The Bystanders

340 thoughts on “The Bystanders”

1. “… assumption that everyone with a penis is out to get you.”

   You’ve called to mind a naughty joke I first read while still a very young wallaby (a wallabrat, some would say, to have been reading such joke books).

   It seems there was this college anatomy professor who, in the course of one lecture, posed the question, “What part of the human anatomy is harder than steel? Ms Jones, can you tell us?”

   Ms Jones, a comely young maid, blushed and stammered, “Why Professor Smith, I don’t know why you ask me such a question!”

   “It is the fingernail,” supplied the professor, “And Ms Jones, you are an optimist.”

   Happily, i today’s enlightened world where only the correct will be permitted to attend college, much less teach therein, such jokes will no longer make any sense.
   –

2. I suspect there is nothing we can do. We certainly can’t control the Left. The best we can do is create what ever boundaries—physical, social, psychological, political—we can to protect ourselves while the Left makes yet another run agains Reality. The Real World always wins. The Left and its tyrannies always hits bottom.

   Truth wins in the end, but there’s no guarantee of an easy ride.

3. The problem is that so many of those of us on the right side don’t want to admit that these people flat out hate us and most would happily watch as we were loaded into the boxcars.
   TWANLOC is, unfortunately, the reality that we are facing, and no amount of “hopes and feels” is going to change this.
   It’s ugly out there and only going to get uglier because for so long the purveyors(in this country) of Marxism – or whatever -ism they choose to justify their pernicious views – were never slapped down hard enough to make them crawl back into their holes and die.
   Rant over – bad weekend….

   1. The problem is more complex than that. ton of them don’t hate us PERSONALLY.
      Take my friend referenced in the post. He’d be very upset at my being loaded up in a boxcar.
      OTOH he’d assume it needed to be done to the vast majority, and why did I cast my lot in with bad people?
      That’s what makes it all much more complex. Not saying we won’t have to defend ourselves, but you have to understand some of us can’t help but hold out hope for the captives.
      Praying might be all we can do.

      1. This.

         People have assumptions about groups, even though they often know members of those groups that don’t fit the stereotype. Reconciling these two things is something that people do without even thinking – in part because group members aren’t robots. Allowances for individual variation need to be made even when the outsider really does understand the group.

      2. I think if we could do it in large enough numbers, the old Amish custom of “shunning” might do the trick. “So you believe we are evil and the source of everything bad in the world? Fine, we will have nothing to do with you anymore. Get your goods and services wherever else you can, you can no longer get them from us.” Of course, this would require somehow keeping them from inviting the Chinese in to replace us. And you just know they’ve be crawling groveling to Xi in minutes after we cut them loose.

         1. > shunning

            The Left calls it “canceling.”

            1. There’s a difference I’d say between shunning and canceling, even though it may be a very fine line. Shunning simply involves casting out the person from that one closed society. That’s devastating yes, but not necessarily life and livelihood destroying. Canceling on the other hand attempts to make an individual a persona non grata to all societies and destroy the ability to pursue a livelihood in any society.

               1. Canceling is too close to declaring someone out-law or a wolf’s head. They lose all protection of law as well as the right to be in society. Shunning is the better term, in my opinion.

                  1. But that’s what they’re doing. They declare their enemies non-persons, unworthy to write, speak, vote, be employed, shop, drive on public roads, rent an apartment — any ordinary everyday activity you can think of.

                     And one wrong word can make you their enemy.

                  2. but what about crazy Bob the fool’s theory that we should recognize drug offenders as outlaws

                     *Carefully ignores the obvious drawbacks of such policy.*

                     The left is hypocritical for canceling so many, and not canceling Mexico.

                  3. Shunning only works on individuals, couples or at most small families. Anything larger, and they can form their own enclosed community, often preying on the group that cast them out.

         2. They already are.

         3. The Left is already trying to do this, with varying degrees of success.

            The problem is that it only works if the target doesn’t have an alternative safety net to fall back on. Any group big enough to pull the kind of stuff that the Left wants to do is almost certainly big enough to provide that sort of safety net. That being the case, the only thing “shunning” would accomplish is to make it even more difficult for people on the Left to leave the situation that they’re in.

            1. If it were done widely enough, it would speed the downfall of their power bases, the leftist-controlled cities. But as I said, I doubt it could be done widely enough.

               1. You’re assuming that they don’t have a solid enough power base. They do.

                  Yes, you can reduce their power. Televised professional sports is currently experiencing that. But you can’t cut them off completely because there are too many people who believe. There are too many people who look at your suggestion of shunning and think, “Why on Earth would I want to do that? Why would any reasonable person object to what they do and say?”

                  The *ONLY* thing that you can do right now is provide an avenue of escape for those who come to their senses. Engagement is more important than disengagement. That doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t be discerning in how they engage. But cutting a permanent divide at this point in time will not help matters.

            2. Bingo!

         4. I like that concept. I think that it is already beginning to work with things like … NBA games. And Hollywood movies. It’s not spectacular, our disinclination to watch those things which offend us.
            But I think that it will eventually begin to tell…
            One of the salient comments lately on AoS (that’s the Ace of Spades HQ website) was “Wanna watch good stuff – learn to read subtitles.”
            There is so much good stuff out there – some of it in English, like Australian/New Zealand series, and others produced by Japanese, Korean, Israeli, Turkish-language producers. Interesting, original, realistic and engaging movies and series … really, who needs Hollywood now?

            1. Holly who? *chuckle* Haven’t been to a movie in years. Not that I dislike moving pictures, mind you. Just that there’s nothing worth my time in the theaters these days. Or most tv, steaming, and so on.

               Of course, I may have entered the realm of “old fart” sometime and not noticed, of course. It could happen.

               1. I call it Early Onset Geezerhood. I’ve had it for decades.

               2. Holly’s on the Ferris Wheel with Harry Lime.

                  –

                  1. My favorite movie!

            2. The fun part that when it’s subtitled, I remember them speaking the words.

               1. What is more funny is to go to an American movie that has been dubbed in Turkish and hearing John Wayne say Merhaba, which hello.

                  1. There is a possibly apocryphal example of the French dubbing John Wayne saying Howdy Pardner with enchante

                  2. Or when I went to a movie with my girlfriend in Panama, subtitled in Spanish. She’s start laughing before the line was said because she’d already read it.

                     1. That happened years ago to me, in Vienna. We had stopped to watch “Duck Soup,” by the Marx Brothers. It was in English, with German subtitles. Since the Marx Brothers comedy was a combination of non-verbal slapstick and wildly original wordplay, only the slapstick was understandable in both languages. You can’t translate puns and wordplay, really, so the German subtitles had jokes of their own. We were laughing uproariously at some of the wordplay with the Austrians staring at us in puzzlement, when they would get a joke in the subtitles and start laughing. We had enough German to recognize that there was a joke there, but not enough to get the humor. Still, a good time was had by all…

                        1. This happened to me all the time after I went back from being an exchange student. I’d start giggling and a theater full of Portuguese speakers who were reading the dialogue looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

                        2. In his memoir, Harpo Speaks, Harpo tells of a tour of the Soviet Union during the Thirties in which he’d perform for large audiences, initially to no laughs. The tour promoters quickly arranged to have a narrator providing a framing anecdote for Harpo, after which he would perform his schtick to uproarious laughter.

                           He had no idea what the set-ups were but could tell they were necessary.

                           Harpo also spoke affectionately of the Russian people (a comedian liking a friendly audience? Unheard of!) but had nothing, that I can recall, to say about their government (the 1961 publication date may have had some influence on that silence.)
                           –

      3. Praying is all we can do for the masses.

         But when it comes to those who we have relationship with, whether kith or kin or even friend, then we pray – and we talk in longsuffering patience, with kindness and not envy, without arrogance, rudness, resentment, and pride, and so we must hope, and endure.

         O LORD, hear our prayers.

      4. Seems an awful similarity between how the other side regards us and how the rest of the Germans regarded those of Jewish affiliation in the 1930s. “Sure they’re Germans. But they can’t be REAL Germans because the Party says so! So it must be okay to relocate them elsewhere.”

         1. The Roosevelt Administration agreed with that idea. And set up concentration camps for American citizens who were a little too Japanese, German, or Italian for to meet its standards of racial or national purity.. (as did Mackenzie King’s administration in Canada)

            The Democrats were fine with all of it until just recently, when they shifted blame to “America is bad”, and therefore totally not their fault.

            1. There is a horrible book, “The Train to Crystal City” which documents how American citizens were forcibly taken sent to a concentration camp and used to trade for spies captured by the Germans, Italians, and Japanese. I had to force myself to finish reading the book it was so nauseating.

               1. The Roosevelt administration also worked with the New York Times to deliberately hide the extent of the Holocaust being carried out by the Nazis so that he did not face public pressure to take quicker action to go after the concentration camps. Frankly I think Roosevelt would have been quite content if the defeat of the Nazis was delayed until after the Nazis had completed their “final solution”.

         2. Precisely. Just because they’ll only load the Jews from the next town over into boxcars, but won’t load the Jews they know, doesn’t mean they aren’t people who load Jews into boxcars.

         3. A lot of the antifa literature is openly anti-Semitic-denouncing Jews for being “the one percent of the one percent” and repeating all the Marxist anti-Semitism while making claims that would fit right in with the Protocols of The Elders of Zion. These are people who will happily send Jews to gas chambers and blame Jews for making their murder necessary.

            1. There’s a “conspiracy theory levels” graphic going around that goes from “grounded” (“these things actually happened”) to “no touch with reality.” The top section is above “The Anti-Semitic Line of No Return.”

               … and yeah, that’s pretty much what it is. “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is, of course, in the top section.

               1. Yeah, but they also have “climate change denial” or something like that up there.

                  1. And just remember, prominent Democratic Party Senators and AGs have called for criminal prosecutions and imprisonment of “climate deniers”, i..e. they want to prosecute and jail people for though-tcrime.

                     1. Oh, hell, the whole ‘Hate Crime’ thing stinks of that. And aren’t the Fascist Left OUTRAGED if anybody on their side gets charged with one.

                     2. They’re just kulaks and wreckers and hoarders.

                  2. Which is why I haven’t shared that graphic around.

      5. If you don’t hate me, but will follow the orders to put the “racists” on the boxcars, does it matter they only assign you the “racists” you don’t like to pack in while they assign me to one of the people who doesn’t personally hate the “racists” they know to put me in a boxcar?

         Nope, at a certain point choosing a side by willful ignorance is still choosing a side. If I have the choice of going down burning as many of them to grease puddles and charred bones as I can on the way or being nice because they were misled, I’m going to render a lot of passive leftists into a good seasoning for cast iron.

         1. No. Of course it doesn’t make a difference when it comes to how to treat them if/when they come for us.
            The important point, Herb, is that we have NO clue how many of them there are. Judging by the strength of the narrative on COVID and how fast they swallowed it, I fear very much they’re still a majority. Certainly a majority of those credentialed in a number of fields, some of which we need. (Mine, thank heavens, needs no credentials.)
            I was trying to understand HOW people who are otherwise smart can STILL buy that shit. But if they do, how deep does the rot go? And can we save ourselves?

            1. Yeah, medicine is almost completely occupied territory. I can’t think of 10 doctors I would discuss this with. Keep that in mind if you need to go to the hospitals.

               1. Got that right. Hospital I work for is a hot bed of liberal Progressives. Hmmm. I wonder if my wearing my Trump hat to work (not to mention the bumper stickers on my truck) had anything to do with my getting “home officed”?

               2. I know.

               3. Well, my doctor went on a pro-Trump rant the visit before last.

                  1. There are a few. I’ve never found one. Sigh.

                     1. Have you tried looking for the AMA membership?

                        Or perhaps just ask your doctor’s opinion(s) on the AMA.
                        –

         2. +1. Another reason to take this route in target selection is that it might make the passive, non-committed ones less willing to go along if they realize they are on the firing line as well. Insert the Solzhenitsyn “How we burned in the camps…” quote here.

            Of course such resistance will push some of them over the line into active evil. Ain’t no good solutions in any of this, simply ones that are in some ways less bad than others.

            1. Well, fwiw, I respect active evil more than going along with evil out of cowardice.

               I even accept selling out more than going alone out of cowardice.

               I guess I’ve got more Rand in me than I realized.

               1. Nah, not necessarily. They don’t recognize what courage actually is. Where are the heroes of the left? Not Conan. Sexist. Not Clarence Thomas. Same. And so on. How can you put victimhood on a pedestal above courage?

                  It’s more common for young men, I thought, to mistake bravado for bravery. Or stupidity for courage. When you do something you were afraid of doing despite that fear, there may be courage in it- of not, it’s probably a “hold my beer” moment. I’d take the latter over meekly following along with what you know is wrong- or what you are afraid of facing when you don’t.

         3. When good men do nothing in the face of evil they cease to be good men.

            1. “Evil oft will evil mar.” So waiting and doing nothing, sometimes the problem eliminates itself. But that’s rare, it usually festers forever.

               “He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.” Say something, stick a pin in them, and skedaddle far enough to be safe to look at the results. Guerrilla warfare.

               “Everything above your neck is going to be a fine red mist!” Pick targets and snipe at them. Counter-trolling. Long distance guerrilla warfare.

               “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” Patton is eminently applicable at the moment. It’s another application of the Butterfly Effect. Every mind we can sow a seed of doubt early so they don’t vote against us, or even possibly turn from the Dark Side and actually vote with us, helps.

               “Go! Confront the problem! Fight! WIn!” Think, reason, prepare, ACT! Best outcome.

               “Better to die fighting for Freedom then to be a prisoner all the days of your life.” Fight with words and images now, or you may have to fight for real later. But do you really want to live if that means living in hell on Earth?

               1. Common citizens cannot possibly stand up to the might of a standing army.
                  Bull pucky!
                  It’s called asymetric warfare, the stuff that stimied national armies all through the 20th and on into the 21st centuries.
                  Can a militia member stand up to a tank or a jet fighter? Not hardly, but who said anything about standing up. That tank crew, that jet jockey, they all have to eat, sleep, take a dump, and service other human needs. And without crew the mightiest war machine is just a pile of rusting hardware in the end.

                  1. Absolutely correct. It’s just a matter of whether you can put enough monkey wrenches into the works faster than they can remove them and fix the damage.

                  2. Wars are not run from tanks. They are run from desks. Going after the poor bastards on the sharp end is not the most effective approach.

      6. This is how the Nazi’s were able to build concentration camps and ship of millions to be murdered. While the Nazis took power in the 1930s, the ideas that they advocated had been percolating in Germany for decades, including in academia, and thus when they took power, the populace had already absorbed the Nazi ideology and even when they saw its evil either supported it or simply ignored it because the people they were doing it to were “bad people>”

         Important to remember when Democrats/leftists call their opponents Nazis, they are projecting. It is the Democrats who as a party have the ideologues who think that people who “don’t think right” need to be “reeducated”.

         If they are successful in grabbing and holding power, the camps and mass graves will follow. If they are defeated, it will be after a long and bloody civil strife (Lebanon style). Anyone who doesn’t realize that hasn’t been paying attention.

         1. Looking at the reports of this –

            Former Twitter Exec Suggests Insufficiently Woke CEOs Face a Firing Squad

            – my reflexive reaction is to ask, “Other than who they chose to target, where do you disagree with the Nazis?”

            I don’t think there is a single Republican policy which can be honestly traced to the Third Reich while I can think of several Democrat/Socialist policies whose lineage is pretty much a straight line.
            –

            1. Starting with Planned Parenthood/abortion. Indeed Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was cited by the Nazi eugenicists in their own writings as a source for their own racial superiority ideology.

               1. They copied their sterilization programs from ours. Then we punished the doctors responsible despite their citing Buck vs. Bell, while our programs were still going.

            2. Nazis always accused other people of exactly what they were doing. As in, they did a film about the concentration camps in the Boer War when they were setting up their own.

            3. Well, the Nazis ran on bringing back prosperity. *sarcasm* No one can accuse the democrats of that.

               1. Unfortunately that plays right into the left’s hands when we start talking about Make America Great Again. They just don’t look at it the same way.

      7. “You can’t lynch my black friend! He’d never do that. All those others, though….”

         Does that pretty well describe your “friend”? Evil.

         1. Oh no. I’m sure he’d say “but well, she chose to hang with THEM, so…”

            1. Evil.

            2. It’s been done, with the very few leftists who actually *listen* to the rebuttal of “very fine people”. They just shift the hate from Trump to the voters: “If they were such nice people, what were they doing in a rally that had Neo-Nazis in it?”

               1. They weren’t. They were at a rally to preserve our heritage.
                  Also, tell them “I agree, what was Trump doing saying there are very good people among the burners and looters of antifa? What kind of good people hate their own country?” :>

                  1. Well yes, but the left believes America’s heritage is pure evil and must be erased. There is a reason they chant “no borders, no walls, no USA at all” when they march. Thus anyone seeking to preserve American history is by definition a Nazi to them. We see proof of this with the Antifa/BLM campaign to topple monuments, including those of such people like Lincoln and Frederick Douglas.

                     1. They should leave already.
                        I’ll help them pack.

      8. For many months, my soon-to-be-ex wife had, as her Skype status “if you’re not like them, why hang out with them.” For a long time, I wondered if that was directed at me, because of the web site company I keep.

         It turns out it was, but if she’s just asked me about it, I could have answered the question. It proceeds from a false premise. I am like “them,” or, more correctly, “they” are like me. But, as you say, that is simply incredible to a great many people.

         1. “… if she’s just asked me about it, I could have answered”

            That’s why she didn’t ask you.
            –

4. “the parties changed sides” version of US history. (Something that COULD NOT happen without both parties agreeing, and seriously, where did the meeting take place?

   The question is, who was President and in Congress at the exact moment that both parties were crossing at the center, and thus indistinguishable in each and every platform point and position? What were the massive legislative agendas passed and put into practice during this time of convergence of thought where all government merged into a solid indistinguishable mass of unified government power?

   I ask as rhetorical questions, expecting only a unified rhetorical answer.

   1. My (non-rhetorical) guess would actually be at the H.Hoover / FDR change, with seeds probably planted earlier under Wilson. *spit*

      1. Given historical documentation, it is difficult to make any case that FDR was not a racist bastard well within the bounds of the traditional Dem all the way back to at least 1861.

         True he was a Damn Yankee and not a Son of the Confederacy, but that’s pretty much the only variance.

         1. Meh. There were plenty of Damn Yankees who had no problem with slavery (particularly of a sort posing no danger to them) and were quite happy to come South and rob the losers blind.

            But that is not relevant to the Great Switcheroo, which Progtards argue occurred with Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” — a strategy which they wholly misrepresent as Nixon wooing unenlightened Southerners (a phrase most Yankees and Liberals deem redundant) via racist dog whistle, when the obvious fact is that when the Dems no longer offered their yummy yummy frosting of racism they couldn’t induce Southerners to consume their diet of anti-Americanism, trade-unionism, contempt for the military and other indigestible beliefs.

            Racism was merely the bacon in which they wrapped their bitter pills and, denied that, they could no longer get Southerners to swallow their poison.

            It is worth noting that even after the Great Switcheroo they were still electing ex-Klan recruiters and appointing them to the Senate leadership. Similarly, Billy Jeff Clinton never repudiated the politics of Orville Faubus or J. William Fulbright, he merely kicked sand over the stench.
            –

            1. Even many of the ones who opposed slavery were still racist and did not consider black people to be equal to whites.

            2. In other words, the great “Southern Strategy” that the DNC (and a number of their big-L Libertarian dupes, unfortunately) cite as “switching” the parties on the issue of racism does not exist as such and never did.

               (One of the L’s actually told me that the GOP has as much bloodguilt over racism as the Dems do over abortion– horse manure even if you blame the GOP for all of the Klan’s lynchings and pretend Lincoln, as GOP, started the ACW and incurred every one of its deaths at his party’s feet. At simple per-death numbers, even pretending the GOP was the party of Jim Crow (also BS), the liberals are still in the lead in that race to damnation!)

               1. The Democrats have been the party of slavery, racism, segregation and discrimination for more than 180 years. They still are, they just lie about it more. That’s why they’re knocking down all the old Confederate monuments; they’re trying to erase the evidence of their past.

                  They have become a little more equal-opportunity of late — instead of just wanting to enslave blacks, now they want to enslave everybody.

                  Now we see Biden making speeches at Gettysburg. WHY did nobody call him out on it? “Yo, Joe, your boys were on the OTHER side!” The Civil War was more between Democrats and Republicans than South vs. North.

      2. No, JFK was definitely still on board with Segregation. He was elected thanks to EVs controlled by the South, and explicitly ran on his ‘Catholicism’ not binding him to oppose Segregation.

         It was Johnson that made the decision that it was necessary to rebrand the party, and he was rooted deeply within Segregation that he could make it happen.

         I can point to a political figure, whose political allies back in the day tar him as white supremacist aligned, who only a few years ago was pretending to not have any convictions of the sort at all.

         1. Liberal JFK biographer Robert Reed admitted that JFK’s main reason for supporting Civil Rights was a) the Soviets were using it as a major propaganda point against us and b) we kept getting embarrassed by African “Dual posted” ambassadors — one ambassador for the UN and Washington DC — being pulled over and harassed by Maryland (and possibly Delaware) cops. Having to routinely send State Department personnel to “fix” problems with local cops was providing too much fodder for the Reds.

            For all the Democrats boasting of passing Civil Rights acts it was Republicans who gave them the majority of the party’s votes (and those few who, like Goldwater, opposed did so on the grounds that it was unwarranted Federal interference in the states … although Barry G. might have sung a different tune had the states been denying Civil Rights to Jewish citizens in addition to Black ones.
            –

   2. Never happened. *sigh

5. C4c

6. The claimed party switch is linked to the supposed Republican Southern Strategy, which I’ve seen mentioned in conjunction with Nixon. The Southern Strategy is complete nonsense, of course, and even the New York Times has refuted it. It’s worth noting that despite repeated Republican presidential wins, the first election in which the South played a key role in electing a Republican president was the 2000 election. Prior to that, the South was either split, or the election was a Reagan-induced landslide.

   1. From the Inevitable Arrow perspective, any R win is by definition cheating the Inevitable Arrow of History and thus an electorate mistake, and any landslide win, as in Nixon’s second or Reagan’s second, or even non-landslide but emphatic wins like Bush the Younger’s second, were electorate errors and box-scored as such.

      Also, note Nixon was a pretty squishy leftish R all things considered – no R President since has even considered price controls and such.

      1. Nixon and John McCain were fairly covalent.

         1. And, metabolically, they are again.

      2. Nixon was anti-Communist, otherwise a moderate of his era. Price controls were fairly mainstream economics of that time (pretty much before Friedman)… which tells you about all you need know about “mainstream” economics.
         –

         1. By Nixon, the Left’s view of how government should work was pervasive, and really had been for quite a while.

   2. Nixon’s only Southern Strategy was not being a Democrat.

7. c4c

8. > Fox News … conservative

   Yeah. To people who thought Lenin was a bit soft on socialism, Fox News might look conservative.

   They’re solidly Left, and always have been. But I guess if they’re not Crazy Left, they’re not of-the-body…

   1. And yet the Left hate Fox because they’re not Left enough.

      1. Fox are SPLITTERS!!!!11111!!!!!!!

      2. It’s like an atmospheric leak on a starship — there’s no such thing as a small one.

         1. Tell that to the International Space Station …

            1. an orbital platform has it easier than a starship

   2. Yep.

   3. Kudos to the Landru reference. I referenced it myself in a reply to a ridiculous AI post on LinkedIn. Ironically I can’t seem to link to the LinkedIn post.

      1. We tend to lean more toward Babylon 5 here, but TOS helps fill in the gaps. And Kipling, and Lewis, and Chesterton…

   4. I’d argue that at the beginning FNC was centrist. The leftward movement started during the Obama administration and by the time they cancelled O’Reilly they were center left – still to the right of ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN.
      Of course, by now most of their news anchors would fit right in the MSM, only some conservative commentators remain.

      1. I suspect they mostly keep Tucker to be able to grift they are conservative.

         Not sure who is filling that role at National Review now.

         1. I was thinking about a lot of the known “right wing” enterprises in the communication industries, including mine, and how they seem to flip before elections: Drudge, the little spheroids of verdant color, etc.
            I’ve become convinced they’re bought out with a non-compete non-disclosure agreement and in the case of my industry with requirements to continue serving as a figurehead.
            It’s the only thing that fits the facts.
            And you know…. it’s…. It wouldn’t even be that expensive for Soros or Xi or the various groups doing this stuff. A couple million here, a couple million there, demoralize the right.

            1. More bang for their bucks than feeding more money into advertising campaigns. And some of the most influential outfits are/were in poor financial shape, and likely cheap.

            2. I thought somebody found evidence of buyout-with-NDA for Matt Drudge – something about a significant increase in lifestyle and something of a change in appearance/manner of dress, all while basically dodging ex-fans.

               Others, well, I think sometimes pretenders are forced to surface by other factors, so it appears there’s a radical change where it’s just dropping the mask. There were a few local “conservative” talk radio hosts back when such a thing was new and unheard of who were pretty obviously doing a cartoon-conservative impression schtick to get and keep the gig – a few lost the gig and lost all those emphatic positions really fast, some even confessing that it was an act.

               1. I have a vague memory of that.

               2. The original Sgt. Stryker eventually confessed as much – that he was just doing the hard-right conservative military schtick for sh*ts and giggles. I think the fraudulence of it got to him, eventually. And I thought he was a total d**k for not letting me take over the original blog-address at my expense. He vacated it, some scrounger took it over, I could no longer access a lot of the early archives.

            3. Buyouts? Could also be blackmail. Or worse. Plombo o plata.

            4. The changes in the chartreuse oblate spherical objects was odd(to say the least). Ostensibly it was a panic about the republicans being in bed with the religious right and their opposition to forcing same sex marriage on states. But OBummers official position at that time was essentially identical until late in the campaign. Can’t imagine who would pay them, they had smashed the stupid Texas ANG nonsense with some simple observation 4 years previous, but not much since then. Certainly they had no friends in MSM. They had a high readership but I suspect that crashed once they went insane. I know I said “Bleep this I’m out of here”. There seemed to be a lot of weird inexplicable changes in the NeoConservative hawks about that time. You might be on to something.

               1. Think of who would pay them to take them out. Before the election.

                  1. Point taken Madam Hostess. It might also be a way for foreign types to get involved in things without potentially running afoul of contribution rules. Was it important to the 2008 election? Beats me. Seems like a darned poor investment as you’re trying to tackle hard core folks that were the main consumers of pea soup colored sports items output at that time. On top of that the influence of the Neo Conservative Blogosphere limitied as it was was on the wane. Given the McCain folks were making the stupid party epithet reality and Obumbles was an intentional cipher it makes little sense. But then again few of the actions of the left make sense to anyone with two brain cells to rub together.

                     1. “It might also be a way for foreign types to get involved in things without potentially running afoul of contribution rules.”

                        Why would that have been a factor. Obama and several candidates disabled ALL donation verification checks in 2008 (and 2012), I verified that PERSONALLY.

                        1. As did Clinton in 2016

               2. So did I. I really did wonder what happened to that place, although I burned a lot of time there, now and again.

               3. Okay, I have no idea what chartreuse obtuseness y’all are talking about.

                  1. A blog we can’t name because the (former?) owner keeps looking for mentions of the blog, and makes a pest of himself whenever it is mentioned in less than glowing terms.

                     1. The Blog Which Must Not Be Named! 😛

                        Does it start with V?

                        1. No. It starts with Little.
                           It’s named after small spherical verdant objects.

                        2. Not the Volksdeutch Expatriate. Rather it starts with an L

                  2. small

                     that color from mixing yellow and blue pigments

                     ogives used to play that grid iron sport that the professional league is trying to destroy

         2. They’re all NEVER-TRUMPERS there. I crossed them off my list in 2015,

            1. Kindof. Apparently they’re also being financed by people on the left, so…
               BUT yes I also have not been back.

            2. Not all of them. Victor Davis Hanson still writs there. Editor Rich Lowry seems to be of the “He isn’t my deal but he is a) president and b) surprisingly conservative, so I’ll support him where I can.” There are others, as well, such as Conrad Black.

               Part of the thing is that unlike the Left there is little enforcement of ideological discipline on the Right which leaves far more latitude for “nuanced” disagreement.

               Hell, I’m not even particularly pro-Trump; he isn’t my beaux ideal of conservative leadership but he’s the best we conservatives have so I’ll live with his flaws. The unhappy fact about American elections is we don’t get to choose between cake and death; we’re lucky if we get to choose between slow death and quick death.

               Shucks, I’m so old I remember when the Right was savaging Reagan.
               –

               1. > he isn’t my beaux ideal of conservative leadership but he’s the best we conservatives have

                  Every election, I’ve thought “330 million people, and this is all we’re allowed to choose between?”

                  It’s a result of the political party system, which I’d like to see go away, but they’d just come back under different names.

               2. As one of my Fb friends said this week:

                  If you don’t believe voting is *always* voting for the least of all evils, then you reject original sin.

               3. I was disappointed to have him as fulfillment of my dream of a troll president; it wasn’t my exact preferred flavor of trolling.

                  He hasn’t even purged the State Department by requiring as condition of employment denouncement of the Democrats as a terrorist organization, and the declaration that the Paris Accord implies that the only remaining licit purpose for US diplomacy is arranging wars to exterminate the rest of the world.

                  It is almost like his trolling is in service of some concept of human decency, and not one that I would come up with.

                  Total Depravity means that you can’t work with human organizations without working with evil men, women, and children.

      2. Yup. OAN is about all there is these days. I haven’t watched NewsMax TV though; maybe it fits in there somewhere.

      3. Fox Business (at least in the mornings) is pretty center-right. Granted, they’ve got some free-market Brit escapee, er, expats now citizens who keep a sense of perspective.

      4. They’re still rightward of the Wappo (D.C.’s “paper of record,” with the motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on its black header bar).

         1. Democracy Dies In Darkness, and it’s pretty dark for the republic as they put a pillow over its head and lean on it.

9. I’ve worried for years about the alternate realities that seem to be in play, and I’ve been convinced that if only those who’ve been gaslighted (gaslit?) by the left could be freed from the socialist plantation, we could return to a people with one set of facts – one reality. I remain hopeful, but that process will take longer than we have, I’m afraid.
   Sad and frightening that we are in this situation – I hope the left doesn’t succeed in stealing the election – that would truly be the end of “our” democracy.

   1. fi they succeed in erasing history, the MiniTru will replace it with the only approved version.

      1. Why did Cultural Marxism used to have a normal wikipedia entry and now it only has a conspiracy theory entry? In 2014 was it a real thing and somehow it's transformed into a conspiracy theory a few years later?https://t.co/X82tsbA5hD

         vshttps://t.co/8I52IXul92 pic.twitter.com/egFtAGZpVj

         — PSA Sitch🚸 (@PSA_Sitch) October 5, 2020

         We’re going to pay for not keeping paper books.

         It’ll be curious what the “anti-Nazi” rewrites of 1984 and Animal Farm will look like. Who will be the honest pig driven off in the later?

         1. Disney/ABC is certainly doing their part to rewrite history while openly shilling to help the Democrats in the election under the pretense of “raising voter awareness”:

            https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/10/05/abcs-black-ish-election-special-casts-america-as-racist-and-rife-with-voter-suppression/

            This of course is the same Disney/ABC that thanks the people directly running concentration camps in China: This is not a neutral get out the vote effort but is a partisan effort to support Democrats Pure Democratic Party propaganda masquerading as a “news” special.

         2. We’ll get thing like a presidential candidate opining that the central theme of 1984 is that we have to learn to trust the government. Oh, wait . . .

            1. Wait. What?

               1. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/14/hillary-clinton-lesson-1984-trust-leaders-press/

               2. Hillary

10. > racist, or sexist, or homophobic

    What, no Nazis? You can’t have a proper denunciation without invoking the National Socialist German Workers’ Party! Or, at the very least, Illinois Nazis…

    “Nazi” as an epithet is just a step above “Tory” or “Whig.” People recognize the words, but few have any idea what they mean…

11. I don’t consider myself to be homophobic. I do consider homosexuality to be a non-survival oriented mental neurosis that arises from a combination of a developmental weakness to it combined with various emotional and mental environmental factors during childhood. In short, I disapprove of the behavior, and am very much against those trying to advocate for, perpetuate and mainstream it. But I don’t fear or hate those with a same sex orientation.

    And I’m (mostly) a conservative.

    Unfortunately, our hostess is largely correct. Even though democrats suspect Biden will be bad, Harris worse, and the schemes of AOC disastrous; the well has been totally poisoned for voting for any Republican, including, or especially, Donald Trump. Thinking isn’t operational anymore. It’s full speed ahead with whatever the flagmen of the News Media and the Party have directed.

    I don’t know how big the pool is of independents that haven’t made up their minds yet. Even they might not know until the day of the election, and it will depend on what they hear first thing in the morning over coffee. That IS scary.

    I think that it may be a mistake out of compassion (or general laziness) to still consider those on the other side, friends. Friends don’t stab you in the back, or help your enemies to do so. They have left the fold of friendship and are now merely long-known acquaintances or sometimes drinking buddies, but they’re not really friends anymore; as depressing as that sounds. I have one that comments against every conservative post I make on the book of faces that hasn’t reached the level of toxicity that I’d un-friend him (yet). I’ve had a couple others over the years that I did have to un-friend; they’d become abusive of the relationship and I wouldn’t stand for it any more.

    This situation has happened a couple of times in American history. The Civil War was one of them. North and South were geographically separated, so after defeating the Army of the Confederacy, both sides were tired enough that Reconstruction and 100 years largely erased our differences. (Perhaps too much so since the Left is trying to erase the Civil War completely.) The other that stands out in my mind is the American Revolutionary War for Independence. Those who supported Britain, as much as 1/3rd the population, were either forced to shut up, or forced to move out of the country entirely.

    I think our situation is more like the Revolution rather than the Civil War. The losers will need to shut up, or leave the country. Conservatives, having discovered we have a voice, are unlikely to shut up; and if we lose, there is no where else to go. Hope and pray we have enough votes to win, and enough to beat the fraud too. I’m too old to tolerate being sent to a gulag.

    1. I managed to leave one of the neverTrumpers speechless when she declared, “He doesn’t act presidential!” I said, “Neither did Theodore Roosevelt. He invited a black man to dine with him at the White House.”

       1. *grin*

       2. Oh, I like that. I’m stealing it!

       3. I do hope you were wearing a face shield and mask at the time. Breathing in blood and brains can’t be good for one’s health.

       4. I know I have real life friends who are busily trying to reconcile their knowledge of me with what they “know to be true” about Republicans and the right in general. I can also tell by the angry responses from some that I am getting under their skin and forcing them to think about things they don’t want to think about. So, I count that as a win.

          I’m also still of the belief that there are a lot more people now than there were in 2016 who are going to hold their noses and vote against Biden. I’m still hopeful in that regard. But then, I’m likely crazy too…so I got that going for me.

          In the end, if Trump loses, hubby and I will get ourselves to a reasonable state and hunker down and pray for what amount to 90% of our families living in California. Pray HARD.

          1. I don’t doubt you’re right. My fear is the fraud.

             1. I am (currently (mood has a huge effect here)) becoming less fearful of the fraud.

                It is looking more and more like a fraudless election would be a 50-state curbstomp such as has never been seen before. And every tea leaf I can find points in the direction that Stuff Is Happening behind the scenes to deal with the fraud.

                There’s no need to fear! Un-der-dog is here! (and he just took his super energy pill)

             2. Neither aspect of the Uniparty is bothering to make an issue of voting fraud. Yes, a few grumbles here and there, but I note that the Republicans don’t actually seem to be doing anything to oppose vote-by-mail or ballot harvesting.

                The mugger who relieves you of your wallet is a criminal. And the policeman who stands there and watches without interfering is just as guilty.

                1. The mugger who relieves you of your wallet is a criminal. And the policeman who stands there and watches without interfering is just as guilty.

                   The policeman who then arrests you for trying to not be mugged is not only as guilty for the theft, but bears responsibility for subsequent muggings.

                   1. Democratic Party will replace police with thought police.

                      1. We got that when they started pushing through the first “hate crime” bills. That’a thoughtcrime de jure…

                         1. A sad commentary on our education system is the number of times I’ve referred to “hate crime” legislation as “Thought Crime” and the other people in the conversation did not get the reference.

                         2. Exactly what I thought, O so many years ago.

                         3. When I was teaching Intro American politics I used to ask my classes, if a murder victim was more or less dead if s/he was considered to be a victim of a hate crime. Got a lot of puzzled looks. When some CJ major would say, well it goes to motivation, then I’d ask…but there’s already enough motivation for a first-degree murder charge. How much more do you need?

             3. There has been proven fraud in many of the elections in the recent past in favor of the Dems. I share your fear.

                1. Blatant fraud is how Democrats got Al Franken the Minnesota Senate seat and his seat was the one that was needed to ensure that Obamacare could not be filibustered in the Senate.

                   I expect a mass scale repeat of that kind of fraud,.

             4. The fraud is real. And it scares me as well.

                1. I KNOW the fraud is real. I was surprised at how massive it was in COLORADO SPRINGS of all places, in 2012.
                   I’ve been terrified ever since.

                   1. They’ve been terrified it won’t be *enough,* like it was in 2016. I worry there will be, at the very least, *stupid* amounts of attempted fraud.

                      And if the stupid amounts of attempted fraudsters start getting caught, and they start rolling them up… I wouldn’t mind at all.

             5. The more I watch mask hysteria the more I think they reason they are ramping back the mail in demands is they realize they don’t need to voting fraud.

                The information fraud has already won for them.

                Then again, I’m looking wistfully for the days when I thought I only have 20 years left to live before my lungs get me or my heart and I make it just as long as my father.

                Now I figured I’ll be dead of violence by Christmas next year. I just hope the leftists take care of my cats after.

                1. I’m pretty sure these people are not smart enough to make and execute that plan.

                   I was just ranting to someone about the ones in an institution which I am tied to.

                   Big organization, has made a master plan and distributed it recently. Does not impress; given the size, surely people smart enough to do better were available?

                   When you are determined to quash dissent, you blind yourself to awareness of when you are making plans that are simply wishful thinking.

                   1. They don’t have to be smart enough. They just need to be the willing lackeys of those who are.

                      And they do it for not even a mess of pottage, but just a pat on the head.

                      1. Double standards aren’t. By that, I mean that they aren’t entirely able to keep the damage they’ve inflicted on the rest of society from bleeding over into their own organizations.

                         Even the best high level plan would lack information about ground truth, needed to actually work in reality. The sort coming from low level troubleshooters, like NCOs.

                         These people are willing to make their services available to the Democrats in ordinary times, because no matter how little they really believe, their skills are useful, and they will be protected as long as they deliver.

                         The folks who were useful before may have people in power beholden to them enough for protection. Hanging around inner circles makes you vulnerable to wishcasting group think, and it becomes very difficult to maintain an outside perspective.

                         What about fresh recruits? I submit that many of the cohort that would have come on board this cycle may have skipped chiming up for fear of being lynched. People who don’t believe the hype, and can see the games being played, are rare enough without also needing a cheerful willingness for self sacrifice.

                         Trying to dictate reality to the rest of America will make smart people /inside/ their organizations a bit less confident in volunteering that “no, reality has to be actively changed, and we need to take this new precaution because of the changed circumstances.”

                         Beyond that, in 2016, Hillary didn’t listen to Bill, and does not seem to have accepted that as a mistake that influenced the outcome.

                         There is reason to suspect that these organizations will be unusually vulnerable to misjudging how people perceive their activities.

                         I have not shown that these organizations will need to judge how people perceive them, and adapt to changed circumstances. They will. No matter how practiced they are at fraud, it is different now that the consent decree is no longer in force.

                         My ‘human behavior can be more complex than humans are able to understand in advance’ cuts against the certainty of my forecast here.

                      2. Very common. If Esau got his pottage, he was uncommonly better off than most such deals.

                      3. I came across this in a “conversation” about the new Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums* of all time list.

                         “Rolling Stone was immediately denounced for not being “inclusive” enough anyway, which illustrates why you should never play these games in the first place. Throw out your integrity and all that remains to be decided is how much groveling you will do, not whether to grovel.”
                         – Kyle Smith

                         *No, not only do I not care the list now has more representation I never cared about the prior list and won’t care about the next.
                         –

          2. Thing is, last time there was absolutely zero incentive for Gavin’s Glorious Bear Flag People’s Golden Albeit Smokey Republic voters to bother – the press was all-inevitable-Dowager Empress-all-the-time, and nobody spent any ad money out here, so there was not really much to kindle hope.

             This time CA voters know that it was solely the lopsided R-voter-suppression vote count results in California that let the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua claim the vote total, so I’m thinking it will not be as lopsided. And if more ruling party votes get cast, that will shift some of the state and local races as well.

             Bottom line for behind enemy lines in CA: All hope is not lost. Your vote matters! Vote!!

             1. more non-ruling party votes

             2. Like I said, about 90% of the family and tons of friends in CA (grew up there). I know that most of the friends will be voting R, but most of the family (hubby’s and mine) will be voting D. I hope you’re right about shifting local races.

             3. Our local mayoral race is between two guys and a late contender who is running a spite campaign—and I’m kinda rooting for the spite campaign. (There are valid Reasons and the candidacy slogan is “Integrity. For a Change.” Which is the best burn…)

             4. > Smokey

                I think the states downwind of the PDRC ought to start filing Federal lawsuits. California’s forest mismanagment is causing far more air pollution than eeevil automobiles or industry, and it’s crossing the state lines to affect air quality and quality-of-life in other states. It’s no different than dumping raw sewage into a river and to hell with the states downstream.

                The EPA seems entirely uninterested in that sort of air pollution. Interesting.

                1. It’s no different than dumping raw sewage into a river and to hell with the states downstream.

                   –
                   Like Mexico has been doing to southern California for fifty years? They dump billions of gallons of raw sewage into the Tijuana River every year, which flows north across the border. Every time it rains, we have to close down twenty miles of U.S. beaches for a week because they’re covered with mexican shit.

                   The government up in Sacra-de-mento is far enough from the problem they can ignore it.

                   1. Wow. I’d never heard of that.

                2. Oooooh, pretty sunsets!

       5. Oh, thank you for that.

          Now, do any of ye more historically literate fellowes have any more examples?

       6. And that was fixed by his successor’s succesor who ecstatically screened “Birth of a Nation” at the White House and purged the Civil Service of people with too much melanin.

          1. The above was meant to be a reply to TXRed above. WordPress delenda est!

          2. Wilson also re-segregated the military.

             1. Meh. Debating which Democrat president was more racist and corrupt is like debating whether horse manure tastes worse than cow manure. When or lose, you’re still getting a mouthful of manure.
                –

       7. He doesn’t act presidential?

          You mean like Bill Clinton, get blown by interns in the Oval Office? Or going from laughing to weeping in a single step?

          Did they approve of either Bush however presidential they acted?

          If you want somebody who acts presidential your party would never have attacked Reagan as “just a B-movie actor.”

          Look at the results: Trump created a booming economy with record minority job creation, has earned three Nobel Peace Prize nominations, has assured American energy independence while significantly reducing greenhouse emissions, reduced American troop presence in war-zones around the world, and has wrong-footed China and Russia, weakening their global challenge to world peace.

          What they mean is Trump doesn’t act Republican-presidential, taking his beating and responding, “Please sir, may I have another?”
          –

          1. And of course all of them were declared to be “the next Hitler”-remember the 8 years of Bushhitler that they screamed out while now that he is out of office he is touted as what Trump should aspire to. Every Republican politician who refuses to sit back and lose and capitulate to Democrats is “the next Hitler” and once out of office, they are held out as to what the new “next Hitler” must aspire to be like.

             And like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football, people still fall for it.

             1. Luckily Bush the Younger is, well, younger, so it will be a while until he passes away.

                That Wave of Strange New Respect will probably swamp the US East Coast.

       8. I always liked the ones who damned Ronald Reagan for being an actor. “Yes, he acts just like a President.”

       9. So What is Presidential? These people are really really really living in a bubble. I wanted to say something that had a lot of curse words btw.

    2. As with relatives caught in the clutch of a psychopath, you do have to limit the damage they can do TO YOU while still holding out hope for them.

       1. It’s like having alcoholics or druggies as relatives. You can still love them, but you don’t have to follow them down their chosen path.

       2. Sometimes that means you walk away from them. Sadly my nephew is living the Dem dream *sigh

    3. The real fear of the Left is that if Trump has four more years and none of their dire predictions come true, a lot of the gaslighting will go *pift*. They see it already happening, on the fringes. Hell, they probably magnify greatly the actual effect, because they run on adrenaline and bile and not thought and analysis.

       The Masses ARE waking up, slowly, and have been for some time. The first big awakening was under Reagan, but it had started earlier, and has continued in spite of their massive efforts to combat it. That’s a big reason why I assert that Lefty progress peaked with Watergate, and ever since they have been spending more Political Capitol than they get back.

       Could they win (or ‘win’) this election, and set back the awakening a lot? Certainly. But the facade is cracking badly, and they damn well know it, and have very little idea what to do about it. Their biggest problem is that many(if not most) of their initiatives start falling apart well before they become universal. And people notice little things like rolling blackouts, or sprawling homeless encampments full of dung and needles. And eventually start voting for supposedly racist homophobic candidates who propose reasonable solutions.

       The Left doesn’t grasp the damage they do to themselves by telling citizens that the problems they citizens clearly see aren’t real. So they tell us that ‘illegal aliens’ are ‘undocumented’ , as if that solved anything, and anyone who sees the real problem decides “I’m not voting for these blivots anymore. I’m voting for the man who says he’ll put a stop to it. I don’t CARE if he’s nasty. At least he isn’t telling me I’M nasty.”

       1. “Could they win (or ‘win’) this election, and set back the awakening a lot?”

          (Holds out paw parallel to ground, waggles it slightly) ehhhh … or hasten it tremendously, as Obama awakened the TEA Party. But rapid reactions are explosive and tend to leave a mess everywhere.
          –

          1. Most people think the Tea Party failed, as it appeared to be co-opted by the establishment: the Tea Party email lists I subscribed to in 2012 quickly became full of bog-standard money-raising emails almost indistinguishable from the rest of the political scene. But the Tea Party elected Ted Cruz, and I would argue was a big factor in Trump’s election as well. Very few of the Tea Party types, at least that I know of, have morphed into Never-Trumpers. Most of them are quite enthusiastic about the cuts in government he’s managed so far, and want him to have another term.

             1. The TEA Party also elected Mario Rubio and whatever you want to say against him he’s still better than his primary opponent, Charlie Crist.
                –

                1. I think that Tea Partists just went quiet and underground. I know that I did.

                   1. #metoo.

                   2. Yep, as soon as the establishment starting purging anyone expressing disagreement with leftist ideology by firing them from their jobs and closing their bank accounts and payment processing accounts, while tech oligarchs banned them from social media and deplatformed them.

       2. And people notice little things like rolling blackouts, or sprawling homeless encampments full of dung and needles. And eventually start voting for supposedly racist homophobic candidates who propose reasonable solutions.

          Assuming in those blue states where that is true it is not already too late to make them Uniparty instead of Democrat states, this is their last chance.

          Wake up now or be like the opening to the Mack Reynolds story I read this past weekend:

          The knock at the door came in the middle of the night, as Josip Pekic had always thought it would.

          1. The number of first time gun buyers has evidently been through the roof all year. I think there are a lot of people who have woken up thinking, “Defund the police!?! They’re NUTS!”. Will they vote against the nuts? One can certainly hope. I really think the Democrats are going to find that encouraging their pet Brownshirts to scare people was a big mistake.

             1. https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/nics_firearm_checks_-_month_year.pdf/view

                As of September, 2020 has seen the largest total number of NICS checks of any full year since NICS started in 1998 at 28.8 million, which was achieved in 3/4 of a year with the traditionally higher monthly count holiday shopping season still to go. If the last three months are only matching last year, the total will be 36.7 million NICS checks, which can each cover multiple guns. Since months this year has been running on average 141% of 2019, which would mean right around 40 million NICS checks in 2020.

                1. Re that last sentence: Statistics + Grammar are hard.

                2. Also note that June and July 2020, when many states unlocked their hostage populations and the peaceful protest casualties started to accumulate, saw respectively 170.0% and 179.2% of the same-month 2019 NICS checks. If the promised Trump-Wins riots happen, I’d expect similar increases for November and December, yielding a 2020 total of 41.8 million NICS checks.

                   For perspective, assuming there was only one firearm purchased per NICS check (which is not the case) this total is more than the estimated civilian firearms ownership in 176 countries combined. This 41.8m total is roughly 237% of the total estimated number of civilian-owned firearms in Russia, and roughly 95% of the total estimated number of civilian-owned firearms in the Peoples Republic of China, whence the Wuhan Coronavirus came and where Chairman Pooh is God-Emperor.

          2. Hey, they only knock when they feel safe standing on the other side of a piece of wood.

             Given the number of legally owned firearms in the US, a kinetic or explosive breach by a Department of Reconciliation SWAT team is more what I’d expect if that branch of the road ahead is taken.

       3. The direct fear of the Team Obama and Team Hillary cabals is prosecution; if Trump loses, they skate without consequences for their coup attempt; if Trump wins, they face a far higher chance of being prosecuted-and the Comey’s, Strozk’s, McCabe’s, etc., know this.

          It is no accident the CBS owned Showtime and other Democratic Party media arms are running massive propaganda deifying the coup plotters.

          1. Hillary would look sooooo good in an orange jumpsuit.

             1. Hillary would look better climbing up a long ladder toward a short rope. Sic Semper Tyrannis.

                1. Given that General Flynn was persecuted on the pretext of the Logan Act, that same law should be used to prosecute John Kerry, along with treason charges, for his meeting with Iran and directly telling them to ignore President Trump and to disregard what his administration was doing as the Democrats would reverse it as soon as they got Trump out of office. Unlike Flynn, who as incoming national security advisor, had a legitimate basis to talk with foreign leaders, Kerry was an ex-official from the administration of the party that had lost the election and had no legitimate reason to talk with Iran, much less to undercut the current administration while doing so.

                2. I’m willing to compromise: eschew the rope in lieu of old-fashioned stocks, dawn to dusk. Think of the social benefits to produce marketers in need of an market for rotting wares.

                   Put James Comey, John Brennan, Andrew McCabe and a few more right alongside her. Let them have ample time to repent their sins against the Constitution.
                   –

                   1. Traditionally people would throw things at those in the stocks. May we throw things? Like Medium sized rocks, darts, dead skunks, small explosives (m-80?). I really don’t give a rats patootie if they repent, I just want them to slink away to avoid future humiliation and agony…

                      1. Please note comment about it being a boon to produce marketers in need of an market for rotting wares.

                         I suspect the line would have to be drawn at any sort of deadly or even seriously injurious projectile. While I am sympathetic to the impulse for selecting such articles I do not believe the recipients of that largesse would benefit from the experience nearly as much. A weight limit would probably have to be imposed in this era of half-ton pumpkins.

                         It does occur to me that the Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment might preclude such an approach, in which case I propose employing a traditional device commonly used at fairs, school & church fundraisers and the like: a dunking cage, wherein the ne’er-do-well perches on a seat designed upon striking of a target by a hurled projectile, such as a baseball or bean bag, whereupon they’re dropped into a receptacle. Contents of that receptacle should be determined by judge and jury, but traditional options include water, lime Jell-O, mud, tar, molten lava, acid and rabid weasels.
                         –

                         1. RES sometimes you are just no fun :-). And no I hadn’t noticed the fruit related portion of your comment, shame on me for not reading it fully.

       4. Part of my fear is that when* trump wins, the woke left will turn their intifada up to 13, and the reaction will have them being able to point and say, “See! See! We told you so!” as they’re being led off to the camps.

    4. We are geographically segregated, but not contiguously. The large cities are totally different from the rest of the country in their views. We need someone to invent the spindizzy, but I don’t think it will turn out so well for Blizh’s cities. Alternately we need a Klacik and a Carson to take back the cities. Unfortunately Congress isn’t the place for Klacik to do it. Maybe she can run for mayor later.

    5. “… the well has been totally poisoned for voting for any Republican,”

       Else how could anyone non-ironically adorn their car with a “Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican” bumper sticker and condemn Republicans for “Voter Suppression”?
       –

       1. Simple. If they vote Republican they will be corrupted, and come to believe in voter suppression, so a true friend will stop them before the moral rot sets in.
          Mind you, the level of self-righteousness required is fairly breathtaking.

    6. “Friends don’t stab you in the back, or help your enemies to do so.”

       Sadly, they don’t perceive it as that; they think of it as “an intervention” — like when you intrude on a friend to tell them that daily chugging of two gallons of vodka Kool-Aid has to stop, or that their drug use has passed the “recreational” level to become a (bad) lifestyle choice. Or to convince them that the Ouija board, horoscopes and tarot readings have caused them to slip their moorings in Reality.

       Just because they are the ones who’ve been gaslighted doesn’t mean they don’t mean well, even when they send you down that road to Hell. Nurse Ratched was only concerned with the well-being of her charges; that’s the horror of the tale.
       –

       1. My buddies tell me that I should’ve waited
          They say I’m missing a whole world of fun
          But I still love them, and I sing with pride
          I like the Christian life

          [Chorus]
          I won’t lose a friend by heeding God’s call
          For what is a friend who’d want you to fall
          Others find pleasure in things I despise
          I like the Christian life

       2. How can we be wrong when we’re so sincere?

    7. I think that it may be a mistake out of compassion (or general laziness) to still consider those on the other side, friends.

       They are not friends, as I learned Saturday at a board game night. They are people who hate you without the stomach to actually voice it aloud except when they “know” everyone in the room agrees with them.

       The Spanish Civil War covered for a lot of score settling. All the people who “knew” they were safe to be their real selves because I “agreed” with them at the top of my list for doing so when the time comes.

       I’ll spare the Antifa idiot who will spit in my face and call me a Nazi. At least he is honest and has something resembling courage.

       1. On the bright side, we have lots of opportunity to pray for our enemies.

          1. I know it is a deviation on my journey, but of late I’ve left that to Father Gabriel more than done it myself.

             As sad as I am to admit it, I suspect I lack the faith to be a martyr.

    8. This is the result of the decades of leftist control of education and media. Too many people conditioned to join in the Two Minute Hate without question and who will spin on a dime to shout that we are at war with Eastasia.

       The Democrats/left are using 1984 as a “how to guide” and we see this daily in their efforts to impose Newspeak and to rewrite history to fit the current party line. The only difference between Democratic Party and Ingsoc is that the Democrats have added “Conformity is Diversity” to the three Ingsoc principles.

12. The media lies, the polls lie, politicians lie. I honestly believe there are enough votes out there to maintain the Republic and the Constitution come November, in a fair election. Enough to counter the graveyard, criminal alien, etc. votes? I hope so.

    None the less, as I keep saying, gotta have a plan D.

    1. Jiminalaska says:
       I honestly believe there are enough votes out there to maintain the Republic and the Constitution come November, in a fair election

       The real question is are there enough votes out there to squeak out (or landslide?) an electoral college win for Trump given this will almost certainly NOT be a fair election. The cheating is likely to be cranked up to 11. On top of that the Democrats seem ready to use every weird trick they can think of to NOT let things go this time. Well every trick except actually campaigning seems like they only recently got their ground game started in the battleground states. That they seem to have totally given up on modern campaigning and fallen back on a front porch (or in this case cellar based) campaign strategy. With the media on their side it MIGHT work but usually this is a technique reserved for the incumbent. Mr Biden seems to be recumbent. And Ms Harris they don’t let say anything either. Its just fracking strange

13. I know I have real life friends who are busily trying to reconcile their knowledge of me with what they “know to be true” about Republicans and the right in general. I can also tell by the angry responses from some that I am getting under their skin and forcing them to think about things they don’t want to think about. So, I count that as a win.

    I’m also still of the belief that there are a lot more people now than there were in 2016 who are going to hold their noses and vote against Biden. I’m still hopeful in that regard. But then, I’m likely crazy too…so I got that going for me.

    In the end, if Trump loses, hubby and I will get ourselves to a reasonable state and hunker down and pray for what amount to 90% of our families living in California. Pray HARD.

    1. OK. I’m not sure how this got in two places…apologies for the duplicates.

       1. WP delenda est.

       2. Not to worry — dealing with the Progressives often leaves many of us stuttering.
          –

14. > So– They’re inside the bubble and they believe this. They have to, because everyone has always told them how scary the non-left side is, and how it will hurt and torture everyone they know.
    —
    All their life, preschool, elementary school, high school, college, band camp, ball camp, every TV channel, every movie they’ve ever sat through, any books they bothered to read, the newspapers and news magazine, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Tik-Tok, their parents, all their friends… their entire world is all in agreement. Anyone who disagrees is crazy. Q.E.D.

    1. One of the other threads is talking about books that helped against gaslighting, like the Sherlock quote about once you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

       When dealing with this, I found one from 1984 helpful:

       “Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

    2. And if they’re gay, they get a neverending diet of fear porn on how Trump will put them in concentration camps, because OF COURSE he wants to, he’s a Republican, and everybody knows Republicans are gay-bashers….

       (Our gay friends, who have apparently put us in their, “But they’re different!” box)

       1. Even though it hasn’t happened….

       2. I don’t know as the propaganda has worked terribly well; I recently saw an item about Trump increasing his share of the LGBT vote by about 28%: LGBT support for Trump on the rise in narrative-busting poll.

          Mind, that share is rising from “Damn Little” to “Not Much” — the problem of growing from a small portion is that proportionate increase of 50% might merely mean from 10% to 15.
          –

          1. Yes, but that’s five percent he didn’t have before. Every little bit helps.

             1. Brands from the fire.

             2. And more to the point it hurts the opposition. The Democrats are VERY dependent on High turnout and 90% of their assorted “minority” groups. If turn out is low or worse yet for the other side they’re in a world of hurt anywhere that is NOT strictly one party blue…

                1. Again with the mass fraud by mail, who the voters actually vote for is irrelevant; between ballots that are altered to switch who is being voted for and outright fraudulent ballots and ballots from illegal aliens, Democrats will ensure they manufacture enough votes to steal the election. The only reason they didn’t do it in 2016 was because they were so confident of a Hillary landslid that they simply didn’t manufacture enough fraudulent votes. As we saw from the 2018 midterms, they fixed that.

             3. It’s also 5% the Democrat doesn’t get.

                Win-Win!
                –

15. The Left has long relied upon the willing assistance of Useful Idiots, just as con artists count on the gullibility of marks, using shills as shepherds use their dogs.

    I no longer care whether the person opposite me is a manipulator, a shill or a mark — I will know which no later than their third response to my remarks and can shape my subsequent discussion accordingly. The mark can be reached by methods displayed by Captain Kirk when confronted by artificial intelligences, the shill is subject to conversion and/or shaming (i.e., the profits are greater/more assured and/or the onus is less on this side) and the committed ideologue can only be handled by ridicule (or killing, but that entails much tedious paperwork), stripping the patina of credibility like the cheap veneer it is.
    –

    1. Speaking of shills and grifters. The WHO just came out with an updated IFR for WuFlu. 13 bp! I had been goin with 36 Bp which made this a bad flu but 13 bp is an average flu. Fauci is stilL pushing the 60bp, which always gets reported as 6 times the flu!!!!! And there are still press ho’s at1% or higher. I hate these people.

       1. “Bp”?

          1. Sorry. Basis Points. each percentage point is made up of 100 basis points. 13 bp is 0.13%

          2. I opt for Blood Pressure – because my average low BP continuously spikes these days…

       2. Link?

16. >“help me, or I f*ck you up” is not a cry for help, it’s an hostage situation.

    I cannot agree with this one enough. Up until mid-August I was still stuck in one.

    Now that the party who needed caregiving is deceased, one of my brothers no longer has the threat of a felony elder abuse charge to hang over my head. He’s still trying to exert leverage by way of various legal shenanigans, but doesn’t seem to realize yet that the threat of losing just money… really cuts no ice. Not compared to the past 6 years of hell.

    As someone who has been gaslit and managed to get loose, let me lay out what I know.

    First, it helps if you have access to sources of outside information – any outside information. Preferably stuff on psychology or stories that show good guys and bad guys, but anything the gaslighter doesn’t control helps, just by not being associated with their point of view. I got hold of Robert E. Howard and Sherlock Holmes very young. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” was a statement that allowed me to look at some very painful facts.

    Second, it takes a while, because even once you’ve assembled enough information to realize something is drastically wrong… humans are social animals. Going against everything your nearest social connections say is potentially life-threatening, and the brain responds with quite reasonable terror. And that’s before you even try to make any moves to escape.

    Third, when you do try to get out, there are lots of enablers out there. People who have a vested interest in not drawing the gaslighter’s attention to them, so they’ll pull out any and all stops to convince you to stay right where you are and take the abuse. “It isn’t so bad.” “You owe them.” “How can you betray them after all they did for you?” And on, and on. And on top of the active enablers there are plenty of people who just assume someone couldn’t be as evil as you say, really, no one could do that, you’re just acting out, how selfish of you….

    Ran across somewhere that it takes someone in an abusive relationship an average of eight attempts to make a successful escape. I believe it.

    Fourth, people who’ve been raised in an abusive environment are often raised deliberately helpless. They’re not allowed to set boundaries. They’re not allowed to physically defend themselves. They’re not allowed to have friends the abusers don’t approve of – and anyone that tries to teach the victim anything that might be a step toward independence will be shut down hard. Many victims aren’t even allowed to learn to drive. (I couldn’t until I was 28.)

    Fifth – if you do get out, it’s usually not a one-time thing. Because of what you were taught from a young age, you look like a target… and users find you, over and over again. And once they start circling, the next batch of enablers closes in, because “oh look, Annoying Guy’s attention is focused on someone besides me, let’s keep it that way….” (Also because cluster B personality types are partly heritable, meaning there’s depressing odds that if one person in your family is Evil, more will be. That was my situation – I got the obvious Evil out of my life decades back, took too long to catch onto the subtler ones.)

    There are some people who will never snap out of it. There are others who need more information. But for a lot of people there needs to be a realization that it’s life or death – if you don’t get out, you are likely to die. Human social bonds are that strong. And the fear is that great.

    All I can suggest is, we have to do the best we can to keep information out there. Keep another voice lifted, that’s not the drumbeat of “Everybody knows X!” And in a way it may even be better if our voices are fantasy and science fiction – it’s easier for someone who’s started to dream of escape to pass those off as “just a book!” If someone wonders what they’re up to.

    1. THANK you for making why Himself (or my subconscious) is pushing “you and everyone else sane need to write fiction as fast as you can, and put it out there.” ) Not even (or particularly) political fiction. But by being who I am (and you are)and writing what we do, there might be stuff in there that breaks the hold.
       Thank you. Here we go. One person at a time. G-d grant us enough time to pull enough brands from the fire.

       1. I honestly think it’s the thing to do. Fiction saved me. Solomon Kane and other heroes are the reasons I’m as sane as I am – or at least, cracked in a fashion that wishes no ill will on someone not trying to do unto me.

          (If someone is trying to do unto me, I’d rather just avoid them. If that’s not possible… do what is necessary.)

          Heck, even if I can’t concentrate on fiction ATM, I’m putting together a book on worldbuilding so other people can write more fiction. More heroes! More good vs. evil! More light to beat back the grimdark despair!

          We still read the story of Gilgamesh to this day. That means something!

          1. Don’t let the normies fool ya. Everybody’s cracked. Just some of us know it, and can correct for it. The flaws are hid right in the middle of every human heart. That means we can all improve ourselves, despite what liars would like to tell us. And that is a very good thing indeed.

       2. It also explains why Himself kept kicking me this spring and summer to write, and what to write. (The push is still there, but Himself does understand Day Job’s pressures.)

          1. If Himself wants me to write more, maybe He should not have my body break down randomly. Off to the doctors to find if back pain is back pain or kidney infection AGAIN.

    2. Congratulations on extracting from that toxic situation. I pray you maintain the fortitude to persevere.

       1. Just need to get through the rest of the legal stuff regarding the house. Hopefully less than a year. *Knocks on wood.*

    3. People who have a vested interest in not drawing the gaslighter’s attention to them, so they’ll pull out any and all stops to convince you to stay right where you are and take the abuse.
       I’ve seen this happen – thankfully from the periphery. I was stunned that everyone wasn’t cheering for the “escapee”, let alone trying to talk him out of it. I wouldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t been there.

       1. Amazing what people will talk themselves into doing if it makes sure they don’t get inconvenienced, isn’t it? *Wry*

          I swear, fiction and the contacts I’ve made over the internet because of it are the only reasons I haven’t completely thrown the towel in on humanity.

17. “Everything is political!” is blasphemy of the highest order, and such speech must be confronted and condemned.

    1. It’s one of those things that is partially true, and then gets distorted. If one takes the broad view that “politics” is the art of addressing differences without open warfare, then one certainly *hopes* that everything is political.

       I think it’s the belief that [all] politics is the extension of war by other means that is the problem.

       1. The problem is that “everything is political” is a contradiction to “everything is moral,” since the “heaven-on-earthers” have turned politics into religion, and inverted Mao’s “power comes from the barrel of a gun” into “power comes from being a victim”. The latter only works for immoral people preying on a moral society, and then only on one weakened enough to eschew the death penalty for mass murderers like Charles Manson. Also it only works as long as its perpetrators can convince their victims of collective guilt and collective innocence. “Social justice” is not justice. True morality teaches that individuals are responsible for their own choices and the consequences even if they don’t have all possible choices. As Glenn Reynolds says, “The whole point of leftist politics is to give people an excuse to feel good about being mean.”

          1. “he latter only works for immoral people preying on a moral society,”
             |absolutely this!

          2. The left today would find an excuse for Manson, if he were still living, to be released from prison with some bogus social justice or sob story justification. Just look at the people that Cuomo’s hand picked parole board is releasing in New York; and he is supposed to be a moderate in their party (proving that there pretty much is no such thing these days).

             1. FryFree Mumia?

                1. If Harris wins, she gets Pennsylvania to pardon Mumia.

18. My philosophy is to love others as they are with true acceptance and non-judgement. That said, I am also concerned with the current political environment and see it as very destructive to the freedoms I hold dear. When I am asked, in person, about my thoughts I try to answer reasonably and with facts. But like many of you…my responses fall upon uncomprehending ears. History repeats itself because people don’t study history and those of us who do study history fall prey to those who don’t. SIGH! As to your original premise…”Feeling hopeless over the weekend”…I understand. I however have hope because our country has faced detrimental leaders in the past. Think about the allowing of slavery and how it took the USA a long time to be free of this “denial of basic human rights.” I could also use the example of “The Playboy” club as a fundamental right for men…but these clubs are closed today due to people realizing how demeaning they were to women. Not saying prostitution is no longer a problem, but less blatantly so imho. My hope stems from how we’ve course corrected over the many years we’ve existed as a nation. My hope also is based upon my religious beliefs and this leads me to pray for my leaders whomever they are.

    1. “these clubs are closed today due to people realizing how demeaning they were to women.”

       Frankly, they always struck me as pretty demeaning to men, too.
       –

       1. True this. A real man is more than his appetites, humbled by his flaws but not shackled by them.

19. You know what?

    I no longer care why they are retarded. They are fellow travelers of people who at their best are just destroying my country, my neighborhood, my reading, and even ‘sitting in the basement and pretending to be an elf’. They are fellow travelers of people who openly talk about killing me and providing video commentary. They have choose, be it from fear or ignorance, to ignore that level of assault on their moral compass.

    They can burn along with the left if it comes to it for all I care. They have decided they’d rather be tools than humans. They have made their choice.

20. For me, it’s the “I can see it, why can’t you?” aspect of things.

    I’ve been sharing with my Dad articles on how ANTIFA organizes and does prep and ground work for protests. (If you haven’t seen some of them, ANTIFA is pretty well organized in technique, technology, and doctrine.) Dad, a veteran cop, is more concerned about right-wing protesters and how they’re coming armed and ready to fight and cause trouble, etc, etc, etc…

    Now, here’s the thing. I know one of the things going on is that he runs a mailing list for our retired members and quite a few of them are going into the Alex Jones/Info Wars/”chemtrails turning the frogs gay!!!” madness portions of the Internet. Quite a few, really. And, they are not subtle about their opinions, so I can understand being frustrated.

    But…even on the news, almost all of the violence is from ANTIFA, BLM, and anarchists doing riot LARPing for fun and excitement. The city governments can’t crack down on them because many of the people supporting ANTIFA and their ilk are the same people that are paying their campaign contributions.

    I sit and watch and I remember that despair is a sin. But, despair is getting easier and easier as the days go on. You watch the talk shows come out ready to watch Trump be removed from the White House in a body bag (1), CNN having doctors crying out that “someone” needs to invoke the 25th Amendment, that the world is going to end unless we take massive steps to curb climate change, etc, etc, etc, etc…

    If there is a hope in this, is that when it’s all over, the egg on people’s face for supporting these things is so thick and crusted that they can’t take it off without peeling their faces off. I won’t laugh at the bloody mess of their faces…much.

    (1)-It would not surprise me, in the least, if Trump and the rest of the White House staged his “infection” to just see what crazy madness was put on Twitter and shown on CNN, then have Trump do something to make them even crazier. Because, the crazier they are, the less likely they’ll respond well when they need clarity of thought and action. And, this close to the election, they don’t have time to let the pot cool off if they discover how caught they are.

    1. More or less where I am, also. And honestly, I’m afraid even if the left wins and we go Cuba THEY WON’T WAKE UP.

       1. For quite a few of them, they can’t wake up. Because, if they wake up…they would have to realize that everything they’ve done has been wrong and very few people can overcome that kind of sunken cost fallacy.

          1. Yep. So much of leftism requires not knowing.

             1. They live on faith, it’s where they exist. Because, without faith, they’d have to think ab out what they’re doing.

             2. In fairness, that leaves them playing to their strength.
                
                –

       2. They won’t wake up if we go full North Korea.

          1. Not even then. Refer to history.

    2. Look for articles by Andy Ngo, who’s been watching the Portland riots.

21. What’s sad? I’ve said this before-the last time I went to B&N (which is nearly a month ago, now), all of the new books in the sci-fi/fantasy section were all grey wallpaper paste with some very uncomfortable implications. One author-that I know well enough that I might be able to pick her out in a lineup-had me wondering if she knew what I thought of half of her opinions, she would immediately sentence me to an indeterminate stay at a work camp in British Colombia to mine the thick maple syrup deposits there.

    I suspect that the movie industry as we know it is dead. They’ve pushed back a number of films to April, and at least one chain is in the process of closing their doors. The proposed replacements are hiring the people that got the industry in trouble in the first place and are getting the replacements into trouble even faster (i.e. Cuties and the massive drop of Netflix subscriptions, etc, etc, etc).

    Music? I can’t think of anyone new I want to listen to.

    Anime? The #MeToo movement just hit them, a number of people with long CVs are getting canned because they had “issues” that nobody had a problem with at the time. Going back on anti-censorship promises and terrible casting choices.

    Comics? The Mean Girls have taken over everywhere in the “big 5” comic book industry. If they can destroy Warren F(YAY!)ing Ellis-who has a CV and sales list that any sane comic-book company would murder for-what about anybody smaller than him?

    The entertainment industry is murdering themselves and destroying what they’ve made for no other reason than they can. And, we’re all going to suffer for it.

    1. I can’t think of anyone new I want to listen to.

       Define new.

       These guys formed in either 2015 or 2016, although I only discovered them yesterday.

    2. The comics industry has been replaced by manga and indie self-publishing. And indie self-publishing is very lucrative, and has the kind of sales figures that indicate a real industry.

       The sad thing is that it’s not going to help comics shops. But a lot of them have figured out that used comics can be a bigger business than new industry comics, and have cut their losses by cutting out the industry.

22. Fear.

    If you feel fear, and another human is involved, there is a very strong likelihood that someone is trying to manipulate or control you. You may occasionally be wrong, but far more often you will be right.

    That won’t remove the fear, or reduce it, but it gives the rational you a chance to square up to it and do the right thing. And maybe punch that manipulator in the metaphorical nose. Your ornery streak is a weapon to use for this fight. They are more afraid of you wizing up than you are of their treachery. Escape has costs, but the gained freedom is priceless.

    You write inspirations for others. Don’t let the lying bastards con you. Defy them, thus destroy them. They can -only- win if you quit.

    1. 7-3/4-D105.

       Take cover if possible.

       Deploy concealment.

       Assault forward.

       Whether or not these options are very literal or figurative – the principles (IMO) hold true.

       REACT, ADAPT, OVERCOME.

       1. And never forget that cover is degradable by fire.

23. I spent a lot of time wondering–with some stress–whether my left friends thought I was stupid or evil, acknowledging it had to be one or the other and not being willing to ask (particularly because it would be rude to put them in that spot).

    I’ve since realized I think most of them are–not *stupid*, but profoundly maleducated (or toxically socialized) in ways that leave them unable to even meaningfully examine their premises, much less grapple with different ones, which would certainly sounds the same. Which takes out some of the sting from the idea that I’m either stupid or evil, if I think the same right back.

    …but then I realized that it’s more likely that they think That Terrible Man (fifth wedding anniversary this past weekend! Twelve years overall) has corrupted me, which saves anyone from ever having to actually grapple with either possibility.

    Of course, still haven’t asked. I mean, I don’t see much of the point. At this point I’m trying to update with as many cute child photos as I can to keep a human face, and send handwritten letters back and forth to at least get the concept of what we’d say to each other when there’s an audience of one.

    (I haven’t written any letters back in about a month and a half–death of a close friend has had my… part of my soul able to touch anyone else, instead of being disastrously self-obsessed?… a little paralyzed.)

    …

    Anyway. Enough whinging. Surely I can manage something useful about now

    1. “toxically socialized”. Yes, I think that describes a lot of people these days, especially in the wake of public education. Nice turn of phrase.

       1. There’s some other issues as well-
          *We’ve allowed people that would have been regularly punished for being terrible people-and, genuine terrible, mind you-and not only have we not punished them, we have exalted them beyond all measures of reason. They have been raised to a level of paragons, and if they are the way to Heaven, I’d like my ticket to Hell now.
          *The Pick-Up Artist movement. Not directly, mind you. Feminists realized that men now have learned a lot of the tricks and techniques they’ve used, weaponized them, and are using them to fight back in the dating game. So, the feminists and their ilk have been hyper-sensitizing women to be ready for any PUA game techniques. Guy realizes that he said something stupid and tries to walk it back? BOOM! You’re using negging! Be scarce and hard to get (even if you’ve been juggling live squid at work for the last few weeks and can prove it)? BANG! You’re using false scarcity!

          Women especially, but some men (especially men that have been in abusive relationships) now have an idea of what the abuser tools are. But, in knowing this, most of them don’t know and don’t care that honest people can use those tools as well.
          *Twitter. Take a limit of 160 characters, add the GIFT (Greater Internet F(YAY!)kwad Theory), attach your value to how retweeted you are, and stand back as you watch people become absolute dicks where logic and reason go out the windows; replaced by vile, vitriol, and stonking great tits.

          When it’s safer, easier, and more rational to be on 4Chan, you know you’ve done something wrong.
          *Our political class, for the most part, is terrible. We’ve been forced to pay attention to how the sausage is made, and nobody likes it.

          1. >most of them don’t know and don’t care that honest people can use those tools as well.

             When you’ve been run over by a steamroller once, you stay out of the way of anything with wheels.

             Seriously, if you’ve barely crawled away from a relationship still breathing, you really don’t care if someone might be honest this time.

             Agree with you on the rest, though.

             1. I understand that, but I also understand that there are people (like me) that learned the tools because we are otherwise so absolutely clueless that it increases our chances from “none” to “maybe.”

                And, yes, steamroller fear is valid.

       2. Yes, I like that term, “toxically socialized.” It goes to the social credit hunting that I think everybody on the left is doing. “I MUST say/post/agree with this thing so that everybody knows I’m a Good Person”.

          I saw a comment on a friend’s FB post a couple months ago where the commenter lamented that she felt obligated to say “Oh, Kid took her mask down to eat the ice cream cone that’s when I took the picture.” She felt like if she didn’t put in the caveat, she would get tagged as a bad mom because child wasn’t wearing a mask. Despite the fact that said mask was hanging from the kid’s ear.

          I’ve yet to receive anything like that, but I do have a number of responses ready to deploy.

          1. Scored off nicely here:
             https://www.takimag.com/article/the-two-eisgrubers/

             1. Thanks for this, Mary. I love Dalrymple.

24. Review Nock on Isaiah’s task and accept that a remnant is all we are guaranteed. That is enough and despair is as always a sin. Expectations are premeditated resentments.

    I’m more inclined to suspect that the Flag and the nation for which it stands will survive neatly folded and often in a glass fronted case than in fragments but either works for me.

    Some of the people who draw inspiration from your writings will be candles in the wind. Some will keep the flame alive until it bursts out again.

25. …the best thing we could do for Africa right now would be remove China’s colonial boot from their necks.

    I’m no sure anything (including nothing) we do can help Africa. I’ve never read about, nor talked to anyone from Africa that I find credible, that contradicts Kim Du Toit’s Let Africa Sink essay.

    From a selfish Realpolitik point of view, I’m quite happy to have Winnie the Xi and fellow Barbarian Bastards find out the boot they have on the neck of Africa is now at least ankle deep and sinking. Expenditures in blood, treasure and opportunity costs in Africa are resources they can’t use somewhere where they will be a more lasting threat.

    The Chinese just think they invented the art of corruption and scamming the stupid foreign devils.

    1. What it would take to “civilize” Africa would never be allowed any time prior to the invention of the newspaper, let alone the printing press.

       1. Actually, I think Africa is in the process of civilizing itself. Wherever large numbers of people become Christian and devout, things get better for everyone. Heck, there are some countries where they have too many hardworking, super-enthusiastic priests and ministers, and they have to send them to _us_.

          Of course, this is running in tandem with jihads, Communism, and craziness, so there’s a good question as to which tendency will win.

          1. One of the best priests we ever had was not only from Africa, but the son of a Moslem father and a Catholic mother….
             He was amazing.

26. I understand the feeling about looking at it from the outside. I’ve felt that way my entire life. I didn’t think at my age I would feel that way even more. Nothing I can do than the little bit I do every day. It doesn’t feel like enough.

27. Also for some reason wouldn’t post my last comment. Someone told me that I couldn’t wish the Trumps well because I might trigger someone. (The person in question wasn’t an American citizen btw). She basically told me that he was a bad and ignorant person.

    1. You can’t express good wishes because that might make someone, WHO YOU DON’T KNOW AND NEVER MET, feel bad. That’s Mrs. Grundyism on steroids. And the woman probably doesn’t even realize it.

       1. Yea… except for TDS she is a perfectly good online person. Don’t know her off the grid though.

          1. And why do Europeans have TDS? Except for people like Merkel and Boris, who interact with us, I couldn’t name their presidents/premiers/poobahs on a bet.

             1. Because he opposes Merkel’s and Macron’s efforts to turn Europe into the Fourth Reich. Of course the parts of Europe up to Vienna are being claimed by Erdogan as he openly seeks to reestablish the Ottoman Empire.

             2. I suspect the mass media is effectively a multinational monoculture. Supposedly people are marching or rioting all over the world in protest of American racism, or that Donald Trump is still breathing, or… even if it were true, why should they even care? It’s not like their own countries aren’t mostly dumpster fires.

                1. Well, there’s France’s “Hot for Teacher” president Emmanuel Moron … er, Maroon, uh, Macron. Italy’s leadership changes too often to keep up with and I’m not sure any of the others much matter (Okay, I feel shame I can’t recall Poland’s leadership, nor the Czech Republic’s … but then I often cannot recall how to type the Czech Republic’s name..)

                   I believe many of those foreign protests are ginned up, as were the anti-American rallies common during Soviet-era politics.
                   –

                   1. And then there’s the TV Comic who got elected to President of Ukraine last year (announced his bid on New Year’s Eve, the vote was March/April/May-ish, took office in June). If only our own elections moved so quickly– but that’d have its own problems in a country as big as ours.

             3. CNN probably … I don’t understand why they care about TRump btw

       2. “If what I’ve said made you feel bad perhaps you ought consider why that is so and address the problems within yourself that cause you to experience hurt from such an anodyne remark.”
          –

       3. Doesn’t that sounds like “wear a mask” logic? Someone you don’t know and never met will DIE if you don’t wear a mask!
          There must be something in the human psyche that responds strongly to that.

       4. Doesn’t that sounds like “wear a mask” logic? Someone you don’t know and never met will DIE if you don’t wear a mask!
          There must be something in the human psyche that responds strongly to that.

    2. *Blink. Blink blink.*

       If we all based our actions on what someone MIGHT feel, we might as well vanish off the face of the earth. Oy.

       1. But only the CORRECT feelings.

          1. *Wry Snrk* I’ll never pass that test. I prefer stories where Conan slaughters the bad guy….

28. Mrs Hoyt, I am sorry to tell you that your friends are rabid. Does not mean that you should not love them, but remember “Old Yeller”. And I am sorry because that much blood and that many people living in fear that if they slip they will add to the rivers is corrosive of society and will destroy this society for at least one generation, maybe more.

29. I got a Voter Booklet today.

    Right in the middle of the front cover,
    In Bold.
    Centered.
    Printed in RED ink.
    Read the following words:

    Governor’s Executive Order
    All Voters Will Be Mailed A Ballot

    Now I’m not aware of any Enabling Act being passed, that allows the Chancellor Governor to rule by decree. That order violates both the California and United States constitutions.

    AND right under that Voter Booklet was the very Mail-In Ballot I’d been warned about. Now I know why they sent me that Mail-In Ballot. They expect me to fill out that there Mail-In Ballot like a good little drone, and put that Ballot in a mailbox, and then somewhere betwixt that mailbox and where they Officially Record the Ballots, somebody is going to hold my Mail-In Ballot up to a really bright light and see if I voted for something they don’t like. And if’n they see something they don’t like, that poor misguided Ballot is somehow mysteriously going to get lost on its way to where they Officially Record the Ballots and if it ever turns up at all it will be long after it’s way too late to be Officially Recorded. Oops.

    SO I am going to fill out that Ballot, and then on Election Day — not the day before, and for sure not the day after — I will march on down to the Official Polling Place and personally stick that Ballot into the Official Ballot Box with my own hands and cut out at least two opportunities for that Ballot to wander off down the wrong path as so many others have done recently.

    That is what everybody should do, because there is no verifiable Chain Of Custody for Mail-In Ballots, and I don’t believe that even Herr Fuhrer Governor Nuisance is too stupid to know it.

    Yes, I’m hearing Arlo Guthrie in my head. What of it?

    1. AIRBORNE

    2. Posted the Official Absentee Ballot this time around, due to Uncle Sam preventing my voting in person: the ballot went in an unmarked envelope, inside of a larger envelope marked “OFFICIAL ABSENTEE BALLOT”, all per the instructions from the home County Board of Elections. It might end up Folded, Spindled, and Mutilated like a good little punchcard, but nobody’s going to read it through the side of the package.

30. <“The way you find this, btw, is that they buy into “never listen to anything that makes you doubt the gaslighting.”

    But surely, literally (not) *everyone* their *whole lives* could not be wrong? Their parents, their teachers, their pastor, their friends… everyone? Of course “everyone” doesn’t include *them.* The faceless *them* are the reprobates, the wreckers, the counter-revolutionaries. The ones that never qutie fit in. Those, you can safely put in the basket of deplorables, am I right?

    Put it that way, it doesn’t surprise me that they’ve become as they are. It is a cult, a political path, and a dominant subculture. It doesn’t surprpise me that neuroses are more prevalent on the left that are “active and engaged, politically.” That sort of upbringing causes negative cognitive side effects. You’d be a bit paranoid, too, if stability was constantly being ripped out from under you in your formative years.

    What to do?

    Well, living a good life is a start. I’m not kidding about that, by the way. Happiness draws people in a way that rage never can. And we can only control ourselves (to some degree- biology has its say, and it ain’t small), so that’s a good place to start. Being a good example is tough. Exhausting. Ask any parent. But worthwhile. Part of that is being good to others, too. Charity and forgiveness are awesome, trust me on that. Wisdom to know what charity is and what enabling is, that’s an important distinction to have, too.

    Enabling is *not* catching, prosecuting, and punishing criminals. It is also quite literally harming the innocent. The shopkeep whose store is vandalized, for example, whose glass you remain clean and stock unlooted if the guilty were punished appropriately, and the opportunists got wise to the idea that stealing is bad, man- they’ll lock you up with the violent ones. So law and order is a must. Vote for the good guys, and make ’em keep those promises- those things are of value to *you.* Run for office if there’s no one else doing it. But remember to live a good life there, too. That’s not your money you are playing with, and responsibility is supposed to be a burden. Remember to lay it down after a while. Parents need to let their children make decisions of their own, politicians need to know when to get out.

    Sometimes a good life ends early. If we’re lucky, perhaps we get to die doing a good thing. It doesn’t have to be in a hail of gunfire- though I’d argue there are individuals that the world would be better off without. It can be anything that touches lives and makes the world a better place. It may not be immortality, but it’ll do for the humble few that choose it. Or it chooses them, I misremember which.

    A good life becomes better with other people in it. Infinitely better, there’s no end to how good it can get. I say this without irony as an avowed curmudgeon no less. And social activity makes me tired. But I recognize the value of it, and the value of the people who make my life a better place than it would have been.

    As to those other people stuck in the middle of the mob, well. Every life must choose for itself. Thank Himself for that! It’s the very basis of our founding document, after all. That’s why living a good life is what I’d prefer to start with. No one I know of has ever been convinced by screaming, other than convinced the other guy was a raving lunatic. Some folks will be convinced by argument, but less than you’d think. Emotion tends to sway first, the intellect trails after, rationalizing. And there’s where Andrew Breitbart was- happy warrior, addressing the left right to their faces with a better way.

    1. A good life becomes better with other people in it.

       At the very least even a middling or bad life can be better with others in it. If only because no one is so much worse.

31. Courtesy of Mark Steyn (and I don’t know his sourcing on this clip) for a moment to remember: Funny Uncle Joe fulfilling his duties as President of the Senate at the swearing in of Montana’s newly elected senator, Steve Daines:

    While grabbing a bit of a gratuity for himself in a moment that Sen. Daines’ now thirteen-year-old niece will likely treasure forever.
    –

    1. Also HT: Steyn for this reminder of how the Culture treats bystanders. Remember Mark Gauvreau Judge, Bad Brett Kavanaugh’s partner in pandemonium? It turns out that the “crazed gang-rapist drug-fiend judge’s sick enabler” was just another bystander to a drive-by cancellatioi attempt:

       Satan’s Anus: Dishwashing through the Pandemic
       Of course they hired me on the spot. Nobody else wanted to spend seven hours a day suffocating in Vietnamese-level heat, gagging on a stupid COVID mask, getting soaking wet and wearing your muscles to exhaustion by scraping eggs, chocolate, bread dough and other muck off of trays, plates, soup bowls, assorted cutlery and Tupperware that piled from floor to ceiling.

       But there was no choice. I’d become a dishwasher.

       Industries are collapsing due to COVID. My own profession, journalism (or maybe it’s my former profession) is bleeding out. That doesn’t really bother me, as I long ago decided that most official journalism is garbage and I was going to think and write as a free man, no matter what the consequences. Better a free-thinking dishwasher than a very important editor or TV personality who’s a captive mind.

       Coronavirus has revealed that as a culture we have, as the Jungian psychologist James Hollis put it in his new book Living Between Worlds, “lost the map.” Our old ideas of success and failure and what matters are shaken. Does the world need so many journalists? Or managers? Or consultants? Or movies? Were they really feeding our souls?

       So, like Hollis or Dante, when “the way is lost” you sometimes just have to knuckle under and walk through hell. You have to make a buck on your feet, with your chest and arms and inside your own body, not in cyberspace or on Facebook or Twitter. You revert back to those summers when you were a kid, cutting grass, shoveling snow, bagging groceries. That puts us back in touch with ourselves.

       [SNIP]
       At the end of my shift I drove home, completely water-logged, sore like I just played a game in the NFL, and exhausted. I wasn’t sure I could even make it from the car to my front door.

       That night a friend called, and when he heard I was a dishwasher, he said found my situation “poignant.” I’d been a book author, a contributor to places like The Washington Post and The New York Times, and the target of an explosive and well-publicized 2018 political hit. My friend reminded me of something I hadn’t though about since my time at Catholic University in the 1980s. At the end of the Inferno, Dante and Virgil can only escape hell by climbing up Satan’s asshole. “You’re stuck in Satan’s anus,” he said. “You just gotta keep climbing.”

       Yes, the only way through it is through it. And the crisis, if we’re lucky, will remind us how far we as human souls have become separated from our true selves and bodies. “On a collective level,” Hollis writes in Living Between Worlds, “our culture’s treatment plans for the absence of a personal, intimate relationship with the gods are materialism, hedonism, narcissism and nationalism, as well as a coursing nostalgia for a world that never really existed. Our contemporary Odysseys are redirected to the Apple Store, the palliative pharmacy, or forays along the River Amazon Prime. Guided by Google, whereby all things are knowable, we wonder why we are so absent-spirited, so lost, and so adrift. We may say that these secular surrogates, these ‘isms,’ constitute our values, our de facto religions, those in which we most invest our energies. But we have to ask the obvious question, ‘How well are they working for us?’”

       Not well.
       –

32. We’re watching the masses indoctrinated into bigotry and scapegoating. In a way we are the privileged few, those who have escaped most of the indoctrination. And we have, maybe, some idea of what the perceptive saw in Nazi Germany and in Communist societies.

    We keep the faith. We keep our eyes open for opportunities, and take them, recognizing that we have different talents to employ. We vote and pray, and are grateful for whatever blessings of Judeo-Christian civilization we have enjoyed.

    And we are grateful for those among us who can carry torches not to lay waste, but to give light.

33. Here’s an interesting electoral indicator. The Wall Street Journal has it behind a paywall so I offer no link — but NY is widely recognized amongst the most Liberal of states, and “Da Yute Vote” is generally deemed highly Liberal, so you’d t’ink they’d be registering in droves to vote out Trump.

    New York Seeks to Counter Sharp Drop in Registered Young Voters
    Days ahead of the Oct. 9 deadline for voter registration in New York, over 430,000 young eligible voters have yet to sign up to vote, a significant decline compared with 2016 registrants, data shows.
    –

    1. How many of them are still IN New York? And how is ‘New York’ going to counter the drop in voters? They’ve already gone through the cemeteries; are they going to start on the pet cemeteries? That can cause problems.

       1. Steven King warned us about that one…

       2. Amigo, los coyoteros can take care of all your electoral needs! They can round up plenty of passable fake voters and run them by your polls as needed. And they’re economical and completely deniable! What’s not to like?

          And if your polling system is all electronic, the hackers of the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398 are available for hire. Like most Chinese military organizations, they’re partially self-funding. And get this: you don’t actually have to take the risk of having your payment uncovered by annoying investigators; they’ll just lift the money straight out of one of your accounts, and then the bank’s insurors cover the loss. Nobody loses, everybody wins! And even better, you can sue the bank for the breach and turn a modest profit too!

    2. Here’s the stat I find most interesting: over the past three years Trump’s Twitter followers went from a couple million to, as of yesterday, a bit over 87 million.

       Which might be a reasonable proxy for Trump voters.

34. I wonder how many of them are Bernie Bros who have decided to sit this one out?

35. I don’t have any friends to lose but many of my family members are voting for Biden. It’s hard because these are the people are I rely on for a reality check when depression and anxiety are whispering poison in my ears.

    1. Tell them Biden is going to ‘retire for health reasons’ before Christmas. Ask them if they really want Kamala to appoint Queen Hillary as Vice-President.

       1. You are a scary person, and I’m totally going to steal that.

          Except one suspects the appointee would be someone more like Mad Maxine, or Keith Ellison, or even AOC.

          1. Kamala is smart enough to know that if she nominated Hillary for VP that she would thereafter commit an assisted involuntary suicide so that Hillary could could crown herself god-empress.

             1. True, the constant watching her back for knives would be one disadvantage to that scheme.

             2. Yeah, that. Not even Obummer was that stupid. I still think Biden, if fraudedelected, will set the record for shortest incumbency in the office.

                1. Kamala will have to work fast: William Henry Harrison died of either typhoid, pneumonia, or paratyphoid fever 31 days into his term, becoming the first president to die in office and the shortest-serving president in U.S.
                   –

                   1. OTOH, I would put the over/under at twelve days.

                      Anybody know how to check the Vegas line on that? Aren’t the Brits usually pretty quick to get some action going on political events?
                      –

             3. If Kamala were to choose Hilary she’d best resign quickly to spend more time with her family lest she get to spend more time with worms.

                1. Messalina vs Elizabeth Bathory in a to the death cage match

                   1. Ahem. Elizabeth Bathory wasn’t quite what the winners in that fight described. Yes, she got sent into exile, but it was so her in-laws and others could get the estate that she inherited from her late husband. (Per the Hungarian historian at the Bathory museum.)

                      1. Their being after the land is not, in fact, evidence of her innocence.

          2. AOC is not eligible (too young). She would pick Stacy Abrams.

             1. No. Illan Omar

                1. Ilhan isn’t native-born, so she can’t serve as VP.

             2. So that the freak show becomes a clown show? Oh help!

          3. AOC is not nearly old enough. The others …

             Needless to say, none of the above should veep. Including Biden (as we’ve already seen).

36. c4c

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