Smelling the Smoke

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

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The night after the election, I found myself on a facebook battle with what I suppose we must call an “ally” (white savior, much? Or in this case het savior?).  I.e. the daughter of a friend took it upon herself to warn us that now that Trump had won, they were going to be going door to door to round up all the gay people and put them in camps.

I confess I would have been more puzzled by the deranged idea if it weren’t for the fact that I had heard this before, about W.  In fact, I more or less walked away from a friendship because this woman was offended at my calling her idea that Bush was going to put all the gays in camps “fever swamps.”

I wasn’t as plugged in when I first came to the US, mostly because my husband was almost aggressively apolitical, but I suspect there was the same nonsense about Reagan, particularly when the crisis hit.

This is because the left has no imagination.  Or perhaps because they’ve gone well beyond trying to sell their idea, which we’ve all known is poison since the soviet union fell (or at least all of those who escaped the public indoctrination camps long enough ago) and into scaring several groups of people into thinking that the other side means them ill.  Which is how we got Biden’s eructation “They’re gonna put you in chains.”

The thing that amazes me about this is how these people — even otherwise intelligent, well informed people — never walk back from the cliffs of insanity.  I mean, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who met the “they’re going to kill all gay people!” panicked people after the election in 16.

So– have any of those people ever walked that back?  One? Just one?  Any of them ever said “Uh. Trump actually has gay people in his administration. I guess I was wrong?”

None that I know of.

And this gives me an insight into how poisonous ideologies bent on totalitarianism take control of people.

For decades we’ve wondered how the Germans, some of the most civilized people in Europe at the time, could have committed the atrocities of WWII.  Honestly, they too don’t seem to know how that happened, and in Germany, among the older people in the eighties, you got the sense of their still not being sure how it got that far.

BTW, I BELIEVE the people within sight and smell of the camps who said they didn’t know what was going on there.

No, I don’t believe they didn’t know, or weren’t able to put it together.  I BELIEVE they’d convinced themselves they didn’t know what was going on there. Because they couldn’t live with knowing, and admitting they’d been supporting and aiding evil would break them. So, in self, preservation, they “didn’t know.” Hysterical denial is a thing.

You see, the people who HAVE to have noticed that Trump isn’t rounding up gay people to put in camps, can’t admit it to themselves, because if they did they would have to admit they were duped and completely fooled.

For instance, the young lady on election night, was telling me that Trump holding up a rainbow flag on stage was a “codded message” because “he held it upside down.”  When we pointed out that a) the rainbow flag doesn’t even have set colors, much less an up and down.  b) there was an inscription on the flag (I THINK LGBT for Trump) and the inscription was right side up, she retreated to “the flag wasn’t made by a real gay person.”  Which…. well. I presume the flag was made in slave factories in China, like so much of such things.  Also, how do you certify a real gay person? Is there a central authority? The mind boggles.

This young lady isn’t stupid. Intellectually lazy, poorly educated, but not stupid.  Which means what?

Well, her peer group, her social credit, the people that pass themselves as trend setters and really smart in her groups, all told her that Trump was going to round up gay people.  To admit they were wrong would have broken her. So. She had an investment in believing it.  It made them tell her she was “smart” and “connected.”  To suddenly doubt them would make her an outcast. And of course, the media sells these points over and over and over again.

And the more you buy from them, the more you realized they’re wrong, the more you have to tell yourself you believe the next big panic to come down the pike.  Because if you don’t, you have to admit you were wrong before.  Your own sunk costs hold you captive.  You can’t admit you were encouraging evil people and supporting them, that you were their willing dupe, so the side you’re fighting must be even worse than you suspected, and it must be horrible 24/7.

I believe this is the key to why the good people on the left — and there are still good people there — are still going along with the insanity.

Craziness after craziness has come and gone, including the fact that they tried to impeach Trump because Biden DID blackmail Ukraine.  Insanity after insanity and obviously cooked evidence.

More importantly things have come out about the abortion factories that are Planned Parenthhood outposts.  Tearing babies out in bits so you can sell the bits for profit, to the corrupt oligarchs of China. Insanity like Kermit Gosnell, or that guy that kept babies in jars in the back of his car and his garage.  This is the stuff of true evil, the stuff of mass murderers, the stuff of horror.  How can people face with this continue saying that we should have late-term abortions, and that it’s the mother’s word that determines if a creature is human or not?  HOW?

More importantly, how can writers of science fiction and fantasy look at aborted-baby-parts sold to China to (supposedly) keep the decrepit communist horrors alive another decade and not go “That’s the stuff of vampire legends. Those weren’t the good guys.”  If they fact that fact, they’ll realize they owe Elizabeth Bathory an apology.

And while on that, China, which has been their beau ideal since the Soviet Union collapsed, a place where, supposedly, communism worked (which in part caused them to decide it’s whiteness that causes communism not to work.), has been revealed as basically as evil and corrupted and as ethnically driven as Hitler’s Germany.  But you’ll still hear “good people” on the left tell you that the Chinese aren’t racist and that’s why they do “so well” in Africa.  I know. I’m related to one of those.

Then there is the multiple insanity of the Obama administration, from Fast and Furious which left hundreds if not thousands of Mexicans dead, on a psychological gambit that anyone out of Obama’s freshman-in-college circle would tell him was not going to work.  Or Benghazi where he let good men die (and went after a man who made a movie about Muslims in the US, where we’re supposed to be able to say whatever we wan, as an excuse) so as not to admit we still had problems with terrorism, and potentially jeopardize his re-election.  And ten the Iran bullshit.  I have to tell you I can’t decide whether Obama was always Iran’s puppy, and simply had to pay back, or if he is just a raging idiot. But it’s one or the other, plus a lot of evil. He flew PALLETS OF CASH to the evil oligarchs of Iran who crush their own people under an iron yoke, while screaming death to the US and Israel.  He did this in exchange for a meaningless promise they wouldn’t develop nukes, which is mind-boggling stupid and evil.  And he thought that was his signature deal, his apotheosis. And the trained seals saw nothing wrong with that.

Then there is the fact he subverted our judicial system and our investigatory agencies to attack his political enemies.

And all this is as nothing compared to 2020, where they — desperate, and realizing that the technology is moving people away from the conditions that foster central control, i.e. packed cities, largely illiterate workforce, repetitive mindless work in large conglomerates run by the same clock — decided to pull all the stops.

The jury is out on whether they meant the covidiocy to be a sophisticated psy-ops.  I’m sure it was just that on the part of China. And very sophisticated indeed, to the point that around February I was very worried.  To be fair, this might be fostered by the fact that the casualties were worst in China due to their truly appallingly bad level of hygiene and pollution.  That said, by March it was obvious to me — and I’m not a trained intelligence officer — that the illness would not be half as bad as they were touting, and would probably amount to “a bad flu.”

I find it amusing that if the CDC is right and the cases in which COVID-19 was primarily responsible for the death of the patient are 6% of the total reported, it comes to exactly my prediction when we were pushed into lockdown: 10k people, more or less.  Which, yes, is very sad, but it’s the number of people who die of the flu every winter.

However, whether our authorities were duped or malicious, no one can pretend at this point that between the continuing semi-lock down and the orders to mask up while there’s no proof the masks do anything, and there is plenty proof they aren’t necessary among school children, it becomes obvious that whatever else this is, it is a malicious attack on our society and economy. An unprecedented attack, never before performed by a sixth column on any nation.

So, why do so many people — particularly on the left — believe that Winnie the Flu has killed 30 million people? Well, because they have to. Otherwise they’d look like idiots.  (BTW it didn’t take a genius to figure out if the homeless and the poorer countries in Africa where China has a presence weren’t dying like flies, the illness was NOT that dangerous.  I know it didn’t take a genius, because I figured it out.  So why did people hysterically fall for it? I don’t know. That one has me stumped. And why are so many people holding onto the lie?  Because they also can’t figure out how they fell for it.

And now we have the riots.  And you need to be a particular kind of stupid and indoctrinated — say a CNN reporter — to believe they’re mostly peaceful.  Most of us who live in blue cities have found our lives changing, our daily routines being calculated to stay out of the path of the crazy (which gives me PTSD from 70s Portugal.)

And there are people defending the looting as “taking back what’s theirs.” Because apparently mostly affluent, college-educated white kids and/or petty criminals have the “right” to whatever they want from stores.  Since that stuff is made by elves and represents no human effort or investment.

Then there was trying to turn Kyle Rittenhouse self-defense shooting into “white supremacy.” Because apparently killing a white pedophile rapist who is trying to brain you with a skateboard means you believe the only good people are blond. Or something.

And then yesterday there were two shootings of Trump supporters. Note that there isn’t any excuse for those.  You can scream they’re “white supremacists” but even if they were, that might be a stupid opinion but it — or black supremacy, or all the other crazy floating around — aren’t capital crimes.  But the truth is, there is nothing to indicate that. They were just political opponents of the left. That’s it. And as much as the left would like it to be otherwise, that is not a capital crime.

So, to the good people of the left: your side has now descended into killing people who disagree with them politically.

And don’t tell us that’s necessary, because otherwise you’ll die under Trump’s iron boot.  His first four years seem to show that means you’ll do well financially and frankly, your primacy in academe, entertainment and the media remained unchallenged.

So why? Why the desperate panic?  Is it because you KNOW now you were duped? Because the accumulation of the things you did in good faith has been revealed to be support for the monsters? And you refuse to admit it — have to refuse to admit it — or you’ll have to break your image of yourself as sophisticated and compassionate?  So you must fight very hard, because another four years of Trump will only reveal to what extent you’ve been duped; to what extent your thought leaders have lied and screwed everyone over?

Is it because you are in MacBeth’s position:

By the worst means, the worst. For mine own good,
All causes shall give way. I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
Strange things I have in head, that will to hand,
Which must be acted ere they may be scanned.
Is it? I would remind you how that story ends. I would also remind you that like the Germans you can choose not to “know” of the atrocities committed in your name. But the more they escalate, the more they will become obvious, and the more the atrocities will mount.

Your side has destroyed the most vibrant economy in the world, and is already killing people with famine in the third world every day.  If allowed to continue, they will bring the famine here.  And they might end civilization.

And they’re shooting people on the streets for having a contrary opinion, even while destroying the work and livelihood of millions.

At which point do you say enough?

None of those death camps could have stayed in business if everyone around, all the decent people, had advanced on them and said “Stop it. Enough is enough.”

All they had to do was admit they were wrong and had supported evil.

So, what will do?  Will you smell the smoke and tell yourself you don’t know what it means?

Or will you have the courage to face your own darkness and walk forth into the night?

585 thoughts on “Smelling the Smoke”

    1. “All the “Wokeness” over everything possible (and mostly imaginary) in the last few years? That’s social signaling by a social group losing power and trying to regain it. The less it works, the more extravagant it will get. “-Sarah Hoyt, in the fabulous essay “Is That A Ship On Your head?”

      Each “reason” for the reeee! and riot is getting more and more ridiculous and thanks to our hostess’s writing I can see why.

    2. One minor nit to pick: the guy trying to brain Kyle Rittenhouse with the skateboard was the wife-beating felon. The pedophile was the first one shot, who chased him and tried to grab at his gun.

      1. “Never bring a skateboard to a gunfight!” 😀
        ———————————
        “What? You’re a Betan! You can’t do—“

        1. I was literally just trying to find a short way to describe all of those involved in the latest batch of shootings– can’t say the sex offender, that is at least three to five that have been in the news this week or two; the convicted pedophile works for the first guy shot by the kid, but “that guy who tried to brain him with a skate board” makes folks think you’re remembering the guy from earlier this summer, and “the wife beater” doesn’t narrow it down, basically ALL of them have domestic violence backgrounds, “convicted violent felon” does little to narrow it down….

          1. Sounds like your average nazi or commie street fighter then. You didn’t find a lot of well adjusted men in either of those cohorts.

                1. Same people who’ve been telling us for years that keeping violent criminals alive and unhurt is more important than their victims’ opportunity to protect themselves. There are areas in which they are entirely consistent.

        1. The shot-by-police-not-dead-guy and dead-skateboard-guy were both violent “domestic partner” abusers. I THINK that still-alive-shot-in-his-pistol-arm guy was, too? Can’t remember.

          All three shot either grabbed or grabbed for the 17 year old’s rifle, though.

            1. Kid got *two* before the still-alive-pistol idiot– and Snopes has been covering for the still-alive-shot-by-police guy by carefully explaining he wasn’t accused of raping a kid.

              I don’t know if they explained he raped his kid’s mother while the kid was sleeping with her, robbed her, and came back a month later to threaten her with a knife, I try to avoid their site for my blood pressure’s sake.

              I somehow doubt it.

              1. I’ve read somewhere that one of the guys was actually killed by a shot in the back (from someone else). Have you seen anything about that? I’m willing to believe someone made it up, but can’t find anything definitive.

                1. I know there was audio of *multiple* shots being fired before, during and after when the kid was firing, there’s muzzle-flash before the kid fell to the ground, and I have read that the convicted sex offender had several more holes than can be accounted for by the number of bullets the kid fired, but I haven’t heard of any autopsies being released as of yet.

                3. Well, he as definitely SHOT in the back:

                  “Dr. Kelly of the Milwaukee Medical Examiner’s Office conducted an office on Joseph Rosenbaum. Dr. Kelly indicated that Rosenbaum had a gunshot wound to the right groin which fractured his pelvis, a gunshot wound to the back which perforated his right lung and liver, a gunshot wound to the left hand, a superficial gunshot wound to his lateral left thigh, and a graze gunshot wound to the right side of his forehead.
                  https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/The-Kenosha-Shootings-Kyle-Rittenhouse-A-Tactical-and-Legal-Analysis-UPDATED-1st-Shooter-ID-d-/5-2362796/

          2. Iirc Mr impersonator was just posessiom while drunk. Although should also add on impersonation of protected class (paramedic is technically a controlled title in most states) or practicing without license and moonlighting (if he had authorization from actual organization was affiliated to to be be involved as such, especially armed and with no official identification, that’s a whole norther dangerous ball of wax). I’m too lazy and not in good place to go look up if had an actual medical license but should be plenty of things to hit with there.

            1. He was arrested for felony burglary in ’13, violated parole, and apparently had some weapons charges, too.

              Haven’t seen the primary documents for that, yet, though. All the results are to the effect that the kid is a firearms felon, which doesn’t survive looking at the law they claim he violated.

              1. Ah. Alright. Only one I was aware of was armed and under influence which was noted as misdemeanor. I’m not in headspace to really look at any of this hence why haven’t tried to pull license if has one since moonlighting is a very easy way to lose job and license

          3. The “shot-in-the-arm” guy not only was trying to grab the 17 year old’s rifle with one hand, he had a pistol in his other.

              1. From the enlarged still I saw, he had a major hole in forearm, but no obviously missing parts. Looked like he had a thumb stuck in the hole. Might have got more holes later.

                No matter… so long as the bad guys collect holes, can’t be too fussy about their caliber.

  2. Pingback: Smelling the Smoke – It's Karl

  3. “They want to put us in chains”

    “They’ll round up gay people and put them in camps”

    And I remember: they always always ALWAYS accuse others of their own crimes, or intended crimes.

    I never really understood till recently why it is “satan” means “accuser.”

    1. “SJWs always project” (2nd law?)

      Or as I used to say ‘way back in the oughts, whenever you hear a proggie screaming g bloody murder about something a conservative is (or might be) doing, the issue isn’t ethics, it’s patent infringement.

        1. I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees this. I’ve taken several times to addressing Facebook frogwits, when they accuse the right and/or the innocent (Rittenhouse et al) of the sort of barbarism they and theirs are on camera doing, or on record advocating/boasting of/whatever, as “Captain PowerPoint!”

          Or simply declaring that “The PowerPoint is strong in this one!”

  5. Re: Kyle Rittenhouse. I saw the other day somebody making the point that if there weren’t so much immediate camera coverage, then they might have really had a chance of making the narrative of a white supremacist who crossed state lines with a gun to hunt innocent protesters stick.

    Heck, they might even have been able to make the murder charges stick!

    And the mainstream would have a new villain and new sets of martyrs ready to go.

      1. They started killing their political opponents earlier than this. There was that young woman who was stalked and killed by BLM, shot from a pedestrian footbridge because she said ‘All Lives Matter.’ They didn’t murder her outright because she and her partner were armed, and the BLM had accosted them while they were out with their child, walking, and minding their own damn business.

        The media suppressed that hard. I’ve been angry since and have sort of stopped paying attention to the news because I figure at this point now, you’ll have a violent response as an inevitability, given the Left demanding obeisance at the cost of your lives.

        1. The MSM are in the lying business, but they lie about that, too, unlike honest purveyors of fiction such as Sarah and Stephen King.

          Seen:

          When Was the Peaceful Phase?
          The New York Times has a reported piece on its homepage entitled, “As Guns Get Drawn at Protest Sites, Demonstrators Fear a Volatile New Phase.” Were these past few months the peaceful phase? According to Forbes, 19 people had died amid the protests by June 8 — most of whom were black males. David Dorn — a 77-year-old retired police captain who was shot after responding to a burglary at his friend’s pawn shop and whose wife delivered a moving speech at the Republican National Convention last week — was one of them.

          Nevertheless, the Times insists that only now that “right-wing activists have arrived, bent on countering the racial justice protests with an opposing vision of America” have the protests “taken a more perilous turn.” The authors of the piece also lament “the arrival of firearms” to these demonstrations. Yet 16 of the 19 people who died in the two weeks following George Floyd’s death were killed in shootings.

          For months, while violent crime rates have skyrocketed in cities across the country, outlets such as the Times have brushed aside the lawlessness, insisting instead that the protests were “mostly peaceful.” Over time, that narrative has become increasingly untenable because it is so divergent from the public’s lived experience. The Times has been forced to find a culprit other than the largely peaceful protesters — why not “right-wing activists”?

          If we have all this time been in the peaceful phase, we should all be on guard as we enter the violent one.
          –

          1. Obscene:

            Joe Biden’s Neat Trick
            Biden’s speech yesterday will help him, but he was careful to denounce violence without naming anyone on the Left responsible for the violence and while making it sound as if it’s been right-wing militias driving the disorder,

            Ben Shapiro noted this here:

            Ben Shapiro@benshapiro
            Joe Biden name-checked “white nationalists” once, “white supremacists” once, “right-wing militias” twice and “armed militias” once in his supposedly unifying anti-violence speech yesterday. He did not mention Antifa or BLM. This is gaslighting and cowardice.

            Meanwhile, progressives are now shamelessly reframing the debate. As the headline of a Michelle Goldberg column puts it, “Biden Condemned Violence. Why Won’t Trump?”

            This is completely ridiculous. Trump shouldn’t have tweeted support for the vehicular counterprotest in Portland, but he’s denounced the violence in the harshest terms since the outset. And, by the way, in following much of the media coverage, you would have missed that it was a member of Antifa who shot and killed a counterprotester, not the other way around.

            The answer to the mayhem is for authorities to deploy enough force to completely control the streets, to make ample arrests, and to vigorously prosecute everyone charged. Portland now has a long history of doing none of the above.
            –

    2. Are you sure the murder charges won’t stick?

      Do you believe our courts, especially in blue states, aren’t corrupt enough to exeute him as a warning to the rest of us?

      I don’t want to believe they are that corrupt, but it’s a 50/50 proposition anymore. Look at the speed with which he was arrested and charges compared to Portland where there is no official suspect.

      2. Peter Grant had a really good post on knowing the law on self-defense. Links to books on the topic by Actual LawyerTM included. Highly recommended.

        https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2020/08/saturday-snippet-self-defense-and-law.html

        I’m only part way through book one, but I’ve found a serious flaw: Nothing in the law appears to cover Rooftop Koreans. That is, the literal reason for the 2nd Amendment: to wit, a well-ordered militia that forms up to protect a settlement neighbor small town from British Injun Mostly Peaceful Protesters. Mr Grant, being still a paper American doesn’t twig to this. (Really a shame that the Grants don’t have kids.) Which is fine, except that it implies that most Americans for that bill too.

        So while we’re channelling the bard* – The Law is an ass.

        Also, via Vox Popoli – Heartiste (probably from Gab) points out that when that heroism of the “keep Antifa from burning down the town next door” stripe is not usually pragmatic. White Rose societies rarely are.

        *Watched Much Ado with the DP last night. Shakespeare is so based.

        1. I no longer trust the law to operate on any principle besides “Democrats/leftist good; everyone else bad”. Between the Flynn ruling, the catch and release of rioters, and the arresting of those who even indicate they’ll defend themselves, much less do, the LEOs and the court have decided to be neutral at best and on the other side at worst.

          We are on our own once the shooting spreads.

            1. Let me clarify. Like or dislike the cops but the legal system is already set up to be multilevel with the annointed (rulers) on top of the pharisees (lawyers) on top of those who can pay the pharisees on top of the rest of us. In some areas and cases there is also the leper class. In some areas, I believe, the line of defend yourself and become an outlaw is already crossed.

              Once that happens, it doesn’t matter if you were on your knees with a gun to your head when you managed to turn tables. Don’t turn self in, accept that your life is over. All you can do is make life miserable for the enforcers.

        2. *cough* “The law is a ass” is Charles Dickens.

          For a great legal commentary on current events, Viva Frei and Robert Barnes do a great Sunday podcast on Youtube. Viva is a Canuck (but I think he did work/part of his education in US) and Barnes is a great conservative lawyer doing a lot of cases in the news (some of the Covington kids, etc.)

          And I completely agree with all the comments on leftist/progressive projection. That’s their pseudo imagination. Or maybe it’s pseudo empathy. They aren’t actually competent in putting themselves in someone else’s shoes.

          2. Did I not hear that the lawyer who handled Covington volunteered to represent Kyle? (I wasn’t paying attention…)

            1. Better, actually– he volunteered to MAKE SURE he’s got good representation, free, which means he’s getting someone who knows the state(s) criminal law.

        3. > town next door

          The number that keeps coming up with Rittenhouse is “12 miles.” That might be a lot to an urbanite, but I haven’t had a job with a commute shorter than that in 35 years. Only one friend in meatspace is closer than that. I drive that far to the lumberyard, and *much* further for most medical care. The nearest emergency room is further than that.

          Just because Rittenhouse’s address and bed were across the state line, doesn’t mean he might not spend most of his time in Kenosha. They keep trying to make it sound like he was some kind of Antifa goon bused in from Chicago.

          And while the preponderance of evidence are that he’s a good kid and has impressive real-world combat skills, if the reports that he’s 17 are correct, he’s a MINOR. Which means even if he’s tried as an adult, his parents are in deep doodoo, and he’s also dragged any other family members into it. Even if they decide not to go forward with the murder charges, they can still light him up on multiple felonies. Which will make him a second-class citizen, one step above the sex offenders. His Constitutional rights to vote and own firearms will go up in smoke if even one of the charges sticks, and it will limit employment opportunities for the rest of his life. And, bet your ass, the two goons he shot are going to be bringing civil suits, and the family of the one he exterminated. And depending on the laws of the two states, his parents might get dragged into that, too.

          As a minor, he made a lot of choices that weren’t legally his to make.

          1. Two are dead, one wounded, and the injured guy is on video with a gun while running after the kid, while walking up, while pretending to surrender, and then when pointing that gun at the kid who is on the ground, and STILL IN HIS HAND when there isn’t a muscle on his arm anymore.

            By the state law, unless the rifle was a short barrel, the kid’s fine in carrying it.

            …basically every felony they’ve tried to throw at him, thus far, has been specifically identified and debunked via video evidence from the guys who were trying to kill him.

            And he’s got lawyers who have a strong interest in him being completely exonerated, so they can sue the **** out of the folks now calling him nasty stuff.

            1. But will the law be the controlling factor or will the trial by media. I go back to same thing I said for almost all of these cases back to st. Skittles. Stupidity is not illegal. If Z followed all the way to house it would be trespassing, maybe minor stalking. Tactically stupid but not necessarily illegal or threat of lethal force. Same with mccloskys. It all might have been tactically stupid but not illegal. But both had lives ruined because media took the side of the aggressor. The government will find a loophole to charge. Same reason SDNY will eventually put trump family in prison for failing to dot an i on some business filing. We live in banana Republic without the damned bananas

              1. “Saint Skittles” is exactly the case to look at.

                After the psychos failed to destroy Zimmerman, the media took the lawyer’s word and reported it as truth.
                And were able to do it for months before anybody kicked back.

                Now for this mess, they tried to do the same with the shot-by-cops-not-killed guy, and then slam the kid who was targeted by the attacks.

                It didn’t even last a day before some of the media broke ranks about the kid (trying to get ahead of the videos that were already out).

                They didn’t even manage to control the resisting-arrest-while-being-a-violent-criminal-with-a-deadly-weapon guy for a SINGLE WEEK.

                Folks are far, far less invested in what they “know,” now.

                1. And to this day, Mr Zimmerman is a hunted man with a target on his back. Who cares what the law says?

                  1. Obviously, they do.

                    Because they had to bend over backwards to destroy him legally…and failed.

                    They only managed to destroy his life as a secondary effect, and burned up a LOT of good will to do so.

                    His case was them not being able to get what they wanted after destroying the previous “stuff that worked.”

                    And they’re burning up their resources faster, and faster, and faster.

                  2. And as soon as they find the law with which they can win he will end up in genpop. And the DA will be the one handing the shiv used to execute him to the killer figuratively if not literally

            2. Also Facebook, YouTube and others are NOT allowing anyone to support him. Only those against him have a voice. They are trying to silence everybody else. They are having troubles doing it but things are disappearing. Also the Media has been extremely one sided and tries to demonize Kyle at every turn. I believe that this will make the libel cases easy if Kyle wins the criminal case. It is possible that he will not be extradited because the charges are on their face ridicules and disproved by the videos.

              1. The attempts to silence are not working, too.

                Yeah, make it harder– but still don’t work.

                NONE of my relatives on FB pushed the original line. Not even the gal who routinely posts stuff Snopes has debunked from the Left.

                They did share the photograph of that poor, older man who was bleeding copiously.

                Only one of the liberal not-a-relatives even tried to push the “the kid is horrible” thing, and it vanished after I pointed out the relevant laws. And that she drove further to work than the kid does, and he works in town.

          2. Yes. I agree: the penalty for going up against the mob to defend your friends and neighbors, instead of keeping your head down and hoping they do not come for you is high. Maybe crazy high.I

            But there’s something not quite right about this line “…As a minor, he made a lot of choices that weren’t legally his to make.” I can’t put my finger on it though, so it I cannot say I disagree. I’ll have to think some.

            1. If they try to prosecute him for murder, they’d have to charge him as an adult, yes? which I’d think would legally sever him from his parents.

          3. OTOH. If he survives the attempts to Arkancide him in jail or railroad him, he can always move to a Red State and never have to pay for his own beers for the rest of his life.

          4. In the first place, I suspect Kenosha’s DA is not a Soros-backed Leftard who doesn’t give a [poop] about the voters. Looking at the city’s Wiki entry, they are represented by a Republican in the US House (Bryan Steil, who replaced the retiring Paul Ryan in 2018) and by Democrats int the WI legislature. Watching Trump’s press conference from there this afternoon I did not get the sense the mayor, District Attorney nor police chief thought they’d gain politically by showing Trump their [bum].

            In the second place … I don’t recall where I saw this last night, but apparently the NY Freakin’ Times has had multiple reporters do a careful analysis of the timelines from multiple video sources and they’ve published their conclusion exonerating Rittenhouse. This strongly suggests that no Kenosha jury is likely inclined to convict a seventeen-year-old lifeguard.
            –

        4. Montana law on Rooftop Koreans:
          ===
          45-3-103. Use of force in defense of occupied structure. (1) A person is justified in the use of force or threat to use force against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that the use of force is necessary to prevent or terminate the other person’s unlawful entry into or attack upon an occupied structure.

          (2) A person justified in the use of force pursuant to subsection (1) is justified in the use of force likely to cause death or serious bodily harm only if:

          (a) the entry is made or attempted and the person reasonably believes that the force is necessary to prevent an assault upon the person or another then in the occupied structure; or

          (b) the person reasonably believes that the force is necessary to prevent the commission of a forcible felony in the occupied structure.

          45-3-104. Use of force in defense of other property. A person is justified in the use of force or threat to use force against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that the conduct is necessary to prevent or terminate the other person’s trespass on or other tortious or criminal interference with either real property, other than an occupied structure, or personal property lawfully in the person’s possession or in the possession of another who is a member of the person’s immediate family or household or of a person whose property the person has a legal duty to protect. However, the person is justified in the use of force likely to cause death or serious bodily harm only if the person reasonably believes that the force is necessary to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

          45-3-110. No duty to summon help or flee. Except as provided in 45-3-105, a person who is lawfully in a place or location and who is threatened with bodily injury or loss of life has no duty to retreat from a threat or summon law enforcement assistance prior to using force. The provisions of this section apply to a person offering evidence of justifiable use of force under 45-3-102, 45-3-103, or 45-3-104.
          ===

          https://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/title_0450/chapter_0030/part_0010/sections_index.html

      3. All it takes is one person on the jury that understands basic self defense. He’ll have that.

        1. Provided that juror has any confidence that their entire family won’t be doxxed 5 minutes after they are picked.

          1. Kenosha isn’t exactly Antefa friendly at the moment. Any such juror would likely have the means to defend themselves and their family and have more than a few neighbors willing to help.

        2. A competent* prosecutor will take care of that problem in voire dire. Most cases are pretty much won or lost in jury selection.

          *competent in this case refers to doing what it takes to win, not understanding their responsibility to uphold the spirit of the law and Constitution.

          1. Which is why a competent defense lawyer would make sure there was one. The prosecution doesn’t get to have it all their own way on the jury.

      4. Jury will likely let him off. A jury in Kenosha will likely find him Not Guilty. A Hung Jury is the worst likely outcome.

      5. I think that with the quantity of evidence, they won’t dare convict him. They may be pretty damn dumb, but I believe they’re aware enough to know how BAD that would turn out.

        Especially since the New York Times, of all places, posted a timeline that showed how everything played out and showed that he was defending himself.

      6. Nope. DA ain’t gonna back down. And jury will have someone on it just wanting to destroy him for shooting protected people. The black letter law doesn’t matter. Just power.

        Meanwhile portland shooter will get off scot free.

    3. in this case, and others that have happened lately, the “victims” are exposed by their own side bragging on what they are doing, by live streaming their “good works” bashing someone over the head or pointing a rifle at a random person, from multiple angles, not to mention the fools think this shows their versions of reality are extant.

      1. Notice how the social media oligarchs have no problem with leftists openly inciting directed violence and posting videos of their violent attacks on political opponents while they ban conservatives and libertarians who denounce leftist violence?

    4. I find it telling that we don’t have similar footage from the Portland killing.

      My guess is that the videos are primarily from Antefa. In Kenosha they thought they could sway public opinion by releasing the footage. They did, just not in the direction they wanted. Now they’re going to be cagier about what they release. Hopefully they’re still uploading video on the fly to protect it if their cameras are confiscated. That will provide a means for a defense team to recover the video, even if the ones shooting it don’t want them exonerated.

        1. Some of them do learn. Not enough to question their religion, but enough to change tactics at the margins.

        2. Well, they’ve recently had people posting on Twitter telling BLM activists to STOP posting photos and videos, because it’s affecting the Biden campaign polling.

    5. Unfortunately the prevalence of cameras is also what allowed the lies about Jacob Blake to take hold before the truth could be told.

  6. Various commenters have pointed out, on many examples of left-wing claims that Trump would do evil thing X if he got power, that these are in fact projection. They are actually things THEY would like to do, and because they want to, they assume others would also do them if elected.

    1. Have done. Trump hasn’t started any wars and has kept the killing to a minimum. Theybseem to like wars as long as they’re never won. Good for business is war and politicians like to feel important.

    2. Some of my co-workers believe that anyone – including a black Mexican “dreamer” (aka child whose parents brought him to the U.S. illegally), who they brought in to “teach us” DIE, is a potential neo-Nazi, merely for stating that when talking to someone who believes that national borders matter “It is important to listen, empathise, and try to understand.”

      I note that this gent started his talk with the “We are on [Names of our local Amerindian tribes and Nations ancestral land spiel. Yes. He took the time to look it up. Not all Californians …suck] He’d clearly thought about what it meant to be a wanna-be Mexican coloniser/conqueror of the place that the United States has colonised / conquered (Oh the antique justice! In order to prevent the intermarriage ala Brasil we advertised for East Coast bride ships, and swamped [30%] the territory with Swedes). He understood the conflict.

      That makes him a Nazi.

      No thinking for you Brown man! No history!

      Bigotry is real. No matter how smart God made you, or what heights of education you’ve climbed, it WILL make you stupid. [Racism] is a wicked joke.

  7. It is a characteristic of the insane that they believe themselves the sane ones.

    Of course, nobody has ever accused me of an excess of sanity.

    Sadly, one way or the other there is coming a great cleansing of society.
    –

  8. Meanwhile last night’s Antifa/BLM rioters in Oakland were chanting “Death to America”. The violence the left is engaged in against political opponents and their desire for a violent Marxist revolution was very clear when they were marching and chanting “no borders, no walls, no USA at all” months after Trump took office. The Democrats have committed themselves to this agenda and sadly they have no intention of doing anything other than having their paramilitary ramp up the violence against their political opponents.

    This is about seizing absolute permanent totalitarian power, nothing less. When the senior most elected official of the Democratic Party declares the entire opposition party and every citizen who votes for Trump to be an “enemy of the state” and “domestic enemies” it is very clear they are playing for keeps and WILL send people to mass graves to achieve their goals.

    Anyone who thinks this has a happy ending hasn’t been paying attention. I simply do not see how widespread chaos, conflict and civil war are avoided, as the Democrats have made clear that they will not accept the election results if they lose (as they should) and that if they win it will be full open season on their political opponents. There is simply NO-ONE in the Democratic Party who is willing to talk them off the ledge.

    1. I simply do not see how widespread chaos, conflict and civil war are avoided

      At this point the question “are we in a Civil War?” is purely one of semantics.

      1. If it comes to that, it would be more of a civil war than the attempted secession of 1860. This time we really are fighting over control of national civil government.

        It has been done at the state level — see: The Wilmington insurrection of 1898, when Democrats in NC overthrew a Republican government, rewrote a state constitution and installed themselves in power before Washington could react. That lead to the foundation of the regime that became known as Jim Crow.

        Whether it becomes a war is not yet determined. Right now it is insurrection, it is rioting, but not yet war. It depends on whether (ans how) we fight back.

        AG Barr has been impressive thus far; if Trump is reelected I expect there will be deep and serious investigations into the underwriting of these “mostly peaceful” protests, and of the efforts to game our voting processes. There must come a cleansing, one way or another. If we do not clean and reinforce our systems there will be a cleansing of the sort requiring camps, and it won’t be American constitutionalists running them.

        It will be the political party which gave us Jim Crow.

        N.B. – because that video is from Vox it promulgates the long-standing lie that Southern Republicans and Democrats have exchanged positions on the Left/Right spectrum.
        –

        1. Haven’t they, though? The original Republicans were for higher taxes, bigger gov’t boondoggle spending (canals and railroads, mostly in the North), and a strong central gov’t. They even had honest to God communists in the original “GOP”. The democrats of the time were for less taxes, less gov’t spending, state’s rights, and even term limits! On the issues of money and power (what the Left cares about) they DID switch.

          Only on issues of civil rights and racism have the party’s stated consistent. Important to us, but just boob baits every election cycle to the Leftists.

        2. It is instructive to compare the Wikipedia and Infogalactic versions of events. Who knew that “white Democratic Party insurgents” were “white supremacists” ??!

      2. We aren’t in a ‘War” until the side opposing the Antifidiots starts fighting back in an organized manner.

        We’ll be able to tell because of the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Left when that happens.

        The average weekend pickup game of basketball is more organized on a street level than these Antifa riots. Antifa may have organization behind the scenes, but they have no tactics more sophisticated than ‘mob and pummel’.

        At this point I am irritated enough to be looking forward to somebody introducing these rabid c children to a (to them) new concept;

        Volley Fire.

          1. I don’t believe that is a good idea. Shoot them, don’t burn them (unless you use their own Molotovs). It is better for us. No bombs, no fire bombs. We need to be better than that.

            1. Firearms are precision tools, inappropriate to deal with a mass such as a mob.

              Fire is a bad plan though – too much risk of it getting out of control. That said, nothing says “get off my lawn” quite like several thousand ball bearings propelled at high speed by esplosives…

                1. OTOH, a half-litre soda bottle, filled with small pea gravel with a M80 or even just a cherry bomb at the center, lobbed over the front ranks into the crowd, ought to incentivize dispersal.

            2. Depends on the tactical situation. Bombs are weapons, as are guns. One can build a case that they are the wrong tactical weapons in this situation but it has to be built.

        2. My expectation is that somebody who understands the situation (are you reading this, Colonel K?) will engineer a situation in which there can be no doubt that antifa was aggressor and earned their punishment. Say something along the lines of a soccer mom & kids in her van with its MAGA stickers get cut out of traffic by an antifa pack and she ends up driving into a cul-de-sac with them in pursuit. She stops her engine, ad gets out to face them down, shouting defiance, telling the kids to run between the houses, when out from the shadows emerge the MAGA Defense Force, armed with paintball guns carrying highly unpleasant loads (backed by a cordon of more conventionally armed troops.

          Loads in those paintballs to be determined, I suppose. It could be caustic chemicals, or perhaps concentrated skunk stench designed to cling to a person for days. Or (my favorite) a non-soluble adhesive, followed by bombardment with feathers …
          –

    2. I’ll admit to not paying attention.

      Sure, targeted assassinations, because they are broken in the head idiots.

      That is not the same as saying that there is no peaceful way out. The current tolerance of violence is at least partly fashion, and when they have to believe in ‘white supremacist infiltrators’, when that Andrew Sullivan idiot is called a fascist for saying that civil disorder that only hurts minorities is wrong (which claim of facism implies that the Civil Rights Movement was fascist), the fashion will change. Okay, I have no theory that can reliably predict exactly what changes will occur, or show it leading inevitably towards peace. It is still physically possible to have subsequent steps that are not vastly more bloody, and not leading us to vastly more bloody consequences.

      I also think there is grounds to argue that there are in fact more than just semantic differences between this and a real civil war.

    3. by declaring us “enemies of the state” at this point really means there’s no point not to start shooting Democrats if they happen to take back power. I fear this republic is already lost.

    4. Rioters in Oakland?

      The Speaker of the House of Representatives on national television called the President and Republican members of Congress domestic enemies and enemies of the state.

      There can be no peace. If they lose they will start a war and if they win they will try an liquidate us.

      The war is coming and, at this point, can’t be avoided. We’re all in the starter blocks waiting for the gun.

      1. I have a dream…

        MaligNancy loses the election, tries to have the winner imprisoned on false charges, and winds up getting dragged out of the Capitol building in handcuffs, kicking and screaming.

        New York Times, Washington Post and CNN denounce the ‘right-wing coup’ and call for ‘protests’.

        1. My dream is that God will have mercy and thwart the wicked, embolden the faithful and allow the remnant to reclaim our country for the true, the beautiful, and the good.

          Oh? Like Emeth, you desire the Logos but you believe my understanding of it is flawed-? You are covered, dear one. Unless your definition of “flawed” includes “I want/need to betray my friend / my husband” etc. And therefore I reject your God, and need… a flexible truth. And the ugly needs to be called pretty. You, poor sod, have a hard row to hoe.

          But I pray that whatever betides, the dream of a New World Christendom, aka the UDA, can live, and be renewed, or reborn.

          1. My *dream* harmonizes with Overgrownhobbit’s. My malicious little “don’t *exactly* want it buuuuuuuut…” fantasies, on the other hand… 🙂

          2. Heh. I am inclined to pray that they each of them repent and find their way t heaven.

            But I have thought long and hard about what true repentance entails.
            –

      2. Evil exists.

        That’s…I’m a freaking atheist and that was my first reaction.

        It’s the only descriptor I can dredge up to label something so repellent. So absolutely shameless. I mean, I knew they always accuse others of their own crimes, but this…

        This is…

        Evil exists.

        2. Having been an atheist before, I get you. One cannot look into the depths of man’s inhumanity and *not* recognize this without becoming closer to it than is ever wise.

    6. Remember that most of the electorate doesn’t follow politics that closely. They’re just now waking up to what the Democrats and their supporters want. We also have a very robust tradition of transfer of power via elections, something that’s lacking in countries where coups and revolutions are successful. If Trump wins, which I think is all but guaranteed at this point, the people as a whole will stop supporting any group that refuses to acknowledge that. Wrapping up the Antefa/BLM riot industry will take time and there will be bloodshed, but it won’t seriously threaten the Republic.

      What worries me is if the Democrats can get close enough to cast doubts on the legitimacy of Trump’s reelection. Especially if they can keep some of the big purple states, like Pennsylvania or Michigan, from declaring a winner. By law the Electors have to meet on December 14th this year and cast their ballots. If a state hasn’t chosen by then they don’t count and the 270 victory criteria goes down accordingly. But that’s not well known. If some states don’t certify their vote until after December 14th, especially if they certify for Biden, there could be a popular sense that Trump’s election wasn’t legitimate.

      I guess we have to make sure that it isn’t close.

  9. Re the WuFlu part of the psyops and a tale of two nurses. Both nurses should have had the same mask training right? And both nurses should still be networked because that’s how nurses roll, right? But one nurse (my sister in law) when I question the numbers and the whole mask virtue signalling screams about how bad it is to die of covid. The second nurse asked her working friends and during the lockdown when the hospitals were closed entirely here, the maximum number of covid patients at one time in the Henderson hospital was…..20. And she was trained throughout her career that if you wanted to stop a virus that you used an N95 mask.

    1. Nurses vary.

      Raconteur Report, who savagely (it is his default state. Look. You either like bland, or you like spicy. I like opinionated [redacted]) rejected my plans bak in 2/2020 for home mask-building on purely experiential and scientific grounds. As a result my sisters and I dropped some serious coin back in mid-March? to get my parents the real deal n95 and n100 respirators so they could go out and still see their doctors w/out getting the Wuhan Gurgling Death.

      Now he’s All Mask. Alla Time.

      Why do those cloth masks and K”n95″ knock-offs become semi-permeable membranes now? Why hasn’t he gone All FaceShield AllaTime? (Note to self: Weds Misc cartoon stat) which, in the absence of a competent populace / admin would check the spread of airborne disease? Why go balls to the wall for a protocol which requires near-perfect compliance (Homeless. sBLM Most!y Peaceful Protesters. Mass transit. New Americans. Hahahahahahahaha!) + non-available resources (try buying an n100 respirator. I dare ya) to work?

      And you wonder why the kiddos get sucked into commie-ville?

      God alone knows. But the pervasive gas-lighting and will-to-believe is real. As Mr. Chesterton pointed out “..they’ll believe in anything. “

  10. Sarah, what I’m seeing of FakeBook is that any Trump supporter is a racist Nazi until proven otherwise, and should be attacked on sight. And these are people I’ve attended conventions with, etc.

    2. Those would be people not to attend conventions with in the future. Assuming we’re ever allowed to have them again.

        1. They don’t that level of commitment. The main thing you’d have to worry about are weaponized zero tolerance policies being used against you. Petty harassment and backstabby BS is more their style.

    3. Yep. And if anything like ones I’ve seen it includes staff and security. If they deci free to call you a fascist you cold be stabbed, shot, or kicked to death in middle of dealers den and only concern would be how to roll you into a carpet, sanitize, and dump you somewhere that they aren’t blamed

    1. We won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but I’ve heard some people suggest that the MolotovPedo’s death may have been friendly fire. There were at least 2 rioters with guns on the scene in the videos, Lefty and an unidentified one.

      1. The dwarf was shot four times:

        * pelvis / groin (thought to be first hit that sent him crumpling)

        * chest, I think

        * grazing head wound

        * downward travelling shot entering the back. (this would be as he was almost crumpled and Kyle was still shooting)

        In addition to Kyle the Defender’s string of shots we have:

        * 1 shot just before Kyle ventilates the dwarf. This is thought to be grey-camo-pant guy seen in various videos, done as a provocation.

        * 5 shots of unknown origin just after Kyle shoots.

        1. Do you have a link to a reasonably trustworthy video? I’d like to see/hear for myself…

              1. Who’s upset that the paedophile got pink misted? First I’ve heard of that, but it stands to reason with Weinstein and Epstein, etc…

  12. We are further down the road to chaos than it appears. In believeng things which are not true, the Prog Left has backed themselves into an intellectual corner, where they can not change direction or belief without admitting their errors.
    Since they have also defined questioning their beliefs as lethal heresy, they are locked into those errors of fact, logic, and history.
    Why this is now worse, and will continue to worsen, even if, as I pray it happens, that Trump is reelected, is that their power structures and financiers have given them permission to act violently towards everyone not them, and those not sufficiently enthusiastic about the violence.
    Robiespierre anyone?
    The book Neighbors, by Jan T. Gross, studied a village in Poland which had, since the 1400s, been about half Jewish and half not, and which had for that time, basically got along.
    The Nazis took over, and gave the non-Jews permission to extermiate their Jewish neighbors, which they did.
    The book explores how little official pushing it took to make the non-Jews feel that they were doing a good thing by killing their neighbors for the Nazis.
    I see unfortunate parallels in our society today. The genie of political and street violence is out of the bottle, and is hungry.
    The political violence of the 1960s and 70s sank into the rising economic tides, and into the Long March. The Long March is here, and the economic tide seems to be going out.
    Time to muddle through as best we can, hold onto our scraps of Flag, and build anew after the Troubles pass.
    John in Indy

    1. I will have scraps of flag to mail out by the middle of September. We decided (after consults) it is a respectful way of disposing of a worn out flag.
      And if they bring comfort to anyone, send me an address by one of my emails. They’ll be sent out by Sept. 15.
      Again, if they’ll bring comfort….

      1. In our little neck of the woods we burned them. Respectfully. Not at all how it sounds.

        In the misty woods of yesteryear, the boy scouts were given the duty. For a full day and a night, each flag was flown on staves brought for that purpose. Vets came by and saluted. Police came by, same. We were expected to stand the watch in shifts, day and night. The fire was built up around dawn, and each flag was set alight, never touching the ground till it was completely consumed.

        We were a small troop, cobbled together from several small towns in the area. For little cubs, I think we gave it as much solemnity and gravity as such small persons could. For such a small place, there certainly were a *lot* of flags every year to retire. I believe that tradition continues, far as I know, depsite the nonsense the hoity-toity Scouting know-betters have tried to foist on it.

        The flag itself is just a colored bit of cloth, itself. The *idea* of the flag, the idea it represents, is worthy of great respect. There is quite literally nothing else in the world quite like it.

          1. How about setting it afire with a mound of dogs at its feet?

            For those who like dogs, Antifa can be substituted.
            –

        2. It was a Boy Scout privilege to burn them. Them or the veterans. We made a big ceremony of it and passed out the grommets after for rememberance.

          1. We always gave the grommets to the local VFW. They were then put into the caskets of vets who died recently. The ashes from the fire were buried

        3. Haven’t heard of Scouts performing the Flag Burning ceremony lately, but we’re not as tuned in to the local Scouting scene locally. Plus we don’t get the local papers which generally publish (something) about the opportunity to retire worn flags. In the past when I know Scouts have been involved, the troops &/or cub packs worked with the local Veteran associations. Full ceremony for each flag, with rotating scouts performing the ceremony.

          I think having a scrap of flag that can be kept as a memento is also a great idea.

      2. My late Mother used to observe, of the ‘Flag Burning’ controversy, that the way she had been brought up, the proper way to dispose of a worn out flag WAS burning.

        I checked an old Boy Scout Manual and she was right.

        Not saying you shouldn’t do your thing, just your comment woke an interesting side-memory.

        1. No. people kept asking for scraps of flag, but I told them I didn’t want to desecrate one.
          Then someone pointed out that disposing of a worn one REVERENTLY with the pieces going to people who keep them as reminders of their devotion to our ideals is a respectful disposal.
          So, it will happen.
          But I knew about the burning. We’ve only had to do it to one, because with CO weather I can’t leave the flag out all the time.

    2. And yet there were also villages where people who hated Jews’ guts did everything they could to protect them. Because curmudgeons are sometimes safer to be around than “nice people.” (And besides, the Nazis were nosy outsiders.)

      1. Someone did an investigation to try and figure out who rescued Jews and why. They were very surprised by the results.

        Idealists? Usually weren’t rescuers, and if they were they usually got caught.

        The people who were effective rescuers had an incident where, “If I do this one thing right now, I will save a life.” And then kept on doing it. And yes, a lot of them were cranky, curmudgeons, and people who didn’t like other people much. They were just adamant that what was happening was wrong.

        I can’t remember the title, but this may be it.

        1. I just read an article a little bit ago by some guy in Australia who was talking about class differences and how expecting the lower classes not to be racist or rough misunderstood their reality where economic pressure was concrete reality instead of an abstract to be virtuous over. But also that those people who used the bad words and complained about this or that group had strong ideas of what was right or wrong and what was *right* didn’t depend on how they felt about anyone. One shared anecdote was about a rough co-worker that leapt forward and saved a Chinese guy from serious injury while the author was frozen in indecision even while the co-worker maintained his anti-Chinese prejudice.

          Because it wasn’t about that.

          1. My grandma couldn’t stand… well, pretty much anybody not Scottish, and that was enough to get probation.

            Hated the English. … Married an English man. (by their figuring)

            Can’t stand Mexicans. Utterly doted on, and spoiled, little Maria in our 4-H group, because… imagine the Wendy’s girl, as a Mexican. Now turn cute from 3 to 12 on a scale of 10. That was Maria. And she was NICE.

            Hated the Catholics.

            By the time she passed, was watching EWTN for the masses, and nodding along with Benedict the 16th as he talked theology.

            Because she was as pig headed as can be, and would do what was right; so she’ll tell you she can’t stand Japanese, and also take food, clothes, blankets, treats and general stuff to the local internment camp during WWII. (Which basically bullied all the other local social structure to do it, too.)

            1. Through circumstances too convoluted to go into my Father’s Mother inherited half a block of downtown Miami (not a good half block). With it she inherited an ‘agent’ who was an absolute Cracker. Could not open his pie hole without letting out a racial or ethnic slur. To her surprise, he treated all the (black, Jewish, Hispanic, etc) tenants fairly. My Father was not surprised 8n the least; the man was too goddamned proud to be unfair, even if he WAS a flaming bigot.

              The backbone of the KKK was always poor white TRASH. The kind who weren’t too proud.

            2. You don’t have to love a person/group to treat them fairly, even kindly. Nor does ostentatiously “loving” them mean you’ll treat them respectfully or even kindly.

              Never mistake the masks we don for the persons we actually are.
              –

              1. We know that– at least for the usual meaning of “love,” as opposed to Christian ethical love– but these folks’ brains shut of at the breath of racism.

        2. I read “The Upstairs Room” by Johanna Reiss many years ago…it’s the tale of another Dutch Jewish girl and her sister who hid with farmers. I remember the family, especially the man of the house, to be somewhat cantankerous but they saved those girls’ lives. Even when the Nazis decided to make the farmhouse their local headquarters.

          1. I’ll take a cranky person who offers to help versus a nice-nice who might be just offering because it’s the expected thing to do, and plans to weasel out of it at the first opportunity.

        3. It also helps to stand up if you aren’t doing it alone.

          There’s an entire country that was close to Germany where the king kept saying, something along the lines of, “You want our Jewish poulation? but we rounded them up and they are working for us. Oh, that train full of Jews headed to the concentration camps? Our camps were closer, so we diverted it to ours.” He could do it because most of the officials, government and church, worked with him. They managed to save almost their entire Jewish population of 50,000. I only recently heard the story, and thought it was amazing, both that they succeeded, and that I had never heard it before.

          This video is from a strongly Christian perspective. https://www.faistudios.org/?sapurl=LytqYmY2L2xiL21pLys5M3p5a3lkP2JyYW5kaW5nPXRydWUmZW1iZWQ9dHJ1ZQ==

          2. Didn’t that Japanese… not ambassador, but guy in charge of an embassy type thing…. he did the same thing, to the point of maiming himself making enough fake papers and throwing them out the window of the train as they were leaving?

            The Nazis were aware of stuff like this happening, too– a LOT of the folks who ended up in the camps were either too loud in opposition, or they got caught, or someone in their group got caught but got away. (Also the preemptive punishment thing for groups that they thought MIGHT resist.)

              1. Yup, Raoul Wallenberg wasn’t the only guy. Several of the diplomatic corps guys did their thing, in all kinds of weird places across the world, and many of them got ostracized by their many governments during and after the war for it. (Or they just got away with it, because they were sneaky and discreet and never let their governments know what they had done.)

                The Japanese vice-consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara, had a particularly hard row to hoe, because of course he was working for the Axis and going directly against his government, and therefore got treated as a traitor even after the war, for a very long time. (And he was a Christian, so he was already regarded as a minority himself, so falling out of the Japanese elite structures made it hard for him to find work.) But now he’s finally regarded correctly as a hero (although he’s also dead, which activates the appeasement of the dead for treating them like crud).

                Apparently other diplomats in other cities across Europe did similar things, but less blatantly, which is why they weren’t so famously ostracized, either. The military attache in Moscow, Yoshitsugu Tatekawa, issued hundreds of visas to refugees and Jews, getting them out of the Soviet Union. But he was a general and senior diplomat, so nobody could disapprove him too much. Saburo Nei at the consulate in Vladivostok also got lots of Jews and refugees out.

                There are always a surprising number of people who want to help, just as there are a surprising number of people who are afraid to help even when it is no trouble, or who do evil when it does them no good.

                1. Was a story I read recently about the liberation of one of the Japanese pow camps after vj. It was a true work camp and not known for niceties and concern was that even after surrender the orders to kill all prisoners would befollowed. What happened was the camp commandant sent most guards away and locked self in command building. Before the prisoners called off the allied food bombings they were supported by th local villagers who they had been made to work for in rounding up wayward food and such from paradrops. Only Once marines landed and were evacuating camp did commander leave barracks and watch.

                  Sometimes an action of nothing is enough to make difference.

          3. I am also saving the videos to check out for my kids’ history. Thank you.

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

            Finding the guy’s information was easier than I thought:

            The memorial museum in Lithuania’s former capital recounts the story of Chiune Sugihara, who was a vice-consul diplomat based at the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas during 1939-1940. Its small collection is housed in the villa that once served as the consulate.

            https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/japan-funds-save-lithuania-museum-diplomat-saved-jews-72103215

              1. That would be Aristides de Sousa Mendes?
                There was a Spaniard too, Ángel Sanz-Briz, Ambassador to Hungary, and an Italian with him, Giorgio Perlasca, who hadn’t even an official possition (he was a honorary Spanish citizen); not to mention the more widely known Swede Raoul Wallenberg.

              2. Aristides de Sousa Mendes, consul general in Bordeaux. He had a Jewish rabbi friend who refused to be saved unless his people could be saved. So the consul-general retreated to his bed for three days, brooded, and then got up and saved everybody. He signed thousands of visas in Bordeaux and Bayonne, assisted by his sons and other refugees, and then was recalled to Portugal in disgrace. On his way home, he signed visas in Hendaye. By the numbers, he may have saved more people from the Holocaust than anyone in the world.

                (The last bit of the story seems to have been transferred to Sugihara, but it was de Sousa Mendes.)

                He was stripped of his diplomatic job, and his 15 kids were blacklisted from government employment. (To be fair, some of them had helped with the visas.) But a Jewish welfare group helped his family survive. He died in 1954. He said, “If one Christian [ie, Hitler] has made thousands of Jews suffer, surely one Christian can suffer for so many Jews.”

                He was posthumously pardoned in 1987. In 2020, he was given a monument in Portugal’s National Pantheon.

                2. FYI the story I heard wasn’t just Bayonne: it seems every time the train stopped (coal trains back then. They stopped for water) even for a few seconds, the train was mobbed, and he flung visas out the window.

          4. I thought I had covered WWII history pretty well in my reading. Completely missed any hint of what’s in this film. Thanks for that link.

      2. Because curmudgeons don’t trust people, unless it’s to be the worst sort, curmudgeons tend to expect and plan for the worst. A lot. Being one of that sort, I can guess the motivation is part “help the innocent,” and a healthy dollop of “p*ss off the ones that are p*ssing me off.” One does not have to be “nice” to do that.

    3. I’m suspicious enough to take the idea of it just taking a little nudge with a large grain of salt– if it was actually that common, it would’ve happened a LOT, not a perhaps of one instance.

      I’ve also read enough dribs and drabs to know that the Nazis and Soviets didn’t just take over Poland, they did a purge of those who could resist*, harvested children, etc, so I went trying to find any other information…and I can’t. Usually, there’d be all kinds of stuff related to it, or being 99% agreement but X point wasn’t hit enough, and there’s not.

      Instead there’s stuff like this:
      https://www.geocities.ws/jedwabne/english/zstapienie_szatana_czy_przyjazd_gestapo.htm

      Which makes objective claims that can be verified

      But it is a fairly recent claim. From right about the time that Russia was working very hard to push the “Poland deserved anything bad we did to them” thing. Checking the reviews for the book, it says that the author didn’t check into the German records (which should be relatively easy to get, now– at least compared to historically!) and strongly relied on Soviet records as “eye witness” accounts.

      * It’s one of the standard reasons that gun registration is evil. They vanished the households that had guns in the records.

      1. Not just a purge. Multiple, ongoing, and waves of purges. From Solzhenitsyn, I gather Stalin practiced it on his own population first.

        1. Poland had committed the unpardonable crime of kicking the tar out of the Red Army in 1920. Now that I understand that, it’s a lot easier to understand the sheer animus of the USSR’s Party against Poland. They didn’t just want to take over; they wanted to make Poland an example.

          1. I never understood it before, because a lot of the Soviet professional soldiers seem to have had no animus toward the Poles. The horsebreeding establishments for Polish Arabians were treated fairly kindly, even though they had been run by the Polish Army. The Soviet non-horse cavalry guys practically adopted the Polish horse guys, compared to the sorts of horrible things I was expecting to hear when I looked into the history.

            So the other reason may have been that the Party knew that some Soviet soldiers admired the Poles for fighting back and winning.

      2. And as a result of the Soviet purges, we got Katyn Forest, which has the unusual history of being a Soviet mass murder revealed to the world by the Nazis when they took the rest of Poland at the start of Barbarossa.

  13. For a large part of this it’s just follow the money I’m afraid. Certainly sport, universities, media, and politicians are owned body and soul by one or several Satans. China is one, Soros is another. They don’t fear Trump imprisoning gay people, they fear Trump will imprison them. They lack imagination. If it ever comes out widely, Trump might be the only thing standing between them and the lamp post.

    I forget which commentator says that liberalism requires not knowing things.

    1. Between the lamp post and the gallows, what’s the choice again?

      Besides, we all know they’ve got suicide capsules in the event it all goes down.

      1. ‘Twould be a real shame to leave them unused, then. Seeing as they went to the trouble and all.
        ———————————
        Some folks can be taught. Others can learn by example. The rest have to piss on the electric fence for themselves.

  15. So, why do so many people — particularly on the left — believe that Winnie the Flu has killed 30 million people? Well, because they have to. Otherwise they’d look like idiots.

    My theory is that because admitting the whole thing is a fraud means they ought to be doing something about it. And doing something about it will cost them friends and status and cause them to be mocked as “COVID deniers.” Much better to pretend you don’t see the truth, assume (hope?) that the disease really is serious and worth going through all of this lockdown for, and just keep your head down and not rock the boat.

    1. This in anecdotal but, it seem that people who buy the COVID narrative hook, line, and sinker also are, shall we say,… uncritical of the Anthropogenic Global Bad Weather Thing as well.

      1. There was a link floating around last week that showed some interesting survey results. Democrats were more likely to think the distribution of SARS2 deaths was far more evenly distributed among the age groups than it actually is.

  16. I never wanted to think this, or say this, but I have to. The time has come for all sane (defined as non-leftist) people to arm up, for self-protection and protection of the innocents. The Rittenhouse example needs to be taken to heart–better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.

    1. I know. I don’t think there’s avoiding the butcher’s bill now.
      It wasn’t our fault. it started before we were born. But it’s coming on our watch.

      1. And history has shown that failure to fight back against tyranny and efforts to impose tyranny, which is exactly what the Democrats and their paramilitary seek to do, results in far more violence and death than fighting back.

      2. We can’t avoid it, but we can hope to limit the damages. Careful excision of the tumors is preferable to radiation treatment which leaves forever damaged our immune system.
        –

      3. I’m still boring through “None Dare Call it Treason.” It’s pretty heavy going since the author provides sources for *everything*… but they weren’t bothering to hide anything before 1964 either. It was just that either the media didn’t report things, or by the time anything got to print it was too late.

        Other than names and dates, there’s almost no difference between 1964 and 2020. Right down to the rioting, which I’d never even heard of before…

      4. “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

        ― Thomas Paine

        2. “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

          ― John Adams
          –

    2. “… better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.”

      The Progressives are the party of Judge Lynch; in the jury box, at least, he is not in full control of procedure.
      –

    3. That point was crossed a long time ago, in the Seattle blob at least.

      The big difference is, if it’s an active mob, they’re less likely to run like hell when they see you aren’t disarmed.

      Having backup seems to still work, though, as long as they aren’t willing to shoot.

      Don’t get isolated.

    4. The problem with “judged by 12” is that it is at the end of a process which *is* punishment, and that process is controlled by one person – the local prosecutor. I have the book and actually took a seminar from Bianca, and the horror stories of stress and financial impoverishment inflicted on righteous shooters even if they are ultimately exonerated are enough to convince me to get out. I’m actively looking for a new residence out of the Portland area. I don’t like the feeling that my somewhat comfortable up-from-working-class white ass makes me a target. I can protect myself from the rioters, but I can’t protect myself from the leftist D.A.

      I’d give you the same advice given to ranchers protecting their livestock from “protected” predators. Don’t be loudly righteous.

      Shoot, shovel, shutup.

      2. I’m not sure where to go – Back home to S. Oregon is still under the boot of PDX, as it has been all me life, and worse now, and most places are going bibbidy. Can’t even quote Crockett anymore, as TX is seemingly going a bit blue.

  17. There’s a kind of cognitive dissidence that humans need to survive. It’s not exclusively on the Left (see the Catholic Church on pedophilia), that has us want to believe that the cause we stand for is beautiful and worthwhile. And, we must ignore the flaws, because those flaws are nothing in comparison to the Cause. It is this belief that makes us stay with people that we shouldn’t-and probably keeps us from strangling our babies at 2 AM after you’ve gotten only thirty minutes sleep and you’re pretty sure that you did everything in the right order.

    (Wife at 4 AM-“Honey, why is the baby wearing a diaper as a hat?”)

    For our opponents on the Left, they’re reaching this point where the ability to justify their positions is becoming unable to connect or work with observable reality. For small, short periods of time, they could make it work-the Soviet Union was the wave of the future (not an overheated Third World economy who’s only good products could only be sold in massive bulk with even more massive discounts). China proved that you could be a socialist nation and have a capitalist economy (and, don’t look at the massive levels of corruption, fraud, and theft that even the worst robber-barons of the 1800’s would stomp on with both feet). And, that Obama was the wave of the future (ignore the fact that the “wave of the future” seemed to only carry urban Democratic voters anywhere, it seemed to be going up a 85 degree mirror-smooth greased slope, and Trump was able to change about everything back in less than a single Presidential term).

    The Left in the US has always had issues-but the last three and a half years, after they thought that they had won and that Hillary! would continue the trip forward into the Gloriously Promised Future…

    Trump got elected. Everything that had promised them victory-the media, the polls, the news programs, all of their friends-had lied and failed them. But…they couldn’t believe that-they should have won! Victory was ordained!

    If they lost, it wasn’t because their cause was wrong. It was because it had been stolen from them. They came up with a whole bunch of interesting theories, you have to admit. Russia used magical Internet hacking to flip the election. The Alt Right committed vote fraud (despite vote fraud being traditionally a Democratic thing). Gamers Gate. Comics Gate. Massive Right Wing Militia Conspiracy. And, for three and a half years, they have had the most massive hateboner, with balls so blue Papa Smurf is asking to let his people go to get anything on Trump that would prove that he stole their election.

    And, that is driving them mad. Both “angry” and “insane” mad. We’re seeing the results right now-the Crow Flu is giving them a chance to act out all of there “do what I say, now!” dreams (they’re still waiting on the Hugo Boss-fitted uniforms). A poorly-done arrest that happens every day in the big urban cores, with one of the usual end results (suspect died of a drug OD that would have happens anyways) was used as an excuse to do practice rioting for when Trump wins the election this time around. And, a kid who probably shouldn’t have been there defends himself-both legally and morally-is being used as an excuse to start killing “Trump supporters” in the streets.

    Most people, when the hit cognitive dissidence failure, either double down (“this time, I’ll win!) or they have a moment of clarity. But, the moment of clarity must have space to exist, and the Left has made very sure that expressing any doubt instantly puts you on the outside. Even mild worry is turned into a reason for destruction.

    Yea, we can smell the smoke. I’m only hoping we can stop the isolated fires before they burn everything.

    2. Communist China seems to have slipped into Fascist China. Where the economy is run by “private” business at the behest of the political class for the benefit of the political class with just enough of the profit going back to the “business owner” to keep everyone happy. With the world economy crashing, I doubt they can keep that up much longer.

        1. FYI Europe is not much different. The “good families” are back in charge. They’re just not as obviously murderous. It’s more the soft-murder of people voting with their wombs, etc.

          1. What I’m finding hilarious will be the day when the Good Families in Europe realize that the replacement Moslem population are not as shy and retiring and obedient as the local population is.

            And, they lack enough of the ambitious lower-middle and middle-class natives to provide the storm-troopers needed to keep the Moslems under control.

              1. Or ambitious native children that don’t realize that there are better chances and places to go-like the United States or Canada-than staying where they are.

                In a perverse way, the Good Families should be thanking the United States and keeping us the way we are. We’re the overflow culvert for their people that can’t find a way up otherwise.

                  1. You’ve betrayed the Good Families, for the purposes of the human race.

                    When we get to the Ninth Circle of Hell, we’ll yell bad carp puns at each other until they let us go. Because even Satan has some standards.

                    2. He won’t. None of the lawyers he has have access to the current case law. I think we’ll be wandering the Earth forever because we’re too annoying for Hell and too demanding for Heaven.

      2. That’s pretty much how things worked in the Third Reich. The higher Party members wound up as partners or outright owners of most of Germany’s industry; “you’re free to refuse my offer; I hear it’s very nice at Dachau this time of year.”

        The Chicoms also operates under that system, plus the Army itself owns a sizeable amount of China’s production capacity; supplies and weapons systems other countries source through private enterprise, the People’s Liberation Army makes for itself, and exports too.

        1. I’m by no means persuaded that the way China is run now is materially different from the way China has been run by almost every dynasty throughout its revolting history. Maybe the RANGE of enterprises being leeched on by The Court and the Army has expanded a little…

      3. Communist goals using fascist methods with a heavy dose of racism (e.g. the Muslim Uighyers in concentration camps). It is the model that Democrats seek to impose here. This is why I have dubbed it Communazism.

        1. It always amuses me- amuses, because otherwise, bad things- that folks think the culture that is racist towards other people who look nearly exactly like them would be *less* racist towards people that look a lot less like them would be the ideal for racial tolerance in *this* country, without irony.

        2. The only difference between the socialist, the communist, and the fascist is the names they give to the policies they want to implement and how quickly they want to implement them.

          1. The fascists tended to have better taste in male fashion. Hugo Boss beats the hell out of a Mao jacket. That’s how we know that antifa are commies, they have no Style.

            1. …you realize that you just made me see if there was any good cosplay photos of a properly tailored Mao jacket on a pretty girl?

              But, yes. Fascists, for all their sins, tended to be snappier dressers than most commies.

              1. Pretty girls make anything look good, even Mao jackets, though Mao jackets tended to be worn by lefty girls and while lefty girls are easy, righty girls are good looking. 😉😜

                Fascists also design better looking objects generally, or it could just be that the Italians had a big fascist party. Our hostess could tell us since Portugal was fascist, then communist, then whatever they have there now.

                I’m not a big fan of severe classical architecture, it’s all too … fascist or Stalinist but I’d take any number of bad Classical monstrosities over the ugly crap built today. The HUD building in DC, Boston City Hall, LA Cathedral, blech. Everything is ugly.

                2. Brutalist architecture (which I think is what you’re describing) is at the heart of things-“how can we make anything using concrete that only looks like part of the sort of prison that you never bend over in the showers.” Bonus points if it’s made out of cheap concrete that fails amazingly quickly in a few years.

                  1. Mostly but not entirely brutalist architecture. Everything seems to be ugly, public buildings, houses, all of it. bad proportions, no symmetry, badly handled masses, no understanding of light and shade. Architecture has lost its way and is now just academic posturing.

                    2. Actually, there’s a lot of interest in traditional architecture. But there’s also a lot of crazy regulation, and there’s a lot of people who are just dumb. But usually people like a new church or building that isn’t brutalist.

                      I mean, if you have a giant blank wall or ceiling, why wouldn’t you have a giant mural with lots of color and interest? But nooooo.

                      Fortunately, the generation coming up contains a lot of kids who had to stare at giant blank walls, and have some ideas about what to do with them. A lot of churches are getting decorated, and people love it.

                    3. Really awesome thing I’ve seen, people copying all the elaborate pattern-work that use to be inlayed around windows and stuff, and copy it with either stencils or paint stamps/sponges (haven’t seen it put on) with jewel-tones and gold paint.

                      The result is something like this:

                      for a blank wall, or they’ll use paint on windows with that for trim and reverse-engineer painted windows.

                    4. My parish is 1960’s ski lodge. Somewhere along the line skill of hand was lost. I hope the rising generation recaptures it. I’ve seen hopeful signs but the sheer mass of bad ugly building will take years to overcome.

                    1. So did the Soviet Union. One of the big things that I remember about this was that one of the first MiG-25 pilots had a new apartment building/barracks built that was built so badly that the floors started to visibly sag within a year. The fix was to drive “steel” I-beams through the walls to lift the floors up-he used them as improvised pull-up bar.

                      Less than six months later, the floor and the I-beams were bowing again.

                    2. Chinese towns are literally melting right now because the floods have exposed that they built a lot of concrete buildings without any rebar. they call it Tofu dreg building. Buildings, bridges, the works.

            2. Fascists wear uniforms. Commies tend to wear sacks. ‘One size fits all’ — equally badly.

            3. You apparently do not read the Washington Post. Wise move. But you can sometimes read about the Washington Post. Put “M” into your search engine for a selection of articles such as this:

              WaPo Glorifies Antifa In Fashion Spread That Tries, Fails To Make Bike Helmets Sexy
              The Washington Post published a glowing photo essay on Saturday featuring Antifa protestors in Portland showing off their riot gear. The article fawns over the anarchists’ courage to maintain a months-long assault on the city in the name of social justice, violently attacking federal agents and holding public property under siege.

              The piece, authored by Post protest reporter Marissa Lang prominently highlights testimony from several Portland activists sharing their one-sided experiences painting police as violent agents an oppressive state with no mention of word “riot” where protestors have sowed more than 70 days of perpetual unrest, including attempts to burn down a federal courthouse. …
              –

              1. Oops! Forgot to replace my placeholder!

                Put “washington post antifa fashion” into your search engine.

                Right Angle also addressed this, with comparisons of these “Fighters for Morality” in mufti and in costume:

                –

        2. Outright owner in many cases. Senior generals as large shareholders in many others. Outside one or two Chinese firms, the competition is among the different state organs for control not any sort of capitalistic competition.

          It’s like Eastern European football before the wall came down. The army had a team, the secret police had a team, the party had a team and there was a team the actual people rooted for. Dynamo Berlin, the Stasi team, won the East German league every year. Dynamo Berlin lost a European cup match back in the day to Dynamo Moscow, the MVD team. Dynamo for the secret,police, Red Star for the army, it was the same all over Eastern Europe.

    3. > go to get anything on Trump that would prove that he stole their election.

      They’re not really looking for proof, or even credible evidence. They keep hammering at it because, in their world-view, if they say it enough times, it becomes true.

      1. In the same way, having donned the “Trump = Racist” glasses, everything he says and does is seen through those lenses, regardless of the actual purpose.
        –

    4. “They came up with a whole bunch of interesting theories, you have to admit.”

      There is a metaphor to be drawn between your argument and the Democrats’ (mis)management of the Vietnam War …
      –

    5. I can’t remember anyone in the Catholic Church saying that pedophilia is a good thing and I think that’s the difference. We looked the other way but the left is embracing it. Yes, some said that the victims were at fault, and some still say that, but Pedophilia was never and can never be Catholicism. Frankie’s “who am I to judge” when he’s the bloody pope of Rome notwithstanding.

      1. The issue with the Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal is the old saying of “The coverup is worse than the crime.” That’s what bit the Church in the ass, shuffling priests and trying to keep stuff on the downlow.

        Priests engage in pedophilia at a rate less than the general population and less than public school teachers.

        1. There must be an awful lot of pedos then or, more likely, I met a very biased sample, I had occasion to go through the pedo list not long ago Two priests and two Brothers from my high school. Three priests from my parish(one overlapped with the school). One priest from each of my NJ parishes and one priest who had a very large, positive, influence on my life. One Cardinal certainly, —McCarrick was a friend of my mother’s — and one cardinal probably. There was also the priest who was chaplain at my kids school back in the UK. Not to speak of the ones my wife knew.

          I’m a biased sample I admit, my mother’s family founded the order of nuns that taught in my grammar school, my great-great uncle was a papal count whose wife donated the money for a chapel at Saint Patrick’s in NYC, and my grandfather was a papal knight, so I know a lot of priests. The number who turned out to be pedos is stunning.

          1. Apparently stunning in public schools too.
            BUT this also goes by time. The seventies and early eighties seem to have been worst.
            Also these days the ones I get that vibe off of (and warned the boys to be careful with) are hard core liberation theologists.

            1. All the “cool” priests were pedos. My father protected me from that.

              I agree about the 70’s. Post Vatican II was chaotic. It was also concentrated where it was tolerated My old school had a fair few but Cardinal Hayes HS in the Bronx had a huge number. Principal, Dean, Guidance Counselors, priests, brothers, lay teachers, coaches, the whole lot top to bottom.

              I suppose where you find children you’ll find pedos, e.g., the Boy Scouts.

            2. Unsurprisingly, I can’t find it on the Tube, but when that supercut of Biden being handsy with kids was making the rounds, what struck ME was the unconscious tensing of…maybe 80 percent of the parents as soon as he approached? People *know*, even if they don’t know they know.

          2. If I remember correctly, McCarrick was the guy leading an active recruiting/grooming group that kicked out those who wouldn’t join. It was a sub-group selecting for active pedoes. As you put a finger on– the “cool” guys.

            The activists had to start adding in anybody accused, even if it wasn’t credibly accused, and then add in misconduct with adult women to disguise that.

            1. Just so. There was a guy who used to hand out handwritten, photocopied books on the train detailing how McCarrick was having orgies in the cathedral, we though the guy was nuts, and indeed he was, but the fact remains that the guy was right about McCarrick. I wish I’d kept a copy or could find the guy and tell him I was sorry.

              Even after McCarrick was told to stop,ministry he was still at it. Number Two son was Vimpa, fine liturgical word that one, to him at a pontifical high mass at my parish less than a year before McCarrick was finally defrocked.

              Money talks.

              I’m only glad my mother didn’t live to see the day, she loved McCarrick and having her grandson serve his Mass would have been a highlight of her life.

        2. They treated it the way they treated a priest who had trouble with a woman in the parish. Remove the occasion of sin and move on. That doesn’t work with pedos and then the pedos ended up in power and we had those little networks protecting each other.

          1. Huh. That’s the first explanation I’ve heard that makes sense.

            Not all the “cool priests” were pedos. Some were the ones marrying the nuns or teachers (a little late on the decisionmaking, but at least getting out honorably).

        4. From some of the things that I’ve been finding out in research, there was always a bit of an issue with sticking as close on the straight and narrow that the job requires. But, it seemed like during the late ’60s and onward there was a definite effort to create protective cliques within the Church-mostly among the Liberation Theology supporters-and the pedos used this to their advantage.

          (That, and I got to include a priest that got sent to work the local private Catholic high school because he broke his bishop’s jaw when the priest caught him…plowing a new field, shall we say?)

      2. No, but the analogy stands-there are some things that are “not talked about” because it would require us to ask questions about how things are that would make far too many people uncomfortable.

        Most people view this as a failing.

        The Left views this as a badge of honor.

        1. There’s been resistance to the “Lavender Mafia” for a very long time– problem being, it’s counter-culture, and the predators are very, very good at what they do– picking targets, defeating opposition, etc.

            1. The UK priest whom I mentioned being defrocked denounced the US from the pulpit the Sunday after 9/11. I walked out of church, only the second time in my life. My daughter’s Irish dance teacher smacked the priest right in the mouth after Mass. God bless her. The parish went to the bishop and had him removed shortly after, it’s a very Tory part of Britain and they have little patience for that. The news about the boys broke soon after that.

              I remember watching him gloat as he watched me get up, genuflect, and leave. I had blocked that out until just now. I’d have to wonder if he knew the bishop knew about the boys, we’d just gotten a new bishop and the previous one was rather swishy.

              Obadiah Slope had nothing on this priest. Oleaginous doesn’t even begin to describe him. Not all the bent priests I’ve known have been like that but all those like that have been bent.

            2. What happened to the “great rack”?

              Asking for a friend. Procrustes says a replacement bed is wanted.
              –

          4. Counter-culture is always a virgin field for predators, because very often the people in the counter-culture are weak and desperate for anything that even looks “good” if you squint at hard enough. And, because they’re outside the regular culture…they feel or know that they can’t get help within or without.

            (Don’t ask me about what I learned about a few people I respected in the furry community around 2015-2016. “Castrated with a dull spoon” would have been the kindest thing I would have done.)

            1. I don’t think what you’re hearing is what I’m saying–
              I’m saying that not approving of homosexuality is counter-cultural, so any attempt to stop the pedo-predators (who, even with altar girls being more common than altar boys, still primarily targeted boys) left them open to attacks that they are “haters.”

              you are correct about new counter-culture movements being very rich hunting grounds.

              1. It doesn’t help that there are people in the LGBTQ+ community that are moving the goal posts in terms of this. I know just enough people that I hear the side-chatter. There’s an increasing amount of trying to “normalize” pedophilia, using LGBTQ+ arguments and networks to give them another cause to fight for.

                1. The folks who pointed out this was going to happen since the 90s have been noticing, too.

                  I know there’s still some argument on if the latest attempt to normalize pedophilia is at least partly a massive troll, and none of the real activists involved can figure it out enough to stop themselves.

                2. The point is not to normalize a damned thing, it is to humiliate and debase the “straights” and force them to accept ever greater depravity. That is why they will forever move goalposts because their goal is to force acceptance of their “right” to place those goalposts wherever the bloody please.
                  –

              2. Now. It’s counter cultural now, it certainly wasn’t then. Homosexuality was classed as a mental disorder until the early 70’s. Also, there were no altar girls back then, just boys. Homo sexual acts are still a sin. I think it was 1967 that it was legalized in the UK and later in Ireland.

                Anyway, the pedos were damn good at it. it’s only now that I look back and see just how good at It they were. I was saved from it by my father, who was a Jesuit boy himself and so knew, though he said it was much more prevalent in my day than his, and by the fact that I was a 6’2” 220 pound strong safety.

                Also, looking back I feel guilt. We all knew. We made jokes about it. When you’re sixteen you don’t see it as exploitation because you’re grown up now. The boys Involved were seen to be willing participants and i think many of them saw it that way., It was all genuinely diabolical.

                I also think that calling it pedophilia allows them to sidestep what is at issue, which is unchastity among the clergy, gay or otherwise. Its not pedophilia it’s ephebophilia, which is just the gay version of Jailbait and, after all, the age of consent changes as society changes so what is illegal today is legal tomorrow. (Sarcasm) In that vein, I find it interesting in a rather morbid sense, how many gay narratives start with the under age gay teenager getting involved with a much older man.

                Exploitation doth never prosper, what’s the reason? For if it prosper it becomes the law and none dare call it exploitation.

                1. My mom was an altar server as a kid in the 60s– I believe up until mid-90s they had to say “we don’t have enough boys.”
                  ********
                  Problem:
                  the push to draw a distinction in the varieties of targeting children is an aspect of normalizing the predation.

                  The crass way of putting it was “grass on the field.”

                  I ran into it via digging into who the **** was the father of the babies for 13 and 14 year old girls getting abortions. Same guys as the 15 and 16 year olds– loser-type dudes in their 30s or older. (The ones that were dating the girl’s mom were more likely to be charged.)

                  It was all genuinely diabolical.

                  Yes.
                  Capture and subvert authority to evil ends.

                  In that vein, I find it interesting in a rather morbid sense, how many gay narratives start with the under age gay teenager getting involved with a much older man.

                  Lesbians, too, if you don’t count either LUGs or revenge-lesbians.
                  After that drunken “my first experience” story telling evening, I somehow never ended up alone with that social group again…..

                2. Homosexuality was classed as a mental disorder until the early 70’s.

                  *points at moving the priests around* And that is how it was treated.

                  Have a mental issue, k, get treatment, move to a new area.

                  You can’t blame someone, it’s psychological! Just treat him, and move him….

                    1. *points at “it’s ma’am” and “give me a wax on sexual organs I do not posses” dudes*

                      **********

                      I kinda suspect that “science” was deliberate malarkey, but no idea how to prove it.

                    2. Most psychology is malarkey GOOD psychologists and psychiatrists EXIST but it seems to be a knack. The theory? Mostly malarkey. Which is why I ran away after a semester. And the seventies was rife with “suppressing my anti-social behavior is oppression. ” More so than now. It’s time to be done with that trash.

                    3. Most psychology is malarkey

                      Good point.

                      There’s a reason I keep pushing Doctor Ray, he’s at least 90% the worst you can say is it doesn’t work, 5% brilliant and 5% he’s being silly.

                    4. The wife likes Doctor Ray. I don’t watch television so I really don’t have my own view.

                      The “science” was purposeful, a brief look at Kinsey, Freud, and all that crowd makes that very clear.

                      As for the problem I’m not looking to make a distinction between pedos and ephebephiles among the clergy. Exploitation is exploitation, Neither am I making a distinction between the exploitation of boys versus girls, again exploitation is exploitation.

                      The problem is that the vast majority of the bent priests were into pubescent boys — not pre pubescent boys — or adolescents or very young men hence the ephebophilia. McCarrick was removed for the one (I think and it was enough) case of pedophilia but little was said of the seminarians or other young men. By calling attention to the pedophilia and away from the young men you normalize unchastity among the clergy. that’s why all the progressive women thought the.answer was a married clergy, like the Episcopalians, see how well that worked out.

                      I lost all respect for the bishops when they did this and they’ve only made it worse, but as I noted elsewhere here I’m stuck with the bloody bishops since otherwise I’d be a Protestant, which is a step I cannot take. I suppose Orthodoxy is an option, but it’d take an awful lot for me to take that step,

                    6. “If only teachers were allowed to marry!” has been a go-to cry as long as I’ve been around the Catholic blogosphere. Dark humor, but has a point. :/

                    7. It always helps. The strongest weapon the enemy has is despair and nothing causes despair faster than believing one is alone. That is Solzhenitsyn’s great insight, Arendt too for that matter. That is your great gift to me and many others, You provide a forum where we can see we are not alone.

                      I’m a faithful sin of our Holy Mother and will see it through.

                      My children know to have 2 Timothy 4:7 read at my funeral. First because it’s appropriate. I have fought a good fight,I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. Second, because the current translation used in Catholic churches will bring me back from the dead. The current lectionary has that great passage as “I have competed well.” I have competed well indeed. . What nonsense. I’ve had knock down drag out arguments with priests about this. I’ve pulled out Greek and Vulgate new testaments, the Douay, all the English Protestant ones. That’s not what it says in the book!

                      My kids love to watch my reaction when it comes round of a Sunday. Number one son tries to lector so he can emphasize it. The only thing I loathe more than that is those Hauggen Daz hymns. Blech. I haven’t been at a BLM mass but we did walk out of a Liberation Theology Mass when we were first married, It was not our parish; it was, appropriately, a very rich parish in Westchester county. I’m too poor to be a socialist.

                      But then, what does one expect from a bunch of clerics in Rome.

                    8. I’ve walked out of some.
                      For a while one of the bishop’s pets in the Springs combined liberation theology with anti-semitism. In the middle of a rant on the crimes of Israel (existing, I guess) older son and I traded looks and LEFT. Took the other two five minutes to join us in the car. Mostly I think because they knew that priest and had decided to zone during the sermon.

                  2. I’m still a little shocked at the notion of altar girls. I had never heard of such a thing. We had lots of boys. It was the baby boom and NY was one of the most Catholic cities in the world. Even the Jews knew what parish they lived in or no one would know where they lived. Girl altar servers wasn’t really a thing until we came back to the US in the early oughts.

                    My daughter was a lector and even that shocked me a little. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bothered by it it’s just not what I was used to. In my experience, the only time women came on to the altar was to take the altar cloths off for cleaning, and often not even then, we altar boys used to do it after the last mass on Sunday.

                    My mother used to clean them, we’d find a paper bag filled with white linen in the refrigerator every once in a while. G-d help us if we spilled anything on it.

                    1. My mom was rural Oregon– which isn’t very friendly to Catholics, historically– but even in a mostly Catholic town… eh. People are *weird.* (I gather that her brothers did it because her parents insisted. So when they ran out of older brothers, she had to do it.)

                      I was an altar server, and the main result I saw was that it made sure that none of the boys wanted to do it. Which cut down on their involvement with the Mass, at all, and thus cut down on the number that considered the priesthood.

                      It also seems to be strongly associated with the “boyfriend Jesus” strain of theology, and the associated…not very healthy female type social dynamics.

                      That MIGHT be a side-effect of not having a lot of adult men willing to show up at Mass, may be a cause, booger if I know. I was *very* rural California and then where-Seattle-bought-ranches Washington, where I saw enough to draw conclusions. (Hiding in the crying room cuts down on the amount of time to target for drama.)

                    2. LOL. BGE. I’m older than you are and I WAS an alter girl from 10 to 14.
                      To be fair, I think our priest never told the bishop (who was a commie, so there was a state of more or less open war with our priest who WAS/is Don Camilo to the life.)
                      The reason there was “none of the boys are reverent enough.” He wasn’t joking, btw. Most of the boys my generation in the village now have criminal records. No, we don’t know why.

                    4. Me one claim to fame is a great Aunt’s table cloth is in the National Museum because it was what they could get for the Eucharist for Pearse, Connolly, Mac Diarmaid, etc.

                    5. The strongest weapon the enemy has is despair …

                      As Jerry Pournelle used to remind people, “Despair is a sin!” To which Henry Vanderbilt, if he were in the room, would always add, “… and a tactical blunder!”

                      Take heart! All is not lost, nor will it ever be.

                    9. > Most of the boys my generation in the village now have criminal records. No, we don’t know why.

                      Growing up fed obvious lies in a social structure based on fear and favoritism, then having that collapse and having to make their way on their own without having any background to run their own lives?

                      You got a lot more than fey ideas out of all those books you read when you were a kid. It gave you a flexibility of world-view most people didn’t have; enough that you left before it all came tumbling down.

                    10. Er….
                      Actually in the village there was neither much fear or favoritism. You did what your father had done, pretty much. Life was poor but simple.
                      The revolution, OTOH told them a lot of nonsense, including “The land to them who work it” (which more or less it alreadyw as, but…) And “We should be paying you for existing.”

                    11. Apparently it was pretty common to have “emergency” altar girls at day Catholic girls’ schools in the 1950’s, because otherwise the priest would have to do it all himself (not encouraged), or they’d have to bring over altar boys and interrupt their school day (usually but not always possible). But the idea was to be neat, clean, and not have a hairstyle that was super-girly. Usually the emergency altar girls were the kids who were sacristan’s assistants, and thus were available on short notice as warm bodies.

                      I agree that it’s one of those things that isn’t wrong in itself, but that does not work well. It does discourage boys from volunteering, it’s not super-fun for adult acolytes, and it doesn’t help much to encourage vocations. Sure, those things shouldn’t happen. But fighting human nature is silly.

                      The point, I think, is that American men are kinda conditioned to think of “inside the house jobs” as belonging to women, so having women do any of those jobs tends to push American men into avoiding taking those jobs away from women, intruding on their sphere. I even feel that with jobs like lector and cantor (although also, those are jobs that are associated with the clergy, and could be vocation bait).

                      Re: women sacristans, that was always a nun thing from way back, because it’s hard to have a male sacristan in a convent. So sure, St. Bernadette and St. Therese both did a lot of altar preparation and such, and it was one of the ancient jobs of various deaconesses, even though it did mean being “up on the altar”. But when there are men around, men are supposed to be the sacristans.

                3. “When you’re sixteen you don’t see it as exploitation”

                  Back in the Nineties when the first few tales of Female Teachers having sex with teenage boys began to percolate I remember even conservative talk show hosts dismissing it as every teen boy’s fantasy, and knowing there was a flaw in that argument.

                  After a while it occurred to me that drinking liquor and driving cars too fast were also teen boys’ fantasies — which did not mean they should be allowed to engage in them.

                  Teens, male or otherwise, lack the understanding of what consequences can follow the indulgences their urges push them toward, and it is the job of adults to rein them in until they do understand.
                  –

                  1. The flaw in the idea that getting it on with a female Teacher was every boy’s fantasy is twofold,

                    1) It assumes hat fulfilling that feat asylum is a good thing.

                    and

                    2) It assumes that the female teacher in question is actually attractive.

      3. “some said that the victims were at fault, and some still say that”

        As a matter of Law and of Practice, that is utter bollocks. A minor child is not legally capable of granting consent to such an act, therefore the burden, the duty, the onus is ON THE ADULT, no matter how tempted, no matter how much the child “came on to” him.

        Denial of that distinction is to deny the pedo agency, to reduce the pedo to childlike status, which is a pathetic defense to claim, as the proper remedy would be remanding the pedo into permanent custody of an actual adult.
        –

        2. > A minor child is not legally capable of granting consent to such an act,

          While the big push nowadays is “18 for anything”, age of consent historically has been younger than age of majority. In most US states, age of consent is now 16, but some states were younger than that up into the 1960s.

          1. If you give younger kids more of the responsibilities and privileges of an adult (like adult jobs, adult money, adult ability to drink and smoke, adult license to drive), then sure, you can let kids marry and have sex younger, too. But most minors today are true minors.

              2. It shows up in the strangest places. There should have been a demographic “pop” in economic performance in the second half of Obama’s second term. Never happened. We can blame a lot of it on his policies but there’s also the fact that the 19-24 age cohort didn’t behave as it used to.

                I had a lot of schooling but I was married with children and well into a professional career at the age they’re starting out today.

                Same thing struck me about antifa. These aren’t chronological children, they’re men grown. The women seem to be toung though. Hmmm.

                3. Attending college does not, apparently, encourage maturation as was once its wont. The accumulation of debt, OTOH, discourages marriage and accumulation of children.

                  As does the retarded maturation – a resonance loop, as nothing encourages maturation so well as becoming a parent, a truth known to even Josh Rogin.
                  –

                  1. I have literally seen people defending college as the safe place where youngsters get to try a limited adulthood.

                    Oddly enough, there is no answer why this place should be non-profit, or why the dumb kids seem to manage getting dumped right into adulthood.

              3. Hell, one of the signs of early onset geezerhood (which I have in spades) is when you work in a mall, and see young nubile women ripple past in their jigglewear, and that little voice in your head says, “*sigh* They’d want to talk afterwards, and they don’t have anything to say.”

                  1. I realized I’d stopped being young at probably 39 when I saw a bunch of shirtless college kids hanging out and thought “Does your mom know you’re out in this weather shirtless?” Sigh.

            2. None of which matters much to a biology which hasn’t changed to accommodate that societal change. Peak fertility and drive appears to be somewhere between 14 and 30, both sexes. Also having the energy to cope with raising kids.

              Courtship and marriage were intended to put a channel around that, and it’s been destroyed.

              1. Also having the energy to cope with raising kids.

                Is a definite Thing.

                …hm, you know, that would explain a lot of the “advice” (browbeating) about spacing out the kids, and farming out raising them ASAP.

                I know I have more reasons to be tired than most, and less of a support structure, but I definitely can see some poor gal being easy prey when she’s tired and drained and the harpies start telling her that if she doesn’t take the route that means less work, she’s hurting the kids.

                (I don’t brag on Elf nearly enough, because I don’t want to bore folks, but one of his major jobs is telling me “you know they’re full of it, you just explained to me why, there’s nothing wrong with your reasoning, so ignore them.”)

                1. On the energy… it’s definitely a thing. I’m really glad that 30 and first kid was not my experience. I got lucky/blessed/made some deliberate life choices which resulted in a younger marriage and we were open to kids so they happened. Funny that. But it’s really odd to see someone 35-40 with their first pregnancy. I just feel like they won’t know what hits them… Yep.

                  I encourage those in the 20-30 bracket to be open to a relationship, consider what good enough means in a partner (since perfection is not attainable) and that kids before 30 (with the right person) is a very good idea. Just for general rules. I guess because it’s worked out pretty well for me. 🙂

                  I’ve noticed that spacing tends to follow sleep. Everybody sleeps great? Kids closer together. Kids waking up and waking mom up too? Kids further apart. I should take a poll, but that’s what I’ve observed in my pool.

                    1. I started late out of sheer intimidation, but I got the best kid.

                      ….

                      It eventually occurred to me I actually did grow a new heart in my guts this year. Of course, it’s not mine, but I like it a lot.

                    2. Which leads to my other opinion that children are a gift. If G-d for whatever reason chooses not to send them, then that’s nothing to be ashamed or guilty about. All we can do is … try. And be willing for them. But it’s like some people aren’t even aware that being younger makes a difference. The college girls who run around thinking they can have the fabulous career and a baby whenever they want and that it won’t make any difference when they try.

                      Mine… one of mine still doesn’t sleep through the night. We can’t figure out how to get itching to stop. We’ve tried a bunch of different diets, creams, and medicines, but so far nothings worked. All I can do is pray that someday it’ll be better. And keep trying other diets, creams, and medicines because despair is really not a good place to parent from. But I think that sleep issue affected spacing. Which is what it is. The alternative of sleeping through the night being the norm is actually kinda odd since it’s so far from my experience.

                    4. It eventually occurred to me I actually did grow a new heart in my guts this year. Of course, it’s not mine, but I like it a lot.

                      That is adorable!

                    5. I’m 39 and my wife is 32, our first is 13 months (and adorable).

                      Energy is definitely an issue for us

                    6. Our second also made himself waited, and was born when I was (by a few days) 32.
                      When he’s driving me nuts in some way, I tell him we never spanked him enough.
                      But it’s not even the spanking (although a swat to the butt is worth hours of sermons) it’s that we didn’t SUPERVISE him nearly as closely as we did his brother. The fact that he is an extreme introvert and control freak didn’t help.
                      BUT most of it was, the endless hours of reading to the first born, etc, never happened with the younger. And part of it is I had pneumonia at 33 that almost killed me, and took me YEARS to recover from. But ONLY part of it.

                    7. We try giving her all the attention we can, but it’s *hard*. Doesn’t help we both have our own mental health issues, plus various family crap (not so much issues as subscriptions)

                    8. We started when I was 24, officially. But for physical reasons, if I hadn’t had fertility problems, what birth control we were using should have failed. I found out I was pregnant on my 32nd birthday. Never got pregnant again, not even miscarriages (of which there were several before finally having a viable pregnancy). Also was never on birth control again, ever. (Why?)

                      One sister also had problems. She had her first biological child at age 33 (she’s 18 months younger). Next two at 36, and 39, with miscarriages between each of the three viable pregnancies. They were told they’d never have children without invasive (then + expensive) IVF or adoption. IVF never took. Their first child is adopted. The other 5 pregnancies were considered miracles even if they had to abort two of them (implanted in tube), would have killed her & the fetus if allowed to continue).

                      The other sister didn’t use fertility even before they officially got married. Odds were she had the same problems we did. She did, eventually, just not for her first two. All 3 of each of our oldest were born the same year.

                  2. I’ve noticed that spacing tends to follow sleep. Everybody sleeps great? Kids closer together. Kids waking up and waking mom up too? Kids further apart. I should take a poll, but that’s what I’ve observed in my pool.

                    Stress and sleep disruption screw with hormones, so very likely.

              3. And I read this book that went on to rail about not just making kids WORK at young ages, but making them study hard, and how evil that was.
                This needs to change and fast.

              4. Not just destroyed as in the sense of the why pay for cow when milk is cheap, but honestly relatively high risk. The amount of married men I met in my career over last decade who were not screwed over by it I can count on one hand. Never mind the matriarchal state of courts.

    6. The USSR supported itself by pressuring its client states to buy Soviet exports, and by shipping arms and advisors to any country that could afford them. Now the client states are largely gone, and the T-72 has lost its luster (I’ve heard the MiG-29 is still a decent plane, though – for its increasingly outdated generation). Russia’s got oil, but the US is crashing that market with frakking.

  18. I had to talk my kids down when Trump got elected over the “gays in camps” thing. It made me utterly furious. No one stoking that profound (and very sincere) fear in vulnerable populations will ever be held to account for it.

    And then we were supposed to respect the *fear* because the *feelings are real.*

    1. Feelings are real — but they’re expressions of a subjective reality, not the objective one.

      Part of overcoming adolescence is learning to distinguish between those two realities.
      –

      1. Exactly. “Feelings are real” is another statement wrenched from its proper place and used to say something else entirely. In therapeutic terms, it means that feelings must be dealt with. Failure to take them into account is asking for trouble. That doesn’t mean they should rule. Often you have to do something that runs against your feelings because the alternative is worse. But the feelings exist, and you need to acknowledge them and cope.

        Which ain’t even close to how the pop-psyche culture means it.

  19. I’m somewhat more optimistic for the following reason: There are (at least) two groups in the Dem big tent with distinct goals. The conflict between them is just getting going – and will greatly benefit Trump and our future.

    The Marxists want to destroy the USA. This includes Antifa, BLM, some university types, some in the media.

    The “elite”, our self-described betters, just want their power and globalism back. This includes much of corporate America, the Chamber of Commerce, the NBA, dem party leaders, Hilarity Clinton, a number of billionaires, former national security folks, the deep state, the media, etc. They believe they can co-opt the popularity of BLM and protest for their own purposes. Think of how 60s radicalism was co-opted by corporate America. Or hip-hop music.

    The fun comes with Antifa/BLM/anarchists refusing to be co-opted. Thus the planned “White House Siege”, continued rioting even now that the “elite” has said stop, etc.

    Stock up on your favorite beverage and popcorn for escalating conflict within the Dem big tent. And, as always, be prepared for trouble.

    1. I’m not sure I believe that. Atlas Shrugged portrays the alliance between the wealthy corporate elite and the socialist ideologues, and the more I see, the more I think Rand knew what she was writing about.

        1. When the senior most elected Democrat authorizes the Antifas and BLMs to use violence against Democrat’s political opponents by calling those opponents “enemies of the state” they have made it clear that they are willing to to support a full fledged violent Marxist revolution in their pursuit of power, and that they WANT to send their political opponents to the camps and the mass graves. Obama’s mentor Bill Ayers openly spoke of re-education camps and the “diversity” training that the Democratic Party establishment is pushing and which has become endemic in the corporate world is right out of Mao’s China’s Cultural Revolution. Anyone who does not accept that “re-education” will be deemed an enemy and thus imprisoned and ultimately murdered. This is the inevitable end result of their path unless they are thwarted.

          If Democrats win the purges we have already seen will be minor league compared to what will come.

      2. Thank you William and Sarah and Cardshark. Tis a wonderful thing you have here, Sarah, a place where we can have a civil conversation. Far too rare today.

        Sticking my neck out a bit further and possibly digging a deeper hole: I think there are three main possibilities for the election outcome. The one I hope for is a big win by Trump, including majorities in the House and Senate. This would, as after the McGovern loss years ago, result in the Dems moving towards the center, and may set the Marxists back twenty years.

        The second possibility, which I think the most likely, is for a modest win by Trump (even with the media censorship and lies and electoral cheating). I think this would stave off any major open conflict for four years. The president has a lot of resources at his disposal to stifle unrest.

        The disastrous third possibility is a Dem win. It wouldn’t take a year to get to civil war due to efforts at gun confiscation, persecution of opponents, etc. Very ugly very fast.

        This gets back to my original post above about the two Dem groups in conflict. The pragmatist elite desperately wants to win in November. They need to denounce and calm the rioting to win (and along the way implicitly denounce the Marxists/Antifa/BLM/Anarchists). Two problems: I don’t think the Marxists are going to cooperate in calming the rioting. They despise Biden, the Dem party apparatus, the billionaires. And denouncing the Marxists turns away needed votes.

        We shall see soon.

        1. And it’s by no means certain the Marxists COULD calm it. You have entire generations raised to believe that “We wuz robbed by honky.” And that “honky deserves to pay.”

          The problem is that there’s going to be a backlash…. which is why Richard Spencer endorsed Biden.

          2. BLM has a very low proportion of black people in it and an awful lot of public school teachers. This could become a race war, but for now it’s Bader Meinhof not civil war.

            We need to be careful about this since a race war is what the evil f-ckers want. Divide et impera.

              1. Who aren’t that popular among their neighbors. Ask an inner city person about “the dirty people.”

                In any case, the street gangs are economically rational. They will use the chaos but will not create it. The smarter ones, and they exist, know that they don’t have rich parents Like the antifa clowns so when the hammer comes down it will come down on them.

                1. I suspect that if they could get away with it and had access to the tools, a lot of the inner-city people would make the gangsters…go away…and nobody would complain much.

                2. Also, the hispanic street gangs, like the Latin Kings and MS13, really do not like black street gangs, or the BLM/Antifa crowds. There have been a number of confrontations in Chicago already and I am sure there have been others which the Democratic Party media has buried.

              2. The street gangs have bern telling the “protestors” to buzz off. There’s no profit in burning down your own neighborhood, and the street gangs are primarily interested in the bottom line.

            3. Glenn at Instapundit has mentioned a couple of times: Trump at the convention brought up all these positive, successful pro-Trump minority people and told his followers “look, these are our kind of people and we’re glad to have them.”

              Spot on.

              Don’t let the enemy bait you into anything else.

              Minority folks need law enforcement at least as much as anyone else. One poll showed 80% support for the police. Tap into that, don’t piss it away.

            4. Insty has been making this point for a few days. He quoted Rush today pointing out that the main theme of the RNC convention was to defuse a race war. The entire message of the week boiled down to “We don’t care about your sex, your skin color, or who you like to sleep with. Stuck in the ghetto? No problem. If you’re willing to work and not demand handouts and you want to be free there’s a place for you in America and the Republican Party.”

            5. “… an awful lot of public school teachers”

              One more reason to divert the money flow from the schools to the parents. And there is an effort underway to achieve that, sending CARES Act funds to families in the form of grants for private schools (that are willing to open) and home-schooling parents.

              We need a little longer for Janus decision erosion of union membership, keeping in mind that for a while the effect will be to distill the unions down to their most fervent believers … whose demands may succeed in dissolving public school unions almost entirely.
              –

        2. A modest Trump win will not be accepted by the Democrats. They have already quite clearly said so. They have told Biden not to concede no matter what, and are wargaming using the military to force Trump out if he WINS narrowly and refuses to accept the Democrats subversion of the electoral college by states run by Democratic governors in states like Wisconsin and Pennyslvania to replace pro-Trump electors with ones who will vote for Biden. They have proclaimed they will have an “army of lawyers” and of course and will use their control of the postal service employees union to create enough chaos so that their media arm can spread the “Trump stole the election and must be removed by force” narrative. If nothing else, they hope to have the election unsettled right up to inauguration day, as they hope Nancy Pelosi would then become POTUS .

          The Democrats are NOT going to accept a loss. They haven’t accepted Gore’s loss in 2000 much less Hillary’s in 2016.

        3. I fear that even a resounding win of the Reagan ’84 or Nixon ’72 sort will still produce a sustained tantrum, the only question being how long they can sustain it. They have made it clear they think feel Rump is illegitimate, they have established adequate predicate for claims that he will have somehow cheated (not that such a predicate be particularly well-founded; look at the twaddle Rep. Schiff is peddling … and their rubes are swallowing) and suppressed their votes.

          Because the simple fact is they believe themselves entitled to rule and, like Smeagol and his “Birthday Present” will abide no deterrence of their destiny.

          Still, that is the most positive expectation I can offer.
          –

        4. If the Democrats look like they will win after Nov 3rd. Trump will get his family OUT. If you see Trump’s family going on trips just before or just after, you will know that Trump is really worried. If the Democrats win, only Trump will be in the US on Jan 20th. He will be on a plane out of the US before Biden gets near the White House. If he isn’t gone when Biden becomes President he will be arrested as will members of his family. He and they will be railroaded quickly and put in prison.

          1. Yep. If Trump loses, not only will his family be out of the US to non-extradition countries, but he won’t be at the inauguration.

    2. I’d think this very likely.

      There is a very interesting conversation going on in the UK about whether loony Labour wanted Corbyn to win the election. The thinking is that the left knew that there were still too many moderates in labour who would interfere with their plans for a glorious future rubbing sticks together to make fire and eating fair trade vegan sprouts. They want to establish doctrinal purity first. It is all the Judean People’s Front.

      What will surprise the Corporate left in the coming years is that they are up against believers. We are unbelievers but the corporate left are heretics and heretics are a danger to the soul. Look at what they’re saying about Wheeler, though his being sixth generation money with a career as a thief at JP Morgan doesn’t help him.

  20. Broken glass littering the streets. The smell of burning books and burning small businesses. It is almost enough on which to base the name for current events, but that name is already taken. I’m just afraid that the summer of broken glass could become the same sort of historical watchword as the night of broken glass.

      1. I’ll disagree there, even though I lived close enough to downtown Chicago in ’68. [Mom and Dad didn’t raise fools; I stayed home and watched the festivities on the TV and read the newspapers.] The difference between then and now, was that TPTB in ’68 were largely from the WW 2 generation; they’d seen what all-out war was, and after Dresden/Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Dachau/Auschwitz ad nauseum were bound and determined to not let it happen.

        Now, those people are gone, and TPTB don’t have the horrifyingly bad example of global hot war to dissaude them. See the Fourth Turning and/or Generational Dynamics for better descriptions of this. We are in the Generational Crisis mode now (usually happens about every 70 years), and if the SHTF doesn’t happen now, it’s likely to do so soon.

        1. TPTB today are, largely, the ones who threw the tantrum in 1968. Them and those who wished they’d been part of that tantrum. Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and their ilk, gone to ground in the pedagogical sciences, designing indoctrination for subsequent generations.
          –

          1. Aye, with nobody to moderate their teachings, on and on until the SHTF and it all blows up to a “generational climax”, some event so horrible that nobody wants to see it happen again in their lifetime. To make matters more interesting, China is at the same stage of generational crisis, so we might be in for some fascinating times.

        1. I grew up in cop and fireman land in NYC. My father’s cronies used to sit around and tell stories about the riots when they’d been drinking. They never did find all the bodies since a fair few were dumped down the sewer. No camera phones then.

          That said, this is still a red brigade, Red Army Faction sort of thing not a real civil war, yet. The politicians are playing with that fire but seem to be having a real problem getting traction in the purported beneficiaries of this. It seems that they underestimated the common decency and humanity of people.

          Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this broke the dem lock? Evil will oft doth evil mar and all that.

          1. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this broke the dem lock? Evil will oft doth evil mar and all that.

            To His ears…

      3. 68 wasn’t worse simply because the establishment, such as Goodyear Tires, was not cheering it on and actively aiding and abetting it.

      4. 68 did not have week after week of burning buildings. 68 did not have police buildings under long term siege and set fire. 68 did not have city and state government colluding with the rioters. I was there.

    2. And just like Nazi Germany, the people perpetrating and endorsing the violence are blaming the victims.

  21. But you see, Trump’s real crime is his tolerance for homosexuals and blacks.

    Who took point on the impeachment? Schiff and Pelosi. What districts are they from? What demographic do they owe their election to? Homosexuals.

    Pushing hard on opposition to Trump was politically necessary to the survival of their career.

    If he hadn’t given up his plausible deniability where tolerance for homosexuals was concerned, the Democrats would not have been forced to bring out the big guns of claiming Federal death camps. (Despite that a careful reading of Federal grant requests and other bureaucratic minutia would show that the Feds are not adequately making preparations for carrying this out.)

    This break down in the relative ceasefire between the parties has got to be the harm to norms that Rubin, Nichols, McLaughlin, Goldberg, Erickson, etc. are complaining so much about.

    What all this leads to is that there is only one way to purge the GOP of Trumpism, and restore the status quo ante.

    Democrat activists have been outright burning down minority neighborhoods and killing people. There is no way that a few GOP pols talking pushback about gay marriage or affirmative action is going to move the independents worth anything.

    If Rubin and Nichols are serious about removing Trumpism’s influence, they need to be credibly arguing for the extermination of blacks, homosexuals, etc. To speak more loudly than the Critical Race Theory activists, to make it clear that it is an outcome sincerely desired, and to demonstrate that necessary and sufficient steps are being taken to implement. Only then can they hope to sway the independent voter away from the GOP.

  22. “the media sells these points over and over and over again.”

    Hence an MSNBC “analyst” declaring the many Black speakers at the Republican convention were a “Minstrel show.” Because real Black people do what they’re told to by their Progressive leaders. Leaders unelected by the African-American community but appointed by the Progressive mainstream.

    https://video.foxnews.com/v/6186114668001
    Yeah, this guy, who fought Democrats’ segregation in 1960, is a minstrel. Black people who go on MSNBC and tell their fellow African-Americans to stay in line are not minstrels, you racists.
    –

  23. “[T]he purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.” Theodore Dalrymple

  24. “I can’t decide whether Obama was always Iran’s puppy, and simply had to pay back, or if he is just a raging idiot.”

    These are not mutually exclusive, it need not be one or the other.
    –

    1. Obama’s support for Iran was and is directly related to Iran’s vowed goal of “wiping Israel off the map”, and is the same reason he supported the Muslim Brotherhood (which includes offshoots such as Hamas). He views the Sunni states as being unwilling to push for Israel’s destruction, and as Obama is firmly of the belief that Israel should never have existed and that Jews are interlopers in their own historic homeland, he sought to actively sought those he thought would actually work towards Israel’s destruction and the eradication of its Jewish population.

    2. I’ll be the odd person out and insist that Obama supported Iran because he believed in his heart of hearts that people (or nations) are only BAD because other people aren’t nice to them. If we’d only be nice to everyone they wouldn’t be bad anymore.

      I think we discussed this basic Marxist philosophy last week. 😉

      And funny thing, I’m pretty sure that Islam doesn’t buy into that baloney AT ALL.

      1. Except he repeatedly demonized Israel and Jews at every opportunity. Do not forget his close friendship with ex-PLO spokesperson Rashid Khalidi who is part of the “Israel should never have existed and must be destroyed” crowd, and Obama’s still ‘secret speech” celebrating Khalidi that the LA Times is still sitting on and his long time friendship with open anti-Semite Reverend Wright.

        1. Neo-Marxist philosophy has replaced the proletariat-bourgeoisie dynamic with the oppressed-oppressor dynamic. One side of every struggle is the good guy and one side is the bad guy, to figure out which is which you need to know who is oppressing whom. The US and Israel are “oppressing” others, so we’re the bad guys, which means that anyone opposed to us, like Iran and the Palestinians are the good guys. Anything bad the good guys do is just because of our oppression, which makes it our fault, so we’re still the bad guys.

          And that’s what passes for “thought” in Barry the Simple’s brain.

          1. Pity him. He was a red diaper baby, but a third generation one, raised by communists who are usually stone cold racists, as well as having other perversions.
            It’s no wonder he was a ganja addict.

            1. Meh. He dumped on the grandmother that raised him because that grandmother was critical of the father that had knocked up her hippy chick daughter and then abandoned her and her child. My mother used to say, that ingratitude is the only sin our Lord cried to heaven for.

              They were all prize catches in that family.

              1. Sure. And I’m not saying he was a wonderful person, but dear Lord. Genetics or environment? nothing to choose from. Ganja Barry is a pitiful creature, and also stomach-churning.

                1. One consistent trait of the Left is ingratitude. Gratitude generally needs to be taught, but the Left prefers resentment.
                  –

              2. There is a sickening scene in “Dreams of my Father” where he watches his grandmother complain to his grandfather about being accosted by an agressive vagrant on her way to work (work which played for her grandson’s education). The vagrant, who happened to be black, became very demanding even after she gave him a dollar and she was frightened. The grandfather-bizarrely- starts verbally attacking his wife, accusing her of being a racist and afraid of the panhandlers because he was black. Young Obama doesn’t step in or defend her anything just assumes his grandma is an evil racist who fears black men. I remember reading that scene twice and thinking “Are you kidding me?” It really put into perspective how messed up he and his family were.

    3. Obama has been a Muslim since he made that tour in college. He was staying in the foreign Students housing. After he went on the tour he was able to get into Columbia then Harvard. Where did the money come from? Obama WAS the Manchurian Candidate. The Left THOUGHT he was THEIR’S but he was rally the Muslim’s. The Progressives didn’t care because he was supposed to set it up so Hillary was NEXT and with HER the Progressives would have had everything they wanted. That is why the hate Trump so much.

  25. How can they not see that the Democrats are the racist party, and always have been? EVERYTHING is about race for them. Lately they’ve found a few more hobby-horses to ride, but they always go back to their racist roots. The ‘systemic racism’ they scream about exists only in cities that have been ruled by left-wing Democrats for decades. They don’t want to end oppression; they just want to be the oppressors.
    ———————————
    The Democrats are willing to burn America to the ground, so long as they wind up squatting on top of the ashes.

    1. They’ve been steeped in it from pre-school, movies, the news, and social media. It’s The Way Things Are, as they see it; anything else is obviously wrong, and thinking about it is a waste of time. They pick their attitudes up by assmosis, they’re reinforced a hundred times a day, and voicing a contrary thought would bring instant ridicule, if not retaliation.

      “You can’t reason a man out of a position he didn’t reason his way into.”

      1. “You can’t reason a man out of a position he didn’t reason his way into.”

        Well, you can, but I recommend an aluminum bat as neither hickory nor maple has quite enough durability for those types of conversations.
        –

  26. The funny thing is, this morning I saw a tweet from Michael Moore that someone needed to pull the fire-alarms at the DNC about Trump’s support, or the DNC is going to loose the election hard. It reminded me so much of the earlier observations that the hard left has spent the last 20-30 years pulling out all the fire alarms.

    One thing that has struck me is the rioters seem to only be able to riot hard in a few cities at a time. The Portland stuff died down during the Kenosha riots, and only picked back up after the crack down there drive them out. During the DC riots this weekend, the Portland ones lost volume, and at least a couple of their leaders were calling for more bodies in Portland.

    I’m beginning to think that the hard liners have a lot fewer murder hobos than they’ve been implying, and if any of the root centers does a hard arrest and jail push, the riots will end. I think Sarah’s right: this is the rage of a dying faction.

    1. That’s the thing. You need to arrest the violent or destructive protesters and not give them bail. And if they did anything federal, they need to await trial in a federal jail. Mommy and Daddy can send them physical letters.

      1. I’ve been thinking for the better part of the last two years that Portland is a training ground. Rotate your shock troops in, “blood,” them in a friendly arena, send them home to await orders. The ones whom get arres9and released week after week would be training cadre.

        1. Which is probably why the Feds seem to be looking heavily at the logistical structure put in place to directly support the thugs.

    2. A couple of sites have copied from Fakebook posts by known Antifa people their posts saying “just drove in (to Kenosha) from Portland, any friends have a shower available?”
      Another site showed the same guy in Portland and in DC a few days later.
      In Kenosha, the riot “food truck” seen in the Chicago riots at the Columbus statue was present.
      Kenosha police reported that out of 175 people arrested, 102 were from out of town.
      John in Indy

      2. If you chanced to watch Trump’s press conference from Kenosha around 3:30 this afternoon, the Feds are aware of the travelling looters and are building a case against them.
        https://www.c-span.org/video/?475353-1/president-participates-community-safety-roundtable-kenohsa-wisconsin
        See AG Barr’s remarks at about 18 minutes: (Roughly transcribed):

        “Thank you, Mr. President. As most of you know whenever there is an officer-involved shooting in our country, it’s reviewed by local authorities to ensure that it was reasonable force. When there are questions raised about it the Federal Government, the Justice Department also reviews it. And like all procedures and processes in our country, we do it under due process and we try to reach a dispassionate, reasoned decision based on analysis of the situation.

        We do not allow judgments to be reached because of mob violence. We do not have mob violence in this country make our decisions over the fate of individuals when their actions are challenged.

        When the shooting occurred here in Kenosha, under the direction of the president we told the DOD, the Defense Department, to get ready some national guard units in case they were needed to help here and from several states volunteered to supply national guard if they were needed. The president directed me to assemble a group of federal law enforcement that could be dispatched here, which we did and staged in Chicago.

        We were picking up information that these violent instigators were coming to Kenosha, coming from California, Washington state, a lot from Chicago and every coming up to Kenosha we expected matters to get worse. The violence that erupted shortly after the shooting is simply not a legitimate response to a police shooting. And the looting and arson were unacceptable. And as it progressed it became more and more distant from the issue of racial justice. It was violence for violence sake.

        Once again we saw hijacking of a protest by hard-core group of radicals who were carrying out, planning, a coordinated violent attack on law-enforcement come on public property and on private property. That can’t be tolerated.

        These are the same people, many of them who came from out of town – out of 175 arrests, 100 were from out of town. These are the same people using the same tactics that have been used in various cities, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, now Kenosha, Portland. They use these black bloc tactics, throwing projectiles at police — and literally trying to inflict injuries on police, arson and rioting. They came equipped as even the mayor of Washington acknowledged, they come equipped to fight. And it’s completely unacceptable and the state is the first line of defense. If local leaders are committed to keeping the public safe, it can be done.

        While slow in getting off the starting block, this is an example, that when you have the local political leadership backing the police, you had the state willing to put in the resource in terms of national guard, and the Federal Government able to come up with support such as the FBI, the Marshals and ATF who have some special skills and forensic ability to help, , there would be peace on the streets. And there’s going to be accountability.

        What people don’t see is all of these cities that are task forces of federal and state officers reviewing all the video that we can get our hands on, and when we are able to identify people who committed crimes in these riots going all the way back to the beginning, whether they are burning police cars or throwing rocks at people, which are deadly, they will be prosecuted. That’s a large-scale effort and is going to continue.

        So I can tell you, Mr. President, that as far as the Federal Government is concerned we welcome the opportunity to work with state and local to deal with this public safety issue. Law enforcement is used to working together. We do a good job when we are allowed to work together. This is no different than dealing with violent crime where we work together. We can achieve results and the Federal Government is willing to use all our tools and all our laws to bring these people to justice.”
        –

  27. if you watch some of the more extreme parts of the right, you will see people quoting Kipling’s Grave of 100 Head. It’s become a shooting war because the AFs are immune from punishment due to huge amounts for bail funding and free lawyering. They can ltierally do anything in Democratic cities. They might be surprised.

    The cord hasn’t snapped yet, but a fuckton of people are now going heavily armed to counter protests.

    1. That’s what the left wants. They want a civil war. Once the right and left are fighting in the streets the whole American thing is done. That’s why rich pukes like wheeler, and it’s the rich versus the rest of us, are so dangerous and why Soros pays for District Attorneys. They strike at the legitimacy of the state and are trying to make it necessary to fight.

      They are truly evil people.

      The rest of the left are naive or compromised, mostly compromised their position and money rides on being on the correct side.

  28. I was around 8 at the end of WW II, cognizant enough to wonder how/why the German populace supported it. I re-approached that question often over the decades and was never able to wrap my head around it, to find a satisfactory answer.

    Then came the Obama years and, sadly, it started to become clear.

    Now, today, 2020, it’s perfectly clear, though I admit I still try to deny it when I look at the friends I have left on the left. Personally I don’t mind some crazy folks around me but it hurts to admit I’ve friends that are criminally insane.

  29. Also, how do you certify a real gay person?

    I seem to remember one fellow offering a physical demonstration and asking who on the busy-body SJW-activist group would volunteer to the the subject.

    Believe there were no takers.

  30. Also:
    dang it, Sarah, get out of my head.

    I’ve been staring at this nutzo thing and wondering when, and HOW, folks are going to be brave enough to admit that they were wrong, and try to fix it.

    Having Abby Johnson speak at the RNC was a very wise choice. I hope it works, for even one or two, but I pray many more…..

    1. I think one of the geniouses of the secret ballot is most of the people who aren’t in so deep that they are ready to kill people is, they can pick in the ballot box without having at openly admit the other guy was a mistake.

      I think that thought is part of what stalks the crazy ones.

          1. Expect that mail in ballots from areas that traditionally vote Republican to end up in the garbage on a large scale, courtesy of the postal workers union which has endorsed Biden.

      4. This is why I think the Trump campaign should be blanketing the airwaves in blue districts with ads that end “Remember, nobody has to know who you voted for.”

    2. This may be a “hundred monkeys,” thing because I’ve been thinking it too. It’s just too painful to confess being wrong for them. Not only the, “all my friends will shun me,” thing, but the fear the “right-wingers,” will laugh at them too.

        1. The people I’m thinking of wouldn’t know that. Remember, they think in stereotypes so “conservatives,” are, loud, rude, ignorant blowhards, at best to them.

    3. Curious tale she told. After the RNC, she got the “race traitor” treatment from the same mob that went after Rand Paul. She was on a conference application (Clubhouse, I think it’s called) and mentioned such. There were a bunch of Clintonistas and other DNC types, (Van Jones among others) and they demanded she not repeat the story. Can’t have the counter narrative get out.

  31. I had one of my best spontaneous comebacks ever in the week after the 2016 election. Colleague came into my office and said she needed to talk to me about the political situation now (until this June I taught political science at the college level). My first response was: “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve been told the camps will be very comfortable! You’ll be fine!”

    I know I’m going to hell for that but, my God. The look on her face was totally worth it. Took her about two heartbeats to (sort of) realize I was joking.

    I’ve also been told by a poli sci professor who’s a Ghanaian immigrant, that Clarence Thomas doesn’t think the way a black man should think. That’s when the “you must think like the group” thing was cemented for me. I’ve also been told that as a woman, if I didn’t vote for Hillary (in her Senate campaign) that I was either uneducated (I have a PhD in political science) or oppressed by my husband (he rolled on the floor laughing when I told him).

    Groupthink is a very real phenomenon and we’re seeing it in action.

    1. There are a lot of people who think that everyone of a certain characteristic must think/do everything the same. It’s often a surprise to them when a bunch of said characteristic take offense at being pidgeonholed.

    2. > Clarence Thomas doesn’t think the way a black man should think.

      I should hope not. He gave that up.

      Once he pulled the robe on, his race and species became “judge.”

        1. To quote the title of one of Judith Scanlon’s books “Beauty is Skin Deep, but Stupid goes Clear to the Bone.”

    3. I can’t be arsed to look it up, but my recollection is that the camps were being planned by the prior administration.

      Not that such niggling details deter the Left’s fantasies. After all, didn’t Michelle take the stage at the DNC convention to decry the Trump Administration’s perpetuation of her husband’s policy of putting immigrant kids in cages? Not to mention, in this era of sex trafficking minors, denouncing a policy of separating children from their “parents” until the relationship could be confirmed.
      –

      1. Not that cages are great….. But how do you keep a bunch of abused ( by nature of the trip) kids from getting further abuse from the adults responsible for there current care (or the appearance thereof) and from each other while providing basics of food and medicine to kids whose hygiene is lacking and may be carrying lots of interesting diseases and parasites? In a real, not ideal world now. With budget constraints. When you don’t have enough people who speak their language.

        1. What on earth makes you think they wanted to protect the kids?

          Shortly after Trump took office, they broke up another sweat shop in LA, which was full of kids who had been “released to relatives” at the border.

          And those poor boys who were slaves in… I believe New Mexico? Same thing.
          “Say we’re your uncles or your family will die.”

          1. Perhaps I wasn’t clear? While I don’t think the solution chosen was wonderful, I also don’t think any minors who show up at the border should just be let go with the adult they came with or anyone who shows up. DNA tests seem a reasonable requirement to release a minor into custody with anybody… and honestly, anybody who brings a kid over that trip, in my opinion, should not be given care of any child. The least terrible option? Sending older kids BACK to the country they came from to somebody provably related to them (by DNA because who thinks a document means anything where bribery is normal) and find good vetted parents here to adopt the young kids with, IDK, mandated counseling? The trip sounded awful. But that way, predators don’t have the belief that they can get away with child trafficking and parents don’t have an incentive to use the children to get in more easily. I probably ought to read more about what the solution actually was (to form an opinion on how much border patrol cared about the kids), but just thinking about the problem (minors showing up at the border) raised the other issues in my mind in about 15 min. Protecting those kids and caring for them would be tough to do well. If in an institution, there’s one set of challenges, if putting them in private care, another set. And just sending them with the adults they show up with seems like one of the worst options available.

            2. Oh, an additional problem– on the language front– same problem San Diego has.
              Some of these folks, NOBODY in the US speaks their language. A couple of years ago there was a police involved shooting where the illegal gang member spoke a language that only has like 200 speakers, all in one valley. They got some professor that spoke something close enough to get information from him, but this isn’t a unique problem.

              1. Oh, yeah. We’re getting people from so far in the …. Jungles? Countryside? that the thing Occasional cortex spotlighted was true. Someone drank from the toilet. NOT because water was provided, but because she had never seen a toilet or a faucet.
                Anyone who thinks that person has great prospects at acculturation needs their head examined.

                1. Find a flight attendant who flies into that part of the world. The best story was the people who set the inflight magazines on fire to make tea on the airplane. Tall tale, maybe, but there were others and the weight of them was impressive.

                  1. Not tall tails. Happened in Saudi Arabia. Plane coming in caught fire and burned. They had started a fire for tea.

            3. I probably ought to read more about what the solution actually was (to form an opinion on how much border patrol cared about the kids), but just thinking about the problem (minors showing up at the border) raised the other issues in my mind in about 15 min.

              Because you care about the kids, too.

              You probably won’t find a lot of information on what the BP thinks, but if you remember that kid found alive afterwandering the desert for a week– that was all over the BP and related offices.
              Because they usually don’t find them alive, and it tears the guys up.

              Sorting out the kids who are stone-cold predators is a big problem, too. Yes, they exist, yes, it’s horrifying.

              1. It seems like parents wanting to get their kids a better life through adoption could be dealt with by adjusting adoption rules to make international adoption a smidge easier and making sure that the information was known before they leave their home. Maybe combined with and “if we catch you bringing a minor, you will have jail time” or some consequence that mattered to them. Similar to how hospitals and firestations have newborn surrender options with no penalty. So, increasing cost on one hand, lowering it on a better path? IDK. It’s tricky. I suppose one consequence of adoption being the norm could be people trying to turn a profit by buying and selling babies across the border? Apparently that’s a perennial with baby adoption. Argh. There’s no perfect solution.

                The liberal solution seems to be to make the US just like home so no one wants to come here anymore. Any solution is better than that.

              2. There’s a good Israeli film (“Live and Become”) that touches on this (sympathetically). An Ethiopean Jew has her son die in a refugee camp just before the Israelis are set to bring mother and son to Israel. So she arranges with her Christian neighbor, and claims that the neighbor’s son (the protagonist) is her own.

                Loving parents will do a lot to ensure that their kid has a chance to grow up in a safe and comfortable environment.

              3. With protections against deliberate infiltration — I’d be OK with kids being sent here for a better life.

                Heck, cut out the coyotes, let people do blind adoptions into the US, for kids under four or so, explicitly to avoid people risking their kids like that.

        2. > Not that cages are great…..

          Some American kids would look at all the chain link and wonder where the rest of the school was.

          The difference between “public school” and “prison” is just a matter of degree in many places.

  32. Also, how do you certify a real gay person? Is there a central authority?

    A real gay person votes Democrat. Same as real women, real blacks, real Hispanics, real Asians, real disabled, real trans, real whatever.

    The central authority is the DNC.

      1. Yeah, that’s the worst. “Real Christians” ™ support abortion and gay marriage and see Islam as an equally valid religion.

        I’ll stick with being a “fake” Orthodox Christian.

        1. The leadership of about half the Protestant mainline denominations in America have jumped on-board with supporting one or both. The rest, plus the rest of the Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, etc. have thankfully held out, though with Commie Pope I don’t know how long Roman Catholicism can sustain.

          1. Glen(n) Beck had a clip this morning of a Catholic service where the priest was doing a call and response (?) session with his congregation using the BLM liturgy as its base.

          2. That is the reason my southside Irish Catholic wife is seriously considering leaving the church after all this time. We have been attending an independent protestant church where she works as a teacher in the attched school. The head pastor is full throat defying governeor Putzger and holding full indoor services and suing the state at the same time, while the Catholic hierarchy is meekly submitting and also preaching liberation theology.

            1. If the Arians couldn’t get the Catholics out of the Church, the liberation theologians will have to wait a million years. The Lord sent people like me to His parishes to be an orthodox theology pain in the butt, and also to break into tears while trying to explain what has me upset.

              That said, I think it’s silly to go Protestant over anything policy-oriented, especially when your local Protestant church is one bad day away from the minister going left, or a leftist minister getting hired.

              There’s probably a better parish around, or you can always go to Maronite Rite or Ruthenian, or so on. It doesn’t even have to be a parish that speaks English.

          3. There are times I wonder just how far my current LDS Bishop wioud go if Church leadership in SLC hadn’t issued directives on certain things (such as banning political talk from the pulpit).

      2. Gleichschaltung and the Deutsche Christen come to mind. It’s not a new thing. What’s new and troubling is Papa Frankie and the bishops. The church used to be the bulwark against this sort of thing. Now they’re in the pit.

          1. I explained to a Jewish friend of mine that we Catholics are stuck with the damned bishops, otherwise we’d be Protestants.

            There’s a persistent rumor that the seminaries were purposely targeted for infiltration by the soviets. Stalin had been a seminarian after all and understood. The American left is to stupid and arrogant to understand.

            I also think it’s high time that the Society of Jesus be suppressed again, and I say that as a Jesuit boy.

            1. My boys and I had just that conversation. My wife was telling her friends and several confirmed that their husbands had been having the same conversation.

              I remember the first time I stood in Saint Peter’s and asked myself, “was it worth it?” Nope. For all the art and all the beauty it wasn’t worth a life, never mind a soul.

  33. >All they had to do was admit they were wrong and had supported evil.

    Speaking from a personal POV, most people don’t want to do this.

    I’ll spare you my rants on the Just World fallacy and everything that springs from that poison. I’ll just observe that the vast majority of people want to believe they are good people. And Good People never do evil things. No, not even by accident. No, not even because they didn’t know the whole story. Because they’re Good.

    (I could rant for hours on what happens when you live in a small town and the Good People decide you’re Evil. And I’m talking about in kindergarten, and onward. Then again, from what you’ve said about Portugal, you know a lot of that already.)

    …And this is why we have to have cops. To protect suspects from the mob of Good People who would otherwise lynch them for suspected crimes – and then be oh so sorry if the dead guy is proved innocent after all.

    BLM/Antifa/whatever wants to defund the cops. I’d say we should let them, if it weren’t for the collateral damage.

    1. This is why having been trained in a religion that encourages regular confession is very useful. I know I have sinned in my mind and in my heart, by what I’ve done and what I’ve failed to do, sins of commission and omission, of imperfect knowledge and wishful thinking.
      That helps. Because G-d knows I’ve been wrong, often.

      1. Yes. I think I was lucky to have 4 years of Religion class in HS. My parents expected me to come out an atheist. Which should tell you something.

        Instead, I came out with, “all the lasting religions say there is a Golden Rule for how you treat people. I would like this to be true. Therefore, I will strive to act in this manner. Even if it is painfully hard.”

        It was the first step on a long climb out of my family’s dysfunction. Because it gave me a yardstick to measure what people said they were doing versus actual results.

        1. Catholic school still teaches the one great lesson that all people need to learn. Life is not fair.

          You can learn it elsewhere but no one did it better than the nuns did.

            1. Yes, but there’s also the thing about confession.

              And there are those who say that confession is an escape route.

              shudder.

      2. Agreed. For all the many sins the Church has brought upon its own head, I thank the nuns that trained my young mind away from the paths I might’ve trod. It also taught me that all men are fallible, save the one, and that fallibility ain’t the point. The fact that you can, daily, try again and do better- that’s a lesson that may very well save lives. Souls, definitely.

    2. No, they wouldn’t be sorry if the dead prove innocent. Out of the mouth of my ultra-liberal coworker, who thinks she’s a Good Person: “Well, if Trump wasn’t guilty of collusion, he ought to have been!”

      Again with the: You can’t reason someone out of something that their ego and self-image relies on them knowing is “true”, no matter how wrong or evil it may actually be.

    3. most people don’t want to admit fault at all. As I’ve been watching old Formula 1 races I’ve gained an even greater respect for Nikki Lauda. When he drops out of a race for a reason and they interview him he always accepts responsibility for what he did. “I was driving like an @sshole.” or “I put myself in a bad position. Completely my fault.” It’s refreshing, and unusual.

      1. “It’s refreshing, and unusual.”

        Isn’t it though? I found myself charmed watching a post-game interview in which the pitcher explained, basically, “I threw the wrong pitches in the wrong places and didn’t execute them well.”
        –

      2. You have to accept responsibility for your own faults or you can’t improve. Owning your own problems is very powerful because it gives you the ability to do something about them.

        1. Which is why claims of “systemic racism” are so destructive, because it means there’s nothing the individual can do. It deprives the individual of agency. An individual without agency is a child and reacts as a child, with whinging and tantrums.

          Others — Jackie Robinson, for one, whose achievement MLB celebrated last Friday — faced far greater “systemic racism” than anything people today can imagine. He did not let it deter him and he demonstrated a determined person, dedicated to achievement, can overcome.
          –

      3. It’s the only way to improve too. I’ve survived, and that’s the right word, 40 years on Wall Street by trying my best to be honest with myself. It starts by keeping track of decisions and checking how you did.

        NumberOne son’s Masters thesis in Linguistics was on the way EPL managers talked after winning or losing a match. The ones who tended to be losers blamed the referees or the pitch or something else the ones who tended to be winners tended to credit the opposition and criticize their team’s work rate.

        He also proved, scientifically, that Jose Mourinho is an a—hole. My nephew still laughs that everyone knew this to be true but my son proved it with math.

        1. At some point I realized I had never corrected a problem I didn’t recognize I had, and learned to accept criticism with grace (even as I reserve the right to determine its validity.)

          I have never thought myself perfect (merely better than almost everybody else) and so I have never thought there no room to improve.
          –

    4. I lived through that too.

      I remember watching “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” as a teen, and thinking there was no practical difference between alien pod people and the Nice People who thought child was their religious duty.

    5. “… the vast majority of people want to believe they are good people”

      Heh. One more reason to be appreciative I’ve not generally thought of myself as “good” (although I will own to being “mostly harmless”) nor people.

      I am a wallaby and thus inherently wonderful — but I never confuse being wonderful with being good. That’s a mistake it takes a monkey to make.
      –

    6. A tactic that works– because it is true, at least in part and often at root– hammer on that they have been lied to.

      They didn’t go “Oh! Evil! how shiny, I shall do that!”

      They were lied to, and misled and — well, gaslighted.

      Recognizing that doesn’t mean they’re weak, it means THEY ESCAPED.

      1. …Sometimes that works.

        Sometimes they realize that you’re implying they HAD to escape, meaning they weren’t as powerful/socially connected as whoever was doing the gaslighting.

        At which point they double down and try to take you out for insulting them and threatening their community status.

        1. Also sometimes “both.”

          It takes a while for them to decide that you were right and it IS worth it…. which does you very little good. (This realization made me really, really feel for the folks dealing with newly minted Saint Paul.)

    7. Hide, witch, hide!
      The good folk come to burn thee,
      Their keen enjoyment hid behind
      A Gothic mask of duty.

      (From a song by Jefferson Airplane, based on lines in an SF novel of the 1950s.)

      2. ‘So Sincere’ — a Pat Benatar song from 1979.

        “I try to leave and you plead and plead and plead and plead and plead.”

  34. “None of those death camps could have stayed in business if everyone around, all the decent people, had advanced on them and said “Stop it. Enough is enough.””

    Must disagree. Given who the Nazis were, they’d have definitely killed anybody who made a fuss about those camps. This is the Great Pacifist Fallacy, that if all the decent people get together they could stop it.

    No, not really. Not unless all the decent people ganged up and went to KILL them all. But then it’s not pacifism anymore. It’s War, capital W.

    Given the guy assassinated in Portland a couple days ago, the American (and Canadian) Left is most definitely going that way. I’d prefer we settle them before they start with the death camp shit.

    1. This of course is one of the reasons that the Nazi’s, like every totalitarian and aspiring totalitarian regime, disarms the populace at the first opportunity, and is why Democrats are so anxious to do so now.

  35. It’s darkly humorous to see how both obvious and inept the media’s deceptions have become. They run articles telling us that the protests have been peaceful with pictures of burni,ng buildings. The Dem vice-presidential candidate tells viewers that the riots are good and will continue and then a few days later the media tells us the riots are bad now because they’re hurting the Dems and are now Trump’s fault. By Election Day, I expect them to be telling us that all apparent leftist rioting is actually an illusion being beamed to Earth via Russian mind-control satellites.

      1. Pravda, heck. I seem to recall a silly little thing called “satire” that you quite literally can’t do anymore because it becomes *news* too fast. Ah, for a more innocent time, before the Times put the tabloids outta business by making hogwash *their* business model…

    2. NPR just sent out a tweet saying that Trump claimed “without evidence” that Kyle Rittenhouse acted in self defense. Never mind the fact that everyone and their dog has seen the videos by now. The narrative is that it wasn’t self defense so there can’t be any evidence that it’s self defense.

      1. In a Bill Clintonesque way, NPR might be right. SARC /
        It’s only a video until it is submitted in court, after establishing a foundation for it, and surviving objections.
        That is when it becomes “evidence”
        Keep in mind that the Prog / Left defines and re-defines words and concepts to suit their goals.
        In other words, they lie like rugs.
        John in Indy

  36. Powerline just nailed it. Biden is Joe Isuzu.

    I know he’s a politician and all but Biden lies about things he doesn’t have to. I remember when the Prince of Wales came to the US and Biden had his mother saying you don’t kiss the queen’s ring so he wouldn’t. Biden’s mother was Irish.

    She never said that. You don’t kiss the queen’s ring, you bow or curtesy to her. You kiss a bishop’s ring. Biden’s mother would know that, as would Biden if he were as Catholic as he claims.

    Biden is a pathological liar.

      1. I know he’s stupid and “good old Joe” but it’s beyond stupid. It’s like his plagiarizing, He should know that he’ll be caught but he does it anyway. He also tends to steal from unsuccessful politicians, which makes no sense at all. It’s pathological.

        The pathology is what bothers me, Perhaps it’s the rise of professional politicians who have never held another job but the proportion of politicians who can easily rate high scores on the psychopath tests seems to be much higher and approaching 100% of the donkey’s.

        1. Psycopathy need not be a direct route to evil. An intelligent psychopath can realize what will happen to him if he *truly* acts as if other people have no inherent worth. There can be rules, well, guidelines really, that can present a pleasant face to the world without the mess of dealing with other people too intimately.

        2. He does it because he has gotten away with it his entire life because he knows the media which Democrats dominate will let him get away with it. After all, Virginia’s Governor Blackface is still in power, because he is a Democrat.

          1. This is part of the way in which the MSM destroys the Democrat Party, allowing wounds to fester when they ought have been long ago lanced.
            –

        3. Leave us not overlook his asinine bluster, from talking about “taking Trump out behind the gym and beating the hell out of him” to challenging a questioner to a push-ups contest to belittling another voter’s IQ

          A video is making the rounds in which Biden boasts at a 1987 rally, “I went to law school on a full academic scholarship…[and] ended up in the top half of my class.”

          Biden also maintained that he “graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school” and was the “outstanding student in the political science department.”

          Not one of those claims was true, as newscasters at the time affirmed. In fact, Biden graduated 76th of 85 students in his law school class, had only a partial scholarship and did not win top honors in his undergraduate discipline.

          Biden explained in his 2007 autobiography “Promises to Keep” that he had been angry at that rally since “it sounded to me that one of my own supporters doubted my intelligence.” According to a 1987 Newsweek piece, a supporter had “politely” asked Biden what law school he attended and how well he had done.

          Biden bristled, saying “I think I have a much higher IQ than you do,” reeled off his fabricated accomplishments and concluded “I’d be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours if you’d like, Frank.”
          https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/499065-lies-damned-lies-and-the-truth-about-joe-biden

          And this man dares complain about Trump’s lack of decorum.
          –

          1. Which is why I was amazed that he got the nomination. Trump’s biggest weaknesses are his history with women and his rather convoluted speaking style. In response, the Democrats nominated perhaps the one person who could make Trump look like St. Augustine.

    2. Biden’s half-senile. I doubt he’d remember his own name if people didn’t constantly remind him.

  37. I live and work in lib world. It’s astonishing how many otherwise bright people will spout nonsense about Republicans plotting to put gays in camps and turn women into broodmares in pilgrim costumes a la The Handmaid’s Tale. This gets reinforced over and over on social media, on t.v., in movies and t.v. shows, and on alleged news programs. This is why the Biden campaign is now taking the tack that those hooligans tearing down statues, attacking cops, shooting people in cars, burning car dealerships and furniture stores, and carrying out struggle sessions at sidewalk cafes are all Trump supporters. Because MAGA types are always shouting “Death to America” at Trump rallies.

    On the other hand, we know leftists condone and want more violence against anyone who gets in their way of their ever-changing goal posts. They cheered when the Patriot Prayer guy was shot to death in Portland. They didn’t condemn the people who shot at a Trump caravan in Los Angeles yesterday or last week in South Carolina. They laughed off assaults on Rand Paul and Steve Scalise or blamed Trump for making people so angry they want to kill others. Conservatives have been targets of political violence for years and the Democrats or anyone else on the left have never condemned it.

    1. It became “Trump violence” the moment it impacted Biden’s poll numbers. Before that it was “Rioting? What rioting?”

    2. One quick little thing on the video of Rand Paul getting mobbed caught my attention. One of the cops got shoved off his bicycle and Sen. Paul instantly reached out to help him stay on his feet.

      Would Biden do that? Baroness Kamela and MaligNancy definitely wouldn’t.

      1. I understand during the softball shootup Sen. Paul was on his knees, rendering first aid before the bullets had stopped flying.
        Good doctors are like that.

        1. If I remember correctly, the guy who was hurt worst retold what he remembered as seeing Senator Paul already helping the first guy hit as his first indication it wasn’t a car backfire or something.

        2. IIRC, Senator Paul and my representative, Representative Wenstrup, were the first two doctors on the scene.

      2. “Would Biden do that? Baroness Kamela and MaligNancy definitely wouldn’t.”

        AS IF any violent mob mostly peaceful protest would endanger a one of them. Who’d reimburse their travel expenses, vouch for their pay chits, go their bail if they injured (or even annoyed) a Progressive pol?

        They surely do not think a right-wing protest would threaten them. After all, Speaker Pelosi had no qualms marching through a crowd TEA Party protesters without protective escort, waving her giant phallus gavel about.
        –

        2. The mob is a fickle thing. I remember stories about protestors showing up in front of Sen. Schumer’s house shortly after Trump took office.

          I can easily see a mob attacking Pelosi for not being radical enough.

    3. “It’s astonishing how many otherwise bright people will spout nonsense about Republicans plotting to put gays in camps and turn women into broodmares in pilgrim costumes a la The Handmaid’s Tale. This gets reinforced over and over on social media, on t.v., in movies and t.v. shows, and on alleged news programs.”

      I used to be able to speak fluent educated academic liberal, once upon a time. It is both a dialect and a culture. You believe, and speak, certain things and you are part of the “in” group. The culture has its own shibboleths, cult-like beliefs, shaming rituals, and linguistic turns of phrase to distinguish “us” from “them.”

      To the leftist, some things aren’t looked at too closely. Rather, they are looked *around* than at, so that, oh, all aspects of gender are on the table and scrutinized save for the actual biology. Or that poverty is a terrible problem that we need to eliminate, but not by the proven methods that actually *work* and the fact that some people *like* it there and think you’re an idiot for working. At all.

      Things like “throwing grandma off a cliff,” “putting kids in cages,” and “rounding up X,Y, and Q (I remember when it was just blacks, not blacks, browns, gays, and so on)” aren’t so much looked at as signaling “I am one of us.” Of course they want to defend that in-group status. That’s the main thing. It might even be an unconscious desire- I am no psychologist- but functionally it works.

      The rapid shifting of sacred and profane that has happened in the last fifteen years or so usually happens in a culture under stress. Old ways of thinking aren’t working. The sacrifice hasn’t prevented the storm. So the tribes have to go and get a new shaman to magic up a reason it didn’t work- and, predictably, it’s heresy that’s the cause (figuratively. mostly). Thus how gays are lumped in with what used to be just straight white guys, which used to be WASPs, the suits, the man, et cetera.

      It would be a terribly fascinating ethnography. If you could get an honest man to do it. An he survives to write it, of course.

        1. *nod* It has. Failed more people than died in modern wars, plagues, and all.

          And that’s just the point. isn’t it? As long as they did it to themselves, fine, knock yourselves out, have fun. But the freedom to be left alone was the one thing they can never give us. They have to be in control of *other people* to make it all work, and then it’ll be rainbow farting unicorns far as the eye can see.*

          *Disclaimer: “rainbow farting unicorns” is also known to manifest as grinding poverty, gulags, gas chambers, permanent shortages of the basic necessities, corruption, slavery, until all are ground down to the nubbin in the equality of universal tragedy and suffering.

      3. “We keep throwing sacrifices into the volcano, and it’s still erupting! What is wrong with the sacrifices? We need better ones!”

      4. I can still pass. The setting helps, and keeping an open ear to the latest movements and fads in the field makes it easier to nod in the right places and mention the right names or events, if only to signal that I’m aware of them. But it’s tiring.

  38. “Gays in camps”…given that Trump has spent a big part of his life in the entertainment industry, and most of his life in NYC, you would think it would have been obvious that he was unlikely to be a gay-hater.

    There are a lot of people who just do not have the ability to apply reasonableness tests, and this phenomeneon is not seen only in politics.

    2. Hey he booted Epstein out after he behaved poorly with an under-aged employee– CLEARLY Trump isn’t sufficiently “with it.”

      1. Yeah, but he doesn’t support it the right way. He thinks people should be left alone rather than requiring those evil people that didn’t celebrate gay intercourse to be made to do so

    4. Oh dearie dear me, I am getting old and slow, else I’d have spotted this earlier …

      “Gays in camps” — well, of course: Gays practically invented Camp.

      And nobody does it better!
      –

  40. I think some people would rather die than admit they were wrong. And I guess the loss of one’s self image as “a good person” is a type of death as well.

    2. Some peopke would rather silence you* than admit they were wrong.

      *Permanently, if necessary . . .

  41. After 2016 I had to talk a coworker down because she was certain that Trump was going to make her marriage illegal. I had to explain that Trump first had to replace Kennedy or one of the liberal justices, then there would have to be a case challenging Oberfell which would have to make it all the way to the Supreme Court, and then Oberfell would be overturned. But that would just get rid of the national mandate for gay marriage. It would still be legal in states like Washington that had legalized it before.

  43. I don’t think these people are duped. Rather, I think they knew it was all bull, but as long as enough of them repeated the lies, nobody could call them out and make it stick.

    I concluded during the Clinton administration that the Left believes it can fool enough of the people enough of the time, i.e. until the reins of power are irrevocably in its hands. All the gaslighting was for the rubes, the Trump supporters Peter Strozk could smell at Wal-Mart. But now it seems that there wasn’t as much time as the Left needed, and this has the Left trapped.

    As I’ve often said, you don’t get your credibility back by admitting you’ve been lying to people. Your only hope is to double down. We shall see how that works out.

  44. What I find most amusing is that if you put Ric Grenell or Scott Pressler on stage at a Trump rally, the place would erupt in support. People would be lining up to get autographs.

    Maybe it’s not the “gay” part that Trump supporters have a problem with…..maybe it has something to do with the “self-absorbed twits who will tear down the country if they can’t rule it like Louix XIV.”

    1. If only they had been told what happened to Louis XVI…
      ———————————
      Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do remember history are doomed to watch everybody else repeat it.

    2. I want to figure out Grenell’s address to send him a copy of A Few Good Men. If he’s going to try to play the George, he should know what he’s doing fictionally speaking 😉

    3. Similarly, put Thomas Sowell or Walter B. Williamson stage at one of Trump’s rallies and it better be open air because the applause’ll raise the roof.

      Back in Reagan’s day the GOP had no problem with “strong” women — witness the reactions to Maggie Thatcher or Jean Kirkpatrick. That hasn’t changed in the time since, either.

      Of course, it isn’t as if they’re interested in being truthful about conservatives.
      –

  46. Small point, but a quick look seems to support the idea that this is not widely known.
    Jacob Blake may have been a reprehensible man, but he wasn’t a pedophile. His ex-girlfriend (who is now calling herself his fiance) is just one year – at most – younger than he. The offense he was charged with just happens to fall under the same statute as that offense (not actually rape) does.
    What I think happened:
    – He got tired of her overdramatic $hit. Left her. May or may not have penetrated her with his finger. But, in any case, she felt disrespected.
    – She called in the cops. Got the arrest warrant, and also an order of protection. When he came to pick up HIS kids, she called the cops.
    – Result? Cops, believing him to be a dangerous rapist, tried to bring him in. He, being a Black man who thought the whole thing was B$, tried to leave (he did present a threat – the knife in the photos). The cops acted to keep him from leaving with the kids (with the XGF screaming in their ears, no doubt).
    Was Jacob in the wrong? Sure. But, by the standards of his culture, he was being calm and rational. Also, may have been trying to get the kids away from that cray-cray woman.
    Were the cops in the wrong? They did act according to procedure – not that it will save their jobs or bank account.
    What is NOT being investigated?
    – Did Jacob leave for another woman? Based on how the average man works – hell, yes! Men seldom leave without another woman at least somewhere in the picture. It may not have lasted – likely not. But, it was a sufficient reason for the XGF to get her anger going, and swear out a warrant.
    – Did he commit the act he was accused of? Probably. It seems to be less of a sexual thing that disrespectful one – he sniffed his finger, and asked if we smelt another man. (Did she already have another guy? Maybe.)
    – Should this have been dealt with by some other means? Probably – but, the XGF was the one that brought in the cops, by her insistence on arrest. By that point, no social worker could have managed it.
    What can be done to get to the truth of this?
    (1) Keep the XGF away from him, as well as any other member of her family.
    (2) DA – go to court, and insist that the attorney representing him refuse to represent the XGF in any proceeding. Her interests are opposite the accused.
    (3) Once the connection has been severed, allow the man’s kids to visit him, with supervision from his family, under observation.
    (4) Once some rapport has been established via these means, soften him up by pointing out that her essential character hasn’t changed, and she is likely to get herself another man. He has already shown he doesn’t trust her. Re-direct his anger from the cops, to the woman who caused this all.
    It might just work.

    1. Okay, so other than violating a restraining order, assaulting police, and possibly going for a weapon during that struggle, he was acting just fine.
      But, this would be the first time I saw him called pedo. I saw one wag mention the “underage” estranged GF, but everything has centered on assault charges and violating restraining orders, followed by fighting with the police.
      The pedo charge is usually referring to one of the guys the kid shot while running for his life.
      then again I’ve been paying as little attention as possible to the whole sh*tshow.

    2. The convicted pedophile is the first guy shot during the riots, not the rapist shot resisting arrest when the cops came to stop him from threatening his victim with a knife. (Sarah conflated him with dead guy #2, who tried to beat the 17 year old with a skateboard and grabbing the rifle.)

      Dead guy #1 was charged, convicted, and sentenced in Arizona, which has Romeo and Juliet laws, so was either forcible rape or someone 15 or younger.

      The Jacob Blake timeline you’re using appears to confuse the offense in July (warrant issued) with the offense August (police attempted to arrest).

      The police were called because Blake had violated the restraining order and threatened his victim with a knife. In at least one of the cases, after the digital penetration you describe, he took her car keys, the car, and the kids, and she dialed 911.

      The timeline is extremely unclear because the reporters seem to have relied exclusively on Blake’s lawyer, “fiancé,” and “witnesses” (which I am going to guess include said fiancé) up until the police issued a statement and Twitter banned the rape victim’s aunt’s twitter account.

    3. Found the police statement– Western Journal *actually linked it*, rather than doing selected quotes, I’ll need to use them more often.

      Long quote; article link at end, PDF link in article as “joint statement.”

      The officers were dispatched to the location due to a complaint that Mr. Blake was
      attempting to steal the caller’s keys/vehicle.
      • Officers were aware of Mr. Blake’s open warrant for felony sexual assault (3rd degree)
      before they arrived on scene.
      • Mr. Blake was not breaking up a fight between two females when officers arrived on scene.
      • The silver SUV seen in the widely circulated video was not Mr. Blake’s vehicle.
      • Mr. Blake was not unarmed. He was armed with a knife. The officers did not see the knife
      initially. The officers first saw him holding the knife while they were on the passenger side
      of the vehicle. The “main” video circulating on the internet shows Mr. Blake with the knife
      in his left hand when he rounds the front of the car. The officers issued repeated commands
      for Mr. Blake to drop the knife. He did not comply.
      • The officers initially tried to speak with Mr. Blake, but he was uncooperative.
      • The officers then began issuing verbal commands to Mr. Blake, but he was non-complaint.
      • The officers next went “hands-on” with Mr. Blake, so as to gain compliance and control.
      • Mr. Blake actively resisted the officers’ attempt to gain compliance.
      • The officers then disengaged and drew their tasers, issuing commands to Mr. Blake that
      he would be tased if he did not comply.
      • Based on his non-compliance, one officer tased Mr. Blake. The taser did not incapacitate
      Mr. Blake.
      • The officers once more went “hands-on” with Mr. Blake; again, trying to gain control of
      the escalating situation.
      • Mr. Blake forcefully fought with the officers, including putting one of the officers in a
      headlock.
      • A second taser (from a different officer than had deployed the initial taser) was then
      deployed on Mr. Blake. It did not appear to have any impact on him.
      • Based on the inability to gain compliance and control after using verbal, physical and lesslethal means, the officers drew their firearms.
      • Mr. Blake continued to ignore the officers’ commands, even with the threat of lethal force
      now present.

      https://www.westernjournal.com/kenosha-police-union-issues-statement-shredding-false-narrative-around-jacob-blake-shooting/

    4. And here are the details for the first incident:

      Again, document linked in article at end, long quote:

      On May 3, 2020 Kenosha Police Officer Raiche, in full uniform and operating marked squad
      #3343, responded to 2805 40th Street Unit D, City and County of Kenosha, state of Wisconsin for a
      report of an ex-boyfriend who had broken into the residence and stole vehicle keys, a vehicle and
      a debit card from the victim before fleeing.
      Officers Matz and Raiche arrived on scene and spoke with LNB. Officer Raiche reports LNB was
      crying and visibly shaken, dressed only in a nightgown. LNB invited them in and explained that the
      previous evening she had left at approximately 8PM to attend a party in Milwaukee. LNB rented a
      vehicle for the weekend because she didn’t think her vehicle would make it because of mechanical
      issues. LNB asked her sister Tamara to stay the night and watch her three children while she was
      gone. LNB returned home at about 4:11AM, her sister was sleeping in the living room on the couch
      with numerous children so LNB brought her son with her into the first bedroom down the hallway
      on the east wall, they then lay down to go to sleep.
      LNB stated at about 6AM she was woken up by the father of her children, Jacob Blake, herein
      known as the defendant, standing over her saying, “I want my shit.” As LNB lay there, on her
      back, the defendant, suddenly and without warning, reached his hand between her legs,
      penetrated her vaginally with a finger, pull it out and sniffed it, and said, “Smells like you’ve been
      with other men.”
      Officer Raiche reported LNB had a very difficult time telling him this and cried as she told how the
      defendant assaulted her and then the defendant immediately left the bedroom.
      LNB stated the defendant penetrating her digitally caused her pain and humiliation and was done
      without her consent.
      LNB stated she was upset but collected herself and ran after the defendant out the front door and
      then realized her vehicle was missing. LNB ran back inside to her purse, which was on the kitchen
      counter and checked it, quickly realizing her key to her truck (Ford Explorer 2002), a black
      individual key and the only key for the vehicle and her Great Lakes Debit Card were missing. LNB
      immediately called 911 and while waiting for Officers, checked her Great Lakes Account and saw
      two fraudulent ATM withdrawals on May 3, 2020 that she did not make, both at PNC Bank, 3920
      Washington Road, both for $500, at an unknown time.
      LNB stated she and the defendant have three children together but have never resided together in
      the eight years they have been on and off. LNB stated the defendant is unemployed, has no
      vehicle, and would not tell LNB where he was currently living. LNB stated over the past eight
      years the defendant has physically assaulted her around twice a year when he drinks heavily.
      LNB did not know how the defendant entered the apartment and thought maybe through a window.
      Officer Matz spoke to LNB’s sister Tamara, and she advised after LNB had left, the defendant
      came to the residence for around ten minutes and interacted with the children. Officer Matz asked
      how the defendant may have entered and she said one of the children had broken a key off in the
      dead bolt lock so the only way the door locks is by latching the privacy chain. LNB stated when
      the defendant comes over he usually yells through a window for someone to let him in and most
      likely when he showed up he possibly had one of the children remove the chain latch so he could
      enter.

      https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3877395/posts

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

      Basically, strangely enough, it lines up with the memes on twitter– the woman in a long running, abusive relationship finally DID SOMETHING to try to get out…

      And the media turns her scumbag abuser into a hero.

    5. Updated information, the vehicle and children are the rape victim’s, and there was a protection order at the time he was threatening her with a knife.

      https://statelymcdanielmanor.wordpress.com/2020/09/02/jacob-blake-the-status-quo/

      Incidentally, this is bullshit:
      the offense he was charged with just happens to fall under the same statute as that offense (not actually rape) does.

      Forcibly fingering someone does not “happen” to fall under the same statute, any more than using an object to forcibly rape someone does.

      It is forcible penetration– sexual humiliation that shows the rapist has extreme domination of the victim.

      It would be like arguing that sodomizing a guy with a broomstick isn’t rape, or lesbian rape isn’t rape, because a dick wasn’t involved.

      1. “It would be like arguing that sodomizing a guy with a broomstick isn’t rape, or lesbian rape isn’t rape, because a dick wasn’t involved.”

        Oh, those typically involve a dick, alright, just not a penis.
        –

  47. Pingback: Evil good people – Professor Ornery Dragon

  48. I mean, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who met the “they’re going to kill all gay people!” panicked people after the election in 16.

    Well, I’ve mentioned before that my wife was terrified for our younger son after that election. Fortunately, while he has his troubles, he’s not THAT kind of crazy, and told her that she was being hysterical.

  51. A day late, sorry, I was busy…

    And while on that, China, which has been their beau ideal since the Soviet Union collapsed, a place where, supposedly, communism worked (which in part caused them to decide it’s whiteness that causes communism not to work.)

    Insisting that Caucasianess makes communism not work, just look at those Asians, while simultaneously insisting that Asians must count as white in race-based-preference spoils allocations like college admissions with no resulting head explosions, forces the conclusion that they do not in fact think about the words that they emit – it’s the classic GIGO equation with no mental processing involved between input and output.

  52. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 09.04.20 : The Other McCain

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