Everywhere you turn these days, the term “civil war” is on everyone’s lips.
We know the left WANTS one, both because they tell us they do, and because, true to their mechanic of projection, they tell us it’s the “right” that wants the civil war, and latch onto the craziest things, like Hawaiian shirts, which men of certain portliness wear, as a sure sign we’re now wearing a uniform and we “want a civil war.”
The thing might be unavoidable, of course, since they’re trying so hard — and I’ll explain WHY they’re trying so hard in a minute — but my earnest question to those on the right doing things like posting memes of the Founding Fathers with “my homies and I would already be stacking bodies” (Which is historically wrong. They put up with a lot more shit than we have. The Road to the Revolution was loooong. You only hear about “relevant precipitating incidents”, but it was a long time before Americans snapped. This has been true in every war, btw.) is “WHY would you give the left what they want?”
Have they been alive in this world at the same time I have? Because I don’t recall a time that what the left wanted wasn’t good for them and bad for everyone else.
In this case, the left needs a civil war. They need to destroy civilization, control the news again, and install a totalitarian regime where no dissent will be allowed. Yes, they’re trying to get it by means of censorship, but if that were working, they wouldn’t be so hot to trot.
The most baffling thing about what I’ll call “The dogs of war” on the right is that it doesn’t stop with circumstances. No, seriously. Before 2016, they wanted to burn it all down. (To an extent, I DO understand that, by the way. Because after Obama, Hillary would have put an end to us. It doesn’t mean going out in a blaze of glory was the smart choice for us and for the future. But it was understandable.) Then Trump won, and they REALLY wanted to burn it all down. Uh? You have the president, the house and congress. Yes, embattled. What, you expected it to be a fairy tale and the dragon imploded? But still, you’ve shown you have the ability to change with the system you have…. and you want to blow it all down? And now they want to burn it all down….
At which point do they realize that whatever is driving them is not the current political situation? And that maybe what apparently are called “black pillers” are not people who have our society’s best interests at heart?
Has the time leading to Trump’s election taught you nothing? All the people running around, approvingly talking about how racist he was, who disappeared right after the election….. YOU THINK THEY WERE REAL? YOU THINK THEY WERE AMERICAN? YOU THINK THEY WERE ON THE RIGHT? Are you out of your minds?
That’s the beginning, but there are other things. Like the insistence that our loss of the rule of law is unprecedented. That cancel culture is unprecedented. That our colleges are uniquely infected.
Every time I hear this — and often it is from a leftist who is changing — I want to post this:
Look, I do realize I see things a certain way, because of where I was born/grew up. But I’ve lived here most of my adult life.
The shock was not coming here as an exchange student, from a country dominated by the left where education taught the splendors of communism and my suddenly enjoying the land of the free. The shock was realizing your left was a lot like our left — just more veiled — that the history books taught the same bullshit, only less openly, and that you had to keep your mouth shut about how bad the left/communism/socialism were or risk being treated as crazy or an idiot by all the bien pensant.
The number of times I told my host family “This is what is really going on” and they told me that stuff didn’t happen in America and I was being paranoid is in the hundreds. You know, stuff like sitcoms painting Reagan as a crazy person and practically campaigning for Carter? Yeah, stuff like that. They, btw, eventually came to see it. By then, at eighteen, I couldn’t figure out how people didn’t see it.
And yes, of course I kept my mouth shut in school and social situations. Because if even my host family thought I was insane, what would strangers think?
And when I came here as a young wife, it was no different. Yes, part of this were the circles I ran in, which were academic/artistic and technological on the husband’s side. But it was the same. When our dentist, during a session, campaigned for the democrat for mayor, and talked about the horrible racism of the GOP candidate (assumed because GOP) do you think I set her straight? She’d just decide I was racist.
As for cancel culture…. PFUI. With a cherry on top. Why do you think I kept my mouth shut in order to keep writing. It didn’t even take much. I know for a fact a liking for elephants as an animal was enough to make people suspect you of being a secret republican. And like the hunt for witches, once they suspected you, it was easy to find “corroboration.” You’re religious? Ah! Obviously an evil right winger who wants to kill all non believers, put women in chain, restore slavery, etc. etc. (The fact their image of the right has bloody nothing to do with reality never stopped them. Besides it was reinforced by entertainment, the news, everything.)
And yes, you’d get cancelled. I saw it happen. Granted, it wasn’t all politics. You could get cancelled for all sorts of reasons. Word went out that you were seen with so and so, who once called your editor a b*tch, and you were friendly with them. And no one would touch you again. Suddenly you were “difficult to work with” and no other editor would accept you.
Why not? There was an infinite supply of widget-writers, and what made you really successful was whether you got promo and push or not (to an extent not wrong, after selling to the net, btw. It just took them a while to figure out that they couldn’t make dog turds shine.) You were done. More importantly everyone was warned not to talk to you, read you, or even think about you. You were banished.
It was no different in other entertainment, academic, or even news or scientific circles. Cancel culture has been alive and well ever since I’ve been in this country. It’s just that most people weren’t aware of it. This is how we got the myth that only leftists were talented, because they were the only visible ones. The other ones disappeared. And though people tried to explain why civilizational product in general, from science to art, was going down, (the left loved the theory of the decadence brought on by capitalism), it never occurred to the average man on the street that the people in these fields were being judged and culled by criteria that had nothing to do with ability or merit.
Heck, even some people to the right of Lenin who had come in before me, when the left at least attempted to pretend they were even-handed didn’t see it. They bought into the myth it was all merit. BUT they knew too. Because they advised you not to be seen with so and so. They just never correlated it. And if I brought it up, I was told it was a conspiracy theory. So I didn’t.
It wasn’t a conspiracy, btw. As we’ve found out, a lot of fellow-travelers who all believe the same thing and head the same way is indistinguishable from a conspiracy. Also, the power to cancel and destroy was the stronger because they controlled the mass media, the press, etc.
But Sarah, you say, we’re seeing uniquely partisan persecutions, and attacks, and–
Really? Want to bet on that? I’m remiss on studying the history of the US, I confess, but while there have been better times — mostly while the west was open, which meant there were places where it was hard to track people, although that had its downsides, too — and worse times, partisan persecution, oppression, suppression of opinions, etc, have always been with us. They probably always will be, honestly. We are human.
It’s good to have the ideal of equal treatment under the law. It’s also important to realize that it’s never going to happen. Not completely. For various reasons, but mostly because no, ever judge is not going to be a paragon. Every police officer is not going to be a saint. And there are no angels among the populace, either. Miscarriages of justice will happen. To demand a world where there is no miscarriage of justice, ever, puts you in the same mind set as the idiots who think all men should be responsible because one of them is a rapist. That’s not how humans work.
But Sarah, look at how they’ve gone after Trump and his people….
Yeah. I’ll forgive that to the college kids who don’t know any better, but those of you who were old enough to shave at the same time I bought my first lipstick (at 17. I was a late bloomer) do not get that kind of pass.
It’s like you’ve forgotten the endless “scandals” of the Reagan administration, that kept them tied in lawfare. It’s like you forgot that aids to Bush were thrown in prison on bullshit procedural “crimes.” It’s like you don’t realize that compared to what Obama clearly has gotten away with, Nixon was a choirboy.
And by the way, I’m sure all of that goes back much, much further back.
But Sarah, the federal government didn’t have that kind of power in the past–
Oh, yeah? Read first-hand sources during WWI. Or WWII. Or read The Forgotten Man which is like a manual on how a deranged totalitarian president can screw this country. Ask yourself how we got where we’re now. How the crawl through the institutions happened. How they came to have control of our societal mechanisms. Go ahead. Ask yourself how we got here. And how long it’s been going on. (Heinlein said that the Democrats had been taken over by communists by the forties. That communists were in control where it counted. I see no reason to doubt him.)
Your ignorance of how bad things were in the past, doesn’t make this the worst things have ever been.
So, what has changed?
Well, it’ more visible now. Things have changed, indeed — changed at such a pace that it qualifies as “catastrophic change” in the last 20 years or so. 20 years ago? I’d be praying a lot and keeping my mouth tight shut. Also, most of the publishing establishment would think of me as a very domestic woman with no political opinions. One of those Latin moms, you know? Why? Well, because I would want my stories to continue being read.
Now?
Despite all attempts at keeping only the official narrative going, the dems are losing control. They’re losing control of the very institutions they worked so hard to control completely. They can cancel people to an extent, but people KNOW ABOUT IT. And that in itself, even if the canceling works, goes against them, because other people realize what’s going on.
Obama? They tried to paint him as a boy scout, pure as driven snow. But it didn’t work. Stuff leaked. No one but the most invested of the left believes that his administration was ethical and pure. Hillary? They tried to sell her so hard. SO hard. Media and entertainment burned their credibility to do it. (And it was planned, since at least Clinton’s first term, when I heard a bunch of editors talk about how long it would be before we COULD have HER, who was the real hard left in the family.) And it didn’t work. Enough stuff had leaked, that the stink clung to her. And their media lost a bit of their shine.
Their war on Trump? Sure, it’s been worse than anything I’ve seen. But part of it is that I’ve SEEN it. What was going on before, when we relied on the tainted media to report? Do you know? Because I don’t.
I know that most republicans before didn’t fight. I don’t judge them harshly, even those who clearly developed Stockholm Syndrome.
I don’t judge them because…. go up there and read that if things hadn’t changed the way they have in the last twenty years, I’d probably still be tightly politically closeted. Trying to embed messages in my books, sure, and probably getting more and more depressed because I couldn’t tell the truth (which would increase my silences) but …. What would be the point of telling the truth? Or of blowing things up and start shooting people? I’d just go down in history as a monster and be used to destroy people like me. Be used to increase the repression. (Yes, that is still in effect to some extent, though it’s changing. The fact the right refused to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse scared the living crap out of the left, which is part of the reason they started calling out the rioters. BUT his case is so clear cut defense, that the left had trouble selling it. And also, even so, a lot of the “not politically connected people” BOUGHT the idea he was a white supremacist murderer. So the stupid press still has some power.)
So I don’t judge the older republicans too harshly. And I do realize why Trump daring to fight back drives the left bonkers. It’s not just that he fights back, but that by and large he gets away with it, which is a reminder of how much power they have lost.
Guys, the very fact they’re OPENLY talking about stealing the election via fraud, is not a sign of their power, but of how they are losing power.
If they still had the power they had 30 years ago, all you’d hear is how the people would all rise up and vote for Biden. Seriously. And you wouldn’t even have a suspicion he’s demented as f*ck. Because you’d watch the debates and think it, but then you’d hear everyone talk about his acumen and wonderfulness, and you’d go “well…. I might be crazy.”
Yes, this year has driven me nuts, partly because I’m cracked due to past experiences. You don’t need to have been in physical battle to experience PTSD. And I think that’s hitting a lot of you too.
But what you have to realize is that the old establishment, from corrupt scientists to the news media, to the lefty governors, to academia and the schools went all in, did everything to create a crisis (it’s not a surprise. They were openly wishing for something to crash the economy. And for the idiots reading this, no, I’m not saying they created or made up the virus. I’m saying they directed the response in the craziest, most counterproductive way possible) in order for the mass media to regain their captive audience, and the left to sell their story.
And they’re failing. Across the country they are failing. What they succeeded in doing, in fact, was destroy what remained of the credibility and finances of the institutions they control.
So, yes, they want a civil war. That’s their hail mary pass. That’s their only chance. If we remain free and functioning as a society, they’re done, and they know it. This is also why they’re openly fantasizing about fraud.
This is not the behavior of people who subscribe to an ascendant, powerful philosophy. This is the behavior of ants whose hill has been dug up.
There is a book, and I wish I knew which, only I think I rather hated the book, and that it was one of those mainstream things that I read because I had to, which had an insane description that stuck with me.
It was talking about a little boy with a boil. The little boy was very proud of that boil, and watched it swell, and become huge and red, and admired the sheen of the stretched skin. Yeah, it hurt a bit, but look how big, how beautiful it was. And then someone (I don’t remember who) lanced it, and all this yellow, bad smelling stuff came pouring out. And he cried because the stuff was revolting, and he no longer had his big shining boil.
That is kind of what I’m seeing. All this bad smelling, yellow/green corruption you’re seeing? It was always there. In fact, the modern left have become uniformly horrible human beings because the cover of the institutions meant their corruption was never found, so they could do whatever they wanted with no fear. My guess is that the sewer-like effluvium we’ve not yet seen is much worse than we can guess at. Worse than anything we can dream of, because we are not by and large insane.
BUT just because you didn’t see it, weren’t aware of it before, or were briefly aware of it, and then it was covered over, it doesn’t mean things weren’t as bad before. I think they were worse.
The new tech was enough to lance the boil. Oh, not fully. But enough for us to see some of what’s inside. Enough for the left to be unable to keep it all secret, and pretend only crazy people oppose their program, and that they’re the best there is.
And that’s what scares them. If the boil is fully cut open, we’ll all see what it holds and it will heal. Sunlight and the disinfectant of people’s disgust will destroy their cozy corruption. They can’t stand it. They want to destroy our ability to open that boil more. And only a complete collapse of society will give them that power again.
This is why they’re pushing so hard for civil war.
The question is, why should we give it to them?
Yes, it might become inevitable. But that point is not now. Hell, the point might not come if they win through massive fraud. It might, though. Depends on what they do with that, and how far to North Korea they manage to take us. My guess is, like Obama, they’ll find they’re not as powerful as they think they’d be. And also that the levels of fraud will generate more resistance than they dream of. I could be wrong.
Am I saying there won’t be a time to fight? Who? Me? One of you gave my husband a shirt saying “I’m with the excitable Latina.” You know better.
I’m just saying that though I too long for a clear confrontation, one that will finally lay everything bare…. That’s not the way reality works. We’re not a in a movie.
Listen to those in the comments who have experienced civil war and insurrection. Or read (real) histories of the revolutionary war and the civil war. Once the shooting starts, things get murky, and high principles get lost.
Yes, we got very lucky with the revolutionary war, and to a certain extent with the civil war — it could have been worse, believe it or not, even if the changes to our government set up the seeds of the current mess — but do you want to roll for a third time? Before it’s absolutely needed? Really?
Sure, the time might come — and unfortunately not far off — to live free or die. But if the time comes it must be done with forethought and in the certainty it won’t lead to what we’re trying to avoid. Trusting the left to poke us into it, and thinking it will turn out all right is a fool’s game.
This is no time to go wobbly. If the republic can be saved at the ballot box, the cartridge box should stay shut. Full and ready, but shut.
In the end we win, they lose. Unless we start falling for their — weak — mind games.
Be not afraid!
According To Hoyt 
Good for you. The warning is needed.
/amen
Just because…
Oh, the pustulant corruption will all come out – there are just too many people just too angry with what the Vile Progs have done over the last few years and decades. Especially in the last few years.
I know. It might come out EVEN if they win.
I wonder if it’s “especially” as in “Oh crap, they’re getting in. Dumping the lot to the world NOW!”
It cannot help but cone out. Do you really think the (s)BLM, the Clinton crime syndicate, the Soros and Gates crews and the La Raza and Los Colonias can play nice together and civilly divide the spoils?
It’s interesting times all the way down.
*come
**rhetorical “you”
In that analogy if the boil hadn’t been lanced things might have gotten worse and gangrene and/ or septicemia might have set in.
The brain damaging of the youth by 1619 and other false history is a little bit of that septicemia. We need vicious broad spectrum antibiotics to fix that before it goes to much further. It’s not clear if gangrene has set in. If it has we are in for a rough ride as I think the political equivalent of amputation is definitely NOT where we want to go.
it is never where we want to go.
Note I’m not saying it might not be necessary. It’s always better to live free or die. I’m saying we’re not there yet. And if G-d looks after fools, drunkards and the United States of America we MIGHT not get there.
Hence my doing a lot of praying.
Because like a patient with limbs amputated, we might or might not survive the sheer shock. And we’ll have to live in a completely different way. And the only ones who would think that way was superior are the very sick people, who are into mutilation. (Note also for clarity not saying we can’t survive without Marxism. We need Marxism like a hunter needs an accordion. I’m saying at this juncture what we’d need to de-marxize America short term, would leave us with gaping wounds where our constitutional rights used to be.)
May G-d have mercy on our souls. He is our only hope to get out of this without blood up to our ankles and the constitution gone once and for all.
Note I’ve said before in effect, they can’t win, but we can lose.
“Note I’ve said before in effect, they can’t win, but we can lose.”
THIS
I am not afraid.
Neither am I. I’m fed to the teeth with the lying, the corruption, the arrogance and the sheer bloody incompetence.
Mencken and Juvenal. Read Mencken and Juvenal. The period we are emerging from, where at least one political faction could hide its corruption and incompetence, is unusual. I take particular comfort from Juvenal; in the reign of Caesar Augustus, he’s complaining about the same stupid human behavior we face now. And in the meantime we have developed modern dentistry, antibiotics, refrigeration, and the primary dietary problem of the poor in our society is that they are too fat.
We do move forward. And people behave like people, drat them.
I am afraid of when good people get justly angry. IF we cross that threshold, Starship Troopers “one day the veterans had had enough. Coming home from a war they weren’t allowed to win….” IS and will remain the best case scenario.
And I’m a berserker. I’m old and not in the best shape, but I’m a berserker. I respect the inner beast.
I’ve seen a meme warning that people who live in the country think that sitting in a tree for twenty hours waiting to kill something is a fun hobby. . . .
They also skin and field-dress the carcass, in most cases. 😛
Wabbit season!
Duck season!
Wabbit season!
Duck season!
…BLM season?
[sigh] No, Long Pig is always out of season.
Forgot –
Bambi Season
Boar Hog Season
Bear Season
Regarding Long Pig always being out of season? Well Bear, Coyote, Wolf, Fox, & the smaller carnivores, have to eat too. (sigh) But we really don’t want the larger predators (bear, coyote, wolf, wild boar) getting any ideas … especially the wild boar … from what I’ve read, where they are horribly invasive, they already have a worse reputation than bears.
“Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms.”
Well, they are an invasive species. They’re not native to this continent. Anybody in the South will tell you, feral hogs are worse than three-hundred-pound rats. They eat everything, and root up even more. A whole cottage industry has sprung up around various attempts to eradicate feral pigs. So far, the hogs are winning.
When some redneck says he needs a military-type semiautomatic rifle to hunt pigs, he’s NOT bullshitting you. Although I wouldn’t recommend hunting feral hogs with a .223. Use a .308, and make sure you’ve got plenty of ammo.
———————————
Firepower is not a thousand bullets that miss; firepower is one bullet that hits.
Just reread that one. I needed something happy and hopeful.
They put up with a lot more shit than we have. The Road to the Revolution was loooong.
Yes and no. We are not yet being expected to put up with martial law or the suspension of republican government in the various states.
We are, however, facing a rate of taxation and “swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance” that would make the Founders wonder what madness had overcome our kings.
Because I don’t recall a time that what the left wanted wasn’t good for them and bad for everyone else.
Well, the Left always want things they think meet that model. Most often they are bad for them and everyone else. Occassionally, and I’d argue the recent riots and the ramping up of politication of the SCUS nomination process with Kavanaugh are examples, they have wanted what turned out to be bad for them and good for their opponents.
Well, it’ more visible now. Things have changed, indeed — changed at such a pace that it qualifies as “catastrophic change” in the last 20 years or so. 20 years ago?
Yes, catastrophic. Take cancel culture. I get what you say about it always being with us, but it was neither so absolute nor so pervasive. The earliest example I can think of is in the 40s among the CPP doing a struggle session with a writer who penned, for a party paper, bad think about art.
However, his was not pursued until he was unemployable even at minimum wage at a diner counter or digging ditches. Now that is the goal. Leftists openly discuss after cancelling someone “find out if he works at a restaurant so I can go and complain about service and get him fired.”
Nor are the minimum wage employees exempt even if that is all they ever were. Cancelling someone for wrong think you overheard while they made your tacos at Taco Bell is now possible.
What is different is there are no longer any professions that allow escape. Despite the fact we interview on 1 in 1000 resumes received I am convinced at some point my postings here and in the comments at Insty, among others, wil cost me my job. I only refuse to censor because there is too much out there.
That was not true five years ago.
Yes, the arts and academia were gone and we knew it, but we had places to go. You can say that’s the natural progression of what you’re discussing and I won’t argue. However, that was different. People’s backs weren’t against the wall to conform or be unemployable; to comform or be assaulted in the stree.
If five years at this pace we’ll have no choice, but to fight.
I’d rather fight now, less for me but because my oldest nephew will be 15 in five years and thus of the age to be drafted into the gangs that will characterize much of this fight.
With a little luck if we fight now we can be done before he is swept up. We wait both him and his younger brother (who turns 8 next month) will be.
I’d rather die with my boots on then watch them do it.
I realize if that was my real goal I should have wanted it ten years ago when he was being born, as these things often last generations (think of the Troubles in Ireland). I’m well aware in the end I’ll have a choice between the Communists, dominated by Bejing and purged of non-comforming leftists just happened in the Spanish Civil War via the USSR, or an American Franco supported openly by Russia and clandestinely by about half of NATO (they are leftist, but they need us and they know it, hence the hate), but there is still time to have a Spanish Civil War instead of a Troubles.
There is still time to avoid either, but the ability to avoid any fighting will probably be gone by Christmas unless someone on the left pulls back. They will insist on violence, all we have left is the timing. I had hoped Trump had taught them to slow down at least, instead they doubled down and speed up.
In the end we win, they lose. Unless we start falling for their — weak — mind games.
In the end they lose because they are not in touch with reality. But we can lose with them if we wait so long we are trapped in the burning building with them.
Cancel culture: I’d argue for our entire life it was more pervasive and more complete. It JUST wasn’t VISIBLE.
I’m talking as someone who was, because of her upbringing, sensitive to covert games.
And no, you wouldn’t have HEARD about other instances. They wouldn’t be DOCUMENTED and there would be EXCUSES.
Yes, but that is a huge difference. It means they had to use other reasons and “justify” it. That meant it was used for the real problems, like a writer who might encourage people to think differently, and not some random kid on a visit to Washington DC.
That is different. That is the difference between not being a trouble making and fearing the boots that come in the night at random for anyone. It is the difference between being “promoted” to commander of Ice Station Zebra for wrong think and being driven to suicide because you were charged with murder for acting in self-defense (which is in the news today).
As you point out, the former is normal human behavior, although there is a spectrum. The later is the gulag which is not normal human behavior.
But Herb, they didn’t really justify. They just cited something else.
They could just fling out a narrative and get away with it.
The gulag STILL came. You just didn’t even know about it.
I remember in hte nineties being terrified because we were casual friends with someone who was taken up for being in a “militia.” It was always there. You just didn’t see it all the time.
And it’s not like they wouldn’t disguise it now, if they could. They just can’t. Te wound is pierced. The infection is visible.
If it was always there, how am I still employed? If it was always there why could some kid who supported Reagan in the school election keep his job at McDs?
We all know people openly conservative who are paying the price now for things that are much less blatant than people in the same jobs did 5, 10, 20 years ago who didn’t.
Did we know exactly what happened? No, but we knew. Like you did in publishing you heard the whispers, but it was limited to certain professions and certain companies. It wasn’t done to anyone and everyone.
Perhaps this is just being used to both a socialist country and then a socialist industry, but top tier engineering talent was not fired for bad think. They were hidden from others. They were deemed “not management material” in jobs where management was the only way up the latter.
But they were not disposed of because they were hard to replace.
In minimum wage jobs the converse was true. Turn over was so damned high you couldn’t afford to fire people who actually stayed because they had a MAGA hat. Sure, you told them to leave the hat at home and to shut up when the complained about the BLM kid getting to wear his, but you didn’t fire him and go out of your way if called for a reference to say he wasn’t eligible for rehire because it was a waste of you time.
That is no longer true.
There were pockets, Herb. And some people got lucky.
Look, Jerry Pournelle had a career. Which is why he refused to believe there was political discrimination to that extent. But there was.
Some people got in,through the cracks. And some pockets of fields, or some fields, were relatively “okay” within the greater mess.
BUT cancel culture was already there. And already crazy. People just didn’t see it.
Okay.
So it was always like this, we just know now.
Hey, we survived when we didn’t know so why bother fighting now. It’ll been fine.
After all, it’s not getting worse and no matter what we win anyway.
I’ll just vote Republican and it’ll all work out. We won’t have to wear masks and I can go to the office and fucking Dungeons & Dragons will be an elf game instead of being decolonialized (or I guess since nothing has changed there were fights since 1974 to decolonialize D&D but I just didnt know about them).
You know that’s not what I’m saying Herb.
The left is acting crazier at its being revealed. They were crazy before.
Yes, fighting might be needed, but we need to fight with our brains, not our fear. And most of the fighting won’t be physical.
Yes, voting is needed before anything else is.
After that, we’ll access the situation.
Note I’m praying very hard. I don’t think it’s a corner we can turn alone.
BUT pardon me for quoting the end of Independence Day: Don’t go premature on me. It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.
And yes, much as I hate it, part of my hope is that Trump has a rabbit or two up his sleeve. He tends to.
Agreed on the hope and guess for your last. I don’t think POTUS would be making such a fuss on Twitter if he didn’t have some kind of means to counteract the fraud by mail. I have no idea what he has going, but there’s usually (almost always, from what I’ve seen) fire behind his smoke.
What I object to is the contention that today is no different than the beginning of September 1980 or 1990 or 2000 or even 2010.
The level and form of the destructive behavior of the left, not only its brazenness, but how common and destructive it is are a sea change.
It may be the change from Tsarist secret police to the NKVD, but that was a real and deadly change with an effect on every Russian, not just those the authorities deemed a threat. The intent and even much of the apparatus are the same, but pervasiveness and violence were enough of a change to be a new thing.
It’s OPEN now.
And yes they’ve gone insane.
BUT in 1980 they already had control. That’s what makes our position indivious. And why we have to be REALLY smart about fighting back.
BUT Herb, after all the control they’ve had in the culture, everything they’ve done?
Their “fighting force” is mostly paid, and only “fights” where the authorities encourage them.
Also they might be very small and shipped around. There’s indications that way.
Don’t underestimate them, but they might be the mouse that roared. If we find the right place to push.
Finding it is the difficult thing.
There’s a prudent level of caution and there’s taking counsel of one’s fears.
Entirely too many people are doing the latter.
I guess this is the stumbling block.
If nothing, except it being open, in their behavior now is different from 1980 and it was not appropriate to fight them with violence in 1980 or 1990 or 2000 or 2010, but just to continue fighting in institutions by Marquess of Queensberry rules, how does mere openness justify being ready to fight.
The transition from “this is not worth risking winding up with a Franco to stop” to “it is worth risking a Franco to stop” has to be based on the severity of the behavior, not just its brazenness.
So, either it is no different and the planned cheating, to pick an example, is no worse than Illinois in 1960, the Bloody 5th in Indiana in the 80s, motor voter, or Gore in 2000 and we just roll with it and comeback next election, or it is something we need to be ready for violence to stop because it is different.
It probably isn’t worse. than in 2000. It is worse than in the 1960s and there’s more…. facilitating mechanisms in place.
Starting with motor voter, mandatory Fraud by Mail, etc.
I’m not saying to continue playing by Marquess de Queensbury rules, Herb. That’s ONE thing you continually misunderstand. Among other things we don’t have a president who fights that way. All I’m saying is “Give the man some space, willyah? What he’s accomplished so far is damn impressive. And about to get more so. TRUST that he knows what he’s doing, and knows the fraud that will happen and has a plan.”
AFTER the elections, if they fraud their way to power and he waves paws in the air?
Well, then we’re in dire territory. We will also, as RES put it have a casus belli, an undeniable one.
Meanwhile, prepare for the worst and the best and everything in between. Including having alternate ways to contact each other.(Which I personally need to work on.)
I guess I missed the DAs letting rioters who destroyed property and intimidated diners off in 2000 as well as the DAs charging those who acted in self defense with murders.
Oh, and governors shutting down whole economies for “science” while leftists cheered police brutality in enforcing the wearing of masks.
Wow, they really did own the media.
No. Not the shut down. That is part of “they are going insane.”
Rioters and harassment not being reported. Yeah. that was going on.
I think it is important to note that there are two levels of “worse or not” at work.
THE PEOPLE, in general are not worse, just we’re seeing them more.
On a political level, we’re worse than in 2000 but not worse than at other times in the past, like WWII where crazy things were done, or the great depression when the economy was raped as bad as by the shutdown.
We just hear about it now.
Yes, the motor voter act has fucked our voting. And let’s not talk of Soros bought DAs. But someone with more time on their hands can give you similar instances from the 20th century.
They’ve been rioting in Seattle for decades with very little legal consequence — as Wikipedia notes about the 1999 WTO riots there:
As well, there’s been scant repercussion for rioters in Ferguson, Baltimore or elsewhere. We all know about the lack of consequence for Antifa rioters in Charlottesville.
BLM’s communist core has been long known but ignored by the MSM, who also ignore the follow-up failures of these
riotsmostly peaceful protests.–
That just leads me to, “okay, this is normal. Why care this time? We didn’t fight then, why now”.
Then again, we’re not supposed to fight “just yet”. I’m sure there is a hill behind us that we’ll decidedly fight on.
I’m starting to wish we were what they accuse of being. At least the Soviets had to destroy Army Group Center to get to Berlin, not just walk around making threats and have it retreat all the way there without a fight.
That just leads me to, “okay, this is normal. Why care this time? We didn’t fight then, why now”.
Because there ARE responses besides “clearly, the victims of this aggression deserve it” and “kill the bastards, ALL the bastards.”
Well, and we’ve used those responses when?
I’ve spent 35 years as an adult told we can’t fight back with words, it’ll make the moderates angry. We can’t fight back with power when in an election, it’ll make the moderates mad.
I’m sure plenty of people genuinely opposed to leftists will argue we should fight in the line for the showers because maybe this time it’ll be just showers.
I’ve spent 35 years as an adult told we can’t fight back with words, it’ll make the moderates angry.
Maybe you should be listening to different people, because my entire adult life I’ve been arguing with people who want to get to do what the Left does– scream, shout, get violent, be rude, call people names, try to destroy them, everything except for make a rational, coherent argument.
Notably, they were generally also the people who wanted me to sign up for their Liberaltarian bandwagon, now with 100% less pesky morality and everyone having the freedom to do exactly what the theory demands they want to do, and disagreement means you’re a closet liberal and thus an acceptable target for abuse.
Meanwhile, I look over at places like EWTN, various pro-life groups, various gun rights groups, homeschooling…all the places that work on reasoning and rational argument and don’t expel people for being religious or for supporting traditional morality.
Those groups are growing.
I look at Rush Limbaugh, who yeah is a heck of an entertainer– but also gives facts, and figures, and evidence, and makes the left scream by giving them just the flavor of their most socially acceptable mockery in the course of making a rational point.
Because they cannot take it.
I was out working campaigns. The last campaign I worked was 2010. I worked a phone bank the day before I left College State, TX for Atlanta, Georgia to start a new job the day after that.
I had done something similar (literature handout, not phone banks) in 2006 when I left Connecticut for Texas. I drove out on Halloween, I did literature distribution the day before.
I worked every campaign in CT 2nd from 1994 to 1998 hoping to get Sam out. I worked GOP Senate in 2000. Story of my life, we lost the Senate, but Sam was finally gone. Never can pick the right horse (the last time my vote in the GOP presidential primary was for the ultimate candidate was…never…for the record: Kemp, Forbes, Forbes, Romney, Santorum, and Cruz).
Yet when all that work paid off and we got a GOP WH, House, and Senate, did we move right? Nope, the GOP gave us the first entitlement since the Great Society.
Where did you think my idea in 2014 when I started commenting here that the conservatives should do to the GOP what the GOP did to the Whigs came from? It came from 20+ years in the trenches fighting the good fight only to find out the generals were too busy enjoying the perks of office to be arsed to fight.
I listened to Rush for 20 years before burning about about the time it was clear the GOP House majority of the 2010s was to the left of the Dem House majority of the 1980s.
Sure, they can’t take mockery which is why they are now using their power to silence those who mock them.
And no, the current riots are like WTO. Maybe you can claim this has gone on for 12 years with Occupy, but in 2000? In 1990? Nope, the events were isolated, not coordinated nationwide, and violence was not tolerated. There was a lot of catch and release, but no police stand downs.
But, I was clearly clueless and unobservant and didn’t see the mobs chasing people in restaurants or the 90 consecutive days of rioting in one city because I just listened to CNN and NBC and was clueless.
You mean like the folks beaten bloody with their own signs, on video, which was shown on the news, in the run up to Washington State’s gender neutral marriage vote?
Where KOMO then interviewed the “counter-protesters,” approvingly?
Where there was never even so much as a suggestion that openly saying they did not want marriage redefined was no justification for physical violence?
Like I’m saying…okay, this is normal.
What did we do then? Oh, we held the vote and accepted their victory.
Why should we do different this November.
It’ll never be time for anything more than a strongly worded letter, that much is obvious.
Whitaker Chambers was right at his death, he did pick the losing side. And one that wants to lose by rolling over than with their boots on.
At this point, moving to Turkey looks better the more I learn the language. The Orthodox have fared better under Islam than under communism.
And that’s not based on any illusions about Islam. It is based on the simple fact that Soviets destroyed a greater percentage of churches in Russia in 70 years than Muslims did in the Middle East in a millennia.
Again, either this is what it has been like for years and we never bothered to push back, so why should we bother now OR something has changed and now it is time to push back.
We don’t fight with words. That offends people and they control the culture. Even after the Internet they control the culture enough that the non-political will side with them despite the “normal” being now open. I guess the non-political like the normal we all grew up with and never saw.
We don’t fight with power because when we have the White House we can’t win because they have Congress and when we have Congress we can’t win because they have the White House and when we have both we can’t fight back because that offends people.
We can’t fight back with violence because we’ll lose.
At this point why not change sides or leave the US. Clearly it not only is gone, but isn’t worth fighting for because there is no form of fighting that has ever been acceptable based on what is happening and I’m more and more convinced to the average “conservative” there never will be.
If we’re just going to let them produce random numbers, claim they are vote totals, and take power and say “well, that’s nothing they haven’t done before” and then let them use their power to do to us what they claim we want to do to them and say “well, that’s nothing they haven’t done before” we deserve extinction.
The Founders are either spitting on us or were fools. I’m not sure which anymore.
I just need to find an Islamic country that will let me bring the cats. At least they will fight progressives.
How exactly do you flip from “they have never done this before” in response to people saying that they have been doing this stuff for years and we’re just SEEING it widely reported, now, to “this is normal so WE did nothing before so WE should just roll over”?
How about “we” try something radical, like letting people know it’s happening, and making them follow the law?
Because that has been having results. It’s less pleasant than pretending that there is nothing going on before, and that all the victims really deserved it, this is totally new– but this way actually sometimes works.
I thought what they were doing has changed and is worth fighting.
You and Sarah and others are the ones telling me this is no different, no worse than 40 years ago.
We haven’t had any fight over those 40 years. So, if I accept you are right and it wasn’t worth fighting in 1990 or 2000 or 2010, why should we fight now that nothing has changed?
That’s the flip. If I accept your premise then why fight now the very things that weren’t worth fighting over three decades?
We haven’t had any fight over those 40 years.
Who’s “we,” kemosabi?
Folks fought back. Lawfully.
Frequently, they lost.
When they lost, they were generally slandered and it stuck.
Now, it’s not sticking, even when they lose– and the folks resisting, lawfully, the unjust aggression are winning more and more often.
People actually know what is going on.
So why on earth are you going with a false choice of “act as I did when I didn’t know this was going on” vs “do things that didn’t work for the folks who DID know what was going on,” while ignoring “use the tactics that people who saw, and responded, and were successful enough that know we know what is going on”?
Because some of the wider knowledge is technology, but a lot of it is people not giving up, and sticking to their principles, and NOT burning down the village to save it.
Sigh. One of the things Foxifier and Sarah have been saying (and now you can add me to that) that has changed is that it’s more open. It being more open changes. the. battlespace.
Consider. Forty years ago Walter Cronkite was “the most trusted man in America.” That just meant he could lie through his teeth with impunity with nobody to call him on it. Someone who might have personal knowledge of something was nevertheless inundated with news and other “official” sources telling him he’s wrong. Folk who had the pieces were isolated, unable to put them together with other folk who had other pieces. And so we had near perfect gaslighting.
Twenty years ago, Dan Rather found that past a certain point, he couldn’t do the same thing. “Fake but accurate” became a joke. And it lost him his job.
Today, despite the best efforts of many, the narrative of Kyle Rittenour being a white supremacist looking for trouble who murdered two and attempted murder on a third man while wildly shooting into a crowd of peaceful protestors has completely fallen apart. Even the New York Times was forced to admit that the shootings look very much like legitimate self defense. Or look at the results of the “Covington Kids” (highest paid person at CNN) for another example.
The openness has changed things. Their openness, in turn opens up avenues to us. Folk defending themselves are less likely to be successfully railroaded and painted as the aggressors. It still happens, of course (see the case of Jake Gardner, although perhaps if he’d been able to hold on a little longer…) but it’s a lot less effective than it used to be.
This is not carte blanch. We’re not, quite (IMO), ready for Captain Parker’s line. But there are more options available than there were when they were more successfully concealing their true nature.
Sigh. One of the things Foxifier and Sarah have been saying (and now you can add me to that) that has changed is that it’s more open.
Show me the police stand down orders in LA or Seattle in prior riots.
Show me the consecutive three months of rioting in one city.
Show me the three months of coordinated rioting across the nation.
Show the routine and widespread interruption of dining by rioters.
Or at least show me how you are got such revelations when the press hid them when I didn’t. What engaged magical powers do you have I lack?
And given I was so easily lied to by the press then, how do I know I’m not being lied to by the Internet now?
You follow a number of “show me’s” with a statement that give you an out to dismiss anything I do show you.
You also moved the goalposts. The question on deck, which I commented to address, was if the only difference is that they’re more open now, then why fight now rather than then. I answered that being more open, in and of itself with no other changes, shifts what can be tactically effective.
Going back to my original point, all I claimed was this is not how it has been for 40 years. That is the jumping off point for all of this.
You cannot hide nationwide rioting. You cannot hide 3 months of continuous rioting in one city. You cannot hide flash routine mob looting of stores.
When I daid this was different I was given examples of one off events.
Something happening once and something being the norm are different states of being. Right now every year a handful of extraterrestrial objects survive the plunge through the atmosphere to reach Earth’s surface.
If all of a sudden dozens did each day would you tell me that’s nothing new? Would you tell me nothing has changed except me noticing extraterrestrial objects reaching the Earth’s surface?
Of course not. You would acknowledge the change and conclude that was at least part of why I noticed.
You sure as shit wouldn’t tell me it was always like this and I only notice becayse the Internet broke the press’s ability to keep me from hearing about it.
And if this is what has gone on for 40 years, then why fight just because we know. If this has gone on for 40 years it cannot be dangerous or destructive because we’ve survived it.
I lived two decades before knew I had a weird heart issue. Know how knowing changed it? I had to get a waiver to stay in the sub service. No surgery or drugs. Just a “yeah you’ve got it and you’re fine” paper.
So, that goes all the way back. I contend the left has not behaved this this for 40 years. Isolated events every other year and nationwide, coordinated weekly or more events are not the same thing.
And if They are and all that is different is “we know” (not we know because the scale has increased) why should knowibg alarm me?
1. Herb, you’re being an ass. You don’t have to agree, but it is past time to let it drop. Your point has been made: you are unconvinced; what do you expect to achieve by pushing this further?
2. The US is a large, diverse culture. That means that exact parallels rarely manifest themselves, but equivalencies often do.
You complain about the rioting – well, in the Seventies we had a long string of terrorist bombings, in the Thirties Douglas MacArthur led a massive charge of infantry, cavalry and tanks to dislodge the Bonus Army, 17,000 WWI veterans and their families (43,000 in all) encamped on the Anacostia Flats for six weeks. A very little effort is all it takes to come up with more examples of prolonged civic unrest, differing only slightly.
The rioting is new in form, in governmental reaction, not content. History is rhyming, not repeating.
–
I remember the 70s bombings.
That is one thing you can convince me the press and academia have mostly memory holed. Their biggest slip on that got overshadowed by 9/11.
Oddly, that is the one the current radicals are not repeating. I’ll admit I’m confused by that one. Is it just that the Bill Ayers era radicals were that much more put together than the modern ones or are they just holding off in case they fail to steal the election somehow? Is it possible what is going on today is much more centrally controlled than in the late 60s so groups like the Weathermen can’t splinter off as easily?
Oddly, that is the one the current radicals are not repeating. I’ll admit I’m confused by that one. Is it just that the Bill Ayers era radicals were that much more put together than the modern ones or are they just holding off in case they fail to steal the election somehow?
Different population.
My husband use to do force protection training for…well pretty much every place he was stationed or sent TDY. (I told you he’s a geek.)
He and the local sheriff– who is at MOST in his early 30s and has been mostly traffic enforcement and animal control his entire adult life– had at least a half hour long geek out secession on IEDs, crowd protection tactics and recognizing high vulnerability situations.
Neither of them actually work in anything related- and a number of the folks going by obviously recognized the subject and were familiar with considerations, and the culture of “see something, say something” with cops who won’t laugh it off has seriously changed the playing field.
It doesn’t even make the news when there’s a small bomb scare, unless it’s something really funny like the backpack style purse full of women’s underwear during that one in Seattle a while ago, but teh cops take it seriously because they don’t want their face on the screen with “Officials received warning about a suspitious package, but dismissed it–“
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/12/wto-d01.html
News from the time mentioning the police were completely removed from the union-organized march area, because it was policed by the union, and if you read between the lines only violence was being policed, not other law breaking in the protests.
If you want to know how much the news made up/confabulated/ignored, ask Dave freer about the “South African Police are attacking protesters with dogs.” Seriously.
You have no idea how much happened we’ll never know, or never know the truth of.
To be clear my “it’s been like this” was about cancel culture, about their really hating us, about all that.
The riots AREN’T unprecedented and yep they were hidden before. They’re a amping up of what happened during Obama’s presidency.
BUT there were also smaller scale (maybe. How the fuck would I KNOW?) burning and looting incidents during the DNC in 2020.
The OWS stuff was AS bad only localized.
And Herb, I’m sorry. When you say “you can’t hide” this stuff, you really, truly don’t have any idea. You’d be amazed what is hidden, when people don’t have cell phones, and can’t talk to people all over the internet any minute.
Let me say, for instance, everything you know about the Portuguese revolution is a lie. Even though the press was on it to cover it. (With a pillow. Until it stopped moving.)
I don’t know enough of the US before the 90s, because I was new here and acculturating.
I understand for a while things went underground after the fall of USSR. THere wasn’t as much financing for this shit. you know this shit is foreign financed, as much as crazy natives.
During Obama and now, China stepped up with cash. And possibly some Iran cash, too.
BUT I understand from people who were here, the sixties and seventies were like this, but perhaps on a larger scale, as they DID have more sympathy among the man on the street, partly because of how the news were covered, with a pillow, etc.
I KNOW I can’t read any biography from any one ten years older than I or more, without coming across riots and looting and burning at some time in their college career. Either by them or others.
I know when I first moved to downtown areas, early nineties, most of them were still sketchy, still recovering. Because of terrible times before.
Now, am I going to put my hands in the fire that the stuff then was better/worse/painted purple?
I don’t know Herb. There seems to be more ruins left behind, but by the time I moved, things had been rebuilt anyway.
I don’t know. Part of the problem is that we’re arguing about things we can’t know for sure. Not just our news reporting but our recent history is full of Marxist squid ink.
THIS I know for sure, and can swear to:
The canceling was as bad, complicated by the fact that it was hidden, so even the people themselves started wondering if they were imagining it. The gaslighting was way worse.
AND in terms of culture, on the man-on-the-street level, more people were sympathetic with the crazy left. Right now, it’s mostly the indoctrinated who have had no time to shed it (and might not be able to, because you know, my kids’ generation ALREADY got indoctrination at a level that I — and remember how I grew up — thought was insane.) BUT in the seventies, a lot of their opinions were default-good even for people on the right. “Sure, of course the government has to regulate the economy.” “Of course there has to be welfare of the no-sparrow-shall-fall type.” “Of course, the USSR has a terrible police state, but economically and in terms of looking after people they are doing it right”
ALL of that helped the sparks they started with riots, etc, take hold. The riots and such felt way more “normal” more “rational.”
Which is why they managed to conquer institutions, etc. Because “everybody knew.”
In that sense, we’re better off. But remember political power is downstream from cultural power, and we’ve only started to fight less than 20 years ago. Can we turn this around before it goes violent? Who knows? I’m praying. But there are days I don’t think we can.
One thing I know is that hastening the confrontation is to THEIR advantage, not ours.
1999 WTO protests, here’s their after-event run down (by those responsible, so it’s polished as a turd can get) of the plan that boiled down to “let people get right up to the point of rioting, but only arrest people who are actually doing violent actions. Only have one team that can reasonably be expected to do this, and then ‘reassign’ them.”
Click to access Seattle%20PD%20after%20action%20report.pdf
I’ll grant you they’re more open now, but it’s also because we HEAR about incidents more now. We didn’t in the past. As I said, they can no longer keep things quiet. Even their own crazies.
I think the point is that, back in the day, a lot of people would get hired or fired with some disguise, rather than wanting to show a naked exercise of wokeness. Afraid of the donors or senior staff, ashamed, or just sneaky in their cliquishness — the point was that they didn’t want everybody to know, or to provide solid grounds to get sued.
Now there’s not just naked exercise of power for political, racial, or religious prejudices against the unwoke and the not left enough. Oh, no, they have to announce it on Twitter within three minutes, and make sure that everybody sees their virtue as well as their naked exercise of power.
They don’t care if they get sued out of business, as long as they get their likes and benefits. It’s not just get woke, go broke; it’s get woke and go for broke. They are gambling that in the end, somebody will pay their bills if it doesn’t work out.
So it’s not so much pervasive as desperate. You don’t dare be the last leftie to oppress somebody.
And of course, if the whole reason they got hired was so that they could provide value for effort for the lefties who got them hired, they might really be on a quid pro quo timetable.
To be clear, I don’t expect us to brush through this with no eruptions at all and a sudden clear victory, in any case. The damage is too extensive. There’s too much to rebuild.
And I don’t expect we can go out of peril soon. I think as someone said, what’s ahead of us is sweat, toil and tears. And lots of it, in big heaping servings.
BUT if we’re very lucky and work very hard, my grandkids, or at least someone’s grandkids might see an America that is freer and relatively clear of the Marxist bug.
A huge chunk of the damage is damage to the people who are tasked with the rebuild. I may be a far edge case, but I’m hardly the only one who has a fundamentally broken individual to society relationship.
BUT that doesn’t mean we can’t build things better than we got them.
We’re all walking wounded. But we’re still limping.
And sometimes that is enough.
It is no coincidence that the stories that (ugh, I hate this expression) “speak to me” the most all have characters grinding through horrors while burning through their last minutes of life. Because there is some candle who’s light needs to be protected / given a chance to escape.
Maybe “feed your soul”?
Hmmm.
Considering that one of them whacked me upside the head hard enough to make my life start moving, that might actually be a good way of putting it.
Which one, if I may ask?
Bioshock series.
Taffy Three.
They could have cursed the fate that put their puny ships in the path of the most powerful battleship afloat. Instead, they thanked the fate that had put someone between that battleship and our vulnerable carriers, even if that someone was just puny little them. And so they raced into the fight, full power, guns blazing, knowing they wouldn’t survive, knowing the best they could do was to buy the carriers a little time. And, through sheer ferocity, they WON! The huge battleship and its fleet turned tail and fled.
Dozens of the men on those puny little ships went to Valhalla instead of home to their families. But the thousands of men on the carriers — they knew who’d saved them.
Hemingway was a POS communist, but he was right when he wrote:
Life breaks everyone. And some are stronger in the broken places.
Mal: Still Flyin’.
Simon: That’s not much.
Mal: It’s enough.
It is the difference between being “promoted” to commander of Ice Station Zebra for wrong think and being driven to suicide because you were charged with murder for acting in self-defense (which is in the news today).
Why do you think this is new?
Because you KNOW about him acting in self defense?
Even in the 90s, it was fully recognized that the “based on a true story” movies might have a few names and locations in common, but generally didn’t have anything else– but I’ve seen people assume they’re accurate, anyways. Even when it was completely backwards.
Not new. Definitely not new.
“Why’d you start a fight with all those kids?” So many times I got that. So. Many. Times.
(Answer: I didn’t. I just tried to stay in one piece after they jumped me.)
Heck, my dad was startled when he “found out” that everybody who was drafted either hated the military or was crazy.
And that was *before* Zinn’s junk reached our school.
Oof. *Nods*
My late Father was an outspoken Republican and 18th Century Liberal, generally thought the Radical Left were deranged, and was an academic scholar, fully employed and more or less bulletproof right up to retirement in the mid’ 1990s. And he continued to write and published the second part of his masterpiece after retiring from teaching, through a major STATE university.
The Cancel culture has gotten a damned sight more blatant, and in some places people who might oppose it have given up. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t old, and entrenched, and dates back quite a ways.
Again, there were pockets. But I also think part of it is there were people who trough some combination of success and ability and …. just luck became so big they were untouchable. For those people, it held it death, even if the rest of the field treated them as “those fossils.”
BUT for most people, cancel culture was already crazy.
On that note, I’ll note I’m not (that I know) blocked from Twitter. Yes, I rarely use it except for blog share. But people have got cancelled for less than my blogs. So, how come? How come I only got into FB jail once?
Well, part of it is that they don’t want to read me. At all. So they pretend I don’t exist.
And part is luck.
Cancel culture is NEVER absolute. But I’d say it’s about as ubiquitous as it’s ever been. Just less…. hidden.
It’s also a question of soft vs hard power. If you think everyone is in line, and you are sure of the arc of history, you don’t *need* to stamp out everyone everywhere all the time. Plus that would tip the hand too soon.
Take away the soft power and only the hard remains.
I found you because you were retweeted on Twitter.
Which means even today’s cancel culture is not absolute.
I don’t catch a lot of bans and the like, in part because I’m simply too small potatoes to be on most people’s radar. MadMike catches them all the time, in part because he deliberately pushes buttons, but also because he does have more reach and thus makes a bigger blip on the radar.
I cancelled Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and all other corporate media.
The only “social media” I participate in are usenet, a handful of privately-owned forums, and some blogs.
Where do you get Usenet access? It was already getting a bit hard for me to find in the 2000’s decade, and I haven’t even tried since 2010. But that might mean that I’m completely ignorant of some easy-to-find sources.
Paid account at usenetxs.com. Free usenet, at least in non-academic or very limited access, doesn’t seem to be around any more.
I know the Radical Chic ninnies we’re scared to death of my father; he PUBLISHED. A lot. Most of them barely managed the occasional article, whereas he had two books under his belt by the time I was in High School.
Targeting has changed. Used to be Jews and Negroes could not get access to the “better” social circles — which meant those who were otherwise “qualified” were let in to make up the numbers.
There is also the likelihood that politics is used for a screen now while other screens had greater effect in earlier times. “Not our sort, dear” used to be a death knell in many Western societies.
Additionally, the greater ability to focus attention on a target, such as a school or business, gives leverage that did not previously exist — but it is fundamentally no different from the old Jim Crow laws.
Ultimately, I doubt it much matters. History is useful for perspective but quibbling over such factors distracts from the present battle. It is less important whether the present discrimination is greater than that experienced by, say, Catholics in Cromwell’s England and of greater importance how we resist it now.
–
Still is in Great Britain. There’s a final visit before you get into Oxford and that’s when they weed out the lower-class students.
Mr. H.N. is correct on this. A little over ten years ago Ender’s Game could win the lifetime achievement award *despite* the raging controversy about the author’s so-called “anti-gay” politics. And despite a storm of controversy, we could hold the line for the *book* and make it stick.
No-one would dare do that now. We also have banks that cancel people’s accounts for wrong think, at the same time financial institutions are consolidating – you only need to capture a few…
We have devices that listen, record, share, and a make possible decades-old crimethink to be uncovered and published for vastly more numbers of people. Keeping your head down us also no longer possible for mire and more people, you must loudly affirm.
Quantity, the saying goes, can have a quality of it’s own. The scale is off the charts.
Sigh. No, Hobbit. Twenty years ago the left wasn’t all in on gay rights, and no one cared.
SERIOUSLY.
Heh. No right back atcha. I will admit, I didn’t care, but tgat’s because not a deplorable tendency to not like people very much. You wanna go to hell in a rainbow-scented basket? Knock yourself out. Bad Hobbit. No grace for you!
Heterophobia was published in 1999. When was Breendoggle? When did the Catholic church fold to the lavender-scented mafia? The marxist front has been all-in for gay rights from day one.
The left and the oligarchs just hadn’t reached a tipping point where they could make it stick.
This has been building since WW1.
Does not mean Mr. Herb N. is correct. Giving the left it’s civil war NOW on it’s own terms is a recipe for disaster. We are long past the point of “get it over now for the kid’s sake.”
Best not to have it at all, better to have it on our own schedule. Blog posts are no place for a committee of correspondence anyway.
No. but they were not officially on board with it. It wasn’t even discussed. remember Obama “evolved”?
So, yeah. OSC was fine. Then it changed.
Yes. That change was ability to unmask and get away with it because the social re-education and infiltration was complete. It *really* is different and worse now than it ever was. How many uncompromised institutions remain?
Does not make your analysis or prescription wrong, But it really is that bad.
What the dewberries egging on civil war NOW don’t appreciate is how very, very, fragile civilization is, and how badly we can lose, and how much worse it can get.
It began when they weaponized AIDS to attack Republicans … while eschewing traditionally proven effective methods of halting spread of disease. Once they’d developed the model and used it to make gays mascots they simply expanded the psyops technique.
The fact that 99.9% of Hollywood output in the last forty-plus years offered sympathetic “oppressed” classes and uniformly identified the oppressors as blatantly as a medieval passion play didn’t hurt. Once conservatives got crowded out of the culture the political results became a mere matter of time.
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Oh. You mean AIDS the social phenomenon, not the AIDS virus itself. For a second there I was wondering if they made tinfoil hats for Wallabys.
One question always bothered me about that: how did a sexually transmitted monkey virus get loose in the San Francisco gay community?
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“It’s reassuring to find that the world is crazier than you are.”
Tinfoil hats???? With ears like these??????
On the monkey virus thing … well, from what I’ve heard I wouldn’t bet there were none among them who’d screw a monkey. I recall thinking at the time, “Gee, sex with twenty to thirty strangers in a night, using an exit port as an entry point — who’d think that might turn out to be trouble?”
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They knew.
They were already vastly overrepresented in the veneral disease statistics. They BRAGGED of it and how they swamped free clinics — they were fighting eratophobia! — and it’s not like something new would come along.
Originally, they thought Patient Zero was a male flight attendant from Quebec who’d been visiting Africa, and who was eating monkey meat and hanging around the markets, as well as cruising around all over the place. And when he got home, he was super-social and such.
However, he wasn’t the first patient, and they think from genetic info that the disease crossed from monkeys to humans in the early 1900’s, in Africa, and had just not gotten out of the waybacks until the late Sixties or early Seventies.
Oh, and they found AIDS in NYC blood samples from before 1971, when Quebec dude was still in high school in Quebec.
Oh. Yeah. That’s globalization.
Having grown up in a place that was relatively isolated, there’s tons of REALLY bad illnesses that run through isolated populations and the rest of the world never even knows.
Even my brother thought what killed 2/3 of the kids in the village when I was little was NOT Smallpox. Except it’s marked as a smallpox sweep over the region, in various sites that track epidemics.
BUT in a village? With mostly socialized medicine? If the local practitioner says “I don’t know” and treats the best he can…. what are you going to do?
And people were called him exonerated even though his actions — willfully spreading HIV when he KNEW he was positive — were the same.
this. tHE CULTURE, GUYS.
I’d forgotten that aspect of it. Destroying any concept of well-ordered sexuality (I.e. chastity) as a social norm has been part of the plan from day one (And where we get so many of the cucks on the Right. Even Mr. Reagan).
But you are correct… They didn’t really get any traction with gay human shields until the poor sods could be painted as *victims*. Really puts a new spin on the deliberate incompetence of the leadership.
No gallows too high for Mr. Fauci and his accomplices.
Subtext on a (S)BLM* sign seen on last Saturday’s prayer walk: Silence=Violence. And yet we’re also informed that speech=violence. Which one is it?
Oh, I get that they’re trying to posit the notion that if you do anything but enthusiastically endorse the party line, you’re engaging in violence. Still, it would help reach folk if they’d make up their minds. Oh, I forgot; expecting logic and/or consistency is a white male patriarchical trat. Check, check, and double-check (OK, maybe half-check).
* (Some) Black Lives Matter
Absence of violence = Peace = Submission
Do what we say and nobody gets hurt.
Much.
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Every power-hungry clique ever adds: And if we define you as a “nobody” and you get hurt, well, that doesn’t count.
I’ve seen a troll on Disqus who oscillated between rejoicing in racial violence about to be inflicted on whites with no escape, and telling whites to obey him to avoid violence.
They’re more honest with “No Peace! No Justice!” Then they call for what they want. . . .
Heh. True. Keep in mind some of this, like the Smithsonian piece, are designed as an obvious distraction from the message, to get the partisan fight going and dissipate energy. (See pattern of Puppy-kicking trolls)
In the Smithsonian info graphic it was to hide the big lie: The U.S. was created, founded, and built (which included a lot of conquest*) by a *mix* of ethnic groups and nationalities, of which the English and Northern Europeans were but one among many.
Why is this so important to get baked into the unexamined ideas we share? My first thought is perhaps to inculcate that there is no real “American” culture to preserve, except for an pattern of government structures and a selectively-honored Constitution**.
But I do know it will have (or appear to have) some way of keeping the oligarchy-class and their iron-rice-bowl servitors in place, and (or) defanging some likely resistance.
*Spot the doublethink!
**For example: mass migrations of Muslim Somalis will fit in just as well as mass-migration of peasant Swedes. Though that latter left a mark, and probably was the nail in the coffin of the Amerindian tribes of Washington. Not sure, though.
If you had a legitimate path to take, one they could not use to attack you, how on earth would they attack you? It’s BOTH.
That controversy was part of the activist-Left taking “gay rights” as their current 2+2=5 hobby horse. The cool kids were doing it, but you were allowed to be ‘personally opposed’.
I think that forcing that down everyone’s throat, so obviously and stupidly, is part of why they’re getting frantic– sure, they “won.” And in the process gave a shock to the system of a lot of folks, including homosexuals who didn’t want a lot of the “rights” they were given, or who recognized that the open abuse or violation of system could be used against them, too.
True. The blue check-mark dancing bears *do* like to pick different squares at different times on the floor to declare anathema or holy: If you don’t step on this one you ate ritually unclean!
I will point out that that’s a solid consistency to which squares get chosen. Live long enough, pay attention long enough and you can spot it.
Admittedly they also like to randomize the humiliation rituals involved in order to terrorize the kids.
Pattern of “foolish and self destructive” plus “can humiliate people on a pretense” is a pattern, but not a great one for predictive power… well, besides the one I keep hammering on, which is that if someone has a camera or a microphone and asks you a question, gtfo.
No. Pattern of Enemy goals.
I think that forcing that down everyone’s throat, so obviously and stupidly, is part of why they’re getting frantic
The ones used as human stepping stones and the middle-men, yes.The leadership… Maybe. How nervous are men like Bill Gates?
They just switch away from Love is Love to BLM. The stalking horse, Can’t you just let these people live in peace? If you weren’t so hell-bent on driving them out of society, they’d live lives just as decently-ordered as you. Why are you driving them into the heedless fornication and adultery, and substance abuse and sexual abuse of the Hollywood crowd? remains to and keep the gentle poison, the Marxist go foothold in place.
That’s one reason I say “Niw is different.” Nit different in kind, Mrs. Hoyt is right on that, but different in quantity and speed.
It use to be “Two steps foward, one step back.” Now it’s five steps forward, one step back.”
Mr. Trump is inflaming the rage heads on both left and right by saying “Three steps back, baby!”.
Bill Gates is leadership?
Funding, yes.
But he sure looks like a kid buying a seat at the popular kids’ table.
That’s one reason I say “Now is different.” Not different in kind, Mrs. Hoyt is right on that, but different in quantity and speed.
My folks were warned not to drive their pickup with the Beef bumper sticker into Seattle, because it would be attacked.
I was forced to live with a woman who behaved in manners that would have gotten a male sailor sent to captain’s mast, and was threatened with being written up when I complained, back in ’01. Husband had similar issues with male sailors who would’ve been at captain’s mast if they’d targeted females.
Don’t get anybody started on what the abusively black Islam sorts got up to.
Decade ish before that, a family “friend” was having miraculous success at work… incidentally following her girlfriend’s rise….
I know I have been obnoxious here a couple of times during Obama’s terms with trying to figure out why people were shocked at things that had been normal abuses in rural areas or to agricultural groups since the 90s or 80s, at least. Mostly in relation to environment and animals, IIRC.
I think it’s just that it can be SEEN now, rather than “everybody knowing” the cover story.
THAT is what I think too. It’s now just impossible to ignore. And their shock troops are more unhinged…..The rest. Meh.
Sorry – not leader as in “in charge” but as in “on top”. But also, looks are deceiving.
Masks are off now, that’s for sure.
Three steps back, and then a jump to the right,
Put your thumb to your nose, wiggle the fingers, Bronx cheer,
Punch the SJWs in the gut, take away their Molotov cocktails,
And then teleport away through time/space
As your queen teleports into a predetermined space, and your pawns turn into queens;
And you capture all their pieces,
And then you say “Checkmate, suckers.”
That’s how Trump does it.
OMG. I didn’t think about it. One of my favorite Pratchett scenes of ALL TIME is the morris dancers waylaid by elves.
THAT is not just how Trump fights, it’s how we are fighting. How hopeless our situation is if we DON’T.
One two three and turn, and hit the bastards.
Go read it if you own the book. GO READ IT.
Amusing!
I think you might be missing some of the trees for the forest here.
Lots of us saw (speaking from perception, not necessarily reailty) the entire country turning ever more corrupt. Depending on age we may have seen the government send a not-subtle-at-all message to anyone who thought different that they would be torched. We saw the school system and CPS be weaponized. On and on and on….
If someone was awake it wasn’t hard to get the idea that your society is irredeemably corrupt, and that it was not worthy of you owing it anything. Any loyalty — if there could be any at all — would be to a Golden Age America that may or may not have existed.
Uh….
Depending on age….
Ian, the take over was so complete by MY childhood, that the fact you’re only seeing things now only means…. you’re only seeing things now.
Didn’t say that I was only seeing things now.
Dude!* I GREW UP LEARNING THIS.
Why do you think my opening position on any question is more or less “America was burnt to the ground long ago, we might be able to rebuild parts of it”?
* inclusive genderfluid non-binary dudeness
To be crystal clear: I am all-in on camp Things Are Turning Around, even if the means I have to fight against my deepest instincts on this.
I didn’t get those instincts because my parents didn’t see the corruption. They saw it, however imperfectly, and taught accordingly.
THIS. I did not have the words “deep state” but I knew what it was back in the ’80s. Hence “bureaucracy always goes for the soft target”.
We knew. But fool that I was, I thought the problem.was political and the danger was to our political institutions primarily, rather than cultural and moral.
There is a tendency, especially among the young, to think they’re discovering a thing’s increase when they only increase is in their knowledge and awareness. Call it the iceberg fallacy – the fact of your growing awareness does not mean the iceberg itself is growing.
The recommended therapy for this is Study of History, although that History now being administered in schools is snake oil intended to aggravate rather than cure the condition.
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Unless they were taught that things were much worse than they really were.
In 30 years (ok 26 during the 2016 election) this is the first time Win has been on the table.
Win is always on the table. It may not be what the World sees as winning, but if Christ is for me – who can stand against me?
Nonetheless a win that one’s children can enjoy has its advantages.
One of the most useful obscene words I know of I picked up from — of all places — a Feminist blog many years ago.
“Martyrbation”
A huge part of the Evangelical Conservative base took this route. Oh! Woe is us in the glorious victimhood-to-be when they pile us into the camps!
It is, frankly, despicable.
Well, there’s obviously a time for being a martyr, or even for being a separatist; but there’s also a time for making the world better. If we’re going to judge angels, we have to get some kind of job experience on making good judgments.
The thing that usually came up in martyr trials of early Christians was, “But you’re such a good Roman citizen! Everybody says you’re honest and helpful and do lots of good business, and you’re a model of Romanitas!” Or “You’re such a model of the philosophical life!” Or “You’re such a good mother!” Or “You’re such a model maiden/widow!” There are only a few cases where the person was a notorious grump or nobody knew the girl until she made trouble by kicking over the brazier or breaking the idol. I’m sure that happened, but you can’t set an example if you’re totally apart. (Unless you’re a monk or a hermit, and even then….)
Pockets survived until recently. But regulations and policies enacted by Carter, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II pretty much strangled them.
Although Obama was very enthusiastic about using a sledgehammer to administer a coup de gras, and salting the earth afterwards.
I am so tired of having to justify my anger and responses to some of this crap. I am out of academia now in part because of that crap. I have a clear memory from 2004 when I was in my 2nd year of my tenure-track job. Somebody said at a division lunch, “Oh, you’re voting for Bush” and I freaked out (quietly and in person to her) Don’t say that! I won’t get my contract renewed! She was surprised. I muttered “Think about it” and never brought it up again. Then when the (only) Italian prof told me that until I got tenure I should be careful about being seen with him because as a gay man he was voting for Bush and that made him persona non grata in the humanities division. (He’s a good friend now). I KNOW that all of that is why I didn’t get promoted to full professor.
THIS is what I meant in my answers to Herb and Ian: The fact you’re only seeing it now, only means you’re only seeing it now.
You’re only seeing IT NOW.
It’s been obvious for a long time in those fields, like the arts, academia, movies, books, that had gatekeepers. I’m not in those worlds, so the first time I saw it was a write up during the Napoleon Changon controversy in anthropology around 20 years ago. I remember that one of the participants was defended because he voted for Gore and so couldn’t be a Nazi. Voting for Bush made you a Nazi? Voting for Gore made you a competent social scientist? I mean, really.
For various professional reasons around the same time I did a lot of reading in evolution — Gould’s concept of punctuated equilibrium Is useful for evaluating new sectors and the notion of an evolutionary stable strategy was fascinating —. A subtext in most of those works was that a believer couldn’t be a biologist. Now the biologists in question, Gould, Lewontin, Mayer, etc. we’re all devout communists, Lewontin in particular, so I simply though it a clash of religions but it’s become more obvious. So, it was there too.
I think the difference today is CCP money and blackmail. Politicians have always been corrupt but the combination of CCP money and the surveillance state along with Twitter mobs make it obvious. I also think they’re failing, which has made them desperate. China is a basket case and the Democrat party is run by a bunch of slimy octogenarians who are being flanked by radicals to their left The analogy has been made to WWI and declining vs rising powers.. Most of the writers are thinking the US is the declining power but it’s not. At the end of the day, if the corruption doesn’t wipe China out, the demographic collapse will.. They and their bought and paid for creatures have to win. We have to not lose.
Noli timere terra exulta et laetare quoniam magnificavit Dominus ut facere
Noli timere terra exulta et laetare quoniam magnificavit Dominus ut facere
Yea, and Amen.
Yes. Read Orwell’s intro to Animal Farm. It was originally blocked by commie symps. Ditto, Scarlet Pimpernel, though they were proto pinkos. The latter was a true indie girl-power story.
You’ve reminded me of stories about my Mother-In-Law finally getting glasses and being amazed at all that was revealed.
There is a movie or TV show (I forget the name and suspect there were more than one) premised on the protagonist receiving specs which enable him to see the “lizard people” among us. Think of Heinlein’s puppet masters and sudden onset awareness of how many people have rounded shoulders.
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There may have been more than one, but usually the only citation of things along that line I see (which isn’t the same as “that exists, period”, mind you) is John Carpenter’s “They Live”, with wrestler Roddy Piper as the protagonist. (“I am here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”)
Not “lizard people” in a literal sense, mind you. With the special sunglasses, they looked more like skeletons with only a light covering of muscle, and mass media advertising had alternate text that was subliminally controlling people.
“They Live,” starring Rowdy Roddy Piper…
On a side note, I suspect the rage also has a lot to do with most media becoming algorithm driven.
Rage is the most powerful easily manipulated emotion, so if your tools are looking to maximize the reader engagement, they’ll focus on that like a laser.
I suspect if we’re given enough time we’ll develop cultural protections against rage mind viruses, but I don’t really know if it will be our culture that evolves it first, or someone else. I expect the first one that does will have a serious competitive advantage though.
I could not agree more. I surf a number of sites in the ‘Right-o-sphere’ and sometimes browse the comments section just to see what opinions are bubbling up. I can’t tell you how many i have clicked away from when i see these posters with there “We’ll whip them fellers in a day, we gots all tha’ guns and them pasty faced pantywaists couldn’t win a fist fight with a girl!!!” I do believe the confederates said something similar in 1861. Didn’t go quite as planned. I can’t remember who said it, but I recall the quote as, “There are no winners in a civil war: Only survivors.” To be sure, the chances America would undergo such a catastrophe and come out with our present form of government intact are exceedingly small. Just Ask anyone who lived through the last one!
Agreed. I’m convinced there are some very competent, utterly ruthless people on the left that will be far better at violence than most people believe.
And a lot of “civil war wannabees,” will change their minds quickly when someone close to them actually suffers from that ruthlessness.
They could always do what the soviets did and take the officer’s families hostage. Of course, they killed them all in due course because that’s how they roll but it worked long enough. Or, they could simply shut down the power grid for a city or town. Stop the shipment of food and medicine and watch them die. Put it on TV. Sure it’ll kill the innocent too but you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Remember, we’re dealing with psychopaths.
Then let’s call for One-Shot Paddy and Éamon Wright.
Wait for fire season when it is dry and hot and windy and set fires in the country redoubts. Ah, but they’re already doing that….
The thing about comparisons with the last Civil War is that while both times both sides thought they would win in a walkover, in the first one, both sides had good reason to think so (not good ENOUGH, but not laughable). The advantages the North had were held in contempt by the South, but they took time to start mattering.
By contrast, the Fascist Left does not have a solid Military/Gun culture. Yes, the street fighters of their Sturmabteilung have held in spots. But they are in the position (as I have averred before) of a boxer who thinks he has been winning against a string of genuine contenders, instead of a carefully chosen Bum Of The Month Club. Yes, they can probably get their hands on a lot of firearms. So far as I can see, they won’t understand them, don’t practice with them, won’t know what to do if they malfunction, and don’t have time to learn.
So, while ianal, it seems to my inexpert eye that in the event of widespread insurrection, Trump has available to him a broad range of options that, while maybe not originalist Constitutional, are well established, far MORE Constitutional than anything the Left has pulled in 12 years (maybe twice that), and likely to break Antifa/BLM like a twig.
Maybe I’m wrong.
I suspect the main difference in a modern civil war will be the lack of boundaries.
And the fact that the left will probably burn the parts of their own city their own adherents depend on in the ramp up.
I will argue that in the event of a true civil war, there is a good chance that the right would get clobbered. We laugh at antifa, and brag about the imbalance of guns, but when the sh*t hits the fan, we would be assaulted from behind women and children, with no clear targets. The Left has learned from the Palestinians and other guerilla warfare experts. Fight from inside the hospitals, fight from inside the elementary schools, fight from inside the nursing homes. What are we going to do, shoot back randomly?
THIS.
Absolutely. Go Duck Duck “May Day protests Seattle” to see just how long the antics, black bloc and anarchists have been gaming street warfare and improvised weapons.
(Hat tip to Wilder Wealthy Wise for the reminder)
Take a look at what they have been doing in Europe for decades, including outright assassinations of politicians they don’t like,
The left is so dangerous simply because unlike us, who do not want mass graves, they think mass graves are necessary for them to achieve their desired socialist utopia. Just look at Obama mentor Bill Ayers on what he would do to people who would be re-educated. Any ideology that believes that achieving their goals justifies murdering millions of people is fundamentally dangerous in ways that will be very difficult to defeat in a true civil war without massive bloodshed. There is simply no fundamental difference between radical leftists and Jihadists.
Pull out our kids and our people. After that? We fight or we submit. Either way, some of us will die, but submitting to the Left means we ALL die.
Sieges.
There is also the problem of their ranks being rife with “Chick Guevaras” — spoiled white girls who are acting out their daddy issues in the streets.
Don’t shed a single tear for the suffering of ‘sorority Marxists’ — they’ve earned it
The modern crop of American leftist revolutionaries are a curious bunch. These are the children of the high bourgeoisie, often women, “cosplaying” the revolution until they get arrested and suddenly playtime turns into hard time.
For a growing list of Chick Guevaras, real legal consequences are following from what they thought would be a frolicking freedom fight — and how they react reveals much about their privilege.
[SNIP]
But a funny thing happens on the way to neo-Marxist utopia. Once these unlikely guerrilla warriors are apprehended, they start demanding all of the protections provided by the very legal system they say is corrupt beyond repair.
[SNIP]
[T]here is a big difference between the late John Lewis and the Chick Guevaras of today. Men like Lewis and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. went to jail peacefully protesting, or breaking unjust laws, not setting stuff on fire. They welcomed the consequences of their actions to expose the inequality of the system.
They were serious people, not disaffected minor characters in some Bret Easton Ellis novel.
The more we see the lily-white (albeit often tattooed) faces of Antifa rioters, the more sophomores from Seven Sisters schools get arrested, the clearer it becomes: These violent displays aren’t some organic uprising by the dispossessed, but rather the actions of unhappy children of privilege long taught to hate America. And it really doesn’t help when Kamala Harris and members of Joe Biden’s campaign urge Americans to help bail these criminals out of jail.
These frauds were given more than they could ask for in life. Yet we’re supposed to feel sorry for them while ignoring the deaths of poor kids in our cities — brought about by the anti-police policies championed by these snot-nosed brats.
Sorry, no. I refuse to feel bad. If these princesses really think America is so bad that they have to set things on fire, so be it. But when they get caught, they should go to the slammer and learn to enjoy it. That’s part of the whole deal. Being a revolutionary isn’t all fun outfits and crazy slogans.
Luckily for the Chick Guevaras, our system is nowhere near as cruel as they claim. Even those who do serious time can look forward to tenure-track jobs teaching courses on “Queer Resistances in Palestine” or whatever. The hopeful lesson for the rest of us trying to live our lives is that these clowns have nothing substantive to offer. Their temper tantrums are a testament to their own hang-ups and f - - kups.
[END ARTICLE]
Frankly, I think the solution to their distemper is the one their side commonly prescribes for conservative women: they need to get laid, good and hard.
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And looking at them only inspires one thought: not enough Viagra in the galaxy.
There is another aspect to their hypocrisy — not that they need more. They always put those overweight, blue-haired, tattooed, pierced Chick Gueveras out front, and send them to attack ‘the oppressors’ because they know those Sexist White Patriarchy Racists are unlikely to hit a…female.
If some man DOES dare to defend himself against their attacks, THEN he’s a Sexist Pig!
When the least bit of elementary logic shows that NOT hitting them is sexist. Really, if you’d punch one of those 20-something man-babies in self-defense, slugging the females is simply granting them the equality they claim to want.
Of course, logic, reason, fairness and common sense are all Tools of the Oppressive White Patriarchy…
———————————
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
Probably. It’s not all guns. They have an in depth IED culture.
Most importantly, they have the establishment behind them. Antifa and BLM are essentially the paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party in the same way as the Brownshirts were the Nazi’s in the 1930s and the Blackshirts were Mussolini’s in Italy prior to that. And of course the Democrats have experience having a violent paramilitary arm, as they had the KKK as theirs previously, including such people as Shrillary’s mentor, Robert “KKK Wizard” Byrd.
Yes. Exactly.
You say that we haven’t seen the “long chain of abuses”.
Honest question: How can that possibly be true?
“We”, in the sense of the individuals perhaps not, because the frog temperature has been rising for well over a hundred years. But “we” as in the society has put up with and been crushed under abuse after abuse after abuse.
I have NEVER said that, Ian. Go read again. I’m saying that the chain of abuses the Founders talked about were going on a LOT LONGER than you think if you don’t have an in depth knowledge of the period (And mine isn’t even THAT in depth)
I’m saying there have been times of worse abuse, and that we’re in fact clawing back, at last. I’m saying you have the fucking picture upside down, Ian.
The Founding Fathers actually were partly talking about the so-called Glorious Revolution, where the English aristocracy and gentry basically threw out King James for being annoying. (They did have some valid concerns, but it wasn’t anything like the English were doing to each other already.) They didn’t consult the common people; they just held a coup d’etat and installed foreign royals with foreign buddies.
So that whole Declaration of Independence is partially, “Yes, we have real reasons that affect everyone in this country, and yes, we’re going to do all our stuff openly. It’s not just Congress doing it all by themselves, keeping everyone else in the dark and turning on people who’ve been good to us.”
It’s a very looooong chain of abuses. A lot of people came to America to try to get away from UK policies, and then found the government reinstituting all the annoying stuff that they’d been free from. Some of that was stuff they no longer suffered in Britain, or at least in England, but which was now coming down on America like it was a conquered country instead of an English colony. People were very bitter and suspicious that it was only going to get worse, and it probably was.
If you want abuses as seen from the other side of the pond, Edmund Burke had some doozies of speeches about how stupid it was to end the laissez faire treatment of the colonies. A lot of Parliament had argued against all the silly laws and taxes, and they had a sort of gloomy “I told you so” going on.
Charles Townsend would do well in contemporary think tank. He was brilliant and so very stupid. It was worse than a crime, a blunder.
We studied Burke’s Conciliation speech in English Comp but my sisters, who are just that bit younger, didn’t. Another subject they don’t teach in school anymore, it reduces the impact,of propaganda and that will simply not do.
Civil wars have a remarkable tendency for both sides to initially underestimate the duration considerably. The War of Southern Secession had both sides imagining that one good battle, bloodying the other’s nose, would settle things. Similarly, the Brits and the American colonists never believed their dispute would take nearly a decade. In both of those conflicts the participants were easily separated (although the Revolutionaries and Loyalists were quite intermingled, the real argument was with the Brits, not loyalists.)
What America will face, if we get to it, bears much greater resemblance to the Irish Troubles ad is as likely, if not likelier, to last a hundred years. Tinpots will set themselves up as area satraps and all legitimacy of government will be dissipated. There will be no restoration of Constitutional government as once we had although by the time we struggle out the other end there may be, in limited degree, some small restoration. For a while.
We were warned by the Founders that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” There would be no such people at the conclusion of such a war because war does not breed such people.
While our relatives on the Left may demand war, we should be loath to give them what they want in this or any other matter. We would not win such a war, we would merely lose less, at best, than our opponents.
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This was a rather serendipitous posting, as this morning in the weird sort-of-awake-but-not-entirely time before the alarm went off, I was thinking something similar (and would have been hard-put to phrase it as elegantly.)
The current behavior of the left is not the behavior of people who believe they’re “winning” (whatever that’s defined as.) Instead it’s the behavior of the desperate, realizing they’re steadily losing ground and they can’t see a way to win back what they’ve lost. So, they begin making “hail Mary” plays that often backfire, making stupid mistakes that put them in a worse position (Kavanaugh, anyone? Their behavior towards him is going to bite them very, very, very hard.) What we need to be on-guard against now is the desperation play.
What will they do if, despite their best efforts, they can’t steal the election for Harris… I mean Biden? That’s when things could get even uglier. When the knives come out entirely from the shadows.
(I was wanting to work a comparison to the Detroit Lions into the above, but couldn’t… After all, the Lions seem to be winning, only to drop the ball and lose in the end…)
“The current behavior of the left is not the behavior of people who believe they’re ‘winning’”
I dunno – people who are winning often threaten to “Burn it down!” if they are not given their way.
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Third option: those given to temper tantrums will throw them whether winning, or losing, just for the rush.
This is a great and timely piece.
Anyone interested In political slander in American History should search for James Callender and the campaign of 1800. if you really want to get juicy look at JQ Adams vs Jackson in 1828 and look at what they said about Rachel Jackson. Then you can get going on the 1860 election, particularly the actions of the Democrats in the house when they refused to elect a speaker and no business was done, fights occurred, and there was all round chaos. Things never change.
Gore Vidal’s novels about American history are really must reads. Yes, he was a miserable human being, but he “went there,” his history is sound and can be easily checked, and he wrote well.
Put not your trust in princes..
I really didn’t like the Lincoln Presidential “Library,” aside from the opening setup. But one very uncomfortable and educational multi-media presentation is a walk through a long hall showing the criticisms people threw at Lincoln. Outright painful to experience. But yes, it’s all been done to Presidents before.
Your man Kevin J. Anderson has republished almost all the fictional works of Allen Drury (who for many years was the Washington DC congressional reporter for UPI), but I don’t think he’s republished the nonfiction Senate Diary yet. FDR was a terrible person who did his best to cancel those who disagreed with him. He died willing to blackmail or ruin a senator and drive him to suicide, over an issue that wasn’t even all that important to his program. And that was just one guy.
A lot of the difference in today’s politics is that today’s senators and representatives often do not feel like they report directly to their constituents, or that they have to deal with various skittish human beings. That’s part of why they are so smug, and why they fail. But there have always been ugly things in US politics, and beautiful things too. And you’ve always had to realize that some people will betray you for the sake of religion or politics, which is why you only talked about them with people you trusted, not in polite open conversation.
However, the fiction of Allen Drury is pretty clear about just how bad the left is, if you get directly exposed to them in a concentrated form. He saw it all, and he tells it all.
Okay, where did my comment on that quote go?
What I was trying to say was “So, what’s my Goth attire then? Mess dress?” 😉
I don’t know. Given I tend to dress all in black, we might be in the same corps. Maybe we should find out what it is?
Antifa dresses all in Black, so their Fascist counter part MUST dress in Hawaiian shirts. How could they believe anything else.
Also handy for concealing oversized double-stack autoloaders…
I prefer single stacks, so use other means.
The only oversize semiauto is the Desert Eagle. Everything else just stuff it in yer pants.
So that’s why the Left was so upset over the Asteroid Scientist’s (un)lucky shirt.
No. This was after that.
All clothing is cosplay. I believe in dressing to camouflage.
Hmm… I dress in black too. Suddenly I’m wondering how common that is in this crowd and if there’s a particular reason for it.
There’s a regionalism aspect as well. I felt wildly out of place the first time I visited the mid-atlantic. I dressed well within the range of “normal” so as not to draw attention, but the colors worn by the natives were so subdued I might as well have worn hot pink, and had a western tanager sitting on my hat.
My goodness, some of the shirts around here— !! (Iowa)
They’re gorgeous, but…whatever you call a really brilliant pastel color? (I don’t know how else to describe it; they’re not pale, they’ve just got really high gamma?) LOTS OF THAT. And then someone got going with the classy version of a bedazzeler where the rhinestones are tiny, so there’s a pair of peacocks in the classic dancing pose, or a whole flock of rainbow chickadees, or a flower vase filled with wild flowers, or one gal had a spiderweb– it’s nice, but WOW. I feel daring when I wear lilac with a pocket-posy on it.
makes me look thinner. Also, I like it.
I’ve avoided black, brown, & white, colors, on my upper body, because it makes me disappear, day or night, … Oh …. wait … hmmm, time to rethink that stratagem..
It’s hard to make black clash, and it doesn’t demand attention the same way a lot of colors do.
My go-tos are (approximate) navy blue, burgundy red, and hunter green, because they don’t show spills and cat hair as easily as black and they don’t call attention to the jeans I’m wearing. They don’t call attention, period.
By the way for anyone who doesn’t know where the Hawaiian shirts came from in relation to The Boogaloo:
What else would you wear to a Big Luau?
No, I know. But the left leaped from that to deciding everyone in an Hawaiian shirt wanted the civil war, etc.
They’re mental.
I think that was a 4chan op. They love to make up prank stuff; and it almost always gets swallowed by the left, because the left has no sense of humor and no sense of truth.
Yes, but it’s getting hard to tell 4chan from left crazy. Kind of like the Babylon Bee had to start Not the Bee for us to see what reality is doing that’s crazier than anything they can make up.
So was the OK sign being a white supremicist sign. They’re crazy and not very bright, not a good combination
The problem is that when it finally comes to light that the latest white supremecist tell is really a 4chan prank, the Left then decides that white supremecists *also* fell for the prank, and turned that fake tell into an actual tell.
Dear 4chan,
I submit to you that Ruth Bader Ginsberg is a secret conservative symbol.
Crab dance anyone?
Could be. They gave us “meninism” and “free bleeding” after all.
Erm, a fair number of the people I’ve known to wear Hawaiian shirts use them for the “conceal” part of “carry”: At least ong guy wore his to church (we’re pretty informal in the Deplorable counties) and it was clear it wasn’t for fashion. The anti-gun pastor figured out he was outvoted, so open carry was out.
I don’t like being visible. Probably why I will never copy Magnum. However, backpacks can hold a surprising amount of freedom. So can tennis racket bag … things…
Yes, so can a violin case, and a guitar case. And certain hard cases look identical between “We’re with the band” and “We’re headed to the range” until decorated with stickers.
Although a friend of mine did run into the problem of her neighbors tried to be friendly and asking about the band she was in, given the cases she and her husband kept carrying out to the car and back on weekends…
“Our band is real heavy on percussion.” 😀
The most baffling thing about what I’ll call “The dogs of war” on the right is that it doesn’t stop with circumstances.
Most of those “dogs of war” on social media are trolls or sock-puppets operated by the other side, or sides. The USA has many “enemies, foreign and domestic,” who want civil unrest or here. The specific reasons depend on the specific enemy. Some want to refashion America as a socialist state. Some want to refashion America as an Islamic state. Some want to conquer America for loot and tribute. Some simply want to distract America, to prevent us from interfering with their evil-doings elsewhere in the world. All of these are pushing in the same direction, toward a fractious, divided America. It need not be an active conspiracy among our enemies when they all have the same short-term goal.
Twitter and its ilk are almost ideal tools for a psychological warfare campaign. There is no way to know that a million “likes” are really the work of a handful of hostile operatives, and not a representative poll of our fellow citizens. Humans are still herd animals to some extent (Odds perhaps less so than most) and we can still be swayed by the apparent opinions of the rest of our herd. The good Perfessor covered this in his book about the evils of social media.
When telephones were new, they were subconsciously treated as a trustworthy communications channel. Con artists discovered this and started a wave of fraudulent calls that lasted a couple of decades, until society became less trusting of the telephone and the cost of the calls outweighed the expected return. The word “phony” was coined in that era to describe such fraudsters and survives to this day.
The cost of calling fell drastically in the last decade or two, such that phone spam became profitable again even though the expected returns are also far lower. Hence the second wave of fraudulent calls that we suffer today. Social media is relatively new to our culture, and we have not yet learned at the subconscious level that it is untrustworthy. We’re still in the first wave, so it continues to have a disproportionate effect on our culture.
I have a personal rule that anyone encouraging the Boogaloo is either a troll working for our enemies, or has fallen under the influence of one. No American with a working knowledge of history or of warfare could possibly want another civil war here. I encourage others to adopt the same rule.
And folks have just discovered text begging. I get three or four texts a day, usually pushing panic.
Scary one for me, I’ve been getting “sell me your house” texts with my address! Been going nuts trying to figure out where they’re linked in any public records.
Mortgage documents?
You can always use the FTC reporting option:
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-recognize-and-report-spam-text-messages
(relevant part down at the bottom)
I am afraid. I am afraid of what people have become, and of what they think they want to do. Too many have forgotten the principle of being careful what you wish for. People on both sides. We MUST understand how much more difficult it is to regain control of the dogs of war than to let them slip. I agree that, ultimately, we win, they lose. I just pray that we get from here to there without the killing part.
I TOO am afraid. You’d have to be a total fool not to be afraid right now. We’re in very very perilous waters. I too pray. Very constantly.
One thing to say for this whole mess is that it has made me far more ….religious? G-d-trusting? Dependent on divine mercy?
So, I suppose, in an eternal pov, this is all very good for me.
I wish my faith were stronger, so I didn’t resent it so much.
“Lord, I believe. Help mine unbelief”
Which is why I’m making mass orders of popcorn for the Rowling row: One of the promoted and anointed “talent” has turned from The True Path of the Arrow, even just a bit! Madness!!
More popcorn popped as I waited for the Emmy Award ratings – and Unexpectedly the ratings suck! And the NFL, domain of the redneck unwashed, was finally invaded and the correctthought campaign begun – and the ratings for the rolled-left NFL suck! And they spent all this effort to thoroughly conquer and colonize the institutions of higher learning – and due to the Chinese Coronavirus from Wuhan China where Winnie the Pooh is God-Emperor, Universities are all losing millions in tuition and in sight is when they are all gone! Unexpectedly!
Anyone know where to order quality popcorn in bulk?
And trad pub is IMPLODING in a way that even I am shocked at.
Honestly, I need to get enough money to rescue my IP because the crash is going to be epic, and is upon us.
I’m seeing less TradPub on the shelves at B&N (sci-fi, fantasy) and more small press. Granted, some of the small press stuff is more Woke than a lot of the tradpub, but not all of it. One wonders if the TradPub releases are shrinking.
If you read the Kristin Kathryn Rusch blogpost, you will see that tradpub is having supply line problems. Small presses use small printing organizations or different big print orgs, so they have different supply lines and probably can get sufficient paper and packaging more easily.
They also took it in the shorts big time for the time of the lock down.
Meh. My schadenboner is reaching low earth orbit.
I now need brain bleach for that image.
Gor-RAM.
Sorry. A friend of mine started that, and now my phone understands the word schadenboner. Sigh.
No worries. I may use it later, for it is indeed wonderful. But that first shock of mental imagery … 😉
>> “Meh. My schadenboner is reaching low earth orbit.”
[raises eyebrow]
Either Dan’s more open-minded than I gave him credit for or you should probably have that looked at.
Well, considering Dan routinely accuses me of driving with it 😀
But it’s metaphorical one. EVERYONE can have one.
People still shop at B &N? 😉
The last memorable bookstore I wandered into was a little German shop-front of the perfect sort, not-quite-overstuffed with books, few of which were much younger than I and a great many of them quite a bit older. I must have had that durn mask on, because though I don’t recall the mask, I do remember the regret of not being able to sniff the books. Unfortunately, also, I don’t read German as well as I’d like, so I made no purchases that day.
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At? No. From. Yes. .EPub is my preferred format. For now. Need to start picking up ebooks from Amazon, but I’d get the same books from other locations if I can.
If you need a dead-tree edition for any reason, B&N is VASTLY faster than Amazon. (Prior to the Wuhan virus, I found it faster but not vastly. Now? Oh yes.)
Online ordering, that is. Obviously, if it’s on the shelves, faster yet if you can make the trip.
If the IP holder goes down the tubes, don’t the rights revert to you? As a practical matter, anyway?
I mean, the company is out of existence, who is going to sue an author if they release an e-book? (Things like this are why I’m pretty happy I started reading Mad Genius Club and According to Hoyt before publishing my own book.)
No. They revert to their creditors. IP is part of the “assets” of the company that get divided.
And it might end up in limbo and not out at all.
Yeah, the Passive Voice has a lot of stuff on that topic, as an IP and bankruptcy guy. Bankruptcy means all the bankrupt company’s assets get divvied up and sold for the benefit of the creditors, biggest debts first. None of the company’s obligations go with it, really, and sometimes even contracts can be rewritten by the new owner of the IP.
For example, apparently TSR never honored the subscriptions that SPI had sold to wargamers, when it took over SPI, Because Lawyers.
Company assets usually get acquired by holding companies, who then sell the assets to other holding companies, and so on. And IP is an asset. They like to estimate the worth of assets as really really big, so that they can look like they’ve got really good stuff.
Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to hire a lawyer, and won’t be for a few more months.
And I don’t want the event that would make me able to. We’ve had enough death already this year.
OTOH I might break down and beg mom and dad for a loan. Which, note, we’ve never yet done, in 35 years. BUT the idea that because of the very crooked contract, my IP might be out of reach for me and my kids? Yeah.
I play tested games for SPI back in the day, they paid us in games. Everybody got screwed by TSR.
I’m not an IP lawyer, but I’ve dealt with a fair few distressed asset deals, not IP mostly RE. If I might be so bold, there are things you can do before lawyers get involved. The first is to determine how much you’re willing to pay to get them back, note not what it’s worth, but how much you’ll pay. This is vital. You don’t want to break yourself.
The second is to start to plan for the contingencies. As the ban sidhe says, the assets tend to get passed along, In the first sale, the firm in possession tries to inflate the value of the assets while the creditors try to drive them down. The firm in possession wants to survive and the DIP bank, who is the most important player, wants to get their money back. You have little interest in the firm surviving and a chapter 7 might be better for you than an 11. the best result for you is getting your IP back sometime down the road at a discount, possibly for nothing. patience is your friend here.
Planning and patience. It’s a cold blooded business.
A friend of mine who recently passed away claimed that TSR got stymied by the distributors that SPI owed money to.
Make of that what you will.
Note that the IP won’t be worth THAT much to me, except if I continue the series. My wish to get it back is “Because it’s mine, damn it.”
They asked for MINIMUM 50k. I’m not giving them 50k. Should I inherit 50k I’ll burn it on lawyers and accountants because they done pissed me off, and I’m not a nice person. (And here, people, you’ll understand my sympathy with those who wish to fight. And why the chances of me not doing SOMETHING if I happen to be where things are hot are ZERO. I’ve just seen enough miracles in my life, enough impossible things, from the fall of the USSR to Brexit to 2016 that I’m not convinced it’s time to throw it all away RIGHT NOW.)
But I don’t want to inherit early enough to be feasible, if they’re imploding as fast as they look to be.
…. I know “write Sarah, Write.”
Fortunately what they own is not my root-world but a secondary world created in my late twenties. It’s still mine, d*mn it.
This is the right way to think. They’re trying to survive and are looking for whatever value and revenue they can. Once things settle down, one way or the other, you should be able to do much better.
Of course, if they implode fast enough, THEY won’t have the money for lawyers to enforce it.
no, but whoever owns them will.
At which point, it’s “A fiery pen, a cloud of words, and a hearty “Fuck you, trad-pub!”, as Sarah writes off into the sunset.
Yes, indeed. Actually that’s closer than they think, and they would be well advised to stop playing games. Just saying.
Make a reasonable offer to buy back your IP. Send them another copy every three or four months. Keep an eye out for receivers or buyers; your offer is money on the table, something the court is obligated to consider during a bankruptcy proceeding.
um… 5k is reasonable. (Back list don’t pay much.)
Putting in a bid is a very good idea for the reason TRX gives. Still, whatever you think is reasonable, offer. IDK,.. half? You might get it and, worst case, you’ve established.a low reservation price. You’re a Portagee, you must have any number of fishwives in your ancestry. Channel them.
Make damned sure you’ve established the maximum you’ll pay and stick to it. You’ve said it was yours. It was yours and might be again, but it isn’t now. that’s how they’ll get you to overpay, they’ll play on your emotions, all good salesmen do. The absolute hardest thing is to walk away but walking away is almost always the best strategy. Often they’ll chase you when you do it.
BGE has a good idea. Bid $2,000 and let them “win” by jacking the price up to more than double.
And don’t go past your preset limit, at least not without talking it over with Dan. Way too many bidders get lost in the action.
I like it. The longer people think about a money offer, and the more they realize that you will renew the offer regularly, the more likely they are to take the money eventually. People hate to leave money on the table. Cash has a sweet siren song.
Sadly, no.
One of the “fun” bits of trying to ressurect a long-gone but fan favorite IP is trying to figure out who holds the rights. And if bankruptcy is involved, the rights holder might not even be sure that they own the rights. Or they might suspect that they own those rights but not know for sure. So while they won’t approve anything using those rights, they’ll take anyone who tries to use the rights to court.
A classic case in anime circles is the US rights to the Macross movie, “Macross: Do You Remember Love”. It’s a gorgeously animated film using the cast and equipment of the first part of the series that aired in the US as Robotech…
and no one knows who holds the US rights. They were sold decades ago to a US company that went bankrupt a little while later. Last I’d heard there were three possible companies that might hold the US rights, but none of the three view it as worthwhile to go through the hassle of confirming whether they actually own the rights.
This happens in video games as well. I recall the rights for the System Shock series was a huge mess. Fortunately, a company with deep enough pockets was willing to do the job of fixing that and a remake is supposed to come out this year.
Hang on… Does anyone have “SHODAN returns” on their 2020 bingo card? Because now that I think of it that’s eerily fitting.
Isn’t that how preference cascades tend to fall? First slowly then all at once?
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Yes. And I predict the same in politics and soon.
I watched most of the Buccaneers/Panthers game yesterday (missed the first 15 minutes) and NOT ONCE did the Fox announcers talk about Kapernick, Floyd, S.J., BLM, etc. They just called the football game.
I think they finally realized that cancelling can go both ways when sports starved fans refrained from tuning in to the NFL in week 1.
I suspect the PTB at the networks were expecting the political stuff to either increase or not affect ratings and were shocked it backfired.
To us, Nixon was a crook.*
To Clinton, he was an amateur.
To Obama, he was just so adorable.
*Okay, maybe not. There are people who think he was more railroaded by political payback more than actually criminal. I lack sufficient information to be able to decide either way. Still, just roll with it for the joke, ‘kay?
Nixon was said to have been paranoid – but is it paranoia when they really are out to get you?
My guess is that Nixon had cleaner hands than LBJ – but too much was hidden from the public back then to be sure…
By far. By far cleaner hands than LBJ. I’m no satanist, on the contrary,but I’d like to point out there’s a good chance Satan had cleaner hands than LBJ….
Johnson’s lies got us into Vietnam, and then his active-stupid meddling kept us from accomplishing anything. For that alone he belongs one step below Hitler.
I remember what my Dad always said about the 1964 election: “The Democrats kept telling us if we voted for Goldwater, we’d go to war in Southeast Asia. Sure enough, they were right — I voted for Goldwater, and we went to war in Southeast Asia!”
Yes. Justified paranoia.
Nixon was a patriot; he wanted to advance the cause of America and give our enemies a poke in the eye. But it was pretty much the same as 2016; the voters rejected their preselected next President and voted Nixon in instead. And the Left went just as berserk, willing to pull the whole country down if necessary, to show their displeasure. Which only resulted in Nixon being elected by an even larger margin the second time around.
Richard Milhous Nixon had many faults but oddly none of them were things he was accused of much…
I’ve long contended that Nixon (or his associates) was (were) no more corrupt than his predecessors in office. His primary failure was that he got *caught*, thus demonstrating that he was less adept at the shenanigans or that the press made it their mission to ‘get’ him.
My dad agrees with you– his family provides a lot of the “we are (ancestry), (religion), Democrats” stories I tell, and if he were less polite he’d be a sort of “piss off and leave me alone” small-L libertarian– so it’s likely that the information to draw that conclusion was widely spread.
Nixon
didattempted nothing that his predecessors hadn’t done. White House recording? Installed by predecessor (don’t care which, don’t care to search it down). Sic the IRS on opponents? He tried, they wouldn’t do for him what they did for LBJ. Keep an enemies list? Brother, if you don’t think LBJ and JFK not only kept lists but kept score you’re too naïve to be allowed online.Nixon’s biggest mistake was being loyal to subordinates. When “the Plumbers” got nabbed (on a mission neither authorized by him nor known to him) he could have just hung them out to dry, arranged for them to do easy time and get show-up jobs once they’re out. Instead he tried to protect him.
Being loyal to underlings is a error you’ll NEVER see a Liberal make.
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I tend to agree with you Sarah, but but but I find myself putting a lot of yea buts after many of the points you made quite well.
Yea but my homies wouldn’t even think of stacking bodies, though discreetly disposing of same might be considered in certain situations.
Yea but and yep, it’s been going on for a long time and I’m all for turning the other cheek but, after four one runs out of cheeks.
More each and every day the the rabid insanity of the left is apparent in spite of the media’s attempts to hide it. Is the affliction treatable? I hope so as the only alternative I can come up with is the way one cures a rabid dog.
Sitting up here on top of the world I’m, so far, spared seeing or experiencing the worst excesses but I wonder how long decent folks in the lower forty eight can accept or ignore an environment where in they’re harassed at restaurants if they fail to raise their fist in a black power salute, view city blocks burned to the ground, see friends killed because they might be President Trump supporters, see any representation of law and order vilified, view out of town hooligans bused in to terrorize their neighborhoods?
No matter what the results are come November, the road ahead is rocky.
One last yea but, Sarah; Yea but in spite of my rant, keep shouting, a voice of reason, loud and clear, young lady, if enough people join in on the chorus y’all just might (& no, I am not indulging in hyperbole.) save the world!
Note I’m not saying to turn the other cheek. But fight smarter…
Remember, after the second cheek three words say all you need: Buns of Steel!
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Note that not all cities are burning, pretty much only lefty cities. And if someone harasses me to do the black power salute, you’ll be reading about it in the paper. Because I’d no more do that than the Nazi salute. Fuck that. I don’t do gestures of systems that killed millions. I might stand up and sing the Star Spangled Banner, though. Badly and with great passion.
Be sure to post a video of the singing here. ~:D
well… since they’re likely to get violent on the singing…. and that… well….I hope to take an escort with me. But you’re more likely to read about it in the paper.
Where can we contribute to the Bat’leth fund?
HAAKKAA PÄÄLLE!
Note I still say Sarah,keep shouting, a voice of reason, loud and clear, if enough people join in on the chorus, just might (in all seriousness.) save the world!
Where are the not-lefty cities?
Whelp. There are a few. They don’t make the news.
Seriously, even Denver didn’t burn that much.
Most of the cities east of the Cascades in Oregon are not-left. (And some of the SW Oregon cities are going right.)
Let them find out that the Holiday Fire was arson & it was triggered by someone at the protest that went through Thurston … Springfield & east & south Lane County will definitely vote right, Eugene & Florence will probably follow. There are enough people in Eugene whose compassion is is boundless, is finding boundaries, between the protests on 6th & 7th at the Washington Street Bridge. That & the homeless after this year. A homeless camp lighting it off will trigger the same cascade. It might be just my pocket of NW Eugene. OTOH the Holiday Fire up Hwy 126 scared the residents of South Eugene s***less, to death. Too many cases of only one route out, with fire breathing down. South Eugene residences locations are just as bad.
The fire that started in Ashland and nuked Phoenix (Oregon! We recycle city names here) and Talent was another one like that. After the Paradise, CA Camp fire, I took a hard look as Ashland and realized that there’s only two routes (US 99 and I-5) for quite a few miles. A fire along that corridor (both parallel and close to each other in that stretch) would leave it quite hard to get out.
It didn’t help that Ashland dropped personnel in the fire department due to “lack of tourist revenue”. I’m waiting to see if it has any effect on the congressional and state races over there.
(Looks up Holiday Farm fire): I see it has the classic “Under Investigation” for the cause. Hmm, I just looked at the fire summary for the NW Coordinating Council (OR and WA). Of the 15 fires listed (only large active ones make that list, so Ashland’s isn’t on there any more), two are identified as “Human Caused”, one Lightning, and the remainder are either “Unknown” or “Under Investigation”. Curious that, especially since a lot of fires broke out just as Portland got a lull in riots. (FWIW, Almeda Drive Fire in Ashland was “Human Caused”, but pay no attention to the burned out car with a propane tank setting on the roof. $SPOUSE’s outrage level has gone from “Extremely Pissed” to “We need range time, STAT!” OTOH, a secondary fire for that incident was arson, with the creep who started it arrested.
There have been an arsonist or two arrested in Lane County too. One for setting brush fires in the park across the Clear Lake road from Fernridge Dam, points further east on Clear Lake and on Hwy 126 between Veneta & RR bridge where it crosses W. 11th, east of where Fisher Lane intersects with Hwy 126W. A rumor of an attempted arsonist at Buford Park/Pisgah Park, which is area between south Springfield, and highway 58, not far off I-5. This would have shut down Highway 58, easily, if not I-5. Not to mention easily involved 30th avenue and over the hill, involving south Eugene, and take out southeast Springfield.
All concerning. More concerning, to us, is the Clear Lake arson attempts as there isn’t a whole lot except farms & hobby ranches to 5-to-10-acre ranchet’s/orchards between there & hwy 99. Jump Hwy 99 into lumber mill and sweep into W Eugene industrial and residential grown boundary/city pockets. Including us. Okay the reaction was more “Dang it!” Okay more swearing but you get the picture.
If it looks like, smells like, acts like, enemy action, enemy action is the way to bet.
https://www.kezi.com/content/news/WATCH-A-look-at-Highway-126-after-the-Holiday-Farm-Fire-572543631.html
The south, with exceptions. We’re heading to Oxford, Mississippi shortly for a project and since it’s a college town I’m curious to see whether it’s like Oklahoma State last year (normal) or Oregon State two years ago (woke).
Nashville may be mixed. So far as I know it’s been pretty quiet, but the local media just pointed out the mayor hid the stats on Covid transmissions via bar/restaurant – as in, hardly any. Local bar/restaurant owners have every reason to be ticked. And yes, the mayor is a Democrat.
Oklahoma State is in Stillwater. Which is a university town. In a conservative state, but probably left for Oklahoma.
There are hard left cities/towns in some of the conservative states, which still have not been torching places, even when the town is owned and operated by hard left types. Presumably because the nutjobs in charge are sane enough to realize that the state can remove them if they are obviously enough criminally partisan.
I’d have sworn Oregon State was more conservative. OTOH that would be conservative right of University of Oregon … and my view is 42 years ago. My son, who graduated more recently (within last 10 years) just shakes his head at me. So OS(U) is less woke than UofO, but that isn’t saying much. Entire state is less woke, based on land base locations, unfortunately population wise, Eugene, Corvallis, Salem, & Portland, dominate the state’s wokedness. Don’t even need Ashland.
Haven’t had issues in Des Moines.
Not even all lefty cities – Silicon Valley is very much capital-P Progressive and all we had was one night right at the start, which the solid SJPD put down flat in one night (because of which there’s current virtue signaling about commissions and “police reforms” and changing the standing riot ROE in penance, but still, it got put down with minimal property damage), and even the City and County of San Francisco have made their protests and about a ten-day of major rioting go away, in spite of the commie DA (no, really; child of weather underground commie convicts raised by other weather underground commies).
SF has not skipped the results though – the exodus is on full blast up there, and the last survey I saw said over 60% of the closed businesses would never reopen.
But it’s only the lefty cities that look from here to have encouraged things that still have issues.
It might be informative to overlay a map of cities where riots persisted and one of cities where George Soros funded the local District Attorney’s election.
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And Denver lights up like a Christmas tree.
Hey, RES, if you have access to a list of those, send it to me in email. I’ll do a post for PJ.
A quick search reveals a number of likely possibilities for Soros tracking; I will list the top few with denatured URLs:
DAs backed by Soros, other liberal activists join fray in clash with police
Under-the-radar political investments made by progressive groups in recent years may be paying off
foxnews . com/politics/da-soros-justice
Crime spikes as Soros-funded DAs take charge: ‘They’re not progressive, they’re rogue’
washingtontimes . com/news/2020/aug/20/george-soros-funded-das-oversee-big-cities-skyrock/
George Soros revealed to have funded DA’s who now oppose police in American cities
Bombshell report from Fox News is no surprise, but a ringing set of connections made
theduran . com/george-soros-revealed-to-have-funded-das-who-now-oppose-police-in-american-cities/
Soros Aims to Transform the Justice System by Funding DA Races
capitalresearch . org/article/soros-aims-to-transform-the-justice-system-by-funding-da-races/
Beware Of George Soros’ Trojan Horse Prosecutors
The left-wing billionaire has been funding the campaigns of prosecutors intent on creating chaos rather than doing their jobs.
theamericanconservative . com/articles/beware-of-george-soros-trojan-horse-prosecutors/
There are even some Youtube pieces on this:
357 views•Apr 18, 2018
Campaign records for the “Justice & Public Safety PAC” and the “Law & Justice PAC” might turn up some useful things. There’s also David Horowitz’s “Discover the Networks” site:
discoverthenetworks . org/individuals/george-soros/
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I would raise exactly 1/5 of a fist.
That’s all they deserve, and all they get.
That might happen too. Probably.
oh, you’d raise 1/5 of two fists.
Let’s be serious, guys. You give ’em the bird and they’ll get violent and you’ll take a beating. You’re sitting, there’s no way to defend yourself. You need a different plan.
Eat steak. INSIST the restaurant provide a steak knife. Drink HOT beverages. If you do drink beer, skip what’s on tap and go for the bottled.
If mobbed, steak knife in the belly of the one nearest, hot beverage in the face of next nearest, beer bottle over the head of whoever’s standing in reach after you’ve overturned the table to provide something between you and the mob. Then grab the chair and swing away while calling for the police. Dining partners ought to have a coordinated plan, preferably with a cue word or signal.
Additional tips: Try to order a good fighting beer, something in the 0.75 liter (25oz.) size with a stout glass body and neck sufficient to enable a good grip. I recommend Australian and Scottish beers for this purpose, although there are some excellent Irish brands that ought serve. If the restaurant doesn’t provide a steak knife there’s no point to stabbing a thug with one of those blunted knives barely able to spread butter; just stick a fork in ‘im.
N.B. – in no way is violence recommended for reconciling differences of opinion; it ought only be resorted to when no other viable response is available, and then it ought be decisive as possible. Keep in mind that if you kick a foe across the knee it is unlikely he will long be inclined to chase you.
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My thought on the original story of diners being berated to raise their fists was “I’ll see your fist, and raise you a finger”.
On my left hand, my right hand is likely to be occupied presently.
Good thing I don’t go out much, and my regular dining establishment is the local VFW post.
The rather suspicious local fire in $TINY_TOWN was likely a really bad idea for the setters. The old joke(?) about the South still fighting The Late Unpleasantness is mirrored locally, with a fair number of the descendants of the Modoc war living here. Not a good idea to annoy them. Any further attempt by outsiders would likely not have LEOs involved, modulo the Missing Person’s desk.
Hear, hear!! Me too, with both middle fingers aloft!
Now THAT is an excellent idea. No mask Full voice. I cannot carry a tune in a bucket, but I can project.
I have a REALLY loud voice. Sometimes perfectly on tune. But rarely and never when stressed. I can’t HEAR it, you see?
That’s rough. My sympathies.
I give dramatic speeches about books to rooms full of 25 – 75 teenagers. So I can really make it carry when I want to. And I’m always stressed then – makes for a better performance.
If someone demanded that I raise my fist, they would probably get one – with a digital extension.
Remember the Sixties, which were all the Left’s way until Kent State suddenly convinced many of the campy followers there was a price to be paid, that the kids weren’t going to continue being let run wild.
See reaction to the McCloskey’s in St Louis. See reaction to the Hero of Kenosha. So long as they can maintain the illusion there is scant price to be paid rioting is all fun & games. But lock up that mob around McConnell’s house and they next mob will think again.
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I’m tired of politics.
While I basically agree with Sarah, I need a vacation for political stuff.
Take Care Everybody.
A few years ago, ILOH had a post up on his blog about the folly of hoping for a civil war. To paraphrase and sum up his rather lengthy post, there might be a time when pulling the trigger is the right thing to do. But anyone doing so should be aware that even if we win, we’ll still lose.
On another note, I think one of the big differences today is how rabid they’ve gotten about destroying the foundational roots of society. In the 70s, proponents of the ERA mocked opponents who claimed that it would lead to men using womens’ bathrooms. Fast forward to today, and we’re seeing exactly that even though the ERA never passed. And this is hardly the only item like this.
On the positive side, I suspect that we’re about to get some interesting revelations regarding associates of the late Mr. Epstein (who didn’t kill himself). Hopefully that will put some of the bigger problems behind bars.
It’s almost October. I suspect (expect) that whatever lame-ass October Surprise the Left has planned it will be as nothing to the names I’m quite sure Guillain Maxwell is busy spilling right now.
As Kate McMillan likes to say on her blog, “Come back, Pizzagate! All is forgiven!”
Ghislaine Maxwell? You mean they’ve managed to keep her alive?
Last I heard.
I would be surprised if she ‘hung herself’, and it didn’t at least get mentioned her.
Plus, I’ve a suspicion she is why HRC isn’t retrying the direct route to the white house.
So far. Knocks on head.
Knocks on head? Give them no suggestions, please!
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It was the nearest wood to knock on.
So far there’s no announcement that she’s on “suicide watch” so I hope for the best.
Apropos, the Governor of the US Virgin Islands has demanded the -entire- passenger list for all of the Epstein aircraft, including the Lolita Express, from the late 1990s onward.
Going to be some -names- on there, you know? October Surprise, incoming on full afterburner…
Apparently Epstein maintained a residence in the USVI, which gives the USVI standing to open an investigation.
They ain’t gettin’ nuthin’, though. Their demand will simply be ignored unless other pressures are applied, which would result in the information being “lost” or “accidentally deleted”.
Of course, in a better timeline the governor of the USVI would send armed marshals to DC with subpoenas and get copies at gunpoint if necessary.
The most recent news that I’m aware of is that she’d asked to be taken *out* of protected custody, and put into the general prison population. Evidently she felt she would be safer there.
Her lawyers requested. Which means the lawyers are in on the efforts to finish her off.
I’ve seen this, in one form or another, from the early ’90s. I barely dodged the minefields of political correctness in my two abortive attempts at getting a degree, and I know what the belly of the beast looks like. I’ve seen San Francisco change from a place that I loved, with all sorts of interesting little shops and places to party and interesting people, to a classic town of oligarchs. Great if you’re rich or you have access to the rich, terrible if you’re making it on your own. And, if you’re not connected or the rich and powerful don’t like you…away you go…
I’ve had to defend people’s right to say things that I wouldn’t have defended otherwise, because if they went down, it could be me next.
And, it probably is going to be me next at this point.
I don’t want to think about how close this election is going to be. And, it does matter. However you might not like Trump, a Biden/Harris administration will go through every single thing you care about like a blowtorch. Unless you’re one of the Woke or can dance as fast as you can to keep up with them, you’re just “unenlightened.” And, brothers and sisters, they will enlighten you-even if that requires 50,000 volts up your rectum.
Trump truly scared the E!Democrats and the “institutional” socialists. Hillary! was supposed to win, because the Media and all the Right-Thinking People said so. And, beating Trump would serve as her annotation oil for Queen Of Everything.
Except, he…won. And, people realized that with all the tools they used to go around, under, and over that they were not alone. Even more than GamersGate, ComicsGate, and their ilk, people realized that the stuff they were getting was crap. It wasn’t good-books, movies, TV shows, music, news, whatever. And, there were people that would agree with them, or at the very least agree to disagree without insults or attacks.
If Biden/Harris win, you can bet they’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again. They are scared-scared to the point of madness-that if they can’t make the “unenlightened” dance to their tune this time, they’re through. They have killed almost all of the evergreen franchises in one form or another (Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel and DC Comics, Netflix, etc, etc, etc…) and the people that are coming up to take over are hungry and have no patience at all for the wokescolds and their ilk. The major network news outlets and the cable news networks have become known jokes by now.
The beast of institutional socialism is wounded. Badly, even. But, it’s still got teeth and claws, and it’s not dead yet.
Be not afraid. Keep hitting the monster, and when the time comes-cut off it’s head and burn the remains.
Just watch — Hollywood is going to re-make Frankenstein. The Noble Creature will be half male, half female, stitched together from Politically Correct percentages of every race and ethnicity EXCEPT white. The villagers will all be inbred White Supremacists, led by a creationist preacher. A White Patriarchy Evil Capitalist accidentally kills Dr. Frankenstein while trying to steal the Secret Of Life, then sets out to capture the Creature…
———————————
Frederick: “Whose brain was it?”
Igor: “Abbey somebody.”
Frederick: “Abbey who?”
Igor: “Abbey…Normal.”
ROFL
I am also sure they would remake Titanic and portray the sinking as being the result of greedy Jewish capitalists.,.,…oh wait, Goebbels already made that movie in the 1940s.
I liked that version….
“Go, Aryan Hans! Save those people!”
((Drink))
Now, will there even be an entertainment industry as we know about it in the next few years? The Emmys reached an all-time low, down 33% from last year-and last year’s numbers were low as well.
They blamed Sunday basketball on this, but those numbers were down as well. Same as the NFL and other sports.
I’m remembering more bombs (Mulan, Tenet) and disasters (massive unsubscripions from Netflix because of Cuties and some very…dubious program choices). When you have people that were first-tier Marvel and DC artists and writers going for Kickstarter/IGG funding to do their own comics, there’s something wrong there.
Funmation gets licenses that are pretty much “let’s print ALL THE MONEY!” licenses-and they lie about cutting the fan service, insert Social Justice Zealot politics in the dubs, and throw people they’ve worked with for years under the bus.
I think we’re going to see a 1970’s shake-out of Hollywood and it is going to be bad when it happens. I am just glad I know where to sail the high seas if I have to.
Re shakeout: The longer it’s delayed, the louder the noise will be when it finally crashes.
The C19 bug probably is what will let academe have any possibility of a controlled crash instead of a smoking crater, as long as the universities that survive this preshakout/culling event take the hints that this black swan is providing.
But I don’t think Hollywood is in any way even remotely capable of taking the hints that they are getting in abundance, so I think the large media empires will make a very large strings of craters indeed.
I’m thinking some hybrid form of subscription and crowdfunding will end up being the primary way stuff gets made in the future – basically Star Trek Continues with a bigger budget, with whatever’s left of the current media entities doing IP licensing.
It doesn’t help that the theoretical “replacements” for the big media giants like Netflix and their ilk are developing reputations as EXTREMELY cheap bastards-if you’re not a name-brand star, it’s almost better to work in a Subway than a low-billing role. It also doesn’t help that it feels like the streamers are trying to put up the same content we’ve been telling them we don’t like for years.
Look where Amazon and Netflix and such are headhunting their media management hires: Straight from Hwood studios. It’s not like those folks know how to do anything differently.
The problem is that the management they need, at least according to HR, is from those places. They have the skill sets, the knowledge, and such to make these kinds of projects work.
And, put the kind of sociopath that makes it in Hollywood in a place with even fewer controls than Hollywood has? You see them trying to low-ball everyone so that they can….ah, make a better profit margin for the investors, that’s it!
Some of these really low-budget action movies, I’m only waiting for there to be a serious, “lots of people died” accident to happen.
now mind you most of my friends are in VFX, but i hadn’t heard of those kinds of problems on these shoots….
It’s CW, I know, but one of the reasons why Ruby Rose left “Batwoman” (besides it being terrible) was that she got badly hurt doing a stunt in the show. Mostly because it was done on the cheap.
The box office performance might be an interesting clue. Between Caviezel and Dinesh D’Souza’s involvement it is assuredly not from Hollywood’s usual suspects. I noted it surpassed New Mutants but that might not be much.
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Wait — I forgot — make that Dr. Victoria Frankenstein. No way a MALE could figure out how to create Life, after all.
———————————
Count Piotr: “Woman! Where have you been?”
Cordelia: “Shopping. Want to see what I bought?”
Harris has openly said that if elected she would go after Trump’s supporters (i.e. half the country) and “punish them” for doing so. She has a long track record of using her official position to engage in partisan political persecution of opponents (remember her prosecution of the undercover reporters who filmed Planned Parenthood’s scheme to sell body parts). She is a true fascist who believes in one thing only-her own power to rule over others and to destroy anyone who dares oppose her.
And, Dad had friends in SFPD when Harris was a DA and most of their opinions are unprintable due to language. “Willie’s mistress got a payoff job” was the kindest think they said about her. And, yes, she has a record. Funny how a lot of that got scrubbed in a lot of places…
“put women in chain”
It has been my impression that many women like being put in chains.
Have I been misinformed?
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Some view chain as practical daywear …
… or so I’m told.
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Forgot to mention a safe word. Quite nulkulturney.
For those blessed young’uns who were born after the 1970s, I’d just like to say:
This is Deja Poo. I Have Seen This Shit Before.
You all know that right now, the government of Canada is very much in bed with the Communist Chinese, The Justin Trudeau Liberals are 100% taking “suggestions” and “requests” from China. For sure. There’s no question about it. They’re also wrecking the Canadian military and confiscating guns from Canadians as fast as they can. They are deliberately wrecking the economy.
Seems bad, right?
Well, I remember the FIRST Trudeau regime, that of Pierre Trudeau. Pierre Trudeau was very cozy with the Russians. And this is during the darkest days of the Cold War, don’t forget. The Liberals confiscated guns from civilians. They wrecked the military IN THE MIDDLE OF THE COLD WAR. They wrecked the economy. They declared Martial Law for real in the FLQ crisis. There were murders. There were bombings. Shit went on fire.
But, eventually it all stopped. You guys elected Regan, we elected Mulroney, and the world spun on. The military got repaired. The economy boomed.
So just remember, we’ve seen this before. It’s not a new thing. We beat it last time, we will beat it this time.
You forgot the part where China owns one of your arctic ports.
But yes, nothing has yet been done that cannot be undone. We just need to get in there and undo it.
China owns -all- the ports. They have their name on one of them.
“It wasn’t a conspiracy, btw. As we’ve found out, a lot of fellow-travelers who all believe the same thing and head the same way is indistinguishable from a conspiracy.”
See, for example, “Climate Change”. All reputable scientists believe in Anthroprogenic Climate Change; nobody who denies Anthroprogenic Climate Change is a reputable scientist.
There are other examples: “America’s history of systemic racism has permanently crippled African-Americans, denying them full participation in American society.”
“What about Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Barry Gordy, O. J. Simpson and others?”
“They’re exceptions who prove the rule. African-Americans need affirmative action to make up for the inadequacy of America’s racist school systems.”
“Were people such as Thomas Sowell, Walter B. Williams, John McWhorter, Thurgood Marshall, and Clarence Thomas denied careers because of their skin color?”
“Shut up, racist.”
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Here’s a good one. African-American nuns (actually, I think they were all religious sisters) allegedly put out a communique demanding that the Catholic Church fight racism more. In fact, they demanded that Catholics stop marching against abortion, and instead there “should be a day” to have “tens of thousands” of Catholics march against racism.
Because that totally never happened during the Civil Rights marches. No Catholics whatsoever.
Also, of course we can’t mention that more black babies get aborted than white babies, by percentage, to the point that abortion is the cause of more black deaths than any other cause, whether it be illness, car accidents, or crime. Because everybody must sign onto Current Leftist Cause, regardless of whether it makes sense.
National Black Sisters Conference. So yes, sisters not nuns. Looked typical of the mainline religious, only one in anything resembling a habit. The rest were women of a certain age and certain size wearing comfortable shoes and woman-priest pins.
The sad part is their biographies show that they’re mostly from “teaching” orders.
I’d love to introduce our African-American sisters to some African-African sisters, i know a few Nigerian sisters. Bonny that would be.
Ah, you mean the Nigerian sisters who are in constant fear of being targeted by Boku Haram? I suspect they would have a lot to say.
Something like that though the ones I’m thinking about are here in the US. Let’s just say that they end to be rather more orthodox than your average American mainline religious sister.
The average priest from Africa is also much more priest-like, “strangely”.
Maybe it’s time for Africa to evangelize the west, when it comes to Catholics, at least?
Not hard.
Of course every reputable scientist believes in climate change. My back yard was 2 miles under ice not so long (in geologic terms) ago.
Tin foil hat kooks believe in Climate Stasis. That humanity can force Earth’s climate to stay exactly the same forever! Bwahaha!
First they come for our words.
c4c
“Heinlein said that the Democrats had been taken over by communists by the forties. That communists were in control where it counted. I see no reason to doubt him.”
I believe that changed during the subsequent couple of decades. Hubert Humphrey made his political bones as Mayor of Minneapolis by throwing the Communists out of the party; JFK was, whatever his faults, staunchly anti-Red; the Labor Unions spent those decades suppressing the Communists in their midst (this is when Reagan, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, took to carrying a pistol whenever he went out. Also, “While the AFL was grappling with the problem of gangster-dominated affiliates, the CIO decided in 1948 to bar Communists from holding office in the organization, and in 1949-50 it expelled 11 of its affiliated unions, which were said to be Communist-dominated”).
It was only when the Dems relaxed their guard, thinking they had “solved” the problem (the problem of communists is never solved, any more than Herpes is solved) and lowered their guard i the Eighties and Nineties (especially during the Clinton presidency) and “the tide shifted significantly in 1995 when John Sweeney, Richard Trumka and Linda Chavez-Thompson ousted Lane Kirkland and took over the AFL-CIO.”
Communism, like rust, never sleeps – but it can occasionally be scraped away.
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Well. Um. If you look at what Lenin was promising, the Democratic Party and the labor unions had implemented almost all of it by the late 1940s. Not that all of it was bad or unwelcome, but the 40-hour work week, equal pay for equal work, overtime, collective bargaining, retirement and social welfare systems… those were all “talking points” from Lenin’s European years. Lenin promised what he thought his listeners wanted to hear, but America came *far* closer to fulfilling those promises than the CCCP ever did.
The Democratic Party and unions were functionally Communist, but they didn’t think of themselves that way. The “Communists” they were opposing were the old-school wreckers, rioters, and revolutionaries, who had served their purpose and were now an embarrassment, if not an outright threat to the new socialist order.
There is also the matter of communism in that era being largely a matter of taking orders from Russia. One could argue that the American unions liked being communists just fine, they just didn’t like dancing to Russia’s jigs.
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“The fact the right refused to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse scared the living crap out of the left”
They weren’t any too happy about the support for Mark and Patricia McCloskey, either.
They’re scared [poop]less over growth in support of the Second Amendment.
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Because everyone on the Right that worked through the chain of events realized that-
1-“F(YAY!)k, that could have been me.”
2-Great shooting. Needs some more tactical work and he forgot the first rule of a gunfight (always bring a buddy, have your buddy bring a buddy, and the more buddies the better…), but for his first rodeo? Pretty damn good.”
And, even in the People’s Republic of California, we’re running out of guns and ammo. People know that it might just be them at this point.
Even the conservative karens who never miss a chance to take a dump on someone defending themselves eventually had to admit that it was good in-between chants that he shouldn’t have been there.
When leftists complain about people having guns and defending themselves, I always remind them that Malcolm X was a strong believer in the right to bear arms and the right of self-defense. I also remind them that he thought government largess was a tool to enslave people and that political power came from having economic power by owning and controlling ones own businesses in one’s community. Drives them nuts.
I’ve heard it recommended to me, but not yet read it. https://www.amazon.com/This-Nonviolent-Stuffll-Get-Killed/dp/082236123X
They are scared spitless by the NICs check rate – I know not every NICS check is a firearm sale, and some are for things like the renewal of carry permits, but it’s also the case that one NICs check can cover multiple firearms in one purchase. But if you add up all the NICS checks since the NICS system began in November 1998, those 356,056,781 NICS checks from November 1998 through August 2020 are equal to 106.5% of the entire US population – and there plenty of guns that were bought before 1998.
In the first 8 months of 2020, even with all the lockdowns (out here in CA all gun stores were by Gavin’s Imperial Rescript nonessential and thus closed, which definitely shows up in the FBI NICS stats from here), there have been NICS checks equal to 7.7% of the 2020 US population.
That is a run rate that would conservatively yield 38.6 million NICS checks, or checks numbering more than 11.5% of the total US population, and that’s without any additional increases during the election run-up or even just due to the holidays. I would not be surprised if the total ends up over 40m for the year.
And you can’t find ammo. And we’re short on ammo. (Always, pretty much.)
Some of us paid attention to Professor Du Toit when he lectured on “Ammo Supply Math”. Not forgetting magazines.
Sure. I did too, but we couldn’t afford to stock up when the back of my head was screaming for me to buy more.
Like I said, Sarah, I got to where you are now in 2003. And started stocking then.
Note that, other than in a couple of shithole states, NICS checks only apply to FFLs. Most places, private individuals can buy and sell guns just like baby clothes or lawnmowers.
It is possible to build an extensive collection with few or no 4473s.
yes, but those aren’t new guns entering the system…
Texas LTC [License to Carry} permits are coming in at over twice the rate as in previous years. Every month. The issuing office is weeks behind, and stop answering the phone on some days. The range I belong to has at least four carry classes every month, and they sell out in days, if not hours.
Make of it what you will.
And in TX, if you possess a LTC, you do not need to have a NICS check to purchase firearms. Still filling out the 4473, but no waiting, just paperwork, cash or credit card, and out the door.
Which means the number of background checks does not equal the number of sales at a FFL.
“Across the country they are failing.”
Next thing you know some wiseacres will paint a huge mural on a NY City street, declaring F-CK CUOMO AND DEBLASIO or some such.
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My apologies for incomplete information! If such a message was painted in the NY street it would not have inserted a “-” in place of the vowel in that initial word.
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It’s New York. The only reason it isn’t a longer rant is that they want to make sure they can see and read it.
Now, now. Unlike the BLM outside Trump tower, the city covered it in black paint within a day. That instruction cam “from the top”. Bill is well known for his sense of humor. The term Masshole might have been invented solely for him or Bloomberg or Gauleiter Murphy.
Where it happened is very interesting. It was Greenpoint, which had been a solidly Polish working class part of town that had gotten a bit run down and is now hipster central, almost as bad as Williamsburg.
Lot of anger around. Maybe Andy and Bill shouldn’t have killed grandad and nana.
I think if only legal ballots from legally entitled voters were counted, Trump could win New York. Of course the Democrats will never allow that to happen.
All the folks who died in the nursing homes have already voted for Harris and Biden.
THAT’S what the Democrats see in mass graves — a lot of reliable voters!
It would depend on how the Hispanic vote went, but NY has had republican governors and mayors not long ago. The trouble is the Republican Party is a disaster, but Trump could overcome that,
FWIW I think the Hispanic vote, or at least some of it, is seriously in play. I also think the black vote could be interesting. The margin of fraud is what worries me. Still, the dems are not acting like they’re winning are they?
They also arrested the painters for vandalism. Laws for thee but not for them…..
It’s true that civil wars can be easily be really really bad, but it’s
also true that some fraction of the time they really are so quick
and/or lopsided that there’s not much military destruction. It seems
to me that people (naturally) remember the conflicts which boiled over
into really expensive outcomes much more, and then (unwisely) forget
to count the less-expensive conflicts. So civil wars do have a big
risk of being really bad, but if you don’t carefully count the ones
that are harder to remember, you might think civil war is like playing
Russian roulette with three or four bullets in the cylinder, when in
reality civil war might be more like playing Russian roulette with
merely *two* or *three* bullets in the cylinder!
For example, in the Anglosphere we (used to, before right thinking
people taught us that revolution is French or Russian, period, because
shut up, or perhaps because to remember historical reminders of the
natural consequences of liquidating legitimacy and alienating big
unusually-productive identity groups is to be a wrecker spreading
inherently fascist deviationist propaganda) remember the 17th century
English Civil War and Glorious Revolution. We seldom remember
Monmouth’s rebellion being stomped. And we do vaguely remember the
restoration of the Stuarts after Richard Cromwell was deposed, but
seldom seem to think very much about how for a while, before it was
suddenly tidied up without much fighting, the situation looked rather
like the usual late-Roman-Empire recipe for endless countercoups and
civil war.
Thing is, the easy ones perhaps don’t really count as civil wars, at least not ones where the fights are necessary.
When you can simply helicopter communists, carry out a coup, or send a few barons to the headsman, your opposition does not have conventional forces ready in place to fight the other side of a civil war.
When your top general decides it is his turn to be emperor, or when the sons, nephews, and grandsons of the previous great khan want to fight you for the succession, you are more in the middle of what we what we here are anticipating as a civil war.
Which is not to say that we anticipate a conventional war, ala ACW.
It is just that if the balance of force is so overwhelmingly in favor of our side, we probably do not need to actually escalate to warfare.
Our assumptions for near future boog first requires that the military not simply wholeheartedly support one side, because then the conflict ends very quickly. So to avoid ‘and then nothing happens’, you have to assume that the military sits it out, or is busy fighting itself.
Americans have a lot of ability to hurt each other that isn’t currently used. If you have enough people on each side of a political dispute to be worth fighting it out, Americans being similar to Americans, you probably have a good chunk of people on both sides who can be dangerous. And that war potential is neither carefully labeled for easy neutralization, nor already organized to the point of having kill lists distributed, material stockpiled, or a process in place to select targets and place bombs. (Or, at least, we can infer this, from the fact that rapid sequences of killings have not been occurring, and that the preparations are too incriminating to start unless you need to use them soon.) The left’s leadership does not appear competent to organize a coup. Which leaves both sides raising bottom up organized forces of irregulars.
Our theory here is that the irregular conflict would initially be sloppy enough that it will widen from people seeking revenge. We expect it to widen too much to make peace quickly achievable again.
Stop making sense, Bob.It makes the world rock on its moorings.
Oddly enough, I was tempted to tease you about related subjects in the current post.
If it would comfort you, perhaps I could do a guest post on how what Ginsberg wanted more than anything is for Trump to nominate before the funeral, and for the Senate to confirm well before the election. XD
Depending on different variables, even the US military going all-in for one side or the other might not end it. Cities eat armies. The current US Army might not be big enough to fully lock-down a hostile Greater Los Angeles for an extended period of time.
Interesting scenario, but not one to plan for in my outrageously arrogant opinion. The officer corps, NCOs, and the retired/skilled folks in the civilian sector are precisely the unpredictable elements that make rolling the dice on a civil war so very risky. It may be possible to forecast that well enough to plan for, but that is not an ability I have.
They don’t have to lock it down, just destroy it and there are any number of ways to do that. Turn off the water for a start.
I thought the Mayor of LA was already doing that to anyone who dared defied his edicts.
Just so.
Why bother? Destroy the water pumping stations and leave.
exactly. the Army Corps of Engineers can do just as much to contain los angeles as any other unit….
Civil wars are like playing Russian Roulette with a Colt 1911. That’s why we don’t like them.
> Enough for the left to be unable to keep it all secret, and pretend only crazy people oppose their program, and that they’re the best there is.
—
“You can lie, but you can’t hide!”
The internet is like a new kind of electric light; you flip the switch and see the roaches scuttle.
The problem is that civil strife won’t remain merely an internal matter. We know the CCP is financing the BLM activists (the national BLM’s own website references a CCP front as a “partner”). We also have enemies who have nukes, who would not hesitate to attack us if they thought that the internal strife is sufficient to prevent a response (and if the Dems win the election they may rightly feel that they would not respond to such an attack because their expressed hatred of their own country is such that our enemies may believe that they would “take the attack” and accept it as punishment for “America’s crimes”. They don’t even need a direct strike-just a high altitude EMP pulse or two and they can watch the strife ramp up to full Mad Max levels.
Yep.
And I don’t want to wear a colander.
I don’t have enough hair left to do the Mohawk thing. And as much as I like leather jackets, pants….not so much.
If you have cataract surgery you’ll get to wear the tea ball, though…
?
Mrs. TRX had to wear a perforated metal eyepatch for several days after getting eye surgery. She hated that thing with incandescent fury.
Fair’s fair – if they ship colanders over here, we ship colanders over there. Airdrops of the modern equivalent to Liberator pistols over the Uigur concentration camps from unmarked drones, anyone?
Not if the Dems are in power.
They won’t ship colanders if the Dems are in power – in that case they’d be destabilizing something they bought and paid for.
Those colanders are heading our way only if the Dems lose.
No. We won’t retaliate if the dems are in power. YOU KNOW THAT.
Oh, most certainly – see above about “bought and paid for” by the Chicoms. The illegal funneling of Chinese money to the Ds through anonymous credit card donations was a nudge-nudge-wink-wink open secret in the press as far back as the 2008 Great And Powerful Sotoero campaign. And lo, for eight years there was abject supplication for God-Emperor Winnie.
If The Dotard were to win they’d probably insist he do the full face down thing in front of Winnie in Beijing. Joe will probably fall asleep, though. At least Kamala has experience in what they’d require of her.
Yeah, if she could do Willie, she can do anybody.
WE hear you loud and clear. Unfortunately, we’re running into almost perfect polarization. And the ears are off from the opposition, save for taking offense, or listening for intelligence (the war variety, not smarts) purposes. Waaaay too many college indoctrinated young adults have zero understanding of history, or our government. And perhaps I err when I say, “Young Adults”. They are NOT adulting. Rather, they are children both mentally and emotionally; with zero training in rational, logical thought. In some cases, I swear they were trained NOT to think logically or rationally.
The noisy ones, yes– at least the ones who are willing to fly off the handle without any good information.
I was loud, all through school…but restrained by the facts. You wouldn’t believe how many people acted shocked when I “turned out” to be a Republican.
The main effect that I had from their POV was “for once so and so aren’t being obnoxious,” which somehow meant they associated me with the obnoxious person but not the part where they didn’t say anything, because I would embarrass them with countering facts.
Other that the folks unrestrained by the facts who expected me to never look it up or disagree with them, because I didn’t do so reflexively.
Even I wasn’t dumb enough to talk to someone holding a mic or a video camera.
Don’t forget the assless chaps. My what fun it must have been to stick to that hot leather motorcycle seat in balmy Queensland!
And those leather masks as well:
All chaps are assless, that’s what makes them not-pants.
Before they were fetish wear, cowboys wore them so cacti and thorny underbrush didn’t rip the skin from their legs if their horse brushed against it.
I have some hope that this will all fizzle out. I think the scenario that makes the most sense for that would be a big Repub. victory. Now, I don’t really much care for any politician, it is not an honest profession like used car sales for example but I am hoping that after the Election, and it is clear that no one is going nowhere as far as POTUS is concerned the DoJ under Mr. Barr, who should be making his naughty list right now and checking it twice, will sweep up the real leaders and instigators of the violence we are seeing, and quash it. These kids in the streets will go home if no one tells them what to do and the guy with the megaphone is under a jail somewhere. A few well placed indictments, and a few casual convo’s with the D party to the effect of knowing who’s bodies are buried where should even things out.
One can always hope anyway.
I’m not afraid of the rioters. There’s remarkably few of them, and they only gambol where the authorities abet them.
I’m afraid of the traitors in black robes and in legislative and executive offices. And I’m afraid of their Chinese masters.
I’m hoping enough of them are swept out of office pour encourager les autres to flee and/or retire.
If we get through this I’m going to start agitating to add Supremes. Maybe in proportion to the states (originally 9 for 13 states, so assuming indivisible justices that would be 35 justices for 50 states), or maybe accommodate population sort of with one justice for every ten representatives rounded up to the nearest odd number (maybe 44+1 with the chief justice as a tiebreaker only?) so that one justice won’t have nearly the weight as now, and frankly close decisions would be a lot less likely.
Fewer would be fine, but 9 was a number for 13 states.
Not 9, but Nein! The Supreme Court was originally established with 6 Justices. The court operated with as few as 5, and as many as 7, until the current enumeration of 9 Justices was set in 1869.
We don’t need a bigger Supreme Court. We’re still using the same Constitution, at least when we bother to follow it at all.
———————————
People can make stupid mistakes, but only the government can force everybody to make the SAME stupid mistakes.
Sure. Let’s confirm them as the actual legislature by replacing the Congress with them.
That whirring sound is the Founders spinning in their graves like turbines.
“We don’t need electric chairs. We need electric bleachers.”
— Jerry Doyle, in an unguarded moment in the B5 studio cafeteria
Akshully, techniques of capital punishment are more than fast enough, it is only that the current state of the law resembles active and knowing sabotage. Racist fascist sabotage at that.
They’re no longer even trying to hide the fact that we’re no longer a nation of law. We’re now a nation of privilege. The world’s largest banana republic.
When your population no longer trusts its government or its judges, and its Constitution becomes a “living document” (looking at *you*, Ginsberg) instead of a touchstone, things inevitably turn ugly.
They are also panicked sloppy, because the resistance and consequences they get are much more than what they can handle.
The key effort will be to turn off the money supply keeping this running. I assume (puts on tinfoil hat here) that the government has the ability to track the cryptocurrency that the mostly peaceful protesters are being fueled with. If the money stops flowing the riots will stop quickly.
I fully expect that if Trump wins in a landslide and Republicans keep the Senate, that the next step the Democrats/left will take is outright assassination.
For sure. They’ve done this stuff before or tried it, after all.
I’ve been expecting that for years.
Of course, I also keep wondering if the reason the Biden campaign seems so feckless is because they don’t expect there to be an election…
I will be so glad to be wrong.
And I still think Scalia was murdered.
What, like sending ricin to the White House?
Frankly, I think the second assassination would open the ball for a lot of folk to do the Eagle Rock on their heads. The first one is shame on you, but a second?
–
‘Swhy I’ve been saying for years (to anyone with the wit to hear it)… YOU will not survive the zombine apocalypse. Far better than preparing for it, you should spend your energy keeping it from coming about.
Yes. Sure, if needed fight the zombies. But that’s not now. That’s not yet.
Also if you survive or not, (and what survives won’t be you) has less to do with preparation than where you are and how much they want you dead. I figured I’m dead if it starts. I’m visible enough. My only hope is to take an escort to hell with me.
Because, meeting Heinlein and telling him I was slaughtered like a sheep?
Yeah. No.
I wouldn’t worry about being exposed. If past experience is any guide it’ll be random and as many of their own will get swept up as their enemies. Most won’t have had anything to do with it one way or the other.
You might as well let it all hang out and, of course, you can always take one with you — it’s good for the soul and might be the basis for something in the future. Solzhenitsyn taught us that.
You may not be afraid, but I am. If they couldn’t accept a Trump victory in 2016, they certainly won’t accept it in 2020. I can’t even tell the difference between satire and actual left-wing accounts anymore. I know people personally who want all Republicans arrested for treason.
Ten years ago, people laughed at and dismissed SJWs. Now they’re taking over. Firing a NYT editor for posting an opinion piece by a Republican Senator tells me their control is nearly complete. Many people losing their jobs are liberal; they’re just not woke.
If this turns into civil war, it’s not going to be the Union and Confederacy. It’ll look a lot more like Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria, and there won’t be any winners.
People who listened to the media laughed at and dismissed the SJWs.
People who saw through the media, some of them mocked the SJWs, but did not dismiss them.
THIS.
They are not taking over.
People laughed at the name, not the people. They were already in power. Unless your circles are very weird, we only laughed at them to contain the problem.
WE KNEW where the problem was. They’ve been in charge my whole life.
Afraid? Well, if you’re not afraid, you’re a fool. They’re desperate. Beware the cornered rat.
BUT I tell you not to be afraid, not to work FROM fear. Use your head. You’re going to need it to get from this.
Be apprehensive, not panicked. Don’t let yourself be stampeded. And fall not into despair.
c4c
Folks who think this is as bad as it ever has been should take a read of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism
I never much cared for Woodrow Wilson since he was willing to go along with setting up the conditions for WWII, but never realized what a despicable scum bag he was until I read that book and then did some research on my own to cross check some claims made in the book. Even the SJWs started noticing when latest craze of Rename All The Buildings started.
I work very hard to not let this all get to me, as I learned long ago that it would be so easy to let go and go full Berserker in ways that would make a Tom Kratman character flinch. And I grow older and with my daughter out on her own, there seems to be less and less reason to hold that line. A prime restraint is my Oath to the Constitution, and the fact that some means preclude some ends.
–
I don’t think they have figured it out. They keep telling us how shiny their turds are, and how racist we are for not admiring the shine, and digging up more turds to shove at us. They write shitty books, and then pretend Systemic Racism!! is the reason nobody wants to read them.
The Puppies know better.
———————————
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit.
It *is* uniquely bad now* AND you are absolutely right, Mrs. Hoyt. For the love of Heaven do not give the globalist oligarchs and their Black Scarf gangs the civil war on *their* terms.
Every bit of time we have to get healthy, tribe- and neighbor-up, to spread the word and rip off the masks is precious. But if/when they come to take your neighbor (or you) to the camps, sell your lives dear.
(*MAPs drugged trans toddlers, heading toward half the country completely unassimilated foreigners, or worse, nissei who have no sense of assimilation to anyplace, the utter enstupidification of the population, vast swathes of savage welfare plantations, now with 4th and 5th generations less capable of surviving in a civilized society than a yanomamo. Not just anarchist bomb throwers, but people deliberately setting fires during fire season…Yes. This time it’s worse.)
I reverted my Bantam titles back around ’93. Smartest thing I could have done.
i’ve reverted all but last publisher. And that’s because they have a ridiculously abusive clause…. 😦
Last as in last to revert, or as in last to publish?
Last to publish.
The contract has a clause that says if they published a tpb or hc edition, they own the copyright for the length of the copyright.
At the time I signed them, I had no other options. Also I believed I could work with them.
Well…. lesson learned, right?
Under which state’s law is the contract governed by? Some states impose an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing that may be able used to hold them in breach if their actions are not in good faith.
This is why I need an IP lawyer. BUT right now I need a pro-bono one, and I don’t know any.
And the state is NY
For NY get it touch with a game designer and artist named Jeff Dee. (http://wwjdee.blogspot.com).
He won last year or the year before an IP claim with a small NY based publisher. He might have a line on a good lawyer for that state (although probably not pro-bono…why not crowdfund said attorney).
And I must say that disappoints me so much about that publisher they have been the first to join Tor on the “never buy new every again” list. I’ll buy used and PayPal the difference directly to the artist (probably more than they’d get from new anyway, as it would be 40-50% of cover).
Some times you gotta take what’s on the table.
Sometimes those setting the table need to be aware that folks dining at nearby tables are watching. Was that a standard contract, such as might have been signed by certain other “Best-Selling” authors?
I’m gonna guess a certain author who’s first monster selling international series began as a self-published book is watching them very closely.
–
I am trying follow the words of my Lord and “Fear not”. My personal anthem hymn is Be Still My Soul and I have verses of scripture that I always return to. But it’s hard and I am a poor servant to my God.
My favorite hymn, particularly for this time of deep water, and fiery trials, is “How Firm a Foundation”. Each line reminds us that God is in control. It does not pretend “everything will be fine”.
1 How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word!
What more can He say than to you He hath said—
To you who for refuge to Jesus have fled?
2 “Fear not, I am with thee, oh, be not dismayed,
For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.
3 “When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow;
For I will be with thee thy trouble to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
4 “When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
My grace, all-sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not harm thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.
5 “The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not, desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.”
These wonderful words from God sustain me.
If you’re a David Weber fan, you’ll appreciate the titles of his Safehold books, then: the fifth is How Firm a Foundation, and looking at the rest of the set, that’s not a fluke. Only one of them is not a hymn reference.
Here’s the first ten together, so you can see what I mean:
Here, text form, from his web page:
Off Armageddon Reef
By Schism Rent Asunder
By Heresies Distressed
A Mighty Fortress
How Firm A Foundation
Midst Toil and Tribulation
Like A Mighty Army
Hell’s Foundations Quiver
At the Sign of Triumph
Through Fiery Trials
http://davidweber.net/books
…which one isn’t from a hymn?
*searches* K, says the first one on that list, but I could’ve sworn I’ve heard a sea-flavored end times song before….
This just in, as of about 10 minutes ago: “A Level 3 evacuation notice has been issued due to a fast moving fire per Goshen Fire for Garden Valley Road area from Garden Valley Road to Drummond Drive near Mt. Pisgah. Residents in that area should GO NOW.”
The Goshen Fire, based on these evacuations, are between I-5 and Mt Pisgah. You know that area on North side of Hwy 58 between I-5 and Hwy 97, through Pleasant Hill & Oakridge. The ONLY E/W Highway off I-5, say Canyonville and Portland, not blocked …
Right now area is getting strong, very strong, warm winds. Suppose to get rain. Haven’t seen any rain yet. Wind has been blowing since around 1 PM. (NW Eugene, presume the entire area, but this is where I am.)
Rain just started.
That was quick. Has the weather been watching your internet feed?
Yes. I think it has.
Also, Level 3 recalled. Rain, when it hit, hit hard.
Not that anyone’s going to see this, but I *think* the “boy with a boil” story is actually from the excellent novel *Deep Secret* by Diana Wynne Jones, which definitely has some parallels to the current situation. Many ongoing evil-doings finally coming to light, characters discovering that they can in fact push back against their bullies, etc. Also, it’s just a lot of fun, like most of the author’s works.
You are correct, and it’s actually a great book.
For some reason I’d attached the memory to a literary story in which a raccoon gets burned alive.
I too like Diana Wynne Jones.
And deep secret is a very interesting experiment, because of how the story is told.