When The King Comes Home

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

The week after the election, I was very disappointed in an acquaintance that I both like and respect intellectually. As I was saying that if we let this election stand, the republic is gone, he said if our institutions were already corrupt enough to let this stand, the republic has been gone a long time, perhaps our whole life.

I was angry, because well…. Because I prefer people spit out the black pill. Sure, maybe the game is rigged, but as RAH put it, if you don’t bet you can’t win.

As it turns out, we were both right, but mostly wrong.

You see, I’d forgotten — as I’m sure he has too — who the sacred ruler of these United States is.

Before I go into that, let me take a detour. As most of you know, I was a bookish child raised in Europe. Well, in the romantic, daft portion of Europe, which is better and worse. Particularly in the North of Portugal, a land of mists and crazy people, legends are very important. And being a bookish child, of a fantastic disposition, and the child of a man obsessed with legends and the past, I have heard about a million variations of the “The King Comes Back” story.

Heck, one of my favorite stories growing up, consumed in every form I could find it was Robin Hood (The liberals have him all wrong. He was, quite obviously, the first tax rebel.) Though that story, as history, is a bit confused as Richard the Lion Heart had…. as they say zee issues and his brother John Lackland was actually a pretty good steward. But history written by winners, etc.

Anyway, most of “The king comes back” or “the sleeper wakens” are based on older, much older stories. It wasn’t unusual for a king to have to go away, particularly when like the king of Itaca, their kingdom was kind of small, and they plowed their own lands. I mean there was business and stuff that called the householder/king away from home and you know travel had to be hazardous in those days.

While the king was away, his servants and underlings had a merry time, and when the king came home, he had to set things back in order.

This is related of course to “the sleeper wakens” which tended to be what the stories turned into when the king didn’t come home, and the righteous subjects needed to dream of a rescue.

Most kings, of course, at least after the Neolythic were no good, and wastrels, and all that, which is why we kicked them out. Oh, there was the occasional good one, in a string of f*ckers. And unlike Heinlein I’m not convinced proper breeding would fix that. It’s not the genes, it’s the behavior and the checks on that that makes the just king. Or ruler. Or whatever the heck. Which is why I will write later on why letting the franchise slip away is a very bad thing, perhaps the worst thing. (For example, we need do no more than look at Europe which has transferred all its power to unelected bureaucrats on purpose (shakes head.))

But the important thing here is that “when the good king/responsible householder goes away/falls asleep, his servants become corrupt and abuse the people” is, as far as history is concerned day ending in y, or year ending in a number. (Or in real old times, in some kind of name.) It’s the normal course of events.

And of course, the fault is ours doubly: one, because we forgot we were the king of this land. And two, because we fell asleep.

The fault of the first is, ultimately, the education system which has been taken over for a long time by a cabal of our enemies. (And people who think themselves superior, which most teachers do, though perhaps never as unwarrantedly as in the late twentieth/early twenty first centuries, are unlikely to teach the sovereignty of the common man.) And the second, well… World War Two after the shock of the depression (More on both later) made people inexplicably believe the government was competent to look after everyone. (A good thing to consider here, is that at the time “scientific” governance was all the rage. I don’t think this myth lasts very long.) And we were prosperous. Very prosperous. We’re not the first sovereign to be lured by his pleasures and his wealth into not minding the kingdom. Fortunately it’s not irreversible.

Also, fortunately, We The People were not a dissolute king, not at bottom. Except for those “disloyal servants, who have been eating out our worth” we retained enough ability not to be tempted by the really crazy sh*t. Or at least we retained a core of horse-sense. No, we are not the hardest-working people in the world, but study after study has proven we are the most efficiently-working people in the world. We are also, despite the (willfull?) corruption of our education, quite competent, thank you. And as I pointed out in 2016, people offered a choice between a party who was screaming they’d given them things, and one candidate saying “we’ll create jobs” chose the jobs. This sovereign is not an air-dreamer, or completely out of touch with reality or his roots.

Then there is the fact that after five generations of communist indoctrination, after four intensive years of denigrating the guy who brought jobs back, after endless beat downs, starting in infancy, on how we and our country are the worst, people hunched their shoulders and voted for Trump in such numbers that the commies had to emergency-fraud (this beyond their well oiled fraud machine, or as the potted plant put it, “the most inclusive and largest fraud network”? was it?) in front of G-d and everyone to get the commies in.

This is not an addled and defeated king. This is a king who fell asleep for a while; has just woken up; is a bit confused, but is ultimately, quite capable for his duties and his throne. He’s a little disoriented now, having just woken up, over the last three years, so be patient. (These things always take longer than we expect them to!)

But in the end, the story is clear: when the good king comes home and he is GOOD — and we are, despite everything — he sets his own house in order and he prevails. (See Ulysses, Itaca, probably a codifying of much, much older stories, and a sort of prototype.)

Which means the Republic isn’t lost. Not while We The People remain. It might be temporarily mislaid, but only because we’ve been absent/asleep.

Not saying that it won’t be a little while before we take up the throne and set things to rights. (Look, the thing is that the left is daft and their minds almost virgin of history. They don’t understand that they’re a lot closer to the Nazis than to the commie regimes, and the nazis only lasted 11 years by constant invasions of other lands. Even if we wanted to take that way, we can’t. There aren’t — particularly after the covidiocy — any lands even as close to our wealth. Socialism, national or international, is a parasite, it only works by stealing from other lands. And yeah, the commies, USSR and China lasted longer but admittedly that was because our elites fed them/gave them special deals/helped them survive. And even so, they still had t parasite/steal from other lands. The other thing is that they think we are Russian barefoot peasants, or completely downtrodden Chinese. Instead they’re dealing with — by the grace of G-d — spoiled Americans, where even our lower middle class are used to, by global standards, living like kings. They/we will not take the deprivations of communism. Particularly not communism that we didn’t choose, and which can’t be fed by cannibalizing other lands.)

In other words, yeah, things might get pretty bad for a couple/three years. But in the end? The king of this land is awake and has come home. And we all know how the rest of this story goes. WE ALL KNOW.

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

Remember you’re Americans. We The People are the sovereign of this land. We’ve been asleep, but now we’re wide awake.

This only ends one way.

394 thoughts on “When The King Comes Home”

  1. And the King has made “a little list and none of them will be missed”. 😈

        1. Not that small. We now have databases so no need to PRINT lists. It is also SO NICE and Helpful when they self identify. The hard part comes when ranking traitors before enemies? Priorities? Do we give them points for possible scoring. We can make decks of cards like we did in Iraq. There are a lot of useful and entertaining things that can be done.

          We will need a internet site for a “Go Fund Me” to provide Lawyers for those accused of removing someone on the list/database. A Lawyer will have to be found to run it but that should be doable. Finding the site will be much harder. This needs to be started soon, so there is a chance to build up a balance. If the Dems can do it for Antifa/BLM, we can do it.

          1. Hell, my readers are already 2.0 — 3.0 for truly relaxing with a paperback. I’ve got some 4.0 for fine work, but I’m thinking about getting 6.0 to 8.0 for REALLY fine work.

            1. For fine work I bought a visor magnifier, with mixed results (mostly comfort because my head is a weird shape) but after my last trip to the dentist a light bulb went off on what actually works, so I’ve been shopping magnifier headlamps – I have not yet picked one but both the binocular loupe style and other styles are findable on Amazon for not very much at all.

            2. While I didn’t go as long as Dad for needing them, (he made it to his 50’s) I still have better than average sight. Though I hates the fuzz starting to creep into the far sight now too. I wear 1.5s for day to day needs and have a few 2.0s around for really small stuff, like threading a fine needle. This year I noticed I do better with readers while riding the bike, as a glance at the gauges takes a bit of concentration to focus without them. The sunglasses with 1.0 are enough there, but I munged the lens on one side, and keep the 1.5 clear and sunglasses for reading menues, prices, etc anyhow.
              What really cheeses me off is I used to use the Clear Vue cheapos from Walmart but they don’t seem to carry them any longer, and the online seller never has them in stock, but they do stock a brand that is less comfortable, and the bifocals are too high so always in the way, oh, and are twice the price. I found some that are close, but the lenses get scummy fast, and the are not as well formed, so give a bit of distortion.

    2. “Since January there have been 41 incidents of shunts placed on BNSF tracks in Whatcom and Skagit counties. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force has been investigating the placement of shunts on the BNSF tracks since Jan. 19.”

      https://www.rtands.com/rail-news/group-using-shunts-in-an-attempt-to-disrupt-derail-trains-in-state-of-washington/

      Add this to the attacks on natural gas pipelines in Aspen, CO and it adds up to a coordinated attack on our ability to live peacefully. They keep saying we are paranoid and they keep doing stuff like this.

      1. I used to think I was paranoid.
        I thought people were out to get me.
        Now I know the truth — they ARE out to get me!
        I feel so much better.

  2. Went for a walk yesterday. Saw quite a few *new* Trump flags, ones saying “No More Bullshit.” Including one on a house that I would have sworn the person was more progressive than otherwise (I know her, but haven’t seen much of her since she started homeschooling her kids due to a bizarre trace allergy her daughter picked up.)

    This is Sacramento County, which is counted blue on the California county map. So if I’m seeing this here…

    1. A very large portion of family for me and hubby lives in Sacto county. With the exception of FiL and his wife they are all far left liberal. But, the sucky economy and the deliberate destruction of the economy is driving the thinking ones to the right. People are beginning to wake up. There is hope.

      1. Scratchy-voiced Emperor “Lockdown” Gavin of the Greased Back Hair is getting on everyone’s nerves – the recall petition continues to gain signatures…

        1. True, but hearsay is that Alex Padilla (Newsollini’s Secretary of State) will void signatures for the most trivial of reasons. Is the signature too large? Toss it. Does any part of the signature cross the lines above or below the signature box? Toss it and the signature next to it. Maybe it is just some sour grapes but I put nothing sleazy beyond Little Benito a priori.

    2. I’ve seen scores and scores of Trump-Pence signs out in yards and in small towns, and posted along the fences of rural properties to the north and south of San Antonio – and this was more than a month after election day.

      1. Just north of Seattle. I actually saw a car with two Trump/Pence stickers on the back window. In the QFC parking lot.

        I wanted to run over and hug them.

          1. See there? Now, if I see them again I can greet them with the joke “Hey, you guys need a shotgun riding rooftop?”

    3. Your neighbor might very well be progressive. But obvious shenanigans will draw fire even from people who are otherwise fine with the results. I read articles from Great Britain about conversations with people who were Remainers, but said they were going to vote for the Tories (and Johnson) because they were disgusted by the actions of the political class in trying to evade the will of the voters.

  4. I don’t have a problem with dealing the malicious servants. Hanging’s too good for them, I agree. But, I feel some slight measure of sympathy for those that thought the malicious were “adventurous” and “explorative” and a whole bunch of other things that say that the malicious were a spark of color in their black and white life.

    Hopefully, the pain will be enough to help these people out.

    1. > Hanging’s too good for them,

      The Voices always render those words in the voice of Hanover Fiske…

    2. Those who knowingly lie to others and convince them that wrong is right and right is wrong, and those who plan and manage the theft, denial, and canceling of votes deserve the most severe punishment.

  6. We are awaiting a Coalescing Event. There’s ample evidence that the Nation is sound, it is our “Elite” (spit) who are corrupt. This year fund Trump the “most-admired” man in America, even as we are daily told how imperfect he is. Elsewhere I read that over 70% of the country rejects the values expressed by the Wokerati (I forget just which values, so please allow for windage.)

    Take not counsel of our fears, and never, never, believe our foes’ claims of invincibility. Yeah, it is hard. It could be far worse. Of one thing we can be certain: if we fold our hands we’ll never have a shot at the pot.

    I am old enough to remember Watergate, the Nixon resignation, gasoline prices tripling (it seemed) overnight, HUGE Democrat majorities* in House & Senate, and President “Don’t Call Me James” Carter. We rolled that back and we can roll this back.

    *After the 1974 elections, the Democrats held a 61 – 37** (with two unaffiliated***) Senate majority and owned the House by better than two-to-one, 291 – 144

    **Amongst the putative Republicans were Lowell Weicker and Charles Percy

    ***James Buckley, Conservative-NY & Harry Byrd, Jr., Independent-VA

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/94th_United_States_Congress#Senate
    ~

    1. Buckley was not unaffiliated- he was Conservative Party. Elected when Republicans ran a liberal as liberal as the Democrat candidate-and they split the Democrat and Liberal votes. Buckley got the Conservative Party voters and a great number of Republicans. Minor parties may be minor- but they’re not unaffiliated.

      1. “Unaffiliated” in the sense there were no other representatives of that party present in the Senate. Presumably you did read deeply enough to notice his party identification in my third footnote.
        ~

  7. I am less sanguine than Mrs. Hoyt about the character of our King Richard, though there is no doubt that most of the stewards should be whipped at the cart’s tail. Let him wake up and come home, either way.

    2. Richard was an arsehole, and John got a lot of flack that he didn’t deserve because he was enforcing Richard’s policies. Not that John WASN’T an arsehole, mind.

  8. I’m seeing more signs of awakening all over the place. Here in Philly, the small one is an increasing number of people walking around *without* a mask…at least outside. For the last couple months it seemed like hubby and I were the only ones walking *outside* without masks. Slowly, slowly that’s starting to shift.

  9. If the king doesn’t wake up, even as he is waking up and putting things to rights, the rest of the world is going to learn what happens when the golden goose is killed, or maimed bad enough that the golden eggs disappear.

    Given a chance. I’m also not above emulating my ancestor’s who first braved those dangerous deadly vast spaces know as Atlantic Ocean, and later American Prairies. (How many graves litter the Oregon and California Trails west?) Is Space a bit more challenging? Yes. The Point? Someone will figure it out. Someone is trying to figure it out. I doubt I’ll be given that chance, not at my age. I doubt I’ll see it. But put pressure on the right people hard enough, someone desperate enough will try it. Someone will eventually succeed. Then watch the exodus.

    1. If DJT doesn’t pull a rabbit out of his hat, it’s not just the Democrats who are going to be gunning for him. A lot of formerly full-on supporters have swallowed the black pill and feel like they’re being shafted.

      The dumpster fire of the election has overshadowed the Big Reveal. The US government has “three legs”, the executive, legislative, and judicial. We now know the Supreme Court has been compromised. And due to how the Constitution was written, they’re exempt from dismissal.

      The Supremes not only “interpret” the Constitution, they make law from the bench, usurping the power of the legislative branch. We get to vote for the President, Senate, and Congress, but they now answer to the Supremes to hold their offices and authority. I’m pretty sure the Founders didn’t intend that, but there you are. They were the single-point-of-failure in the Constitution, and, yep…

      1. “A lot of formerly full-on supporters have swallowed the black pill and feel like they’re being shafted.”

        Not a chance. Not even a tiny, snowball in hades chance, is that even remotely true. Not ever.

        If you’ve heard from someone who considered themself a “full-on supporter” who now says they’re going to “gun” for POTUS, they were never a supporter.

        1. I think it’s more like “even our hero can’t do anything against The System; time to hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.” Figuratively, of course.

      2. When the SC said that Texas had no standing, that was the SC failing to do one of the things they were created to do. Settle disputes between the States and ENFORCE the Constitution. With the people Trump put on the SC they should have taken the case. The fact that they didn’t, means that the SC CANNOT BE TRUSTED to do what is right, they are COWARDS. Trump is NOT Responsible for that. There was no one who would have believed that the SC would say that Texas didn’t have Standing, that they would deny Standing as a PURE Political move.
        Trump is also NOT responsible for the Republican Governors, SoS, Attorney Generals, AND Legislatures who either turned their coats or refused to act out of cowardice. If he had gotten even partial support he would have had few problems.

      3. Justices aren’t exempt from dismissal. The Constitution just says that judges will hold their office during good behavior. There’s no reason to believe that good behavior includes obvious failures of reasoning.

        1. When impeachment takes a 2/3 vote, that’s a standard that doesn’t apply.

          Personally, I refuse to pretend that ANY law in our system will ever be enforced equally, so accusing someone of a crime is just proving they were correct in their arguments.

      1. And you can tell Trump looked back at 1969, looked up at the moon, and said, “Why in hell did we give that up?? Never mind, we can do it again, and aim higher.”

        1. The Moonbase was a done deal; they were planning the launches to start construction. And then it wasn’t, and NASA dropped it like a hot rock.

          I still think there was some kind of Cold War backroom deal over that. Just the propaganda value would have made the cost trivial.

          The Politburo and Central Committee members, the generals and admirals, the functionaries, and the serfs… when they looked up, there would be America, looking down at them.

          I can imagine how I’d feel if there was a Russian or Chinese Moonbase up there, and we were stuck down here…

          1. My cynical little voice opines that this dropping like a hot rock may have been the product of concurrent infiltrations… let’s just direct that money elsewhere…

            1. I have a vague memory of a four-panel political cartoon. (quotes not exact) 1. One genera speaking to another: “If we stopped wasting money on poverty programs and the moon race, we could win the war. 2. One scientist speaking to another: “If we stopped wasting money on the war and on poverty programs, we could get to the moon.” 3. One bureaucrat speaking to another: “If we stopped wasting money on the war and the moon race, we could end poverty.” 4. A group of antennaed alien hillbillies on lunar landscape, looking at Earth. “I wish they’d hurry up with the moon landings. We could use a good anti-poverty program.”

              But the Apollo program was a last hurrah for the old-time Progressives who (despite their many flaws) did believe in progress.They looked forward to a brighter, more prosperous future, even if they expected that future to be brought forth by Wise Government Planning. They were replaced by a new leftist cohort with the new leftist line “Learn to live with less, you greedy racist bastards!”

          2. Congress killed the Apollo program before the dust from Apollo 11 had settled. The propaganda victory had been achieved and the money could be put to use buying helping voters.

          1. Commies don’t do the frontier very well. And space is very much the frontier for a good while yet.

            Sure it’s amazing. And potentially amazingly profitable. That’ll draw commie interest for sure. But frontier spirit is very much an individual thing. I mean, a self starter, hard worker, innovator, kind of person is a must. These things and top-down authority don’t really jive. Even less with a a redistributist scheme.

            True, the frontier is heavily dependent on the home country in the early stages. But beyond that…? If there’s a way to be independent, they’ll take it. And the elites can howl like mad if they like. The frontier belongs to the pioneer folk for a good while. Once everyone else catches up, well… There’s Mars, the belt, and more to go. And Venus for the predictably standoffish and stubbornly difficult types.

            Lower the cost to orbit, and we shall see what comes next. *grin*

      2. Sadly, that is simply beyond our capability at this time.
        Go to the moon, sure, crew of three for a week or two.
        Moon base, Chinese will get there first, and we will have to play catch up same as we did with the Russians in the 60s.
        Mars, several technological and a couple of physiological problems to solve before we could do even one manned mission.
        Someone invent a constant thrust one G propulsion system and we own the solar system.
        Interstellar, gotta have FTL of some form or fashion. Warp drives, worm holes, some so far unthought of new technology.
        And generation ships are right out. It would take an incredible population pressure to justify such an endeavor, or perhaps some desperate group fleeing terrible persecution. Possible, but not in any meaningful numbers.

          1. Absent some major breakthrough in FTL communications, how would we ever know?
            And do keep in mind for biodiversity alone that colony would have to include tens of thousands of individuals with very clean DNA to minimize the negative impacts of inbreeding occurring over many generations.
            Our early colonists, those that survived the Atlantic crossing, at least had a destination reported by earlier explorers to have breathable air, clean water, abundant game, and vast resources of trees and plant life.
            I recommend a very old book, The Moon is Hell, by John W. Campbell for a well thought out and researched tale of an attempt to live in a non earthlike environment.

        2. Maybe. China may be more brittle than it appears. Not to say that it’s safe — the more brittle, the more dangerous, probably.

          1. Done, at the Hotmail addy.
            And I am ever so pleased at this new Sarah feeling her oats and spitting mad.
            Trite phrase, but you go girl!

        4. Doesn’t even have to be one G. Even 1/10 G (~1 m/s^2) puts Mars a little over 2 weeks away even if it is on the opposite side of the Sun. (That does assume you skim inside the orbit of Mercury) A similar trajectory to Ceres is about 3 weeks. No place in the inner Solar System is so far away at 1/10 G that the really bad effects of low gravity would have time to exhibit.

          Plus, 1/10 G is enough to make plumbing work 🙂 And showers.

          The above are back-of-the-envelope calculations but I doubt the actual time would be much different. Maybe I need to dig out my old dynamics books.

          1. “We could save X fuel if-”

            “IF we gave up flush toilets. NOT happening.”

            “Er, maybe we need to add another 10% capacity to the fuel tanks, just to be sure?”

            “See, NOW you’re talking sense.”

        5. And in 1620 a group of disgruntled folk took a small boat across a vast and icy sea to land on Cape Cod in November.

  10. Now that’s the Usain we know! The darkness from having to sit on the berserker has lifted and ways forward can be seen.

  11. The fault of the first is, ultimately, the education system which has been taken over for a long time by a cabal of our enemies.

    Among the greatest victories of the enemy / greatest crimes of the conservatives was to make not bowing before the school system the ultimate sin against the culture.

      1. Speaking as someone who worked in a public school system, I cannot think of a better real-world example of Pournelle’s law of bureaucracy.

        2. “… home schooling has doubled this year …”

          TRIPLED, at last report, and that does not count the number of families effectively home-schooling, essaying “remote-learning” with public school teachers who rarely connect.
          ~

        3. The one I saw was for Colorado–and only counted those folks who had formally and correctly filed as homeschooling. (Which includes the school correctly filing the letters, instead of frauding mistakenly failing to record that the lost enrollment. )

          Mostly for pre-k to fifth, which is the easier ages, but once you find out how much FASTER it can be and compare it to having to do all the junk for the “educators,” it’s hard to consider going back.

          (Who? Me? Cynical?)

      3. The two most powerful lobbies in Wisconsin are:
        The Tavern League
        and
        The Wisconsin Education Association.

        And despite what it would seem, the Tavern League does LESS damage than the WEA.

  12. “Square your shoulders. Be not afraid. In the end, we win, they lose.”

    YAY! Fighting Sarah is back! Gloom-and-doom Sarah was really starting to make me worry.

    Can we start planning the revolution already?

    1. Sarah,
      I don’t see you saying here that we can shut the fourth box,
      I don’t see you saying that there won’t be blood in the streets.
      I don’t even see you saying that the Republic is not dead,
      I just see you saying that maybe, just maybe we can resuscitate it.

      From your keyboard to God’s ears.

      1. We built a nation once, fumbling in the dark. We can build it again. And this time we know where we’re going.

        1. If you have cancer, you don’t want to go under the knife a second or third time because the first two oncologists quit before cutting it all out.

      3. The First American Republic is dead, but there’s no reason there can’t be a second. Hell, the French are on their fifth.

        1. We’re really on our third right now. The difference from the French is that we’ve kept the same Constitution instead of throwing it out each time (or rather we keep the same words whether or not they get read the same).

            1. Articles of confedration were essentially a first pass/ placeholder/training wheels :-). As for how many different government systems we’ve had semi reputable historians count 5-6 party systems starting from the beginning of the constitution.

      4. Well then let me say it: The Republic is not dead!

        Sure, we’ve hit a rough spot, but anyone who tells you the Republic is dead is a damn quitter. We – those of us who value Rights and Liberty – have lost a battle. That doesn’t mean we’ve lost the whole war. Hell, Biden didn’t “win” by all that many votes (for certain, fraudulent, values of the word “win”). The Republic isn’t dead until we give up and let it be dead.

        I, for one, am not ready to give up. Even if it gets so bad that I’m sneaking around with a scrap of flag in my pocket, preaching an illegal USAian religion in dark alleys I won’t give up. Far too many people have been moping around like things have gotten that bad. They haven’t.

        2. I am not yet ready to go through the Republic’s pockets looking for loose change.

          There is still reason to hope, if only for a miracle.
          ~

  13. The Once-And-Future-King is more than an anachronist fantasy novel by T.H. White: it’s an archetypal trope in many cultures, with the English legend of King Arthur being simply one of the best known. We also see it in the Jacobite iconizing of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Irish legend of Grace O’Malley (Gráinne Mhaol, Gráinne Ní Mháille, or Granuaile), and the way the Mongol culture revere Chinghis Khan. Of course, the return of Christ in the Apocalypse of John (Revelations) is the ur-myth of this type, and was the event Christ referenced in many of his famous parables that used the trope (The Talents, the Wicked Vinyard-Keepers, the Ten Virgins, et c.)

    I think the Sleeper-Awakens is a subtrope of it, drawing in Washington Irving’s Rip van Winkle, the Grimms’ Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, the enchantment of Merlin that C.S. Lewis brings up (pun intended) in That Hideous Strength, and even the slumber of Brünhilde in the Eddas into the greater set.

    1. Charlemagne, Fredrick Barbarossa, or Fredrick II in the German lands. Holger Danske in Scandinavia. Sir Francis Drake in England – his drum was supposed to have been heard during 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain. We know who won that fight.

        1. The Protector of Mexico? Of course! White savior complex. It’s so obvious I will declare it in advance.

          1. The whole ‘It doesn’t matter what White people do, it’s racist and evil’ thing has an ending that I don’t think the Blacks and Browns will like one bit. At some point reasonable White people, sick of being pushed around, and going to start saying, “Sit down and shut up, Nigger”, and meaning it. If they are going to be accused of being Bigots no matter what, they will start BEING bigots, if only out of fatigue.

            1. Already happening, more than I’d thought possible. I’ve heard more than once the NBA and the NFL referred to a “nigger ball,” and this from long time fans.

              And it’s got nothing to do with some racist idea–it’s disgust.

  14. > made people inexplicably believe the government was competent to look after everyone

    Practically any book or magazine you picked up from after WWI would have been wholly on board with that.

    The mass media fell to the socialists very early.

    Maybe every other issue of the many SF magazines of the 1940s and 1950s bemoaned the lack of stories to print. I used to think it was because there was a shortage of writers unwilling to work for three free copied and a pat on the head, but now I suspect “lack of stories” was shorthand for “lack of stories conforming to the Narrative.”

    1. I am reminded that in the decades immediately following this “government is competent to look after everyone” we got a raft of dystopia SF novels where the main theme was escaping from or taking down a distant but overbearing government.

    2. There is nothing quite like getting a rejection from a magazine for a sword and sorcery story on the grounds that it’s fine but not right for the magazine and reading the lament in the next issue about how they would publish more sword and sorcery if only they got them.

  15. unlikely to teach the sovereignty of the common man

    Following some links yesterday I came upon a discussion of the first mandatory public schooling laws (Boston IIRC) and their genesis – short version, the mass migration of the late 19th century freaked right out the previous-Americans, with the fear that if they were left to their own devices, primarily home schooling with some private contract schools plus religious (gasp – Catholic!) schools, those new immigrants children would never assimilate.

    Mandatory public schooling was proposed to force those foreign kids into a venue where they could be molded into American kids, informed as to the basis for the institutions and not separate tribes of monarchist or anarchist (or papist!) ghettos full of multi-generation foreigners-in-residence with no connection to the US and who retained allegiance to the places from which they came.

    Of course this viewpoint overlooked the overwhelming and near unversal recognition by those new immigrant parents that their kids needed to assimilate and become Americans to get ahead.

    But the idea stuck, and the concept of tax-funded public schools spread theoughout the US. So by the 1960s this vast and powerful tool crafted specifically to indoctrinate was just lying there, fully unionized, waiting to be picked up and put to proper use by the Inevitable Arrow cultists – which is where first we got “government is always competent” and “you need the government to grant you your ‘rights'” and “you need the government to take care of you”.

    Teaching the actual explicit fact of a sovereign citizenry under the US Constitutioninstead of a lightbringer dope smoking one who was waiting for himself sovereign, was right out. And any teaching of the implications of extending that citizen sovereignty to include alien foreigners who do not assimilate and in fact actively oppose assimilation (not really talking about those from southward, as many of those folks do assimilate – instead see the Somali unassimilated enclaves in Minnesota as but one example) woudl open too many doors and uncover too many uncomfortable questions.

    This is why the kids who did not figure all this out on their own take a few years to come to the truth, often in penny packets instead of all at once. And some just cannot shake their indoctrination without a shock, just as many of those older did not see things until 9-11 shoked the system.

    But going forward, the public schools are in the process of committing suicide. What will thsoe kids, homeschooled by necessity or pod schooled or remote schooled from here on, think of the just-past generation with all their indoctrinated views?

    Combining those from here on with the ones who either ghosted through all that crap in school while knowing the truth, or those who are just now, faced with the fraud and incompetence of the WuhanCommieVirus response are coming to it after leaving school, I retain hope.

    Setback are just that, and in the end we win, they lose.

    1. It started a little earlier than even that: the Puritans wanted schools for the indoctrination part of their utopian plans.

      They may have dropped the religion, but they kept the rest. Forget killing Hitler — or even Marx — if you get a time machine go back and launch a few dozen Exocets at the Mayflower.

      1. No, not them. Later arrivals. The Plymouth Colony was a lot more open to ideas and new revelations than were later Separatist colonists. Besides, every group wants their children to learn the proper-to-the-parents beliefs and morals. The Plymouth Colony also gave up on socialism after one winter, because they discovered what a disaster it led to.

        Alas, others managed to ignore the memo, or became so absolutely set certain that they alone knew the will of G-d that, yeah, we know how those stories end.

      2. In those days, the distinction between “school” and “church” was often a matter of definition. Even in the 20th century United States, long after the public schools weren’t supposed to be doing that any more. Which I know from personal experience.

        1. Churches ran the schools when schools were voluntary. The origin of “Sunday School” was to teach children to read and do sums on the day they had off work.

      3. Per the rather extensive descendant records, 16% of the U.S. is descended from Mayflower colonists. (Including myself, 3 ways.) And judging even by just my own known ancestors — they were the backbone of the prosperity built just behind the expanding frontier. Methinks whatever they did wrong (tho as another points out, they were quick to learn the error of their proposed socialist utopia) America would be far poorer without them.

        1. Where do you think the woker than thou attitude that festers in new england came from?

          As I said: they dropped the religion, but kept all the other things that made them embarrassments to humanity.

          2. I’d need a longer explanation of how that works in order to understand your confidence in it.
            I’m not asking for it specifically, just saying that I’m not aware of the details that would make it true. And it’s work to explain, so don’t feel compelled, please.

            1. It’s a long term observation– the obnoxiously woke are fanatics of a religion without forgiveness, mercy or humility.

              The nasty sort of church ladies without being tempered by a good philosophy.

              1. Good Philosophy or Good Theology. They have fallen prey to a combination of two of the earliest and most prevalent heresies of the Christian faith. The first is one popular in various parts of the qua evangelical church referred to as the health and wealth gospel. The belief is IF you are a believer G*d will grace you with various earthly needs to an extreme exent. Conversely if you are NOT experiencing this you have done something wrong or have insufficient faith. This goes ll the way back to first century Judaism (Lord why was this man born blind did he or his parents sin? John 9:1-3). A quick look at the Prophets and Job will tell you this is nonsense. The other heresy is the Pelagian heresy. This is that we can by our own merits without divine grace achieve himan perfection/sinlessness. It’s kind of a kissing cousin to Health and wealth Gospel and was shredded by Augustine of Hippo primarily in his City of God. To attribute these issues to the original puritans is somewhat disingenuous. They are VERY steeped in a Calvinistic view which takes strongly from Martin Luther and thence from Augustine. Over time the original puritan views morph to the more humanist Transcendentalist movement in the early 19th century.

                1. Their philosophy is usually missing the theology part, yeah….

                  It goes back further than first century Israel, Himself laid out a holy hobby horse about not saying ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
                  Over half a millennium later, they were still applying the bad logic in gotcha questions.

                  1. Their Philosophy IS Theology of a sort. They’re just too ignorant or too unaware to understand it. When your philosophy is “Do what you will, so long as it harms none” and when none means none who follow what I do you have effectively declared yourself the deity. And yes The Author warns his chosen folk many times, but the result is almost always the same as seen at the end of Judges “In those days Israel had no king. Each man did what he considered to be right.” I fear the Author either laughs in derision or cries in frustration at the fact we keep coming back to the same lie.

                    1. And when your criterion for “harm” is, “well, they should just get over it” negates any harm.

            2. I don’t have the data to prove it, as I’ve mostly read about the stuff that does. Albion’s Seed is one of the major works in the field.

              TL;DR: when you trace back migration patterns and religious sect mutations in the US you find that the wokeists are as close as you can get to direct descendants as you can get short of founding a dynasty.

              A friend reports having force-fed someone he knows a pill-of-indeterminate-color by showing her the line of ideological succession from her either unitarianism or mild-wokeism (can’t remember exactly), all the way back.

              They dropped the particular religion they used as window dressing. But they still have the same attitudes towards everyone else, and they still have the same goal “We will make People Better” straight out of Serenity.

              Unfortunately dropping their old religion means they no longer even have to give lip service to the idea that one should have some basic decency towards others. On the other hand; mask’s off.

              1. Thank you so much. This makes sense.

                Interesting and maybe pertinent. I’ve traveled some in the USA, and lived in several places. The most blatantly “we hate blacks” city? Boston. BY FAR. The people in MA cities treated everyone like they hated them.

                I went to college in South Carolina, and the difference in attitudes between the two areas is striking.

            3. Fox has the commie/left as religion aspect explained well.

              The other, some of the initial New England colonies were Puritans/Calvinists. The colonists were basically selected for super extreme religious fanaticism, came to expect the social effects of interacting only with such, and then they had kids. The New England flavor of Calvinism did not survive very well, because their expectations for the subsequent generations were not very functional. Their expectations were for a selected narrow slice of personality types, and the cohorts born in the new world were a broader mix. So, New Englanders wound up a bit burned out on religion, and a skepticism remains of religious expression similar to that of the Calvinists. But that does not mean that they are not drawn to religion. They might even jump into it the same way as long as they think the religion is something other than a religion.

              Third aspect, Ian may be influenced by Mencius Moldbug. Moldbug believes that leftism the religion is specifically a derivative of Protestant Christianity. I’m skeptical of this. Leftism the religion definitely derives from Christianity, because besides Judaism the other religions it could have inherited features from are too far away. Specific flavors of Christianity I think are more of a claim that is often based on intuition and personal perspective. Leftism seems to have inherited the altar call, which was developed within North American Protestant tradition. However, it has also inherited strong notions of an established church, which was outside of the North American Protestant tradition by the time the altar call developed. My position is that communism has borrowed from all religions it has obtained converts from, is a heresy of Christianity, and more than a single flavor of Christianity has left traces.

              1. Leftism shares most of it’s traits with Islam…. Which is fair, since Islam traces it’s roots back to Monophysite Christianity, which keeps the One God of Judaism while admitting Jesus was the Messiah.

                Note: this is the nickel synopsis.

              2. You’re a blessing, Bob, thank you.

                It really helps to understand what you guys are talking about, and several have taken the time to explain.

                I’m at least nominally a Presbyterian (PCA). I’ll look at how we do things and see if I can spot a mirror in leftism.

            4. As for the general position that the Puritans were monsters who tragically escaped the block in their own country, that is an amalgamation of a number of different threads I’ve seen over the years.

              First, there is what I mentioned in the other post.

              Second we have Gatto’s tracing of the origin of the public school system back to them. And it wasn’t a case of “a good idea gone bad”. The idea was always evil, which leads into…

              Third, a short book many years ago (can’t remember title or anything now) that analyzed how they started the schools, but from a religious perspective. They got into some nasty stuff, like swapping children around between families specifically to weaken parent-child bonds and to make the indoctrination more perfect. Hmmm, that sure sounds familiar now doesn’t it?

              I could probably remember other bits and pieces with time; as I said it is an amalgamation from many sources. But it is uncomfortably consistent.

              It’s funny; the mainstream left wing narrative is that the Puritans were monsters because eeeew religion, eeeew colonizer. And the mainstream right wing narrative is Puritans == Good. And then you did down and find that no they were in fact monsters, for completely different reasons.

              Unfortunately for them their descendants have forgotten to have children. So even if they don’t get purged in the coming horrorshow this particular brand of holier than thou fucktard is dying out.

              1. Ian you’re the best. Thank you. I have a much better understanding of things now. At least, I think I do. 🙂

              2. Their descendants have forgotten to have children – which is why they’re so obsessed with coming after and corrupting yours.

        2. I’m seeing more connections from the here-long-time side of my own family tree to the Dutch settlers that came to the New Amsterdam colony, though there’s a fair chunk from folks who emigrated from the north of England up near the Scots border.

          It does seem that the main thing they shared was all of them hated where their parents settled – pretty much each generation went as far west as was possible at that time.

          1. Perhaps not so much hatred, as finally they were somewhere that actually HAD a new horizon, letting them indulge that formerly-stifled urge to go see what’s beyond it.

          1. Viking on one side, Assorted Brit and Norman and eventually Roman on the other… prolly related lots of ways!

            A genealogical funny: acquaintance who was trying to get into it pro was digging up some of mine… we got back to a Welshman (hmm, no wonder I think like I do) and he says… if I could cough up a million pounds in back taxes, I’m heir to this here [finds pictures] tumbledown Welsh castle. [digs some more] …hey! whaddya mean, you’re ahead of me as heir to that castle??

        4. Johnny come latelys.

          (I have ancestors who arrived on this continent a century earlier. And that’s not counting the bride who appear in the records out of nowhere on their wedding days.)

      4. Education, and especially education of the poor, has always, Always, ALWAYS been about indoctrination. Where the Fascist Left achieved near total victory on that particular battlefield was when they pried control of the curriculum away from local school boards. I suspect that they saw that they were beginning to get pushback from parents on their Narrative, and that desegregation was a smoke screen.

      5. Well, goodbye and thanks for all the carp if you’re playing time travel assassin with the Mayflower. I’m descended from William Bradford.

      1. Yeah, funny thing: The offspring of friends of ours who moved to SF a few years ago effectively did so because of all the restaurants within easy walking distance. After having the windows broken multiple times (apartment had no garage, so street parking) she even sent her car down to her folks, and then had them sell it for her.

        At the latest report, 85% of all businesses in SF have been shuttered, and more than half the restaurants and other storefronts are closed permanently – and those stats are from reporting back in August, so it’ll be a lot worse now after ‘Shutdown II: The Wrath of Gavin’. Oddly no reporting updates leading up to the election on that, or on the exodus.

        Have not had the heart to ask “So how’s that walking-to-restaurants-and-shopping don’t-need-a-car thing working out for you up there these days?”

        1. Gonna do wonders for SF’s tax base… have heard it’s also doing a number on state sales tax revenues.

          Reportedly it’s much the same in NYC, and there — many apartment dwellers habitually eat out ALL the time, and never cook their own meals, and had literally NO idea what to do when the local cafes were no longer available. (Similarly I’ve known people in L.A. who eat out for dinner every day, and never EVER cook themselves anything more complex than a bowl of cereal or a sandwich.)

          1. The tax payers are leaving, and the tax leeches are staying. SO…they scream for ‘bailouts’ from the rest of the country, that’s not stuck-on-stupid.

            They filled their bath; let them soak in it.

            2. They probably think that they’ll get all the money they need from DC. I’m not confident that they’re wrong.

              1. The thing is, what they need ISN’T money. Decaying Democrat controlled cities have proved it time and time again: money doesn’t solve their problems because lack of it is a symptom, not the core issue. So, they can get a few bailouts from Wonderland On The Potomac, while their fellow Fascists are in control, and it won’t matter. SF and NYC have tipped over into ‘flaming dumpster’ mode and, absent long stretches of Conservative administration with legislative backup, they ain’t coming back. Which is a pity; there was once much to like about both towns.

                1. You can add the Greater Seattle area to the dumpster fire. It’s as bad as SF. If not worse.

                  Marxists rented rooms for hobos on Christmas Eve, and now won’t leave. They are making demands of the Tacoma (just south of Seattle) Mayor/City Manager.

                  The City manager is on their side.

                  The hotel manager has 40+ people squatting in his hotel, with Marxists gathering outside to protest their eviction, and the City manager says “Yeah, that’s chill. Let’s talk it out. Tomorrow. Maybe next day.”

                  Seattle’s finest tourist areas are so dangerous you can’t go there. If you bring a camera you’ll be assaulted by the heroin deranged hobos.

                2. “… they can get a few bailouts from Wonderland On The Potomac, while their fellow Fascists are in control, and it won’t matter.”

                  As has been said, sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.
                  !

          2. most beautiful part of their beloved covidiocy is that it’s their institutions they’re killing.

            –

            “So how’s that walking-to-restaurants-and-shopping don’t-need-a-car thing working out for you up there these days?”

            –
            Don’t know about SF apartments, but rumors I’ve heard is that for those in NYC apartments, the Tiny Home movement is an upgrade. Kitchens are bigger and actually functional, whether the Tiny Home is mobile or not.

            We eat out way more than we should, when things are normal. But not every meal. Not by a long shot. Unless you count the one meal out as “all meals” because that is what it tends to be.

            Good news is my CC bill is way, way, down. Thanks to the shutdowns, our taxable draw is down 75% … Which will affect the taxable amount of our federal SS (Oregon doesn’t tax SS); decreasing the taxable amount substantially. We might even trip back into deductions actually mattering again.

                    1. No. You’d have to live with us, and that’s just odd.
                      Though right now having a third pair of hands to pet Havey might keep me from killing him when he’s needy at 4 am.

                    2. We’ve been known to tell Nemo that it’s a good thing he’s as cute as he is when he wants to herd us into the same room.

        3. I recall Iowahawk pointing out that it was so expensive to rent a U-Haul in (parts of?) California that you could fly to Vegas or such, rent from there, drive back, and spend less money.

          1. I perceive a possible business model: U-Haul arbitrage brokerage. Offer a service where you rent a u-haul from, say, Las Vegas to Austin TX, then fly to Vegas, drive it back into the Glorious Bear Flag Peoples Republic and hand it over to the California-escapee-wannabe – for a modest fee of course.

            The downside is that leaves you in CA. Hm. Ah! You base yourself in Vegas, and then costs are an Uber ride to and a one way flight from the closest CA airport to McCarran to get home.

            1. I suspect contract and liability issues would put a dent in that business model. It’s been a hell of a long time since I rented a truck, but I rather suspect the contract has some fancy language saying that only the signer and certain people are authorized to drive the truck.

              OTOH, facilitating escapees with services might work; CA escapee flies to LV or alternate city–don’t want to trigger outsized imbalances, you pick him up, he stays in the Motel 6 down the road, and you get him to the U-Haul*. He drives to Cali-F’n-ornia and thence to freedom.

              (*) An in-state driver’s license and “home address” might be a good idea if the vendors caught wise. Obtaining such on short notice will be left as an exercise for the unscrupulous.

              That would work until U-Haul noticed a major imbalance in trucks leaving Vegas. OTOH, there are multiple rental companies. You might be able to spread it among a few cities.

            2. Dunno about now but U-Haul used to actually do that; you’d see caravans (or truckloads) of the durn things once in a while.

          3. pointing out that it was so expensive to rent a U-Haul in (parts of?) California

            –
            Or fly to ultimate destination, pickup the U-Haul and drive it back, load and return it to original location when done; round trip rate. Not only CA but NYC and other places people are fleeing.

    3. The impetus was majorly influenced by the Blaine Amendments, named for Congressman James G. Blaine as an amendment to the US Constitution in 1875 (House passed 180 – 7; in the Senate it fell 4 votes short of the necessary two-thirds) but eventually incorporated into the constitutions of all but 10 states. These amendments, forbidding use of public funds for sectarian schools, were only recently addressed by the US Supreme Court, in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (June, 2020), in which the court ruled (5/4) that scholarship funds provided by the state could not be barred from use for sectarian schools, as the funds were “cleansed” by being given to the parents rather than directly to schools.

      Almost 150 years to get that obvious result, and even then by only one justice. Perhaps in another 150 years we will see all school funding delivered to parents for use as they see fit.
      ~

      1. I grew up putting cattle on the “School section” in three different states. (Maybe four, there’s one I’m not sure where the border was, and as a kid I didn’t need to know. I was just the figurehead for a horse that knew better than I did, anyways.)

        The environmentalists have done a lot of damage to the options for income from those– first the lumber, then the grazing rights, get destroyed or regulated away.

        1. Yes, I remember you talking about that. It’s terrible, how intolerant these people are, especially of lifestyles and folkways different from their own. When they’re paid by the public who has the folkways.

          1. At least the KKK and the Nazis didn’t try to make their victims feel guilty by proclaiming that their intolerance was tolerance.

  16. > We The People are the sovereign of this land

    Or as I keep reminding people, the officials of the government of The United States of America are my *employees*, not my masters.

    The Fed isn’t a sovereign of itself; it’s our *representative.*

    Unfortunately, a very large number of people seem to think the Feds are nobles and the incumbent is a king. I know many of them were criminally mis-educated, but a distressing percentage seem entirely happy to consider themselves as serfs. Like RES(?) said, “They don’t want freedom, they want license.”

    1. I recall the suggestion I once read that if they want to call themselves “Public Servant” that’s alright. But then they must address member of the public as ‘Master’ – as a constant reminder of what ‘servant’ means. I was amused by this. I am growing ever more toward figuring it should be a firing offense [go try the private sector, come back in no less than 5* years if you must try again] to not address members of the public such.

      * Larger number accepted. 250 is larger, yes. So is 8,192.

      2. Hell, I’d settle for “Sir”.

        Though, to be fair, my interaction with local government in my area has been universally cordial and helpful. Even DMV is pretty good, service and manners-wise. It’s above that level that it begins to go sour.

        1. As someone told me years ago in the heydey of small ISPs (and faceless AOL etc.): “Stick to place you can firebomb.” — Meaning they KNOW they DEPEND on locals so must treat them right. ATT, etc., doesn’t care, as it it doesn’t have to (Ma Bell model)….

  17. Thanx for the tough optimism.
    I’m afraid it will get much worse (fourth box) unless we squash the steal now. Our usurpers and their supporters are beyond hearing the truth any longer or reasoning it out for themselves, and are either too lazy or have been propagandized into fanatics.
    My best hope is for Congress and the other Legislatures to do the right thing next week, and for the threatened rioting to be minimal, or squashed quickly so we can have four more years of narrative driven turmoil while we uproot the swamp.
    Won’t end until JUSTICE is served on all, ESPECIALLY the special people who think they are entitled to sit in power over us.

      1. I agree. I do not think the legislatures will do the right thing. They are too afraid, whether of left-wing violence, being called a conspiracy theorist, or of losing their place in the hierarchy of fraudsters. We need to plan campaigns to get rid of a large number of them…

        1. The problem with the leftists being quicker with violence is that it makes them look the greater danger.

      2. I will be looking on with considerable interest during the run-up and execution of the mid-term elections in 2022. History and logic say that the Democrats will take a serious hit, probably lose both Houses of Congress. But considering that they seem to have gotten away with blatant fraud this time (even more that their usual skullduggery, and so obvious as well) I expect this next go round to be the archtypical chit show.

        1. I don’t think there will be real elections of consequence in 2022 unless the mass corruption with this election get sorted out. 2020 will be the last election for this version of the Republic. (We are on Version 2.0 or 3.0, depending on which historian you follow…)

          Even in non-swing states, the amount of fraud was epic. I know first-hand, I work on an independent team analysing the voting records and collecting evidence concerning large counties in Texas. The amount of different types of scams and the scale is breathtaking. Every possible way to cheat the system happened.

          The unwillingness of anybody in authority to address or investigate the situation means this version of the Republic is dead. (Think Monty Python Parrot Sketch DEAD.) We are just collecting the evidence so we can explain the spicy dancing to the undecided when the SHTF and for the trials if we somehow survive.

          So anyone that thinks, “Well golly, we just need to be pure of heart and do better in 2022!”, is a fool.

          3. Yep. This. The only reason it didn’t work is that they didn’t realize that not all Texans of Mexican descent are on board, and the Asian influx (judging by what I saw greeting people at the polls) has realized they are just another tribe of honkies.

          4. “The unwillingness of anybody in authority to address or investigate the situation ”

            Abbott and Paxton have been.

            1. Abbott and Paxton have been force to address it by groups like the one I belong to and the folks that back Trump. They know they are hated by the left and there are no special deals for them. Other than them and a handful of lawmakers, most election fraud evidence has been suppressed by the “good ole boy” system in the state. The media is mostly spineless sycophants and the Dems and most GOP aren’t much better.

              1. Since I’m a volunteer for TrueTheVote, one of the original members of the DFW Tea Party, and a Trump donor since 2015……

  19. Hope so, hope even sooner (6 January?), but always have a plan D to get you through days or decades.

    Know where the hollows are, swamp foxes?

    Know which cracks you can get through, deplorable cockroaches?

    Teaching your kids to survive and strive no matter what, thievin’ ravens?

    Know how to turn your book learnin’ to calloused hands earnin’?

    If so, if for enough of us, so, no matter what, we’ll be right, mate.

  20. I wish I had your optimism.

    Just about the only hope I have right now is that America is armed. As far as I can tell, that’s the only difference between where we are now, and where all barely-pre-communist societies have been before going to hell. Everything else is exactly the same. The escalating social punishments by bullies and psycopaths. The craven evasive spinelessness by officials. The in-your-face unjust punishment of people for exercising their rights. The political street thugs used by the party to punish people. I’ve been reading too much Russian history, and I’m having trouble seeing how this doesn’t become that.

    I keep hearing “people won’t put up with X”. People won’t put up with it HOW? What does that mean in concrete terms? How do we prevent our officials, newly freed from having to give any shit at all what the people think from doing whatever they want to us? Voting at them harder doesn’t work anymore. Disobedience won’t be tolerated. This is going to escalate into brutal police repression, massacres and atrocities until we start shooting back – how can it not?

    1. They make the mistake of assuming that a reduced order model of a society holds for all forecasting of future events.

      If you let yourself make the same mistake, you will blind yourself to chance opportunities to mess them up.

    2. I note the reporting on the restaurant owner in LA who blocked the health inspector’s car.

      How much do you want to bet they will ask for a police escort when they are out and about abusing their petty tyrant powers by citing restauranteers for not policing public property. And how enthusiastic will the PD and Sherriff dept leadership be about assigning dwindling resources to a detail that will only generate negative social media and press coverage?

      I also note the Sacramento beauty salon that was cited by the brave KalifornienSchönheitssalonLizenzCompliancePolizei (the beauty salon licensing inspector in raid body armor with POLICE on the back of his vest is a nice touch) where the local DA and Sherrif both issued press releases saying “Yeah, not our thing, we’re not charging or enforcing any of that kind of crap.”

      Noncompliance is starting up at all levels. Take not the counsel of your fears. In the end, we win, they lose.

      1. Didn’t hurt the health inspector any; he’s a government employee on salary, and gets paid whether he’s at work or not.

        Paid out of the restaurant owner’s tax, licensing, and fee money, to boot.

        “Please, do hurt me some more, I want to sleep in tomorrow.”

        2. It didn’t hurt him, but it did hurt his agency. They can’t fine people if he can’t actually get to them. And if he’s smart he’d be at least a little worried that people aren’t respecting his official position they way they once did. That respect is the only thing keeping a lot of these officials from a wall-to-wall counselling session.

          1. THIS.

            “And if he’s smart he’d be at least a little worried that people aren’t respecting his official position they way they once did.”

            Which is why a LOT of CA health officials have resigned this past year. At this point, you can figure that the ones that are left aren’t persuadable by any civilized argument,

            1. Sulla and Cicero lived in cities, therefore their arguments are by definition civilized.

              In the name of heaven, Kamala, how long do you propose to exploit our patience? …

              These are times that try men’s souls.

  21. Off topic question, but does anyone know what happened to Scifiwright.com? Hopefully he just forgot to pay his bill or something, but after WordPress booted The Conservative Treehouse, I’m worried that other blogs like this one will be next.

    2. I’ve been concerned too. The first time it happened, he said his webhosting service was dong some upgrades, and that came up instead of a more typical “under maintenance” error code page. But it keeps happening, which really makes me wonder if they’re shadowbanning him and lying about the maintenance.

      2. It came up all right a minute ago. The last post was “Christmastide”, dated 12/26.

        OldNFO’s blog went down and came back up a day or three later.

        2. OK. 3:47AM (PST), it shows “Account Suspended” right now. The contact page goes to webmaster at scifiwright dot com. Sigh.

    4. I think if he’d been booted, we’d be seeing the other side gloating about it. Haven’t noticed any of that –yet.

      1. Possibly they are starting to get worried and dropping the gloating. I noticed that the fantasies on Twitter about censoring conservatives and depriving them of the right to vote dropped down as they realized we weren’t going down meekly.

              1. There’s a lot of variety. For instance, there are indeed people who master operational security. (They tend to incite the riots and walk off.)

                2. Still getting “account suspended” notices.

                  So, apparently Mr. Wright uses bluehost? I left them as a hosting provider a while back because they started screwing with the server I was renting from them in an attempt to “integrate services”. In the process they broke some of the things I had set up. I thought they were getting sleazy/going downhill as a company.

              2. I caught snippets of Rush Limbaugh’s shot today, not sure who the guest host was. Some socialist creep “Mark” was gloating about Conservatives’ reluctance to go batshit and that the commies would be in power forever. (I had to change to a different station; it was starting to get me frightfully annoyed. .30-’06 annoyed.) Not sure what the idiot’s game plan was, unless he planned to have his bloody body be the inspiration for the great leftwing crackdown.

                1. People on the Left think that. And then 1989 happens.

                  I don’t pretend to know what’s going to happen. I know what it looks like *right now*. And I’d be lyilng if I didn’t say that things look bad right now. But I don’t pretend to know what’s about to come out of left field and blindside all of us, for good or ill. Given what happened just this year, anyone who does think that they know what’s going to happen (and whose title doesn’t include “Almighty Ruler of the Universe”) is deluding themselves.

                2. Guest host was Todd herman, per Paul Bedard’s Washington Secrets column:

                  Sidney Powell on Rush Limbaugh: ‘This was a masterful, Machiavellian scheme’
                  by Paul Bedard, Washington Secrets Columnist | December 29, 2020 02:31 PM

                  No, Sidney Powell is not backing down on her claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election despite attacks from White House insiders and now even Geraldo Rivera.

                  During a 20-minute interview with Todd Herman, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday, Powell expressed frustration that none of the judges who have rejected challenges to the election have actually seen any of the evidence collected.

                  “No judge has heard the evidence,” she said, suggesting a rush job to move past the election.

                  “For them to dismiss our cases on any basis is absolutely ridiculous. We have just an extraordinary volume of evidence that you wouldn’t even put in the complaint stage of a normal case,” said Powell.
                  [END EXCERPT]

                  Emphasis added.

                  Seminar callers often target Rush’s guest hosts. If socialists had any predictive accuracy the Soviet Union would still be extant, Cuba & Venezuela would be paradises and China would yet adhere to Mao’s economics.
                  ~

                3. That dude was a horrid chode, wasn’t he? He didn’t want to convince anyone, he came on to bleat that they had already won, they didn’t need to convince us of anything, and they were getting ready to destroy the Constitution….

                  The guest host was Todd Herman out of KTTH Seattle (770 AM), 6-9 AM weekdays. A thoroughly righteous and trustworthy fellow. He refuses to wear the slave diaper to the extent that he moved his family to Idaho and does his radio show out of a Spokane radio station. He is a wealth of information about the ‘Rona lie.

        2. People don’t push this hard when they’re chill with the outcome.

          Senators resign their seat if they think they won. Heels Up Harris hasn’t done so.

          They planned the “shock and awe” phase for right after the theft day. When we said “No!” they mumbled and gurgled and ….. hid.

          1. It certainly does not appear to me that the China Joe muppet and the easy east-Indian female that’s pretending to be black are confident in their ascension to the halls of power.

  22. I have to object with my ancestors’ statement of “No king but God”.

    We hold the power, but at His pleasure.
    It behooves us to use that power with a humble heart.
    To pray for Wisdom.
    To try and temper justice with mercy.
    And to praise the Lord as we pass the ammunition.
    Let us once again sing The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

    1. The Battle Hymn is a wonderful song. Heard it used as the background music in a video recently (visual-only trailer for a new line of American Civil War wargaming miniatures). The rendition was slower, and more majestic-sounding than it normally is. But it still gave me the warm fuzzies.

      1. There’s video on YouTube, of the (Russian) Red Army Choir singing it. At a rock show in Finland…

        That’s the Alexandrov Ensemble, that lost 64 members when their Tu-154 went down in 2016. There are several conflicting official stories about the cause of the crash.

      2. Charles Laughton first delivered this address in the 1935 film Ruggles of Red Gap, in which he played an English valet brought West by his new master, a West which first liberates him from his servile status then elevates him to a higher servant status, being elected sheriff in his new homeland. The highlight of the film is this recitation, one which Laughton would often repeat as years went on:

        Other memorable 1935 performances by Laughton include Mutiny on the Bounty‘s Captain Bligh and Inspector Javert, opposite Fredric March in Les Misérables, but this is worth celebrating above all others.
        ~

  23. Kept my Trump signs in my lawn to date and wear a “Trump 2020” COVID mask. Have had a couple of stink-eyes for the mask (both older people), but lots more compliments (just shy of a standing ovation at the counter of a Chik-Fil-A). Interesting thing: a LOT of the compliments for the mask come from younger people, including college and high-school age.

    1. I realized sometime ago a HUGE (pardon) thing has happened in the culture. I know several young people who are Trump supporters and afraid to tell their parents.
      I can’t tell you how massive this is.

      1. I volunteered at the GOP headquarters last summer and noticed the same. High school kids supporting Trump didn’t care who knew, but it’s a red county in a blue state. College students admitted they’d be in some trouble on campus if they were outed. It occurred to me then that progressivism has been on top long enough for some form of conservatism to become a counter-culture. Is this the first case of the culture refusing to admit that it IS the counter-culture, or did the boomers get there first?

      3. At least one friend informed her offspring from age 7 onward that they would be disowned and formally discommodated in the family high council if they ever voted R.

        Gee, I wonder if they would ever so confess? And If so, to what end?

        1. That’s the sort that terrorizes their kids so they can claim the kid is frightened at election results.

        2. There’s a story about a small Mississippi town, back in the Yellow Dog Democrat days, where there would be one Republican vote every election. The town-folk concluded that it had to be coming from that strange Old Man Johnson. When Old Man Johnson died, and no one could find any family of his, everyone decided that they shouldn’t hold his politics against him – not now, now that he was dead. So the entire town turned out for Old Man Johnson’s funeral, giving him a proper burial and send-off.

          And the next election, when the votes came in, there was that one Republican vote.

          2. Well, there was always those people who wondered how Massachusetts came to have a Republican Senator.

            Seems they had this one Republican, and they had to get him out of the state somehow… 😛

    2. Talk about timing. Those two Trump 2020 lawn signs I left in my front yard vanished last night. No biggie, I’ve got three spares. Occurs to me I might want to put a padlock on the door to the old storm cellar first — that’s where my water purification is.

  24. What will happen when people go to DC on the 6th????
    I hope and pray that it will be peaceful. The Democrats will plan to use Antifa/BLM to make them look violent and racist. I hope it doesn’t work.
    For all those who plan to go God speed and a safe time.

    1. Doesn’t matter what happens to the crowds in DC on the 6th, outside of a large casualty event, the media will under report it or twist it. It’s a symbolic gesture for whatever the heck Trump is up to, one last rally before the SHTF… What matters is what happens with Trump/Pence between now and the 20th.

      If Biden takes office, the asymmetric spicy dancing will start. Both sides have lists. If the elite were smart, they would be negotiating and heading overseas just in case. Much of their assets, ($30T), are already out of the States.

      I’m going to order some popcorn and extra batteries for the radio…

        1. *shakes head* They *are* just that dumb, too.

          It ain’t just the elites. This is a human theme. “It can’t happen to me!” and “It can’t happen here!” are just as common among the rabble and the leftist mob members. Normies too.

          Pick a revolution other than the American one. The safest place to be is *not* in the middle of one. Mission creep happens. And the allies of yesterday become the hated foe of today.

          I do wonder if, in the future, we look back and add in the deaths from the riots and suchlike to the (thus far attempted) coup/revolution. The American people said “F U NO!” to the creepy old man and his creepy laughing running mate. And the creepers said “Fraud harder! We can win this yet!”

          1. Outside of the US, what we call the Revolutionary War is more typically referred to as the American War of Independence (AWI). It’s a more accurate name, imo. Revolutions involve overthrowing the powers that be. Our war left the British government still very much intact. It just removed that government’s ability to influence what was going on in the former 13 Colonies.

              1. Don’t get me wrong – the fallout of the war was revolutionary – as in producing a novel outcome. But the war itself was not.

    2. The provocateurs and the might-be-Horst-Wessels are already in place and waiting.

      DJT has called up the DC National Guard. Which is the only Guard unit directly under the President, and not its host state or territory.

      DC Metro PD will obey the Mayor. *They always do.*
      BLM and Antifa are stacking their pallets of bricks and Molotovs at this moment. *They’ve done it before.*
      Metro PD knows where they’re going to herd groups together. *They’ve done it before.*
      The provocateurs know what to do. *They’ve done it before.*
      The media have already scoped out their optimum camera angles. *They’ve done it before.*
      The media already have their stories written; they will cherry-pick supporting video. *They’ve done it before.*

      The chances of even a “mostly peaceful demonstration” are basically zero.

      I’m expecting DC and surrounding states to set up roadblocks after admitting a suitable quantity of “white supremacist nazi patriots” for the videographers. If that happens, there will be police and Guard units facing off against angry citizenry with guns. And I sort of expect some ad hoc support demonstrations in various state capitols, by people who couldn’t make the trip to DC.

      “Spicy time is coming.”

      1. The hotels are already canceling people’s rooms.

        But that is ok; everyone expected it from the moment Trump said “be there”.

        Just like they expect the roadblocks.

        Just like they expect flight cancellations.

        Just like many are leaving the kids home.

        Just like many intend to go armed.

        Almost like they know this is the line in the sand.

            1. Of course they know that. It is still scary. I had hoped for “Unintended Consequences” not cry havoc.

            2. I know of many. Every single CCW cardholder is carrying, guaranteed.

              Or, rather, bringing their weapons with them.

              This is the reason national reciprocity was a necessary thing. Congress and the NRA all ignored it.

        2. Gee, what will happen to those hotels, etc. after the lists of phony-abloney cancellations gets out? Will they be… Antifa/BLM-ed.. even if not by soi disant Antifa/BLM?

        3. Just like they expect cell service to be cut.

          This is much more than a symbolic gesture, as one commenter put it. The line in the sand is drawn, the Rubicon has been crossed.

          Many see January 6 as “Let’s Roll” time.

          1. The thing to do would be to place bombs ALL over that would only start the countdown if service dropped and stayed dropped. Which would mean that option would forever verboten as callous and insane.

            Why yes, I *am* a monster. But not evil. It’s not like I’m a bureaucrat or anything Truly Nasty.

              1. Apropos nothing: Spent some time plotting the story arc for the next ten shifter books, now that they’re all mine and I can continue the series.
                Cough. One of them might be called “With the Horns On” and feature a certain Minotaur. 😉

                1. Moooo!

                  Looks like I’ll be needing to get ‘dead’ tree versions for the long-lastingness AND so some of the folks who don’t do e-books can read of such. ♉

                2. “… and feature a certain Minotaur.>

                  I should imagine a uncertain minotaur to be more entertaining.
                  ~

            2. Oh, I don’t know. A “monster” tries to steal a presidency. A person who fights back using every explosive means available? Noble.

            3. Pretty sure it isn’t feasible to work.

              There’s probably a rule of thumb that with explosives you want to control the place and time in addition to the other factors like size, etc. Minefields are sort of an exception, but decent armies do not leave those hanging around forever (they aren’t really slowing down military forces if you aren’t around to shoot the enemy sappers).

              ‘You’ control the place with this, but not the time. So ‘your’ opposition jams the device in question when they’ve arranged for innocents to be in the place. They blame ‘you’. Eventually ‘you’ are stopped from placing more, and the old ones are removed. Then they the go full scale on the jamming.

              Looks like one of those things that seems to work in theory, but probably could be defeated in practice without too much trouble.

                1. SENSE.

                  Damnit, you’re making _sense_ (yet) again.

                  And I can’t blame that on WP..
                  So I’ll mutter darkly about design flaws in this Reality thing once again.

    4. I hope and pray that it will be peaceful.

      I’ve been giving thanks that the Duchess is back from visiting my in-laws, and worrying about her playmates from when she was there.

  25. “They don’t understand that they’re a lot closer to the Nazis than to the commie regimes,”

    They are still useful idiots and think that Nazis are right-wing.

      1. I have had in teh back of my head the urge to write down what Stalin actually did, policy wise, and try to be as fair as humanly possible, and see where it lines up compared to various political parties.

        2. Big thing I remember is: If there is unrest in Province A, confiscate their food and ship it to Province B. Province B will be appeased for a while at least. Province A starves, ceases to be a problem, and is available for ‘resettlement’ after a few months.
          ———————————
          They kill a lot of people, overthrow their corrupt rulers and replace them with a new batch of corrupt rulers. Viva la revolution! Yesterday’s oppressed become tomorrow’s oppressors.

          2. Final Fantasy 14 has been doing a lot to spread familiarity with that tactic– which makes it less effective– by using it as their bad guy’s source of cannon fodder.

        3. This works much better if people are unable to stockpile food. All those communist stores full of empty shelves may not have been entirely due to incompetence.

          Play the Monty Python ‘Cheese Shop’ sketch here…
          ———————————
          Nobody has so little that some asshole doesn’t want to take it.

  26. Passing along useful advice from RedState a few days ago. I would hope everyone here already knows this, but a lot of new names have shown up in the last month or two.

    The FBI is sharpening its claws to go after disgruntled Trump supporters. It is not hard to see us getting to a point where merely mentioning that you think the 2020 election was stolen will be enough to put you on the radar of federal law enforcement. You may think you are just talking sh** in the RedState comments section or on Facebook or Twitter or a private email group, but someone is watching you. The guy talking the loudest about how we have to take action to defend our rights is probably on the FBI payroll. If anyone offers to help you do anything that could be considered criminal when taken in its worst light…like making a list of government officials’ home addresses, just for instance…they are on the FBI payroll. If you are even passively involved in a group where such talk takes place, you are putting yourself in jeopardy. Talking about civil war on the internet doesn’t make you look tough; it makes you look stupid, and it puts a target on your back and on the backs of anyone who interacts with you.
    (snip)
    A lot of us are angry at what seems to be an election that was carried out in a manner calculated to encourage vote fraud and we are angry that literally no one in government seems bothered enough to bother looking into the matter. That is understandable. Don’t let the FBI turn you being pissed off into a press release and an entry on their annual report about rightwing domestic terrorist plots they have broken up.

    If you have any thoughts that you wouldn’t want to see on CNN tomorrow morning, don’t talk about them here. Don’t trust anyone who urges immediate action or offers to “help you carry out your plan.” In general, don’t trust anyone you haven’t known for a while. That would include me, BTW — I’ve only been commenting here for a year or so. It’s perfectly reasonable to treat me with a bit of suspicion. I’m not offended. (And I really don’t want to know anything beyond under-reported news.)

    Read the whole thing, and be mindful.
    https://redstate.com/streiff/2020/12/26/fbi-terror-plot-white-supremacists-n300105

      1. Ding ding ding!

        Any action you shy away from for the reason “I might get on a list” is folly. You are already on more lists than you can count, just by being alive.

        Congratulations! Enjoy your new found freedom from the fear of the list!

      2. ^This.
        I haven’t forgotten that I checked all but a couple of boxes on Obama’s “potential domestic terrorist” list.
        .
        And I am absolutely certain that those compiling the lists haven’t forgotten, either.
        .
        I’ve function checked my cold weather camping gear. I don’t know if I’ll be able to go, but I’m ready. Just in case.

      3. I’ve been on the “suspected terrorist” list since the 1980s, when Dollar Billy Clinton decided to form an anti-terrorist task force, which was trendy at the time. Not finding any terrorists in Arkansas, they filled their list of suspects with people on other lists, one of them being “machine gun owners registered with the state.” Of which there were maybe afew dozen of the thousands here, that even knew about that regulation. When I went to Little Rock to fill out the forms, the official nominally in charge of it had never heard of that form, and had to go looking for one… shows what you get for trying to obey the rules.

        That list got folded into a “regional anti-terrorist force” list with Texas and Oklahoma, and then eventually into a Federal list, probably FBI. Because data is forever… I had largely forgotten about it until I was signing in at a Navy base on the east coast a few years after 9/11, and their security guys thought they’d just cornered bin Laden. It got *very* tense there for a while.

    2. Of course, everybody who disagrees, or calls out their bullshit, is a ‘white supremacist!’

      Even the ones who aren’t white. Like RRRAAACIIISSST!!! they have abused ‘WHITE SUPREMACIST!!” until the term has lost all meaning. It’s just noise, like most of what spews out of their pie-holes.

      How do they propose to lock up 100+ million ‘white supremacists’ though?
      ———————————
      Pacifism will, at best, get you a nice peaceful trip to the slave pens. At worst — tell me, have you ever heard of the Aztecs?

      1. They think they can perform the usual song and dance of making examples of a few.

        It wouldn’t work: we have reached the stage where each abuse makes people louder and angrier.

        3. If you end up being called “racist-sexist-bigoted-homophone-transphone” it can be fun to turn and shriek in the others’ face “NO, YOU’RE THE ….!” And keep up with it. Don’t let them get away with no consequence for besmirching your good name. Scream. Yell. Throw things if you want to. Make sure you call the authorities they’re threatening you with. “You want the cops? Great, let’s call 911.” Then do it.

          It’s fun, if you can’t get away anyhow, to make the biggest stink you can. Gather authorities like pennies, get all the woke babies there. Let them f’ing have it with their garbage. Demand they charge the person with… something. Make things up. Be irrelevant, loudly!

          The NPCs can’t think their way out of a wet paper bag, so it’s a good time.

              1. If you wish to re-run, I’ve no objection. Probably needs some edits, however minor.
                If it needs updating/adjustment, I can try it.
                I’ll have to think on ‘First Slow, Then Fast’ – you know ox speed.

      4. One suggestion seems to be “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions,” for the deplorables. Or there’s Rahm Emmanuel in today’s Wall Street Journal explaining (says the article blurb), that Biden voters prove “Americans still have faith in the nation’s institutions ,” and the new Administration needs to “reassure,” the rest of us.
        Is it me, or is this thoroughly condescending?

        2. It says something about a family when, of three brothers — Rahm, Ezekiel, and Ari — the Hollywood agent is the highlight.
          ~

        1. They rolled a no-knock early AM raid on a clearly innocuous connected lawyer and his wife, with a tip to the local media to roll a video van, purely pour encourager les autres, so if they come I don’t expect a knock.

    4. I’m already on their lists. In fact, most of my wife’s family is probably on their lists too. When the FBI conspires to coverup their involvement with the mob, and said mob murders your family members, and the FBI covers THAT up, it basically kills any and all faith in their ability to follow the law, or do their official jobs competently.

      Don’t trust, and always verify.

    5. Lady. We’re all on lists. I don’t care anymore about their lists. *waves to Fed the Fred, might want to consider retiring* welcome to a place where we mock their lists. Even us quiet ones.

      1. If they were smart, they’d shorts-wetting TERRIFIED of the “quiet ones.”

        Those who express… have open a relief valve,
        Those who do not… the pressure builds.

      1. Pish-tosh, my good beast. For whatever reason would anybody want to put a wallaby on a list? The very thought is absurd!
        ~

          1. Putting wallabies in that list is sort of like putting the Sun on the list of “Things That Come Up In The Morning” — so blatantly obvious that listing it would be superfluous.
            ~

  27. Sing it!

    … Then the sands will roll out a carpet of gold
    For your weary toes to be a-touchin’
    And the ships wise men will remind you once again
    That the whole wide world is watchin’

    Oh the foes will rise with the sleep still in their eyes
    And they’ll jerk from their beds and think they’re dreamin’
    But they’ll pinch themselves and squeal and they’ll know that it’s for real
    The hour that the ship comes in

    Then they’ll raise their hands sayin’, “We’ll meet all your demands
    But we’ll shout from the bow your days are numbered”
    And like pharaohs tribe they’ll be drownded in the tide
    And like Goliath, they’ll be conquered

    I see NO reason we cannot swipe and repurpose their songs. Our King returns – prepare ye the way of The Lord.
    ~

      1. Plenty of rest to be had in the grave, and it’ll claim us soon enough.

        In the meantime, hands to work, hearts to God.

  30. “They have an engine called the press by which the people are deceived.”—CSLewis, =That Hideous Strength”

    How does an organism fight a virus? Sooner or later, infected cells have to be killed to stop the spread. How do you stop a deliberate, malicous, infectious, meme? God grant that shattering or discrediting the vector institutions will be enough, or the War Between the States will look like a church picnic. And the resentment from that Late Unpleasantness is with us still in places.

    Though some crimes, like organizing voter fraud, ought to be punished from the gallows, and others, like taking an oath in order that you gain the chance to break it, cry out for justice dispensed still later.

    1. You need antibodies to fight viruses. Or in this case, an anti-meme. Per our illustrious hostess, that anti-meme is most effective when it ridicules and shows just how absurd the original fallacious meme is. Meme’s don’t do well when people look at them as say, “That’s just plain stupid.”

  31. Point to remember is that when the King came home to put his home back in order, it almost always required the use of force, lethal in many cases, against the worst of the offenders.

    3. Point is right — when Ithaca’s king, Odysseus, returned from his wanderings many of those seeking to replace him got the point quite directly.

      Fortunately, American schoolchildren will no longer be subjected to such tales of terror and hatred.
      ~

    4. In some ways this feels like “The Cleansing of the Shire” from the Return of the King. With Kneepads taking Sharkey’s job and his Fraudulence in the Wormtounge roll (albeit with far less on the ball). I fear thats a best case scenario and keep thinking the transition in Caliphate is far more likely.

      1. [pedant]It’s “The Scouring of the Shire”[/pedant]

        ‘No!’ said Merry. ‘It’s no good “getting under cover”. That is just what people have been doing, and just what these ruffians like. They will simply come down on us in force, corner us, and then drive us out, or burn us in. No, we have got to do something at once.’

        ‘Do what?’ said Pippin.

        ‘Raise the Shire!’ said Merry. ‘Now! Wake all our people! They hate all this, you can see: all of them except perhaps one or two rascals, and a few fools that want to be important, but don’t at all understand what is really going on. But Shire-folk have been so comfortable so long they don’t know what to do. They just want a match, though, and they’ll go up in fire. The Chief’s Men must know that. They’ll try to stamp on us and put us out quick. We’ve only got a very short time.’

        1. Please continue to be a pedant my memory was faulty on the title.
          As for what to do I have an old hunting horn around here somewhere, perhaps I should start blowing “Fear, Fire, Foes” on it.

          1. It must be something atavistic, but I just need to read “Fear! Fire! Foes!” and the hair stands up on my arms.

            When I was reading LotR to my daughter last year, I had to pause for a good fifteen seconds before I could continue.

  32. Why are the Republicans pretending that there will be an election in Georgia next week? Like the Democrats haven’t already stolen it. As if it’s going to be decided by U.S. citizens actually filling out ballots and having them counted. What have they been SMOKING?!!

    They haven’t done jack shit to prevent a repeat of the November election fraud. They haven’t removed the illegal, dead and out-of-state voter registrations, the unsecured ballot collection boxes, the ballot harvesting. They haven’t even looked at the Don’t-minion vote stealing machines.

    The Democrats have put up the two most repulsive candidates they could find, just to throw it in everybody’s faces that after November’s practice run, they’ve got enough fraud in place to elect HItler and Goebbels.

    In other news, the latest group to get maximum priority for corona virus vaccinations in New York is: junkies.
    ———————————
    There’s statistically improbable, and then there’s ‘violates the fundamental principles of the universe’ improbable.

      1. It is almost adorable how oblivious to their base’s hatred they are.

        Get rid of the Orange Man Who is Bad will you? How about we get rid of *you*? If that means running the firing squads for a month straight we’re fine with that.

    2. “They haven’t removed the illegal, dead and out-of-state voter registrations,”

      Credit where due. They tried. Stacy Abrams sister (no conflict of interest there) who’s an Obama judge issued an injunction.

  33. Your hopeful take here, reminds me of the quote attributed to Churchill:

    You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else

    May we quickly shake off our comfortable numbness, shortcut the above process, and take back our place as the sovereigns known as We the People.

  35. You guys are lucky. Here in Canaduh we actually -have- a monarch. She’s home already. She’s sitting in Buckingham Palace, having a tea and thinking about how best to organize the peasants around Covid-19.

    That would be me. One of the peasants, currently being “organized” by the crown.

    Unfortunately our Ruling Class (and do not doubt that it is a true hereditary Ruling Class in every sense of the word except the titles) has been swept by the Socialism fad. Every one of them, from the Queen and her benighted offspring down to the dorky fourth/fifth-cousins and hangers-on who run Toronto from the Granite Club boardroom, drank Karl Marx’s bong water in the 1920s and they’ve been True Believers ever since.

    As a Canadian, I was brought up the Follow The Rules. Everybody from my parents and school teachers to random people I’d meet as a kid emphasized Respect For Authority and Following The Rules. (This is the core difference between an American and a Canadian, IMHO. The assumption is that people who are bigger, smarter and more moral than you made those rules for your benefit, and if you don’t follow them you’ll end up broke and living in a cardboard box.)

    Well, the last few years have revealed a new thing. That the people making the rules are smaller, dumber and more venal than a pack of rabid weasels on a sinking rowboat. They’re literally chewing more holes in the boat.

    The peasants, (that’s me, remember?) are ALL going to end up living in a cardboard box. Faster if we still follow the rules. The Ruling Class will be living in ever-larger and ever-more-ornate palaces, with bigger and bigger fences and more guards. This is the same thing that’s happening in the USA of course. We never threw off the old Feudalism completely, so the new Feudalism is clamping down faster here in Canada. We’re 20 years ahead of you.

    1. As a Canadian, I was brought up the Follow The Rules. Everybody from my parents and school teachers to random people I’d meet as a kid emphasized Respect For Authority and Following The Rules. (This is the core difference between an American and a Canadian, IMHO. The assumption is that people who are bigger, smarter and more moral than you made those rules for your benefit, and if you don’t follow them you’ll end up broke and living in a cardboard box.)

      Wow. You guys are screwed.

      All they had to do was not support the British and they could have been Americans……

      1. It’s a different culture. Some of the results are the same as what you find in the USA, how we get there is very different.

        Example, my old favorite, the Bill C-17 gun ban in 1991. Brought in under the Progressive Conservative Party under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney by then-Minister of Justice Kim Campbell, the bill essentially banned the ownership of a wide variety of very expensive guns in Canada. The dreaded Assault Weapons, you know. They passed the law without much fanfare, and the media applauded and said it was a good thing.

        So, what happened? Nothing, to be frank. People stuck their guns in the closet. Those guns were not turned in, as they should have been, and they were not destroyed by their owners. The people just IGNORED the government, because the Government had stepped -way- out of line.

        But then Brian Mulroney, seeing the writing on the wall, “retired.” Kim Campbell became Canada’s first and only female Prime Minister. Briefly. And in the election that followed, the PCs were voted out of office in every riding in the land. Destroyed as a party. Gone, completely.

        Following that, the Liberals ruled. They brought in Bill C-68, Alan Rock’s gun registry. They did that because they watched as all of Canada ignored Kim Campbell’s law. They wanted a list of guns that the cops could use to confiscate things in the future. As it would eventually come to pass, when they banned pistols of .32 caliber.

        So, what happened? NOTHING. No one registered their guns. Even the few who registered because of whatever reason, did not register -all- their guns. Some people famously registered heat guns and nail guns. But again, faced with the -ridiculous- actions of government, the general population simply ignored them.

        Presently the population is ignoring the Liberals again, as they banned the AR-15 in all its variants on May 1st 2020. (Note the date, May Day, beloved of Communist dictators everywhere. Anybody think that was a coincidence?)

        So the government makes rules and the people follow them… unless the government does something insane, like banning a gun that 5 million people own in Canada. Then -nobody- follows the rule.

        Different culture.

        1. Really no reason we couldn’t liberate Canada once we have fixed our local problems….

          Plus it would give us a contiguous landmass with Alaska. And Greenland once we buy it.

          1. Normally I’d say something about Anti-Americanism being a fundamental Canadian trait, but lately it is looking more and more likely that you Americans may well end up liberating us from the Communist Chinese. They pretty much run the Canadian government right now.

            Point of information, the Canadian government curtailed flights from Britain last week over the new Covid-19 strain. They have -never- curtailed flights from Communist China, not even from Wuhan. Famous for the Wuhan Flu, aka Covid-19.

            Britain is where the Queen lives. -Our- Queen. The one on all the money. You can’t fly into Toronto from London, but you can from Wuhan.

            1. Anti-Americanism is a very inexpensive hobby; being Anti-Chicom is proving expensive everywhere it is tried. It is the difference between recreational reefer and heroin.
              ~

              1. I’ll tell you what, the USA does itself no favors internationally. Your officials are idiotic, incompetent and capricious, your policies change all the time, and your media hates you. People really and truly think that sick old people are kicked out of hospitals in the USA if they can’t pay.

                I, fortunately, know the USA from the inside. I learned an awful lot about exactly how full of shit the Canadian and US media are the first few years I lived in the US. It’s quite amazing when you first see it.

                1. In fairness, officials all around the world tend too be “idiotic, incompetent and capricious” except when they’re evil & corrupt — and even then they tend to be idiotic, incompetent and capricious. It is one reason certain kids of comedy translate into all cultures.

                  As for policies changing all the time …

                  We are not unique in that, either.
                  ~

      2. The heavily Catholic Canadians weren’t going to support their own disenfranchisement. Mind you, it shook out that the Catholics in the US soon got the vote and often the right to hold office — but it is not an encouragement to throw your lot in with other people when they disenfranchise you right now.

      1. It’s funny, they always seem to think that they’ll continue to be nobles under the new establishment. Despite that -never- happening after any socialist uprising ever in history.

    3. Those palaces need power, especially in Winter (and you have a POTENT Winter) and it’s almost trivial to rectify that (not AC to DC…) and no guns or explosives needed. But I won’t say how in public. In private? Maaaaybe.

  36. Socialism… only works by stealing from other lands.
    I’ll disagree with this only to say that it also works if the people involved are very dedicated to the proposition and wholly vested in it due to a religious commitment. And they’re not idiots. They don’t have to be angels, but pretty dang close. (And even then it won’t likely last forever. Or even a really long time. Maybe two generations, at best.)

      1. Aye. See: Amana Colonies. Described as “Christian Communists” – it worked for them… until they were invaded by freeloaders during the Great Depression. Then they held a vote one day and went literally (literally literally!) to a private-property/free market system OVERNIGHT. Yes, the VERY NEXT DAY was different. Why? SURVIVAL pressure does that.

    2. (And even then it won’t likely last forever. Or even a really long time. Maybe two generations, at best.)

      We actually ran that experiment. A bunch of times.

      Swap “generations” for “years” and it is still an exaggeration, but a reasonable one.

        1. My definition of “lasts” if a bit more than “and then all their grandkids starved to death.”

          1. It works when they have no grandkids because everyone joins as an adult and takes a vow of celibacy.

  37. “North of Portugal, a land of mists and crazy people,” this made me laugh.
    I got back to Utah yesterday. On our drive up, we spotted a bald eagle flying low to ground. I’m taking it as a positive sign.

  38. Can’t believe anyone would get angry at someone for saying America died long ago. It’s evident. When did America die? Well you can trace the roots of the problem right back to flaws in the Constitution, but it really started with WW2 and the Cold War. These events taught the small town shysters we laughingly refer to as our leaders to see themselves as rulers of the world. It was only a matter of time until America became just another colony to be exploited. (Hence the fury the establishment has toward populism, a.k.a. the colonial subjects getting uppity.) This is the standard drift of imperialism. By the time Rome fell it’s estimated that 90% of its citizens weren’t Roman. The American bee expended its stinger on WW2 and the Cold War. They may have been necessary but understand the cost.

    1. It’s great you don’t understand it.
      It also means you have a hole where America should be.
      The rest of us will keep America alive. KINDLY get out of the way and stop pounding your hands and feet on the pavement.
      You’re about as useful as the bit-bucketed Catholic traditionalist who came by to helpfully inform us we’re all damned to hell because we were born after Vatican second and can’t do anything about it.
      Thank you so much for resigning as an American, if that’s indeed what you ever were.
      The rest us DO have work to do, so please keep it down to a low whine. And sit in the corner, out of the way, or you’re liable to get hurt.

  39. You’ve lost your country. That’s not something that’s going to happen, it happened decades ago. Biden will make citizens out of millions of illegal aliens, he’ll open the borders, he might even succeed in making Puerto Rico and D.C. into states. Texas, Arizona, and Georgia will go blue. That’s the end of conservatism and the Republican party as a national force. No amount of political “work” is going to counter these momentous historical trends. This decade is going to be an interesting one for you, all of you. It’s going to beat the denial right out of you.

    1. Oh. Another one.
      Look, we get it. We do. You assholes ain’t American, and you want us to give up. I get it. SO MANY DRIVE BYES. Impossible not to get.
      Kindly go sit in the corner with your thumb up your ass and keep quiet. Or take a flying leap off a short plank. Either or. Don’t much care.
      Just stop it. We’re Americans. Our country isn’t lost till we give up. Or these bitches fail. And the second is almost guaranteed.
      So sorry. You’re on the losing side.

    2. That’s what they told us when claiming we had to give up the antiquated Declaration of Independence and Constitution to jump on the bandwagon of the great Leninist/Fascist experiment in Europe. They too claimed to be backed by ” momentous historical trends.”

    3. 240 years ago we created a new nation. 231 years ago we instituted a completely new form of government in that nation. We can do it again if we have to. We’d rather take an easier path, by correcting what has been subverted, but if that path is closed off, we’ll break a new trail. Don’t be in our way.
      ———————————
      Pacifism will, at best, get you a nice peaceful trip to the slave pens. At worst — tell me, have you ever heard of the Aztecs?

    4. Lost? In the words of John Paul Jones (sorry – you’ll have to look him up): We have not yet begun to fight.

      In case you haven’t noticed, the GOP holds a majority of governorships and state legislatures and will retake the House in 2022. DC cannot become a state absent a Constitutional amendment and Puerto Rico doesn’t want to become a state. Reapportionment will take Democrat House seats from California and New York and award them to Florida, Texas and other red states.

      In the long run, we win because our policies work.
      ~

        1. Democrat taxes will cause the RICH to flee to Mexico as soon as they realize that they’ll pay less in bribes to the Mexican government.

        2. will cause illegal immigration to go the OTHER WAY to Mexico.

          –
          That is how President Trump gets Mexico to build the rest of the wall! I can hear the grumbling coming out of Mexico city … “Dang it! We facilitated those refuges to get through Mexico, and our poor, into the US, to get rid of them. Now they are running back here? Well, c**p and d*mn. Build the Wall. Dang it.”

    5. I’m not sure why you feel the need to share your black hearted despair with the rest of us. You’re wrong. Deeply wrong.

      Your writing reminds me of someone who isn’t American. You dismiss the nation and her people like a feckless EU person. It makes no sense.

      Have at it, if you want to. And watch the rest of us work.

    6. With all due respect, Yesterday, December 7th, 1941-a date which will live in infamy- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking towards the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.

      With all due respect, What a scandalous commentary on our age and its standards! For the Senate knows about all the things. The consul sees them being done. And yet this man still lives! Lives? He walks right into the Senate. He joins in our national debates – watches and notes and marks down with his gaze each one of us he plots to assassinate. And we, how brave we are! Just by getting out of the way of his frenzied onslaught, we feel we are doing patriotic duty enough.

      With all due respect, Soon there will be war. Millions will perish in sickness and misery. Why does one death matter against so many? Because there is good and evil, and evil must be punished. Even in the face of Armageddon, I will not compromise in this.

      With all due respect, Cruel necessity.

      With all due respect, Sic Semper Tyrannis.

      With all due respect, I beg to move, That this House welcomes the formation of a Government representing the united and inflexible resolve of the nation to prosecute the war with Germany to a victorious conclusion.

      With all due respect, Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some time past, and now are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Missippi, Louisiana and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the Marshals by law, Now therefore, I, Abaraham Lincoln, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution, and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed. The details, for this object, will be immediately communicated to the State authorities through the War Department. I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government, and to redress wrongs already long enough endured.

      With all due respect, Don’t give up the ship. Fight her till she sinks.

      With all due respect, I’d like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come at too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes, and wave like this.

      With all due respect, Carthago Delenda Est.

      1. “With all due respect, I’d like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come at too high a price. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes, and wave like this.”

        Right there alongside you.

          1. For a guy who is apparently a raging leftist, JMS actually understands a few things that come out in his work. Same with Whedon – go figure.

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