Reading Suicide Notes

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Of all the things the last 12 months have robbed me of, the illusion that I’m a good person might be the one I cherished best.

Oh, I’m not a bad person. But it’s becoming very weird to read suicide note after suicide note from the left and not to growl “do it already. And stop trying to take us down with you.”

How can people hate themselves so much, at such a deep and disturbing level, and keep projecting it outwards?

Years ago I realized that was at the root of their issues. It’s the only thing that makes sense of what I’ll call, for lack of a better term, their hierarchy of hatred.

They hate those most like them — since most of them are actually white and fairly well off, and often from anodine and exceedlingly well mannered cultures — so they hate white people most (to the point they’ve now decided that “whiteness” comes in many colors. “D*mn white people and their — spins wheel — diversity!”), followed by what they perceive as white culture — even though they assure us white people have no culture — i.e. the sort of nicey-nicey middle class culture that they grew up in, followed by “capitalism” i.e. the free market that allowed them to live and prosper despite being rather sad sacks, followed by whatever country they originate in (seriously, it’s not just America), followed by countries they perceive as similar to their own, followed by countries more distantly related to their own, followed by humanity, followed by mammals, followed by …. life.

They never seem to realize what they really hate is at the center of that hierarchy, and is themselves.

Seriously, if you listen to them, this becomes very obvious. They pretend to lionize foreign cultures, but only until something even more foreign — animals, say — is juxtaposed, and then all humans are bad. And if they’re waxing poetic about an ape, they’ll throw it over for a kangaroo, and then the kangaroo over for a fish.

Their continuous eruption of signs against H8te and H8ters is bizarre if you don’t decode their obsessions. Because you can be sitting there going “Dude, I disapprove of illegal immigration for a host of reasons, including how it hurts the immigrants themselves and their countries of origin, and yes, our country and culture, but I don’t actually HATE anyone. Why are you so convinced the only reason I think differently is that I hate people or things?”

(Actually one of the weirdest moments of my life was realizing I don’t hate anyone not even people like Obama and the Clintons who objectively want to do/have done things that hurt me and my family and destroyed my country. I don’t hate them, not because I’m a good person, but because I don’t care enough for them to hate them. I just want them removed from any even remote ability to hurt me. It’s kind of sad to realize you’re not so much a good person as really, really lazy.)

I see them as turning in a circle of mirrors, and accusing people of all the hate they feel, but they know it can’t come from them.

Oh, and the suicide notes? The Biden administration isn’t even hiding they hate us all and want to destroy us.

The left used to be slightly more veiled. It was all about “care for the working people” or “poor children” or whatever the cause du jour was. And sometimes they were even convincing, at least when I was in my teens (then again I was in my teens.) I mean, their ultimate policies always hurt the people they were going to “help” but at least it had plausible deniability.

Now? Seriously? The “Stimulus” meant to help Americans went mostly abroad, and often for bizarre things, like you know gender studies in Pakistan. And Biden can’t stop himself from telling us all how much he loves Xi and wants to help Xi to world domination, and they really want to pay Iran to nuke Israel and eventually us, and–

Each of the cabinet picks from hell is basically a suicide note penned in America’s stationary, and signed America, but really from the left. (As my friend Bill Reader put it the other day “D*mn it, we didn’t even vote ourselves into socialism.”)

You look at that stuff and think “They really, really hate us.” And you’re not wrong. Of course you’re not.

But what you might not get is how much they truly hate themselves. Which is what is driving all this, in the end.

The dime finally dropped when I was reading an article (okay, the headline and skim) in the Washington post about how the FBI fears — I SWEAR I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP AND THIS WAS PUBLISHED IN A MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPER — “invasion by an army of violent and armed Qanon followers.”

Look, most Qanon followers, if my very brief dip into their twitter threads is exemplary, just say “G-d bless” a lot, and seem to be mostly people in precarious positions who have fallen off the ledge and are being held up by false hope.

I saw more signs of organized militia in my kids’ kindergarten class.

But like with their panic fear that Nancy Pelosi was to be assassinated with buffallo-man-tics, I suddenly realized “They’re telling us what they want.”

All the troops, and all the hysteria, are not so much part of a grand plan but the real and fervent hope that someone, someone, please put them out of their misery.

This conviction, btw, might have to do with the bizarre troll-invasion of my page. Those I clicked through to block? OMG. No, seriously. OMG. I don’t have words.

Some of them are fake profiles, fronts to be able to attack people inpunely. But just as many are their real pages, and they’re a continuous lythany of bitch and moan. Oh, not about politics, or half-joking about their cats, or whatever. I mean, I’m aware my postings haven’t been ecstatic the last year. But even on the most bleak days, there will be a joke, or I’ll like a friends joke.

These people? It’s all about how someone or other is doing them wrong or how they hate, hate, hate, hate living comfortably int he — so far — most prosperous society the world has ever seen, and how that society must therefore be obliterated. And it’s not hard to realize they hate everything because they’re so miserable, and in the end what they hate is that they can’t be happy/can’t find happiness.

What is wrong with them? I don’t know. I really believe they’re in great pain, but I don’t know what caused it. Is it the fact we’re in our third generation where parents hand their kids over to be raised by strangers? (Kids are pretty good at sensing love, and no strangers don’t love them.) Is it that they were told that constant happiness is the objective? (When it’s really not only more or less impossible, but usually a happy byproduct of doing something worthwhile.) Is it that they were raised to have “self esteem” meaning an inflated view of themselves, without being taught anything that would actually sustain them? Is it that they’re just pampered, bored and medicated and have never had to work for their next crust of bread?

The truly bizarre thing is that this seems to extend all through the left. Well, maybe it has something to do with Marxism sanctifying envy. It would attract a certain type of personality.

But still, really? On the rare occasions I buy a lottery ticket (mostly to have the chance to dream of all the absurd things I’d do with it) I’ve been known to joke “I just want a chance to prove it won’t spoil me.”

But the fact is I’ve known very rich people who lived, basically, normal human lives. Sure, they never had to sit in the cleaner isle agonizing “do I buy the good detergent, or can I make do with vinegar, baking soda and the cheap stuff again?” and they might have domestic help, at least of the “come by once a week and make sure I haven’t died under my collapsed TBR pile,” but they’re essentially normal human beings.

So, take the Bidens, the Clintons (please. We don’t want them) or Commie LaWhorish, or Nancy Grey Goose Pelosi.

They’ve each of them stolen, purloined, frauded and in other ways made off with enough money to support third world countries for decades. And they’re miserable. Their kids are on drugs, there’s whiffs of inappropriate sexual behavior all through their relationships, their eyes are dead and their faces reflect deep hatred of everyone and everything.

I know money doesn’t buy happiness, but surely it affords some searchlights to find it, no?

So why are all of them so miserable? So angry? So full of hate for everyone and everything that’s most like them?

And why are they penning suicide notes in all our names?

Honestly, I know I’m not truly a good person, because I should be weeping and praying for them. Well, I do both at times. But MOSTLY? If they were on a ledge, I’d be one of those people rhythmically clapping and shouting “jump, jump, jump.”

Only we’re standing right below them, and they mean to take us out with them.

755 thoughts on “Reading Suicide Notes”

  1. It’s pretty obvious to me. Their lives are devoid of true meaning. They have a sense that what they’ve been sold—prosperity—is the end goal, and so many of them have achieved (been thrust into) that, and it’s not fulfilling them.

    If you remove religion, and don’t replace it with something substantial like love, you’re going to end up empty. And my personal vision of Hell isn’t flames, it’s eternal depression.

    1. I’m a confirmed atheist. I agree that people need something in their lives, but there are lots of things that something can be…even including the hate that defines the Left. Even so, not being religious just means there is something else that drives you.

      1. That hate, and the ignorance that drives it, IS their religion.
        They can not admit error.
        An admission that their policies serve only to enrich their elites, and punish everyone else would break their belief structure and show the emptiness inside.
        Because it CAN’T be them, tge problem must be an external enemy, this time, it’s us.
        Minor problem for them, we are not German Jews. Whether we are Kulaks is yet to be seen, but I think not.
        While looking out to see what the Main Enemy(tm) is trying to do to us, keep a close watch on those traitors who claim to be us, the RINOs, the totalitarians, and the Corporatists.
        It is hard to focus on an external threat knowing that there a knife in the hand of a supposed ally waiting for your exposed back.
        John

      2. I’m a theist. At least one of us is going to be surprised when we die. I suspect we’ll both be; but I’m hoping that it will be a pleasant one.

        1. Insert joke about the various groups in Heaven and a newcomer being given “the tour” as it were…

          “Be very quiet now.”
          “Why?”
          “That bunch thinks they’re alone here.”

            1. The New Testament has Christ saying (should be a fairly close paraphrase from memory): “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.”

              I simply figure that any Deity that is the ultimate creator of the Universe would not only be more expansive than we imagine, but more expansive than we can imagine and limitations on what “by me” truly means are probably quite shortsighted.

              Faith? Consider Death’s words (as transcribed by Saint Pratchett): “take the Universe and grind it to the finest powder and sift it with the finest sieve and show me one atom of justice, of mercy, or of compassion” (again, paraphrased from memory but should be fairly close. Simply acting as though such things “exist”, and trying to order one’s personal world so that they do exist is, perhaps, the greatest act of faith there is.

              1. Since He very literally explained that He had to come down here to fix stuff so that we can choose to rejoin Him, the obvious meaning of “no, literally, I’m here to make saving you possible” seems the like it’d be a primary meaning.

                1. Dante wrestled with this in the Divine Comedy. The answer he finally received (or if you prefer, the answer Dante the character received) is noone but God knows who knows Christ, but He’s made arrangements for some of those who never had a chance to know, or know of, Him.

                  1. Basic Catholic theology boils down to even folks who’ve never heard of Jesus can be saved by Him– which, since we have pre-Incarnation saints, I should hope so! 😀

                1. That He draws a line somewhere is presumed. That any human understands precisely where that line is drawn, what its shape is (might be a fractal for instance), given how big any true Creator Deity must be, is what I dispute.

                    1. Or that it’s not in our power to fully comprehend. Thus “greater than we can comprehend.”

                      In that vein:

                      It’s not the “they would only see us as ants” that I’m referring to here but the “how would it answer another ant about what had happened.”

                      Even in they physical sciences: what does the wavefunction of something mean? We don’t know. We can manipulate the equations, compute observables, and make predictions on their basis but what are they? If we can’t even grasp and truly understand that one tiny aspect of this vast Universe, then how much less can we grasp any being that not only fully understands it all but created it all.

                      The ant is vastly better equipped to understand us than we are to understand any such being that might exist.

                    2. True to a large degree.

                      However, such a being may be able to communicate with us.

                      Yes, He would not “be able” tell us all about Himself but could tell us What He Is allowing for our limited abilities.

                    4. “Fully” is implicit in people claiming that the answer they understand is all the answer they is. (Not saying that’s you, or that it’s not you, one way or the other.) The folk who think that their understanding of what “by Me” means is the only meaning their is. Even seemingly fairly simple aspects of belief are…more complex than they may first appear. Take the “simple” faith vs. works.

                      On the one hand we have the person who believes that by telling themselves and everyone around them–and I’ll grant that they truly believe it–that they are “saved” because they accept Jesus as their savior. That’s one kind of faith.

                      But what about the person who behaves morally, honorably, nobly without a explicit belief in a Supreme Being. How is that not, in and of itself, an expression of faith? As Death says in The Hogfather, “Take the Universe and grind it to the finest powder and sift it with the finest sieve and show me one atom of mercy, or compassion, or justice.” And yet the person I’m talking about behaves as though such things exist. They _believe_ such things exist and are worth pursuing.

                      Perhaps the whole thing about you aren’t saved by works specifically (although note what James had to say about that) is speaking of the cynical “if I do this, I’ll get that” approach to “works” as though God is some merchant who will hand you a trinket as a reward for some particular “action” as opposed to acting the way you do because you believe, regardless of pragmatic considerations, that it’s just the right thing to do. You do good because you’re a good person, not because you expect some particular reward for doing them (although the latter can be used to build the habits that lead to the former–it’s complicated…which is a large part of my point). Indeed, is that not implicit in the idea of “verily, I say unto you, if you have done this to the least of these my bretheren, ye have done it unto me”? Perhaps there’s more to the idea of being saved by faith than many people assume?

                      And, Sarah, I do hope we’re not overstepping any bounds with this discussion but it seems to be an interesting, potentially enlightening (whether any individual is convinced or not, understanding other people’s positions is itself a form of enlightenment), and relatively heat free discussion. If it starts turning to more heat than light, I will drop it.

                    6. This comment contains too much certainty of what God does to convince me that you are arguing from a position that people do not comprehend him.

                    7. Elsewhere he appeared to be arguing that “we may have misunderstood what G*d told us”.

                    9. Nod.

                      Now I got a “bit too hot” in the discussion on his site so I’m going to let Mary discuss it with him. 😉

        2. One day I realized that if there is only one God then the notion of It being male or female is pretty silly. I eventually decided that God is a hermaphrodite. Now I can tell It to “go fuck yourself” and know It can probably do that. 🙂

        3. It’s like the comment about the three wonders of heaven. We won’t see some we expect to be there, we will see some we don’t expect to be there, and the greatest wonder of all is that we will see ourselves there.

            2. We were both raised Catholic so I figure you will get this.

              Admittance to the Kingdom of God is not based on fairness or justice. It is based on grace and mercy. Grace is God giving someone something he does not deserve. Mercy is God not giving a person what he **does** deserve. Christ died on the cross to forgive the past, present and future sins of everyone not just the sins of the good people.

              1. Most Christian groups draw a distinction between “Christ died for everybody’s sins” (ie, redemption) and “people aren’t forced to respond positively to God or redemption, and therefore are subject to a positive or negative outcome at the particular and/or general Judgment” (salvation vs. damnation).

                There’s a whole spectrum of theological ideas about this, and it’s usually one of the main reasons that people have different denominations. Free will. Predestination. The nature of eternity vs. time/space. God’s omniscience and omnipotence. Human dignity after the Fall. Merit. Imagery of how redemption works. Justification while alive. And so on.

      3. Yes. Hooman beans have a religious impulse baked in. For atheists it’s supposedly an appendix, for everyone else it’s photoreceptors. Made to respond to Something or Someone. Figuring it out is the trick. (Hoo-, with a side-order of Boy, is it ever!) But if you do not try, or at least understand that you need to figure it out, you’re at the mercy of the first thing that comes along to fill the need.

        Long ago, when the Left had not gone completely mad, I attended a conference, and read research on why some kids, (more and more every year) were not making it safely to reasonably capable adulthood, and were, more and more, falling off a cliff.

        The TL’DR was: They have a massive parent-shaped hole in their lives. Even one parent can do the trick to get the kid over the hump. But that one has to be fairly spot-on, because they’ve got no back-up. And sometimes *both* fail comprehensively, because Hooman-bean nature and entropy (or sin and a fallen world. Pick your story)

        Do you remember in the early oughts how well that research went down? It was The Wrong Answer. Bill Cosby got his dirty linen exposed for attempting to get anyone to heed it. The answer to the previous “why are so many parents not there for their kids, or there in toxic ways now?” had also been answered, about 20-odd years prior to that, and got shot down as also being The Wrong Answer.

        If you want to have fun, try to figure out why these answers must be; desperately must be, Wrong.

      4. I will accept “love” as a thing which can fill the empty hole quite adequately. Better than hate, which is corrosive, and which makes the hole bigger.

  2. Apparently they are also “worried” that the National Guard Units that they’re called in to protect the Coronation of Joe-The-Cheater contains Trump-Voters. 😈

      1. Dear Lord, they really are trying to push the idea that there’s Republicans lurking in every shadow waiting to assassinate Biden, aren’t they? It’s the Red State Scare.

        3. My lord they are stupid. Most of the Republicans in congress are only slightly more competent than the Keystone Cops. Admittedly this puts them far ahead of the average democrat (let alone folks like Hank “Guam Might Tip Over” Johnson). I think a troop of cub scouts might be far more dangerous. The embarrassing thing is that these silly SOBs are running the joint. This isn’t feels vs data/truth this is total detachment from anything approaching reality. I just can’t wrap my mind that anyone could actually believe something that makes a bad acid trip look reasonable.

            1. My employer sent out social media guidance on Friday with a tacit green light to point out wrong thinkers by noting it tracks mentions of the company’s name and similar on social media, but not employee activity. However, even if you don’t disclose you are an employee someone else might tag you as one and then the company will monitor that material.

              So, pretty much, “please flag wrong thinking employees as employees so we know and can take action.”

              1. I make a point of never mentioning my employer by name or identifying characteristics on any blogs. Most of the people I know IRL and on Facebook know, but I don’t discuss politics there. And I just went and took my employment history off my profile just in case someone connects the dots and wants to do some offense archaeology.

                  1. I think I might have to do that as well. I’ve never gotten any perceptible atvantage out of it, and now it might be a liability when it comes to the vengeful woke.

                    1. I’m retired and most the companies on my list don’t exist anymore. Two do. But one is international. The other is so specific that even locally if you mention the company name (which is the type of work done) people say “Um? What is that?”

                      But #metoo. I just have to figure out my login/password combination. It has been 19 years since I created it, let alone got into it. I occasionally get headhunter activity off of it. Which is weird because my last date of employment listed is Aug 2002. I never updated it with my last employer.

                2. For those using real-life photos as avatars: facial recognition is getting awfully good.
                  Just Sayin’.

                    1. I’m all in. I use my real name.

                      Same. Oh, I go by “The Writer In Black” but, it’s not like the real name behind that is any secret. It’s plastered all over the covers of the books I sell on my own site.

                  2. Oh No!

                    So what you’re saying is: I’m screwed. They Komedy Kops will be knocking at my door any moment!
                    ~

      4. I’m forced to wonder if that’s why they insisted on bringing in Guard from all 50 states — so that no unit would recognize another and false-flag “infiltrators” would be harder to spot. I really wish it didn’t seem sensible to think this way in the United States of America, for chrissakes.

        1. Balzacq – More likely they could only get up to a certain number from each state to make up their Grand Total, and they also wanted “unity” for their photo-op (not that the NG is identifiable by State from a distance), and if the violence they were hoping for actually happened, every governor would then be complicit in putting it down.
          Not dismissing your idea completely, though.

        1. Actually it is, or was. military was seldom issued ammo on US soil. When I worked on army/air force bases, the gate guards had/wore .45 pistols but no magazines. That was way back in the day though, not sure about now.

          1. When I stood quarterdeck watch in the Navy, even in port at Naval Station San Diego, we were issued a .45 pistol and two magazines with 5 rounds each. In a security alert, we would report to the armory for either a .45 and two mags, or a 12 guage shotgun and some number of shotgun shells. 6? 8? I forget.

            So at least the Navy wasn’t stupid enough to issue guns without ammunition.

            Of course, that was 40 years ago. They might have gotten stupid since then.

            1. It was the same way 25 years ago, although on the boats we also had M-14s which you could be issued.

              I believe the shotgun was 8. It was my preferred weapon in a security alert. The close quarters inside a submarine are the perfect environment for it.

            2. Last time I stood armed quarterdeck watch was 2018. I was issued an M9 with a full mag, and two extras, and I carried a round in the chamber. Our topside rover had an M4.

            3. I worked 9 years at a National Lab. I always felt sorry for the bullet sponges at the gate, Even when they were absurdly proctoscoping the underside of my car. They might have slowed an actual attack by as much as 20 seconds

          3. NG had ammo when patrolling airports around here after 9/11.

            Nothing in the chamber, but they were loaded out.

      2. Only complete idiots hand the military empty weapons.
        I should know, I spent 22 years in the service, and when anyone did that, it was merely more proof that they didn’t have the brains to wipe their own butts. Doesn’t matter if it was an order from a higher officer, or even the President himself. Any President who issued such an order just proved they’re ready to be removed under Article 25. And I’m fairly certain that President Trump didn’t issue any such order.

    5. That’s why they’re not giving them any ammo.

      Which of course begs the question of why they have 30,000 guys carrying empty rifles standing around in the cold.

      And the question answers itself: Because They Can.

      I’d like it very much indeed if tomorrow all 30,000 gave China Joe* the same treatment the mayor of NYC got from the NYPD: Stand facing the podium until they prod him up, then “About Face!” and give him their backs.

      1. Bending over and pulling their pants down might be going a step too far… 😛

        I’d laugh, though.

      3. It is possible they’re lying about the lack of ammo. I mean, what kind of idiots put out thousands of National Guard for their defense and announces they’re unarmed ?

        It would be different if they had M-1s or other real guns, especially with bayonets. Those rifles had heft enough to be effective clubs when push came to shove – those Barbie guns are useless without bullets.
        ~

        1. Look they are idiots. And the reason to NOT give the military ammo in DC? They are paranoid of a coup and they just brought in enough troops for a coup if any of the officers have “wrongthink.”

          1. It makes perfect sense if you have deep personal physical cowardice, and hate those you fear, and fear everyone.

            Those tens of thousands of expendable troops are standing there out in the cold solely to slow down the vast zombie hordes of unwashed plebes that you hate and fear so you can escape. But you don’t want to actually arm those troops, as they are of course morons since they joined the military, and you hate and fear them as well. Plus, you actually believe all that nonsense that you spout about how magically dangerous those scary black rifles are with the shoulder thing that goes up. It’s bad enough those morons have to carry rifles, purely as imagery, to scare those zombie plebes away, but you can’t possibly give them anything to actually defend themselves – some might hate you back.

            Hate and fear, but mostly fear, drive everything these cowardly bullies do. “Cowardly bullies that have gained enough power to be spiteful in their reign over all you moronic idiots out there” is one of the best filters I’ve found to decode and predict actions of these “elite”.

            1. THIS and yes– it shows how much they hate and fear the peons. Already in the last stages of the French Revolution in fear for those politicians.

            2. This. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine myself into their heads because their world view is pretty foreign to me. So the lizard alien metaphor makes real sense.

        2. …those Barbie guns are useless without bullets.

          –
          …and only mostly useless with bullets. 😛

          “We went downhill when we switched from guns designed to kill our enemies to guns designed to piss them off.”

          1. Surely you jest. My fully-semi-automatic-assault-weapon-AR-15 was so powerful I couldn’t afford to keep replacing the satellites I was shooting down, so I had to downgrade to a more moderate and sensible AR-10.

  3. “It’s kind of sad to realize you’re not so much a good person as really, really lazy.”

    AKA “It’s amazing how much virtuous behavior resembles simply being too tired.”

    I don’t know for sure “why”. I can only offer my personal experience, which is that one narcissistic personality unchecked screws up dozens of people, and we’ve had a lot of people rewarded for being narcissists since the 60s at least.

          1. Well, since I’m not allowed to go out and play trivia on Thursdays and my D&D group is gone, I’m open to inviting it over.

              2. For me, D&D and RPGs in general are about social interaction around a table. I have found CRPGs don’t work as well for me. If it is me and the computer, I tend to play Civ or other 4X games.

                I have done Diablo with remote players and it was okay.

                1. Ah, but we have voice chat up in guild and the conversation for us runs through weather, guns, booze, food (coffee, pizza, Chinese food), politics, sexual innuendo, bad puns, and stupid things in the game.

                  1. Sounds similar to my experience in a squadron on Elite Dangerous on XBOX. The voice chat channel is used more to talk with each other than to actually communicate information relevant to the task at hand. My experience was similar on PC in Mechwarrior 4 and other games. But I can see how not having the bull session nature of an RPG would get lost. Maybe over something like Zoom?

                2. Thinks of 4x joke and stops. If you know folks its doable over web. Otherwise I wouldn’t go more than action right type

              1. I have been doing it over hangouts with my BIL and oldest nephew. It has been interesting.

                For me, D&D and RPGs in general are about social interaction around a table. Zoom kinda works.

                    1. Young Wizard: Well I guess that I can make time….

                      Old Wizard: Do Not Even Try! 😆

                    3. The young wizard is David Edding’s character, Garion (also called Belgarion) and the old wizard is Garion’s ultimate grandfather Belgarath. 😉

                      Garion has been spending most of his time as King and hasn’t been studying wizardry as much as Belgarath thinks he should.

                      Garion has recently called up a thunderstorm to “make a point”. Belgarath and other wizards had to deal with the side-effects of that thunderstorm.

                      Actually “creating time” might be within the ability of the wizards but isn’t something sane/knowledgeable wizards Should Do.

                    4. OK this is vaguely tempting. I haven’t played D&D practically since it came as 3 perfect bound books in a white box and it borrowed rules from Chainmail.

                    5. I’ve been playing almost that long…the supplements were out when I started as was the first Monster Manual was out but not the PHB.

                    7. Any and all interested in the first Hun’s Online D&D campaign, please email me:

                      herb at nowell with a commercial extension. I’ll get a group email going to select a time and tech (Discord, anyone)?

                    8. General note: my group I’m playing in is using Discord for audio and Fantasy Grounds for the tabletop.

                    10. Right now we’re running CoC Pulp, but we’ve run everything from AD&D 3.5 to Star Wars. And there are lots of add-ons such as tile maps for each.

                2. My group plays over Google docs, sometimes using Roll20 for maps and character movement.

                  There’s no face-to-face interaction, but using the chat window for table chatter and the document for narration and character action and dialogue really streamlines things.

    2. And one of the biggest narcissists on the public stage in recent memory screwed up every one of them and lives rent free in their heads.

      1. I just found out (from a People magazine article from this summer) that Obama threatened to call the wedding off with Michelle because he had a head cold.

        Later that day, after everyone fussed over him, he miraculously recovered from his head cold and consented to marry the unfortunate bride.

        I feel very very sorry for Michelle Obama and her daughters. Holy crud, though, how many red flags could a man wave to warn you off?

        2. I’ll admit I’m unmarried and probably unmarriageable but I would be killed if I tried that with anyone worthwhile assuming I was not in hospital

    3. I’m not sure I’m a great man, or even a good one, but I think I may be alright…

        1. The wrath is definitely an energy depleter… I’m still trying to get energy after the last month. It bleeds away. I’ve had to pull away for few days– sleep and escape to get back enough energy to live.

          1. Sometimes if you can’t even get energy to watch an ep of something good, there’s still the energy for an AMV? Good music helps perk up the soul.

            I particularly like the line, “If you’ve lost the fight – then let’s win the war.”

            1. I only have a small amount of energy after fighting a chronic illness… and now on dialysis. So sleep, listening to music, petting the dog, and more sleep helps.

              1. Cyn, hopefully not for years, but can you give my email to one of your siblings, and ask I be let know if something happens to you?
                Particularly if not fatal, and you might need us?

                    3. I also have a great grandmother who lived to 99, and one of her daughters lived to 104. So I’ve always intended to live to 100 myself. Not sure I’ll make it if I don’t get back on the wagon with the carbs though (diabetes). This year has been very bad for my health. In a weird unhappy way, it’s almost a relief that the bad thing has happened and the totalitarian left has won (for now). Seesawing through hope and dread was very very stressful.

                1. Oddly this was the year nearly everything got better for me: knees, back, heart, shoulder. I’m not the old “Hobbit strong like ox! Build field stone wall! Haull fallen trees!” person I used to be. But I’m okay. God be thanked.

  4. Understand that that victimarchy is a shield for the lowerarchy to protect itself. (Which is why, I suspect, that they keep trying to place pedos in the victimarchy. They’d have protection forever.)

    Since the lowerarchy is ultimately of their father below, their purpose is to be miserable like unto him, and spread that misery to everyone they can. Once the excitement of indulging in animal instincts is worn away, misery is all they have left.

    -Albert

  5. Some of it is undoubtedly also that they have been assured since birth that They Are Above Certain Things. While deep down the lack of them is eating away at the inside of their minds.

    Or put another way; how do you enrage a rabid feminist beyond the limits of what you thought possible? Suggest she might secretly want to be a housewife.

        1. If you ever cleaned out the dumpster behind the deli section of the store, or scrubbed the toilets on the floor of the hotel where the convention-goers had their parties, or worked your shift even though you were so tired from school that you could barely stagger to your car when you punched out – even if such was done in proximity to saltwater, I contend that actual work yields immunity to these maladies of self hate.

          Basically, these idiots had it too easy.

  6. The last four years should have been seen as one of the better periods of American history. No new war, growing economy, a president who is sort of fun. Instead there was this huge hissy fit. Here in the Bay area, traffic on the 101 has increased dramatically since December – it’s like now that Trump and the good times are gone, they agree to leave their houses.

  7. Looking back (and, damn, does that make me sound OLD!), it’s scary how many people I’ve known in the Left and in the “alternate” communities hated themselves and what they became as time went by. Got more stories than I can think of without notes, but the theme is almost always the same-

    I hate this world as it is, and if I can’t destroy it…I’ll destroy myself

    Lots of reasons why-abuse, especially sexual and/or emotional. The lack of a glory greater than ourselves, especially one that evolves as the child grows up (seen that way, Marxism/Socialism/Fascism is a religion-a simplistic one, true, with all of the cruel innocence of children). The natural fear of people that have seen the world change-and the change grows quicker every year-and don’t want it to change anymore. Or just the realization that bloody-minded stubbornness isn’t going to get them anywhere now.

    Most suicides are…a desperation play to get attention. To have senpai notice them again, that they don’t know any way out other than this. Couple of times, I was very close to that edge as well.

    But, I didn’t sign a suicide pact with these people, and I don’t want to have to clean up their mess. However, if they want to make a mess…then the only thing I can do is stop them from doing it.

    Whatever it takes.

    1. I have seen it said, “He who murders, merely kills another. He who commits suicides destroys the world.” Back when usenet was viable, the strange group alt.suicide.holiday (supposedly originated to consider suicide upsurge around holidays, but… drifted) had a “Methods FAQ” that included chances *and situations of* survival. That was a very sobering read. And no, I had never seriously considered it, but the group name… well, one kinda had to look, at least once.

      1. I want to be able to stand up straight and hold an M1 Garand and tell all these idiots to get off of my lawn when the time comes.

        Or, hell, just migrate to a new body, hopefully with better parts and the human equivalent of a supercharged V12 and six on the floor.

  8. They’re hit with massive cognitive dissonance when they see people who are genuinely happy via enjoying things that the woke have been told it’s impossible to enjoy. Family, religion, a simple life, a “low-level” job that nevertheless pays for everything and then some. These things are to be shunned, not enjoyed! But here are these deplorables, who clearly don’t know any better, enjoying them! How is that possible? The left is the Grinch, wondering how Christmas still showed up when he’d stolen all the Christmas stuff. Only, unlike the Grinch who conceded that he was wrong, the left cannot do that and therefore must destroy that which makes others happy.

    1. left cannot do that and therefore must destroy that which makes others happy.

      Is it too much to ask for villains that aren’t trying to maximize their cliche value?

                    1. Hell, the examples given are why I’m not allowed in the room during that bit when the kids watch it. 😀

                      It was a mildly funny joke, beaten to death, and I am almost as sick of it as I am of the “smart people are too stupid to breed” thing from Idiocracy.

                      It’s a freaking movie, folks, not a documentary!

                    2. Yep, it would be too easy to design capes that would “break away” from the rest of the costume.

                  1. If Superman were to be sucked into a jet engine it is the engine that would suffer.

                    Heck, just the cape would destroy any engine it got pulled into.
                    ~

                    1. Not so sure of that.

                      Superman’s uniform is made of regular materials (from Earth) and isn’t invulnerable.

                      Most of his uniform is protected by a force-shield his body generates but his cape is outside that force-shield and has been destroyed.

                    3. Good point.

                      I was thinking that the Glorious Wallaby was thinking that the cape was special (which in some earlier versions of Superman it was).

                    4. Superman’s uniform is made of regular materials (from Earth) and isn’t invulnerable.

                      That’s the immediate post “Crisis on Infinite Earths” Superman. Pre-crisis, it was made from blankets included in the spaceship that brought him to Earth. And I don’t know what they’ve done with the character in the various crisises (crises? Crisii? Spell-check seems to like “crises”.) since then. I mostly walked away from comics not long after CoIE–they just got too damn depressing and that’s coming from me, the one and only “Writer in Black” aka the “Goth on Ice” 😉

                    5. There were some good stories after “Crisis on Infinite Earths” but I haven’t followed either DC or Marvel in several years.

                    6. Thank-you, yes: there are no stories post Crisis. Those are all non-canonical. Mama Kent made those rompers from baby Kal’s blankies (the cape is, of course, his special binkie, which is why he wears it everywhere.)
                      ~

                    7. Mama Kent made those rompers from baby Kal’s blankies

                      HOW?!

                      If they’re just as indestructible as Superman, how the hell did she cut and stitch them into his costume?

                    9. She unraveled the knit blankets and re-knit them into Superbaby’s play suit, then later re-knit them into his costume. Cutting was done by application of baby Kal-El’s supervision at Ma’s direction. Being nearly infinitely stretchable meant that not only could the costume be secreted well but insured his drawers would not bet baggy, something I am confident we can all agree would be undesirable.
                      ~

                    12. And the lenses in his glasses came from pieces of “glass” from his spaceship, which is why he could use things like heat vision through them without melting them.

                    13. Besides that, part of the problem with having continuing plot lines and character development is that a character arc is a finite shape.

                      Golden Age episodic stories work. But an unlimited series of developing characters does not. (This is one advantage of Astro City. He could do permanent things to characters because he never had to bring one back.

                3. Superman is a nice guy, as well as a good one– he could and would deal with that.

                  Also, note, love this The Question for the sheer GUTS involved. :::boggle:::

      3. The Goa’uld have… issues that make that unlikely.

        Though I must admit one thing that made Ba’al interesting was that he tried to avoid the cliche act, and was very dangerous because of that.

        1. Oh, gad, that scene were there’s like a dozen Ba’al all hanging out and just totally chill stole my heart.

          What a freaking PERFECT intelligent villain!

    2. Ever noticed how those ‘low-level’ jobs are the ones that actually make life possible? Plumbers, electricians, cooks and dishwashers, butchers and bakers are scorned, while lawyers, ‘union leaders’, ‘executives’ and stock traders are rewarded?

      Productive workers get shit on while useless elitists are praised, and there are no more useless elitists than the ‘leading’ Democrat politicians. They’ve never even MET an honest day’s work, much less done one.
      ———————————
      A politician is worse than a toilet. They’re both full of shit — but at least you can flush the toilet.

      3. So much this.
        It drove me nuts every time they’d propose some “for the heroes” bill to hand out money to “essential” workers. You know, the hospital staff (who hadn’t been laid off with the stoppage of “non-critical” services,) police (but lets defund them, too,) and I think typically fire and EMS workers.

        Yet you also had all the grocery store workers who were “essential” but not essential enough to get in one of those bills.

        Or the truck drivers who deliver the product to the stores to put on the shelves.

        Or the folks keeping the plumbing working, the electric working, etc.

        But in their minds, those people are invisible, Grey Goose Nancys’ ice cream magically appears on the store shelves.

        Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few of the leftists would love to get a caste system in this country, they could toss all the blue-collar workers, the retail workers, and all the service-industry people into the “untouchable” caste and ignore them (unless they need something from them, like a toilet plunged.)

        A part of me would love to see EXACTLY how these so-called “elitists” treat the staff at a restaurant, the waitstaff and the bussers. I’m betting I’d be absolutely disgusted by their behavior…

        1. Latest trick is to pull family influence strings to suddenly be a “volunteer” at the vax distribution effort, which gets you in the critical health care worker category, so you show up a few days and shuffle paperwork or some other untrained warm body make work job, and you get a shot.

          Meanwhile my 90+ Mom’s memory care facility still has not seen any doses for staff or residents. This is California, so of course.

        2. Those people are stagehands – they’re supposed to go unnoticed. It isn’t as if they’re the spear carriers, or even the supporting cast, much less Stars.
          ~

        3. In Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur winds up on an early version of Earth that was colonized by middle managers. They’d been tricked into leaving their home planet by elites who didn’t think they were necessary at all. Turns out the home planet population was wiped out by a disease from an unsanitized phone.

          I think the same story would apply here. They’d all be wiping their butts with leaves and living in the yard because the house flooded from a broken pipe.

      4. “there are no more useless elitists than the ‘leading’ Democrat politicians. They’ve never even MET an honest day’s work, much less done one.”

        gopE are trying to get to the same level, all too often

        You know, sitting and thinking on it, although Trump was very much of the elite, I can’t say he ever came across as one of those who hated the productive workers. He might not get all of it, but he never came across as a hater of them. Even back in the 90’s, when I had closer second hand knowledge of him (people I knew and worked with had dealings with him and his)

        1. Trump LIKED and made time for the little guys. He stopped talked to them and the LISTENED to what they had to say. No high level politician has done anything like that. He is the only one in my lifetime, 67 years.
          There are many examples. Look for them and they should be easy to fine.

          1. He really earned the nickname “Blue Collar Billionaire.” He loves regular people because he’s regular people. With a ton of coin.

            1. I don’t think Trump was “regular people.” Instead, he recognized those people as members of another, co-equal tribe with whom he could have friendly diplomatic relations. Whereas the Establishment types see regular people as a socially inferior class and are upset that regular people don’t see them in turn as “our betters.”

              (My working theory is that America has a very weak class system, especially compared to elsewhere, and is better understood as being a set of interlocking tribes.)

          2. He turned the motorcade around on multiple occasions to go talk to regular folks.

            Barry Sotoero, not so much ever.

            And the China Joe* Muppet Show, well, you know, he’s old and frail and a muppet and likes to win in the nude in front of his female secret service protection detail and stuff. Best not.

            1. China Joe* likes to swim in the nude in front of his female secret service protection detail, knowing they have to watch.

            2. When Trump owned and actively ran his Atlantic City casinos, he would regularly visit the casino floor and other public areas of the hotels and chat with guests; he always stopped in at the Taj for the US Poker Championship tournament series that they hosted each fall when he still ran the Taj.

          3. Trump understood that while his contractor would assure him the project could be done the way he wanted, the actual worker — painter, landscape worker, plumber, carpenter, dry wall hanger, etc. — could tell him a) why the contractor’s solution would cost more and work less well and b) three better, faster and more effective ways of getting the job done.

            A contractor’s expertise is in hiring guys, putting them on the job site on time and handling billing & payroll, it is the individual workers who know how to get’r’done.
            ~

        2. I don’t think Trump ever complained about anyone who filled his order correctly. However, I do know that his campaign staff in NH probably cost him several hundred votes by failing to tip the sandwich place my son was working in at the time; even though they failed to call the order in ahead of time, the store dropped everything to fill the order, they completed the order correctly, and sooner than expected.

          Do NOT screw over college kids working in food services; a bad rep is one of the few things that spreads faster than light speed.

            1. I don’t know what the East Coast tipping rules are, but a gigantic last-minute sandwich order would seem to require some kind of gigantic “keep the change,” or for the restaurant to include an extra charge. However, I’ve noticed that the East Coast tips for everything, and at higher percentages, and their takeout places may not pay their cooks very high wages.

              Usually normal bulk business orders around here do include some kind of extra charge for the pain in the butt, but no tipping is expected. Where I work, we’re just not allowed to take any big last-minute orders, because we really don’t have the facilities, staff, ingredients, etc. If you give us 24 hours, we can put something together. Otherwise, no.

              Around here, a normal take-out order wouldn’t have any tipping involved, although delivery would mean a tip for the driver. They keep trying to convince people to put money for takeout into the jar at a lot of places, but I don’t think most people really can see doing it. My place doesn’t allow tipping, period, and it’s a firing offense to be found accepting it; but then again, I’m not paid on tipping rates. Paying any cook on tipping rates seems like a dumb thing to do.

              1. I am a member of a club that meets most months for lunch. Everyone pays a flat $25 to the club, then the club pays for Lunch and non-alcohol beverages. Because of the club’s size (6+ non-family) there is always an automatic gratuity added on the bill, at 15% to 20%, depending on the venue. When the club pays, no additional gratuity is added when the gratuity is auto added to the bill. OTOH when individuals pay their bar bill they usually do add gratuity, if for no other reason of handing off a $10 bill for a $7 bill.

                Have also been present with a group where individuals pay their own tab. But because of group number, each bill had the gratuity auto added to the bill. We (hubby & I) have a standard practice of not adding any extra gratuity unless our personal service was exceptional or (depending on the group – cough golf club), the staff had to put up with a lot of (polite) BS, or it is a venue that was frequented a lot by the group, which means the staff knew the group and was egging on the BS. Note, anytime the extra gratuity is added to the bill automatically and we don’t pay extra, I guaranty they got less than if they’d had left it up to us to volunteer an amount. I get it. We are generous. Others aren’t. I’m sure it at minimum averages out. But still.

              2. West coast inland, but the general “rule” for our big party was “add at least as many dollars as people you have, over 10,” and recognize last minute is them doing you a BIG favor.

                So, we walk in with a dozen cowboys, four kids, and six spouses, there’s goign to be at least an extra $20 on the tip.

              3. A confounding issue I’ve seen is folks who try to insist that fifteen percent is insult level tip.

                For a Denny’s, or a coffee shop.

                A. Coffee. Shop.

                Getting a cup of coffee, not even a liquid dessert.

                Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot?

                I know for a FACT that my sister in a nice place only rarely got up to 20%, with exceptional service, and these goalpost shifting twits want to make it a normal minimum, for COFFEE SHOPS?

              4. Some low-level flunky – out of a group of temps or contractors – is going to be detailed to handle the order. They’re going to have authority to pay more than the amount on the receipt?

                Things like that are generally known as “a bad idea.”

            2. The tip, in this instance, is for special service, which is apparently what was given.

              For politicians the cost of ANY tip is less than the cost of not tipping, even if service was meh.
              ~

        3. From everything I’ve heard, which arguably is incomplete, Trump at least recognized that the maid, the bulldozer driver, etc existed. The second thing I learned before I even had a degree was that the guys touching metal usually could teach me a lot. But just seems that the little guy is overlooked. “Middle class” = govt drone

  9. Why would they ever leave us alone. They’ve learned that the populace can be cowed and made to dance to their tune and while they are unhappy, they are molified by dragging others down below them.

  10. Marxism is fundamentally the politics of envy. Envy is tied up with hatred of your betters:

    He has Stuff. I want it. Kill him and take his Stuff.

    The fact that now there won’t be any more Stuff (defined at root as Competence) for *anyone* doesn’t enter their equation.

    It’s how spoiled little brats think, when they’ve never learned to make their own Stuff but they’re sure you didn’t make your own Stuff either (cuz projection).

    Education has become all about the immediate feelz rather than growing one’s competence. Envy naturally followed, and “Gibs me dat” being written into politics: Kill America and take its Stuff.

    They only see NOW. They don’t make plans for after they knock us off the ledge. They can’t understand that the ledge is greased, they just know that now they’re king of the ledge. It winds up being suicide, but it was intended as murder.

    1. I agree with the centrality of the envy piece. But I’d like to specify that *status envy*, which feels like a different thing to me, also seems really important. I think of my friends and relatives who vote for the Democrats and make nasty remarks about the Republicans, and as people they’re not all that different from the right. Often if you get them in conversation, they’re actually “conservative” in the areas they know the most about. But without realizing it they’ve become addicted to having somebody to look down on. Everybody wants an out group to be superior to. And human nature is such that the most deeply resented out groups are those that are closest.

      It’s one of the reasons that I think the identity politics of the lefts is so destructive. It enshrines in doctrine dumping on particular groups (whites and males at the moment). Instead of encouraging people to *resist* the urge to hate on people because of who they are — one of the better aspects of Christianity — their stupid roiling mess of woke religion *encourages* out group hatred. It’s like the engine that runs the whole system.

      We live in a clickbait society. The internet and its damn A/B tests encourages the lowest emotions in the human heart, because they’re so easily aroused and “encourage engagement”.

      1. Status is legitimately gained by competence. It’s still the same envy-engine:

        You have competence. I don’t have competence. You must have cheated. So I’ll just kill you and take yours, then parade around shouting how I was always better than you.

      2. > But I’d like to specify that *status envy*, which feels like a different thing to me, also seems really important.
        —
        All the other primates orient themselves in rigid pecking orders. Sapiens, maybe a quarter of them are quite happy to wander off and do their own thing.

        Like the “pink monkey” thing, they perceive that as fundamentally *wrong*, and attack it whenever they can.

        Note that every time they have the opportunity, they slap the label “loner” on people they don’t like, even when it’s obviously not true. Becuse they view people outside the pecking order as a threat, not something to be ignored.

        1. I think you’re right that some people (most of the Huns, for one) are not nearly as focused on status hierarchy as others. I do think that the United States may have had a bunch of self-selected people of that ilk to start with. Which has been vastly thinned out since then, and importing a bunch of of status-seekers will thin it out even more.

          I wonder if there’s a correlation with Neanderthal genes?

        2. I think you’ve hit on the unsolved problem of freedom and popular government: they only work if that percentage of “wander off and do their own thing” is high enough and that 25% isn’t high enough.

          For whatever reason, the US has drifted from the required percentage and may have fallen below the critical number.

          1. That being the critical percentage of “a moral people” for the whole to function without an enforced hierarchy.

            And yes, I think it is more of that Neanderthal heritage.

          2. So this is a reason that we need frontiers, such as other planets. People willing to be pioneers are much more likely to be of that kind. So SF novels about the struggles between the freedom-loving peoples of the asteroid belt may yet come true. If we can last that long.

          3. Whatever reason? The Bureau of Information (News media, public education, entertainment, Big Tech,…) has been brainwashing us for over 3 generations.

          4. Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way has a big discussion about Greeks as the weird individualists who did their own thing and made their own judgments. like Xenophon deciding he was on a mission from Zeus to lead the troops home. No credentials, did not need them.

            2. In hand-to-hand sword-to-shield combat credentials pretty much establish themselves immediately.
              ~

              1. Well, that’s true, and he was a good horseman and decent fighter, given that he kept up with several militaries. But at the time, Xenophon was just some Greek kid who was traveling with a mercenary army to study army stuff, because he knew some guys and they’d invited him to come along and hang out. He was paying his way, but he was essentially a visiting civilian from Athens with some military skills. (Although yeah, he’d studied with Socrates.)

                But he said some very sensible and inspiring things to the surviving officer corps, so they made him the commanding general.

      3. Think of it as team identification. You love your team, you’re devoted to your team, and it doesn’t matter how sucky the team IS, you’re still going to keep supporting the team because, dammit, you’re a team player and it’s YOUR team!

        Lot of folks look on politics like that… it’s their ‘team’, and anything their team does is right and good. The RESULTS don’t matter – what matters is whether it’s their team doing it or not, and if not… then it’s wrong.

        1. What I call “Drazi Politics”. Green. Purple. (Or, in the case of US politics “Red.” “Blue.”) It may not be quite as simplistic as pulling ribbons out of a box and whoever has “Green” is “Green Drazi” and whoever pulls out blue is “Blue Drazi” but once one is on a team….

          1. Susan Ivanova: “You’re saying just because I’m holding this right now, I’m Green Leader? But I’m human!”

            Former Green Leader: “Rules of combat older than contact with other races. Did not mention aliens. Rules change…caught up in committee. Not come through yet.”

            Susan: “Bureaucracy. Ya gotta love it.”

            1. It’s a commentary on the slowness of committee/bureaucracy when you find out in season 5 that the Drazi have had contact with other races for at least 800 years (the Hyach-Do Drazi recording).

              1. The Roman Senate finally got so bound up it was unable to respond to those annoying northern incursions before the barbarians were occupying Rome.

                They had the troops, leaders, and logistical support… but there was too much bureaucratic overhead to make effective use of them.

    2. Speaking as a descendant of Viking, Hun, and other raiders; I take objection to being lumped in with despicable communists. You see, raiders are honest about it. You got stuff, I want it, I’m going to fight you to take it from you.

      First of all, I’m not going to dress it up saying you didn’t work for that, or you didn’t earn that, and you have to share it with others equally. This is pure honest greed. You got it. I want it. It’s for me.

      Second of all, while I’m going to try to surprise you with the raid, you’re going to have just as much chance to kill me to stop me from taking your stuff. That is unless you decide to cower in place, and pay others to do your fighting. of course if you do that, then you deserve it if they turn on you and raid you instead. (Lucky bastards. Inside jobs like that is like spearing crabs in a bucket.)

      Hey! Too bad we haven’t thought of a way to make the Prog-Socs pay US danegeld!

        1. Yes, it was used to end the rioting in the mid 60s. And as always created and voted for by the Democrats.
          Many people were simply laughing at them destroying their own neighborhoods and just enjoyed the show. Like after the Watts riot when the Blacks complained that there were very few stores in Watts. Well if you hadn’t destroyed them there might be more.

          1. Are you calling China Joe a gelding?

            Not that I disagree, mind, just want to be clear.

      3. There’s a story (don’t know if it’s real or not, sounds like a “just-so” story to me) about some Vikings who were captured and imprisoned awaiting “trial” and imposition of some of the truly horrific punishments that used during the middle ages. They managed to escape captivity and make off with some unguarded treasures. As they were leaving one of them asks “Are we thieves?” This leads to great dismay among the others so they turn about and attack the village leading to much blood and destruction.

        To modern Western sensibilities the “raiding”, killing and maiming the villagers, is much worse than simple theft, but from a certain perspective…what they were doing was “earning” the treasure by putting their own lives on the line and “proving” via battle prowess that they were more worthy of having it than the villagers.

        It’s not a morality that I particularly agree with (in the sense of how things “should” be), but through most of human existence that’s pretty much been how it was…and to a certain extent still is on he international level. You can keep your country because you can hold it against those who would like to take it (or if you can convince others to hold it for you).

        1. Stealing by stealth was much more evil than stealing openly by armed robbery, just like secret murder was the bad murder. At least in a lot of India European tribes without cities. City folk felt differently.

          1. For a hero who lives by the rules, there ain’t nothing more despicable than someone who’d shoot a man in the back.

      4. Well, yeah. Honest greed is entirely different from envy. Envy has a component of denigrating the Other as unworthy to own that Stuff. Honest greed a la Vikings is “Let’s see if you can keep it or whether we get to take it” — it’s a competition, and therefore a test of competence.

        Half Viking myself, and the other half assorted British (Scot up the top male line, back to the Normans elsewhere) so plenty of raiders in my heritage. 😀

        1. Reziac – I think you have hit on another essential distinction between Trump (a Viking) and Democrat Leaders, who look upon Government as their Village.
          (Not all Democrat voters are sociopaths; they are often just deluded, or — like some I know — envious on behalf of “underserved” people rather than themselves. They are, however, just as defensive.)

  11. What caused it? A combination of all the things you mentioned, plus a few others. Like telling lies for so long that you’re losing the capacity to know what’s true anymore. Like believing life is ultimately meaningless (oh look, another lie) and not being able to “create your own meaning.”

    And all of the reasons–just like everything else causing human misery–boil down to someone choosing to believe in a lie, because initially it sounded better than the truth

    1. They don’t see it as lying. They’re sociopaths; their reality is whatever benefits them at the moment. When it ceases to be advantageous, their reality becomes something else. I’ve dealt personally with people like that; they refuse to understand why anyone would make an issue of it, and if you keep pressing, they will get violently defensive.

      1. Fictional worlds created in the imagination of sociopaths usually make me go, “Those poor bastards in the story got screwed.” But at least I can put the book down. When they do it in real life? ( shakes head )

  12. “to the point they’ve now decided that “whiteness” comes in many colors. “D*mn white people and their — spins wheel — diversity!”

    This is better understood when you realize that “whiteness” is their code word for “insufficiently Marxist”.

      1. He’s the ur approved non-white white.

        Although I suspect he’ll be converted to a dead white male soon enough. You can hear it coming if you listen hard enough. I suspect that’s part of why Mao is their open model over Lenin and why Pol Pot is their secret one.

    2. Someone recently observed all the black and brown faces in the “white supremacist” Trump supporters, and coined the buzzphrase “multiracial whiteness”. Since this concept Is so often used in a crab-in-a-bucket fashion to deride persons of minority heritage who are trying to improve themselves, and seeing how often race and sex have long been considered matters of politics than biology, I found myself faintly amused by the concept. Very faintly.

      1. From the Daily Beast two years ago:

        Why Young Men of Color Are Joining White-Supremacist Groups

        Tarrio and other people of color at the far-right rallies claim institutional racism no longer exists in America. In their view, blacks are to blame for any lingering inequality because they are dependent on welfare, lack strong leadership, and believe Democrats who tell them “You’re always going to be broke. You’re not going to make it in society because of institutional racism,” as one mixed-race man put it.

        If racism doesn’t exist, I ask Tarrio, how would he explain the disproportionate killing of young black men by police? “Hip-hop culture,” he says. It “glorifies that lifestyle… of selling drugs, shooting up.” Because of that, “Obviously you’re going to have higher crime rates. Obviously you’re going to have more police presence and more confrontations.” (Police kill black males aged 15 to 34 at nine times the rate of the general population.)

        Elysa Sanchez, who is black and Puerto Rican, attended the “Liberty or Death Rally Against Left-Wing Violence” in Seattle on Aug. 18, joining about 20 militiamen open-carrying handguns and semi-automatic rifles.

        Sanchez says, “If black people are committing more murders, more robberies, more thefts, more violent crime, that’s why you would see more black men having encounters with the police.”

        Also in Seattle, Franky Price, who said he is “black and white,”wore a T-shirt reading, “It’s okay to be white.”

        They are among nearly a dozen black, Latino, and Asian participants at far-right rallies on the West Coast interviewed by The Daily Beast recently. They represent the new face of the far right that some scholars term “multiracial white supremacy.”

        1. When Black Lives Matter first started, the founder of the Ten Points Coalition here in Indianapolis, who was himself Black and (IIRC) a Baptist minister, said,” Let’s act like it and stop killing each other.”

          Oddly enough, he got very little support outside his organization.

          1. Eh – it’s a franchise thing. Black folk hold the license for killing of one another and do not want the Blue trespassing on their territory. That just leads to chaos.
            ~

          1. There is nothing leftists can’t lower the standards on, even the minimum standard to be a while supremacist. Used to be you had to buy robes and burn things…these days you just have to disagree with a random leftist.

        3. > white supremacists

          They’d be horrified to find out that some branches of the Klan are more “inclusive” and “diverse” than they are.

        4. Note for readers in the future who are trying to puzzle this stuff out: “Far-Right” in this era means “Other than Far Left”. The media of today knows about the Overton Window effect has built artificial vocabulary to attempt to shift things in their preferred left wing “inevitable arrow” direction through, in effect, misdirection.

          You will not be able to map the plain meaning of the various policy positions to these labels for other than the actual far left.

          1. Decent chance that around 40%-70% counts as extreme far-right, by policy and mores, not racist nutjobbery.

      2. Someone who says “multiracial whiteness” just proved they aren’t connected to reality and are incapable of logic or reason.

        1. Mythical creature here. Severe disconnect from Reality (or so is claimed, or even hoped).
          *I* could not come with that corker.
          Sure, ox slow, but… well.. damn.
          “multiracial whiteness”
          Why, that HAD to be invented by someone who spent too much time at University and insufficient time with Universe.

          1. Ox may be slow, but Ox far ahead of those spending whole lives with heads shoved up own assholes. Is why they have such shitty view of world.
            ———————————
            There is no shortage of people convinced they can create the perfect world. They just have to eliminate all those imperfect people who don’t fit in it.

        3. Once you’ve decreed that “race” determines “culture” it is inevitable that the linkage works in reverse, so that your culture defines your race.

          It is stupid but it is the sort of confusion that arises when you confuse the map for the territory.
          ~

        4. Multiracial Original Sin works fine. Although if there’s any expiation (do not count on it) it’s going to be *your* blood, or better yet the blood of your children. The best you can hope for is constant appeasement towards a stay of execution.

          Heyo! Old Skool pagan world is back with a vengeance.

          Though their midern gods are boring and stupid.

      3. Anything they disagree with they define as “whiteness”. Thus, anybody who disagrees with them is, by definition a “white supremacist.”

        However, the word they’re really looking for is “Untermenschen.”

          1. Yep – you are intended to be nodding along with “white supremacists are bad” and not notice when they start putting black and brown people who think the wrong things in that row of white supremacist cattle cars.

  14. > why

    It’s the political version of “suicide by cop.”

    “Insurrection” would be their version of Nazism’s anti-Semitism; all their problems and failures instantly become *someone else’s fault.*

  15. “Do a flip!”

    Bender B. Rodriguez

    I know they’re blowing it up with them like the roof of Nakatomi Plaza, but hey, maybe some of us can get some skeet practice in before the rubble lands.

    (Is it getting cynical, or is that just me?)

      1. I am beyond anger. Anger is what you feel when you have doubt. It’s your lizard brain’s attempt to gear up to perhaps change whatever bothers you. Now I’m just waiting.

        2. Yeah. Got to cold anger a long time ago, and then for a while was just blank, and now… I’m to where just about everything the left does is hilarious, because it’s as disconnected from reality as a comic strip. And come to me or them, they’ve got all the value of crumpled newsprint.

  16. I know I’m not a good Christian. I’d be perfectly happy if they jumped off that ledge. I might even be willing to give them a hand in getting up there and convincing themselves to do it. For a couple, I may lend a hand in making that last loooonnnnggggg step.

    1. There was one villain (IIRC a Bond villain) who said “Put them/him out of my misery”.

      Sadly, I think of that concerning plenty of Lefties.

      3. When I’m feeling depressed about how my own failures and misdeeds cause hardship to others, I’ve been known to make that offer…put me out of your misery. So far, (obviously) no one has accepted the invitation.

    2. I’ll never be a decent Christian, all I know how to do is follow Jesus and stumble all the time.

      I’ve imagined myself with a sniper rifle. Many times, recently. I think I’d do it. And if one of them decided to think about the ledge? “Here, let me help you.”

      1. When I see video of massive destruction of our cities, I think.. “We need more Rooftop Koreans. Hand me that rifle.”

        So you’re not alone, by any stretch.

        I say let natural selection do its job, and cull the bastards.

      2. The problem with sniping is that it takes a lot of practice. Most of the “naturals” grew up hunting and got really good at it that way. If your target has protection, those guys are coming after you, assuming they don’t stop you from getting there in the first place. Take the Secret Service in Washington for example. I’m sure they know every single possible location for a sniper to operate from within a mile of the Mall. It’s just not going to happen during a major event, unless they’re the ones doing it. Which is one of the reasons I was laughing my butt off over their worries about the military, and even more when they compared any hypothetical Biden assassination attempts with the Ghandi assassination. Ghandi’s guards were her Secret Service counterparts, not a bunch of Pakistani military crowd controllers.

        Assuming you wanted to snipe, the farther away you are, the better your chances of getting away with it. That also means the harder it’s going to be to hit your target, and that goes up exponentially as the distance increases. Farthest successful sniper shot ever (so far) was 3,540 m by a Canadian in Iraq.

        No, I suspect the one thing that gives the SS the hee bee gee bees is a multiple, staggered, drone attack, with a varied weapon payload. And it’s not the helicopter drones that are the most popular; it’s the RC plane types that move faster and can carry heavier loads. I don’t know if they’ll have any reapers orbiting DC tomorrow, but a rogue military or CIA drone operator flying one would be a very bad thing.

        1. The lesson of the assassination of Indira Gandhi is “don’t put down a rebellion in maximally bloody fashion and still keep the rebels’ co-religionists as your trusted bodyguards”. We should maybe watch for a purge of the Secret Service.

          1. As long as they select the replacements for ideological purity rather than competence, I say go for it!

            1. I’m sure the ones who served under Trump were relieved… “Thank G0d we don’t have to guard the potted plant.” I’m reminded that being assigned to Hillary was regarded as punishment.

              1. China Joe* (and I am totally stealing Zhou Bai Den*) has a ‘history’ with the secret service: His protection detail had females assigned as his close protection, so he had a practice of swimming in the nude when those women were on duty so they had to watch him up close.

                1. I suppose it was a step up from LBJ speaking to reporters from his seat on the crapper… Of course, if they weren’t obligated to respect the office, they coulda pointed and laughed.

                  Hopefully attempted “Zhōu bā diàn” (closest that seemed to be real words) in Translate, but the best it could do was “Week Eight”. Oh well!

                  1. Ah – a Mandarin prophetic duration prediction for the “China Joe gets smothered by That Indian Chick Pretending To Be Black using a pillow” Presidential Clue betting pool, then.

                  2. How about:

                    Zhōu
                    周
                    Circle (week – widespread – thoughtful – give financial help)

                    bā
                    扒
                    Digs up (pull – push aside) / Rake (scratch – stolen)

                    diàn
                    殿
                    Palace (temple)

                    So give financial help for stealing the palace

                    2. Ha! Very good. So adequately names the Thief in Chief.

                      I have zero words of Mandarin, so I’m easily convinced. 😀

                    3. Running those characters back through Bing translate yields “Zhou pickpocketing temple”

                4. Say what you will about the nude swimming, I give credit to a man not afraid to expose his deficiencies.
                  ~

            2. O_O

              First, I would think that would be a deadly insult to the Secret Service, an second … What, they think the Trumps have supernatural charm?

              1. Very likely it’s the idea that No Good Person would be willing to Protect that Monster Trump. [Sarcastic Grin]

            3. Bet most of Trump’s Secret Service went with him, if they and he had a choice, anyway. After all he pays for additional help.

              1. You know he’d pay them enough to compensate for any loss of “pension”, and they’d be able to sleep at night knowing they are not ultimately working for The God-Emperor Xi the Pooh.

                1. he’d pay them enough to compensate for any loss of “pension”

                  –
                  I wasn’t even thinking of his detail leaving their jobs. Don’t former former POTUS get service protection? Would kind of be a demotion from POTUS detail to former POTUS detail. But given who the incoming FICUS is, why not? If former POTUS doesn’t get service protection? Agree that he would compensate them.

                  OTOH how many years does it take to get locked into a pension in federal law enforcement? Private it was 5 years. Granted minuscule amount (after 7 years and not available until 65, or wasn’t suppose to be). I’m sure those on POTUS detail have worked for Secret Service for way longer than 5 years and they came up through other federal agencies first. Be it FBI, or armed services, etc.

                  they’d be able to sleep at night knowing they are not ultimately working for The God-Emperor Xi the Pooh.

                  –
                  Agree.

                  1. Biden insisted on getting different agents by the reports I have heard. Though I will point at that the reports also said they were the ones he had as VP.

                  2. Federal retirement post-1987 is a typically overcomplicated system that consists of three chunks: The first chunk is Social Security, the second is the Basic Benefit based on a percentage of your highest pay, and the third chunk is the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) which is organized sort of like a 401k with matching and a choice of only three investment funds or now a set of “retire in year X” funds and pays out like an annuity.

                    So the two factors in retirement amount are sufficient years of service to qualify for retirement benefits and whatever contributions and match go into TSP.

                    And a large enough checkbook would suffice as a substitute.

        2. But for most of them, what they see in movies and TV for guns is reality.
          You can screw a suppressor onto a 9mm pistol and have a running gunfight in a crowded subway station and no one will bat an eye, a rifle with a scope can hit someone in the eye from 2 miles away, a shotgun can blow the target back 20ft, people can hit a moving target while at a dead run with a little 3″ barrel pistol…

          And of course the scary black AR15 can vaporize bone and fire “fully semi-automatic…”
          Yeah, .223/5.56mm can do that.
          If you believe that, I’ve got some waterfront land to sell you in Nevada…

          1. Well, 5.56 does a real good job of tearing up the log backstop. But for Heaven’s sake, it’s not a damn phaser!

          2. Then there are the idiots who that only a person using an AR15 can stop a Terrorist using an AR15.

            Oh yes, some idiot used that argument on Baen’s Bar awhile back.

          3. The complaints I have seen from the past two decades of expeditionary kinetics are from ‘stan where 5.56 had trouble with long shots across mountain valleys and such. From Iraq, where most shooty combat was urban unless it was convoy stuff where vehicle-mounted heavier weaponry was dominant, the latest 5.56 seemed to be well regarded.

            SOF still wants to bump up in caliber, of late preferring a 6mm or 6.5mm round, but they are always doing more on their own. The “shooting across valleys” situation can also be solved by comms and ideally a designator and either artillery or air within range, but the bad guys stubbornly refuse to only attack when convenient to weather and tube maintenance scheduling.

            Were I to succeed to the newly created imperial throne, I’d probably dictate 6.5mm as the basic round.

        3. Have you seen the linux controlled rifle. about $4k, good enough for an ordinary shooter to hit reliably out to about 3000 yards, or go for the $10k one that is reliable out to a mile.

          1. Um, 3,000 yards is almost 2 miles. Maybe the first one is good out to 1,000 yards?
            ———————————
            The Democrats trust violent criminals with guns more than they trust you.

        4. “Farthest successful sniper shot ever (so far) was 3,540 m by a Canadian in Iraq.”

          HOLY CRAP!!

          2.2 miles, for the metric-challenged. I know people who are accurate at a mile, but… woah.

          Well, if we’re workin’ off our own rooftops, 150 feet oughta suffice.

          1. 2017, from up in a highrise, using a 26 lb MacMillan Tac-50 rifle firing .50 BMG – best guess from another link is that the round used was a Mark 211 Model 0 671-gr. armor-piercing bullet with a tungsten-carbide penetrator core. Hitting that Daesh target at that distance means the bullet had a time of flight of just shy of 10 seconds.

            https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadian-elite-special-forces-sniper-sets-record-breaking-kill-shot-in-iraq/article35415651/

            1. Woah. Hella complex shot. Awesome.

              Obviously the target was not expected to be moving around. Presumably seated?

          2. Last year an ICE agent did a 2000 yard shot with a pistol. Admittedly a target shot, not a kill shot, but still impressive.

  17. Nancy Pelosi had an older brother who, at age 20, was hanging out with other college “men” when they raped and molested two girls, by which I mean an 11 year old and a 13 year old. He was the only one acquitted of that crime and of perjury, probably because he was the son of the mayor of Baltimore, and his dad was mobbed up.

    Also, her name was supposed to be Annunziata, like her mom, but instead they gave her the mainstream American nickname that her mom used.

    That said, she’s a grownup and they are all dead.

  18. All of this. And add to it the fact that the education system (including its adjuncts in media like PBS) have been telling us all– for at least the past couple decades– that it is our Sacred Duty to hate and despise those (people and principles alike) that made America great.

    Yeah, there’s a whole lot of Love Of Fellow Man on all our parts that really just boils down to not being bothered to wish them ill in particular. Original Sin has plenty to go around.

  20. Oh, I’m not a bad person. But it’s becoming very weird to read suicide note after suicide note from the left and not to growl “do it already. And stop trying to take us down with you.”

    How can people hate themselves so much, at such a deep and disturbing level, and keep projecting it outwards?

    I don’t get it, either.

  21. A wise man once observed “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh”, and those who see hatred in others often do it because they are full of hate themselves, and yes, that includes hating themselves and their own lives.

    So while people were going around yesterday quoting Martin Luther King about how to combat hate with love, I was wondering…how does one actually do that?
    I have negligible influence with other people. I have not the gift of persuasion. Anything I can do is on the scale of my own personal life. But I do what I can.

    When I was a child, I was called all sorts of demeaning and insulting names by schoolmates and family alike. It never did anything to improve me, and I don’t think giving opposing politicians clever but derisive nicknames, invective, or insults does anything to improve them, either. The most cruel and vicious things that have ever been said to me have come, not from enemies, whose misconceptions are often more ludicrous than painful, but from those close to me who meant well but did not understand. It has been a lifelong struggle to see past my own pain and recognize where they are really coming from…and understanding often brings forgiveness. I try to look for the best in those whose opinions and policies I disagree with, and give hem the benefit of the doubt. , even if sometimes there’s not much doubt and not much benefit to offer. Glen Campbell sang “”Try a little kindness” and a children’s song I first heard as a teenager goes “kindness begins with me.”.

    I hate lies. I may denounce the hypocrisy of those who attribute the worst of motives to their enemies and the best to themselves and their friends. I may disbelieve claims of virtue that aren’t backed by deeds. I may disdain claims to moral superiority, I may oppose policies that I think are shortsighted. I may express my opinion of what I think is wrong, foolish, or evil with cutting sarcasm. I reserve the right to defend myself if I am attacked.

    But these are behavior…not persons. There is a difference between hating disease and hating the sick. I try to look for the best in those whose political preferences and policies I must oppose, even fiercely. I’m not perfect at it, but I do try to keep the distinction in mind,

    1. I’ve noticed that those who go around quoting MLK about “how to combat hate with love” tend to actually mean “You need to love ME, but I’m still free to hate YOU.”

    2. TAANSTAAFL

      The cost of love is pain. If you love someone, they *will* stick the knife in somewhere, and the better you know each other, the higher quality bullseye you are going to paint. It’s unavoidable because if you stay a walled, concrete castle, no garden can ever grow.

      Pay the price. I’ve tried both courses and the rose garden worth the scratches.

      Also, the um… more challenging your own personality, the harder this road will be.

      I am coming to understand that some people rub other people very badly the wrong way. And the people so irritated are *not* being irrational (or not always). So that the best you can hope for from Irritated Sally toward Difficult Don is Sally not going out of her way to do Don a harm. This appears to be true even of people I know to be very decent sorts who actually try to live by principles of Christian charity.

      I’d say, “…So do not be difficult!” But you know as well as I, that’s not going to work reliably.

      Hang in there. Say your prayers, and be hopeful. There is so much beauty in the world.

      1. Hmmph, Snort. But thanks. I’m aware of various irritants in my own personality; some of them I can’t fix, some of them I don’t want to. I just watched a few episodes of “The Good Cop”. which Netflix recently brought back. I grok that fellow; that’s my kind of Difficult Don. The social price is one can afford…barely.

  22. “So why are all of them so miserable? So angry? So full of hate for everyone and everything that’s most like them?”

    Because they have gotten where they are today by lying, cheating, and stealing their way through life. They primarily seek opportunities for theft and to satisfy their pet perversions, and are always surrounded by others like themselves. Therefore they think everyone in the world is scum like they are, and all deserve to die.

    If you make a pile of money, thieves come to take it. Western civilization has made government the place where all the money is. Thieves came. They are in charge of it. Socialism is the best way to steal yet devised.

    That’s why there are 25,000 troops in DC today, more guys than they sent to Afghanistan. Because the thieves are deathly afraid Americans are all going to come down there and take it away from them. Nancy Pelosi is terrified Americans are going to come to her house and take away her freezer full of ice cream, which she has stocked by minions who come and rotate the inventory every week or so.

    (Side issue, I think the Capitol Guided Tour Event was certainly planned by Leftists. But it wasn’t planned by the Leftists who were inside the building that day, and they’re petrified of how the cops just let them all in. Remember all those pics of the weirdo in the Viking get-up inside the Senate room? There’s finally video of the event out. There was a Capitol cop literally right there next to him, armed and ready to shoot him in the ass if he acted up. Guided. Tour.)

    You notice how nobody is saying anything about how much it costs to put 25,000 armed men and tanks in DC for a ceremony nobody is allowed to attend? I find that hilarious.

    That’s why they fear and hate Americans.

    Same with Canada, the Canadian Establishment is terrified the rest of us are going to get tired of their bullshit and come for them. What’s hilarious is if they just eased off on the stealing even a little bit, the rest of us would be too busy to give them a second thought. But they never do. The screw only turns one direction. Until one day finally it breaks and then oh no look out you pissed off the Canadians.

          1. Thing is, it also isn’t really enough.

            If there was true will to push hard and now, much larger crowds of concerned citizens could be brought to bear. Crowds don’t really do good unit cohesion, but a lot of the national guard are apparently techs, and force multipliers are only perfect in theory.

            The actual ‘what happens next’ is probably a false flag, but in absence of that, the next step remains unclear.

            National guard eventually stands down, or is permanently Federalized. It would be stupid to keep them mobilized, without making accommodations. Of course, we may be dealing with that grade of idiot.

            Either way, either they put a Praetorian guard in place somehow, or congress becomes ‘vulnerable’ at some future date. And Praetorian guards have their own issues, there are reasons foreign mercenaries or ‘volunteers’ might be of use.

            Congress peeps cannot stay holed up in DC behind a Praetorian guard. If they do not return to their districts, it is much harder to stay in close enough contact to local politics to be certain of how the elections will be run.

            1. Any student of military history knows that cities eat armies. 25,000 troops would melt away in the blink of an eye if people acted on what many of them feel right now (and that’s assuming that all of them actually stood and fought).

          2. He’s so scared he’s surrounded himself with soldiers . . . but he doesn’t trust the soldiers.

            And his time in office is just beginning, folks.

            1. It’s Pelosi who put the soldiers there, not Harris/Biden. She is the one calling the shots.

    3. “…then oh no look out you pissed off the Canadians.”

      I remember Canadians rioting years ago (I don’t remember why). The first video of it I saw was of a nicely dressed young man, what many of us in the US think of as the stereotypical Canadian, running around “enraged”. He looked like a cartoon character. Admittedly, I didn’t bother looking for any more video… Probably not fair, but I wanted that to be the picture in my head of what rioting Canadians looked like. Purely because it tickled me to no end.

      2. The Canadians came down in 2014 and helped burn D.C. I was hoping for a bicentennial re-enactment of that great event, but perhaps they could oblige in 2021?

        1. Burned DC in 2014?

          I must have missed it. 👿

          Now some crazy people burned down the White House around 1814. 😀

          1. Sorry, brain and fingers not in synch. I meant I’d hoped they’d commemorate the 1814 burning of D.C. with a 2014 re-enactment, but a 2021 reprisal of the role would also be fitting. 🙂

  23. Our symbol is a rattlesnake. It’s about the only animal that will loudly warn you that it’s pissed and will kill you if you keep doing what you’re doing. But these people are always so shocked when we strike back.

    1. Eh scratch part of that it was hastily written, other animals do warn you, but few so obvious. That’s why it’s the perfect symbol for people like us. But they’re still poking a snake that rattles then complaining that it bites. Maybe they truly are suicidal.

      2. Actually, speaking from considerable experience hunting down rattlers, one of the problems is that they often DON’T warn you. I’ve actually STEPPED on ’em, TWICE, with no rattle, no nothing. Fortunately, as snakes go they’re very slow, and have a short striking range.

        What they’ve really got going for ’em as a symbol is, “We TOLD you not to poke that.”

  24. Pelosi’s dad was investigated for mob ties. Close to the tree.
    My priority is to reread TheTrue Believer by Eric Hoffer. Woke mania, climate change religion, racist beliefs, power love get thought. Needed

  25. I know money doesn’t buy happiness, but surely it affords some searchlights to find it, no?

    –
    Money is a symbol of value. They’ve stolen the symbols, and can’t comprehend why that does not imbue them with value.

    The same with the 2020 election. They ‘won’ by cheating and stealing, so they don’t FEEL like winners. On some deep level they KNOW most of the voters rejected them, and the ‘victory’ that was supposed to cure their insecurities has only made them worse.

    They’re like ‘Bad Kirk’ in ‘The Enemy Within’, or Janice Lester when she swaps minds with him in ‘Turnabout Intruder’ and the crew won’t follow her crazy orders. “I’m the Captain!” they screech, not understanding that the face and the uniform are not enough.

    So they order 30,000 soldiers into Washington and turn our nation’s capital into East Berlin just to prove (mostly to themselves) that We Are In Charge Here! and You Will Do What We Say!

    And the longer they go without finding the ‘insurrection’ they’ve invented in their heads, the more deranged they are going to get. It took the Democrats three months to start the first Civil War after losing the 1860 election. How long will it take them to start the second after ‘winning’ the 2020 election? What will be our Fort Sumter?
    ———————————
    Does the Left drive those idiots barking mad, or were they drawn to the Left because they were already batshit crazy?

    1. Beats me. I suspect I’m going to have to issue demands to Chris Pappas and Ann Kuster to initial a bill of impeachment against President Biden before the end of the week for executive orders in blatant violation of the Constitution. The only question is which sections he’s going to violate.

      2. That freshman congresscritter — Greene? from Georgia?? says she plans to bring articles as soon as she’s sworn in, working from the China connections. But I’m sure we could bring a steady stream… if it ties up Congress and prevents ’em from doing anything regrettably stupid, it will have done its job.

    2. A tongue-in-cheek theory is that the Democrats are unhappy because they can’t use their money to buy slaves. For a century after the (first) Civil War, this unhappiness was kept in check by allowing them Jim Crow as a substitute. But 50 years ago they had to not only give that up, but also pretend that they didn’t want it. Then the USSR fell, and with it the glorious socialist dream of being able to control people as part of the Nomenklatura. So now they’re really unhappy because they can’t get their own-and-control-people fix.

      1. “For a century after the (first) Civil War, this unhappiness was kept in check by allowing them Jim Crow as a substitute. ”

        Anyone with any knowledge of sharecropping can tell you that the name changed but not the reality…. except that all races were brought in.

  26. Honestly, I know I’m not truly a good person, because I should be weeping and praying for them. Well, I do both at times. But MOSTLY? If they were on a ledge, I’d be one of those people rhythmically clapping and shouting “jump, jump, jump.”

    I might do something like this…

  27. “It’s kind of sad to realize you’re not so much a good person as really, really lazy.)

    Welcome to the conservative condition, Sarah. But you knew that already. 😉

  28. When you base your self on “stuff”, on the things you have, then you base it on a maw that can never been satisfied. Literally the first day of Intro to Microeconomics back in college the instructor gave the great truth of economics: wants are unlimited but resources are limited (or, as Thomas Sowell puts it: scarce resources that have alternative uses). If you are more worried about the things you want but don’t have than about, well, about anything else, you are setting yourself up for misery because there’s always more stuff that you don’t have.

    Also, I would add, while I don’t always agree with Mr. Peterson, he’s nailed it with the idea of looking more for meaning than for “happiness.” You’re not always going to be happy no matter how successful you are. There are some times when you’re going to be sad, angry, or any of the other myriad feelings rather than “happy.” If you make happiness the be-all and end-all, and you see times when you’re not happy as a failure–yours, someone else’s, societies, whatever–then that becomes another bottomless pit to fall into.

    To paraphrase Milton Friedman, if you seek happiness over meaning, you’ll end up with little of either. If you seek meaning over happiness, you’ll end up with a great deal of both.

    1. Also, I would add, while I don’t always agree with Mr. Peterson, he’s nailed it with the idea of looking more for meaning than for “happiness.” You’re not always going to be happy no matter how successful you are. There are some times when you’re going to be sad, angry, or any of the other myriad feelings rather than “happy.” If you make happiness the be-all and end-all, and you see times when you’re not happy as a failure–yours, someone else’s, societies, whatever–then that becomes another bottomless pit to fall into.

      There is no better demonstration of this than the fact that sometimes people who are not suicidal will be ok with dying — perhaps horribly — in the service of some goal that has meaning for them.

      Which brings us right back to the remarkable coincidence of how many wokeists are childless, or childless by virtue of having as little contact with their children as possible.

      1. Conversely, few people who are suicidal die in service to anything. (Exceptions, yeah, but not typical.)

  29. Ain’t it amazing you’ve got dragons, wallabies, assorted monsters (inc. minotaur, yes) and somehow… that lot is NOT the screwed-up bunch? A touch screwy, perhaps, but not screwed up.

            1. I got lazy about getting it. Then I saw the comment that said it had already been pulled. I had to check the link to find out.

              You know that cold feeling you get in your insides, that spreads to your arms and makes it hard to breathe for a moment? That happened when I discovered that yep, already gone.

              Thank you for giving me a second chance!

  31. Like some of the other folks here, I once made it a requirement to read everything I could which was written by the Austrian School of Economics. Like many of those, I got about 1/2 way through Human Action and called it a day. I did however buy the wonderful book by von Mises, “The Anti-capitalistic Mentality”. It explains very clearly why we’re hated.

    All of us, even the artistic of us, such as you Sarah and the whole plethora of folks I’ve learned to love reading as a result of finding AtH, are hated. Why, because something is accomplished that the left despises, money changes hands! They, generally speaking, don’t want anyone successful. As an aside, the worst example of this is Norway, where people who are successful have to hide it, as it means that you’re DIFFERENT. One should not be different in Norway. Ibsen got the gist of it.

    Speaker of the House – Skeletor and her ilk, get ready for a mixed(?) metaphor, are afraid they’ve stolen the Arc of the Covenant and are getting ready to open it. Didn’t go so well the first time…

    Keep up the good work!

      1. Skeletor had skills (magical, physical, and administrative), plans and goals, survivor instinct, exit strategies, definite conditions of victory, and a fair amount of understanding of his minions. He also had a pretty good evil lieutenant in Evil-Lyn.

        Living under Skeletor would not be nice, but at least your evil ruler would be minimally competent.

            1. Russia’s idea of non-tragic literature is a novel in which (among other things) a wounded character who’s on the road to recovery quite suddenly decides that life is just being too good to him. And so he dies.

            2. English has the words “pass” and “satisfactory” and NASA-speak has “nominal”.

  32. Leftists are unhappy because they judge their value by the approbation of others. We all do, but when you only have that, lacking a true Godly moral compass, life sucks.

    1. The approbation of others?

      Well, some others more than the rest. Most others, their approbation is like cheap wine … unsatisfying.
      ~

  33. A related phenomenon:

    Ever since college I’ve noticed that those Americans who “fall in love with London” (or Paris or Berlin) — for which read “spent a semester in a tiny fourth-floor walkup with a shared WC at the end of the hall, all on Daddy’s dime”* — and come home and forever after bang on about how much more sophisticated and civilized Europe is and ostentatiously handle their knife and fork Euro-style, those people are usually women but universally leftists and/or not particularly serious people.

    People like Bruce Bawer — who emigrated to a European country, had the perspicacity to notice that it’s not any better than the US and in some ways a lot worse, and the stones to actually talk about it in public — are vanishingly rare.

    I know the romance of the expat has been an American thing forever (Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson spring to mind), and denouncing the American flavor of bourgeois complacency has been an American thing since the 1880s, but the combination of the two is especially galling.

    (* it would be interesting to see what their opinion of Britain was if instead of gadding about the London shops between classes, they had to live in a council estate in New Fartheringtonham (pronounced “fish”) and work stocking shelves at a Tesco’s for a couple of years and dodging “youths” on the street.)

    1. Johnny Depp bugged out to France for GWB (see he actually did leave when we elected him)
      decided car-b-ques, “asian” gangs, and under-reported crime wasn’t worth it, and came back.

      1. You’re an immigrant, you’re excused. Now imagine going back to Portugal and drawing attention to yourself by doing it American-style and making a point of telling everyone how much better it is. Now imagine everyone rolling their eyes.

          1. You can’t be rid of us that easily Sarah! There’s room for you and family in Texas. Writers, IT folk, Doctors and engineers are all welcome here.

      2. You mean holding the handle in your fist instead of between thumb and forefinger? I’ve always done the fist-grip, since I was a little kid; just came naturally, no one taught me, and I still do it. Drove my more sophisticated relatives nuts (“stop holding your fork like a baby”).

        I also sometimes do knife in one hand, fork in the other.

        Then again, I’ve also been known to get them backwards and find myself trying to stab with the knife and cut with the fork.

          2. I know that “Knife in right hand, fork in left, cut your meat, switch the fork to the right” is all sorts of American and stuff… but it’s also really inefficient.

            I too, eat European style, more or less, when eating a meal fancy enough to require a knife.

            3. Agreed – meal time is too important to waste any of it pointlessly putting down and picking up cutlery. I’ve been doing it the sensible way since middle school eve though I’m a native child of the Mountain State (aka West Byrdginia.)

              Of course, my preference and the far simpler method is to let the kitchen cut things to bite size and eat the meal with chopsticks.
              ~

              1. See, I’m of the opinion that chopsticks are a vastly inferior solution for eating utensils. Any two-year-old can master a fork, but even Asian adults are known to have trouble with chopsticks. (There is video of Deng Xiaoping at a state dinner repeatedly dropping a chunk of meat on the way to his mouth.)

                But cultures stick with what they know and nothing will talk them out of it. Not Invented Here is very strong. (For instance, the Latin alphabet plus a couple diacritics is perfectly capable of encoding all of the Japanese language and would be a thousand times easier for children to learn than the godawful hodgepodge of a writing system they use, but the Japanese will never change.)

                1. Aren’t there two separate, incompatible writing systems in Japan?

                  I think one was for royalty, and the other was for the bureaucracy.

                  1. Japanese can be written in kanji, borrowed Chinese, or in the syllabic scripts hiragana and katakana. The first is more formal but insofar as there is a difference, I have mostly heard “men/women” as the split.

          3. I tend to use an unholy fusion of European and American. When stabbing and cutting (like with meat) I keep fork in left hand both to hold while cutting and to transfer cut portion to mouth. When scooping (like with peas or the like, back when I could eat such things), fork in right hand. When cutting with fork (chaffel, for instance) fork in right hand.

            I’ve been tempted to take up juggling just to confuse matters further. 😉

    3. I’ve lived in England, and Belgium and spent quite some time in Germany, South Korea, and Okinawa.

      Basically, the people in England and Belgium aren’t allowed to do squat without 5 times more paperwork and regulations than we have in the U.S., and it’s bad enough here. Then add to the fact that most Europeans are lucky to keep even half of their gross income. Lots of people on the dole everywhere. Not a lot of hope of bettering themselves either. Half the girls in the U.K would jump at the chance to marry an American GI just to be able to move up out of economic bottom they were in.

      Many have a tax burden of at least 60%.Okinawa, being an island, has limited land issues, so understandably numerous restrictions on what you can do with your property. And even though I spent a year in South Korea (1983-1984), most of the people I knew or spoke with either lived in 2 room farm houses, or smallish European-style apartments in much of Seoul.

      1. I need to go watch Barcelona again. There’s a great rant about European snobs from the US Navy officer character that I can’t find a video clip for.

          1. That wasn’t it; it was more along the lines of “we defend your asses for free so you can sit in cafes and look down on us”.

            However, this is a good one:

            Woman: You can’t say Americans are not more violent than other people.
            Fred: No.
            Woman: All those people killed in shootings in America?
            Fred: Oh, shootings, yes. But that doesn’t mean Americans are more violent than other people. We’re just better shots.

    4. It is different. Better in some ways and worse in others. Of course, barring the infestation of progressives ( the proper collective noun) I consider my little corner of the world to be the very best place in it.

      I would still like to live, for a few weeks or even years in some of the countries I have fallen in love with from stories. ” Come live with me, and you’ll know me.”

      Chesterton was right. You cannot properly love other people’s countries if you will not love your own.

  34. Of course they hate themselves – they’ve been handed so much, for such little from them, and they aren’t satisfied for they’ve been denied the pleasures of earning a thing. They are spoilt children and know not the meaning of gratitude.
    ~

  35. So now we have this frightened group of old rich people – hiding behind 25,000 men and women who they are ALSO afraid of – using their unarmed bodies as a shield for the other group. If their bogey men attack with bullets or car bombs these spear carriers they hate and revile can die for them. Perhaps giving them time to flee. How long before these cowards crouch behind children?

    1. Given the age disparity between Nancy Pelosi and most National Guardsmen, I’d say they ARE crouching behind children now. Grandchildren even.

      1. Given Pelosi’s age. Not children or grandchildren … Great-Grandchildren!!! at least some of them.

      1. He’s wrong, you know?
        Yeah, some things are right, but he’s wrong.
        You still need geographic borders. That’s what Trump taught us. You need control of pharma, you need control of farms, you need control OF YOUR TERRITORY.

        1. Oh my gosh I just had a flash I’m going to write it down before I think too hard and lose it—

          No borders.

          That means everybody “just knows” how stuff works.

          You know, like after they destroyed manners– we all are supposed to interpret what they want to happen as the way it is.

          One of the big things about the left? They don’t respect boundaries ….

          1. and our kind are really bad at intuiting things.
            BUT the guy is right that this is not a successful revolution.
            BTW he’s wrong about the sov union. I went through the Cosmosphere. Even by the fifties, it was already very bad, but yes, most people in the country and abroad still believed their bullshit.
            By the eighties no one believed it. all they had was repression and force.
            This is already here for the left. THey have a very few (very incompetent) true believers. That’s it. And force and repression.

            1. BTW he’s wrong about the sov union.

              I think you misread what he said about the USSR. What you describe as the reality of it is exactly the same as what he describes.

            2. Interesting book: Why They Behave Like Russians by John Fischer (1947, out of copyright). What he describes is a sort of fatalism. Well, there’s no bread today, but maybe tomorrow. As if everyone had been trained to passively wait, and had no expectations beyond the life of a peasant.

              https://archive.org/details/whytheybehavelik00fisctest

              Embedded copy that shows as bigger print:
              (both are somewhat messed up, but mostly there)

              unz DOT com/print/FischerJohn-1947/?View=OL_1

              Then again… as noted, all the people who didn’t wait but instead went and DID… had already gone to America in the 1800s.

          4. They Left don’t respect boundaries? Nonsense! They detest Cultural Appropriation.

            Heck, they respect boundaries so much they keep them secret, the better to defend them.
            ~

        2. It’s the same rhetoric we’ve been hearing since the dawn of the Internet Age: the future is fluid tribes of netizens united by interests without respect to outmoded borders and governments.

          It’s a nice dream but it’s wrong. It’s like you can write all the software you want, but at some point you have to hook your computer to something physical to have any effect in the real world. It’s all well and good to be united with freedom-loving peoples the world over, but when men carrying badges issued by a government with borders come to your front door and point guns at you it’s not going to help you much.

          1. What gives you hope, or could give you hope about things today?

            I read the thread and got a completely different feeling from you and Sarah. I don’t want to hope frivolously.

            1. The part about “the old machine is on its last legs” is correct. The part about “we are the people who are willing to dream and work and build” is correct.

              The part about “the Westphalian system is dead, who controls existing nations doesn’t matter anymore” is sadly misguided and wrong, and likely to get people killed in the old machine’s death throes.

              1. I kind of think the Westphalian system is dead, or dying. But that doesn’t mean borders become irrelevant. It means religion becomes important in international politics again. It means that what governments think the proper end of human life is will be an explicit cause for war.

                Really, it was World War I that broke the Peace of Westphalia. Everything that’s happened since has been fighting over what moral order its replacement will assume and build from.

                1. Personally, I favor a morality that starts with ‘Life Is Good’. Our enemies do not appear to believe that.

                    1. Most religions teach that life is good. They tend to teach that there are also things better than life, but that doesn’t mean that life itself isn’t good.

                      Of course, any of the Gnostic belief systems would teach that all Creation is icky and was created either by evil, by a fit of negative emotion, or by mistake, and that therefore life is the imprisonment of innocent souls in a Bad Place.

                    2. There are a huge number of christian sects that put so much emphasis on how evil the world is that you would be hard pressed to find anything good.

                      Ironically in doing so they make the very god they claim to worship a liar: if life is evil, how can a long life and many children be a blessing?

                    3. And Wokeism is a gnostic mystery religion. You start out as a lost soul embedded in a fallen world of patriarchy and systemic racism, but by being initiated into the Wokesinian Mysteries (i.e. college) you are able to free yourself from the dross of Amerikkka and see the true light of … whatever the Truth is as of five minutes ago. I didn’t say it was a stable religion.

                    4. Re: life being good or not good, the spectrum of Christian thought on the matter is basically determined by how much Fall that a group’s theology believes to have occurred, both to humanity and to the rest of material Creation, whether original sin exists and can be dealt with, whether concupiscence exists and can be dealt with, whether justification/sanctification can occur while one is alive and how much it affects one, how much God intervenes, how the Holy Spirit indwells people, etc.

                      The New England Puritans didn’t celebrate holidays and had a lot of rules against fun things, but many of them managed to have a lot of godly fun all the same. So it’s hard to tell how theology and praxis will interact.

                    5. Puritans held you could have thanksgiving feasts as well as penitential days, but you couldn’t schedule them. They had to be responses to signal providences, whether mercies or chastisements. (Will now go off into the corner and mutter about the Tower of Siloam.)

                    6. Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton explains it better than I can. Free on Gutenberg and funny. Give it a go.

                      I can only speak affirmatively from Christianity, which says that life is awesome. Life is very nearly the best thing ever, given generously to all by THE best thing ever to hooman beans who are AMAZEBALLS. But who also screwed things up, comprehensively, so get off your delicate pink hindquarters and get to work. Life, the world, the people in it are most definitely worth the candle.

                      Impossible you say? True. But that’s what miracles are for.

                    7. hooman beans who are AMAZEBALLS

                      Many years ago there was a massive revelation in my family when someone pointed out the “a little lower than the angels” part.

                      Which flips things on their head when the previous orthodoxy was “humans are the trash dump of the universe”.

                    9. Weird?

                      Nah. Obvious conclusion to make…. if all you’ve ever seen is condemnations of how evil people are. And hardly ever had dealings with anyone that went well. And so bereft of good influences that the very idea that a “good influence” could exist is rejected as a matter of principle.

                    10. if all you’ve ever seen is condemnations of how evil people are. And hardly ever had dealings with anyone that went well. And so bereft of good influences that the very idea that a “good influence” could exist is rejected as a matter of principle.

                      Ian, IMO the situation you describe above is “more than Weird”.

                      It’s a terrible situation.

                      Note, I’ve had to deal with shitty people but fortunately I’ve dealt with non-shitty people.

                    15. Mr. Bruene, there is a Big Difference between “All have fallen short of the Glory Of G*d” and “All Humans Are Evil” (especially when there’s the mind-set of “All Humans Should Die” and especially when “Forgiveness Isn’t Possible” in the mind-set”).

                    21. You want fundamentalism? How about the most fundamental principle of all, what makes the “Gospel” truly “Good news” for believers? John 3:17 “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

                      That, right there, is the core of Christian belief. And if it’s not a statement of the incredible value of human life in God’s eyes.

                    23. Nod, in the “minds” of too many, “fundamentalism” equals “evil”. 😦

                    25. How about the most fundamental principle of all, what makes the “Gospel” truly “Good news” for believers?

                      Get a sect far enough down the rabbit hole and there isn’t much Good News to be had.

                      When WH40k starts comparing favorably you might have taken a wrong turn. OTOH you don’t get to pick what universe you are in; there is no reason to believe that all conceivable universes must be compatible with human life.

                    27. Get a sect far enough down the rabbit hole

                      And one word for that is “weird.” What you experienced may be “what it was”. It may be “far enough down the rabbit hole”. But it’s still “weird” in the larger scheme of things.

                      If it doesn’t take John 3:16, and the implications thereof, seriously, then it cannot possibly be truly “fundamentalist” Christian, whatever label someone might want to claim for it because at its root, that is the fundamental core of Christianity. God so loved the world (which is hard to do if it’s not in some respect worthy, even if not to His impossibly high standards) that He sacrificed Himself/His Son (depending on how you view the Trinity/Godhead) for its sake.

                      I would go so far as to say if they don’t have that then they’re not Christian, whatever they may call themselves.

                    28. If it doesn’t take John 3:16, and the implications thereof, seriously

                      Never said it didn’t.

                      which is hard to do if it’s not in some respect worthy

                      Acktually…. not necessarily.

                      That is one of the things that God goes out of his way to make a point about over and over again: that his choice of someone or something says nothing whatsoever about its worth.

                      As for what counts as “Christian”. I couldn’t tell you. Here I use the term with the widest possible definition, so wide that it comes close to including Islam and Marxism because they are descended from it.

                      that is the fundamental core of Christianity.

                      Nah. To be a proper fundie (yes, I do mean as an insult here) you start by burning away as much of the human as possible. Find additional ways to make it incompatible with existence to taste.

                      I still can’t even say for sure that that is wrong: why it is necessary that the universe be compatible with human life?

                    29. What’s funny is that you’re arguing (in this case) with a neo-pagan.

                      thewriterinblack is not Christian and he seems to know more about Christianity than you do.

                      Of course, thewriterinblack and I often disagree but conversations with him can be very interesting.

                      Conversations with you are a waste of time.

                    32. “thewriterinblack is not Christian and he seems to know more about Christianity than you do.”

                      You call to mind an aphorism variously attributed to Mark Twain, Josh Billings and Artemus Ward “It ain’t so much men’s ignorance that does the harm as their knowing so many things that ain’t so.”
                      ~

                    34. That is one of the things that God goes out of his way to make a point about over and over again: that his choice of someone or something says nothing whatsoever about its worth.

                      We’re not talking about choosing someone or something for a particular purpose. We’re talking about love.

                      Here I use the term with the widest possible definition, so wide that it comes close to including Islam and Marxism because they are descended from it.

                      Which would be wrong. An excessively wide meaning is also a weak one. Such a definition renders it essentially meaningless.

                      To be a proper fundie

                      Making up new meanings of words just to “prove” some point is the Left’s game. Words have meanings. Those meanings may change over time–they often do–but you don’t just get to make up new ones so as to essentially make your position “correct” by definition. It’s a form of circular argument. That way lies crap like “multiracial whiteness.”

                      why it is necessary that the universe be compatible with human life?

                      Le voilâ! Behold it, self-demonstrating. Das Ding an sich. Bite it. It is. Ai-je raison?

                      That we exist is itself a demonstration that at some level the Univers is compatible with human life. There is, perhaps, no reason why it must be, but that we are here demonstrates that it is. If it were different it would perhaps be some other form of life asking the question. If it were such that there were no form of life possible, then there would be no form of life to ask, let alone answer, the question. It is what it is and what it is permits the existence of human life. Ele! Behold!

                    35. Which would be wrong. An excessively wide meaning is also a weak one. Such a definition renders it essentially meaningless.

                      Would it have been better to use a definition here that excluded the Catholics and Mormons?

                      Making up new meanings of words just to “prove” some point is the Left’s game. Words have meanings.

                      In theory “fundamentalism” means something like “focusing on the roots and getting them right”. In practice it usually means “let us set up our utopia and see if we can beat the record for making it hell on earth”.

                      That we exist is itself a demonstration that at some level the Univers is compatible with human life.

                      It is quite easy to have a universe incompatible with humans, while still containing them: all that is needed is for something necessary for their survival / sanity to be defined as evil.

                    41. Actually on second thoughts it can’t be all that weird. Because the point was made in a sermon / lecture.

                      It wouldn’t have been stated (and given the kind of emphasis it had) unless it were a common mistake people made.

                    43. shrug

                      It was what it was.

                      I suppose it is probably *another* example of what happens when there is constant emphasis on a particular problem, and then the counterbalancing context is removed.

                      One of these days I’ll figure out a good name for the phenomena.

                    44. I don’t care if it’s a megachurch of 15,000 people — as a percentage of the US population that is STILL under 0.0045% and thus can easily qualify as Weird with a capital Whee.
                      ~

                2. Those that seek establish a global caliphate have a very different idea of what a “global nation” will look like than the Davos crowd does, even if the Davos crowd spends a lot of time appeasing and excusing the Jihadists.

                  Those who pursue the end of nations have shown that their global replacement is totalitarian, whether religious or Marxist…oh wait, Marxism is a religion as well. Individual liberty is dependent on small, limited government that is as local as possible. The ONLY system of government that is designed to promote such is that set forth in the US Constitution. This is why the left is so anxious to trash the Constitution and be rid of it.

                  1. Thanks. No, I’m not a PT. They are worth their weight in gold, though, the good ones.

                    (This may have posted already. The power went out in the middle of my last reply and I don’t remember posting.)

                2. Physical therapist. Shouldn’t have posted my question. I think that my PT for my shoulder injury has your name. Mea Culpa.

                  1. All is well. I’m sorry you’re having to do PT for a shoulder. That region is painful and notoriously slow to heal.

          1. I read it and felt really happy in my spirit. I’m not so much built for intellectual analysis, so I didn’t see any “wrong” in it.

            1. The idea that a particular model of statehood might be dying isn’t crazy. We have had many such things.

              Unfortunately humans being humans some sort of border-like thing appears to be necessary. Maybe. Everything about America would have been considered flat impossible if you went back far enough…..

                    1. Of course!

                      Can you even deal honestly with someone with whom you do not have mutual annihilation capability? Equality is serious business.

          2. I said before, this is not what commie takeover looks like.
            It’s like takeover and fall apart in one.
            But he’s wrong on other things, too. The USSR — as I found touring the Cosmosphere — NEVER was a success at any level. Oh, sure, utterly starving peasants sort of got better, on handouts from the US. But they had tons of true believers in the fifties.
            The state of our idiot commies is more the eighties, when all they had was power and repression.

            1. But they had tons of true believers in the fifties.
              The state of our idiot commies is more the eighties, when all they had was power and repression.

              …..that is exactly his point.

            2. Speaking of power and repression, did anybody fall for the false flag and hold any “protests” this weekend? I haven’t seen anything in the news.

                1. The failure of people to fall for the scam is being used as for propaganda by the local Pravda rag which in mocking fashion headline “more people with skateboards than protestors at State House”, as if the Marxist style posters actually represented a flyer put out by genuine conservatives/libertarians.

        4. Wellllll … not so much “of your territory” (although that is generally a critical component) as control of your supply lines. Trump understood that fracking and the Keystone pipeline provided America an uninterruptible energy supply. Any essential need, such as toilet paper, which can be cut off is a fundamental weakness which WILL be exploited.

          You don’t let others keep a grip on your windpipe.
          ~

    2. Reading the thread made my heart sing!

      Hard? Yep. Chaos? Yep. Hugely better, Bigly better? YES.

  37. The discussions of the current unpleasantness raise a question for the audience I’m curious about, and am not trying to set the blog on fire in the process even though it gets awfully close to banned topics….

    For the Christians* in the blog: how does your sect get around the prohibition on taking up arms against the authority?

    Obviously in America this is almost a non-issue, because the American “org-chart” is not like other nations. But I certainly don’t see American’s who are Christians using the concept as a “valid here, nowhere else” sort of thing.

    * using the widest definition of “Christian” here that includes alllllll the sects / heresies that think of themselves as Christian.

    1. For the Christians* in the blog: how does your sect get around the prohibition on taking up arms against the authority?

      The what?

      There’s a lot of stuff on submitting to legitimate authority, and obeying lawful orders– and one of the early fights was basically “no, you can’t overthrow a country just because they’re not Christians”— and of civil authority is recognized as being as natural an occurrence as having parents, but recognizing that natural good no more prohibits taking up arms against it than respect for one’s parents means you can’t raise a hand in defense.

      Looooooong wordy explanation here:
      https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/civil-authority

      1. There’s a lot of stuff on submitting to legitimate authority

        That is the root of the idea: that all governments are ordained by by for this or that purpose (yes, that would include Hitler), and thus are legitimate and are not to be actively resisted by the average person.

        Passive resistance, or active resistance by someone in the authority structure are different matters entirely.

        1. I would submit that given the premise that God is omniscient and, therefore, sees all outcomes, that if an oppressive government exists for His purpose that resisting and even overthrowing it is also for His purpose.

            1. No. You have to do it for HIS purposes. i.e. stuff like “preserving your freedom of choosing good or evil because HE gave us that.”
              So, being enslaved gives you the right to overthrow the master.
              Look, I only know of ONE sect that thinks governments among men are instituted by himself.
              it has other problems.

              1. So, being enslaved gives you the right to overthrow the master.

                Uh…. that… doesn’t help.

                Submission to masters is specifically commanded, despite slavery being listed under capital crimes.

                1. It’s kidnapping and slave-trading that were the capital crimes in the Mosaic Law.

                  Other types of slavery, such as selling yourself or your family to pay off debts, weren’t crimes at all.

              2. *derp* post too soon…

                Look, I only know of ONE sect that thinks governments among men are instituted by himself.

                It wasn’t what you meant, but that would simplify things dramatically. Because it means that only one sect follows an explicit and unambiguous order in the NT.

                A pity that that sect seems to be where a large portion of the assholes congregate…

              3. In The Silmarillion, there was an exchange (from memory and it’s been a while) where the Valar are discussing evil and how it still is part of Illuvatar’s plan.

                Manwe: “Evil can be good for having been.”
                Mandos: “And yet be evil still.”

                One can make the argument–I generally don’t but it can be made and can be consistent–that something can be “evil” and yet it be good in the end that it existed. That is not an argument that it should be left alone, mind, but that the fighting against it and the lessons learned in doing so is the very mechanism by which “it can be good to have been.”

                Again, this is not an argument I generally make (although it’s implicit in the resolution of my story “The Spaewife”), nor one I particularly agree with, but I do acknowledge it as a valid position to take.

                1. I’ve never found the whole “Why is there evil?” discussion very interesting, at least in the christian context. With very few exceptions they usually ignore Job.

                  It also runs into definitional issues, because the bible goes out of its way to specify that good/evil are not defined in human terms. So how horrible or wonderful people might see something…… doesn’t really count.

        2. Sounds right up there with the guys who use “honor thy father and mother” to mean you must sin if they demand it– which is directly opposite of what Himself said.

          1. No, the rule is consistent: if parent or government orders you to do something evil it it not only your right, but duty to disobey. But to take up arms against either (for purposes of this a fist is an arm) is forbidden.

              2. Well I am somewhat suspicious of the doctrine, based on the oh so random coincidence of theologians spending a great deal of time and effort working the Proper System….. that just so happens to be whatever system is present in their era.

                Weird that.

                1. Most of the theologans I’ve read ended up saying either 1) exactly what Jesus said, or 2) pointing out enough issues with the current system to put themselves in deadly risk.

                  But then, I read the ones that do chapter, verse, relevant history, allusions, etc, rather than “here’s my fig leaf” or “behold my impressions based on a loose reading of this translation, ungrounded from even the rest of the Bible, much less relevant history.”

                  One of my favorites is the guy who had to explain to the barbarian warlord he was converting that no, he really couldn’t be married to his aunt.

            2. Are you thinking of the Quakers, perhaps?

              I know they are… were… a pacifist sect, and that some of them would serve in the military, but not in any capacity where they had to handle weapons.

          1. Honestly I expected the Catholics to lean more in that direction, due to the much more top-down structure……

            Conversely that Mormons would lean away from it, because of their particular relationship to America.

            1. The only prohibition against weapons I’ve heard of was that they shouldn’t be carried in church, but since the place where I read that was a novel, I don’t know if that was because of the local political situation, or if it was a general Church prohibition, or if it was an invention by the author for the sake of the story.

              1. The only prohibition against weapons

                wat

                Never mentioned anything of the sort.

                Though I have seen someone try to claim that sort of idea. Together with an explicit example of “no, you can’t defend your wife from a rapist, only block his path so she can escape”. Go figure the same guy also taught that that parents should beat the shit out of their kids. Muchly consistent.

              2. Definitely invented, though not sure by whom– Usher is one of the oldest non-priest jobs in the Church, and they were the usually armed bouncers who were regularly martyred preventing armed mobs from rushing in to defile the Host.

    2. Actually, I haven’t heard of any “prohibition on taking up arms against the authority”.

      We are to “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to render unto G*d that which is G*d’s”.

      There is Saint Paul’s command to respect the secular authorities.

      But there’s nothing about forbidding Christians to take up arms against authority when Authority Goes Beyond What G*d Expects Secular Authorities To Behave.

      2. Actually, I haven’t heard of any “prohibition on taking up arms against the authority”.

        That would be these parts: “There is Saint Paul’s command to respect the secular authorities.”

        Also a generally consistent theme of non-resistance, even if being slaughtered in batch lots.

          1. Basically, Christians don’t resist evil if they have reason to believe that they would just make matters worse, because they couldn’t win. But OTOH, if authority is doing serious injustice, and you can win, and you can’t get them to back down and do the reasonable thing without fighting… welp, then it’s okay to revolt.

            The Declaration of Independence is a good primer on the interaction of natural law and Christianity, because it’s based ultimately on Bellarmine’s natural law arguments about tyrants.

            Because we are all created by God as individual humans who are in the image of God, none of us naturally has a right to rule over any other. Only by mutual agreement to donate each one’s individual power to form a government and follow its (human) laws can governments justly exist. People can also mutually agree to withdraw their consent, but it should be done in an orderly fashion and for good reasons. The Declaration of Independence follows this procedure.

            1. Naturally, the inner workings of marriage and family are more the business of God, family-specific natural law, and culture than the workings of a government and its people are. So obviously little kids don’t generally have to consent to be governed by their parents (although they have the right to withdraw from the situation if their lives, wellbeing, moral rights, etc. are threatened).

            2. But OTOH, if authority is doing serious injustice, and you can win, and you can’t get them to back down and do the reasonable thing without fighting… welp, then it’s okay to revolt.

              Source? Where does it say that? (a few steps derived counts)

                1. That said, it occurs to me to say that Bellarmine being a saint doesn’t mean I think that all his arguments were equally good and true. Sometimes he was a man of his time, even though sometimes he was a man talking to all times. Making distinctions between what you agree with and what you think is wrong and/or incorrect is an important part of reading any kind of philosophy, and especially those philosophers in the medieval tradition.

                  So yup, Bellarmine was way too pessimistic on questions of societal tolerance of religious pluralism, probably because he hadn’t grown up in that kind of society, and because it was causing havoc in his time. We probably are too optimistic, to the point of willfully ignoring things like sudden Jihadi syndrome and honor killings.

                  Anyhoo… if you don’t want to read the whole book, what you usually want to do is read bits of the beginning chapters, where the terms are defined, and then sort of browse around to find the topics that interest you. But high-speed skimming of everything until you get to the parts that interest you — might work better, because a lot of times the arguments kind of build on each other, and come back again after they’ve been left alone for a while.

            2. 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.

              Sic Semper Tyrannis.

              Carthago Delenda Est.

        2. It says to respect the secular *authorities*.

          It doesn’t say to respect the secular *tyrants*.

            1. Presumably this is where G0d expects us to exercise both free will and good judgment.

              After all, nowhere are we instructed to be morons with no minds of our own.

              1. The point is that when it says *all* of the higher powers were appointed, and that when someone claimed to have killed one that was unquestionably a tyrant, and was executed for it. That drastically narrows the possible conditions for this.

                Hmmm, now that I think of it I think if there is an answer it has to be in some sort of secondary meanings of the original greek that didn’t get carried over. Would hardly be the first time.

                  1. Language and culture.

                    Which means stuff goes unstated, which means not carefully and systemically learned, which means that it is right and proper for us to take time to discuss it from time to time in tedious detail. And varied approaches and understandings in this discussion are a way of compensating for faulty academic work.

                    My bible study is quite sparse. So referencing the first bit of Ecclesiastes may simply be because I haven’t read a whole lot else. Starts out with, summarizing, don’t join a bandit gang, because that is an evil act.

                    ‘Give unto Caesar’ implies paying taxes to some governments. May also imply military service. Since I am an insane militarist, I extend it to imperatives to wage warfare against other polities, using some of the Roman military policies, down to treating “enemies come over walls, friends come through the gates” as having moral force, down to situations involving minor children. Quite a lot of grounds for people to stop before that point, but the taxation thing is pretty broadly seen as defensible.

                    So, what is the difference between a legitimate government extracting taxes from a population, and a bandit gang robbing passerby? Well, how much people is the government killing, that aren’t by their own acts common law criminals? You can also argue suffering caused by taxes extracted, costs of regulation,etc. Another avenue is looking at rights and privileges extended to subjects, and the rights and privileges of the soldiers and aristocracy.

                    Forex, if a regime maintains a right to extract sexual favors from women, that would be on the bandit side of the spectrum. For example, ‘right of first night’, or certain persons being able to rape with impunity.

                    I suspect some of the theology around this may not have been researched to my satisfaction. See, we have more information about economics than we did during the last really trustworthy period of extensive work on theology. I would like to see some more done on just levels of transaction costs, rents, etc. I may simply be so unschooled that this has been done, and I don’t know about it.

                    At one point, Christian teaching was very skeptical of usury, and I understand many Christians avoided moneylending as a business, because they did not feel able to charge interest for the use of funds.

                    I’m not sure if modern Christian practice of banking is theological development tied to newer information about economics and finance, if it is no longer practical to avoid, or if it is a change of focus within Christian practice.

                    1. At one point, Christian teaching was very skeptical of usury, and I understand many Christians avoided moneylending as a business, because they did not feel able to charge interest for the use of funds.

                      That’s a matter of profiting from someone’s vulnerability– extortion, basically.

            2. Just a point which no-one ever mentions. Not even really solid they logical types.

              In the U.S. we have, as a founding principle, “no King but Jesus.”. The highest law in the land are the State and national constitutions. The rulers are We the People. The folks dealing themselves in the mantle of Caesar are the hired help. Like wossname, the pitiful tax collector from the Bible.

              So yes, Pogo, ” We have met the enemy and they are us.”

              And what oh wise, does the good book have to say about rubbish rulers, who slack off and refuse to do their duty-?

              1. In the U.S. we have, as a founding principle, “no King but Jesus.”. The highest law in the land are the State and national constitutions. The rulers are We the People. The folks dealing themselves in the mantle of Caesar are the hired help. Like wossname, the pitiful tax collector from the Bible.

                mmhmm, hence the clause in my original comment that the US is different. Putting the people at the top of the org-chart flips everything on its head.

              2. And what oh wise, does the good book have to say about rubbish rulers, who slack off and refuse to do their duty-?

                Very little good, to put it mildly.

                1. Well, in Proverbs it says that one of the four things the world abhors is a servant who becomes a ruler – as Kipling expanded upon. The servant has never taken responsibility for the outcome of his actions . . . and doesn’t when he becomes ruler.

    3. Presbyterians have it easier. We have a long history of schism. We disagree with you, we are leaving.
      So if your “authorities” are go off the rails, it has been easy to split. The Presbyterian Historical Society at
      http://www.history.pcusa.org/history-online/presbyterian-history/family-tree-presbyterian-denominations, has a chart that shows the many presbyterian splits in America. It does not include that latest splits from PCUSA. If your denomination can split, fighting an unjust government is easy to justify.

      Presbyterian denominations have a form of government that includes non-pastors, and calls on members to be involved in government. The church is to serve in the world. So if you are involved in government, and it is evil, you must fight. Also, there is a strong Scotch background in Presbyterian history…

      There are strong links to the Presbyterian form of government, in our American constitution. So we are more likely to get involved in changing the government, just as we did in 1776. Unfortunately, too many “presbyterians” have been seduced by the social justice heresy, and are on the side of evil, but that is not just a Presbyterian problem.

      1. Yeah, it’s gotten hard to find a church that has not signed on to that heresy. I was looking last year and crossed off every church that had a BLM banner or other social justice bullshit. Didn’t leave much.

        2. The wheat and the tares will grow together until harvest.

          Sometimes it’s hard to believe that there’s any wheat in there.

        3. Just a reminder – the LDS parted ways with the BSA over the SJW stuff, and that was before the Scouts went total BLM.
          Coincidence?
          (Broke AesopSpouse’s heart to resign after 40 years as a Scoutmaster).

      2. ” Also, there is a strong Scotch background in Presbyterian history…”
        Single malt I hope.

      1. no such prohibition

        Short response: [citation needed]

        There are specific passages that, while they perhaps do not explicitly state XYZ, would require some remarkable feats of interpretation to not mean that.

        And then there is the example of Saul. An awkward one that.

        1. Short response: [citation needed]
          There are specific passages that, while they perhaps do not explicitly state XYZ, would require some remarkable feats of interpretation to not mean that.

          You, first.

          Seriously, there are a ton of folks here who are very big theology geeks, both pro and con, and only two folks have heard of *anybody* having a view anything like that, and they’re fringe.

          It’s like demanding a Greek Orthodox explain why they *don’t* believe in the whole Left Behind theology stuff.

            1. Besides the earlier article I linked, there’s this:
              https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/when-is-it-okay-to-disobey

              Authority does not derive its moral legitimacy from itself. It must not behave in a despotic manner, but must act for the common good as a moral force based on freedom and a sense of responsibility: A human law has the character of law to the extent that it accords with right reason, and thus derives from the eternal law. Insofar as it falls short of right reason it is said to be an unjust law, and thus has not so much the nature of law as of a kind of violence. (1902)

              Authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it employs morally licit means to attain it. If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience. In such a case, authority breaks down completely and results in shameful abuse. (1903)

              (Quoting the catechism)

                1. Disobeying *is* resistance.

                  When someone who has authority over you says, “go do this thing,” and you do not– then you have resisted their authority.

                  That’s why their authority deriving from God is so important– it’s basically a matter of an illegal order.
                  The president has authority from the Constitution; so, an order that violates it, violates his own authority.

                  How to DEAL with that is the problem, and there isn’t an easy hack.

                  1. Disobeying *is* resistance.

                    Yes. Passive resistance. Which is commanded.

                    Active resistance OTOH is condemned. Unless someone is part of the authority, and then it is commanded.

                    1. Where does it say that?

                      Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God.a
                      2
                      Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves.
                      3
                      For rulers are not a cause of fear to good conduct, but to evil.b Do you wish to have no fear of authority? Then do what is good and you will receive approval from it,
                      4
                      for it is a servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer.c
                      5
                      Therefore, it is necessary to be subject not only because of the wrath but also because of conscience.d
                      6
                      This is why you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, devoting themselves to this very thing.
                      7
                      Pay to all their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, toll to whom toll is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.e

                      Nothing here about “by resist I mean active resistance.”

                      In context, we confess for what we have done, and what we have failed to do.

                    2. I went and looked at the source elaboration? (unsure of the proper word here…) to make sure something hadn’t been missed. It wasn’t. In fact the commands of submission are far greater than previously thought.

                      Figuring out how to consider any of our ruling classes as honorable without dying of unstoppable vomiting is going to be quite the challenge…

                      https://ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.vi.xxi.html

                      (yeah yeah, I know Calvin is the universal boogeyman of all that is bad, one might even say the Orange Man of his time. But where is he wrong.)

                    3. Ian, I do not have the spoons to build an argument for you.

                      If you want to dig through that to explain why submit to authority means don’t actively resist authority but totally passively resist authority even when the basis you’ve offered is full on actively support authority– hard to get more active than paying taxes, when “Be a soldier” wasn’t exactly voluntary– then do.

                      But we *already know* your… training… had some seriously jacked up stuff.

                      It would be a shock if they hadn’t taught you things as universal which are in the solid “WTF?” zone for most faiths.

                    4. If you want to dig through that to explain why submit to authority means don’t actively resist authority but totally passively resist authority

                      TL;DR version: No private resistance whatsoever, but immoral orders are not to be obeyed regardless of what consequences the tyrant may impose.

                      when the basis you’ve offered is full on actively support authority

                      Well, yeah, Christianity is inherently authoritarian in that sense.

                      hard to get more active than paying taxes

                      wat

                      “Render unto Caesar”

                    5. Ian, your response 1) doesn’t give support for your claims, 2) doesn’t build an argument, 3) seems to be shocked at the idea that I read to the end of my own quote….

                    6. TL;DR version: No private resistance whatsoever, but immoral orders are not to be obeyed regardless of what consequences the tyrant may impose.

                      Trying to rephrase it to convey–

                      This isn’t an argument.
                      This is an assertion.

                      An argument will have statements and support, preferably logically following from a recognized truth.

                      As it stands, the assertion flatly contradicts the biblical quote offered as the basis.

                    7. This isn’t an argument.
                      This is an assertion.

                      I was TL;DRing my link. Summaries are never arguments.

                      As it stands, the assertion flatly contradicts the biblical quote offered as the basis.

                      *boggle*

                      There is no clause in there that says “unless they are a tyrant”. The obvious place for wiggle room “pay to all their dues” leads into the fact that throughout scripture those who take up arms against the authority — regardless of how bad that authority might be — are cursed.

                      The other obvious wiggle spot; that “they are God’s ministers”, and thus invalid if they overstep, runs into the same problem. Plus the extensive examples of a horrific tyrant being one of the Standard Issue Curses, so they would be “ministers” of a curse.

                    8. I was TL;DRing my link. Summaries are never arguments.

                      I asked you to make your own argument. You gave me a link to a wall of text, and a set of assertions.

                      There is no clause in there that says “unless they are a tyrant”.

                      There is one that states that their authority comes only through God, though– which means their authority cannot be used for evil, not everything they say can’t be evil.

                      It’s like Judas. He was one of the 12. He had authority to freaking CAST OUT DEMONS… through Christ.
                      He DID it.
                      That doesn’t mean that when he betrayed Him, it was alright.

                      There is no clause that says anything at all about active vs passive resistance, and the order forbids the “just don’t do what they say” in as much as paying taxes is active support.

                    9. There is one that states that their authority comes only through God, though– which means their authority cannot be used for evil, not everything they say can’t be evil.

                      1. See tyrant-as-punishment.

                      2. Saul forms the ur-example: unquestionably a tyrant, bad enough to earn one of the exceptions of another person being anointed against him. When RandomDude shows up after the final battle claiming to have killed him RandomDude is put to death for it.

                      There is no clause that says anything at all about active vs passive resistance, and the order forbids the “just don’t do what they say”

                      The distinction between active/passive is implied by it being made clear elsewhere that immoral orders are not to be followed. Daniel ignored the worship order, and submitted to being thrown in the den. He did not attempt to kill the king.

                      in as much as paying taxes is active support.

                      Taxes were addressed as roughly “it was always the King’s money”.

                    10. Ian, a last time, build the freaking argument. We already tried the “everybody else builds the argument based on your citation” thing. It didn’t work. WE all said “Wait, huh? No, that’s wrong, because-”

                      Pull it out of your head, lay it down in order, find at least the chapter and verse, preferably quote them, and then make your argument based on the thing you just directly offered.

                      We cannot see the shortcuts, assumptions and connections that you see– yes, it’s frustrating, I’ve spent a lot of time going “what the hell, how can you not see what I’m pointing out, here?”– but do it. We are not going to be able to answer the questions about the back of your hand if we don’t have even a hint of which hand you’re looking at.

                      Here, look at one of Jimmy’s more fun articles for an idea of layout:
                      http://jimmyakin.com/2005/08/theology_of_the.html

                    11. build the freaking argument.

                      The actual rigorous argument would be the link.

                      The back of the envelope argument is:

                      1. Every single time authority is shown, it is always, always, always, shown as something that is to be submitted to, regardless of how brutal or immoral it might be.

                      2. Cases of rebellion are always either condemned (the Saul example), or exceptions to the rules in the same way that the occasional orders of “go into that country and kill *everyone*” are.

                      3. Immoral orders (“worship this idol!”) are to be ignored because they violate a higher authority. But the response is never rebellion, but submitting to whatever punishment the tyrant meets out.

                      Now, I could go dig up passages to support this. I would spend a tremendous amount of time and multiply the word count 100x or more without changing the argument in any way shape or form. It would be a pointless vomiting out of words.

                    12. The actual rigorous argument would be the link.

                      No, it is a very long, general argument that is at least probably related, but I am not digging through it to make your argument for you.

                      SEriously, Ian, I already made your argument from “Romans 13,” and then refuted it in several ways.

                      Either you actually make an argument, or it’s just flat refuted until you do.

                    13. And David said unto the young man that told him, Whence art thou? And he answered, I am the son of a stranger, an Amalekite.

                      14 And David said unto him, How wast thou not afraid to stretch forth thine hand to destroy the LORD’S anointed?

                      15 And David called one of the young men, and said, Go near, and fall upon him. And he smote him that he died.

                      16 And David said unto him, Thy blood be upon thy head; for thy mouth hath testified against thee, saying, I have slain the LORD’S anointed.

                      At least half of first Samuel consists of demonstrating that Saul is a tyrant, rejected by God. And yet the average person killing him carries the death penalty precisely because he was the authority set up by God. Even David who was also anointed and therefore was the True King refuses to kill Saul or join battle when he has (several) chances to do so.

                      As for Judas, if he is relevant at all he strengthens my point: we have what was arguably the most evil man who ever lived, and it removed not one whit of his authority.

                      Of course it is a different situation; Judas was not a civil authority. On the gripping hand this is a principle that does apply widely. Part of the support or confirmation for it is that the husband/wife and parent/child structures work the same way.

                      SEriously, Ian, I already made your argument from “Romans 13,” and then refuted it in several ways.

                      I haven’t seen any refutation; only counter-assertions that no it doesn’t work that way.

                    14. Of course it is a different situation; Judas was not a civil authority.

                      Except that the entire point is that civil authorities get authority only via God.

                    15. I’m not denying that; I’m saying that they don’t lose that authority by being evil. As Job points out (more like hammer into the ground until there is nothing left of the ground); the Devil himself can’t even sneeze without express permission.

                      And because the authority is from God the private individual is not to so much as raise a hand in their defense.

                    16. You have still not supported that conclusion, at all, Ian.

                      You’ve had it explained left, right and center why the reasons you give for it do not say what you’re concluding, you haven’t even given examples of this being a general prohibition. Not killing Saul is similar to Uzzah’s death a few chapters away, when he wasn’t respectful enough of God, not “he’s a civil authority so you can’t kill him.”

                      We get it, you think it, and you think that page you linked supports it– we’re telling you that what you’ve said doesn’t say what you are reading it to say, and if you want to use arguments from the page then pull out the support.

                    18. You mean where you concluded his “evil” was supposed to invalidate his ability to act in accordance with God’s will– when the entire point is “their authority comes through God, so it’s only valid when it is in accordance with God’s will.”

                      Their power is God’s, not their own.

                      Killing people for disrespecting God’s property has nothing to do with it, unless you want to look at abuse of your (borrowed) power being disrespect of God.

                    19. You mean where you concluded his “evil” was supposed to invalidate his ability to act in accordance with God’s will

                      What!? That is the exact, diametric opposite of what I’ve been saying.

                      That an Authority has no authority to order evil is not in question. The multiple examples of refusing orders during the captivity is sufficient to prove that.

                      That an Authority is fine when it orders good is also not in question.

                      What is in dispute is the claim that there is any way for an Authority to lose their status as an Authority, just because they are abusing the power of that position.

                      There is nothing that says Medals Von Hitlerstein stops being an authority appointed by God because he is being a dictator. Quite the reverse: he was appointed to be that dictator.

                      you haven’t even given examples of this being a general prohibition. Not killing Saul is similar to Uzzah’s death a few chapters away, when he wasn’t respectful enough of God, not “he’s a civil authority so you can’t kill him.”

                      I was using Saul as an example because he was the most explicit case. I mean… do you want me to trawl through the whole thing and pick out every single tyrant in scripture?

                      Besides, that Saul was anointed is not a disagreement. All authorities have been anointed. Dumping a bowl of oil on someone’s head is but a symbol.

                    20. Do you understand now why you never attend online seminary? It devolves into this–an irritating whackamole that gives no one any wisdom or clarity.

                      Next time you want to discuss such an awesome topic, here’s the only way I’ve seen it work. I’ve never seen this work with an online discussion, but we’ll see:

                      State your conclusion(s) first: “I believe x. And x. And x.”
                      Lay out your text in support: use the Old Testament, New Testament, Jewish historians, good commentaries–you have to have context to argue Biblical wisdom. You have to know who Paul was talking to, or why Saul got chosen in the first place.
                      Summarize–“I believe this portion of scripture supports this, and this commentary suggests this….”

                      You chose a topic that final year seminarians argue about, legitimately. Believers have already worked out (or are working out) the daily implications of their beliefs–you’re arguing about the bones and sinews of Christianity. That requires a lot of effort.

                      I couldn’t hold back anymore. Great discussion possibilities here, but this feels like whackamole without end.

                    21. I expect you to bother to make a case that actually engages with the evidence in context.

                      It has been explained, in about fifteen different ways, and your response is still “I think this, prove it’s wrong.”

                      No.

                      You’ve got a funky theory. YOU prove it RIGHT. If it was such a solid prohibition, there should be a lot of stuff supporting it, say in the Summa or something.

                      I’m done explaining why your few bits of evidence don’t say what you’ve read them as, and explaining over and over how the authority works.

                      It’s been beaten to death for centuries.

                      You seem utterly locked on to authority as some sort of absolute super-power, even though nobody has that, based

                    22. Most of what he’s said is flat out incorrect. But he’s got to start back at the beginning and uncover it for himself, I think.

                      This turned into whackamole.

                    23. To clip out a smaller and more specific wall from the greater wall I linked:

                      But the most remarkable and memorable passage is in Jeremiah. Though it is rather long, I am not indisposed to quote it, because it most clearly settles this whole question. “I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground, by my great power, and by my outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed meet unto me. And now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant: and the beasts of the field have I given him also to serve him. And all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son’s son, until the very time of his land come: and then many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of him. And it shall come to pass, that the nation and kingdom which will not serve the same Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and that will not put their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation will I punish, saith the Lord, with the sword, and with famine, and with pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand” (Jer. 27:5-8). Therefore “bring your necks under the yoke of the king of Babylon, and serve him and his people, and live” (v. 12). We see how great obedience the Lord was pleased to demand for this dire and ferocious tyrant, for no other reason than just that he held the kingdom. In other words, the divine decree had placed him on the throne of the kingdom, and admitted him to regal majesty, which could not be lawfully violated. If we constantly keep before our eyes and minds the fact, that even the most iniquitous kings are appointed by the same decree which establishes all regal authority, we will never entertain the seditious thought, that a king is to be treated according to his deserts, and that we are not bound to act the part of good subjects to him who does not in his turn act the part of a king to us.

                    25. As he wrote even earlier than that:
                      1
                      Thus says the LORD: Go down to the palace of the king of Judah and there deliver this word:
                      2
                      You shall say: Listen to the word of the LORD, king of Judah, who sit on the throne of David, you, your ministers, and your people who enter by these gates!a
                      3
                      Thus says the LORD: Do what is right and just. Rescue the victims from the hand of their oppressors. Do not wrong or oppress the resident alien, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.b
                      4
                      If you carry out these commands, kings who succeed to the throne of David will continue to enter the gates of this house, riding in chariots or mounted on horses, with their ministers, and their people.
                      5
                      But if you do not obey these commands, I swear by myself—oracle of the LORD: this house shall become rubble.
                      https://bible.usccb.org/bible/jeremiah/22

                      God having to go “no, really, I said stop that!” and get smacky is a pretty common theme in the Bible. :/

                    26. God having to go “no, really, I said stop that!” and get smacky is a pretty common theme in the Bible.

                      Well, yes….

                      Was that ever in doubt?

                    27. Since you literally just citied a portion of an entire book of “do what I tell you or this is going to happen” as evidence for general philosophy, it clearly needs to be stated.

                    29. Is there such a thing as a tyrant that isn’t a case of God getting smacky with people?

                      You mean like the one we are actively discussing, where He enumerates all the bad stuff they are doing and says stop it or you’re going to be destroyed?

                    30. Guys, this is literally why I first forbid religious arguments in the blog.
                      I allow them, but this one is unproductive.
                      Ian, it’s not our fault if you were raised by wolves, and we can only help so much. GO DO THE WORK YOURSELF.

                    31. THANK-you! I have been clicking past those (emailed) comments as quickly as I could identify them, having long since recognized them as epitomizing pointless argument. Ian was not going to persuade anybody and nobody was going to persuade Ian of anything one iota different than their initial position.

                      Two Wallaby Wules of Thumb:
                      1. Once an argument has hit the far wall, drop it unless you can add something funny. It is exhausted and to continue butting heads is much trouble to little purpose – the only folk still reading are those least likely to change their views.

                      2. If nobody’s buying pitchers of beer the continued argument ain’t fun.
                      ~

                    32. A few more Rules may fitly be given here, for correspondence that has unfortunately become controversial.

                      One is, don’t repeat yourself. When once you have said your say, fully and clearly, on a certain point, and have failed to convince your friend, drop that subject: to repeat your arguments, all over again, will simply lead to his doing the same; and so you will go on, like a Circulating Decimal. Did you ever know a Circulating Decimal come to an end?/

                      Lewis Carroll

                    33. Actually, I can tighten up the argument:

                      There is one that states that their authority comes only through God, though– which means their authority cannot be used for evil

                      This is the specific point I am denying: that their evil “defrocks” them.

                      Does it make them evil? Well a bit of chicken-and-egg there, but yes. Does it make them someone you would want to be under? No.

                      But nowhere is there support for the idea that it invalidates their authority unless you start with that premise and read it into the text.

                    34. This is the specific point I am denying: that their evil “defrocks” them.

                      It doesn’t say that, though.

                      For it to say anything like that, we’d have to ignore suggestions that even as he was casting out demons, Jude was stealing from the cash-bag.

                      There isn’t a “they must be good people” thing, there’s only a “they have power in as far as they are doing God’s work” thing, which happens to feed into the whole casting out demons in God’s name without being a member thing.

                    37. As Foxfier (IMO) strongly implied, Active Resistance Is Not Condemned when the Authority is abusing His G*d Ordained Authority.

                      If the Authority Ordering Something That G*d has not authorized him to order, then Active Resistance Is OK.

                    38. I guess nobody saw my link to the collection of Bellarmine books, On Temporal and Spiritual Authority. Scroll down far enough, and you can download an HTML version for free, and maybe other formats.

                      The point about Saul being God’s anointed was not that he was a king, or that he was a minister. It was that he was _anointed_. He was sacred and belonged to God in a special way. So you don’t burn down the Temple, and you try not to kill anointed people.

                      But there’s a dearth of validly anointed kings around, whereas I got anointed at Baptism and Confirmation. So I’m as much the Lord’s anointed as anybody else, albeit with less portion of prophetic power than a bishop or priest, because they have more Sacraments and blessings than me.

                      Still, I don’t punch Pope Francis. Not because he’s a pope, but because he’s ordained as a priest and consecrated as a bishop of Rome and pope. If he were assaulting me, obviously there’d be cause for me to engage in anointed on anointed combat. Otherwise, it would be wrong to insult God by assaulting a pope’s schnozz.

                    39. The point about Saul being God’s anointed was not that he was a king, or that he was a minister. It was that he was _anointed_.

                      So swap out Saul for any of the other examples, he is just the most clearly stated one. The fact remains that not once is there a case of “the ruler has become sufficiently tyrannical, it is ok to rebel”, it is always “pray and bear it”.

                    40. “To your tents, O Israel!” is presented as totally justified, even though Israel vs. Judah was a bad thing.

                      European Christian history was full of armed revolts even when everybody was the same religion. Any kind of legal justification usually did it.

                      And then, there’s always St. Joan of Arc. Right of conquest made the English being in France a totally legal proposition, but apparently God had other ideas, and St. Joan did that right of conquest thing right back. The Kings of France and of England were arguably each other’s vassals at the time, but they both refused to go into vassalage for their holdings in the other guy’s territory.

                    41. Also — and I know Constantine isn’t popular in many circles, but he’s a saint of the Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches — you don’t get an Emperor Constantine without accepting armed revolt. He wasn’t appointed by the Emperors; he was appointed by his troops. Everybody knew that he was supposed to have been named one of the Caesars, as Constantius’ heir, and everybody knew he’d been ripped off. So when Constantius died, everybody in Britain just named him Emperor anyway. And then he fought it out with Maxentius, who had the better title according to imperial authority. He did cover himself by getting the Roman Senate to support him, mostly, but that was after the fact.

                      But too bad, because the ultimate Roman authority was always the people, especially when the people had swords. Plus, right of conquest. Which was supported by a vision from God and miraculous help, so obviously God agrees.

                      OTOH, if Constantine hadn’t gone for the purple, it was well-recognized that he would have been executed. Once his troops declared him Emperor, they would have been executed. So it was fight or die, at that point.

                      People don’t like to talk about sword-right, but it underlies a lot of international law, and it does show up in natural law. “Don’t try it unless you have a good chance to win” is not exactly a denunciation of war, conquest, revolt, etc.

        2. I may have a sermon on the topic that is helpful. If interested, contact me off this site. Considering who trolls here, I do not want to paint a target on the man’s back. He preaches within the belly of the Beast.

          I share your struggles with submitting to authority.

          Another useful book for the meta principle; Christianity is about perfect submission to authority AND total rebellion against evil tyranny (Yes. Really) is Chesterton as Orthodoxy.

          Wow. That book is getting a workout this week.

  38. Actually, the very very top of their hatred list, are Jews, and Jews are always the people they absolutely hate the most. The Occupy Wall Street mob always declared in their denouncements of the “one percent” that Jews were the “one percent of the one percent”.

  39. Pingback: How the H8 just keeps boiling | Dio's Workshop

  40. “… if they’re waxing poetic about an ape, they’ll throw it over for a kangaroo, and then the kangaroo over for a fish.”

    To give them credit, they awe wight when wecognizing the wonderfulness of wallabies.
    ~

  41. God put everything in the Bible. And in Romans 1:18-32, it describes the wrath of God, which includes being given over to a foolish and depraved mind.

    2 Corinthians 4:7-18 describes how to regard our current weakness.

    Hebrews 13:5-6 reminds us all they can do to a Christian is send us home early.

    Please read the verses above and pray. We’ll need to be lifting each other up in prayer a lot–and not losing hope.

  42. I think “self-hating American white” is a similar phenomenon to “self-hating (Western) Jew”. Both see that they are blessed compared to others and, rather than being thankful and trying to bless others [from whom much is given, much is expected], they feel guilty about it. They blame white folks (except themselves) for the “oppression” of the less fortunate and even changes in the climate. Wanting to feel that they are not guilty and actually deserve their blessings (wouldn’t want to give them up), self-hating folks crave approval for their virtue, for their concern for others and the earth. Hence support for socialism and all manner of destructive policies. And then, quite naturally, everyone that opposes their virtuous policies is to blame for the ills of the less fortunate and destroying the earth.

    Heaven save up from these imbeciles.

    2. Or at least, they’ve been taught to feel guilty about it, and no one has managed to teach them better.

  43. I’ll bring up ESR’s classic Gramscian Damage post again, according to which the USSR spread ideas designed to lead to the suicide of the West, with those ideas taking independent root after the end of the Cold War.

    o There is no truth, only competing agendas.

    o All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.

    o There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.

    o The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.

    o Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.

    o The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)

    o For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.

    o When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

    As I previously observed, if you trace any of these back far enough, you’ll find a Stalinist intellectual at the bottom.

    1. I think I saw all of these advanced in college classes I took. The “Ethics” class more or less consisted of the adjunct professor fervently preaching the bulk of these. It was one tenth ethics and 9/10 socialist indoctrination. Introduction to Sociology included a good portion of the others, but the TA teaching the course didn’t seem to buy in to too much of it and seemed to be teaching it because it was in the textbook. A few of these ideas were incorporated into American History as well, but that was mostly the department’s standard textbook for the course, not being pushed by the prof.

  44. “…invasion by an army of violent and armed Qanon followers.”

    There’s no room for them underneath their beds, what with all the white supremacists, Nazis and Russians down there. Gotta put them somewhere. Surreptitiously marching on DC is as good a place as any since the Russian consulate in Miami didn’t work out.

    Funny thing about Qanon stuff is that lefties seem to be the ones who ‘know’ things about it. Nobody else can make heads or tails of it.

      1. You can always go the Andrew McCarthy route:

        “I’m sorry I told you that this stuff was impossible and you were crazy to believe it. Here’s a nice book you can buy from me documenting all the lies and misdeeds of government institutions I said couldn’t possibly happen. When you finish it you can go back to trusting those institutions.”

        Seemed to work for him.

        1. If you are an example of ‘Qanon’ I can understand why the Democrats would believe we are all deranged idiots.

          2. See, I already knew a little about image boards when I first heard that the guy posted on one.

            There are good people and conversations worth having on image boards. But they are weird places, with a fair amount of silly stuff, I hadn’t made a home in any of the communities, and I wound up quitting them for signal to noise reasons.

            So my reaction to ‘government dude posting the secret inside scoop on an image board’ was similar to say, the claim that “Bob the Fool on Hoyt’s blog is an Authority on Theology.” It is physically possible. But there are some strange aspects if we think about the claim of a government dude who knows about this stuff, and has picked this way to share the information. What game would such a person be playing, and is the method a good approach?

            Yeah, I push back on the hysterical complaints about it being a conspiracy theory about pedophilia and Satanism. (Citing public school sex ed for the pedophilia, and leftism as religion for the Satanism.) If the stuff is really there, and people are picking up on it on some level, then people would have an unmet need to understand what is really going on. So it would be productive material for a con man to work with, and at the same time people trying to discredit the con man might be suspect.

            If QAnon is a con man, it doesn’t hurt me, because I don’t recall taking it seriously enough to rely on it being true for my arguments.

      3. Well, some of us believe it is an awesome political campaign / story.

        I think it is possible that somewhere you there was some autist sigint weenie who started sharing info on the more outre message boards, and then a more socialized type ran with it as agitprop.

  46. Honestly? I think they are, in many cases, followers of Satan as described in this verse.
    2 Nephi 2:27
    “Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.”
    Wanting everyone to be miserable because you are miserable is monstrous behavior.

    1. Well, when you consider the bad info given to the cops, the failure to send backup for more than 2 hours, the Fibbies knowing a week in advance that an attack was planned and ‘forgetting’ to tell anybody, it’s hard to reach any other conclusion.

      1. True. and my brain had already run down all those paths, yep, yep, yep. But I think he’s the first to point out that the lack of an obvious and distinct counter-protest was in itself a redflag.

  48. I had another thought the left’s suicide wish.

    Revelation 9:6 “And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.”

    I don’t think their murder-suicide attempt is going to be successful. They don’t get to die and they definitely don’t get to take us with them.

  49. I have plenty of compassion for the light workers and warriors that incarnated into Cabal families like Blue Hiden’s.

    This is the “insanity” that you decry, Sarah Hoyt. From my pov though, my peace, my serenity, and calm is far superior than your “sanity”, for all the good it does you.

    When humanity loses their heads, I keep mine. I don’t need much.

    How much has your “sanity” gotten you to where you and your nation are now?

    Keep doing the same things and expecting better results, heh.

    2. You know very well the insanity I decry. You spent months declaring yourself a god-prophet. It doesn’t help anyone.
      I DO understand how you got where you are. But I remember when you were sane.
      Insanity IS escape.
      But it’s sad to watch.

    3. “When humanity loses their heads, I keep mine. I don’t need much.”

      Nor, apparently, does your head amount to much, which must make it easier to keep.
      ~

      1. Subsequent consideration forces me to conclude the greater ease of keeping that which you store between your buttocks.
        ~

  50. “Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness.
    11 And now, my son, all men that are in a state of nature, or I would say, in a carnal state, are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity; they are without God in the world, and they have gone contrary to the nature of God; therefore, they are in a state contrary to the nature of happiness.”

    Alma 41:10-11
    The Book of Mormon

  51. LIVE: President Donald Trump Departure Ceremony (Jan. 20) | NTD
    It’s not yet trimmed of dead air, but starts at 23 minutes in.

      1. Yeah. I find myself grateful that his residence is in Florida. New York state isn’t safe for him.

          1. Not really. But there’s more and less safe, and Florida seems definitely safer than New York.

            1. Yes, but it still in reach of our new Marxist overlords. I am mystified why Trump didn’t pardon principal members of his family and get himself and some of his loyal staff to a safe, freedom loving country.

              1. We’d all like to be in a safe, freedom loving country. Not sure what that would be at this point though.

              2. In another country, he’d be entirely dependent on his private security, and a relatively easy target.

                In the U.S., any real threat will bring ten thousand armed patriots out of the woodwork.

                Further, this isn’t a guy who leads from the bunker.

                1. When the Democrats kill him, doing it here means that they have less plausible deniability in claiming that a foreign government is responsible, and that Democrat hands are clean.

                  Better circumstances for the Boog, maybe.

                  And if they get him before getting his family, Boog maybe heats up fast enough that the Dems lose access for follow on assassinations.

  52. I don’t hate them, not because I’m a good person, but because I don’t care enough for them to hate them. I just want them removed from any even remote ability to hurt me. It’s kind of sad to realize you’re not so much a good person as really, really lazy.)

    There’s an Agatha Christie Mallowan collection (Star Over Bethlehem) , that’s worth owning for “The Water Bus”. It was an eye-opener for me too. (Note: the stories are not what I would call theologically rigorous, but they’re neat, withall)

    These were the years I had to learn to stop despising pinkos, and just hate communism itself. It’s … Not really doing that well.

  53. This is in response to Sarah’s comment about “Expecting Logic From Comics”.

    With all due respect to Sarah, it reminds me of an idiot who posted a story (SF) years ago on the Bar for “Jim Baen’s Universe”.

    Some of us were commenting on how unrealistic (science & otherwise) his story was and his response was “It doesn’t have to make sense, it’s Science Fiction!”. [Crazy Grin]

    As for super-hero stories (Comics or otherwise), I treat them (in my mind) as Fantasy not Science Fiction.

    IE I’ll be kicked out of the story mainly for inconsistency, not for “Bad Science”. And yes, like some Fantasy stories, some Super-Hero stories can have a lack of consistency. 😦

    2. Personally I regard Superheroes as another fantastic genre right alongside Science Fiction and Fantasy. Mind you it’s defined more by its tropes whereas the other two can be defined more philosophically, but that’s not unique to it.

      Part is the merry mishmash is one of the defining tropes. Dr. Strange is a superhero, but a world of wizards, even crime-fighting ones, is a fantasy. Superman is a superhero, but a world of alien crime-fighters is SF — as soft as it gets, but SF.

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