It Is Later Than You Think
by
Bill Reader
“We thought we ranked above the chance of ill.
Others might fall, not we, for we were wise—
Merchants in freedom. So, of our free-will
We let our servants drug our strength with lies.
The pleasure and the poison had its way
On us as on the meanest, till we learned
That he who lies will steal, who steals will slay.
Neither God’s judgment nor man’s heart was turned.”
-Rudyard Kipling—”The Covenant”
It is only lately—and, I think, in conjunction with many others on the Right—that I have properly ascertained both the magnitude and the severity of the threat we as a civilization face. I choose my words carefully, here—as a civilization. Not just as a nation, but all of us in the broader western world. We have all fallen prey to something pernicious. And it is both exactly what Glenn Reynolds discussed in his USA Today column here—and then again it is something slightly different.
I’m not seeking to present anything new to you today. I will consider myself to have done well if I present what you already know together, without the soporific effect of lengthy times between stories, or the calming effect of great distances. This is not about the future. I am not even sure it is about the present, though I remain optimistic. But see it, and judge it, for yourself— and recognize it for what it is, because I’m lately afraid our time is much dearer than we’d suspected.
It is later than you think.
The world’s seven largest economies, in ranked order, are the US, China, Japan, Germany, the UK, India, and France. Traditionally, China, Japan, and India are considered Eastern nations. Therefore in a practical sense—and probably also, arguably (albeit at more length than I care to go into; I have bigger fish to fry), in a pragmatic and philosophical sense— the heavyweights and current stabilizing poles of the Western world, writ large, are the US, Germany, the UK, and France.
It would be troubling for me to write that there had been a coup in any of these. Yet increasingly it looks like there has been a silent coup—or certainly an attempted one, at all events—in all of these. Not because of grand conspiracy, but because of a kind of monoculture among what Glenn Reynolds refers to above as “the new class”. They are easy to identify, by their smug certainty that they know better what ought to be done with and for you than you yourself do. And they are beholden—as often as they can possibly make this so— to nobody, and are guided by nothing except their doctrinaire beliefs in what might charitably be called academic Marxism, and might more aptly be called simple totalitarianism.
Angela Merkel was the bellwether. Guided not by the desires of her citizens, nor by any apparent concern or understanding of its ramifications, but solely because it was pleasant to pretend that Germany could accommodate them, she opened Germany’s borders to vast hordes of impoverished denizens of the third world. As tends to happen with people imported from backwater nations using absolutely no filtering process to guarantee they are even aware of their host nation’s values— let alone support said values— they brought the cultures of their native motherlands along with them instead (not that this is topical in any way). And on New Years Eve, in 2015, “For all of Germany, police estimated in a document leaked in 2016 that 1,200 women were sexually assaulted and that at least 2,000 men were involved, often acting in groups”. These crimes, largely by ‘men of “Arab or North African appearance”,’ were the gratitude Germany got for its attempt at grandiose humanitarian aid.
A heavy price was borne for Merkel’s arrogance, though Merkel herself remained comfortably distant from what she caused, as is usually the case in these “for your own good” schemes. Her only meaningful punishment is that she is not planning to seek re-election as leader of the CDU or Germany—and even still, she fully intends to stay chancellor until 2021. Though not before making German politics decidedly more—interesting. In 2017, along with her ouster, suddenly the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was a significant force, and her own party was on the back foot—to her shock and dismay. Her citizens chose the “wrong” answer, and the international press was sure to tell everyone as much. (As an aside: the “quality” reporting in the US and UK makes it utterly impossible for me to tell whether AfD is actually a concern in its own right, or just a correction to an overwhelmingly idiotic decision by the ruling party. Insofar as the MSM can’t tell the difference between Trump and Hitler and have reportedly been axing foreign correspondent positions for years, I tend to assume that the AfD would get called Nazis purely for holding stances the Left disagrees with. Actually being German is just icing on the cake. By the way, to any leftists reading, here’s a hint: Hitler probably wouldn’t even recognize Israel—given that a lot of the radical islamic groups in the middle east were originally funded by the Nazis in part because they both hated Jews. He would therefore be decidedly unlikely to favor Israel over “Palestine” by moving his embassy to Jerusalem. Oh, and he probably wouldn’t be Grand Marshall in a Salute to Israel Parade. But I digress. On the other hand, 2017 is also the year “Mein Kampf” got back on the German bestseller’s list, and you can spin that how you like, but it doesn’t strike me as a good sign. I would love it if someone who is near Germany could weigh in with their thoughts in the comments.)
Turn now to the case of Brexit. In a complete surprise to the British elite, a referendum on leaving the EU came back showing that the British don’t like absentee landlords from the rest of the continent telling them what to do. This had recently become especially important since, well, Germany had just attempted to commit suicide by taking a massive overdose of immigrants.
Now the EU was telling the rest of its members that it was no fair not also attempting suicide, and immigrants should be able to move freely into England from Germany. Not that the British press said it this way. No, the British press, curiously, decided to frame their opponents as being “anti-immigration”—which they say in roughly the same way you or I might say “satanist”—thus demonstrating that between Germany and Scandinavia, professional leftists the world over don’t really have a problem with rape, as long as the victim is a blond white chick.
Moreover, the elite in Britain were outraged, since many of their close personal friends happen to be absentee landlords from the rest of the continent, and their favorite hobby to bond over is making up absurd things and telling people to do them. Think of it as “Simon Says”, except to stop playing you have to emigrate—and you have to wait for Simon to say you can emigrate.
But, driven by a resolute belief in the power of democracy, they boldly decided to— not comply with the result. The people, you see, had once again gotten the “wrong” answer. So the British elite dragged its feet, and the EU threw an outright tantrum which made it easier for them to do so. (Not that the EU doesn’t have its reasons—England leaving is an existential threat to the EU, since it essentially destroys the current “rob from the rich and give to the dysfunctional” model it operates on by taking a massive cash source away. If you wonder why the EU is trying to rob Britain blind in Brexit “deal” negotiations, it’s because they can’t afford not to.). This culminated in a “deal” by Theresa May that was so ass-backwards many people think it was intentionally designed to be broken—and it went down in flames by a massive margin. The rest of this story hasn’t even been told, yet, but the smart money is that Britain’s elite is going to try to push another vote on Brexit, and this time encourage people, by hook or crook, to choose the “right” answer.
Say, do you notice a pattern?
Well, how about this story, one you know well. The MSM, to give the First Woman President (TM) the best possible chance, openly prayed for the person they considered the worst, most back-number conservative candidate, to run against her.
And when they got him—good and hard, as you might say—they proceeded to attempt to destroy him the way they’d always done with Republican candidates. EG, they called him Hitler (I always wonder how many Leftists who instantly played the Nazi card on Trump even remember that we endured probably six solid years of the “Chimpy McBushHitler” slander from them, personally, before Trump was even a major national candidate. If the Republicans could nominate Anne Frank to a major position, the Democrats would trip over themselves to call her literally Hitler—and a gender traitor, to boot.)
Trouble was, first, they didn’t factor in that they were still running one of the most unlikeable people on the planet—a person whose tagline rapidly became a single derogatory term for opponents, “deplorables”—that applied, essentially, to everyone from far right to moderate middle.
Secondly, they assumed that running footage of Trump discussing his beliefs and campaign promises would hurt him. To be honest, to the extent that I was skeptical of Trump at the beginning, it was because: A- Given that he was from New York and had pictures taken with virtually every notable Democrat you can imagine, I didn’t think he believed in or would even attempt his campaign promises; and B- I was partially caught up in the media response on the right, from outlets like National Review that, in retrospect, I think were themselves mostly people who couldn’t bring themselves to doubt there had to be fire behind the massive MSM smoke-bomb, and later felt they’d be seen as inconsistent if they changed their minds.
But for anyone else who was in my boat, I can’t imagine that seeing what Trump actually said was especially off-putting. There are things like tariffs I’m not in love with—but most of the platform is solid. Tax reform, an emphasis on border security (of any kind, actually, compared to the import-a-voter Left), reforming (rather than, as the single-payer advocates like Hillary would have it, further deforming) healthcare, deregulation, taking the boot off the face of American energy producers—there’s a lot in there that most of the right and many in the middle can agree on. Meanwhile, Hillary “Adult Fun Camps” Clinton basically offered European governance, except more corrupt. This rather extreme position, the MSM explained, was “moderate”, and they estimated that Hillary had a 99.9999999% chance of winning, with the remaining 0.0000001% being their estimated odds of her being tragically hit by a meteor.
But insofar as this was about five months after Brexit, where it turned out that even Britain had had enough of European governance, this went over about as well as you’d imagine.
Actually, it went over worse. Hillary Clinton went from impossible-to-lose to impossible-to-win so fast it had much of the MSM exposing their true colors that very night. You remember the tears and shocked faces?
That alone should have put middle America on notice about media bias. And to the Democrats, this seemed like some kind of terrible miracle. I’ve talked about that before, and I won’t belabor it now, but I suspect that’s in part because the upper echelons of Democrats know they rig the game in their favor.
And if you don’t think they know it, first, I offer the examples of Arizona and Florida in the 2018 midterms. And second, I offer the very first bill the new House brought to the floor. And third, as an extension of their, shall we say, morally challenged ways, note the willingness to use the FBI on a fishing expedition against Trump, starting before the election and continuing, now, a full two years in. I’d say there’s very little that shows off to better effect that they want to win at all cost.
Because there patently isn’t any there, there. There never was any. At best it was about using Russia as a convenient excuse to find something, anything, real, with which to take down Trump and thus reverse the election results. At worst, they didn’t even want something real. They may well have simply wanted a string of tantalizing accusations that would then be immediately disproven. Note the unending barrage of Headlines in 30 point font and retractions in 6 point font a week later (if, indeed, any retraction materializes at all), which the media collectively calls “ethical journalism”. In fact, look at what has happened this very week—as we saw a “bombshell” about Trump so stupid it was dissolved by Mueller’s office within a day, followed by a “bombshell” about catholic school-kids disproven by more extensive video evidence than a murder on a movie set, some of it taken by the professional protesto—I’m sorry, I mean “victim”, himself. “You can bury a person just as effectively with potting soil, as you can with real dirt. You just need to buy enough of it,” is the new MSM motto.
And what is all of this ultimately for? Why do it?
Because you, American voter, chose the “wrong answer”. And your elites are here to “educate” that tendency out of you. But first, they need to violate a ton of laws, and take us well into banana republic territory (What else do you call government officials, many from the last administration, rebelling against a duly and legally elected leader and actively fighting everything he does, exactly? Contrary to what the Left likes to say, that is extremely unextraordinary behavior—from Leftists, no less—in those lovely South and Central American countries that are so well run, we need a wall in part to keep their people from coming into the US en masse. What it is not a legitimate part of, is the tradition of Western Democracy.).
Not because they want to, you understand. If you had simply surrendered like good boys and girls and submitted to your rightful masters, they could have done everything they wanted without breaking any laws. It was you, ungrateful peon, who forced them to use extra-legal means to continue upholding the status quo, and only because they are deeply #principled are they continuing to doggedly fight to ensure your rights are abrogated for your own good. And by the way, as with the EU in Brexit, the Left is fighting Trump tooth and nail because he’s threatening their nest egg.
They know that people from South of the border vote Democrat. If at all possible, the Democrats would like to integrate them into their welfare web (Because on closer inspection, it’s oddly reliable how the “safety net” seems designed both to trap people and make them prey to eternal predation by Democrats. One might begin to suspect LBJ knew what he was about, no?), and keep them voting Democrat for, well, forever. People call them out about flip-flopping on their stances, but of course in their mind they haven’t flip-flopped at all. They were willing to support border security only when there was virtually no chance of it being enforced. That’s why the Trump administration has noted that there are extant laws calling for barriers on the Southern border pre-dating his administration, which were curiously unenforced. Now that there’s a chance of border security being enforced, the Democrats are openly opposing it. But their position is consistency itself.
The only thing that changed is that before they were lying to keep you happy, and now you ungrateful oafs have forced them to acknowledge their actual beliefs.
And so, after all that, what do you do with a place like France? Macron, by all accounts, is only the proximal cause in a long string of abuses on the French people—and more specifically, its middle class.
You see, in pursuit of various personal goals—forcing people into carpooling and mass transit, environmental posturing, good old fashioned money and power—apparently France’s elites have, for some time, been enacting increasingly insane laws that benefit themselves while inconveniencing the populace. At some point, a tipping point was reached, and the people of France donned yellow vests and started protesting—say have I heard this song before? Sounds like it’s being done by a French cover band. At all events, the French government—apt students of history that they aren’t—have responded in the way any reasonable oligarch would: they’ve started talking about banning unsanctioned protests. Yes, this will go well. Obviously. How could it possibly not?
The people of France were successfully talked out of voting for Le Pen, but, mon dieu, they have still somehow fallen backwards and now, malheureusement, have picked the “wrong” answer. It is up to their betters in the elite class to make this gauche and ill-mannered display impossible by outlawing it, because outlawing behaviors the government dislikes has an excellent historical record of causing them to vanish, especially when those behaviors include protesting said government.
But you appreciate that, while we can laugh at this because it’s better than crying, it’s a sign of something deeply unhealthy and vastly widespread?
Every pillar of the Western world, it seems, has revealed itself to be infected with an extremely dangerous political class, formed of people who believe implicitly in rule by the enlightened, by the right people, even while mouthing obfuscating lies about “democracy”.
They believe in populism until someone plays the game of populism better. They believe in democracy, the more direct the better, as long as they think they’ll be in power under it. But mostly what they believe in is power.
The rest is window dressing. They are aristocrats in modern suits, and the government changes around them, but they remain the same. They believe in grand, stupid, and impossible visions that benefit them, and actively harm their people, and pursue them to the exclusion of all else. Oh, certainly they are the “new class”.
But they are more than that. They are a sign that Western Democracy has unofficially become Western “Democracy”. Now that the opinions of the people—in Germany, in England, in the United States, and now in France—have become inconvenient, the governments are finding they would like to dissolve the people and elect another. And they will do anything to achieve that end—”we let our servants drug our strength with lies”. France and England sound poised to commit to these brave new social experiments in their own ways, and the US won’t be far behind if the Democrats ever get enough funding to run a few more fraudulent investigations.
So look around you, while you still can. The sun is high in the sky. The last day of rule by the people—by the actual people, rather than by a “bolshevik” (literally, majority) minority— is half gone already. We’ve all been living in a very pleasant world, but it’s one that’s enabled us to relatively disregard politics, and that has let some very unsavory characters slip in while we were living in a dream. “The pleasure and the poison had its way”.
It is later than you think.
I have said before that I am unsure whether America will have another civil war, even though many of her people are—foolishly, to anyone who has seen one— spoiling for one.
The factors are myriad, but king of them all is geographical emulsification and the lack of clear battle lines. I’ve been trying, for ages, to think of how that might change. Now, I realize, it won’t.
What’s happened in France and is happening in Britain has made me realize that the conflict is fundamentally between normal people who are getting pissed on, and people who sympathize with—and often someday hope to become—the unelected or unremovable power brokers who are pissing on them.
I know of no true historical model for a civil war in a country that looks and acts demographically like America does now.
But—as Angela Merkel learned, and as I suspect France will soon discover—history is wall-papered, end to end, with examples of leaders uninterested in the well-being of their people who eventually faced deposition of one form or another.
I pray that somehow, the leaders of America allow the peaceful and existing processes that could allow that to happen to advance unabated. It will take surviving a bitter old guard and defanging a particularly idiotic new guard of Democrats. It will take acknowledging earnestly that whole departments of our government, just like our press, have largely fallen into the hands of people who hate the nation and its people, and re-evaluating our goals on who to elect and what to do in elected office from that perspective.
But we must rise, face the day, and try. It is later than you think—and getting later. Because, I maintain, part of America’s ability not to become the bloody quagmire that France did during its revolution was down to the people it was revolting against being on the other side of an ocean.
I think we are— all Western nations, and we, no exception— more at more risk than I had initially thought of our own French revolution, and that’s a thing we decidedly do not need, and a place we decidedly do not wish to go. The name might survive—but I fear that nothing else of value in our country would.
According To Hoyt 
…had just attempted to commit suicide by taking a massive overdose of immigrants.
*SNARF*
SO very appropriating that line, oh yes.
If they hadn’t been Muslims it might have worked.
But with Muslims it was always suicide.
The problem wasn’t that they were Muslims. The problem was that the Germans weren’t willing to say “Don’t care how things are at home, this is how we do it in Deutschland” and then make it stick.
The ones not listening are also to blame.
Well yeah, but at that point you’re just dealing with the general fallen nature of humanity.
Muslims – trying to invade and destroy Europe since 674 A.D.
I have to disagree with you on that point. Germany could have said “this is how we do it” unto eternity, until their faces turned deep, deep blue, but muslims will NOT go along with that. They may pretend a bit while they’re a minority, but they’re entire culture is domination. So, it IS because they’re muslims. That’s the very worst group any country could ever import at all, let alone in such massive numbers. It’s cultural suicide by European and British people to allow it to happen and it’s cultural murder by European and British leaders to do it. Something’s got to give or they’re done.
Oops. “their entire culture.” My bad.
Did you miss the “and make it stick” part willfully, or did you miss it in your haste to pontificate about how terrible Muslims are?
There is no way to “Make it Stick” with Muslims.
Depends which Muslims, from where and what their motivation is. In the eighties, the Turks were TRYING to fit in and getting hte German “not one of us” treatment.
Making it stick with Muslims is done the same way as with anyone else.
By using a large stick?
And if it looks like it is sticking, it’s because there aren’t enough of them to dispute it.
accordingtohoyt.com/2015/01/08/je-suis-charlie/#comment-233518
Don’t reply to it, of course.
Think of it as “Simon Says”, except to stop playing you have to emigrate—and you have to wait for Simon to say you can emigrate.
And Euro gun/weapons control starts to be comprehensible. Vile, Evil, but comprehensible.
I wish I could say this article is wrong. Bill sent me this and then waited and after a while poked me on FB and I said “Well…. Fortunately I’m too sick to be suicidal.”
And he said “Yeah. Doesn’t sound good, does it?”
“No. But I can’t dispute it. I always felt a civil war model was wrong, but this? This is plausible. And unfortunately being who and what we are,” [he’s as racially-identifiable visually as I am. Depending on how he dresses, he’s treated as “one of us” by anyone of any race. And he’s a fargin college professor. In the humanities.] “we’ll be perceived as enemies by both sides, my friend. Been nice while it lasted.”
Him:”So, should we kiss up to the left so at least we have defense?”
Me: “I wonder how many people are doing just that. But no. Even if it worked, and it will in spots, I still have to sleep with myself at night. I believe what I believe, and I can’t just change it.”
Him:”Yeah, me too. Well, it’s going to suck to be us. You know what I need? More ammo.”
That’s why there’s been such a run on the gun stores, Bill.
Yeah, his arsenal is MUCH bigger than mine. Also I suck at shooting. (Though the boys are both natural sharp shooters so there is that, provided they’re still around — ie. within driving distance — when the music starts.)
BUT Lovely Almost-Daughter-In-Law (in a month and a very little) told me last week one of the ranges is giving really cheap memberships to women and “we should.”
She ain’t wrong.
New co-worker: $ATTEMPTED_HUMOROUS_INSULT (failed)
Ox: You realize that I all have to do is open a gas valve and walk away?
New co-worker: That’s mean!
Ox: That’s under a second. What if I gave it some real thought?
New co-worker: …
Meanwhile, I’m trying hard NOT to figure out the correct process to synthesize one of the cathinones. I know it’s easy, but I really want to NEVER even get close* to any of that family.
* The murder (not by me, mind) of someone a few miles from where I used to live is already too close. Yes it was -cathinone related. I’ve had to explain that these things made the Soviets (the charming folks who figured the spin-down test on an RBMK reactor was a good idea) think it over and finally develop a case of NOPE!
What, no Khat in your fodder?
How can millions of east Africans be wrong?
> suck at shooting
For values of “social interaction”, marksmanship (at least better than NYPD/LAPD/Imperial Stormtrooper level) is decidedly second place to knowing *when* to shoot and then getting it done.
There have been a lot of people in morgues who didn’t recognize when things turned bad, couldn’t believe it when they did, tried to negotiate, or simply waited too long before doing what had to be done.
You should take advantage of the range’s sexist and discriminatory offer; shooting is fun. Mrs. TRX and I do a range trip and nice lunch or dinner regularly…
yes, I do realize it’s discriminatory. But to be fair, we need it more than the guys.
Also, I’m not sure it’s so sexist. I think they intend to use us as bait. So, good old capitalism.
Well, at least they’re using the best for bait. 😉
Think of this for a minute:
A city like Detroit or Chicago has rolling blackouts….Maybe the EBT card system takes a hit and they don’t get money for their bread and circuses for over a week. They burn and pillage and spread out looking for things to steal ….
And they come across small conservative towns.
The town defends itself.
The start of the Second Revolution has started.
It’s THAT simple.
Maybe up North the country folk will wait until they are attacked, but down here in Texas, I believe that the country folk will be waiting to ambush the City people coming out to rampage and loot. The revolution will have started in the cities and the country people will have prepared.
Tennessee here, and yup. We’re not nearly the unaware rednecks they all think we are; we’d know what was coming and trust me, we’d be prepared (many here already are).
I think he’s a good shot but can someone start an Instywatch? I don’t want to lose the blogfather.
This is a very peculiar American illusion. Like the idea that if the economy goes bad, we are magically transported to to the 19th century.
This inner city loots suburbs has never happened that way anywhere and frankly venting it just makes the left think they were right all along and we fear the “proletariat” (which they think means the poor.) Part of the reason they pay welfare is because they do fear the poor and are scared of this. But like most of the leftist claptrap this is a ridiculous idea. People in America are underclass because they LACK INITIATIVE not because they’re willing to walk (note most of them rely on public transport) miles to loot and burn. When welfare states go bad, they rampage and loot THEIR OWN NEIGHBORHOODS and look pitiful for the cameras.
I never understood why people expect otherwise.
In Paris, OTOH the MIDDLE CLASS is going after the wealthy neighborhoods. They’re the ones who can’t survive with the rule of the “enlightened” and HAD to revolt.
“they LACK INITIATIVE not because they’re willing to walk (note most of them rely on public transport) miles to loot and burn. ”
Are you nuts? Have you nver given a thought to the problems afflicting the urban poor when it comes to looting suburbia? Try walking the five or more miles from your typical suburb back into the ghetto while carrying a looted 55″ big screen TV, much less dragging along the accompanying sub-woofer!
Sniff!! Just more evidence of your middle-class privilege and lack of empathy for the problems afflicting the urban poor.
This is one reason our enlightened bureaucrats are working on Affirmatively Fair Housing and requirements for Everybody to live in urban high-rises. Our social betters understand how difficult it is for those lacking privilege to conveniently loot those who have benefited unfairly and need better insulation between themselves and the underclasses.
Yes, they do walk. I see them. I serve them. But they are very rare. And brain-damaged from drug abuse. (Because mentally ill? Chicken vs. egg. Also? All white. Because it’s still safe to talk about white social dysfunction. I’m losing track of the justifications why. But I digress.). So if the city is big enough and the dependent class large enough, will enough walk to cause problems?
Don’t know. The bigger problem is the dependent riot-and-loot crowd (Mostly black, now. Didn’t used to be that way. Maybe there’s a causal connection between the silencing and this result?) finishing local supplies and looting transportation to go to greener pastures if results differ from previous exercises of same. Will this tiny fraction be enough?
But the real elephant in the room is what Mrs. Hoyt pointed out: Like most of us, the Welfare Plantation crowd are used to things-as-they-are and slow to react. But the WP folk are every bit as human as you or I. And we all have folks among us – or are those folks at a given time – who have an entrepreneurial spirit.
With positive institutions and outlets that can channel that spirit having been and being ruthlessly stamped out by evil do-gooders, SJW Marxists, bureaucrats, and aristos: what’s left? Criminal enterprise. Will EBT card-failure (or whatever is the “we’re Venezuela now” equivalent event) prove to be a signal to *these* folk to carpe the diem? Could be.
IT won’t be.
You’re missing the “can’t organize. Lose interest in a minute.” I wouldn’t like to be in those expensive condos next to welfareville. In fact, in a way I moved from that, though it wasn’t a condo. BUT organized, more than a neighborhood attacks? Story in head. “The dispossessed march!” Bullshit, in other words.
Nope.
The real danger of perpetual revolution is a middle class revolution. As the French revolution was, btw, no matter what movies show.
Viz “the dispossessed March” : agreed.
The ancillary stuff is interesting. I purely hope in only story-making terms.
Oh, and beg to differ. Most of my life, I’ve worked and shopped and dined close to that level, so that we get some of the underclass in. MOSTLY they don’t walk. They amble.
Amble… that’s a fair cop!
> can’t organize
The drug-addled losers, no. But you’re going to have to deal with the flash mobs, the wildings, the Twitter rioters, and antifa and BLM, who get their organization from Somewhere Else.
But how many people are actually in Antifa and BLM and the like? I’ve heard reports that they object to photos because it would show how many are repeats at every protest.
Antifa in particular is afraid of anywhere where they have to take the masks off. They will be afraid of anywhere where folks shoot back.
Yes, I’m sure a lot. Look, guys, if they could have taken every city and disrupted things they would have. Clearly not enough of them.
Not even as far as the next small conservative town — the next conservative and cohesive outer-ring suburb.
Nope, nope, nope, nope and extra nope.
When the underclass revolts, they burn their neighborhoods. Nothing changes. All lasting revolutions have been middle class. ALWAYS.
Also, FYI they won’t spread out. These people CAN’T. They’ve been rendered incapable by generations of dependency.
Here’s the trouble–they can and do go where the goods are. Here in central AL we’ve been having instances of what you might call “criminal commuting”, in one particular case a couple of punks from Selma hit the Interstate to pull something in Wetumpka, a few miles north of Montgomery.
Maybe in some areas they won’t be mobile, but I wouldn’t count on that holding universally. Not even close.
Yes, in small groups etc.
Look, the socialists have got in your head, okay? You see “big armies of the poor” trying to expropriate the suburbs, but today’s poor are casual criminals (they do commute on the socialist choochoos and bring crime with her) but aren’t in any way the Marxist idea of “poor.” Their most accurate description is ne’er do wells, and most of them are addicted to substances that make planning or cooperation impossible.
They’ll take if it’s easy, but unfamiliar territory, having to trust a group of their fellows (THEY KNOW THEIR FELLOWS) and go beard lions in their den? Never happen. Never did.
Now, shaking down the government for money by being pitiful, sure.
IF EBT cards stop (they won’t, unless the government is upended. The left knows their clients) the places where the underclass lives are going to be destroyed. But that’s it.
The only time I’ve seen anything close to “the locusts on the move” that gets predicted is during mass evacuations due to hurricane. But even then, distance provides less clarity, not more. So breaking it down into groups that travel:
1.) The highly enterprising. A bunch (several hundred, at least) of criminals broke into dealerships, and filled out the paperwork to deed the titles for the cars over to themselves, then drove off to the west coast / elsewhere with the intent of selling the brand-new luxury car as their nest egg when they arrived. The Texas & LA cops were grinding their teeth, because they knew damn well the cars were stolen, but the paperwork checked out and there was no way for them to be reported as stolen… nobody was there to report, and the offices that would record such were underwater.
2.) Commuter criminals. These were on their way to somewhere in their own beater or blinged-up cars, and they’d stop for a spot of robbery on the way instead of paying for food / lodging/gas. Whether theft of goods and services or a spot of mugging and rape, they were mostly opportunists, not planners. When they came through Tiny Town Texas, a popular gag was to pull up to Applebees after ordering a large dinner to go, and insist that they be shown the food before paying… at which point they’d grab the food and drive off. Amazingly, police possess and use telephonic inventions, and having heard about such behaviours as the same pests came through Louisiana and East Texas, were standing by to arrest the perpetrators.
Once they got where they were going (Chicago was one major landing spot), some they decided this was too easy, and took to the highways in carloads to go do their robbery “far away where no one will catch us.” (Having broken their mental “the world stops at the edge of my hood.” To this day, they’re still a problem, but quite a few have found out the hard way that the rural dwellers are far more likely to be armed, and the cops have radios and will coordinate.
3.) Imported en masse. These were the majority; they arrived by the bus load, carried by either the government or NGOs that intended to help. Whether they landed on a summer camp or a half-empty high-rise, they quickly trashed everything until it was as run down or worse than what they left, as well as carried their drug-seeking, drug-pushing, fundamentally corrupt culture into the local schools, shopping malls, and downtowns.
As one thug complained when he tried to hold up a flower shop and found himself with a 20 guage shotgun stuck under his nose by an irate black grandmother… he complained to the large black police officer who arrested him, “Brother, it ain’t like this in N’awlins!”
The cop replied, quite firmly, “This ain’t New Orleans, and I’m NOT your brother.”
…in some places, isolated pockets of “the old hood” cling on, but in many cases, assimilation has been forced by the neighborhoods around them. Or, as one cop put it, “They tried to run the barrio like it was the ninth ward, and the local gangs ate them alive.”
…
That said, unless they were exported too far away to easily repatriate, most stayed in the hood, or returned to the hood. Although a shrunken and smaller hood than before (nobody talks about the very high body count from locals shooting looters. But the pumps that empty New Orleans can move an olympic-sized swimming pool every second, and when a water-logged rotting corpse hits those, ther’s no trace left on the other side. Strange how many locals refused to eat non-farmed catfish for months…) Even when there’s no food, no water, no power… most locals would rather wait in line for handouts of above than move on, seeking elsewhere.
They have been made dependent. They were probably not get up and get to begin with, but they’ve been infected with “can’t do nothing.” And that’s the real tragedy.
I’ve noticed that the murder/rape/GBH level criminals here in Arkansas are often not local (not in the same county), and some large percentage aren’t even from Arkansas.
Travel isn’t expensive at all when you have carjacking and robbery.
They still have phones, and Fecesbook, and Twatter, and they’ve often been part of the welfare or Child Services systems, which moved them around far enough to spread their contacts out.
And they actually hit a gas station on Cobb’s Ford Road in Prattville within a MILE of my parent’s house that my dad buys gas at. Yes my folks are armed. They’re also 86.
Oh, and “isolated incident”? Not hardly.
That’s where I’m at for my folks– they’re “only” late 60s, but my mom’s knees are shot and my dad has always been small, and I’m scared they’ll have to shoot SEVERAL SOBs before they figure out this is not the easy target they were looking for, and Washington state is a crap shoot.
But when they have no water or food they WILL move.
The question is how far and in what direction.
Even if it is a small percentage that lives, that is still a great many people.
Those people will be dangerous, tribal, don’t care and water and food first and everything else a far second. 90% will die in the city but the 10% that get out will be total barbarians.
Sigh. Holy frack. No, they’re not tribal. That’s part of their problem. They’re not that far into organization.
Will they move? History suggest most of them won’t. And the ones that do… Oh, hell. Stop kicking the dead horse. Find Dorothy’s comment and read it.
I know it’s a great story in your head. It’s just not how the world works.
This always strikes me as odd – people on the road system seem to assume you’ll run out of food, water, and power at the exact same time, and no one’s going to be doing anything about it. Real life doesn’t work that way. When the west coast ports went on strike and no food was coming in to Alaska, we still had water and power just fine, Restaurants were going to limited menus and shutting down for lack of food, and there was no rioting, just lots of churches and food bank saying “let us know if you need help”, and the local dairy noting that nursing moms & kids got priority for milk over other products being made.
Then earthquake strikes – power’s out, water’s out and gas is out sporadically, a few houses burn from ruptured gas lines. No rioting or looting – instead, crews were out working around the shift repairing roads and utilities, places opened as shelters once inspected for structural soundness, and people pitched in to help, and celebrated when they got off the boil orders.
Forest fires? Nope, no mass looting overrunning the nearby cities in California, just lots of people helping others out, and lots of charity moving in to help as well. And that was a mass displacement, unlike the others. (If much smaller scale than a major city with all its slums and barrios and ghettos.)
When the power went out in a major section of NYC in the summer, sure you had lots of people out in the streets, and you inevitably got bad actors taking cover of the mob for looting and settling gang scores. But you also had a lot of people just hanging out, settling in to wait it out and looking for the help that would soon arrive.
Rather than expecting somehow that all services will be cut and no help is ever coming, look at the nation around you and expect more of the same.
The second the power goes out, they’ll be hitting gun stores and sports stores (for the hottest kicks) which have no functioning security systems when the power is out. I’ve been through enough natural disasters to know how these things work. Then they’ll be stealing heavy duty trucks so they can chain and drag ATMs for the $1000 inside them (causing 10’s of thousands in damage in the process. They won’t harrass their neighbors – unless they heard a neighbor had hit the motherlode at a gun store.
NO. You’d be doing that. They’re not you, as you should know but apparently don’t. (Rolls eyes hard. Really hard.)
Also, I’m not sure it’s so sexist. I think they intend to use us as bait. So, good old capitalism.
It may be recognizing basic sex differences– when girls go gonzo for a protective measure, they’ll pay stupid amounts for things like my aunt’s bubble gum pink revolver…and they won’t object to their husband’s hobby of shooting and collecting guns.
Buckshot hides many sins.
…and leaves little ballistic evidence behind, too!
As long as you wear gloves to handle the hulls. Pesky fingerprints…
It the SHTF, WHO is going to be looking at finder prints????
What kind of shot is Dan? If you feel unsafe in CO you are welcome to visit Plano.
Or us in suburban San Antonio. Got a sleeper couch, and I’m sure Greebo will get along with our cats. Park a small RV in my driveway, you’re good to go.
If you tossed my neighborhood, house to house and room to room, I’m pretty certain you’d find enough weaponry for a small European country – say San Marino, or Monaco at the very least.
I think that San Antonio Airport has fewer flights than DFW.
If one of your sons relocates to suburban Dallas (much nicer than Dallas itself) I have a great real estate agent for you!
Thanks for your concern, emily61, but you needn’t worry. I shot archery in college; let’s just say my skills translated well to the range. My grouping at 20-30 yards is quite respectable, I’m told. I also shoot darts effectively.
It’s just a sneaky way to get you guys to visit Plano. I wasn’t impugning your ability to shoot.
Lovely Almost DIL: Your son picked a GOOD one.
I think it will start in one of the inner cities. Their EBT cards won’t work and they will riot and burn…and spread out from there to conservative communities. Once that happens, the fire will be lit and it will spread
Umm… how will they spread? Too far to walk, and in a lot of these areas, primary transport is public transit, and I can’t see them getting on the bus to go riot.
That’s why rioters tend to burn down their own neighbourhoods.
Those neighborhoods are almost always Section 8 or locally assisted rentals, and if they burn themselves out, they get new stuff and a new apartment, the landlords rebuild with insurance money, and the city rezones. It’s wins all the way down. Except for the taxpayers, but nobody cares about them.
I am told this whole EBT thing comes from a very good short story. MUST have been a humdinger, as it seems to be bypassing logic in otherwise rational people.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ebt-benefit-card-glitch-sparks-walmart-shopping-sprees-in-louisiana/
Lots of news from the time.
Y’all don’t understand. When the ball drops, the “New Elite” will load the buses with the welfare class and _drive_ them out into the suburbs and small towns. Will tell them that _Those_ are the people refusing to feed them, to provide the tax monies needed to pay for their “expenses”.
_If_ we’re lucky, the first bus or dozen won’t be armed, and we’ll “only” lose a few suburbs/small cities. Then things get ugly.
LOL. John. Seriously. I can think of more threatening things. No. The new Elite won’t be caught dead near the welfare recepients. If Macron is an example, and he is, they’ll start calling police and army to shoot on their own people.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/09/04/texas_doctor_i_saw_people_handing_out_cash_to_protesters_in_the_line_for_kavanaugh_hearing.html
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/14/george-soros-funds-ferguson-protests-hopes-to-spur/
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-13/blocks-anti-trump-protest-buses-caught-tape
Sure. PROTESTS. And handing out money. They’re hiring them.
If you don’t see the difference between that and “We’re hiring you to go attack this place where people are likely harmed” (They’re underclass, they’re not COMPLETELY dumb) “Let’s get on the bus” you’re drinking Marxist ink.
This whole EBTs Fail BAM the poor attack the wealthier communities is pure Marx. And like everything Marx, it’s a fantasy.
Speaking of Marx, our Useful Idiot class has no problem getting near the underclass as the regular reports of Tyler Wouldbegood detecting raped, beheaded, or just robbed while “helping them”
The migrant trains from Honduras are evidence A that the entrepreneurial criminal class, U.S. aristos, and useful idiots will collude to do just as John argues. I’m not as up on Stasi Merkel’s mess (thank you, thank you Mr. Reader) but couldn’t the same claim be made for that as well?
The objection comes down to the “why” it’s happening cross border, as to whether it could happen intra-U.S. border. My guess would be “no” but I’d be interested in arguments either way.
Also, I think the EBT hordes idea a owes more to zombie movies and The Walking Dead than Marx.
Somebody on the gun-culture internets did a really interesting story + survival prep commentary about the EBT-fail / TEOTWAWKI in the U.S a few years ago. He posited that the WP hordes were mainly a danger to the plantation cities themselves, with the occasional “trickler out” a risk to other people who wanted or need to cross by large cities on their lonesome. The biggest threat moving out into the countryside were the criminal gangs – and that included some police forces.
Anyone remember this? I should’ve book-marked it.
Or alternately LOLwut?
Paid protesters =/= armed gangs of EBT card users.
I may not approve of being a paid protester, but it is a job, and the professionals I’ve seen were prompt, showed up regularly, and in their own way were even well trained.
(Grocery union protested an employee-owned store for over a year, because they wouldn’t unionize.)
RPG for the win!
At that point, expect the busses to be trashed. Remember, these are rioters, not disciplined and deployable troops.
THIS.
And so what? Think the taxpayers won’t fix them?
They are not a disciplined army. They are a rent-a-flash-mob that can be deployed via Obamaphone as an intimidation tactic and a tripwire. Sarah, those BLM mobs that block interstates in Dallas aren’t imaginary. And you keep mentioning tech changes: the tech deployed to put together a flash mob to sing the Messiah or block an interstate wasn’t even available in your whole “street unrest” experience before now.
Some of poor in Texas have cars. Gas and cars are cheaper here.
Poor and underclass are not the same.
true. But more underclass drive in Texas than elsewhere. I feel your pain of your cold. I’m trying to deal with the painful aftereffects of a dental procedure.
DOUBT it. It will start with the middle class. This is a revolt of the normals.
What makes you think the EBT cards won’t work. They’ll work to the end, if the printing presses have to run overtime.
SERIOUSLY.
Look at France (and btw, this started rural in France) — they’re mostly middle aged middle class people. Look at Brexit supporters….
One seed not planted, yet: if a new AWB 2.0 gets enacted that bans more or less all semiautos it will result in a *lot* of third holes being drilled.
Then everyone waits for a spark to hit the kindling……..
While I think you’re right that elements of the government will continue to spend money it doesn’t have to keep EBT system functional, that doesn’t mean technical glitches or deliberate sabotage could not occur – or that disruption of that government (terrorist attack, coup, etc.) might not disrupt those elements of the government involved with EBT.
And I BEG OF YOU WITH TEARS IN MY EYES TO NOT BELIEVE MARXIST FANTASIES.
I don’t know who wrote the original story, but the whole thing is the “the poor form an army to attack the wealthier people” straight out of Marx.
You cling to it — all of you — because you were raised in Marxist indoctrination and don’t even see it.
We have events like that — have had them — in the US. Something happens and the easy dependency of the under class is disrupted. Yep, their neighborhoods burn.
Even the things someone mentioned above, where someone pays people to protest: a) those weren’t the under class. Most of those people work, at least occasionally. b) BLM was a royal pain in the ass, but I didn’t see them March to take any nearby neighborhoods. And at that the feckless and lost were, in great part, surrounded and bolstered by the crazy and indoctrinated, like the wife of one of my fellow writers.
And even then, show them a gun and they backed so fast.
These are not “the armies of the dispossessed” that give the left the warm fuzzies. These are people too crazy/stupid/addicted to SURVIVE without help. That they’re also vicious mostly makes them dangerous to people who have to live in their area.
If the armies of dispossessed exist at all, look to the middle class when the government stops making it impossible to make a living and makes it REALLY impossible, as its happened in France.
Then you get Gillets Jaunes and Flight 93 elections.
One slight demurral. During the bank collapse and a few other events of the past few years we have seen organized protests bused into “elite” private neighborhoods in order to
harassprotest the target’s home and annoy the neighbors. There was one recent incident where the target’s teenage son had to take refuge in a closet, IIRC.But note that these are rare and the result of highly organized, well financed pressure groups, such as Labor Unions and ACORN-type agents. They constitute more the exception than the rule.
Yep. This. And it’s mostly “harass and annoy.” And at a guess, from knowing lefties who brag about taking part in this, the “underclass to crazy left” ratio is more like one to three.
Note the more violent, threatening protests are the middle class kids of antifa.
You may be RIGHT but what if you are NOT.
Isn’t it better to think that this MIGHT happen and be prepared for it?
There is another thing that you may be missing. It is not only the EBT class that will be a problem. It is ANYONE in the CITY. If power, food and water becomes a problem, no matter WHO they are the surrounding area will NOT be able to support them.
I believe thinking about the possible problem and preparing for it is the best way.
Good F*cking G-d.
Okay, if a miracle happens and power and water goes off everywhere at once, you might be right.
I will also be prepared for an invasion of alien robots, which is more likely.
SERIOUSLY?
I LIVE IN A CITY. In the US. Maybe you live in a city in Russia.
This is not the way these things happen here.
I have a question, one which I have given a lot of thought to and haven’t come up with a good answer, or even a bad one. Just a quick moment to set the stage.
When “they” come for your guns, or the emergency food you have set aside, or even to break up the community protection group that fell in place when the SHTF, the first person you see isn’t going to be a black clad storm trooper flown in by black unmarked helicopters; it is going to be the policeman you’ve known since he was a baby, or the deputy sheriff who coached your kid’s soccer team. Possibly the national guard member from just down the street. They are there, in your yard or on your door step, because he has to work to feed his family or received what appeared to be a lawful order.
The question is “What then?” How convinced are we, as individuals making up this group called “we”, that our course of action justifies resistance to the point of causing bodily harm to some schmo who’d rather be home protecting his family. How strong are we as individuals when that kid you’ve known since first grade is the one there to take your guns?
It is easy to boast about “cold dead hand” but something quite different when the alternative is….
What then?
I’m sorry: WHO HERE KNOWS POLICEMEN SINCE THEY WERE BABIES?
I think you’re talking of a vanished or vanishingly small world.
Also, bah. They know it’s not legal to do this. If they still do it, they ain’t people you know.
I didn’t know I’d been looking for a well-reasoned and articulated position that justified my growing dis-ease with the state of western civilization and America particularly, but I must have been–I was almost delighted the further I read. I’m disturbed to the point of focusing the rest of my life on… destroying-with-a-small-nonviolent-‘d’ the enemies of the nation, and of western civ in general, and the article should give anyone else the same feeling.
I’ve served in uniform and understand at least intellectually that though the situation is dire (worse maybe than even the author considers) we don’t want to engage in armed combat with our neighbors. Ever. And I don’t think we need to.
Anyhow, I’m going to share this with my local radio station hosts, this is so fabulous.
Keep heart, warriors. This is America. And we are Americans, our own secret weapon.
Unfortunately, there’s no place left to emigrate to for the conservative right, except maybe the stars; and we don’t have the tech for that, yet.
Israel? But it’s a small dangerous piece of real estate.
Not worried about danger. Israel is a common sense country where citizens are allowed to blow away their attackers, and carry to be able to do so.
It’s also a geographically small country.
Unlike …
New York law is an open invitation to home invaders
There is a reason homeowners can rarely afford to dispense mercy on an overnight invader: Criminal intruders tend to be the dangerous type. What homeowners don’t expect are law enforcers and prosecutors going after them for defending themselves and their loved ones.
Queens resident Joel Christopher Paul faced a home-intruder threat in the early hours of July 30, 2017. The 27-year-old was home in Springfield Gardens with his mother, brother and sister when someone attempted to break in. The intruder was Shamel Shauvo, 26, who had traveled north from Maryland after being named a suspect in a shooting there 10 days earlier.
Expecting a pizza delivery, Paul’s brother, Michael, 16, went to the door and discovered Shauvo trying to break in. Michael forced Shauvo to the surrounding area, and his mother called for help. Joel, adrenaline likely surging through his veins, answered the call — and brought a bat and knife to the confrontation.
By the time it was all over, Shauvo received the ultimate lesson in picking the wrong house. He died at Jamaica Hospital after being clubbed and stabbed. The confrontation had all the indications of a break-in gone wrong for the wanted man, and as one high-ranking police source told The Post, the response was justifiable.
Both brothers avoided arrest and remained home after the incident. But months later, Queens DA Richard Brown submitted the case to a grand jury, bringing ruin upon Joel, who has been charged with manslaughter.
A ham sandwich, as the saying goes, can be indicted in grand-jury proceedings completely overseen by prosecutors. But prosecutors shouldn’t have targeted Joel. The stress, expense and uncertainty of facing a first-degree manslaughter charge are devastating and can lead to an unjustified plea that could result in Joel going to prison.
Part of the trouble lies with New York’s “retreat doctrine.” A theory fit for law school classrooms, the doctrine holds Joel had a duty to run and hide if it was safe to do so. It’s an obligation Joel, like the vast majority of New Yorkers, had probably never heard of.
Yet it’s likely that the Queens DA will pursue precisely this avenue at trial, since the indictment states that Joel, “with intent to cause serious physical injury to Shamel Shavuo,” caused his death.
While most jurisdictions would have left Joel alone, the Queens DA seems to want to resurrect the city’s bad old days, when prosecutors developed a reputation of interpreting laws in ways that protected criminals more than they protected victims. …
I’ve visited and it’s a perfect idea, if they will have us.
I was safer in Tiberias on the boardwalk at midnight than in Seattle on a weekday morning.
We may dread – and are right to dread – the prospect of a hot civil war. But with the contempt displayed for the general citizenry by those who see themselves as the ruling class – I can’t see a resolution in anything short of blood.
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/58874.html
Which reminds me – back to work on that WIP about the ACW…
Yeah, but he’s right it won’t be a civil war. It will be a revolution. Which means it needs to be carefully handled, or it will be the self-feeding blood machine.
Juggling definitions, but I wouldn’t call it a revolution. A revolution impies replacement of the existing order. In this case, I’d view it more as a massive de-verminization of the order we thought we had…
This is why the Second Amendment is such a hot spot with some of us. We have no monarch ruling by divine right; all we have is the Constitution. When the bureaucracy in general, and one political party in particular, openly declared war against an enumerated right (and the only one with “shall not be infringed”)… what other parts of that “living document” would they decide to ignore or redefine next?
The Constitution *is* the United States. It’s the source of all law and political power. If they invalidate it… they’re not going to be running a country. They’ll be trying to lord it over 300-odd million people who saw way too many Mad Max movies, and know exactly where they live…
First question is, how to we modify the Constitution, or protect it, to prevent such a leftistization from happening again?
Not to belabor a point that causes problems, but the only way to do that would be by an Article V convention. The federal government will never propose amendments that will limit its power (and we’re all aware that the federal government/deep state is solidly on the left, no matter what top-level veneer elections have temporarily placed on it).
Alternatively, a blood bath with a million dead bureaucrats and deep staters, might work.
In the opinion of many that would constitute what’s called a good start.
Yeah. Honestly, I’d really prefer not to see our nation go down that road, and hope that it doesn’t actually become necessary. That’s not the same as saying it won’t be necessary, unfortunately.
I agree with you Uncle Lar.
And anyone who thinks an Article V convention, even if somehow convened, would in any scenario be allowed to run where it wills is fooling themselves.
Still, it’s the only possibility for amending the Constitution in the direction we need. The only other way of amending it is a non-starter. At least an Article V convention would have some chance of success, even if unlikely. Personally, I’d like to try that first, before opening fire on the left.
I am NOT for civil war. I know that there will be nothing civil about it.
After the Article 5 convention you have a major problem. Which version of the Constitution do you support?? The Original or the Leftist one. And it would be a Leftist one coming out of the Article 5 convention.
Without the Article 5 Convention it is SIMPLE, we support the Constitution and want to RETURN to it. Removing all the BS added by the Progs.
Who to target, also simple – congress critters, Judges, Bureaucrats, Media, etc that do not support the Constitution. Keep removing them until the Government returns to the Constitution.
Plan, execute, STFU, repeat as needed.
No leaders and no armies.
This should NOT HAPPEN, I pray that it doesn’t happen.
An Article V convention would be a total crap shoot. With how evenly the US is divided, it would be just as likely (if not more likely) to go the opposite of the direction you want it to go.
On the other hand. I don’t think anyone is saying we should “open fire on the Left”. I think people are just bowing to the, possibly inevitable, fact that we might eventually be forced to defend ourselves FROM the rabid Left, when they start rioting.
My last post here on this topic. What I’m saying is that before we move to things like separation into two or more countries or to an actual hot conflict, we should try the legitimate and legal means available to us to remedy the situation. That’s an Article V convention. If it doesn’t work, are we really worse off than we are currently? If it does, we’re definitely better off.
Oh, and just remember, anything coming out of an Article V convention would have to be ratified by the legislatures of 38 states to go into effect. Do you really think the far-leftist amendments people worry about wouldn’t get rejected by at least 13 states?
Sorry. Yes, an Article V convention would be preferable to just starting shooting. I’m not so sure that convening one wouldn’t end up lighting the fuse, but doing things the legal way, in spite of the problems, is always preferable.
No, it’s the only means of amending the Constitution within Constitutional constraints. The problem is with the radical progressive leftists flooding the convention and screwing up everything.
We don’t need to amend the constitution, we need to defend it.
Thank you, Pam.
Erzactly! Remember about watering the tree of liberty.
We already have the 10th Amendment:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The problem lies not really within what is written (popular senate election notwithstanding) but with controlling the interpretation. Courts need restraint but they also do need to restrain (DACA an example of both problems). And the citizenry must be taught the whys of the government. Tbh, of, by, for perished years ago. All we’re seeing is the agonal resps of an executed culture.
And if that amendment wasn’t totally ignored by the administrative state (and was accepted by the federal courts as justification for declaring administrative overreach unconstitutional), there’t be no reason for trying to amend the Constitution to get us to where we should be. But it is ignored, and the courts aren’t interested in changing things.
Yeah – my concern is a lot of the amendments proposed at an Article V convention would boil down to “…and we really mean it!”
It actually says what it means, pretzel-penumbra-interpretations notwithstanding, and if the actual document were actually enforced to plain meaning we’d be in a much better place.
“prevent such a leftistization from happening again?”
We don’t. The solution is not in making new rules, it is making people understand and support the rules that are.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams
Making a new Constitution will not solve that flaw.
Support first. The lack of understanding comes from the unwillingness to support, not vice versa.
Read “A Planet for Texans” by H. Beam Piper.
Wonderful book! Texas BBQ!
In theory, the 9th and 10th amendments already cover it as well as it can possibly be covered.
(The talk of a convention is silly. What are we going to do? Add “we really mean it” to the 9th and 10th?)
In practice, it requires a populace that makes bloody examples when the government attempts to grab more power.
Limit the franchise and establish safeguards against fraud.
Establish a federal vote database. At elections, record voter details, the vote and a photograph of the voter. Total public access to the votes table for counting. All voters have password protected access to their own vote, to check that it has been recorded correctly. Photograph to minimise identity fraud,
My guess is that honest elections would show a 10% swing to the republicans, give or take.
LOL. More like 25%. Yes, I’ve watched polls.
BUT my question is, do you want to give the feds more power? A CENTRALIZED database is the thing of prog dreams.
I suggest rather “you run your elections as you want, but if you don’t have these minimal standards, we don’t sit your representatives/count your votes for president.”
So who prevents Democrats from claiming to have those standards? And what happens when they lie?
And no, this isn’t despair; it’s the simple recognition that you can’t have ANY government with people you can never trust….. unless you are, as the saying goes, willing to “reward oathbreaking with vengeance.” So far, we reward it with “one more chance.”
Well, the First is already under attack, so I’d imagine most of the others would be at risk.
The official shooting range is 50 miles away. The unofficial range is in the entirely too appropriately named “Rattlesnake Meadow”. Sure wish the GOPe had passed the suppressor bill before they got themselves removed from the House. OTOH, it’s the right half of the Unified Bipartisan Fusion Party, so it makes sense. Dammit.
Juggling definitions, the difference between a revolution and a civil war depends on who wins. If the South had won in the 1860s, the War Between the States would be known as the “Second American Revolution” rather than the “US Civil War”. (Note the throw-away comment in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.)
That tired old saying “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” is actually the recognition of the historical fact that George Washington wasn’t referred to as “Father of His Country” in Lord Cornwallis’ officers mess. He was referred to as a rebel and a traitor…. until he won.
Cornwallis referred to Washington as a general in announcing his surrender at Yorktown. For the first time.
The real issue is that the new class hates the ideas found in the declaration of independence. We lived under.the articles of confederation before the constitution. i could immediatelty improve our existing constitution by adding clauses banning Muslim immigration and reversong the popular election of senators. But if we.lose the declaration we lose the idea of what became America.
The Constitution IS the United States, but it isn’t Texas. Or Maine.
I think you guys have convinced me. We’ve got the civil-war + revolution combo looming on the horizon.
Trust Americans to super-size things.
:). The next time I need to write a beautiful opinion I’m going to give you a call.
When the decision is made and the Rubicon is crossed, the rules for proper behavior change pretty dramatically.
I’m thinking there’s a natural moderator in many places across the US that would cause things, after a bit, to shake out mostly into a sudden migration of people who thought they were ruling class who just happen to identify an immediate need to move out of state.
In some places, where the powerful incorrectly think they have things locked down enough that they don’t have to be circumspect, they are going to go too far too fast and run head-first right into unexpected masses of Schlichter’s “militant normals” – you know, people who have been doing their ammo shopping looking for good sales on bulk quantities all along.
As an aside, I also think fewer of the LE minions the elites are counting on to go jack-boot to save them will show up for that detail.
These middle places will be ugly. I expect to see black-hoodie idiots and esteemed members of the local elite both strung up on light poles along the interstate pour encourager les autres.
And then there are the already-lost big cities, where change, even in the face of obvious examples of insanity in governance, is even now inconceivable. By historical example, it will end up worse in these metroplexes, with increasingly desperate smaller and smaller circles of elites doing increasingly desperate things via the newly-empaneled “peoples eco-courts” to instantiate their utopia, while more and more normals have nothing left to lose.
And worst of all, the rest of the planet will not sit idly by – other countries will intervene both covertly and openly, and with the US otherwise occupied, will move elsewhere to settle old scores. The Pax Americana will fade into history.
Takeaway lesson on the international front: Don’t Be The Kurds.
Do we have any U.S. states that have “gone red” culturally, either slowly ala California, or dramatically, like Massachusetts?
I don’t think we’ve ever had a Grenada here. But I would truly welcome correction on this. So far the “they went too far” seems to get a minor course correction, then back to business as usual. See: Gov. Scott Walker.
In part that’s a good thing. We’re supposed to manage our regular revolutions peacefully at the ballot box. In part, it’s because we have an utterly unaccountable 4th government completely outside the U.S. constitutional system. It’s what De Toqueville wrote about in his sequel. And, for my fellow pessimists, note that the French bureaucracy is still there, and stronger than ever.
For California, one could argue that the Wilson governorship, and the initial promise of the Schwarzenegger governorship, were this type of course correction, but during the latter in 2008 the redistricting process was transferred from elected politicians to a board of appointed commissioners (appointed to the unironically named “California Citizens Redistricting Commission”) who, unsurprisingly given the “screening” process and how they are insulated from any answerability to the voters, do what the politicians currently in power tell them to do and redistrict any party not starting with “D” and ending with “emocrat” totally out of any hope of power.
Though, of course, the wedrawthelines.ca.gov web site says things are all now wonderful in the Glorious Peoples Bear Republic, as we walk hand in hand into the future along the Inevitable Arrow Of History.
Far too many people who contemplate, sometimes to the point of waxing rhapsodic, a “Second American Revolution” or “Second Civil War,” seem to think a resurgent representative republic that respects individual liberty is the inevitable (or at least most likely) result. They forget that as revolutions go, the American Revolution was relatively unique in its outcome. To engage in armed revolt against an imperial power and then to not only win but to relatively peacefully (and relatively quickly) transition to a stable nation is not the norm in a revolution. One might make a similar argument regarding the Civil War, that it is not the norm for forced reunification to succeed so relatively peacefully.
Revolutions tend to be bloody, not only during the “actual” revolution itself, but during successive periods which follow (France comes to mind). It would be great if we could avoid such a thing.
The reason the Civil War actually ended instead of continuing is because of 2 men Robert E. Lee and Lincoln. Lincoln because he was not punitive in winning and Robert E. Lee because he ACCEPTED Defeat and told his men to go home and accept the Loss. If either man had acted differently we would STILL be fighting that war.
And Andrew Johnson who carried out Lincoln’s wishes after he assumed the Presidency, and for which he was impeached and only remained in office by a single vote margin.
Well, not exactly. After he ascended to the presidency, Johnson seemed poised to enact retribution on the slaveholding aristocracy that he’d long resented. Instead, his lenient Presidential Reconstruction program merely issued thousands of pardons to the wealthiest landowners and infuriated Congress, which rejected his plan and refused to seat the newly elected Southern representatives. He also readmitted states into the union if 10 percent of the state’s white voters pledged allegiance. After they rejoined the union, he allowed them to reform their government without slavery.
It’s hard to say if these were Lincoln’s wishes, but while Lincoln was conciliatory it seems unlikely that he would have been quite that lenient with the former slave-owners.
I think Bill gets that.
There won’t be anything civil about this war, even if it only happens within the existing borders of this country.
Civil here only means it’s not international.
Haven’t the sense for responding critically to, or even reading, the whole of the OP.
Because, I maintain, part of America’s ability not to become the bloody quagmire that France did during its revolution was down to the people it was revolting against being on the other side of an ocean.
I think this may be true. Another part is Crane Brinton’s point about conservative revolutions. Probably another is whatever social mechanism let colonial Dutch and Scots say that they were more or less the same people, and that the Cherokee were not. Though this last mechanism, whatever behavioral cues are involved, is not sure to have nice results for the current situation. Things are a wee bit more confused than the royalist/rebel split.
Well, here in east Tennessee we have a long history with the revenuers, and not one the Feds are happy about. And let’s not forget that the Battle of Athens happened just a little ways down the road from my house…
I can see many parts of the US de facto seceding from the federal government if the cold civil war we’re now in heats up a bit. Not with formal declarations, but with willful ignorance of federal directives, refusal to allow feds to operate freely within their territories, and routine jury nullification of federal attempts to enforce federal laws. Actually, now that I think about it, I kind of described California as it is today, didn’t I?
“Sam, that’s an illegal still and we-”
“WE will leave that ‘art in public places’ installation alone. And forget we saw it, John.”
“But…”
“How’s your kid? Wanna see him again? We leave it the hell alone. Ain’t nothing here, even.”
“Funny statue.”
“Yeah.”
Yup. A “social contract” of sorts, as it were…
Unfortunately it seems as if the “social contract” our aristos have taken out is the sort the Mafia does.
Texas will secede.
Yeah, right. It’ll never happen, not with several thousand Californians moving into Austin.
The weevils in Austin stay in power as long as they don’t annoy the rest of Texas too much.
Austin doesn’t have the suburban sprawl of so many capitols; it would be easy enough to simply cut their phone lines and set up a new government elsewhere.
Before or after it becomes California?
California used to be what Texas was, passed through what Texas is now, and is what Texas will be “if this goes on”.
Because we’re a nation of migrants. And no, that isn’t a good thing. Maybe if we had birth right (only) State citizenship? “Yes you can leave the statist mess you created, but you never get to vote or hold office here. Yes, you have representation… back in Boston. Feel free to cast your absentee ballot there.”
And I say that as an immigrant myself. I’d happily surrender my vote with all the other Johhny-come -late-lies. I love my new home.
Yeah, but California didn’t have the example of what happened to it later…
Everything was just peachy – except for the peach farmers – until the 1960s, when things started going seriously off the rails.
I agree. We’re all slowly (some more slowly than others) waking up to the idea that politics is down-stream of culture.
And that ignoring lefties in disgust with a “live-and-let-live” philosophy is suicidal.
Will it be too late, as Mr. Reader wonders? I don’t know. I think we have to live as if it isn’t. “Build up, build over, build around.”
Not doing so, guarantees it.
I’m piling on with bells on on the “We have to live as though it isn’t.” Despair is a sin for a reason.
Me too.
Actually, now that I think about it, I kind of described California as it is today, didn’t I?
Nullification of Federal Law, Sedition, and Secession are only bad when the wrong people do it.
Except there will be a contingent of feds eager to clamp down on the resisters. Their kids are safely ensconced half a continent away in the capital city made up of people who think just as they do. And adding to them will be a denial of services to the rebellion by everything from communication to finance.
Resistance only survives against oppressors willing to let it go.
See my reference to revenuers above…
If all is lost and there’s no chance of changing things, we might as well roll up and die, eh? Sorry, not gonna go that way. And the feds you’re talking about actually don’t live in D.C., only their bosses. The folks on the ground are (and have to be) living among us, where we can reach them.
Start with a list of all your town officers and employees, including law enforcement. You can pull their home addresses and phone numbers out of the internet for at least half of them; if my town is a typical example.
Ditto for your state government elected, appointed, and hired. State law enforcement is harder to get; but their top level leaders are usually very visible, and they are the ones you really need to influence as they’re the ones usually pushing the legal-justice-penal industry to the detriment of your citizens.
Federal? So much of that is a massive black hole. Heck, we see that with every FOIA demand we make of them.
Not saying you have to doxx them or anything unethical or illegal like that. But if it ever comes down to them coming after you, it’s kind of smart to be able to return the favor.
I just keep going back to the integration in Little Rock. For point revolts, all the feds need do is import boots that believe or at least do not disbelieve.
Locals outside the cities will probably split between the citizen as subject and citizen as equal groups. Staye will be more dependent on homogeneity of state but shuffling folks around helps break the problem of ‘would you shoot your math teacher over his shotgun’ by removing the conflict.
Nope, not split nearly as equal groups. I guarantee the folks outside the cities would be citizen over subject by large margins.
There is a rather crucial difference. For one thing, Little Rock could be summed up as: “We’re preventing the state government from being tyrannical.”
In any modern-day confrontation the feds would have rather less legitimacy.
How so. States felt that states rights covered what was not explicit in constitution while feds decided that they could write laws to force states to perform certain actions. It’s the same problem with 2A or 1A for example. It’s part of why the deification of the students in shootings and the near obsession with making more or why hate laws are highlighted. It comes to feds saying “here is how you will treat this group. They are bad because they segregate/won’t help protect schoolkids and cops/want to bully everyone with mean words.” Doesn’t mean the folks that are fought are right or wrong but that the storylines are there and by bringing in outside forces a government uprising can be quashed.
You do understand that school segregation was not a natural event, right? It was enforced by law. The Feds were preventing the state from performing a certain action, not forcing the state to do something.
Most people can see the difference.
> contingent of feds
It might take more than they think. I think ESR has a good handle on how it might go: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8053
Yeah, I’d generally go with Eric’s analysis on such stuff. He’s got a very good track record of being accurate in his analyses.
Among actual military tacticians, I’ve seen ONE that figured the military had a chance.
It consisted of a single middle to small sized city with physical barriers adapted for by roads, so you can take out transportation easily. (Think like El Paso, which has IIRC 3 bottlenecks heading out).
And there were several other favored-the-attacker assumptions, but I can’t remember.
I recall an exercise where we figured three fireteam elements operating independently could shut down transportation across the Sierra Nevadas and Cascades with minimal risk exposure.
Ah, but that’s the difference between containment and conquering.
Seriously, a dozen people could cut off El Paso. But they couldn’t control it.
America’s state sovereignty is critical to rolling back the tide. It is possible to focus and reclaim citizen sovereignty in individual states, and we are winning that battle, albeit unevenly — particularly as some heretofore “conservative” governors develop national ambition and attempt to portray themselves as “moderate” (i.e., just to the left of Stalin.) They’re fools, lured by the Gaslight Media’s promises of
candyfavorable coverage — incapable of understanding the lesson of President McCain.The utility of the states is especially true as the Trump judiciary curtails the Administrative State. That is why the Democrats have pulled out all stops to block Trump’s appointees, and why the next SCOTUS nominee (especially, as seems likely, one replacing a Liberal justice) will make the Kavanaugh nomination look like a walk in the park on a sunny spring day. The Progs are utterly convinced that their failure in blocking Bret was because they didn’t use enough cowbell, but like an abusive spouse they will learn that the more they double down the more they drive their victim away.
It takes time for Constitutionalists to trickle up through the state governments into the Federal one, but that wave is coming along. Take not counsel of our fears but look instead to the bright hopes on the horizon. Thanks to Janus and Heller the Left is losing their ability to suppress diversity and enforce conformity, and those precedents will be further embedded as the Courts reinforce them. California is damned determined to prove Socialism won’t work, New York is doing its best to get there first and both states are bleeding people in arterial flows. They can no longer paper over their atrocities with compliant media and their death throes will be mighty, but don’t let the thrashing confuse you int thinking they’re thriving.
“It takes time for Constitutionalists to trickle up through the state governments into the Federal one, but that wave is coming along.”
So don’t look to the current players, but rather to the bench?
The traitors in robes are how we got into this mess…
The judiciary needs to be reined in *hard*.
Umm… I meant it in sports terms – the bench being the players who will be coming onto the field as the current ones leave it.
Perhaps you should have said, don’t look to the current players, but to the farm clubs…
Reins are fine, so long as we still get to use tar and feathers.
(It’s traditional.)
Part of the problem of course being that our “elites” have made it so friggin’ difficult to just get by that many of us are too exhausted just taking care of our families to get out there and politically steamroll their… feet, let’s start with the feet….
Yeah, but as the gilets jaunes are showing, sooner or later you have to do it or die. Because these aristos are so completely out of touch with reality and legislating for dreamland. It’s like being ruled by elves.
…So this is an IRL case of the Trope, Screw You Elves? 😉
Hopefully, yes.
*G*
> do it or die
The Fifth Republic is ancient by French standards.
The French people have shown their willingness to clean house and start over quite often, by historical standards. And sometimes on much less provocation than now.
Think about it. The reports of “unrest” and civil disobedience that have made it to US media, those are from major, hard-left urban areas. Anyone want to guess the attitudes of the French “deplorables” in their version of flyoverland?
Those Frenchmen don’t need those cities… but those cities desperately need *them* since they can’t feed themselves.
Elves had more sympathy. More like uncaring feudal barons.
“All peasants will pay an annual tax of 100 bushels of wheat.”
“But milordship, the land we’re on only produces 80 bushels of wheat even on a good year.”
“You dare to question the Baron? His law is just and fair. Everyone has to pay 100 bushels of wheat equally.
“But…”
“Flunky, take him and his flea-bitten family and put them in with the rest of the debt slaves.”
The thing about barons is they were at least socially expected to provide some minimal level of protection and succor to their “lowers”. Our political class has almost stopped pretending to do that.
Not quite on-topic, but interesting nonetheless:
Read up on the Icelandic Free State, or Icelandic Commonwealth, from about 900 to about 1200 AD.
Oh, they did provide protection, usually from the other barons. and every once in a while they’d feed one of their less savory followers to the scales of justice just to show the peasants they were on their side.
Not to mention that any Baron with a lick of sense levied his people at something like a 10% rate, similar to what the Church expected, as depriving them of sustenance guaranteed a much poorer return following years.
*G* As mentioned about the Fowls in fiction, you have to keep peasants in good shape or you run out of accomplices!
The thing to realize is, even though gilets jaunes coverage in the US media is being pushed to minimal levels, the self-appointed elites here are very definitely paying close attention to French happenings.
And I think for a lot of them it’s completely inconceivable that there is any problem. Just take the bus instead of driving. Call the police when there is a prowler. Just strike for more pay and bribe the paymasters.
One trick I’ve used is to substitute the term “bureaucratic class” for “middle class” in policy prescriptions. They saw no real difficulty over the reign of error while we saw layoff after layoff. There’s a reason 7 of the 10 richest counties are in DC metro.
Many years ago I was surprised to get the reaction that reverse of my experience. I was told the 1970’s were great and the 1980’s just terrible. This puzzled me until I realize the speaker of those claims had never worked in the private sector.
I really wish there was a way to make sure that was not possible. That is a huge chunk of why there is this disconnect between rulers and ruled here.
Nobody put this up yet?
Professional leftists the world over don’t really have a problem with rape, as long as the victim is a blond white chick.
You have it backwards. It’s the race of the rapists rather than their victims that matters. They have problems with the rape of a blonde white chick so long as the rapist is a blond white dude. It’s if the rapist is, um, “Asian” that things suddenly get complicated. And to be fair, the professional leftists also don’t have a problem with the rape of Arab or African or Chinese women by “Asians”; in fact, they rarely even notice them.
I always wonder how many Leftists who instantly played the Nazi card on Trump even remember that we endured probably six solid years of the “Chimpy McBushHitler” slander from them, personally, before Trump was even a major national candidate.
Not to mention that Mitt Romney was Hitler and John McCain was Hitler and Bob Dole way back in the 90s was Hitler too. There are admittedly a number of things about Trump I find disturbing, but when “I’m so mild I make dishwater seem like ghost pepper sauce” Romney is a Nazi, it’s hard to take anything they say about any Republican seriously.
And as you pointed out, the international “Nazis” have the same problem. In many of these countries, it’s plausible that some of these groups really are connected to the Third Reich and its beliefs. Only…well, I’ve heard a lot about how horrible Victor Orban in Hungary is. And yet when I was in Hungary (admittedly more than 15 years ago now), I met a lot of Orban’s supporters. They were not Nazis. They were people who believed that it would be stupid to give the country back to the Communists after they finally managed to get Hungary free of them. And yes, it’s been a long time, and both people and parties change, but…well, I’m skeptical of the Nazi charge. And if I’m skeptical there, no reason to immediately believe it for anyone else.
(As an aside, has anyone else noticed how many of the names from 15 years ago are still being bandied about. Orban, Merkel, Netanyahu…I’m extremely grateful for the 22nd Amendment that at least gives us a chance to get some new blood in the US).
> Mitt Romney was Hitler and John McCain was Hitler and Bob Dole
—
“Calling Mel Brooks! We need an ‘Everyone Is Hitler!’ song, stat!”
If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would be an alt-right neo-Nazi.
A number of people have noted that… on the other hand, almost nobody knows what he really said. They just know the Official Interpretations, which King would probably disagree vehemently with.
King wouldn’t fit anywhere today. Too pragmatic for the left, too socialist for the right.
I ended up calling it the Hitler-of-the-month club. it makes no less sense than any of the other labels.
This is a very trivial aside, but I appreciate your correct use of “blonde” and “blond.”
“They are easy to identify, by their smug certainty that they know better what ought to be done with and for you than you yourself do.”
As the writer so rightly pointed out later, this makes them would-be aristocrats. And that is HOPEFULL. We’ve suffered under the like before, and emerged. I admit, I’m worrid about Europe, but Europe has been a pesthole of Condescension for a long time, on and off (mostly on).
See, the thing is, I believe that the vast majority of those who may take up arms against the Ninnies have no desire to rule. The French Revolution was infected with dozens of factions that thought they should be in charge when the dust cleared. And while there are at least that many small factions here that feel the same way, the huge majority of them are on the Progressive Left. They will fight (bitterly) among themselves WHILE they fight the deplorables.
And what th deplorables primarily want can be summed up as “Build and maintain the roads, deliver the mail, enforce contracts, control thr border, and otherwise leave us the f*ck alone.”
“Build and maintain the roads, deliver the mail, enforce contracts, control the (sp) border, and otherwise leave us the f*ck alone.”
THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS!
(Control the border is part of our military’s function, even though the Border Patrol isn’t part of the military. Ought to be though. And those basic services do need to be paid for: that’s what tolls are for, that’s what stamps are for, and *sigh* enforcing contracts are what judges and juries are for.)
But… but… what about The Environment? And the farmers? And Welfare? And Education? Dear Ghu, what about the bunny inspectors?!
I suspect the bunnies inspect each other plenty.
Depends on what kind of bunnies. Some seem to prefer inspectors to other bunnies. Male inspectors. Rich male inspectors, that is. There are claims that they are a disappearing species, but I doubt that. Possibly the name may change, but the characteristics will stay more or less the same.
The aurum fodiens subspecies?
Okay, I know aurum, but fodiens?
‘digger’
Aha. I thought it probably was, but couldn’t find that in any of the Latin – English dictionaries online.
I am confused. Are we talking about officials who inspect bunnies,
or inspectors who are bunnies?
See Jerry Pournelle’s definition. (To recap for those not familiar: The bunny inspectors were the ones ensuring that magicians treated the bunny correctly, as defined by The Powers That Be.)
Just pointing out that there are more than one kind of bunnies. And more than one kind of inspectors too. 😛
I’m all for putting a bounty on bunny inspectors, and those who demanded we have them.
Farmers can do just fine if we leave them the heck alone and not tax their property like it has the Hilton built on it.
And the environment is doing just fine. If we don’t like it, we modify it. That’s what humans are best at.
Farmers can do just fine if we leave them the heck alone and not tax their property like it has the Hilton built on it.
And make sure no f’in moron is bringing in a nasty parasite, disease or pest.
The weak point of HAVING specialized food systems is that it’s relatively easy to wipe out vast swaths of the resource by someone doing a “this cna’t hurt” stupid move.
And no, the standard “so just sue them for damages” does NOT work. As well sue for the dead to come back to life.
This is not, IMO, just a matter of “elites”, but equally, of people who *thought* they were going to be Elite (at least to some degree), based on their College Degrees, and find that they are not.
50 years ago, Peter Drucker wrote:
“Individually he (the knowledge worker) is an “employee”…but the knowledge worker sees himself as just another “professional,” no different from the lawyer, the teacher, the preacher, the doctor, the government servant of yesterday. He has the same education. He has more income. He has probably greater opportunities as well…This hidden conflict between the knowledge worker’s view of himself as a “professional” and the social reality in which he is the upgraded and well-paid successor to the skilled worker of yesterday underlies the disenchantment of so many highly educated young people with the jobs available to them.”
As any field becomes a mass employer, it is likely that a substantial number of the people working in that field will feel that they are not getting the high status and rewards that they should have. And the frustrations about which Drucker writes are surely greatly exacerbated when large numbers of people in a field are concentrated in the same geographical area, as in the case of Silicon Valley, where there were in 2016 apparently a significant number of Sanders supporters among frustrated startup employees.
And, of course, those that see themselves as Professionals, but wind up working at Starbucks or worse, will be even more frustrated than those who are disenchanted with their actual knowledge-work jobs.
> professional
I don’t know if that applies to IT…
Several times I got yanked out of the Zone and sent off to rearrange furniture, apparently because I was a) male; b) “wasn’t doing anything anyway” and c) the desk had a computer or printer on it, so obviously moving furniture should be my job…
Did you start carrying a cable cutter to “help” and never be asked to move anything again? Or, worse, the infamous etherkiller?
Yes, I was one of those admins who saw Simon’s article go by, and immediately built his own cable.
I only used it for good, though. When I saw the article, I’d already had nearly a month of downtime from a hardware vendor who claimed “everything works fine here, that’ll be $500 for the diagnostic fee.”
When I sent that board back the next time, it was *definitely* not working.
o/` And when they turn the power on, it’s sure to dim the lamps… o/`
There is also the devaluation of the college degree. My (very) late Grandfather graduated from a public high school.mto do so he had to be reasonably fluent in one modern language other than English, competent in Latin, and have a mastery of mathematics through calculus. Today, not even a Batchelor ‘s degree is assurance of that defree of education. Yet college graduates doing clerk’s work are told they are intellectuals. And, let us face facts, if you work with computers but are not a programmer or an artist, you are a clerk. Your skills may be different from those of a clerk in a Victorian counting-house, but they are not more important.
They have the same relationship to true intellectuals that Cub Scouts have to Eagle Scouts. They have, perhaps, begun the journey, but have an awful lot of merit badges yet to go.
“decided to frame their opponents as being `anti-immigration`—which they say in roughly the same way you or I might say `satanist`”
One might as reasonably denounce as “Prohibitionist” anybody who suggests that binge-drinking to get blind, falling-down drunk is unhealthy. Or denounce as a “prude” any gal who declines to (in AOC’s quaint phrase) “run train” for any and all passengers.
Oh, wait, that last one …
Last one is not new. Been around since at least the ’70s. Under the “Just because you are a virgin.; you won’t let us sleep together in ‘our’ room (full disclosure, in our dorm room with me in the bunk above), you think I’m a slut.” Screamed at me by my then dorm roommate, 50 years ago …
That doesn’t count the names I was called, repeatably for uh, not participating.
Even now. Know of more that a few long term marriages that get looked askance at. Ours & more than a few other parents we’ve met along the way. Apparently somehow long term relationships/marriages are a danger to others? It might be dangerously catching, I guess.
Objecting when you catch folks in Bad Behavior is bad, too.
The most obvious (though probably not most prevalent) example is the “women filing for divorce” vs the male/female divide on divorce in response to cheating. (short version, women who cheat divorce; men who cheat get divorced; pattern goes beyond when divorce on demand was available, too)
*********
I think the whole long term relationship is horrible evil is related to the “gosh they have too many kids flip out” thing, basically weaponized guilt.
OTOH, do we really WANT those unstable ninnies to reproduce abundantly? I’d rather deal with the unparanted spawn of the ghetto; they are ignorant, not necessarily deranged.
Exactly their logic when faced with things like (gasp!) observant Catholics, or Mormons, having 4+ kids.
We’re a threat, rather than a risk.
That’s not a threat, that’s a team. 🙂
The future is inscrutable on this one. Will the Left dominate? They like to think so, but I remember not all that long ago the US having a Democrat in the WH, and Dem majorities in both the House and the Senate, and having to weather smug gloating from a-hole Leftists saying that they had “broken the back of the Republican party”, and never again would there be a Republican President or Majority in either House or Senate. They truly believed it.
Then a few short years later, the R’s had all three. How did it happen? The Democrats did what they always do. They over-played their hand.
Now, once again, Leftists are talking smack about Impeaching Trump, and taking the Presidency in 2020, and the Senate (all while, of course, keeping the House). AND impeaching Kavanaugh, AND openly talking about packing SCOTUS with Leftist judges. AND AND AND AND.
And I’m left to wonder, will the Left over-play their hand yet again? Occasional-Cortex anyone?
I have seen it said “This is The End for the Republicans”… a couple times, at least, now.
I have seen it said “This is The End for the Democrats”… a couple times, at leas, now.
I have seen it said, “The world will end ‘Tuesday’!”… and went to Wednesday, so many times I find the apocalypse boring.
What I know to be repeated, or at least very well rhyming, history that those in power eventually screw up and those not in power get power… until they screw it up. The oscillations have gotten perhaps of higher frequency and certainly of seemingly greater amplitude of late. When things go non-linear and one party truly fails and a ‘third’ becomes one of the Big Two? I cannot say.
The last few days I’ve been watching snippets of Laugh In where they really did go after anyone and everyone (some of the jokes would be SO un-PC nowadays…) and people could laugh at each other and themselves, at least a little bit.
Occasional Cortex thinks the world will end in 12 years.
See you in 13.
That’s because 12 is as high as she can go with shoes on.
Ouch
Party at Chupik’s place in 13 years? *eg*
Better plan on getting a bigger place by then.
That’s too cold! Unless it’s near Victoria. We could do a second honeymoon.
Uh, how cold?
Dunno. Just assuming it is.
Aficionados of cold recognize that there are many factors involved in its perceived degree; such as wind chill, humidity (dry cold being tolerated more easily than a wet cold which sucks the heat out of you), dreariness, and persistence (how cold it stays for how long.) Thus the most meaningful measure of cold is binary: too cold, not too cold.
Aye, once upon a time I worked nights at a post office (feeling better now, thanks…) in Wausau, WI, in the Depths of Winter. For two weeks the lows hit -40 and the highs never reached above 0 F. The electric jack that was never to be brought off the dock into the main building was brought in – to keep the batteries warm enough to work. You think things over some when the machinery is giving up or trying[1] to. When, finally, the high struggled up to a just barely positive number, it was almost as if Spring had sprung.
[1] Yes, I know: Don’t anthropomorphize machines; they hate it when you do that.
> the End
Yeah, but after four years of “Impeach him!” and “FBI investigation” it’s likely to be the New Normal.
The political Overton Window gets pushed further into Crazyland…
I am not aware of anything that is genuinely infinitely elastic. Belief, or tolerance, can only be stretched so far.
As said before, if things go…. ‘active’, shall we say? The ‘last straw’ will be mundane and historians might marvel at its seeming insignificance.. except it was heaped up on top of all those other straws, and the poor camel can only support so much. But it’s just one little straw.. maybe even. wafer-thin.
“if things go…. ‘active’, shall we say?”
I believe the current term of art is “kinetic”…
That’s so.. last administration. }:O)
(But then:
“When Nixon resigned..”
“I didn’t study history.”
“It wasn’t history. it was a current event.”
)
Like the folks who think the American Revolution was ‘only’ over taxation without representation?
And didn’t involve a Reign of Terror. I promise you, the Tories didn’t run off and leave (in many cases) a considerable amount of property because they wouldn’t get invited to the White House for dinner. Or the atrocities and counter atrocities of Tarleton and Francis Marion.
Produced more refugees than the French one did.
I think one of the reasons for the appearance of increased amplitude and/or frequency has been the gradual eviction of the Old School Rinos from the Republican party. It has made the Republican power structure weaker in the short term. But it’s well along, now. Or Trump wouldn’t have been nominated.
Yep, and then the GOP proceeded to pi$$ away every opportunity for 2 years to reduce the progressive carnage. At least President Trump has proven to be more reliable than the Republican Party. (OMG, I can’t believe I just wrote that, and actually meant it.)
(OMG, I can’t believe I just wrote that, and actually meant it.)
I STILL maintain that I never wanted Trump to be President. Only, the Democrats had to offer Hillary as the alternative. I (eahhgh) like some of the policies Trump has put into place (uuggghh).
Why was that so hard to say? Oh yea, Trump just Tweeted that [insert… well… F#@KING ANYONE… here], is a [insert the most infantile insult you can imagine here].
“Trump just Tweeted that [insert… well… F#@KING ANYONE… here], is a [insert the most infantile insult you can imagine here].”
In his defense, at least half the time when he says stuff like that he’s not wrong…
I like how one person put it, which was, roughly: Do not make the mistake of taking him literally rather than seriously.
It is hard to say anything about Pelosi that is insulting and false.
False is easy. Insulting? That’s tough.
And it’s one of the irksome aspects of all of this. Policy wise this is a pretty typical (if rather liberal) Republican platform, and honestly very similar to the dems when I was growing up. But there are so many people dripping hate because he doesn’t talk like most politicians. And yet tripping the finger on live tv or insulting folks made no difference before.
I actually like he says the “unspeakable.” There should be no unspeakable.
Mike, when the Republican Party establishment went along with calling the Tea Party racist, sexist, Fascist, etc. (“hobbits” and “whacko birds” counts) and in many cases actively sabotaging candidates who identified with it, President Trump became inevitable.
I think they already have. A multi-year tantrum does not strike me as a good strategy for convincing the undecided. I also think an awful lot of voters look at the likes of Antifa and see the scruffy Brownshirts that I see. If Trump does something effective about vote fraud (it isn’t – quite – time yet…or so I think) they might well lose 2020 even more completely than they did 2016. A wet-firecracker effort at Impeachment would do a lot of damage, too. And I’m not seeing anything that seems likely to do anything but fizzle.
I know I keep harping on this, but the behavior of the Democrat elite makes more sense to me as a strategy to hold on to their position in the Party than one to improve the Party’s position in 2020. Absent all this noise and distraction, I think we might be seeing a real effort by the Democrat rank and file to clean out the odds and sods in their own Party, after the balls up of 2016.
“If Trump does something effective about vote fraud …”
He’s been given the perfect opening in NC’s 9th District where Dem accusations of fraud against the Republican elected by some 900 votes. Apparently the argument is that there was an illegal ballot harvesting effort by a former long-time Democrat working for the Republican’s campaign.
Dowless a ‘person of interest’ in 9th Congressional District election probe
Leslie McRae Dowless, the political operative at the heart of potential absentee mail-in ballot misconduct in Bladen County, is a person of interest in the 9th Congressional District investigation, the Bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement has confirmed.
[SNIP]
Republican Mark Harris beat Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in the congressional race. His large lead in absentee mail-in ballots raised concerns about possible election tampering.
[SNIP]
Until recently, statewide and national attention focused on Dowless, and the so-called ballot harvesting his crew conducted under contract with Red Dome Group. But Republicans and news outlets are now reporting that the Bladen County Improvement Association, a Democratic-funded organization aiding Democratic candidates, used the same tactics in this year’s 9th Congressional District contest, and in prior election cycles.
That unlawful activity involves third-party individuals ordering, filling out, or submitting absentee mail-in ballots for voters. Only voters, near family members, or legal guardians can perform those functions legally. There is suspicion third-party ballot collectors, rather than voters assigned the ballots, could be filling them out for the candidate on whose campaign they are working, and are not turning in ballots the voters filled in for the opposing candidate.
At Thursday’s news conference, the Republican senators said allegations about Bladen County absentee mail-in ballot skullduggery have been made since at least 2010. Both Democrats and Republicans might have benefited, and the practice was widely known. They pointed to huge statistical discrepancies in voting patterns as cause for alarm.
Democrats demanding an investigation into vote fraud….exactly the opening Trump needs. Let some ninny in the House demand that an investigation be launched, respond with alacrity (before the Demos can conjure up a ‘bipartisan panel’ to control the thing) and awaaay we go!
Might have to wait for the shutdown to play out, might not.
Oh, but the Democrats DID demand an investigation into voter fraud! And they got it!
And then they and their media STFU after every case brought to light showed it was the Democrats who had been twiddling the counts.
“Nothing to see here, move along. These aren’t the votes you’re looking for.”
Actually, TRX, it wasn’t just that, it was the simple fact that the techniques of “ballot harvesting” could be found in every winning Democrat’s campaign nationwide…. and some of us were starting to point that out.
Trump should establish a commission to investigate Ballot Harvesting in this district (a seat whose Republican winner Pelosi’s House has refused to seat) and Ballot Harvesting in general, especially in CA.
It should not prove difficult to expand the investigation into ballot security in general, including Voter ID laws.
Ideally this would be a non-partisan commission, perhaps drawing Joe Lieberman and any other retired Dem politicians possessing a modicum of integrity (I’m trying my best to think of names, but Lieberman is the only one who comes to mind.)
Trump did establish such a commission on voter fraud in 2017….. and every Democrat and many GOPe Republicans promptly refused to cooperate in any way. They did uncover some interesting things even so:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/7/voter-fraud-alert-over-5000-new-hampshire-presiden/
Antifa and BLM have been very quiet since talk of indicting their paymaster became serious.
I have no doubt they’ll be back, but they’ll probably try harder to cover the money trail next time, and they won’t be used for simple harassment like before.
“Trump does something effective about vote fraud (it isn’t – quite – time yet…or so I think) ”
Trump can’t do much about vote fraud since the Democrats will just flip him the bird and refuse to enforce. Note this video is from Houston, TX in 2018. Texas HAS voter id and a governor and AG who have prosecuted vote fraud with vigor (They are investigating this). SO WHAT??? Does anyone think if they had managed to pile up enough fraudulent votes to put Beto over the top he wouldn’t have been seated???? Anyone who thinks we’re voting our way out of this is DELUSIONAL with a cherry on top.
Oh, and yes, there are Senators right now who got elected by fraud. New Hampshire is one of the states who refused to cooperate with Trump’s Voter Fraud commission.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/7/voter-fraud-alert-over-5000-new-hampshire-presiden/
I find it interesting how little the MSM reports on what is going on in France at the moment. And everything Brexit related since the shocking vote results seems to be intentionally crafted to fail.
The MSM reaction to the votes rolling in ’16 was surreal. The mask slipped so far that it was unmistakable how biased they were. Getting caught out, in near real time, manufacturing incidents was a little shocking.
As for ACW2, I dread it’s coming. But it’s overdue. I can only hope that most of the really nasty stuff passes us by out here in flyover country.
Anyone else see reports that the gendarmes are targeting yellow vest leaders with live ammo?
Hell, they don’t even use that on the Islamist “No Go” zone holders.
They are also targeting them in the head with rubber bullets, so much more deniable.
RoEs are to be used against outside combatants. Your own subjects are fair game for anything.
Rep “the government has nukes” Swallows-Well could not be reached for comment.
A standard feature of Democrats calling for gun confiscation is to sanction actions against their “fellow Americans” that would rightly be considered “war crimes” if used on Islamic terrorists overseas.
Yes. At this point I’m all for air-dropping weapons to the yellow vest crowd.
yes. A yellow vest has been fatally shot.
The fireman died?
Damn it.
He had a wife and three kids, and was shot in the back of the head while just being a protester. Not even a “burn the cars” protester.
Why the French government thinks that will end well tells me that THEIR elite schools are at least as bad at teachingnreal history as ours.
Worse. Robert attended IB. The curriculum is from France. Don’t get me started.
An in-law teaches IB. I nod, look interested, and am glad that’s not in my bailiwick.
I haven’t heard much about IB. It’s that bad?
I’ve got friends with Irritable Bowel. It ain’t good. 😉 Or perhaps this is a different IB…
International Baccalaureate. It is Bad. It is a rigorous program in “good think” Note the rigorous. But in the US it will do nothing for your college admission (despite bringing down your grades) and what it puts in the head… nevermind.
Interesting . . . sad, but interesting – in a quick web search of ‘yellow vest protester gunned down’, the first page returned 1, count ’em, one article on the incident and eight on ‘anti-Semitism in the yellow vest movement’.
c4c
When you ban the right for people to peacefully assemble to protest, you cede them the right to UN-peacefully assemble. With the wrong leaders, you have Watts and Ferguson riots. With the right leaders, at best, you have the Revolutionary War, at worst, your have The Terror preceding the French Revolution.
Even many of us on the right beleive in rule by the enlightened. We expect leaders to be well educated, ethical, widely knowledgeable about many things, specially knowledgeable about certain things, and who know the difference, and are temporarily taking time away from the real jobs to do it. Alas, what we have instead are leaders pre-programmed by the infiltrated and occupied educational institution into progressive leftists educated in nothing more than the party line; widely knowledgeable about nothing and specifically knowledgeable about opinion polls results, but not statistics or ethics, and in it to rule forever.
So what you’re (and I’m) looking for is government by enlightened amateurs rather than government by professional governors. Works for me! Term limits at the very least, and not only for elected officials, but for any government bureaucrat above a certain pay level. For that matter, no government official, elected or otherwise, should be allowed to serve unless he or she can demonstrate proficiency in some form of endeavor other than government. Only after showing some relationship with the world outside government should a person be allowed to serve, and even then only temporarily.
To be honest, I think that’s exactly what the founding fathers intended. Although in their case, the enlightened amateurs were supposed to be all renaissance men with well rounded educations, and proven track records of success and sound minds in their communities.
Well, I’d support a variation on William F. Buckley’s adage:
“I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”
I’m not sure I’d pick the Boston directory (and are there even telephone directories anymore?), but the concept is good. How about a draft for governmental officials, conscripting normal people to serve in constitutional roles for a limited time, sort of like extended jury duty?
They’d be just the white pages, the yellow pages, and a few pages of old people who still have land lines from traditional telcos.
Everyone else is on VOIP and cellular…
(Raises hand). Non-satellite broadband will be coming Real Soon Now, probably sometime before the heat-death of the universe. As for cellular, when the iron-rich hill gets attacked by a swarm of angry D-10 caterpillars or the cell company puts in a tower closer than 10 miles away, it might be possible to replace the landline.
Term limits for bureaucrats be damned. What’s needed is a hunting season on GS 7s and above.
Fuck off and die.
My husband is a 12.
His boss, who is a great lady who works her ass off to try to rein in not just foreign abuses but native ones, is (duh) higher.
And you want to FUCKING KILL US because your ignorant ass thinks it sounds OK?
Either sober up, or go fuck yourself.
His entire office is off without pay. About half is allowed to work anyways.
They have to have someone standing by the front door to make sure they don’t work without pay, because their work is IMPORTANT. Shocker, some folks who work for the Fed think that protecting our people is important.
There’s one or two sort of liberals (and even those are what would be attacked as center-right) in the shop. The rest are make-Donald-blush conservatives. That’s WHY the Dems are OK with targeting DHS, DOJ and such.
And you want to declare that it’s ok to try to FUCKING KILL MY HUSBAND because he’s doing a job the government is supposed to be doing?
Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
I know you’re not a moron, CPS. I know you’re not Occasional Cortex of the right.
So WHY THE HELL are you now suggesting to KILL (well, attempt, I know my husband and co-workers armory) folks who are doing the things gov’t is supposed to do, because they’re not entry level secretaries?
My husband was hired at GS9 because he was a Navy vet who had spent 8 years in that exact field, and had a clearance.
So you want to have an open season on those who are military vets but go into public service?
Yeah, I know I’m almost at ranting level here.
YOU FUCKING PROMOTED KILLING MY HUSBAND.
Do you maybe think that, possibly, that will REALLY PISS ME OFF?
He’s doing public service because we KNOW he won’t abuse it, and it’s stuff the gov’t is supposed to be doing.
But hey, let’s all try to rally up hate, because hey why not, eh?
Honey, I think it was partly a joke… and he was thinking IRS agents, not people doing security stuff.
Yes, it was bad. But…
But the “joke” is my husband dead.
I get that. Which is why I said it was awful. But I dont’ think he was thinking of real people, if that makes sense. We all have lapses.
That is exactly what scares me.
The left lives on “not real people”– that is, dehumanizing anybody in the way of their goals.
Pretty sure I don’t need to spell out how that works out, here.
Incidentally, exactly why I don’t try to be nice about responding to it, too.
Because it is explicitly making my husband a non-person.
And WE KNOW BETTER.
We need to be watching ourselves better?
Cause this internal stress in the United States isn’t going to be going good places no matter what, and some of our best tools for bending the arc in a better direction involve decency and self control?
And in the end, individual assessments end up with better results than broad brush pattern matching.
It’s just that it’s way harder and more time consuming.
Even when it would be easier to make our own copies of their head-stories, just demonizing different targets.
It SUCKS, it’s a lot of work, there’s going to be judgement involved, and the opposition gets a vote.
But if we don’t do it, things will just get even worse.
Yes
I will not try to justify my bad taste. You are right to be angry with me.
I’m not all that sure that term limits for people like your husband would be better for the country than shooting them, though. Better for him and you, obviously, but it doesn’t address the problem which is that too much of the government is the House that Parkinson’s Law built. Hard workers doing actual good we want to keep, promote, and pay handsomely. Work-shy bums, political activists in government clothing, and mindless empire builders, we need to ease out.
It is generally a mistake to do wholesale what deserves to be done retail; considering government employees as a caste rather than as individuals is an unforced error. It is just that the 90% of them who are corrupt, lazy and/or incompetent give the other 10% a bad name.
Civil service reforms are obviously long overdue; at the very least Trump could rescind JFK’s Executive Order 10988 certifying government employee unions. Also, use Janus to end forced civil service membership and/or dues. Introduce legislation (Hello Nancy, we’ve got a treat for you) capping public employee pensions and limiting the effect of double/triple dipping (perhaps by rolling one pension into the next, the same way a 401K from a prior employer rolls into the one offered by a new employer.)
at the very least Trump could rescind JFK’s Executive Order 10988 certifying government employee unions
Elf was just suggesting the same thing.
And random conspiracy theory– that was one of the last things he did, and the Mob was big in labor unions. Can’t do that with federal employees, it opens a whole new can of worms.
Maybe someone objected.
limiting the effect of double/triple dipping (perhaps by rolling one pension into the next, the same way a 401K from a prior employer rolls into the one offered by a new employer.)
I like this one, but how would it be figured for military pensions?
A lot of folks retire from the military and then go into “civil service.”
Maybe like how having multiple insurance plans works– the second one covers the difference between the first coverage and the total?
RES, when the corruption is at the 90% level YOU JUST POSTULATED*, they ARE a caste. It is the classic example of the Sodom and Gomorrah dilemma: are there enough righteous left that the cities shouldn’t be nuked from orbit?
If you read the Scripture, there’s an answer: the righteous are warned to make tracks and do it, while the Lord cleans house.
Fox’s husband, 60guilders, and ME (because even though I’m not a direct employee, I’ve worked contracts for both government and private companies in my career; I’m currently working one with the USMC) need to be finding new careers. Or acknowledge that we might be part of the cost of reform.
* — As we’ve seen, that percentage is probably right. IRS targeting the Tea Party groups, the shenanigans that are being documented about the FBI / DoJ going after President Trump before Mueller, too many others to list. The sad and discouraging part isn’t even that they did these things; it’s that their fellow bureaucrats didn’t arrest them or at least resign as soon as they heard about it. Corruption among government employees has become expected and accepted, “normalized”, if you will.
Snelson–you’re forgetting that the Lord said he would spare the cities even if there were ten righteous men. I’m fairly certain there were more than a hundred men in those cities.
I can only look at the results: Lot’s family got told to leave, and the brimstone fell.
> double dipping
Why not? “Equal pay for equal work.” They do the time, they get the money, same as anyone else.
The retirement benefit is part of your “compensation”. Paying someone less because they have other income opens the door to abuse. “Oh, your spouse works? We’ll only pay you half of what Bob at the next desk gets.”
I will not try to justify my bad taste. You are right to be angry with me.
Accepted and thank you.
**********
We do need to work hard to keep house– and one bad manager can do insane damage. (Looks at Obama and his folks’ open abuse on political grounds.)
But fixing it requires having people who will do the work, so we can’t tell folks it’s impossible and that if they’re doing it, they don’t exist. That just hands the whole thing over to folks who WILL abuse it.
Would also be good to trim down how much the Fed is doing, as much as possible. Obviously border control related stuff is not an option. (Would you trust California to do a decent job?)
No. I would not expect CA to do a decent job on border control.
OTOH, the more I hear about where the Navajo, Apache, & some other SW “got there first” tribes, reservations borders are the same as the southern US border, I wonder if a fence funneling illegal immigrants there might be a thought … not saying it is a good or nice neighborly thought … I understand they practice the 3 S’s with prejudice; even the cartels avoid that section.
Disclosure/Disclaimer: The practice as I understand it may be untrue, pure rumor, or wishful thinking on those reporting it … I don’t know.
I am sorry but your husband is a Government Bureaucrat.
If the SHTF, unless he gets out quick, he is likely to be tarred with the same brush as the IRS, ATF, and other Government Bureaucrats that people don’t like. At that point there will be many idiots not even trying to make any kind of distinction between Good and Bad Government Bureaucrats.
It sucks but I don’t think there is anything that can be done about it.
sigh. You do know that people distinguish DEFENSE from the IRS, right?
If the SHTF, unless he gets out quick, he is likely to be tarred with the same brush as the IRS, ATF, and other Government Bureaucrats that people don’t like.
People in the future, in your estimation, might be complete idiots– so I shouldn’t object to it being suggested now?
On a more practical level, those doing the vast majority of the jobs that the gov’t should be doing have already done this work-through with various organized crime. Took the jobs anyways, because they need doing.
The possibility of disorganized crime (or more likely, organized crime attempting to point mobs at their desired targets)– is somewhat less worrying.
What Foxfier said. I’m about to be a GS-9, and I literally just got hired last year.
I will take…exception…if you come after me.
By which I mean I will do my very level best to ensure that you are carried by six.
Our Marine buddy is likewise above the cut-off.
He’s adorable, but…yeah, I wouldn’t want to try to kill him, either.
And anybody who tried, would have me trying to kill them. Because he’s an adorable kid dedicated to doing what the Gov’t is supposed to do.
“With the right leaders, at best, you have the Revolutionary War […]”
Our 1700s Revolutionary War was certainly an unusually good outcome for a revolt, but I think the 1600s “Glorious Revolution” has a good claim to be even better. Very far from achieving utopia, of course, but it did achieve a pretty good outcome as seen from the perspective of the time, and from our perspective it was an even better outcome because it was so clearly on track for the historically unprecedented successes of the Industrial Revolution.
FWIW, it was in many ways also an interesting counterpoint to the enthusiastic bloodymindedness controversy of the other replies to this parent comment. Politics is always played for blood at some fundamental level, but there is such a big difference between “stands like an ox in his furrow and mutters” bloodymindedness and “make a desert and call it peace” bloodymindedness that the practical-minded person should make a distinction. British domestic politics was strongly trending toward less dramatically memorably bloody-minded every generation or so in the 17th century, and it is at least tempting to connect that change to the domestic stability they achieved going forward. (And not grim mandarins-and-eunuchs stability at all costs, including the cost of backwardness and military weakness, but Hobbiton stability, with coffers overflowing with money for a worldbeating navy. Too bad, of course, about the hobby of going abroad to regions with low population density or with mandarins-and-eunuchs dysfunctional regimes and LARPing as orcs there, but I don’t think it particularly weakens my point about the pragmatic success of the domestic policy.)
Since it is never a bad time to cite Macaulay’s fascinating[*] History of England, I will quote it making a connection along those lines:
[*] Fascinating as history of the time period it describes, fascinating as a time capsule of how an influential faction thought at the time it was published, fascinating as a time capsule of a style of prose was largely displaced by the simplifying influence of writers such as Twain…
The distinctive characteristic of the Glorious Revolution and the American Fight For Independence is that each was an effort to restore the status quo ante. Return of the Stuart Dynasty and its efforts to expand the king’s prerogatives was similar to efforts by George III to reign in the self-governance that had been enjoyed by his American colonies during the Seven Years (aka, French & Indian) Wars. Both were efforts to assert the rights of the polity against the Crown, and both produced not so remarkably similar* Bills of Rights.
As the Glorious Revolutioins charter of rights provided the template for the American one. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution#The_Bill_of_Rights
The Left is determined to impose their fantasies on everyone by mandating things that don’t work, and then hoping it works , which it won’t. I used to not be sure if it was just a ploy to get power or if they were really stupid enough to think their ideas were sound. Now I think they’re mostly stupid.
When the Left does control enough of the government again — and eventually it will happen — they’ll try to make their fantasyland changes. The most likely outcome will be failure due to the inevitable infighting. But if they actually do make changes that affect the population in general, the scariest scenario is when some authority tries to enforce an unjust law.
For a long time, we citizens consider the piluce and military to be on the side of justice. But when they’re enforcing unjust laws, they’re not, and it’s reasonable for ANYONE to resist it. That is after all, how this country started. But it’s dangerous to resist if you don’t know what other citizens think about the laws being enforced. All that uncertainty is what allows dangerous situations to develop.
The problem is that the statists have discipline. Just as ocare was rammed thru, so will medicaid for all and the police protection act (gun ban). The former will just castrate the medical system. The latter will end in body bags, although I’m bearish on likelihood of revolt doing anything positive. But until there are no more subhumans left to defeat the disparate coalition will survive. Meanwhile the reps can barely pass a tax cut without some showboat announcing they cannot support this unconscionable bill.
Tbh i think we are long past develop.
The revolt against the gun ban will be positive if the politicians who rammed it through, not the fools trying to enforce it, are the first targets.
Thus far the revolt consists of ignoring them.
I’m seeing the (temporary, I hope) triumph of the left in Oregon. The urbanoids west of the Cascades have a one-size fits all program, and it doesn’t matter that police response is an hour on a good day; we must not try to defend ourselves. And large farms and privately owned businesses must be subject to a punitive death tax “because it’s only fair, you know”.
I feel sorry for the non-lefties stuck in the west side. At least we have local government trying to buffer the insanity.
Remember the three Ss every western rancher is familiar with: Shoot, Shovel, and Shutup. Works for more than “endangered” varmints predating your herds…
Just means you should sell all that land and business and go to the habitrails on the coast and be a good little prole.
Dad was a stubborn person and did what he saw as right rather than what was convenient. I got that from him, and occasionally paid the price for it. Still, I’d rather go with the 3S solution than be a good prole.
$SPOUSE and I are musing about what to do (and where to go) if Oregon succumbs to the California Virus. The State of Jefferson people might have the right idea, but it’s a bit early for state breakups. At least for now.
“…if…?”
From a distance, it looks like that ship sailed long ago.
We try to bring it back to shore, but the Salem-Portland axis is bound to try to control all of the state. They don’t always succeed.
I wonder if Saint Andreas would consider prayers from the Cascadia region. 🙂
” it doesn’t matter that police response is an hour on a good day; we must not try to defend ourselves”
Used to be “just don’t shoot them outside the house, if you do, drag them in & out & in again; so it looks like you shot them inside but they crawled out, but you dragged them in to try & save them.”
Now. You have to do that from the back bedroom as in “I tried to hide. They still came after me …”
“A bill that would increase firearm regulations in Oregon is a reminder that states have vastly different gun laws.
In Idaho, for example, you can purchase a gun from a private owner without going through a background check. In Oregon, background checks are required for all sales.
The bill proposed to appear in the Legislature this year would require Oregonians to obtain a permit before buying a gun, limit the amount of ammunition a person could buy, outlaw magazines with a capacity of more than five rounds, and create gun locking and storage requirements.
If passed, Senate Bill 501 would make Oregon’s firearms regulations among the strictest in the U.S. Compared to most other western states, Oregon already has stricter gun laws. ”
Good news is currently the background checks are not officially stored anywhere & disappear off the system, as much as anything can disappear off a computerized system. Key word is “officially”, there is no mechanism in the system to save the information other than the physical paperwork signed.
Someone I know has been through process twice in less than 6 months. It was explicitly stated by both locations (different) where the back ground checks were preformed that the background checks are not currently saved by the computer system. Even their sales, the paperwork they keep show the sale of the firearm, but not which one (would smack of registration), but official stamp that background was done, but not for who (again would smack of registration).
One because of a raffle won firearm (yes, surprised us too). That firearm was bigger than person wants to carry while backpacking or hiking, so another purchase was made, which incidentally matches the (large) stash of already have ammunition. The “free” purchase, person didn’t have any ammunition … didn’t, does now, & didn’t purchase any, nor did the person who gave it to the individual, purchase any ammunition for that firearm, either now, nor in any past … No, am not ratting out the person, neighbor, friend, or acquaintance, who informed me (they were bragging about the raffle win).
Official stance around here is “What guns? Mom got rid of theirs when daddy died.”
I suspect there would be a huge uptick in unfortunate boating accidents if that bill came to fruition. (And also a bunch of lawsuits.)
I do find myself wondering how much of the things reported in the news are actually real or real to the degree that they are reported to be. Scott Adams had a very interesting point around the elections, in that the news has a vested interest in reporting that tensions are rising and things are hearing up to the boiling point, because rage drives clicks, and clicks are the only metric most news companies can measure.
I find myself wondering how many people crews life the ones that went after the school boys actually have, or if they are really just an insignificant fraction of the population handed a megaphone by a news media desperately seeking something bad for them to report on.
If you think about it, this was a bunch of teenage boys that a cluster of professional provokers tried to start something with, and all they could manage to get was a confused smile.
They act like they run the world. Do they really have any power beyond what we let them? Or are they the old publishing houses screaming that we need to pay attention to them or else?
My dad was a newspaperman for 32 years, back when that had something to do with actually reporting what happened. I learned about the Gell-Mann amnesia effect very early and from that how to interpret the news.
Briefly, if you see a report in the MSM about something you have close and deep knowledge of, the news report is so bizarrely wrong and not even within shouting distance of reality that you’re astounded. But when you read reports about things you’re not personally knowledgeable about, you tend to give the same “news” organizations much more credibility than you did for the reports you could critique from personal experience.
So the answer to your question, “how much of the things reported in the news are actually real or real to the degree that they are reported to be,” is, none. Oh, there’s a possibility of them getting something right just by accident, but that’s definitely not the way to bet.
But when you read reports about things you’re not personally knowledgeable about, you tend to give the same “news” organizations much more credibility than you did for the reports you could critique from personal experience.
Now, apply that to the “Millennials are ________” stuff.
-.-
If you think about it, this was a bunch of teenage boys that a cluster of professional provokers tried to start something with, and all they could manage to get was a confused smile.
Oh, well said.
And the kid in question stood his ground, against provocation and a hostile crowd, and rather hesitantly smiled at them. Kid’s got more guts and integrity than any liberal, and frankly counted coup against the native American drummers.
Yes, I’m impressed with the kid.
Someone walked up to his face and was quite rude to him, and he took it rather than argue with a lunatic.
Even though it looks to me like he wasn’t quite sure what was going on, coupled with embarrassment at being the sudden center of attention, he did okay.
For a teen boy? he did AMAZINGLY. I’ve been accused of channeling my inner 13 yo boy, now and then, and I’d have started punching.
Younger son, who is much older than that boy, but mine, would probably have started punching AND NOT STOPPED.
That confused smile was probably the best likely reaction. Teh Narrative that the boys were doing something wrong unraveled pretty quickly. MY gut reaction would have ended with me in jail. Probably not prison, but jail for a while.
I still think the kids should have tried to charge Mr. Professional Native American with assault.
He definitely fulfilled the requirements.
You probably saw that the next evening he and a group of other AIM and related “protesters” tried to enter the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception during Mass to protest Catholic colonialism or something like that.
Nope, didn’t hit ny news sources… and half of them are explicitly Catholic.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/nathan-phillips-rally-attempted-to-disrupt-mass-at-dcs-national-shrine-91038
Apparently he and his associates missed the part about how often the Catholic Church scolded Euro-Americans (North and South) about mistreating Indians.
Probably bought into the lies about the church enslaving everybody and destroying their culture.
(In a way, they did destroy a lot of cultures– mostly by the whole “it’s not OK to torture people to death and kidnap their women and children for slaves” type things, and giving people a choice.)
Found via Adam Baldwin’s Twitter feed, includes video by scourge of Poseur Veterans, Seal Don Shipley:
Not a Vietnam vet
Served in USMC 72-76
Drumroll please
Refrigerator mechanic not a “Recon Ranger
& the big finish
3 AWOLS
Also at Adam Baldwin’s feed, this Venn Diagram provided by
Did you hear the “Freon Ranger” sally?
mine, too. I would have berserked and killed someone.
A church group in a Gun-Free Zone. It probably looked safe enough.
Most of the country, it could have been “a failure of the victim-selection process.”
Good thing they weren’t some school’s ball team…
O.M.F’ing.G!
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could probe banks’ earnings
Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now a member of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees the nation’s banks and financial institutions. And California Congresswoman Maxine Waters is chairing that committee.
And I think it’s going to be a hoot.
Ocasio-Cortez has already proposed taxing very rich people at a 70 percent rate. And bankers would be the ones stung by a proposal like that — which, incidentally, is stupid and is never going to happen.
But what I like most about the Democrat from California and the one from Queens — who shocked the political establishment when she won the primary last year and then the election — is that the pair might take the opportunity to look into how banks report their earnings.
And once people point out the accounting tricks, Ocasio-Cortez and Waters can really get some TV airtime jumping up and down. For instance…
I wonder if AOC would support Ron Paul’s “Audit the Fed”?
> who shocked the political establishment when she won the primary last year and then the election
—
Couldn’t be any shock to the Republicans; they worked far harder to put her in than the Democrats did.
I’d like to believe someone has a Plan, but preponderance of evidence says it’s another of the the kind of Republican antic that generates Kali-grade facepalm.
I dunno. Using Ocasio-Cortez as the stalking horse by which to audit all the things would be both hilarious and clever.
When the left gets back in power, they are going to make Obama’s first term, when they forced Obamacare on us, look like a pleasant experience.
This will not end well.
Heh, speak for yourself. Some of us read that and think, “Welcome to the party, pal.”
These days, I enjoy reading all the commentary lamenting ‘polarization’ and the like, written by people who support the politicization of football, fiction, games, school curricula, etc.
c4c
Who’s got the weapons? That’s your clue about who will eventually be running things.
In Europe, the answer is “the USA”. And should the USA pull it’s troops out (likely), the class/group who steps up to become the new European military will be the eventual new overlords. I suspect that the EU will do the same thing as the Roman Empire, and make the Barbarian Tribes into the new Legions- and be mastered by same.
In the USA, the people with the weapons tend to be mostly on the rightwing axis (a point we’ve discussed before). Deep state will find it a lot harder to enforce it’s will when they find they don’t have the force to back it up.
An extra point to consider is that what force the deep state does have has a large contingent (perhaps even a majority) of its members sympathetic or even part of the rightwing axis…
Most (I’d say all, but there may be exceptions) government agents, no matter what department, are authorized sidearms. Who did the authorizing and what they expected to accomplish baffles me. That said, the vast Deep State Progressive blob may be armed, but I expect they would be more a danger to themselves than to an armed populace. They’re Armed, but likely not trained, and I doubt that if they ARE trained, they practice much.
Even the Education Department has a SWAT team.
And their agents are trained BUT they are trained as LEO in the US.
They are totally unprepared for anyone actually fighting back.
Case in point the Branch Dravidians. The ATF only stopped when THEY were running out of ammo. The BDs had plenty, but they stopped as soon as the AFT stopped.
I was looking at an issue of “Air Force Times” (?) about ten years ago, that had a pie chart of the demographics of the US military in general.
Something like 40% were from Dixie, 25% from flyoverland, 10% were from the urban coasts, and the rest were foreigners serving in the US armed forces.
I’m willing to bet the officer-to-enlisted demographics were substantially different, though…
Polling from the last election indicated that the enlisted ranks supported Trump by a wide margin, the officers the same but less so.
IIRC, Hillary came in third in polling among the US military during the 2016 election – with the Libertarian candidate outpolling her.
That’s one of the things the American Left doesn’t get–their contempt for the military is returned in full.
Smart revolutionaries suborn the lower ranks of the army. Dumb ones mock them and call them babykillers.
They’re not exactly working hard to win friends among law enforcement either.
I guess it’s just one of the flaws of using Soviet sourced methods. There was supposed to be a Soviet army to step in and take over.
What kind of revolutionaries say, “You know, education, if you make the most of it and you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”?
Of course they feel contempt. Doormen and police wear uniforms, they’re the symbol of subservience to their class. Military wear uniforms, so of course they’ll do as they’re bidden as well.
The lickspittle appointees at the Pentagon and the tainted graduates of West Point might kowtow, but that in no way means the deplorables in the ranks are going to go along with it.
uh guys, this article is about how close to acw2 (at least the comments are). one of the causes that might trigger it would be if the EBT cards stop working.
I read somewhere (I don’t remember where) that if the govt shut down continues to the end of feb. that system will be out of money.
the end my be days away.
those of you that live/work in a large city might think about a vacation around then.
Head desk. Head Desk. HEAD DESK. The OP explicitly refutes the idea of a civil war.
AND the EBT cards stopping working is insane boogery. I’ve been reading this for years and NO PORTION OF IT WORKS.
It’s like saying the gillet Jaunes is happening because the police is going after Muslims.
Are all of you off your rockers.
ok
“Are all of you off your rockers.”
Of course we are! Have you ever tried typing while sitting in a rocking chair? Finger placement on the keyboard just goes all to Hekk;
Point 1. RES, I use a rocker at my computer. So I am in fact firmly ensconced in my rocker. I have for . . . well, over sixteen years now.
Point 2. Yes, the Ag department is out of money for EBT, as well as very many of the other things. That doesn’t mean all that much–they’ve distributed February’s early, but will be shut down as of Feb 1, and have no ability to distribute more in March. But that is a good many days away, and I’d be absolutely amazed if they don’t find some way to distribute more as of the beginning of March one way or another.
Point 3. A lot of people are working on this potential problem, from individuals to communities. I won’t say there won’t be localized issues, but charitable groups and individuals are already gearing up to do what they can do, which in this country is quite a lot, and may actually be better at feeding folks, since they usually hand out food rather than funds.
Haven’t read yet, but was charmed to see the whole civilization angle pointed at, instead of the usual (not here, broad general) pointed out.
We have such a massive wealth…..
“We have such massive wealth…”
And it’s ours to use as we owners see fit; not the government, and not the elitists.
Though we should be responsible about improving it– that’s just being decent.
Problem is, the elite seem to want to take it over and remake it in their own image….
Yeah, but you know the point is, if we earned the wealth, we get the right to decide how it gets used to improve things. The government didn’t earn that right, and ain’t one single elected representative ever earned that right either.
Wrong wealth; this is the wealth of the civilization we were lucky enough to be born into– which we definitely did NOT earn!
Oh, you *do* earn it. If you don’t do the hard work (education, morality, jealous guarding of your liberty), then you will most certainly lose it – or your children will. If you do the hard work, then you have earned it once again for your children and theirs.
In their zero-sum worldview, all of your wealth came at the expense of others, which makes you the bad guy. As agents of the State, it’s their duty to fix the inequality and injustice by reapportioning the mis-gotten accumulation of capital.
As best I can tell about the AfD and PEGAIDA is that they are primarily pro-Western Civ, anti-uncontrolled immigration, pro-assimilation, pro-law-and-order. PEGAIDA came first and was the heart-felt reaction to the 1915 opening of the gates. Their argument was that German culture and western civilization were valuable and should be taught and defended, not discarded. They opposed unchecked immigration by people who did not want to become German and who did not value western civilization. AfD, the Hungarian nationalists, the Austrian populist/nationalists, and others are the political offshoots of that impulse.
They are not NSDAP members in waiting, the are not neo-Nazis, although the media assume they must be. Yes, the skinheads will show up at AfD rallies. So do the Communists. There are Jewish members in the AfD, last time I did some digging. It is difficult to find good info, even in German, because the German and EU media try hard to stick with the Official Story.
1915? Did I read that year correctly? What is so very significant about 1915?
2015, I think.
2015, sorry. I’m also researching the politics of Wilhelmine Germany for Day Job, plus covering for someone today, and my brain is mush for numbers.
If as a non-Old-World reader one realizes that the Official European Union Press Style Guide mandates that the term “Far-” is only ever applicable to the term “Right”, and in that association it is mandatory, then all press coverage from the Old World will make a bit better sense.
A reader will never experience the term “Far-Left” in any reporting whatsoever, and any political description of anyone from the Trotsky-line rightward is always “Far-Right”.
If one wants to translate from EuroSpeak to reality, when one sees “Far-Right”, think “Centrist” and it will make better sense to a non-Old-World reader.
Japan, China, and India are also interesting.
Japan I do not understand. I see signs of some of the same social diseases as the US.
China? ChiComs gonna Com.
India shows some signs of wanting prosperity. Policywise, from hearsay I gather they are shooting themselves in the foot. Lots of soft left tendencies. I forecast that the Indians will be very disappointed, and some years down the line will be looking for someone to take it out on.
Given that it is my analysis, I am obviously going to interpret this stuff through the lens of UK, Germany, France, India, China and Japan as opponents in the next World War. If our domestic factional relationships are not good enough to preclude civil war, how can any international relationship be good enough to ensure that a foreign power comes in on our side of the next world war, as opposed to on one of the opposing sides?
I think Japan is America’s problems without our release mechanisms– things like me going “F that, I’m gonna housewife!” in the face of how “every woman” needs a career, or my brother trying for something, failing, and then keeping going instead of killing himself as a failure.
Japan I do not understand.
Over time I have come to embrace this as my fundamental position on the inhabitants of those islands. I am happy to have what is left of them as they demographically dwindle as an ally, and some of their artistic endeavors are very good, but those folks are as close to A Nation Of Odds as you will ever see.
My take on it is Japan is a nation of Odds with conformism as a social ideal – which may have something to do with their high suicide rate.
India, as near as I can tell has the same problem China does–about a fifth of their population lives in the late twentieth century, another fifth lives in the early twentieth century, and the rest all live in the sixteenth century.
Also, India will probably stick with us, because we are very far away, and China is nearby. Better to ally with the far superpower than the near one.
China- heading towards a big economic/demographic crash in a decade or so.
Japan- already had their economic/demographic crash.
Plus, the two do not like each other. Should China get too antsy, Japan will join the nuclear club.
Lots of soft left tendencies.
India used to be even more left than they are now. They flirted heavily with the commies on their continent.
The question is which way they will ultimately slip. The 50% living in the 16th century will tell in the end.
India has some of the same issues China does wrt demographics, inequality, etc, plus added issues with a nuclear armed neighbor (two, really) and an encroaching neighbor with an inferiority complex. China is playing chicken in Africa, with India, and with the rest of ASEAN. Makes me glad i’m leaving this region next year.
Anyone else hearing the title of this post with gaps (Like: It. Is. Later. Than. You. Think.) and trying to recall which radio show started thus?
Lights Out
It is my GUESS, that the AfD is somewhat equivalent to Trump voters. I used to say they were more like Republicans, and only looked so right wing because the Left had gone so far to the left.
“Hillary Clinton went from impossible-to-lose to impossible-to-win so fast it had much of the MSM exposing their true colors that very night. You remember the tears and shocked faces?
That alone should have put middle America on notice about media bias.” We’d already noticed the enemedia was in the tank for the Dems.
“Hillary Clinton went from impossible-to-lose to impossible-to-win so fast it how much of the MSM exposing their true colors that very night. You remember the tears and shocked faces?
That alone should have put middle America on notice about media bias.”
That & reported polls. I’ll believe polls in America, or anywhere, are accurate, when there is a space ship in every asteroid self sustaining homestead in the galaxy subdivision called the “Milky Way”.
To be clear … Never.
Oddly and interestingly enough, know personally several younger generation people studying Japanese culture and language; others who have chosen to work/live in Japan itself, some of whom have Japanese spouses. They are US citizens who live in Japan and only rarely visit their US families. Makes me wonder how many and who are the expats (that we tend to think of retirees seeking cheaper places to live) who are young people choosing different cultures to spend their lives in. Examples: Couple in Mexico. Young man in Thailand. (We were told by British gentleman living in Thailand, running several successful businesses and married to a Thai lady for 30 years, that despite speaking four languages besides English he has never been able to successfully master Thai.) Several others travel all around the world for their jobs, becoming multi-lingual in most cases and have little attachment to the US. Where will they ultimately settle? Will they are about the coming mess in the US?
Japan? Mostly because of Japanese manga and anime growing up.
The others? I actually fell down a rabbit hole reading blogs of these people. 99% hard left, get disillusioned within a year, come back to US. Longest is 10 years.
I knew a Canadian who left for Europe (Sweden? Not sure, recall it was near but not Norway) for all the great socialist benefits… and after a year or so got back to Canada as he discovered just how much all that alleged ‘free’ really costs.
Know of someone who wanted to leave the racist US for Canada after Trump elected. He didn’t meet criteria so no move. But still hasn’t learned from it.
Disillusionment doesn’t seem to have affected Fred Reed down in Mexico. Of course he does travel around a lot.
There’s always an exception. MOST of them, though, get really tired.
Even in Portugal, a solidly 2nd or even 1 and 1/2 country, people going there to homestead (Country property is relatively cheap) love everything about it that I loved: the soil that will grow anything, the nice climate, the ability to visit ruins/monuments from any historical period within a couple of hours. But they usually leave when they need medical care; when they realize how bad disaster management is; when it gets to them that stuff like electricity is rationed and unreliable.
Ol’ Fred is occasionally interesting, but he’s so eaten up with his hatred of America most of his later writing goes off into silliness.
There’s also a decent percentage of former US military personnel who married Japanese ladies and stayed here, and their children grow up here. But those children will always be Ameri-Japanese to “real” Japanese people.
yep. because Japanese is ETHNIC.
Am acquaintance is Chinese. His parents were from China, he was born there, but they came to America before he could walk. For his entire life, as far as he could remember, he was from San Francisco…
He said that caused him no end of trouble when trying to interact with his parents’ friends and business contacts, or trips back “home” to China, when he not only spoke only broken, heavily-accented Chinese, but didn’t behave as they thought someone his age and apparent status should.
Back in gwailo-land he was a respected engineer at a major Silicon Valley computer company, in China he was a punk who should speak only when spoken to.
Hope they came here as in immigrated, so he’s got an official status should China want to put some weight on him.
From personal experience as a 20 year American expat, the longer you stay away from America, the more attractive America becomes.
True, there’s usually a year or so honeymoon period when everything in your new host nation is new and exciting and different- and one does feel as if one is cosmopolitan compared to the provincial rubes back in your home area.
But, time passes, the novelty wears off, and instead of being cool and special, you find things that are just annoying or unpleasant. Driving on roads that aren’t all potholes for one, or having stores where what you want is available, or not getting food poisoning in the local restaurants, or just being able to get a straight answer.
And you’ll find that while newer expats tend to exaggerate their expattyness when in the USA, they tend to conversely act more American when overseas.
“Driving on roads that aren’t all potholes for one …”
This is an area where many American communities are striving to achieve world standards, BTW.
Before the state repaved the roads to the casinos, most state highways in Mississippi didn’t have potholes. They had occasional strips and ridges of tar across dirt roads…
My parents had an RV in the 1970s; when we hit the Mississippi state line we always stopped so Mom could take anything breakable out of the cabinets, wrap them in towels or spare clothing, and put them on the floor. Still had the back bumper come loose once from all the banging and jouncing… had a water tank rupture another time.
When I first moved to $HOOTERVILLE, the main highway had a sign “BAD ROAD NEXT 17 MILES.” A visitor from Michigan marveled that a road in such good condition had such a warning on it. It did need work – another visitor, one driving an RV (motorhome), decided the return trip should be on the back roads, slower, but less oscillation.
Same as how gang fear and domestic abuse are reasons for asylum. How many Americans meet the criteria, or even moreso and get no support.
I concur, RES. One stretch of my “commute” requires driving in the turn lane if one desires to maintain the posted limit without breaking an axle. This on a major east-west road well within the city limits. It was repaved seven-eight years back.
“It’s not the contractor’s fault, it’s not the city’s fault, it’s the asphalt.” Yeah, riiiiiiiiiight. *annoyed teenager eye-roll here*
Manuel labor factors into this. When you come from a culture of bribes and gloves… well…
“It’s not the contractor’s fault, it’s not the city’s fault, it’s the asphalt.”
Somebody approved the contract, somebody approved the materials, somebody signed off on the job as completed according to spec, so what ass is at phalt?
I second this.
A simple question: What happens to the world when American food production drops 90%? That is a side effect of a 3rd American civil war.
I have read science fiction for 60 years. No one has come close to the true reality of what the collapse of civilization will mean. If we are lucky only 2 billion die. Rise and collapse seem part of our human pattern. We have risen so high, we have a long way to fall. What killed the civilizations of 1100 BC?
The left seems blind to what they do. They didn’t set out to wreck Venezuela. No one sets out to kill the goose that lays golden eggs. Yet Ukraine in the 20’s, Argentina after WWII, to Venezuela are crashes caused by the left. So many examples. None are so blind, that will not see. The right sees the danger, the left pushes forward thinking they are about to win, then kills the Kulaks for hoarding grain. They then call it “bad luck”.
This will be the worst own goal. There is much real danger in the universe we must prepare for. Cascadia will rupture. Tokyo will have another 8. Yellowstone will visit Kansas. A 10 mile asteroid will arrive at the “right” time. The ice will return. Rather than prepare, we sail toward the reef…
Remember- there’s a whole lot of Marxist cult members who believe that America’s collapse will lead to the Revolution and True Global Communism.
It’s a religious thing.
It’s a religious thing.
This. For so very many, this.
> only 2 billion
That presupposes the industrial infrastructure to make modern fertilizers and insecticides remains or is rebooted quickly, and that rail and truck transport survive to get fertilizer, spare parts, and fuel to farms, and to get the produce to where it needs to go.
You’d lose more than two billion just in Bangladesh and India. Without at least that much industrial infrastructure, you’re looking at a lot more dead of starvation. My most conservative estimate would be six billion, and that supposes immediate and maximal use of every bit of arable soil, somehow getting enough stoop labor out there to work it, and handwaving how to get it to to the people who need it.
Modern fertilizers and insecticides require energy to produce. Our entire western infrastructure is based on cheap, plentiful energy, 80% from fossil fuels. (I was surprised 9% from nuclear and 11% from renewables. And I knew energy usage had losses, but I was surprised that the total was nearly 2/3rds lost to the 1/3rd actually utilized.) Destroy the production sources, or disrupt the distribution system for more than 2 weeks, and the whole damn thing is likely to collapse.
“modern fertilizers and insecticides remains or is rebooted quickly,”
Which isn’t going to happen; both sides are well aware that modern fertilizers make dandy boom mixture; some are also aware that if you concentrate insecticides, well…… One of the early discoveries in Iraq was bunkers full of drums labeled “insecticide” which made the chemical weapons detectors go nuts. Just remove the dilution……
Those will be targets of high importance for pre-emptive removal.
Great article, but
“even though many of her people are—foolishly, to anyone who has seen one— spoiling for one”
We can’t move forward until we defeat the Post Modernist Global Marxists. And, as per Ender’s Game, we must win in a manner that wins any future battles too. Which means that we are going to have to kill every last one of them and sort them historically and socially right next to the Nazi.
Yes it will hurt, but tbe alternative is a lifetime of turning routs into orderly retreats.
Han shot first. Let’s get it over with.
You do remember what happened at the end of Ender’s Game, right?
Spoiler Alert: I think you didn’t read the last chapter.
Regret is one thing. But regret, like mercy, is also a luxury that can only be indulged in by the winners of an existential struggle.
I think it goes a bit beyond regret when you actively harbor the last survivor of the race you nearly wiped out in order to let them reboot.
> Han shot first
Han was a criminal, dealing with other criminals.
Expecting him to play by Queensberry rules was silly, but it didn’t stop Lucas from changing it… which sort of killed the “bad guy moves to Good” subplot, but I doubt anyone cared.
SWTOR kept the original spirit at the end of the Smuggler class quest on Alderaan. 😀
Eh, in confrontations between crooks, one is getting the shot off first. It doesn’t make the other an angel.
Also, side note: thanks to an earlier discussion, I think there’s some misunderstanding of the government pay scale and where people fall on it. Based on my admittedly limited experience, this is what the level of responsibility looks like for the various levels:
GS 1-4 are practically a part-time job. You are not making important decisions.
GS 5-7 are entry-level positions. You might make decisions that affect individuals, but will not make decisions that affect large groups of people, except indirectly.
GS 8-12 are like unto 5-7, but are not entry-level.
It’s not until GS 13 that you start getting into actually making decisions that might affect policy, and not until 15 that you start really making decisions that affect large numbers of people.
And you left out us WGs, the worker bees. Plumbers, electricians, bouler operators, laundry and housekeeping- the people who work with things other than computers.
And SES’ – Senior Executive Service – who actually make the BIG decisions. They are equivalent to General Officers in the military. (GS-13-15 are more like Majors to Lt Colonels)
Fortunately, most of these people don’t do anything at all most of the time. They have meetings with each other and do PowerPoint slides.
I’m seeing a lot of comments about how we need to enforce the Constitution we have, and I agree with all of them.
The elephant that NO ONE is addressing is that Constitution was made for the government of a REPUBLIC, with the franchise restricted to those with a stake economically and socially enough to keep them from looting the public purse.
We don’t live in one.
We live in a warm-body DEMOCRACY, where anyone who can show up (or not, with mail in ballots, right Sarah?) is allowed to cast a vote that counts just as much as anyone else’s. Which means that those who are NOT contributing to the system, and whose livelihoods come from using the state to loot the productive, are the ones driving this train.
That will have to change. Our election laws will have to change to eliminate the possibilities for fraud, and the franchise will have to be restricted so that at least the self-supporting are the ones making the decisions. That’s why there were restrictions such as pauper’s oaths, which meant that government assistance meant you didn’t have the franchise while you were on it. It’s also why felony convictions lead to loss of voting rights, and also to Second Amendment rights: No voting under Rule .308.
And implementing those changes won’t happen without actual fighting. But if they aren’t, there will be no changes.
“If it be quicker to die by the sword
Or cheaper to die by vote–
These are things we have dealt with once,
(And they will not rise from their grave)
For Holy People, however it runs,
Endeth in wholly Slave.”
https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/macdonoughs_song.html
One vote for every tax bracket you pass through? Not my ideal, but I’d support it. If nothing else, it would probably result in reducing the number of tax brackets.
We view this “red sky at morning” as part-and-parcel of the extraordinary Scientific/Industrial, lately Info-tech/robotics and demographic transformation wrought in Western cultures –particularly the Anglosphere– from c. AD 1600 on.
Just as no-one in 1800 could conceive developments to 1900, or those in 1900 the advances of AD 2000 (in outline, think Quantum Theory and Relativity; Edison’s research laboratories, Ford’s mass-production, Pasteur’s scientific medicine), so we in this early 21st Century react in baffled wonderment, seeking unwonted security against civilizational earthquakes-tsunamis rolling in.
Without belaboring the profound psychogenic unease infecting every aspect of storm-tossed global cultures, we assert: Nothing that’s happened over some four centuries prepares anyone for what must come.
First: By 2100, organic evolution will have been supplanted by hyperlinked, effectively immortal, networks of symbiontic nodes. Second, as cyclical 102-kiloyear Pleistocene glaciations dating from AD 1350 bury 80% of Earth’s habitable zones beneath ice-sheets 2.5 miles thick, populations will either remove en masse off-planet to giant intrasolar refugia, or go extinct. Third, on these bases every scientific discipline from biology and chemistry to physics and utterly new, synergistic combinations, will render any and all traditional intellectual, moral, even spiritual mores risibly outmoded.
Pre-schoolers today will catch a glimpse of this; but many an upscale Westerner born c. 2050 – 2075 will transition to a holographic node both part-and-whole of humanity’s spontaneously self-emergent super-organism. As quantum correlation/correspondence opens worlds-on-worlds to instantaneous accessibility, our Milky Way Galaxy will serve as a mere stepping stone.
To skeptics, we advise: Check back in AD 2125… actually, 10,000 years from now would be more apropos.
Skeptics OTOH know humans. Cybernetic my sore behind. At least some of the smarter tech people are admitting it won’t happen.
Curve fitting technological advancement data is not a valid method of forecasting the future.
You get more entertaining singularity masturbation from cross over fanfic positing that Ranma Saotome shows up at the world tournament at the end of Dragonball. “…but then Ranma intuits that Goku intuited that Ranma intuited that Goku intuited that Ranma intuited…”
Assuming that certain technologies must be developed by certain dates, decades into the future, is akin to having strong convictions on the matchup between Raoh and Heihachi Edajima that are believed to be valid for any crossover of every Shonen Jump property.
Possibly worth keeping in mind:
Not sure the left is up for civil war. Divorce maybe. I’m ready for our own version of Brexit. I think 1) there is no longer common ground to be found. Where are the shared points between border security with immigration to benefit the country rather than a charitable endevour; and everyone should be able to come legally? Or between personal responsibility and all necessities are ‘human rights’ and should be provided at no cost to you by the state. Or even the middle ground between ‘the global technocrats should have an outsized say in nation state governance’, and ‘we should leave the UN because they are inept at everything they do.’
2) The animosity has gotten too nasty and the disdain and disgust from either side for ‘the others’ has gone past the point of healing the rift. Just like a marriage where verbal altercations stray into the realm of digging into each others’ most vunerable spots too many times results in harms that just cannot be forgotten much less forgiven.
Good, because this post is about how there won’t be a civil war. There won’t be succession either. Again, they’re not you. That’s kind of the whole point.
The Left is not up for civil war because they think they’ve already won, and all that remains is a mopping up action. The Arrow of History points up their butts, don’cha know?
A civil war also means they have to get off their arse, put their lives at risk, submit to discipline, and all that kind of stuff.
And this is a group that whines loudly that other people should give them free shite.
They are no less certain of victory than the rousers on the right. They think that they will have the govt and tech to negate the skill advantage that rightists may have. In addition, the dehumanization efforts have paid out in spades. That helps make war crimes much easier to commit and sllow.
If skill at committing war crimes were how wars were won, we’d be living in the world of The Man in the High Castle.
Committing atrocities is actually counter-productive to conquest. You want to give your opponent room to surrender with the knowledge he’ll likely survive the aftermath.
If you are too harsh, and he feels there’s nothing left to lose, there’s a good chance they’ll find the strength to fight even harder (thus Sun Tzu’s comment on putting your own soldiers on deadly ground to fight).
The only divorce would be the formation of City-States and the rest of the country. The Divide is Urban & country. There is no place to draw the divorce lines.
If the Republicans could nominate Anne Frank to a major position
Maybe if we could convince her to run in Chicago…….
It will take …
It will take re-educating and re-committing the electorate to the proper ideas of freedom and morals. If we can’t do that with enough of the electorate, the best we can hope for is a divorce.
– Never knew of your work before today (hat tip Ace of Spades blog!)
– will now be buying all of your books.
Though you might want to be careful about mentioning National Review; Jay Caruso might call you drunk and masturbatory on Twitter. *eyeroll*
Blink… what?
A lot of these problems could be solved by persuading coastal and Bay Area California to secede.
“I know of no true historical model for a civil war in a country that looks and acts demographically like America does now.”
Spain, 1930; England 1640
Not Spain 1930. I was closer to that, sir. THAT needs foreign mercenaries.