NONE of This Is New

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

For what it’s worth. It’s worth remembering, even if just to pity the present maleducated generation. Not that this means we should be more lenient, but you know…. Also, we should have seen this coming, as technology is making the “elites” of the past obsolete. Just one of those times of change, you know?
Hold on to the sides of the boat. The water is getting very rough.

“A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. ” ( George Orwell The Prevention of Literature, 1946)

“The really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits ‘atrocities’ but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it claims to control the past as well as the future.” George Orwell (“As I Please,” column in Tribune, 4 February 1944).

“A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark-” Robert A. Heinlein

319 thoughts on “NONE of This Is New”

        1. TBH I sometimes think that one of the things that should be brought back is some kind of rite of adulthood. SOMETHING that can show that you can take responsibilities and be trusted to handle them.

          This used to be a very basic ‘knows how to do household things,’ but that’s no longer expected of people now. It’s… kind of no surprise that we have a generation screaming to be taken care of endlessly, and be supplied with endless treats and pleasures like spoiled children. And heaven forbid that you dare have expectations of someone else. e_e

          I guess they’ll find out the hard way, right?

            2. Worse: they’ve converted rite-of-passage into right-of-passage. They’ve eliminated all competitors except school graduations … and those are largely so dumbed down that mere attendance (and not even 80%) will get you a ceremony whether or not you can read your diploma (of course, odds are good there will be at least three spelling/grammar errors in the document.)

              Used to be guys could experience rites-of-passage in the Boy Scouts but that organization’s been buggered all to hell. Girls have (in the lower classes) at least some semblance of a rite-of-passage although I’m not sure “your first pregnancy and AFDC check” really conveys much sense of achievement.
              –

              1. Thanks for correcting my typo. I do know the difference between ‘rite’ and ‘right’ but was thinking slowly. 😉

                1. Nobody with typing as execrable as I has any right to call others to account for typing flaws. HOWEVER, when I can get a jest or a point made well out of it I deem it permissible to take the opportunity. I am glad you took it as the friendly gesture intended.
                  –

          2. This used to be a very basic ‘knows how to do household things,’ but that’s no longer expected of people now

            Having run a submissive oriented kink event for 3 years plus 4 more on the staff one thing I noticed is a good half of our classes are home-ec at the heart.

            Same is true of submissive specific classes at all the kink events I have attended.

            Now, some are advanced home-ec such as butler books, running a formal dinner, and so on (these are people for whom Downtown Abbey is porn), but a lot are basics such as ironing, menu planning, basic cooking skills, and so on.

            Which means we have people looking to be “traditional housewives” in terms of relationship roles who never learned the most basic version of those skills.

            1. for whom Downtown Abbey is porn

              It isn’t?

              Oh, you don’t mean for the costuming. Never mind. 😉

                1. Having taken a tour of the “downstairs” at the Newport mansions the actuality of 19th/ early 20th century service was darned grim. 14-16 hour days, awful accommodations, observation by you senior members that could get you tossed on the spot, massive cattiness amongst the various classes of servant (Downton Abbey/ Upstairs Downstairs seems to have gotten that right). A Chcun son Gout but dang some peoples tastes make no sense to me…

              1. When I first got into the kink scene, I thought D/s would skew older while the younger people would be more about the raw S&M and sex.

                I was almost completely backwards. Strong interest in D/s, and formalized relationship roles in general, skews younger. Sport f***ing aspects skew older.

                The later I figured out pretty quickly, a mix of “spice things up” and “I’m on the downside of youth, so wild sex is something new to offer new partners”, but the former puzzled me.

                The conclusion I came to is, much like the home-ec they were never taught, the kids grew up with “men and women are so equal they are interchangeable and everyone does everything equally in relationships” so they have no model. I don’t mean they have bad models of how being romantic partners work, they have none. Just a “people do it and figure it out”, so they wind up experimenting with strongly defined roles: Dominant/submissive, Master/slave, Owner/property, Daddy/girl, Daddy/boy, Captain/First Mate, etc.

                I do think it is the home-ec becomes amazing when run through kink as much as having more formalized roles move it from “drudgery women had to fight to escape” to “valuable part of a strong partnership”.

              2. None kink wise there are is at least one butler book on Amazon:

                There used to be a service online magazine which might be worth looking at, but I don’t remember the name and it was on Yahoo. I have feelers out.

                If you want to share an email, I can get you some handout.

          3. Excellent point! The military was one passage for many of my peers, my own was 6 months on a schooner in the South Pacific, including a knockdown and dismasting. My daughter’s was being a kayak guide in Alaska. Whatever it takes, but I think we need something to mark the transition from child to full adult. There can be many steps or stages here as well, first BB gun, first bike, drivers license etc.

  3. Or Kipling:

    Whatsoever, for any cause,
    Seeketh to take or give
    Power above or beyond the Laws,
    Suffer it not to live!
    Holy State or Holy King–
    Or Holy People’s Will–
    Have no truck with the senseless thing.
    Order the guns and kill!
    Saying –after–me:–

    Once there was The People–Terror gave it birth;
    Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth
    Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, 0 ye slain!
    Once there was The People–it shall never be again!

    -Macdonough’s Song

    1. Also see Kipling’s story “As Easy As ABC” — to which “Macdonough’s Song” is really an embellishment — which is, best as I can tell allowing for differences of time and culture and setting, etc., basically 19th-century libertarian SF.

      No, really. And yes, by Rudyard Kipling.

  4. Hold on to the sides of the boat. The water is getting very rough.
    Having done some whitewater rafting in my youth, I was taught that if you held onto the sides of the raft, you would be tossed out. There may be a lesson here about attaching yourself to something that may shift at any time, vs. staying flexible.

    1. IIRC the safest place on a raft was straddling the tube and paddling as long as you had a strong set of paddlers. Sitting in the center was just asking to get tossed out.

      1. Raft vs Canoe…. Canoe – hold the gunwales (sides) and sit your butt on the bottom of the canoe if you are the middle (non-paddler) in a canoe. Butt on the bottom and paddle in hands if your are paddling the canoe.

  5. The left today has a much higher percentage of the people with a deeply felt need to be accepted and to fit in (and also those who want power and status). An unfortunate side effect of the current internet based culture is that when they’re trying to fit into *twitter* you get enormous social pressure and waves of idiotic fads rolling over them. I think there’s a real reason that our side has more “odds” and people who can’t or won’t fit. We’re all self-selected.

    1. *waggles hand*
      To want to be accepted, and to have a place where you fit, is human.

      The Procrustean route to the same, rather than trying to organically form a place and mold a means of acceptance, is very much the Proggy thing.

      Part of why I adore Log Horizon’s William’s Gamer Speech so much. (warning, the dub is horrible, at least to my ears)

      It touches on why Gamers game– it’s making your own place.
      Even if it’s all pixels and electronic words.

        1. Yeah. I’ve been slowly figuring out how to play Elite Dangerous, finally, mostly because I want to be able to launch off into the black and leave civilization behind.

          I may depend on them to exist, but I really don’t want to be around them very much.

          Honestly, I think part of what’s been eating America is that we have no frontiers. We need somewhere to set off to with dreams of a homestead of our own, or we begin to eat ourselves like crabs in a bucket.

          1. Oh my gosh have you HEARD THE IT’S NOT DATA BECAUSE THAT’S COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT VOICE MOD?!?!?

            Voice. Activated. Spaceship. With educational asides.

            1. Oh dear. Do they actually offer it as a child’s speech and diction correction toy?

              On a side thread, is it just me, or do a lot of women seem to crush on Data? I’ve noticed that with Athos from the musketeers as well.

              I gather they also have a GladOS one. I would not want that as a child’s speech and diction correction toy.

              1. From context, I think that is supposed to be an elaborate joke about machines-that-talk.

                **********

                You left Spock off your crush-list.

                Not just women, but girls, too– both control, and honesty, are sexy as heck. Especially when you know it’s real honesty, not “I am going to try to hurt you, and then say I was just being brutally honest. Oh, and if you say something that upsets me, I am totally whining.”

                People are scary. The other sex is even scarier, because they’re wired even more differently. The appeal of someone that you know is going to give and take honesty? Whoof. Huge.

                1. So, if you are familiar with Keith Laumer’s Bolo series, do the Bolos also fall into that category as well?

                  I’m testing the predictive power of the mental map I’m building.

                  2. If you’re attempting to ask if the sentient machine is sexy, as a person familiar with the series, I’d say no. Their officers, it depends on which ones. 🙂 Some are a bit too broken to be anything but scary, while others fall into the tragically burdened by command responsibilities, but still basically honest and doing their jobs as best they can, which is character I can really appreciate. It gets a bit mixed up because of how many non-Laumer authors have played with the story. Some I really like, others not.

                    1. And my memory of the series was hazy. The ones I remembered were the ones who, upon discovering they had orders to guard an area that they would never likely hear back from anyone else on, set up what was essentially an astronomy club.

                      What I was trying to figure out was if they also needed to be humanoid, or if it was the absolute honesty and non-volatility that was the essential part. What I had not realized what that there were dishonest ones in the series, so it wasn’t within the type set.

                  1. What Abrams movies?

                    (Nope, not going to accept movies that pay less attention to the thing they’re supposedly set in than the X-Men/TNG crossover novel I read as a kid!)

                    1. Ah yes, the one that pointed out the striking resemblance between Jean-Luc Picard and Charles Xavier … years before Patrick Stewart was cast in X-Men.

                    2. The one that pointed out the remarkable resemblance between Jean-Luc Picard and Charles Xavier years before Patrick Stewart was cast in X-Men? 😀

                    3. I believe so, yes, I mostly remember swooning over the tiny bit of character space Nightcrawler got.
                      I’ve got the book around here, somewhere, I need to find it again…. (one of the few that escaped the “helpful” yard sale while I was deployed)

                  2. That said, the kid they got to play Spock left me cold. Not sure if it was the actor or how they had him act, I got an overwhelming impression of “teen boy in a snit,” not “aloof and strictly controlled.”

                    1. My impression was that Jar Jar Abrams wrote the script and directed the actors based on the Futurama versions of the characters, plus his usual schtick of remaking better movies and adding daddy issues. From interviews, Zachary Quinto seems like a decent guy; he’s a bit like some of the SW prequel and Doctor Who actors who were/are so excited to be in their favorite childhood tv show that they don’t push back against stupid scripts and bad direction.

                    3. remaking better movies and adding daddy issues

                      ….I am almost worried to ask where you got that one from, because it fits the observed facts PERFECTLY and I never considered it.

                    4. A mutual acquaintance from a “rebounding” website. And yeah, it’s so true:
                      Star Trek (2009) = Star Trek: First Contact
                      Star Trek Into Darkness = Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn
                      Star Wars: The Force Awakens = Star Wars (1977)
                      Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker = Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
                      Alias = La Femme Nikita

                      I don’t remember the other parallels that were pointed out.

                    5. That’s it exactly. Given my disgust with how Lost ended, I should just avoid anything by Abrams in the future.

              2. The first fan activity around Star Trek were focused on Mr. Spock. They didn’t become general Trek clubs until later.

                Nimoy was flabbergasted at the mail he got, and the Spock thing got big enough that the network executives took notice… after a previous set of executives had ordered Roddenberry to tone it down, to the point of airbrushing the points off Spock’s ears on promotional material.

                “…it seems to me some fine things
                have been laid upon your table
                but you only want the ones
                that you can’t have…”

              3. They were surprised at how much people liked Illya from Man From UNCLE. He’s not listed, or only “Also starring” in the opening season because they hadn’t even intended to put in every episode at first.

            2. Yeah the PC guys get all the fun. There are far fewer voice sets on XBox (and no voice control, although I don’t really want to shout at my machine like a character in some Anime). Although I do have Norman Lovett (Holly’s voice for much of Red Dwarf) for one of my large cargo ships which just happens to be painted red…I would love to have Danny John-Jules (Cat). The voice to really have though would have been Majel Barrett but she was gone 6 years before Elite Dangerous shipped 😦 .

              1. It gets crazier. On PC, I can do it in VR.

                I’m still trying to figure out how to proper lot set up a couple of browser windows I can run while in-game though :/ That game needs a lot of database searches…

                1. VR would be nice although current Xbox doesn’t have horsepower or hardware to support it. PS4 has the hardware and a little more oomph but Frontier (Elite Dangerous developer/publisher) hasn’t supported it as its a really small market. Next Gen consoles may be different, certainly they match a fairly high end current PC in performance. If you’re on Facebook consider joining the Elite Dangerous group, bunches of PC folks there using a variety of VR hardware and lots of solutions for the kinds of thing you want to do. Also do a search for “elite dangerous tools” on your favorite search engine, there are a bunch of tools that help with the experience. o7 Commander !!!

        2. >> “That’s why my kids told me they game. It’s the frontier.”

          Years ago I heard (second-hand) about a couple that was planning to play video games instead of cruising the world when they retired. Say what you will, but you’ve got to admit it’s a lot more affordable.

          1. I know of at least one couple in Great Britain that do that. Flossy (gamer tag) and her husband were avid RPG gamers and picked up computer games back on the BBC computer(s) days. They have retired and still play on PC and Xbox. Flossy is an avid Elite Dangerous player and well known in the community for her involvement in the Fuel Rats (ad hoc group that will bring you fuel if you’ve been an idiot and gotten to low to jump out of an uninhabited system) and one of the clan like groups the Hutton Orbital Truckers. Also active in Warcraft and several other RPGs. Spent their time roaming about to various conventions (until they were all nuked in this weird year).

          1. There were tax issues and a giant pissing match about who had the rights to the show, so it STOPPED after two seasons.

            But they got everybody back together, except for Re-gan*’s voice actor who sadly passed away this year, and NHK has it scheduled for January 2021. Twelve episodes.

            *the kinda creepy Person Of The Land sage

  6. Several years ago I read The Ancient Regime, by de Toqueville, and one of the core thing he pointed oh was that the fuedal French governing class had managed to shed all of their responsibilities, without giving up any of their perogatives, and it meant that they were able to demand stuff from the lower classes, basically at will, for simply existing.

    The entire governing structure has ended up in the hands of behind the scenes officials and petty bureaucrats, such that part of the revolution consisted in simply sweeping away the false front of the government in favor of those who actually were already running the show.

    Kind of depressing, actually.

    1. Actually, it’s encouraging – so many people are becoming aware and energized, that I am hopeful that the fight will begin on OUR terms, not theirs.
      I’m working to improve my physical condition. Don’t want to be left behind when the fight breaks out.

      1. That is a good point. I was thinking more along the lines that the French Revolution basically succeeded in putting in power the same people who were running the show behind the scenes before hand.

        Our problem is of a somewhat different nature.

        1. On the other hand, putting those individuals into power led to The Terror.

          And, of course, a young artillery officer from Corsica.

          1. And the French Revolution led to so much silliness, all in the name of Reason. I think of re-doing the calendar and renaming the months as an example.

    2. Back in my college days I was reading a translation of Livy’s History of the Roman Republic and was amazed at how so very many of the issues battled over back then were still being fought over today (well, it was the Eighties, but we’ve yet to resolve any of the real issues.)

      So I doubt we’ll solve these problems now — but at least now we’re once again openly engaging in the arguments. That’s much, much better than feeding the alligator, waitig for its appetite to abate.

      That last strategy never ends well.

      Not even for the alligator.
      –

      1. Back in high school, I read sections of Juvenal’s 16 SATIRES. Written during the rein of Caesar Augustus, they complain that the trash isn’t picked up, gangs have taken over the streets, judges are corrupt, senators are immoral…just like today. And in the meanwhile we have developed antibiotics, modern dentistry, and the primary dietary problem of our poor is that they are too fat.

        People remain largely the same, but progress is made anyway.

        1. Ohhhh! I love Juvenal’s satires. They are so hilarious and amazingly true about how humanity hasn’t changed. There was also another book called “As the Romans Did”, which had some fun translations of wall graffiti from Pompeii. Which again, could have been written today.

        2. That would be much more reassuring if the Roman Republic hadn’t fallen, largely due to that corruption.
          .
          And if it weren’t so easy to draw parallels between Tiberius Gracchus and Donald Trump with respect to their attempts at reinvigorating the yeoman class in the face of a self-dealing “elite” making a mockery of the rule of law.
          (I hope it works out better this time. And if Trump also winds up dead on the Senate floor, I’m going to be very, very cross.)
          .
          .
          Observation: Otto Korrekt wants to change “yeoman” to “urinal”.

            1. They damn near bathed in it, but yes, they wrote so much of the articles and later Constitution specifically to avoid the traps the Roman Republic fell into.

              In a way that gives me hope, in that most of the real modern grievances have very little to do with the actual system of government. Rather it is the newsies, the education establishment and the technocrats who are screwing everyone over. Even if someone replicated Caesar’s march on Silicon Valley, the country would still remain.

              1. Yep – the hot new book of their era, the one all of the cool book clubs were poring over, the Harry Potter or Fifty Shades of their time was Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the six-volume page-turner that had them enthralled.

                Wikipedia notes that “Volume I was published in 1776 and went through six printings.
                –

                1. They had all read pretty much everything that came out of the printing press, so they added bits to counter the bad sides and pull in the good sides of Rome, Athens, Sparta and the rest of the city-states, as well as the upsides and downsides of Venetian Republic and their own recent experience with the English civil war.

            2. If we use Rome as an example, the Democratic Party is clearly emulating Caligula in its depravity and lust for power.

            3. Different systems, same theme.
              The powerful ignored the law and the common good. They benefited at the direct expense of the society, and violated the societal contract and laws with impunity.
              A charismatic leader rose to challenge this state of affairs, won power, and attempted reforms to return to a former, more stable, status quo.
              But the instruments of law were turned against the law, neutralizing his attempted reforms.
              We could even talk about how the corruption drove the expansion of an underclass, which was dependant on the patronage of those responsible for their plight!
              (And I’ll stop there, as I have no wish to prophesy, especially of something I desperately wish to avoid.)
              .
              Anyway, a tragedy is a tragedy, whether it’s in dactylic hexameter or iambic pentameter.

              1. Dang! Now you’ve got me wondering whether Mike Pence has a speechwriter busily cribbing reviewing Julius Caesar, especially Marc Anthony’s funeral oration.
                –

          3. Decent argument to be made that the best thing that ever happened to Western civilization was the fall of the Roman empire/republic. Reading How the West Won by Rodney Stark and he makes a convincing case that empires stifle innovation. The Roman’s used slavery extensively for farming and it prevented breakthroughs in agriculture, for example.

  8. “The really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits ‘atrocities’ but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it claims to control the past as well as the future.”

    I disagree with this. That’s not the frightening bit . The frightening bit is when those same people are completely willing to kill to get their way. At that point it doesn’t matter if what they want is possession of your house or if they want you to agree that fish control the stars. When the threat is your death, or the disappearance of your sister, your child — the only frightening bit is THAT.

    1. People willing to attack the concept of objective truth have always shown a strong willingness to “disappear people”, i.e. commit mass murder. The second always follows the first. It is an inevitable aspect of totalitarianism and efforts to impose and maintain it.

      1. The leftist totalitarians are just begging for it, aren’t they? They’re not even pretending anymore to be civilized. Mrs. Hoyt is just plain right — the Big Steal of 2020 has to be stopped now, one way or the other, or we’re almost certainly screwed.

        1. Wasn’t it ‘The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Uzis’? Those look like MAC-10’s. 😛

          1. As long as they work. MP5s sound good to me. My experience with all of them is purely of the video game variety from the GTA series of games; always found the MP5s to be the most effective in the submachine gun category.

        2. The right to bear arms is the fundamental right to defend ourselves, including defending ourselves from our own government when it turns tyrannical:

          1. I would add to that

            “As a Jew, I kind of wish my coreligionists had been armed in the late 1930s/ early 1940s”

    2. I faced the kind of death that frightens me the most, dying in bed (operating table is close enough), quite recently.

      I know the other kind, with my boots on, heads up, still swinging, is coming. I’ve known it was since mid-summer.

      Unlike our hostess, I’m not sure we win and they lose. Everyone loses in the sense of Heinleinian “bad luck”, but the Miltonian Satanists we fight don’t care about that, only power. I can see that group winning, at least for this generation, while the rest of us lose.

      But at they very least, I won’t die in bed. They cannot take that away from me.

    3. Force is scary, but it’s not permanent. Getting in your head and making you see something different is FAR MORE PERMANENT.
      I’ve been fighting to get Marx out of my head for 20 years, and there’s still bits.

      1. The mind control fantasies the Left has have never frightened me. For me, it truly is the threat of killing or disappearing that is the only frightening bit. The illogic of the Left is a major irritant, but it’s never scary because I know I’ll never buy in. They most I’ll do is pretend, in order to prevent the frightening bit.

      2. Don’t have a reference handy just now; but as I remember it someone once asked the Dalai Lama (the current one, who had to flee the country just ahead of the Red Chinese invasion of Tibet ca.1959) if he hated the (those) Chinese.

        His answer was very thoughtful, very Buddhist, and very typical; something along these lines (but better):

        They have invaded and occupied my country, forced so many of us into exile, looted so much property and natural resources, bulldozed acres of centuries-old buildings to put in shiny condos and discos for Chinese colonists, rounded up and jailed so many monks and nuns, shut or demolished so many of our monasteries, punished and suppressed our culture and religion and language.

        So should I, by hating them, let them take my mind too?

        One thing we do not have to do, though of course there is a considerable price in ongoing inner vigilance to be paid, is give these frauding mad depots rent-free lodging in our own heads, any internal ‘aid and comfort’ whatever, or any storage or processor cycles.

        So much of the ‘mobspeak’ is aimed (whether they realize it or not) at getting ‘their’ viewpoint and belief past your conscious understanding and cognitive, self-protective ‘filters’ — as if their whole ‘system of thought’ and behavior is simply another virus (and yes, this includes the mask myth-fetish-cult too).

        At least good old H. P. Lovecraft made his ugly-evil-doom-cult-speak interesting…

        1. And along the lines of the Dalai Lama: Any on the left that think that openly cheating China Joe into office as lame-duck-for-four-years-POTUS will somehow free them and evict DJT from their cluttered little mindspace where he’s been living rent-free full time is only fooling themselves. If the cheat succeeds, DJT will have fewer constraints on what he does and says and twits than he does while in office.

          Welcome to your self-created hell, lefties – he will never go away.

                  2. Biden isn’t likely to give in to his Left Wing on that. It would make his pledge of unity impossible, it would feed their bloodlust and thoroughly alienate too many Americans. He might like to but the cost is too great.

                    As one pundit I read earlier said — imagine the way Trump on trial would dominate the media. No way Biden is going to give away the spotlight so Trump can reenact the OJ Simpson, Chicago 7, and Sacco & Vanzetti trials rolled into one.
                    –

                    3. President Harris however would gladly hold a Soviet style show trial before he is Epsteined while in custody.

                    6. Democratic Party’s senior leadership in Congress is calling for Trump to be tried, essentially as “an enemy of the state::

                      https://www.nj.com/politics/2020/11/fierce-trump-critic-pascrell-says-president-should-be-tried-for-crimes-against-our-nation-and-constitution.html

                      These are the same people who want to jail people who disagree with global warming alarmism. They believe that disagreement with their ideology is a crime, and they WILL act on that belief. And if they can do it and what they already did to Trump, just imagine what they will do to the rest of us.

                    7. The Democrat Leadership is desperately trying to maintain their hold on power, certain that their young turks will destroy America, destroy the party, and destroy them. Much of what they say is appeasing the maniacs with whom they find themselves in bed.

                      Just as we’ve seen with Republican leaders, there is a vast chasm between what they say and what they are willing to do. While they might enjoy Trump’s conviction they well understand that it is (like impeachment) much easier tp call for than to achieve.
                      –

                    9. They CANNOT stop it. He will be accused and jailed within a Month of Biden becoming President, if not days.
                      The Left has too much TDS, way too much hatred to do anything else. The ONLY way to stop it would be Biden as his FIRST ACT to Pardon Trump! For the Democrats that is what he SHOULD DO. Think about it, it cuts Trump’s legs out from under him. How is he going to FIGHT that. He can’t. It just is, and taints everything. But the people behind Biden are not smart enough to see that at all, let alone do it and face the anger from the TDS crowd.
                      They will arrest Trump, Charge him, put him in jail, a good chance he is killed in jail by a felon, then be tried and sentenced, then go to prison. There again a good chance he will be killed.

                      What the Left doesn’t realize is if some how Trump makes it through, they will have made a Monster. He might break, but if he doesn’t. What might he do in 2024? And that’s if he wants to play nice.

        2. The same leftists who go on and on and on about “colonialist oppression”, “cultural genocide”, etc., are utterly silent about the CCP’s long history and ongoing atrocities with regards to Tibet, Muslim Uyghurs, and the other non-Han Chinese people within China’s borders. Likewise it is okay that they build a coal fired power plant a day.

          These things are okay with the leftists because China under the CCP is already communist (of course it really is more of a fascist socialism these days with communist goals, as private property is nominally allowed to exist as long as said property serves The State).

          2. Meh. They largely endorsed USSR colonialism, too. And excused their gulags and other atrocities
            –

              1. Yep. The reason the Democrats consistently refuse to criticize the CCP is because they want TO BE the CCP.

          3. The leftists were silent about the abuses of the USSR, and also silent about The Despicable Austrian’s German until he attacked Stalin. Their outrage is entirely selective, and never worth listening to.

          4. Meh … the average Tibetan in the 1950s was literally a serf, owned by the monastery and legally tied to the land. The Dalai Lama would like you to forget that before the Chinese invaded, he was a god-king with no restraints on his power, backed by a religion that glorifies suffering. Mr. Pacifist also like you to forget that he tried to lead an armed rebellion against the Chinese to reinstate himself as god-king.

            I’m no fan of the CCP, but Tibetans didn’t go from freedom to slavery; they went from Buddhist slavery to Communist slavery.

            1. “from Tibetan Buddhist slavery to Chinese Communist slavery.”

              FTFY. And it does make a difference. If they were unhappy with Tibetan Buddhist slavery, they had the same right to rebel as any other people.

      3. I’m less worried about my head, than the heads of those around me that I care about. It sometimes feels like a psychological version of Attack of the Bodysnatchers, or the Archangel War from “The Implied Spaces”.

      4. First you lie, then you parrot, and finally you believe.

        I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before, though I don’t know where I might have seen it or who might have said it. But it makes the point that the more often you repeat a lie, the more likely you are to start believing it.

        1. The related ones I know are the “wear the mask so long it becomes your face,” and “the way you play is the way you live.”
          That second one, I really need to get translated into Latin as the family motto.

          2. Huh, that makes a lot of sense. I’m going to save that one, with permission? We play, but I’m picky. I have strong preferences in games. I like playing a person with honor and character, even though it shouldn’t matter which side I pick in a game. But you become what you play…

            1. Go for it, I want it spread, and it’s not mine except by sharing.

              I’ve watched too many people who go the “it’s just a game” route and it leaks into their real life. There’s got to be something that you connect to, in the characters you play. It may not be the obvious– I’m definitely not as incredibly violent, nor as clueless, as many of my characters!– but it feeds something in your soul.
              Make sure it’s something you want to grow.

    4. The really frightening thing about totalitarianism is the number of idiots who, in spite of many object lessons to the contrary, believe it will WORK.

    5. What frightens me is that so many people just don’t care. The average German wasn’t a rabid anti-Semite, they just didn’t care. Same thing under the soviets.

  9. Of the best rulers
    The people (only) know that they exist;
    The next best the love and praise;
    The next they fear;
    And the next they revile.

    When they do not command the people’s faith,
    Some will lose faith in them,
    And then they resort to oaths!
    But (of the best) when their task is accomplished,
    their work done,
    The people all remark, “We have done it ourselves.”

    Daodejing 17 Lin Yutang tr.

  10. The retreat continues:

    They previously backed off from “President-Elect” to “Projected Winner”. Now backing off from “Official sources” to “Multiple sources”.

    This is clearly the behavior of a side which is confident in its victory.

    1. Promises promises. The Gods of the Copybook Headings are worse teases than SMOD. Although 2068 may be even more exciting than 2020 if Apophis has its way.

        1. Bumper sticker seen in a Kroger parking lot:
          Giant Meteor 2020
          Just get it over with already
          Best thing, the sticker is in the style of a Democratic campaign sticker.

        2. The two nearby passes (in time sense) are known to be excluded. The yarkovsky effect (which I definitely don’t quite comprehend) can alter an asteroids path and so 2068 is still a possibility. I’d be 107 so unlikely to see it. But its a big boy something approaching 400m in size so definitely worth watching. Although by then perhaps spaceX will have a fleet of Starships to deal with the issue.

  12. I hope I’m wrong but I’ve a feeling we, not me or thee of course, but those 37 other guys that claim to be with us are too law abiding to act when the fit hits the shan.

    Kyle Rittenhouse is sitting in jail with a 2 million buck bond. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands have died alone as their family members respected the ‘laws’ disallowing visits due to the China flu.

    First they came for… & those 37 guys, times several orders of magnitude, that we expect to support us, did nothing because…

    2. There’s probably a way to know that this fear is not correct.

      Basically similar to the question of whether the population meets Bacon’s criteria of stout and warlike. A historical metric for stout and warlike is production of good infantry. If we can show that America’s infantry was good in the past, then the culture a little prior was still capable in the way.

      In this case, there is another indicator which suggests that Americans are not so soft that they will simply roll over. Incarceration of felons.

      I’ve got medical stuff, and other fish to fry, so I can’t sort out the chain of reasons for why incarceration of felons is diagnostic.

      But if Americans could be intimidated into giving criminals free reign, there would have been no reason to push on criminal justice reform, and on the alleged disparate impact of law enforcement. There would be no need to invoke fairness or compassion if Americans were too frightened or too rigidly formal to bother with making sure that laws are enforced against criminals.

      It looks like decriminalizations of marijauna were of the same push, and also frauded through.

      1. In California voters supported Democrat candidates by two-to-one, yet they rejected Proposition 16 even though its supporters outspent opponents eighteen to one.

        I’d say that’s a pretty strong indicator that they don’t support liberals in one of our supposedly*) most liberal states.

        *supposedly – perhaps they don’t vote for Republicans because they’re convinced that Republican candidates, for a variety of reasons – simply cannot win. Were I ruing the California (or New York) GOP I think I’d be looking at recruiting sheriffs and police chiefs to run for higher office.
        –

        1. Or maybe it’s a sign that, while the Democrat cabal know they can steal local elections, if they cheat on a really popular (or unpopular) ballot proposition, they could stir up trouble they would be hard put to put down.

          1. Actually it is in large part due to California’s “jungle primaries” which often result in the two general election candidates both being Democrats. That, as much as the ballot harvesting and blatant fraud, is why they tend to keep such a large majority of Democrats in elected offices. The “jungle primary” manipulations don’t impact ballot questions however, thus the seeming discrepancy.

        2. The Party of Stupid doesn’t even *try* in many cases. They just assume they can’t win and give up. Ocrazio-Cortex would probably still have won given her democraphics, but the GOP picked a candidate so bad he might as well have been hand-selected by AOC’s own election advisers.

        3. Former LA County DA Steve Cooley came close to beating Harris for the AG spot. My Dad is convinced that Cooley actually got the majority of the votes.

          But the problem is that Republicans can’t even get the important Sheriff or DA jobs anymore. LA County DA Jackie Lacey – a Dem – just got beaten by a Soros candidate that had the backing of Lacey’s own party. Getting a Republican into office even for the law and order jobs in the big urban areas won’t happen unless something changes. And those are the sheriffs and police chiefs that might have enough name recognition to win at the state level.

  13. Although I fear the blood and pain a great deal I still hope and pray this is the birth of something better, something new. We’ve been allowing the left to get away with far too much for far too long. If this is the turning point, the line in the sand then so be it, we are still well armed, many people can still educate ourselves out of stupid leftist thinking and we still have (somewhat) free communication, people have done far more with far less.

  14. “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.”

    Which also appplies beneath that ‘macro scale’ to smaller organizations or groups or sub-societies, on the “micro” or “meso” scale. Where often, even if and while that ‘clinging’ thing still works, people can just… leave.

    Twitter vs. Parler, Youtube vs. Rumble. (Both ‘alternatives’ that have grown by multiples in the past week or two.) Even Tradpub vs. Indie. (Or the ‘Hollywood’ counterpart, which started earlier and has grown slower.)

    Typically summarized, hereabouts, as “roll left and die.” (Sooner or later, more or less messily and horribly and expensively.)

    Let’s hope, and pray, and work, for their fall to be cheaper, sooner, easier, and less messy (and/or bloody). In many ways, Sidney Powell’s “Defending the Republic” (ldfftar dot org) effort, and allied work by people like Rudy Giuliani and Lin Wood, might be the best credible chance we have left to avoid something that’s more costly in all sorts of ways. (It likely will erase any real, fact-based credibility a ‘Biden win” ever could’ve had, and in part already has.)

    But if not…

    The impromptu, barely-promoted Million MAGA March was big; by some (fairly credible) estimates, even more than a million in DC at once.

    That’s about a third of a percent of the entire U.S. population, there.

    When you have nearly half the country mad as hornets at you because you cheated ’em big-time in plain sight, that is not a “big win” scenario.

    1. The flames coming out at 46 seconds is a Titan II test launch. The flames and vapor come out first, and the missile comes out later and slowly. Ja, I vass a Titan II missileer.

      1. Given weirder stuff made it into official planning, I always wondered if, in order to preserve military astronaut access to LEO, there were any USAF plans to mount Gemini capsules on Titans in silos.

        Mainly because it would have been cool.

  16. “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

    This is known as “bad luck.

    – Robert Heinlein

    Americans, through action and inaction, have become sufficiently right-thinking that we are about to have a very long bout of bad luck.

    We don’t get why, because we are Odds and to embrace freedom requires one to be an Odd. Most humans do not want to be free. I used to say they want to be slaves, but that’s too far the other way. Most humans want to be accepted and freedom and acceptance are at odds on a fundamental level. The free will roll with being unaccepted because they value freedom and their rolling with being unaccepted threatens the value of acceptance and thus those who driving force is being accepted.

    The establishment of freedom requires sufficient Odds. The maintenance of freedom does as well, although that threshold is lower.

    America is below both. Once a society is below both thresholds bad luck is only a matter of time. We could have coasted another generation, but those who want the power to define acceptance have taken advantage of being below the threshold to gain their power.

  19. Two other “Fails” that have led to this collapse are the Education system and, to a great extent, the squandering of moral leadership by our Religious institutions.
    Let’s see if the efforts of Sidney Powell, et al, come to fruition. Their masks are off, the game is on, so to speak. Pray.

  20. Apophis, by the way, while probably not going to strike the Earth this time, is going to plow right through the GEO satellite belt….

      2. Though considering how he (permanently) died… (Or at least Jack was 99% sure he was really dead for good…)

        1. One of my favorites is the one when Apophis is laying dying in the SGC infirmary and Jack tells him that he should pray to his god, “..oh wait, you are your god”. Couldn’t find a clip for the scene though.

    3. … and for extra special bonus fun, some speculations figure that collisions with massive enough satellites could deflect the asteroid’s path enough (at the end of years of travel) to change the near-ness of the next pass or the one after it.

      In unknown and (specifically) unpredictable directions, maybe just enough to turn a near-miss into at least a grazing hit — so the tentative conclusion was for any observing probes to stay away from its vicinity until after the close pass. IIRC.(I think I read about this at Zimmerman’s space, etc. Web site behindtheblack dot com. And too lazy to do calculations myself.)

      Ah, 2020.

  21. I had a disturbing thought;

    Iran is an enemy of the US.
    Biden or his representative has said that he will sign back on to the Iran nuclear accord, thus giving aid to Iran?
    This was known before the election?
    Thus everyone who voted for Biden voted to give aid to an enemy of the US and is thus guilty of treason under the Constitution.

    Could this be used by Trump to permanently disenfranchise the entire Democratic party? I think that that would be preferable to executing them all.

    1. If that were the case, then a similar argument could be made for those who negotiate a peace treaty.

      We really don’t want to go there.

      1. There is a difference between negotiating a peace treaty, even a mild one and giving aid (that amounted to billions last time) to an active enemy of the US.

        1. 1.) The aid was given at the direction of the individual who was – at the time – the President of the United States of America.
          2.) The aid was given as part of a package deal that was supposed to help “normalize” relations between Iran and the rest of the world, and involved a formal agreement between the United States of America and Iran.
          3.) The fact that there was no way to ensure that Iran was actually following its end of the agreement doesn’t mean that those involved on the American side were traitors. It means that they were idiots. And being an idiot is not illegal.

          And yes, all indications are that the people involved on the American side of things genuinely think that point 2 is possible under the Ayatollahs in Iran. The goal, according to various sources over the years, is to bring Iran into the international community by helping it to become a regional power, and giving it a stake in the modern world order. If such a thing were to be accomplished, then it would mean that peace had been achieved with Iran. The fact that such thinking is foolish and deluded doesn’t mean that it’s treasonous so long as the government of the United States has authorized the actions that are taken.

          The United States and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea are currently still in a state of war. A cease fire has been declared, but an actual peace agreement was never hammered out. North Korean forces still occasionally engage in hostile actions against the United States and its allies in the region, particularly the Republic of Korea. Under the thinking that you describe, the shipments of humanitarian that are regularly sent to North Korea in order to help keep the entire country from starving to death would qualify as “aid and comfort to an enemy of the United States”.

          And yes, I’m aware that much of that aid ends up in the hands of the North Korean military.

          1. While I was speaking about Biden’s future actions, Obama’s actions were illegal under the laws that then existed and the “treaty” was never ratified by the Senate which makes it null and void.
            As far as North Korea is concerned, that was a UN action. As far as I know we never declared war on them, Even so, I could be persuaded that “humanitarian” aid to them is treasonous.

          2. Barack Obama either never understood the concept of Danegeld, or he didn’t care because it was detrimental to the United States in the long run..

          3. “The goal, according to various sources over the years, is to bring Iran into the international community by helping it to become a regional power, and giving it a stake in the modern world order.”

            Of course Barack Obama and those of his ilk are too stupid to understand just how well that worked with China. Great experiment by Nixon; but I think if he were still alive today, he’d have said it was a failure.

            1. Nixon didn’t go to China to turn it into a Representative Democracy. The view that we could tempt the Chinese Communists into free market freedom came later. Nixon went to China to break up the Communist alliance, which was already largely an “in name only” affair by then. Going to China allowed the US to take what had formerly been the USSR’s most powerful ally, and turn it into an extremely dangerous neighbor. Any Soviet invasion of either Europe or Asia risked rapidly turning into a very dangerous two-front war.

              It also gave Nixon some room to maneuver while attempting to bring the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table.

          4. “1.) The aid was given at the direction of the individual who was – at the time – the President of the United States of America.”

            It was also carefully structured to avoid triggering the requirement that any expenditure of over 400 million requires a specific appropriation line item. You or I would be under the jail; the Feds define that as “structuring to evade the law.”

    2. I always wondered if some of those billions given to Iran didn’t make their way into the pockets of those “responsible”. The revelations of Biden’s really routine corruption did not help.

      1. I don’t know how much of it reached Iran. But the citizens of Iran are very much aware that none of it was used to help them.

    3. Iran has said he’ll have to send them several additional pallets full of cash to pay “reparations” for the harm doe them by Trump. Even giving them the two seats from Georgia I don’t think Biden has a chance of getting payments to Iran.
      –

    4. No. Just no. That is a path we simply don’t want to go down, unless we are really set on an American Imperium, which I don’t recommend. The founders made the charge of Treason VERY difficult to sustain, for good reason.

  23. Big news out of Michigan: Wayne County, which includes Detroit, i.e. the fraudulent ballots that threw Michigan and the Senate seat to the Democrats, has refused/failed to certify its vote.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/11/17/wayne-county-michigan-refuses-to-certify-election-results/

    This puts things closer to having the Republican legislature select the electors.

    The Secretary of State is a Democrat so I suspect that even if the votes are not certifiable, they will be certified anyway, resulting in yet more litigation.

    1. The Secretary of State is a Democrat so I suspect that even if the votes are not certifiable, they will be certified anyway, resulting in yet more litigation.

      Not if she wants to stay out of prison she won’t.

      1. If you haven’t noticed, guilty Democrats don’t tend to go to prison.
        Even when caught red-handed.

      2. Depends, there haven’t been any consequences for Democrat politicians for decades. Is she going to believe there is going to be now? She knows if Biden gets into office there won’t be. Because the Republicans in Congress have shown themselves to be too spineless to ever stand up to anyone in the past (excepting the short time Gingrich managed to weild the majority like a club and stand up to Clinton) so she can be fairly positive if they don’t have a strong leader in the White House to follow she has nothing to worry about. And even if they do, odds are she will just end up having to spend months or years explaining herself in court, and at worst losing her job.

        1. That only works if they are certain that they are going to win.

          If there is anything we know about the situation, it is that they are not certain.

          1. …and…..apparently moot for the moment as the Wayne County officials apparently reversed course and are now going to certify the results. Sigh. So many caving in the face of blatant fraud. If they continue to do so, there will never be another genuine election again.

            1. I hear rumors they did so in closed session and may have invalidated their vote in the process as it violated state transparency laws.

                  1. h/t add the dot back
                    thefederalist com/2020/11/18/michigan-democrat-doxxes-children-of-wayne-county-election-official/

        2. Not only are the Republicans in Congress spineless, but the average GOP voter is (fortunately) too law abiding to take matters of justice in their own hands until the wolf is clawing at their own door.

      3. That assumes she believes that prison is an actual possibility. The political class in general, and the Fascist Left in particular, seem to believe that laws and consequences are things that happen to other people.

    2. Good news, indeed. I was about to comment regarding that. My understanding is that it isn’t solely her call, with a similarly-divided state canvassing board being the next step, and if they deadlock it goes to the state legislature. The Georgia recount, problematic as it is and incomplete as it is, has netting around another 1500 votes for President Trump from just a couple counties. This election may yet go in America’s favor.

      If it does, clean(er) elections are something we as voters and citizens need to hold the government at all levels accountable for going further. We need to be eternally vigilant, and they need to know that no more shenanigans will be tolerated.

      1. If Trump beats the fraud this year, the Democrats will just fraud harder in 2022. Heads have to roll!

        1. While we are fantasizing about absurd combinations of ideas we should have a collaborative project on the emotional sleep habits of green ideas.

          😛

            3. >> “Moo.”

              [blink]

              I… I never thought of it that way.

              Excuse me, I have to go rethink my life.

          2. Hey, if somebody comes up with some wheels, I’ve got enough scrap lumber to build at least a couple of tumbrils…

          1. Maybe, but that would require either honest secretaries of State, or a concentration of power over the electoral process in the hands of the Feds. The first is impossible and the second would be at best a short term solution.

            1. It is conceivable a Trump victory might have a byproduct of flipping several House seats – enough (especially if they can persuade some moderate Dems to change parties or just to vote with the GOP) giving the Republicans the Grand Trifecta: control of the House, Senate, Executive and Judicial power. Further, the Democrats’ civil war would drench them in their own blood.

              It is highly unlikely but is the kind of event – like Watergate – that can justify massive reform.

              You’re probably well advised to not count on that but instead buy a lottery ticket.
              –

    4. The Secretary of State is a Democrat so I suspect that even if the votes are not certifiable, she is.
      Fixed it.

  24. After a few hours of doxing and death threats the Wayne county board folded.

    Before taking counsel of your fears you should consider this: the Left is reduced to overt threats of violence to keep people in line.

    They are losing, badly.

      1. Yep, elections will be as meaningful as the ones held by the Soviet Union, with the same consequences for not enthusiastically clapping for the approved winner.

    2. “They are losing, badly.”

      Well, they’ve been bad losers for the last hundred and sixty years. If there is ANY evidence of the duress that would be cause for a court to overturn their decision.

      BTW – in similar vein, the reports of Democrat lawyers threatening and harassing conservative or merely on-partisan) lawyers to quit cases ought be referred to local, state, and national Bar associations. If intimidating opposition counsel isn’t grounds for disbarment then the Bar is a joke.
      –

      1. >> “If there is ANY evidence of the duress that would be cause for a court to overturn their decision.”

        Assuming the judge doesn’t fold when he’s targetted.

        1. Yep – which is why it is important to push back, to call out thuggery, at the first attempts to violate rights by intimidation. We do not own what we do not defend.
          –

          1. As long as you’re prepared for your warnings to be ignored. When you establish a 50+ year track record of rattles without a single strike, your prey disbelieves your fangs..

    3. As I suspected … Given the likelihood the local branch of the Teachers’ Union is pro-Biden, this is yet one more reason to ban such unions.

      Michigan Democrat Doxxes Children Of Wayne County Election Official
      A Democratic Michigan State Representative-elect doxxed the chairwoman of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers on a public Zoom meeting on Tuesday, revealing where her children attend school and claiming that she was enabling racism by refusing to certify the Wayne County Election.

      “You, Ms. Monica Palmer from Grosse Pointe Woods, which has a history of racism, are deciding to enable and continue to perpetuate the racist history of this country and I want you to think about what that means for your kids,” he said, name-dropping the name of their school and talking about the impact her decision would have on their black classmates.

      Miss Michigan@correctthemedia
      BREAKING VIDEO:
      The exact moment Democrat Abraham Aiyash threatened Monica Palmer’s children on zoom. This extortion attempt directly influenced the decision to agree to certify the election fraud in #WayneCounty.

      [END EXCERPT]
      –

      1. And here, thanks to the magic of WP’s single lik rule, is the Tweet i question:

        I am certain that, should Mr. Aiyash’s house burn down it would be reported as “White Supremacy” rather than retribution for denying fellow citizens their rights.

        At any rate, thanks to Zoom and the lockdown we have his implicit threat on record.
        –

        1. Democrats broke promises? That’s hard to believe

          Wayne County Canvassers Board Republicans Rescind Votes Certifying Election
          In the second reversal in as many days, two Republicans on a county elections board in Michigan rescinded their votes that had certified their county’s results in the 2020 election.

          Wayne County Board of Canvassers Chairperson Monica Palmer and board member William Hartmann signed sworn affidavits on Nov. 18 testifying that they voted to certify the election results the day before only because they were promised that a full audit of the election would take place to address their concerns. After learning that no audit would occur, they rescinded their votes.

          “Vice-Chairman Jonathan Kinloch gave me assurances that voting for the certification of the November election would result in a full, independent audit of Detroit’s unbalanced precincts,” Palmer wrote, according to an affidavit obtained by Just The News. “I relied on that assurance and voted to certify the election based on that assurance.

          “Later that evening, I was sent statements that Secretary Jocelyn Benson made saying that she did not view our audit resolution to be binding,” Palmer continued. “As a result of these facts, I rescind my prior vote to certify Wayne County elections.”

          Prior to the vote on Tuesday, Hartmann determined that 71 percent of Wayne County’s Absent Voter County Boards were not balanced without any explanation. After initially voting against certifying the results and deadlocking on the board’s certification, he and Palmer changed their votes after being promised an audit.

          “I was enticed to agree to certify based on a promise that a full independent would take place,” Hartmann wrote in an affidavit obtained by Just The News. “Until these questions are addressed, I remain opposed to certification of Wayne County results.”

          In his affidavit, Hartmann listed a number of other concerns about the election, including an unresolved question about private money being used to pay poll workers.

          [SNIP]

          Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, had called the discrepancies in Wayne County “bookkeeping errors” on Nov. 18 and hailed the Republican’s initial decision to certify the results after they were holding back as the right thing to do.
          –

      2. Proper response would be for Abraham Aiyash to be arrested, tried, and convicted of extortion, criminal threatening, conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to murder. Be a whole lot cheaper just to allow the Palmer’s to respond with high velocity lead suppositories.

        1. No, this is actually a good thing.

          Means we have one of the criminal acts we need to go after the teachers and schools under RICO.

      1. “Bullied.”

        Funny way to characterize the live-streamed announcement of where a woman’s children go to school, followed by accusations that have resulted in multiple deaths and hospitalizations so far this year.

        I’d call it “obvious threat” and “possibly criminal attempt to subvert government functions.”

  25. And reports are coming in that the Wayne County MI election board just certified their results, despite serious discrepancies, mostly because people were threatening to kill the Republican members of the board.

    Because apparently that’s how politics is done these days…

    I wish the left understood that the means create the ends, not the otherway around, but I’m not sure they value any ends other than power now.

    2. Well congratulations, you chickenshits, they OWN your asses now! You’ll do whatever they want, and they’ll want EVERYTHING. Blackmail NEVER ENDS. Their greed NEVER ENDS. You wussed out, and sold us all out. WE should hang the lot of you for that!

      Soooo many lamp-posts in need of decoration, and look! It’s almost Christmas!

  27. Had a weird thought at work today:

    Harry Harrison’s “Stainless Steel Rat for President” had the title character run against a banana republic-esque regime. He riled up the dictator and got them to fake the vote so bad it was blatantly obvious.

    Wonder if The T drove the dems into this corner.

  28. Also, I’m a titch worried about my mental tracking. This is making me feel bipolar. I’m not trying to mock or demean anyone with manic depressive conditions. I seriously have been cycling through ways of focusing on the issues.

    I was (mostly) hopeful on election day itself, only to start worrying late in the evening as states were constantly “in play”.

    I was peeved when the media began announcing the “shifts”.

    I’ve had moments when I was ready to shout at people for the slightest thing.

    The coronation party they held on Saturday night made me weep a bit for what I felt was a lost republic.

    I’ve been checking a couple of other blogs and gone from “Okay, that might work.” to “Why aren’t they pulling the trigger if they have a good case?” to an occasional “It’s all connected!” effort like Charlie trying to figure out the Pepe Silva influence.

    This can’t be healthy.

      1. Me too.
        On a lighter note, hit the other yarn shop in Nashville and she had NO “woke,” stuff by her door. Yes, masks but that’s local ordnance. Otherwise nothing but yarn, supplies, talk.
        Bet I know which shop is going to get more business.

  31. So much corruption!! Just saw that they were instructed in Georgia to give the original count not the new count, to conceal the fraud!

  32. And my phone accidentally opened on “Briefing,” (articles specially curated for the user! Oh, boy!) and the opening screen was, “Can Trump actually stage a coup and serve a second term ?”

    Great galloping gallons of golop, these….mistaken people….used the words “coup,” and “second term,” in the same sentence? Children, someone running a “coup,” generally doesn’t do it for a four-year stint.

          1. I was misinformed. I thought (long ago) that Dems might play nice. I’ve since become better educated.

        2. Worst. Nazi. Ever.

          No midnight parades, no Party uniforms, no concentration camps, no secret police, no Judenrein, no appropriation of property, not even a Boring Book.

          He’s not really trying, is he?

          1. It’s his opponents who seek to make things Judenrein. After all, they are the ones whose idea of a “two state solution” in the Middle East is that one of those two states is entitled to be completely Jew free and that Jews have no right to live in areas where Jews have had a presence for millennia, even after the massacres by the Romans, except for the period between 1948 and 19687 when Jordan actively cleansed East Jerusalem and the West Bank of the entirety of the Jewish presence that had been there prior to 1948,

            It is Trump’s opponents who espouse government discrimination based on race and religion and who systematically target Jews for selective enforcement of decrees, and thus persecution, the way Cuomo and DeBlasio have done in New York. So, who are the Nazi’s., It’s not Trump or his supporters.

      2. On my angrier days, I wish Trump would give them the dictatorship they accuse him of.

        With a frozen swordfish. Sideways.

      3. I’m thinking those are less trolls than gnomes. Trolls will linger and disrupt debates with insane arguments. The behaviour you describe seems more in the category of drive-by shooting off their mouth.

        I admit that I conceived the gnomenclature (premised on being troll-like but smaller and more easily repulsed) before recalling Larry’s depiction of gnome culture — but it fits, by gadfrey, it fits.
        –

  34. There isn’t much point to this post. I’m simply so frazzled by The Great Fraud of 2020. The temptation to perform judicious pest control is growing by leaps and bounds, but it’s a trifle early for that, isn’t it? Even when the leftist vermin are actually threatening in public to murder principled, if regrettably weak-willed, Republican election officials. Maybe showing off by posting a fun picture on the first try will improve my own morale. Sorry, CardShark — GLOAT!

    P.S. RES, now you’ve gotten me interested in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Six volumes, you say? Sort of like Harry Potter for keener intellects who don’t require magic wands and goofy spells to tickle their brain cells into happy convulsions? Hrmmm ….

    1. Read Ferdinand Lot too. Gibbon blames it all on the Catholics. But it’d be better to blame it on the debasement of the currency, massive expansion of the bureaucracy, increasing absolutism, and the crushing tax burden. Sounds familiar, no?

      1. Sounds familiar, oui! Or are we talking about the slow death of the Roman Republic? Or any one of innumerable other national expirations? The theme to which you refer seems to repeat so very often in the crayon-scribbled pages of history. You’d think the funny-looking hairless apes would learn somewhere along the line, but nyet. -_-

        1. The late empire haunts me. Not for the empire, I hate the bloody Romans, but the parallels to us here now. We’ve just auctioned the crown to a senile clown and the praetorians are going to demand a massive annona.

    2. Always glad to encourage personal improvement. Although I do not doubt Gibbon’s work might prove a slow trudge it should certainly enhance your understanding of the Founders’ milieu. For a bit of light reading on the side you could always break for Adam Smith’s works.

      Your poster brings to mind something I was mulling yesterday or the day before: is it time to retire Uncle Sam? Certainly he can be criticized as representing White Patriarchy (or does he represent Patriarchal Whiteness? Not that it matters to his critics.) My thought had been that the appropriate representative of the Woke States of America might best be Auntie Karen. She should probably be a woman of color, although African-American might seem exclusionary to many, so I suggest mixed ancestry, to better represent America’s melding of cultures. Perhaps a blend of representatives of the Indian sub-continent and African-Americans? Somebody like Kamala Harris might be best.

      I leave the idea for the artistic among us to develop.
      –

  36. A relevant quote I just deployed elsewhere, and should here as well:

    “Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”

    Beyond its obvious meaning this is also the attitude that helps someone survive Interesting Times.

    1. One aspect of the transitory nature of greatness is the fickleness of the public: having created a myth they too often turn against its subject on grounds of being merely human rather than the demo-god they imagined. (It seems unnecessary to expound on what the ancient Greeks had to say about demi-gods — suffice to say that few might welcome them as neighbors or sons-in-law.)

      This is perhaps most visible in the sports world, where athletes are often accorded qualities beyond their athletic prowess and then, once the public (or more importantly, sportswriters in pursuit of new stories to sell tell) discovers their idols merely human after all, denounced for having misled their fans.

      “Dr. Benjamin Franklin: … what would posterity think we were? Demi-gods? We’re men, no more no less, trying to get a nation started against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed.”
      –

      1. Heh. In route to finding the precise wording of that quote I found this exchange which, in this moment, seems pertinent:

        “Thomas Jefferson: When a king becomes a tyrant, he thereby breaks the contract binding his subjects to him.

        John Dickinson: How so?

        Thomas Jefferson: By taking away their rights.

        John Dickinson: Rights that came from him in the first place.

        Thomas Jefferson: All except one. The right to be free comes from nature.

        John Dickinson: And are we not free, Mr. Jefferson?

        Thomas Jefferson: Homes entered without warrant, citizens arrested without charge, and in many places, free assembly itself denied.

        John Dickinson: No one approves of such things, but these are dangerous times.
        –

      2. “1776” movie quote, nice. Not really historical but I have never found or heard of a better explanation of HOW the Deliration was created. The compromises that had to be made and the character of the MEN who had to make them.

        1. 1776 is not about literal accuracy, it is about historical accuracy. It is art and seeks to provide modern audiences with understanding of a different milieu.

          Every time we watch it Beloved Spouse would confirm that I:
          1. Grouse about its unfairness to John Dickinson
          2. Complain about its unfair depiction of Judge Wilson
          3. Point out its beclowning of Richard Henry Lee
          4. Observe that John Adams loses every argument we see
          5. Multiple other flaws not worth listing

          But none of that matters because, frankly, I wouldn’t have delved into the history without having loved that musical. I’d never have sought out, much less read, biographies of any of those men. I likely would have never read about the Glorious Revolution, England’s antecedent that established the rights for which those colonists fought. I’d have never thought two moments in a row about what the independence of those colonies meant.

          But because Art brought those events alive, because Art made me love John Adam even though he is obviously obnoxious and dislikable, because Art gave Mr. Dickinson the best arguments — for all those reasons and more I became involved in that history and taught myself more than any sensible person would feel any need to know about it.

          Many of the lines are indeed quotes, albeit lifted from other venues (such as Adams writing Abigail about his being obnoxious and disliked), but that doesn’t matter. A great painter will depict many realities about his subject while eliminating an equal number in order to make the portrait faithful to his view of that subject. It is likely that Thomas More never said a damned thing about giving the Devil benefit of the law, but that does not render his questionThis country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?any less salient.

          The trick is to neither give undue authority to a quote (even if legitimate) nor casually discard it as illegitimate.
          –

  38. From above, 10:43 — 11:47 P.M. Tue.:

    This is making me feel bipolar. … This can’t be healthy.

    I’m in the same exact place. You are completely normal. For us.

    I’m also doing that. It doesn’t feel healthy, but it does feel…appropriate.

    My own best judgment, which is (of course) still developing just like the whole background “situation” behind such things, is that this “cycling” between one viewpoint and another, one mental outlook and another, is both pretty much normal and about as “healthy” a reaction as many of us are capable of…

    Under the given circumstances.

    Which few of us Americans can do much to control, and therefore have to experience, as something done to us, often much against our will.

    In a way that is genuinely threatening, profoundly abusive, subtly but quite viciously traumatic (and a ‘flashback’ to earlier similar / related traumas like the Impeachment Coup Attempt) — something like having a family member suddenly in the hospital of Something Serious and Maybe Bad, but with the extra added dollop of knowing it is / was completely artificial and intentional. And with the similar extra complication of what I can only call anticipatory or conditional grief — we know we might “lose” the person, so we seek by instinct to cushion a possible future shock by grieving, as it were, in advance.

    These are extraordinary times, “the times that try men’s souls.” (So, either we are clueless or soulless if they do not.) We are not, unless rarely gifted or quite floridly extraordinary in this way ourselves, actually supposed to be able to take such great and horrible things as these in stride. It’s normal, or equivalently typical, in the face of such extraordinary stress and trauma, to need to take more time to sleep, to reflect, to balance ourselves in whatever way works for us — and to feel a sometimes-violent oscillation of mood, of outlook, of sense of hope and / or despair. I know I do.

    This is a separate thing from the careful reflection, the close awareness, the tactical or strategic planning — it’s a whole different function of the mind, it plays by its own rules and works by its own dynamics. But letting our minds play out what they have to do to accept or even overcome what the effects would (otherwise) be — so we can get them out of the way of whatever else we need to think about, plan, or accomplish — that’s really a sign of strength.

    For as a character says at one point (it’s Ada King’s husband William, yes that Ada Countess Lovelace, who in this alternate history does not die so young in 1852): “I know so well how men are all supposed to be made of stone and iron whenever that strength is called for, but we are mere flesh and blood after all. Every last wretchedly-forsaken one of us.”

    1. Thanks for your thoughts about this. I really really hate when people lie to me; it invalidates my picture of reality (which tends to be tad jello-like sometimes anyway). All of this fraud makes me question big chunks of the past and assumptions about how our country worked. There’s a lot of grief…

      2. …it invalidates my picture of reality…

        In many ways, this gets very close to the heart of the matter. And the reason why I wrote this now, beyond a sudden awareness of… deep and wide grief.

        Real, hard-core ‘gaslighting’ isn’t only about peddling alternate “facts” that contradict what you can find out or already know — mere confusion, fake news, misinformation or disinformation isn’t enough. Neither is connecting all those hoax-details into a coherent ‘dogma’ or ‘narrative’ designed to damage or replace your own (contrary) framework of understanding — bypass all your checks and ‘filters’ that would otherwise refute or dismiss all those things one by one, with a single horse-pill of lies — though that comes much closer.

        No, the real grand-slam home run of the whole gaslighting game is to get you to question or even dismiss your entire “picture of reality” along with the way you got to it in the first place. And it doesn’t just work in plain sight, by logical (but fraudulent) arguments to your conscious mind, it also works ‘under the table’ by attacking the foundations of your basic faith in yourself and the world around you, and the ability that faith gives you to proceed confidently with life.

        And that makes it just as important, potentially, to create that kind of mutual re-validation on the unconscious and ‘feeling’ level too; not just at the logical and cognitive level of ‘yes, they really are that crazy’ or ‘no, this stupid idea will never work anywhere outside their own heads’ (which this blog has been so very good at, in the wonderful tradition of, e.g., Jerry Pournelle’s “A Step Farther Out” columns years ago).

        Even that latest “Star Wars” movie (!) said it straight out. “They want you to think you’re alone. But you’re not.”

        1. Yes, having people to communicate (like here) that will validate your reality with is important to get back to balance. The reason why I started posting after intermittently reading here for years…

          1. Just be very careful of whom you select to validate your reality. Self-identified dragons, minotaurs, wallabies and the like are not necessarily reliable sources of good sense.

            –

            1. It’s not at all clear that what I’m looking for is ‘good sense”. 🙂 According to many that would be the positions of the (spit) mainstream media. I vastly prefer dragons, minotaurs, wallabies, oxen, etc.

    3. “I know so well how men are all supposed to be made of stone and iron whenever that strength is called for, but we are mere flesh and blood after all. Every last wretchedly-forsaken one of us.”

  40. So, I headed up to Gladstone today for the gun testing and collecting a few items left up at the parents’ RV . . . along the lakefront north of Menominee, there is a stretch of several Biden signs, and the larger amount of Trump signs . . . and between them, at a yard with a small skateboard half pipe, a hand painted sign saying “Iggy Pop for President!”
    I LoLed

  41. Byron York, reporting on the GOP Establishment’s view of Trump’s post election actions:

    How do Republicans see Trump refusal to concede?
    [SNIP]
    So they support Trump’s continued challenges in the hope that the evidence might emerge. To have a chance, the representative explained, Trump has to move beyond citing small examples of individual irregularities and discover the bigger vote manipulation behind it all. It’s fine to talk about dead people voting, but that’s not the big thing, they believe. They acknowledge that the evidence might never be found — that Trump has, in fact, lost — but while the search goes on, they have absolutely no problem with the president not conceding. On that, Trump is on firm ground with a lot of Republicans.

    Trump also has support on the transition question. The senator discounted reports of the Biden team not receiving intelligence briefings. It’s not a big deal, he said. Nor is any other lack of cooperation in the transition so far. Look at the last transition, he said, the transition from Obama to Trump. There was a pretense of a smooth transition, but at the same time the outgoing Obama team sicced U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies on the incoming Trump administration. They tried to sabotage the new president even as they pretended to conduct a gracious transition. So now, the senator said, using a common vulgar expression, the Democrats can stick their desire for a gracious transition in a place where the sun don’t shine.

    But then there is Georgia. Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are both facing runoff elections in a state it appears Trump has very narrowly lost. If Republicans win just one of the two races, they will control the Senate. If they win both, they’ll be stronger. But if Democrats win both seats, the Senate will be divided 50-50, with a Vice President Kamala Harris able to break ties in the Democrats’ favor. So for Republicans right now, after Trump’s loss, nothing could be more important.

    Both lawmakers see Georgia as the whole ball game …
    [SNIP]
    In more blunt terms, helping Republicans win the Senate would be the best way for Trump to stick it to Biden, to stick it to Chuck Schumer, to stick it to Nancy Pelosi, to get some measure of payback, and to walk away from Washington with Republicans having real power to preserve some of Trump’s accomplishments. If Trump will work for Perdue and Loeffler victories, it will add one final accomplishment to an already impressive list of things Trump got done in a single term. The GOP’s future for the next few years could depend on Trump’s embrace of that view.
    –

    1. “shut up Trump, and help us establishment types.”
      NO. ALSO THESE ARE MY MIDDLE FINGERS.
      And you know what, that titles begs the conclusion. So, he can take it and shove it.

    1. I was kind of wondering if it was my turn to go blackpill/doomer.

      I don’t quite follow the lyrics to this, but it seems similar to my reaction to all the post voting revelations.

      Though, The Donald as Prisma Ilya is maybe a little bit nuts, even by my standards of “wouldn’t it be cool to make a story where…” Kaledio Topaz explains current events as well as anything.

      1. Oh? And how would you have handled it when they cut the outside feed so they could trap you in a hostage situation?

        Any vote obtained under duress isn’t valid by definition.

      2. “This is wrong.”
        “Vote to certify, we’ll do an audit… and oh yes, your racist hate of (home address), your children of (specific school) are going to be so upset. Unless you vote to certify.”

        That is why they signed the paper saying that they were illegally pressured into it.

        I want legal action for the open t hreats, but don’t expect it to happen.

    3. Come on Ian ask something hard. They can barely FIND their posterior extremity let alone wipe it without issues.

  44. Current news conference by Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, etc., is ongoing but carried only by e.g., Rush Limbaugh, OAN, maybe a few others — looks like they’re pretty much laying the whole “big picture” out now, and giving references to actual court filings with witness statements and other evidence as they do. Looks like the Kraken is starting to rise from the depths…

  45. Current news conference by Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, etc., is ongoing but carried only by e.g., Rush Limbaugh, OAN, maybe a few others — looks like they’re pretty much laying the whole “big picture” out now, and giving references to actual court filings with witness staements and other evidence as they do. Looks like the Kraken is starting to rise from the depths…

    1. Meanwhile the MSM stands with blinders on and hands over their ears going LALALALALA and occasionally shouting “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”.

        1. I was thinking more like Oz in the movie of the Wizard of Oz, However, blending that with the Emperor’s New Clothes works well.

            1. Not only was the Wizard a good flim flam man he was at heart a decent soul, a “humbug” by his or description

  46. It appears my last comment went into a black hole 😦

    This is no longer Trump/Biden.
    This is no longer even politics.
    This is about the integrity of the ballot box.
    If we no longer have reliable elections, we no longer have a democracy, let alone a Republic.

    This cannot be permitted to stand — I don’t know how much harder I can pray.

    P.S. From now until hell freezes over, we need to start using a new style guide that “interprets” the new doublespeak right in the text. For example: Last week antifa (new hitler youth) attacked peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C.

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