involvement. Might.

                    Asatru believes in challenges, no?

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                    1. This article by Richard Fernandex over on PJM explains some of that.

                      One of the most salient characteristic of American culture is “can do” — its ability to find a way around obstacles placed in its path.
                      ****
                      The downside to this laudable impulse to self-help is that very few American politicians are ever punished for their blunders. The population apparently finds it easier to adapt. It is easier to invent a new industry than start a political movement.

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                    2. I read that yesterday, it was interesting.

                      Specifically the downside you excerpted. That is one failure I’d like our culture to be inclined to punish (or at least acknowledge!) with a bit more regularity.

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                  2. People are perfectly fine with returning THEIR political scumbags to office, what they want is everyone ELSE’S political scumbags thrown out.

                    After all, there’s only so much bacon to be brought home from Washington.

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                    1. MY senator is supporting local industry, not pork. But I’ll kick in $5 to get rid of YOUR senator for his/her/its reckless spending and nasty politics. $10 if your senator is Harry Reid.

                      Liked by 1 person

              2. I think there is a process other than that in operation in this dynamic. A man who moves politically from Left to Right is less likely to get laid* and can count on paying a higher price** to do so.

                A man who moves politically from Right to Left can not only anticipate a variety of sexual partners who, in the name of equality, use him like a battery-powered appliance, but can do so without investing in any relationship more meaningful than that of the wait staff in a mid-range restaurant. In extreme cases he may even be permitted multiple rapes (“rape-rapes”, to be accurate) without any significant consequences to his social standing.

                *getting laid, in this context, means to have sexual relations. It does not imply a relationship lasting longer than one night.

                **higher price, in this usage, includes having an emotional investment in the partner, making a long-term commitment with full intention of living up to it and other such emoluments of commitment to another human being. (I leave aside as an entirely different argument whether these “costs” constitute an investment with reward far out-stripping the price. Being happily married and prone to sleep in the same locale every night I consider it expressive of my personal well-being to assert that these “costs” are an investment bringing reward beyond measurement.)

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  9. One thing that helped prevent previous versions from destroying the country was the fiery counter-rhetoric. Reminding people of the possibility of revolution can help curb their enthusiasm.

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  10. Hitting on several topics that I agree with you on to a large extent.

    Revolution/civil war: One hopes that such an occurrence will not happen. However, I don’t think another conflict like that on American can be stopped. There’s only so much crapp people can take. How does it an abused dog to fight back or lay down and die? Bring it on already. Why?

    I want to be the one to deal with it, get the d*amn thing resolved before my spawnlings come into the world. I don’t want them dealing with it. They’ll have enough problems on their plate as it is.

    I find myself thinking the United States… won’t be so united after that and there will be probably a handful of new nations. I think the term is balkanization? (….. and spell check says this word is spelled wrong and suggests cannibalization… oh that’s just spooky…)

    Economy: Well…on the surface one might seem immobile. Take the home crafters for instance. Myself and dozens of others I know, we aren’t above making a “Blankets for you and the whole family for the coming winter for say a half dozen fresh eggs every week and a quarter of a cow come fall” kind of arrangement. Or soap and shampoo, etc etc.

    Some of that hiding in shadows is for our own good.

    /imitation “I mean really, exchange goods without proper supervision and proper tribute the authorities… why…. why… THAT’S ANARCHY!” /end imitation

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        1. I’ve got hens. I s’pose you aren’t anywhere near SE Idaho, but that’s okay. I also have a guitar teacher and a roller skating rink owner (!) who need eggs, and the girls are taking a winter break.

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          1. :)

            Sadly no I’m nowhere you Holly. Currently am stuck in the abyss sinkhole known to the mundanes as Los Angeles. Yick.

            You want to see what happens to people when they are broken? Visit California, cities of Los Angeles, San Franciso, and Sacramento. They are not right. They act like dogs who’ve forced to watch other dogs be beaten to death. You go into other cities and places… and it’s like the days of folks like John Wayne never left.

            We try to visit these other cities. Frequently.

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              1. Plenty of nice places around the Deep South, Texas, The Dakotas, well, most anywhere the citified call “rural” whether it is or not. We’d be right happy to have any of y’all move in next door- there’s apple pie in the bargain, too!

                “Come to the Appalachians, we’ll feed ya pie” doesn’t have the same ring as “Come to the Dark Side, we have cookies,” but that doesn’t stop some folks from thinkin’ we’re a special kind of evil, anyway.

                Liked by 1 person

                  1. How central? Closer to the nor’east ya get, the worse things seem to get. Down in the southwest of the state the rent is cheap and the towns are fairly no-nonsense. Most of my family is from around the border with Tennessee and North Carolina.

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                2. Dallas is right citified and sane if you prefer city living. If you want something on the water there’s Houston. I wouldn’t move too close to the Mexican border.

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                  1. Depends on what you’re looking for. Follow I81 and you’ll hit Morristown, Bristol, Salem, Roanoke… and so on. Manassas in Va. gets you a bit close to the Blue Crazies around DC, so that’s a bit far north.

                    Several nice places in North Carolina, outside of Boone and Asheville (if you want to avoid the bigger “cities”). Depending on how small you want to go and how far you don’t mind being from the city, there’s cabins out in the backwoods that don’t cost a fortune, but you’re a ways away from emergency services if those are an issue.

                    Some of the more historic towns have regulations on what you can build there (which is why I generally prefer the county). Little places like Abingdon on the Virginia border are like that- nice little town, don’t want to build or remodel there, though. Anywhere around the Cherokee National Forest is generally darn pretty, but mostly I’m just driving through that area.

                    Around Knoxville, Asheville, and the tri-city area at the northeast end of Tenessee, and a ways into Virginia/Kentucky is mostly what I am familiar with. There’s a few places I’d avoid, mostly because I’m not a fan of big city life, but by and large there’s nice people, pretty leaves in the fall, little mountains and quiet creeks running through the valleys. Good fishing spots, fair to decent hunting (feral hogs are a problem more to the west of us), and a few places where NASCAR fans descend to triple the town’s population a few times a year.

                    Maybe there’s better places to be out there in the world, but I’m darn glad I was born here. Even if we lag somewhat behind the rest of the country in “progress,” technological improvements and social ones. *grin*

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                    1. Thanks for the list. I was thinking 300,000 pop. and up. We won’t move, we love TX too much.

                      Sarah, where did you live when you lived in NC? Hubby’s next contract might be in NC.

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                    3. Your little spot in the world is on my list to visit on the bike one day. Lots of grand roads there and about worth exploring. I might even bumble through Speck…

                      ;)

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                    4. You’ll probably want one of the cities, then. Heck, half of Appalachia’s four hundred some odd counties average *less* than 50k population. Knoxville doesn’t top 200k save during tourist season, unless you add in all the metro area. And it’s one of the biggest around here, more of a sprawl than a built-up city like you’d find in the Northeast.

                      Most places I call a “city” in this area are over 100k. Maybe Atlanta, Nashville, Coumbia, Richmond, and Raleigh are over 300k… but that’s rather farther afield. I’m content with my little towns and backwoods, though- nice and quiet. *grin*

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                  2. I actually liked Knoxville. If you take 75 north, that takes you through some gorgeous areas and smaller towns. Near Norris Dam TN, there is the Museum of Applachia. It is incredibly cool.

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                    1. Definitely worth the look, and the hiking around Norris ain’t bad either. I don’t get to visit as much as I’d like, but I’d recommend it to anyone stopping by that area. Just keep watch for folks stopped in the middle of the road out that way. Two words: photogenic deer.

                      K-town’s nice to visit when there’s not a football game going, but the traffic gets a bit fussy for this old redneck, especially around 4-6pm on Papermill and 640. I still stop in at a couple of the restaurants in the area- Melting Pot and Altruda’s (which has some of the best Italian food I’ve had period).

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            3. I was born there. Dad worked at the museum at Rancho La Brea. My family left when I was little, but I’ve been there many times visiting friends. It’s weird being told “Don’t wear that shirt, it’s not safe to wear red at this mall.” “So, um, why the heck are we going to this mall?” I gather it was as weird to them to be told “Wear hiking boots, there are rattlesnakes,” and “We don’t pet bison.”

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              1. Yeah…. I’ve had the talk with others here in this corner of the city about safe colors. Apparently there is no such thing as a “Leave me alone, I will mess up one and all if messed with” color. …outside of a pro 2nd amendment shirt.

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              1. Sadly no. My location hinges on the fiance’s location. And his work wants him in LA most of the time.

                His work is very eager for us to get moved to Phoenix though, however… they do not provide moving assistance of any sort. The goal for the next year is getting out of California *completely*.

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            5. eviestormrose, I’ve still got family in southern California heck, grew up there. Being (I assume) somewhat more aged than yourself, you might imagine how different the place is from where it was 60+ years ago. Imagine more. (Same goes for the SF Bay area, Sacramento, etc.)

              It took a while, but we finally got out. My sisters are leaving in a year or two, tops, only one of our kids is still there, and he and his wife are looking to leave, too. And with the possible exception of one sister, none will be bringing crazy California ideas with them; we’ve been thoroughly inoculated against ’em.

              I do plan to get the weaving gear out and set up once the new house is built. We know someone nearby with chickens…

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              1. I can imagine it a little bit. Most of the fiance’s family on his mom’s side has lived in California their entire lives. He tells they are incredibly depressed in recent years.

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              2. I have family in So Cal, too, and I wish like heck I could get them to leave. My sister and her husband and kids nearly made it a few years ago, when he had a job offer to work at JPL in Houston. Nope – he turned it down, or the job went away, or something. Little brother’s wife is a teacher with the LA School district. My other brother lives in Indio – but his wife has family over the border.

                I grew up there too – and it was great, when I was a kid – my parents remember it as being even more fantastic before 1942, when all the war industries arrived, and then all the nutcases, too – and the nutcases never went home back to where they had come. I read Victor Davis Hanson’s account of his family acres, and his little hometown in the Central Valley and I could cry buckets for what it was once, and how readily it was p*ssed away.

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                1. What’s happened in Central Valley is definitely worth shedding a tears and Spells….er… prayers in most of ya’lls case… over.

                  It’s a sardine for crying out loud. Declare it edible and behold, there will be acres upon acres raising the little things. Extinction threat problem solved.

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                2. While I have heard tights called many a rude name, I believe this to be the first time I’ve heard them called predatory. However, I cannot dispute so terming them.*

                  *One size fits all my ass.

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                  1. Am I reading this correctly? Only one size fits all of your ass?

                    Perhaps it’s the tail giving you trouble?

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                3. Predator-tight? but won’t all that plasma proof steel and concrete be expensive??

                  What? Oh… uncapitalized predator…. never mind.

                  Liked by 1 person

        2. Quilt, afghan, comforter…? I usually get mine in trade for mechanic or plumbing work. *grin*

          It’d be nice to have a barter network set up for things like this. I once traded a starter install and two power window repairs for a coat and fresh eggs, but things like that are catch-as-catch can. I still wish the guy I got honey from hadn’t died a few years back. Wildflower honey is good for keeping the allergies in check, for those that have them.

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            1. Scarves and knit caps are good sellers here in my little mountains lately- if you go to any cons (such as Libertycon) in the Southeast around autumn or winter, you can usually unload quite a few if you work at it.

              Good quilts are constantly in demand, though. Good on ya for looking for options, lass. *grin*

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              1. I used to go to Liberty actually. I stopped due financial reasons and others.

                Actually…. Now that I think about it, it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to send a box or two of stuff with folks who do go and just tell me to keep half and send the other half of the proceeds back to me….I’m not sure why I didn’t think of that of before…. Ack

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                1. Finances is why I’ve not been yet, and I live practically on their doorstep. Well, a good eight hour drive away, but that’s yet to stop me when I’ve a desire to be someplace. So long as everybody stays reasonably healthy and nothing major breaks, I may get to go this coming year.

                  Maybe. I’ll not be lightly tempting Murphy to kill a transmission or put a hole in my roof in an inconvenient place by implying it’s a done deal.

                  Finances and being a curmudgeonly hermit, I should say. It never even occurred to me I should go until I started reading this blog.

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                  1. I would but there are individuals that in the local area that would show up and caused a severe amount of trouble for the Con where they to find out I was back in town. It’s just not worth the trouble right now.

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                    2. One of them knows a large chunk of the folks who go to LibertyCon.

                      The other is just a kid, but a sociopath. It’s not them intimidating the con that I am concerned about.

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                    3. Having been to Libertycon and knowing several attendees, they’d just point and laugh. If the sociopath got frisky, they’d point and shoot.

                      Either way, no one would harass you about these people’s bad behavior.

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                    4. It’s more a situation of the first one is not intelligent enough to create situations and try to force other people’s involvement. I learned a long time ago, people willing to cause drama at conventions knew full well what they were doing and it’s best just to avoid the conventions they frequent.

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                    6. And drama’s a thing we all want to avoid. *shakes head*

                      In any large group of people there will be the pot-stirrers. Sad but true.

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                    7. Incredibly true. Hence, I stay away. As much as I don’t want to. It’s the more adult course of action I have available to me.

                      Mostly because contract hits on those two would be incredibly expensive…. I mean uh… *raises rum glass* Cheers!

                      Liked by 1 person

                    8. *chuckle* Well, I can’t say I’ve not considered the same once or twice over the years. Things have a way of working themselves out sometimes though. Folks with nasty attitudes eventually get themselves into trouble they can’t so easily squirm out off.

                      At least, that’s what I tell myself these days. Ain’t worth worrying too much over that sort. They like it when they get folks mad, and it irritates the livin’ daylights out of ’em when you bless their rotten little hearts and go on your way, happy as a clam.

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          2. What we need is non governmental money. I may have a guest blog post, I just need to finish it in my copious spare time. Remember money needs to be a store of value and a medium of exchange.. That’s it.

            Oh and it would help if you could trust that it wasn’t forged (though that plays into both the other two because if you can’t trust it then it is neither a medium of exchange nor a store of value)

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Check out the recent New York Sun editorial Kaboom?, analyzing the current DJI 18K in terms of value in gold-based units.

              Nut graf:

              What the story failed to note is that the value of the Dow — that is, its worth in ounces of gold — is nowhere near a record. This can be glimpsed in the charts that are kept by pricedingold[DOT]com. The chart illuminates that even with the kurrent kaboom, the current value of the Dow, at just under 450 grams of gold, may be up from where it was at the start of the Obama administration, when it was near 350 grams, but is still way down from its record of 1,400 grams part way through 1999. The value of the Dow has certainly been trending upward in recent months, the chart of pricededgold.com suggests. It ducked under 200 grams of gold at one point during the Great Recession.

              Also, a recent post at Powerline examined how the 3rd Quarter “5%” GDP growth rate is an illusion caused by counting Obamacare effects in the wrong quarter.

              Lies, damn lies, and you-know-what.

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          1. Ooo. Evil idea! Gun rugs made of Offensive Shirt Fabric! Offend EVERYONE!

            Or a corset. As a female mammal of considerable dimension, it would be very meta on me :-D Especially if packing a death ray.

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  11. Dang it, Sarah! Are you trying to give Fred the Fed something to worry about?

    BTW, word of the day is “Cataphract”. Reply using Vermillion Protocol only. Mary had a little lamb.

    Liked by 1 person

    3. To this I can only add: John had a long mustache; The Ship Sails at Midnight; and My hovercraft is full of eels.

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            1. They tighten platypi — so, yes.

              They’ve also been known to take wrench to a rattling snake now and again. Thus, the anti-venom cabinet.

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                1. Exactly.

                  Tough to find somebody that’s got the right tools these days. When was the last time you saw a good set of scale gauges? Or a full set of squirrel nut wrenches?

                  Craftsmen. Dying breed.

                  :|

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    6. It’s Fed the Fred. The poor guy has to slog through our threads trying to make sense of them. The least we can do is get his name right.

      Liked by 1 person

    7. Had dinner with my friend who may or may not be Fed the Fred last night, but we were in an Irish Pub and it was simply too busy to ask him if he is.

      He was telling the wife about having grown up in Alaska and being a Right-Wing hippie. Her head nearly exploded.

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        1. It crows at midnight?? What did you put in that recipe? Does (maybe) Fed the Fred have a SO? They might not appreciate midnight crowing! We could have a grumpy Fred!

          Which — could be good.

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          1. That was code. Which book are you using?

            But if it actually DID crow, I think you could count on it being taken outside and beaten with some sort of medieval weapon until it ceased to do so.

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            1. Cryptonomicon and relevant appendices.

              Don’t tell me Stephenson put out another codex*!?

              I know the definition, roll with me, here.

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  12. In many ways I agree with your points here. However the issue that you did not address is the damage to the checks and balances, the very essence of our governmental system, that is done by the way Obama is doing his evil. I pray that he is impeached, convicted and perhaps executed (if convicted of treason), as otherwise the methods that he is using will be on the table for presidents to use for all time.

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    1. It will have to be restored, but it will be. With the power of public fury behind it, the government will have to return to being a good servant.
      Look, it doesn’t require impeachment. Impeachment WOULD precipitate a race war. Weirdly I have recently become aware of a lust on the part of the dems to see him tried for treason and /or assassinated. It’s their only hope of survival.

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      1. See, I don’t get why it would precipitate a race war. The guy’s as much his mom’s kid as his dad’s, arguably a whole lot more. All the demagogues (Sharpton/Jackson/etc) need to do is disown him. He’s too ‘white’. Maybe they wouldn’t disown him, but they could, and if they had half-a-bit of common sense, they would start calling him a ‘race traitor’ the instant anything started going down, play up how he was raised by his mom’s folks, and point out that his dad wasn’t at all African American, by the way, so he doesn’t understand the ‘African American Experience’. It would save a heck-of-a-lot of young lives if they do.
        ‘Course if they do what I suggest, it would lead to them having to abandon the Democratic party.

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        1. “point out that his dad wasn’t at all African American, by the way, so he doesn’t understand the ‘African American Experience’.”

          Early on there were people claiming that about Obama. [Sad Smile]

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          1. But they can see past Thomas Sowell, Clarance Thomas, and Bill Cosby’s. So they could if they wanted to. And I don’t believe for a moment that those demagogues feel a darn thing about anything that they don’t mean to feel, so if they wanted to disown him, they could do it with lots of tears about how they were tricked, and their followers would follow along with it just as willingly as they follow any other story they preach.

            I probably feel the way I feel (pissed) about it because they want to co-opt my kids into their grouping. If you’re going to have your stupid concepts of race based on skin tone and some bits of ancestry but not others, fine, but leave me and mine out of it.

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            1. “But they can see past Thomas Sowell, Clarance Thomas, and Bill Cosby’s.”

              No they can’t. Those men left the plantation and must be put back on it or metaphorically killed. Hence the treatment they receive in certain parts …

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              1. I have wondered if that’s part of the motivation behind the avalanche of charges against Cosby, that could have come out decades ago.

                I won’t say one way or the other whether they are TRUE, because I can’t possibly know, but the timing is suspicious.

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                1. Since we now have a legal environment where there is no statute of limitations and there is no defense possible including innocence, this is the most effective attack possible.

                  What smart Republicans should do is use that same standard to ask when Bill Clinton is getting prosecuted for Juanita Broadrick, and will Hillary be charged as an accomplice and “rape denier”.

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            3. Recently, someone (in the Dine and Dice Politics group, I think) linked to an article which, if you boiled down a couple of the points, basically said that actor Ben Kinglsey was Privileged because he was half White, but Obama was oppressed because he was half Black.

              Don’t try to make sense of them. Just apply observation of their patterns and go on.

              Liked by 1 person

        4. ” The guy’s as much his mom’s kid as his dad’s, arguably a whole lot more.”

          Irrelevant. The current crop of blacks adhere as strongly to the one-drop rule as ever the KKK did.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. The power of public fury unless expressed by dangling politician and administrative bodies will not stop the techniques from being used again. At lower levels, we could just incentivise the politicians to fire the administrators that have overstepped (at the politicians urging), but Obama is no longer fireable. Something must be done to make it crystal clear that how he is governing (not just what policies he is pushing) is criminally unacceptable or it will be regarded as aceptable forever more (or at least until some other president is lynched over it (impeachment will not work for this as the defense “Obama did it” will be available to future presidents if this is not shut down now).

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        1. Impeachment is a dead letter. Modern Democrats cannot get elected anywhere in the country without overwhelming support among black voters. If black support for Democrats falls off to something like 70% they never win another national election. There is no way any of them are going to allow themselves to be painted as the politician who voted to impeach the first black President. If the GOP had the supermajority necessary to impeach a President alone, they wouldn’t need to do it.

          We need to figure out another way to rein in a feral executive. Then we need to figure out how to get it implemented. The problem is that while plenty of politicians decry untrammeled power in their opponent’s hands, they have no problem with wielding it themselves.

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          1. We have a method: cut off the funding. We have the votes to do it. All we need is the will from our representatives. It is because they won’t use the legal means that extra-legal becomes the least awful option.

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            1. The reason politicians don’t have the will to cut funding is because it’s politically toxic. With control of who is deemed non-essential and media top-cover Obama can ensure that Republicans bear the blame for a government shutdown. It is testament to Barry’s utter incompetence that the public still hates him more than Congress.

              Now, there might be some hope in a smaller scale attack with the purse strings, breaking appropriations into separate departments (the way it was done until voting for government spending became toxic) and attaching riders to specific bills, such as an Obamacare repeal to HHS funding. But Obama can always run out the clock, refusing to sign any of them in favor of an omnibus budget (remember, he has media top-cover).

              Liked by 1 person

                1. Miss no opportunity to observe how the MSM exculpation of their pets for fomenting attacks on police repudiates the position they took when Gabby Giffords got shot by an apolitical lunatic (paranoid schizophrenia.)

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      3. Which is why I think all the Republicans in Congress ought sign a joint letter that President Obama has committed unconstitutional acts that are reason for impeachment and removal from offfice- and as soon as the Democrats decide to take their oath to protect the Constitution seriously and introduce Articles of Impeachment the House will act on them.

        As far as race war going on goes- I can introduce you to a whole bunch of websites where they already insist one is going on now, but only being fought by one side.

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    2. Treason, I think, would be both counterproductive and impossible, being constitutionally defined as either waging war against the USA or giving aid comfort to the enemies of the United States in time of war (the only reason why Jane Fonda should not be hanged higher than Haman). Furthermore, John Marshall, during the treason trial of Aaron Burr, declared that conviction required two witnesses to an actual act thereof.
      If Aaron Burr could not be convicted of treason, Obama sure can’t.

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      1. I am not so sure. The definition of treason in the Constitution is: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort”. Note that this does not require it to be in a time of war. Given this, I think that Obama’s actions in respect to terrorism, Al Quaeda, ISIS, etc. could very well constitute treason.

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        1. I suspect that it was meant that “Enemies” was those we had declared war on. I could be wrong, though.
          Either way, Aaron Burr, he who plotted to take everything west of the Appalachians and form his own not-so-little empire, was not convicted of treason. Convicting Obama of such would be…difficult.
          Besides, I am also not so sure that such would be necessary. Malfeasance in office would be much more likely to stick,

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            1. He’d gotten as far as recruiting the troops he’d need and gathering them together, and had probably divulged information to the Spanish. At that point, the line between conspiracy to commit and having committed is…iffy.

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          2. Don’t the oaths of office refer to enemies “foreign and domestic”? Seems to me that broadens the Constitutional definition of “enemy” wider than declared wars.

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            1. Probably. I stand corrected.
              However, based on that, and given that neither Adams nor Jefferson were so tried for their various antics at certain points, I don’t think we can try Obama for treason.

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  14. Around about February most years, I start thinking, “I’m cold. I’ve always been cold, I always will be cold.” This usually happens about a week before the temperature starts warming again.

    It wouldn’t surprise me if something like that happened to our ancestors. They knew the sun would come again, but didn’t quite believe it.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. A few years ago I had the lovely experience of going through an ice storm in early December. Spent the night listening to transformers exploding and trees breaking. The next day was just as cold and gray, and a huge limb came down, missed my bedroom window by two inches. But on the third day the sun came out. It was the most beautiful, magical, powerful, heck, I don’t have words to describe what I felt to see the sun again, to know that the ice had ended and things would start to get better. I walked to campus and the light on the ice and snow was beautiful in a truly awful way. Like how Ruskin described the sublime. At that point I understood why my ancestors had worshiped the sun and had longed for the solstice and the return of longer days. (Power came back a week later.)

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  15. Malgre’–I’ve met a new word. Isvestia/Tass/Pravda: the NYT, WaPo, and the Alphabets have done a great job at turning off people who might have believed them. CNN: the most despised news source in airports.

    We can thank The Won for one thing: he convinced a lot of people to buy guns/rifles/shotguns, and others to buy more.

    You know the left is evil/monomaniacal when they refuse (REFUSE) to lower tax rates to get more tax money (worked for Kennedy and Reagan).

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  16. ” Makes gesture of slapping one hand with the back of another ”

    Oh you do that one too! Drives my family nuts, but it’s so very … I don’t even know … evocative? We have no fishwives in the family or region, but we are from dirt farming stock, so maybe cousins?

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    1. I think it’s Roman? I heard once that the idea behind turning the other cheek was that you slapped someone who was below you with the back of your hand, and someone who was your equal with the front, and you couldn’t slap anyone with the other hand because hygiene, so it was a claim of equality rather than submission.

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  17. Some years ago I read a rather good paper on urban guerrilla warfare. The basic theory is “Les politique du Pire’ (The politics of making things worse). The idea is that the majority are a bunch of apathetic sheep and don’t see their own interests in “Revolution”. Hence the need for intervention by the revolutionaries.

    The idea is to conduct urban guerrilla warfare to bring about the revolution.

    Step 1. Terrorism and random atrocity

    Step 2. The people blame the government for being unable to provide security

    Step 3. The government reacts by cracking down, preferably including a right wing military coup and disproportionate tyranny.

    Step 4. This finally motivated the majority to rise up against the tyrannical government

    Step 5. The revolutionaries, being properly indoctrinated and prepared, step in front of the bandwagon and lead “The People” to revolution and Utopia.

    The problem is a kind of “underpants gnome” syndrome.

    What actually happens is that they get to Step 3, and lose. They are a bunch of Cafe intellectual Marxists, and they get liquidated very thoroughly by the professional secret police with all the powers of the State behind them. They thereby bring about exactly the opposite of what they intend. Instead of a Marxist Utopia, they get an authoritarian reactionary dictatorship.

    For examples see Argentina, Chile, Brazil etc.

    Even if they succeed it usually ends badly, when the idealists are replaced by the cynical opportunists. (French and Russian revolutions for the best examples.).

    Every time I see someone calling for “Revolution” I see someone who doesn’t read their history and don’t realize that they will be amongst the second group, (after the members of the ancien regime), against the wall or loaded into the tumbrels, and I shake my head at their naivete and stupidity. .

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    1. Cloward-Piven, Alinsky, Ayres, it all amounts to the same tactics. Wreck things for the sake of the revolution. They only act that way because they are total sociopaths. Of course they don’t stop being total sociopaths when they win. See Cuba and Venezuela.

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  18. Shooting off on a trivia tangent …
    The longest day is the solstice, but the latest sunrise comes after that. Morning relief doesn’t start coming for another week or so (for us mid-northies).
    –z

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    1. As a person of permanent pallor, I LIKE this time of year. I don’t have to get up at 0500 to get my walk in, or wait until after 2200. :D

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  20. With the 2014 elections in the rear view mirror, we find the more conservative party controlling 69 out of 98 partisan state legislative bodies. The GOP also has a majority of governors, almost each and every single one of them more conservative that the Democratic candidate for that job. In 32 states you will find an (R) following the name of the lieutenant-governor, and in 29 states there will be an (R) following the name of the secretary of state. Nearly 55% of state legislative seats are held by Republicans.

    That means that the GOP is developing far more candidates for higher office. It means the Progressives are in control of only a few states, such as California, where they are producing NO candidates likely to influence national politics. Sure, the media pumps them up, but none of those are likely to actually matter.

    The ship of state is a barge which turns slowly, but ours is turning inexorably to the Right. Republicans are learning governance and good politics, which will also put an even greater premium on journalism able to access those politicians and fairly represent their views. The MSM is a dying bull — still capable of goring the unwary but of little real danger.

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        1. If you have trouble hearing the lyrics, according to Google Play:

          I am Governor Jerry Brown
          My aura smiles and never frowns
          Soon I will be President

          Carter power will soon go away
          I will be fuhrer one day
          I will command all of you
          Your kids will meditate in school
          Your kids will meditate in school

          California Uber Alles
          California Uber Alles
          Uber Alles California
          Uber Alles California

          Zen fascists will control you 100% natural
          You will jog for the master race
          And always wear the happy face
          Close your eyes, can’t happen here

          Big Bro’ on the white horse is near
          The hippies won’t come back, you say
          Mellow out or you will pay
          Mellow out or you will pay

          California Uber Alles
          California Uber Alles
          Uber Alles California
          Uber Alles California

          Now it is 1984
          Knock, knock at your front door
          It’s the suede-denim secret police
          They have come for your uncool niece

          Come quietly to the camp
          You’d look nice as a drawstring lamp
          Don’t you worry, it’s only a shower
          For your clothes, here’s a pretty flower

          Die on organic poison gas
          Serpent’s egg’s already hatched
          You will croak, you little clown
          When you mess with President Brown
          When you mess with President Brown

          California Uber Alles
          California Uber Alles
          Uber Alles California
          Uber Alles California

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  21. They’re also rare, which is a good thing, as too many of these presidents a century and it would eventually destroy us.

    The question is, how many are too many and how close are we to that? We had Clinton. And, frankly, neither the Bush before nor the Bush after was all that much better. (I firmly believe that history will record the “Bush-Clinton” years rather than “Reagan-Bush”.) Liberals like to point to the following quote from Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.” They apparently claim it as some kind of “endorsement” of those programs and use that as a stick with which to beat modern Republicans (or others) who object to those programs as they exist now. Far from it, of course, it wasn’t an endorsement but a recognition that the American people had been so sold on them, that anyone who tried to abolish them would be committing political suicide.

    Or take the term “neocon.” It started as someone who was mostly liberal but somewhat hawkish, far, far to the left of a Reagan, let alone a Goldwater, but soon the term morphed into kind of an “arch conservative” and so anybody really conservative, let alone of a libertarian bent, instantly became radical fringe.

    And people buy it.

    I’m not one to quit. And the world certainly needs rabble rousers. (Took a “which founding father are you” type “quiz” and, depending on the answers I gave on a couple of “could go either way” questions get either Patrick Henry or Samuel Adams. I can live with that.) That does not mean I am sanguine about the prospects. History has known far more failed revolutions or successful ones ending in tyranny anyway, than the reverse.

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      1. Benjamin Franklin was an eccentric genius. He was a humorist, a printer, a visionary and an inventor. After the success of his Poor Richard’s Almanac, he retired and devoted himself to public service and philanthropy. He is often remembered for eccentric projects such as studying lightning during a storm, but he was also one the three American leaders to sign the peace treaty with Britain that ended the American Revolution. He invented a type of bifocal glasses and other devices that still inspire inventors today. He followed his own path through life, building a uniquely American legacy that will never be forgotten.

        It’ll do.

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      2. No fears, Sarah. In the dictionary (revised edition) under “stubborn” it has my picture.

        Some people have difficulty understanding that I don’t like confrontation and argument. I just happen to get really passionate about things I believe in.

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        1. While I rather enjoy confrontation and argument, I have, through years of experience, been forced to conclude that some people are just too rock-solid stupidly committed to moronic ideas for reason, facts and evidence to dislodge them and I can better employ my time herding the neighborhood’s cats.

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          1. “some people are just too rock-solid stupidly committed to moronic ideas for reason, facts and evidence to dislodge them and I can better employ my time herding the neighborhood’s cats.”

            Combine that with their insatiable power lust and that is where I get my inescapable conclusion that civil war is inevitable and necessary. QED.

            I also derive the follow-on conclusion that like any other unpleasant but necessary task, “if it were done, tis best done quickly.”

            I’ve been headed down this path since Nov of 2000. 9/11 and the domestic aftermath pretty much set it in stone. The Left hates America and everyone who doesn’t, and are prepared to kill as many people as necessary to achieve its’ end.

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      3. Another Thomas Paine, here. No worries. All I want is them to stand a little less between me and the sun, is all.

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