Say Goodbye to Hollywood

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

As most of y7ou know — yes? . — I read at Ace of Spades HQ.

My opinions aren’t always the same as theirs — duh. Their opinions don’t always agree internally either. Because free people rarely agree. Heck, I’ve been known to disagree with myself hour by hour.

The only thing that made me genuinely angry though was their post about how if you’re “in a blue city” leave!

Cities aren’t just the places where we live. And if we’re anything but minimum wage workers, leaving is not as easy as that. Even today, in the “work from home” job marketplace, people have ties to places: homes, property, various organizations they belong to, friend groups they’re part of. All these things, you can slowly disentangle yourself from, at least if your job doesn’t require physical presence. (Dan and I have gone round and round on this, and we think full-telecommute positions are probably no more than 20 to 25% of the workforce.) Obviously if you’re in some training programs, you’ll have to stay with them.

This is before you get into other things, like the fact that we can’t keep moving from state to state and giving ever-increasing swaths of the country to the left, even when they took it through fraud (Hi, I’m from Colorado! But I understand California has similar problems) and consolidated it by moving in massive numbers of homeless (turning our convention center into a homeless shelter is next level though. Polis is something else. Not sure what, but definitely something else) or illegal immigrants to vote them in again and again (Because I guess vote by fraud wasn’t enough.)

If they can take Colorado, which at one time was considered the place for Libertarians to move to, let me assure you they can take any refuge you find, including TX. In fact, they are going to try really hard to take TX, if they don’t manage to take the whole country (vote by fraud!) this November.

So, are you willing to give them the ability to do what the Arabs want to do to the Jews in the Middle East? Just push us into the sea?

Every election they say that the GOP will become a regional party, and they intend to do it by hook or crook. Mostly crook, honestly, because they have no scruples. You see, this is religious for them. The arrow of history demands that they win. And once we kulaks are pushed into the sea, utopia will reign.

Except of course, that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. Every time they take over a place they destroy it, and send people fleeing.

The other part of the problem is that places aren’t just places. They’re part of who we are, our views of ourselves. From the earliest stories of mankind, humans were FROM somewhere. Going somewhere. Defending somewhere.

Remove the places from the Iliad…. And none of it makes sense.

This is part of the reason the internationalist dream was always nonsense (besides varying cultures, different languages, and the fact that no one can govern the whole Earth. They can’t even know enough to govern a moderately large place with slightly varying cultures, which is why we’re supposed to be governed first by states. Never mind.) People and places are part of each other. (Though it’s more like people places and times. We own a place for a certain time, and the span of our lives is far too short.)

I’ve loved three places in my life. The first was the village. I loved everything about it, including the smell in the air, when spring had just burst forth and every wall was covered in flowering roses.

Then I loved Porto, which was twenty minutes away by train, but might as well be another planet. It was basically a big, dirty, and in the mid-seventies, mildly dangerous Atlantic Port city. I loved it in the morning, before the shops opened. You’d catch people sweeping the sidewalk in front of their shops, and it was like catching a beautiful woman without makeup. I loved the coffee shops, some with pictures of 19th century poets who used to hang out there. I loved the bookstores, particularly the old ones, with unsold books up in the attic, still marked at old prices. I loved the little art supply shop hidden in an alleyway.

Both of those places I left before they changed: the village into what is essentially a sleeper-suburb for the city, filled with stack-a-prol apartments, and Porto into what my sons call “euro-disney”, kind of a “not so rich” pleasure town. I tried to take them to all the mildly seedy coffee shops and student hangouts, and they’d all been sanitized “for Englishmen to see” and all served the same rather bland food “that tourists like.”

Now, though both those places are gone, and I can only walk them in my dreams, I will freely admit both places are better for the people who stayed behind. I mean, I loved the village, but dear Lord, there was a set of public showers built outside the elementary school, for all the people who didn’t have running water, or at least running hot water, and that was a majority of the village. People used to line up outside the showers early morning on the weekend, for their weekly shower. And well… I’ve mentioned the main form of entertainment was sitting on the stoop and gossiping.

As for Porto, though it’s now somewhat bland, it’s also much much safer than it was. To put this in perspective, the habits of staying safe on the street in Porto saw me through a visit to NYC on my own, with two other girls in the very early eighties. And it’s CLEAN. And you can actually visit the medieval part of town without having chamber pots emptied on your head. So.

Then there was Denver. My history with Denver is weird. At eight I knew that when I grew up I was going to be a writer and live in Denver. Why Denver? I don’t know.

What I know is that in 92, when Dan and I lived in Columbia South Carolina, in a VERY bad situation (he worked for a programing sweat shop, and I was stuck in an unairconditioned house all day (we only had one car) with a toddler. And I knew no one.) we realized we couldn’t go on that way, and we were dead broke, and there were no other jobs.

So, he said, “We have to move.” And I said “Let’s move to Denver.” (Though he might have mentioned it first, because I’d talked about it before.) So we did. Well, we moved to Colorado Springs, which was close enough sort of.

The thing is the minute we drove into Colorado, both of us knew we’d found home, and though we lived in the Springs for over 20 years, we came to Denver often enough that we got to know every little street, every place to hangout, and we were regulars at Pete’s Kitchen on Colfax long before we moved up.

Most of my memories of spending time with the kids growing up are bound up in Denver: from trips to the Natural History Museum and the zoo, to spur of the moment trips to the Art museum, or to a restaurant, to late-night-drives to Pete’s to discuss plotting over coffee.

Some very difficult times were bridged over by Dan and I driving up to Denver and going for a walk in City Park, around the lake. In summer, they illuminated the fountains red white and blue, and we’d sit on a park bench as it got dark, and watched the fountains and talked, before going home.

In summer, also, we took the kids to Lakeside amusement park. Because I have a middle ear issue that makes most rides torture, to me this involved following the kids from ride to ride, reading a book (Dan sometimes went with them, sometimes not) and people watching, until we were ready to leave, when we’d take the train ride around the lake. One time the kids started singing “When the Saints go Marching in” and the rest of the train joined in, only they were singing in Spanish.

Six years ago, when the kids were both in college and not spending a lot of time with us, we realized that we had nothing to do in the Springs on weekends, which partly led to us moving up to Denver (there were other reasons.) We are not, thank heavens, anywhere near our favorite haunts, because we couldn’t afford a house there, but in a fairly peaceful suburb.

Which I used to think was bad, because we had to drive (even though much less) mostly city streets to get to our favorite places….

Then came 2020 and the lock down. And Polis’ order that homeless get to camp on sidewalks and public lands.

I didn’t actually drive downtown till last weekend….

Let’s put it this way, there’s streets we’ve run across at midnight on the way from a favorite restaurant (because we couldn’t park nearer) that I wouldn’t NOW walk at noon, with two policemen on either side. Downtown looks like Detroit, between the boarded/burned shops, and the threatening “unhoused” addicts clustering in every corner. And please, don’t tell me that I shouldn’t complain they’re unsightly. I’m complaining they’re there at all. These aren’t people from Denver, or people who lived here before they went feral. They just came to Denver because they can do as they please, and it’s the productive citizens who are restricted.

Polis can pull this shit and does because vote by mail allows him to know he can fraud himself in again and again and again.

He’s destroying the state. And Denver is probably hardest hit.

It quite literally is breaking my heart. It’s like seeing someone you love plunge into addiction.

I would like to fight back. I can’t. I don’t even know how one fights back from this. Yes, it would start with cleaning up voting, but at this point we’ve attracted so much scum, from crazy commies to feral homeless, that I’m not even sure that would help. It probably would, but how does one do it. All “vote by mail” was passed by the legislature after being soundly defeated as a referendum.

At any rate, the last month and the trip to low altitude showed that we have to leave. We have to, because the altitude is spinning up my auto-immune. It’s been a slow rev-up, so slow I didn’t realize it, but I’m now more or less always in auto-immune crisis. Except… when we went down from the mountain. Long before sea level, the auto immune clears up as if by magic.

So eventually we’ll have to leave. Not before two years, though. And heaven knows if we have two years.

At any rate, if we move, I know I’m leaving behind not the Denver I loved, but a grotesque, hideous corpse that is losing all the things and destroying all the places I love.

And unlike the village, or Porto, it won’t be good for anyone.

Would I stay and fight if it weren’t for the altitude thing? Possibly. Even though I have no idea how to fight back. But I know we can’t continue losing territory. They don’t even do anything with it, except turn it into a diorama of a war zone. They seem incapable of actually administering or doing anything with what they take. Possibly because they’re at odds with reality.

So, I don’t tell everyone behind the lines to “move already”. It’s not that simple. And if we keep running from place to place, we’re going to run out of land. And long before that, they’ll have destroyed every place we left. I do right now have friends in all of the worst zones, including yes Hollywood and New York City. And they’re all caught between grief and anger, same as I am.

What is the solution? I don’t know. But leaving behind every place we love, which the locusts took by hook or crook (and mostly by crook) is a lot like selling grandma down to Rio. It kills grandma, and it doesn’t leave us feeling very good either.

So, to quote one of their heroes…. what’s to be done?

286 thoughts on “Say Goodbye to Hollywood”

  1. The walls have ears. Go out in the woods without your phone if you really want to talk about what needs to be done. And then only to your family.

      2. You’re being funny, but responding seriously, many phones you cannot remove the battery any more and a lot of them now have a secondary location battery as well. Even in a static bag, The phone can still be set to “Listen/record” in some cases. Its not paranoia when they really are out to get you.

    1. You think that, if it gives you comfort.
      I know when Colorado was flipped in 12, at least 1/3 of the votes, and more in other cities, were made up, forged, stolen.

      1. If they win nationally, the first thing they will do is eliminate the filibuster in the Senate. At that point it is off to the races, with court packing (so they can ensure that their unconstitutional power grab is okayed by the Supreme Court) and national fraud by mail, ballot harvesting, lowering the voting age to 16 and mass amnesty to illegal immigrants will be just the start of how they quickly move to establish permanent absolute power. They will add enough states to make winning national elections impossible for Republicans, and then they will systematically seek to simply wipe out any opposition, both figuratively and literally.

        The Democrats, particularly their social media oligarch propaganda arm, has been circulating with approval for years opinion pieces which call for CCP style one party rule in the USA and advocates the complete elimination of the Republican party “and its supporters”.

        Anyone who doesn’t believe that they will go on a rampage in the quest for absolute power has not been paying attention.

          1. And in true Oceania style they are claiming that they won’t be packing the Supreme Court, they will be “rebalancing it”

            2. They’re changing the definition of packing the court. There is currently an “I am not making this up” claim being advanced that packing the court is loading it up with your supporters.

          2. Sarah — in 12, my closest Tea Party friends in Denver read the re-elected Red Diaper Baby Tea Leaves this way: plan an exit; we’ll need it soon. I left Denver last Spring. I measure city corruption by how many men it takes to fix a hole in the street. In Denver, it takes four or five (one or two labor; the rest watch); in Auckland, New Zealand, it takes only three (two doing the work). Before the virus crisis, NZ’s national debt was 50% of GDP, while the US has zoomed past 120%. Eight years ago, a married couple from Objectivist circles, living in Coal Creek Canyon deep in the Foothills, had decided to become Kiwis, to ditch their hi-tech careers, to become hobby farmers in South Island. WtheF? Leave CO? The mystery? Now I know why. I’m still on my way to Eastern Europe, where the memory of Marxist Oppression still lives outside of museums. But I am sorely tempted to do more than detour back to the Antipodes: even Sky News Australia is much better than FNC! Off course, this is my journey. Thank you for sharing yours.

            1. I didn’t — still don’t — want to leave Colorado. But if I’d wanted to, we couldn’t have done it in 12, when the kids were starting college and we were financing both of them as much as we could as we promised if they took “useful degrees.”
              Even now, we just can’t, not before 22. Pray for us, if you’re a praying kind. If not, hold your thumbs for us really hard.

        2. My fear is when they have fraud by mail down pat country wide they will start talking bout constitutional amendments for all their pet idiocies.

  3. I feel your despair. I wish I knew what was to be done and not just about Denver or Hollywood. In Memphis, TN near where I live there haven’t been the riots or homeless issues like you have but that is merely because the City has been divided up between the corrupt politicians and the gangs. A few weeks ago the Mayor told the media that they had avoided violence because they met with ‘Community Leaders’ to prevent the riots. I can well imagine it went something like:
    “Jim, Our folk are restless. they have nothing, and a good riot on Saturday night would cap a week of boring TV.”
    “Bill, We don’t need that sort of thing around town. Here’s what we’ll do: You put a lid on those homies, and we will go back to our offices and not care about all the drugs and the graft and the crooked shit you are all up to. Try to keep the gang killings within the normal number -say about ten a week.”
    “Oh, like your aren’t up to your necks in crooked shit?”
    “Beside the point. We have those rich families out in the burbs to keep quiet.”
    “Sounds like a deal…”
    If that seems like buying calm, it was. It is also calm to be sitting on a keg of gunpowder when the lit fuse is still six feet long.

    1. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Tennessee have the kind of governor who’d send in the National Guard, in force, to settle down such disturbances? One who’d call on Trump for assistance if he thought it neccesary?
      –

  4. The left are well on their way to perfecting the boiling of the frog masses.
    At least they were, but for some reason possibly connected with their refusal to accept reality they seem to believe that now they can crank the heat up to full boil.
    Thing is, you do that too soon and the frogs jump out of the pot, and some of these frogs have very sharp teeth.
    In any case, take in ever increasing numbers of indigent homeless, drive your tax base away, and one day you wake up to find you have an unsustainable mess on your hands. And most times there isn’t a pandemic around to weasel a massive infusion of Federal funding to bail you out.
    On a personal note, you have a strong background in assuming a defensive posture so draw from that and make damn sure you and yours are as protected as humanly possible from the crapstorm surrounding you. Denver will not evaporate, won’t even all burn down, probably. It will just get increasingly difficult to live what we’ve come to expect is a normal American life.
    You can do two years, you’ve done it before in less that accommodating circumstances. Just be very very careful and limit exposure to the brown shirts. Sit quietly behind closed curtains and watch. The night of the long knives will come for them. Ain’t it a bitch how history keeps repeating itself with minor variations?
    And by the way, write you silly Portagee. Last thing I scrubbed of yours was Deep Pink, and that some time ago.

        2. I feel for you so much on the stress. I was going to work on a SS this morning (It’s going to be epic!) But I foolishly clicked on news sites instead. Even being Instapundit, Ace and Powerline didn’t help and I fell into complete funk. I can’t do anything when I’m like that.

        3. Stress tends to make the brain lock up, yes. Best I can manage ATM is keep writing down plotbunnies for the Ancient Mage Spirit idea and work on editing the Worldbuilding draft.

          That and try not to watch too much TV news. Not good for the blood pressure!

        6. Just yesterday, I listened to Mikhala (sp?) Peterson — the daughter of public intellectual Jordan Peterson — in her August 2nd interview on YouTube with The Sun (London – the 20ish conservative interviewer has avoided Uni). From childhood Mikhala suffered from crippling autoimmune disease requiring replacement joints, and even bi-polar depression in her late teens. She explains how elimination dieting in her 20s reversed this madness (well, not the surgery). Amazing. I’m sure you’ve heard everything, Sarah. But I’ve never heard why this might work and lead to success before. Perhaps others will find it of interest? Apparently, Mikhala has posted up her own “Lion Diet” video with further details….

          1. I am on an extremely restricted diet (though not as much as hers) to keep the auto immune somewhat down. BUT the altitude seems to play a role in it.
            In retrospect it’s been winding up the 30 years we lived here. I thought it was just “age and stress.” (Stress does make it worse.)
            Turns out when I spend time low altitude not in professional events or stressed by international travel, I get much much better.
            So–
            Yeah. it’s time.

            1. Come to Texas then – alas, the summers are brutally hot, and there is no snow on mountaintops (Sob – which I miss from Utah!) and no mountains at all … but the Hill Country is lovely. Sort of like Provence, what with the wine, lavender, olive-oil and goat cheese on offer.
              You and Dan can set up a family compound in some small Hill Country town and relax.

  5. I moved from California back home to Ohio recently. I didn’t do it for political reasons, but family reasons. If my family had been living in California, I would have had to move to there, rather than from there. (So my condolences to people whose roots are in occupied territory.)

    I’m relieved to be home. Moving out of a plainly collapsing society lifts a weight that it’s impossible to describe. However, I’m also aware that this island of normal beautiful America could easily be destroyed if the left keeps getting its way. They’ve somehow taken over the entire western world, and they’re destroying it – grinding it down into serfdom: a fake imitation of what it used to be at its most public facing and glittery, and a desperate dystopia in which it’s impossible to really live off the main streets.

    1. Almost all family that I have left and all of my husband’s family is in northern California. We want to move closer to them all, but we are not moving back to California…even though we were both raised there. I’d give my eyeteeth to be able to live in the San Diego area again. But I won’t. Not while my beloved California is turning into a hell hole.

      1. When we left Oregon two and a half years ago to move to Kentucky, it was partly to be closer to my two older daughters, but a major reason was because Oregon has gone so left-wing. One law was passing after another that was really bad, including some that scared me for my severely handicapped daughter. We gave up a lot when we moved, but it was worth it. Now we just have to keep Kentucky from going left any farther.

  6. My daughter sees the same thing when she goes out to Pasadena to help my sister and brother in law with Mom. Homeless encampments, everywhere. My sister hates to drive more than ten or fifteen minutes away from home, she is that nervous about it all.
    Drive out the working-class, the skilled, talented, useful, tax-paying citizens – the Curley effect written large, in order to consolidate your own political ascendency. Never mind that what you have secured is increasingly poor, troubled, dangerous. You’ve got yours.

    1. Are these people being driven TO anywhere in particular? If normal America could concentrate anywhere, we could perhaps fight off the left on a local level. That never seems to happen though. That was the dream about NH back in the day, but the left looks like they just keep multiplying, and we keep dying off.

          1. They’re going to have to really outdo themselves this time, and I really get the feeling that Trump is waiting for them.

            If he is, the next couple of years are going to be interesting. As we’ve seen, the Left tends to eat its own. I wonder how many lower level fraudsters will turn in their higher ups….

    2. Pasadena – and the cities east of Downtown LA in general – is better off than much of the rest of the County. I suspect that at least some of it is tied to the fact that Pasadena gets a ridiculous amount of money from tourism, both on New Years Day, and with the college football games in the Rose Bowl. It’s very much in the city’s best interests to keep the homeless in check if they want to keep the money flowing in.

      As for the politicians in the area – too many of them have embraced Satan’s line in ‘Paradise Lost’ – “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.”

  7. If you look at his tweets over the last day Trump is obviously making a play for California.

    A few months ago I wondered if CA might be in play. Seems that GEOTUS agrees.

    1. the kid who ran as a Dem last presidential election for state representative (and won) is running again for re-election as a Republican this election. He was a business oriented (family owns gas stations) and locality specific sort of “conservative” democrat, and actually has saved me money with a couple of his bills, that too many of his fellow Dems had not wanted to support. Seems he found a fiscally conservative Dem has no place in State politics any longer. I gotta give it to him, he has done more good than the Republican he replaced, so I will not be too unhappy to fill his oval on the ballot.

    2. Unfortunately in CA, the vote fraud seems to be permanent. They’ve legalized vote harvesting and imported enough illegal aliens who they force voter registrations on, many of whom don’t even understand it’s illegal. The leftists have pulled so many tricks (party-free primaries, motor voter, refusal to purge election rolls) that it’s like welfare. If you’re willing to cheat, it’s easy. If you try to follow the laws, it’s almost impossible. So Trump may indeed capture CA’s electoral votes, but CA will remain blue. In many places, and not just big margin dem precincts, the vote is only between 2 dems. Republicans don’t even bother to run in many districts. We need real conservatives to kill motor voter and other fraud-enabling methods.

      I’m sorry the West Coast is closed to you as far as sea-level places go, but I can’t recommend it.

      1. I’m sorry the West Coast is closed to you as far as sea-level places go, but I can’t recommend it.

        What kind of nutjob would want to move to a place where they don’t get snow?

        California’s insanity was predestined by its climate.

        1. When my father moved us here, he said he could get whatever climate he wanted by driving 60 miles. We have a quad-furcated weather report here: beaches, inland valleys, mountains, and deserts.

          San Diego is the last big coastal city that hasn’t fallen to death and destruction yet, but I fear it’s coming soon. The leading candidate for school board boasts of her biggest accomplishment being removing Trump’s letter accompanying federal food distribution because, among other sensible things, it said, “Consider wearing a mask when appropriate.” CONSIDER got her in high dudgeon! CONSIDER! What kind of evil killer would only say CONSIDER? Fortunately she saved the poor from this terrible, deadly missive. Now Governor Nuisance tells us to whip our mask off and on between bites at a restaurant. Lyft and Uber crafted a bill to exempt themselves from the vile AB-5 that our local representative forced on the state. Unfortunately other free-lancers will still have to deal with it. The main local issue for Mayor (aside from the candidates lying about each other) is who can ban AirBnB most effectively. Wouldn’t want those rich La Jollans to annoy their neighbors by renting out their vacation homes to raucous partiers. I wonder how much Mittens’ beach house with the garage elevator goes for while he’s in DC and Salt Lake City?

            1. We’d certainly be glad to have you and Dan here. I drove through a local intersection last year on my way to work that said it all. On one corner was a billboard advertising Marijuana, and across from it was one for diet pills proclaiming, “You’re a big loser!” Should have pulled over to take a picture, but the bike lane got in the way.

            2. I love the north half of San Diego. The south half (various city designations, but all the same metro) is more like Mexico del Norte.

                1. Last time we were in San Diego was ’93. Flew to Disney World with 4 year old. Took rental vehicle to San Diego to meet up with SIL & her two kids for Shamu, Zoo, & Wild Animal Park. Hubby was born & raised in San Diego area (Lemon Grove). We’d been down 4 times before ’93, between ’78 and ’86; haven’t been back since. Hubby does not want to go back, ever. I’m not one to be able to judge. The area intimidated me in ’78; let alone ’80, ’83, ’86, and ’93.

                2. It’s a big place. I was last there in … about 2006? and before that in 1982 (that was when I toured the southern half). It’s a long haul from north L.A. county so wasn’t on my regular route. Hadn’t changed as much as L.A., but maybe because at one time it was more of a military town, and doesn’t have so many fluffy industries.

                  Myself, tho, much as I liked L.A. (at least as it was, not as it is), I’m glad to be back in the Northern Wastes. Came over the Montana state border and got that whole-body frisson that told me it was *right*.

                3. Visited SD in ’86 mostly to see an old buddy who’d just gotten out of the Marines. While there, I did a bit of job hunting. The *best* job I found would have paid me enough, barely, to rent a couch in my buddy’s spare room.

              2. Well, National City and Chula Vista (south San Diego) are still heavily poorer and hispanic, but east of that is more classic suburban, and the former 2 are not exactly ghettos. Downtown is gentrified, and immediately north of that (Hillcrest) is LG city with businesses featuring rainbow billboards. Ocean Beach is a haven for old hippies, Pacific Beach is full of bars and tattoo parlors catering to the college crowd. North of I-8 is yuppies in condos. North and East of that is alternating suburbs and businesses (many biotech, software, or defense-oriented). Housing is, of course, ridiculously expensive but not to the absurd levels of Silicon Valley and SF. People who aren’t rich and want a reasonably-sized house move east and way north, sometimes to a ridiculous extent.

          2. Large parts of Orange County are still conservative, and it’s got beachfront access. There are still enough conservatives that the fact that the Dems were able to sweep the Orange County congressional districts was one of the things that brought vote harvesting to the public’s attention.

        3. When you’re four feet deep in snow on New Years Day, and you turn your television to watch the Rose Parade in Pasadena, on a day in which it has been statistically proven that the sky is clear far more often than it should be…

          1. My mom got to go to the Rose Parade this year. She’s grateful that it happened, because all of her other planned trips (including Canada and Oberammagau) got canceled.

            1. I’m glad she got to go. Watching it on TV, you wouldn’t think that attending in person is anything special. And yet, it is a lot of fun.

              1. It was absolutely marvelous, watching it in person, when we were kids. My grandmother lived on South Lotus Avenue in Pasadena (about a block south of Colorado and slightly east of Rosemead) and an easy walk to the last third of the parade route. We would stay with Granny Jessie for the week after Christmas, and she would take us up to see the parade, carrying some folding stools.
                It was all fantastically exciting – even if some of the marching bands were getting a little ragged after five miles or so. (Really, some of the women marching band members had to march in high heels!) Sometimes some of the vehicles and floats had to be towed at that point, and one year (I think Bob Hope was the grand marshal that year) his car broke down, and a couple of husky male volunteers pushed his sedan all the way through the rest of the parade.
                The floats were amazing to see, close up, the bands were almost always still energetic, and the horse companies were also amazing.
                Granny Jessie had been going to the parade for about forty years by that point – she knew exactly the time to start out from her house to get to the best point on the route to secure a front-of-the crowd place to see it all.
                It was always a mild day in Pasadena – sometimes there would be snow on Mt. Wilson, but it would all be very pleasant at mid-day. And we knew, walking home from seeing the parade, that the year was done and dusted, and the holidays were most definitely over.

        4. At one point, I lived in a house in Massachusetts with a 152 foot long driveway. Snowblowers weren’t an option at that point.

          I don’t even want to see snow on television.

      3. The fact that Republicans will sometimes not even run in some districts, or give half-hearted attempts to win governorships in some years and in some States, is one of the things that drives me nuts about the Republican Party, and perhaps politics in general.

        Granted, I understand the reasoning — that resources are limited, and thus need to be focused on the races that are the most threatened — and it can be difficult to collect resources when you have to convince potential donors that you can win — however, when you have districts and races that aren’t seriously challenged, the voters don’t get exposed to the ideas of the opposition, and thus get used to the idea that there’s no real opposition.

        It can be frustrating to see a Governor that should be challenged (eg in New York), yet see the Republican challenger doing so little to challenge the Governor — and it’s not clear whether this is because the candidate isn’t pushing hard enough, or if it’s because the Republican donors aren’t willing to push against the current Governor ….

        1. It’s because they have written New York statewide offices off due to the ability of New York City and other areas with a strong government employee union presence to basically create enough fraudulent votes to determine the outcome of any statewide election. The public employee unions have immense power in New York, to the point of browbeating the State to approve New York City spending for public employees that blatantly violates state law.

          1. I don’t recall if I mentioned this in this thread or a different one, but one of the ways the Republicans flipped Texas was to fund, essentially, budget training campaigns.

            Basically they’d find someone to run in blue districts that weren’t likely to flip, and run a low cost campaign mainly as a way to keep their hand in, and keep developing talent, without breaking anyone’s bank.

            It ultimately meant that when the Democrats managed to alienate large chunks of the state, the GOP had people there who were able to go hard for it when they needed them.

          1. This is why, in my opinion, Trump got elected. We wanted and needed a fighter, and he is a fighter. So sick and tired of ‘go along to get along.’

          1. Amusingly enough, there are occasional instances in which it’s two Republicans running in a Democratic district because there were too many Democratic candidates, and the votes got split in too many directions.

            But yes, the jungle primary is a lot of nonsense. Open primaries, jungle primaries, and “ranked voting” are all abominations.

            1. The closest I’d consider is “every candidate who gets over X% of the vote” if you want to narrow the field. The law was passed after that recall election with some crazy number of gubernatorial candidates, so it was fresh in people’s minds. Drop everyone below a certain threshold, fine. Limit it to two contenders and you end up with an AWFUL restriction.

      4. If Trump is making a play for California, maybe he has enough evidence in hand to put the cat among the pigeons there.

        Wouldn’t THAT be fun to watch!

        1. It’s just a tweet. Doesn’t cost Trump any money but if it gets Democrats to spend time and resources in California, those resources can’t be used in other states which are more contested.

          1. Money’s being spent, because pro-Trump ads are airing. I don’t know how many (I don’t watch TV myself). But they do exist.

      5. I don’t know about the vote fraud being permanent. You see, the fraud is perpetrated by a very few people, and the effect they have changes over time as those people or their attitudes change. So it works best only when you’ve got a lock on certain populations. Once that lock is insecure, then things could get nonlinear in a hurry.

        Doesn’t mean they will and it doesn’t mean that the results will be better. I just think that things could change in a hurry.

        1. That’s why they need a constant infusion of new illegal aliens that they can keep in a bubble and exploit.

          1. And the more ‘old’ illegal aliens that start to turn against them, the more ‘new’ illegal aliens they need to outnumber them.

    3. I must admit that cities were a necessary evil for me. I had to live in one to to my job, but when that went away in the Dot-com implosion, we had no qualms about moving to rural Oregon. The necessary occasional trips to various larger cities for services and/or supplies is the price we’re willing to pay. I’d rather wake up to owls and get chewed out by an eagle than to a siren and yelled at by yet another pissed-off commuter.

      I don’t want to get into details, but I saw a conservative candidate who hit the top in a three-way race get frozen out to the Dem in the runoff. A big part of the problem was Mafia influence in San Jose at that time, [See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose_crime_family ] but now that area is much more diverse with Mexican and Asian gangs instead. Sigh. The bigger donors were told “don’t support or lose any chance of doing business in the area”. The “or worse” was implied…

      I think a good part of the problem in blue cities is the integration of corruption; gangs and politicians supporting each other, corrupt activists, a legal system turned on its head, and a media perfectly fine with it. This makes it hard to clean up; get one pocket clean, and the bad actors will dirty it up quickly. I think several areas would have to be tackled at once to break the web. If (huge “if”) the integration can be undone, defeating the corruption in detail would be viable.

    4. As I mentioned in an earlier thread, I overheard the tail end of a Trump TV ad while on my lunch break last week here in LA County. I don’t know how serious of a play he’s making for my home state. But he’s not completely ignoring it.

      There are hints here that not all is well for the Dems here in Blue Central. But that’s all that they are so far – hints. And there aren’t yet enough of them to determine whether the Left should start shoring itself up here.

      1. Trump understands that demoralized conservatives forgot:

        If you take the fight to the enemy you can save your own ground from being a battlefield.

          1. In all fairness, the Democrats are just taking the names off of the lists of people who have already voted via mail in ballots.

          2. Well, the dead do vote Democrat, why not write letters against enemies of the Democrats? 😉

  8. Moved back to Michigan, but it is pretty much the same kind of mess as when I left. Hometown has changed a bit, but not much, and it isn’t hammered in as often as I live down the road an hour or so.

  9. “How do we fight back” will be the question to answer. There must come a time when the Normals first, decide to not relinquish any more territory, then, second, begin taking back what’s been lost.

    It begins with saying “No” to everything not fully supported by rational thought and behavior, then backing up the “No” with action, including the application of lethal force if necessary; one cannot win anything if one is dead or incapacitated, so if one is to Stand One’s Ground, Then Advance, one must protect oneself.

    We have about 15,000 years of data on what works well and what doesn’t work well in human societies on this planet; not everyone interprets those data the same way, but some of it is, or should be, obvious upon thoughtful and honest examination, “honest” being the most difficult part.

    What we’re doing with America, however, has never been tried before on the planet: Vouchsafing societal authority in the individual in a large and complex society. It’s become obvious not all individuals are up to the task, which is the current problem: the Left has self-decided they are The Ones who should have that authority and applied the concept to Us.

    Against which it’s long past we took a stand and referred strongly to the original concept; it’s not a sin to disagree with that concept, but under the Original Agreement, it is a sin to use illegitimate means to enforce changes based on that disagreement, and almost nothing employed by the Left over the last six or eight decades has been even slightly legitimate.

    Transitions, of any kind, are frequently quite complex, often very difficult, and almost always fraught with conflict. Such will be our transition, either back to a rational society, or to another Leftist disaster: Retreat or advance. Pick one and act accordingly.

  10. Sarah:

    Could you give a link to the “blue cities” Ace of Spades HQ blog post?

    Thanks!

    1. No. It was some months back. Someone else might have it. The site is notoriously hard to search.
      I’ll be honest, I was angry and let it go. But people keep saying “California” (Or Colorado) “deserves it. Just leave.” And that not…. that simple.

        1. In Oregon, for many years, the ‘pubs were The Loyal Opposition, but that started to change with the advent of the Tea Party. One county commissioner recall attempt failed, but within two election cycles (2 year split for the three people in there) all of the GOPe were gone. OTOH, after full terms, there was more turnover. One ran for and won a state senate seat, one had legal issues and was curbstomped at the primary, and the third just was defeated. (Local businessman, no issues that I heard of.) On the gripping hand, the current group is fairly good, with another businessman (he had a bit of a tractor dealership chain going until it became too much and he sold out) doing great work at public service, and the others medium good. No scandals, (reported *or* rumored) and the original group of GOPe people crashed and burned at comeback attempts.

          Despicable Kate Brown helped get a Dem majority in the state legislature, *but* with Republican solidarity, they can deny a quorum and have used it to thwart many (most?) of the more egregious bills. OTOH, DKB is willing to use executive orders; she’s a minor league Whitless in that respect, but she’s ticking people off enough that I wonder/hope about getting a Rep majority in one of the legislature bodies. It’s been a while since Oregon had a Republican governor (and a long time since we had a useful R party), but it’s getting interesting.

          Not much luck with state-wide offices. We had a R Sec-State, but he died in office and the RINO that replaced him carefully undid all his reforms. Arggh.

          1. I’m in Christine Drazan’s district – she is attempting to do good things, but my personal opinion is that she needs more brimstone.

            Was down in Gervais looking at house to buy – loads of signs for the new R challenger Anna Kasachev. Look at her site – loads to approve of there.

            I have hope for the R challenger for SECSTATE – seems like a good gal for the job. Really hoping that Skarlatos kicks DeFazio out and boots him again on the way down.

            I don’t know if you have seen the Northwest Observer online, but they are doing a marvelous series on comparing candidates for office, and also digging into the ballot measures.

            There are days I’m hopeful about what’s coming, and other days that I am not. And some of those not days are bad

            1. Mom has stated she’s voting straight republican ticket. Have to keep talking her off the cliff. She’ll be 86 less that two weeks after the election.

              1. Frankly, despite being a registered non-affiliated, I am likely to run a straight ticket as well. Seems like a good idea, However, other good ideas also involve assasination, car bombings, etc., so if you need some salt, here’s a barrel.

                1. This is the first time I’ve lost sleep worrying about an election. I just am tremendously thrilled by dueling articles “proving” that [Biden|Trump] will win in a landslide.

                  2. Consider that I’ve seriously considered moving out for a month or so around election, to protect husband and son, should I be on a list, and you have a measure of my fears.
                    (I haven’t done it, because they won’t LET me.)

                2. The only point in going out on a window ledge is to see if you can land on some Woke and break some necks.

                  Otherwise, lurking in alleyways with a lead pipe looks more productive.

            2. We’ve had an R congressman for years (Greg Walden, GOPe, though he’s done some good. It was time for him to retire, especially after he endorsed a GOPe candidate who had been recalled from the county commission. That guy ended up losing the R primary, and switched to D at the general. The curbstomping was epic.)

              NW Observer doesn’t have anything on races in our area, but the proposition info is useful. Partisan races run heavily R, with the commies, libertarians and Democrats running in the distance. So far, no changes.

              I just downloaded the voter pamphlet (we haven’t been mailed one since we went to a mail drop). I don’t see any of the propositions that I’d want to vote for. Legalize public campaign funding, complete with freedom of speech restrictions? Nope. Last I looked cigarettes had immense taxes, I’ll pass, and the drugs legalization measures don’t seem attractive. Mushrooms? WTF?) Yes, please increase my auto insurance rates! Said nobody, ever.

          2. Have a couple of Uncles that wanted to get involve. One has ran for state congress. Failed. The other discussed going for state senate. But ultimately didn’t. Because of back ground issues* & family. Not only did he do his time & parole. He got a full pardon from the governor (republican) at age 30 to gain back all his rights. He is a major business owner in Oregon.

            * I don’t know the particulars, not even after 50 years. We (kids) were told that we weren’t to get in a car with the uncle, not even if grandma was with him. That he was in trouble with the police. I know enough to know what it didn’t involve. Know that when his step-daughter showed signs of going down the same bad path … Hard for her mother to argue when his comment was “Been There. Did the Time. Not. My. Daughter.”

      2. While I love Ace of Spades, “just leave” is not a helpful thing to say, and while I can’t remember a specific instance of it being said, a good many of the denizens do take that attitude and aren’t shy about expressing it.

  12. Something that occurred to me in a discussion with someone else, for anyone who is convinced or has high fear about the left winning this fight:

    If your prediction requires exceptional or even moderate competence from the left to execute, then the theory is wrong.

    It doesn’t matter how plausible it is, or how much it follows historical patterns, or (for those of the persuasion) how well it fits with your martyr fantasies. It’s just wrong.

    2. I KNOW they’re not competent. BUT they’re competent enough to destroy. Just not to hold.
      I don’t have martyr fantasies. I have deja poo fears. “Not this crap AGAIN.”

  14. Two main issues I see:
    1. People flee areas that got infected with blue nonsense, only to bring their politics and voting habits with them. It’s as if they had no real idea why they had to leave in the first place.

    2. Everyone takes our prosperity for granted, thinking it a birthright rather than something we’ve had to fight for and work hard to establish and pass on. And naiveté coupled with arrogance can easily destroy such prosperity. The bad thing is most won’t know it until it’s too late to reverse course.

    1. 1- Not people like us. Sure, I’d take my politics with me, but that’s different.
      2 – true. Part of this is Marxist education. They promote the idea that wealth is just there, and all it needs to do is be distributed. I’m convinced for all his faults Obama truly believed this. He thought by impoverishing the US he was making other countries richer. Maybe G-d of His mercy forgive the bastard. I won’t.

      1. Not people like us? I don’t know. When I moved back to Texas, I wondered about my driver’s license. Everywhere else I’d lived, when you go in to get your driver’s license they handed it to you on the way out the door. In Texas, they promised to mail it in four to six weeks, and I couldn’t help thinking at the time that it should be more like Ohio or Iowa.

        Now, I’m not so sure. Is having to wait a month for your physical license to arrive in the mail the cost of not having a state income tax? Does it perhaps have some other tradeoff that I would accept, if only I recognized it? Maybe I was, in fact, being like a blue locust, if only in a small way, when I complained about the way that particular thing was done here.

        1. “Now, I’m not so sure. Is having to wait a month for your physical license to arrive in the mail the cost of not having a state income tax? ”

          No income tax in Florida, and I get my license printed up at the DMV. ‘course it costs me a frippin’ fortune, as I’m a trucker ($225 last time, not a typo)

          1. And a friend of mine just bought one and a half acres on the Withlacoochee River for a cool $100K. There’s still bargains to be had down here.

        2. Indiana mails your credential to you, although you get a temporary paper credential while you wait. This apparently has to do with anti-counterfeiting measures in DL’s and state ID’s that make the machine far too large and complicated (and expensive) to be put in every BMV location.

          1. Oregon mails your official license too. Your old license is returned, & you get a temporary paper version. Together, they are your official documents until your new one arrives. Been this way since the implementation of the “official id” for federal state identification. Even though Oregon Driver’s licenses didn’t qualify, until recently (if issued more recently or pay to get update before “due”).

          2. Illinois used to print them at every DMV location as you waited but when they finally started complying with REAL ID in the last few years that changed and they went to central printing and mailing them out. I suspect you are correct about the new machinery.

        3. That’s where transparency is involved– given it’s Texas? I’d guess a desire to avoid IDs being printed and handed out for cash is the reason, not a voting stance. I know there was a small scandal in the last couple of five years where that happened.

          2. I worked for a school photography company for several years, and we had to stop handing out IDs immediately because of this at a few schools. They’d go to the administration, who would remove any duplicates (and presumably deal with the students involved.)

          3. I don’t know. My point is that most people, including huns, have an affinity for “the way I’m used to.”

            It’s not nearly so bad now that the temporary licenses, printed on paper, now include a photo so that they can work as a temporary ID, too.

  15. I have ideas, but most of them aren’t legal, or even moral.

    I admit my views ATM are colored by the family mess I’m dealing with, where two of us siblings are simply trying to get the estate through probate and divided up equally according to the law, and the other two are either doing nothing except providing evasive answers to any questions, or actively getting another lawyer mixed into what should have been a simple “get this legally done so the place is actually owned by someone and can be sold”.

    You can probably guess from that our individual party preferences.

    1. That’s historically inaccurate, that is. The Horse Tribes of the central plains did not develop until the 1600’s — because there were no horses. It took about a hundred years for enough horses to escape from the Europeans to form viable breeding herds and then be re-domesticated by the locals. Long after Columbus’s time.

      1. So … the Horse Tribes were cultural appropriators. And the Europeans who moved in were undocumented immigrants.

        1. syphilis took a considerable chunk of Europe. I’m not sure about tobacco. I don’t think people lived long enough to develop lung cancer, and without tat, Tobacco is actually prophylactic against things like pneumonia…. (not for me. Apparently only pipe tobacco processed as the Elizabethans did it. But you know…)

          1. The ‘Tobacco is the root of all evil’ industry is WAAAAY overdue for a serious investigation/audit. I’m not saying tobacco isn’t mostly a vice, but the anti-tobacco Crusade has been in full derangement mode for at least three decades.

  17. How did we defeat the Klan, back when it had a stranglehold on the South?

    I think part of it was we exposed them as ridiculous. But there were also federal mandates.

    I suspect there is also ground to be gained by lawsuits against the local governments that cause that sort of downtown disaster area by selectively unenforcing laws. Possibly for depriving of right under official color?

    We need to start putting together ideas, and trying them in as many small trials as we can. I recall one of the techniques that the GOP used to flip Texas was to start supporting limited campaigns: basically budget campaigns for office by people who had not held office, even against entrenched incumbents, so that they could both always have someone on the ballot, and gain useful experience campaigning without breaking the bank.

    I think we’d also have to pull together a sort of mutual legal defense team to handle the things the left will invariably throw at us, support challenges to suspect elections, and shield people from the liberal lawfare brigade.

    I know I’d certain pay for that, even though I’m not likely to ever get enough attention to get targetted in it, just knowing that someone knowledgeable had my back would be an immense relief.

    Thoughts?

    1. We have the beginnings on this in The Sand Lawyer, now defending Kyle.

      When they have wrapped up their own case I wouldn’t be shocked if the McCloskeys join the fight.

      2. We’ve also got the HSLDA, the Home School Legal Defense Association, which could help — they’ve been fighting legal battles like this for several decades now. At least they could advise and assist, maybe.

    3. I suspect that World War 2 had a large role in bringing about the end of the Klan. Fighting side by side with people of different ethnicities will tend to cause people to lose their racist attitudes. And while some ethnicities weren’t integrated (ex. – black units and the Nissei unit), others were (Chinese were fully integrated). And sometimes the lack of integration could be helpful in making a good impression. If you were in a unit in Europe that was supported by the excellent 761st Tank Destroyer Battalion (“Black Panthers”; this was the inspiration for the names of both the black power organization, and the super hero), you’d probably remember that a bunch of black guys had covered your back in combat. And that would make you less receptive to the arguments of groups like the KKK.

      Truman’s actions to undo the damage that Wilson had done, and fully integrate the armed forces, no doubt also helped move things along.

      1. Actually, almost all the black units, such as 761st Tanks (Patton’s Panthers), had white officers and noncoms…. who got a lot of flak for defending their troops. I believe the Nisei units were the same.

        1. I suspect the same – and that after having gone overseas and fought effectively as Americans – black and other ethnic troops were a lot less willing to be treated as second-class and less-able citizens.

  18. But leaving behind every place we love, which the locusts took by hook or crook (and mostly by crook) is a lot like selling grandma down to Rio. It kills grandma, and it doesn’t leave us feeling very good either.

    As long as I have been an adult, the non-left in the US has done nothing but retreat. In the end, that simple fact, more than anything, got Trump the nomination and, much to my surprise, the Presidency.

    But very little of the rest of the non-left has learned from that. The default is too often “retreat; this isn’t the place to make a stand.” As you are pointing out, do that enough, and you have no place left to make a stand. I think we are there or, at best, we are in the last place to make a stand.

    What is to be done? Fight. Fight by any and every method available. Twice now, in a month, the left has demonstrated they are ready to go to openly murdering their opponents with no push back. Yeah, the first shooter is dead and the second under arrest, but they’ll sacrifice useful idiots. The push back has to hit them in mass.

    But the right isn’t willing to say ‘boo’ much less than use the Chicago way against people using it on us.

    What can you do? Pick your line, knowing you will stand it alone, without an ally or even the possibility of imperishable fame. Pick your line, knowing you will die at it with even half of your family and friends not grieving because you didn’t surrender, the political right’s equivalent of “did you see what she was wearing.”

    Pick your line and die when they cross it, taking at least one of them with you. You will die. You will be forgotten. But, maybe, just maybe, for those who do survive, your death will be part of a real-world I Fought, We Won Battle.

    3. The Right backs off because the cost in acting is so high and that the Left very OFTEN, WANTS the violence. In Denver the Guy in the Black Guns Matter shirt was desperately TRYING to get attacked. We all know what would have happened if he had been. Each person has to decide when he HAS to act. When he does, he will be ALONE. Groups getting together to act will be infiltrated or betrayed and will accomplish nothing but give HEADLINES to the Democrats. In a city you will have little chance of organizing, HOW do you pick people that you can TRUST.

      That is the Great Problem, how do you fight people that have nothing to lose, when YOU have everything to lose and the City, State, and maybe the Feds will be against YOU. WAITING for you or someone like YOU to DO something that they can blow up, spread across the country and drum up support for the Progressives.
      YES, a stand must be made but it cannot be made by groups that are going to do anything except Politics.
      When you have been pushed too far, when what you HAVE is no longer as important, when you HOPE to come HOME, BUT KNOW that is not likely, THEN you have to be COLD and RATIONAL – PLAN, EXECUTE, STFU and repeat if you are able.

      Just like the people that wanted to smack down the Guy in Denver with the Black Guns Matter shirt, it would have felt so good but the COST would have been far too high and done the cause too much damage.

      The call to action is Great but the questions of WHAT, HOW, WHEN, and COST are not answered. We have lived very very well, at peace, with few if any real threats, YES we are soft and we will have to be FORCED into action by things that we cannot know. EXCEPT we KNOW if the Democrats win this election, those THINGS WILL HAPPEN!!!

      Remember, IF it starts it will be UGLY beyond belief, NO ONE will come out CLEAN and NO ONE can know WHAT will come out the other end. Americans have never KNOWN this level of UGLY, the mountains of bodies that are almost certain, the destruction and waste that are certain. PRAY, PRAY that this cup will pass us by, for IF it comes to US, we will have to drink it to the dregs as our world dies, so that OUR IDEALS can live.

      1. Just like the people that wanted to smack down the Guy in Denver with the Black Guns Matter shirt, it would have felt so good but the COST would have been far too high and done the cause too much damage

        Adulting sucks. /wry

        1. I’m not sure it is adulting.

          Failing to punish misbehaving children even as they escalate is not the (in)action of an adult.

          The problem is there are too few adults and we’ve escalated so far we’re well beyond a tantrum.

          1. Responsible adults realize they cannot punish other people’s children for most misbehavior.

            No matter how much the psychotic little brats need it, and even knowing that when we do have a right to react, AND the manipulative ferals haven’t got it set up so that doing so, it’s going to have to be much harder on both of us than if the people responsible would just do their job.

            I’ve been watching this with the mentally ill in Washington for my whole life. Yeah, it sucks.

            1. Most of these other people’s children are legally adults and a significant subset have proven they are dangerous and do not see people like us as human.

              Twice in as many months a leftist has shot a conservative dead on camera. And no, the security guard bit in Denver isn’t cutting it. At best he got the job as cover for being able to shoot conservatives.

              Those parents need to get their children under control or get ready to start burying them. A rabid animal is a rabid animal be it a stray dog or your kid and people will defend themselves.

              Better judged by 12 than carried by 6.

              1. A rabid animal is a rabid animal be it a stray dog or your kid and people will defend themselves.

                Which is very relevant when you’re in the place of that kid in Kenosha, not so much when you’re looking at Portland from miles, counties and states away.

                It’s freaking obvious that a decent number of the progressives are not just wanting, urging and expecting violence, but are actively promoting it. The Washington state nutcase who shot a man in Portland is no more a shock than the Portland nutcase that got hit by a car when placing her body on the freeway in the middle of the night.

                We can prepare to deal with it– I don’t take my husband’s little car out shopping in a city, and we completely avoided Chicago for non-traffic reasons, and we paid MUCH closer attention to gun laws than would usually be the case– but we can’t go and stop it from happening at all. There are folks who have the authority to step in before it gets to a level I am able to stick my nose in, and we can work to punish those who abandon their responsibility, but that’s much longer term and harder.

                Hey, until they draw blood– they’re not hurting anybody. *sad, angry, wry expression* Why are you so interested in sticking your nose into other folks’ business, just because they might do something you don’t like?

                1. Why am I in their business? Because they are foaming at the mouth. A shopping district I use, I bought my starter pack of disc when I took up disc golf back in April, was burned and looted by these fools.

                  And you do not wait for the rabid dog to bite, much less draw blood. The foaming at the mouth is enough.

                  He’ll, both of the murders were them going to other people’s rallies to kill. At this point being in an Antifa FB group is enough to classify you as an immentent threat if I see you.

                  1. Because they are foaming at the mouth.

                    They think, and say, stupid stuff? Things with which you disagree, and in fact believe are so wrong they should not be allowed?

                    A shopping district I use, I bought my starter pack of disc when I took up disc golf back in April, was burned and looted by these fools.

                    These specific ones, or group members?
                    Because if it’s specific ones, you can go after them. Legally. Happening in Washington state, and enough other places that the idiots actually started asking folks to stop videoing themselves looting.

                    If it’s members of the group– then they didn’t do anything wrong. They’ve hurt nobody. No victim, no crime.
                    Even if they stood there giving shelter to those who were beating a guy into the hospital.

                    1. “Aiding and abetting” is a crime. Heck, standing by is a crime under certain statutes, although I think you’re not obliged to jump in and defend the kid on the ground. But providing cover? Oh, yes, that’s abetting.

                    2. Problem being proving that they knew the bad guy was going to do the crime, just for starters– which is probably why they picked “protests” and worked so hard to get people to sign up to hand out water bottles, which is a reasonable thing to do at a protest…not so much at a planned riot and looting exercise.

      2. Remember, IF it starts it will be UGLY beyond belief, NO ONE will come out CLEAN and NO ONE can know WHAT will come out the other end. Americans have never KNOWN this level of UGLY, the mountains of bodies that are almost certain, the destruction and waste that are certain.

        My second most common warning to people wanting a civil on various comment threads and Twitter is about this. The first is in response to people who think it’ll be a cake walk (on both the Left and the Right) is most wars are started by people who think they will be much easier to win than they turn out to be (see How to Stop a War for the extended case that this is the principle cause of war).

        Americans do not realize how abnormal our civil war was both in its struggle with little activity by partisans/guerrillas and gentlemanly behavior. Yes, gentlemanly, in comparison.

        Assuming we avoid the absolute worst outcome people get into, generational civil war (although lots of Irish in this country whose families supported people in the old country during the Troubles, so we’ve got the poison in some of us), most people have no idea that much of the death in a civil war is score settling. A US civil war would probably see score settling that would embarrass those who used the accusation of kulak to advance during the 20s and 30s in the USSR.

        Nearly everyone has a mental list and some people have physical ones. Some of us realize as soon as the balloon goes up is the best chance we’ll have and those people will seize it. Some may have partial plans to do so ready to go. As time passes, more and more will realize it.

        Every cop will have to wonder about every prison term someone he arrested served, especially if police pick a side. Even picking the side that will have a higher proportion of criminals, which it seems police departments are doing in large cities, will not protect them. That’s the obvious example.

        Everyone who has a list of people they are out to get on Twitter has a built in list. Given political fights are a big part of Twitter, they’ll even be able to self-justify acting on their list.

        Even some weirdo who writes down the license plate numbers of people who cut him off will have cover under a civil war scenario to get even.

        I am here warning people of how much passion and blood it will unleash. Yet I know if it happens and I live long enough to see how it goes that I will be surprised and sickened by the turns that passion and violence take.

        And I know it the end it will end with some kind of dictator, a Franco if we’re lucky. The international community has insured there will be no more Pinochet, tyrants who can be labelled ‘right wing’ who step down willingly. Given the result in the US will be some form of right wing, that Spanish judge made sure it’ll be a Franco. Spain got out of that relatively well because there was a Juan Carlos to step in as the King and side with the classical liberals over the army when the generals decided they didn’t want to liberalize post Franco.

        We have no Juan Carlos. We have no royalty to step in and be the figure guiding us back to freedom. I don’t know what will come after an American Franco if the Left gets the war they want. I doubt I would live to see it and for a variety of reasons don’t really care. The American Franco, even though if I live that long I will probably fight for him over a USSA the left will try to impose, will be a failure.

        1. “Americans do not realize how abnormal our civil war was both in its struggle with little activity by partisans/guerrillas and gentlemanly behavior. Yes, gentlemanly, in comparison.”

          Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was no gentleman by Southern standards, proposed opening the ACW with the exact “burn out the food supply” strategy later used by Sherman and Sheridan on the South to Lee. The result would have been a North too economically damaged to feed its’ armies. Reportedly Lee and Stuart were horrified by the notion.

          1. I knew someone would bring up Forrest.

            Imagine a civil war where Forrest is the norm, not the exception. Imagine one where Sherman’s March isn’t a late war strategy to end the last resistance of an already defeated enemy, which the South was by 1864, but the opening gun and praised instead of being horrifying.

            That is what most civil wars look like.

            1. THIS.
              And our only chance (and it’s not guaranteed) to avoid that at this time is a massive Trump victory. The commies and totalitarians and their street theater need to be slapped by the vote SO HARD that they taste next week’s dinner.
              Barring that…. may G-d have mercy on our souls.

      3. As for my line, I will not be Havel’s Greengrocer. When they come to burn the house because I don’t have my BLM sign, even though I rent (which is why I don’t have a Trump sign…I will not take positive action that will lead to the destruction of my landlord’s property) I will defend the premises.

    4. Mark Steyn observes:

      When Woke Puts You to Sleep
      [SNIP] … If you took [Kyle Clark, the news anchor of Channel Nine]’s advice to check out the lively Denver scene, I do hope you weren’t shot by Kyle Clark’s murderous colleague Matthew Dolloff. Mr Dolloff is a hardcore leftie #F*ckThePolice #F*ckTrumper, so naturally the NBC affiliate hired him as a “security guard”, gave him a gun, and took him to cover a “Patriot Rally”, where he shot and killed pro-Trump veteran Lee Keltner.

      In Colorado employment as a security guard is contingent upon a license. Mr Dolloff did not have one. So, even before he started shooting, the “guard” and 9News were in breach of state law. As the NBC station points out, however, the upside is that their producers and anchors did not actively participate in the killing:

      A private security guard, hired by 9NEWS, is being held as a suspect in the deadly shooting. A 9NEWS producer has been released after DPD said it was determined they were not involved in the incident.

      So we are not yet in homicidal weather-girl territory. But still: Mainstream media employees are now literally killing Trump supporters. 9News is pioneering the transition from boring old Eyewitness News to the livelier format of Perpetrator News.
      [SNIP]
      –

      1. Additionally, same source:

        … Speaking of cultural appropriation, are there any blacks in #BlackLivesMatter? Last night the Portland mob toppled statues of Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln and, very tellingly, smashed up the Oregon Historical Society – because, even more than the Khmer Rouge, they wish to live in a post-historical permanent hyper-present that’s less Year Zero than Day Zero.

        The previous night – Saturday – twenty-six “racial justice” crusaders were arrested by what remains of Portland “law” “enforcement”. Here they are:

        Not a lot of vibrant diversity, is there? The only even theoretical nod to our rich identity-politics mosaic is that it is no longer possible in most of these mug shots to detect which are cis and which are trans – or indeed, in at least ten of the twenty-six, which are male and which are female in any sense.
        –

      2. They are getting ready to air the pilot of the Mao Tse Tung Hour. I’m guessing it will get a 47 share and revive network television.

  19. Before the ammo box can be resorted to, the police have to be persuaded to apply equal treatment: If the marxists, fascists, ferals, looters, arsonists, murderers, rapists, and other common-law felon Dims aren’t to be arrested, resisted, shot, or otherwise pacified during their chimping, then the armed constitutional citizens must not be hindered by the blue line either.

    So, how _does_ one convince the police to stop covering for BLM and antiFA? Because I’m leaning towards Tom Kratman being right about how much the tree of liberty needs to be watered with the blood of commies.

    -Albert

    1. If you are at the point of the ammo box there are alternative methods of persuading the police to stop violating the Constitution.

      Highly unpleasant, and to be avoided if at all possible. But we are working from the premise of having reached the ammo box.

      1. Well, if the police aren’t arresting or, having arrested, the DA isn’t prosecuting, we’re already reached the ammo box. But Burn/Loot/Murder is pretty quick to mewl for police to protect _them_ when the tables turn.

        So how does one persuade the police that they want to be neutral, rather than get killed protecting people who set cop cars on fire with the cops inside? Such persuasion being necessary to keep local police from calling for county, state, and national escalation, one assumes.

        -Albert

        1. Lots of very clear speaking to them?

          There was the IIRC Marine who shamed the police in CA into standing down during the lockdown protests. We need a thousand more like him.

            1. Dunno about police pensions, but California’s state pension fund is about half invested in China — meaning largely in businesses that don’t actually exist. The boil-off, when it comes, is gonna be ugly.

              1. The businesses in China don’t exist, but the money is being spent on the Chinese military build-up.

                After all, how stupid do you have to be to invest in a company named Ali Baba? It’s like eating at a restaurant named Sal Monella’s.

                1. Alibaba is a ginormous swap meet, essentially eBay without the auction process. Which means even tho it exists, it could instantly evaporate without a trace. Not my idea of a sound investment.

                  And good point about where the money actually goes.

        2. Isn’t the Denver DA another one of the Soros crop?

          I’m thinking if they fail to prosecute, then it’s time to do a recall petition and get them replaced. That would probably tie in with getting a mutual legal defense fund going too, since we can assume the DA will throw every possible legal obstruction, or legal assault our path.

          Clear out the corrupt DA’s, Mayor’s and Governor’s, and the beat police will do their job. The average beat cop is there because they want law, order, and to make their town a better, safer place. I don’t think any of the signed up to spend their days in burning tent camps.

          2. The Democratic DA in LA County is running against a Soros carpet-bagger from San Francisco that was endorsed by the party.. If you know people in LA County, make sure that they know how important that race is.

            1. And they ran the Soros DA against her because the DA and her husband had the audacity to try to defend themselves from a leftist mob that was swarming their home and trying to break in.

              1. That particular incident actually came after the carpet bagger had already declared and gotten his backing, iirc.

          3. With the soros’ get, sooner or later it’s going to come down to Rule Three- Ought-Eight. Pour encourager les autres… Or as a friend of mine once commented – during a discussion on politics, “535?? That’s barely more than half a case…

        3. By killing them for protecting people who set police cars on fire.

          When they draw on me for defending myself from the left they allowed to run rampant they pick a side. They can live with the consequences of that choice.

    2. You don’t.

      When I say I expect to be dead holding my line next year I place equal odds on it being done by leftists and it being done by police who have agreed to only enforce the law against non-leftists.

      Had police not struck that deal there would be no need to individuals to stand and die fighting the left as they break the law.

      The police will not save us from the left. The military will not either. Individuals from both might, although after what the FBI has done I expect few if any cops to.

      But the institutions have been surrendered to the left. When the last good cop or soldier is gone Antifa will be given the resulting skin suit and demand the power and deference the prior institution recieved.

      They may get it long enough to make eventually losing irrelevant.

  20. I lived in Denver (Actually Aurora) Colorado Springs, now in Northern California. My Son and Grandchildren are here, I’m screwed.

  21. Yeah, health problems hindering relocation is part of why I’m still here, but another part is estimating that it would be about as safe a place as can be found. Maybe I have another place to go (probably not), but it is an area where the industries not only do not match my skills, but probably do not match my aptitudes either. The other area where my blood is buried is as bad as where I am now.

    Part of why I’ve been pointing out the limits of knowing where impossibility of happier domestic paths are concerned, is that my current investments are pointless on the unhappy paths; I should be working on other tasks if the unhappy paths are certain.

    a) I have very little to live for. Working towards answers to unhappy foreign policy paths is about all that can excite my interest. b) I’m in a delicate place where my business is concerned, and mindset is pretty critical. The work probably will not survive a shift from focusing on enemies foreign to enemies domestic, for all that the two appear to be deeply mingled. Failing the work would make me sad. I’m both insecure about my mental health, and deeply driven to address the problems as best as I can. Death does not frighten me. Profoundly failing my responsibility to my mental health does. All men die, death can be delayed, but not avoided. But a man /can/ work every day to be as sane as they are capable of. c) False negatives, and false positives. False negative, the death squads get to me before I can prevent them, which is a wash because of how little I have invested in life. False positive, and in my madness I give the left ammunition to make things harder for conservatives. What matters is that conservatives beat the communists; me living to see it does not matter. And better to be murdered than accept, in my heart of hearts, victories by enemies domestic or foreign. d) we Americans also need to fight enemies foreign. It is rational for me to deliberately ignore the active fight domestic, and do what little I can for preparing battle space for a hypothetical active foreign fight.

    I deeply regret the probability that I will let the other individuals down when it comes to an active fight domestic.

    Caede eos. Caedete eos.

    Cartago delenda est.

    2. The whole investment thing is why I have trouble sitting down to write. If your expectation is to be dead in a year and you figure writing will take five to pay off, aren’t you better off doing things “for the last time” instead of learning a new skill.

      I guess every word I write is an expression of hope that the violence will not spread on a linear or stepper path without society in some way saying “no more” and making it stick.

      2. Two things.

        One, the live you live now is preparation for the next life. You can probably take your writing skills with you. I think how much you improve them in life may be more important than how much you worried about stuff that is outside your control.

        ‘Trust in The Lord’ is easy to say, and harder to do.

        Secondly, American history is literally filled with society in some way saying “no more” and making it stick. The law men of the west, waging decisive warfare against the Indians, bombing Japan till surrender, even the time the effing KKK burned down a town because of a corrupt revenuer (in bed with the alcohol traffickers) who murdered one of those old law men, all of these and more. Our historical levels of relative extreme peace are not because Americans are innately peaceful; it is because we are terrifying, /and/ can tell how dangerous it is to push each other.

        We are impatient now, because we can calculate that the smaller hammer is not quite doing the job, or because we are foresightful, or in my case because I am insane and always want to use larger hammers. But the other Americans need experience to learn from the burned hand, and switch to the the heavier hammer. That is not solely that they are inherently weak and soft; we forget how much the indians and Japanese had to do to persuade the smaller hammer Americans of the day. Once persuaded, they will not immediately be unpersuaded.

        The mill of American peace changes slowly, because the milling of justice must be slow, but Americans will not forever tolerate any thing but finely ground.

        I know not what will come, but an American feedback response will be nonlinear.

        1. I’m very aware of preparation for the next life. I always thought of it as “working on my virtue or at least being a little less sinful.” But if G-d gave me the need and the will to write and keeps pushing me, maybe He has plans eternal in that direction?
          You might be right, Bob. Damn it, stop making sense.

          1. Basically, ask Dan, supposing that Erdos is in heaven, what is he doing? Has God shared with him the book of the most excellent proofs, or is the process so important to Erdos that he is still showing up to mathematicians to collaborate?

            In eternity does the Erdos number of every other saved mathematician approach unity?

            This is related to the ‘Dogs in heaven’ problem.

            I am far from a rigorous theologian.

            God may intend some or all of us to use our skills in eternity, and the time pressure of mortality may be important for improving those skills.

            When we can’t control or change what we worry over, and could instead improve our skills, perhaps worrying is slothful.

            1. I suspect that it’s not so much our current skills, as the next step beyond our current skills. If you have a resurrected body with improvements and eternal life, and a new and improved heavens and earth, obviously your brain can do a bit more. And if everyone is networked through the Body of Christ…..

  22. The days when an industry could give not a single damn about pleasing its customers are ended. For some it ends slowly, for others it crashes precipitously. Hollywood has always been subject to extravagance and that tends to end badly.
    –

        1. The lockdown, though,really stomped on Hollywood, and publishing, and …. schools. Everything the left controls.
          As I said, they can’t win. Unfortunately we CAN lose.

  23. Advance and retreat are maneuvers, and you do them when terrain is favorable, and your forces are up to it.

    Left has deliberately worked to close off all paths to retreat, to take the fight to everyone, and to pervade the whole of society.

    Retreating invites destruction in detail.

    On death ground, fight.

    Doomer theory is that we are surrounded and outnumbered; Traditional American culture says “when do we attack?” It is also more effective to assault into an ambush.

    The Democrat election effort is either going to be a historic disaster for them, or if the doomers are correct, it is some sort of masterplan that will mousetrap us.

    If the doomers are wrong, we have no need to escalate to attack. If they are correct, it will go most badly for the Democrats if we are waiting for them.

    Democrats are probably wildly overconfident, if they mean the election as the start of the boog a) it will be obvious b) a plan for a counter ambush is to, as an individual (the only possibility for security) have a plan ready to go, and then 1) if it isn’t the boog, quietly stand down 2) go ahead if it is the boog. If other individuals aren’t reading the entrails and the figurative terrain to come to similar conclusions, fighting would be futile anyway. Taking fighting as not futile is a bet, or faith, in those others anyway.

    Democrats have at every point of violence this cycle been really freaking obvious. Unless they’ve had a force quietly prepared somewhere, say, moonlighting cartel hit teams, their escalation in killings is not going to be quiet disappearances of key conservatives.

    Anyway, during the Obama administration I was holding on with my fingernails to enough sanity not to cross the line into suicidal depression. I’m much happier these days, and am not as eager to die for a good cause. I’m going to take heart in the uncertainty before battle is joined.

        1. I have to admit, due to family mess, I hadn’t been in reliable touch with reality since April 2019. I’ve actually been recovering the past month or so. Just in time for the whole “vote for us or we’ll burn more cities down” mess.

          …I want a word with the Author, this plotline is too implausible….

              1. I have no doubt that Hollywood will some day sooner than later make a Godzilla remake where Godzilla is the result of global warming rather than nuclear radiation….because.

      2. The thing that may not be obvious if you look at my extreme conclusions in isolation is that I reach them by being pulled in different directions.

        There are certain mental terrains that I have surveyed fairly well. That my global conclusions are not yours does not mean that I have nothing to offer about local slope, etc. I may be aware of pitfalls in areas that truly sane people would not be looking.

    2. “On death ground, fight”

      There is that.

      I expect that if the hard left wins, I’ll be among the hunted, and looked to see where I could send those under my charge that would be safer in such an event. I realized, there is nowhere that is not, and will not be worse, even under antifa.

      And thing is, I really don’t want this fight; I’d rather be figuring out the best setups for my VR flight sim rig or working out how to build a sofa out of 2 by 4’s or baking bread, but I don’t think I’m going to get that choice. I doubt I could bend the right knee even if I tried.

  24. Thank you for posting this.

    Also, I have faith that things will work out on your end. If you feel that you need to leave, but need two years to do so, then I’m confident that you’ll get the time that you need.

    1. I feel I need to leave for my health.
      Well, the events that conspired to make it so we can’t leave right now are so absurd that’s thumbs on the scale from one side or the other. We’ll see which.

  25. I am not usually reading this in the middle of the day, since I am still healthy enough and keep employed at 82. Although I am an economist by training, I am now in IT. I hear you about Colorado, since I got my Master’s at Colorado State and once thought I was going to get a position there. But it was not to be. I tried to go back to Idaho where the family was, I found that when you go back, the world you knew when growing up had changed. The farm I grew up on is now a gravel pit and the family was not very accepting to my second wife. Now after my grandfather and great grandfather came there 100 years ago, my brother is still there and some cousins, but has not been in contact since my father died. In a one hundred years, the area went from frontier, to a thriving farming community and then decline to large operations. As result the small towns died as well as the local school. A lot of those that stayed work in the casinos across the line in Nevada. And, then there is the migration of those escaping from California.

    But my family has been migrating since my ancestor came here as Hessian soldier during the revolutionary war, was fortunately captured at Trenton by Washington and eventually became an end indentured servant to family in in Pennsylvania. My ancestors followed the frontier, first to Ohio and then to Missouri then to Idaho. Along the way they married wives of different ethnicities, English, Irish etc., some newly arrived others that went back to the day. My mother’s family name, though derived from German, was changed as they shipwrecked and ended up in Ireland for several generations before coming to the U.S.

    My wife, like our esteemed hostess, knows what living in communist country is like since she is Albanian. But the point is, our ancestors managed to live though times of trouble and survived. Now we must do the same, for it is those who survive that write history. For some that will mean staying and fighting for other moving or even fleeing. And once you leave somewhere, you can never go home, for that is only a memory. We, like most other posters on this blog, are evaluating our options of where to go if things go bad. And we have our 600 tins of sardines, which is what Albanians survived on when food was short.

    Thanks for listening from a view from the Potomac.

  26. I’ve been to SF two times since the Shelter-In-Place has been ordered, the last time was on Friday. Deserted isn’t the best word for it. If you weren’t worried about the Crow Flu, you’d be able to film an “immediately after the end” movie in most parts of Downtown. Once you got rid of the homeless spilling out onto the streets. And, they are everywhere. You have to be in areas that are the major drags to not see them, and even then you get the feeling that they’re just…waiting somewhere.

    Streets have middle-of-the-weekday traffic that is more in line with an early Sunday morning a year ago. Previously, it would take about 90 minutes to get to SF-now, it’s 45-50 minutes, easy. Parking is easy as well. The housing market in SF is crashing-there are apartments of average and better quality offering no deposit and their cost has gone down by 25-50%. If anybody gets them, the landlords are going to be stuck with those rental costs because of rent control laws. But, a paying tenant now beats an empty unit that is only a cost.

    More stores boarded up. Several places, including stores that have been open for years have been cleaned out and the inventory gone. The signs on the doors and windows are already starting to get that look of something exposed for a while. Mask paranoia. One bookstore that I hit every time I’m there had at least one employee always checking to see if I had a mask on.

    I want to fight. I truly do. But, how do I fight?

    My parents believe that if Trump fills RBG’s seat, it’s one step on the road to “The Handmaid’s Tale.” (And, Jesus fucking wept, I have had that story ground in to my brain and just how racist it is, along with misandrist…) My friends share anti-Trump memes that are saying for all around “toe the line or we’ll de-friend you.” And, I’m a lonely enough SOB to be around as is. TV sucks, I can’t see paying for a movie right now, and books have been horrible (shall I post my rant on my last trip to B&N?).

    I love California. There are parts of it that I enjoy still. There are parts that can be better. But, I am getting that sharp, painful feeling in my life insurance that I should be moving. I don’t want to move to Texas, but that might be my only option at this point. And, I won’t need a welcome wagon, I will just vote for anyone that isn’t a Democrat.

    1. “My friends share anti-Trump memes that are saying for all around “toe the line or we’ll de-friend you.”

      Though it’s not pleasant, I appreciate when my “friends” self-select their toxic little arses right out of my “friend” pool. I do them a favor and initiate the de-friending, usually with a comment that I’m removing their toxicity from my life. Just did it with my DiL. I am not obligated to participate in someone’s neurotic little Junior Maoist Struggle Session.

      It doesn’t change opinions, and it most certainly doesn’t instigate any self-reflection on their part. But it does briefly trigger the Lefty fear-of-being-outgrouped, and that elicits satisfying results, however brief.

      Of course, the main benefit is removing nasty people from your life, even if it’s only “social” media.

      1. Two of my dearly beloved granddaughters have now unfriended me on FB because of our differing political beliefs. They are still very young — 20 and nearly 22 — and I hope and pray that as they get older and have more experience, they will also get wisdom. And I curse the public education system for failing them so badly. For failing all of our children.

        1. At least your grandkids have an excuse. My colleagues don’t. They just want to sound hip and be “smart” and after all, Orange man bad, and also a stupid evil genius.
          They don’t want electricity reduced to 2 hours a day, food rationing, expropriation of their property for the “unhoused.” They don’t want executions and the loss of the first ammendment. They don’t see that these people are COMMUNISTS. Or that they hate us. They think things will go on the same, but America will be more “caring” or something.
          This is not what they’ll get, though. What they’ll get is full on Venezuela, and holly hell, they should KNOW this. They’re my age and many older. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THEIR HEADS?

          1. 1-I’m amazed by just how much Donald Trump is living, rent-free, in their skulls.
            In the same breath, Trump is both so stupid that his toupee is doing all of his thinking for him and he is the most ingenious person in the world with plans so deep and sinister that we can barely track them.
            (And, of course, they know everything he’s doing…)
            2-Many of our “colleagues” grew up with the dream of the Perfect World. That one day, something would come along and everything would be perfect and wonderful and nobody would want for anything and even they could get laid without paying cash up front or lots of alcohol in the subject of their affections (or worse…).
            Socialism and it’s children of fascism and communism promised that Perfect World. A return to the Garden of Eden, of innocence, and none of the grubby little compromises we make every day to deal with other people. All you have to do is trust the Anointed Ones to run everything.
            All you have to do is obey.
            Or else.
            There’s a very technical term for this kind of arrangement-slavery. It just isn’t one of chains and manacles and the whip, but of thought and deed and the fear of the knock on the door at night. And, these people would demand that we enslave ourselves willingly-happily even!-as long as the Anointed Ones can make everything Perfect.
            (Just for the sake of completeness-I don’t think we’ll ever get to “perfect.” I think we can get to better, and we should keep trying to do better. Even if we fail and serve only as a bad example to others.)

              1. So where did W hide his? Because they said the same things about him. These people never change.

                    1. Never mind. You either csnnot or will not accept I was just making a joke about a bad hair piece by mashing two sci-fi tropes together.

            2. “In the same breath, Trump is both so stupid that his toupee is doing all of his thinking for him and he is the most ingenious person in the world with plans so deep and sinister that we can barely track them.”

              ———————

              In fairness, I used to hear the same thing about Obama. Though I suspect in his case, he himself was fairly disinterested, and his advisors were the ones with cunning plans. It would be ironic if it turned out that Obama’s narcissism and arrogance actually kept his advisors from doing as much damage as they could have.

                  1. He was all noise and blather, signifying nothing but what his audience wanted to hear. It didn’t hurt that the press was covering for him like a one-legged man at a sheetrock-hanging competition.

            3. Especially for you …

              Nancy Pelosi’s latest stunt proves she’s obsessed with President Trump
              When announcing her 25th Amendment ploy questioning the president’s fitness to serve, Nancy Pelosi last week bizarrely criticized President Trump’s “erotic” behavior.

              She was responding on ABC’s “The View” to a Trump tweet about the “stimulus” bill that flashed up on screen.

              “What do you think is causing this erratic behavior?” the House speaker was asked.

              “Well I think it’s true to form,” she said. “The president has always had erotic behavior.”

              Perhaps she meant to say “erratic,” but her Freudian slip begs the question: Is Nancy Pelosi secretly in love with the president?
              Enlarge Image
              Rep. Nancy PelosiPhoto by Nicholas Kamm / AFP

              She definitely is obsessed with him.

              Morning, noon and night, Trump is in her thoughts and on her lips. She brings him up spontaneously in interviews. She talks about his “manhood” and his “fitness” and once called him a “big Humma-Humma.” She quivers at the sound of his name. She frets about his health and claims constantly to “pray” for him. She has confessed he gives her sleepless nights.

              Whether or not heartsickness is Pelosi’s ailment, she always finds a way to talk about the younger man.

              [SNIP]

              But love and hate are closely intertwined in the human condition. Nothing makes a woman more spiteful than unrequited love.

              Pelosi and Trump’s volcanic feud has shades of Anne Shirley and her classmate Gilbert Blythe in “Anne of Green Gables.” Gilbert pulls Anne’s red braids and calls her “Carrots.” She smashes a writing slate over his head, and they don’t speak to each other for years. But secretly you know someone has a crush.

              Or perhaps Pelosi sees herself more as the Jane Austen character Elizabeth Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice,” detesting Mr. Darcy with every fiber of her being . . . until her dreams come true and she falls romantically into his arms.

              “From the very beginning . . . your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others . . . have built so immovable a dislike,” spits Ms. Bennet at the object of her passions. …
              –

              1. …thank you for that terrible, terrible image that is going through my head of Pelosi being erotically interested in Trump. I am now going to have to find some extremely good things to wash that image out of my head.

        2. I am so sorry, Kathleen – that’s just another bit of the awfulness in the cold civil war which has been going on for the last couple of years.
          My daughter was able to lead my 20ish nephew a little way out of the garden of lies, by making him watch the uncut video of the Covington Catholic kids being barracked by the Black Israelites … and getting him to acknowledge that yeah … maybe the initial news stories about it were fraudulent.
          Here’s hoping.

      2. I’m not defriending family, or (ex) co-workers, neighbors, or even long term friends. It is refreshing to know where they stand or where their head is. I don’t spend anytime arguing with them. My scroll by button works just fine. My hide works just fine. I might have reported a few posts. It isn’t like I’m outing myself with posts on FB. FB is for cute cat/kitten/dog pictures. Period. As it is, I rarely post to my page anyway. Otherwise I keep my post replies to private groups, like Sarah’s Diner.

        Not saying there isn’t a need to eliminate people from your headache. I just haven’t reached that point with anyone. Some have been “well yes … sigh”. Some have been “WTHH”?

        1. See above about scores and lists.

          I’m not on FB much, but it has its purposes.

          The friends ready to send me to the camps are good to know.

          1. The friends ready to send me to the camps are good to know.

            –
            Yep. Even if they are coming for you because you didn’t “Like” (at least) or “Hate” (depending on the topic) something they posted. OTOH, other than family (which I hope won’t come), neighbors & ex-co-workers don’t know … well, we didn’t show them around or talk about them before the canoe accident. They just know I don’t like boats. That I’m pretty sure chumming waters while you fish is illegal. (Plus it is horrible when the canoe tips over … but we don’t talk about that accident, remember.) They know we hunt with camera’s but they won’t be afraid of cameras.

  27. This election will be decided by fraud not votes.

    I have a pretty, sparkly, USA flag pin. Was going to wear it to a medical appointment but decided no, I didn’t want to make myself a target. Sad.

    Too bad “Cry the Beloved Country” has already been used as a book title.

    1. Exactly. There will be no election. Oh, there will be voting and lines and newsreports.

      And then Biden will win every state that wasn’t in the Confederacy. They’ll allow those (or even fraud them) Red to prove Trump is the candidate of the Klan.

      1. They can’t afford that to give up even the Southern states. That would suggest that there are people who disagree with their glorious plans for the future.

  28. The last time I visited Denver was in the seventies, hence I’ve delightful memories of the area.

    One such, Denver Museum of Art; John DeAndrea’s Linda, a slightly draped nude lying in repose atop a white block. A polyvinyl life casting plus oil paint plus natural hair. Art? Craft? DamnedifIknow, but striking, dramatic, magical? Yes!

    Two kids, 7 or 12, came running in to the hall laughing, playing, as kids that age will do. They saw Linda and immediately quieted down, tipped toed over and asked me, whispering; “Is she sleeping?”

    I took a photo of Linda at the time and have a 14 by 20 inch print hanging right above my computer. Ole Tom was right, can’t go home (or Denver) again, but at least I’ll always have Linda. 😉

  29. What to do?

    Well, manufactured crisis or no, we shouldn’t let the current one go to waste, as they say.

    As the Chinese Flu has shown us (and most of us on the Right have known for awhile), brick and mortar schools are no longer necessary. And since they are the source of our intellectual rot, schools should be the target. This is going to be the best opportunity in probably a generation to gain a foothold on the Left’s educational hegemony.

    Yes, I understand the roadblocks many parents face in trying to school their children at home, but we have to look at those as obstacles to overcome. The Covid “crisis” has accelerated the Work from Home trend from Impulse to about, oh, Warp 5. A lot of people figured out how to make that work, and it’s gonna be permanent for many. There’s no reason we can’t do the same for education.

    For too long, people have outsourced child rearing (which includes teaching them how to think) to schools and we ceded the Left that ground long ago. The cavalry isn’t waiting behind the hill, ready to drive the enemy off the field. Commercial Real Estate is probably going to implode, and imploding brick and mortar schools could easily follow suit.

    Is it ideal? No, but what other opportunity is there? Are there problems inherent with this? Sure, but what other opportunity is there?

    1. For too long, people have outsourced child rearing (which includes teaching them how to think) to schools and we ceded the Left that ground long ago.

      If you had to point to the single greatest victory the totalitarians ever won it would be in convincing / forcing with overwhelming force everyone that sending their kids to school to be raised by someone else was normal.

      1. The schools were NOT supposed to RAISE the children. They were supposed to just teach them. The Left took them over and changed to indoctrinating them and cutting out the Parents as much as possible. Most didn’t worry about that because they STILL thought that the schools were teaching. There are many getting a intense education in what their children were being taught and the cat is out of the bag. NO ONE believed that it was as BAD as people said but now the Parents have SEEN what is being taught. Many are NOT happy. Things will be changing. Changing to what will be decided by the election.

        2. Nor were the schools supposed to have their curriculae set by some distant entity; school bards were local AND set the agendas. Now the curriculum is set most state capitals by bureaucracies taking their marching orders from Washington.
          –

    2. I’m just spit-balling here but … If teachers’ unions are afraid to let their captives members return to classrooms:

      Funding students rather than institutions would be a school choice victory
      [SNIP] … While much of the education landscape is not a pretty picture, innovation is happening. Families are pooling resources together to form “pandemic pods” or “micro-schools” where parents help to supervise instruction and also may hire teachers or tutors to facilitate learning.

      Private schools have been nimble in responding to a changing environment, but many public schools have not. Students lack access to these new solutions. The difference is clear: One of these sectors gets your money regardless of how well it meets the needs of individual families. The other is hampered by government regulations, making it difficult even for the most well-intentioned school leaders to adapt.

      We need to change how North Carolina and other states finance schools. One step we can take is to allow families to take their children’s education dollars to wherever they wish to receive an education, whether it be a public school, private school, home school, or micro-school. Funding students directly through a statewide education savings account, or ESA, is the best way to make that happen.

      Funding students directly can also improve equity in education. Advantaged families already have school choice because they can afford to live in neighborhoods that are assigned to the best public schools or can readily pay for private school tuition. Funding students directly would empower more families to choose how and where their children are educated. North Carolina already has an ESA program that helps parents of students with special needs pay for their educational expenses. All families should have that kind of opportunity. …

      [SNIP]

      … Our current system of funding schools puts the needs of institutions before the needs of students. Those institutions haven’t been responsive to the changing needs of families. Funding students directly fixes that problem. ESAs rightfully elevate the educational needs of each child over the needs of a system. By linking funding to the child, parents are empowered to access the best educational option for their child while generating significant economic benefits and boosting positive social and civic outcomes. The needs of students should come before the desire to protect a monopoly.
      –

      1. “Yes Prime Minister” has an episode about it. It’s a “clash between the executive will and the administrative won’t,” with the administration winning.

  31. Sarah, I think what you missed is the Story.

    Americans are the Children of Those Who Left. Our Pilgrim Ancestors left. Scientists and myth tell us the Native Americans left. Every single person who came here left there, either by force or by choice, and often the line between wasn’t more than a hair.

    One of the defining Stories of America is that we didn’t force Them, whatever value of Them, to do things our way, we followed our God, our hopes, our dreams, or escaped one step ahead of the law or were kicked out by the law. We left.

    When we ran afoul of customs and beliefs of others who left we went West. We left again. (Ask our LDS friends: they were but one of many groups, but they’ve got their story clear.)

    We laud those who leave. We welcome those who leave over there today. If we had a frontier, we’d be leaving by droves right now.

    Our Story, our Myth, embraces leaving those who do not want us behind, forsaking family, friends, and homelands, for the sake of living by our beliefs. We Usaians are and have always been the people who left. We’re not a blood and soil people, as you’ve often pointed out, we’re a people joined by belief, and one of the big beliefs is that Those Who Leave are the Heros.

    Ask your husband, since I know he shares some of my ancestry, if he wasn’t taught at home, if not in school, that the Pilgrims were right to leave when persecuted for their beliefs, that they were right to take extraordinary risks rather than stay and fight.

    Usaians don’t identify with place very well, or we wouldn’t be Usaians. We identify with beliefs. As well you know. I think you missed the resonating power of this part of the myth, though, of being an American, of being the People Who Leave. Probably because you didn’t hear it at your mother’s knee. “Come out of her, my people . . . ” (Rev. 18:4)

    Is it a correct choice? Maybe not: it’s a choice to live in line with a myth, and I suspect it’s not even a conscious choice. Mostly when we live by myths we don’t think about it.

    We’ll hit “If they mean to have a war, let it begin here” in the end (and we may be there already). But first we leave, because that’s what the Story says we do. It’s always clearer when the switch flip happened in retrospect, after all.

    1. Our Story, our Myth, embraces leaving those who do not want us behind, forsaking family, friends, and homelands, for the sake of living by our beliefs. We Usaians are and have always been the people who left. We’re not a blood and soil people, as you’ve often pointed out, we’re a people joined by belief, and one of the big beliefs is that Those Who Leave are the Heros.

      It is appropriate that the individual most likely to crack the Hard Problems of practical space travel is Someone Who Left and came here.

    2. I think it also has to do with our belief in freedom of the individual. “You don’t want me here? Fine, I’m not staying – let’s part amicably.” (Instead of in a hail of gunfire.)

      The problem I see is, those who live in line with progressive views live with the inner story of, “We are the Special Ones who should be In Charge, and everyone else is there to do what we say.” If someone walks away from them, their entire inner story goes up in smoke. And they can’t have it. It drives them insane. That’s what we’ve been seeing since Trump was elected – people who thought they were comfortably in charge found out that someone actually could tell them no. And they went berserk.

      We’re stuck, on a large scale, in the situation of anyone trying to leave an abusive relationship. Abusers do not voluntarily let you leave.

      I wish I had a good solution. But given I’ve spent my entire life trying to pry my life out of the hands of one *unprintable* after another, “because they’re faaaaamily….”

      All I know it it’ll get uglier still.

            1. I read that as “hurricanes, allergies, men!” Nah, Dan is fine. However, allergies, back pain so I haven’t vacuumed in two weeks, stuff piled everywhere as I haven’t been able to work on the flooring. ARGH.

        1. Exactly. If Mars were a viable option right now, there’d be a stampede – and because of that, the would-be totalitarians here would have to loosen their grip, or lose all their tax base.

          I can’t remember exactly where I read it, but someone made a cogent argument that the closing of the American frontier was what led to our current overpowered federal government mess. So long as there was somewhere to move to get away from laws and regulations, there was a limit to how strict they could be, or fed-up people would up and leave. With the frontier closed, we’re stuck. People have poked at sea-steading, who knows if that’s going somewhere now, but it’s obviously not fast enough and takes a lot more initial investment then loading a prairie schooner and taking off.

          I want a stargate too. That’s exactly the reaction I had when I saw it open in the first movie the very first time – “I want to go!”

          1. I have to admit, setting up a Mars colony, or even an orbital colony would be epic. But I’m not sure the people I need to take care of would be keen on it. Still I’d expect there would be a lot of work dirt-side to support one, at least in the early years.

            Part of my lineage is sailors. People think they like to travel, but, in reality, they’re more like the turtle that wears it’s home on its back and brings it everywhere.

      4. “Abusers do not voluntarily let you leave.”

        That means you’re doing it wrong. The idea is to have the former abuser frantically trying to leave the country, to get away from you. ~:D

          1. Sometimes the goal is not worth the effort, and leaving yourself will do. It always has for me.

            But wouldn’t it be nice to see them all trying to swim to Cuba, to escape us? I’m just saying.

        2. Saw that happen once. The abused in question had friends the abuser did not realize. They gave her a place to go. He had overplayed his hand to the point that she could have got the law involved. The next time he saw her he ran. It was a very healing experience for her seeing his fear. And no, she was not in good shape and had a long term illness.

    3. I like what you said about Americans being The People Who Left, and there’s a lot of truth to that. My family ended up ‘leaving’ one place after another until we ended up in Alaska, and some of us are still in Alaska, though some have decided we are too old and have too many health problems to deal with the long winters anymore.

      But we can also be People of Our Land. I think that the reason so many Americans don’t feel all that attached to a particular place is that so many people move a lot. But if you stay put long enough, especially as a child, you do get attached. I’m attached to Alaska, and to the part of the Oregon Coast where my great-great grandparents homesteaded in the 1870’s, because we lived there through part of my childhood, as well as in Alaska. Kind of went back and forth every few years. It hurt when my parents (who were divorcing) sold our 160 acre homestead on a lake, and it ended up being divided into five-acre house lots (I hate seeing good farm land wasted by being built on, and yes, Alaska actually has at least as much good farm land as Iowa does). And I miss the green and wet of the Oregon Coast. I miss being able to go to the ocean whenever I want. There is still family there, too.

    4. Latter-day Saint theology has a lot to say about the United States and it’s destiny. But since theology is off limits here; I will simply state that we do not have rocket ships under all the temples and will not be fleeing the planet for the wilderness of outer space any time soon. This is, of course, a great disappointment to me personally.

  33. I’ve thought about sea-steading, seriously thought about it. It’s the massive investment required that stops me from actually doing it. I love the ocean, love fish, like ‘tiny houses’ and love boats, so I think it could be a good fit. But honestly, would the abusive ones leave the sea-steaders alone? Even the people who are already trying it get harrassed.

  34. “So, I don’t tell everyone behind the lines to “move already”. It’s not that simple.”

    Sure it is. You make a decision, you pack up your shit, and you leave. Simple. Maybe not easy.

    I got chased out of Canada by the assholes that run universities, had to go to the USA to get my degree. I got chased out of the USA by the INS, their incomparable incompetence gave me no alternative but to return to Canada to work.

    Living in town in Canada was made impossible by City Hall. I can’t do it. I’ve had guys calling the cops on me for erecting a snow fence on my own lawn, for legally building a shed on my own property, for FIXING MY CAR on my own driveway. I’m fixing my car and the city inspector arrives because of a complaint. True story.

    I can’t fight city hall. So I left and moved far enough away that land was cheap, and now I do not have the building inspector rolling up to deliver noise complaints about my lawnmower. Because no neighbors.

    Moving from NY to AZ likewise was a no-brainer. I didn’t like leaving NY, because I had friends and contacts there. But leaving NY meant that I could have a car, a house, a job, and generally go along like a normal human being instead of dealing with the -amazing- bullshit being served up in NY to men in the medical fields. Loaded up the rental truck and burned rubber for AZ before the ink was dry on my diploma. Best thing I ever did.

  35. “what’s to be done?”

    Nobody discusses that in public. We aren’t as naive as our forefathers were 8 score years ago, but we have the advantage of hindsight.

    We will really never see “America” again as imagined, the twisted, evil, seeds planted in the last 100 years have bloomed into something truly terrible. A true restoration would require more sacrifice than any large, capable group of sane people would want to pay.

    “It was an interesting, but doomed experiment…”

  36. Do what you can, where you can, when you can.

    Never give up, never surrender.

    For me? My strength comes not from man at all, as the song goes.

    We will win; I owe it to all that is right, just and good to be part of that winning, not part of what must be overcome to get there, or a bystander.

  37. The Anti-Zombie Defamation league will be filing a Civil Rights complaint soon:

    How to Secure Your Vote and Minimize the Impact of Zombie Voters
    By Sarah Hoyt
    I didn’t mean to fall off the edge of the world, but in my personal life, September started weird and continued strange, and so far October has continued the wild ride. Which pretty much defines 2020, right?

    And speaking of 2020, and it being an election year, I’ve been feeling a bit hopeless about November.

    Sure, I think we, the non-Marxists, have a good chance at winning by a historic margin. However, allowing mail-in ballots to trickle in means a win by almost any margin is meaningless.

    Heck, they’ve told us what they intend to do in no uncertain terms by proclaiming the “red mirage” theory: at first, it will look like Trump won in a landslide, and then as votes trickle in, it will be obvious that Biden won.

    People are amused with this theory because they think this means the Democrats consider their own followers too incompetent to vote properly and on time.

    I’m going to assume these people aren’t from Colorado and never took a close look at Boulder, where voting irregularities proliferate.

    So, we get to 2020 and we have the Democrats – after instigating, with the help of their pet media, lockdowns that destroyed the economy – running their spokes-zombie Biden as a stalking horse for the unhinged left of the party who are not ashamed to call themselves communists.

    And they’re not even campaigning, not really, nor are they bothering to publish even halfway credible polls. What they’re doing instead is planning what they’ll do once they fraud themselves in: open the borders, finance Iran’s terrorists, become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the PRC, all the while making sure what we can never again vote ourselves in—by any means necessary.

    If that future appeals to you, carry on. This post is not for you. …
    –

  38. “I know I’m leaving behind not the Denver I loved, but a grotesque, hideous corpse that is losing all the things and destroying all the places I love.”

    I gather many (former) “partners” of Meth-heads understand this feeling quite well.
    –

  39. Well, there’s Kim Klacik in Maryland, challenging Kweisi Mfume for what had been Elijah Cummings’ Maryland seat.

    And Maxine Waters is getting a challenge this election, from a man who says twenty-two terms of Mad Maxine is enough.

    Campaigns so crazy they just might win?
    –

    1. Well heck! This was posted as a a response to Alpheus at 1:39 pm [https://accordingtohoyt.com/2020/10/12/say-goodbye-to-hollywood/#comment-709022]

      “The fact that Republicans will sometimes not even run in some districts, or give half-hearted attempts to win governorships in some years and in some States, is one of the things that drives me nuts …”

      WPDE.
      –

  40. What can be done? Watch your local government like a hawk, and pay attention to new political groups that appear. “Indivisible [yourcity]” appeared a few years ago. If you look at the group’s national home page, and the donors, you’ll see some familiar names. Beware of bond issues and resolutions. Beware of attempts to change terms and [if your state has them] open-meeting rules and requirements. Start small, dig under, dig around. Watch your representative carefully, vote well [but not often]. That’s where I’d start.

    Be not afraid. In the end we win, they lose.

    1. Always read the ballot question carefully. the salaud’s have copped on that people tend to vote no on their initiatives so they’re turning the wording around so you have to vote yes to defeat them or at least that’s what they’re doing in NJ

  41. I was born in Denver and my maternal grandparents lived there until 2010. I have fond memories of visiting them in the summer. I loved to go to Belleview Park, the zoo, and to hike up to Devil’s Head where there were always lots of ladybugs. I’m sorry that you’ve lost a place you loved.

  42. Always remind the lefties that if they deny us the ballot box, we can still use the cartridge box. It seems like the left is all fired up to start the 2nd American Civil War. So be it.

    1. Remember, if the cartridge box opens up, the nature of supply chains means that, for a large number of people, the food box (among others) will be empty. Quick and painless it will not be.

      1. The food box will be empty anyway, as the government spends all the money on weapons and death squads federal agents to keep us in line. WHY does the BATF have armored vehicles and helicopters, again?

        1. Because the failed state to our south has entire army units freelancing with the cartels, or giving/selling them their weapons, and we’re some 30, 40 years into a significant portion of the political class not wanting to try to keep them on THAT side of the border.

Comments are closed.