Turning Us Inside Out

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

animals-2107902_1280

I think it was fifteen years ago now that Classical Values coined the term “Cold Civil war.”

At the time I read it, it immediately clicked in my brain as “oh. Precisely. This is what it is.”

I could see immediately the same patterns as we saw it in Europe in the seventies and eighties, as the Soviets — through puppets — had taken over the schools, publishing, and all instruments of culture, and all those of us who opposed communism had as options was keeping our heads down, shutting up, and seething internally.  Oh, there was also and increasingly the option of malicious compliance.  Which we engaged in with much vigor and enthusiasm.

The victories of the Soviet Union were everywhere.  Partly because everything that happened was treated as a victory.  And the bad things that the Soviets did were never reported in the press.  You might know the Soviets — via their Cuban mercenaries — were beating Africa like a rented mule, raping it like the wife of the defeated and despoiling it like a jewelry store in a riot zone, but you couldn’t say it in public. For one it would be as uncouth as farting in church. For another, because farting in church would probably be forgiven, but telling the truth about the Soviets in social, professional or academic circles, would never ever ever be forgiven. And anyone who heard you mention the unmentionable would do their best to destroy you. Because the alternate option would be for THEM to step away from the herd and become a target.

In addition, the Soviet Union used violence unapologetically, and quickly, which the US, on whom we must pin our hopes for freedom, apologized and begged forgiveness for any even half-hearted attempt to oppose Soviet aggression. Even under Reagan — who at least tried to make public stands and not apologize — the US was never the bold strider that the Soviet Union was.  From the perspective of the nations in Europe, the Soviets were the strong horse. They were the way to bet. All the news of the world that we got to read said the result was foreordained.

This meant that a lot more of the cognoscenti, the people in the “best” classes and the “best” jobs claimed to be communist (or socialist) than the ones actually naturally attracted to this poisonous philosophy.  You see, it gave you a patina of virtue, made you unfirable, and at the very least made you cool.

And yet, through all this grinding misery, the sense kept leaking — and people said I was crazy there too. And yes, sometimes I doubted myself, too — that all was not good, all was not sound on the Soviet side.  The sense kept leaking in through that maybe, just maybe, there was no way for the US to lose. There was no way for freedom to lose.

Even I didn’t expect how fast, how peacefully the Soviet Union came apart. It came apart because it never worked, and it could only keep going by this massive pretense, this Potemkin appearance of power and prosperity. Because they needed to keep conquering and despoiling new lands to be able to keep going.

Once it became obvious that they would need to pay a price, they came apart.

Remember we did not have the internet.  Remember also the dismount on the cold war was, to put it mildly, NOT well handled. And part of the reason it wasn’t well handled was the problem we’re now dealing with: the left had also penetrated the, for lack of a better term, culture-manufacturing sectors of America.  So, the true bizarre horror that was the Soviet union was never heard of here. Oh, we heard bits and pieces. Most of the books about it STILL are either too dry or grim for me to read. And I’m an interested party.

And so, by fifteen years ago, I felt much like I was living in Europe in the seventies.  Which is why the term fit.

Since then … since then things have gone more so, but at the same something happened that didn’t happen in the international cold war: They lost control of the information stream.

The USSR never lost control of that, arguably even as it collapsed internally and officially stopped existing.  Or as we say around here, the snake is dead but the tail twitches.

But the tail has lot access to the levers of power, to overstretch the metaphor. It’s twitching madly trying to regain them, but they can’t.

Thing is though that one of the things they thoroughly infested is our democracy, from our bureaucracy to our voting mechanisms, to the point that they have power over us.

And they’re terrified. They’re so terrified that I’m wondering how deep the sewer is, and how dirty everyone involved in this is. I know in a couple of places they can’t reform. They’ll die first, because the alternative is they’re dead anyway, or worse, they have to part with everything they’ve been and everything they believe.

Which means they’re trying to regain control by all means possible and being increasingly aggressive and stupid about their aggression.  Which, in retrospect, is another parallel with the USSR before the fall.

As a parenthetical comment, the reason they’re collapsing is partly the reason the USSR collapsed. Turns out when what you’re choosing for is compliance and ideological conformity, you don’t choose people who can keep the lights on in civilization.  When you value fake science that confirms your prejudices over real science, you end up not being able to run a technological civilization.

But it is the snake flopping around and looking for levers and trying for a desperate win after it’s defanged….

There are several reasons I wish actual violence would wait until we had time to do more work on the “back panel” of the culture.  We have — despite everything — been turning the culture around. Which is part of the reason they are desperate.

The problem is that with the disarray in the culture, a lot of the people just have the gut feeling (and experience) that everything the left pushes is wrong. But they have nothing to replace it with, and therefore just turn whatever the left says on its head and says the opposite is true.

This is just as effective a method to destroy civilization, or at least a civilization of free individuals. The left is a tumor on western civilization, but it is of our DNA. If you reject our DNA, we merely die (instead of the chemotherapy approach of merely going through very bad times by rejecting the tumor and isolating it, but living in the end.)

I’ve prayed this moment not come for at least another four years (our rebuilding of the culture is much faster than it looks, honest. Partly because it’s been 20 years in the making.)

Maybe we’ll get lucky. It looked impossible the cold war would end without major blood, particularly as the USSR lost the plot and flailed around.

But I would lie if I said I’m not nervous about Virginia.  Tap dancing on a powder barrel is dangerous, particularly when the powder barrel has connections all over the world — everyone, everywhere is fed up with the left. If the signal goes up, I’m afraid it all blows at once — and when the people who might replace it don’t even understand the values of Western civilization.  Or at least no more than the left does.  (Not their fault. They got no real education, but still…)

What I’m hoping against hope is that the anti-left side doesn’t fire the first shot. (If they do, it’s entirely possible the left can put them down in public opinion and destroy all opposition, in which case say hello to president Bernie.)

Which means I’m hoping that the people there are alert to infiltrators and agents provocateurs.  I’m going to say right now that if a pregnant woman gets shot, it will be infiltrator/communist action. (It became almost a joke in Europe in the seventies. If someone opposed leftists with violence, a pregnant woman was ALWAYS shot, and then waved like a bloody shirt.  It is one of the reasons I’m 90% sure that Kent State was an action by communist agent provocateurs.)

Perhaps this too shall pass. And we’ll get a few years to turn the culture around. Because this can’t continue, and the left can’t retain a state of hysteria that long.

Also because I think if Trump gets a second term, the stuff that comes out will discredit the left forever.  Honestly — for those of you who are going to bay at me that we need to shoot NOW — before we start the music, we should consider how HARD the left has been trying to stampede us into initiating violence. I think they might — correctly — believe that’s their last hope.

It is always a bad idea to do what the enemy is trying to — openly — get you to do.

Because if the left gets us to start this, they will almost certainly will. We’ll have played into their hands with “unhinged right wingers.” To the extent they still have any power it is the emotive power of the news/entertainment complex and the people who believe in it.

And what comes next will turns us inside out, to non-functional and irrecoverable.

So, keep cool, keep thinking. Sure, self defense is a thing. And if it comes to that, well, it comes to that.

But keep your booger hook off the bangstick until and unless they start it.

Because–

They’re not engaging in provocations because they’re winning. They’re not screaming and trying to cancel you because they’re strong. They’re not letting the masks drop because they’re confident of victory.

If we can keep going through the squalls the left creates, we will win, they lose.

But I never promised you a rose garden, or that there would be no flare ups.

Heck, the international cold war was full of them.

I’m writing this on the night of the 19th. And I’ll be praying for Virginia, and praying that however it turns out, the cause of liberty comes through.

And it’s all I can do right now.

 

 

262 thoughts on “Turning Us Inside Out”

  1. That’s a hope many of us have. This is a time for vigilance, but not false starts.
    The left provocateurs will be like a teen age bully, trying by false actions to get their victim to jump first. Like a football lineman who makes a twitch, and the opposing lineman jumps over the line. And then gets penalized.
    Yes, the stakes are higher now, and for that reason we must not make the first move. The action against us must be definite, and public, before we react.
    I think that probably means someone on our side will die, or be severely injured.
    But the cause must be evident, and the response seen as justified.

  2. @Sarah,

    >> “Remember also the dismount on the cold war was, to put it mildly, well handled. And part of the reason it wasn’t well handled”

    Should be “NOT well handled.” Your editor isn’t earning his tuna lately, it seems.

    I suppose I should ask if you want me to continue pointing these things out. I wouldn’t bother with minor errors, but when you end up saying the opposite of what you mean it jumps out at me.

      1. Oh, forgiven. Of course forgiven. I think we got what you meant. *chuckle* I was reading on autopilot and didn’t even spot the lack, myself.

    2. The dissolution of the USSR was problematic. The situation called for people and organizations that were pro-representative to invest and provide aid and education in setting up a democratic republican form of government to replace the old soviet, and the defunct economic environment. Unfortunately, too many people either still hated the Soviets and refused to do anything to save them, or worse, saw them as a perfect opportunity to make a financial killing. Which is why they were subjected to 2 decades of criminal oligarchy, and why we have a retread KGB agent leading Russia today. We blew an opportunity to make them into an ally.

      1. To be fair, a lot of the criminal apparatus existed long before the fall of Communism- and actually was what kept it afloat for most of it’s history. The men who worked as fixers under the corrupt centralized planning regime were well positioned to become oligarchs under the next.

        1. So, as I understand it, there were three sets, with lots of Venn-diagram overlap: The prior fixers/blackmarket as noted; the violent criminals who managed to be criminals even under a police state who ran pretty much wild, and the KGB and GRU people, being very well trained in bypassing police and such – by the 1980s lots of KGB people already had side gigs in the blackmarket world, and those who became ex-KGB went fully entrepreneurial after they decided they didn’t want to work for Boris in the FSB or FIS.

      2. While I am happy that the USSR dissolved (more or less) peacefully (if for no other reason than I spent the 80’s expecting not to survive the conflict I expected to take it down), it is unfortunate that it fell in a way that precluded the type of De-NAZIfication that happened in West Germany after WWII.

        (In the East they either shot them/sent the to Gulags or simply put new insignia on their uniforms and turned them loose. cf: VOPOs).

        Me being me I was rather hoping for street lights being decorated by KGB agents throughout Russia and the various republics, but at heart I am not a nice person.

    3. I’m pretty sure the editor only pays attention to the blog postings to remind the author that blogging doesn’t pay the bills and she should be writing stories.

      On a related note, Thanks for the free ice cream!

        1. From a blogger’s (I forget whose) comment section, where somebody compared blogging to being a person who hands out free ice cream to all comers, only rather than being thanked he is castigated for not offering a person’s favorite (obscure) flavor.

  3. Pingback: Turning Us Inside Out — According To Hoyt | The zombie apocalypse survival homestead

  4. Which means I’m hoping that the people there are alert to infiltrators and agents provocateurs.

    Everyone there knows this. Everyone is watching. Everyone is recording everything. Everyone knows that Coonman is trying to provoke violence. Everyone knows. Everyone knows. Everyone knows. Everyone knows. Everyone knows.

    Forgive my rudeness, but there is an endless stream of people who seem to think that Bubba just rolled out of bed one day and decided to stroll over to Richmond.

    The people in Virginia are as well prepared as they can hope to be.

    And those fences are coming down.

    1. Exactly. The Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) is being very clear to everyone receiving their messages that they must obey the no-weapons policy within the area designated and must not respond to provocations with violence. There will be (I can guarantee this) well-regulated people just outside that area who are carrying and are watching closely everything that happens within the area, though. They won’t start anything, but if something does go down and the police are unwilling or unable to to control it, or are actively involved in perpetrating it, things will get kinetic pretty fast.

      1. They won’t start anything

        Well something is going to happen. But who started it is a different story depending on who does the telling: for the grabbers it will be that the evil violent gun owning racists attacked the capitol. For the sane people it is that Coonman issued an illegal order restricting firearms from the grounds, and thus it was the police’s responsibility to stand down when the bolt cutters came out to remove the fence.

        1. I wouldn’t be surprised. There are likely several plans in place for agents provocateur to start a melee. There are also multiple groups there with the experience and manpower to lock that crap down. This isn’t the first time some fool has stuck his chin out, begging for a punch, won’t be the last.

          Nowadays we have ways to prove what actually did happen. That makes a rather large difference.

          1. Now that the rally is over it turns out that I was 7/8ths wrong.

            It was completely peaceful, even though there was a lot of serious chatter (not just jokes and letting off steam) about dismantling the fences and refusing to obey Coonman’s illegal order.

            I say “7/8ths wrong”, because apparently after the rally some people walked right up to the police, dismantled the fences, and stacked them in a neat pile.

            2. after the rally some people walked right up to the police, dismantled the fences, and stacked them in a neat pile.

              Oh my goodness.

              That’s delightful.

            3. That isn’t you being right, that’s just good American citizens policing their rally area and restoring to condition ante only better.

              That some might interpret it as a demonstration of “what we could’ve done had we wanted to” assumes greater perceptivity than heretofore demonstrated by Leftists.

              1. that’s just good American citizens policing their rally area and restoring to condition ante only better.

                Not sure where you are getting that. The attendees didn’t put up the fences. VCDL didn’t put up the fences. The local businesses didn’t even put on the fences. Those fences were put up by command of Emperor Coonman as part of a grossly illegal declaration of a state of emergency.

                Now in addition to that the attendees also picked up their trash, but the two events were unrelated.

                1. I’m sorry. Next visit to your physician I suggest you inform the doctor that you are sarcasm impaired and then request a recommendation for an effective yet gentle stool softener.
                  –

      2. I saw an interesting photo from an office overlooking the kill-zone fenced area:

        I’m surprised so many people were in the area, myself.

        Biggest fear on my part is the old false-flag ploy. Get a bunch of thugs, give them MAGA hats, and have them go after obvious lefties. Scream “Evvvvvvvviiiiiiillllllllleeee Gun-nuts!” and carry on. The good news is that a bunch of weaponized autists have gotten really good at IDing people and finding their associations. Witness the bike-lock assaulting professor in California; IDed through a tattoo on his arm.

          1. I was in town today and not glued to the radio. I was quite glad *not* to see violence, either from our hotheads or the lefties running a false flag. I’m very happy to have my expectations not being met.

            NBC “news”, “confusing” the Pledge of Allegiance for a “we will not comply” chant. Just take the ‘L’, chumps.

    2. I don’t think Bubba anything. it’s Virginia, for G-d’s sake. I think that we got ambushed with some pretty nifty stuff in Portugal in the seventies (as for instance, shots fired into the crowd causing us to stampede which turned into “right wing riot.”)
      What I’m saying is I’ve seen this movie before. I don’t want the reprise.
      I hope anyone who does anything is Covingtoned. That’s all I have to say.
      Because remember Charlottesville?

      1. Oh, yes. We remember Charlottesville.

        Dixon bragged on Facebook about confronting James Fields with an AR-15 rifle, moments before Fields drove his car into a crowd of protesters at the Charlottesville, Virginia protests (and in doing so, perhaps pushing Fields’s emotions past the point of reason). During Fields’s trial, though, Dixon changed his story, claiming it was not Fields’s car he approached with his weapon, but another one.

        https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/07/unc-chapel-hill-a-sanctuary-campus-for-terroristic-radicals-on-the-taxpayers-dime/

        An AR-15 is not a concealed carry gun. How did he get it into the area without the connivance of one or more of the law enforcement agencies whose connivance in ensuring that the Antifa mob would be allowed to assault the protesters who had a permit?

        1. Moreover, the “White Supremacist” rally has been found to have been organized by people who’d only recently been Left-wing activists. Cynical, suspicious minds might be inclined to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t a Progressive Theatre production from the git-go.

          Some of us remember a similar thing occurring in Greensboro, NC in a Socialist Workers’ organized rally — held in an African-American neighborhood but not of that neighborhood — calling for “Death to the Klan.” As if the KKK had had any influence in NC politics in decades. Naturally, the kind of knuckleheads who enjoy Klan cross-dressing showed up to counter-protest and, naturally, they were stampeded into shooting. National media quickly fitted the events into their off-the-rack narrative suit — South, Klan, Black martyrs — and engaged the nation in months of race-war titillation.

          Funny thing – what happened in the 1980 elections? Yes, a popular Democrat governor got re-elected, but Reagan carried the state and a Republican (John East) won, giving NC two Republican senators (alongside Jesse Helms) for the first time since Reconstruction.

          1. I remember that, but the media where I was (Iowa at the time) reported it as KKK vs Communists, without any racial competent (other than that implicit when the Sheet Heads are involved), so I just chalked it up under the category of “too bad they didn’t wipe each other out” and moved on.

            Part of the narrative I saw might have been due to the college newspaper playing up the Communist martyrs angle as that probably hit close to home for them (Being run by members of the Revolutionary Student Brigade and all)

            1. Sigh. Beloved Spouse & I had to deal with concerned calls from Yankee family members, convinced that the city of 150K was on the verge of race rioting because of one kerfuffle between outside agitators in a small park.
              –

  5. I am really not liking how many politicians are hopping up and down on the “personally owned firearms can’t beat the military!” button.

    And…then ban guns.

    Oh, this isn’t an obvious trap. >.<

    1. To be blunt, anyone arguing that citizens shouldn’t bear arms in defence against military aggression, simply because they’d stand no chance of winning, is someone who shouldn’t be allowed within five miles of a legislative institution. Or, for good measure, anything sharper than a crayon.

      Their applied policies notwithstanding, even the actual Soviets weren’t keen on using the Appeal to Force as part of their civil rhetoric. Not least because, given that the military was mostly conscripted, the last thing you want to imply to the already reluctant Private Ivan, is that he might have to choose between his family or his government.

      If anything, the culture war worked both ways back in the day, and I reckon it still does in the modern US. When the Union fell, it was because it became too americanized, in one aspect in particular – Gorby’s people got this crazy idea that the Soviet government wasn’t merely supposed to be grudgingly tolerated and feared, but that it had to be liked. That people weren’t simply expected to accept it, but they had to choose it, on their own free will. So they were given that choice; they were given glasnost, and perestroika, and… they chose something else. And the rest is modern history.

      So in turn, the leftist governments of today are collapsing for much the same reason – they fully expected that people would choose them, without actually bothering to give a reason why. They expected women and minorities to flock to their side, simply by virtue of being women and minorities. They expected to be chosen particularly against the strawman of conservatism that they themselves created, and what’s worse, started believing. And when the people again chose something else, they cried foul, and have kept going ever since.

      Ultimately, that’s why I’m not all that worried about leftists prevailing, at least for the time being – all their current policies, from climate regulations to identity politics, rely on people not being able to choose what to do. On them signing up for the train ride, and then agreeing with every subsequent policy and regulation, on penalty of professional, political, and sometimes actual death. And right about now, I reckon even liberal-leaning voters would think twice before going with that particular choice.

      1. What happened in Moscow in 1992 proves your point about Private Ivan vs. the babushkas. The military on the ground blinked.

        1. The military might blink when it’s a local unit.

          There’s a reason why Beijing called in units from another part of the country to crush the Tianenmen Square protests.

      2. Which they were able to get around, a bit, by being such a diversified empire (yes, empire, despite their ‘anti-imperialistic’ rhetoric) – easier to get, say, an Uzbek to fire on Chechens or Georgians to shoot Ukrainians than Minnesotans (to pick an example) to shoot their Iowan cousins. Yes, I know we make jokes about them, but it’s all (mostly?) in jest. And yes, I do have cousins in Iowa.

        1. Just as China carefully selects which troops to send to Hong Kong and Tienanmen to terminate those rallies.

        2. That’s partially the case, though for a somewhat different reason. Soviet rhetoric loved to hype the brotherhood among the Soviet (and Warsaw Pact) nations; if anything, actual popular sentiment was a lot more hostile, especially with regard to the Chechens. So instead, the actual party line would be something like “our troops were graciously sent (or, in foreign countries, invited) to protect the innocent citizens from violent extremists and foreign provocations”. It’s not that Private Ivan would be keener on killing people of a different color, creed or country, but that he’s a lot easier to entice with promises it’s all for “the greater good”, and that civilians “just don’t understand”.

          To that effect, I’d be less concerned so long as modern liberal rhetoric angrily decries large mobs of “racists”, “gun nuts” and overall “deplorables”. No, when they start talking all kind and gentle-like, about how the innocent people in the red states need to be saved and protected from extremists or what-have-you, and the best way to do so is to keep them unarmed and safeguarded by, say, special detachments of the National Guard, then you should double-check your stock of Second Amendment accessories.

    2. They *REALLY* will NOT like what is apt to happen post-ban when “Might as well go full-out since everything is illegal.” gets taken to heart. Leslie Groves would reel at the speed of the New Weapons Program.

      1. Yup. The opposition forgets that the receiver for a Sten submachine gun is a length of steel tubing.

      2. We literally dropped leaflets all over occupied Europe in WWII showing people how to make firearms out of common goods. But banning guns will remove them from the populace? The ignorance of the progressives is monumental.

        1. Ammunition can become the bottleneck. Especially for modern, multi-shot weapons. But even single shot, muzzle or breech loaders can be used effectively; just not in large scale battles against modern weapons. But then there’s two terms for insurgents that try to go toe-to-toe; stupid, and dead.

          1. Remember, you don’t have to make enough ammunition to supply the army, you just need to be able to make enough ammunition to allow your army to supply itself from the enemy stocks.

        2. Firearms – or other nasty stuff. PJM runs a weekly “Florida Man” column, snippets about various idiots being arrested for doing stupid things (they keep the name, although they have branched out to other parts of the country than poor Florida).

          Anywho… the column last week had a snippet about a “Florida Woman” who walked into a Wally World and began assembling an IED from just the things on their shelves. Now, I am not in any way a trained person, but that gave me to think – just from my knowledge of chemistry and physics, I can think of at least three ways right off the bat to do the same thing (depending on what departments the particular store maintains).

          A modern economy flatly cannot prevent that kind of thing. Eliminate common cleaning agents, fertilizer, fuels, cooking materials and equipment – nope. Eliminate electronics re-purposable as trigger devices – nope. Eliminate various things that can be converted into far nastier stuff than simple explosives (think nerve agents) – nope.

          1. Yea … my father told me how to turn a can of a common automobile aerosol brake cleaner into a flame-thrower…
            (I had the necessary ingredients in the door-pocket of the driver side, during some long, long road trips…”

            1. A friend being harassed by a car packed with guys on a lonely road did just that, after they tried to throw bottles at her window. While the window was open. And drove away. She never knew how that turned out.

            2. I seem to remember one of my sisters – or it might have been a female acquaintance – carried a can of spray wax in the car. I’m not going to experiment to confirm it, but I think that stuff just might stick like napalm and keep burning longer.

              1. |Now you have me wondering about those new style WD40 cans that have a straw that is physically attached, you just flip it up or down. (So you can broad spray or straw it)

            4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie) did that with hair spray.

              Yeah, not 100%. But it gets folks thinking.

              FFS, I ended up playing with rubbing alcohol and a spray bottle.

          2. “A modern economy flatly cannot prevent that kind of thing.”

            Gee – ya s’pose that is why so many of their policies are virtually calculated to end modern economies?
            –

            1. Could be… Of course, they really don’t realize that, even if THEY are the ones living in the castle surrounded by their adoring peasants (unlikely, that will be the abode of someone much tougher than themselves) – their flush toilet will disappear too. They will still have to live with the stench of the chamber pot until the maid takes it out in the morning. Either that, or build over a really deep hole.

    3. Yeah, my standard response to idjits making that claim is “We’re living next door to you, whether you realize it or not. If the US Military unleashes that kind of firepower, you can look up “collateral damage” and tattoo it on your kids’ foreheads.”

      1. These are the same idiots declaring our military cannot defeat the Afghanis. Coherence is not one of their strong points.

        1. Apparently, at least some believe that in the case of another ACW, the military’s ROE will be looser against their own friends and family in the same country than they were against hostile “foreigner” a-holes living on the other side of the planet.

          Then again, these people are, by and large, the same ones that think that reality-denying fantasies like Marxism really can work, if only done by the “correct” people (like them, usually).

                  1. Husband asked me what garum was, and I explained.

                    Hubby: you have to wonder about the guy who first discovered the stuff and what made him decide to eat it.

                    me: Starvation?

                    (then again, I wonder much the same about the person who was so hungry they discovered that gympie gympie fruit was edible. And tasteless.)

                    1. a) The Romans were entirely sane by modern standards*
                      b) Consider the climate, and that the sea access means a fish heavy diet. There would have been spoilage problems transporting and storing the fish, and poor people would have eaten or drunk the stuff not considered choice. If they didn’t die, it might’ve become a staple. From there, it is a matter of the population acquiring a taste, and that taste evolving to get the elaborate production of the stuff.

                      Keep in mind that the Roman upper class got up to all sorts of foodstuffs for fancy meals. Or not, some of the dishes very much do not appeal to me.

                      *Yeah, sarcasm. Not meant as a commentary on modern standards, even if modern standards are also nuts. In all seriousness, wildly alien cultures a long time ago.

          2. I’ll admit I’m one, but that’s mostly because the folks setting the RoE seem to hate those they would see on the non government side of a civil war more than any overseas terrorist. Question is just to what extent the trigger pullers would comply. Have seen both responses.

            1. Time for my bed, so haven’t thought it over, but… Intuition is that this is a case where gaming it would show no simple answer.

              Okay, Hillary hates the military too much to do a good job of setting up that part of the stage management. What happens when you assume communists do somewhere between a completely perfect and a completely flawed job of setting things up? You probably don’t have all units ordered to civil atrocity at the same time. (You wouldn’t want to do that anyway, because what if you guess wrong about how well prepared things are?) So, some officers at a certain level give that order. Two problems can result. One is mutiny. Another is carrying out the order, and getting a little out of control while doing so. How does either reflect on those officers? If the first officers to order atrocity wind up appearing incompetent, the rest of the officers will be falling over themselves to appear more competent. Which may mean pretending they had no intention of ordering an atrocity.

              The folks most fooled by the stage management may also be the ones most likely to, if they are active at all, to be active stupidly. And hence screw up implementation of the ‘play’.

              This may be a case where if your units and officers are so uniformly trustworthy and reliable for whatever faction that they will just smoothly implement civil atrocity a) it will be obvious from behavior in garrison b) domestic politics are unbalanced enough to have no real need for a civil war. Don’t get overconfident, but very much don’t assume the opposition has everything solved and ready. Them jumping in unprepared provides opportunities to potentially stop things from spiraling out of control, if we are aware enough to notice them and act in time.

      2. NO. NEVER tattoo it on their kid’s heads. That was Timothy McVeigh’s problem; he claimed he’d have bombed the building eve if he’d known about the child care center in advance.. Never, ever go after someone’s kids. Unless that kid has a gun, grenade, IED, or probable biological, you don’t kill or even hurt them. Especially if you’re running an insurgency and need the good will, or at least knowing non-interference of the population.

        1. Which is why I’m inviting them to do it. And I won’t be targeting their kids, they will.

              1. The statement “nice place, shame if anything happened to it” is, in plain English, not a threat.

                It’s still universally recognized as a threat.

                  1. Of course it’s obvious to anyone with a lick of sense that he’s pointing out that they live right next to him, any hit will hit them.

                    We’re talking about people where the fully functional, sane examples get the vapors at the idea that some Vague Other might have a gun ina public area…when they’ve been sitting not three feet from my concealed carry pistol for the last six months, and I’ve been wearing both my old Navy PT gear and my utility jacket, and even though I politely decline or disagree on politics they think I am a Seattle liberal.

                    The guys whose side tells women what they’re allowed to think, do or be, and insists that the side who goes “I don’t care what you do, don’t make me pay for it” is controling.

                    They have rather huge blinders. We have to pay attention to their assumptions, no matter how stupid they are, unless we’re willing to kill them for being idiots.

                    1. I should have elaborated my second sentence a bit more: I had to look completely cock-eyed at this sub-thread before I could see the problem. No one even attempted to point it out to snelson, better to snark about what looks like completely unrelated crap.

                      It’s making me look like a model of clarity. That isn’t a good thing.

                    2. Snelson usually is the one pointing out that they are looking at stuff through a rather nasty set of assumptions.

                      And then he goes and makes a point about the neighbors’ kids, with added mention of tattooing.

        2. *puts on Raiding Party [aka semi-moderator] hat* Let’s just agree that there’s been some misunderstandings and miscommunications and leave this topic alone for a while.

    5. Give me a dozen retired Army rangers with percussion rifles and OTC optics and equipment, and I can guarantee they have at least parity of effectiveness against any similarly sized military group, including current Army rangers, where the modern group is acting as the defenders. Give the old guys current modern civilian weapons, and I can just about guarantee success.

      Success would go to the modern military assaulting any fixed position being defended by the old guys. You just can’t beat the initial artillery attack. But that’s no different than what’s been happening in Afghanistan and other middle eastern countries. Insurgents that try to stand toe-to-toe die, those that plan for retreat or bugout don’t win that engagement, but do often survive to fight another day.

      1. *shakes head* Not even that much, Mike. Behind the wire, there’s a *lot* you can do with very little. Even without firearms. Or duct tape. They just make certain things easier. But those things are in a box labled “Stuff we don’t ever want to do on American soil.” I would very much like it if that box remained untouched. Very much indeed.

    6. And I love how those politicians blithely assume the .mil will jump to to obey those orders.

      Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. perhaps the Military culture in the ranks has changed since I was in enough that it would work that way. (I hope not, but hope is not a strategy). I’m certainly not confident enough that sufficient numbers of troops won’t obey unconstitutional orders (due to poor training and poor leadership if naught else) that I’m certainly not willing to roll those dice.

      The fact that those politicians are so certain is proof they don’t know enough about what they are suggesting to be entitled to a credible opinion on the subject. Probably, many have been buying their own propaganda over the past 50 years that the US Military are full of brain dead Storm Troopers too stupid or desperate to go to a good school or get a real job.

      1. It hasn’t.

        Part of why Obama spooked me was that he (I’m going to keep it individual, but quite sure it was more like “his group” and have no idea who was in charge) was actively going through the military and replacing people that they thought might be a threat.
        Thank God, these idiots were looking at upper officers. The only lower level officers I heard about getting framed was clearly when they needed a fall guy– and even most of those were at least department head level.
        One of the things they didn’t like was prior enlisted officers.

        I would estimate that the take-the-biggest-possible-risk-and-double-it estimate is that half of the troops wouldn’t be trying to figure out who to shoot in response to the illegal order. Some portion of the rest would balk when they were actually told to do something where they can see other Americans, or when some officer decided to make an example.

        1. Foxfier, I heard about those too… but I was working on a USMC project on both coasts 2009-2012, and the number of enlisted Marines who were deciding to get out even in the face of the Obama economy was not small. And these weren’t just supply types, either.

          1. The totally not subtle “anonymous” survey about open homosexuals in the military got a lot of folks out of the military after their first hitch, too. I filled it out honestly– the military was bad enough about sheltering homosexual sex harassment already, making it open hasn’t helped at all– but most folks I talked to round-filed it. They were seriously not even subtle about how they were not going to keep it secret if you answered “wrong.”

            But a lot decided to tough it out, especially if they’ve got family…and they kinda shot themselves in the foot with folks who have never NOT been in an environment where the authorities hate them kind of shrugging and figuring eh, why not, may as well go where if things go bad at least there’s something I can do.

            And those guys are going to be quiet.

          1. Got relatives that are mid-level– there is serious mental stress, there.

            …given what I know of them, an openly illegal order would be an insanely bad idea. They’d over-react. In a very painful way.

            That’s part of the problem with Americans. We respond to stress in unpredictable ways.

      2. Depends. I saw an awful lot of guys who’d do what they were told, no matter how heinous, and not question it until AFTER they got back to the barracks and thought about it. By that time, it’s too late to stop the first atrocity, although it might terminate any follow ups.

  6. I am pretty certain that many of us are well-aware of leftists trying to provoke violence, or bad press by acting like a**holes for the camera; we saw it at local Tea Party rallies. Our leadership and security volunteers took special note of people whom we didn’t know, acting like agent-provocateurs.
    I’m hoping that the people gathering today are also as security-conscious.

      1. Why am I thinking of a quote from Mirror, Mirror to the effect that it is easier for civilized people to pose as barbarians that it is for barbarians to pose as civilized people?

    2. Thing was, Antifa was apparently (peacefully) demonstrating alongside the pro-2nd Amendment people. Their excuse was that guns were going to be taken from minorities who need them for protection. And the openly Antifa-types apparently didn’t try to start anything. Given that the primary group of Lefty troublemakers was claiming to be on the same side as the rally organizers, it might explain the lack of overt trouble-makers.

      1. Apparently not all Antifa groups are alike. Some seem to have read a history book or two, like how gun control was used as a means to disarm “those uppity [n-word]s” and other minorities.

        Of course, it lack of gun control also makes it easier for THEM to be armed as well, and “Come The Revolution” is hardly unheard of in any of the groups. 😛

          1. While each Antifa group will draw from the local citizenry and culture, they still draw funding from the same places. You never know what will win out when a group’s priorities are being figured out. There’s also the possibility that there was some ulterior motive that was kept out of sight during the rally.

            1. Moreover, Antifa are best known for “doin’ there thang” when they have implicit protection from the powers-that-be and their opposition badly outnumbered. Now, imagine you’re an Antifa activist out there with several hundred of your friends and you realize that you’re surrounded by several thousand folks (many of whom have the appearance of being much more capable fighters than your associates) protesting in support of their right to shoot you (albeit only in self-defense.)

              How seriously are you going to reconsider your intentions of becoming a martyr?
              –

        2. Apparently not all Antifa groups are alike.

          No they aren’t.

          It is forgotten now, but there were once many different strains of Communism before the current form ate all the others (and a good sized part of the planet). Many Antifa groups in the US still contain adherents to those long forgotten strains.

          If the syndicalists or [name forgotten]ists win the internal debates than you will get pro-2a Antifa.

          1. Leslie Fish being a prime example and boy does she get dragged (and cancelled) for it. I have been to filk circles where people don’t want her songs performed because they’re “too right wing”.

            Yeah, I know. A Wobbly as right wing…..

      2. Good heavens, really? Antifa, not just a more diverse conservative crowd than the press wanted to admit?

        If the local Antifa folks are balking, the gun control proponents overstepped their support even more dramatically than I thought.

        1. Antifa announced before the rally that they would be attending in support of the demonstrators. The suspicion was that they’d use the rally as an excuse to infiltrate and cause trouble in some fashion that would make the pro-2nd Amendment demonstrators look bad. That apparently didn’t happen.

          That doesn’t mean that I’m not wary of an ulterior motive. But if so, the Antifa members in the know did it discretely, and not in a way that would draw attention.

          1. apparently so discreetly that it didnt make any difference in the actual effect of the rally, which makes any such effort ineffective.

            1. Nah. My thinking is that any ulterior motives had nothing to do with causing trouble at the rally today. Instead, it was aimed at some other more long-range plan.

              But if so, I don’t know what it could be.

    1. Also praying… but not optimistic. The only way I can see that this doesn’t end badly is if not one single 2A supporter is provoked into any kind of action. The odds don’t look good… and I really hope I’m wrong. As I frequently am!

  8. Pingback: News/Gun Bits … – Freedom Is Just Another Word…

  9. “…turn whatever the left says on its head and says the opposite is true.”

    This is the main reason the Climate Change zealots are dangerous. They discourage actual science, and even if they’re right, they discourage realistic, nonpunitive actions in response.

    1. Nobody with a lick of sense denies that climate changes.
      What the zealots demand is that we take a leap of faith and accept both that climate change is man made and that if only the US, already with some of the tightest emissions controls of the industrial nations, will only cripple our economy by surrendering our use of natural resources to satisfy some theory based on computer models that are consistently proven wrong.
      Two interesting facts not often reported in our MSM:
      The US was roundly castigated for refusing to sign the Kyoto accords setting new standards for emissions several years ago. Despite not signing we are the only nation that actually met those new restrictions, none of the signers did.
      Late in 2019 the US achieved the status of being a net exporter of hydrocarbon products, ie we are now shipping for export more coal, oil, and natural gas than we import. Which means neither the Middle East nor any other oil producing country has any real choke hold on our industry and economy.

      2. Bless you for digging that out, Lar.

        Now if we could only get Musk to start assembling those solar satellites Dr Pournelle kept pushing for, or someone would start putting up next generation nuclear plants, we could tell the other nations to go drink their oil permanently.

        1. It’s all in the lift – if Elon can get the honking-big Starship going, even unmanned (though it will be human-rated), the price per pound* will go way way down, which makes “Man who sold the Moon” scenarios and things like solar power sats possible.

          But only expect the Glorious Bear Flag Peoples Republic to approve solar sat power rectenna receivers out in the otherwise useless deserts after the state goes into Federal receivership.

          * Yes, pound, darnit – The US made it to the moon in inches and feet and pounds while the metric Soviets did not, and there’s no reason to ostentatiously adhere to the Obscure French Measurement System for every darned thing. The SpaceX inflight abort success webcast yesterday kept talking about the splashdown being “approximately 32 kilometers offshore” and relayed the altitude in meters as the Crew Dragon came down on the chutes. “Approximately 20 miles” would have been just as accurate and correct, and I think only the commie country’s militaries use meters for altitude these days, with every civil aircraft worldwide using feet.

          1. There are advantages and disadvantages to both systems of measurement.

            Most people have hands with a full range of digits, and forearms, and feet, and have a stride, albeit all of those range in size; and calculations and conversions in the English system can be a PITA.

            Metric makes calculations easy. But I don’t seem to have a convenient body part that matches any kind of metric unit.

            Do equestrians measure horse’s heights in meters nowadays?

            1. I actually find it useful to remember a hand and a decimeter are actually pretty close, but still…

            2. I learned to love metric during my mechanicing days. Not having to perform mental division when trying to get the next sized socket, because your mental processor is trying to deal with the car on the rack is great.
              Of course, there is the eternal tendency of 10mm sockets to run away with your sock to Narnia.

            3. “Metric makes calculations easy.”

              As most people have very little cause for calculations in their daily activities this is a remarkably ineffective argument. Adults have generally grasped that the response to a request to “Please put up with this slight inconvenience in order to make my job much, much easier” is typically only acquiescence for those possessing D-cups or greater.

              1. If you’re doing anything with multiple units Metric (SI to be precise) is a big win. You CAN do Chemistry or mechanical engineering in English (as noted Saturn V and its friends were primarily English units). But because the SI Units are interrelated conversions are more direct. You can avoid the weird English units that are not derived, but at that point you’ve essentially reinvented the SI system without the convenience of decimal relationships. Some English units are more natural (e.g. degrees Fahrenheit better for thinking about temperature for outdoors) but for calculations the simplicity of a system with carefully derived units makes calculations and unit cancellation cleaner.

                1. Quick, explain the relationship between Pascals, Torr, bar, kg/cm^3, atmospheres, mm/Hg, and N/m^2…

                  Oh, and which of the four *different* metric systems are you using? cgs or kgs that I had in school, DIN that I used at work, or ISO?

                  “Oh, we don’t use those any more, or only in certain specialized fields.”

                  Same as furlongs per fortnight. The camel is well inside the metric tent now…

                  And if you want more, I shall taunt you about the chaos of metric screw thread “standards”, of which there are so many, there really aren’t any…

          2. The metric system was better than the chaos of (literally) hundreds of competing systems it replaced… but that’s about the best that can be said for it. Otherwise, it’s a ridiculously complex mess of design-by-committee, and far too much of the metric system is based on politics instead of usefulness.

            And I learned the metric system *first*, and resented having to pick up the “obsolete” Imperial system later…

            1. If you want to see how much fun it is, go to Units of Measure and see for yourself.

              Don’t blame me if you look up four hours later and notice it’s dark outside! 😀

              It’s almost as much fun as searching ‘Redneck invention’ in Google.
              ———————————
              You can’t have the government take away the freedom of only the people you don’t like.

            2. Hundreds of competing systems…. The adjustable wrench, often referred to by it’s brand name Crescent wrench, was invented in a Swedish shipyard for just that reason. There was no uniform measurement of nuts and bolts on any machinery in the early days of mechanically powered ships. And – some engines and machinery used square heads, others, hexagonal.I don’t think there were any 8 sided ones- but an adjustable wrench would work on those. So rather than have a special tool made up for each and every size of nut and bolt you might find, “Voila!”, two parallel flat surfaces with one movable to fit any size square or hexagonal nut or bolt!

              IIRC, I learned that little tidbit in Navy machinist’s mate “A” school, where they told us “NEVER USE ONE!” I never used one smaller than 24 inches during my time….

              Still, the traditional English system of measurements is human scaled, and useful for that reason. And could have become the world standard were it not for the French….

                1. Because an adjustable wrench provides a sloppier fit that a socket the precise shape of a nut or bolt head. Over time they will tend to round off sharp edges and create wear that leads to having to replace fasteners. Also, during the application of sufficient force to “break” a stubborn nut an adjustable is much more likely to slip and result in damage or injury.

                    1. Sure. But there are standards for bolt head clearance; the outside of the wrench jaws or ring have to meet that, or in some (many!) cases you can’t get the wrench on the bolt or nut. All of the fancy wrenches need more room than exists, too many times for them to be worthwhile. And wrench swing clearance is figured in 1/12-turns; that’s why the open end jaws are at an angle, so you can flip it over and get another 1/12-turn when you have to. Many of the fancy wrenches have internal mechanisms that require more than 1/12 rotation to get a bite. So if you have to have a whole set of plain wrenches anyway, why bother with a fancy wrench too?

                      — TRX, charter member of the Skinned Knuckles Club

          3. We live at the bottom of a one G well. Mass insertion to orbit is expensive as hell, and to escape velocity even more so. Consider as well that once hardware is up there you have access to relatively unlimited power and hard vacuum. But once you consider manned operations off planet you increase your cost by several orders of magnitude. Energy isn’t enough, you need food, water, and oxygen as well, roughly a crewman’s body mass in consumables every couple of days. Most of that as water which fills the need for not only drinking and washing, but as the feedstock for O2 generation as well.
            Much as I dearly loved my time involved in manned experiment operations both with the Space Shuttle missions and the ISS, it’s rather obvious to me that for the foreseeable future the best opportunities in space exploration are with telerobotics run via a combination of onboard AI and Earth based command links.
            As for metric, as an engineer I can function in either system. In fact it was a running joke that on the initial drawings for the proposed Ares 5 heavy lift launch vehicle the overall length was given in feet while the diameter was in meters. Not a huge issue as the drawings were proof of concept only, not intended as blueprints to bend metal from. And in any case that program got cancelled, after which I decided that retirement was my best option.

            1. that program got cancelled

              This is the problem with the folks depending on any government agency to advance something as critical as making humans more than a one-planet-wonder species. What you need is an obsessive-compulsive true believer, someone who will take risks and build resources in order to expend those resources to build spaceships.

              I’d be a lot happier if NASA were spending a fraction of the Senate Launch System budget on technology like microgravity fuel transfer demonstration, rad shielding experimentation, long duration life support (I know, ISS has this sorta), and the various high-ISP drives than just another big rocket or the slightly odd Lunar Gateway.

              The expandable/inflatable work is another good example. NASA had the inflatable TransHab under development in house, but it lacked NASA-aristocracy support so it fell prey to budget battles and the entire program got cancelled in 2000. I remember AvWeek had stories about how the LEO-only-STS-forever faction saw developing anything like TransHab as sneaking Mars mission dev onto ISS, thus stealing their LEO mojo, and when the ISS budget was under pressure TransHab had to die. That inflatables tech had to be acquired by Bigelow and developed privately before they could finally get a smaller inflatable demo berthed at ISS as the BEAM demo on a SpaceX Dragon resupply in 2016 – so only a decade and a half later, on what I think is one of the most promising technologies for creating habitable volume for long transit missions within current launch system volume constraints.

              So with driven single minded people who can succeed in business by really trying like Musk or Bezos have sets their sights on getting off this rock, I am a lot happier than when NASA says they want to send a fhandful more GS-whatevers out of LEO.

              1. Also why Jerry Pournelle pushed the concept of the government doing X-prizes for space development milestones, rather than having NASA pretending to do it directly.

        2. Yes, but even if we didn’t use a single drop of oil for fuel, we would still need to refine it because the byproducts that come from refining oil are essential to making many modern products, including lubricant’s, “rubber” (those electric cars still need tires) and way to many others to list, Indeed I cannot think of many other resources that are used as effectively and efficiently as petroleum

          1. The people who are calling on bans on this or that because they are bad for the environment don’t know literal beans about what they are advocating for. Sure, they share social media post about loving science, but how many of them have even the slightest idea of where the magic sparky stuff that makes their I-thingys battery charge is, or how it’s generated, ect?

            2. They’ll tell you, repeatedly, it’s not about ‘their carbon footprint’ or what they do is not relevant, while screaming at people to change their lives, and eventually eat bugs and live in pods.

              Piers believes in human-made climate change, but he does stick it to the hypocrites.

              1. Yeah — and after they’ve had their way with Science they never call the next day or even send roses.
                –

              1. Well Edward Jenner and Luis Pasteur are dead white guys, so their life saving world altering humanity saving discoveries are tainted by their heteronormative cis-white priviliege, and also slavery, so this new fellows reductive redundant reinvention of the concept of “vaccination” is, in that light, a great breakthrough. Unless he’s a white guy, then into the dustbin of history with him! The arrow has passed him by!

                1. Ah! But Jenner experimented on a minor with his vaccines without full informed consent of either the minor or his parents and is therefore guilty of child abuse and medical malpractice!

                  How’s that for misapplication of today’s norms against yesterday’s pragmatism?

        3. What is the difference between a orbital solar power and orbital solar weapon?
          How you focus it.

      3. I’ve gotten upset at when, during such a discussion, I said something along the lines of “Depends. Do you mean geologic climate change, or sun-driven climate change? Sure, that happens. Man-made? Big ass scam none of which has correctly predicted the weather for the afternoon.”

        I got called unscientific ^_~

        1. I got called unscientific ^_~

          That is, you got called an unbeliever.

          Anthropogenic-Climate-Change is a religion, and unbelievers must be identified and cast out into the outer darkness where Gaias Light does not reach.

          (I know Gaia is the life-infested-dirtball-goddess, so it would logically have to be casting out of the light of some other godlet-of-the-burning-ball-in-the-sky-that-totally-does-cause-Earth’s-climate-to-ever-change, but I used the word logic, so yeah, no.)

          1. *gigglefit*

            Pointing out that volcanoes throw out more pollution and CO2 in a few hours, or a day, than we could, as a race, in perhaps a year… well. That never sits well with them.

            The local governments are trying to blame the PM for the bushfires here.

            1. Oh heck – Progressive policies regarding greenspace management, proactive controlled burns, clearance of brush and ground cover have probably produced more CO2 than a year’s worth of Western Civ industrial practices (Third World, especially China’s and India’s, policies probably produce more CO2 in a month than Western Civ does in a year.)

  10. Repeating myself for the umpteenth time, but … how dirty? This is the most important document I’ve seen since the Muslim Brotherhood “brief” explaining how they planned to take over the U.S. And it sure explains a lot. It names names. Note that Trump is NOT named. That’s why he’s so scary to the Left — because he’s NOT dirty.

    Click to access bender-affidavit.pdf

    1. Yeah, I’ve been hearing a lot about Qatar paying off pols, and pols being crooks. But not to this degree.

      That document is interesting. I haven’t taken the time to fully read and analyze.

      Early on claims that Qatar intelligence taped all of the conversations. We definitely have politicians stupidly overconfident enough to let that happen.

      What if Qatar’s government falls, and loses control of that documentation?

      If it was you, you’d want to be in a position to manage the foreign policy situation, and media situation, so that doesn’t happen. Might make someone pretty desperate.

      Interesting alternate hypothesis to Hillary is just that crazy, and has the Democratic Party that stump broke.

    2. *shakes head* Anyone who didn’t already know about Qatar might be shocked. But Qatar has been no friend to us for some time now.

      1. Many who are not our friends had to be treated as such previously when we needed their oil.

        Have you hugged your fracker today?

  11. “all those of us who opposed communism had as options was keeping our heads down, shutting up, and seething internally.”

    AND sub-vocalized, subversive, snarky remarks — the kind most of us grew up hearing (or expressing) from the back rows of classrooms.
    –

  12. Well, this doesn’t sound too bad:

    RICHMOND, Virginia – Thousands of gun owners and gun rights supporters gathered Monday at Virginia’s Capitol in Richmond for a “peaceful day to address our Legislature” that appeared to generate none of the violence feared by some state leaders.

    […]

    Signs read “Come and take it” and “Second Amendment Sanctuary.” But despite warnings from Gov. Ralph Northam and law enforcement that out of state hate groups and militias may incite violence, no one appeared angry or looking for a fight.

    via USA Today

    Of course, the fact that they expected violence isn’t great, but it looks as though the rally wasn’t heated.

    2. Not that left’s media arm (i.e. NBC, CNN< etc.) are letting facts get in the way of slandering everyone who opposes the Democratic Party gun grab; as they push patently false claims that people saying the Pledge of Allegiance were in fact chanting "we will resist" and describe the peaceful protestors as being akin to KKK members and calling the event a "white nationalist rally". The fact that they were protesting against the policies of a Democratic Party governor who actually wore blackface or a KKK uniform and was protected from removal from office by the same Democrats is lost on these same leftist hacks.,

      The Democrats and their media arm genuinely believe at this point that people who disagree with them are fundamentally evil and to be purged from society (both figuratively and for more and more of them literally). When they claim that population needs to be reduced to "save the planet" it is very clear who they have in mind to be "reduced".

      1. You’ll have to pry their narrative from their cold, dead, hands.

        Virginia Second Amendment rally proves the media hate gun owners
        Reporters and editors at the largest news outlets overwhelmingly dislike and distrust the people demonstrating against Virginia’s proposed gun restrictions. This is clear as day, and every journalist, center-left media critic, and media defender would do well to admit as much.

        The media elite hate guns, favor gun control, and bear disdain or at least distrust for those who are passionate about gun rights.

        Reporters’ coverage of and reaction to Monday’s Second Amendment demonstration makes that abundantly clear.

        For starters, NBC News reporter Ben Collins, again, he’s a reporter, not an opinion writer, flatly and falsely called the demonstration a “white nationalist rally” in a tweet calling on everyone covering it to “verify information” before tweeting it out. Collins has deleted the smear-tweet, but you have to consider the nature of the error.

        While deeply thinking about accuracy in tweets, a news reporter falsely called a gun rights rally a “white nationalist rally.”

        [SNIP]

        It’s not hard to read between the lines of the Washington Post‘s coverage: “Chants of ‘U-S-A, U-S-A’ broke out every few minutes, but by 10:15 a.m. there were no signs of violence or conflict with law enforcement officers.”

        If you’re a normal person, you probably noticed that “but.” The clear implication is that the sort of folks who get together and chant “U-S-A” are prone to violence.

        Bloomberg News has a decent story that gratuitously mentions that the protesters “were mostly white and male.” Those words don’t appear in Bloomberg coverage about Bernie Sanders’s rallies or the Democratic debate stage. Those words are intended to signal disapproval of the pro-gun demonstrators. …

        1. ….But presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg swears he is not using his media company as a tool to advance his presidential campaign……

          Bloomberg once again earning his double middle finger salute.

          1. Also, anyone notice how much Bloomberg is like Cocteau from Demolition Man? He even looks quite a bit like him, and he definitely is the same kind of nanny-state tyrant.

    3. …the fact that they expected violence…

      Did they? Really? Or was it simply politically convenient to say so. And if you have to expend some extra funding for LE overtime and such to make the optics fit your narrative, well, it’s not like they’re spending their own money.

  13. Wonderful post.

    It will be completely peaceful because that’s how we roll.

    But we’ll kick your a** every Christmas Eve from here to eternity if we must.

  14. Vis-a-vis the “Cold Civil War”… What you’re actually see play out here is the pendulum swing of typical American politics. We’ve been here before, it’s just that most of us are ignorant of it all. Mainly because the lying bastards in academia and “popular history” don’t teach this crap, and have studiously been whistling and looking the other way whenever the subject comes up.

    During Wilson’s administration, this sort of crap came to a head. You had what amounted to Young Communists coming into people’s homes, conducting “inspections” for “hoarded contraband”, confiscating it, and then taking it down to where they were headquartered (local Democratic Party HQ, doncha’ know…) and “redistributing” it to their own clients. And, getting away with it. That happened in Portland, Oregon, and is in large part why my maternal grandparents were life-long Republicans.

    That sort of madness was prevalent in the 1917-18 era, and for a little while after. Then, people came back to their senses, and all of that insanity was pushed back, and if you even suggest that things like that happened, people will tell you that you’re mad, no such thing ever occurred. Not in the history books, non-event, no, we never did things like kill random Dachshunds because they were German dogs, we didn’t ban the speaking of German, and on and on and on.

    It did happen, nonetheless. You just play hell finding the documentary proof of it.

    And, we eventually came out of the fever-dream, and righted things to a more even keel. I’ve got faith that we’ll do the same, this time around. And, if not, well… Bloody Kansas got its name for a reason. We might do that again. May need to.

    2. “…did things like kill random Dachshunds because they were German dogs”

      I wonder if that’s what motivated my grandfather to get a black bear as a pet and take it for walks like it was a regular dog?

    3. No, Kirk. I’m not reading your block of text, but your opening disqualifies the rest.
      If you want me to be blunt: f*ck your pendulum swing with a rusty coat hanger, no.
      There is no pendulum swing. What you’ve seen over the last 100 years is the Marxist take over of the west. The “pendulum swing” was their cover for moving the overton window.
      it was never true, as far as I can tell from history. It’s bullshit.

    4. Warren Harding’s campaign slogan in 1920 was “A return to normalcy.” The leftist historians will tell you that meant a return to pre-WWI values, which was a part of its meaning, but another big part was the repudiation of Wilson’s proto-fascism.

    5. And, getting away with it. That happened in Portland, Oregon, and is in large part why my maternal grandparents were life-long Republicans.

      Part of that is just Oregon at the time– we also have them to thank for a lot of the protections on religious education, because they were such obvious, psychotic a-holes who made it obvious they were trying to wipe out Catholic schools.

      1. Yeah, um, what was the Supreme Court ruling? Pierce vs. the Society of Sisters or something? (goes to check) The new “public school only” laws were, of course, supported and promoted by the KKK.

    6. What I’ve heard about the dachsund thing is that the excuse for the hatred was because dachsunds were the Kaiser’s favorite dogs.

        1. In WWII there was a radio station in Louisiana that broadcast in Creole. This upset the Office of Censorship, who could not understand the broadcasts. The censors didn’t have anyone who spoke Creole and didn’t find any in the pool of potential hires, so they sent some people out to the station to Stop It Right Now.

          In what was surely a fit of Federal brain damage, they asked the station nicely if they would refrain from the use of Creole for the duration of the war. Since they were asked nicely, the station complied, and promptly resumed broadcasting after V-J Day.

  16. “a lot more of the cognoscenti … claimed to be communist (or socialist) than the ones actually naturally attracted to this poisonous philosophy. You see, it gave you a patina of virtue, made you unfirable, and at the very least made you cool.”

    Beyond that, it provided a paper trail for the day when the inevitable purges began, allowing you to claim you’d supported the movement all along and demonstrated how useful, as a powerful and influential voice, you could be to our new Soviet overlords.

    1. Which, of course, would mean that you’d be first against the wall come the revolution – can’t have any pesky folk with proven subversive tendencies running around loose . . .

  17. The use of force, particularly by the President, as Congress can’t really use force for anything except by explicit declaration of war, has been a concern of mine since, well, ever since I was born in 1959, seeing as I grew up during the Vietnam expedition, and then voluntarily enlisted in the USAF in 1977.

    Thing is, the President currently exercises a level of force around the world where he (or she) can order the killing, kidnapping and incarceration, or economic/financial devestation, of anyone, with practically zero oversight or consequence from the average American.

    Let’s face it. The use of drones as a means of extra-judicial execution is here to stay. Every first world nation has the means to implement it, not just the U.S.; and we’re going to see more of it, and by lots of other players in the future. But the person with ultimate authority to make that order, the President, should also be subject to the ultimate punishment for wrongful use of that power. In every instance of its use, the President should be required to produce justification understandable by the majority of average citizens, that the person executed was a clear and present danger to the safety and security if America. (I know, life is not a Tom Clancy story.) Failure to do so means the President gets immediately impeached, tried and if found guilty, removed from office; and handed over for a criminal trial and punishment.

    If the President ordered Soleimani’s execution for his past deeds, then that would be inappropriate use of force. If, as has been claimed, he can produce evidence that says Soleimani was planning another terrorist attack, then his execution was justified. And seeing as he was the commander of “a division primarily responsible for extraterritorial military and clandestine operations” (Wikipedia, 1/20/2020) that seems like it should be a slam-dunk.
    – – –
    The governor of Virginia, proggy that he is, is right to be wary of violence at this rally. But we’ve seen instances where even those who claim to be wary of it, actually did things to promote the possibility of it, you have to wonder if he’s a crocodile in sheep’s clothing (to mix things really up.) Hopefully, all the 2nd Amendment supporters hold fast to: speak softly (we already have a big stick), don’t throw the first punch, don’t escallate, don’t be afraid to laugh and walk away; but defend yourself if you can’t avoid it. Yeah, vigilance is a good term.
    – – –
    There’s a whole lot of people (on all sides) making the assumption that Donald Trump will be re-elected. There’s zero guarrantee that that will happen, and everyone needs to know it. The Dems are terrified of it. Scared enough to have sent people from both Warren’s and Steyer’s campaigns down my long, winding, and currently icy drive at considerable risk of getting stuck, or pissing me off (or both.)

    1. “If the President ordered Soleimani’s execution for his past deeds, then that would be inappropriate use of force. ”

      Only if Solemani were a US citizen…… and it’s arguable that when you openly join the other side, you’ve renounced your citizenship.

      Otherwise, it was 100% appropriate. “Kill American citizens and you die” should be our first principle.

      1. Yeah, but how long ago? There’s a reason for the saying, “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

        And spanking the kid a week after they did something bad isn’t a valid employment of force, and doesn’t do squat to change their behavior.

        1. Dude’s actual day job was coordinating and directing terrorist attacks against US and allied targets. Not distant past.

        2. You are sufficiently aware to understand why there is no statute of limitations on murder?

          And we’re not raising a child. We’re establishing a principle for adults.

          1. Like I said, it should be a slam dunk. As for his doing it in the past, it’s not murder if it’s his job and he did it 10, 20 years ago. Unless you’re going to prosecute me for conspiracy to commit murder for my work I did back in 1990 and 1991 (or even earlier periods) while I was in the military? If so, are you going to have the guts to tell me before hand, or should I just expect your dagger in the dark? Et tu Brute’? Iran has been at a state of war against the U.S. since 1979, and you can argue the entire spectrum from none of their actions constitutes murder, to arguing that all of their non-conventional warfare actions constitutes murder, espionage, and sabotage.

            1. As a military commander in a country that is at war with us, he was a valid target. Just as Yamamoto was during WWII.

              1. For that matter, did we ever declare war against the Barbary Pirates when we sent the Navy and Marines (…and got the “…and the shores of Tripoli” line added to the Marine Corps Hymn) to suppress them?

            2. Why are you treating it like a criminal prosecution? He was an enemy military officer, physically in the area of operations, coordinating attacks. That’s a completely legit target.

              ________________________________

            3. While I recognise the arguments about his being an enemy military commander …We were not (are not) at war* with Iran and therefore he held no legitimate combat role. Plus, as he many times targeted non-combatants he was clearly guilty of war crimes and subject to appropriate penalties for that. (The Dems ought be thankful we spread his component molecules rather than captured him and brought him to trial. Imagine their conflicting feelings then!)

              *De facto, yes, but not de jure.

              1. Iran declared war on the U.S. in 1979. They never un-declared war, we’ve just been mostly ignoring it. Technically, we could invade Iran tomorrow. We can certainly drop bombs on them, and shoot regular or Ginsu missiles at members of their military engaged in hostilities against us.

              2. It only takes one nation to declare war, and Iran has declared war against us, whether or not we formally declare war back.

                Also, given that Solemeini’s attacks are themselves a violation of the Geneva conventions, and attacking embassies is itself considered an Act of War, Trump ordering the attack on him was perfectly justified under international law. Indeed, Solemeini, by being outside of Iran, was in violation of UN sanctions against him personally because of his misconduct. He was legitimate target.

          2. The Solemani strike was not a behavioral correction exercise for Solemani, since as has been noted his only possible behavior afterward was converging with ambient temperature.

            The strike was a direct action against an enemy combatant in a declared zone of hostilities, plus for his replacement and the mullahs, it was Pour Encourager Les Autres.

            1. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad he’s dead. But I’m troubled with the authority, or lack, under which it was done. I’ve been largely against drone assassination ever since the Al Awlaki assassinations (especially the son’s) without Constitutional due process. It doesn’t take much of a stretch of imagination to have a Progressive Socialist President decide that Ms. Hoyt needs to unfortunately be crushed by a 500 lb chunk of concrete falling off a bridge overpass just as she passes by it while the sound of a drone fades off into the distance. It’s not the good guys in charge that bother me. It’s the fact that a bad guy is eventually going to be sitting there that does.

              1. The authority comes straight out of the Constitution. The President is Commander in Chief of the armed forces and is therefore authorized to give orders to prosecute a war and defend American interests. Drone strikes have all been within that authority.

              2. If Congress has a problem with the two applicable AUMF laws (“Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002” (PUBLIC LAW 107–243—OCT. 16, 2002) and “Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Terrorists” (PUBLIC LAW 107–40—SEPT. 18, 2001)) still being law under which the Orange Man can tell the military to do things, they have a simple remedy: Exercise their legislative powers and repeal those laws.

                One could argue that those laws are overly broad (after rereading them both recently I tend to agree), but they both are current law, and thus a use of military force in the form of a Hellfire missile blowing up a car containing a terrorist leader in Iraq (two actually, since Solemani was riding with the Iraqi command dude) was per se legal.

                Since it’s Iraq it could just as easily been a F-15 or F-18 or F-22 these days – the drone thing is more of an issue in other places.

                A commissioned officer of a nation that has publicly declared war on the US, who is in the chain of command of and has ordered and participated repeatedly in irregular attacks that have killed American military personnel, should reasonably expect to get Hellfired when he gets openly picked up at the Baghdad airport by an Iraqi terrorist command element in an active area of hostilities that is under specific congressional Use of Military Force authorization for that specific country and in which US military forces are in-country.

            2. The Solemani strike was not a behavioral correction exercise for Solemani, since as has been noted his only possible behavior afterward was converging with ambient temperature.

              That’s not entirely true. If stray dogs ate some of the pieces, they wouldn’t reach ambient temperature until some time after they…passed through.

              Pity the stray dogs, though.
              ———————————
              Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

        3. Mrph. “How long ago?” Well, how long is “too long”? The week or two since the rocket attack that did kill an American citizen (not looking up the actual date here, it is irrelevant to be honest). Or the couple of days after the attack on the Embassy? (I’m willing to concede that murder may not have been in the plan – but it was quite probable in the results, if successful.)

          Now, on killing American citizens – yes. We do need to clean out the superstition of “magic dirt” that pervades our view of “citizenship” – but, in the meantime, killing an American citizen that is not a direct and immediate threat to another citizen, without even the cover of a trial in absentia, should be viewed in the same light as premeditated murder.

  18. Considering events in Virginia it seems clear to me that there are many in the crowd of protesters who likely have incriminating evidence on the Clintons and anything happening there is almost surely a consequence of that.
    –

    1. OT:
      The year and a half old is pointing at your picture and yelling that you are a cat, in a very pleased manner.

      I believe you’ve just been complemented, cats are the most wonderful non-food thing in her world.

      1. I know of no higher compliment (other than being recognized as wallaby) than to be taken for a cat. Beloved Spouse has taken to explaining some of my social quirks as being expressive of an essential cat-like nature. Your child is obviously perceptive and intelligent, if somewhat deficient in base knowledge (a lack I am confident will be addressed in times to come.)
        –

  19. Generalize this beyond sexual relations to the broader societal context:

    A crucial alarm all modern men should heed
    … [British actor Laurence] Fox, 41, made his comments last week in an interview on The James Delingpole Podcast. “I don’t know how we ended up together,” he said about his former girlfriend. “It was a very short relationship. We were walking down the road, and she was talking about how good the Gillette advert was. I just looked at her and went, ‘Bye. Sorry, I can’t do this with you.’”

    And here’s the most important part: “You know when a woman starts speaking to you like that you need to run,” Fox said. “She’s literally giving you two very strong hints that she’s about to make your life miserable.” … Fox said: “This is the problem if you’re priming women to believe they’re victims and that this is a tyrannical patriarchy. It’s not like they’ve got a solution for that. They just want a matriarchy. Exactly the same, just the women in charge.”
    [SNIP]

    1. Women are not victims if they don’t want to be. It’s a choice. And as far as some “patriarchy” is concerned, I really haven’t noticed any such thing in my 54 years of living. I don’t believe I’ve been paid any different than a man or treated any different for being female. However, I do know that other females have been exceedingly unkind to me for a large proportion of my life, which explains why I prefer guys to gals for hanging out with.

      I, too, am praying for Virginia.

      1. I would say it’s easier for women to become victims, and harder for them to get out of victimizing situations than men. There are some very natural fears there, but not as much as the fear merchants peddling things are saying.

        Combine that with the culture that many women have been marinading in for the last couple of decades…I’m only surprised that more women aren’t howling-at-the-moon crazy versus “muttering with cats in a corner” crazy.

      2. I have to agree with equestriaverse. Women certainly can be victims. You know, *actual* victims of individual abuse or crime. They just aren’t, even if you stand on your head and look at it sideways, victims of the patriarchy in the west in 2020. Not even if they desire to be so with all their heart.

      3. Instapundit linked to an interesting interview with Kathy Bates (Oscar nominee, Richard Jewell) in which she opined that what Weinstein and others are accused of doing is unquestionably wrong … but, “In my day, if you went up to a guy’s hotel room, you knew exactly why you were going and in those days it was consensual.” and “if you spread your legs because he said ‘be nice to me and I’ll give you a job in a movie’ then I’m afraid that’s tantamount to consent, and it’s too late now to start whingeing about that.”

        For insisting on female agency Bates is likely to get snubbed by #OscarsSoMale.
        –

        1. Afraid you are right, about Kathy Bates being upfront about the quid-pro-quo … got a soft spot for her, actually -being the realistic one when she played Molly Brown in that Titanic move. And that people have said that I look like her, when I am all rigged out in my Edwardian-era gowns and amazing hats.
          Well, if I can’t look like Aubrey Hepburn, I can at least look like another movie star!

      5. I think you may be saying, translated:

        Women are not inherently a victim purely by existing in their current form, unless they wish to be. There isn’t some big conspiracy that is going to Keep Them Down

        vs

        Women aren’t subject to harm unless they wanna be. There are no people who make stupid assumptions about lack of ability due to them being openly female.

        *************

        THIS is why the jerks re-write the meaning of words. They gotta screw stuff up, or folks will be able to talk about what they mean, and avoid needless fights. *grumble*

        ********

        Thank God our prayers were answered.

        *******

        Now, I have been treated differently (in a bad way) for being what I’ll call openly female– wife, mother, etc. Being a woman with unapproved thoughts or positions. Heck, sometimes for being female when it made no objective difference.

        Except for the last one, usually by center-to-left; the last one usually by “cultural enhancers,” and I tend to just roll my eyes and figure that their culture involves being incredibly rude and foolish and I follow manners and am quiet unless it’s very important. (Hey, it’s the flip side of treating me better when it’s no objective difference, and that’s a cousin to recognizing differences that are more conditional or subtle, so I can be polite, eh?)

        1. “Now, I have been treated differently (in a bad way) for being what I’ll call openly female”

          You’re telling us you are not an authentic woman?

          Having seen all too many pictures from the recent “Women’s March” I must confess I have concluded that “inauthentic” is highly desirable thing for a woman to be.
          –

          1. D***m straight, oh Wallaby; I have wwaaaaay over 2.1 kids with the same man to whom I was married before their conception much less birth, married, their sexes are wrong, and I actually raise them rather than demanding strangers do so.

            Worse yet, I don’t f**** strangers. Especially not those threatening me.

            How much further from “authentically female” per the feminists can you get?

                1. Well, heck – I really wanted to have more than one! Four would have been my ideal, only … didn’t work out. The guy that I wanted to have them with … did’t work out. Catastrophically. When you only have one life to live, and … well, never mind. At least I got one good kid out of that disaster.

    1. except, looking at the pictures i have seen, i see PoC, trans people, etc, holding up pro-gun signs.

        2. The response I’ve been seeing is basically “oh, you got a photo that proves we’re lying through our teeth– that means you’re a racist who is hiding behind one or two tokens!”

  22. so, so far so good. no reported ‘incidents’ … hopefully the new dem reps have just enough self-interest in reelection that they vote down this s**t sandwich… it won’t require many. (their majority is actually pretty narrow)

    1. They’ve also got lots of off-duty LEOs – some in uniform – as a visible part of the pro-2A crowd, including a bunch holding up a “Sheriffs for the 2nd Amendment” banner.

      1. And this lovely little self-own:

        Andy Campbell
        ‏Verified account @AndyBCampbell

        “The far right will claim this rally was peaceful because counterprotesters didn’t show. Just remember that if everything stays peaceful – everyone hopes it does! – it’ll be because nobody shot anybody.

        The issue with violence in this country is still the guns and extremism.”

        Really? Somehow law abiding citizens stayed law abiding and peaceful, simply because violent thugs failed to show up where there were *lots and lots* of peaceably armed citizens?

        I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that such a thing has occurred. Minion! Bring me my Fainting Couch!

  23. There’s more, lots more of us than there are of them. Insty had a recent story about some beta male clickbait serf trying to organize a twitter lynch mob on a Target manager that wouldn’t let him buy a toothbrush for $.01. The internet rose up, and gofundme’d the manager for a few ten thousand dollars to get a vacation from whiny little creeps like him (she’s giving it to charity).

    1. Handy rule of thumb: If you are seeing the box this time it is only because you forgot to tick the box last time.

  25. “They’re not letting the masks drop because they’re confident of victory.”

    Sadly I think the left is so delusional at this point that they do think that they are actually winning. They are wrong, but still, they are so blind at this point, they can’t see anything that conflicts with their warped world view. They have gone all in on Obama’s “:sometimes I believe my own BS”. (yet another statement, just like “we are five days away from the FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION of America” that the so-called mainstream media dutifully ignored without asking the natural question of “Um, what do you mean by that?”) They actually do believe it.

    1. As Sarah phrased it once, ‘They’re drinking their own ink.” Since everyone they know says it, it must be true! Even if the laws of the US, G-d, and Newtonian physics suggest otherwise.

    3. Just a few short years ago, it looked like their final victory was absolutely inevitable. Once the Inevitable Arrow of History put Hillary in the White House, and once the Congress once again filled up with Democrats in 2016, they could safely continue the fundamental transformation of the USA.
      After all, Progress & Demographics were on their side. They just needed to wait for the old reactionaries to die, or shame the remaining deplorables into obedience to their betters.
      Trump is destroying that, and they’re fighting to keep what they can.

  26. I didn’t think of it in time, but the biggest possible joke on them would have been if nobody went ‘inside the wire’ and left them with a big empty space with a fence around it. A perfect metaphor for the left!
    ———————————
    Bring out yer dead!

  27. “They’re so terrified that I’m wondering how deep the sewer is, and how dirty everyone involved in this is.”

    They are terrified that what they desire to do to us, their ever so *hated* opponents, will instead happen to them. They believe, in their heart of hearts, that no man is clean. Deep down, I believe they know what vile thoughts they have. They fear. They *should* fear.

    Because for all their petty little hates, they have not the slightest idea what will occur with the id unchained, and no grim sheepdog around to protect them. The world they work so diligiently and hard for would be the death of them.

    The task is not to beat them down so low they will never raise their heads again. It never was. The task is to make proud, confident, hard working Americans of the ones that can be saved. Forget the true believers. You’ll never get them all, or even most. Work for the ones who’ve been lied to their whole lives. Them with the capacity and the will? They are our future brothers and sisters in freedom.

    “Turns out when what you’re choosing for is compliance and ideological conformity, you don’t choose people who can keep the lights on in civilization.”

    No only don’t, but can’t. More and more, ideological conformity is incompatible with results based work ethic. Somebody once said, Peterson I think it was, that when you can’t understand the whys and wherefors of a thing, why they continually don’t get the result they say they want, consider that what they actually get is the real desired result.

    They don’t really want diversity, inculsivity, and the end of hate. They want destruction, violence, and in the end, death.

    “And I’ll be praying for Virginia, and praying that however it turns out, the cause of liberty comes through.”

    From your lips to His ears, good lady. By all reports, the rally was peaceful. Folks on the ground knew what’s what. A message was sent. Let us see what happens next.

    1. The task is not to beat them down so low they will never raise their heads again. It never was. The task is to make proud, confident, hard working Americans of the ones that can be saved. Forget the true believers. You’ll never get them all, or even most. Work for the ones who’ve been lied to their whole lives. Them with the capacity and the will? They are our future brothers and sisters in freedom.

      Look at Woodstock for our inspiration–not the folks who were trashing the place, but the grownups who went in, dragged out the folks who were laying in the mud dying in the mud from drugs or alcohol, and made sure that they LIVED.

      Some of those folks lived, grew up, and to use a totally different example they cut their hair and got a job, and did good with the second chance they were given.

  28. A fond fantasy I have is of Trump describing the Left as domestic enemies of the Constitution, the legacy media braying in alarm, and then being so eager to justify themselves that they actually do a semi-decent job of teaching the middle what the Constitution means and why they are, in fact, enemies of it.

    They might not ever recover from that kind of shift of the Overton Window.

    -Albert

  29. “When you value fake science that confirms your prejudices over real science, you end up not being able to run a technological civilization.”

    This!
    Thanks, Sarah! That is the key to understanding the ridiculous paradigm underlying much of modern Woke narrative fiction & screenwriting, especially political and science fiction. All of these command-and-control societies with their brilliant, fanciful architectures and perfect advanced technologies, that somehow arose out of people all acting like happy bees in a hive.

      1. Although, with the weird hair, piercings, strange experiments in crochet knitting worn upon heads, the Gucci show (don’t. If you’ve not, just don’t, and be glad of the warning), and so on… They don’t always do a good job of wearing the human suit, to be honest.

  30. Didn’t get to read this until late. Virginia rally is over and it ended without violence.

    On the subject of the Left getting increasingly shrill. One thing we studied back in the Cultural Anthropology class I took in college (needed six credit hours in “Social Sciences” to get my degree in Physics) was “revitalization movements”. Cultures under extreme stress, as in seeing their way of life dying, can react by not just reverting to their fundamental beliefs but doubling and tripling down on them. They get more and more extreme because that’s the only way, as they believe (even if they don’t consciously articulate it) that they can save their culture. It’s the last gasp of a dying culture.

    I believe that’s what we’re seeing in a number of contexts. Radical Islamic terrorism is one. And the far left in the United States is another (don’t know enough about the rest of the world to say whether it applies there, but I suspect it does given how thoroughly the same Soviet agitprop that drove the left in the US was stretched throughout the world).

    1. …needed six credit hours in “Social Sciences” to get my degree in Physics

      Strange how the reverse of that never seems to be true.

      1. Majoring in Anthropology, I was required to take something like 9 credits of physical science. Transfer credits for physics courses taken while a software engineering technology major took care of most of that, and an astronomy course took care of the rest.

      2. It makes sense if you look at the fluffy studies as originally a way to keep otherwise useless grads employed in order to keep the placement stats up. Later, forcing students to take fluffy studies became a way of getting more money from the actually useful students.

  31. Do not yeet until yote upon is pretty much good advice for the nonce. That might change later but it’ll have to be a pretty radical change.

    And I’m seeing signs of things turning in our favor. People who are pretty apolitical shocked at just how corrupt a lot of politicians are. And ready to vote in ways they’d never have considered until recent events.

Comments are closed.