Rough Music

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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Pratchett’s “Witches” world was so similar to my own, from jumping over fires to get married (not legal in my day, but there was memory of it) to various local folk superstitions, that it was always a surprise when he pulled something I’d never heard of.

One of these is the “rough music.”

When someone has done just about enough that a small village can no longer put up with him, the men in the village get together and play a barbarous and terrible music as they nerve themselves up for the barbarous and terrible things they have to do.

In Europe — hell, all over the rest of the world —  the rough music is playing.  Just because no one is reporting on this, it doesn’t mean it’s not going on, and growing, and nerving itself up to… something.

The level at which the Gilets Jaunes have been under reported is extraordinary, except that it hasn’t stopped the uprising either.

(And now I think about it, how much do we see in main stream news about Hong Kong? And it hasn’t stopped the uprising either.)

To those of you who haven’t been to Europe recently (as locals, not tourists) and don’t have family there, there are things to remember:

1- Europe is weird in terms of blogs and alternate news media.  They might read ours — some do — but blogs never really took off in Europe as a source of news.  Even here, we’re at most 50%.  Maybe a little more if you count that news filter in.  People talk at the water cooler, whatever.  More on this later.  BUT in Europe this doesn’t exist.  Mostly the news they get including the news from here are third hand via our media and whatever crazy alien clown they’re getting their spin from.

2- Europe is about 20 years “ahead” of us on the road of what a friend of mine calls the Brahamandarins taking over.  The internationalist left has been in full command since the nineties. They never had a Reagan (Thatcher sort of kind of held off the tide briefly, but only in one country.)  There was no eighties prosperity. Hell, slick Willie was to the right of their right. Obama is about center of their politicians, including his loathing for the country he governed.

3- Europe is in trouble BAD.  The government has betrayed the people to the extent of making it almost impossible for rural populations to live with any dignity; for people to afford having families; for people to be safe in their lives, pursuits and possessions.  No, I mean to a level you guys don’t comprehend.  Imagine if the Obama years had lasted for 30 years now, and he controlled all the media, all the judges and most of the law enforcement.

And Europe has had just about enough.  Things like Brexit and the Yellow Jackets filter through here, in the alternate news sources.  I wonder how much else is going on, we have not a clue about.  The fact we know about the Yellow Jackets at any level is bizarre enough, given that they are — media and internet wise — living in the eighties.

So, let’s talk about the rough music.  Sure, you can hear it. I can hear it too. The stomp and the drumming can be heard all over the world.

That which can’t go on, won’t.

But I implore you to stop and think: if the rough music plays, what comes after?

There might be no hope for Europe, but Europe’s… ah…. how do we put this? Europe’s tenets, their stand before the world, an improvement as they were on everything before them, are not ours.

Even in Europe I suspect when this bursts — and there it will burst.  The elites flaying and screaming is only making it worse — you’re going to see things that will make you wonder why on Earth good American boys died in WWII.  Because we’re about to get National Socialism, the sequel.  National because they’re getting tired of the international elites (and who isn’t) and socialism because the poor bastards have not experienced anything else their entire adult lives.

It will happen. It is necessary. The EU was probably one of the most bizarre ideas in the history of bad ideas. The way it’s run which essentially steals the franchise from ordinary people was just the old style “good families” coming back into power through a back door.

But what comes after will probably be horrific. If we’re all lucky it will also be briefish and like France after the revolution they’ll find their way to something slightly less insane.  With or without Napoleon and Europe wide war?  Ah… that’s where we need to talk.

First however, let me say that hearing the rough music from the rest of the world is starting to echo here.  We see what’s going on there. And we hear strange and stupid stuff, like the “whistleblower of the day” and an impeachment without voting and of course, pancake-gate.

Faced with that kind of behavior you obviously think “It’s insane.” And “We have to stop it.”

But there is something you’re missing.  There’s the good news.

The first good news, of course, is that Trump won in 2016.  it was bloody impossible. The fraud was unbelievable. But he still won.

And in the midterms — yes, they won the house, but think about it — the fraud was UNBELIEVABLE. Literally. Banana republics were laughing at our random keeping of polling stations open, of weird shenanigans with votes down in FL and of whatever the heck the chick in Georgia thought she was doing.  And they won… the house.  And not with a rushing majority.

Do you know why they’re going insane?  Because they hear the rough music too. And they know that they probably can’t cheat enough to win in November 2020 or even keep the house. And they’re desperate.  And none of their increasingly crazier gambits are sticking.

For years, they were a gerbil kept in the controlled environment of left information-complex. They could pull the right lever, and things went their way.

Arguably the last time this worked for them was making an infelicitous but in no way bad phrasing of Romney’s into a threat on women. “Women in binders.”  Of course he meant women resumes were in binders, and he was signaling that he hired women but they made this sound like he somehow wanted to put women in binders. And crazy leftists all over were repeating this, as if it even meant something.

They threw everything in, they burned all their credit to get Obama elected.  If they could they’d have made him the new FDR/JFK/Hero president of the left forever.  They couldn’t.  They couldn’t make Summer of Recovery fly. They couldn’t even make Michelle Obama fly as a fashion icon.  (Arguably, she didn’t help them.)  They burned everything they had. They pressed that button to deliver their progressive pellet and nothing happened.

And then they got everything and everyone, including probably controlling who the right chose, so that Hillary would have “her turn.”

… and it didn’t work.

But worse, the things they keep trying to do keep not working, including the “we’re really going into a recession NOoooooow”

Worse, traps they lay for Trump ensnare their own guys.  See #metoo.

Yes, the left hears the rough music playing.  But the rough music they hear, right now, is coming from ballot boxes.

Understand, everything they’ve done to us so far can be undone.  Part of their madness is how much of Obama’s “legacy” Trump has quietly dismantled while they chase crazy stuff like the totally bizarre impeachment.

Worse, they’re being unmasked, repeatedly, in public.  Look, guys, I’d been hearing about the Lolita express and Clinton since the early 2000s on the blogs. I didn’t even believe it. It was too fantastic. How would he keep that quiet.  And then it exploded.  And then Jeffrey Epstein died in a way no one in America really believes was “unforced suicide.”

And yes, there’s a feeling there’s a sluice of sewage down there, and it’s splashing most of the left.  They’re keeping it quiet, sort of, but people know.  You can’t unknow this stuff. And this was something that five years ago most people would have thought you were crazy for bringing up.

Then there’s Ukraine.  I don’t know what they thought they were playing at. But what it keeps exposing is massive corruption in a widening circle, and Chinese influence too.

So– They hear the rough music at the ballot box.

Anyone else wonder why it’s starting this early?  Why because they fear NEXT YEAR’s October surprise and are trying to defang it now.  How bad can it be, to start a year ahead.

And you can see how worried they are by how social media has been trying to censor things (though interestingly, this last month has been less weird, perhaps because there are inquiries being made.)  And by their sudden and bizarre sallies against… FREE SPEECH.  Yep. They’re actually coming out, publicly, against the first amendment.  yes, we know they’ve always controlled speech in their enclaves. But it’s not working. And now all they can do is scream “But I want you to shut up” and “Mr. Policeman, make them shut up.”  This is not a position of CONFIDENCE.

In the same way, they’ve been flapping jaws about a living constitution since I was an exchange student. This is the first time they’re coming out as being AGAINST the Constitution. (Admittedly, Obama started it.)

No, this isn’t good. It makes everything feel very unstable.  And it makes people on our side scream “Get them, before they get us.”

But the best thing we can compare this to is the lancing of a boil.  It looked prettier and healthier while the pus was under the skin.  But it would have killed us.

It would have come to the point where there was nothing else we could do but don yellow vests, and take to the streets.

Fortunately things happened.  Okay, mostly the internet, which they keep thinking they can control, but which keeps blowing up on them.

It’s to cry — with laughter — a hundred years of marching to the institutions, and the AV geeks are beating them.  It’s like the USSR being brought up by copiers and typewriters.

And it’s something to remember.

Totalitarianism cannot endure, not long term, with widespread peer to peer communication and the ability to communicate freely and for free across the country and across the world.

China, you say? Yeah, Hong Kong might still end badly. But that it’s lasted this long, in open defiance? It is a sign.  And it is not a sign the despots are winning.

Will we have to do it? Will it come to it?

I hope and pray it won’t. I’ve said before “be careful, be prepared.”  I’m hoping it won’t come here.  We do after all have the internet. And Trump. And if you think that makes no difference, you haven’t been awake the last two years and change. They have yellow jackets. We have a Trump. (And does his name not make you wonder if G-d is a novelist?)

The rough music might come here.  I can envision stuff like really, really obviously faked-up elections that we can’t even begin to pretend we don’t see, and trying to cram someone like Lizzy Warpaint or Kamel the Harris down our throats.  Or worse. I can imagine our government actually physically divided, with the House attempting to outright arrest the president solely on their say so.

Any of these things will send up the balloon.  And look, dollar stores have yellow jackets. It’s not a bad idea to stock up.

But Trump has a way of coming up with twists no one saw, twists that avoid the worst possible things…  And I’m hoping he keeps doing that.

Because guys, if the rough music comes here, it’s going to be ugly, and it’s going to burn short but hot.  And there’s no telling what emerges.  No, seriously, you don’t know.  You might wish to fight till we have the real constitutional republic, but remember the young in military age never learned civics.

You toss that dice, you don’t know what happens after.

And it’s not just us. The rough music is already playing in the rest of the world. To the extent things haven’t gone completely and bizarrely insane — in the paint the room red  sense — it’s because there is the US. And they can’t read us. They have no idea what we’ll do.

To an extent, despite our refusing open involvement, we’re what’s keeping the protesters in Hong Kong alive. We’re what’s keeping the antifa-like elements of the yellow jackets (not most of them, but an element) from turning this into just a pillage and rob expedition resulting in who knows what.  I don’t know what our influence is in the rest of the world, but I’d bet it’s not negligible.

We’re the one sane guy, holding the gun, and watching the rest of the room burst out into inanity.  To the extent the world isn’t drowning in blood, it’s because we’re here, we’re functional, and people are afraid to get our attention.  Not to mention tariffs or not, we’re their best customer.

If we down into the ululating madness, there’s more than a good chance the rest of the world does too.  There’s a good chance we’ll wake from any donnybrook we engage in, in whatever form we wake up, to find the world is Chinese. Which would spell the end of Western civilization and pull us into the cycle of “always burning books and restarting history” China plays.

Even with a best case scenario, do you want the US facing a world-Chinese Empire?  How long do we keep the republic then?

And even if everyone emerges and the Chinese don’t have the strength to become a world power (who knows?) we’ll have lost twenty or thirty years and countless wealth and lives.  And what emerges will be …. possibly very bad.

It might be unavoidable. And if we get to it, there’s nothing left but to fight valiantly.

The balloon could go up.

And yet it’s better for everyone if it doesn’t. It’s better for everyone if America keeps at least the appearance of a constitutional republic while we clean house and reset onto a better course.

It’s better if the rough music never plays, if the mob never has to deal with things in the only way the mob knows how to do it.

Trust me, exposure will still destroy most of these people, in everything that is worth it to them. Even if not one of them goes to jail, we’ll still have won a duel to the pain.  (And don’t be sure they won’t go to jail.)

For years now I’ve been telling you: in the end we win they lose.  Things are already headed that way. Which is already a miracle given how much control they’ve for 100 years.

What you can do right now is speak up, expose the nonsense, not let them hide.

The time for fighting might come.  But it might not.  At least not physical fighting.  Keep in mind what we’re doing is not without dangers.  And some of us have already paid a heavy price.

I can’t tell at this point if it’s better or worse for the republic if the left loses its mind faster. On the one hand, beware the wounded bear.  On the other hand a spooked enemy — as we’re learning — fights badly.

Don’t let up now.  Come out come out wherever you are, if you can at all. They fear our exposure of their misdeeds more than they fear our (right now) ineffectual physical violence.

Be prepared, but for now, just be aware.  And don’t back down.

Stand your ground.

 

 

 

690 thoughts on “Rough Music”

  1. The more of us that come out, the more of us that CAN come out. Lets work on making it publicly acceptable to be conservative. I think that may speed up the left going completely bonkers, but it will (I think) make the transition easier.

    1. That’s the real reason folks are upset about the lack of “civility” in social media.

      The folks you use to be able to bully into silence?

      It’s much, much harder, now.

      1. “Civility” defined by the Left as “Don’t you dare disagree with us”. 😦

          1. After Sarah Palin got blamed for the Gabby Giffords shooting, as Ann Althouse put it, “civility bullshit” has been front and center. As a member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, I’m supposed to say sir and ma’am (or is it “yes massa”?). Curiously, punch a Nazi is popular, with anybody to the right of Lenin being a Nazi.

            They need us to play by the “rules for the right” (as defined by the left on the spur of the moment) for them to win. When we don’t play as they demand, they won’t win.

            FWIW, there seems to be a fair amount of quiet voter fraud arrests going on around the country. I’m not sure, but I think the 2020 elections might be a lot harder for the machine to steal.

            2. And what I want to emphasize is that the left always cheated, at least in the 20th century, as far as I can tell.
              It’s just that with their absolute control of the media in the second half of the 20th century, and somehow pinning “racist” on the right, the cheating went industrial scale.

              1. I grew up in rural downstate Illinois.
                I was only nine at the time of the 1960 election, but remember how it was common knowledge that Chicago handed JFK the election on a platter.
                Chitown, home of vote early and often, and don’t forget to cast one for each of your dead relatives.

                  1. As I recall, the analysis was that the combination of Illinois and Texas threw enough force behind the formidable Joseph P. ‘Rat Bastard’ Kennedy machine to clinch matters.

                    1. JFK got 303 EC votes, when 269 were needed to win. Even with the loss in IL he’d have been 276, so he’d have needed to lose at least one more state not to still be a clear winner. Imagine that had been the 8 EC votes of SC. Given the 15 EC votes for Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia, that wouldn’t have meant an EC victory for Nixon (only 254) – it would have thrown things to the House. Imagine that!

                    2. Landslide Lyndon made sure that he stole enough votes along the Rio Grand to a win by 46,233. It is interesting to see the additional votes from the 1956 election on the demo side. Hidalgo County, an increase of 8,859 to 18,663. In several counties the number of votes for Kennedy doubles from 1956.

                      That part of Texas is where Landslide Lyndon stole his first election. Just now reading Robert Caro’s book “Working”, where he writes of interviewing Luis Salas, George Parr’s “enforcer” who did the actual ballot box 13 stuffing.

                    3. Which is one reason why it’s been a major focus for Gov Abbott and AG Paxton for voter fraud prosecutions..

            3. Curiously, punch a Nazi is popular, with anybody to the right of Lenin being a Nazi.

              “Punch a Nazi” shirt is why I didn’t go into the pit at Gogol Bordello, after the opening act made sure I’d paid to go not to a concert I’d wanted to see for a decade, but an anti-Trump rally.

              As a result I haven’t gone to several punk/psychobilly shows including Flogging Molly, the first time I have skipped them since moving to Atlanta.

              They made sure I was no longer welcome.

              Metal shows, to date, have eschewed making sure fans who aren’t openly leftist unwelcome. I hope it says that way but between comics, Star Wars, fandom, D&D (yes, D&D is now woke), and everything else I figure it is a matter of time.

              I figure retro-computing, of all my hobbies, will be the last to go as it takes actual work.

              1. I failed to go to Leonard Cohen’s concert the day before the election in 12, even though husband offered to take me and get the best seats.
                Turned out I was stupid, Mr. Cohen was — as always — a class act, as well as… well… being more on our side than not. But I didn’t know that. And I was afraid of destroying music I love for the rest of MY life.
                We’ll see. Maybe Himself keeps crazy creatives in their own space, in which case there will yet be an opportunity.

              2. I can imagine a dual legend shirt:

                “Punch a Nazi” and “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

                I have been remiss in not pointing out that Hitler and his Nazis gave National Socialism a bad name. I think a strong argument can be made that it is preferable to both International Socialism and Democratic Socialism.

                Admittedly, that is akin to declaring Measles preferable to Bubonic Plague and Smallpox.

                1. Real National Socialism has never been tried.

                  I mean, if I can’t criticize people who say that about international socialism why not the reverse. National has been tried many fewer times.

                2. More like pneumonia is preferable to bubonic plague and smallpox.
                  I mean, you’re correct. As practiced by Salazar — or even Franco, until he stopped practicing — it doesn’t kill people VISIBLY and in batch lots. It just makes people very poor and kills them through the ills of poverty, SLOWLY. But the poverty is rarely eat-zoo-animals and raid-dumpsters horrific. More like the couple I met on a train from France who only ate a few ounces of meat a week, before immigrating.
                  (And arguably my family was freakishly tall because we had more protein than our neighbors. We grew it. If there was nothing else, there were always eggs.)

                  1. Nor if I recall correctly did Mussolini for that matter prior to Italy aligning with Hitler. Yes he was an authoritarian dictator who believed in all powerful state but he was not particularly interest in sending Jews and others off to concentration camps prior to his entering into an alliance with Germany.

                    Lets not forget that the New York Times and the rest of the Democratic Party establishment LOVED Mussolini and Hitler, right up to the time when Hitler attacked the left’s beloved Soviet Union.

                    1. To be fair, some of the Dem establishment took a dislike to Hitler when he started invading western Europe. After all, many of them at the time were blue-blooded old money Anglophiles. The Leftward slide was uneven and a thing of years, after all.

              3. My wife didn’t understand why I didn’t want to see certain acts. “Well, dear, I don’t like paying good money to be told I’m a horrible human being.” She probably didn’t notice when someone said Republicans were horrible because it wasn’t her they were talking about.

                1. I think I may have mentioned this, but for a while my Step-Mother-In-Law had a “Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican” sticker on her car. I told her that was offensive. She told me it was a joke. I asked her if she thought the Jim Crow laws that kept Blacks from voting in the south were funny.

                  I never saw that sticker again.

                2. Way back when, Sting was touring, and his opening act was Annie Lennox, beautiful voice, braindead leftist zombie. It was hard to enjoy Sting’s non-political (to a point) performance after being yelled at by some redheaded twit who was rich about how we, who paid serious money for tickets, were the issue.

                  After that, well, pretty much dried up any wish to see people in concert ever again.

                  That was back in 2003-2004. Can’t imagine how much weirder and shrewish the left has gotten. No, that’s not true, I see it every day. And since I’ve entered my grumpy old guy stage, I can grumble and vent on the idiots all I want. Surprising how many laugh with me as the twit-heads get all butt-hurt about my favorite subjects, like why is the previous admin’s female dear leader all over the darned news stands, while our glorious and beautiful First Lady is only on the cover of one scandal rag every other month?

                  Makes you wonder if the previous admin’s first lady is going to be the dark horse candidate come next year, brought in to heal the wounds of the campaign trail. Why not? It’s happened before…

                  So, well, get out there. Grumble and moan and complain about everything, backed up by facts, that the leftists hold sacred. Plastic Bags Bad? Not so much, and prove it. Plastic Straws bad? Then why plastic cups? And seriously, how is landfill garbage getting into the oceans? WTheck? Things like that. Make noise, politely, but constantly. And call people out for their hypocrisy, like the guy with a Tesla AND a Bernie sticker! What a dunce. Call them on it. If Bernie truly believes in Socialism, why hasn’t he given up all his houses and moved into small apartments in the Projects? Stuff like that. Blow people’s minds. Grumble, fact-based grumble, everywhere you go.

                  At the worst, people will leave you alone. Which is a victory in today’s world…

              4. There’s a regular over in Ace’s comments section that claims to be a musician. He hasn’t provided his real name or band, but he appears to be at the heavier/harder end of things. He’s stated more than once that the heavy and death metal groups tend to be pro-US and pro-West.

                1. I suspect they are. One, a lot of metal on the death and folk ends are very tied to national cultures. Eluvietie, for example, has a song “The Call of the Mountains” which is very explicit that it is “the call of the Alps” and is all about resisting outsiders.

                  Also, about the same time as GamerGate there was an SJW push in the metal world. It did not catch on.

              5. WotC was going woke ten years ago, at least. They’ve been waging war on geekdom on every front for nigh as long as I’ve been alive.

                Put gunsmithing and shooting sports up there as low on the list. Along with tractor pulls, muddin’, hunting (and eating what you hunt), fishing, and the like.

                Wouldn’t it be a hoot to see nerds and rednecks as the last bastion of common sense and civility? *chuckle* I’d rather it not have to be that way, but still. Funny stuff.

            4. “I’m supposed to say sir and ma’am”

              You still aren’t getting with the agenda, are you?

              You’re supposed to doff your cap (hats are for the Uppers), tug your forelock and say, “Please Sir / Ma’am, may I have another?”

              The abuse will continue until you accept your place.

              1. I usually keep my hair too short for forelock tugging. OTOH, my middle fingers are long enough.

              2. “You’re supposed to doff your cap (hats are for the Uppers), tug your forelock and say, “Please Sir / Ma’am, may I have another?” ”

                Missed a piece — add: While on your knees, prone, forehead firmly on the ground, hands firmly clasped on the hat tucked at waist, eyes downcast, least they have to look into them.

                Might as well take RcPete’s middle finger approach. Not like I can tuck like that anyway if I was so prone to take that route. Although eventually, if they have their way, and I am still surviving, I’m guessing that tuck won’t be a problem by then. I’ll actually be so skinny, I’ll be too skinny.

              3. You PRESUME THEIR GENDER?

                (And what do you say to someone who denies being either? Online so you can’t tell?)

      1. Dear heart, it’s already turned to blood, just in isolated cases so far.
        Notables on the right have been spit on, punched, driven from public places. So far most of the most blatant acts of aggression have intentionally taken place in only the bluest of locations. But as ever was, the left always over reach and fail to consider the potential for retaliation from their victims.
        What you and I and most here are hoping, praying, and working for is that such attacks do get squashed and do not escalate into common daily occurrences.
        I must confess that a part of me wishes for that quick, violent, and oh so bloody response to these ever escalating attacks on the good people of this nation. After all we do possess the implements to do such corrective actions in a somewhat organized and controlled fashion. As citizens we are still members of the unorganized militia and subject to a muster call as needed, but most of us also know the terrible collateral damage such an action would entail.

  2. Not sure why, but the concept of rough music had me imagining people hoisting the black flag, singing pirate songs.

    (yeah, this is a c4c, tired, baby sick and spewy. No fever, no nothing other than lots of phlegm; might be a teething thing. =/ )

      1. Abney Park, the reason so many goths went steampunk a decade ago (for those who don’t know, steampunk happens when a goth is introduced to the color brown).

        1. Steampunk: the women are wearing brown corsets and white lace.

          Goth: the women are wearing black corsets and black lace.

          Cyberpunk: the women are wearing latex.

              1. And less likely to cause blindness.

                Although House of Gord and Charlotte have weaned me off latex, I doubt I’ll ever look aslant at corsets with full skirts.

              1. Let’s just say it was a two piece and because of…circumference there was a very bright white wedge of harry skin revealed.

                I first notice when my friend JediChrome yelled, “Oh my God, I’m blind” loud enough to hear over the music.

                  2. Or, as I warn people who want to come to a club to see the freaky-freakies all naked that not all the freaky-freakies in real life look like they do in the movies/on TV.

                    In fact, the majority don’t. They look like the people that you meet as you’re walking down the street.

                    1. That reminds me of Glenn Reynolds saying the biggest problem with nude beaches was quality control.

                    2. Yeah, although for those who are regulars that isn’t the issue. Tourist are a bigger one.

                      Then again, that comes down to “into the aesthetic” as opposed to “I want to see seXXXy people.”

                      Boston shock jock almost got strangled by the Boston goth scene over that difference circa 2000.

                    4. I forget his name, but he had “BiDay Friday” where he encouraged women to call in and talk about having had sex with other women.

                      Yeah, shock jock, so what.

                      Then he started saying, “And if you want to meet chicks like this go to ManRay on Friday night. Just remember to wear all black.” There were also plenty of statements that all they wanted to do was have sex.

                      So, for about a year, year and a half we had a huge tourist problem. Not only were there a lot of them, but the gawk in amazement vs. read it all as an invitation to grope was much worse than normal.

                      Women started being much more careful about who they stood next to. The club even called the station and asked him to stop.

                      I forget what finally ended it, probably the bit getting old, but while it went on a lot of people were ready if they ran into the guy in a dark alley.

                      It was a classic, “this is why we can’t have nice things” moment.

                    5. Huh. Kind of glad the goth “fad” is over. People involved tend to be more serious and we fly under the radar of most people’s awareness these days. Get comments from some people “Is that still a thing”? Why yes, it is. I usually run into one or two a week here in the midwest just in the unavoidable out and about that I do (I stay home a lot, but even so I have to get groceries and the like–and apparently other goths do too) and the “Goth Night” at Fountain Square is packed.

                      So, not as big a thing as it used to be but we’re still out there. 😉

                    6. I actually don’t dress the part most days. No longer have many black pants, for one.

                      I just figure multiple years of spinning it on the radio in multiple states ensures my goth card never expires.

                      That said, some days I miss it. I suspect as we get more corporate and I have to add corp to the wardrobe it’ll be corp goth.

                  3. All of my pants are black. And most of my shirts. And all my socks. And on the rare occasions when I wear a hat (I hate rain on my glasses), that’s black too.

                    It seems there are arcane social conventions involving which colors can be worn with other colors, lest you incur the wrath of the people who imagine they can see a difference between “green” and “red”, or other imaginary shades.

                    Black is always socially acceptable and doesn’t show bloodstains. What’s not to like?

                2. I’ve been calling for “spandex police” since the first con I attended in 1983 (Atlanta Fantasy Fair).

        2. Steampunk is what happens when Goths and Cybers get exposed to Jules Verne and The Wild Wild West (the series, not the film).

          Anyone think Peter Dinklage could play a believable (ok, in line with canon) Miguelito Lovelace?

          1. I’m there.

            I was so disappointed in the movie despite two excellent casting choices for the lead. I really looked forward to as the show was a childhood favorite.

            Only to find the writers of the movie had clearly not watched a single episode. The ending alone proved it. Lovelace should have gone over the side of the Grand Canyon in the the spider screaming, “I’ll get you West” at the end.

            So he could show up in Wild Wild West IV.

            1. One of the thing that made The Wild Wild West TV show work (aside from the truly inspired acting of Ross Martin) was that it was played straight. There was little to no “wink, wink, nudge, nudge.”

              I’m a fan, can’t you tell? 😉 Just recently bought the complete series on DVD and enjoy it just as much now as when I was a kid.

              What I’d seen in the ads for the movie seemed more poking fun at TWWW than anything else. I was completely unmotivated to watch it and haven’t to this day.

            2. According to a famous internet article about, among other things, Nick Cage as Superman, that mechanical spider had been lurking about Hollywood for quite some time.

              Count me among those saddened by the first Spiderman movie, great as it was, excising the scene in which he spun a web between the WTC Towers to catch a helicopter. Even with (especially with) the towers freshly fallen that would have been a stand-up and cheer moment.

          2. I’m on record as saying Peter Dinklage = Miles Vorkosigan.

            Although it is possibly best is Hollywood never gets the chance to defile it.

        1. I’m YouTube impaired, so haven’t checked any of the other songs. OTOH, I could do a fair job at singing “Lincoln Park Pirates” by heart.

          (reviews Nancy lyrics)

          I’d rather be in Nancy’s place than have to deal with Lincoln Towing company. 🙂

          “Way hey, tow ’em away,
          The Lincoln Park pirates are we,
          From Edsel to Chevy,
          There’s no car too heavy,
          We always collect our fee….”

    5. Charivari, known in US English as “shivaree.”

      Usually a way to embarrass young newlyweds, or those about to marry.

      Occasionally a protest against a disliked person.

      1. Heheh, AKA, “That time my mom set the tone for her interaction with the Young Folks in her new home town.”

        They got waaaaay out of hand, were doing hundreds to thousands of dollars in damage…so mom made sure to mention, at the wedding, that the first car up the driveway would have its headlights removed via rifle.

        Took six months for the town drunk to show up, and I’m not sure her new sister-in-laws (ringleaders for the “oh gosh, it’s all in fun, how dare you complain” party) ever DID visit the house.

        1. In some regions of America it was considered as much a part of the ceremony as the wedding itself. But it consisted of banging on pots until they got up and gave you all cider or the like.

          1. Yeah, in my part of the world, it was more about parties not being supported by churches, or not being rowdy enough.

            But get some pots and pans, dress up in masks or pretend to be a different ethnic group, and climb up on the cabin roof, and you have a rowdy party that is totally okay!

        1. Then let me include and recommend Alestorm’s “F___ed With an Anchor”.
          The chorus runs (with cheerful enthusiasm)
          ____ you, ____ you with an anchor.
          We’re gonna punch you right in the balls.
          ____ you, you’re a ____ing wanker.
          You’re all ____s, so ____ you all.

          Humming to oneself is a great way to show your interest in the latest diatribe.
          And this jaunty tune is ideal for the purpose.

      2. Back in 2007 when I was learning to walk (and other things) “March of Cambreadth” was what I played when I was about to hit the wall on whatever machine I was on. It caused the physical and occupational therapists to look at me funny (especially if I forgot while I had earphones in and started to sing along) but it worked for me.

        1. Back in the mid-’90s I spent a lot of time on hold with Hewlett-Packard tech support. I didn’t really mind; whoever built their playlist was a big fan of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, and the playlist had all three major versions of “Paranoid”.

          After half an hour or so I’d be humming along, which sometimes caused odd looks over the partitions…

    7. Dunno if it counts as “rough,” but my go-to (when writing such scenes in my fiction, relax y’all!) has become Phil Collins.

      Toss a couple of machine guns in the back of a Ferrari and go roaring off into the neon-lit night to take care of business.

          1. Don’t be like the Progressives, judge the artist by their works NOT by their words.

            1. Why?
              No, seriously. WHY?
              You realize this means, in practicality, we bend ourselves into pretzels to buy them and excuse them, even when they hate people like us. While they won’t touch us with a ten foot pole.
              And then we wonder why they dominate the arts fields.
              Look, I get “fairness” but objectively a lot of their “art” is bullshit. Phil Collins mostly wrote cryptic shit about Reagan. Which was wrong and proven so.
              And when it’s not bullshit, you’re still throwing your weight behind the cultural side that wants to destroy you and yours.
              Yeah, for the GOOD — really good — ones I still make exceptions, and I don’t discriminate against soft left custard heads.
              But arguably I am playing by Marquis de Queensbury rules when I do so.
              Which is how you lose the culture war.

              1. A lot of it has to do with remembering their role in society. Just because somebody makes enjoyable music is no reason to think them wise, intelligent or informed.

                I’m not Bob Dylan,
                But I never miss a beat.
                I ain’t no philosopher.
                I dance in the street”

                To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, ‘Sir, a musician’s philosophizing is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.’

                One great advantage of listening to bands performing in foreign languages is that you are not assaulted with insipidity. Sometimes you have to just ignore the words.

            2. Note elsewhere I said that my reviews hit the crapper (not even a joke) when I came out politically.
              But progressives who are loud are acclaimed and rewarded monetarily.
              This is how progressivism becomes a positional good.
              Please consider the issues. “Being better than them” is cute. Maybe it’s needed for some of us. BUT ultimately it’s a suicide pact.

              1. Frankly, I’m too old to give a damn about them and their idiocities. If they get in my way, I usually tell them that I don’t mind them going to hell in a hand-basket… AS long as THEIR hand-basket doesn’t impinge on my hand-basket. Cause if it does their trip will suddenly get a lot faster.

            3. I can do that with pretty much everyone else… but I just can’t get past that picture of her with the NVA on Thud Ridge. Political beliefs is one thing. Active treason (providing aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war) is something else altogether.

              1. I think of it as the “don’t piss me off” rule.

                Of course, some folks I work really hard to make sure they don’t get a CHANCE to piss me off….

              2. “Her” being “Hanoi Jane Fonda.” For some reason I thought this would be under a comment further below. That’s what I get for responding to comments via sidebar.

  3. You are still the optimist. I think the Left is going to push their coup until the choice will be to physically fight or to submit. The current impeachment charade is going forward and many in the GOP want Trump gone too. They all need to be taught that the gravy train is going to stop in horrific ways if they remove Trump. Pray the lesson is short of all out CW. Otherwise, we are going to devolve into a totalitarian state with a ruling elite and an exploited proletarian mass. Such states can last for a long time – longer than any of us will be alive.

    1. > going to push

      …far past the point where any sane person would stop, for fear of what comes next.

      Because, as Sarah said a few years ago, “the lines in their heads are wrong.” https://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/05/27/the-lines-in-our-heads/

      They live almost entirely in their own feedback-driven “we want it so it whall be so” imaginary universe; they’re not able to connect the dots between what they’re doing and what is likely to happen because of it.

    2. I absolutely love being called an optimist and on the same day being chided for always expecting the worst.
      Look, I’m a born pessimist. Things 90% of the time turn out not just better than I expect, but MASSIVELY, inconceivably better.
      I’ve learned to calibrate for it over fifty years of a not very quiet life, btw.
      I love being chided for my optimism. Just love it. It’s second only to being chided for my “Latin meekness” by my mother in law.

            2. Yeah… I’ve seen it. Trust me, you DO NOT want to see it yourself. Unless it’s directed well away from you and you’re past the Minimum Safe Distance.

              Hell hath no fury like a well and truly pissed-off Italian grandmother.

              1. A little Fillipina grandmother. Taking on three gang members. She’s armed with a flip-flop. Is at least a foot shorter than the guys, weighs less than 100 lbs. Scared them so bad that none of them set foot in that apartment building after that. Her grandson the Marine narrating the story was still terrified… of her.

                1. My sister-in-law is a Filipina. She thought “Friday the Thirteenth” was supposed to be a comedy… she kept waiting for the part where someone filleted the bozo with the hockey mask.

                  1. I like how she thinks.

                    There has only been one episode of NCIS where I was yelling at the TV during the initial “set up the conflict” scene– gal is in her kitchen, a guy busts down the door, she runs right past several hundred dollars worth of nice, big, sharp knives, through the livingroom, leaps to the couch, the guy grabs her foot– and she turns around with the pistol she’d been going for and puts lots of nice big holes in him.

                    3. speaking of fights… a friend i went to college with in CA is big into FC and has even worked filming a binch of mid-level matches… he once told me how UFC settled once and for all the question of which was the best martial art … to which i responded “really? how many participants have been killed or crippled?”

                      Yes, i had to explain that no matter how they billed it, UFC was not ‘no holds barred’ to him.

            1. And once invested in a concept they will hold on for dear life long past the point where it has been proven false and even harmful to their best interests.

      2. “Latin meekness” is juuuust odd enough to make me wonder what. The. Heck.

        Is this like “Irish marriage counseling”? (frying pan)

        1. I’m not allowed to own a cast iron frying pan. Last time I did I used it for “menacing” (okay, it happened to be Obama, on the TV, but still.) So younger son took it when he moved out.

          1. Same reason I’m not allowed to watch any films or TV shows starring Hanoi Jane Fonda (9 to 5 being the exception since I can control myself through that one). Mom and Dad weren’t big on me working myself into a foaming-at-the-mouth fury and looking for big heavy things to throw at the TV.

            1. Have you forgotten ‘Barbarella’? Because it’s sooooooo bad and embarrassing, AND she’s the one with all the big guns.

            2. I found her performance in Klute quite persuasive, probably because she seemed to have an innate grasp of the dynamics of prostitution.

              It’s been years since I’ve seen it but I recall it having a sad ending – she survives. Just think of the career she could have had if she’d gone the Jamie Lee Curtis route and been the victim in countless slasher flicks.

      3. “Latin Meekness.” That’s funny. If the Italian branch of my family is/was anything to go by (most have sadly passed) that means “actually using your indoor voice when you’re inside,” right?

        Mom’s half Italian (second-generation Italian American on her mother’s side), and that part of the family had the biggest influence on her (parents split when she was a kid) while Dad’s family is almost pure English (with a smattering of other Britons thrown in for good measure), been here since the Mayflower, and are the most boring people I’ve ever met. He still talks about the first time she brought him to a family get-together. “Culture shock” is putting it mildly.

        1. Well, I’m a little unusual because I straight-up berserk. Though since I’m not a kid anymore, I know not to let it be triggered.
          OTOH indoor voice? WHAT’s that. New England Patrician husband is constantly telling me not to shout. 😀

        2. Dan, listening to my family DISCUSS (note not argue) where we should buy shoes, almost dove under the table. he was sure we were all about to kill each other. 😀

          1. That’s what my father was certain was about to happen at the aforementioned family get together. The way he tells it, one second everyone was at everyone else’s throats, the next second they were all crying and hugging each other because it was time to leave. Thirty five years later and he’s still not sure what happened.

            1. Yep.
              I kept telling Dan “we’re just talking about where to buy shoes!”
              The funny part? My kids both have my social style. So when DIL joined us for dinner, it was Dan all over again. 😀

            2. My poor in-laws didn’t know what to think. You see my family runs the gambit. You see my voice is quiet. To be loud I have to YELL, even then it doesn’t carry far under normal circumstances, plus I will get a headache, so I don’t bother; which causes problems when one is hard of hearing (them). Dad’s voice is like mine, quiet but carried a lot better. OTOH my mom’s voice is BOOM at a whisper. My sisters’ are somewhere in between the two. The social aspect of our small immediate family wedding at their home was interesting. In-laws never got to experience my family with all the nieces present (they passed away before then). Much as I love nieces to pieces, it is blessedly quiet when they leave. They are not just noisy because there are a lot of them, they are loud (note all are adults now, least some think “well kids aren’t quiet”).

    3. Heh. *shakes head* Of course the left is going to push the envelope. Heck, their business model hinges on “our business/platform is failing! It must be because we didin’t go *far enough* into leftist crazy-pants-on-head-land!” I.e. roll left and die.

      Also, Sarah Hoyt: optimist? Not seeing that. Not her natural state.

        1. They just don’t see it, the poor idiots. Thing is, the way they want it, their idiocy affects all of us. I’m okay with them LARPing their socialist paradise as long as it only applies to folks who voluntarily put their butts in the vise.

    4. Yeah, they haven’t learned the meaning of *ATFTRAF, but if they try to push that crap over the cliff they will.
      *after the first, the rest are free…

  4. I think this bit is wrong
    They never had a Reagan (Thatcher sort of kind of held off the tide briefly, but only in one country.) There was no eighties prosperity.

    I can’t really talk about the rest of Europe, but the UK and Ireland saw, on average, a huge increase in prosperity in the 1980s. Now there were spots, mostly places where the nationalized heavy industry factory was shut, where things got worse, but as someone who was in the UK in 1979 and in 1989 the difference was astounding. Basic things like heating and indoor toilets were not remotely close to universal in the 70s. By 1990 they pretty much were. Likewise personal car ownership and your own (fixed-line) phone. And for the most part that continued (apart from the ERM/Soros breaking of the BoE) in the 1990s. Maybe we weren’t as rich as the US in 1990, maybe we (they since I don’t live there) aren’t now, but despite the lies of the lefties even the most deprived place in the UK today is miles ahead of 1980.

    Ireland was much the same: anyone with a bit of drive left Ireland ASAP in the 1970s/early 1980s. By 1990 that trend had stopped and begun to reverse. By the 2000s there was a huge influx in returners which continued until 2008.

    In the cheating Southern Europe countries (Greece Italy Spain and Portugal, plus arguably France and even perhaps Belgium) the influx of EU money and then easy credit of the Euro meant that from 1995 – 2008 there was a similar massive increase in quality of life. Now, unlike the earlier UK/Irish enrichment most of that was based on fraud and/or excessively low interest rates but it was real. As was the less fraudulent but similar enrichment of Eastern Europe about the same time. Remember Eastern Europe was, in 1990, about where Portugal was in 1960 (i.e. donkey carts were normal and hardly anyone had a phone),

    Where things went really off the rails was 2008. And that’s a lot more recent. Most of Euro area Europe has still not recovered to pre 2008 levels. But the EU brahmandarins don’t seem to get that. They don’t get that 50% youth unemployment is a problem, not even when it is combined with mass immigration from Africa/Arabia.

    1. No. I’ll admit that. Thatcher made a huge difference in the British isles. But in the rest of Europe the assumption that “Things get worse” and “there is no way to prosperity” remained. Sorry if that was less than clear.

      1. But was that 1980s recovery true prosperity or simply Europe clawing itself out of the massive hole they found themselves in due in the main from World War Two? That struggle aided by massive aid from the US yet at the same time exacerbated by an all pervasive and ever increasing socialism.
        And not to be ugly, but hundreds of years of your best and brightest (and often most disruptive and authority challenging) leaving your country and heading off to the Americas has to have an impact.

        1. Heading off EVERYWHERE. Dave Freer’s ancestors went to the Southern tip of Africa. Mine… well. I had relatives everywhere before the 70s sent a lot fleeing back.

      2. Hang on… so Europe (as Brit’s view it: Those folks to the east of the Channel)) doesn’t really believe in real prosperity as they have never truly experienced it? That explains far too much – and is terribly, terribly sad.

    1. Trump’s a boor. I don’t really doubt the pancake story, but anyone who didn’t know he was a boor at least five years ago must have been hiding in a cave. Being a boor is not an impeachable offense, at least not according to the people who elected him.

        1. Among others. Everything I’ve heard suggests that Grant and Andrew Jackson would have been gone in a heartbeat.

          1. No, he was a boor. The Leftwing Media didn’t want to report him as such, but if you were living in DC at the time, it leaked.

            He was ALSO a loose fish.

            1. Based on what I heard at the time, they seemed very much like trailer trash, if you’ll forgive the expression. Everything that you would think totally classless boors who got into the White House would do, they did, from renting out the Lincoln bedroom to stealing the “W” keys on the White House computers on the way out. They were like the Beverly Hillbillies except without the charm.

              1. “Trailer trash” is exactly what I heard at the time… from people in Arkansas. Who also expressed the sentiment that they voted for ’em to get ’em out of the state.

              2. When James Carville spoke of “dragging a $100 bill through a trailer park” I assumed he was speaking from experience.

              3. The Beverly Hillbillies, if I recall correctly (not one of my favorite shows) were consistently SMARTER than people expected. Also, in their own peculiar way, classier.

                Which makes the Clintons the anti-Beverly Hillbillies.

                Gods, the amount of goodwill, political capital, and general believability the Left expended propping up the public image of President Bubba and his charming wife Bruno!

              4. My family is from AR. “Po’ white trash” is precisely how he was though of. She was a carpetbagger.

        3. And LBJ would have been burned at stake, practically. The man took being boorish into other dimensions and alternate historical timelines.

          1. His Secret Service minders, who were stuck with being in his presence for 8-hour shifts, disliked him immensely.

      2. I do doubt the pancake story. He’s not a boor. He’s a calculated and determined troll.
        The pancake story is just totally insane. Sorry, my brother who is a genius had questionable manners at best. EVEN HE WOULDN’T PUT PANCAKES IN HIS POCKET.
        What the hell about interviewing a senile citizen about a disliked relative is newsworthy?

          2. Is he? Is he really a germaphobe, or is that a false trail laid out to give him deniability?

            The House needs to investigate that and hold him accountable for his lies to the American People!!! NO One (Republican) Is Above The Law!!!

        3. Funny! That pancakes in the pocket thing was the first thing that hit me also. Just when was he supposed to have done this? When he was 10?

          My other thought was… are Scottish pancakes different somehow that they might go in a pocket without disintegrating? (Then it hit me… someone HERE might actually know! LOL!)

      3. I shudder to think what my ELDERLY relatives would say of me. Even my mom now confuses me and and my brother. Elderly relatives often confuse me with much older cousin the hellion. Etc.

      4. So along the lines of Lincoln’s “But he fights!” – do we inquire his favorite brand of pancake mix and send him a case?

          1. Ice cream. After all, the media breathelessly reported a while back that he has *two* scoops.

          2. I haven’t read up on his steak preference – but I can’t imagine him eating a ruined steak. I can imagine him liking them my way – passed over the fire twice, once in each direction.

            1. It as actually something that came out early in his Presidency–he liked his steaks well-done with ketchup.

              But like another President before him functionally said (specific words were different): He’s President. He can eat what he wants.

              1. Yep — and I bet that, unlike certain other politicians we might name, he does not demand you eat your steak his way. Staff probably politely inquires before hand how each diner prefers their steak cooked.

                1. It is an older generation thing, so probably Trump learned it from his dad. Heck, that is how my dad used to eat steak, before my mom worked on him. Given bad cuts of meat or bad cooks in the home, or bad memories of spoiled food, you too would be prone to enjoy well done meat with ketchup.

                  Geez, you would think people had no grandparents or knew no old people.

                  1. …..or were use to being really well off.

                    I’m one of the folks who makes a lot of jokes about the steak abuse, but I AM a beef rancher kid so it’s expected.

                  2. It likely derives from many Leftists having no idea who their fathers sires were., for several antecedent generations.

                2. Like that issue with the “Trump got two scoops of ice cream while everyone else only got one”. I suspect at a White House dinner anyone who asked for a second scoop, or a third or fourth for that matter, would have gotten it.

      5. I’d say Trump acts like a boor.

        Like that Boris guy over in the UK– it’s a great way to be underestimated, and totally guts the angle of attack most common against a slip-up in showing BadThink.

        1. Yep. Playing the fool when not thus natively endowed, when properly pulled off, is a marvel to behold. Especially when the press or the socialist scum (but I repeat myself) buy into that “fool” assessment and get run rings around and ground into the dirt.

          Plus Boris has studied Churchill extensively, studying in detail how Winston put speeches together, his way of constructing sentences, and his methods of delivery. And as a result, Boris can make speeches – see the one he gave to the Conservative Conference last week at: https://youtu.be/tlvK7XLNXNU

          1. BTW – nothing so riles the Right People as being polite to the Wrong People. Trump carries a roll of twenties so he can tip bus boys and hotel chambermaids — his critics tip maitre d’s and concierges.

            1. Like his stop in San Antonio where he stopped on his walk up to the plane to talk to the police and others that were there. Not a Right Person in sight. Didn’t just say something in passing but STOPPED, shuck hands, really talked to them. And the Smiles he got. Not doing it for the press, doing it for THEM, because he liked THEM. And the Progressives can’t understand what people see in Trump.

              1. …or walking over and picking up a Marine’s hat after rotor wash blew it off.

                Sure, it could be a series of carefully crafted stunts by a PR genius, but I doubt it would even have occurred to several Previous Incumbents to stoop so low as to even notice. Soldiers, security, waitresses… they’re just furniture; it would be ne kulturny to treat them as real people.

                1. “I doubt it would even have occurred to several Previous Incumbents to stoop so low …”

                  Had it been proposed I doubt Obama would have acted, unless it was an opportunity to make a point about Amerikkka being raaaaacisssss.

                  I am sure Billy Jeff would have acted oon it, especially if the acting involved an attractive female.

                  Hillary reportedly insisted that staff flee the White House hallways when she passed through and woe betide any who dared make eye contact with her.

                  I recall that both generations of Bushes were reported to get along well with White House staff.

    2. I have read rumours about another whistle-blower, inside the White House, reporting Trump was sighted drinking tea without holding his pinky up!!!!!!

      A second White House whistle-blower may soon provide evidence that Trump has his Reuben sandwiches made with spicy mustard instead of Russian Dressing. A new Russia-gate investigator is expected to be named any day now.

      Investigators are also pursuing reports that Trump leaves the toilet seat up.

      The walls are closing in, closing, I tell you!

          1. Burn the Wit—, er, book destroyer! (Unless he bought and paid for them himself, in which case he has the right to do to his property as he sees fit. But I won’t send him a holiday card.)

        2. And pulls the “Not to be removed under penalty of law” tags from mattresses. The horror!

            2. Nonono, if he says that and he’s lying then he DOESN’T get impeached, right? Or is that only if one’s surname starts with a C, or if one is a Democrat…? >:D

        3. I had to do that for the bathroom with the litter box. Charmin isn’t supposed to be a kitteh toy.

          1. When we were young cat-slaves, we came home one day to find our house had been tpeed on the inside. As in, every room was shrouded. One of them — I suspect Pixie, kitty genius — had figured out how to unroll it. And then — probably with his twin, Randy’s, help — they went after the ones stacked on the back of the toilet.
            It was… uh…. interesting. Dan kept muttering “RUGS” while we cleaned up.

            1. We came home to a GSD hiding under the kitchen table. As small as she could tuck. The look on her face was “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t! I swear on my tennis balls, I did not do this thing.” With (I swear) a 10 day kitten curled in the middle of the hallway on top of the rolled out toilet paper. Whole house wasn’t TP’d, she only had the one roll after all; bathroom and hall OTOH …

              How in the heck did she get high enough to get to the roll? Still don’t know and that was 40 years ago. She wasn’t telling. We could just imagine the scene before we got home. Kitten, all 10 oz (maybe), somehow, getting on top of toilet lid (closed to keep dog from drinking out of it), reaching for the dangling piece of TP, dog at the door going “Nooooo. They’ll blame meeeeee. Noooooo.”

            2. Our bichon had a thing for TP. We once came home from church to discover that he’d somehow managed to shred half a roll of TP… as in the side of the roll facing inwards was still intact, but the side facing outward had been demolished down to the cardboard roller. Little bugger was so proud of himself… until I told Mom that she had to see this. Then he couldn’t skedaddle out of their and get under Mom & Dad’s bed fast enough.

              Still not sure how he managed to pull that off, and regrettably nobody thought to save the roll or at least capture photographic evidence of the feat.

              1. My terrier poodle mix, Nemo, gets his fiber by shredding/eating any Kleenex he finds on the floor. Used preferred….. Hey, dogs think carrion is Chanel #5.

                1. That’s odd. I always thought that Nemo was part Daschund?
                  Terrier poodle. Uh. Has he rewired your house, yet? Does he manage your investment account. (I mean restless and smart.)
                  And I’m glad he’s surviving, btw.

                  1. Jack Russel / mini poodle. And no, he’s too busy patrolling for visitors / sqwirlz / any random food.

                    He’s finished second chemo, and is back in remission. He lost hair this time; poodles have hair, not fur, so when they are treated with human chemo drugs that cause hair loss…..

                    2. My profile pic is his predecessor, Fuzzy.

                      Hopefully this will show as a picture; it’s pre hairloss though:

                2. Kleenex, paper towels, wash cloths, hand towels, socks, golf score cards, especially socks, little sneak thief. Ours is a Chi/Pom/Great Pyrenees (okay per DNA test later is only 1/8) … It’s gotten to the point when I see a little black streak headed either outside or to the back, briefly stop by, then bolt off (she has to know someone knows how cleaver she was). Grab conveniently placed treats and go play the exchange game. First two she can’t get the treat unless she backs off the (now shredded) item, so I can pick up the pieces. Everything else she usually has a paw on it when we exchange. Sometimes (more recently) she’ll actually hand it to me.

                  1. Socks and underwear for Nemo. Again, the more used the better, little perv. We check his puppy beds every laundry day…..

                  2. My Boykin spaniel (not quite 6 months old, a rescue, and in full on toddler mode at the moment) tries to eat EVERYTHING, but has a special passion for knitted things (dishcloths, gloves, socks), kleenex, and anything I’m foolish enough to leave on my desk. Had a scare when she got hold of my vial of albuterol for the nebulizer–but thankfully she didn’t get much, only enough to make her little hard pound kind of hard for a few hours, and then she was fine.

                    She’s such a toe-fiend that her nickname is Mr. Trashbags, heh.

                    And she tends to steal food of plates if you take your attention off them–but I realized this is probably because with her former owner (if we are right about the identity of the person she escaped from, who is known to regularly starve expensive hunting dogs to death because he’s too busy drinking to bother feeding them), it was the only way she survived, by stealing food off his plates. So that, at least, is understandable. And probably, alas, not a habit I’ll have an easy time breaking her of.

                    But yeah. She chews on EVERYTHING. She’s done teething, at least. Now we’re working on the whole “No, you don’t need to chew on my arm/toes/ears/nose right now, and PLEASE don’t bite so hard.” She’s so sweet natured, though, even the destruction of a hand-knit pair of socks couldn’t land her in trouble for long, lol.

            1. Whatever practices for toilet paper hanging people engage in the sanctity of their own homes is inappropriate for comment by others, even visitors in those homes.

              Re-hanging other people’s toilet paper to comport with one’s own peculiar notions of propriety is, however, beyond conscionable.

      2. Mustard and sauerkraut is actually an alternative for cole slaw or kraut and Russian dressing on a reuben-and is used a lot in Jewish Deli’s in New York.

        1. I know – I despise Russian dressing in all its applications, but especially on a Reuben. That is how I know that the Liberals who detest red meat in all situations are responsible for the adulteration of the noble swiss cheese, corn beef & kraut concoction which demands spicy mustard for its completion.

          Russian dressing, like its cousin Thousand Island, is a glide path to Hell.

          2. I didn’t even know one could GET a Reuben without the dressing. (Which I tolerate, because I love the rest of it.) A reuben with spicy mustard sounds DIVINE.

    4. Pocketing pancakes is silly. Not quite as silly as pocketing soup, unless you have plastic-lined pockets, but therein lies proof of premeditation.

      1. What’s that line from an episode of Agent Carter? ” here has a special pocket sewn in her purse for GRAVY.” (And all the other residents look at her in envy.)

  6. Re: Epstein’s suicide–I think the craziest thing I saw floating (and didn’t read in detail, because it was SO CRAZY) was along the lines of “he committed suicide as a gambit to protect his money from seizure.”

    And no, this did not also float the “and faked his own death.”

    Um…what?

    1. I’m not surprised Epstein was killed. Way too many people in power would have been brought down if he opened his mouth. Same deal with Whitey Bulger’s murder in prison. There really IS a deep state in our government, and they are the worst of the worst.

      As for the rough music; I can hear the banging of the swords and spears against the shields, the thunder of the drums, and the bag pipes that are wailing away.

      1. I am wondering if the rough music has been playing for 40 years, but we didn’t notice because initially it was left off by actual rough music.

        It is usually young men who dance to the rough music and for 40 years they’ve been slam dancing then moshing (although moshing is nicer so its slightly de-escalated).

        Could our Reign of Terror been put off by rough men in rough pits?

          1. The march of Must Issue and then Constitutional Carry across the nation was the first straw in the wind.

            And as warning signs go, the election of Trump strikes me as the equivalent of a ‘bridge out’ sign from Richard Moore’s FAR WEST;

            “Only idjits beyond this point “

            1. Neither the Democrats NOR the “Republicans”. I was at the organizing of the Dallas branch. I’ve BEEN fighting with words. My experience is that as long as the sheep stay to be shorn neither side gives a rip.

          3. The indicator has been well into amber for some time. We’re beginning to realize the needle is hitting the red area (or the red lamps are flashing, take your pick). If we’re lucky, we can trip a safety valve before things get Fatally Nasty. (Ponder “safe(r)” steam locomotives – consider that the “safety” setup when the water gets too low ONLY kills/severely injures the crew – rather than launching the engine a significant distance. The WORST valve-release stop is always better than that.)

      2. Oh, I wasn’t surprised he was killed–I think the number of people who WERE are probably vanishingly small. What I was surprised was the insistence that no, really, it WAS suicide and anyone who thinks otherwise is of COURSE nuts, and also the various reasons given for said “suicide” including the utterly insane one I first mentioned (ie, the notion that dying to protect wealth that you could not then make any sort of use of making any sort of sense to anyone with an ounce of sense and/or sanity).

        I mean, they’re not even HIDING it. They just expected everyone to toe the “of COURSE it was suicide line” and stop prodding.

        (And my concern is that the people who *should* be prodding DID stop prodding–but it’s also possible that they simply aren’t talking to the media now, which would be very wise. And that’s what I hope is happening. Also that Epstein kept records somewhere other than in his head, and that good men got their hands on them rather than loyal bad men.)

        1. At first I thought his death was faked. Had to be. Because they were going to off him anyway, this way they get to keep mining his brain for other folks they needed to catch to stop this modern day slavery ring. They couldn’t have been this…. ham handed, could they?

          Yes. Yes they could. *shakes head*

          1. “They couldn’t have been this…. ham handed, could they?”

            Why not? No matter how subtle they were about it the suspicion would be the same, so, as Nike would tell them, “Just do it.”

            Give credit: they weren’t Jack Ruby bold.

      3. > I’m not surprised Epstein was killed.

        I am. He’d already been convicted and done time before; with his little black book, I’m astonished that he was in jail at all. And that he didn’t let it be known that there were packages of evidence in trusted hands, ready to take down everyone he dealt with if anything happened to him.

        I mean, imagine you’re a big time whoremaster who has dirt on everyone from politicians to billionaire industrialists to obscure programmers; even a street pimp would know that information was his major protection against being Arkancided.

      1. The Romans actually gave people a fair hearing compared to the abomination that are US civil forfeiture.laws.

        1. There is actually hella confabulation, there.

          There have been some abuses, yes. Hard core.

          But every time I go investigate the activist targets, they chose actual drug dealer’s actual assets that are actually directly paid for via drug money and used for drug stuff, just they happened to be caught with either some poor black mailed bastard in the driver’s seat or they put them in mom’s name.

          It is getting to the point where I am not sure if Reason and other Libertarian type groups are actively paid by the Cartels or if they’re useful idiots, because they are so consistently ///maliciously/// wrong on stuff.

          1. While I don’t doubt you in the least re: the actual targets, it doesn’t matter whether the seized assets did belong to actual drug dealers or not. If they were seized without a trial, that’s a prima facie violation of the Fourteenth Amendment: “… nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Taking things that are evidence and holding them until the trial is a different matter, but most civil forfeiture laws are flat-out unconstitutional, whether or not they’re being applied to unpopular targets.

            1. Asset forfeitures are after due legal process, though. Specifics depend on state and level of crime.
              Places like Reason have to include the initial seizure/impoundment to boost there numbers, and in several cases falsely claim that the seized items weren’t involved in a crime, even when the guy was convicted of a crime, because it wasn’t “proven” to come from the crime.

              Frequently, the folks it’s taken from who aren’t found guilty because to do so, they’d have to confess to the crime.

              I do think many states need to fix their laws to avoid abuse, but the amount of bad information that’s out there is suggestive that the opposition isn’t organic.
              https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-rights/asset-forfeiture-laws-by-state.html

              1. Insufficient coffee….

                their numbers

                ….

                the folks it’s taken from aren’t found guilty of the crime the assets were from because that would mean confessing that they did the crime

                …..

                Even after coffee, not so good; kids and cats decided that while dad is gone, it’s best to have 90% of the household sleeping in MY bed.

              2. This might be a remediable issue. We likely all agree that abuse of process is a problem, so add provision that assets confiscated without clear evidence of being ill-gotten — burden of proof is on authorities seizing — with penalty being on the order of return of assets plus monetary damages equal to value of assets seized (or double or treble damages if highly egregious instances) plus legal fees.

                1. Except that we don’t actually all agree on the problem, because a lot of the “solutions” are either to problems that aren’t actually there, or are folks who are already breaking the rules.

                  There’s a handful of states that could use some tightening up just to avoid obvious abuse, but those aren’t what gets targeted by media and online outrage.

                  1. BTW, I feel like we’re arguing two different points. You keep hammering about the media, including libertarian media like Reason, deceiving people about typical asset forfeitures. What I’m arguing is the inherent unconstitutionality of seizing assets before a trial when those assets aren’t evidence to be used in the trial. That argument is completely independent of whether Reason et al are inflating their numbers to gin up outrage.

                    1. What I’m arguing is the inherent unconstitutionality of seizing assets before a trial when those assets aren’t evidence to be used in the trial.

                      Except it’s not unconstitutional.

                      As you directly quoted, it has to be in accordance with the legal process.

                      The process is THERE.

                      It’s not “some dude just takes it.”

                      Which is what Reason and similar groups like to act like.

                    2. The way you’re arguing for reading the Fourteenth Amendment, it would allow “You’ve been accused of treason, so we’re going to seize all your assets before the trial”. That’s self-evidently not due process. “Due process” does not mean that the process has been started, it means that the process has been completed and the person has been found guilty.

                    3. *points back up at the actual laws*

                      Not similar at all, though one or two states is a lot closer to that than I’d prefer– the rule you seem to be pushing for would require that someone be found guilty before they can even be arrested, since imprisonment is part of punishment and the process hasn’t been finished.

                      Simplest would probably be to look at the federal page to see how it actually lays out the three different forms of asset forfeiture and the processes involved.

                  2. It’s actually summed up in one sentence:

                    No assets may be seized for any reason whatsoever without a guilty verdict in a jury trial.

              3. So after the trial and conviction, seizure would be constitutional because the accused has had due process. What I’m claiming is that the initial seizure/impoundment is unconstitutional, because it “deprives [a] person of … property, without due process of law”. A mere accusation, even if you’re 100% certain of it, is not sufficient constitutional grounds for seizing someone’s property, precisely because that could so easily be abused. “You have been accused of treason, so we’re going to take all your money” and then you have trouble hiring a good lawyer, that sort of thing.

                So if the item is evidence to be used at the trial. impounding it is legitimate because that prevents the accused tampering with evidence. But if it’s merely a tool the accused uses in his work, even if that work is criminal (or perhaps I should say “allegedly” criminal, since he hasn’t received a trial yet), the Constitution does not allow taking it away from him on the mere basis of an accusation.

                1. Robin, seriously, go read how it actually works. I keep going back to the media because that appears to be what you’re basing your arguments off of– those scary reports about how some random person is going about their daily life, and then their property is taken from them, out of the blue!

                  Thing is, when I can find enough information to find out what happened, the authors are very careful about if they say that the person wasn’t found guilty of a crime, that the stuff wasn’t proven to come from crime, etc.– because different types of forfeiture have different methods, standards, qualifying factors, etc.

                  Here’s the three types of Federal forfeiture (from the link I gave earlier):
                  Criminal forfeiture is an action brought as a part of the criminal prosecution of a defendant. It is an in personam (against the person) action and requires that the government indict (charge) the property used or derived from the crime along with the defendant. If the jury finds the property forfeitable, the court issues an order of forfeiture.

                  For forfeitures pursuant to the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO), as well as money laundering and obscenity statutes, there is an ancillary hearing for third parties to assert their interest in the property. Once the interests of third parties are addressed, the court issues a final forfeiture order.

                  Civil judicial forfeiture is an in rem (against the property) action brought in court against the property. The property is the defendant and no criminal charge against the owner is necessary.

                  Administrative forfeiture is an in rem action that permits the federal seizing agency to forfeit the property without judicial involvement. The authority for a seizing agency to start an administrative forfeiture action is found in the Tariff Act of 1930, 19 U.S.C. § 1607. Property that can be administratively forfeited is: merchandise the importation of which is prohibited; a conveyance used to import, transport, or store a controlled substance; a monetary instrument; or other property that does not exceed $500,000 in value.

              4. Foxfier, you haven’t researched this. Assets are routinely seized before trial. The assets are then transferred to the government by a hearing labelled “Government Agency vs 2014 Cadillac Escalade”. Note that the owner isn’t even listed, because that way he isn’t a party to the action. In order to even be represented, he has to file a motion to invervene in the case, and the judge doesn’t have to allow it.

                In that case, the prosecutor shows up and says he’s ready to proceed. That Caddy hasn’t been able to hire a lawyer for some reason, so a plea of “no contest” is entered and the prosecutor takes it away.

                Colorado provides an example:

                “If any owner or interest owner filed a counterclaim;”

                Note that defendant isn’t mentioned. Hope your 90 year old grandmaw who’s car you borrowed finds out how to handle all of this.

                Oh, and you’ll find that unless you pay for a Westlaw account, you can’t get full law cites. How much law can you afford?

                1. Nelson, it’s pretty clear that you’re not reading what I wrote, and linked, and argued.

                  It’s not exactly a shock you don’t like forfeiture, but I’m neither changing my mind because you disagree nor am I going to chase after you for the joy of being told that I haven’t researched something by someone who has not responded to arguments and direct quotes that are right here, much less elsewhere.

            2. Asked a friend for a decent source for the federal version, here we go:
              https://www.justice.gov/afp

              Tons of reports, and they’ve probably got the write up of that mess a few years ago where some idiot used a program to identify suspicious transactions– and then flat out confiscated the whole bleepin’ thing. Administrative forfeiture, I think. Policy “got changed” after that.

              I am still rather pissed that everyone who signed off on that one wasn’t fired, makes me suspicious that there was Something Else involved.

              Lots of good info at the link, though, and if you click on that funky slide show it’ll take you to a report with a break down of what kind of forfeitures there are, including that 20% are “it’s not mine!” situations.

              The thing most often forfeited? Guns or explosives. Which explains the “it’s not mine” response.

              1. Better dig a little deeper again:

                “Civil judicial forfeiture is an in rem (against the property) action brought in court against the property. The property is the defendant and no criminal charge against the owner is necessary.”

                As I was saying…. above.

  7. Last week, I had a short conversation with an economist. Not one you’ve heard of, but one who works for a consulting firm that has a very, very good track record of being right about the general economy – 95% or better accuracy.

    I asked how he felt about the people trying to force a recession on the US, and he shook his head. “Look, there’s going to be a soft patch in early 2020, and we’ll b on the way out of it by mid-2020. Nothing to do about it, really. If we knew how to force a recession, we’d know how to prevent one.”

    1. there are ways to bring them about . . .sorta, not a real one, but a crisis that causes mild panic. We saw one just before the election in ’08 when the money markets got played causing a speed-up of the issues that were going to come (due to regs being stooopid)

          1. This: Ross actually swung it for Willie, but absent the “Worst economy since they invented money!!!” lie George Herbert would not have been vulnerable.

            1. I was (still) reading the NY Times back then and noticed the business Section had announced the recession’s end some three months before the Front Page recognized it and two months before the election.

              The Front Page, of course, attributed the recession’s end to the imminent arrival of Clinton’s administration and the surge of hope engendered.

              And ever since, whatever I read in the Times my reaction is a) might be true and b) what are they trying to sell me?

              Not necessarily in that order.

        2. I’m not so sure about that. I always got the impression that there were a LOT of serious pro-Reagan Republicans who thought GHWB strayed too far from the path that Reagan put us on. Enough that people I knew back then referred to him as a traitor.

          2. Yes, target of opportunity for Ross, but if George Herbert had not done stupid stuff, like making a big deal about the “Read My Lips: No New Taxes” thing and then agreeing to tax increases, he would not have been vulnerable to either Ross or the “recession” lie.

            All George had to do was glide along staying on the RR path and he could have become, as someone once said, more flexible after the election, and the world would not have heard from the “centrist” from Arkansas, or his wife, ever again.

            Inflicting the Clintons on the nation is something for which I allocate blame to both George Herbert Walker Bush and H. Ross Perot, with a special note of allocation to James Carville.

              1. Cut him some slack there — he hardly had the time to do that before the Dems were squandering the “peace dividend.”

                Although I would not care to have to make the argument that, given four more years in office, he would have done a proper job of it … any more than Grant was able to make of Reconstruction.

        3. The one thing that took GHWB down was “Read my lips, no new taxes”, and then reneging. My Dad, slightly to the right of Attila the Hun, didn’t vote in his second election just because of this, and neither did a lot of other folks who voted for him the first time. Making suck a flat, principled tatement, and then selling it out for political expediency was just too hard for many to swallow.

            1. Urgh, that sounds about right. ::shudders::

              I mean, look, *maybe* Mittens was a decent bishop and stake president* (though I’ve known enough of them that were *terrible* at it not to hold my breath on that front) but even when he was running I knew I’d have to hold my nose to vote for him as a politician. (Still, he wasn’t Obama, and that was something.)

              *I’ve also known at least one man who was an excellent bishop (for those not familiar with the terminology amongst the Mormons, bishop = lay leader of a local congregation above a certain size, while stake president = lay leader of a regional group of congregations. And you don’t get to pick the job, you only get to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when it’s offered to you), but who was a fairly big a-hole at work (I worked in the same office as him). So I learned that one cannot judge a man’s professional behavior by how he does as a religious leader. (Though in theory, one should behave the same in both situations, but humans gonna human.)

        4. When he was snookered into breaking “no new taxes” it showed very directly. Pa’s business made small items used in home windows. The tax happened, the new housing starts stopped, the orders stopped. And it happened FAST. That was a switch being flipped, not a dial slowly turned down.

      2. We do know how to force a recession. Oil. When the price of oil goes up, the economy goes down. Someone played with the price of oil in 2008. I could see that a recession was coming, but the price of oil kept going up. Someone was putting money into keeping the price of oil high when it should have been going down. Here in the “people’s republic”, the price of gas is over $4 a gallon. I wonder why?

        The price of oil is what caused the 2008 depression. They took what would have been a mild downturn and turned it into the second great depression, in conjunction with the two other stupid things, derivatives, and giving loans to people with no money .

        We call it a “recession”, but its effects were just as bad as the first great depression. So no one has ever taken credit for helping elect the big 0, because they would have to take credit for the second great depression.

        1. Interesting. I wonder if that’s why the Saudi refinery was bombed? To induce just such a recession?

          2. I was thinking a test-run– see what folks would do.

            Given stuff went all spikey but not in a useful way, I HOPE that it was ruled out.

            1. I think it was the Mullahs starting to freak about what we now know regarding China honoring the renewed sanctions and cutting way back on financial transactions and oil purchases from Iran – The mullahs wanted to spike the world oil market, but oops, fracking, so it didn’t move much.

              Note this would cause the mullahs freak more, so watch for more things to happen.

              1. Iran, Venezuela and even the Saud need the cost higher. A good bit higher. The Saudi’s will let it drop to hurt others, but they are hitting a point where they need it back up to recover, and they did such a good job trying to hurt Iran and the frackers, the frackers figured how stay at it at even lower costs, and then they started being able to export it. A strike didn’t help Iran much, but it did cost the House of Saud a goodly bit. Venezuela needs it higher to make refining their crappy gunk worthwhile. They’ve ruined their refineries, and recently just gave a lot of their stocks of crude to Cuba, just to free up space.

                1. Don’t forget the newly-discovered oil off the coast of South Africa. They could be as rich as the Saudis… but somehow, I don’t think that’s going to happen. As various expatriates have mentioned, “Africa always wins.”

                2. The Russians need the price higher, too.

                  By deregulating fracking Trump has done a spectacular job of weaponizing the most valuable resource on the planet (well, the two most valuable resources: oil and human ingenuity) and is destroying the economies of our challengers.

                  He not only gets no, NO, zero, nada, zilch credit for this, he gets condemned by All The Right People.

                  2. It has been observed (yielding a shrug and a “watchagonnado?” from Team The One) that the Shirtless Tsar’s entire rearmament campaign was funded solely with petroleum revenues plus what Roscosmos charges NASA for each seat on a Soyuz.

                    The fracking boom has so changed the international oil market that something like the Saudi attack which would have previously doubled the spot price barely budged it, and NASA’s got Elon working on obviating the need to pay Russian taxi drivers.

                    And yeah, no credit at all.

                    1. Well, hey, given the announcements from the Chinese, we may soon be able to pay the People’s Liberation Army to send our people into space instead of the nasssty Rooskies.

                      $DIETY freakin’ wept…

                      I’d totally sympathize with anyone who worked on Apollo or the Shuttle, if they just said screw it and got into nice warm bath with a sharp razor blade.

                      “All these things, lost, like tears in rain.”

          3. For that theory to be true, the Iranian leaders would need to understand (and care about) internal US politics much better than I believe they do. I figure the Saudi refinery bombing was about Middle East politics, not US politics.

        2. As recently as five years ago I was still encountering people who wanted to know why Congress wasn’t investigating the real estate collapse and attendant bank failures, to find out who was responsible.

          I’d tell them, “Because they know goddamned well who was responsible, and they’re scared that if they ask in Congress, some angry witness is likely to come out with it flat footed on national television.”

          1. They know Clinton caused it, but can’t admit that even to themselves. See: ‘Community Reinvestment Act’. The whole real estate boom-and-bust in three words. Took eight years for those buzzards to come home to roost, so they wound up on Bush Jr.’s roof.

            1. The only thing they learned from the Keating 5 Scandal was to use better intermediaries. They were fine with the scam but needed to better avoid fingerprints.

  8. True story: yesterday I heard a conservative leaning guy say something to the effect of: “Good people HAVE to use violence because they’re so bad at deception and manipulation.”

    Things are getting bad.

    1. Was he also one of the galaxy-brains who was horrified by Trump being mildly rude during the campaign?

      It is easy to lose when you define every winning tactic as immoral. Though that might be considered a good thing if you have the conservative martyrdom fetish….

      1. Quite the opposite. He doesn’t think Trump goes nearly far enough. He’s a pretty mild guy, and even he’s given up on civility, debate, and presumptions of good faith. If the people on the other side aren’t his countrymen, they shouldn’t be treated as such.

        Folks are listening to that rough music.

        1. They are. BUT TRUST ME: in the village it was the women who handled this sort of thing (and no rough music was involved. Women nerve themselves up to violence because they just stop willing themselves not to kill anyone) and the results were… uh… mixed.
          We can’t afford this.

        2. And I’m the guy who thinks the punishment should fit the crime. So impalement for rape is quite fitting. I also know my opinions on the matter are outside the norm, so I am okay with life imprisonment, even though I think the entire prison system is in dire, dire need of reform.

          Folks who have not experienced violence close up and first hand tend to be rather more enamored of it than those who have, generally speaking. The exceptions tend to populate aforementioned prisons, or they have iron self control.

          I am all for self defense. Even organized self defense, neighbors and friends watching each others backs counts. But hear me and hear me well: we DO NOT want to go down this path. It is more ugly, brutal, wasteful, and terrifying than most can imagine. I would not wish it on anyone. Not you, not me and mine, not any democrat or socialist wannabe, no matter how zealous.

          Work the courts. Work the politics. Work on your friends and neighbors. I do not believe in fantasy lands of pleasure and contentment without personal sacrifice and suffering, so do not mistake me to be telling you things will be all roses and sunshine if we get through this tough patch. Liberty will always face challenges, from within as well as without. But let those challenges be non-violent, and let the law breakers be dealt with by law and not by vigilantes in the street.

            1. From your lips to Himself’s ears (didn’t mean to step on your toes there).

              Side note, I wonder how many on the right have rediscovered actual faith in the last four years (and not just lip service faith)? Mysterious ways, indeed.

              1. You didn’t step on my toes. I just think you admirably summarized what I was trying to say. Since I did this last night, I was afraid no one would GET it. (Last night — late, feeling better but suffering from post-viral syndrome.)
                For the first time in my life I have A prayer life. now this might simply be because I’m older, but since the ADHD has gotten markedly worse, I don’t think so.

              1. Peacekeepers, peace thru strength. There was a reason for those forces at the Fulda gap.

          3. Impalement for rape is interest, but I’m a member of the suffering side of punishment and not sure impalement beats crucifixion on that point. I’m open to have my mind changed.

            I remember the 10th Victim had a scene right before the impalement of someone for littering. That might be a little much.

            Folks who have not experienced violence close up and first hand tend to be rather more enamored of it than those who have, generally speaking. The exceptions tend to populate aforementioned prisons, or they have iron self control.

            Agree, and the last thing we need to give them a reason to let that self-control slip. I suspect once gone, it doesn’t come back.

            I also suspect seeking release via violence is habituating like many forms of adrenaline junkie activities. Yes, most of my evidence is anecdotal, but I have a lot of it and enough antidotes become a data set.

            Although there is a third reason: they know they revel in it in the movement, but also have enough of a conscious to have a hard time living with themselves afterwards.

            1. It is akin to holding a snarling, angry dog. Once it has been set loose without restriction, it becomes easier the time after, and the one after that.

              The savage joy some find in violence isn’t something one can control. It just is. That is why men from time immemorial have placed rules on when and where it can be done, and how much is too much. There are *very, very* good reasons for restrictions on how much is too much. So we have equivalent responses. A man comes at you with a fist, it is a faux pas to set him on fire, for example.

              Per your last, it is an issue that falls into two parts. One, the knowledge of what you are capable of will never leave you. Two, the knowledge of how you felt in doing such things will be with you forever, too.

              1. > There are *very, very* good reasons for restrictions on how much is too much. So we have equivalent responses. A man comes at you with a fist, it is a faux pas to set him on fire, for example.
                —
                That’s why the Left is enamored of acid-throwing and milkshake-throwing.

                “Oh, you totally overreacted by blowing that poor person away! It was just a joke!”

                “What, you thought I was going to wait and see if I was going blind first?”

              2. “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.”— Robert E. Lee, at Fredericksburg

          4. Folks who have not experienced violence close up and first hand tend to be rather more enamored of it than those who have, generally speaking.

            Supporting evidence:
            The XO on my ship loved war movies. The more horrific, nhilistic and bloody, the better.

            On the way back from the gulf, with a full load of Marines, his preference lasted all of about two days before we went to constant Disney movies.

            Yes, including animated ones.

            There was a “mysterious” fire or leak that happened to damage all of the movies on board for the Morale Office, so the (volunteer, civilian) guy asked for donations and set up votes.

            “Amazingly,” the XO lost.

            Constantly.

      3. When it comes to tactics of the fight, people will say “we’re better than that”. The thing is Marquis of Queensbury rules are fine in the ring with a referee and judges to ensure that everyone obeys the rules. They’re even fine in a schoolyard brawl where the only stake is bragging rights and the only risk is a black eye of fat lip.

        In a knife fight in a back alley, however, they’re a quick right to suicide.

        Entirely too many “moral superiority” types forget that or worse, are okay with suicide so long as they don’t get their own hands dirty trying to avoid it.

        1. Or, to put it in a famous Texas phrase, when it comes to a fight in the back alley, “Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six”.

        2. I think in case of our moral superiors (spit), it’s a case of “Let’s you and him fight”, with the MFSers insisting that we play by the Marquis rules. They only regret that *we* have only one life to give for their cause.

        3. I think a great many of the “We should be better than this” crowd are simply too comfortable with losing. They know, or believe they know, that the Progressive Left is going to need a fig-leaf Opposition, and figure that they can settle in comfortably, never having to face the frightening prospect of what to do if they WIN.

          I also see that these dinks are slowly being supplanted. Let’s hope it isn’t TOO slowly.

          1. Oh, I’ll let them lose.

            At the primary election.

            OTOH, when that’s been done, somehow it’s not a graceful loss anymore.

        4. *Blinks.* I, er, had to read your comment twice about the schoolyard brawl bit.

          In my experience… the stakes were much, much higher than that. Not to the knife fight level, but “get to the doctor” happened more than I’d like.

          1. It seems to be the standard my dad fought at– he was born in ’50.

            The older kids would beat the shit out of you if you seriously hurt someone.

            Supposedly, at least. From what I know of the…guys… I would be suspicious if how well that worked.

            By the time I got there, it was “a teacher has to explain why a 16 year old can’t beat on a 6 year old.”

            1. Yeah. That last bit is how it was when I hit school. Which mainly seemed to translate to “don’t get caught beating up the 6-year-old… and if you are, claim they started it. Works every time.”

  9. Does the French army still patrol Paris in squads of four, with battle armor and submachine guns?

    Larry Correia saw that during his European book tour a few years ago.

    You don’t see that in any of our ‘insanely violent’ American cities, not even Chicago or Baltimore. The only place I ever saw anything of the sort was in the Philippines when Marcos was in charge — army troops armed with M-16’s patrolled the cities, and shot criminals on sight.

    Is that what Europe is headed for? Open tyranny, just to keep the clueless elites in power?

    How long will it take for their frogs to boil?
    ———————————
    Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here — this is the War Room!

      1. I seem to recall full batlle-rattle national guard in US airports right after 9/11 – perhaps there’s some here who participated in that walking-around exercise willing to say whether they had full or empty mags loaded in their M-4s.

        1. See also New York’s Joint Task Force Empire Sheild, which has the NY National Guard patrolling major transportation facilities (e.g. Penn Station, Grand Central, Port Authority Bus, etc.) in NYC.

          1. Idiots. Anyone who issues a RoE to issue weapons and no ammo ought to be executed on the spot. Of course having a couple of friends captured by belligerents and having a quarter of a million dollars in secure communications gear shot to pieces does tend to bias me on that subject.

            1. This is yet one other thing that can get me blistering mad. If you don’t want to give them bullets (WHY?), give them swords or bayonets or bloody *something.* They are supposed to be entrusted with the responsibility of being armed. That’s the bloody *point.* Arm them, so they can defend self and others as they are charged to.

        3. Indeed. The troops were truly out in force at Logan airport a couple of weeks after The Event. And even then, from what I observed, it was all nothing but ‘security theater’.

          1. I did three trips in the 9 months after 9/11, all between SFO and Munich by various routes. Security theater got progressively worse as time went on (the shoe bomber hit after trip #1, so shoe checks for #2 and 3).

            One trip entailed a few-hour layover at Chas DeGaulle. (protip: French airport BLT sandwiches involve lox-textured bacon. Liver might have been better. 🙂 ) French security theater was at the Opera Buffa level; it was the first time I saw security bypass the athletic types to single out a 60 year old tiny woman for extensive searching.

            I don’t recall much theater in Munich. IIRC, I had to start booting my mini-laptop, and explain to the X-ray operator that the odd machine was my CPAP compressor, but it wasn’t much different from a US domestic flight in the 1990s. If security was enhanced, they did a good job of keeping it subtle.

            I believe the Frankfurt airport had troops roaming around, but no hassling of the passengers.

            Those were the last flights I’ve taken, and I plan to keep it that way.

    2. From what I’m reading about Chicago (secondcitycop is a good source at the grunt level), it’s now in the cop’s best interest (personal, career wise) to ignore minor* crimes, because TPTB do not like/trust the cops, and will throw them to the wolves at the slightest whisper of police brutality.

      It’s pretty much two cops cruising the beat in a squad car, doing their best Sgt Schultz imitation “I saw nothing!”.

      Looks like it’s getting even worse in Cali, with $900 being the upper limit for no-muss no-fuss shoplifting. I expect an exodus wave of law enforcement and shop owners, and likely a return to the old-fashioned grocery store model; customer stands on one side of a strong partition, the clerk fills the order and passes it through on payment. Yet another reason to rejoice being gone from California and a loooooooong way away from Chicago.

      (*) For a steadily increasing tolerance of crime levels as “minor”. Not sure they’re ignoring homicides just yet.

      1. It’s $950 in CA for most theft including shoplifting, but yeah. Normal PD procedure here is for the non-emergency dispatcher to direct victims to the web-based reporting form to get a police report number for insurance purposes.

        While the retailers are upset about the shoplifting gangs (send in 20 youts at once to swarm the racks and grab an armful, knowing it won’t total over $950 for any one armload), the main frustration I note is property crimes in residential neighborhoods – scum are trolling through and imply taking property without regard to anything like the proliferation of cameras. One tactic is to roll up in a car and send a young-ish female to collect all the expensive kids toys from a front yard, with motorized kid vehicles especially targeted.

        It all brings to mind Insty’s observation that the police are actually there to protect individual criminals from local concepts of justice involving lamp-poles and rope.

        1. It also brings to mind our hostess’s amazement that Americans put out decorations in their yards.

          I guess we are reverting to the historical mean, or at least Cali is.

            1. The main driver of this-here-now is that CA’s three-strikes law was too effective in getting habitual criminal scum off the streets, which added to overcrowding in prisons, so Prop 47 reclassified lots of drug and property crime, including the theft less than $950, as misdemeanors so they do not count towards three-strikes.

              And the people who said Prop 47 if passed would lead to rampant theft were called craaaazy, and of course raaaaacis’. And Prop 47 passed – mostly because voters thought of it as just drug decriminalization and overlooked the property crime stuff.

              And since the drug crimes, including dealing, are now a misdemeanor ticket, and one must fund one’s now risk-free drug habit somehow, theft becomes rampant, and if one gets caught, that’s just another ticket.

        2. I’ve heard of “dollar stores” where the price on everything was a dollar.

          If I was a store owner in California, everything in my store would be true price + $1,000 (or more, if needed), and offer a “customer discount” of $1,000 at the register.

      2. If you remember a chain called “Service Merchandise”, they operated on the Soviet retail model: every item was locked in a glass case, and they were just displays anyway; you had to fill out a card, give it to the service desk, and eventually someone would bring your purchase out and put it on the counter.

        Kroger has been taking flak for putting high-theft items behind glass now. The Usual Suspects are, of course, screeching “racism!” No skin off my nose, after they decloaked and went anti-RKBA, I have no intention of ever entering one again.

        1. I remember my family shopping at a “Service Merchandise” when I was a kid. I’ve always wondered why more places haven’t gone to that model. The one my family went to was clean, and had nice, wide isles. You just jot down the number, pay at the counter, and wha-la your purchases popped out on a conveyor belt right near the door. No need to worry about carting things around while you were shopping. I rather liked it.

          1. Well… as long as you could devote most of an evening to making a single purchase.

            So you walked around, saw something – a camera, say – and you want to look at the specs. So you’d have to search out a clerk, which could take an hour or more if there were other people waiting. Then you’d read the back of the box, decide to buy, and do the card thing. After hiking back to the service desk, you stood in a long line until you paid. Then they’d send the card in back. And then you’d wait. An hour seemed to be common. No chairs, of course. Then someone would come and dump your item on the counter, whence you retrieved it, and then limped out to the car, wondering if it might just have been a better deal to have paid the extra $19.34 at Sears…

            1. I can almost see Amazon kind of doing the Service Merchandise model in large cities. Similar to what’s going on at Walmart and Wegman’s and other places are doing with groceries. Order online, drive up, and someone brings it out to you.

              It would vastly reduce their shipping costs, and increase their sales for people who want things NOW!

              There are some things, like furniture, I won’t buy without touching and feeling an actual object. But most stuff today, buying online is fine. Of course, having worked retail, the really profitable items, anywhere, grocery, hardware, or soft lines, are the impulse purchases.

              1. Amazon has the Amazon Locker option. You can arrange to have an item shipped to a specified locker, say, a local grocery store. You could plan to pick up the item when you stop for groceries. The item is not sitting on your porch, unattended & at risk for theft.

                The neat thing is that a program keeps track of the available space in each locker, so they don’t get overfilled. I’ve used it to send things to family members living in the city.

            2. We had one near my apartment back in the day. I think I used it once, then decided that life was too short to support their business model.

              OTOH, it worked fairly well at the Brookstone place in the upscale mall. They had enough people to get fairly quick service.

              Our pharmacy is sticking more of what used to be OTC supplies behind the wall. Stuff like Betadine (rather, the less expensive generic form). One wonders if there’s a use for it in illicit drug manufacturer. I am *not* going to research this…

            3. LOL! I must have been in second or third grade a the time, and had so much fun exploring the store (I was one of those kids who could entertain myself nearly anywhere) that I don’t remember all the waiting.

              I do remember the glass (or crystal) room. There was a section that had all the fancy crystal dishes and stuff. I went in there and looked around all wide eyed because I had never seen anything like it. Needless to say, there was some serious freaking out going on with the store employees. Imagine a little boy, so thin people thought I was malnourished*, probably covered in scrapes and bruises because I lived on a farm and that was “the usual” with me, walking around looking at all the pretty, very breakable and expensive, things.

              * My mother was accused a number of times of neglecting my brother and I. Usually with someone pulling one or both of us aside and asking if we want something to eat. The answer was always “Of course” because we both had intensely high metabolisms (now I’m middle aged and fat… sigh, those were the days LOL!) The real funny thing was, do-gooders would try to feed us, only to realize that we ate A LOT. Like a freakin mythical amount, and once they started investigating they found out that our mother cooked HUGE meals, and never had leftovers. For instance… to make (Americanized) spaghetti sauce, my mother used something like FIVE POUNDS of ground beef, and that only lasted ONE meal. Underfed we were not. 🙂

        2. There is also the habit of many stores of checking your receipt against your purchases at the door, from Guitar Center to Costco.

          Every time I thank them for treating me like a criminal. Guitar Center advertises they match online prices. The problem is that practice, along with how hard it is to check out sometimes, did more to get me buying from Sweetwater than prices ever did. On the kind of purchases I make there, “I get it now instead of tomorrow or next week” can justify a lot of price difference.

          1. With Costco, it works both ways. I’ve had one or two cases where something didn’t make it on the shopping cart after checkout and the door-checker caught it. Also, for Costco, it’s part of the membership agreement to submit to the door check. While I have issues with the place, (I *really* don’t need Food Nazis telling me that sugar free cocoa is Not Acceptable.) but that’s not one of them.

            Fry’s Electronics was really bad for this when I lived there, but they could not *legally* demand to check outgoing bags. If you really wanted, you could just walk on by. And I did. Also tried to avoid them, but if you needed a left handed framistat with a USB-THX1138 cable, they had it in stock. The competition might have to order it from Alderaan. (Though the idjits working the floor at Fry’s didn’t know squat. They might have thought I was serious. 🙂 )

            I’ve walked through the Medford Guitar Center, and was unimpressed with their stock. Of course, I was spoiled by the store in San Jose, though I spent much more money at the local competition.

            1. Update: left handed framistats with a USB-THX1138 cable are now sourced from the Wookie sweatshops on Kasyyk.

            2. They built a mega-Walmart in the middle of nowhere in an adjacent county, miles from the nearest town, (pop. <1,500).

              Apparently they brought in a manager from out-of-state, who not only thought bag checks were good, he had the idea he could have someone who didn't cooperate physically restrained from leaving.

              You can't do that in Arkansas. Yankee manager and several "associates" found themselves looking down the barrel of an angry old gentleman's pistol as he ushered his wife and her purse out of the store…

              The manager was shocked to find out that he would have been up on a felony kidnapping charge had the customer chosen to swear a complaint, and that if he'd pulled the trigger the county prosecutor would have seen nothing to charge.

              I've been told that the laws in other states are different. Wouldn't have helped Mr. Manager in court, though.

              1. Robert Heinlein said it well: an armed society is a polite society.

                Welcome to the sunny (and increasingly CCL-ed) South…

            3. Funny story about Fry’s –

              At an old retail job of mine, one of my co-workers got fired because he knew another employee was stealing from the store, but didn’t say anything (appatently he hadn’t kept quiet during an earlier job, and got his car vandalized). The next time I saw him, he was one of the guys checking receipts at Fry’s.

          2. I don’t mind a receipt check– but I’m also the kind of person who is so busy trying to keep the kids under control to MY standards that I’ve repeatedly had folks add an extra zero to stuff, or accidentally add ten to the total. (I buy bulk even at places that don’t do bulk, so sometimes they’ll scan an item, hit one, and then hit 9 because I bought 9– and that’s big enough that I notice, but not big enough I go “you made a mistake,” it’s “damn it, I thought I had it better tracked than that.”)

            I figure that it’s aimed at folks who aren’t me, and 90% of the time the guy at the out-scan looks at me, looks at the cart that DOESN’T have a bunch of bulk stuff, and waves me through.

            1. I know it isn’t aimed at people like me, but eventually the person you treat as the default is who most people become.

              More and more retailers treat customers as someone to distrust. This gets customers who should be trusted to seek alternatives meaning their customer base is less trustworthy. Rinse, repeat.

              Probably the single greatest insight I ever had in life was Gresham’s Law applies to more than money.

              1. Part of it is how folks interpret it, though.

                And I care more about paying for the chutzpah method of theft than I do about someone making sure what’s in my basket matches what’s on my list, especially when they’ll catch “oopses” that are AGAINST them.

              2. Treat people like thieves and they’ll start to steal. They’re paying part of the price already, so they’ll figure it’s owed them.

          3. Herb, they treat everybody like a crminal. You wouldn’t want them to profile, would you?

            Besides, judging by the picture accompanying your comments here I think most of us would agree that you do look like a criminal. You White Males have been looting the planet for centuries, after all.

        3. What? Kroger (Fred Meyer locally) does what Costco has done all along with their high end stuff, and the criminals are whining? Gee. What’s next, members only entry, that you pay for, but get back in “dividends”? The racists!

          Very disappointed in Kroger. Oregon, so far, still, despite our lovely governor, is open carry. But as someone I know pointed out “why would I open carry? Someone is robbing or shooting up the place are going to take out are those with obvious guns.” She’s in the process of getting her CC (she’s over 70 if not over 80). Double interesting is she travels to Canada regularly where she can’t take her gun. Mom has a CC but she’s quit taking her gun on her road trips, I think she got tired of fishing/trolling/dredging it out of the drink when she wanted to take it on road trips; she hates the after the trip canoe accidents … She’s 84 in November. We’re getting new bigger pond so we can drain her pond and move her weapons to ours so she doesn’t have to deal with the canoe accidents anymore. Have I ever mentioned how much I despise boats? I never seem to pass the tippy canoe test, I keep tipping the canoe over. (Both lines are true. Just a bit out of context.)

          1. Guns are like mice. First there’s one… and then you’re overrun with them. I’m pretty sure at least some of them reproduce by fission…

          2. In the 16 years we’ve been in the flyover county, I’ve seen open carry (a pistol) at Fred Meyer precisely once. No comments from anybody.

            1. Willamette Valley, I-5 corridor 63 years (in 12 days). Have shopped in Fred Meyers since they built locally sometime in the late ’60s, early ’70s. Never seen anyone open carry (other than law enforcement, which doesn’t count). Something I would notice (I’m not that oblivious). Guns and Service Dogs, I’m going to notice.

              Service Dogs, you say, people don’t notice? Yep. Trust me. I can pull it off. Because when they notice her they say something (20# dog carrying a pack gets attention when noticed). Not trying to make her invisible. The steps I take are to keep her from getting ran over, kicked, or stepped on. I am not carrying her. Leash is visible across my shoulder, not neon or anything, still visible.

            2. There’s a restaurant near the police station; I go there for lunch occasionally. The plainclothes cops were easy to spot; they made a point of taking off their jackets or arranging their shirts so their weapons were exposed.

              Then the legislature legalized open carry, and now the cops make a point of keeping their hardware concealed.

              I guess now that open carry isn’t a special cop privilege, why bother?

              1. I’ve talked to some folks about that.

                Apparently it has to do with how much it looks like you’re trying to conceal the gun.

                Setting it up so you are obviously, visibly armed means that the kind of twit who would go around calling the cops because they said they caught a glimpse of someone’s weapon aren’t a useful means of derailing several cops.

                Like many training things, it might be stupid, but making it standard served some purpose.

      3. $900? Ha. In 2014, $15,000 worth of vandalism and theft was not sufficient to get the Los Angeles County sheriff’s dept. to even take a report — despite that I could point at my shit (custom work, impossible to mistake) lying in plain sight in the perp’s yard a mile down the road. If I didn’t have a receipt (for 20 year old goods?) to prove it was mine, I was welcome to try to steal it back, but they wouldn’t do anything about it.

        1. Not even if marked with serial #’s, and you have the serial #s and paperwork (some were equipment we were still paying for). This was 2006 … Hasn’t gotten better. Yes. We were about $15k too. We did get the Sheriff out, finally. Suggested, mind you this was before the canoe accident, that the thieves might have gotten a weapon or two; didn’t, but hey, shouldn’t law enforcement check it out? Didn’t because, based on mud on the carpet, they opened the door to the room, saw it was our “dump it” before put away eventually room, shut the door. Locked Pond” is in the closet in that room …

          Early ’80s when my folks were robbed, when the Sheriff department was still responding to take reports, the officer’s darn near busted a gut laughing. Thief’s did get a very old pistol dad had inherited, not safe to fire, and not fixable. But they missed 6 or so hunting rifles. NOT locked away.. They were in the small bedroom, closet. This had been turned into my mom’s sewing room. To get to the rifles, one had to move sewing equipment, and storage, open the closet (slide so little blocked the doors), then pull out blankets and other stuff to find the rifles in the back corners. Hell, I’d used to live there and I had to have mom & dad direct me on how to get to them. The officer’s response. “That works. But we still recommend getting a locked “pond”.”

        2. There is a story, and mind is JUST a story, that a fellow who had a car stolen and nothing was done about it at all, happened upon a police left idling… on a hill… near a lake. he allegedly put it drive and let it steal itself.

          1. I recently watched a highly entertaining selfie-video: a lady had her car stolen (in one of the so-liberal cities, if I recall right). Police more or less shrugged. However, as her wallet had also been in the car when it was stolen, and the thief began using her credit cards, she began tracking the thief’s location, following him/her to the stores, and interviewing the clerks. She got a description, and eventually was told that the store clerk had overheard thief saying he was meeting a friend for lunch at Applebee’s. There were four in her town, so she rounded up some friends to stake them out with her. She happened to pick the right one, and was waiting at the bar when she saw her vehicle pull into the parking lot. She waited until the thief had gotten seated and ordered his lunch, then took herself outside, pulled out her spare key, and drove off in HER car. She got several miles away, then pulled over and called the police.

            Lady was an intrepid–and quite good–investigator, and I enjoyed the karma of the story hugely. But I couldn’t help but feel that, in her shoes, I’d be mighty pissed off at the local PD in that she had to do THEIR job. (And I suspect that had they been willing to investigate, she’d have been willing to give them access to the same tools–namely her online credit card account–to track the thief.)

      4. Yeah… but then you have the uniformed toadies in Charlottesville, Berkeley, Portland, and Seattle…

    3. In the mid-90s on liberty we were warned not to mess with Italian tax police who came in van fulls and carried Uzis.

    4. The police I saw in Vienna were up-armored. In Poland and semi-rural Czech Republic? Not really. Even the tax police (who were rather amused to have accidentally intercepted curious Americans rather than German smugglers.)

      1. The Czech Republic isn’t the USA, but their failure to align Czech law with EU “reasonable gun control policies” has given Brussels heartburn for a while. The pro-gun citizen groups are very active there, and it’s one of the few EU countries where an ordinary citizen can simply fill out the forms, jump through a few hoops, get a carry permit, and then go armed while about his daily affairs.

  10. China has it’s own internal problems that aren’t as visible as the west. You can’t speak up there but they hold it in and don’t make that rough music. Nevertheless they have corrupt mayors and police officials who are suddenly dead overnight. Perhaps that is the better way than giving them any warning. One in five people would leave China if they could. I can’t prove it – but I suspect that is most everyone with any talent and gumption who would rather benefit themselves and their family than the state.
    Most people don’t realize China has a dual currency. The Army controls what money can leave the country. Otherwise the average person can’t buy a house abroad or send money to foreign accounts.
    When a foreign company invests in China it’s a roach motel. They can never sell their factory or send the cash profits out of country without permission.
    That was fine as long as they were getting cheap goods. Those days are ending and this is a huge reason they will never replace the dollar as a world currency. The lack of convertibility.

    1. One of those problems is a result of the one child policy. Almost every young man in the Chinese military is not only the only child of two parents, but also the only grandchild of four doting grandparents. Domestic unrest will occur very quickly when they start dying in bulk. To make matters harder for them the “Chinese Army method” of war results in a lot of dead soldiers.

      1. Given their male:female ratio I’m not sure the “lots of dead [young men]” would been seen as a downside by the government.

      2. India has the same problem. Their ratio is even more skewed than China’s and will probably continue to get worse because it is a societal preference, not government policy.

        1. It was a societal preference in both places. Possibly much stronger in India than China, I grant you, but China has been dangerous to girls for a long time. I read a book by a missionary published in 1899 and at one point he cited that the most girls a mother remembered killing was eleven, but several had lost count.

    2. the former owner of the company I work for is one of the few to snare the Chinese in their factory and tech stealing games. He got his money, and they got only exactly what he initially agreed to sell them (what a concept!). Yeah, small potatoes compared to what they got off Honda or others, but still fun.

    4. Word is that quite a few of the Hong Kong protestors are from the mainland, and taking notes about the tactics being used so that they can adapt those tactics for their own use later on.

      2. Between phone tracking and street cams, it’s just a matter of putting forth the effort to identify most of the “protesters.”

        Even leaving home without their phones won’t stop tracking; you just look at the bus cam and see 36 passengers, note that the GPS tracker only shows 34 occupants, and it’s easy enough to track the odd two back to their doors with street cam recordings.

  11. Thought-provoking and very possibly correct post. In America the political class (“Brahmandarins”) and the left are in a state of hysteria — they realize President Trump cannot be defeated in an honest election. We are going to find out soon how deep is the deep state and, more importantly, how much the corruption has spread among the American people.

    And yes, a world without a free United States would be a violent nightmare followed by totalitarianism.

        1. Considering the fraud in the mid-terms this time around they are going to make a certain Athens, TN look like the picture of honesty.

          The question will be how to drag the proverbial sherriff out of the proverbial building without using the all too real noose…..

        2. Speculation has been that they’re panicking over what IG Horowitz, AG Barr and United States Attorney Durham are going to report. A guilty conscience knows not rest.

          1. I think that is a key part of why they are suddenly freaking out and pushing impeachment. If you read the transcript instead of the msm’s unhelpful interpretation of it, it is pretty clear that the favor Trump was asking for was to get a computer server from Crowdstrike (a Ukrainian company).

            1. That is how I read it too. President Trump want information on the 2016 interference.

              The other thing I don’t get. Biden isn’t even President Trump’s rival. Not yet. For that to be true one would have to presume that Biden has won the DMC Primary. What? Has a secret vote been taken that I don’t know about? An investigation against Biden now is a benefit to the other primary candidates. President Trump doesn’t care who wins the DMC primary.

              About President Trump calling on various other countries doing surveillance on people or texts, etc.; lets just say as comedic routines goes, President Trump doesn’t think our foreign national surveillance can find their ass with both hands gripping it; fair assessment or not.

              1. I have noticed that the reaction seems to assume Biden is guilty, else they’d expect an investigation to exonerate him.

                It is also entirely obvious that the Dems want NO investigation into the origins of the 2016 tampering.

  12. One thing to keep in mind is that there’s not an ‘in then end’ until the Second Coming or some other destruction of the mortal Earth. If things ‘end badly’ anywhere, then the next day life will still go on for the survivors, several decades later those who got traumatized and never recovered from that will all be buried, and what’s left of the ‘bad end’ will be whatever mental damage they passed down to their posterity.

    Here in the US it’s time and past time to prepare for micro-collapses in purple areas and macro-collapses in blue areas.

    -Albert

      1. The older you get the more difficult it is to believe in a second coming.

        Especially for men.

      2. *shrug* I don’t think it’s anywhere near as some who do believe in it, if only because cash is too convenient when you don’t want to leave a paper-trail purchase, and so it ought to take a while before we go as completely cashless as Revelations seems to describe. Doesn’t mean we aren’t under the same divine obligation as ever, to live justly and to love to show mercy.

        In terms of sci-fi, I don’t think it’s a concept much worth exploring, because we don’t have the context to write more than WAGs about what happens next. Presumably the heavenly life is well worth living, but why and how is hard to imagine and thus hard to write about, at least without losing the heavenly quality and turning it into something trite or tawdry.

        Heck, even the LDS paradigm, of being part of carrying out ‘worlds without end’, has some of us wondering how long it’d take for that to become routine enough to feel dull. (When we ought to trust the Lord well enough to believe that it wouldn’t ever come to that.)

        -Albert

        1. Yeah. I also can’t imagine what comes after. I think it’s RES’s thing. On the other side we live and think in several dimensions, which makes us QUALITATIVELY different from our limited selves here on Earth.

        1. Not as much as you think. Yes, it means I need to be careful about city centers. If it doesn’t blow-up before oh, July next year, then younger son won’t be very close to a university.
          I’m hoping to get my fill of museums and my favorite park and Pete’s in the next couple of months, because I think come January it will have to be evaluated before we venture out.
          Mind you, Denver cops are hell’s own bastards. Antifa tried to gambol. Once.
          But if things go hot… Well, let’s say in a year I’m more or less ready to circumscribe life to our sleepy suburb.

  13. In 2006, Claire Berlinski published a very interesting book about Europe, where she lives and has traveled extensively. The book discusses both the submission to overweening Islamists and the rise of the alt-right, plus some religion-substitutes such as the thing she calls ‘crop-worship’ (on display here at your local Whole Foods, but apparently more extreme in Europe)

    I don’t understand why Claire’s thought has evolved the way it has in recent years, she now appears to be a never-Trumper…but this book I think is very important reading. I reviewed it in 2014:

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/44959.html

    1. At this point I don’t understand any of the never trumpers. Of the 21 people running for office, he’s the only one who doesn’t want America destroyed.
      I guess it makes a clear-cut line.

      1. The Never Trumpers (if, as I assume, that refers to Republicans against Trump) are easy to explain; they are scared to death of WINNING. Losing has been comfortable for them. They don’t actually lose position. They get invited to all the best Washington Cocktail Parties. AND they don’t have to actually make any policies work.

          1. This. While we’ve bounced back from many things, the way things are now, as religiously sure they are about the “rightness” of their cause, it would not look good for us getting power *back.*

            1. They plan to make the Deplorables pay for our insolence. They have made as clear as it is possible to be without having a press conference listing out each abuse they plan to heap on flyover country.

              It is either let them win, and be in civil war by the mid-terms. Or win, and hopefully their self-immolation will be complete by 2024.

              1. Win, and ensure the machinery of the state is in order such that crimes committed are prosecuted justly, and with dispatch. That is what I hope for.

                1. AaaaaaaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAH!!!!

                  Oh you sweet summer child! You honestly think our court system cares one whit for such paltry matters as “justice”? Did our prosecutor class being officially sanctioned tyrants not clue you in?

                  Although snark aside; Trump has been appointing a lot of judges while he has the lunatics distracted with the scandal of the week….

                  I must note however that any critique of our “justice” system needs to deal with the philosophical issue that you cannot have any concept of justice when there isn’t even the beginnings of the concept of weregild.

                  1. The Left is aware of what Trump’s been doing to the judiciary. And their response has been whether it would be better to remove those judges (impeaching if necessary), or pack the courts as Roosevelt attempted to do.

                1. Stupid young lefties DON’T grow up, they just get older. And they stay stupid. They demand that the government ‘take care’ of them like the forty-year-old babies they become. They do not understand the concepts of maturity, responsibility, and self-discipline. They believe that it is Right and Good to have the government ‘take care’ of us all, because they can’t comprehend the possibility that anyone might be capable of taking care of themselves.
                  ———————————
                  “What? You’re a Betan! You can’t do—”

                  1. They do grow up.
                    They all come out of school indoctrinated, but a good proportion grow up.
                    We’ve been indoctrinated for FOUR generations and the majority is NOT left. Most 20 year olds are. Most 40 year olds aren’t. You figure it.

                    1. The statement about if your 20 and not a liberal you have no heart and 40 and not a conservative you have no brain may be apocryphal in its various attributions (most famously, I think to Winston Churchill) but there is more than a grain of truth to it. Mind you, I never claimed to have a heart.

                      I have seen that pattern multiple times. It’s why I’m not terribly concerned by the claims that the young believe “X political doctrine”–yeah, those who are young, naive, and inexperienced believe all sorts of foolish things before they grow up and learn better. Giving those young, naive, inexperienced folk the power to enforce that naivete on the rest of us, concerns me, but not the fact of the naivete itself.

                  2. That’s like saying bachelors never marry.

                    It’s true in the technical sense because once they marry, they are no longer bachelors.

                    1. When I said that I would die a bachelor, I did not think that I would love till I were married.

        2. I’m thinking there are a few levels of Never-Trumpers. The first were going on the “No True Conservative” bit, and have been the first to (reluctantly) admit that POTUS has been governing conservatively and/or to the benefit of the USA.

          The second are the GOP establishment/elite who sneer at the populist messaging and his support from those hicks and rednecks. Some of them might come around.

          The third are those who are afraid of their own misdeeds coming to light in the various investigations. I’m pretty sure John McCain was in this camp, and I have suspicions about Mr. Romney.

          1. My take on Mittens is that he’s chosen his class above his party, and everyone know all the best people oppose the orange man.

            1. And one hopes the people of the great state of Utah decide that Mitten’s class interests are not actually those which they elected him to represent and recall him to his well-funded retirement.

              1. When Romney first came to my attention in the 1970s when he was running against Ted Kennedy, it was observed that he wasn’t a particularly conservative Republican. He was always a Northeastern, establishment, big government type. He was a far better choice than Obama, but I was rather dismayed by his tendency to reserve his harshest attacks for his Republican rivals instead of his Democratic opponents, He hasn’t changed his spots. He’s more of a McClellan than a Grant, and I don’t think he is a particularly good fit for Utah. It wouldn’t surprise me to see a primary challenge the next election cycle.

              2. He’s probably secure for the tome being. Salt Lake City is noticeably more prog-friendly (and non LDS) than the rest of the state, which makes him a good compromise candidate. Also, SLC remembers that he saved the Olympics, causing a scandal-plagued affaircthat was deeply in debt to finish on-time and in the black for the city (which is unusual even when the scandal doesn’t reach high enough levels to notice).

            2. What if I told you….. that “Never Trumper” is the republican party at its root?

              It is just that the scumbags found it useful to pretend to not be authoritarian power-mongers in order to get votes.

                1. Accidentally putting a round through the wall should tell a person that they need to pay attention better. Accidentally killing someone because you “didn’t know it was loaded!!!” should be a moment forever seared in the person’s memory, never to be repeated again.

                  By the time they’ve killed their fifth person to a scream of not knowing it was loaded it is time to drop the understanding of their mental issues and bring up murder charges.

            3. I betcha Mittens is glad he didn’t get the nod as Secretary of State, although he was certainly willing to kiss Trump’s [ring] in going after the position. Apparently he thinks Trump’s campaign help created no duty of keeping his stupid mouth shut.

              1. He’s up for reelection in 2024, unless he a) runs for Prez on the NeverTrumper ticket, and b) resigns his Senate seat to be honorable about it. [pauses a minute to let the sarcasm subside].

                One imagines that Mittens is going to find Presidential opposition come primary time. I’ll need more popcorn.

                  1. 2016 that was something like 2 AM in the morning PST when I heard the news. Gave up around 11 PM the night before. Got up because (oh call it old age), turned on the TV. Do you know how hard it is to yell “OMG. I can’t believe it”, and squeal, at a whisper? Repeatably?

                  2. Sam’s Club sells 1oz bags by the case (useful for those needing to manage our portion size) — there should be some way to employ those as a vote-promotion.

                    For election night I recommend:


                    Because it is like Cheetos and has balls.

                    3. When I could eat carbs, I was fatally addicted to cheese puffs.
                      When my host family asked what I wanted for food when they put me on the bus to PA, I said “Cheese puffs.” They gave me a bag almost my size. 😀

    2. I think it’s the subject matter she studies. I’ve observed several otherwise excellent historians of the Soviet Era and of Stalinism proclaiming that Trump is an autocrat inclined toward dictatorship. A few anti-Putin writers lean that way as well.

  14. When I saw the Newsweek article I kept looking for the Babylon Bee or The Onion URL. No such luck.

    It took me a while to figure out what it reminded me of but it finally did. In The Running Man they talk about Maria Conchita Alonzo’s character cheating on college exams and sleeping with as many as two or three men in a year. When that’s your best smear job, someone needs to rethink propaganda.

    If the balloon goes up, it will probably end with The Man On The White Horse as our hostess has pointed out before. Look how well that turned out for France.

      1. Hard to make much progress when you spend more time editing your video than actually working on the project… and in the end, it’s just another Mini…

  16. Of course he meant women resumes were in binders, and he was signaling that he hired women but they made this sound like he somehow wanted to put women in binders. And crazy leftists all over were repeating this, as if it even meant something.

    And the thing was even the people repeating this knew what was actually meant. They knew that the people they were speaking to knew what it actually meant. And they repeated it as though it were some sign of misogyny anyway.

    Not just divorced from reality, but willfully and knowingly divorced from reality.

    1. Also the ‘writing off 1/2 the population’ meme. He never said that, what he said was he was writing off the *votes* of 1/2 of the (1/2 of the ones who bother to do so) population.

        1. Tsk. You’d have thought he’d said they were “deplorable” to judge from Gaslight Media reaction.

        2. I still think you’re reading that wrong not quite the way I interpreted it. To me he was saying, ‘47% of voters will never go for me in any case (so-called ‘yellow dog’ Democrats, anti-Mormons, whatever) So I’m not going to waste effort trying to reach them. If elected I still am going to be working for them because I believe the policies I advocate will be good for *all* Americans.’ Of course, he phrased it – unfortunately – and the press and the Democrats (BIRM) had a field day.

  17. “For years, they were a gerbil kept in the controlled environment of left information-complex.”

    You take back that vile slander against gerbils!

    Now, if you want to compare them to certain members of the weasel family …

  18. “We’re the one sane guy, holding the gun, and watching the rest of the room burst out into inanity.”

    I wasn’t watching, but I gather Chuck Todd came awfully close to complaining about “the ants, crawling all over” and stripping out of his clothes yesterday morning.

    1. Only the TV makeup protected Chuck’s face from peeling right off when he was unexpectedly exposed to the heretical view that the anointed media is not saintly and utterly without detectable bias – and from a sitting US Senator, yet! A member of the get-elected-and-you-will-be-made-rich ruling class!!

    2. I heard about that incident only secondhand, but he seems to have been trembling on the edge of an epiphany of the obvious ever since Election Night 2016: “we missed something big” IIRC.

      Yet, only a week later, his insight had, basically, vanished. Now just the other day it was (NBC evening news) something a lot more like “It’s almost as if there are two Americas, and the other doesn’t see why [phone-call impeachment frenzy] is so serious.”

      Yes, there are; and in the Other America you keep pretending does not exist are a lot of people who understand this better than *you*. And who aren’t *paid* to do politics, but still *vote*.

  19. “For years now I’ve been telling you: in the end we win they lose.”

    Y’know what – I no longer even care. Some things, you fight whether or not you think you can win, simply because they are W.R.O.N.G. … and to know you did nothing to deter them is to smash all the mirrors in your life.

      1. I have a baseball bat with “Give Peace A Chance” engraved on it — you’re saying to use that before the firearms using bullets with lyrics from Imagine on them?

        Probably a good idea – I don’t think those lyrics would remain legible.

        As old and wore out as I be, words are indeed the main tool of my assault. Well, words and mockery. The two main weapons of my war against the Left are words, mockery and sarcasm …

          1. Which is why we will mock them on the streets, we will mock them in the classrooms, we will mock them in the press and hopefully we’ll horse-laugh them into a nervous breakdown.

          1. I bet they never expected a Spanish Inquisition 🙂
            Was going to insert Monty Python’s Inquisition sketch here, but sadly all of the clips of the full Spanish Inquisition sketch on YouTube appear to have been taken down.

            1. Although would it be the “Portuguese Inquisition”? (and yes, we had an inquisition that may have been nastier than Spain’s, though most people likely are not aware)

              1. *pushes glasses up nose*

                Always useful to remember that the history of the Inquisition is basically smacking down the human tendency to use any big object as a hammer, and religion is a veeerry big hammer, so there have been a lot of fights over it.

                (Could’ve knocked me over with a feather when I found out that there were actually folks who started up heresies so they’d have a REASON to oppose the local gov’t, though, so the “obvious” evil of gov’t laws against heresy are not so obvious. History is a very, very different country….)

                1. No. In the sixteenth century briefly and I don’t remember why it was entirely under the control of the Portuguese king. Might not have been “real” inquisition, but…
                  He went after people he owed money to. Don’t go there.

                  1. Exactly the kind of “fighting” over the hammer I was thinking of– heck, the was only a formal Church Inquisition because of the awe inspiring frequency with which those who had something the inquisitor wanted were heretics!
                    It’s depressing how many of the locally-run inquisitions basically kicked out the Pope’s representatives and ignored what the Pope told them to not do. Makes it pretty clear where their motives were, huh, as if the amazing frequency with which successful but new-blood families were targeted. 😦

                    They even pioneered this crazy idea of having evidence, even when ‘everybody knows’ that some one was guilty. It took a while to catch on.
                    *looks at Twitter mobs*

                1. The original Inquisition was removed with prejudice from the Iberian peninsula (IIRC in Aragon the Inquisitor was beaten to death by a mob) and was fairly weak outside the vicinity of Rome. Most monarchs considered it a papal power grab.

                  The reintroduction of the Inquisition into Spain ca. 1460 was under the explicit condition that it answered to the Crown, and the Portuguese version a few decades later followed suit.

                    1. Or that had a lot of property which would be confiscated if they were found to be BAd Dudes.

                      Lots of local corruption, too.

                      (plenty to go around!)

  20. “And they can’t read us. They have no idea what we’ll do.”

    Sine we don’t know what we’ll do, why would anyone else have half a chance?

      1. ““One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.” “

    2. They believe that we will react as we always have, TALK about fighting but never resort to violence. They think we are all bark and no bite. That is all they have ever known from us so that is what they expect. The volcano has never erupted, it has smoked and flashed but never erupted, and the House on the rim has such a good view.

      2. Dude, they edit EVERYTHING so that when there’s a response, it wasn’t REALLY against them– dumb-bleep protesters get violent with a vet and get clocked? Never shows up.
        AntiFa targets someone who fights back?
        No report, that’s just an “assault,” unless they can twist it so they’re victims.

  21. And now I think about it, how much do we see in main stream news about Hong Kong? And it hasn’t stopped the uprising either.

    Well, the GM of the Houston Rockets had to apologize for offending people by saying stand up for Hong Kong and liberty, so we know why they aren’t in the news.

    Liberty is offensive to the MSM.

        1. Not at you. I’ve run into this “The people in Hong Kong should just surrender.” It makes me mad enough if I could be present at it, they’d be looking for their teeth on the floor.

          1. There was that very white SJW lecturing Hong Kong protesters. I’m surprised she left without broken bones. OTOH, that’s been a few weeks ago. Now, I’d expect blood after behavior like that.

            Can’t boycott NFL or NBA games if I don’t watch them to begin with. OTOH, I used to watch the Super Bowl for the commercials, but now it’s the Puppy Bowl if anything.

            1. Sigh – it is a trifle irksome to realize that I cannot boycott the NBA because if there is a sports leagues about which I care less than the NFL it is the NBA. It would be like boycotting The View or Rachel Madcow.

              1. IIRC, the last basketball game I sat through was in high school in their state championship season. In college, we had both big basketball and football programs, but our opponents never quite realized we were playing against them.

                OTOH, the semi-official hockey team actually had fun and won a few games.

            2. I doubt the Hong Kong protestors would go that far even now. For one thing, they wouldn’t want to risk giving the PRC government an inroad against them. For another, according to some there’s a specific word Chinese word used as slang for white SJW idiots (note that I’ve heard from at least native living in China that such a term doesn’t exist), If true, that would suggest that the protestors are already familiar with these sorts of deluded idiots.

          2. Sure they should – after all, what’s the worst that could happen?

            China isn’t run by an insane tyrant who will do to them whatever Trump wants to do with those he doesn’t like — put them in cages?

            No, the worst that is likely to happen is they and their families will be sent to comfy camps where they can relearn the benefits of living in a Just Society. Some of them may even get the pleasure of donating internal organs to enhance the lives of sickly party leaders elderly philosophers.

          3. Dear Lord.

            I haven’t seen that.

            That is….a “Ghandi telling the Jews to walk into the gas rooms singing” level crazy.

            1. Even Ghandi wasn’t that stupid. If he had been up against Germans instead of the English he would have gone all Thuggee on their asses and we would never had the peaceful Ghandi.

              1. Ghandi wasn’t that stupid for himself.

                He actually did shit like that when it was other folks. Quote isn’t direct, it’s a from memory of what he advised.

                1. There’s an alt-history short story out there that has Ghandi going up against General Model after Great Britain loses World War 2, and hands India over to Germany.

                  Suffice to say, things don’t go nearly as well for Ghandi in this particular version of history.

                  1. Oh, damn. I read that one. But I don’t remember who wrote it…

                    [clickety] Turtledove, “The Last Article.” Maybe. For some reason the synopsis doesn’t sound quite right…

    2. Frelling NBA.

      When professional sports can’t possibly keep players from kneeling for the US National Anthem but themselves do the full-face-down-abasement thing to Emperor Xi Jinping you know something is very wrong.

      1. Well, my understanding is their season package is now blocked in China, a big market for the Rockets specifically, as a result of his tweet.

        Who cares about freedom in another land if it costs you Benjamins, right.

      2. Take note of how many flags and beards have sprouted all around MLB, coincidentally since the only-slaves-and-losers-kneel incident in the NFL.

      3. Guess you haven’t hear about MSL, which is allowing Antifa flags are games after a ban was protested, but is banning Betsy Ross flags after complaints.

        1. NBA is just the latest to fully embrace the roll-left-and-die theory of it will totally reverse our fortunes and rebuild our greatness to betray our actual base, this time for sure.

          I have looked askance at all of pro sports for some time. Professional curling is still OK. So far.

            1. Weather has been getting sketchy and I’m really not supposed to be walking to/from the gate much until the doc says OK. (7 days and 20 hours until the next check, but who’s counting?) I reused a wooden flagpole and it wasn’t happy with that service, either.

      4. The same NFL that allows what Kapernick started just fined a Saints player over $7000 for wearing a headband that said “Man of God”.

      1. Nope

        ESPN host even called the comment offensive, so yes, standing up for liberty is offense to the MSM now.

        Wouldn’t want to offend China, now, would you. If you want to insult people, try someone with a MAGA hat. Who knows what they are thinking of doing to a gay person.

        2. I got to “ESPN host even called the comment offensive,” and had to laugh. ESPN hosts probably think sugar is racist and coffee is offensive. They’re consistent that way. Consistently leftist, and going further down the rabbit hole.

          If they wanted to insult us, well, they do that daily. They expect us to take the MSM seriously for Bob’s sake!

          1. But — sugar IS racist. They used to trade sugar for slaves 200 years ago. So is coffee, there used to be coffee plantations worked by slaves. I learned that in history class.

            Of course, that was when history class contained actual history, that being things real people actually did in the past. Today they teach how you’re supposed to feel about history without having to actually learn any facts. Facts are racist!
            ———————————
            There are a lot of idiots in the world that believe sticking a politically correct label on a thing will make it what they wish it to be, instead of what it is. They are full of shit.

        3. In fairness, that comment was offensive — to the Red Chinese. In this life one gets to choose whom to offend; please choose wisely.

          ESPN, of course, is owned by Disney, and we already know where their interests lie. Offending the American People? No biggie – half of them are deplorable. Offending the Chinese (the tyrants, not the ones in Hong Kong)? Unacceptable!

          A pattern seems to be emerging.

    4. and the precious bit on Prison Planet showing the Hong Kong protesters waving American flags juxtaposed with our antifascist protesters waving a Communist Chinese flag. Switch, anyone?

      1. Not that long ago it would have seemed impossible. This is simply another data point in support of the idea that this timeline/universe is the/(a?) “hold my beer” one.

      2. I’d be happy to trade.

        Then again, I’ve long offered a trade to legalize illegals 1 to 1 for long term welfare recipients Mexico takes.

  22. But the rough music they hear, right now, is coming from ballot boxes.

    Agreed, but…

    Understand, everything they’ve done to us so far can be undone.

    I’m not sure about that.

    The internet phenom that is the “manosphere” is real and is a generation of western, mostly American and most white, men who are disconnected from the culture. They have no children or have had them taken away from them and watched them be taught to hate them. They are told they are the problem and they need to go away. They want to, but aren’t allowed to as everywhere they go the left follows and chases them out.

    They have no investment in the future. The black pilled among them, want to burn it all down. I know. I’m one of them (and the past few weeks it’s been worse than usual and after last night I was ready for matches).

    They are the men, that Heartless Bitches International said (“http://www.heartless-bitches.com/rants/niceguys/genetic.shtml”):

    Marries late, if at all, mainly because women rarely notice them. Has a life outside of work, but you’ll never listen long enough to find out. Devoted to wife and family, when married. Nice guys at all levels that do 90% of everything necessary to keep the world going.

    Or, as Scott at Slate Star Codex called them, the radicalized romanceless who:

    figure if they’re doomed anyway, they can at least get the consolation of feeling like they’re doing you some damage on their way down.

    Trump, Brexit, et al was, for them, the “we make the world work so give us some respect” moment.

    If they are overturned there they have the next box, which is the ammo box, and the leftists will have given the ammo box to the very people they worked overtime to disenfranchise from the future.

    Men with torches who have no reason to care what burning down today does to tomorrow because they have no investment in tomorrow, are not people you want in the streets.

    Unless you are leftists, apparently.

    Someone, I think a commenter on Insty, recently speculated that having gotten rid of G-d and family the left has found hedonism leads to a boring life and their unintended cultural suicide isn’t unintentional, but just a “get it over with already.”

    Some of us stand ready to grant it. I do. I fight the urge in myself everyday, but lately it is getting harder.

    I’m not sure how to undo that except by succeeding at the ballot box. It won’t cure me and those like me who don’t even fight the urge to burn it down. But it will deny us the chance to do it all together, all at once and let us die off instead of creating more people with the mindset until we are a critical mass.

    If we fail there, the left has created enough people who have no reason to care what comes after for us our culture to survive. So, we need to stop them here, before those of us who don’t have a future decide no one else gets to either.

    The left won’t win. They are too divorced from reality to win.

    That does not mean we cannot lose.

    2. “The internet phenom that is the “manosphere” is real and is a generation of western, mostly American and most white, men who are disconnected from the culture.”

      Haven’t yet seen, don’t know as I will see the movie, but:

      Joker reveals how men handle loneliness
      Adam felt it in his ribs in Genesis. George Orwell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway felt it as they put pen to paper and sauntered through the streets of Paris. The feeling is a tipping point between the natural, evolutionarily robotic and the passionate, soulful man. The feeling comes in a moment to men who sought to be resolute as they fell into destitution with a void they knew existed, but knew not with what to fill it — the profound loneliness of man.

      Enter Arthur Fleck, the lead character in the new movie Joker.

      1. The anons on Gab are laughing at the MSM take:

        “There’s going to be a shooting at The Joker Movie”
        “Any day now, there’s going to be a shooting”
        “Can we have a shooting at The Joker, pleeeeeeeease!”

    3. Herb,
      Before you move to the ammo box, perhaps you should reread E.F. Russell’s WASP and deploy the sticker box ahead of the ballot box. Okay, that probably isn’t where you store stickers, but we’ve got a cool ‘box’ theme going and I didn’t want to disrupt that. Someones (from the chans, perhaps?) are doing brilliant work driving wedges between the identity politics coalitions and demotivating their voters on the left with almost no effort using stuff like “Islam was right about women” stickers. And there seem to be lots of fault lines that could be attacked (trans women vs feminists re:women’s scholarships and set-asides” is another obvious one) Others are getting Democrats to show their scary crazy face to moderate voters with by convincing them stuff like “drinking milk and saying ‘ok’ is a sign of white supremacist”. Also, with the need for huge vote fraud efforts they’ll need to use more trustworthy people to do it, and one that was careless at just the right time about just the right thing… Personally I am too much the coward (and a rule-follower) to even do the stickers on gas pumps vandalism stuff. I don’t even have enough time to keep up with the yardwork much less to build up a computer profile trail that would be believable to dnc vetters. But a man like Mowry with nothing else to do or position to lose…

        2. Perhaps if somebody were to determine what are the dimensions of the typical Bernie, Biden or Warren bumper sticker and print MAGA stickers designed to overlay them …

          I’m not saying anybody ought go out to the local shopping center and paste Trump stickers atop Proggy one, but if I saw somebody doing that I probably wouldn’t report them.

            1. Any graphic not ending in jpg or png is likely not going to appear in WP. To (hopefully) make a picture appear automatically, when have found it in your search engine you need to click on the picture, click the [View File] button and only then will might you have a URL that will show up.

              Thus:


              Comes from the URL: twimg . com/profile_images/3353710918/3cc7ad5db9a2b6a994a68282691ace74 . png

              Maybe – only by posting can we know of a certainty. Stoopid WP.

              1. Similarly:


                Which is a jpg file.

                In some instances you can coopy the file address by right-clicking the desired image — but always test the URL in an open tab before trusting it. If you see a lot of searchengine reference in the URL, such as the engine name or multiple searh parameters — as indicated by the % symbol, WP won’t display.

      2. Oh, I’m loving the Chan’s stuff and talked about “It’s okay to be white” and “Islam is right about women” the other day.

        Been trying to think of ones to leave on the train during my commute.

        1. “Islam has the right idea about gays.”
          “Islam is right about blacks” — might backfire due to ignorance.
          “Feminists have the right idea about trans.”

          1. OOOOO

            Feminists have the right idea about trans.”

            Although, feminists are divided on it and I think TERFs have a point or two.

          3. “might backfire due to ignorance”
            and also propaganda like Bilal:A New Breed of Hero
            now with illegals having historically taken jobs from black (and teenagers of all races) Americans there might be something, if you could make something short and pithy.
            Kanye is right about Trump? Lincoln was a Republican?

          4. I don’t think you quite capture the moral condemnatory fervor … How about:

            It’s Islamophobic to question Islam’s stance on gays!

            Opposition to the feminist view of trans is misogynist!

          1. Yep, grabbed it already. I’m reading some market research right now, but I’ll get to it.

            Sometimes it hurts to be the slowest reading Hun.

              2. I used to just vacuum down text uncritically. But as I developed my own worldview, everything had to be run through multiple filters – is this slanted? If so, for what purpose? Is it verifiable or just an outright lie? Is it propaganda or prejudice? – etc.

                Took a lot of joy out of fiction, and things like nonfiction and particularly history… I read a *lot* more slowly nowadays, as I parse the text and fit it into what AH referred to as the “mosaic.”

    4. They are the men, that Heartless Bitches International said

      K, I feel dumber for reading that pseudo-scientific justification– following is DEFINITELY not aimed at you, or anybody else who goes for it, it’s… lt’s like when you have a girlfriend going “but he said he loved me!” and sobbing.
      That kind of nasty abuse.

      I can see it hitting guys more easily, because they’re…well, not girls.

      That is a very, very female form of malicious lying that…honestly, I can’t even explain how I recognize it.

      I just DO.

      It’s like when Elf tells me a guy is in a pissing contest, and I can’t see it.

      I can’t even tell if that author is male or female, but he’s got “toxic femininity” to the heart.

      That link is nonsense on stilts, like pushing horoscopes at someone who is freaking desperate and spinning it juuuuust so that it is close enough they find SOMETHING that kinda fits, at least better than the shit they’ve gotten so far.

      1. Oh, I don’t go for it per se, but I read the Heartless Bitches quote way back when it was first posted and identified with that section (it was after my first marriage ended, so consider that).

        I do get up, play by the rules, and, well, are locked out of what most Americans privately define as success: family and children.

        So I linked it not to agree with it, but because in that one paragraph captured what a not insignificant number of men feel like with respect to the society they live in and that that is a bad thing.

        As for the article as a whole, I think it was meant to be humor and if you look just right it is kinda funny.

        Except, like all comedy it has a truth about how society treats people.

        That is a very, very female form of malicious lying

        The site is called “Heartless Bitches”.

        I didn’t link to the source of the other quote, which takes on the HB among others, because I wanted to avoid WP jail, but arguably it conveys my point better:

        https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/

        1. I’m sitting here vibrating in fury because I can SEE how this is perfectly aimed to hit at the heart of a vulnerable guy– it’s coated in rationality, it’s controllable, it’s freaking CRACK to any guy or hell even far edge geek gal who has been misused.

          It’s a lie that is freaking MALICIOUSLY TARGETED at the vulnerable good.

          It’s… argh….

          HULK SMASH!

          Damn it, Herbn, I know I can’t do shit, and hell I’m a runt who hates physical violence AND confrontation, but this stuff makes me want to go all Hulk on Loki action, and not in a slash manner, y’grok?

          I don’t know if this is demonic or just humans being shitty, but it’s a lie at folks who are vulnerable, and aren’t me, and I want to try to protect y’all.

          1. Oh, it’s folks being shitty (if you mean Heartless Bitches…Scott seems to be a straight shooter).

            It is also quality emotional masochism. It is of the quality of a good interrogation scene, but it is just pushed out there instead of something signed up for.

    5. I am much the same except that I am Lazy. So that helps. Burning down the world is WORK and it is HARD WORK. Just not my thing but I am afraid that they CAN piss me off so bad that I am willing to put up with what ever it takes to get to THEM. I am OLD and FAT but I still hit what I aim at. And like the Elton John song some day it may well be “a good day to die”.
      But today is NOT THAT DAY, and I hope it never is. Because really, I am to LAZY for this stuff.

  23. Or worse. I can imagine our government actually physically divided, with the House attempting to outright arrest the president solely on their say so.

    Hell, I’m already running odds on parallel inaugurals resulting in an Avignon President if Trump wins.

  24. Germany is noticeably wealthy at this point, much more prosperous than 20 years ago.

    The personal data protection in Europe is more powerful, so there are things you can’t say about people in Europe that you could here. People who can afford lawyers can make publications change their reporting. I predict Prince Harry will win his lawsuit. (And I do feel that printing a private letter is reprehensible.)

    I think the other side is crazy, because they’re scared. When they say, “democracy,” I hear “socialism/communism.” When they say, “populism,” I hear “democracy.” And Elizabeth Warren is a fascist. State control of industry = fascism. The concept of corporate charters is fascism.

    Then again, I think birth control broke the world. We’re still working through the implications. I think it is great that women can choose whether to have children or not, but it is incredibly destabilizing. I also find it very sad to think of the people who chose not to have children when they could have, who discover as they age that loneliness is a real thing.

    In Foreign Policy in 2009, Phillip Longman wrote an article, “The Return of Patriarchy.” I keep returning to that article, which I urge people to read. It’s an interesting article to read now, 10 years later. In a nutshell (which is not as accurate as it could be), Longman predicts huge social changes in developed countries with low birthrates. An ever larger share of the population will come from people with larger families, who (in theory) are more likely to swim against the tide.

    It is interesting that “extinction rebellion” has so many old people, isn’t it? At least, looking at the pictures I can find online. How many of these people had few, or no, children, due to a fear of the future? And now, are angry as they face their personal extinction? And thus urge others to follow their example, as they have opted out of the Darwinian competition. The more liberal one is, the more likely one is to refrain from having children, and the less likely one is to have family members in the next generation. (It works for OCD/attention issues, too. The planners are less likely to have families than the happy-go-lucky types.)

    I think they thought they’d win due to “demographics,” only to find that–surprise!–Americans assimilate. A child with one Hispanic grandparent is only Hispanic on college applications. He or she doesn’t stay in a neat little interest group box. “Anime fan” could be a better description of his political interests, which is to say, none.

    And then the lefty religion of ecowarriors, which calls for a lack of childbearing. Traditionally, religions which eschewed children tend to die out, like the Shakers. Decreasing generations lead to fewer voters.

    1. “Then again, I think birth control broke the world. We’re still working through the implications. I think it is great that women can choose whether to have children or not, but it is incredibly destabilizing. I also find it very sad to think of the people who chose not to have children when they could have, who discover as they age that loneliness is a real thing.”
      Do I look like I’m arguing?
      Another thing: it influences women’s tastes in men, which we didn’t know.
      Don’t get me started.

    2. ” The concept of corporate charters is fascism. ” <– Not only no, but where did you get that idea? It's solely the legal mechanism by which people receive permission, as a legacy of the medieval manner it happened to occur, to do business without the jointness and severability of debt. What the granting of them is predicated on could be fascism.

  25. Sarah, this is a bit spooky. I woke up from a nightmare this morning, that essentially was an extended metaphor for precisely this phenomenon. Woke up, checked your site, and found that we’d had the same sleepless night, from the sound of things.

    1. I’ve been having that dream for a decade or more, now. Only lately has it had some possibility of something less than, well, dark days until we’re all of us against the wall.

          1. I do, but this was like all the hair on my head that migrated to my back and turned wiry migrated to my ears and turned in the lush locks of a Brooke Shields (although I still had two eyebrows).

        2. That’s on par with when I dreamed my big toe fell off. Completely healed on both sides, and I didn’t know what to do. I was about 10, but I still remember it.

    2. Yeah, only mine was the night before.
      And you know, except when my knowledge fails me, our minds often run in parallel it seems. Comes from being foster-siblings, at a guess.

  26. Let’s not have any illusions about the great moral/cultural/whatever level of Europe. Europe east of France is composed of some large number of ethnic-religious-linguistic groups that don’t like each other much. They have not to this day demonstrated that they are capable of living in peace without some central power keeping them all in line. The current EU crowd in Brussels is simply not up to the job–frankly, they’re making the Hapsburgs look good. And things have really gotten to a sad state if you miss the Hapsburgs.

      1. Try Judson’s _The Habsburgs_ and _Heart of Europe_ about the Holy Roman Empire to get a taste of some different takes on the Habsburgs. Short version: they had their flaws, but they were a lot better for more people than later historians have given them credit for. (Something about history being written by Berlin instead of Vienna having a lot to do with it.)

  27. Speaking of, have you noticed folks trying to use “fallacy” to mean “I don’t agree”?

    Usually tossed out when someone REALLY has no freaking clue, or is just very upset.
    (Incidentally: dear Middle East, stop making me explain that the Saudis are actually better than most of their neighbors, and are enjoying a lot of benefits because of such crazy ideas as “maybe we don’t actually have to kill the Jews….” Seriously, it’s uncomfortable on par with pointing out that the Inca were only OK relative to their neighbors, they still did child sacrifices.)

    1. Then there’s the fallacy fallacy. Just because an argument’s fallacious doesn’t necessarily mean that its conclusion is wrong. That may be the way to bet, but the long-shot can come in.

      1. Oh, Iknow that one– and I’ve called folks on the fallacy fallacy fallacy, which is (of course) someone arguing that just because someone pointed out that an argument does not support the conclusion, then they must be doing the fallacy fallacy, and thus the argument is sound.

        It’s one of those things that works a LOT better in person, a slight variant on the “you messed up one thing, so everything is wrong!” that many strong personalities can pull off.

  28. Over the weekend, during the period where my thinking was no together enough to be very active here, noticed an interesting thing.

    I hadn’t heard the claims that the impeachment process would result in executions. So, I’d been a little effective at filtering out political news I don’t need to be seeing.

    It comes to mind that a lot of the signals currently being sent and amplified are divorced or fully divorced from the usual sort of traditional political signalling that makes sense in our culture. This alone would be sufficient to put stress on the system.

    Yes, you all have sound reasons to be paying close attention to this stuff. But it also makes you closer to the excitation being applied to the system. Nobody knows what energizing people in this way does exactly.

    I think I need to build under, around, etc, and remember what I don’t know so that I can be calm enough to do so efficiently.

  32. “We’re the one sane guy, holding the gun, and watching the rest of the room burst out into in[s]anity.”

    And it’s *not* the most comfortable thing… imagine being “the only grownup in the room” multiple times, for example, when the fate of your parents’ $2M+ material lives’ work is being decided, then being paid exactly nothing for your four and a half years’ work on that. (Surreal and variously-hazardous also. If you ever get to the point that watching that first forty minutes of “Saving Private Ryan” is become ah, soothing and restful… then you’ll know too.)

    But it *does* have its (often inestimable) rewards. Or as some Brit guy said once:

    IF you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
    Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
    …

    Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!**

    (Like so very much of JRK’s stuff, it might sound trivial and trite, while being… neither. One might even dare to imagine it the Manual for the Successful Republican President, as well.)

    “Rough music” and the strong and typically rightful passions behind it is not a strategy. Just as a mob of wanna-be heroes or even berserkers running at the enemy howling is not, really, an army.

    However it *is* often the motivation and clear necessity for a good strategy to *accompany* the passion instead. (The clock stands at thirteen months, and counting… so, let us be deliberate yet bold?)

    **ref. www dot kiplingsociety dot co dot uk slash poems_if.htm

    1. “you’ll be a Man, my son!**”
      How DARE you, you agent of Patriarchy. You Misogynist, you Kipling reading MAN!!!
      Next you will be telling us that White Man’s Burden isn’t racist. How can you be so, so UNWOKE! My GAIA – KIPLING!!!! How could you????
      ——————————————————————————————–
      If I had my way every school day would start with 2 things, the pledge and “The Children’s Song” If you do not know it http://www dot kiplingsociety dot co dot uk/poems_childrensong dot htm

  34. Unfortunately the EU has decided that a single EU country can order the suppression of speech globally if that country does not like the speech, under the rubric of preventing “hate speech”(which of course is speech that the is critical of leftists and/or leftist ideology or of groups/people favored by leftists. See Breitbart pieceblow:.

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/10/07/global-censorship-eu-court-eu-govts-remove-content-worldwide/

    This will be used as a tool by leftists, not only in Europe, but here in the USA to silence critics. I have no dobut Democrats will find friends (think the various Soros groups) to file suits in EU countries for the purpose of getting orders banning speech by Americans, including Republican candidates for office in 2020.

    1. We already saw something similar with “Libel Tourism”. People who didn’t like the factual information provided in an English-language book would buy a copy of that book over in the British Isles (mail-ordering it from the States, if necessary). Then they would sue for libel in the British courts, which don’t have the “Truth is an absolute defense against libel and slander claims” that US courts have.

      In response, the US passed a law that essentially told the British to go pound sand. And also, iirc the law invoked penalties if the British tried to enforce any such judgement against any such book that was written by an American citizen, and published primarily in the US.

    2. They’re free to filter packets that cross their national borders.

      Taking down servers in other countries… the European Commission is free to send agents overseas to try to do that. I can just see a rural Arkansas sheriff looking at a stack of papers and saying, “well, ain’t that sumpthin’…”

      1. I believe that in some places, they might be considered “revenooers” and treated accordingly.

      2. That assumes that the social media and hosting sites that the EU demands take down stuff actually fight it, rather than use it as a pretext to implement the broad censorship of non-leftists that they are already pushing forward with. Facebook, et. al., won’t fight this, they will actively join the EU in the censorship efforts.

  35. Popping out but somewhat related to my comment about the nature of the RNC….

    A couple months ago I tried to say something about the various Great Conservative Institutions and damaged what I was saying by including too much anger in it. This should be a bit better:

    The insane left are rabid dogs. Dangerous, sure. Will destroy everything they can find, absolutely. But thankfully they seem to be self destructing so fast that they don’t matter so much as the response to them. Our…. “Allies”…. are something different.

    If you want to thoroughly infuriate me promise to protect something (see: most of the republicans, or the NRA), or to be an exemplar of something (see: pastors, homeschooling thought leaders). Then don’t merely make a mistake, or fail. After all no one is perfect and conditions may preclude your success. No; actively work against what you promised to do.

    If you are the NRA; proclaim your defence of the 2nd Amendment while back door supporting every piece of gun control you see, and sabotaging anyone who is trying to get gun control repealed.

    If you are a well known homeschooler; promise perfect children, while telling parents to do things that have decent odds of killing some of their children through despair. Or leaving and becoming foot-soldiers for the SJWs.

    If you are a pastor; teach doctrines that any two year old can figure out is heresy. Or simply don’t teach anything at all: tell everyone how they need to feel good about themselves about everything.

    If you are a republican politician; promise that you will Take The Fight to the Left! Which will consist of a few completely ineffectual moments of grandstanding, followed by helping them pass whatever rape-in-legal-form they want this time.

    For people like that, the typical brutal execution methods simply won’t do. Weld them into radiation armor and use them as biological waldos to scrub out the insides of reactor chambers. The shielding is to keep them alive long enough to avoid missing out on the joys of vomiting up their own organs.

    Then put their irradiated corpses in a monument on the Moon large enough to be seen from Earth, so that the next 10,000 generations can see that some crimes are unacceptable.

    1. And building on that, with regard to the current situation. When the DNC has burnt itself out and had salt dumped on it, I want to see the RNC burn. They have betrayed us too many times; the people the tea party elected were just some of the most recent. And without the DNC hovering over our heads we will have the luxury of doing this house cleaning.

      I want to see the NRA burn. The extent of their treachery is in direct proportion to the extent of how deep you dig beyond their propaganda.

      And… behold! I’m getting my wish. As the left can’t help themselves, so the Never Trumpers can’t help themselves but attack (funny how they never attacked the left this much), and are failing as a result. The NRA is in shambles.

      1. You might want to consider that what I see there is:

        “for the love of all that’s holy, don’t ally with Ian Buruene. If you aren’t him, you are a traitor. Better to be an enemy than an ally who will be betrayed.”

        1. Then you weren’t paying attention: I specifically said mistakes or failure were not targets, but active treachery.

          It is the difference between a police officer who royally screws up and kills an innocent during a shootout, and Sheriff Israel.

          What the officer did is bad, really really bad. but so long as he doesn’t try to dodge his guilt I have no animus against him…. it was a mistake. What Sheriff Israel did is unpardonable, and in a just world his bones would still be hanging in front of his office.

          If you wish to be in a position of authority, political, military, or moral, then the bar is much higher for you.

          1. Then you weren’t paying attention: I specifically said mistakes or failure were not targets, but active treachery.

            Hey, dumbfuck, maybe that kind of assumption of malice is exactly why I come to the conclusion I did.

            1. Well let’s see, who did I ascribe guilt to?

              First we have the pastors and homeschool leaders (really the pastors were more of a tack on). I guess as long as someone didn’t mean to teach thousands of people ideological cyanide, even though it was quite obvious that that is what it was, everything is a-ok and they are good people.

              Marx sure was a swell guy dontcha think?

              And specifically for the pastors: if you remember the New Testament makes it excruciatingly clear that the teachers have more condemnation piled on their heads.

              Or the republicans who spent their entire campaign telling the Tea Party how they were going to storm D.C. and repeal Obamacare. And held vote after vote when there was no way to win, but the moment Trump gets in and the president would sign the bill the votes stop. Yes. We beat the odds there and got some honest politicians!

              And then the NRA. Yes, that stalwart defender of the 2nd! Except for when they call for gun control. Or when some state level organization is getting traction on some pro-gun legislation, and after the NRA is known to have made a call, mysteriously the bill dies where it is. Wayne LaPierre is a saint among men indeed.

              Alas! For I have wrongly accused completely random and innocent people, known by all to be innocent!

              1. *MAKES REALLY OBVIOUS, QUOTED ACCUSATION*

                *GOES ON TO EXPLAIN ACCUSATION IN A TOTALLY DIFFERENT DIRECTION WITH WILDLY DIFFERENT TARGETING*

                Yeah, no, try again in the original context, I am not some running off after rabbits.

          2. Who bells the cat?

            By whose perspective are we to judge treachery? Yours? Mine?

            Who judges the authority? Do I make myself subject to this rule merely by saying when I think you are full of it? Or claiming to be one of the more prominent voices in America calling for the extermination of all Canadian? Or do I have to explicitly lay claim to one of the enumerated titles?

            Because, as Foxfier says in a different way, I’m seeing dealing with you as nothing but risks. What do you have to offer in exchange for being subject to this process?

            I, personally, am increasingly of the opinion that no human has anything to offer of value for promising political alliance, or for delivering it unswervingly. So my skepticism of what you have to offer me is general, not directed at you.

            I may simply be depressed.

              1. Ah. So this is to you what “Why can’t we just murder all the pot smokers” is to me.

                1. The point, once rhetorical flourishes are removed, is that is was rather clear who the target was. They didn’t pick a random bum out of the ditch and accuse him of taxing the tea too much.

                  What I’m saying is that (to take a very clear cut example) is that Wayne as head of the NRA has made numerous claims that he is pro-2A. He is provably anti-2A. He is elevated as a Protector Of The People, who he then betrays. His firing and investigation for fraud is something that should have happened long ago.

                  This is not a random bum in the ditch.

            2. YOU ARE one of the most prominent voices in America calling for the extermination of all Canadians.
              I won’t say you are the only. I don’t know what that guy who pees on himself on the corner is saying. But you’re the more prominent.

              1. Yeah, but does that make me some sort of leadership figure? Am I subject to penalty if someone doesn’t like my failure to call for the lynching of some specific harmless Canadian?

                Or am I a crank that doesn’t move anyone on my core issues? If I am not responsible to anyone for delivering a political goal, I can not be held responsible for ‘betraying’ them.

                1. I really have no clue what you are talking about. To my knowledge you haven’t promised to defend anyone and then sold them down the river.

                  Unless you have been telling Canadians that you will defend them from an American invasion….

                    3. As long as he restricts himself to Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto, and Victoria, I am strangely ok with this.

                  2. Testing your proposal against my best estimate of applying it in the real world. There’s an existing standard for Treason, with a definition, criteria, etc.

                    With systems implemented on top of human behavior, it is difficult to validate behavior with test cases. Throwing a lot of tests at proposals does sometimes indicate when an idea is severely flawed.

                    For this proposal, the definition of the offense and the process for testing are unclear. Do divorces fall in the scope? Mundane contract violations? When and how is the question decided?

                    Precisely because I thought I might not be the intended target, I used my own case to test my comfort level.

                    Now, I may simply be very stupid today, and have overlooked all sorts of clarifying details. That is not at all impossible for me today. I’m pretty sure I remember skimming.

                    These sorts of problems are a huge mess of trade-offs. I have some inclination to trust in precedent, would want to see a good argument for change, especially with some of the history, and personally am not convinced by what I have noticed of your case.

            3. > By whose perspective are we to judge treachery? Yours? Mine?
              —
              Theirs. When they promise fealty to a cause and work against it instead, that’s treachery.

  36. A lot of never-Trumpers seem motivated largely by fear that populism..in other countries as well as the US…will result in leaders who are the ‘man on horseback’ types, appealing to the uneducated masses.

    Personally, I’m more concerned about power-seeking coalitions appealing to the faux-educated. America today has a lot fewer steelworkers and a lot more teachers, a lot fewer machinists and a lot more lawyers and professors, a lot fewer farmers and a lot more government bureaucrats than it did in, say, the 1930s. These latter types are the base of the Democratic Party and also I suspect for whatever support exists for the EU in Europe.

    1. I’m not convinced that Never-Trumper is a meaningful category when talking about groups that think this way or will act that way.

      Trump is out of office in five years, it is not clear that there will be a cohort of politicians effective at imitating his success, and realignment is not a certainty. So, five years is not a long time in career terms, and there are definitely businessmen taking the safer bet of the old style versus the uncertainty of chasing a yet to be founded new style. Yes, they piss off people now, but plenty of Dubya supporters pissed off on his behalf in 2000-2008 are ticked at him now.

      There are also folks who fail to realize that the Democrats are potentially serious, lost it “but it will never happen /here/”.

      There are other models, that explain some holdouts but not others.

      Frankly, those ‘conservatives’ inclined to meekly fall into line just because Trump is the current chief would have to some extent fallen into line with praising Obama’s alleged training and ability way back when overhyping that was what everyone was doing. “The hold outs who won’t shut up” might be the best category. Is the problem with the hold outs that they may hurt base turnout in 2020?

  37. Something I’ve said on conservative libertarian/libertine conservative blogs for a while now:

    The left thinks they’ll be able to demand Marquis de Queensbury rules when the fight finally goes down.

    We won’t even be following Marquis de Sade rules, folks.

    If it blows, it will be horrific.

    I sincerely hope we can shut them down without the full eruption.

      1. I believe it is a liqueur produced by an order of Alsatian monks. Surely you’ve heard of the followers of Saint Libert, the Libertine Monks?

      1. Some scars are essential. I am sure you’d not trade your caesarean scar for your son’s life. Scars are not the worst price to pay.

    3. The left thinks they’ll be able to demand Marquis de Queensbury rules when the fight finally goes down.

      It’s more than that. They expect to use “knife fight in an alley” rules while expecting us to follow Marquis de Queensbury. And there are some on “our” side who do apparently want to insist on that…but there are plenty who are ready to go “okay, we’ll play by your rules.”

      1. That is because ever more on “our” side understand game theory and the principle of reciprocity.

        For example, most people on the Right understand that the Geneva Convention limits how signatories” war against other signatories and grants no protections to those not signed on nor those signed on but not adhering to the rules. Few on the Left seem to express similar understanding, although the possibility they are merely seeking to tie our side’s hands is not to be discarded.

        1. That’s due to one of the defining characteristics of Leftism: rules bind other people, but not them.

          Just look at the difference between when a Republican politician is charged with a crime, vs. a Democrat. The Republican is likely to bluster and try to threaten his way out of it. The Democrat is usually outraged that anyone is picking on them, because it’s not wrong if everyone else is doing it too…

  38. Seems to me I hear an echo …

    Donald Trump’s lesson for Mitt Romney
    Genteel Republicans like Mitt Romney complain about Donald Trump’s unpresidential behavior, but how else does he combat the dirty left?

    Only a barbarian could defy the liberal establishment as he has done.

    Imagine if Romney were president, trying to be dignified and patrician. They’d eat him alive. Unless, of course, he did nothing to block their agenda, in which case he’d be left alone like all the other cowardly roll-over Republicans.

    The American people chose a barbarian for president because they knew only a barbarian could drain the Washington swamp.

    And, judging by the president’s unchanged approval ratings since House Democrats launched their impeachment inquiry, not to mention his record donation take on the back of it, Trump fans are with him for the long haul, no matter how boorishly he behaves.

    They see him implementing his agenda against all odds. If the swamp gets in his way, Trump bulldozes over it. Supreme Court, tick. Taxes cut, tick. Regulations slashed, tick. Jobs up, tick. Military rebuilt, tick. ISIS stopped, tick. Globalism challenged, tick. Paris climate treaty scrapped, tick. Borders strengthened, tick. Wall built, half-tick.

    All while the Washington establishment tries to sabotage his presidency and the liberal media reviles him.

    He is Teflon Don, energized by a battle that would have broken a genteel Republican long ago.

    That’s why the Dems are afraid and it’s why they’re projecting like crazy. This is the disease of the left.

    [SNIP]

    The psychiatric bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, says projection shifts your “own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, feelings onto someone else.”

    It may help you deal with “unconscious feelings of shame and inadequacy,” according to a 2017 paper on “maladaptive personalities” in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

    So, when you hear liberals constantly accuse their ideological enemies, without evidence, of such thought crimes as racism, sexism, xenophobia and bigotry, chances are they’re projecting.

    In the case of Democrats, they constantly accuse Trump of sins they have themselves committed.

    [SNIP]

    [T]ake House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, caught fibbing to “Morning Joe” two weeks ago over Trump’s call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “We have not spoken directly with the whistleblower.”

    Turns out Schiff knew about the whistleblower’s concerns days before the complaint was filed about Trump’s not-so-perfect call. One of his staffers even advised the whistleblower, according to the New York Times.

    Yet Schiff is the guy who spent the past two years accusing Trump of “deception” and “collusion.”

    “When accusing others of lying, best not to misrepresent facts yourself,” he tweeted last year.

    Classic projection.

    [SNIP]

    Then there is #MeToo. It’s hard to ignore how many high-profile perverts are liberals who bought themselves protection by mouthing liberal platitudes and funding Democratic causes.

    Hollywood is the most liberal enclave in America, yet the Sony Pictures hack attack of 2014 exposed the racism and sexism under the politically correct facade. Here were studio executives proudly contributing to President Barack Obama’s campaigns while making racist jokes about him with colleagues.

    Liberals are obsessed with identity politics yet stoke racial tensions to gain power. They are obsessed with diversity yet impose a stifling intellectual conformity on our cultural institutions.

    In their frenzied projection of their own flaws onto the president, their Freudian slips are showing.

  39. ” because the poor bastards have not experienced anything else their entire adult lives ” <– For the most part, neither have their parents or grandparents.

  40. ” It’s like the USSR being brought up by copiers and typewriters. ” < ~brought down~ ?

  41. Pingback: Sarah Hoyt on the “rough music” « Quotulatiousness

  42. The thing that gets me about the left and their current obsession with impeachment is that they appear to have no real idea of what would happen to this country (and themselves) if they actually succeed. They’re like a dog that chases cars – some of those actually DO succeed in catching it, but the results are almost always not pretty.

    1. While I agree with you on impeachment, the statement that “they appear to have no real idea of what would happen” covers a vast swath of ground, ranging from “Medicare for All” to “Imagine there’re No Borders, It’s Easy If You Try” to “Let’s Impose Rent Control Statewide In CA” to … well … pretty much any other policy proposal.

      I just don’t think this blog is big enough to encompass all the things about which they have no idea.

      N.B. – the rent-seeking gonifs exploiting this ignorance are another matter but equally excessive to discussion here.

      1. I have an idea. Since some California jurisdictions have problems with BOTH “the homeless” AND housing shortages, why not open up all public buildings as public accomodations?

        These people are voting residents, why not let them occupy the Water Department of City Hall when the bureaucrats aren’t using it? They’re only in official use 40 hours a week; the people are paying for them for the whole 168. Might as well get some use out of them.

        Some whiner politicians may object to stepping around suspicious puddles and odoriferous piles when they arrive at work, but hey, the ordinary citizens going to their ordinary jobs put up with the same, every morning…

  43. Even in milktoast Canada you can see the signs.
    Over 800 people walked past Antifa protesters in order to exercise their free speech rights and attend a People’s Party of Canada event. and journalists have managed to overcome attempts at censorship:

    https://www.thepostmillennial.com/breaking-judge-rules-against-trudeau-appointed-commission-allows-journalists-access-to-debates/

    https://www.hamiltonnews.com/news-story/9621255-hamilton-police-arrest-four-individuals-after-protest-against-ppc-leader-maxime-bernier-s-mohawk-college-event-turns-violent/

  44. If all you’re doing is paying attention to politics on the Internet, you’re enjoying it as the latest of spectator sports crazes. The world is not falling apart. You’re involved in fear pornography.

    This has not been a republic since the first term of Jackson as president. It became a democracy when they changed the rules to use the popular vote to drive the Electoral College. That’s not the way this is supposed to work as originally conceived. Moreover, there was never a plebiscite for the Declaration of Independence. Never a plebiscite for the Articles of Confederation and never a plebiscite for The Constitution. Therefore, IT IS NOT LAW! None of it. It’s maritime treaty governed by international law. Nothing is sovereign about it.

    Things became untenable when they switched out the sovereign specie coinage of silver and replaced it with Federal Reserve Note currency after 1964. Then came the assemblage of the statutes at large into the United States Code in 1965. Them that prints the money make the rules for the use of that currency. Not you. Congress is a bank administration of loaned currency at interest. You’re foolish to think otherwise.

    You’re misinformed. You’re a hopeless partisan. If you and your readers had their wits about them, you’d never ever vote for a franchised politician ever again. EVER! However, you’re stuck in a mosh pit and you can’t get out.

    Culturally, we are experiencing nihilism at a level never before witnessed. Most of the population is not paying attention and they never will. This nihilism will continue, Ideological subversion has triumphed immeasurably.

    You’re seeing the world through the lens of the Internet. That’s why you think it’s falling apart.

    It has already happened. We are divided and thus conquered so long as an aimless matriarchy continues to exist as the only opposition to a well entrenched, unscrupulous, highly organised and powerful patriarchy of legacy trusts with more raw power in one banking trust than the rest of the world combined.

    Nothing is going to happen that hasn’t already taken place.

    Tilting at windmills doesn’t mean you’re in a battle.

    You’ve brought children into the world with no purpose other than to entertain your nurturing interests. You have no power. You have no overwhelming stack of cash and your children do not have the strategic vision necessary to topple the unscrupulous financial and vested interests!

    So what is it that you all think you’re doing besides complaining about being caught in the quicksand you and the generations before yourselves helped to create?

    All that’s left is complaining. Well, that dog can’t hunt. You’re foolish to think it can. No president will save you. You’re foolish to think one will emerge that can from the political franchise system.

    George Washington told everyone when he left office don’t become a faction-fractured mob, you’ll lose everything we fought for.

    No one ever listened to the greatest president this country ever had. All of you and the generations after the revolution, is what’s left of a noble effort that failed to install an enlightened electorate.

    1. Can somebody pass me the Lite Italian? With that much word salad, I’m going to need some dressing.

      If all you’re doing is paying attention to politics on the Internet,

      We’re not. So you start from a false premise.

      You’re involved in fear pornography.

      I see that your reading comprehension needs work, particularly since the one recurrent theme from Sarah’s posts on politics is “be not afraid.”

      It became a democracy when they changed the rules to use the popular vote to drive the Electoral College.

      That’s cute. The binary fallacy–that something is either all one thing or all something else. Why that point? Why not when they decided on proportional representation, with popularly elected representatives, in the House of Representatives? Why not when that House was given control of the purse-strings and a short rein on the military because (actual argument used in The Federalist Papers) it was closest to the people?

      Never a plebiscite for the Articles of Confederation and never a plebiscite for The Constitution. Therefore, IT IS NOT LAW!

      Oh. You’re one of those. We can stop here. No point in arguing with crazy.

      Sarah, I take back what I said about chew toys. This one’s covered in …

        1. Yeah, but he referenced the Matriarchy! W00T!

          Now they’re going to hunt him down and kill him. Because the first rule of the Matriarchy is you don’t talk about the Matriarchy…

            1. zzzz….zzzz… oh.. what? sorry i fell asleep as soon as the pers0on started talkign about the silver/gold standard.

      3. Agreed; it is such a slough of gibberish that I despair of the tedium of fisking.

        To take one of the simplest elements:

        It became a democracy when they changed the rules to use the popular vote to drive the Electoral College. … Never a plebiscite for the Articles of Confederation and never a plebiscite for The Constitution. Therefore, IT IS NOT LAW!

        It is contradictory to denounce the Republic for becoming a democracy while simultaneously denouncing the founding documents — Declaration, Articles and Constitution — for having NOT been enacted democratically (you do realize that is what a plebiscite means, aren’t you? “A direct vote in which the entire electorate is invited to accept or refuse a proposal.” The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.)

        You cannot have your cake while also eating it, and a thing cannot both be true and untrue in the same sense at the same time — that would violate the Law of noncontradiction.

        Explaining the principles of representative government and the polities of the uniting States would entail concepts I don’t see evidence of your having mastered.

        1. Why on earth would the people of the time have wanted a plebiscite? They were well familiar with representative government, and more comfortable with it than with direct democracy.

          1. I checked — only Rhode Island attempted ratification by popular vote, and rejected* the Constitution 237 for, 2708 against.

            Rhode Island, as the state to which all other states sent their most unbearable [sphincters] was widely acknowledged to be the pettiest state.

            *Ratification Dates and Votes
            This page lists the votes of each state’s conventions.

            September 17, 1787: The Constitutional Convention adjourns.

            September 28, 1787: The Congress agrees to send the Constitution to the states for debate and ratification.

            December 7, 1787: Delaware ratifies. Vote: 30 for, 0 against.

            December 12, 1787: Pennsylvania ratifies. Vote: 46 for, 23 against.

            December 18, 1787: New Jersey ratifies. Vote: 38 for, 0 against.

            January 2, 1788: Georgia ratifies. Vote: 26 for, 0 against.

            January 9, 1788: Connecticut ratifies. Vote: 128 for, 40 against.

            February 6, 1788: Massachusetts ratifies. Vote: 187 for, 168 against.

            March 24, 1788: Rhode Island popular referendum rejects. Vote: 237 for, 2708 against.

            April 28, 1788: Maryland ratifies. Vote: 63 for, 11 against.

            May 23, 1788: South Carolina ratifies. Vote: 149 for, 73 against.

            June 21, 1788: New Hampshire ratifies. Vote: 57 for, 47 against. Minimum requirement for ratification met.

            June 25, 1788: Virginia ratifies. Vote: 89 for, 79 against.

            July 26, 1788: New York ratifies. Vote: 30 for, 27 against.

            August 2, 1788: North Carolina convention adjourns without ratifying by a vote of 185 in favor of adjournment, 84 opposed.

            November 21, 1789: North Carolina ratifies. Vote: 194 for, 77 against.

            May 29, 1790: Rhode Island ratifies. Vote: 34 for, 32 against.

            Visit linked page for links to individual state ratification debates, including desired alterations. Rhode island, for example, started off wanting an amendment declaring “The United States shall guaranty to each state its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Constitution expressly delegated to the United States.” and “That the words ‘without the consent of Congress,’ in the seventh clause in the ninth section of the first article of the Constitution, be expunged.”

            1. Interesting coincidence. Right after reading this post, I headed home. I turned on the audiobook of Johnson’s History of the American People, continuing from where I’d left off last time, and it was right around the founding of Rhode Island colony.
              A preacher by the name of Roger Winthrop was in the process of being exiled from Massachusetts colony for his religious views–he believed that God covenanted not with nations or even congregations but with each individual. Thus each individual was free to worship as he might see fit and according to his own understanding of what God wants from him. This led him to the conclusion that there had to be an absolute separation between church and state. In religion every man had the right of his individual conscience, guided by the inner light of his faith. In secular matters, he must submit to the will of the majority, determined through institutions shorn of any religious content.

              This proved too much for the Puritans in Massachusetts. They were going to send him back to England for Trial but a sometime Governor of Massachusetts (although this was during a time when he was on the outs) of quite different views, nevertheless warned him to flee.

              He fled, in the midst of a New England winter, made a deal with one of the local tribes for land where he set up the settlement of Providence. He threw open the door, as it were, to other dissidents to settle in that region as well, leading to several other small towns. They were eventually granted a charter by William III and Mary II. So, being contrary was definitely in their makeup (at least back then).

      4. You know what? I’m going to go a bit farther on the “plebiscite” issue.

        Are you aware that the various colonies had their own colonial governments, elected colonial governments, prior to the American War of Independence? Are you aware that these established and recognized (although oft overruled by appointed governors–one of the grievances the colonies had with the mother country) governments sent representatives to the First and Second Continental Congress–and those representatives, representing their respective colonial legislatures, in turn representing the colonial people–on the authority delegated to them through that chain of representation–drafted the Declaration of Independence. Are you aware that the Declaration of Independence itself carried no legal weight. It was simply a statement of why the colonies had taken the actions they had. I will note that before this point, a group of representatives, John Adams among them, had met with a British representative about possible peaceful resolution. The British representative had pardons for lots of people for the rebellion but two names (among others) were not on the list of who could be pardoned: John Adams and his cousin Sam. They were to hang.

        So, moving forward from the Declaration. The same Continental Congress, using the inherited authority from the colonial legislatures, drafted the Articles of Confederation. When those proved to be unworkable in practice, the Continental Congress, again on the inherited authority, organized what we would come to know as the Constitutional Convention with representatives from most of the States (Rhode Island didn’t send anybody) to draft amendments. The “amendment” they proposed was to throw the whole thing out and start over. But that, by itself, didn’t give the Constitution legal authority. No, that came when the Constitution went back to the States and was ratified by, once again, the popularly elected State legislatures. (And Rhode Island, who didn’t send anyone to the convention, was the last to ratify it–but ratify it they did).

        At every step the authority was drawn from existing legal authority derived by representation of the people.

        This “maritime treaty” crap is complete and utter bullshit made up by people who eat paste and lick windows. And I’m pretty sure the paste has to be laced with heavy metals given the amount of neurological damage involved.

        1. He’s not just the founder of “Paint Chip Gourmet”; he’s their best customer…..

          1. I don’t think paint chips explain the word salad. I think his parents MUST have been members of the “Bowl with Babies League.” Possibly champions. Either that or believers in therapeutic re-phrenology.

    2. Jan, dahlink, you accuse others of narcissism while you post extensive incoherent rants contradicted by available evidence? Your ignorance is glaring.

      BTW – George Washington made plenty of mistakes; while wise he hardly speaks with the authority of gospel. Besides, the speech you reference was written by Hamilton.

  45. If you are not going to publish a comment that flies in the face of your uninformed narcissism, than you admit by omission, you lack the knowledge of something you know you can’t debate, and that your narcissism is more important than the truth. Sad.

    1. Publish the comment made by me before this retort or remain to being committed to allowing your blog-public to staying ignorant.

      2. “remain to being committed to allowing your blog-public to staying”

        So, English is not your first language?

        Mighty big talk for a bot. What were you written in, COBOL? Fortran?

    2. What? Who are you strange person? Why are you diagnosing strangers on the internet? What’s wrong with your strange head that this is your first comment here?

    3. I am guessing you did the standard issue gazillion-link-post, in ignorance of the common knowledge that spam catching software usually automatically prevents those from being published.

      Also apparently not knowing that Sarah as a life and work outside of monitoring comments.

      1. I probably could find his/her/its masterpiece in spam filter, but this aggressive behavior doesn’t encourage me to stop entering manuscript changes and go grub in spam.
        It seems fairly deranged. No “what happened to comment” but straight to demands.
        Part of me wants to go find its comment for the lulz, but I really need to get to page 40 before we leave.

          1. Okay, I’m at the remote office. When I get back home if creature hasn’t figured out how to repost, I’ll find and free its comment.
            But don’t blame me if it’s derpertonic.

    4. Objection: asserts facts not in evidence, reaches conclusion based on those facts, and claims bad faith for Word Press function.

      Spews incoherent nonsense, too, but we’re accustomed to that happening.

  46. Oh, dear. Apparently WordPress now spams for “wall of text” and “boring as f”
    I’ve done the cat boxes and am making dinner.
    You guys have fun. On skim I don’t even know if it is making A point. I know it is insulting and screamy.

    1. I just find it thoroughly bizarre that it was so desperate to have that comment approved, so it could “inform” us.
      (Rolls eyes.)
      Russians are usually marginally more competent…

      1. Why not?

        The aardvark has brought out bonbons for the Huns to sustain themselves after the effort of reading that.

      1. Curse you, Wayne Blackburn! I should have scrolled down some more…

        HAR-rumph! With a capital HAR!

    4. Smells like “sovereign citizen” rhetoric to me… “string together a bunch of triggers rather than trying to convey information.”

Comments are closed.