Earlier today (I got up much too early) we were talking about the times ahead, and I will have things to say coming up.
For one, you guys have no idea how socially disruptive times process. No one who hasn’t lived through it knows. Plus you’re all poisoned with story. You have imbibed story by every means possible, some of it disguising as history classes, but really a highly fictionalized and compressed version of things.
I know we in the States do things faster (and generally bigger) but there is an internal logic to strife and revolution that is mostly hurry up and wait. And a bizarre lot of normal life subsists, interspersed with completely strange, reality-breaking events.
The strange, reality breaking events have started. We did not have an election, we had a Fraudiletion and a Frausident was elected. The members of the establishment who imbibed as much story disguised as history, and that story mostly from a Marxist perspective are in the thrall of the illusion they should submit so they will be eaten last, since “the people will rise up” and “The people” are of course communist. You should forgive these idiots, by the way. The bureaucrats and rulers have suffered from this illusion since the early twentieth century, and actually before. The French revolution scared the pants out of them and they took all the wrong lessons, which is why the remaining royal families are “climate change” tools, Muslim apologists and in point of fact enemy agents.
And that’s part of the problem we have. Count on most people in our institutions, who could stop the crazy train to the de facto if not the jure enemy agents.
And enemy is the appropriate name, since you know, it’s not just the fact they shout Death to America, they really mean it, and want to destroy ALL nations in the name of some bizarre, global super state.
No, they can’t win, but we can lose. Which is why it’s important for us, in the middle of the bizarre/normal/bizarre/normal events to find our feet.
We must both make it absolutely clear that should the fraudulent be sworn in, he does not have the “mandate of heaven” which is to say the confidence of the people. The bureaucrats and idiots need to wake up that while they’re afraid of astro-turf riots, they are facing…. well…. revolution and war. Probably a series of them. And the tech Lords with their curious illusions and their attempts at censorship can’t SAVE them. We will find a way.
Now this is a big and important purpose. And you’re going to think that it’s going to completely consume your life, and you’ll go out in a blaze of glory.
That’s story thinking. Fiction is simplified and fast. It’s real life with all the parts cut out. Real life works differently.
So this is the first article of a series. I was going to call it “Make your bed.” We’ll come back to that. I’m in fact not the least interested in your sleeping hygiene, but it’s a good encapsulation.
I’m one of the few people here who has lived through massive societal disruption (over and over again, because, you know, Portugal is a fractious little place, a family quarrel with borders, and you know what domestics are like) and I know how much the accounts clean up (and outright lie) what was a very bizarre series of years.
Because we are the ones pushing for change in this case and bizarrely (when all we want is our constitutional republic) the revolutionaries (most of the 20th century followed a Marxist script and they’ve only gone crazier in this century) we need to understand a few things about what we’re undertaking.
First, this is not a novel. You can be as pissed as you want to be, and you can take as much action as you can, ranging from passive resistance to the fourth box, but this will not — with very, very few exceptions — be your entirely life.
You’ll still have to earn a living, have relationships with other people, live in the normal world.
Most revolutionaries are miserable people, failures as parents and failures as spouses, and failures as humans. I leave it to someone with more time and head space to figure out what that means and whether people become revolutionaries because they’re broken, or whether they’re broken because they become obsessed with the cause.
It could go either way, and Peterson encapsulated it very well, in the idea of people striding abroad to fix the world’s problems while they have an unmade bed back in their room.
Because it’s easier to want to fix big problems that you know you can’t fix alone than to look after your daily life.
But go above and see where I said that you still have to live a normal life. That normalcy WEIRDLY prevails even in the crazier times. As we have had proof in 2020, as our governors and insane people try to change the way everything it works, and people keep going back to being people. (Which, btw, is the biggest resistance you can engage in RIGHT now. Just refuse to obey the insane orders. Come out, come out, wherever you are.)
Before 2020 I lived the transition from National Socialism to International Socialism. And I’m here to tell you that the most bizarre thing is that credentials stayed in place, the forms of normal life continued. I mean, money lost value at a bizarre pace (to make this clear, when the revolution happened the Portuguese currency was 7 to the dollar, and by 1985 (roughly ten years) it was $200 to the dollar. Prices were…. interesting. And there was the usual meddling of wage and price controls, and the black market was NEXT level. (There will be a fortune to be made in the black market in the next few years. I guarantee that. Already I understand “restaurant” and “club” “speakeasies” are the biggest thing. But I suspect a black market for food, for clothing, etc, will develop, should the fraudulent get control of our lives.)
What this means is that, through all this, you have to keep your normal life going as much as possible. You still have to go to work. You still have to be nice to the people around you. (Though meh, we’re more and more dividing, and no one requires you to be nice to people who want to kill you.)
To put it in terms of my own life: I still have to write books; I need to finish the remodeling of the house, since we’re intending to move out in a year. Where we move is slightly influenced by the situation. I mean I never wanted to live anywhere but Denver, and I always loved big cities. Given what’s happening to big cities right now, that’s been revised, as has the list of states on the differential. But we’d always have moved — because altitude is playing havoc with my life — and that needs to go on.
Great social fights, no matter how justified and glorious, and even if we are — we are, you know? — putting our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honors on the line so our children might have liberty are not big explosions as they are in stories. The founding fathers still had businesses (most of them counted on their wives to run them, and some like Franklin, were not very nice in that respect as the wives ended up with everything dumped on them.
BUT though some of them paid the ultimate price, and some died as paupers, a lot of the better known ones prospered through this. They looked up their private lives if not first at least as much as their public lives.
So friends, brothers and sisters in this endeavor, look after yourself and your life. Create compartments. Allot a certain amount of time to the revolution, sure. It will be needed. Be ready to pay the ultimate price. It might be needed (though for a surprisingly small number. Right now, what most of us are in real danger of dying from is famine, weird as that seems, because the left is trying as hard as it can to engineer one.)
But keep your head about you. Work at your chosen avocation. Make money. Sure, if you want to save it in well used gold jewelry (because if you trade in a well worn wedding ring for a pound of meat, no one has any reason to think you have more at home.) or actually you SHOULD keep some in well worn gold jewelry (Pawn shops. We still haven’t broken my mom of her habit of buying used gold. It’s almost endearing.) But keep some in the normal bank account, keep some in investments, and keep your eyes open for things you can do to fulfill a need and bring in unexpected wealth in “these turbulent times.”
In my case, I hear that escapist fiction is selling very, very well. And as soon as I can get the craft room setup (at this point late December is the earliest) I’m going to start making things to sell and give away. Part of this is that I really need to disperse a lot of fabric, paint and craft stuff before we pack to move. Part of it is that in Portugal — and Portugal is different, being an hyper-social society — a lot of the black market was arts and crafts. As legitimate businesses were devoured by wage and price controls, a lot of street vending, with a blanket and running if you saw the police became a thing. A lot of the young people who couldn’t find a job worked at this stuff, and made not just modest incomes, but got experience both with managing finance and with the insanity of regulations. And yep, in a revolution, or the middle of a bunch of them, people still bought and sold toys, jewelry, clothing, etc. And if a lot of it was made from upcyled material, well, that was the time we were in.
We are lucky in that we have access to a ton more materials, and that there is now an internet. I predict a growth market in useful phone aps that are not what our overlords expect, and they will give the young people an outlet and a means to make a living. I suspect we’re not far from “gadgets” either. (And will whisper a word in younger son’s conch-like (d*mn big conch) ear.) And well…. we’ll see what offers. I’ve solidified my idea of what I want for a site for witers. Let me talk to the tech people in the house, and I’ll get back to you on what help we need and when.
Remember a great part of our ah…. revolutionary efforts right now go into protecting our first ammendment and refusing to be gaslit. This means honestly that there is money to be made in alternate avenues.
There is absolutely no reason that what makes you money shouldn’t further the cause, either. But remember that you must first make your bed: look after yourslef, those close to you, those you love. Attend to your primary responsibilities.
If you’re undercover, keep your head down at work. If you must vent, create a deep cover alternate identity for those efforts. I don’t care how unsuited you are. I kept this up for 15 years, and I’m the world’s least likely street agent.
We don’t know how long this is going to take. To an extent this is out of control. And since these events are actually worldwide, it is ….. uh…. even more complicated.
I don’t think the instability will last very long, but then again, have the same reliability as the magic eight ball. What I experienced was a summer rain compared to the storm that’s coming.
What I can tell you is that it will take much, much longer and be more complicated than you can imagine. And since the future belongs to those who show up, you must keep your head and keep yourself going, and keep yourself fed, and make sure you have resources for contingencies.
Yes, this means long term food storage. It means buying used gold for disruptions (which won’t be permanent, btw, but usually limited in time.) It means arming yourself, because in places and at times things will go kinetic.
But mostly? It means working really hard, and making sure you’re okay and those around you are okay: keep your credentials current, keep your skills sharp. Keep your eyes peeled and your mind flexible for new ways to build parallel structures and new ways to build things, so that the tech lords (more like the tech bums) will fnd they took control of the wrapper, not the gift.
This is not the time to plan your glorious demise. This is the time to plan discrediting, taking power away from and making irrelevant those who would enslave the entire world to their deranged illusions.
A lot of this starts with “make your bed.” Keep yourself sane, look after your every day responsibilities, work hard as hell, and be your best you. You’ll then be in the best shape possible to shape the future.
Me, I’m going to write a lot. And if they try to cancel my books, I’ll find new ways to get them to you. Because it’s the skill I have, I’m better at it than most of their darlings, and by gum, I’m going to be good and work as hard as I can.
I’m not saying not to plan for long term and extreme survival. I am. I’m not saying not to resist. I am. I’m not saying not to even plan a move to a safer place. (We are, though there are also other reasons.)
I’m saying, unclench. Stop expecting fast and explosive. Plan for the lonnnnng fight. Plant to thwart anything done to destroy us.
You probably, unless the one reading this is a military VIP or has a key position in bureaucracy, if you are, carry on, can’t do much about the big actions in this long war, but you can do EVERYTHING about the small actions: make yourself solid, prosperous, find your best position (a flea might give a conductor an itch, but the conductor can derail the train.)
The future belongs to do who show up. And by Bob (Heinlein) we’re going to show up. And we’re going to win the future for liberty.
Be not afraid. Stop fretting about your impotence. And go do what you can. We are the majority, and we are going to win this.
According To Hoyt 
This is exactly what I needed to hear right now. Thanks
Wonderful, much-needed post! And so reassuring to know I’m not the only one trying to write AND create hard crafts at the same time!!
No. I resisted the term “creative” for a long time, because it’s so…. artsy fartsy. But the truth is, if we DON’T create, those of us who are well… thus inclined, we get suicidal. And then we’re no use to anyone.
And besides, our skills are going to be needed. Go work. I will too.
I should set a bunny quota. I keep feeling I should do something more important, but the bunnies wind up being all that feels real… quick, too. Definitely need a bunny quota.
I like ‘Make’.
The whole Maker movement, from crocheting to 3d printing to coding to woodworking to welding, is absolutely 100% subversive at its core, and is exactly what needs to happen – An Army of Makers.
Indeed – if you can make, craft, fix stuff … you’re already part of an underground economy.
“if you can make, craft, fix stuff”
And what about those of us who can’t? (I’ve tried. Motor skill deficits get in the way of arts and handicrafts; autism gets in the way of creative writing — can’t create believable characters when you can’t “get into” your fellow human beings’ heads.)
I’m just going to say that this is not the group to say that Autism Spectrum prevents writing. I find it almost impossible to figure out “real people” from their various “tells.” (The classic “don’t get social cues” which feeds into social anxiety and all that.) However, when writing I don’t have to figure out what my characters are thinking/feeling from their “tells.” I get to decide what they’re thinking/feeling and then get to decide what their “tells” for that will be. I don’t have to “figure it out.” It’s my choice.
That’s something of an oversimplification because you do have to make them reasonably plausible, but “reasonably plausible” is a whole lot easier than trying to figure out a real person in real time in a social situation. The most complex and well-developed fictional character ever written is only going to be a drop next to the Great Lakes in complexity of any “real world” person.
I suspect your “motor skill deficits” are also less of a barrier than you believe. Yeah, you’re going to stink for a while. What you turn out will be crap. The skills involved aren’t acquired overnight and the problem most “I can’t draw a straight line” folk have is that they give up too soon. On top of that, there are plenty of things that can be done even with severe limitations on motor control. Browse YouTube. Look for things like artists and crafters with cerebral palsy, in some cases quite severe.
Things like motor skills and Spectrum can be worked around. The real limitation is a lack of drive and perseverance.
Nah. They subvert. It’s superversive. It builds up where they tear down.
Very true. If we are *meant* to do it, then we will find a way to do it!
I’ve taken the suicidal route; admitting you’re an artist, a “creator,” is the difference between life and death. #1 currency for moi is authenticity.
I make most awesome and excellent creams, salt scrubs, and soaps. I’m making up for avoiding chemistry in school–this is way more fun, and it keeps your skin working well. I also just wrote a short story for my sister for Christmas. I’m illustrating it tomorrow and the next few days.
If I don’t do this I’ll get crazy again, and I’m really really close to uncontrollable crazy a lot of the time now. So, soap it is!
This has been a long time coming. Your post was reassuring. In the last five years my family has expanded our skillset by adding beer making, canning, intensive gardening, extensive expansion of wilderness survialval skills, reloading, concealed carry and revisited many other skillsets that had not been used in a while. All with an eye toward this current trouble.
Now added a 3d printer this week and started another business.
The biggest difficulty I have is actually facing the nearly overwhelming reality of it I struggle to wrap my head around the fact that these folks are destroying the greatest experiment on gods green earth WILLFULLY. Granted many are ignorant. One ex friend said to me when confronted about his voting habits, “I am not a baby killer” Oh really? if you support those folk that is what you get. geez.
Some other thoughts. Collect hard back of old history books and commentary. Old biographies and readers at 4th through 8th grade level. Store safely, the stories of our founders and the heros will be needed again. Also do a code with family. One book each of you have in you go bag. Practice the codes and have specific phrases. Nearly unbreakable and very simple. Dont tell anyone what the book is!
Eyes open, look for opportunities to prosper in the midst of the chaos. We win they lose.
While you’re collecting, make sure you include older chemistry, physics, biology, medical, etc. Figure anything post 1990s has been corrupted in ways that will make them actively dangerous.
Have 1910 college physics textbook. Interesting what they knew, and what they thought they knew. Hard to understand the atom without knowing about the neutron. No mention of Einstein and relativity. Apparently used at UC Berkeley.
We have lots of interesting old books. Too bad we live in Mordor. When the “firemen” come… Perhaps we need to establish a hidden library. But where will be safe? Who can we trust? Moving 12,000 books is not easy.
I love the hidden library idea. So much of everything is online and will possibly not be accessable. Libraries in big cities likely to be torched. Small towns and rural not so much but if CWII gets really awful may not survive. I have managed to keep many of the old books even through many moves. A good starting point at least.
Ideas about parameters and locale would be helpful. I think I will make this one of my projects. Gutenburg is great but hard copies preserved may be what is needed. The way the iconoclasts are trending not certain the Library of Congress will survive.
I am reminded of the Foundation. No other end of the Galaxy, but may find suitable place to setup a hidden library. See my other comments below. I would value any insight about locale and lists. Have ideas, enough to get started. Hope is not needed, but do not wish to be the party of “doomed to repeat”.
Don’t forget the corollary — those who do remember history are doomed to watch everybody else repeat it.
So, you’re saying there’s a chance?
~
You and I are on the same wavelength.
Hubby and I are looking to get out of PA (hopefully into TX, he had an interview, fingers crossed).
On the create side of things, I have my mother’s sewing machine which has almost never been used (Dad bought her a new one in hopes she’d take it up again in her fight against Alzheimer’s). Last night I was talking with hubby and mentioned that I had the sewing machine and that I hadn’t really known *why* I’d kept it at the time. Now I do and I’m extremely happy I did. I don’t consider myself crafty, but I can make simple things and even those will be welcome (tea towels, anyone? 😀 )
Not dissing TX, but I made the same move (slowly, albeit) to TN. Left PA for a job in MD between Baltimore and DC, stood that as long as I could, then moved south to TN. Been happy ever since. And if you want to talk to someone about needlecrafts, my wife is the one to talk to.
I’ve been wondering if Texas might not be too high a profile target. I keep seeing clever plans to “turn Texas Blue!’ and if those continue to turnip, I imagine the elites frustration could lead to kinetics in TX earlier than in other places.
Not that I expect that to work or anything – see how well the propositioned bricks worked out there vs. elsewhere. God Bless Texas. But picking someplace a little further down the bad guys list might be prudent.
Heh. That should be “prepositioned bricks.” Thanks, autocorrect.
I’m not quite sure what exactly one would proposition bricks regarding.
I suppose it would depend on what the proposition is. Perhaps that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator…
In Texas, that they form a wall along the southern border seems like a likely proposition one would make to bricks.
“Proposition bricks” describes the operation of planed obsolescence in hand-held electronic devices.
~
Texas is on the radar because it’s a shorter trip to the west coast where *all* the family is located. He actually turned down a job in TN both because the salary was lower and it was as long if not longer to get to California and Washington. Of course, that was before all this crap started. Right now, it’s where are the jobs. Goal #1 is out of PA. We’ll worry about the rest when we get there, wherever there is.
Sooo… “We’ll know where we’re going when we get there!” 😛
We are going to Planet 10.
Keep in mind that your move to Texas will be two votes for Keeping Texas Red.
Congrats on exiting Pennsylvania, winner (again) of Top Judicial Hellhole” in the US:
NYC’s becoming an even nastier ‘judicial hellhole’
Even though the pandemic delayed much litigation for most of 2020, New York City managed to qualify as one of the nation’s top “judicial hellholes” for the third year in a row, and actually got worse.
The American Tort Reform Foundation’s annual Judicial Hellhole report ranks the jurisdictions in the country with the most rampant civil-justice abuse. This year the city moved up to No. 2 after sitting at No. 3 for two years. Only the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania earned a worse ranking; the state of California took the third spot. …
[EMPHASIS ADDED]
~
Exactly (re voting red). We are friends with the former R ward leader here. But, in our ward there (I believe) less than 20 Rs. It will be nice to be somewhere with a bit more balance.
I suspect that some on the Left aren’t hoping to turn Texas blue so much as they’re hoping to provoke a response from Texas that can be play as over the top in the media, generating public opinion that will scream for hammers to be dropped on Texas as punishment.
Be careful what you wish for….
Whether or not such a move ultimately backfires on the Left in the end, it would result in a Texas that has flare-ups that repeatedly has artificially created flashpoints until the desired result is obtained. If someone is planning on moving to Texas for hoped for peace and quiet, the potential for such flashpoints is something to take into consideration.
Alinsky: Provoke the other side into an overreaction.
That, however, relies on people thinking it is an overreaction.
The only thing Saint Augusto did wrong was he didn’t do it enough.
Given how the tech companies keep moving to TX, the “turn it blue” threat might be gaining more weight. OTOH, some of the CA refugees might be thinking “not no but [perdition] no, not again!”
Unless things change (possible) TX is not on the differential, but other places are.
$SPOUSE has weather issues that make TX a non-starter, but we tolerate elevation and cold. (15F this morning. I said *tolerate*, not enjoy.) We’re planning on staying put, but perhaps change states. State of Jefferson signs are getting more common in flyover country, and Despicable Kate and her vile minions can’t seem to stop it.
I’m seeing more rebellion; a couple of counties (both west of the Cascades) are starting to openly defy Kate’s orders. Over here, people are largely quietly trying to ignore them, though the state bureaucrats are trying to make examples of overtly rebellious businesses.
FWIW, I saw the picture of the Texas A&M marching band. Fully masked, with mouth holes in the masks so they can play the instruments while being “safe”. I rather like their style.
Not all of Texas is an inferno. The panhandle has relatively mild summers.
True that. One of the more impressive ice-covered roadway drives was through Amarillo in January ’72.
OTOH, we’re in the Deplorable section of Oregon, and assuming the tribes don’t repeat Modoc War 2.0 against the locals, we’re better off staying put. BLM-ifa already discovered that the shopkeepers in town (and their friends, and friends-of-friends) were adequately armed. Very peaceful protest. 🙂 The progtards did one major arson fire, but the minor one nearest our home was caught right away. Perps weren’t caught for either, not sure any would have survived.
I’d be more worried about raiders from the feral tribes of Weirdland.
They ever finish investigating those suspicious fires?
I haven’t heard a thing recently, although our county chair is taking a huge amount of flak for telling the world that KB to shove it re: Thankskgiving. I saw several threats of recall, and she hasn’t even taken office yet.
My aunt mentioned that your lead twit was planning to drag a circus down to Lake County to try to boost the positive test results– I mean, wanted to make sure that an obviously underserved county was getting the help they needed.
The way they fiddle with the mostly obscured case definitions* and the mysterious departure of Influenza as a disease** it’s clear that we’ll be in lockdown until Despicable Kate relents or does the lamppost dance, pour encourager les autres. (Damn, it’s the most useful French phrase I know.)
(*) (If I got it right, getting tested with a *negative* result counted as a case, not to mention being in contact with someone who tested “positive”, with papaya-positive cycle settings)
(**) (I saw comments from a pharmacist; Tamiflu sales went to zero for him, and it’s absurdly low for the industry because it *has* to be WuhanCCPVirus, donchaknow.)
If you look at the FluView, the number of tests is down slightly– but the percent of positive flu tests is like gone.
I haven’t heard of anybody being caught. Outside of chronic tweeker/firebugs, it’s a tough crime to even catch somebody at, and wildland fires are even tougher. Somebody might possibly have caught a plate number from the start of the Two Four Two fire (set in Collier State Park), but no word. There was a guy bragging about setting fires in Sept. His twitter stuff got scrubbed; don’t know if he’s alive anymore.
We’re far enough from the main highways so that repeated tries would likely get the perps caught. The one attempt wasn’t repeated; or if it was, the 3S rule came into play. People here are a bit exercised over the progtards.
–
In Oregon? Other than Portland Metro? Uh, sucker betting against lynching. So … Duh! Only bet would be how long before they were swinging, or tared & feathered, then hung. Even some of the hills of Portland, they’d better have the caught perps well secure downtown. For all that the Detroit Fire was east of Salem, the Holiday Fire east of Springfield/Eugene, should it come to pass that those were arson caused, the perps would be best to dig themselves a hole and cover it up after them.
Rage against wildland arson fires in Oregon is pretty much a uniting factor among us natives (even if some are not pre-pioneer/trapper variety).
I have about 30 sewing machines. Mostly old Singers and 80s/90s Berninas. I really need to start unpacking them and selling them on…
I have about 30 sewing machines. Mostly old Singers and 80s/90s Berninas. I really need to start unpacking them and selling them on…
Maybe. Just maybe. Where the Legislature was illegally overruled they quietly have upstarted their Secretary of States certification and appointed correct electors or withhold electors. But are not advertising it … Wouldn’t that be a surprise? Won’t hold my breath. Doubt they have the courage to do so … but …
Never give up hope, and keep thinking out scenarios.
Just keep rowing as we do.
That could still happen. There are some indications that it is planned. IF IT DOES, the Fascist Left is going to go epically bugshit. And how the rest of the populace deals with that will be instructive.
I see some indications that the response may be a tad more direct than the Fascists expect. Be ready. Don’t trust the Media (do I really need to mention this?). But charging somebody with a skateboard raised to strike is assault with a deadly weapon. Throwing a gasoline bomb at a crowd is assault with a deadly weapon. Shooting fireworks as people is assault with a deadly weapon.
One is usually allowed to shoot such assailants.
I suspect that the glamour of being Part Of The Revolution will fade fast if the cost rises . And no matter how many fascist Prosecutors there are, the courts are going to get tired of murder charges that boil down to obvious self defense rather quickly if there are a lot of them.
I’m going to be on the sidelines, perforce. My Lady’s health is bad and I’m going to have to be hoping that the amount of ‘normal’ is enough to keep her treatment going.
I wish it were different.
IF the forces of Republicanism prevail, life is going to get very interesting for the Washington Elite. Interesting, but not pleasant.
It turns out the chain link on freeway overpasses will hold a quite reasonable amount of weight suspended from something like ropes, so any lack of streetlights is not a limit on throughput.
–
I don’t think it happened. Dang it. Georgia wimped out.
https://newsla.localad.com/2020/12/14/republican-electors-in-georgia-and-pennsylvania-cast-procedural-votes-for-president-and-vice-president-to-preserve-trump-camp-legal-challenges/
https://newsla.localad.com/2020/12/14/breaking-nevada-gop-electors-cast-ballot-for-trump-there-are-now-dueling-electors-in-three-states-video/
Four:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/pennsylvania-georgia-nevada-and-arizona-republican-electors-cast-votes-for-trump_3618147.html
Possibly five. Michigan’s GoP electors were barred from the capitol building. But they apparently met up elsewhere and cast their votes. According to one source, there’s no requirement regarding where they have to do this.
However, all of this still leaves the ball in the same hands it was originally in.
https://thepostmillennial.com/republican-electors-in-michigan-prevented-from-entering-capitol
Sure, still in the same hands– but it’s not across the goal line.
Last I saw, NV, MI, WI, PA, GA, AZ and New Mexico have contested slates. Not sure why the last.
With the forensic data released, it looks like there’s enough to trigger some very interesting (perhaps I should use the Mr. Spock “Fascinating”) responses. And yes, if these happen, the left will go bonkers.
Already bonkers.
The one thing that concerns me is that apparently the guy releasing the forensic data report has made some sloppy mistakes in the past (such as confusing election data from counties in two completely different states).
Ron Watkins (Codemonkeyz) pointed out that things like the oval coverage criteria can be set manually, so it’s trivial for a crooked operator to send any amount of ballots to the error/adjudication bin. A lot of what he found was in the Dominion manual…
New lawsuit.
What do you know! None of this is showing up in network news. Not even Fox!
Another: https://newsla.localad.com/2020/12/14/breaking-nevada-gop-electors-cast-ballot-for-trump-there-are-now-dueling-electors-in-three-states-video/
All I’m hearing is “Once certified by the Electoral College”
the fat lady has sung and“it is all over” … apparently not …PA’s GOP specifically says they did it because it stops the certification by the electoral college, and there’s still cases going on.
I finally found SOMETHING at The Hill, at the very bottom of an article about certifying the electors they mention that in Georgia– well:
In Georgia, even as former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams presided over the state awarding its 16 electoral votes to Biden, a group of Republicans gathered separately to cast ballots for Trump, despite there being nothing in the Constitution or state electoral processes that allows for such an “alternate” slate of electors.
“Had we not meet today and cast our votes, the President’s pending election contest would have been effectively mooted,” Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer tweeted. “Our action today preserves his rights under Georgia law.”
No link because the f-ers can’t be bothered to REPORT.
That takes me back to the Clinton Administration when I learned that the secret to reading the Washington Post was to CTRL-End their articles and read the last three, four paragraphs where they buried the news. That allowed them to later claim they’d reported on the facts with very little chance of anybody reading their reporting of those facts.
~
*snickers* Way back then, I only read on zombie tree, at least for news type stuff. I read Lileks and some NRO, plus big data releases and research, but internet was where shiny new driver’s license me went for important things like Star Trek boards!
*********
Leaving memory lane, it’s odd– I know to read with an expectation of stupidity in phrasing and stuff, but there’s usually something you can turn sideways and push to say it’s reporting the truth, but they usually only dump things like names you can use to do decent research at the bottom.
Are they maybe hiring a lot more folks who learned their writing 25 years ago?
TrekBBS?
Yep, the Yahoo! boards.
This was also standard practice (or so I hear) by Russians reading Soviet-era staples of “journalism” like Pravda and Izvestiya — only it was the whole paper they read back-to-front (vaguely like an authentic-ish English translation of a manga). ‘Good stuff’ in little articles on the back, “Pensioner Nikita Khrushchev dead at age X” while the front page was meaningless state drivel like “Glorious 57th Tractor Brigade Overfulfills Its Plan Again!” or worse.
Interesting that the NYT was descending to Soviet-standard (ah) journalism back when the Soviet Union was barely in its grave… but no big surprise.
The paper of Walter Duranty? It was no longer needed by the USSR and could degenerate.
Fox, to begin with, was never all that “right wing” except by comparison to the other big media outlets, and has lately been thoroughly blue-pilled.
Yeah, when the Murdock kids got control, it went into roll-left-and-die mode. Ratings post election force the “you need a heart of stone not to laugh” reaction. We get NewsMax on Dish. Modulo Tucker and maybe Varney, that what $SPOUSE watches.
For all the “Outside the Mainstream” huffing and puffing about Fox, most Media surveys found it pretty much slightly left of center (say, a 5.5 on a 1 – 10 scale). The problem was, of course, that most of the network news was rolling in at 7 or 8 (making life hard for Mother Jones and The New Republic, who were trying to stay just right of The Nation.
Fox had Brit Hume, and Tony Snow, and a few others who largely kept them balanced. Hannity was paired with Colmes, a severe intellectual mismatch and O’Reilly was populist and wandering off the spectrum. Van Sustern and whoever else they put in their 10:00 pm slot never really mattered as FNC’s core demographic was abed by then.
They’ve still got a few Right of center hosts — Gutfeld, Perino, Timpf (who’s more libertarian but what the heck) — but the network’s editors and producers are tired of being embarrassed at industry awards shows and, as noted, the Murdocks are dreadfully mortified by the whole mess but can’t figure our how to do a successful rebrand as their capacity for smart decisions was exhausted when they chose their parents.
~
They were abed by then because they had to be a work the next morning.
My Dad was a mountaineer. He always used the phrase “interesting climb” to mean “I survived but I’ll never set crampon on that beast again, thanks very much.”
Heh. By that standard I had an interesting past 6 years….
The Chinese curse; may you live in interesting times.
The Chinese blessing; may your grandfather die, may your father die, may you die, may your son die.
The curse; well that’s right here right now, & been here for quite a while. To a certain extent, I quite enjoy it.
When my kids were growing up they learned early the phrase, ‘Daddy, I’m bored!’, was entirely, completely,absolutely unacceptable. Saying such meant they were not looking around, there’s always something interesting well within arm’s or mind’s reach!
The blessing; The natural order. As noted, even in, especially in, interesting times, make your bed. Respect, support, learn from your elders, nourish, educate, enlighten your offspring and, still, in the mean time, clean your room.
In interesting times, if you do that, in spite of everything, I’m pretty darn sure, you’ll be right, mate.
When my brother and I complained about being bored, my father would look at us, “you live in a place other people come for vacation and pay a lot of money to do so. FIND something to do!”
Yep! 🙂
Not quite the same, but when we said we were bored or wanted something to do the answer was often, “Shovel. Barn. Go!” We learned the habit of not being bored or wanting something to do very quickly…
Yep. “I’ve got just the cure!”
Yep, “I’ll find you something to do.”
My parents had a pet peeve about the word “bored” I learned after just a time or two to never use it.
Time to go melt some chocolate for dipping cookies, I guess.
I’m thinking that my job is to tell stories. Some just happen to have footnotes. So I am working on the Familiars and other stories, and on learning more about history. Because someone needs to have notes on the “unapproved but documented” version to counter what will be pouring down from various “approved” educational authorities.
My job, or at least the direction I’m being pushed/nudged/kicked/dragged [hey, slow on the uptake here, OK?] is story teller. Some happen to have footnotes and citations from material that predate the “approved official curricula” that are dripping down from the ivory tower.
A friend of mine runs a gardening podcast. She and her partner were discussing collective nouns a few weeks ago when they found there was no universally-accepted one for robins. They ran through a list (which I had given them) and glossed over “a reliant of robins.” I had to tell them that this was a pun like so many of the ones they’d gone through and referred to the Reliant Robin, a nearly universally despised three-wheeled auto from England in the 1970s. They then somehow decided I was their own personal Alex Trebek. I accepted that, of course; Alex was a good guy. But being a random fact attractor can have its uses sometimes.
English robins don’t look anything like ours. I knew this intellectually, but it hurts my head to look at them.
*goes to look*
… it’s a freakin’ chickadee with a paint job.
That seems a fair evaluation of the situation Foxfier. Its got a red frontspiece, but all in all the North American Robin (Turdus migratorius) is literally a bird of a different feather.
Technically, the American Robin is a thrush with a paint job.
Here’s a cool thing– the English blackbirds look (and sound) like black robins.
https://journeynorth.org/tm/robin/facts_characteristics.html
Well, I did know a European to see a photo of an American one and recognize while it was called a robin.
Did you ever see the episode of Top Gear where they drove a Reliant Robin and then turned one into a rocked and launched it? Excellent episode!
One of the memorable episodes, yes. My favorite episode is the one where they test cars from behind the Iron Curtain (the “high-end” ones, just to show how awful the Soviet cars were) and then did the test drive for the Ford Fiesta that involved a chase through a mall and a beach assault with the Royal Marines. (Best. Test drive. EVER.)
Yes! I also like the one where they are Albanian mafia guys, driving Mercedes.
We’ve been known to refer to a robination around Redquarters. As in, when 8 or 10 or 14 robins are all trying to use the birdbath “There’s a robination in progress.” But we also use “bedovelment” and “finchified” to refer to herds of birds.
Finchification? 😀
I’m with you. Or, rather, me, too. If we write true things, or tell true stories, that’s not nothing.
Imagine hearing true things on the TV news?
How does the calculus cipher out if I used this post to procrastinate from work?
*wry*
My take away is we still have to be the grown-ups…..
Not that I complain. Peter Pan is a nightmare, to me. But it is work.
It just struck me that all the totes-covid-safe riots of the past year were really Peter Pan riots in the Useful Idiots category – they want to be taken care of as eternal children without impediments to theft nor crime nor mayhem nor piracy nor taking big screen teevees and armfuls of clothing from the bigbox, and no bad popo to stop them because they really, really want to do crime.
And all the TechLord Corporate Statists had to do was buy a couple pallets of bricks.
And judging from secondhand sources (I’d rather dive into the Dark Web than go to that Grate Re-set Web site), “Peter Pan syndrome” is a really good description of the idealized / hoped-for customer they’re trying to pitch their World Communist Takeover Plot at — “I own nothing, but I’m happy!” wasn’t it?
A world full of Lost Boys and Girls who Never Grew Up, ordering everything by Magic Voice Recognition over the Ubiquitous 5G System, with a few benignly dictatorial Expert Class managers ruling all. (Okay, suddenly Peter Pan’s real idea seems better and better by comparison… with that.)
There’s a (truly vicious) story idea lurking in there somewhere.
One of the things I appreciated about the live-action Peter Pan (not Disney) a decade or so ago is the element of tragedy of Peter Pan. That by refusing to grow up, he never got the chance to love or live.
And of course, Jason Isaacs is awesome as Captain Hook.
Despite being firmly lodged on the Social Justice side of things, Ursula Vernon occasionally GETS it. She wrote a positively nightmarish take on Peter Pan a while back, with the Lost Boys sickening on a diet of cake (current) Wendy starving herself in an attempt to stave off her first period. Neverland has always been the ultimate in “nice to visit, never want to live there” for me.
Yeow. I was just reading through the earlier comments and thinking about Wendy in the book growing up a whole day earlier than most girls because it suited her. I don’t think I’ve read that bit of UV’s work and I’m not sure if I want the delivery of it in my head… even if the concept is no more hair-raising than the bits about food or the Lost Boys growing in the book.
I seem to recall the movie Hook did a pretty good job of having Peter rediscover the boy he’d been… expressly to become more of a man for his kids.
Really thought I’d clicked the box….
Being a Grown Up is a lot better than being the eternal child. For however much pain there is, there is a nothing stillness to Peter Pan. And to Fairyland. And to Oz.
However painful, and unwanted, change can be…I would rather have that change than none at all.
Yeah.
It’s like hard work– it can suck while it happens, but it’s worth it.
It’s progress. Not a big fan of the process of entropy mind you (I’d rather live forever or die trying)…but, the world is so much bigger than just games.
Yes, things are kind of terrible all around. But, until the house burns down, I’ve got to make my bed and take the trash out and clean things up.
I can only do so much and I am not so arrogant as to believe that my lack of ability to fix my own problems makes me superior in the process of fixing other people’s problems. (I suspect that if I was one of those “how do I help people?” shows, my first task would be to go to their house and have them help me do a top-down cleaning of everything.)
Oddly enough, a friend suggested that I read The Road To Wigan Pier again and map it onto our current problems. For all of Orwell’s sins (he was a socialist who was in danger of losing his faith the same way many Catholics were after the pedophilia scandals), he does point out quite a few characteristics that I see in our opponents. Not quite the same things, but close enough to rhyme. And, they always seem to have these same issues in one form or another.
One other item –
It’s not clear what value it will be if the currency value gets inflated away. But it might be useful to keep a small stockpile of used-looking twenties just in case the banks get closed for a protracted period. Twenties are the largest bill-size that doesn’t draw attention when used, but bills that look brand new will get noticed. If people notice that you have a lot of fresh bills, they’ll suspect you have a stockpile of them. That might attract the wrong kind of attention. So you want twenties that have exchanged hands a number of times.
Just crumple and rub them, or wash them. No bill has to look new.
Possibly just coincidental, possibly just a local phenomenon, but for the last several months almost every $20 that has passed through my hands has been remarkably crisp & clean — enough so that I noticed.
I’ve looked closely but see no resemblance between Andrew Jackson and Kim Jong-un.
~
That’s because there’s not much call for cash. Lots of businesses are refusing to take it for “Covid transmission” reasons.
Even the Salvation army kettles have a sign over them saying you can donate through either Google or Apple. Like Hell.
Which leads to a coin shortage (or so we are told) so they encourage people to not use cash which means purchases can be tracked.
Also, have an old car. NOBODY steals an old car. Very safe. Especially an old car full of used-looking twenties and really old gold jewelry.
Not bathing! My mind is a cauldron seething with ideas for getting really safe.
Uh, they’re going to come after your stuff. And your best protection is an active defense.
No. Do not have money or gold in the car.
And people DO steal old cars.
Are you for real?
My Truckling (’97 Ford Ranger, currently at 334K on the odometer) apparently is quite safe from being stolen. Some local mechanics can’t figure out how to start it (original owner put in some idiot security dongle thingie that has to be appeased before you can key the ignition switch), get it moving from a parked state (5-speed stick, but the new clutch might have made it easier), or figure out how to keep it from dinging inside after parking it and taking the key out of the ignition…
That’s assuming they can get the driver’s-side door open in the first place (pull the handle up, not out). Good thing; I can’t afford to replace it currently.
Maybe an older would be thief might be successful, but it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth to do it.
The problem with old cars is that on the whole, car thieves are looking for parts because it’s hard to sell the car intact. Hence, cars with parts that are no longer more are more valuable.
Gold at your fingertips, when that may-become-irreplaceable hardware finally goes tits-up for good:
http://therefiningcompany.com/How-Much-Gold-Is-In-A-PC.aspx
In the create, artzy fartzy area, I’ed suggest you push the envelope, check how far beyond normal, acceptable use of your tools and materials you can go, -just in case you have to do so some day.
For example a friend of mine’s silver coin collection ended up a big black lump after a wild wire swept through her land and house. She asked me if I could smelt it in to ingots for her. I found, with a little experimentation, I can melt silver with a hand held mapp gas torch, no force air, no pure oxygen feed, just the hand held gas torch. Yes, I’ve an electric smelting furnace I build, yes, I also built an outdoor coal or charcoal smelter, but it’s, in my opinion, a good idea to find out what is the minimum equipment you need to get a job done, -just in case.
Sigh, wild fire, not wild wire. Sorry.
I was thinking that’s one hell of an electrical short …
Thanks, I needed that.
Part of the frantic effort of the past month-plus (and over a year before that) has been my attempts to try and establish a normal life, outside of relative-inflicted hazards. Just moved into a new place, which should cut down some of the risks – and on top of that I’ve seen Trump and Don’t Tread On Me stickers on my new neighbors’ vehicles, so hopefully this is a plus. Won’t be able to approximate more normal until the house is sold and we can dissolve ties with relatives on the Other Side, but I’m anticipating getting a bunch more writing done behind a door we can lock!
Speaking from personal experience with would-be tyrants, yes. Much as we might like to get it all over with in a movie’s two-hour blaze of glory, a lot of this is going to be an endurance game. It’s an ultramarathon, not a sprint.
You just lit my imagination: this feels like a fartlek. Those hateful drills we used to do where you plod along in a line of 10 people, plod along, shins screaming, you finally drop to the last in line, you wait, then…. RUN TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE AS FAST AS YOU CAN…. then plod along….
It was hideous training. We’d run through the line maybe three times. But boy howdy could you run a two miler after that.
Ooooouch.
Am rereading the Belisarius series and found this quote. I think it applies.
“The plans and schemes of tyrants are broken by many things. They shatter against cliffs of heroic struggle. They rupture on reefs of open resistance. And they are slowly eroded, bit by little bit, on the very beaches where they measure triumph, by countless grains of sand. By the stubborn little decencies of humble little men.”
“We don’t need heroes. We just need some minimum number of people Doing The Right Thing.”
Heroes are what happens when someone screws up. By that definition, we should be awash in heroes very soon . . .
And an update re the FAA and pilots (and air traffic controller) previously explicitly not being approved for the Wuhan Coronavirus from Communist China Vaccine. they changed their collective mind for at least the Pfizer vax:
https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=96258
Debate time: when the office opens, go back in full time, or work remotely and bake bread? Might actually be able to do both, possibly.
I’ve been cutting carbs out for the longest time, but I’m thinking more what I need to do is get solid routine exercise going and avoid sugar in *any* quantities.
Also should probably start writing. I’ve had the plot bunny for a “life in space” type story rattling around for the longest time, but it’s just been a bunny.
Keeps poking it’s nose back up though, and the fundamental problem we seem to have is the wider loss of the culture to centralists.
Not sure is my heart is full in it. Worth a time slot and a try though.
Sarah,
This was an excellent article and extremely timely advice (and RIGHT on point).
Keep Up the Skeeter!
“You’ll still have to earn a living, have relationships with other people, live in the normal world.”
I’ve retired from the first and ever much did either of the other two.
~
“I predict a growth market in useful phone aps that are not what our overlords expect,”
I can see a usefulness in apps that encrypt messages in otherwise innocuous text (“Meet for ice cream at 3?” actually meaning “The ball drops at midnight.”), misreport user location and otherwise confound their monitoring.
~
“Jean has a long mustache.” 😉
She keeps it in the back of her desk drawer.
Jean in French?
IIRC “John has a long mustache” was (in at least one movie version of the Real Thing if not also reality) the coded go-signal to the French Resistance that the D-Day Normandy landing was On, so proceed accordingly.
Yes. I was pointing out Jean is a male name in French.
Yes, I was specifically alluding to “The Longest Day.”
Sigh. How soon they forget the classics. 😉
“It wounds my heart with monotonous langour.”
For this…
“The future belongs to do who show up. And by Bob (Heinlein) we’re going to show up. And we’re going to win the future for liberty.
Be not afraid. Stop fretting about your impotence. And go do what you can. We are the majority, and we are going to win this.”
“I shall slaughter a thousand bullocks in your honor!”
Or maybe just erect a statue in the town square to Sarah The Magnificent.
I’m a Soldier In The Army Of The Lord: https://youtu.be/VmizCScGLmY
In Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs series, Kovacs was a Quellist, a follower of a woman named Quellcrist Falconer, who had died centuries before. Falconer was like a cross between Sarah and Jordan Peterson, and like G’Kar, her writings were taken out of context and turned into a cross between a political platform and a religion…
Are those the books that the Netflix series “Altered Carbon” is based off of?
” her writings were taken out of context and turned into a cross between a political platform and a religion…”
He that hath a Gospel
To loose upon Mankind,
Though he serve it utterly —
Body, soul and mind —
Though he go to Calvary
Daily for its gain —
It is His Disciple
Shall make his labour vain.
He that hath a Gospel
For all earth to own —
Though he etch it on the steel,
Or carve it on the stone —
Not to be misdoubted
Through the after-days —
It is His Disciple
Shall read it many ways.
It is His Disciple
(Ere Those Bones are dust )
Who shall change the Charter,
Who shall split the Trust —
Amplify distinctions,
Rationalize the Claim;
Preaching that the Master
Would have done the same.
It is His Disciple
Who shall tell us how
Much the Master would have scrapped
Had he lived till now —
What he would have modified
Of what he said before.
It is His Disciple
Shall do this and more….
He that hath a Gospel
Whereby Heaven is won
(Carpenter, or cameleer,
Or Maya’s dreaming son),
Many swords shall pierce Him,
Mingling blood with gall;
But His Own Disciple
Shall wound Him worst of all!
https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/disciple.html
Note: I was hoping to find the version Leslie Fish wrote the tune for on YouTube, but apparently that hasn’t made it there.
“it’s the skill I have, I’m better at it than most of their darlings”
Only by way of a point of order: you are not necessarily better at writing good books than are their darlings (that is not actually relevant, in fact) so much as your idea of a good book far more closely approximates the reading public’s idea of a good book. Their darlings’ idea of a good book closely approaches the public’s idea of toilet paper.
Thus being better at writing good books is not terribly difficult (especially as their darlings have long since abandoned such components as story, readability and literacy as elements of oppressive bourgeois society.)
~
It shall be interesting to see how our Media masters handle Biden’s decline and departure. Previously, they acted as if the president-elect breaking his foot while grabbing his dog’s tail in the shower was a perfectly everyday thing nobody should be concerned about. But now they’re finally acknowledging the Hunter Biden stuff they previously suppressed as fake news when it could threaten their candidate’s election. So I’m guessing a slow, Chinese Water Torture drip of mini-scandals and carefully selected acknowledgements of public slip-ups, eventually culminating in a stage-managed crisis which must inevitably end with Biden tearfully having to admit his faculties have declined since the election, impairing his judgment and forcing him to resign. Then we’ll get the spectacle of the media exalting Kamala Harris’s unelected ascension to the highest office in the land, finally giving America a Woman of Color president (or whatever the acceptable Newspeak that month will be).
I’m guessing the Pretender-Elect’s departure (once he’s no longer useful as a rubberstamper and public face) will be a lot simpler: he’ll have a stroke (or so we’re told) and never be heard of again.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress version of a stroke, I’d suppose.
You’re insufficiently cynical. We will receive daily news reports of hos he is rallying, fading, almost recovered (in a desperate, brave effort, he struggled to whisper into Doctrix Jill’s ear, “Control guns – for the chilllllll …” before lapsing back into sleep. Slowly, over the weeks and months the reports will become more sporadic until, one day, a NEW Therapy is tried and (as Christmas no, wait – how’re we doing with the Christian vote? … Easter looms on the horizon* and there is reason to hope for a full recovery. Alas, he has a relapse on Good Friday, but his therapists are pleased and think they’ve found the right course.
Only cynics will note how his health and, more importantly, the news coverage of his progression corresponds to news events that the Administration benefits from a distracted public. Hunter’s plea bargain resulting in a small fine and probation is overwhelmed by reports of Joe rallying, possibly even addressing the nation. A Stock Market crash is obscured by new investigations into whether the stroke was caused by a Russian poison, possibly left in the Resolute Desk by Donald Trump. China’s invasion of Taiwan is wiped from front pages (and leading newscasts) by reports Biden may be on his deathbed.
The MSM will joyfully cling to this storyline whenever it advances, proudly displaying their tears over the tragedy of this brave leader, struggling to unite the nation … and savagely attacking all who decline to show sympathy for the Biden family, the Biden Administration, and America’s loss by voting our liberties into History’s dustbin.
~
* “horizon” in the above comment is not a reference to the vice-president-elect.
~
vice-fraudulent-elect?
–
Hey! Stop writing their playbook.
Arthur Chrenkoff addressed that very topic the other day.
http://thedailychrenk.com/2020/12/12/gone-60-weeks/
That’s a good article and a good blog.
I’m still tired every day. I do a little bit. No energy though.
For the most part, as iconic role as he played in the American Revolution, we do not need a “Captain Parker.” We need Simon Jester and a million Harlequins (not Harley Quinn, but the one from “Repent Harlequin Said the Tick Tock Man”). The problem in RHStTTM was that there was only one. One can be suppressed. A million? That’s a different story.
Snopes has a very nice article, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-price-they-paid/#:~:text=Five%20signers%20were%20captured%20by%20the%20British%20as,British%20during%20the%20course%20of%20the%20Revolutionary%20War.
The Price They Paid
A popular essay outlines the fates of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, but many of its details are inaccurate.
DAVID MIKKELSON
PUBLISHED 28 JUNE 2005
Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence? What fates befell them for daring to put their names to that document?
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors and tortured before they died.
Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.
Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army, another had two sons captured.
Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.
They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
What kind of men were they?
Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.
Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.
Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.
John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year, he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later, he died from exhaustion and a broken heart.
Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These were not wild-eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more.
Standing talk straight, and unwavering, they pledged: “For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
They gave you and me a free and independent America. The history books never told you a lot about what happened in the Revolutionary War. We didn’t fight just the British. We were British subjects at that time and we fought our own government!
Some of us take these liberties so much for granted, but we shouldn’t.
So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July Holiday and silently thank these patriots. It’s not much to ask for the price they paid. Remember: Freedom is never free!
I hope you will show your support by please sending this to as many people as you can. It’s time we get the word out that patriotism is NOT a sin, and the Fourth of July has more to it than beer, picnics, and baseball games.
I have to laugh how so much of the “fact check” comes down to the fact that in war, soldiers “requisition,” loot, and burn the goods and homes of the enemy, and therefore the signers weren’t punished because they signed the Declaration. Or that the capture, wounding, and death of the signers was because they were in the Continental Army, not because they were signers.
Hey Snopes dumbasses, without the Declaration, there would have been no army and no war. The signers knew they were starting a war where they would have to serve in their country’s army and leave their homes vulnerable to marauding British.
Ah — the war was already on when the Declaration was signed. Lexington was 1775, so over a year.
It’s hard to run historical counterfactuals, of course, but I think there’s a reasonable argument that without the unifying action of the Declaration, Lexington/Concord would not have been considered the beginning of the war so much as one quashed rebellion in one colony. The Declaration turned scattered acts of rebellion into the united front of a new nation, making it a war between nation-states instead of an uprising.
It may be a semantic difference, but in these times, I think it’s a difference worth noting. The boogaloo will be nothing but anarchy without having a document of principles signed by respected leaders.
Already has one. See Declaration of Independence and US Constitution.
The Congress had already sent Washington to take command of the siege of Boston, Washington had already forced them out, there had been battles all up and down the colonies — I doubt it.
*laughs*
K, that sounds like arguments I’ve seen where Christians weren’t killed for professing Christ, but for disrupting the social norms…..
They also think you’re stupid enough to believe the British wouldn’t have individually targeted the people who signed the thing.
From the memesmiths of TheDonald:
https://streamable.com/lyy8mz
YES. This is why I spend an inordinate amount of time on The Donald. We have a great time.
And for something completely different, yet awesome:
Accidentally hit this liink trying to post the comment below, about the ASOG report on 68% ballot-counting error rates (etc.) in Antrim Co.
And couldn’t stop watching the video. Even as I was trying to get the ASOG stuff up more or less ASAP.
While I can’t really speak to the details of the baking etc. part (tho’ they all do sound right to me), I can tell you I found no errors or false notes in the relativity and other physics. “Awesome” is not exaggeration, and may be even a bit of an understatement — and the video is only ~5 min so it goes fast.
Election officials (Republican) in Antrim County, Michigan did a forensic analysis of the Dominion voting machines used in last month’s election. They found 68% errors.
That’s right, more than two-thirds of the votes were incorrectly registered. Not only that, the system logs and check files are ‘missing’.
State officials (Democrat) and the Dominion company piped up immediately, claiming ‘they did it wrong’.
———————————
Does the Left drive these idiots barking mad, or were they drawn to the Left because they were already batshit crazy?
dear LORD.
But wait, it gets better! I just saw a short segment that showed early voting starting today in Georgia…
…on Dominion voting machines.
They haven’t corrected any of the…irregularities, from last month, either. It’s like they expect all the fraud to just go away if they ignore it. Trump keeps yelling at Governor Kemp to ‘call the State Legislature into session’ — why can’t they just get together on their own and assert their Constitutional authority?
It don’t make no fookin’ SENSE!!
———————————
My grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.
Oh, it gets better. I just watched a short segment that showed the Georgia early voting starting today…
…on Dominion voting machines. They haven’t corrected any of the…irregularities, from last month’s election. It’s like they believe all the fraud will just go away if they ignore it, while the Democrats laugh at them and crank it up past 11. There are 1.2 million absentee ballots already, including at least 85,000 that didn’t vote last month. How many voters typically skip a Presidential election, and THEN get off their asses to vote in a Senate run-off election?
Trump is still yelling at noodle-spine Governor Kemp to ‘call the State Legislature into session’ — why can’t they get together on their own initiative, and assert their Constitutional authority over this election? What is WRONG with those idiots? Are they TRYING to throw this election, AFTER what we’ve already seen? Are they sitting there with eyes shut and fingers stuck in ears pretending it’s not happening?
(Sorry if this is a double, but it looks like WPDE ate the first one)
———————————
My grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.
Oh, it gets better. I just watched a short segment that showed the Georgia early voting starting today…
…on Dominion voting machines. They haven’t corrected any of the…irregularities, from last month’s election. It’s like they believe all the fraud will just go away if they ignore it, while the Democrats laugh at them and crank it up past 11. There are 1.2 million absentee ballots already, including at least 85,000 that didn’t vote last month. How many voters typically skip a Presidential election, and THEN get up off their asses to vote in a Senate run-off?
Trump is still yelling at noodle-spine Governor Kemp to ‘call the State Legislature into session’ — why can’t they get together on their own initiative, and assert their Constitutional authority over this election? What is WRONG with those idiots? Are they TRYING to throw this election, AFTER what we’ve already seen? Are they sitting there with eyes shut and fingers stuck in ears pretending it’s not happening?
It just don’t make no fookin’ SENSE!!!
(This is my FIFTH try; WPDE ate the first four attempts last night.)
———————————
My grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.
I think it’s your signature line, Imaginos 😉
I have tried to post a reply to this comment SEVEN TIMES!! with a few variations, and WPDE ate them ALL!
It has posted other comments, both before and after The Comment That Shall Not Be Permitted. There is nothing particularly objectionable about the Poison Comment. It’s about the use of those machines in the current election. What is going on?
We are being censored. Try with asterisks
Found it. WordPress is automatically putting it in trash.
And, of course, now they ALL come pouring out. Oh, well, I just look like a lunatic now. No biggie. I know it’s the rest of the world that’s gone crazy, not me. Or, not just me, anyway.
I’ve used that signature line many times before without any issues.
I wonder what it could have been about those posts that set WPDE off? There are several variations, posted in different places, and it got ’em ALL. While letting other comments through.
I freed them.
But WPDE is now quarantining any comments mentioning Dominion. I freed others.
This is fucking insane. I freed all of yours to let people see you weren’t lying.
Sounds like it’s time for new blogging software.
It’s paid through August. It’s not a software thing, it’s the hosting site.
I will move before then but with laptomageddon it got delayed
I guess we need a substitute handle for The Machines Which Must Not Be Named.
I nominate Don’t-minion. 😀
Founder of wordpress studied polisci at, iirc, university of houston.
Looks quite long game now.
I think WP has an algorithm which randomly obstructs posts — I have run into the same problem on several occasions. Only the highly paranoid could suggest that this is a feature designed to disguise a different algorithm censoring forbidden texts.
~
–
For weeks I’m more astonished if my replies/comments show up immediately. Don’t remember ever posting anything any algorithm could object to. Rarely post links. Even comments with only “c4c”, “-“, and ❤ in them. I mean, who cares on the c4c or – ones, just hitting the "Notify …" box anyway. But still … It must not like my user initial … 🙂
They hired someone to do a forensic analysis.
The fuller details are more damning.
The firm claims that it was deliberately designed to get a higher error rate, so that the administrators could assign the votes for the ballots for which errors were registered.
But it isn’t my industry, and I don’t know the company. So I consider the possibility that they are partisan shills.
If they are partisan shills, or do not have a long, established presence, it would be possible to show this in court.
I could potentially be persuaded. So it is a little bit concerning that the courts don’t want to be forum for a rebuttal, and the media do not want to have a serious conversation about the possibility.
Oh, it gets better. I just watched a short segment that showed the Georgia early voting starting today…
…on Dominion voting machines. They haven’t corrected any of the…irregularities, from last month’s election. It’s like they believe all the fraud will just go away if they ignore it, while the Democrats laugh at them and crank it up past 11. There are 1.2 million absentee ballots already, including at least 85,000 that didn’t vote last month. How many voters typically skip a Presidential election, and THEN get up off their asses to vote in a Senate run-off?
Trump is still yelling at noodle-spine Governor Kemp to ‘call the State Legislature into session’ — why can’t they get together on their own initiative, and assert their Constitutional authority over this election? What is WRONG with those idiots? Are they TRYING to throw this election, AFTER what we’ve already seen? Are they sitting there with eyes shut and fingers stuck in ears pretending it’s not happening?
(Sorry if this is a repeat, but it looks like WPDE ate the first two attempts to reply to your comment. Trying again, in a different place.)
———————————
My grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.
Oh, it gets better. I just watched a short segment that showed the Georgia early voting starting today…
…on Dominion voting machines. They haven’t corrected any of the…irregularities, from last month’s election. It’s like they believe all the fraud will just go away if they ignore it, while the Democrats laugh at them and crank it up past 11. There are 1.2 million absentee ballots already, including at least 85,000 that didn’t vote last month. How many voters typically skip a Presidential election, and THEN get up off their asses to vote in a Senate run-off?
Trump is still yelling at noodle-spine Governor Kemp to ‘call the State Legislature into session’ — why can’t they get together on their own initiative, and assert their Constitutional authority over this election? What is WRONG with those idiots? Are they TRYING to throw this election, AFTER what we’ve already seen? Are they sitting there with eyes shut and fingers stuck in ears pretending it’s not happening?
(This is my FOURTH try; looks like WPDE ate the first three attempts. Trying again…)
———————————
My grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.
A good, short reference for more on this (the Allied Security Operations Group report from Antrim County ) is
uncoverdc dot com slash 2020/12/14/antrim-county-forensic-report-shows-manipulation-of-votes/
which includes this link to the actual report,
www dot depernolaw dot com slash uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/antrim_michigan_forensics_report_%5B121320%5D_v2_%5Bredacted%5D.pdf
(the report is “redacted” because the original full report includes actual code from the machines, which is Dominion proprietary). And if anyone remembers that hour-long video from much closer to the election, with all those details about Internet connectivity and servers in Barcelona and Frankfurt — ASOG is the same set of people as that, composed of former military or other government security and forensics personnel. (Uncover DC is pretty good about sorting the wheat from the chaff, too, or Michael Flynn wouldn’t’ve picked them to host his first post-pardon statement.)
That 68% is not a misprint, less than 1/3 of ballots as actually counted were recorded normally, as being without serious errors.
As noted in another comment, the big thing about a 68+% error rate (the FEC’s allowed upper limit is 4 in a million or 170,000 times lower) is that all ‘errored’ ballots go into a second category, which can be re-voted (“adjudicated”) pretty much any way the operators want. (“The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors.The electronic ballots are then transferred for adjudication. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail. This leads to voter or election fraud.” — directly from the report as quoted at Uncover DC.)
There’s a lot more details in the article, presumably a lot more still in the actual almost-full report — but all in all this isn’t so much a smoking gun for algorithmic, programmed election fraud, it’s a smoking Gatling gun.
–
Cover up – which physically the redaction is, morally because: Any coding in relation to tallying and storing votes belongs to the voters. Period. The End. No exception. Maybe only programmers can interpret it. Doesn’t matter.
#rantover
Epoch Times, adjust your Reliability Filter accordingly:
Forensic Audit of the Dominion Voting Equipment in Michigan Shows ‘Intentional Errors’
An expert view on the audit of the Dominion Voting Systems
Gary Miliefsky
While you need an ID to buy alcohol, buy cigarettes, buy lottery tickets, enter a nightclub, get on an airplane, buy a house or rent an apartment, buy a car and get car insurance, we don’t require an ID to choose who will be our next President? It turns out, thanks to our Operation Iraqi Freedom, that the elections in Iraq are more secure than ours. There, they use strong multifactor authentication–one real fingerprint, one real ID, and one real registered voter who shows up in person.
Under the cover of COVID-19, numerous states in the United States were able to sneak in last minute—and in many cases illegal—ways to vote in our election. Hundreds of thousands of “mail-in ballots” would appear and be cast even after midnight of Nov. 3. This opened the door for nation-state interference, especially when boxes of pristine ballots with only one name marked could show up in the wee hours of the night after one candidate was in the lead to reclaim another four years in office. But this is just the tip of the iceberg in voter fraud.
A team of cybersecurity and computer forensic experts at Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG) performed an independent forensic audit of Dominion Voting System in how it performed in just one county, Antrim County, Michigan, for the 2020 election.
Remember, this equipment was sold to and used in 28 states for the U.S. elections this year. Texas refused to purchase this equipment when they found it too vulnerable and risky because it could easily be tampered with to change election results.
The ASOG team, led by Russell J. Ramsland, Jr., found that the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systematic fraud and influence election results. For example, while the allowable election error rate established by the Federal Election Commission (FEC.gov) guidelines is 1 in 250,000 ballots (.0008 percent), ASOG’s forensic analysis observed an error rate of 68.05 percent, which is a significant and fatal error in security and election integrity.
[SNIP
For example, in Central Lake Township, there were 1,222 ballots reversed out of 1,491 total ballots cast, resulting in an 81.96 percent rejection rate. These reversed ballots are sent to “adjudication” for a decision to be made by election personnel. When such a staggering number of votes require adjudication, the biggest problem includes integrity and chain of custody issues. It makes it easy to “flip” votes without any supervision en masse. In past elections, the rejection rates were so low, this was a minor risk, whereas now, it is a major risk and most likely one of the means of exploitation that took place to defraud one candidate out of a massive number of votes that would have been in his favor.
[SNIP]
In the ASOG audit, all log entries for the 2020 election cycle were found missing in the Dominion equipment they analyzed—meanwhile voter adjudication logs for previous years exist. Removal of these log files violates state laws and prevents a meaningful audit, even if the Secretary of State’s office wanted to conduct its own audit.
It takes an even deeper dive into the hard drive, with very expensive forensic tools, usually only used by the CIA, NSA, and FBI to find any “ghosted” evidence of the deleted adjudication log entries. A crime was absolutely committed in how these systems were “cleaned up.” Even the security logs, prior to 11:30 pm on Nov. 4, 2020, were found missing, meaning security logs for the day prior to the election, on election day and the day after the election were all deleted. It was also discovered by the ASOG audit that on Nov. 21, 2020, an unauthorized user unsuccessfully attempted to zero out election results, showing more attempted tampering with the data.
The ASOG audit also discovered software changes on Oct. 23, 2020, and then again on Nov. 5, 2020, just after the election. In accordance with the Help America Vote Act, this violates the 90-day Safe Harbor period which prohibits changes to election systems, without these systems undergoing recertification.
Furthermore, these voting systems should not be allowed to be connected to the internet and should have all wired and wireless internet functionality disabled. During the ASOG audit, they also discovered internet connections were live on this equipment. Because certain log files were deleted, as of date, they have not yet learned the source of internet connectivity, nor what data collection, updates, or changes were made remotely.
Finally, because the same equipment was used in 48 other counties in Michigan, this casts significant doubt on the integrity of the entire election in the state of Michigan. I’m sure that with more Dominion equipment being audited, it would cast a dark shadow across 30 state elections. Only time will tell but ultimately the truth does come out, one way or another.
Gary Miliefsky is a founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the publisher of Cyber Defense Magazine.
~
The Epoch times is one of the very few trustworthy sites around.
Yes. they’re anti-Chinese but that’s no big deal.
In case nobody’s mentioned it, I appreciate the Wallaby including the important bits in these posts, rather than just throwing out a bare link to who-knows-where.
You’re welcome – I try to give clear reason why the link is of interest without making the block overly long (although I feel I too often fail in that last objective.)
As well, I have a vague sense that some sites are subscription only but cannot recall which, so if you cannot access the link I want to provide at least enough information to determine if it is worth your registration.
~
That error rate is what jumped out at me, too.
https://the-american-catholic.com/2020/12/15/dominion-forensic-audit
For folks wondering, there is an actual, Federal standard for how many errors are alright.
It’s got several zeroes to the right of the decimal in the percentage, before you hit a significant number.
Oh, it gets better. I just watched a short segment that showed the Georgia early voting starting today…
…on Dominion voting machines. They haven’t corrected any of the…irregularities, from last month’s election. It’s like they believe all the fraud will just go away if they ignore it, while the Democrats laugh at them and crank it up past 11. There are 1.2 million absentee ballots already, including at least 85,000 that didn’t vote last month. How many voters typically skip a Presidential election, and THEN get up off their asses to vote in a Senate run-off?
Trump is still yelling at noodle-spine Governor Kemp to ‘call the State Legislature into session’ — why won’t he do it? Why can’t they get together on their own initiative, and assert their Constitutional authority over this election? What is WRONG with those idiots? Are they TRYING to throw this election, AFTER what we’ve already seen? Are they sitting there with eyes shut and fingers stuck in ears pretending it’s not happening?
It just don’t make no fookin’ SENSE!!!
(This is my SIXTH! try at replying to Sarah’s ‘Dear LORD’ above; WPDE ate the first four attempts last night, and another one an hour ago. My reply to the Wallaby worked, maybe this one will too?)
———————————
My grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.
Anyone have a book recommendation for an 11 year old boy who loves to read?
Anything in particular?
How to lie with statistics?
Lensmen?
Probably doesn’t have the Young Jedi Knights and Junior Jedi Knights books, Anakin Solo ones are probably age appropriate.
E.W. Hildick, the McGurk book about the Slingshot Sniper might be a little topical, but that may be my inner nutjob talking. (I never got to read that one. The one time I saw it was in a library whose town I visited for a funeral, or something, I instead read the Ghost Squad book I hadn’t seen before.)
I remember Bruce Coville and Gordon Korman had some good stuff.
You could see if you could get one of the good versions of Swiss Family Robinson at an affordable price.
John Clark’s Ignition! is fun, but may be a bit too much of a mature fun. Struik’s concise history of mathematics is cheap from dover, but is probably at too high a grade level.
Does he Redwall yet?
Anyway, I’m getting cross contamination in my “that book was so cool” with stuff like the Los Alamos Primer, which he probably isn’t old enough to appreciate.
I suspect we need a little more to go on, given how few of us were “normal” readers at eleven. At the very least, genres favored would be a help, r even if he leans toward fiction or non-fiction.
If he’s a sports fan, biographies of “early” players (e.g., Babe Ruth for baseball, not Albert Pujols) or, better yet, The Glory of Their Times, a collection of memoirs from those who played the game the first few decades of the Major Leagues. It is a fascinating view of life in America in that era. For the sports fiction fan the works of John Tunis and Clair Bee are good reading.
Winston “Forest Gump” Groom has written a number of “youth” histories, such as a biography of Robert Reagan and a retelling of Andrew Jackson’s Battle of New Orleans (Patriotic Fire).
Redwall are good and virtuous books which ought appeal to any healthy eleven-year-old boy. Some of Louis L’Amour’s books are also healthy reading — I recommend the first two Sackett books, Sackett’s Land and To the Far Blue Mountains, which do a very good job of explaining why many came here from Europe in the first place.
Heinlein’s juveniles are always recommended, particularly Citizen of the Galaxy and Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. The novels of such SF writers as Poul Anderson (Three Hearts and Three Lions, Gordon Dickson, and H. Beam Piper ought suit. Pratt & de Camp’s Harold Shea series might entertain while introducing him to such literary realms as Norse myth, Spencer’s Faerie Queene and Irish myth.
There are some very good works of historical fiction/biography by authors such as Rosemary Sutcliffe or Harold Lamb.
~
Redwall are good and virtuous books which ought appeal to any healthy eleven-year-old boy.
Salamandastron!
Ran into it on accident at about that age, get choked up even thinking about it now.
Never did get into the main storyline, but I’m a sucker for badgers and honor.
I was reading most of them, for a while, but eventually as I grew older and developed other interests, the new books coming out started to seem samey or weaker, and I fell away from keeping up.
The kids loved those.
If you can find them o audio they are delightful, with a rich panoply of regional British accents. Brian Jacques was (among other occupations) an itinerant performer and obviously enjoyed the linguistic pallette offered by his mother togue. From Wiki:
I daresay no few here can recognize portions of that.
OTOH, Pride & Prejudice as an audio reading suffers from too many females of a certain age all from the same family/social milieu and distinguishing one person from another can be challenging.
~
I read the encyclopedia of military history in my mid teens.
It is the rest of the world that has strange taste in reading material. 🙂
Which is why I’m totally not confused about what constitutes age appropriate.
I read The City of God and The Gulag Archipelago in my early teens.
I think I was a little young for them.
The Phantom Tollbooth. But that’s because when I gave it to a small cousin and she accidentally left it behind when they visited her grandfather, he read it before sending it back.
Does he read at age level, or past it? Does he have any particular favorite genre?
_The Dark is Rising_ by Susan Cooper. If he likes it, go back to _Over Sea, Under Stone_, then on to the third book in the series. The Tales of Prydain are also good.
Agreed on the Cooper books, although I don’t know whether their reading level would be suitable. They benefit from familiarity with British/Welsh (especially Arthurian) lore but might well work as an introduction to that subject (genre?).
I would also recommend the Diana Wynne Jones books, particularly in the Chrestomanci books. Those are available in a variety of editions, from stand alone to two-in-one volumes to boxed sets, but I would judge the best entry points to be the two books, Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant.
Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson (and subsequent) series offers a good tale told well, as well as an intro/refresher to world mythology. Bonus – it has grown to some twenty volumes incorporating Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Norse mythologies (and for all I know he’s working in Chinese myths now to cover his hindquarters.)
~
If you are going to recommend Riordan, you might as well suggest Eoin Colfer and Anthony Horowitz.
Sure – why not?
Other than my not having read them, although the Daughtorial Unit very much liked the Artemis Fowl series.
Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet is also a good and appropriate read. I cannot vouch for the four subsequent entries in that series.
~
Book that Sarah linked that won’t let me click through the @#$@# thing.
It didn’t?
That was a favorite of Robert’s.
On my screen, it makes a big, pretty picture of the cover of the book– so I was easily able to find it– but no click-through.
Kipling’s The Jungle Books? Both Mowgli and the assorted other ones.
My parents gave me The Hobbit and LotR to read when I was 12, although I’m sure sooner would have been fine.
Garth Nix’s Abhorsen books maybe? Loved those, devoured Keys to the Kingdom when I found them some years later but hated the end of the series.
Early Black Stallion books?
Little House and Anne of Green Gables series if he’s not against reading stuff about girls, written and set in earlier parts of history, and/or focused on somewhat more mundane problems than some of the recommendations. Although when I was around that age, I remember balking at the end of Green Gables because I felt like Anne was getting “too grown up” (this despite reading other stories about kids growing up, and indeed about grown-ups).
I think I remember My Side of the Mountain/Other Side of the Mountain being good?
If a girl as lead doesn’t put him off – and he has patience to work through an older style – try George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie.
About the first book, Wiki cites G. K. Chesterton cites it as a book that had “made a difference to my whole existence.”
In similar vein, E. Nesbit’s tales are delightful but might prove a challenge to the modern reader — but by that same token they will push his development if he is willing to plough through them. Five Children and It is a good entry point.
When I was a wallabrat my grandpa S gave us kids an very nice boxed set of “classic children’s books” which contained, IIRC, the MacDonald and Nesbit books, along with Tom Sawyer, Penrod and others. Because such books are out of copyright they are often inexpensively available in un-bowdlerized editions.
If he does not already have The Dangerous Book for Boys that is an essential tome; if he does, its (co-)author, Conn Iggulden has written “biographies” of Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan (and of Kublai) that might be of interest.
Some here have recommended Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief, a recommendation I can endorse (as does the Daughtorial Unit) and I presume the remainder of the series stands up well.
~
Walter Farley’s Island Stallion too (along with Black Stallion)
I have fond memories of reading Mary Stewart’s Merlin saga at about that age:
The Crystal Cave
The Hollow Hills
The Last Enchantment
The Wicked Day
Roger Zelazny’s Amber series.
Maybe, the first dozen or so of Piers Anthony’s Xanth trilogy?
The gods know that I wasn’t a normal reader at 11. Or at any age.
One of my pet peeves about fiction for children is the idea that children want & need stories to have characters of their own age that they can “identify” with. When I was a sprout I didn’t care about that, and with hindsight I’m seeing it as a conceit of parents, teachers, editors, and authors, rather than something that the kids themselves actually want. But kids don’t know enough to know that they might object.
I’m particularly annoyed at the way that Romeo and Juliet gets palmed off on teens as the One True Shakespeare Play for that age group. Because the protagonists are teenagers! Bah. Almost any of Shakespeare’s other comedies would be a better choice.
(I came to this view years before seeing Terry Pratchett’s quote on the subject. “…For similar reasons, Moby Dick is very popular among whales.”)
The difference I’ve noticed between the juveniles I read when a juvenile and the YAs is that the juveniles were allowed to have young adult leads. The YAs, with the rarest of exceptions, must have juvenile leads.
–
Me too. Middle school, then 12 – 14 (technically for me 11 – 13), I read: Heinlein, not just the juveniles, Andre Norton, Clark, etc., Ethan Allen Historical Fiction, not to mention Zane Gray, Jack London, etc. Including Herbert’s Dune. This is just a small sample of what I checked out of the school and city libraries.
Wow, thanks for all the responses! He’s autistic and loves science fiction and fantasy.
Much classic SF does not require deep understanding of human emotions, focusing on resolution of technical problems. This makes it excellent reading for autistic kids, who often have difficulty comprehending such motivations. Consider some of the anthologies of “Golden Age” stories, such as the SFWA “Hall of Fame” short story collection, Hugo Winners before 1970 (to pick a date) or even such as Asimov’s Susan Calvin tales (I, Robot) or Jack Williamson’s The Humanoids.
~
Gordon Korman, start him out with the McDonald Hall books and if he likes those Korman has a plethora of more books he will like. Try those yourself, you’ll probably enjoy them also.
Jim Kjelgaard if he likes the outdoors.
Maybe Edgar Rice Burroughs, maybe a little beyond his reading level, but if he loves to read he is likely a bit above his reading level anyways. Louis L’amour if he is interested in westerns, I’m sure beyond a ‘normal’ 11 year olds reading level, but I was reading them at that age.
Science Fiction and fantasy, you could try David Weber’s and Jane Lindskold’s treecat books for juveniles, I quit buying them after the third one because they were too juvenile for my tastes, though I like both authors adult novels. But they were aimed at kids and he would probably like them, plus they would introduce him to a couple of authors that he could continue to enjoy as his reading level advanced.
Also Lloyd Alexander’s Black Cauldron series for a juvenile fantasy.
“You still have to go to work… Work at your chosen avocation.”
And for those of us who don’t have work to go to? Who are on disability, and entirely dependant on regular checks from Social Security and our state’s Public Assistance? (Plus, say, needing Medicaid to afford what would be > $950/mo. in medications.) Who no longer have a feasible “chosen avocation” capable of earning them money (and which earnings would likely make them worse off due to “welfare cliffs”)?
Who have no spouses or children to worry about… nor any prospects of that changing any time soon.
Given your other comment? I don’t know. You do you.
This is a call for being inventive in establishing a safe place and a creative place from which we can THEN fight.
If you can’t, you can’t. I hope you have some kind of network to look after you.
If you don’t?
Well — I don’t know. I know if you’re counting on the government to do so, you’ll be very disappointed.
Our circumstances are not dissimilar; that’s why I feel comfortable posting what I hope are helpful comments.
First, make the decision. You have two choices: either give up, or purpose to find hope, find meaning, keep looking regardless. When you make that choice, you’ve covered the 90% dark days where all you want to do is quit breathing, go away, just quit. It’s too hard and you can’t figure things out and you’re so lonely you can’t breathe. If you have determined that despite these real circumstances that you will walk forward one more step, that will be your foundation.
Second, read Jordan B. Peterson’s “12 Rules For Life.” Watch every single one of his lectures on that book on YouTube. Feed your heart with good works like his.
Third, quit trying to do things by yourself. I have a trauma informed life coach/therapist that I cannot afford. I pay her anyway because I made a commitment to myself that I would do everything I could to right the ship of my life. In preparation, read “The Road Back To You” by Suzanne Stabile. I would also recommend taking the Enneagram test to see where you might lie on a temperament spectrum. This will help focus your effort.
My coach/therapist has a website with her business partner. It’s SOWthat.com. Look for Jean Masukevich’s writing, words, anything.
But only after you make the decision that you won’t quit, no matter what. You’ll struggle with victimhood, self pity, resentment, and despair. That’s just how this goes.
I am working on my pro-American entertainers spreadsheet, which I hope to crowdsource once I have it set up… anyone here have suggestions for info that should go in it? I have name, genre, reading level (so we can find children’s as well as adult fare), website, and a comment field where people can put in why they think that person qualifies. What am I missing? What would other people find useful?
Thanks Sarah. Good info. The used wedding ring currency is particularly clever. Added to my bag of tricks.
Fiction is simplified and fast. It’s real life with all the parts cut out. Real life works differently.
Thanks for the reminder. My complaint is usually the other way around (e.g. the entire DaVinci Code takes place in one day and no one eats or uses a bathroom).
It took decades to get to this point; it’s going to take a while for the pendulum to swing back to center, let alone in the other direction. I should be encouraged by the widespread outrage on the right (the left, always being outraged, doesn’t count). In perspective, Trump could be seen as the exclamation point at the end of the TEA Party movement.
Cheers to the end of the beginning!
I find your posts to be inspiring in a troubling time. I am so very glad I found your blog. Thank you!
Thank you for this
It gives me a solid ground to know how to fight back.
This has been sorely lacking until now.
I have been a fan for a long time.
Now I am a follower