The Fringe

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

So I tried to find some hard numbers on this but all the “Strange things people believe” websites have “strange things Americans believe” being things that Europe and the left can’t possibly accept anyone would believe.  You know, things like “there is no significant racism in America.”

That is their problem and none of mine.

However, as someone who has an appetite for and in fact hangs out in the strangest corners of the net, I can tell you people believe a lot of weird things.

If I had to make an estimation about how many people in America believe that Big Foot is real, it would be about a million, give or take.

How many people believe our politicians are lizard beings from other planets?  At least a few hundred.

Things like the Flat Earth society, or people who believe the Scottish are the lost tribe of Israel claim probably a million adherents, at least.  Feminists who believe that all PIV is rape, and that if men stopped existing women would spontaneously be able to reproduce on their own… well, they have to be in the low hundreds, all things considered.

UFOs? Ancient civilizations? That you can levitate the Denver Mint?  At least hundreds, probably thousands, maybe as much as a million.

Does this mean that the American people, as a whole really, really, believe all these things secretly?

Does this mean we give these people any head space in national discourse?

Uh… America is a nation of 300 million.  Even if a million people believe something, it’s one third of one percent.  America is no more crazy than most of the world, it’s just larger.  This means that a fringe is a significant number.

So, according to what I heard the events of Charlotteville involved maybe 400 people, both sides.

That is a fringe of a fringe.  One in 750,000 people.  More people than that assembled for street festivals when we lived in Manitou springs, a tiny Colorado mountain town.

If only 400 people read your book, you tank even in indie.  Of those 400 people, probably 300 were antifa, which is to say tugs who need money and are on Soros’ payroll.  The other 100 people were neo nazis of some description, or perhaps people who went along because their friends were going, or perhaps people who were there to see what happened.  And of course, some number of them were FBI agents, because some number always is at the KKK and Neo Nazi rallies.

These rallies have happened for a long time, all over America, without either violent confrontation or for that matter any noticeable increase in theory subscribers.

When we first moved to Colorado, 25 years ago, we were living near downtown in Colorado Springs.  This meant tons of parades went by our house, from Pride Parades to Old Car Parades, to “hey, we’re having a parade to celebrate our college graduation.”  The general procedure was to run to the window to watch the parade, particularly since our kid was one and a half and he loved music and people walking by.

So, one Saturday we heard a parade and ran to the window.  It was a KKK parade.  There were probably 100 people, marching down the middle of the street.  And people were ignoring them, and walking on.  No one died and also no one spent any time on social media talking about how this event betrayed the growing belief in white supremacy in America.

The reason no one died is that there were no antifa tugs pre-armed with baseball bats and whatever else they could grab.  And the reason no one thought this was a token of growing white supremacy is that, frankly, there was no social media and also the media itself didn’t bother covering the event.

There might or might not have been some article in the local paper, but if anyone read that, they shrugged and went “it was a hundred assholes.”

I don’t think I need to tell anyone that the neo-nazis are assholes, right?  They are also in general mentally ill and have other issues.  In the same way, the antifa are assholes and many of them are drug users or mentally ill.  In fact, the antifa tugs and the neo-nazi idiots have a lot more to do with each other than with the rest of the universe.  They are the fringe of the fringe.

In a sane world, the rest of the people would shrug and go “Yeah, two sets of fringe people fighting it out.  I’m interested.  Not.”

Instead, over the last few days, the media has been in a frenzy of finding racists under every bed; actual leftists are being turned against if they say we should pause and think about the events, and perhaps consider everything before pronouncing ourselves.  And people all over the spectrum are being denounced by the loony left as a secret Nazi.

Look, guys, I’m used to being called fascist and a nazi because I’m for limited government, individual rights and economic freedom.  Obviously someone who believes in the principle that hou shouldn’t hurt people or take their things must be….  No, wait, it’s not a Nazi, it’s a Libertarian.  Never mind. the left believes unless you endorse a big government capable of enforcing right think, you’re a Nazi.  It’s a form of mental illness I’ve become used to.

But now everyone is being called a Nazi and we’re getting the kind of “profound” psychological analyses that consists in saying “you said the antifa is also to blame.  You’re a fascist.”

Guys, fascists tell you they are so.  Neo Nazis ornament themselves with the swastika.  They are proud of their stupid beliefs.  They think everyone admires their courage.  Oh, yeah AND leftists aren’t given special psychic powers when they sign on for Marx’s team.  Most of them aren’t particularly empathetic.  They just think they are, because they tell themselves they’re doing things for “the downtrodden” or “giving voice to the voiceless.”

Most of what they’re giving voice to is their own inchoate prejudices, frankly.  And this is no different.  This is “everyone who doesn’t agree with me is Hitler and secretly a neo-nazi.”

I was highly amused at being called anti-Semitic on an echo of my post.  Because the caller was Jewish and communist (may G-d have mercy on his soul) and since I didn’t think socialism and communism were kind of sweet gentle ideals I must be anti-Semitic.  And also a neo-nazi.  Oh, yeah, and I was defending the neo-nazis in Charlottesville.

Again, may G-d have mercy on their souls.

When I blogged about this before people said it was nothing.  We’ve had such incidents before, and they passed.

People are right.  But in the past did we have such a critical mass of the young maleducated, who have been turned against their own country and are willing to believe the worst of their countrymen?  Did we have a media, balked of its power last November and anxious to burn it all down?  Did we have aging sixties activists viewing this as their last chance to strike a blow for the revolution?

I’m not afraid of the two sets of asses in Charlottesville.  They are the the fringe of the fringe, and no more significant for public discourse than those who really think we should send a strong message to alpha centuri who are sending lizards among us disguised as humans.

I’m afraid of the idiots who take that tiny, fringe event, and then read the tea leaves to imagine that their country men are “white supremacists.”

They are the people who worry me.  Because if they don’t stop the nonsense, it’s not going to end well.

For anyone.

 

471 thoughts on “The Fringe”

  1. As far as Bigfoot goes, I’m agnostic.

    And, no matter the topic, I get tired of having my thoughts judged by someone who needs their telepathy license revoked, because they’re no good at it.

    1. Hearing their justifications can be interesting, though. In a sort of “troll logic” way.

      “The sky is blue because aardvark doesn’t have a Q.”

      2. I will not spend any time wrapping that in a story so that it makes sense. Nope. None. Damn you!

    2. I don’t actually believe in Bigfoot, but doesn’t stop me from wishing and hoping that somewhere out there, deep in the forest (mountains? desert? swamps? who knows where Bigfoot might be found), that there ARE Bigfoots living happy little Bigfoot lives, with adorable little Bigfoot babies. OH HOW WOULD IT BE?!?! LOL!

      Actually thought I saw a Bigfoot once… but it turns out a friend had set me up on a date with a hippie chick that didn’t shave ANYTHING… or bathe… Not sure if I discovered the basis of the Bigfoot myth or not.

      1. Yeah, it would be kind of nice in a romantic way if Bigfoot is real. I mean, I’ve grown up reading stories of lost worlds and hidden valleys and mysterious caverns where all sorts of improbable creatures survive into the modern world. And Bigfoot’s aren’t even that improbable, they resemble some real hominids that once lived on Earth. It would be really cool if some of them had survived, but sadly, reality doesn’t have to work by the criteria of what I think are cool.

        1. Where’s the like button? Because this post needs a like. That’s the exact reason I like to imagine that there are things out there that we haven’t seen yet, things we can’t explain. It’s also the reason I’m obsessed with deep sea creatures, because so little of the oceans have been explored there’s no telling what the next thing we’ll find down there will be.

          1. Have you read “Rolling in the Deep” by Mira Grant? Great rollercoaster read, though definitely on the downer side of horror. (I wouldn’t call it grey goo, but it’s not a cheerful read.) But I loved her…speciesbuilding, I guess?

            2. Her Mira Grant work is generally on the horror side of her writing. (Which is why it’s a separate name; horror is *designed* to be slightly downer.) The fact that she has friends at the CDC that she calls up with questions about her horror topics always amuses me.

              1. I didn’t know that. I dip the occasional toe into her stuff under both names; she’s a good enough writer that I don’t much mind the occasional SJW reflex. Not one of my buy-immediately authors, but fun – I love the fairy tale books she’s doing as Seanan McGuire, and I am looking forward to what looks like a “Rolling in the Deep” sequel.

                1. She knows how to tell a good story. And any political stuff feels more like the air she breathes than like mandatory inserts, and they’re certainly not caricatures.

          2. My ichthyology professor William Gosline, back in the early 60’s, used to delight in saying “There are bigger fish in the sea than ever came out of it!”
            Stranger too for that matter. Shortly thereafter the megamouth shark turned up in local waters and many more since.

        2. Oooh, hey Jordan, there’s an author who did a number of horror-sci-fi ish books using cryptozoology/old ancient prehistoric monsters you might find fun to read.

          https://greigbeck.com/portfolio-items/beneath-the-dark-ice/

          Heck, he’s fun, actually. I put his first book to my ten year old right after the boyo blew through all the Matthew Reilly books I said he could read. (The Tournament is the sole exception.)

          Haven’t been able to get my hands on the rest of his stuff for a while though, which is a shame.

    3. A race of 8 to 9 foot humanoids running around North America and all we have are a couple of bad photos and plaster foot casts as so-called evidence? Oh yeah, and sound recordings that are more of owls, elk, and wildcats than anything else? And hair that was analyzed by chemistry and biology class dropouts? No villages, encampments, winter quarters, road kill, chipped flint artifacts, or even wooden artifacts for that matter?

      I find it easier to believe in a high tech, high magic fairy civilization invisibly out-of-phase with the normal universe.

      And just how does this “out-of-phase” thing actually work anyway? It’s a cute phrase, but I can’t build a “phase-converter” in my garage based on that.

      2. Hunter: “Hey, there are freaking *mountain lions* roaming around here!

        Game Warden: “No such thing. People keep spreading rumors on the internet, but I assure you there’s not a mountain lion within five hundred miles of here.”

        Hunter: “Seriously? Come look in the back of my truck…”

        see also: wolves, bears, and reticulated pythons.

        1. Park Ranger: No, Ma’am, there are no mountain lions in Flat State.
          Alma [after everyone else leaves on their group hike]: So, where in the park is “be really careful” this week?
          Ranger: Old Road trail and stay alert if you are going near Brushy Branch. You see anything?
          Alma: Two weeks ago, maybe a track and some scat on the far side of Brushy Branch, but I didn’t go into the tall grass for a look.

          1. during a stay at Kannewah State Park a park Ranger starts sorting through his iPhone and says to me “And I am told the Dept of Wildlife and Fisheries that there are absolutely no mountain lions anywhere in the state of West Virginia” and then shows me a photo of one lounging on a branch, eying the camera. So I ask “Where was that?”
            “Just up the valley a mile or so. A deer hunter took it from his tree stand”.
            They gottem up here in da U.P. too. DNR refused to admit they exist until dozens of trail cam and phone camera shots started showing up.
            They refused to admit wolves as well, but that was when they were importing the critters and lying about it.

            1. Oh, hell, we’ve had a mountain lion running around the downtown of the state capital. Urban for miles and miles, but anytime you have a river running past or through, you’ve got a wildlife highway.

              1. apparently there have been multiple wolf sightings in Marinette, WI. just across the river from me. As for me, just a skunk I’ve seen next door (BIG one. maybe 15-20 lbs) and about 8 deer living across the street.

                1. So many turkeys that I actually have a photo album named “Urban Turkeys” that is largely focused on my neighborhood. Nothing to my sister, though, who lives in Marin County; she just posted a video of several deer and about fifty turkeys on her street.

                  1. our turkey populations were depleted in my first 18 years there were none, so an organization worked hard to bring them back. The wolves and cats (not only are cougars numbers up enough for official admitting of existence, so too are bobcat number on the increase) are now lessening their numbers again. Still plenty of them wandering about though.

                    1. Turkeys used to be rare here. Then, in the late 1970s or early 1980s, the DNR decided to restock them. Except some yahoo decided they could just put them out beside the road. That worked as well as expected.

                      The next effort had more sense behind it, and they took. The things are thicker than deer now, and like cars about as much.

                    2. Turkeys used to be rare here, too, until we started electing them to political office. Now we’re up to our armpits in them.

                  2. I had a serious WTF moment the first time I saw a coyote trotting across my small-urban road in North Carolina. I adore coyotes, but only at a distance. Fortunately, our two dogs probably weigh about 5-6 coyotes total.

              2. At Old Tucson, in addition to scat and tracks; we’ve had partial deer carcasses left behind by mountain lions.

                1. That’s hard to believe, as mountain lions are known to be very fastidious. Why, as I understand it, the Rockies were formed by their efforts to kick sand over their scat.

                  1. Very partial: the shin and the hoof, with just a little bit of skin left above the hoof.

              3. Usually. But I have a lot of washes (little ones, medium ones, big ones) and a lot of open space around me here – but all of the bigger critters have apparently moved to my north recently. No coons this year, or coyotes since early last winter.

                We must have plenty of the little ones still, though, as the owl population hereabouts has exploded.

              4. Read some of Peter Capstick’s big game books. The common propaganda at the time was that leopards were endangered. He had dozens of examples of them living unseen unless baited for, and living in such “wild” places as under the Johannesburg soccer stadium. Mated pair, several litters worth.

            2. “I am told [by] the Dept of Wildlife and Fisheries that there are absolutely no mountain lions anywhere in the state of West Virginia”

              I guess if you were to shoot a mountain lion they couldn’t prosecute you for killing an endangered species, could they?

              N.B. – I said couldn’t not wouldn’t; we all know what would happen. But it fun to imagine the DWF representative on the stand contradicting official writ.

              1. Well, in Texas, unless listed as endangered species, all non-native critters are fair game.
                There is no season or limit on cougar, bobcats, Nilgai etc. and they are getting close to fining you for NOT shooting feral pigs.

              2. Self-defense? If the critter was shot from the front, and not from that big a distance? That would be legal anywhere, wouldn’t it?

                Add to that “but there weren’t supposed to be any here!” and some legal reason to have a rifle with you – deer hunting season and license, or whatever would be, there. Should work, right? 🙂

                1. depends on why the denial. if it is because “We have none, so we don’t need to worry (spend money)” then likely you will have no questions asked.
                  If it is like the wolves here at first that was “There are no wolves in the U.P. of Michigan.” (translation: We are importing them and are lying through our teeth about it), shooting one and getting caught, even in self defense, they’d likely try to toss the book at you.
                  They do complain about folks killing wolves. but the ones being shot all have radio collars.
                  People here have learned that those are 90% of the time a problem wolf that has been transfered from state to state, to state because they found farm animals and pets are easy food.

            3. Same problem in New Hampshire. They are apparently scattered in the Whites, and occasionally down in the low mountains south of Lake Winnipesauke too. Closest report I’ve heard is out in Barnstead, about 15 miles from my home.

              But the State F&G steadfastly denies it.

            2. The one upside to the fad for redesignating species by DNA and guessing is that they discovered that not only are they mostly coydogs, but that an entire species of wolf is coy-wolf. (Red wolves.) A lot of coyotes are more wolf than coyote. (Which explains the odd behavior some of y’all have mentioned for coyotes, vs what I grew up watching.)

              So, gosh, the wild breeds are just like the tame breeds! You cross A with B and you can make something new if there is enough difference and you get big enough to be stable.

              This actually makes good sense, but it’s not very good for pounding into submission because it’s good enough to be stable… if they’re not crossing with anything else. Because if they’re crossing with anything else, they can “go extinct” because they have babies with the “wrong” group.

          3. I’ve seen a coyote running down a railroad right-of-way in downtown Evanston, IL. And just a few days ago, I saw a doe and fawn in front of my Mom’s house. (Which is next to a golf course that runs along the North Shore Canal, which has 100-ft wide scrubwood banks.)

            1. First city apartment I had in the US, I nearly flipped my lid because I saw a coyote just hanging out like a dog near the mall bus stop. He moved WRONG, no “I might get spotted” about him… exactly like a rabid one.

              Driving along trying to figure out what the heck you do when you can’t just go shoot the rabid coyote, and happened to drive past the DNR headquarters.

              Flipped a U-turn, walked in and chatted with the lady at the front desk who figured out that I actually knew what I was talking about and explained that’s just how the city coyotes are. They’ll avoid dog packs, and if you’re walking they’ll act right, but they ignore cars… also said she’d mention it to animal control just in case he was rabid, because town people have no idea how to react. If he was sane, he’d run away when they do the stray dog check.

        3. Oh yea– there was a mountain lion in Northeastern Utah near our house, which would scream every summer night. Plus we saw on one of those rural roads. We were told there were no Mountain Lions living there. hahaha

          1. We called them panthers. I call the catamounts now, because when you say “panther,”: people think about black panthers. I grew up hearing them scream. They really do sound like a woman screaming, and you have to listen close. Have come across tracks and seen one drinking from a puddle beside the road.

            We aren’t supposed to have catamounts here. All the experts say so. But the thing is, while I’ve seen catamount tracks (large as a hound dog’s, but no claw marks), and have seen catamounts on occasion, I’ve never come across an expert in the wood.

            1. The issue is decided not by the what experts say but by what catamounts do.

              Experts have a surprisingly poor grasp of this.

        4. For the longest time, game wardens in Missouri kept insisting the same thing. Until a cougar got ran over on I-29 in north Kansas City, just across the river and barely four miles from downtown. Somebody got another one on I-44 near Lebanon, MO just last year.

          1. some one spotted a coyote in my neighborhood (suburban Dallas). Collin County used to be rural and agricultural until the incredible demand for houses in Far North Dallas.

            1. This very day, my sometime ranch-real-estate employer was telling me that there are coyotes living in a band of woods a couple of blocks down from his place, in his neighborhood – which is in the 78209 area code, in the heart of urban San Antonio. A number of his neighbors have lost outside cats to the coyotes. We were rather boggled by this …

            2. At least one pair of bobcats was spotted on our street about two years ago, dear; they confirm Capstick’s thesis on leopards and baiting. The reason they were spotted is our neighbor two doors down was raising chickens in her back yard and shot one of the pair as they were attempting chicken dinner.

          2. Perhaps the wildest here was the loose kangaroo. It escaped from someone who had an exotic animal license. Would have loved to have heard the 911 tapes from that one.

      1. Well, if you are anywhere near an urban center of any size, if you’re in a suburb, if you see what looks like Bigfoot, it’s really Hairy Biped, which is associated with UFOs, is not a rare animal, and is serious trouble for observers.

      2. I’m more in the camp of its real… just because my family did live below the arctic circle (Canada) and my Dad tells a story of seeing one. Plus the area they lived in was filled with stories of Sasquatch. These were people who had daily interactions with bears (black, brown, and grizzlies) so they knew the difference. Personally I haven’t had an encounter and since most things out there in the wilds want to eat you– I prefer not to have an encounter. BTW my Dad is crazy… so it is a yea and nay. Plus I have seen UFOs. I don’t lean toward alien btw. I think there are a lot of things we still don’t know about our planet. So it is probably natural phenomenon. Just because I can’t identify it… I have labeled it a UFO.

        1. “Just because I can’t identify it… I have labeled it a UFO.”

          That’s the funny thing about “Unidentified Flying Objects”. The only requirements for being a UFO are (1) A reasonable belief that what you are seeing is some sort of object, (2) the object is flying, and (3) you don’t have the means to identify what that object might be.

          With that in mind, if you were to come across a flying object that is clearly of alien origin, because you could look into the windows and see aliens…well, it can’t be a UFO, because you’ve just identified it, right?

            1. So if the flying saucer had “model 432A” stenciled on the side, it wouldn’t be unidentified, either, right? Just another FO.

              1. Wouldn’t be a UAO either…. If you can see the model number … now in my case I have astigmatism so it could easily be a UFO to me.

            1. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are Jews in the stars. You know they were kidnapped by UFOs to save them from a pogrom and traded and converted a few aliens. Now you have Jews everywhere!

        2. Bigfoot sightings seem often to be connected with UFOs and other type of weirdness also, so who knows. But I have always also assumed that something like a small-ish population of near human relatives, with human or near human intelligence, might be able to survive undetected or mostly undetected living very close to us, if we assume they had developed a culture and traditions which required active hiding from us, and didn’t have anything like villages but lived most of their lives alone or in very small family groups. Add to that something like thick fur – no need for clothing or housing or even nests even in the winter – and animal like senses, better hearing and better sense of smell. Even pretty big animals can live pretty close to us without being found out when they fear us well enough to try hiding from us, if you added intelligence close to ours to that something might very well be able to hide in the forests and almost never be seen. Especially since for quite a long time now talking about having seen something like that tends to make you a butt of jokes who isn’t believed, and general attitudes have changed enough that most hunters would probably not be willing to shoot something that looks a lot like a hairy human and might be a very rare specimen even if they got the chance, considering that coming out of a forest with a dead one might very well get you either lynched or in jail.

          And when it comes to pictures or video – well, youtube has lots, everybody just assumes they are all hoaxes. Maybe they are. But a genuine one would have a hard time getting even noticed now. Unfortunately the critters, if they exist, still refuse to stay still long enough that you could get a good picture or tape of them.

          So yes. I don’t assume they exist, but I don’t deny the possibility either. I just admit I don’t know.

      3. Maybe we should. You know, total conservative-Constitutional-libertarian types with a single idiosyncrasy that we consider Bigfoot to be an endangered sentient species.

        The Left would still call us Nazis.

          1. The will stop calling people Nazis once the real Nazis – the thugs that will inevitably take over once the Intellectual Communists have made it cost effective to do so – seize power.

            Because one of the first things the real Nazis will do is liquidate the Lefty intellectual class as obvious parasites and troublemakers.

            And that the Left has never managed to pick up on this pattern is one of the major reasons my opinion of their intelligence is so low.

    5. As far as Bigfoot goes, I lean slightly towards the camp of ‘is real.’ Had a family member way back when who owned a small logging outfit and worked in Northern California/Southern Oregon where Bigfoot sightings are thickest. He (as far as I know) never saw Bigfoot, but he did have some odd things happen that he couldn’t find an explanation for, like a full 55 gallon drum of gasoline that walked over to a ravine and threw itself in (no marks of it being rolled, large bare foot prints). Now, gas doesn’t weigh as much as water, but a full 55 gallon drum will still weigh around 330 lbs. (plus the steel drum). There aren’t too many humans who could pick that up, walk fifty feet carrying it, and then toss it into a ravine (it would have crushed brush if it had been rolled in). So, yeah, I’m not sure about Bigfoot.

      As far as the other stuff, though, well, like my mother used to say, “It takes all kinds of people to make the world go around!”

      1. Sounds more like bored teenagers. That’s precisely the kind of prank I know some would pull when I was growing up. (To borrow my son’s words. “I didn’t do it, and I’ll never do it again!”)

            1. Um … I really like the Butcher/Harry Dresden version of sasquatch. “Working for Bigfoot” is a fun book.

        2. Heh, reminds me very much of me back, oh a week or so ago when I was talking to my mom. She mentioned something that had happened, I told her what I’d do, she laughed and said that it would be impossible, I said something to the effect of ‘hey, let’s get a few friends together and do something of questionable legality’, she agreed that maybe I had a point. Because that sort of thing kind of sums up my childhood so very well. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people who believed that monsters and serial killers roamed the woods near my house thanks to me and maybe a few friends.

    6. I’m surprised our hostess would doubt Bigfoot, I thought I recalled her describing some problems with that in her own family. (Mine seems to outgrow shoes before we get out of the store)

      2. we also joke that Robert has a bigfoot female who is enamoured of him. (He thought someone was looking through his window at a one point.) And yes, he wears size 17. E. Or 15 EEEE. Depending on cut.

          1. I think it is the shoe salesmen. Like my Iowa Farm Kid friend who went to a Kia dealership with another friend, and the salesman recommended that IFK try the Ford place up the road. IFK wouldn’t fit into the cars then on the lot.

      3. After trying (fruitlessly) to find slippers that fit me, I found myself wishing for the grand opening of Sasquatch Supply. I’d make their shoe department do really well. My feet grew a size or two when I retired. So much for leisure activities…

  2. The MSM are now fringe. It has become one of those jobs that require a degree. And guess who teaches journalism? Tenured radicals and nut-balls.
    It’s a shame, but not only are they fringe, but they can’t report a normal local story anymore. Instead of fake news you get useless news. They don’t report the who, where, when clearly and in standard English.

    1. Not even useless news.

      What we’re really getting is execrably written fiction, and button-pushing influence pieces.

      1. Ohmigod, but I agree with ‘execrably’! I don’t agree with Mencken’s politics – not reliably – but his old newspaper and editorial work is a delight to read because he could FRIGGIN’ WRITE!

        The primary problem I have with the New York Times isn’t that thet are dishonest or partisan. It’s that they are TIRESOME.

        Jesus Christ on a flaming unicycle, people, if you want me to at least CONSIDER your politics you’re going to have to achieve the level of writing skill exhibited by, say, Franklin Dixon.

  3. Been reading some of the hyperbole post Charlottesville and I have to shake my damned head. Too many people are taking things way out of proportion. One thing I have noticed is those on the liberty side are mostly saying both groups are idiots and why are we paying attention to them?
    While those with the fascist leanings or big government supporters are trying to blow this all out of proportion. And of course the President derides both sides for violence so that makes him a neo-nazi racist supporter because he didn’t specify that the white supremacists were worse the the communist fascists.
    Excuse me while I go curl up in a history book or three.

    1. Well remember, it’s not violence if it’s done against Nazis. After all Nazis are the worst thing ever and should be stopped at all costs. We fought a World War to stop them and no one shed any tears over their being killed then, why should we be upset if a few of them get hospitalized now? It’s no more than they deserve.

      That’s what I learned in high school when a world history professor of mine discovered that I was part German (first day of class we were asked where our ancestors came from, to give us an appreciation of how mixed a lot Americans are, also to let the teacher know who she could freely discriminate against, I asked why she needed to know and it would have died at that if not for a classmate of mine telling her my heritage). Nothing like almost failing a course because of the hypothetical sins of hypothetical ancestors.

      2. to give us an appreciation of how mixed a lot Americans are, also to let the teacher know who she could freely discriminate against,

        I wonder how much trouble one would have gotten into for saying something like “Well, mostly German-Celtic, but family rumor has it there was a mulatto somewhere in the woodpile.”

        Might be worth it to see the look on the teacher’s face…

        1. But there is– *whine lol I bet there are a lot of mulattos that jumped into the woodpiles with my ancestors. We didn’t discriminate … lol

          1. Mut. That is my response to questions like that. There are family rumors of an indian squaw, but there’s too many different genetic sources to bother listing them all.

            2. Mom said “Heinz 57”. Close enough. The next two generations could add several more varieties.

          2. I’ve reason to suspect that several of my ancestors attended public school, so who knows what got into them?

          1. There are Jews all over the world or have been. Few if any Jews in India or Shanghai today. But there a small but thriving population of Jews in India last century. A number of European Jews escaped to Shanghai for the duration of WWII.

    2. “Too many people are taking things way out of proportion.”

      That might be true if you imagined the Media’s job was to calmly and objectively report the news. They seem to think it their duty to shout “Fire!” in crowded theatres, stampeding the public in the desired directions.

    3. I’ve said the following on the liberty side a couple of places:
      1) I do not like or support White Supremacists/Nationalists.
      2) I do and will defend their right to spew their hate-filled rhetoric in public. Indeed, if I see one beset by a mob and the police standing by, doing nothing, I hope I’d have the courage of my convictions to help defend the speaker from a mob.
      3) Once one side was issued a permit, the police should have protected their march appropriately (i.e. whatever it takes to keep the demonstrators safe from physical harm) and kept the sides separated.
      4) Mob justice is NOT appropriate, no matter how much you hate someone’s speech.

  4. We all need to stand firm and be very clear that those morons who call everyone who disagrees with them and who just want to be left alone “nazis” are childish, incapable of rational thought, and more to be pitied than followed. Oh, and laughing at them at every possible opportunity is a very powerful weapon against them. Ridicule they can take; they invite it (intentionally, I think). But refusing to take them seriously, treating them like the children they are, drives them up a wall. They really do want to be thought of as grown-ups even though their behavior makes it very clear that they’re just whiny brats.

      1. Always be prepared for violence on their part. Provocation isn’t necessary anymore. They’re proud of their intention to initiate violence upon those who don’t give obeisance to them.

          1. If you have to demand it, it isn’t respect, it’s at best appeasement and more likely covert ridicule.

                  1. No. 2 Son has a boken he’s named “Common Sense.” He had George R. R. Martin sign it last year at TusCon; now it’s “Common Sense by GRR Martin.”

  5. My concern is the number of people that I see posting their willingness to become vigilante lynch mobs to punish any one who is suspected of being on the wrong side. They do not realize that once you unleash mob violence it becomes hard to control and the mob does not care about guilt or innocence of people being targeted. People bragging on social media about how the are justified in walking up to a fascist and punching, is providing evidence of premeditation and potentially conspiracy to commit a criminal act. I have to wonder if these people are thinking anymore.

    1. “I have to wonder if these people are thinking anymore.” Assuming facts not in evidence. Did these people every truly think?

      1. Some of them are very well educated in highly technical fields but intelligence does not guarantee common sense or sanity.

        1. Don’t confuse “well-educated” with “intelligent.” Or “intelligent” with “wise,” for that matter. The term “educated fools” exists for a reason, you know.

          1. Hey! Don’t forget productivity and effectiveness.

            Intelligence, wisdom, and productivity can be fairly independent. The degree of independence education has partly depends on how badly they’ve screwed up value trying to up throughput.

    2. But what to do when the mob has already been summoned, torches and pitchforks at hand, to destroy the monster? When the mob’s leaders point at first one person, then another, then groups, and declares them to be monsters?

      The individualists fail to organize, and thus are destroyed by the mob.

      1. No, the individualists hopefully pull out their guns and start blowing away the lynch mob; starting with the leaders.

    3. Before, “mob violence” was pretty much anonymous and risk-free.

      Now there’s video, and facial recognition software, and cross-matching to social media. That car you vandalized? The window you broke? The guy you hit with the bike lock? Your complicit government friends may choose not to prosecute, but that doesn’t mean the people you individually wronged can’t file a civil suit. And that video you were so proud of? Oops.

      Crowds used to be anonmous. Not any more.

      And for those Soros contractors who move from riot to riot… they’re not going to be protected forever.

      1. Also, if it goes “hot” you tired of those who could retaliate, and given them the fig leaf of proof “Your Honor, I feared for my life, see the video evidence of their previous behaviour and attacks?”
        Not a smart move, but take into account the geniuses we are talking about.

        2. I think I figured it out!
          “Also, if it goes “hot” you tired of those who could retaliate” should read:
          Also, if it goes “hot” you tipped off those who would retaliate . . . “

      2. “Now there’s video, and facial recognition software, and cross-matching to social media.”

        Yeah, there is. And NCIS to the contrary it isn’t 100% accurate, any more than DNA. We’ve already had several cases of mistaken identity hit the headlines, and we’re talking about people who weren’t in 1000 miles. Social media? Assuming that the account isn’t thrown together details, do you realize how many people with your first and last name live in your city?

        1. At least one too many, in my case. Someone with a bit too much of a taste for the “ladies.” Why the phone is not listed under my name – wife got tired of explaining that there is no way I am the father of their prospective child, because: 1) I was fixed some 20 years ago after our own third one; 2) if they had ever heard me sing, they wouldn’t have stopped running before Albuquerque (at least).

        2. Sure. But the trick is, you don’t have to identify all of them, just enough of them.

          Names… oh yes. The local PD’s first computer system thought everyone from the same town with the same name was the same person. There were three others in my town with the same name as mine. All three of them were felons. It caused more than one very tense encounter with the cops…

      3. Some feel safe enough to brag on camera. I can’t find it now, but Monday night WRAL in Raleigh aired an interview with one of the rioters/vandals who tore down a memorial to Confederate soldiers in Durham while the police stood by and watched. She claimed to have been in Charlottesville. (But somehow The Narrative is that only Nazis came from out of town.)

        The better news is that so far four of the vandals have been arrested. There was lots of video evidence of the first one, as she climbed the statue and put the strap around it so that it could be pulled down. Two others were picked up at the Durham courthouse on Wednesday when they showed up to support the first one who had been arrested.

        The ones arrested so far are part of the World Workers Party (not to be confused with the Workers World Party (SPLITTERS!)) which is a Marxist organization. (Here is my shocked face.)
        http://www.wral.com/three-more-charged-in-durham-confederate-statue-vandalism/16884283/

      1. I had one of those telepaths try to do a long distance reading on me over the internet. The results were interesting as I can only assume that they went too deep and picked up on one of my characters rather than me. Or at least that’s what I’m assuming since they somehow came to the conclusion that I was a literal monster with fantasies of genocide.

        So yeah, as far as I can tell, they have a hard time reading the minds of creative people and tend to get us confused with the characters we write, because that’s the only explanation I can think of for how far off the mark they end up when they do their readings.

      2. This is why it is critically important to insist everybody think according to their assigned stereotype. Independent thought is a sign of false consciousness and must be eradicated in order that the Powers The Be can know your thoughts.

      3. I have neither the arrogance nor insanity to believe that I am infallible or omniscient. Life is not like the comics where the masked vigilante never tracks down the wrong person. Witch Hunts and Lynch Mobs tend to be indiscriminate in there target recognition and selection.

    5. Publishing their names and addresses might foster a bit of responsibility.
      What gravels my ass is that the PTB know where we live, but we mostly don’t know where they live.

  6. Next month is National Preparedness Month so I’m probably going to take the time at church to lead some activities for severe storm prep (which are common for us) and prep for civil unrest (totally uncommon). At a minimum I will get everyone checking their smoke alarms, I hope.

  7. What worries me is not so much the fringe groups – but the people who have been “moderates.” Their pique over having an unanointed President is driving them into alliance with the Left – just see the reactions to Trump actually calling out both sides, not blaming the Nazis exclusively.

    If Sarah ever leaves PJM again, it is leaving my bookmarks. Keeping people like Ron Radosh on – a Jew who is so fixated on Nazis and the KKK that he willingly excuses the people that are just as eager to kill him. There is only so much absolute idiocy that I can stomach without convulsively reaching for my own baseball bat.

    1. Oh good. I’m not the only one who wondered if Ron Radosh had suffered some kind of mild brain trauma and is now unable to tell the “kill everyone who disagrees!!!!” loons from the “separate the races and leave me the h-ll alone!!!!” loons.

      1. It’s sad, because his insights as having grown up a red diaper baby were often valuable

  8. I think you are too sanguine, of all things. The Antifada and the deep pockets behind it have been pushing for, desperate to get, this kind of thing, and now they have it. (They would have preferred a death by gunshot rather than vehicle, but they’ll take it, and the excuse for “common-sense gun control” will come later.) This is a LARP of the fall of Weimar, and the communists are convinced they control enough to win this time. What they don’t remember is that Weimar was replaced by the faction which didn’t announce that they were going to take everyone’s property and make them into cogs in Stalin’s Soviet machine. I hate to say this, but I believe that our Republic is not going to recover from the Leftist power grab of the Obama regime. (Closer to home for me personally, whoever ultimately seizes control of the ruins is going to blame the Jews. At least we have somewhere to go.)

    1. And the Weimar bit scares me for another reason as well. Should the economy really recover well, the money dumped into it as (attempted) stimulus will assert itself in an inflationary mess unless handled very well (Probability of such fine handling: almost 0) which will contribute to the calls for ‘action’, whether the action is correct be d—ed.

      1. I dunno. The two gargantuan stimulus packages eight years ago got paid out to various large corporate entities and, for all practical purposes, vanished without a trace.

        1. Well, the Ford stockholders (I can’t remember if I was one at the right time) appreciated the cash for clunkers campaign; the Ford F-150 was the most popular new vehicle purchased.

          1. As someone who’s had to buy an inexpensive used car or van since then, and who’s *tried* to buy a used car or van a couple more times, I rue the effects of the cash for clunkers campaign. That campaign took perfectly useful cars off the road, and what’s remained is more expensive as a result.

            I have a funny feeling that the environment took a hit too. When such programs go into effect, Congress critters only look at one thing — in this case, gas mileage — and ignore the energy that goes into making a car, which energy wouldn’t have been spent had that car remained on the streets!

            1. I had a 3100 series Pontiac v6 go a year after it was in full swing. Nearly needed to get a crate because none in junkyards.

            2. I keep on getting offers from the Ford dealership asking if I want to trade in my descent condition 5 year old car and buy a new one. True clunkers never qualified for the cash for clunkers program.

              1. I saw some go – the program was regressive, in that it made inexpensive cars less available for poor folks to get to work in.
                They NEVER look at the side effects of what they do!

                1. Side effects are irrelevant; their goal has nothing to do with effectiveness in addressing problems (see: $15/hr MW) and everything to do with signalling their virtuousness.

                  That, and extending government control (in the hands of the Virtuous) over every aspect of people’s lives, reducing Citizens to Subjects.

                    2. Oh they’re great city road vehicles if you are single or a couple with no children. Other then that they are useless. For the same price you can get an SUV from Kia to suit your needs (this is going by brand new prices, used will vary).

                    3. Unsafe, and are not all that cheap. My first six cars/pickups were $25 ,$300, $125, $200, $1000, and $1650.
                      I put well over 250,000 miles on the $1000 car doing outside sales, and would still rather have it but some moron hit me and killed it. Even the $25 car was reliable enough to get me anywhere I needed, I just never had time to go any further than a few hundred miles. All these except the last, most expensive one were easier to work on as well, and today’s are not. I still do, but not everyone can now. That last was a 4cyl Mustang with injection, but I know the engines inside and out, having raced them. I still have not paid more than $7000 for a vehicle. $4Clunkers took most of the kind of cars and trucks I bought most of my life off the market, and made those still existing higher priced because of “rarity” A car in the style and condition of my $1000 car is $4-8000 now because yes, it’s old, but many were traded off when $cash4clunks made them “worth” more as a trade than sales. Even common stuff like F150 Fords got rarer as affordable/cheap

                2. I was kind of suspecting that depriving poor folks of cheaper cars was a feature rather than an unintended consequence. It’s run by the sort that needs peasants dependent upon the State for various things… like transportation.

          2. There were “cash for clunkers” campaigns periodically back to the 1970s, to no great effect.

            What I see here are convoys of six or eight decent-looking used cars with temporary tags, convoying south behind a lead car with Mexican plates.

        2. The problem is it went into companies cash, and companies stock portfolios. They don’t see anything worth buying and because they can’t rely on the future business environment they don’t want to spend it.

          The problem is when inflation starts many companies will see their money lose value so they will spend it while it is worth more. That starts the upward spiral. Inflation goes up, they fear their money will be worth less so they spend, repeat. Then you get Weimar inflation and your money is worthless.

          Then you get Marxist mobs demanding things and then you get anti-Marxist mods fighting them. Then who knows what happens.
          History repeating itself.

    2. werewife — I’m Jewish enough for Hitler and so are the boys.
      We decided long ago if we have to leave our homeland, Israel is the only place we’d consider.

      1. Where are the Christians going to go? So far, it looks like the incipient persecution in this country is aimed more at Christians than at Jews, though I do agree that that will come, probably sooner rather than later.

        1. Umm…we’re not planning to go anywhere. Persecution of anyone will be met with serious opposition here in the mountains of east Tennessee…

          1. There is the perverse unconscious desire in some churches to face persecution. It manifests as a confirmation of suspicious, but nothing more. At times I want to scream “Yes; now why aren’t you working against it?”

            1. That would be because Christ Himself predicted it in many verses. It’s a basic tenet of the faith.

              And there is no working against it. Not denying your faith will get you killed; denying it will eventually send you to Hell unless you repent and proclaim.. Also scriptural.

              1. Killing THEM (as last resort) is self defense, defense of innocents, and might even be defense of them and those they corrupt.

                The question was about those folks who seem to gleefully seek out martyrdom.

                2. Gleeful is in the eye of the beholder, and in my experience is used as a pejorative implying suicidal. YMMV.

                  1. Well, no, gleeful is a objective fact the judgement of which in the living realm depends on a judgement call and for which, if they are truly guilty of it, they will be held accountable.

                    Charity requires that one not leap to it, yes, but charity also requires that one not reflexively assume that people concluding it are just looking for an excuse purely because they concluded it, either.

            1. The difference is, the German Jews didn’t believe what did happen could happen. We labor under no such misconceptions, and the right to and ability to self-defense is taken as a given in these parts. No organized persecution would go unanswered, I assure you.

              1. When the persecution is enabled by the legal system, it’s already organized. See bakers and florists. 8-(

        1. IIRC, the Nazis picked that up from Woodrow Wilson’s Democrats and their “one drop” of Negro blood philosophy.

      3. From everything I’ve heard, Israel is at least as far left as Portugal. Unless you and your son’s Hebrew is very good, you might be better off back in Portugal … but personally, I’d far prefer you stay here and continue to fight the good fight.

      4. I’m hoping that if I had to leave America, migration to Texas will be an option.

        Alternatively, I hope that I won’t have to migrate — that my home State will realize what’s going on, leave America, and join Texas as well…

        But this is the future we’re talking about. Who knows what will happen?

        1. What’s your home state Alpheus? Texas will be happy to welcome you. In Kurt Schlichter’s Kelly Turnbull series (Indian Country, People’s Republic) Dallas is the capital of the USA.

    3. The fact that the “Unite the Right” organizer was an Occupy Wall Street organizer does not raise any suspicions, no, not one susp. That the Left has a history of deliberately provoking Klan violence to advance their agenda is totally phakenews. Charlottesville mayor Michael Signer having earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, founded the UVA Coalition for Progress on Race, and having worked under John “Phish” Podesta at the Soros-funded Center for American Progress raises not hackles over the instructions to the police to not intervene. And don’t nobody need be asking about Terry “ATM” McAuliffe’s non-actions in the face of such unrest.

      Nope, nothing to see here. No reason to follow the money or question the narrative. There’s no reason to ask awkward questions about how it takes two sides to start a riiot or to wonder Qui bono from all this.

      1. There’s also video evidence that the Attack Charger was itself attacked first, and that the police shoved the peaceable demonstrators into the line of Antifa thugs, but see if any of that makes the MSM… noooo, they gotta focus on the 6 or 7 guys LARPing as brownshirts, and one dude in a T-shirt carrying a swastika flag still with fold marks fresh from the mail order package.

        So, yeah… the MSM uses the fringies to taint the whole, and then we wonder why that’s the public’s mass perception??

        2. Reziac, you are a reliable source – but I’ve not been able to find such a video myself. (Sorry, but in getting truth out, “friend of a friend said” doesn’t quite make it.)

          Even my duck-fu has failed me in this quest… (I know better than to try Gurgle or F’ing on this one.)

      2. It’s the old “only the other side engages in crazy conspiratorial actions to enflame events” problem. Anything crazy that the violent Left does to make things worse will be ignored because after all the Left never engages in those sorts of things.

        Drop hints that the white supremacists somehow did the same, though (despite not having a single friend anywhere in the political power structure), and it would be shouted from the rooftops that the whole thing was a Neo-Nazi plot.

      3. This makes the whole thing smell of a set up. the far right walked right into it and it went off like clockwork. Dupes is probably the right word, useful idiots both right and left.

        1. Ya think? Considering that the so-called leader of “Unite the Right” has now been outed as an Obama supporter and leader in “Occupy Wall Street”?

  9. Communism is the “opposite” of Nazism in the same way that Android is the “opposite” of iOS. Like Android and iOS are two competing versions of the same basic product (a smartphone OS) — and the groupies of each will call the other “literaly teh debil” [sic] — communism and national socialism are two competing brands of the same evil (totalitarian collectivism).

    1. What do you mean?!

      On one side you have the Part and the One Leader.

      On the other side you have the Party and the One Leader.

      It’s obvious there’s no similarity whatsoever between the two systems.

    3. The only difference between ‘communism’ and ‘national socialism’ is which direction the government points its guns.

      Well, at first, anyway…

      1. It is more of a “Franchise Fees” argument. ‘Communism’ claims to be international and all franchisees must pay fealty while ‘national socialism’ claims that the franchises are distinct for every nationality and don’t have to coordinate their actions.

        Same business, different structures.

        1. Not exactly.

          You’re thinking of Fascism. National Socialism is similar to Fascism, but has a very open racial element that in particular is anti-Semitic.

          1. I can’t stand the nit-picking and hair-splitting required to differentiate different types of tyranny.

            At some point, I can’t help but want to throw up my hands and say “Enough! I don’t care! Tyranny is tyranny! Go away and leave me alone!”

            Sigh. It’s important on one level, though: each type has its tactics, and it’s good to have an idea of what counter-tactics work against them…

            1. In fairness, Fascists and Nazis *are* pretty similar – similar enough that Hitler was able to work with all of his various fascist neighbors. But Nazism has the openly blatant racial component in it, and it’s the one thing that can definitely be pointed to as “EVUL!!!!!”

              (note that’s not to say that Fascist- or Communist – countries weren’t racist as well; they just weren’t as blatant about it)

              Remove that, or disguise it as “anti-Zionism”, and you’ve got some attitudes that are quite popular – albeit under different names.

          2. Well, true. National Socialism has an open racial element. International Communism has a hidden racial element.

            Somehow, that doesn’t seem much of a difference, at least not in deciding which to stomp on first.

    1. Then identity politics is going to be REALLY confused. Depending on light, hair color at the time (I dye it, yes. It’s been white since I was 28) and people’s expectations, I can be any race or mix.

    2. But they believe that Sarah’s a racist, white, Mormon, cis-male, Fascist so I figure if Identity Politics saw any of us in person they wouldn’t recognize us.

      1. But they believe Sarah’s a racist, white, Mormon, cis-male, Fascist…
        Don’t forget the great rack!

        1. And the beer drinking. That’s proof that she’s male right there! Thus, a white Mormon Male.

          I still fail to see what having a great rack has anything to do with Sarah being a White Mormon Male, though. Don’t all right-thinking evil space princes and princesses have one in their basements?

          (I still don’t believe Sarah has one, though, because she has yet to post a picture to prove that she has one. But preferably without someone being stretched out on it, if possible, because I’m squeamish about such things.)

  11. Depending on how fine you slice it, there are probably a lot more “Scots are the lost tribe” types– I’d need some actual evidence before I made any sort of declarations like “there’s no way a group from the Mediterranean area made it up to the UK area a very long time ago and have family living today.”

    Frequently have had folks take that to mean I “believe” in something.
    *shrug*

    1. Yeah, that’s the Middle Ages (+/-) myth of the founding of Scotland; Saint Andrew left the Holy Land and settled in Scotland. (I guess with some converts or something.)

      1. Anyone else think of this poem by Robert Blake? Not quite the same thing, but:

        And did those feet in ancient time
        Walk upon England’s mountains green?
        And was the holy Lamb of God
        On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

        And did the Countenance Divine
        Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
        And was Jerusalem builded here
        Among these dark Satanic mills?

        Bring me my bow of burning gold:
        Bring me my arrows of desire:
        Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
        Bring me my chariot of fire.

        I will not cease from mental fight,
        Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
        Till we have built Jerusalem
        In England’s green and pleasant land.

        2. I have long found it amusing that “Jerusalem” was the featured choral song for my high school’s commencement ceremonies. Certain evidence of a neo-crypto-alt-wrong militant academy, I’ve no doubt.

      2. The Roman Empire traded with China, and Roman coins have been found as far away as Vietnam. How is St.Andrew migrating to Scotland any less likely?

    2. Romans made it to the U.K. And weren’t there some Phoenician artifacts discovered in the U.K.?

      1. Not to get into a religious debate, but they likely went into what is now Turkey and Iraq and intermarried there, and/or intermarried with the Assyrian settlers brought in to their kingdom. The latter are known as the Samaritans.

          1. There were black Jews that Israel brought back in a semi-secret operation from Africa. And there are Jews in China and no one can actually trace where they came from.

            1. Operation Gideon’s Hammer, iirc. Though I’d need to doublecheck the name on that. The Jews in question were from Ethiopia.

              Speaking of which, there’s a film that I enjoyed about a young Ethiopian Christian whose mother hides his religion so that he can travel from the refugee camps in Ethiopia to Israel. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head.

              As for China, who knows? There’s speculation that the survivors of one of the lost Roman legions were captured by the Sassanid Persians, and then pressed into service against the eastern neighbors of Persia (where they’d be less likely to rebel). It wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for a lost group of Israelites to have made their way to China, especially over the course of a couple thousand years. Though it’s probably worth noting that the direction is contrary to the direction that refugees in Eurasia typically travel. East to West seems to be the usual direction, not West to East.

              1. Whoops! Not Gideon’s Hammer. I think that actually was the airplane hostage rescue operation.

                The movie I mentioned is “Live and Become”.

        1. Yea– and considering how many people in my Dad’s side of the family are creative introverts… I can see the attraction of leaving Sumeria. 🙂

        3. Yep. Whenever I read of some groups of people, particularly Mediterranean / Middle East groups, turning up in unexpected places – I simply think “So?”

          All of those groups had a high percentage of traders – and when you traded with a far away place, you left some of your people there to maintain the trade. Jews, Samaritans, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans – they all followed the shekels – or the solidii – or the cash. (There are traces of Han genes scattered throughout the West, also, although they tended to marry in a bit more easily when consistent trade was interrupted. Good luck trying to figure out when they were introduced into any one “bloodline” here.)

    6. But. . .but. . .but, I’ve seen the genealogies! It traces through King Malcolm (of Macbeth fame) and then to the tribe of Judah (while taking a detour through the Norse and Roman pantheons. It must be true, since it’s in print

      1. As a descendant of one of the remaining two tribes, I admit it: we drove them off on account we couldna stand those damned bagpipes.

        There, I’ve said it and it is quite the load offen me chest, that it is. Of course they’re Jews — who else could get people to pay such exorbitant prices for that swill they distill?

          1. Surely he meant “swill” as the middle-English shortening of the phrase, “God’s will”… 😉

            1. Distilled God’s will, it is… Although there can be some question about whether God is the one having his will when you imbibe too much. Dancing with a saguaro as a partner can be the least of the consequences.

          2. GlenLivet is swill?????

            My father would declare that only a Progressive would say such a thing.

    7. Hm … I’m more likely to believe it the other way around … some very early Scottish mercenaries ended up fighting for the Israelis (and eventually forming their own tribe) but eventually wandered back home to what is now Scotland. After all, they (and their descendants) fought for virtually everyone else as you go back … from Russia to France, here in the US, etc.

    8. They must have been -really- lost if they ended up in Scotland. Its so loverly up there that grass doesn’t grow.

  12. Far more than a million people believe in bigfoot, for relative values of belief. I would bet that at least a quarter believe in UFOs. I, myself, have seen things in the sky that I can’t explain, and on more than one occasion.
    How many Icelanders believe in the little people? I forget what they call them there, but they’re actually protected by law as an endangered species. How about trolls in Scandinavia? Fairies in Ireland? There’s an awful lot of belief sloshing around out there.

    1. Trolls in Iceland, or so my parents were told when they were there last year. That was when the mess about the highway repair crew moving the troll rock and causing major problems was going on.

    2. The proper question is not “How many people believe in UFOs or Bigfoot*?”

      The proper question is “How many people believe with ultimate certainty, that there are not UFOs or Bigfoot?”

      *Sasquatch, or simply “Sass” to his friends. He used to go by “Quatch” but that tended to result in unfortunate “Quatch-grabbing” jokes and he tired of them.

  13. The Neo-Nazis probably also include a fair number of druggies.

    Aryan Nations is a prison gang.

    Roof apparently used Xanax recreationally.

    This is one reason White Supremacism is such a non-starter with me. Skin color is supposed to be more important than whether someone is a drugged up loser in whether I want compromise in order to form a ruling coalition with someone? Yeah, no, I’m too much of a bigot for that.

      1. You forgot perverts. Most of the serious Lefties are seriously fried in the sex department.

        1. you know, i really wouldn’t start up on that because you either don’t know or ignore the people around you.

    2. And that’s the thing they don’t tell you in that ‘white peepl R de reelz terrists’ “study” going around. Prison gang hit vs popping off at Boston Marathon. Little bit different in reality.

      1. The real problem is that they believe in all the bad things that whites are accused of but seek to really piss off white people.

        The are the people who poke a bears in the woods but are surprised when they get eaten.

  14. The Neo-Nazis probably also include a fair number of druggies.

    Aryan Nations is a prison gang.

    Roof apparently used Xanax recreationally.

    This is one reason White Supremacism is such a non-starter with me. Skin color is supposed to be more important than whether someone is a drugged up loser in whether I want compromise in order to form a ruling coalition with someone? Yeah, no, I’m too much of a bigot for that.

    Please delete duplicate post stuck in moderation with wrong ID.

    1. Well, now we know one of your aliases…

      Whatever ideological fringe group you are talking about, the majority are druggies and/or mentally ill. The main differences are the class of drugs they are addicted to, and who they think the tinfoil hats are necessary for.

      (Aside – one good thing about the Trump Presidency is that more of the sane people are becoming aware that the CIA works for the CIA, to achieve the purposes of the CIA. Just like any other bureaucracy; nothing different except in their preferred methodology.)

      1. #defineirony: Leftists who’ve spent decades calling the CIA a fascist organization now upset that Trump has called the CIA a fascist organization.

  15. It was discussing communists, socialists, nazis and fascists when I first learned that it’s only professors who have academic freedom at universities.

    Socialism and communism were significantly worse than fascism and yet people are proud to call themselves socialists or communists. Bernie Sanders is a national socialist but that’s ok because only nazis are bad. Somehow ‘fascist’ has become word to call someone who disagrees with you even tho fascist country of Italy was the least worst of the three ideologies.

    Nazis bad, socialists good was incoherent message prof was peddling and she had me removed from her class when I pointed out that communists, socialists, nazis …. are equally bad and immoral. This is when I learned that social sciences were totally corrupted by all the socialists and communists who find comfortable home in sociology, psychology and the like.

      1. It is interesting dynamic where world’s most murderous ideology has its followers convinced that it is most peaceful.

        I would not have made a good communist, I have hated joining groups for as long as I can remember. People seem different or superficial when in groups, they also do bad things together in pursuit of righteousness, and I have always preferred to think of people as individuals.

  16. “Things like the Flat Earth society”

    FYI lots of physicists join Flat Earth and Geocentric Universe societies as a joke and to get the entertaining publications–although it’s possible that the internet has reduced the need to join/subscribe to get the funniest stuff.

    1. Arguing with an ept Flat Earther is like arguing with a Jesuit – if you don’t have all your ducks in a row, you’re liable to get a “learning experience.”

      1. As I drive west across the great plains why do I first see the peaks of the Rocky Mountains then gradually more and more of them?
        On the ocean why do I first see the top of an approaching ship and more seems to emerge from the sea the closer it gets?

        1. Visited a different barber the other day, who was sure HIS experience as a navy sailor was different, that he saw another ship right down to the waterline at distance.
          Turned out he was several hundred feet up when the other ship appeared out of the haze… but “convinced against his will, was of the same opinion still.”

    2. I love the crazy stuff online. There is this WONDERFUL site for geology, which, after all the continent movements, etc, goes on about dinosaurs orbiting the Earth in a spaceship. It’s an illness. I can’t RESIST that stuff.

        5. Hm, I wonder if that could be expanded into a full drabble. Notwithstanding Sarah’s carp reaction, well done!

              2. I used gin for cleaning mold off the ceramic tile floors in Belgium. It kept it from growing back the longest (about 2 weeks after each application and scrubbing.)

    3. Such societies do have a certain validity; the Earth is flat, just not in three or four dimensions. I forget the math, as it has been many long years since I studied the Calculus, but if you xderivative (or was it the yth function?) you can prove the Earth flat in 7 (or was it 11?) dimensions.

      Anybody else recall the tale of vice-president Al Gore calling up the editor at the Washington post and reading the riot act over their publishing a picture of the Earth from space and having the planet upside down? That was because he was afraid it would cause people to fall off.

        1. I used to have a series of lunar eclipse photos as my work computer wall paper.
          One co-worker saw it and asked “Why is the moon upside down?”
          The photos were from DMM (or his wife i think) at Irregular Web Comic and were from Sydney Oz.

        2. You can buy “Australian” maps that have south at the top. They’re usually also centered over Australia. Amazing how much different the land masses look with that change in perspective.

      2. Heck, all you need is a touch of differential geometry: If you zoom in close enough, the curvature of the Earth is small enough you might as well consider it flat.

        Well, at least until you hit the mountains. Those are some really big bumps when you’re small enough! (Globally, though, they’re barely wrinkles…)

  17. well, Europeans believe that there is no significant racism in Europe, and so do the same subset of Americans that think we are inherently racist.

  18. “But in the past did we have such a critical mass of the young maleducated, who have been turned against their own country and are willing to believe the worst of their countrymen? Did we have a media, balked of its power last November and anxious to burn it all down? Did we have aging sixties activists viewing this as their last chance to strike a blow for the revolution?

    Or a whole cadre of his nominal allies who apparently don’t know (or care about) all the facts or what the terms “moral” or “false equivalence” means.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4794132/Republicans-turn-Trump-latest-Nazi-rally-comments.html

    Those tweets are depressing.

    1. If their “education” consisted only of public school and TV, where would they have learned such esoteric concepts?

    2. There’s a game on Steam that, if you play it one way, you kill a bunch of Dems; play another you kill a bunch of Republicans.

      Play it the way my housemate did, you let BOTH groups die. Apparently in a fire.

      The third option is how I feel right now with that reaction.

    1. Back when we were worried about Mutual Assured Destruction, visitors from the future would have been reassuring.

  20. “Do you believe in UFOs?”
    “Bear with me, this requires a very careful answer. If the question is, ‘Do I believe in objects, in flight, that lack full public identification?’ then the answer is yes. If it is ‘Do you believe in alien visitors?’ then the answer is no. And it’s not that I do not believe in extra-terrestrial life – that would seem a given considering the size of the Universe. But any coming around for the heck of it is rather unlikely and would demand overwhelming evidence.”

        1. Actually, Napoleon’s armies didn’t *have* to forage; that’s what gave them such a huge edge over their enemies, who supported themselves by stripping the countryside bare.

          That kind of thing was why the US Constitution has the Third Amendment… it didn’t matter which side the army was on, when they took everything you had.

          1. And apparently the phone ate the word era. But ya.

            And yet Sammy slips his hand into your paycheck to do the same thing today. Is there any amendment that hasn’t been evaded

            1. Actually, as much as I detest the waste that the Armed Forces produce (largely because their bureaucratic approval process is so burdensome, they’d rather pay $2000 for an outdated part that almost no one makes anymore, than go through the process of approving a new, modern part that’s better than the old), it isn’t the Armed Forces that are the problem.

              The problems are the Social Security Ponzi scheme, the MediCare/MedicAid price fixing and extortion racket, the regulations and fines often made up out of thin air by OSHA, the EPA, and their cousins. The problem is that “[the Federal Government] has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance”. While there’s not an amendment directly addressing such things, there’s the 9th Amendment that secures rights not enumerated in the Constitution…and I’d *like* to think that one of the justifications of the Revolution ought to apply to the Federal Government…

              1. That approval process is strictly a creation of the Congress. People can’t seem to figure that out.

    2. I always joked that I saw more UFOs when I was out with my mom than when I was with my dad because he was better at identifying stuff.

        1. I have personally seen Venus called a UFO. That’s a classic.

          OTOH, there was something we saw that behaved like an aircraft, and since this happened during the CB era, we could have triangulated on the thing and gotten a location and an elevation. Most likely candidate is some sort of military training exercise. Second most likely candidate is something to do with drugs.

          1. I remember one of the (I think) History channels’ UFO shows going on about spacecraft over Phoenix. They had eyewitness drawings and recreated lights etc. Then I saw it in reruns years later. The drawings and behaviour are obviously the Stealth bomber in flight.

            1. I saw one of the UFO shows and started to watch it but gave up when they showed ” incontrovertible evidence” of a UFO using footage I’d seen 20 years earlier… used to demonstrate image processing techniques. The “incontrovertible” alien craft… was built by Cessna.

              2. There was a great ruckus in Sacramento about 1981 or 82 (I was working in the Mather AFB Public Affairs office at that time, which is why I recall it) about strange lights floating silently over part of the city. It did draw the interest of the UFO enthusiasts, as quite a lot of people saw the mysterious lights.
                About a week later, a local Boy Scout troop scoutmaster wrote to the newspaper that his troop had launched a series of fire lanterns from a hill outside the city on that every evening that the lights were spotted, and the prevailing breeze carried them over town. Mystery solved.
                I did use this in the third Luna City book – fire lanterns over town, and UFOlogists going nuts.

                1. That’s funny. I had a friend of the family tell me how to make UFO fire lanterns with balsa wood and dry cleaning bags… and he added that if you knew the local radar frequencies, you could build it to a size that would “ping” back some multiple if you put a light coat of aluminum paint on it…

                  (He grew up in Reno, and apparently learned all sorts of interesting tricks for getting into trouble.)

          2. Great Falls, Montana, IIRC was December of 1965 or ’66… light (brighter than a star but not as bright as Venus) hanging over the airport on Gore Hill at an altitude of perhaps 5 miles, on a very cold and clear night. (We took pictures, but lacking zoom it looks like any other star.) Malmstrom AFB scrambled fighters and gave chase. Light zipped sideways, then straight up, and disappeared. UFO? you tell me.

          3. Scariest thing I had happen, I was driving along rather late with the windows down, about 35 because there MIGHT be bears or dogs but not deer, and suddenly THERE WAS A HUGE FREAKING LIGHT PRACTICALLY RIGHT OVER THE ROAD AND OH MY GOSH WAY WAY WAY TOO FREAKY SLOW WHAT THE —
            Slammed on the breaks, and THEN I could hear the C-17 Globemaster’s engines.

            Even in daylight, they move way, way too slow to look right.

    3. Do I believe in alien visitors? Of course. Just don’t hold your breath.
      Do I believe we’ve actually had alien visitors? Probably not. Lack of acceptable evidence.

      2. I had Charles I. Halt (of Rendlesham fame) for my logistics commander when I was stationed in Belgium. He and his wife were also our instructors in Hap Ki Do; so we had quite a bit of informal time together. Never mentioned UFOs in my presence, and always seemed to be rather pragmatic and level-headed about most things. If he said he and several other folks saw something he and they couldn’t figure out what it was; then he indeed saw something. I suspect it was a black X project of some kind (propulsion, power, surveillance) that came down in the wrong location and it continues to suit the government to allow speculation that it was an alien craft of some kind to keep people from finding out what it REALLY was.

    5. There’s a UFO that flies over my house ever so often. It looks like a snowblower attached to a parachute. I can’t identify it, it’s definitely flying, and it certainly qualifies as an object.

      It is interesting how UFOs have pretty universally come to be synonymous with aliens. I’ve never run across anyone arguing that yes, of course UFOs exist, but they aren’t alien vistors, they’re morse code from God. Or the spirits of the dead returning for Samhain. Or a reflection of Gaia’s inner power that can be channeled with crystals and used to cure fibromyalgia. Come on conspiracy theorists, if I can come up with those three in two minutes, surely you can come up with something more interesting in those tinfoil-covered heads of yours!

      1. After aliens, the most common fantasy I encounter seems to be Luftwaffe reconaissance saucers from the secret Nazi base under the Antarctic ice cap. Or Tibet. Or the cave systems under the Arctic. Or the dark side of the moon…

      2. I had heard of early(?) psychologist type either explaining or predicting the sightings as increasing as secularity gained and religion lost some ground: “technological angels.”

    1. You joke… we were once sitting at the kitchen table, talking about things that shouldn’t exist. Someone mentioned “Squirrel porn.” Husband looked it up. Yep. People put cameras in squirrel burrows, to see….
      Inclines head. Puts fingers on either side of nose.

        1. I remember an xkcd about a decade ago when they did a search for “strip Magic: The Gathering.” The results were…disturbingly non-zero.

          (They also did a search on “strip pooh sticks” which was fortunately zero at least at that time. I’m afraid to make the search again for fear that someone would have taken that comic strip as a challenge.)

          1. You are aware of “Rule 35” are you not?
            It is, roughly, should you find an exception to 34, you are now tasked with… rectification of that. Declining the task seems most wise.

            1. I know this rule and have been cause for it being cited on certain corners of the internet. I’m quite proud of myself.

      2. Reminds me of a “Game” that a friend of mine and I used to play way back in the BBS days (before Internet was so common). We would look around to see who could find the most disturbing gifs, and send them to each other. The first one to cry uncle lost.

        I ended up getting a LOT of pictures of… um… unattractive people (yea, that’s the nice way to say it) doing various sexual acts. Meh… whatever. Sure, some of it was a little disturbing, but it was all pretty tame by today’s standards.

        Once I figured out what my friends buttons were, the game became boring because it was too easy to win so eventually he gave up. I’m reticent to say what that was, not because it’s illegal or anything, but because I know you guys, at least one of you won’t be able to resist searching for it and those aren’t images nice people need stuck in their heads.

      1. I believe I got the idea from an old roll-playing rule book. “Believes that squirrels are messengers from God” was an example of like a one point quirk or something (vague memory, so I might be remembering wrong). I do quite solidly remember being with a group of friends when we read it and exclaiming “Well of COURSE they are… how is that a quirk?” and having everyone just stare at me… trying to decide if I was serious or not. Apparently, I said it very convincingly.

          1. Birdfeeder hung from clothesline pole.
            Squirrels climb pole, get to feeder.
            Pa once had the idea to coat pole with peanut butter.
            There was some delay and confusion…
            ..and then the discovery (by the squirrrel[s]) peanut butter!

  22. I don‘t know that all fascists will use the term in the future; there certainly seems to be a lot of fascism reflected from antifa.

    I was doing some research yesterday, and ran across an article by H. L. Mencken from 1938. After talking about how democracy is being redefined so that it means the opposite in the name of Social Justice, he goes on to say about Social Justice that it “will take us, soon or late, into the stormy waters of Fascism. To be sure, that Fascism is not likely to be identical with the kinds on tap in Germany, Italy and Russia; indeed, it is very apt to come in under the name of anti-Fascism. And its first Duce… will not call himself a dictator, but a scotcher of dictators.”

    1. And then there is the whole thing where people say “The United States is a Democracy!” It is NOT (or at least it was not intended by the Founding Fathers to be one). It was supposed to be a representative Republic. Democracy is basically mob rule — the bigger group can vote for themselves (or for whoever they think is deserving) benefits to be taken forcibly from the smaller group. The bigger group can vote for the smaller group to be penalized for whatever they think they ought to be penalized for. That is mob rule.

      1. Yeah, his full quote on that part was “Thus the fundamental dogmas of democracy are gradually overhauled by men of vision. The idea that government should be an agency of sharply limited powers has been abandoned, and in place of it we have the idea that government should be omnipotent and is generally infallible. The idea of equality before the law gives way to the aforesaid Social Justice, the essence of which is the principle that all property is the rightful possession, not of those who have earned it, but of those who haven’t earned it. And the idea of universal suffrage begins to be conditioned by the idea that there is a right way to vote and a wrong way to vote, and that those who vote wrong are traitors to the Republic.”

  23. In addition to baseball bats, Antifa carries the most powerful pepper spray, intended for Grizzly bears only.

    1. The have heretofore been very lucky that those they target have been polite and largely unprepared for their attacks. That will not continue to be the case much longer.

      1. This would be so, except that the MSM and The Authorities (but I repeat myself) have made it clear that a crime only occurs when somebody defends himself against antifa attack. Take your beatdown like a man or else face criminal charges. Remember: there is no riot until somebody fights back.

        They are applying domestically the rules of engagement long ago developed for the Palestinian Resistance.

        1. As someone said (here or elsewhere, I don’t recall), there are three sides to these fracases: the antifa gang, their chosen targets, and the police gang. If it becomes generally believed that the police gang is colluding with the antifa gang, their authority will be generally discounted and they will be treated by those targets as just another aspect of the opposition.

    3. It’s not pepper spray. They make their own.

      You want to consider the kinds of things Antifa goons would put in that.

  24. Hard to tell for sure, because media you know, but from what I gather a small local group took exception the the renaming of Robert E. Lee park and the proposed removal of his statue. They applied for and received a permit to conduct a peaceful and entirely legal protest.
    Then fringe radical right wing supremacists decided to come pile on, many from several states removed. Still legal, but likely to be highly incendiary.
    Enter the Antifa crowd and their unsanctioned counter protest.
    Had law enforcement kept the two groups apart things still might have been resolved peacefully, but that apparently was not their instruction. Instead they stood by waiting for violence to erupt which it did right on schedule.
    So now they have the full blown riot that some faction apparently was hoping for. Add on one unbalanced idiot with a vehicle to the mix and we have what we saw on infinite loop national media.
    As for Trump’s initial statement, excuse me, but we just lived through eight years of sanctimonious lectures not to jump to conclusions over events. Mass shootings, bombings, attacks of all stripes that we must wait to discover whether the perpetrator screaming Alahu Akbar might really have been a radical white Mormon. And have it explained days if not weeks later that it really was just workplace violence, nothing to see here, move along.
    Trump issued a measured statement, admittedly unusual for him, that decried the act but declined to make accusations until at least the identity of the driver was definitively determined by investigators.
    But in the eyes of the bulk of our media Trump can never ever do anything right. Best we get used to that simple fact and adjust for it as it will be the fact for the rest of his time in office.

  25. So the Nazis are all assholes? OK, I _do_ believe that, but “free speech” and the First Amendment protects assholes as well.

    And if you don’t believe in free speech for assholes, you don’t really believe in free speech at all.

    1. Yup. You’re only defending free speech if you’re defending it from folks who you disagree with. Everybody is for free speech from people preaching the same things they say.

    2. Precisely. Are you under the impression I was saying anything else? Under the first amendment they can demonstrate and speak.
      Banning hate speech means banning free speech.

      2. It’s “demonstrate” that gets redefined, slippery-slopywise, to include violence. The 1A guarantee is for peaceable assembly; I suspect we need to correct that when- and where-ever it’s misquoted.

  26. But Sarah, believing that one side is as bad as the other side means you *must* support one of those sides!

      1. Alas, that will get you called a neo-Nazi. It just happened to Brad, for saying pretty much the same thing.

          1. “Mr. Houst, you’re before the bench today on a charge of assault.”
            “That’s correct, your Honor.”
            “How do you plead?”
            “Guilty, but there were mitigating circumstances.”
            “And what circumstances were they?”
            “They called me a Democrat your Honor.”
            “That’s insufficient justification to assault someone Mr. Houst.”
            “Really your Honor? Then you’re a Republican!”
            * ducks hurled gavel *

              1. I was talking about “fighting words” a few months ago with the chuckleheads at work, and they started talking about how it’s not been accepted as a defense for murder.

                Murder??!? No, stupid, “fighting words” is a defense for delivering a beatdown! If you kill someone for just saying something that makes you angry, then you’re pretty unhinged.

                1. Did you explain to them that they’re “fighting words,” not “killing words?” 😀

          2. In the immortal words of Florence King, ruing the day she wrote a memoir including the lesbian love-of-her-life: “I don’t mind being called perverted and unnatural, but I would just die if people thought I was a Democrat!”

            2. Did she actually write that? Because she was a Southerner (more or less) and for white Southerners in general, voting Democrat was like breathing until the 1960s.

              1. Even so, some of them really disliked the Democratic Party. When the pressure is to endorse, those who refuse are often committed.

                1. There is also the fact that Democrat control was such that if you wanted your voice heard you had to vote in the Democrat primary, as that was where the election effectively occurred. Once out of that milieu you were free to vote for the candidate who best represented you (and had a chance of winning.)

                  In California state-wide voting they have effectively replicated that role for the party. The Democrats are very avid to ensure that only properly qualified candidates run are elected.

        3. Somebody called Brad a neo-Nazi? Must be Wednesday. Or Tuesday, or some other one of those days ending in “y.”

          1. Didn’t you get the memo?
            Everyone even remotely involved with Sad Puppies was automatically assumed to be a white male misogynistic neo-nazi racist Mormon.
            Though some of us had nice racks. Not me of course, but several of my co-conspirators are quite shapely.

          2. Yup. He had the temerity to condemn both groups of violent collectivist morons rather than supporting the “right” morons. An author pulled Brad’s introduction from his new short story collection in retaliation because How Dare He.

        4. This past weekend I was accused of supporting fascism because I argued that the National Socialists were being honest when they called themselves Socialists.

          1. Yeah, because thinking rationally and explaining our thoughts is definitely supportive of whatever the leftists don’t like. Well, not so much supportive as demonstrative, I suppose…

            1. My main takeaway was that leftists will play considerable word games to avoid the inherent cognitive dissidence of their positions.

              The American Nazi Party proclaiming in their party platform on their website that the economy should work for the common volk instead of “bankers and multinational corporations” is just populism, not socialism. We’ll ignore that populism was a branch of early twentieth century progressivism and not at all right-wing.

              I’m not sure I’ve had enough single-malt to clear my brain after descending into that cesspit.

    2. Maxim 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more, no less.

      Or what Sarah said.

      (Though a ton of other Maxims from Schlock Mercenary are starting to get… tempting.)

  27. It seems to me that I have been beyond the fringe all of mu adult life.

    Pollster! Party of one, awaiting service.

    1. I’d invite you to come over to my table so that we could be a party of two, but I suspect that we’d immediately start arguing over something, so probably better to stay our separate parties and maybe throw paper airplanes at each other or something to pass messages.

      1. I expect that by the time we settled who was “party of the first part” and who the “party of the second part” the entrees would have gone room temp. Instead of paper airplanes I suggest we honor tradition and send coded messages via bartender. Rum if by land, Tequila if by sea?

  28. One significant reason I’m not worried is I’ve seen it much worse. In the 1960s there was an expectation of race war. While the idjuts in the media don’t realize that’s what they’re trying to fan, I don’t see it gaining traction much beyond the private parts hats marchers crowd.

    I could be wrong, of course. But whether right or wrong, you just keep a calm eye on it, like spotting a funnel cloud in the distance and watching to see which way it goes.

    1. Yeah, I’ve been commenting a lot to people that we’re just living through the late 60s all over again. Trump is succeeding Obama just like Nixon succeeded Johnson.

      Unfortunately, I’m also remembering that there’s this book I read recently called “Days of Rage” that talks about the domestic bombing campaigns that started during that same era…

      1. Apparently there is chatter that the Left wants to recreate the “Days of Rage” in November of this year. They might want to re-think that idea.

        1. If they do that it will be in states run by Democrats, in cities run by Democrats.

          They might do it in New York, Seattle of Chicago, but they won’t be doing it in Texas.

          1. Given how much overseas freight moves through cities like Los Angeles, that’s a potential problem even if nothing happens where you live.

            In any case, the end goal of most of the bombing campaigns (FALN being a notable exception) was to try and provoke a popular uprising against the government. That didn’t work then. I don’t know what will happen if they try something similar. The one thing that I do know is this – back then, there was a general idea among most of the domestic terrorists that civilian casualties were a bad idea (even if they didn’t start out with that realization, most of them quickly came to it). I think that bit of wisdom would be ignored if a similar campaign started now.

            1. I suspect you’re right. Now it will be Alinsky’s idea of making the middle so miserable that they/we will accept any strong leadership just to make the bad stuff stop, and then AntifaEIEIO (or the Democrats, or someone) will be able to take over and “make things they way they should be.”

              I don’t see that happening quite the way their mental scripts have it playing out.

              1. “I don’t see that happening quite the way their mental scripts have it playing out.”

                More like it played out for that gal who thought “Nazis” would meekly accept her beating them with a bicycle lock, eh?

    2. Same here. I would venture that a majority of Americans, as Lord Veternari observed, pretty much want tomorrow to be like today. They don’t want one race or the other killed off for good. They’re not looking to enact any sort of super radical legislation. Most Americans are pretty boring in view and practice.
      But, boring doesn’t sell newspapers, or gather clicks, or get eyes on screens. So, they have to find kooks, and give them attention beyond all reason. Which gives them influence far beyond what they have.
      Cut off oxygen, and fires die. Cut off attention, and the radicals fade out.

  29. Agreed. One of my main worries is that the mal-educated (and this is not just the youth anymore) will start in on the “white supremast nonsense” against those of us cursed with sensitivities to the sun. I know most people here don’t care. But I’ve had to pull out pictures to show that I have full siblings that are small, short, and brown… not adopted… my full siblings. WTH. Personally I would love to have more melatonin in my skin. I burn, blister, and bleed… but don’t suntan.

    1. I’m 6’4″ and very white. Late sister was about 4’11” and dark. Brother short and dark. We have Jewish ancestry.

  30. Ohh. Had a good one. Ancient prehistoric communist society. See, the sites with the camps, mass graves, and other artifacts are currently underwater.

  31. I don’t worry about the two groups of assholes that you identified. I do worry about the third group, the cops. They stood aside while a permitted protest (permitted by court order against the wishes of the cops superiors) was attacked by an armed, gang, thus eviscerating both the rule of law and the respect for cops as a neutral party (made worse by apparently driving the permitted protesters into the armed gang as soon as they had an excuse to shut the protest down.). This is not the first time that cops have behaved this way in Democrat controlled areas. At some point the permitted protesters are going to start defending themselves against both the antifa gang and the cop gang. When that happens, G-d help us because that cops will never regain the trust of the populace that they MUST HAVE to do their job of preserving the public peace. In my view every cop that stood back plus every person that originated or passed the stand back orders should be facing civil rights charges.

    1. I think part of the issue in larger cities is that the citizens of all stripes are very distrustful of police. I know that they aren’t all bad apples. It’s just that they have been driven to do things that are against their original purpose. In some areas they are more revenue generators then they are custodians of the law. Numerous times I have heard or seen police officers refuse to deal with a situation where they are needed to act because of PC biases.

      1. We need a Police Chief with the nads to say out loud, “The Mayor/Council/Governor ordered me to not separate the groups and allow the fight to break out.”
        Unfortunately it is gonna take a few blues stomped by both groups before most of these political weasels will stand up.

    3. Oh but you are wrong. The nasty racist alt-right (&^%(*%^$&^$&*()& started fighting the good peaceful alt-left and when the police tried to stop the fighting the Alt-Right thugs attacked the police also. So naturally the police had to protect them selves from the monsters of the Alt Right some of whom were carrying GUNS. There was a fire fight but the police won. No officers were killed or wounded because the Alt-Right NRA militia racists can’t shoot straight. The Alt-right attackers were all killed because they refused to surrender to the police. Many were killed by police snipers. (Please see Waco Biker Killings, for examples). The BAD NAZI Alt-Right racist thugs are all dead and the good kind peaceful Alt-Left are all ok.

      1. …. Are you talking about the Banditos/Cossacks meeting blow-up at the shopping mall? Where the cops moved in to arrest people because they were doing armed combat with everything from brass knuckles to fire-arms, and didn’t fire until they’d been shot at? Where the only evidence the cops even hit them was that it was a .223? (Because we all know there’s no way one of the more than a dozen long-guns could be one of those, or any of the rest of the 151 weapons that they caught, nor any others….)

        Only 4 of the 9 dead were even hit, and only half of those had no other bullets in them.

  32. It ain’t the lunatc frozen ng you have tmwatch out for, it’s the lunatic warp and woof.

    Keep in mind at all times that when the Left was having cows on national television about the ‘resurgnce’ of the KKK under Reagan, the only reason the Klan could field a softball league was the number of FBI informants they had filling out the rosters.

    1. Didn’t Reagan kick the Klan out of California back when he was governor?

      1. But that racist, Sessions, did the same thing in Al. Just a cover for their real hatred of the peoples that need democrats to stand up for them.

  33. I think they get those numbers from the silly polls that Buzzfeed and the other quiz sites put up where they ask questions about “White privilege” and “How Texas are you?” all based off of answers that don’t provide near enough range to cover our choices and no or very few “none of the above” options, thereby forcing people into certain categories. Though I have occasionally had a telephone pollster call with similarly biased questions.

  35. “How many people believe our politicians are lizard beings from other planets? At least a few hundred.”

    I’m having a very hard time parsing this sentence. Are you saying that only a few hundred politicians are lizard beings from other planets? Or are you saying that only a few hundred people believe that politicians are lizard beings from other planets?

    Either way, I’m pretty sure you’re significantly underestimating the numbers.

  37. Now it turns out Monday’s Durham Statue Massacre was pretty fringe-y too; local media reports (sporadically) that the leader and noose-dropper is head of a “socialist revolutionary” party. Which makes their statue-toppling not spontaneous rage, but Communist agitation and provocation timed to take advantage of Charlottesville *and* likely aimed at setting off a chain reaction of copycat riots.
    Local government has arrrested her and two others, charged with felony rioting and vandalism — so, good on the rule of law.
    State government (its new governor) has opposed their method but adopted their goal, and wants the same fate for every Confederate monument in NC. “Protesters”/provocateurs already applauding his following their lead, on their way to jail, leading (him) from the fringe.
    Maybe home rule will prevail. Over gubernatorial copycatting.
    It’s not paranoia if they are out to get you. It’s intelligence, in both senses of the word. And (again) it looks like “you” is us.

    “Whether The People be led by The Lord
    Or lured by the loudest throat…” (J. Rudyard Kipling)

    1. If sanity prevails in Durham, it’ll be the first damn time. I spent fifty years there from 2008-2012 and have never been so happy to move.

      1. “fifty years there from 2008-2012”

        That really is a terrible fate. Groundhog day loop?

        1. Quite possibly, given the results of our repeated attempts to get Out of There. Maybe a time warp. (I had somebody ask me in understandable frustration if there was anything I *liked* about the town. After considerable thought I returned “….some of the mimosas along the highway are really pretty in April?”)

  38. Proper & normal response is “You call me a Nazi? Sure, go ahead, throw a few more insults at me. They don’t stick, never will, partly because you and your fellow travellers have taken all the punch out of them with your unthinking overuse. Bugger off, dude.”

    Baseball bats are their (relatively new) response to being dissed and ignored – “you WILL pay attention to me.” And I lay most of the fault for this escalation to the guy who said “they bring a knife, we’ll bring a gun” and made that a “normal” meme.

    1. I state elsewhere I saw most of a show based on sighting that are obvious B2 sightings at night. Did you do interviews about what you saw? (~_^)

  40. I suspect that Charlottesville would have gotten a lot less attention if it hadn’t been for the guy in the car. Deaths of pedestrians due to cars bump things up significantly on the visibility scale. If not for that, I suspect that the whole mess might have receded gently back into the background noise.

    1. Or if that killer had been opposite opinion. But that flag idiot would have been enough to call em all Nazi anyway.

  41. Every time someone proclaims the current POTUS as “The Worst President Evah” I try to introduce them to James Buchanan, with the caveat that Buchanan will hold the title until we start shooting at each other in organized groups again.

    I fear that there are some out there who’d like to ensure that Trump unseats Buchanan.

    1. Harding generally ranks pretty low. And there are a lot of 19th-century Presidents that are abysmal, but people don’t really remember them.

      There was a play that I saw last fall called “44 Plays For 44 Presidents.” It was a vignette for each one. It was originally put together by a comedy troop, so a lot of them were funny or ironic, but a lot were serious as well. Millard Fillmore was a bunch of students in a library trying to find something memorable about his term, for instance. If I find the program, it is actually a good memory aid.

      It was less obnoxious than I had feared, knowing its genesis. I rather enjoyed it.

      1. I think you’re a pretty good president if no one can name a big thing you’ve “accomplished”.

      1. He did less to damage the Constitutional framework of our government than at least twenty other presidents.

      2. Ol’ Tippecanoe gets a pass on dieing so early in his term. Buchanan managed to mishandle Kansas and the threat of succession.

  42. Had a bit of a Bookface argy-bargy with a relative’s relative about this nonsense. We were all about “ignore the clowns like you would any other troll. Attention just empowers them.” From her reaction, one would think we were advocating Hitlerism. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about how if people didn’t (peacefully) stand together and face down the baddies, Jews would be gassed and synagogues burned.
    After many failed attempts at reason, we realized her position has very little to do with defending people (she’s firmly anti-gun). It was just virtue signaling.
    The loser clowns waving Shicklegruber’s flag don’t care about mass disapproval. They want counterprotest and confrontation. They want people shouting at them. it gives them power, it gives their cause relevance- if they weren’t right, why would people be trying to silence them?

    1. So she wanted an intellectually defined minority which she identified as having harmed country to be identified and dehumanized (yes because any of this resistance would be peaceful since this was the third display of this kind here).

      About the only change over the last 80 yrs with that mindset is that one organization was the scapegoat and the other merely didn’t have the ability to project any power.

      1. You probably put more thought into it than she did.
        Her view was that if lots of people didn’t show up to crowdshame the nazzi bastidges, they would move immediately from demonstrating to burning the synagogue and setting up gas chambers.

        1. It ain’t the crowdshaming that is bad although I am not a proponent of unperson via shame. But bringing bats and bear spray shows was a little more than that.

          I just see that there isn’t much difference when you unperson people

          1. One thing on display in the C’ville coverage is the MSM’s ignorance (a bottomless pit, unfortunately) about armament. They fretted that the Unite the Right marchers were carrying round, plywood shields painted black (they maybe should have been painted like the rainbow?) and ignoring the antifa carrying cudgels (bats & 2X4s). That one is essentially defensive and the other offensive weaponry tells you much about the different groups’ intentions.

        2. As if somehow they could do so without a LOT more political power than they’ve had in a century. Unless, if course, she thinks Trump is *that guy*, so they have that power.

          1. What the monsters under the bed could do doesn’t matter to children. Fear is the destroyer.

  43. This is not the article you are looking for:

    Dear Leftists, There Are No Nazis Under Your Bed
    By Sarah Hoyt
    Dear Leftists,

    Stop seeing Nazis under your bed. Yeah, I know, the rally at Charlottesville has proven there are real Nazis and KKK in America, and you’re all very scared that the nonsense you’ve been talking for years is true.

    I’ve heard the rally by Unite the Right (a misnomer, and yes, we’ll get to it later) comprised around a hundred people. Sources trying to make us really scared has increased that to four hundred, but I am sure they’re also including the self-named Antifa.

    So a hundred, maybe four hundred, in the South, in what you guys consider (ignorantly) to be the bastion of racism/sexism/other isms that might occur to you. … Out of a nation of three hundred million.

    Whether or not this turned into a fight, whether or not the hilariously ineffective law enforcement was ordered to stand down, whether or not in the confusion a woman was murdered or at least killed, I want you to think about those numbers. Use your fingers and toes, if needed. Let’s make this clear: if there were four hundred neo-nazis (and that’s assuming some of them weren’t just stupid) there, which there probably weren’t, that’s one in every seven hundred and fifty thousand people in America. [Update: Used to say four hundred thousand. That was a booboo.]

    To put this in perspective, the number of people in the US who believe in big foot, the number of people who believe in UFOs, the number of flat Earthers, the number of people who believe Star Trek is “all true” and probably the number of people who believe that you, yes, you, Mr. Smith from Main Street in Centerville USA are a dinosaur in disguise is far more than four hundred.

    In fact, you can’t name a belief stupid enough that it doesn’t have at least four hundred adherents somewhere in the USA. And this doesn’t mean that we’re particularly crazy of stupid, no. It just means that in a nation of three hundred million, you’re going to find a lot of crazy, off beat, and strange people.

    However you, dear leftists, have decided that this “show of force” by four hundred people who, btw, were completely outnumbered and also incidentally beaten and otherwise attacked by “Antifa” (who must have named itself by opposites, since wearing masks and beating people in the street is the game of the fascists, not the anti-fascists) means that we live in a “White Supremacy” and that anyone saying it ain’t so is a “neo-nazi.”

    Over the last few days, my friends, who range from soft-left to in-your-face Libertarians have been getting in fights and otherwise losing friendships because they tell their leftist friends to keep their hair on, and also that no, there isn’t a sudden upsurge of Nazis ready to take over the country.

    The truth is, dear leftists, that you’ve been scaring yourself with fables.

    Read The Whole Thing

  44. This means that a fringe is a significant number.
    And the other number, that a measly 10% of a billion muslims is a LOT of jihadis.

    I’m not afraid of the two sets of asses in Charlottesville.
    I’m afraid of one set of them. But that’s because they have the power of the media behind them, and a large number of voters who are ignorant of everything not on FB or MSM news. They can drag the country down into the depths.

  45. “I’m afraid of one set of them.”

    I’m not afraid of them — I am afraid of the forces — not just media — who are providing their air support. The governors, mayors and chiefs of police who enable their assaults and charge anybody engaging in self defense. I fear the kind of corrupt use of power that once gave the Klan free reign in those parts of our nation controlled by Democrats.

    The power to avert the gaze is a frightening one.

  46. I won’t call you a Nazi. I will call you stupid for not noticing that neo-nazis, the kkk, and other white supremacist groups are emboldened by Donald Trump’s failure to call them out, and in fact he encourages them by retweeting their posts and using keywords that they also use on the regular.

    Your math is also bad. You keep trotting out the “400” number. In fact the SPLC estimates there are over 1600 white supremacist groups in the country, with thousands of members. I don’t even care if there are only 400 people – they need to be opposed actively. There is a lot of fertile ground for their ideas, since so many people identify with their race primarily and so many idiots think that whites are discriminated against.

    And finally, if you think Soros funds AntiFa, you are beyond help. The paranoia surrounding Soros is as absurd as someone thinking there are nazis under their bed. AntiFa has existed for decades to oppose fascism, and acts only defensively – they were attacked first in Charlottesville and they defended students there. I support them. You should too.

      1. “If you don’t support my team you’re supporting the other team!!”

        Whever you are, you’re the idiot I’d you think the communists that are antifa are good guys. They just happen to be one group of idiots and fools attacking another group of the same.

    2. As to DJT “embolding” the racists. I can’t really say. He’s not supporting them and they are probably just using his words as justification like they would do any politician that they want to follow.
      As to SPLC I have seen posts on their so-called numbers which they have a tendency to inflate to drive donations to keep themselves relevant. What they call a hate group at times is laughable. In fact I have read articles written by conservatives that have been targeted by the SPLC for “hate speech”.
      Now onto the AntiFA. Are they supported by Soro’s? Doesn’t really matter. They have been anything BUT defensive since before the elections last November. In fact everytime there’s been protests against anything conservative they have been at the forefront beating up those they disagree with. So no, they aren’t anti-fascism they are fascists themselves

    3. Like you, the SPLC’s definition of a “hate group” is “disagrees with Democrats.”

    4. Antifa being defensive.

      Uh huh – not even they claim that. Or do you not recall the words “bash the fash”?

    5. Of course Soros doesn’t fund AntiFa. He funds a group that funds the group that organizes AntiFa or some such.

      The SPLC’s estimate of any number of any hate group is fairly dubious. The SPLC sees hate groups under every bed and in every corner. Several second amendment supporting organizations are listed as hate groups. I am surprised that the Sad Puppies have not yet earned the pleasure of being so labelled.

      1. I don’t often bother with typo correction, but you had a minor error:

        “I am surprised that the Sad Puppies have not yet earned the pleasure of being so libeled.”

        FIFY

      2. The SPLC sees hate groups under every bed and in every corner.

        Or, to put it in a more concrete form, I would not be surprised if they label this site as such, despite there being more diversity among the readers here than probably exists AT the SPLC.

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