Stop Mass Hysteria – by Amanda S. Green

144 thoughts on “Stop Mass Hysteria – by Amanda S. Green”

1. Sounds like a book that you’d enjoy reading so go for it! 😀

2. AntiFA thugs (oops, did I just use a bad word?)

   Hmmm. Thug. (Checks rule book) Ah, here we go: Section 27.3.4a, Violation of cultural appropriation prohibition though use of foreign language word, or word derived therefrom, without representative native speaker credentials. Note rule waived if use is in service of the “arrow of history” or other mythological constructs.

3. The Salem Witch Trials are a fascinating example. Once yo get past the pop-culture follies and _The Crucible_, you have a group of people under a lot of social and economic stress. Then add an influx of refugees fleeing from the very-real attacks by Indians to the north and west. Social status, economic status, old-money vs. new-money, a bad harvest, the refugees… something was going to snap, and it did.

   1. The interesting thing is that something about the Salem witch trials does distinguish them from your ordinary run-of-the-mill witch trials, but virtually none of those who talk about it know it.

      What brought down witch hunting was what has been called judicial skepticism: not of witchcraft, but of the evidence that was used to convict. Witchcraft was a crinem exceptum — excepted crime, and what it was excepted from was ordinary standards of evidence. Those jurisdictions that insisted it wasn’t — the Spanish Inquisition, the Holy Roman Inquisition, England — had witch crazes, if at all, when authority had broken down. And jurisdictions that joined them stopped having witch trials.

      One of the aids to this process was that Salem jurors recanted their verdicts, saying they had succumbed to a delusion of Satan and convicted on insufficient evidence. The recantation was much circulated, in part because it was literally the only time ever those convicting recanted.

4. My dad used to listen to Savage’s radio show.

   Savage always used to make me angry, but I’m not sure if I was angrier when I disagreed with him or when I agreed with him.

   (I think it may have been the latter.)

5. Many on the left seem to want things to turn hot. I don’t think they really understand what that all entails. Not being able to trust anyone because you don’t know if they are the enemy or not is not how you build a civilization up, it’s how you tear one apart. The dead from the actual violence isn’t even the part that scares me. It’s the mass starvation as everything breaks down.

   1. An interesting game theory from 2012 of just what you predict;

      https://www.google.com/amp/s/westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/bracken-when-the-music-stops-how-americas-cities-may-explode-in-violence/amp/

   2. There are a number of people on the Right who also want things to turn hot, if only to allow them to shoot the bloody bastards and get over it. They’re mad as heck at having to be mad as heck at them.

      1. I deeply, deeply dread the hot war that may be coming, but a part of me wants to cheer it on just so the other damn shoe will DROP already.

         1. As a child of the 80s who was pretty well convinced that we weren’t going to see the 21st century because of nuclear war, I’m fine with not having the other shoe drop.

            1. Heck. I’m old enough to remember “Duck & Cover” & gather in the local fallout shelter; which was the school cafeteria. This was the 60’s & 70’s. So, yea, I am fine with waiting forever for the other shoe to drop.

            2. As am I. The drop-the-shoe-already part is not something I *endorse*. 🙂

         2. There was a time in RL when I was despairing of achieving anything, and very horrible possibilities seemed attractive. Now that my life seems to be turning around, I’m still tense about the possibilities I’ve spent a decade watching creep closer, but I’m quite interesting in kicking the can down the road aways, either until things stabilize, or at least until I’ve moved to a safer position.

6. OK Amanda, first, our president Trump’s tweets and off the cuff remarks are often rude, crude etc., but each and every time he, supposedly, puts his foot in his mouth, it’s his opponents that lose a few teeth. Also those remarks do a grand job of detracting and occupying the media while he gets real things done.

   Second, mass hysteria: Growing up in the forties and fifties, for many decades I just couldn’t understand how Hitler was able to gain the support of the German people, come to power and convince a well educated populace to condone and commit horrendous acts (Japan I could comprehend, they were just a few generations away from feudalism & their emperor was divine, of course they must obey.).

   Alas, today, now, it’s far to easy to fathom, looking at the hysteria and absurdity demonstrated by our well educated elites and their supporters.

   Hence, I’m looking forward to your continuing review of Savage’s book. At this time it’s not something that I think I’d keep on my selves but I probably will borrow a library copy.

   1. Not to excuse them, but the Germans were coming out of a humiliating war defeat followed by years of economic misery. Our crazies grew up in the comfort of an affluent society. I wonder why the mobs seem so similar?

      1. It’s also worth noting that one of the things that Hitler did to build sympathy with the public was to stop the rampages of the Communist thugs. It’s be like another socialist group gaining sympathy from the general public by responding aggressively to the antics of Antifa and BLM.

         I’ve seen it observed that during the late 30s and early 40s, there were people who signed on with the Fascists or the Communists for the sole reason that each group was the only one opposing the other. It was easy to say, “Communism is a great evil, and must be stopped!” And then you’d look around and note that the only group really strongly opposing the local communists was your local fascist-style party.

         1. In the 30s, I could accept someone signing up with the Communists because of opposition to the Fascists (or vice versa). I can’t see how that works in the 40s once we’ve had the Hitler-Stalin pact.

            1. Keep in mind, very few people were calling out Hitler on his most vile policies, and a lot of them were considered crazy because their accusations sounded so much like thoroughly exploded propaganda from WWI.

               1. Also, Hitler, after the putsch, really toned down on the anti-Semitism. Many people thought he had gotten over it.

               2. That, and the average German could not conceive of the concentration camps’ reality. From what I’ve read, a NIMBY attitude was pretty prevalent, as was the all too familiar ‘redistribute their ill-gotten wealth to the Germans who were hard done by the Jews’ justification for… well, everything.

                  1. They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer.

                     He observed that none of the Nazis he interviewed for that book knew of the Holocaust. In the absolute sense.

                     There was certainly a lot of knowledge floating about. A recent book based on recordings of what German soldiers said while prisoner reveals none of them were ever shocked by the news of massacres. OTOH, one German wrote to an English friend, late in the war, that they would have to crush Germany because many Germans were unaware that hundreds of thousands of Jews had been killed in the Eat.

            2. What 40s? Hitler invaded Russia in June 1941. At that point, Communists were being almost encouraged.

         2. Oh, you mean like is happening in Sweden and the rest of Europe. The Only anti-Muslim groups are the Far Right ones, so people are turning to them because all the others are covering up the crimes of the Muslims and protecting them at all costs. If you want Western Civilization to survive the ONLY ones who MIGHT succeed and defend it are the Far Right, all the others are on the Muslim side.

            1. The “far right” as PEGAIDA and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) aren’t really that far right when you look at their economic ideas and some international relations. But believing that Western Civilization is worth preserving and wanting ALL people held to the same standards in the law is “right wing radical.”

               1. IIRC, the founder of PEGAIDA got caught doing something stupid with regard to Nazis, though I don’t remember what it was. So it’s possible that he really is a covert national socialist.

                  But that’s not why people are paying attention to him.

                  It gets back to the Le Pen problem in France. Marine Le Pen is doing well politically in France, and much of that is because of her focus on immigration while the main parties blatantly ignore it. Her father’s views are problematic, which is why he’s out and she’s leading the political party. The question is whether Marine inherited any of those views aside from immigration.

            2. In Europe, things are a bit vague. Everyone who’s even remotely concerned about immigration tends to get labeled as “far right”. Some of them might actually be fascists. Some of them might just be corrupt politicians that happen to have interests that have interests that are conveniently useful at this time (the Hungarian leader seems to fall into this category, according to one of the regulars over at Ace’s comments section). And some of them might actually be good people with a good cause that are clearsighted about what’s going on right now.

               Unfortunately, it’s difficult to tell from other parts of the world. And the insistence of the press in demonizing everyone who doesn’t agree with them as “far right-wing fascists” makes it even harder.

               1. Even the mild ‘Immigrants should learn the language and culture of their new home to help them settle, find jobs and become independent’ is considered ‘far right-wing’ to the press. *dry*

         3. Eh, they also picked fights with Communists. Mind you, that got left out of propaganda. And the Night of the Long Knives was probably necessary exactly because the sort of street violence the SA had engaged in was counter-productive once in power.

            1. That, and Hitler was disgusted by homosexuals, and it was quite prevalent among the SA leadership. Put the two together, and yeah, what happened was inevitable.

               1. That, also, was a problem with once in power — along with some anti-family things that they had to curb because of outrage. You have to appeal to the masses or you will be out of power.

         4. Some, (Latvia, Estonia? iirc Latvia, and the Finns) fought side by side with the Nazis because they:
            A – Wanted help dealing with Stalin
            B – Knew that once they pushed the Soviets out, kicking the arse of the Germans was going to be easy (iirc Finns especially were of this opinion).

            1. The Finns didn’t have a choice. The Soviets attacked them, and not the other way around. They also intentionally took certain actions (such as not attacking the US and UK ships at the nearby docks that were off-loading Lend-Lease supplies that would have antagonized the Western Allies.

               The Balts, of course, were in a bad situation no matter how you look at it.

               1. Due to the demands Stalin was making before The Winter War, the Finns had chatted with the Germans a bit before the attacks, but nothing real serious, and well, after the attacks and handing Stalin his backside, they dealt with the Germans a bit more, but not hard enough to gain the ire of the US and Brits. They seemed to make it clear they were just going to keep the Rus out, and “y’all just go about what it is you’re going about, and don’t mind us then, hey?”
                  Latvians were fighting in Nazi uniform and after the end of the war, many had to leave or suffer the joys of Stalin’s revenge. I know some ended up in Britain and the US. I forget where, maybe a BBC program, but one had said openly that yes, he fought with the Germans against Russia, but was part of the group that was planning on driving the germans out as soon as the Soviets were done in. oops. They remained proud of their service because they saw it as fighting for the homeland and using the tools available and were not party to all the atrocities of the Reich (yeah, the Soviets accused them of a lot, but more than a bit of the Pot and Kettle there).

                  Why the heck am I up at midnight? I got up at 4am!

               2. Choices I’m glad I didn’t have to make:

                  When the USSR was about to take over the Baltics, Germany was trying to lure Baltic Germans out (with Stalin raising no objections).

      2. The mobs seem so similar because a Socialist is a Communist is a Fascist is a Nazi. The differences are largely cosmetic.

         1. pick the flavor of your poison!

         2. Remember that everyone knew Fascism was left-wing until Stalin decreed that opposition to him meant right-wing, and all the useful idiots fell in line.

      3. Too, you had a young generation who had seen economic certainty erased, and (it appeared) their hopes of having a middle-class or even upper working-class lifestyle erased, apparently by the Allies (aka the Hyperinflation). Now we have a generation that aspires to what their parents have/had but can’t because of debt and a lack of marketable skills, combined with eight years of a lousy economy.

         History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme on occasion.

         1. Thanks, that’s a commonality I hadn’t thought of! Hyperinflation did indeed beat up the young Germans in a way that college debt/lack of skills/lousy economy affects our young people. Mind you, I don’t think it’s nearly as bad, but you’re right that the effects could be similar.

            1. Of course a great deal of those young peoples’ trouble stems from the garbage degrees they were sweet-talked into getting by Lefty academics who desperately want to keep their cushy jobs. A great deal of the Higher Education industry is rotten, and the students it preys on are getting the shaft on several levels.

               Pity the college graduates stuck in dead end jobs aren’t taking out their anger on the right targets.

               1. “Pity the college graduates stuck in dead end jobs aren’t taking out their anger on the right targets.” Yep. It should be pointed out that the mansions of the college presidents, and the salaries of the expanding numbers of university bureaucrats, are being paid for with a great deal of human suffering.

                  1. The notion that companies can’t test their applicants without opening themselves up to risk of a lawsuit is the big culprit.

         2. First there was the hyperinflation, then there was the depression and the severe unemployment. Hans Fallada’s excellent novel, “Little Man, What Now?” portrays the latter period through the eyes of a likable young couple struggling for survival. I reviewed it here:

            https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/29873.html

            The novel had enough international resonance that an American movie was made based on it in 1934.

      4. I think it’s because they’ve grown up in such an affluent society. There is no place for them to bleed off the energy of youth, instead they jump on board the insane train that their progressives teachers have foisted on them under the guise of education.

         On the surface, this type of personality is one I’d also expect for the classic ‘religious zealot’. With much of the current disfavor for religion in academic circles, that type of personality is being drawn into socialism and Left-wing lunacy. Same disease with different symptoms.

         **Note, i’m not knocking religion, just a particular personality trait that some followers of religions display.

      5. Leave us not ignore that German unification was only completed in 1871, with Bismarck elevating Wilhelm, King of Prussia, to Kaiser (emperor) status. That is to say, it was within living memory of a number of people, comprising about the same interval as from the American War of Independence and the Mexican-American War. From Waterloo to the Night of the Long Knives was only about 120 years, putting German Unification as a rough mid-point — about on a par with the interval between the end of WWII and today.

         Following their “short, victorious war” over France, the German people unified (among other areas) Prussia, Alsace-Lorraine, Bavaria, Schleswig and Holstein (reclaimed from the Danes) into a single polity. The new German Empire experienced tremendous growth and prosperity, leaving their defeat in The Great War as a bitter disappointment for a generation which had known only success. The German generation who had grown up since unification would have been on a par with our Baby Boomers — which is not intended as a compliment to either cohort.

         It can be a challenge to view History from the perspective of those living through it without benefit of hindsight.

   2. The thing to remember about the despicable Austrian is that a lot of the disrepute his methods garner today is based on hindsight and the stink that associating them with him put on the whole mess. Antisemitism was a LOT more ‘respectable’ in 1930 than it became circa 1945. Eugenics was ‘respectable’ Progressivism Under Woodrow Wilson, and Wilson is STILL considered respectable by the Left (*spit*). Mass rallies are a major propaganda tool, but since 1945 the people who use them have been damned careful to downplay uniforms and salutes.

      And Germany caught a lot of unfair blame for WWI, as the elites in the Allied nations did their damndest to redirect public disgust over how badly the war had been bungled onto somebody else. Teh Narrative has been that Germany attacked France, wheras the truth is closer to they were gearing up to attack each-other and France didn’t get there fast enough.

      Moreover, The Huns were said to have comitted just about every atrocity imaginable, almost all of which was unmitigated bullsh*t, which is why people took so long to believe what Hitler was actually doing. They’d heard it before about the Germans, and it hadn’t been true.

      THE RABBLE ROUSERS deals with some of this, and Paul Johnson’s histories go into it in some detail.

      A lot of the revulsion felt by people over the death camps had its roots in a dreadful fealing of ‘some of our intellectuals were calling for this kind of crap. That could have been US.’.

      1. I can see that. I make a similar point with those that want to tear down statues because they judge the past by current standards. Today its Jefferson over slavery. Tomorrow it will be Ginsburg over abortion.

         In this century, abortion will be denormalized and historical figures who supported it will be treated with the same contempt we reserve for nazis and slavers.

         1. I agree that abortion will probably cease to be as broadly legal as it is now; the behavior of the Pro-Abortion Left pretty much ensures that. Another abbatoir like Kermit Gosnell’s operation (if not so extreme) is bound to turn up, since the Left has apparently learned nothing from the Gosnell incident. Also, I confidently expect to hear any day that a group of Pro-Abortion activists have snuck a minor across sates lines to evade a Parental Notification law, and the girl has died of comlications.

            That said, I don’t think the transformation you envision is likely to benthat extreme. Abortion was practiced outside the law for centuries before Roe v Wade, and will doubtless continue after the Pro-Abortion True Believers bring about its,return to outlaw status.

            The dramatic shift in reputation I expect to see in medical circles is the downfall of so-called ‘gender reassignment surgery’. In the first place, it obviously doesn’t work. The patient is not transformed into a member of the opposit sex, but mutilated. Further, there appears to be a growing body of data indicating that it does no good psychologically for a large percentage of patients. Suicide rates among those who have had the surgery are much higher than among those who share the belief that they ‘should’ be the opposit sex, but who have not undergone the surgery.

            I think that before too very long the doctors who performed the surgery and those who advised patients to undergo it will be viewed as dangerous quacks. Rather like Sege Vonoroff, the Dr. who grafted parts of monkey testicles onto the testicles of men for a variety of reasons.

            1. With respect, I disagree. Trans are less than 1% and not beings that engender sympathy.

               But 45 million babies murdered? In America alone.

               And the commonality with atrocity doesnt end there. We classified Africans as sub-human animals to justify enslaving them, Jews as sub-human parasites to justify exterminating them, Native Americans as sub-human savages to justify their genocide. And now we declare fetuses to be sub-human tissue to justify murdering babies.

               I think future historians will grant Abortion admittance into the Brotherhood of Evil without hesitation.

               1. Devil’s advocate time.
                  1. The natural rate of failure of pregnancy through things like failure to implant puts some pretty difficult obstacles in the way of criminalizing abortions earlier than a certain point.
                  2. The historians might be mostly really horrible people during the period where events are current enough to get really upset about.

                  I think we probably can’t put the ultrasound genie back into the bottle, and that this is likely to have effects. I am skeptical of forecasts of the future, and am even more skeptical of weighting moral judgements based on said forecasts.

                  1. Your point 1 ignores the bright-line difference between natural death and murder. That is, the difference between a pregnancy that fails and an abortion is that only in the latter case was it caused by the deliberate action of someone who intended death to result from that action. It’s pretty easy to distinguish between natural death and deliberate homicide, and it will likewise be pretty easy to distinguish between natural failure of a pregnancy and deliberate abortion.

                     As for point 2, many people today get really upset about horrible things that the Roman Empire did, or other horrible things that the Aztecs did. Moral indignation doesn’t require proximity to the events in question. And since mores change over time, even if historians of the 22nd century tend to be horrible people, it’s not likely that historians of the 23rd century will be horrible in the same way. So the likelihood of future historians condemning abortion as a horrible practice remains high; it’s just unpredictable which time period will see historians doing so.

                     1. And abortion, of course, has its own elements to make future outrage more likely: evolution. The future generations will be those who were not aborted. And while it works on the margin, it works.

                     2. Soon and very soon. Serious scientists are starting to get worried about POPULATION DEARTH.

                        1. Indeed. The entire developed world has more or less dropped below replacement level birth rates. Some of those countries retain a low population growth rate due to immigration. However the reported birth rate even in the less-developed countries seems to be declining, as well.

                           1. Also there’s indications the sh*tholes are over reporting births. You figure it.

                           2. Money, presumably

                           3. Well, that will in due course fix itself by the simple dint that those who have ten children will be greatly overrepresented in the next generation, while those who have none will not be.

                              Could be very ugly stage in evolution (and for once, that’s scientifically accurate).

                     3. Actually, Robin, it has a lot more to do with the fact that PROVING it was an “induced” abortion rather than a “natural” one is pretty damned impossible at the earlier stages of pregnancy. Whether or not you’ll get the anti-abortion zealots to admit that and keep demanding actual proof rather than guilt by accusation will be the tough part.

                        1. That a miscarriage goes on your medical record as “spontaneous abortion” also says it all. I’m going to repeat “Whether or not you’ll get the anti-abortion zealots to admit that and keep demanding actual proof rather than guilt by accusation will be the tough part.”

                        2. It can be pretty hard to prove that a death was murder, too. Nevertheless, we manage.

                           1. Yep. Of course, you don’t have half the population you’re going to pull your jury pool from that disagrees with your definition of murder.

                           2. That’s a self-fixing problem.

               2. I think the magnitude of the abortion industry alone argues against the shift you envision. Unless the Pro-Life people are a good deal more vindictive, or the Black Quislings like Sharpton a great deal more imaginative then I think likely, the abortion business will get mostly ignored, as the doctors who prescribed heroin during the Great Binge were simply told to stop, and not vilified.

                  But the surgeons who sold sex-change are few enough that they can be pilloried without shaking large segments of Society like an earthquake.

                  *shrug*

                  Hell, we may both be right, and both be wrong.

                  1. Yup, you’re right, we’re both wrong. I took a peak forward and found history rebooted after the EMP Wars of 2112. A million digital Libararies of Alexandria just gone.

                     Hat tip. Bartender, pour my friend another of whatever he’s having.

      2. This summary. So much this.

      3. “The thing to remember about the despicable Austrian is that a lot of the disrepute his methods garner today is based on hindsight and the stink that associating them with him put on the whole mess.”

         See States rights, federalism, and slavery / ACW.

   3. Sebastian Haffner, who grew up in Germany between the wars, had some interesting thoughts about the psychological factors involved in support for Naziism. He observed that when the political and economic climate stabilized (during the Stresemann chancellorship), most people were happy…but not everyone:

      “A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddently ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.”

      and

      “To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.”

      I believe that in America today, we have a substantial number of people who fit this profile–and the vast majority of them are on the Left.

      1. That certainly matches my observations of the Far Left in my lifetime; many of the Hippies learned to channel their energies into more productive ends than intoxication from drugs or politics, but many did not, and they taught successive generations of adolescents the heady feel of emotionalism as a political end. And so, through the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st we see the rise of the Hobby Protester; people who are activists less because they have thought about a Cause and judged it good than because this is what they do with their free time, as Reinactors work on theor uniforms and go to battlefields, ot car buffs work on theor wheels and go to classic car meets. But unlike the Reinactors or the car buffs (or amature sports enthusiasts or any of dozens of other hobby groups) the Hobby Protesters learn little and do little other than stir up their own juvenile emotions.

   4. Ehh…here’s the thing. The GOP should, by rights, be able to achieve a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate this election. The geography favors them completely.
      However, the GOP will not do so, because Trump scares the squishy middle, and if the Democrats were smart they wouldn’t be letting their base run crazy and scare the squishy middle.
      However, they are stupid, and right now the squishy middle is–barely–scared more by the Democrats than they are by Trump.

      1. The ‘squishy middle’ is learning, slowly, that what the mainstream media tells them about politics, and Trump, amd just about anything else, is likely to be utter pigswill. The Establishment Left burned a lot of the Media’s credibility to get Obama elected twice, and a lot more in 2016 and since. The squshies are not necessarily turning to Conservative or Libertarian sources, but they are figuring out that what the babble-box tells them is one long political ad for Democrats. Whether enough of them will have figured it out in time for this year’s National Send In The Clowns Day, on Nov. 6, is an open question.

   5. Jim took both my points, so I’ll just say ditto ditto.
      Trump tweets because it drives the Left loonier and loonier, and then they make mistakes.
      I find some news item almost everyday now that makes me say, “NOW I understand how Hitler happened.”

7. There’s a wonderful, darkly funny, book about mob behavior that I recommend to anyone with a cynic’s appreciation of history. Eric Frank Russell’s THE RABBLE ROUSERS. Russell comes off as Libertarian/Left but he also plays remarably fair. In dealing with the Sacco and Vanzetti case he points out that, innocent or not, they had a number of real strikes against them that the Left really never wanted to consider….such as consorting with career criminals. His essay on the Dreyfus casein France is a classic.

   ( I have a collection of essays from American Heritage that includes a piece by a man who started out firmly believing that Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent, and came to the conclusion that they probably weren’t)

   Sadly, the book was only published once, in paperback, but chasing it down is well worth the trouble. I have gotten a copy through Interlibrary Loan, when one of mine went missing and I wanted to read it again, and Amazon usually has at lesst one copy for sale, used, though a little expensive.

   1. Today there was a copy for sale, used, cheap.

      Not any more. 😀

      1. Oh, I do hope you enjoy it.

8. This is the part of the movie where the victim has stood up to the bully and needs to be made an example of, lest all the other victims realize the bully is just a paper tiger.

   If the midterms don’t result in a blue wave, expect violence from the left. I’m stocking up for a week’s worth of fuel, food, water, etc just in anticipation of Ferguson riots.

   1. California – both in the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, and the Bay Area (as well as further inland from there) – could get very interesting depending on how the voting goes.

      1. I’ll be in San Diego on election day. I’m contemplating bringing my sword.

         1. San Diego still leans Republican, from what I understand. Any “events” should be low key. If there’s any “fun” in the southern part of the state, it’ll likely take place in LA County.

            1. And then mainly in Hollywood and South Central, a continuation of the previous reel, on a bigger screen.

               Rural L.A. County is fairly red, and resents being lumped in with the lowlife. 🙂

               1. i doubt there is going to be anything in South Central. more likely Hollywood to Santa Monica.

   2. Stocking up on essentials, (sadly) re-cleaning & oiling the weapons & stocking the magazines . . .

9. And here is an FYI: Hurricane (correction, Post-tropical cyclone) Leslie isn’t going to end as a fish storm. The National Hurricane Center has her disputing in Spain Sunday after crossing the middle of Portugal today. I looked it up a week ago, so I could be wrong, but I think the first advisory was dated September 23. One to three inches of rain (locally higher amounts possible) and 75 mph winds.

10. I’m disappointed that we have to put in a throw-away line before we praise the direction Trump is moving the country; which the majority of the people in the majority of the states approve. From the opening of this blog:
    “While Trump has, on the whole, done a better job than I expected, I’m still not a complete fan. I wish someone would take his phone away from him, deactivate his Twitter account and coach him better on when to keep his mouth shut.”
    He uses the phone and Twitter to great effect to highlight and marginalize the liberal, progressive, National Socialist elite. Maybe he is crazy like a fox.

    1. Well Subspike, Amanda DIDN’T NEED to put into a throw-away line.

       She’s being honest about her “feelings” about Trump.

       1. My feelings about Trump are simple and straightforward.: “Hit them again! “

          1. “My feelings about Trump …”

             You don’t go to political war with the president you wish, you go with the president you have.

             I could belabor a comparison of Trump & Grant but the parallel is plain to see. We can’t spare this president, he fights.

    2. I agree. It seems to me that Trump uses his tweets and his public statements the way a matador uses his cape.

       1. Yes, but we are all interpreting the fact pattern in different ways, and when we drive off the dissenters we blind ourselves.

          Okay, maybe y’all don’t actually need the perspective I have to offer, and would suffer nothing for its absence.

          More generally, having a range of opinions here improves the accuracy of guesstimates about political viability of this or that.

       2. Yep. People forget, the guy is a branding genius — especially when he goads opponents into branding themselves.

          1. THIS.

    3. Trump is much SMARTER than the average bear.

    4. I’m also not a complete fan of Trump. I haven’t liked him since he ran the USFL into the ground. But he’s been surprisingly effective as President with his policies. He’s still too bombastic for my taste, but he’s turned me into enough of a fan to vote for him in ’20.

       1. Nod.

          I voted for him because he was “Not-Hillary”.

          I can’t see any possible Democrat that would be better for the US than he is.

          1. No Democrat who’d do an actual good job as President can get the nomination.

             Hell, I’m not sure the second coming of Wilson, Roosevelt, or Kennedy could win the nomination today.

             1. If you look at JFK’s actions, he was pretty far to the right of either Bush… In rhetoric, he was even to the right of Nixon, at least during his campaign. (Nixon has a lot to say about that in one of his books; in the know and having to STFU due to national security, vs. “super hawk” who didn’t officially know, and could therefore say anything that would get votes)

                That’s how hard left both parties have swung.

             2. Of the three, Wilson, FDR, and JFK, Kennedy is the only one who wasn’t a comlete elitist, bigoted swine. Wilson’s reputation has been shored up by stuffing his fondness for eugenics theory and the behavior of his Attourney General (Mitchel Palmer, an absolute assh*le) towards immigrants down the memory hole. FDR was another prime scumbag, whose achievements include roping the whole nation into the Ponzi scheme called Social Security, which is going to explode loke a swelling corpse any year now. JFK was so-so. If he hadn’t been assassinated, he would probably be considered a mediocrity at best, but he was head and shoulders (and a good deal of the torso) above Wilson or the man Mencken called ‘Roosevelt the lesser’.

                1. There’s been some slow movement to start to get rid of Wilson, based on his blatant racism.

                   1. FDR wasn’t a whole lot better. Even setting the Japanese Internment aside, it was the Roosevelt administration’s smug assumption that Japan couldn’t reach beyond the Philippines (shared, admitedly, by the military) that caused Pearl Harbor.

                      Twit.

                      1. I suspect that FDR will eventually be knocked off his pedestal, and the internment camps may very well play a role in that. But Wilson was even more openly racist, with things like the ‘Birth of a Nation’ showing, and his segregation of the Federal Government.

                   2. Was in a long online argument with someone who tried to claim that he was a mix of Progressivism and conservativism on that ground. Mind you, his idea of an argument was “people can be mixed.”

                      1. Thegood stuffis all progressivism. All the racisty hate is the conservative side

                         1. HOW did you guess?

          2. I’ve gone from being an independent who voted for whichever person seemed best, to being a Never-A-Democrat-Ever-Again voter after the ACA legislation. After the last couple of weeks I’m wondering when we get to start shooting Democrats as a Clear-And-Present-Danger to our Republic?

             1. I’m against shooting people who are simply registered Democrat voters; I kniw too many nice ones. But the Democrat Politicians, academics, MSM Propagandists, and so on? In my darker moments I fantasize about giving them five days to get out of the country, and then starting to pay for pelts.

                1. Some voters are just in districts where the decision is the Democratic primary, not the election, and want some say.

                   1. True dat.
                      When you get enough of the “Democrats of convenience” together, they learn that they can actually vote as Republicans instead. It happened in the southern states.
                      My mom used to campaign for the GOP when I was young, but as I grew older I noticed that she tended to support the principles and policies of Democrats, so I asked her what was the deal.
                      She replied (essentially) that, back in the day, she thought that the state needed two active parties for viable political discourse, but now the GOP didn’t need her help any more.

                2. Which, if you look back at it, was roughly how the Expulsion of the Tories worked out. The ringleaders, officials, and the outright obnoxious ones were run out of town (or shot), while the average neighbor who accepted the Revolution as a done deal got to stay. Not a clear dividing line, but close enough for jazz.

    5. He’s doing far better than I expected. This is a man who, until he declared his run, was close political and personal friends with Hillary and Bill.
       So, he has been proving my fears wrong so far, and I hope he continues doing so.
       But by far, his biggest accomplishment is being Not Hillary.

       1. “Not Hillary”‘s half of what I voted for him for.

          The other half was watching Lefitsts go bonkers in amusing ways, which I also have to grant him — though I underestimated how many would go bonkers in ways the reverse of bonkers

       2. That was 100% of the reason I voted for him.

          You would have had to reach pretty deep to find a candidate bad enough I would have voted for the Witch instead…

          1. Same.

          2. at the time, I didn’t think the Republicans could get a much worse candidate for making me consider voting Witch, and it wasn’t even close. I think a large number would have “crawled over broken glass”, to vote against Hillary even if Jeb! or one of the other squish, establishment, born losers had gotten the nomination.
             On second thought, I think Jeb! would have been a worse candidate, but I would still prefer him to her evilness.
             Bernie the Commie was a more likable candidate, and i would prefer to punch his lights out.

             1. “i would prefer to punch his lights out.” with a cast iron frying pan.

                1. or a Louisville Slugger, Cricket Bat . . .

             2. I suspect that Bernie would have won, simply for being reasonably likable and for the assumption that he’d be ineffective.

                1. quite possible

       3. “But by far, his biggest accomplishment is being Not Hillary.”

          And my Gods, what a sniveling, self-centered, oblivious twunt Shrillary is proving to be in defeat. I thought I knew how bad she was before the election, but I didn’t know the half of it.

          No wonder Bill screws anything he can hold down.

          1. Yeah, I get the feeling she said “Look, we will need at least one child.” and that explains Chelsea, everything else I have heard, even from yobs who actually like Hillary (even after meeting her more than once), makes it clear she is at best an unpleasant person to be around.

11. I accidentally heard the first part of Michael Savage’s radio show Thursday, I reeled at the hate in his voice. Hate directed towards Tucker Carlson, Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh.

    He swears he isn’t jealous Tucker’s book is doing so much better than his because after all the dreadful Tucker was on the expletive deleted Fox news pimping his book. That is a valid point, I’ve never seen the like for books touted on Fox News Network, however the hate in his voice belied his statement. He is obviously jealous of all of the above.

    I have had occasion to listen to his show some years back and he has not improved, he has become more virulent. I don’t understand the hate. I do want to hear what you think about his book, but I don’t think I could read it.

    1. Does he still have that “Borders, Language, Culture” tagline?

       As if language and culture weren’t intertwined.

       1. I don’t know, I turned it off before I got to angry at him.

    2. The vibe I’ve always gotten off of him is that he leans Left, and started the over the top “conservative” bombast as a grift.
       To me, he’s always sounded like a parody from someone who doesn’t quite “get” the thing he’s parodying.

       Of course, that might make him the best possible commenter on the Left losing their damned minds. But I haven’t tried listening to him in years, so I can’t say.

12. Dr. Savage… I read LOT of Doc Savage pulp novels in the late-’50s-early-’60s.

    1. 😆

    2. aww, someone made mention of it before me.

    3. I read a few, too. And I’ve seen the movie with Ron Ely. Great flick.

       1. Not for a fan of the books. Not for this one, anyway.

          Ely himself did good, considering what he was working with; but the movie itself was classic Sixties camp that sneered at the source material–BATMAN without the affection, and about half the sense of fun. The fact that the entire soundtrack was repurposed Sousa marches said more about the creators’ attitude than I really want to think about.

13. c4c

    1. c4c

       1. CDC 6000

14. Sounds interesting.

15. I listened to Savage on the radio for a while years ago and stopped because I couldn’t take it. IMO he’s not conservative; he’s a nut case. I’d never buy or read anything by him. This might be a great book, and if so, it’s too bad because I don’t want any part of anything with his name on it.

    On the other hand, I just finished Tucker Carlson’s SHIP OF FOOLS and enjoyed it. He’s talking about things I already believe, but I learned some interesting facts anyway, and he hits both sides, although the libs harder. I agree with his basic premise that Trump’s election was a howl of fury from us deplorables. My vote was exactly that.

    I supported Trump and do now more than when I voted for him. After decades of politicians lying to get elected (remember how Bush didn’t believe in nation-building?) my expectations were low. I figured if he did a couple of things he promised, he’d be better than most. He’s way exceeded that and doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

16. Sounds interesting. I have never heard anything to make me think Savage belongs to the Cult of Trump. It should provide us with entertainment and thinking material. Do it.

17. I’ll catch his show for a half-hour or so if I’m on the way home from errands. He used to have a really bad jealous streak, but I haven’t noticed it so much in the past few years.

    $SPOUSE just ordered Tucker’s book. I might order this one.

18. Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Mackay http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518

19. A few years ago I was working second shift and would sometimes listen to his radio show on the way home. Savage doesn’t have a whole lot of room to talk about spreading political hysteria. He’s real close to Alex Jones level of tinfoil hat. Go ahead and read it, but with a skeptical eye.

    1. Alex Jones is more trustworthy than the New York Times, the World Weekly News, or Glyer. And I may be slandering the World Weekly News.

       1. yeah, you can trust the WWN. a bit like Pravda (nothing touches on reality, but hey, some folks gotta read somthin), something you know is a total fabrication, but might be entertaining (to some people). the NYTime and G-mon? trying to pass WWN levels of reality as actual reality.
          Bat Boy should sue

          1. I forget which not-news show it was, but some time ago I watched a single ‘episode’ of it… and it reminded me of Radio Moscow. Or maybe the quotation about one Soviet ‘diplomatic’ or such, “You’d never catch him in an outright lie, but he a very filtered version of reality.” comes close. They didn’t tell any outright falsehoods, but they carefully removed any context that didn’t align mit Das Narratif.

             1. “They didn’t tell any outright falsehoods, but they carefully removed any context that didn’t align mit Das Narratif.” – Orvan.
                This.
                As I see it, they never say anything that isn’t true, but the entire article is a lie.

20. Past bedtime follies.

    Stop mass hysteria; panic as a unique individual.

21. Small minds will always need an Emmanuel Goldstein to rail at.

22. “So far, I’ve seen nothing to warn that Savage is going to go off the rails and turn the book into a Cult of Trump sort of thing the way so many of the Left’s books are Cult of Obama or Cult of Hillary or Cult of Bernie books.”

    Obviously I am subject to both selection bias (I don’t read those kind of political hagiographies either, whether Left or Right) and confirmation bias, but I don’t see that as a common defect of the Right as it is on the Left. Conservatives for the most part share what Thomas Sowell calls “The Tragic Vision” of mankind; or as Peggy Noonan famously described Reagan’s moral instincts: “He believed every man was doing as much good as he could, and as much bad as he must.”

    Then there is the omitted part of Lord Acton’s famous observation on the corruptions of power: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”

    Or to paraphrase Abraham Maslow, “The bigger your hammer, the more every problem looks like a nail.”

    If we created an autocracy of the saints, it would still be an autocracy… perhaps an even more totalitarian one than if it were run by mere mortals.

    1. It’s not as often a defect on the right. But because of the nature of the Trump Revolt it is seen now and then.

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