The Left and the Mirror

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

So, over the last 24 hours, my feed and my online conversations have all been about Gina Carano.

I can’t begin to tell you how completely bizarre this is for the woman who never watches TV or movies. This is not a brag, by the way. It’s a combination of being ADD and not USED to consuming my stories that way, since we only got a TV when I was eight, and even then… well, Portugal didn’t have many hours of TV a day. I go through phases of watching series — usually British mystery, though it’s starting to get hard not to find them bizarrely and stupidly “woke infused” — but usually only when I’m sick or very depressed.

Normally I wouldn’t even have noticed this mess, except that my friends had all been into the new SW series, and were all very upset.

MOSTLY what they were very upset about was that the actress got “cancelled” for something that wasn’t even vaguely anti-semitic under any sane interpretation.

My first reaction was “Oh. Actress said something, and… they cancelled her.” Which is not only “day ending in y” right now, but also has been for a long time. Part of the reason I came out of the political closet is because I’d gotten tired of watching every word I said, and every expression I made in public. Because even a slight slip would have caused my career to be completely dead. In the nineties. As it was, I wasn’t perfect, they weren’t sure of me, which is why although they routinely f*ck every writer over, for me they brought out the Kama Sutra.

So, I was going “Yeah, only innocents who don’t realize what life is like in a completely taken-over industry would think this is surprising. All power to the lady, but I’m sure she knew what would hit her for stepping out of line.”

And then I came across a screen capture of what she said. And someone asking “how is this anti-semitic.”

Which is when I panicked.

Let me explain, okay?

I grew up in Europe, which in American terms is at the very least “soft left” which is what they consider “the right.” But on top of that, I was a “young lady who made good.” I wasn’t precisely working class, since dad has a degree, but we lived with dad’s dad who was a carpenter (and I was his apprentice until school interfered.) I wasn’t the first one in my family to go to college (though both dad and brother qualified for scholarships on that head… on their mother’s side and because dad’s degree was sort of in limbo, at the time. It’s a long story.) However, I came from a working class environment, from a one room school about 50 years behind the times. And I made it to college, which at that time and in that place was 100% meritocratic and mostly by examination.

What that required was adapting to a completely different culture. (You could say by the time I came to the US I had practice acculturating.) And the left in both high school and college, in Portugal, in the seventies, was at least as crazy as here. I’d say more Stalinist than the current American Maoists, but — waggles hand — I mean for six months the Maoists were the government (it’s survivable. Not for everyone, but survivable.) Since I was in a humanities degree, the political spin was particularly pronounced, though SIL’s psychiatry books in medschool were …. completely loony left. (Yes, I read them. Hey. They came into the house. I read them even in foreign languages. Because that was the deal. It came into the house, I read it. I never understood why it took the rest of the family so long to understand that.)

From experiences in Middle School I knew that I had to hide my politics, or I’d never make it to college. And in college I knew I had to hide my politics and fake their idiocy, or be flunked. (Look, I got so good I could make fun of their ideas while they thought I was supporting them. Unfortunately by the time I broke into writing, I was tired of that game. Something to do with having kids, maybe?)

What I want to say is that I lived for the first 4 decades of my life (at least) largely immersed in what you’d call “elite intellectual left establishment) on two continents. (Most of the people in my family, my generation, are still part of it.)

So, I have the same understanding, at gut level, of how leftists think/react as most people do of those people they’re most used to.

And this is why what Gina Carano said, and the reaction scared me sh*tless. What she said was this:
“Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views,” she wrote.

The only way, remotely, not matter how much you stretch it, that what she said can be considered “anti-semitic” is this:

The left believes the Jews were innocent. (This is correct, btw.) That what happened to them was shameful and terrible, and a dishonor on those who attacked them.

BUT they also believe it’s an insult to compare them to the people the left hates FOR THEIR POLITICAL VIEWS.

Because they think the people they hate for their political views — us — are really that bad, and really deserve everything the left intends to do to them. Which is more or less — in rough outlines — what the Nazis did to the Jews.

I mean, they have already talked of reeducating us, taking our children away, and they do in fact do think of us as not fully human.

Mind you, they have absolutely no idea who we are and what we believe, but they know we don’t agree with them, and since their hearts are pure, and utopia is their objective, we must be the very devil, and terrible on principle.

They’ve been exquisitely propagandized to the point they think the only American president with Jewish grandchildren was “anti-semitic.” They think that black people who don’t want to careen into ruinous and deadly socialism are “white supremacists” (the poor things swallowed Gramsci without chewing); they think other races aren’t hetero-normative; they think America is the most racissss, sexissss, homophobic nation on Earth…. and they will not listen to corrections of their appalling and atrocious ignorance of true history or foreign anthropology or…. really anything. Because anything opposing the indoctrination has been trained into them as an attack on their psyche.

So, they’re ignorant. They live in a political/social universe where if you oppose the completely insane leftist version of the world, you must be evil and “a nazi” which is to say the devil. They are so completely saturated in utter inanity that they call Israel “fascist.”

BUT one thing they know, and they know it at gut level: everyone to the right of Lenin — or perhaps Mao — are untermensch who will have to be utterly destroyed, so that the final promised utopia that they were promised since elementary school will come to be.

So, in their eyes comparing innocent Jews to their political opponents is experienced as an insult to the Jews.

Because in leftist eyes, we are evil, cockroaches and sub-humans whom they have to eradicate from society.

And they will not look in the mirror, or admit that what they’re engaging in is exactly what the nazis did, only with political beliefs instead of race. And it’s complicated. These idiots have simply decided that the real master race are black people. And that all evil comes from white males. But to be fair, it shades to people like me who have “internalized oppression” and are therefore “male.”

The Nazis philosophy wasn’t all that different. Sure. there was a racial component, but opposing them was a sign you’d been corrupted by “foreign” or “Jewish” ideas. And after that, the picture blends with our woke left.

In fact, our left is in the grip of the normal totalitarian illusion, that they’re somehow more perceptive than every other human, ever; that they’re pure and above it all and that if they only kill the sinful elements of society — you and me, my brothers and sisters — they will be like onto the angels, living eternally with no strife and no sin.

In fact, they’re made of the same human clay as the rest of us, only in the grip of a bizarre totalitarian cult.

And that means–

Well, these moments in history always end the same way. In this case, given the balance of numbers and weapon-owning, I’d say the backlash will come sooner, and be more terrible than their attempt at making us vanish will be.

Which doesn’t mean any of us, individually is safe.

It does mean we win, they lose. But the butcher’s bill, alas, will turn the oceans incarnadine.

673 thoughts on “The Left and the Mirror”

  1. They are so completely saturated in utter inanity that they call Israel “fascist.”

    I don’t see the error? Israel is a socialist country.

    *runs away*

      1. Yes. And you’ll note that you can track the change from “our dear little brown brothers” to “Israelis eat Palestinian babies for breakfast” when Israel abandoned communism.

        It’s hilarious. I started life as a crazy Jew-lover and I’ll end it as a Jew-Hater because for my money, Israel is just an okay country with good points and bad ones. Not as cool as Finland, but not as obnoxious as France. Honk Honk.

        1. ^^ This ^^

          Plus, compared to US, it is a small country. It doesn’t have the New York to Texas or Montana, “Wait! Holy C*” where am I cultural shock. A social program can be designed and implemented across Israel. A single (whatever kind) program designed for the US to be implemented across the US? How does that work out?

          Hint: It doesn’t. It just isn’t reported unless something blows up. I’m waiting for Ficus’s federal vaccine program to blow up … we all know it will … IF it ever gets off the ground. I will not be shocked to constantly hear Ficus and Ficus-on-hold to both point out that they have a federal program plan for vaccine distribution and inoculation centers, but it never seems to get universally initiated (maybe a center in NY or LA or pick-a-large-left-blue-area … I’d bet even Chicago won’t be on that list).

          1. New Hampshire has to use the Federal vaccination website and it really REALLY sucks. Stupid 20th Century multiple selection boxes that nobody even knows how to use anymore, etc, etc. They had to send a separate email explaining how to fill out the forms, it was so stupid.

          2. Nah, they’ve already gone to blame Trump, and the MSM will hammer that nail forever.
            “We’re gonna aim for vaccinating 100,000,000 a week by February!”
            erm, Trump programs were already doing 116,000,000 or so a week before Inaugural day.
            “What we mean is 150,000,000 a week!”
            Sad thing is, NY and Cali could likely get them that target if they were not more concerned with Wokeist getting it “in the right order” over “you an at risk? Come on down!”
            NY had an online only application for the elderly with a 51(?) query process and if you managed to get to the end without a mistake, great (if you missed filled a line it din’t say “Missed this, fix and click next” it said “Sorry, there has been an error. Start Over”), but your chosen time is unavailable, so START OVER.

            1. The sad thing is that my state, which adjoins Illinois, is so behind in vaccinations that Illinois has better results. Our Democratic governor is a titan clone,And is doing his best to prove that he cannot manage anything, like his peers.

                1. Here I was thinking they have more in common with the Titans in Attack On Titan — the mindless hungry ones in particular.

            3. I read all about that, with horrified amazement. Fifty one questions, which if you get wrong at any point, start all over? If your desired time slot was already filled, start over? Honestly, I wondered if they really wanted to get the public inoculated at all.

                1. Some of the public do not want to be inoculated.

                  Unless you are very very high risk, your odds with coronachan vs. novel virus (assuming you can get your hands on and anti-parisitical and your local hospital is not still using the strangle-tubes-of-death protocol) are higher.

                  I think that the red China flu is an experimental corona virus vaccine that got loose (possibly via the wet markets). So using equally novel pseudo-vaccine innoculations to limit the damage it cause is… I have no words.

          3. Well, the FICUS is already saying masks for another year, so the whole “we’re just waiting for vaccine” promise is no longer operative.

            1. THIS. We are now in the “Obey Peasants” phase, which the FICUS will keep going as long as he can get away with it.

              1. Apparently you’re not supposed to take the various vaccines if you have allergies (as opposed to sensitivities), if you might have had Coof already, if you are pregnant, if you have diabetes or heart problems, if you are going to be having sex in the next year or so….

                But they don’t actually provide the various warnings to the people about to take the vaccines, so that they can pick wisely.

                1. You are supposed to rely on your local doctor for that. Obamacare retired my original one, then the lockdown cut the local clinic to the bone and my new doc moved 45 min away.

                2. Makes me feel fortunate. My doctor is in a large group. They set up their lobby and several small rooms to give the CCPVirus vaccine. Upon arrival each person gets a description of how the shot works and a checklist of warnings. After the shot, you get a 15 minute timer. You spend the 15 minutes with a nurse, so any bad reaction to the shot will be addressed. I had the first shot yesterday, with no problems. Friendly nurses made the visit nice. They also gave me a time and day for shot 2 (provided they have the doses).

          4. Israel is about the size of New Jersey, or maybe Massachusetts if you add the Golan Heights, West Bank and (even thought they returned it donated it to the Palestinians) the Gaza Strip. It’s population of 8.7 million makes it “smaller” than Chicago (8.8 million) — it would barely be in the top 10 cities in China (just ahead of Wuhan.)

            It is approximately 8,630 square miles; Beijing, by comparison, is 6,336 square miles.
            ~

            1. Exactly. New Jersey, or Massachusetts, might be able to initiate single programs state wide, supported by their residents. But the exact same program initiated in Montana or Texas? ROFLOLHP (HP – Hysterically Pointing, FWIW) Might because even in those smaller land masses, rural VS urban VS urban core, at least in America, is going to trip the concept up; Israel not so much, as proven in practice.

              I’d use Chicago as an example, but Chicago is already trying and from all accounts is failing miserably.

              Note. Original comment didn’t note specific states to compare to Israel because my geography is horrible. Too lazy to do the research to specifically narrow down which examples to use. So. Thank you.

      2. Speaking of Israel, HarrisBiden’s press secretary refused to state whether Israel was an ally when asked by a reporter during her press conference today. So basically, HarrisBiden have just announced to the world that they do NOT consider Israel and ally and are going to throw Israel under the bus. They have in essence just declared open season on Israel and Jews worldwide.

        As usual, its the Democrats who are emulating the Nazis while they scream that anyone they don’t like is one.

  2. I’ve been saying for decades that this ends when one side marches the other side into camps.

    I’m never going to see the inside of a camp, one way or another.

    1. That’s it exactly. The day that the scuttling leftist filth start actively rounding up Republican and other supporters of President-in-Pause Donald J. Trump for extermination camps is the day that a lot of good folks will simply make a little list and start actively solving the problem at the local, state, and national levels. Even an older, overweight fellow with multiple serious health problems can gather together a little honor guard for Eternity.

      “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?” — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

    2. What if the camp is your own home, and you can’t leave it unless you wear three and a half masks outdoors, distance yourself from your family the moment you leave, and wear proof of the latest vaccination prominently?

        1. Considering that they have gone bat crap crazy over a little protest in DC, what do they do, of course they double down.
          Simple truth, if we were a tenth as violent and angry as they claim, a rather large number of them would have already disappeared. So naturally they are going to do everything in their power to make us so angry that it overcomes our innate decency and good will.
          The American people have a long history of being very slow to anger. It takes a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11 to really get us upset. Now in that first example it earned the perpetrators two nukes. In the second many (forgotten just how many) “visits” by some of our finest special ops folks scattered over the years since. Not to mention bombing select areas of the sandbox even further back into the stone age that they already were.
          Powers that be will commit some blatantly unconstitutional act with the expectation it will instill fear and obedience in those deplorable Trump voters when in fact it will steel in many a terrible resolve.
          Once past a certain break point we no longer seek fairness, or even revenge, we go straight for mad Viking laying of waste, and always the lamentations of their women for their slaughtered men.
          Not sure yet how that last all works with the gender fluid types, but I’ll bet we’re gonna find out.

          1. Did you forget that women are equal to men now. You have to be alive to lamentate. (If it’s not a word, it should be.)

            1. Exactly this. It’s why I made the comment I did re the Three Weird Sisters over at MGC.

              These people were my friends when I got engaged and married to Em in 2000 and 2001. By 2002 they were trying to claim that we were evil because of 9/11 and Iraq.

              I may forgive, but I will never forget. And I’ll never trust them again.

                1. They could. And I would rejoice in their redemption…. and I’d always have to wonder when they will relapse.

          3. Naw, the lamentations of the soyboys just aren’t the same.

            Making enemies disappear is not really our thing. Our thing is more like what Lasko did to ‘Commander Bukara’ in chapter 43 of ‘Unto The Breach’.

          4. Larry Correia brought up a very good point with regard to the left, the right, and violence. He said that the left views violence as a knob that they can turn up and down to their taste (kind of like a domestic abuser). The right, on the other hand, views it as a switch, on or off. Off is the three other boxes: soap box, ballot box, jury box. On is, and I quote, “fucking kill everyone.”

        2. I hit my first mask Kyle today. At least he helped me decide whether to buy his product.

        3. I agree. Last weekend I was at the local farmer’s market in the part of town we call “older richie-ville” (only because a new, even richie-villier richie-ville was built where the Navy base used to be.) Every time we have gone there, even though it’s outside, the mask freakout has been very strong. However, this past weekend, there were a number of people walking around mask-less. I think even some of the die hard upper-class progressives are starting to get tired of the bullshiff.

          Of course, maybe the whole mask thing was a (perhaps subconscious) poke at Trump, and now wearing a mask isn’t so much fun anymore.

        5. On a brighter note. I work in SJW central and live in reddish-purple-ville (the kind of place where a lefty will bring over baked goods when you lose your dad, and you’ll house sit her parrot).

          The usual baizuo and their poor littles are running around masked on the streets, but the high school and middle school kids are all … Completely not.

          Made me smile today.

          1. The year of the metal bull or ox is supposedly bad luck for Bulls/Oxen, in the Chinese system.

            I think you’re better off with the Japanese system, which involves buying cute cows and cow candy.

            1. Cow Tales – made by Goetze’s

              Basically caramel creams left in the “tube” form rather than sliced into discs.

              Yummy!

              2. When LibertyCon was at a place that wasn’t as restrictive about such, I’d carry a ‘basket’ of those (of various flavors) around for anyone to take… “COURTESY OF ACME”

    2. Orvan– I was born in an ox year and this is the same element as the year I was born. But I don’t take credit either. I’m thinking that those whip crackn’ elites are going to meet with more resistance than they expect. Moo back.

    3. Aren’t you a minotaur? So half man half bovine. So 50% in charge, No? There is no year of the Rigellian, so I get off scot free…

      1. ‘Minotaur’ is if absolutely correct, at least the best approximation.
        The stories say “man with bulls head” but even the ancient artwork showed hooves & tail.
        Humanoid form, but “moo all the way down.”
        In charge? Not so much ‘responsible for’ as ‘held responsible’.

        Careful, someone might designate a decade or something for you.

        2. Yes the description of First Lensman Samm’s trip in a rigellian conveyence in “First Lensman” makes a demolition derby sound tame …

        1. THAT makes sense… The year “(re)born” as life re-appears.

          Much like changing days at noon (easier to verify than midnight in a world without artificial timekeeping),

          1. hmm? It’s generally sunset or sunrise because changing the day while you’re awake is a REAL pain. I have heard of night shifts where the rule was everything got logged as the day you arrived to work because people could not remember to change days when midnight came.

            1. Sunrise and Sunset are certainly easiest. Noon is only slightly more difficult (assuming clear sky and at least some calendar & daylight/sunrise/sunset time knowledge for when it isn’t). Midnight *needs* clockwork of some sort – or you’re doing ‘cloudy day’ noon style adjustment ALL THE TIME. You can’t even truly go by the stars as the solar day is not the sidereal day (is not the lunar day is not the $WHATEVER day). Now “Christmas Eve” and “Christmas Day”…

              1. Oh, Christmas Eve stems from the Jewish habit of starting at sunset, so Christmas celebrations started then, too.

  4. I think more and more normal Americans are beginning to realize that the cold civil war may get hot soon. And I think there are a lot more willing to do their part than the fundie leftists realize.

    1. As the joke goes; Americans have been buying up every gun and bullet they could get their hands on for the last year because they intend to turn them in when Biden says so.

            1. Ah, we only need the caption:

              A bullet may have your name on it, but a grenade is addressed, “To Whom It May Concern.”

              [Have also seen it with splash damage instead of grenade.]

    2. The problem is targets. If you’re going to have an effective revolution, you need to know who the enemy is that needs to be militarily defeated, who the enemy is that can be safely cowed into submission, who’s neutral, and who’s on your side (at the moment.) Planning that in real world terms is considered insurrection, and will probably get you “encamped”. The only legal way to plan one would be via fictional writing; which is probably why many of us are under observation (probably electronic) and don’t know who is for certain. Fictional means also has the problem with nobody being quite sure what the command structure is. Who’s leading this mess? What are the objectives? How do you communicate orders without the nebulous enemy intercepting them? Oh man, how do you know you got the right orders, and not gotten wrapped into an operation by the other side? Consider the January 6 Capital mess. We know the BLM and Antifa planned the break ins. We know that some trump supporters got dragged into it because they thought they were being led by the good guys. And it’s real hard to have a revolution without adequate logistical support. Sure, you need enough food to feed your family. You also need enough to send to the fighters. I recall a large number of the signers of the Declaration had their families eliminated, their farms and businesses destroyed, were executed, or captured, or died destitute, having given everything. I wouldn’t expect any different with today’s logistics.

      We’re still in the slow roll point. Although things do seem to be moving a bit faster. We know that the vetted guard troops are still in D.C. We know that more barricades are going up around the White House and Capital area. The Dems are preparing to repel a real violent insurrection while at the same time trying to punish Trump for their false flag one.

      1. No, there’s another way. No local, state, or national official or elected politician is above the law or a recall election or immune to a hotly contested and heavily funded primary challenge — at least in theory, but that’s a different problem. Hard drive technology and general computing technology have been developed to the point at which immense local storage sufficient unto tracking every individual in the United States, complete with biometric information gathered from pervasive camera-equipped smartphones, security cameras, and other sources, is within the financial reach of many folks of average means.

        By all means widely distribute software that enables a million or ten million “little brothers and sisters” to collectively track individuals who particularly threaten public safety — convicted rapists, murderers, child molesters, anti-gun politicians, communists, socialists, BLM rioters, and so forth. Identify, among other things, the legal grounds on which they can be fired from their jobs and evicted from their homes and banned from innumerable public and private establishments as physically dangerous to the customers and employees thereof. Link to local lawyers who can and will handle endless floods of personal and class-action lawsuits against the aforementioned dangerous individuals. Establish standard procedures for recall elections and selecting effective, principled primary challengers. The sky’s the limit.

        And if a few folks privately contemplate using such publicly available lists of scuttling vermin for other, less savory purposes, well … that’s an unavoidable risk common to public roads, public telephone networks, public computer networks (the Internet), and so forth. To this day, the Italian Mafia still transports illicit goods on the public highways from one state to another. Violent motorcycle gangs roar over those same roads and make interesting, if grungy, telephone calls over the same telephone networks used by Grandma to call her friend from the bingo hall. Stuff happens, and everyone damn well knows it. O_O

        1. This. They have only Hollywood for reference, which has the evil yet incompetent rulers panicking and attempting to flee the country after the impassioned hero speech causes the crowd to go wild.

          IRL, the panicking leader simply greenlights the already deployed properly vetted machine gun and light armor teams.

          And the real “attempts to flee” happens when those properly vetted troops realize they, not the dear leader, hold the actual power.

            1. That is because it pretty much is at this point.
              Compare pictures of Detroit or other Democratic Party run cities to ones of cities that were bombed during WW2. It can be hard to tell the difference.

            2. And I got an ad last night on a game inviting people to come enjoy the open spaces and cultural venues of Denver. Everyone properly masked, and the museum shown both empty and dark as the Pit.

                1. I will suggest that there *IS* a case for outdoor masking.
                  HOWEVER, it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with virology nor bacterioly.
                  It is that at MINUS WhatTheHell? F with windchill of MINUS FsckYou F, masks do aid in keeping the face warm. Now, in pleasant weather? Yeah, makes NO damn sense at all.

          2. Although I shouldn’t be, I’m always amazed by the experiences and knowledge conveyed by contributors to this blog.
            Andersonville prison brings up a family story. In a collection of records from my mother’s family is a letter from a Union soldier to my ancestor, a doctor from the area of the prison. The soldier is thanking the doctor for saving his life; the soldier had escaped from the prison but was so weak he could only go to a house and beg for help. The doctor that of his oath: First do no harm. The doctor and his family hid the prisoner until the war ended, feeding, clothing and providing medical care.
            We never know what G*d intends for our lives, mercy may come when least expected.

            1. Wow. The world is sometimes very small.

              I hope that copies of your family historical records will find their way into a book (or better, to one of the various historical preservation projects) for the benefit of future generations, and so they are not eventually lost.

              I don’t remember where I first heard of Andersonville (probably in high school, having had a US History teacher in 11th grade who was rather a digger-in-old-tomes) but a book about it was the first history-type book I bought for myself, back around 1975.

              1. My sister in Minneapolis has the family record pile and was organizing it until medical issues sidelined her. My wife also has family in Minneapolis, so we’ve been planning to visit…..for years. At some point I’ll grab the records and organize.
                The best historical family hand me down is that Bacon, of Bacon’s Rebellion (a pre-Revolutionary Was uprising) died on the farm of an ancestor. I have confirmed that Bacon died on the farm of a Pate, my mother’s maiden name, but haven’t seen a family tree that connects the dots. I’ll see how far my sister got.

                1. Very VERY cool. On this side of the ditch mine go back to the Mayflower, but have not discovered anything especially interesting about ’em… I think one was a ?corporal in the Revolutionary War, and mumbly-great-granddad’s ?brother was a famous preacher who tried to run the Mormons out of Idaho.

                  1. That’s good history! I’ve been told that “ many” ancestors were Confederates in the Civl War, but no details. My grandfather on Dad’s side was in WW 1, but he never wanted to talk about it ( understandable.)

                    1. Mine were all northerners. By the Civil War they were mostly in Ohio and didn’t seem to affect them any that I could tell.

                      The next one with any adventure I could discover was a Norman knight who was with William the Conqueror.

                      Beyond that the traceable lineage goes through the usual traceable lines, which on that side mostly means Pepin the Short, a younger son of Charles Martel and in turn father of Charlemagne. Now there’s a good line to source “You can’t make me” and “Try it, Punk.” 😀

                    2. Revolutionary war both sides of the family were colonists fighting for independence. Civil War, everyone was in Montana or Oregon.

        3. In all fairness, neither does much of the right. As a general rules the more “bring it on” someone is the less of a ckue they have.

          Note, “can we just do it already and be done with it” is not necessarily the same as “bring it on”.

        4. And the ones that do have surrounded DC with barbed wire and have de-ammo’d ( surely that is a word?) the Guard whilst going on a mad purge of said guards’ political reliability.

          Hoo. Boy.

  5. I recall an FBI informant saying that Weather Underground members like Bill Ayers regularly talked about how they were going to have to kill millions of Americans who wouldn’t get with the communist program, and how exactly could they do that? Imagine them sitting around like kids in a dorm, trying out different ideas like mass graves, furnaces, maybe turn us into fertilizer?

    But I also recall how angry Barack Obama was when gun control efforts failed after the Sandy Hook massacre. I can’t stand looking at or listening to him, but I caught a clip and was chilled at what looked to me like possession by a very angry demon. They need to take away our guns in order to complete their grand plans. They must not succeed.

      1. There’s a free Kindle book that might help with narcissists in private and public life:

        It’s still available on the ‘zon, though Big Brother might get upset if you download it…

    2. And note how Bill Ayers and the other aspiring mass murderers were rewarded with high paying academic jobs and are considered “mentors” by the modern Democratic Party.

      1. Bill Ayers is the closest thing to a father Barry Sotoero ever had. That’s why he ghostwrote Barry’s book.

      2. Because killing your pagan enemies and plotting their destruction is FINE. And by enemies I do not mean opponents. I mean Japanese vs. Koreans. Russians vs. Germans. Eyc. Etc. Etc. As the King of Siam said to Anna.

        It is not a double standard. It is not hypocrisy. It is how the world goes ’round. Human beans gonna Hooman.

        Our mistake is in figuring out that we are playing at opponents while our quondam opponents are sincere enemies. Our challenge is that even as enemies Christendom has boundaries that the pagan world does not. Abandoning them puts us in the game with No-one’s thumb on the scale.

    3. I think a strong attempt to vacuum up all the guns will be the tipping point, because some people (maybe enough) realize that could mean the real end of the country as we knew it. It could even open the door to a genocide (see Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, China, and others). Groundwork is looking like linking things together under global crises, racism, terrorism and whatever else they can dream up. Those that don’t get onboard their program are labeled crazy threats unable to be trusted with weapons.
      So, yeah, they must not succeed.

      1. Won’t work. I’m serious. It will. Not. Work. The getting all the guns, I mean. Even in Europe, it didn’t work. Not even with decades of trying. The numbers are even *worse* in America.

        I don’t mean to say they will not try. Just that any attempt is doomed to fail. Yes, even with all the technology of today. What they don’t want to do, and most don’t even realize they are *about* to do, is destroy enough social trust and trust in the law that things like malicious compliance, parallel networks, Irish democracy, and the out-and-out rebellion that you alluded to become widespread. They already exist.

        But just like the human body can survive multiple low incidences of infection without symptom, so does the greater US manage with low incidences of obvious corruption. When the tipping point actually happens, it will only be obvious after the fact. As will all the little details leading up to it.

        Like many of you here, I am *not* looking forward to saying “I TOLD YOU SO!” As we have already done, time after time.

        1. “Dang it, I hate being right.” BTDT, do not want it or like it. (Was a tornado, in my case. Thanks be, it lifted before it hit the building.)

  6. “Are you comparing us to Nazis? How dare you? How DARE you?” It sounds like the liar who is insulted and outraged when someone questions his word, and supposes that bluster will cow people into believing him, or at least acting like they do. It’s also a known tactic of people attempting a hostile takeover to single out the most visible opponent and *crush* hm, in order to intimidate everyone else. And it’s also a standard bullying technique to bring out everything including the kitchen sink, and throw it at the person being bullied, in hopes that something will stick. It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or false; in fact, the more outrageous, the better, in order to shut down rational thought and create confusion in the opposition.
    If opposing the tactics of mobocracy was easy, it wouldn’t require courage.

  7. The whole mess is truly horrifying. Mob rule enforced by pressure on corporations. Fascism in which the government uses tech and other companies to implement censorship and punishment. A lock by the cabal on the major means of communication.

    The internet isn’t working out like I hoped it would.

      1. Amen to that. And it lets us spread little seeds of hope and optimism all over. Some will fall on barren soil, some on the footpath, some among weeds, but some in fertile soil . . .

      2. Yep. Part of the reason this is happening is that the internet enables people opposing the “consensus” to resist. So like lots of technological innovation it just changes things in ways people aren’t used to dealing with.

        1. Part of the reason the left is acting is because they’re terrified.
          THough they controlled everything for decades they’re losing the culture war. And they didn’t KNOW THAT

          1. They even believed it was *impossible.* To the average leftist, it’s like a rebellion in Heaven.

            That’s not supposed to happen.

            Also explains the nigh-righteous fervor the leftist zealots have in striking down their foes. We aren’t just *wrong* to them. Nor even simply evil. Evil can be banal and boring. What we are, to them, is *profane.* Not simply bad, but a corruption of *good.*

            When looked at in terms of cultish fervor, it makes more sense. At least, to me it does.

      3. Other point to remember is the internet is the canary in the coal mine. It suddenly goes dark, you pretty much know somethings going down. The question is, is it our government about to act, or the Chinese or some other organization making an attack hoping we blame the government and attack it for them?

    2. Twenty years ago, I tried to explain to people that “AOL is not the internet.” Now I try to explain that “Facebook and Twitter are not the internet.”

      It is to them; other than occasional excursions to specific sites, it’s all the “internet” they ever see.

      [sigh]

      1. And this is why there is part of me that wants to tell every censored and deplatformed person that they got exactly what they deserved. They willingly joined completely unnecessary monopoly-like-entities, and then are surprised when they act like MLEs? We have Darwin awards for a reason.

        Unfortunately the situation makes this position impractical.

      2. That is PRECISELY what happened to the Labor party in Britain in their most recent election. They thought that Twitter was the internet, and the internet was the election.

        It did not go well for them.

  8. A couple of years ago the left were saying the exact same thing Carano was, that it didn’t start with marching people off to camps on day one, but rather with demonizing those they could ‘other’. https://westfargomusings.wordpress.com/2021/02/11/i-nearly-forgot-about-this/

    The progressives are so ignorant of history that they don’t realize that The Holocaust was less than a century ago, but that the word has been around for centuries before Columbus showed up in the New World. That would indicate that there were other events that met the definition long before the fascists showed up.

    I’m sure Carano will end up just fine. All the publicity this is causing will make her a hot commodity in certain circles. Plus she’s a strong woman who’s had success in multiple careers. She’ll land on her feet doing something and continue being successful.

    1. The leftoids keep doing what they always claim their enemies want to do. First GWB, then Trump were going to round up races and/or gays and put them in camps or kill them off because reasons, and never a bill or even a talking point for proof of this happens.
      Leftoids wedge themselves in the big seat and immediately work toward getting rid of their enemies, openly discussing how to do it and what they’ll do if resistance comes to pass.
      Ω

      1. I have gay friends who utterly believe this. Only the unending vigilance of the Democrats keeps them free.
        They’re smart people. But on this subject they’re totally brainwashed.

              1. That’s good history! I’ve been told that “ many” ancestors were Confederates in the Civl War, but no details. My grandfather on Dad’s side was in WW 1, but he never wanted to talk about it ( understandable.)

                1. Had an ancestor who lost a son to the Civil War — another one was disabled by it — but the son I’m descended from was too young.

          2. Orvan it takes immense brains to be able to do something that unwise. Wisdom and Intelligence are orthogonal. The left have plenty of people that can reason, but if you start from bad premises you end up with nonsense (as we programmer types say Garbage In Garbage Out). Without sufficient wisdom/common sense you can’t look at your premises/postulates and say “WHOA that’s a load of horse hockey…”, essentially you end up debating things that are analogous to the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

            1. “… if you start from bad premises you end up with nonsense”

              This is especially so if you start from premises that you are smarter and morally superior to all others and that any challenge to your presumptions is a direct attack on you.
              ~

          3. *sigh* Easily. Far, far too easily.

            Intelligence is a trap, in a way, Orvan. You, yourself are not an unintelligent minotaur. Intelligence gives one the tools for its own undoing. Reason can be led astray by simple expedience. Education can be obtained even by the simple, to a point. Rote memorization can take even a dullard far.

            But intelligence always has and always will contain the seed of its own destruction. The temptation of the genius is the same as the common man in nearly all ways, save one: scope. The breadth of possible temptations is spread *wide,* and philosophy not the least of these. A common man can ruin himself with his stupidity. A *genius* can ruin tens of thousands. And more.

            You do not train an intelligent man the same way you do the everyday layman. Intelligence can get bored much quicker, even with the same interest in the task. And in its boredom, seek stimulation. Intelligence tends to fall in love with itself, and seek to protect its beautiful theories from the ugly world of facts.

            And like beauty, like worldly riches, it is power. He who knows things and grasps complex ideas quicker holds a power that a slower mind does not. And we all know what a poison power can be to the weak of will.

            Generations of mankind have relied on the Top Men to guide them, with all too predictable results. Intelligence brought us electricity and nuclear power. It also brought phrenology, slavery, the New Deal, Socialism and Marxism. Racism was backed by the science of its day, and all the Top Men knew a black man would never match the intelligence of a white. That women were only good for childrearing and companionship, their poor brains unable to handle the stress of the man’s world.

            Like strength, intelligence can be used for foolish purposes. It holds in itself the temptation to do so, simply by its own existence. I do not wonder at the foolishness of intelligent men. The temptations are obvious. In my more cynical moments, I am in awe at the accomplishments the human race and most especially this great country have achieved. Because, honestly, it could easily have turned out so much worse.

            1. Or to put it more simply: the smarter you are, the better you are at reasoning yourself into bad ideas.

            2. Bullshit on one point: slavery has been with us since before we were human; 300,000 years or more. Intelligence did not bring it to us. Slavery was universal until the 18th century. Just taken for granted. Oh, a few hotheads had been questioning the practice for a hundred years or so, but most folks didn’t take them seriously.

              Which is why the ‘1619 Project’ is such a pile of shit. Those they accuse of wanting to ‘found a slave nation’ had no motive to do so because they would not have perceived slavery as being under threat. They had no way to know that an Abolitionist movement would start gaining ground a hundred and fifty years later. No more than the Abolitionists could have predicted Prohibition, or Thomas Jefferson could have anticipated World War 2.

                1. Nu uh. The soviet union was a fully equitable country that saw to its populace benefit. It was only the sabotage by the enslaving capitalist nations that made it unable to remain standing.

                  (Do I hafta?)

              3. You’re right about that, and I was wrong. What I was thinking of was all the smart folks around the ACW and before at the Declaration coming up with all sorts of arguments as to how and why it couldn’t be abolished, the harms it would do, and the like.

                The ‘1619’ project is a farce built upon lies in whole cloth. Sort of like the alt-history novels with progressive feminism stuck in whichever time period they set it in. That it has gained any attention at all saddens, but does not especially surprise me. It’s not a history project. It’s a histrionic projection.

                  1. One of the hi-larious “Humans Are Weird”/HFY stories was about the AI’s took on a special… affinity… for humans. Why? “AI, would you please…” “Thank you.” Imagine, being not-nice and learning… and sort of taking over the universe by… politeness? I’d say it sounds insane, except… it’s at least just barely this side of the Plausibility Line.

                  2. Actually… dunno about before, but with the Romans — slavery was seen as the humane alternative to killing ALL of a vanquished people, as was typical military practice. Couldn’t just turn the defeated barbarians loose, or pretty soon you’d be fighting them again. So what choices were there? Kill them, or enslave them and let them keep their lives, and at least now they’re under control. And once these slaves were pretty well assimilated, there was a legal path for freeing them.

                    The unfortunate side effect of this dubious mercy is that when you’re an expanding empire, pretty soon you’ve got WAY too many slaves. I recall reading where some Roman higher-up was pleading with the military to please not bring home any more slaves.

                    1. I would do the ‘and people wonder why I’m on Team Xenocide’ spiel, except that people here largely know my reasons, and disagree. 🙂

                      Frankly, I also disagree. It would be a lot easier to be a monster if only I could be resolute and decisive. XD

          1. yeah, they went from “Hey, you know Trump was letting gays use whatever restroom they wanted and did x or y” trying to turn the base against him, to “he gonna put y’all in chains! and Concentration Camps for the LGBB-Q peepulls!” in one Operetta line

          2. In fairness, there was a 2016 presidential nominee who was talking about putting people in camps.

            “We Need To Put Adults Into ‘Fun Camps’ For Re-Education”
            ~

        4. one of the comebacks by the Flaming Class 3 FFL guy I met to the somewhat less flaming co-worker who was shocked to learn he had Full Auto AKs and Tommy guns. “Believe me. No one is coming to my house to bash me and surviving the attempt.” His ultraleftoid father would have nothing to do with him when he came out, and his “super-conservative” step-dad taught him to protect himself, and then left him his gun collection. I do hope it survived Katrina, but as we didn’t hear about a gay guy shooting it out with the NOLA PD and Nat Guard, he likely was living in Jefferson Parish,

              1. Nah. Didn’t you hear? Flood warnings across the US, on account of all the tragic boating accidents that happened in late January. Raised the lake levels quite a bit, I’m told.

            2. It has occurred to me that I could blame that very large theft incident (about $14k retail value) I TRIED to report to the LA County Sheriff dept. and could not even get them to take a report. “I tried to tell you the perp stole everything made of metal, including my guns!”

      1. Strikeforce created their women’s championship for the Gina Carano-Cris Cyborg bout in 2009, which also was the first women’s bout to headline an MMA event.

    2. Why should being an actress and MMA fighter preclude her knowing history? Those attributes have little to do with each other. It’s like being surprised that a bartender, or an accountant knows history.

      1. MMA fighters, sure, that’s irrelevant to knowing history one way or another. But being an actress (or an actor, the ignorance is about equal from both sexes) is strongly correlated* with not knowing history, so it’s surprising when you meet one like Gina Carano who does know it.

        * These days. Didn’t used to be that way, but it is these days.

        1. There seems to be a fairly strong correlation between actors with clues, and actors who mostly keep their mouths shut.

  10. What gets me is the utter disconnect between, “We must kill or silence the Enemy!” meaning everyone who disagrees with them… OK, but then the other side of the “logic,” is…”So we may establish a perfect society, peaceful, just and fair!”
    How do they think a society founded in blood will actually turn out? Especially given they are also taught that this society was “founded in blood,” and is truly evil/oppressive, and so forth, no matter how noble the founders may have sounded?
    I hate this. I really hate it. and I really don’t hate that easily. (OtOH, I do have a nice collection of stuffed grudges, but I’m trying to thin them out ).

    1. That’s the problem with dealing with cluster B personalities. “Logic” is defined as “What benefits me”. I’ve spent years of my life trying to get through to other people that no, I cannot reason with certain people who keep stomping on my life, it does not work.

      It’s extremely hard to even keep yourself afloat when you’re dealing with someone who delights in your pain, and everyone else around you says, “well, you just need to come to some middle ground!”

          1. Exactly this.
            I’m rather enjoying the schadenfreude, when I check out the FB page maintained by … Well, I won’t get into the grubby personal details, but he was a guy that I once had hopes of a relationship with some 4 decades ago and which came to nothing in a rather awful way. He turned out to be a hysterical never-Trumper sort, and gone through a couple of failed marriages. Now he is in near-hysterical knots because of how the Biden admin is treating the military generally and how politicians are walking back on all sorts of promises to the electorate.
            Sigh.
            What was it that I ever saw in him, again? Love is blind, I guess. Also politically tone-deaf.

      1. Breaking a few eggs is for amateurs.

        The correct version is: “But you can’t make an omelette without ruthlessly crushing dozens of eggs beneath your steel boot and publicly disemboweling the chickens that laid them as a warning to others”.

        Except that Tarquin was at least halfway competent.

        2. Because TRUE COMMUNISM™ has never been accomplished.
          No matter it always devolves into tyranny half way through the process, this time we’ll get it right.

          1. It’s also the case that PURE FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM has never been achieved either.

            Funny thing though: The closer the approximation to true communism, the larger the piles of skulls, while the closer the approximation to 100% free markets, the more abundant the Nice Things.

            2. Aye. I FAR prefer systems that fail safe rather than deadly.
              The Free Market failure mode is *surplus*.
              That can still be problematic (I recall a 1950’s{?} cartoon at the Dept. of Ag. or equivalent, showing EVERYTHING overflowing with some grain.. And a guy hanging up the phone in despair, “Bad news, it looks we’re in for a bumper corn crop too!”) but if you’re gonna have problems.. well Plenty is a far better one to have than Scarcity. And I fear some are about to discover, the hard way, what Scarcity is like. And even if it’s only ‘Scarcity-Light’, it’s still gonna be a helluva jolt.

            3. Failures in a free-market economy tend to be small. A few businesses might fail, a few farmers might go bankrupt, but there are still plenty that didn’t. People can learn from the failures, and make better decisions in the future.

              Failures in centrally planned economies tend to be YUGE. And then, usually, nothing is learned to prevent it from happening again. And again. The planners can’t admit they screwed the pooch, and they have a penchant for shooting whoever points it out to them.
              ———————————
              People can make stupid mistakes, but only the government can force everybody to make the SAME stupid mistakes.

        3. More properly no omelettes for the proles, really awful crappy omelettes from powdered eggs for the Party members. Omelettes using exotic eggs and expensive ingredients for the inner party. Sorry, listening to 1984 recently, it really is astounding how much of that the left is stealing whole cloth as a plan.

          1. Chesterton.

            Please, go look into Chesterton.

            The free stuff will still hit the “oh my Lord when did he write this I recognize this” button, but he knows who wins and who loses.

            Not only did he realize the Nazis were coming, though he died before they showed up. He knew who would win.

    4. > perfect … peaceful, just and fair

      When the dictionary bows the the Narrative, any words will do.

    5. But they’re doing it for the good of society. What comes after they burn down society will justify all of the terrible things that they had to do in order to bring it to pass.

      Or so they tell each other.

  11. Prepare! That’s my take away today. Whatever that looks like make sure it is accomplished. It is sad that in our society people have to be afraid to speak out, but I will not sit idly by and watch a neighbor being taken away and incarcerated for a belief. In all my perusal of science fiction, fantasy, political and law thrillers I never would have thought I’d see those story lines being acted out in my day-to-day life. It appears that professed lovers of the natural have not learned from observations that: a) poking the bear and b) backing him into a corner lead to serious harm and possibly, death. Be strong, fellow bears. Be strong.

  12. Oh, hey, it turns out that Craig Martelle and his merry band of writers have a New Plan. They’ve started a 20 Books for 40K version of SFWA, apparently without dues, called the International Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors. They seem to be focusing on just “professional development” – ie, write more and promote stuff together, with an expanded website version of the 20 Books to 40K group on the book of face.

    You sign up your email address, and they send you links to a bunch of free novellas every month, as well as notifications for every single book that comes out from their group. Authors who are members of IASFA pick out whether or not they want to be part of these promotional bundles.

    I don’t know a lot about it

    The webpage is IASFA.org. It’s apparently the same thing they originally were calling “the Indie Alliance.”

    2. Hm. No list of members. No dues. No corporate status. {unless they’re not rendering in my off-the-main-path browser) And: “Mission Statement – To support the professional development of SFF authors through shared opportunities, camaraderie, and targeted philanthropy. To build an organization with a focus on bringing stories to an SFF loving readership through improved business practices.”

      The “targeted philanthropy” thing makes my antennae twitch.

      It’s far past time someone organized an alternative to the SFWA, but the web site doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies.

  13. This is the most insightful observation I’ve read in probably a month. Thank you.

    “…which is why although they routinely f*ck every writer over, for me they brought out the Kama Sutra.”

    Not to laugh at your misfortune, and irrespective of the thesis, this right here is damn funny. Thank you for that too.

        1. Still am. Now to the tune of “we don’t need to send you the right tax forms. And we want you to respect contracts that we refuse to show you.”
          This is going to end in tears. BUT not for me.

          1. Somebody ever manages to slip a drive belt onto Jim’s corpse and the Baen drive power company could supply electricity to the entire East coast.

  14. “The left believes the Jews were innocent. (This is correct, btw.)”

    Well, not the entire left.

    I forget where I red it, but the line “If it’s one thing the far left and right can agree on, it’s that they hate the Jews.”

    1. Yes, of course. BUT I didn’t want to go into a side-track. I do that enough.
      And I’m not absolutely sure that’s true. Sure, there’s a small core of deluded “right” nativists (a) they’re not right except ina weird socon way. Like the European right, they’re mostly socialists but with a strong G-d and Family and Tribe belief. b) in the US if you go to “pure American ancestry” as in, all ancestors were here at independence, you’ll get 10 people and they’re probably communists. (and related to my husband.) Because that’s how descendants of puritans went. So, deluded.)
      BUT the normal “right” in the US actually rather admires Israel and LIKES Jews. Some of my best friends are Jewish (and most of my ancestors, but that’s something else.)
      And the Jews on the right are some of our best warriors.

      1. Barbara Tuhman did an interesting book on the relation of Protestant and evangelical churches to Zionism, pointing out those churches went to, “Jews are God’s Chosen People, help them out,” as a default position.
        Maybe another reason modern progressives hate “evangelicals”?

        2. I’d think so – evangelicals revere the milieu which Jesus emerged from: HE is our savior, so his community must be all right, and even more — respected and honored. They might not have recognized him 100 percent – but he, his family, practically all of his first disciples were Jews, so – indulgence.
          I think this must absolutely freak out European Jews, especially those who came from Russia and Eastern Europe. All they knew of Christians were the anti-Semitic fanatical element.

          1. If someone wants to get into the weeds on this– go look up father Mitch, on various EWTN stuff.

            He understands Hebrew and a ton of other languages, and worse yet the cultures involved.

            …Catholiclally speaking, I am totally pissed off at Jews not being Catholic. Because they are so CLOSE to safe, but not their… Lord love a duck, much less a human, of COURSE I want them to take that TINY LITTLE MOVEMENT over to safe!

              1. Pardon the freestyling, but…

                What is a skeptic, but someone who will actually think?

                Someone who deeply loves a topic , and considers it, and looks into all the nooks and crannies?

                Someone who adores a subject, and embraces it, and is comfortable enough to poke at all the aspects?

                2. “In ancient Greece, skeptics were those who thought, not those who scoffed.”

                  Gene Wolfe, Latro of the Mists.

      2. Yeah, that’s the whole problem with most people’s understanding of the linear political spectrum, present company not included, of course. And of course when *I* say far right and left, I mean the astronomically insignificant number of actual far RWNJs in the US as opposed to the media and FBI’s portrayal, and the far left, which is pretty much mainstream.

        It feels kinda neat to be a dissident now.

            1. I think most of them have been reduced to informing on each other, just to generate enough paperwork to justify their continued existence.

        2. “It feels kinda neat to be a dissident now”

          I like it that part too 🙂 Might as well get what you can from the current unpleasantness. And I suspect that it’s yet another thing that the left hates us for. They love larping “resistance”, when they were actually pretty much the establishment. They feel like they own the dissident role. Hahaha.

      3. “BUT the normal “right” in the US actually rather admires Israel and LIKES Jews. “

        Yup. Like Foxfier said, the ones that are Jews before politics, sure. And even that is complicated sometimes, because the whole “two Jews, three opinions” thing is real. *chuckle* Still, good people.

        As for the Israel angle, very happy to have them as allies. Nothing but the back of my hand to the Palestinians, though. Push ’em into the sea for all I care. They don’t deal honestly. And the things they do to kids are unprintable. Much rather that land was in the hands of good Israelis, and the enemies outside their borders.

      4. This “the Right hates Jews!!” canard has always boggled me, considering that I *vividly* remember my parents picking a new church on the strength of their pro-Israel signs back in the mid-80s.

      5. If I recall correctly, there were Jews in Portugal during the time of the inquisition (Portugal had an inquisition as well, it wasn’t just the Spanish Inquisition…no one expects the Spanish Inquisition….) who either fled east or converted, with many of the “conversions” being in name only. Of those who fled, some of their descendants eventually returned after a number of generations.

        1. History flag, the only involvement for the inquisition is if they had converted in name only.

          If they had honestly converted, then the accusation was false.

          Frequently, the inquisition found as much, which is part of why they were unpopular…. (Hey, we get these guys’ money! No, no you don’t…..)

    2. Had a realization– it’s not all Jews.

      It’s just the ones that are Jews before they are Leftists.

      Same way that the Catholic gal justice was horrible for being Catholic, but forcibly-violate-binding-faith-elements Biden is fine.

      So *some* of the Jews were treated as They Deserved, because wrongthink.

      Logically, anyways. Admitting that is like the whole “is a human at X stage a human” argument, where they’re placing a biological category in the spot of a moral one because they don’t want to make the argument “those humans are not persons.”

      1. “It’s just the ones that are Jews before they are Leftists.”

        Bingo. Just like Marx’s “On the Jewish Question”. To him the Jews were fine as long as they don’t, you know, act like Jews.

        It’s the standard leftist conception of members of X identity group all behaving according to stereotypes. All they have to do is toe the line to keep from getting labeled “Uncle Toms”, “Race Traitors”, and the new hotness – “multiracial white supremacists”. Because stereotypes are bad, unless you need to get in someone’s face.

        1. > “multiracial white supremacists”

          I like to think that somewhere, there are people with pointy hats in their closets, who do a facepalm every time they see that phrase go by.

          “All those marches, all those midnight meetings, all those lynchings, and now it has sunk to this?”

          Yah, that’s what happens when your Democratic Party masters have no further use for you.

    3. There’s a flavor of Christian (or at least Protestant thought) that likes the Jews in Israel, and likes Jews more than they are irritated by the failure to convert them.

      The folks who are more salty about the Jews not converting may well be outside the mainstream. It is just that I do not have the information to guess about what is mainstream, and what is fringe.

      I mean, I understand there are flavors of Baptist who think that the Methodists, etc. are going to hockeysticks, but which apparently aren’t salty enough about not converting the Methodists to act violently on such sentiment.

      Whatever has been said about European Christianity and Jews, the North American mutations towards multi-denominational tolerance are probably less prevalent in Europe, so the European histories may be less predictive for America.

      Currently, there are some huge questions about how one defines and measures the American right. GOPe is trying to preserve the institution of forever surrendering to the Democrats, which specific item is in isolation a conservative principle. Overturning that institution is a radical goal, in isolation. We have reason to suspect that things have been pushed or drifted to a position of nonlinear instability. Pretty much every nominal conservative is starting to suspect that a mixture of radical and conservative positions may be necessary to shift things to a place where the most critical conservative positions can be preserved. Who am I to say that my basket of positions is correct, and can be used to judge who is truly Right?

      1. “Currently, there are some huge questions about how one defines and measures the American right.”

        Agreed. I find the whole linear political spectrum reductively useless for descriptive purposes. First, you’ve got to differentiate the American from European (and don’t get started on the various Asian flavors), and that just trips up way too many people who should know better. Then no the American side, you’ve got some pretty nonsensical understandings and even categories (the idea of Left libertarianism never ceases to crack me the fark up). THEN you’ve got the ingrained misnomer of “authoritarianism” belonging on the right in American politics pretty much because of the confusion between American and European political spectrums.

        The linear classification is just a shitshow, and to your point, I’m glad to see the Right finally starting to get through the smokescreen its nominal party has been throwing up. If the Republican party in its current form survives the next four years, nothing will kill it.

        2. Sparty at Time Ghost gets all stompy footed when you say Nazism is a leftist philosophy, but his explination basically ignores that his Eurocentric economical/political scale would have many current nations and the E.U. more like Nazis.

      2. Church of Christ, southern incarnation thinks we’re ALL going hockeysticks. Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, all of us. Anyone “who is not a member of the Body of Christ, which is the Church of Christ.” Direct quote from a sermon.
        I didn’t think people like that really existed.
        (I’m told another of their twitches is they will not have instrumental music of any sort in church because musical instruments are not mentioned in the New Testament. Isn’t there at least one heresy that dumped the OT?)

        1. The Oregon flavor was quite similar. From a quick search on Qwant: One site refers to instrumental music as “mechanical music”. Another describes their philosophy thus: “The practice grows out of our desire to reproduce the original church today.” Since instrumental music wasn’t mentioned in the NT, nope.

          I do find the ban a little, er, selective. My first hearing of the instrumental music ban was on a radio sermon from the local church. But radio wasn’t mentioned in the Bible, either.

          My head hurts.

          1. Well, the very early Christians mostly used vocal music/chant, because the synagogues used vocal music. And bells, and a certain amount of liturgical clappers to replace bells during Holy Week.

            And it was considered very iffy for a very long time to use musical instruments that weren’t OT Bible instruments AND that weren’t secular instruments. I mean, eventually pipe organs, various specialized drone instruments including serpents, and so on, and very late you get orchestral instruments.

            The Puritans tended to have a negative feeling about instrumental music in general, as being secular, but they couldn’t use “ancient church tradition” as an argument. Thus the NT thing.

            Anyhoo, the NT mentions pipes, trumpets in Heaven, and the lyres or harps in Heaven (really kinnors). I forget what else. Anyway, Book of Revelation ftw.

  15. Just cruising along, enjoying the column, nodding in agreement, and then – “incarnidine”!!!!!! While the thought is probably spot on, the sheer joy of encountering the word makes up for it nicely. I so pray you’re wrong, Sarah, about that part. The words “civil” and “war” do not belong in the same sentence.

    1. Ha! I see I am not the only logophile here! And I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment that “civil” and “war” do not belong in the same sentence. Unless you’re stating “There is nothing civil about war.”

      1. Yeah, well, civil is often misapplied. Like to our civil servants, who largely are neither civil nor serve!

        2. So it’ll be the first servile war.

          I have an idea who ends up on the crosses, or more likely dangling beneath all the overpasses on electrical wire nooses, along the road leading into DC.

          The left wants to declare half the population as slaves, so they gotta put up with those pesky concomitant issues.

            1. And now I ponder a ‘Motel of the Mysteries’ take should future researchers – in an electricity-ignorant world – discover all those crucifixes along roads, and all that wire… and wondering just what religious purpose all those glass bits served. “You’d think we’d find more bones.”

          2. Sum Spartacus.

            Sunt Spartacus.

            (Yeah, I’ve forgotten almost everything about conjugation and declension.)

        1. He stole from Shakespeare too, probably. Which reminds me of the reported complaint about Shakespeare from a young know-nothing, that Shakespeare is full of clichés 🙂

          3. *shrugs*

            That is the problem with really good, original stuff.

            It gets stolen, and done better, by others– so the stuff that makes it great becomes a cliche.

            That lasts until the cliche rots from lack of understanding– and then it’s amazingly good.

            1. Not always better — I saw a recommendation once that if you liked Wheel of Time, you should try Lord of the Rings.

              1. Thus the part about rotting from lack of understanding what made it great– rather like how when you read Miss Marple, you find out that a lot of the “subversions” were actually in the original, they just didn’t reach Murder, she Wrote.

  16. Normally I wouldn’t even have noticed this mess, except that my friends had all been into the new ST series, and were all very upset.

    ::chuckles::

    Star Wars….

    And honestly, that makes it all the more accurate, to you– there is a new Star Trek, it’s on the list of things for me to watch, but I– the Trekkie of the family– am less into it than the Mandalorian.

      1. Around twenty years ago, I was a Star Wars fanatic.

        I’ve been disenchanted for many years.

        1. About when Lucas decided that he wanted to make movies, so he’d betray the deal that had previously existed about hte books all being cannon?

          Yeah, about when my husband went from full-on fanatic to selective fanatic.

          1. That was Kennedy. Lucas actually honored the books mostly. After Disney wrote Lucas that $4.1b check and he lost any control, KK declared all of them non-cannon so she was free to make Mary-Sue… err, Rey the bestest evah, way better a heroical hero than all those stinky boys, especially that coward quitter wimp that Luke turned out to really be.

            Note this is one reason why the Lucasfilm powers were so hot to fire Carano – she’s a strong woman character and her merch is the hottest thing in The Mando portfolio after baby yoda, but KK has been insisting that SW fans are all misogynistic-hatey-mc-girl-hater-basement-dweller-manboys who cannot handle a strong woman main character – but then Carano’s strong woman character shows up and is hugely popular with SW fandom.

            The rumor folks say multiple inside-the-mouse sources are reporting Disney execs are freaking out, having once again been blindsided by the KK faction inside Lucasfilm leaking about firing Carano – right before the quarterly DIS earnings call.

            I have ordered more poopcorn.

            2. Lucas actually honored the books mostly.

              No, he monday friday did not.

              Seriously. Blanking LOOK at the “prequels” and the books, and say that with a straight face.

              There are interviews when he started going for the new movies, where he was lashing out about how HE had never said they were cannon, and how HE had never agreed to it, and how the unnamed people who had mad the agreements that the books were cannon were not going to bind him.

              I don’t even especially like Star Wars, but in honor of the childhood friends that effectively used the claim that at least their books were cannon– NO.

              This cannot be cast off on others.

              Either Lucas is a lying sack of shit, or he agreed to the books being cannon and then changed his mind and publicly shifted that off on others.

              1. Yeah, I did say mostly, and I certainly won’t die on the hill of defending George Lucas, but KK is the bigger villain in this milieu.

                Lucas deviated from the body of canon whenever he pleased when he was making the three jokes of 1-3, but he did retain all the approved expanded universe as officially canonical. In 2014 KK declared the entire body of the expanded universe as non-canon after the acquisition, with only the movies remaining as canon, as her initiative, so she could more freely make 7-9 and all the promised side story movies.

                Lucas may have only dishonored the expanded universe one chunk at a time, where KK killed it all off at one bold stroke and then proceeded to kill off all the positivity and hope from 4-6. Then years later, after her flops started, she had the absolute gall to lament that the Marvel filmmakers had all this extant canon to draw from while Star Wars had nothing.

                George is not the be-all and end-all film maker that he’s held up to be (say “Jar-Jar”) (and I credit Marcia Lucas with much of the best of 4 and 5, and her absence is very clear in 6), and I was never really an expanded universe fan in the interim, but yeah, I do blame Kathleen Kennedy for individually and consciously making direct efforts to undermine and destroy a major chunk of the popular culture that I grew up with.

                1. Yeah, I did say mostly, and I certainly won’t die on the hill of defending George Lucas, but KK is the bigger villain in this milieu.

                  Since I am not entirely sure my husband would NOT dump me for Mara Jade, I cannot agree.

                  Lukas destroyed her, with a vengeance.

                2. What they needed to do was put Timothy Zahn in charge of making movies 7-9 instead of the Social Justice Warriors Are Us cadre they put in charge.

                    1. Yes. They have a (to me) very strange hierarchy of values. They don’t value the story continuity, the underlying truth of the story, the characters, whether the story connects us to deep and important things. They don’t even seem to value “making money” except as a way of counting coup. They value status, virtue signaling, their ability to imagine themselves superior most other people, and adhering to the positional good of their luxury belief system — socialism/communism. Because only people insulated by power and position from the consequences of those systems could be stupid enough to believe in them just for social position.

                    3. If they’d lived in the 19th century they would have been staunch members of the Temperance Union and taught Sunday School. Dedicated to telling Edifying Stories with a Moral. Because the only purpose of a story is to edify the audience and teach proper behavior.
                      *Sigh.*

                    4. And been better for it, since at the time, inconsistent, changing rules were not the moral fashion.

              1. OMG! This publication reminds me of a magazine that Jim Steranko published in the mid 1970’s. Steranko was an artist for Marvel in (at least) the 1960’s. The magazine published storyboard art from the Star Wars movie before the movie came out. Because of a large painting of Vader vs. Luke my best friend and I went to the movie on day 2 of release. The theater was more than half empty, which word of mouth quickly changed. I am such a nerd…..

            5. “I don’t read that stuff. I haven’t read any of the novels. I don’t know anything about that world. That’s a different world than my world. But I do try to keep it consistent. The way I do it now is they have a Star Wars Encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it up and see if it has already been used. When I said [other people] could make their own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have two universes: My universe and then this other one. They try to make their universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions.” – George Lucas, from an interview in Starlog #337

            6. This pisses me THE FREAK OFF because I literally spent A FREAKIN DECADE in the GEEK WARS going “well, yeah, Star Trek doesn’t have cannon novels, but…..”

              AND THEN THIS MONDAY FRIDAY MONEY GRUBBING SCRUB GOES OH YEAH, I TOTALLY F’IN LIED ABOUT THAT BLEEEP.

              1. This pisses me THE FREAK OFF

                So I gather. Please accept my apologies for connecting that particular circuit.

                As I said above, I will freely yield defense of the hill “George Lucas, super movie storyteller extraordinaire, honored all that expanded universe as canon until he cashed that $4.1billion check”, but I will maintain as my fighting retreat that, unlike KK, GL is not guilty of mass-murder-of-canon.

                1. I just have… a thing… for keeping deals.

                  Not just when I spent most of a decade of geekdom genufelcting to “but yes you guys actually are all CANNON.”

                  …

                2. On closer look, I must disagree with you.

                  LUcas murdered cannon because “I gotta impulse.”

                  Not for something so minor as MONEY.

                  1. Oh, no, I just meant he could no longer fiddle with the stuff on his shelves at whim anymore after selling the store.

                  2. Lucas basically had control of a property that functioned, but obtained that control without having the skill to replicate or understand it.

                    He had some ability at marketing, and part of that marketing was making up a bunch of nonsense about having some grand secret plan. He put himself in a position of forever promising and never delivering, admitting that he could not deliver, or trying and producing crud.

                    The first movie was mashed together with the help of his ex. The second was Leigh Brackett. Third was weaker, but someone kept him in line somehow, and it didn’t seem too terrible.

                    Prequels, that was his way of attempting to dig out of the hole.

                    Selling it to Disney, and putting forward his true apprentice, Kennedy, was a way to get out of the hole, without having it splash on him personally.

                    Kathleen Kennedy is also a hole digger.

                    Would that they would have been mercenary instead.

                    1. KK was a Spielberg acolyte, starting off as a note-taker and coffee-fetcher.

                      I understand George was hard to work with and so had no real business heirs. It is interesting to me that KK, having remora’d to Spielberg and so working for him on the Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park films, ended up not at Amblin but at Lucasfilm. One wonders if Stephen had a little laugh to himself after fobbing her off on George.

                3. As I said above, I will freely yield defense of the hill “George Lucas, super movie storyteller extraordinaire, honored all that expanded universe as canon until he cashed that $4.1billion check”,

                  You’re still wrong.

                  As I demonstrated in links to him well before Darth Mouse even thought about it.

                  He didn’t cash any check at all before doing the cheap kind on the EU.

                  He ditched it before introducing Anakin the Wooden.

                  1. You’ll be pleased to know that in the Star Wars game that I … was running before our kids were born, and plan to pick up again sometime … the original three films are canon, and the Timothy Zahn books (if the characters are successful enough to come to the Emperor’s notice, a certain red-haired Imperial Hand* might be dispatched to deal with the problem), but not the prequels. In fact, if someone brings up the prequels, one of the GM mouthpiece characters will say, “Wait, wait, you don’t actually believe those vids, do you? Can’t you see what obvious Imperial propaganda they are? I mean, come on — Darth freakin’ Vader being a freakin’ virgin birth? What? Not to mention how they portray the Jedi Council as a bunch of bureaucrats with more love for the rules than for individual sapients. And the rules they claim the Council had make no freakin’ sense. Forbidding their Jedi Knights to marry or fall in love? Yeah, right; if they had done that they would have bred Force sensitivity right out of the population.”

                    Seriously, I have a rant. Not all written out and prepared, but maybe I should have it prepared. Because what Lucas did, without realizing it, was portray Palpatine as the good less-bad guy compared to the Jedi Council. He at least only wanted to rule the galaxy, and would have refrained from interfering in people’s individual lives the way the Council did their trainees.

                    * My setting is between the first & second movies. Alderaan has been blown up, but Hoth hasn’t happened yet.

          2. Bought the Revenge of the Sith novel shortly before the movie came, went ‘Hard No.’, and never watched. Got out of the EU with the end of the New Jedi Order story arc in the books. Looked at the books after a little bit, but that mainly confirmed that leaving was correct.

            The purchase by Disney merely failed to draw me back.

            My current position is that both the old EU and the Disney are non-canon. My headcanon is basically that Han and Leia died of old age still married, and that they had six kids. Ben, his OC female twin, Jaina, Jacen, Anakin, and Anakin’s OC female twin, who wasn’t a force sensitive. None of them became Sith, or predeceased Han and Leia. KK’s version is a non-canonical timeline, which is theoretically fixable in Kingdom Hearts if Disney doesn’t simply recognize the non-canonicity.

            What happened with The Mandalorian is only relevant for counting coup against the folks who were saying that it showed that the property owners could be trusted to manage the property. These people are not my enemy, even if they proved incorrect.

        2. It’s a weird thing. I was never a Star Wars fan and sick of hearing about it sometime in 1978 if not in ’77. And yet what has become of it annoys even me. Not that I truly care for it, but *some* did and the messing of it up has destroyed that bit of joy in the world. And the same can be said for all too many other things – the pointless destruction of joy, often in the name of some Great Cause. Admittedly, often it is also simply an unimaginative money-grab. But seemingly endless, systematic grinding away at anything that brings joy… well, a fellow start wondering those suggestion demonic influences just might be onto something. And I wonder if maybe I need more salt…

        3. I absolutely loved Star Wars when it was the only movie of the set. Loved Empire, sort of liked Return of the Jedi (but meh to the Ewoks). I was looking forward to the prequels until I saw Phantom Menace. I’ve watched the other two on 4X fast scan and rskimmed the novelizations, but that was it for the franchise for me.

          I heard that one or two of the followups might possibly be worth a view, but I’m not going to bother.

          On Star Trek, life got in the way halfway through ST-TNG, and I watched the utter wasted opportunity of Enterprise, but nope. I’ve had my fill. (Alien Nazis for the urrrrk!)

          1. Rogue One is a reasonable implantation into the Star Wars universe of The Guns of Navarone or similar ragtag-commando-team-succeeds-against-all-odds story, and it was shot beautifully.

            Just don’t pick too much at any of the various fraying seams – the movie had a lot of reshoots and major story surgery, so the places where they sewed the new and old body parts together can sometimes be visible.

            Engage the ‘high’ setting on your suspension of disbelief module and you’ll enjoy yourself.

            Skip all the rest.

            Especially on Solo, heedeth the monolith’s warning: Make No Attempt At Watching This Movie.

          2. My brother and I stood in line for hours to see the original Star Trek at the theater that it premiered at in 1977 – saw it before I went off to Japan, Love it, extravagantly – and saw the next two sequels as soon as they were available – although I think I watched part 2 on a bootleg copy procured by friends of mine.
            Anyway – I did go and see the follow-on, whatever it was called. Phantom Menace? A princess in an acre of heavy costumes, a glum plot which made no real sense, only one remotely humorous remark in the whole leaden two hours and such… (was it two hours? It seemed like more.) And I dropped the whole cycle after that. Don’t care. Can’t be made to care. It’s dead, along with the 1970s. The decent thing would be to bury it.

      3. Hey! I enjoyed the movie. The Millennium Falcon was nifty.

        Was underwhelmed by the second, and walked out of the theater before the third was done. The stupid, it burned. Never bothered to watch any of the others after that.

        1. I think more visual people loved the special effects. My husband did. But hell, I’d seen better inside my head, and the story couldn’t hold a candle to Heinlein’s SIMPLEST juvenile.

          1. Part of it was time in life, I think. The trilogy happened when I was young enough to enjoy it, and memories of that color it for me. I can see how it would leave others cold, but that wasn’t my experience of it.

            Similarly, my godson loved the prequels, which I think are hot steaming garbage. Pulled from the dumpster behind the strip club. During frat boy spring break. In July.

            But it was one of his first experiences in sci-fi. Other than me reading to him, of course. Kipling, because godad’s rules, before Heinlein.

            Star wars is less sci-fi than space fantasy, though, if we’re picking nits. It’s the hero’s journey with magic swords and wizards in space. I watched it first during my Tolkein binge.

            This was the time period between the golden age of Ace doubles, Astounding, and the like and the internet age before the dot com boom. The rise of indie and amazon saved my interest in sci-fi. Things were getting stale in the new books area, and the spines of my favorites were getting seriously frayed.

            Side note, I was, and am, very picky about my books. I didn’t like creased spines, so I made sure to keep the pages just so. So when I say “frayed spines” I mean hundreds, if not thousands of re-reads.

            Star Wars isn’t on the movie marathon the family has at Christmas, though. That’s the extended versions of LoTR. Lately, I’m trying to start audiobook marathons into the mix. I’m pickier about my sci-fi than fantasy, so there aren’t many sci-fi films that would come close to making the cut so far (well, some anime, but that’s more of a side interest).

            In any case, the time of life one experiences a story can have a lot to do with how a person feels about it. That’s what makes the classics, classic, I think. Game of Thrones, popular as it is today, doesn’t quite have the staying power for generations. not to me, anyway. But The Moon is A Harsh Mistress? Starship Troopers? Have Spaceship, will travel? These transcend time and age well.

            Sometimes a story just feels right at the time you read it. There are plenty I just can’t get into anymore that I loved in my twenties. And teens. Others, I look forward to reading again that I’ve forgotten enough to enjoy at this point in life.

            1. Heroes and villains with swords…well, as Lucas himself admits, Star Wars is essentially a space fantasy remake of Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress. It literally was heroes and villains with swords.

            2. I was thinking about Star Wars (warning: I’ll do my best to avoid wall-o-text, but…)

              Spider Robinson once compared a Critic to a Reviewer. Critic: Is it art? Reviewer: Is it fun? I think that the success of Star Wars came out of its era. In the ’70s, a lot of the culture was newage (rhymes with sewage, or should), and the written SF was following Sturgeon’s law all too well. SF films in the early 70s tended to be pretty dark, with an emphasis on dystopia. Logan’s Run, the various Planet of the Apes, Make Room, Make Room Soylent Green were pretty dystopic. Hell, Lucas’s first film THX1138 fit that slot, with the feelgood part of the better ones being the hero escapes the dystopia.

              Along comes Star Wars. I first learned about it via a radio advert. IMHO, one of the most engaging ads I’ve run across. Not going to try to find it, but it mentioned One boy, a human-cyborg translator, and such. Got my curiosity up. Went to the 12PM show at the biggest theater in San Jose. Huuuuge line. Got tickets for the next show and retired to the decent bookstore across the street (long gone, met Larry and Jerry at a book signing for Footfall years later, snif). Saw the movie and was blown away. Yeah, the F/X was quite good for the era, but IMHO, it was OPTOMISTIC! The dystopia wasn’t so much escaped from, it was medium-well destroyed.

              He stole a perfectly good idea, got major help turning a mess of a plot into a solid movie, and launched a career. As I recall, Empire had Lucas giving the writing job to Leigh Bracket, I think from the beginning. I’m told it’s a better film, and I did like it. Not sure about RotJ, but I gather that the writing on the prequels was all Lucas. And it showed.

              I’m going to discount the hero’s journey and Viet Nam war messaging that Lucas papered over the SW first trilogy. (I think Campbell saw the makings and might have thought Lucas did it intentionally. More likely, he broached it to Lucas, who lied, “Yeah, that’s what I did.”) The anti-war bit? Pull the other one.

              So, for me, Star Wars (the first version: Han shot first!) was a refreshing change from the grimdark movies that preceded it, and it helped bring in a better (at least more fun) bunch of movies. Roger Corman did a credible job stealing from The Seven Samuri The Magnificent Seven for his Battle Beyond the Stars. Johnboy Walton as the hero and Robert Vaughn reprising his TMS role was fun. (Disclaimer: Saw TMS later than Battle, but hey…)

              TL;DR Star Wars came out at a time when more optimistic, yea even fun movies were in short supply. Don’t have to be great art to be influential.

              1. Damn, strike tags not meant to be everywhere.)

                I was thinking about Star Wars (warning: I’ll do my best to avoid wall-o-text, but…)

                Spider Robinson once compared a Critic to a Reviewer. Critic: Is it art? Reviewer: Is it fun? I think that the success of Star Wars came out of its era. In the ’70s, a lot of the culture was newage (rhymes with sewage, or should), and the written SF was following Sturgeon’s law all too well. SF films in the early 70s tended to be pretty dark, with an emphasis on dystopia. Logan’s Run, the various Planet of the Apes, Make Room, Make Room Soylent Green were pretty dystopic. Hell, Lucas’s first film THX1138 fit that slot, with the feelgood part of the better ones being the hero escapes the dystopia.

                Along comes Star Wars. I first learned about it via a radio advert. IMHO, one of the most engaging ads I’ve run across. Not going to try to find it, but it mentioned One boy, a human-cyborg translator, and such. Got my curiosity up. Went to the 12PM show at the biggest theater in San Jose. Huuuuge line. Got tickets for the next show and retired to the decent bookstore across the street (long gone, met Larry and Jerry at a book signing for Footfall years later, sniff). Saw the movie and was blown away. Yeah, the F/X was quite good for the era, but IMHO, it was OPTIMISTIC! The dystopia wasn’t so much escaped from, it was medium-well destroyed.

                He stole a perfectly good idea, got major help turning a mess of a plot into a solid movie, and launched a career. As I recall, Empire had Lucas giving the writing job to Leigh Bracket, I think from the beginning. I’m told it’s a better film, and I did like it. Not sure about RotJ, but I gather that the writing on the prequels was all Lucas. And it showed.

                I’m going to discount the hero’s journey and Viet Nam war messaging that Lucas papered over the SW first trilogy. (I think Campbell saw the makings and might have thought Lucas did it intentionally. More likely, he broached it to Lucas, who lied, “Yeah, that’s what I did.”) The anti-war bit? Pull the other one.

                So, for me, Star Wars (the first version: Han shot first!) was a refreshing change from the grimdark movies that preceded it, and it helped bring in a better (at least more fun) bunch of movies. Roger Corman did a credible job stealing from The Seven Samuri The Magnificent Seven for his Battle Beyond the Stars. Johnboy Walton as the hero and Robert Vaughn reprising his TMS role was fun. (Disclaimer: Saw TMS later than Battle, but hey…)

                TL;DR Star Wars came out at a time when more optimistic, yea even fun movies were in short supply. Don’t have to be great art to be influential.

                WP, please give us an edit function…

                1. Dystopia? Most Leftroids believe Soylent Green had a happy ending. 😛

                  And, The Magnificent Seven is widely acknowledged as a Western remake of The Seven Samurai.

                  The Seven Samurai is LONG, like about 4 1/2 hours, but it holds your attention. Subtitles and all.

          2. Special effects…Episode 8 the Last Jedi… arching fire from an -energy- weapon, being shot from spaceship to spaceship in the depths of SPACE where there’s NO F*CKING GRAVITY…

            In Canada one does not usually hear outbursts from people watching a movie. Love it or hate it, etiquette demands you shut up. I admit when I saw the ballistic curve in a space battle, I groaned out loud. But in my defense, I did hear other people say “are you kidding me?” at the same time.

            Seriously, Lucasfilms. Arching fire? Come on.

            1. The extended shot of the absurdly long spacecraft in Spaceballs had me laughing quietly as the take got longer and longer. I think a bunch of the audience laughed at the bumper sticker: “We brake for nobody”. OTOH, most of it was pretty forgettable, though as usual for Mel Brooks, there were a couple of good one liners and sight gags.

              $SPOUSE and I saw a local theater production of The Producers. Lead balloon for her, though I had liked the movie. OTOH, Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder nailed it. (That theater group did a few years of *very* mild stuff afterwards. I think they got clobbered by the donors.) If I want to watch any more Mel Brooks, I probably should do it on the computer, with headphones. Dammit, I still like “Springtime for Hitler”. (exits, humming.)

              1. Before the folks who run Star Wars removed the forums section from their official fan website, they had a thread called “Things you will never hear in the EU”, which itself included a lengthy continuing bit about “Springtime for Palpatine”, including how it was Han and Lando’s latest great money making scheme, and with people adding to it, including song lyrics.

                  1. But Palpatine was Emperor, not Vader, and thus had the lead role.

                    Other examples of the kind of humor that were in the thread (somehow managed to cut and paste some stuff from all those years ago):

                    At the end of ROTS:

                    Vader: Where is Padme, is she alright?

                    Palpatine: Yes, Lord Vader, she is fine. Although I must say, she is rather upset with you.

                    Vader: It will take some time for her to see through the lies of the Jedi and accept my being a Sith.

                    Palpatine: Oh no, Lord Vader, your wife isn’t upset with you becoming a Sith. She is furious that you were not in the delivery room when she gave birth to your son and daughter. She said something about you being a typical man-doing anything to avoid being in the delivery room.

                    Vader: But, but, I was burned to a cinder and had my legs and an arm chopped off.

                    Palpatine: YOU try explaining that to her.

                    __________________________

                    During the Throne Room scene in ROTJ:

                    Luke to Palpatine: I will never turn to the darkside. The Sith are immoral and evil, and I will not become one.

                    Palpatine to Luke: Says the man who has spent the last 3 years trying to score with his own sister.

                    Vader: WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???

                    Luke: I can explain.

                    Vader: I am waiting-explain.

                    Palpatine: I can’t wait to hear to this.

                    _______________________________
                    Sate Pestage to Emperor Palpatine: Your majesty, murders have increased 50% in the last week since the Empire’s new holonet campaign intended to deter rebel sympathies.

                    Palpatine: I guess the “what would Vader do” theme wasn’t fully thought through.

                    __________________________________

          3. I recall finally seeing SW (the 1977 version) when it aired on TV in the 80’s. The interminable commercials and “Making of” bit that seemed to at least double the length didn’t change that my reaction was “That’s it?” All this time about hearing of a Grand Story and it was, to me, a not so grand version of “knight must rescue princess from dragon… in spaaaaaaaace.”

            1. I think Lucas saw, then took the opportunity to put a shiny coat of Deep Meaning over his fun story. I smell a mouse over the entire effort to elevate it. Yeah, it was a fun movie and it opened the marketplace for more fun movies, but yeah, it’s not Great Aaht with Monumental Momentousness. (totally a word…)

          4. It’s a *movie*. There are very few that can match even a decent short story. “Show, don’t tell” restricts you to only the kinds of stories that are suitable for the screen, and movies typically aim for the widest (lowest) possible market. SF readers – well, what we thought of as SF before it became “woke” – are a very small subset of that market.

            Hey, I liked “Lobster Man from Mars”, too.

            1. I’ve watched (by choice) Plan 9 more than Star Wars (“IV”). And enjoyed it more. Mainly as those around me hadn’t been telling me how Great it was. Yes, that matters. “Hey, you might consider…” is a MUCH better thing than “You GOTTA watch this!” No, I do NOT ‘gotta’. (FWIW, pretty much EVERY ‘gotta’ I tried was used toilet paper when it wasn’t burning used toilet paper).

        2. Oh, hell, I wasn’t going to stick my oar into this subthread, but now a faint memory jiggles. Does anyone remember the original Stars Wars barroom scene where Han Solo or someone else uses a light saber to slice a pugnacious alien in half, from head to … erm, crotch? The dead alien, after a brief pause, falls apart into two oddly bloodless halves with an unintentionally hilarious sound effect that had the audience yukking it up. The next time I saw the movie, that bit had evidently been removed. I never saw it again, leaving me to wonder over the years if I’d simply imagined the whole thing. -_-

          1. “Welcome to the world of regional releases.”

            I don’t know if it’s still being done, but regional releases used to be a thing. Different cuts depending on what they thought their markets were. So, the various theatrical releases, then the “cable TV” release (probably market-differentiated for that, too), then the “broadcast DVD” release, which might be locally edited to cram more commercials in, then the VHS version, then the VHS Director’s Cut, then the DVD cut, which almost always varies slightly from the VHS, and then the DVD Director’s Cut, then the DVD Extended Edition…

            Most people don’t notice, because they can’t sit through an entire movie without channel-hopping, playing with their phone, etc.

            One example: Die Hard. There’s a scene – a *famous* scene, where Bruce Willis is running barefoot over broken glass. It was edited out of the original DVD release. Nobody knows why. Or the ice cream truck scene from some versions of Phantasm. Or… I’ve never found any real rhyme or reason for what they cut,

            1. Ah! Regional releases and A–B audience testing. That makes perfect sense. One can only imagine that this particular barroom scene was simply too slapstick for what the filmmakers wanted to be a relatively serious film with a speckling of sardonic humor. Oh, and I finally remembered — as might have been expected, it was Obi-Wan “Ben” Kenobi who performed the giggle-worthy feat. Han Solo was always the blaster guy. 🙂

              (BTW, trust me on this; that scene and its accompanying cartoon sound effect were hilarious! Die-hard fans would have been talking about it and creating memes from it for centuries to come had it survived the cut.) ^_^

    2. Do not bother with ST-Discovery.

      If you are at all a fan, the first season will have you talking to the screen – “No, vacuum does not work like that. No, rank does not work like that. No, you don’t enter Starfleet from academe by accepting the job of First Officer. No, warp drive does not work like that. No, transporters do not work like that, especially as this is set before ST-TOS timeframe, whee things are really well defined (at one point they beam interstellar distances). No…” on and on and on. And they just can’t avoid hammering the SJW in-your-face-lessons-you-redneck stuff over and over and over. Plus all the lens flare is really annoying.

      I lasted through season 2, where I thought the “Captain Pike” role was cast so well, and the kid playing Spock is fine, but the whole “Spock Accused Of Murder, Held In An insane Asylum” stuff, with magical computers and pure convenience “plot” twists, just got worse and worse, until I canceled my sub and have not watched one single instant of season 3.

      Do not risk exposing yourself to STD.

      1. Picard is the one our Star Wars fan has been up on—based almost entirely on “Look, Riker showed up. I wanna at least see it.”

        1. Prepare for disappointment. Basically doing the “deconstruct that hero dude” thing on Picard, very much in parallel with what they did to Luke.

          1. An interesting-to-me contrast: Apparently Hamill was very much opposed to the assassination of the Luke Skywalker character in Ep 8* which pretty much ended up with him being told to shut up and read his lines, while Sir Patrick was in on the story conferences and provided major input to the storyline of Picard from the very beginning.

            It is odd how some actors made successful by one role grow to loath that character.

            * Reportedly also an issue was the change from what Hamill was told after he first read the Ep 7 script and found he had no lines – the next one would highlight Luke in a positive light and then he’d have a main role in the finale.

            1. Hamill was pretty upset about the whole thing – to the point where he went out of his way to publicly thank the Mandalorian team for Luke’s positive portrayal in season two.

              As for the rumor regarding what Hamill was told – it was quite likely true, particularly since those involved in writing Episode 7 probably also believed that Luke was going to get a positive portrayal in Episode 8.

              1. KK was just reenacting her favorite scene as her favorite character:

                VADER
                He’s all yours, bounty hunter.
                Reset the chamber for Skywalker.

                IMPERIAL OFFICER
                Skywalker has just landed, my lord.

                VADER
                Good. See to it that he finds his way here.
                Calrissian, take the princess and the Wookiee to my ship.

                LANDO
                You said they’d be left in the city under my supervision!

                VADER
                I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.

            2. It is odd how some actors made successful by one role grow to loath that character.

              I appreciated the bit in Galaxy Quest where Alan Rickman was heartily sick of being known for one line, then grew to accept it, to the point of delivering his line with utmost sincerity to comfort a dying comrade. (And carrying through on his promise).

              But I do understand why actors would want to branch out and not be stuck in a single role. Thing is, Stewart did branch out, quite successfully. He had no valid reason to loathe the character.

              1. I always got the impression that he thought the role was beneath him. So of course it would irritate him that he’s best known for it.

                1. The sentence I left out of my comment, but should have included, is “I bet the reason he loathes the character boils down to oikophobia, which isn’t a valid reason”. Though “oikophobia” isn’t quite the right word after all; it’s more like class warfare. Thinking a role is “beneath” you as an actor is essentially saying that only “high-class” acting like Shakespeare matters. But the kinds of things that the Great Unwashed proles like? That’s “low-class” and not worthy of a Great Actor Like Myself™.

                  An actor who complains that his role doesn’t give him a chance to express his full range, like Rickman’s character in Galaxy Quest? I can sympathize. An actor who things a role is “beneath” him? He’s getting delusions of grandeur.

                  2. That was how Sisko went wrong in DS9. Avery Brooks, to paraphrase, wanted the character to be, well, godlike. And threw a fit til he got his way. (Or, perhaps why I’d never liked the character, and liked him less as things progressed.)

                  4. That’s one of the things that can make British TV entertaining. (Bearing in mind, I’m not seeing the more recent wokespew from the BBC). You get actors who play TV, stage (Shakespeare, even) and movies, and the better ones put the same quality into the mundane characters as those from The Bard.

                    Dennis Waterman comes to mind. IIRC, he started out playing Shakespeare, and eventually played the cockney detective on New Tricks. (And in one episode, they riffed on his playing Shakespeare as a youth.)

                    1. I liked the Christmas Carol where he played Scrooge, as I recall.

                      And this one is quite good:

      2. Do not risk exposing yourself to STD.

        —
        ST-Discovery … Too late. OTOH only season #1. Never took it as a prequel. I’ve always taken it as an STAH (alternative history). Especially in light of how integrated the Discovery Crew is already and commitment to the “Prime Directive”. Especially the speech at the end of season #1.

        In STE (-Enterprise) which was a prequel, where Earth isn’t as inline with the Federation regarding the Prime Directive, as their “on loan Vulcan Science Officer” keeps repeating. Which explains some of the science discrepancies. Especially since Discovery doesn’t use warp. Transporters? Eh. Who is to say how transporters work or don’t. Not like we have any to compare to. The other. While ST-original discusses a prior Klingon-Federation war, nothing is hinted that the Federation was all but wiped out. Where as ST-discovery …

        Regarding Academy to First Officer in season 1 pilot … Need to watch again. But not how I took it. I took her rise as … Vulcan *raised, Vulcan Science Academy, Joined Star Fleet, background, then sometime later, after working way up, posted to First Officer on the Shenzhou. We know how Burnham ends up as Specialist from First Officer, then regains rank. The latter is essentially season #1 over arch. (*While Sarek is mentioned as having raised Bernham from an orphan, notably Spock is not mentioned. Guess Sarak could have raised Burnham during the Spock estrangement period, but, nothing. Nada.)

        Haven’t seen season #2 yet. We don’t have CBS Access+ (whatever they are calling it); won’t pay for it. So recording regular CBS, regular season; or if Peacock or Netflex gets it in bulk. Just got teaser regarding Enterprise and Captain Pike for season 2. Also, season 3 has Discovery jumping way far into the future where humans and earth have 100% withdrawn from the Federation, which are all the previews, and FB spoilers hints are all about. Regular Discovery Time-Line? Or another Alternative Timeline for another oops. IDK and won’t for, what two years?

        Plot. Can I get into it all and like the characters … so far … Yes. Who is married to whom or not? Who cares? It is a bit upsetting that they have to show the same gender couple as married, and don’t offset with another non-same gender couple as married, if one thinks about it. Not the focus. But, still. Why was the doctor killed? Was because he was good at his job … no other reason. (If prequel should they have been on the same ship, or is the ship Discovery special … given the plot twist. Yes, special ship.)

        1. Vulcan Science Academy, Joined Star Fleet, background, then sometime later, after working way up, posted to First Officer on the Shenzhou.

          I recall a scene where Mikey Spock is basically handed off by Sarek from her Vulcan Science Academy final examination board directly to the CO of the Shenzhou, arriving in Vulcan academic robes, all nonemotional ( which with that actress is one of her two acting states – blank or screamy – so that was probably the better choice). And Mikey has a speech later along the lines of “…when I joined Starfleet to take the job of first officer I was so proud” – basically like it’s a startup and they hire young kids to be EVPs if their pop’s VC firm invests enough money.

          I had the same problem with the first JJAbrams Trek ending – They end up giving a fleet heavy cruiser as a command, and the rank of four-stripe Captain, to a kid who just (sort of) graduated from the academy, which kid, no matter how smart and brave and photogenic he was in the recent crisis, would in any sane universe be an Ensign reporting aboard his first ship in order to try and be straightened out by his division PO.

          But no, this is Silicon-Valley-startup-company Starfleet, where the new kid can be the CEO!

          STD had a bunch of other stuff in season 1 that made it clear the writing room did not have even the tiniest fraction of the first clue how all this rank and chain of command stuff worked at all.

          I said at the time it was somebody else’s science fiction show with all the Trek stuff pasted over the top, kind of like the Starship Troopers movie was a completely different story about kids growing up in Nazi-occupied Europe with the RAH names and bugs and such pasted overtop.

          If the STD team wanted to do a different SF space show, they should have done so and not corrupted Trek.

          1. There’s a guy named Major Grin who keeps posting videos that show all the better shows that get ripped off by STD. Apparently somebody showed the guy Babylon 5, and now he’s done several videos about them ripping off B5 also.

            1. DS9 utterly ripped off Babylon 5, to the point they hadn’t bothered to file off the serial numbers.

              2. Joe Straczynski has written that he pitched a Trek station show where multiple species interacted that would be darker and feature multi-show story arcs to Paramount and they told him ‘thanks not interested’, then Paramount developed DS9, a station show where multiple species interacted that was darker and featured multi-show story arcs.

                Totes coincidental, of course.

          2. I had the same problem with the first JJAbrams Trek ending – They end up giving a fleet heavy cruiser as a command, and the rank of four-stripe Captain, to a kid who just (sort of) graduated from the academy, which kid, no matter how smart and brave and photogenic he was in the recent crisis, would in any sane universe be an Ensign reporting aboard his first ship in order to try and be straightened out by his division PO.

            So much this. Kid barely graduating from Academy, even after spectacular feat of arms as portrayed, would have been given a medal and put on watch as sanitation systems engineering officer on a fleet starship. If given command of *anything*, it would have been something along the lines of, say, a garbage scow. See Horatio Hornblower’s first command.

            1. I could maybe see JJ Kirk getting command of the equivalent of a PT boat, as long as there was a very experienced enlisted “chief” there to ride herd.

              As it was the whole dang Big-E command staff in that closing scene all had just graduated from the academy. They didn’t even have an experienced helmsman.

              1. Oops, I forgot Spock – who should have been Science Officer aboard Enterprise under Pike, with Number one as First Officer, instead of running the Kobayashi Maru sim at the academy.

              2. A PT-boat equivalent with hot-rod engines and a “bad luck” reputation. Starfleet assigns JJ Kirk to command with a crew of shiny new academy grads under the Napoleonic policy of asking “Are they lucky?” If Kirk and his crew survive, they’re lucky and Starfleet can use them. If not, they officially die as heroes and again Starfleet is left better off.

                Doc Smith did something similar in the Lensmen series at the start of Galactic Patrol, but he knew enough to supply a handwave and a lampshade. Hollywood didn’t realize any need for that handwave and lampshade.

        2. ST Enterprise was frustrating, though I strongly suspect that the thing I liked about the show could have bored half the potential audience to death. To me, it was fun seeing how the various bits of Treknology were developed, with one episode featuring a glitch in the transporter, and the FTL ships going from a max of Warp factor 1 to 5, if memory serves. The best analogy was that they used the idea of Heinlein’s Future History as a guide.

          I recall some bitching that the Enterprise wasn’t the baddest ship in the galaxy, but to this engineer’s mind, that was the fun. I think they went off the rails when the Xindi story arc started, and jumped the space-shark with the alien nazis. I watched it through the end, but wasn’t interested in finding DVD copies of DS9 or Voyager after that.

          1. Agreed. Aside from the stupid song, the first couple seasons were mostly fine and getting better. The time traveler stuff and then the Xindi thing drove me to stop watching. Instead of the Xindi quest, they should have just done the Romulan War, which is right frelling there in the canon timeline, but absent completely from the show.

      3. well, i didn’t make it through the pilot, where i was grumbling at the TV

        1. “Funny, Spock never ever ever mentioned having an adopted human sister that would be roughly Kirk’s age”

        2: “I don’t know what those are, but those aren’t Klingons”

        3. “No, Klingons wouldn’t collect up the bodies to prepare them for entombment, they believe the bodies are empty shells”

        yeahhhh, that was enough for me

        1. Yeah, I didn’t mention the things they called Klingons.

          To quote Worf, “We don’t discuss it with outsiders.”

          According to the rumors, the licensing from the IP holders at one side of the pre-remerged viacomcbs over to the side that was doing STD had requirements that some percentage of their Trek be some major fraction visually different, which explains why they did not just use established designs for bloody anything.

          On one bright note in all this, in looking up Worf’s quote I ran across this:

          https://screenrant.com/star-treks-worf-actor-pitches-his-klingon-tv-show-idea/

  17. “Yeah, only innocents who don’t realize what life is like in a completely taken-over industry would think this is surprising. All power to the lady, but I’m sure she knew what would hit her for stepping out of line.”

    Good point.

    I know a few people who work or worked in the movie and TV industry and they all tell me the same thing: Hollywood has gone completely Dark Side. Gina Carano had to know this but she, apparently, did not appreciate the sheer depth of the evil she is/was embedded in. She seemed to think that logic and reason still mean something to a Sith. (I can be such a nerd sometimes)

    That kind of evil can only be destroyed. It cannot be placated for long nor can it assuaged by any currency except death. It is like the killing machine in the Terminator movie. We all know the quote.

    As someone noted elsewhere, this only ends when one side eliminates the other. On the bright side, any sane observer sees they clearly the aggressors making any resistance to them is self-defense. They won’t see it that way but they are functionally insane.

    On the bright side, we are Americans. The merely difficult we do quickly; the impossible just takes us bit longer.

            1. Writing team I once knew online wrote a few stories that got in the comic book version of Animaniacs. One, “Swappin’ Sibs”, where they parodied a Hello Kitty-oid they said they sold to the then-editor with just the line, “I have no mouth and I must scream!!” (Communicated by sign) And that was due to a bit about the Donner party…

    2. It might be like me around 2010 Gina just BROKE. At some point you get tired of watching your every word, your mind rebels at not saying anything about the evil around you, and you snap.
      You blacklist yourself.
      Or, in the word of Kit Marlowe (before being murdered) “To tell the truth, just once, would be worth it, even if one had to die for it.” (Salutes the confused and mildly insane playwright. I get it.)

        1. Some people (including, if I recall correctly, our esteemed hostess, and also including me) have been predicting for some time that Hollywood would soon fall to the same forces that are dooming publishing. (Not “have doomed” publishing, because they’re not dead yet, just heading in that direction). Specifically, the fact that video cameras are cheap now, there’s free software that can edit a movie, and halfway-decent special effects are also within reach of an amateur’s budget thanks to software like Blender. Hollywood-level special effects, which take a team of professionals a year or more to pull together, might still be out of reach, but 80’s-level special effects are perfectly achievable these days for anyone who can afford to buy a decent computer. Which means that soon Hollywood will be competing with amateur movies… and losing, because the amateur filmmakers, at least many of them, are going to care more about telling a quality story than about shoving a political message in their viewers’ faces. And that will suck money out of Hollywood and distribute it among the amateur filmmakers instead.

          And Hollywood, naturally, isn’t going to see it coming.

          1. yes, including me. BUT also, guys, seriously, DAZ 3D is ….. maybe 5 years from “animated” movies that I and maybe a helper can kit-bash. After we move, I’m going to make time to REALLY learn.

              1. It’s only going to get easier.
                Right now you can buy basically “animation sequences” as part of the Daz models. So “Character runs” is a script, encoded, you don’t have to do it.
                As I said, five years from it being easy for me to assemble an animated movie in a month or so.
                Probably ten years from “I’m not sure if that’s CGI or real actors.”

            2. A Japanese company called Hololive is doing interesting things with ‘vtubers’, virtual celebrities created by turning a human performer into an animated figure using, among other things, a piece of software called live2D.

              Hololive is current recruiting another group of english focused entertainers.

              Hololive has ‘no politics’ restrictions, but the software looks like it might be licensable for private persons.

              One of the mad projects I’ve hopped into at the spur of the moment is some basic design on a character I could use.

          2. All of the video codecs, the software built into the camera to compress the video down to manageable size, come with a ‘no commercial use’ clause in the license. If you make a movie using just about any available video camera, you can’t legally distribute it. The software license that allows for commercial use costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

            And thus they keep all those scruffy independent filmmakers out of their Holy Temple.
            ———————————
            Lennier: “I see they taught you well back home.”
            Marcus: “My teachers said I had a lot of repressed anger.”
            Lennier: [looks at seedy bar full of unconscious lowlifes] “And?”
            Marcus: “It’s not repressed any more.”

            1. Not the WebM/VP8 codecs. As far as I can tell (not being a lawyer), there’s a fee to make a hardware player that can decode it (something like 20 cents per unit, barely noticeable in the price of a TV), but there’s no restrictions on selling content encoded in that format.

              If you know otherwise, please let me know that I’m wrong, and send me the link; I’d love to know otherwise.

      2. As I heard it said once, or saw it in print perhaps: A survivor of socialist/communist Eastern Europe, upon reaching asylum in the United States. Having survived Nazis and Stalinists, he just wanted to call things by their true names again, he said.

        I believe we can all understand that wish today. Sadly.

    3. I know a few people who work or worked in the movie and TV industry and they all tell me the same thing: Hollywood has gone completely Dark Side. Gina Carano had to know this but she, apparently, did not appreciate the sheer depth of the evil she is/was embedded in.

      Presuming on basically nothing but impressions from known-edited media and being a gal of a similar age– I think she knew full well what she was getting into.

      And decided that it. Was. Not. Worth. It.

      She submits, she’s got maybe five years of being the somewhat-attractive F***-toy for bit parts.

      She holds to what is true, either they decided not to kill the golden goose, or they do it publicly.

      1. > “Presuming on basically nothing but impressions from known-edited media and being a gal of a similar age– I think she knew full well what she was getting into.”

        I do not follow the lives of actors. I may occassionally see an article while looking for something else and read it but, usually, I just pass on by that bunny trail. For the most part, beyond a live boy or a dead girl, I don’t want to know about their lives.

        So, yeah, it is certainly possible I underestimated her.

        Frankly, if your version turns out to be true, I will have more respect for her.

        > “She holds to what is true, either they decided not to kill the golden goose, or they do it publicly.”

        There is that. I think the Mandalorian is/was popular for reasons the typical Leftoid will never understand. Things like family, honor, and integrity are anathema to Leftist goals. The show can be a little silly at times and the physics often sucks but it is still well beyond the comprehension of the typical kumquat.

        I predict that, if Disney lets the SJWs have their way and take away from the show the virtues Dhjarin embodies, they will lose a lot of the fan base.

    4. Gina Carano’s been drawing fire for a while now. It started when she refused to put her pronouns on her Twitter bio. Her response to that uproar that caused was to post a picture of a Nazi rally, circle the one guy in the crowd who wasn’t saluting, and write, “Be that guy.”

      The progs have kept pushing to have her fired from The Mandalorian, but for a while it looked like the people running the show would keep her on. As of a couple of days ago, that’s no longer the case.

      So she had to know she was risking trouble when this started, though she might have believed that she’d made it into the clear.

      2. Gina Carano’s been drawing fire for a while now

        *mildly confused*

        Of course she has.

        It’s generic Soyboy vs The Rock.

        In her acting, she moves like violence is an option– but she won’t be able to muscle through it.

        She knows how to do The Thing, but won’t manage it by being stronger, but by knowing what to do with what she has.

        She’s very nice to look at, even for women; she’s reasonably polite and well-spoken; she’s strong, but not brutal– all she’d have to do is have a batch of kids with the same guy who she’d been married to before their conception to make her satanic to the twerps.

        1. All I know of her is mostly that the left hates her, and a few things she’s posted on Twatter that got linked on AoS. For those things, I respect her. She seems a good one. I think she’ll not be broken by this.

          1. *takes a look at the lady* Unless absolutely every dude around her is broken beyond sanity, I think she’ll be OK.

            Seriously, dang, I *WISH* I looked so awesome as she does, and I trust that there’s at least one real dude in her circles.

            1. *raises eyebrow*

              Attractive women, as a rule, tend to draw a greater number of men. Mathematically, I’d call it a greater portion of the total number of heterosexual males that have passed puberty. Based on what little I know of her, I’d say she has little (if any) patience for fools.

              Based on that, I’d say she’s fine. *chuckle* I can appreciate she’s attractive. What I appreciate *more* is that she’s got a good strong will. Any man worth his salt wants that in a mate. Sex is great and all. But when you’re looking for a *partner,* well… You want someone solid at your side.

              With that sort of character, you can build a life. Not just a fling. Good relationships need that sort of thing on both parts, not just one. Only a fool desires a weak mate.

              1. Devil’s advocate, circular reasoning; attractive woman is defined as one who attracts.

                As one who has been assured she is at least cute, yet could not get a date until they thought she was f****-fodder– the pool of those interacting matters.

                If she has little to no patience for fools, then God bless her and keep her that I may point my daughters to her as an example.

                I, too, hope she finds a true partner.

                1. Chalk that up to local environment and the idiocy of the common male. Some men are cowards when it comes to women, and some are sleazebags. I will guaran-danged-tee you she is lusted after by even those who despise her politics.

                  Who knows? She may have just been looking in the wrong places. It’s not just geeks that have trouble with modern courtship (and the lack of clear signals in the area is particularly irksome).

                  Given how many women these days have been seduced by politics inimical to common sense (let alone what’s good for women and little girls), she *does* stand out. Good on her for that, I say! I wouldn’t give it long before there are good men seeking her out.

                  And I agree. The more good people partnering up, the better. *grin*

                  1. Whoof, given that even I notice she’s gorgeous?

                    YEah, my main thing is going “dang, can she find a decent dude??”‘

                    Hm…. is Loki guy still single….. #yenta

                    1. Apparently he is keeping his love life quiet lately…

                      …

                      …Reading that he played Hank Williams is boggling me. I bet that’s like listening to Christopher Lee sing country. I think I vaguely recall having this reaction a few years ago, too.

      3. Nah, has all the feel of her just not giving a F@(k about what they think. Besides, they had to lie about what she was saying and implying to get rid of her, she might be surprised it was this, but she likely knew they’d eventually toss her for reasons.

      4. After the pronoun thing, her fans were *hers*, not her character’s. All the dross was weeded out.

        They’ll follow her to wherever she goes next. And likely they’ll be sour on the Devil Mouse too.

    5. don’t know if me being semi-open about my politics to friends in the biz killed my career or not

      frankly, am several years past caring, either

  18. Reblogged this on Head Noises and commented:
    She’s right.

    The only way to interpret what Miss Carano said as anti-Semitic is if you say that what was done to the Jews was wrong, but that doing it to those with different political views is right.

    To elaborate on this slightly– that would mean that what the Nazis did to the Jews was sometimes right. Because some Jews would have the political views that made their treatment in such a manner an acceptable action.

    1. “No bad tactics, only bad targets.” IOW?

      I guess that’s what set them off: The progs don’t like their true selves being pointed out so publicly.

  19. I just now thought of something.

    The lady in the picture has been stripped.

    She’s running for her health, if not her life.

    ….and the photographer just took the picture.

    How, exactly, are the hordes of hold-up-a-cellphone folks so horrible, when we literally only know of this because some guy with a dedicated camera did the same thing?

    3. It occurs to me that one could ask how the picture Carano posted is any different than the famous picture of a little South Vietnamese girl who was hurt in a napalm bombing gone astray?

      1. Really want to tick the left off-show all those pictures of Fidel and Che putting people up against trees so they can be executed.

  20. Anybody want to start collecting pictures of folks like the poor lady, and putting them next to folks like the guy beaten in the street for selling Trump gear, or the black guy who lost teeth because he organized a Trump rally while the wrong race, or the Mexican ancestry guy who’s a white extremist for opposing the left, or…..

      3. I know it made the local radio news here, because I heard it (and it is rare for me to hear or see any news, local or otherwise), but otherwise all I saw on it was questions on why it wasn’t on the news anywhere.

      1. Well, Sunday is VD.

        It was amusing and depressing that that abbreviation, used that way, UNironically, was a thing (so much *I* noticed) for some a few years back.

    2. I fixed. I actually knew the difference. I’ll confess my friends reviews had me considering watching this, even though I never got into Star Wars, even when SF on the screen was scarce. There was too much seventies lefty bs in it. And I found the pacing slow.

      1. I think The Mandalorian is worth your time.

        The writing and direction are quite good, the post production stuff (editing, music, effects) is really top-notch, and the acting stands up as well. It’s clearly made by people who like the material and want to deliver value, and they also clearly do not hate Star Wars fans – there are nods and references back to the best of the originals throughout, but if you don’t get them they don’t matter.

        The second season ep (Chapter 13: The Jedi) shot as a Kurosawa samurai movie is visually just stunning.

        If you don’t know Star Wars it plays as a fine self-contained space western, and if you are a fan it’s real Star Wars.

        1. > “If you don’t know Star Wars it plays as a fine self-contained space western, and if you are a fan it’s real Star Wars.”

          That is why I like it. It is Star Wars as it can be but rarely is.

          OTOH, my wife was immediately captivated by Baby Yoda. So much so her last birthday gift was a Baby Yoda doll.

  22. The Nazis philosophy wasn’t all that different. Sure. there was a racial component, but opposing them was a sign you’d been corrupted by “foreign” or “Jewish” ideas.

    Sorry to link myself, but in support, from history:
    Also before he was Pope, helped draft an encyclical on “the Church and the German Reich” that resulted in the Nazis calling Pope Pius XI “half-Jewish” and then-Cardinal Pacelli “all-Jewish.”

    Links to both at my post

    For folks who aren’t up on Pope stuff (me, included) the then-Cardinal who became XII is the kinda skinny, balding guy with big glasses that is declared to be “Hitler’s Pope,” XI is the middling-heavy guy with smaller glasses that folks are pissed off about because of Mussolini.

    I would totally believe that some of the pictures used for one were actually the other, too.

  23. It seems that Disney is getting their noses rubbed in just how bad they fucked up. They might even consider trying to correct their mistake.

    As I said yesterday, if they do try to un-fire Gina I hope she shows them both middle fingers.
    ———————————
    Count Vordarian: “What? You’re a Betan! You can’t do—“

    2. Rumor has it this was a KK-faction Lucasfilm leak, with support of an SJW faction inside The House of The Mouse, but was not approved or blessed corporately, especially as it dropped prior to the DIS quarterly earnings call where DIS Execs can be asked about it.

    5. I’m wondering to what degree some of this isn’t just an attempt to distract from the stories coming out about about Joss Whedon. Charisma Carpenter, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Eliza Dushku, Michelle Trachtenberg, Amber Benson and Emma Caulfield all rap Whedon?

      Even Jason Momoa says he was an abusive ass on the JLA set?

      Sure, he’s off the Marvel films now, but what is the statute of limitations on such behaviour and what is the liability of Marvel’s owner: Disney?
      ~

  24. So the short version is that they believe their political opponents (who they hate) are Nazis. So the left is furious because to their eyes she wrote that hating Nazis for being Nazis is the same thing as hating Jews for being Jews… When she really just said to stop hating peoples you disagree with.

      1. So the vampires have it easier, with that not-reflecting thing.
        But demons are forced to see themselves in the mirrors – and they do NOT like it.

        Hrmm… maybe I do need more salt.

  25. Iirc, Von Clausewitz said that war must be horrible and that any effort to make it less so is counter productive and evil.

      1. And he was a man who knew it more than most. He’s the most famous source of the quote “War is hell.”

  26. I agree with parabarbarian: “That kind of evil can only be destroyed. It cannot be placated for long nor can it assuaged by any currency except death.”

    It doesn’t matter why socialists believe what they believe because they will never be logicked out of their beliefs. Socialist/communist states (to me, they’re the same thing) don’t care about anything but keeping a tight grip on power. Nothing happening around them matters unless it affects how safe they themselves feel. That’s their only concern. Communist states do not fall when their countries are in ruins. There are current examples of this — North Korea, South Africa, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, etc. They only fall when their politicians are forced out of power violently. Their citizens’ way of life may be dismal, but that’s inconsequential to the government as long as the politicians do not fear for their lives.

    2. Everything the Democrats are doing shows that they ARE in fear for their lives. Their unhinged paranoia has led them to transform Washington into East Berlin, put up metal detectors so that Republican Representatives can’t shoot them on the House floor, and see violent White Supremacists lurking behind every blade of grass.

      They stole the election. They know they stole it. They know we know. And they are terrified, because they know what they would do if we stole an election from one of their Fearless Leaders. (Queen Hillary doesn’t count. They know Trump won, they just can’t admit it)

      If we really were as violent and deranged as they pretend, there would already be corpses piled a dozen deep in the halls of Congress, and decorating tens of thousands of lamp-posts. The few survivors would be scurrying like rats to avoid the hunting parties.

      They do not understand. Trump is not our Messiah. He’s just the guy we elected to do the job of President. A lot of folks voted for Trump just as a big ‘UP YOURS!’ to the Washington elitists. We were (mostly) pleasantly surprised by the job he wound up doing, so we voted for him again.
      ———————————
      Nobody has so little that some asshole doesn’t want to take it. And the government is full of assholes.

        1. Yep – if they really got that many votes for President, they would not be acting like this, so QED, they did not.

      3. Everything the Democrats are doing shows that they ARE in fear for their lives.

        Yes.

        Because they have screamed, for years now, that our speech is violence.

        So the existence of disagreement is a threat to their very lives.

        You can see this at places like this religious magazine talking about the effects of masks, where commenters talk about how unmasked folks are killing them.

      4. > They do not understand. Trump is not our Messiah.

        Their world is an hierarchy; they stomp the fingers of those below while sucking up to those above. Their entire mindset, their place in society, the way they see themselves – it’s all pecking order and monkey dominance patterns. They don’t understand you. They *can’t* You walk and talk and superficially do the right things, but you keep tripping their buttons because you don’t fall into their pattern. You’re the pink monkey, you *must* be attacked.

      5. The people alleging that people who voted for Trump did so because of a cult of personality around him are the people who are putting up monuments to Harris less than a month after she was installed in office and whose media arm treated Obama “as if he were some kind of god” (Chris Matthews of NBC quote).

    3. Not always violently. Often, yes, but not always. Poland and East Germany come to mind.

      But it does require the people to decide that the loyalty of the state’s enforcement apparatus can no longer be assured.

      Except for Mongolia. I’m not sure what exactly happened there, but the Communists essentially decided that since the Eastern Bloc was collapsing, they’d hold a free and fair democratic election. And then they honored the results.

      1. I think, culturally Mongolia thinks in long terms (like China) but with a touch of realism (unlike China), and was just going along to get along. When the collapses started, I think they saw it as a way to go back to being Mongolia as Mongolia, and how it happened was not as major a concern.

  27. “The left believes the Jews were innocent. (This is correct, btw.) That what happened to them was shameful and terrible, and a dishonor on those who attacked them.
    BUT they also believe it’s an insult to compare them to the people the left hates FOR THEIR POLITICAL VIEWS.”

    Ah, see that? Now I get it.

    When I first saw this thing, I looked up what Carano said and wondered what form of head/ass inversion was required to get “antisemitic” out of it, or if they were just lying. “The Jews were innocent! How dare you compare them to CONSERVATIVES!!!11! Those people love GUNS!!! They deserve to DIEEEEEEEE!!!!!!1111!!!!111!!11! etc.”

    This is one of your great skills, Sarah. Translating bug-f*-crazy into English so we can understand the depravity.

    But I suspect this is more credit than they deserve. My thought is that Carano wouldn’t put out for somebody important, she had the muscle to tell him “NO!” in a way that left permanent marks, and they were looking for an excuse to turf her. Because that’s how they roll, in Hollywood.

    The shirtstorm itself, that you called perfectly. ~:D

    1. Maybe. Diktor Von Doomcock claims that some at Lucasfilm hated her for being popular with the fans, and therefore showing their excuse for dismal Rae and Rose fan popularity of “the traditional fans hate strong women” to be the lie that it is.

      1. Maybe it’s because the Leftroid caricature of a Strong Woman expends so much effort on Being Strong Woman, All The Time that they come off as insecure and overcompensating. Also intensely annoying.

        2. This. I’ve gotten so tired of the “feisty chick” thing. I found Gina in that role *believable* as a physically strong and competent woman, actually capable of doing reasonably well in a fight with men. The 110 pound women they have defeating 100 pound men right and left in the stupid feisty chick movies just irritate me. Takes a pretty big effort to do the suspension of disbelief thing.

          2. Carano actually -is- physically strong and well trained in martial arts. You can tell by the way she moves. Joke is she was hired as a way to scold the rest of us for liking Elizabeth Olsen-sized women.

            But even Carano will have trouble with a 200lb man. That’s the truth of the matter. The man, even just an average dude, will be -much- stronger than her. You can’t beat sexual dimorphism with training.

              1. People who should *know* better, who have theoretically been trained in unarmed combat, often keep the schoolyard mentality… ratchet things up a step at a time, expecting their opponent to do the same, until one of them give up or runs away.

                The longer a fight lasts, the more likely something bad can happen to you. No speeches, no scuffing the dirt, no testing each other’s defenses… just attack. If you win you avoided potential loss, and if you lose, well, at least you got to inflict some damage first.

                The Kzinti thing about “you scream and then you leap?” Screw the “scream” part, there’s no need to give your opponent advance warning. Move straight to “leap.” Put your boot on his chest and yodel afterward if that’s your thing, but that’s *afterward*.

                1. “…ratchet things up a step at a time, expecting their opponent to do the same, until one of them give up or runs away.”

                  Oh yeah, the friggin’ monkey dance. I’ve seen that sh1t a million times in bars all over Ontario. I always love the look of surprise when you skip the dance and hit them with a chair. That’s a beautiful thing. Chair to the face, then out the back door. Whoosh!

              2. Women fight all out, from the get go, holding nothing back. Because women are, no disrespect, physically weaker in general. Weaker guys do that, too. For the guy, even the stronger guy, it can be… disconcerting trying to subdue someone who is quite literally willing to wreck your face.

                Guys don’t generally fight like that. When we learn to fight, most of us, we learn early on that Bad Things can happen when you go all out. So a physical fight starts with less than maximum force. As long as its just a fight.

                A man that is intent on killing you is another thing entirely. A man that gives no sh!ts if he dies as long as he takes you with him is a scary thing. Woman, too. And yes, a knife helps. Prefer a gun, and best of all a long gun. I like the AR-15 pattern sem-auto shotguns. *grin* The AK style is quite reliable, too.

            2. This. My daughter, while in the Marines, was often paired for hand-to-hand bouts with a guy who matched her exactly for size and weight. She said that it was all that she could do to come even in a match. And she was tall and strong, and well-trained … for a woman.
              And that brings me back to the memory of my brother and I, and one of his friends, at the age about thirteen or so … “wrasseling” out on the lawn in back of our house then. I had the height and weight on PJ’s friend Wayne, but he was a wiry little sucker. I could pin his shoulders to the ground in most matches. But I really had to work at it it.
              Mom came out the back door, watched us doing this … wanted to say something. But didn’t. And walked back inside again.

          3. I need to write a post about what strong women ACTUALLY are, and why the left hates them.
            Their idea of what a strong woman is is PHYSICAL. Also stupid. As an indoctrinated former-childhood-friend told my 300 pound son “I’m 90 pounds of get back.”
            Son “If I wanted to hurt you, it wouldn’t take more than a tiny push, you’d in fact get back a long way. Stop being stupid.”

            1. I look forward to it. I grew up with strong women in the household. Not a one of ’em was anywhere near the pantywaste the left thinks a “strong woman” is or should be.

            2. When I think of strong women I think of my mother and grandmother neither of whom is the least bit physically imposing. Heck, Grandma is almost 98 and rather frail what she has is moral authority.

          1. When I write female characters, I don’t bother trying to make them strong. Their strength will either emerge naturally or else it won’t. I am willing to sometimes be unrealistic about their fighting ability for the same reasons I’m unrealistic about characters who are able to sling magic about. Even if not realistic, the “female warrior” character-type has been popular for a loooong time.

            There’s also this rant from Patricia Wrede: Why this question annoys me

      2. Probably alot of the soybois at Lucasfilm hated her for having arms the size of their legs, and the ability to put a serious hurt on them if their lilly-white hands wandered. I haven’t seen much of the Mandalorian (because it’s boring, IMHO, a Lefty western with space ships) but I did see an episode with Carano in it. And I thought “Finally, a woman who looks like it would hurt if she punched you in the face.”

        Probably hired as a scolding on us knuckledragger males for the “body positivity” crowd, they accidentally cast a woman the right size and shape to be a gunfighter. Because I’m sorry, sylphlike females like Angelina Jolie, while fabulous to look at, can’t hit with those cute little arms. (And they can’t shoot a .45 for long, because they’ll get inflammatory issues in their hands, wrists and elbows from the recoil. Small bones have small surface area on the contact points, meaning constant shock loading will inflame the joints and lead to calcification. Too bad, Hollywood.)

        Carano moves like a fighter, not a dancer. She can probably dance too, but her training is martial arts. She settles her weight like a fighter, you watch for 30 seconds and it’s obvious. That’s intimidating as hell to a sleazebag used to doing whatever he wants with young attractive women. She can rip his head off, and he knows it at an instinctive level.

        Or, maybe it’s just the usual Lefty head/assery. Insiders will write tell-all books in 20 years.

        The same as we’re only hearing about Joss Wheadon’s abusive treatment of a pregnant Charisma Carpenter now. Braxton-Hicks contractions are not a joke, but we’re only hearing about it now since Ray Fisher, A BLACK MAN, came out and called Wheadon on his abuse. Carpenter, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Eliza Dushku, Michelle Trachtenberg, James Marsters, Amber Benson, have ALL posted some history of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer experience they had.

        This pisses me off more than the Carano situation, because I have always likes Buffy. I’m disgusted.

        Oh and the mob is coming for Elizabeth Olson because she said the word “gypsy” in describing her Scarlet Witch character. Which is the pinnacle of stupid, because Wanda Maximoff IS a gypsy in the comics, described as such forever. Dear Lefties, just because y’all decide a word is racist doesn’t mean the rest of us are automatically going to play along.

        1. A long time ago, I noted that Molly Price, as playing the part of a female cop on the series “Third Watch” – actually looked like a cop. An authoritative female, with a certain weight and presence.
          There’s a certain kind of “presence” in a role, which most of these 90 pound stick insects-with-tits just can’t carry off.

        2. The NY Post has this on the whole situation involving Whedon’s pattern of abuse:

          https://nypost.com/2021/02/12/michelle-trachtenberg-joss-whedon-couldnt-be-alone-with-me/

          According to Michelle Trachtenberg (Dawn Summers) who was 15 when she started in BTVS, they ended up making a “rule” that Whedon was not allowed to be in alone in the same room with Trachtenberg.

          Spoiler alert: Whedon will be able to continue working in Hollywood while Hollywood does everything they can to ensure Carano never works in film or TV again.

    2. The SJWs have been trying to get Carano fired for a while now. And at least one of her previous posts drew a direct link between resisting Nazi cultural peer pressure, and resisting those after her scalp.

  28. I will repeat the comment I made to Larry’s post on this:
    ***
    The notion that her tweet was anti-Semitic is a complete and blatant lie.
    And as a Jew from the Soviet Union, with half my family having been murdered by the actual Nazis and their civilian accomplices all over Europe, I am sick of these leftist scum using me as a cover in their fascist takeover.
    ***
    And that is what they do. They rail about “appropriations,” and then they go and pretend to be offended on my behalf, while otherizing opponents, cancelling people, destroying livelihoods, breaking storefronts and banning books. All the while misusing and abusing actual horrendous historic events to the point of diminishing them into a farce.

    1. Don’t forget erasing American Jewish history, and applauding anti-Semitic violence by approved members of approved victim groups. Young SJWs are anti-Semitic, in the main.

      1. Yep. Every time there is a BLM or Antifa “protest,” somehow it always has anti-Israel component to it. Just like they had them at OWS, “women’s marches” and the rest of them.
        Anti-Semitism appears to be a requirement for the modern Left.

        1. They do it to all their human tools. Black families used to be strong pillars of the community. God fearing, hard working, honest, salt of the earth folk. Now what is the black man known for? Rioting and rap music. *spits* They want to do the same thing to Jewish people. Don’t let them.

        2. If you start riots that result in Jews dying, you get rewarded with MSNBC gigs, feted as a Democratic Party kingmaker, and get regularly invited to the White House when Democrats have the presidency, as Al Sharpton did and has been.

    2. I really liked a meme I saw on Twitter: She-Ra in white bathing suit costume, holding flaming sword to the heavens, captioned, “By the power of White Girl I am offended on your behalf!”
      How utterly patronizing.

  29. I don’t believe they will succeed in putting people in camps, because there are too many of us to make that a workable solution. Right now they’re riffling through techniques of oppressing/destroying minorities without considering how difficult it would be for somewhat less than half the country to apply those techniques to somewhat more than half the country.

    What you actually get when you try that is… probably… Rwanda 1994.

    And I don’t think we’ll get there either, if only because Americans are too squeamish for those kinds of massacres.

    However, a lot of us are losing that squeamishness by the day.

    TPTB should be worried about that.

      1. “…the turning on of the acetylene compressor.”

        Or, in (allegedly oxymoronic) rocketry terms, hypergolic monopropellant.

      1. And a big percentage of that 1/4 are just fellow-travelers, following that they think “everyone else” is doing. Because according to “social media” and mainstream news, that’s the whole country, other than a handful of seditious deplorables.

        1. Yup, that’s most of my Austin friends and neighbors in a nutshell. They think all they’re doing is expressing “nice” sentiments and they can’t figure out why I insist on not being “nice.” It’s counterintuitive. I’m a white woman with too many college degrees! Why am I not nice like them?

          1. I get that a lot too. Bu…but…you are a professor! You’re supposed to be in the middle of this stuff! Um, no. And, that is why I’m no longer a professor.

          2. This is what happens when you hold to “be nice” as the highest good, instead of “be good.”

            1. Too true. Common courtesy is a fine convention that can be used as a weapon, if you’ve the wit for it. “Nice” is too crude a tool for that. It is being used as a bludgeon by dullards and fools, nothing more.

        2. I’ve been thinking today about how disconnected “what happens on the internet” is from “real” life. It’s a tiny percentage of the country, and the people active on Twitter and left-wing political SJW junkies are playing in a massive MMORPG which is leaking over into real life and screwing it up royally. They create the “perception” and the “consensus” that what they say goes, and way too many sheeples just go along with it. It needs to stop.

          1. I know nothing about iOS, but on most Android loads, the cell providers and phone makers make the Facebook and Twitter apps undeletable, or they automatically reinstall at the next update.

            Funny, that…

            1. “most Android loads … Facebook and Twitter apps undeletable,”

              Yes. Best you can do is never run them. Sometimes you can disable, updates won’t affect that setting, sometimes. Mostly I never bother. Have never used FB on my phones. Not on Twitter or Instagram; never have been.

              1. Uh?

                Do I need to hang on to my current phone forever? I got Messenger for talking to specific people but it didn’t come with Facebook or Twitter.

                1. Guess I should qualify. “We’ve only had Android phones. Verizon. Now Xfinity. So far they’ve all come with Facebook & Twitter App Links. Since I’ve never activated them, on the phone …” (Since 1990.) First phone that would have or run these apps would have been, ummmm 2012, maybe … (We were late to the party.) All I want is a dang phone that will act like a stupid phone, text, … okay, maps are nice too … still the rest? Not quite that bad … but I don’t live on my dang phone.

                  1. The first time I thought about wanting a smartphone was seeing a friend reading a book on one. Didn’t get one until… 2016?

                    1. I got a non-phone tablet in about 2014. I use it for music, videos and books, all loaded from USB.

                    2. Mom actually got a smart phone before we did …

                      I too got a tablet before getting a smart phone. It does have Wifi so I can load books through the Book Apps directly or can use the computer to load them. But the Wifi on the tablet is off unless I’m downloading a book. Also has music and pictures on it. But the latter two has moved to the smart phone. In both cases the music and pictures on on mini-SD drives, as well as any books that are downloaded through the computer. Book Apps (B&N) doesn’t allow all their books to be stored on the SD. But then every time one logs out of the app they remove all books downloaded through the App, so don’t bother unless getting ready to read. I make sure everything purchased is downloaded using the Windows app and saved off somewhere else as well as decrypted and saved.

                2. None of our Samsungs, none of the tablets, and neither of the “basically a burner phone” androids we’ve got have the reported issue.

                  I’d guess some phones got payments to keep Facebook installed.

                  1. Our S8 and the last S6 had them installed as basic apps. Can disable. But that is it. My 8″ Samsung (version ???, but I’ve had it awhile … > 5 years) does not have FB App installed.

    3. Clearly they can’t put 100 million people (or more) in camps. However they’re quite likely to “make an example” of people by putting a select number of people in camps. They want to make everybody afraid so they’ll comply with the Overlords without them actually needing to have enough of a police force or army to enforce their edicts.

      I don’t think it will work out the way they hope.

      2. I don’t think it will work out the way they hope.

        No. No it won’t.

        We crossed the intimidation horizon a while ago and have been accelerating past it since. Flipped coordinates are a bitch when you don’t want to go to the center.

      4. They will make an example of select people while imposing things like food and electricity rationing in the name of “equity” because they will wreck the economy so badly they will make things scarce. People like Comrade Bernie think Soviet bread lines were a good thing, and the younger leftists now in Congress and in control of the Democratic Party are even more radical than he is.

  30. I am slightly dismayed to admit that, ere yesterday, I had NO idea who Gina Carano is. I’ve ne’er watched Mandalorian (nor, for that matter, any other of the Star Wars extensions since the Jedi returned.)

    But I’ve got to say that I like the cut of her jib, and she’s certainly making the proper enemies.
    ~

      1. Not sure I’ve ever heard anyone make hubba hubba comments about Gina Carano, but that might be more because she is probably capable of ripping someone’s arms off than anything else. She is an attractive lady.

          1. Real women are worth knowing, and getting to know. Fake women are not worth real men’s time, not even as playthings.

            Known to Men in the Know as “Don’t stick your unit in crazy,” among other euphemisms.

        2. *reads part about not hearing someone making hubba hubba comments*

          Uh… are they blind?

          *that might be more because she is probably capable of ripping someone’s arms off*

          OK, is legit…

          Seriously, she’s what I’d want to be if I wasn’t a runt.

          I’m OK with being a runt, but I ENJOY watching big, strong, awesome ladies the same way I like watching big, strong awesome guys, but there are more opportunities locally to see awesome guys.

          *swoons at husband*

          1. She probably won’t have to worry about money-her family are major shareholders in Caesar’s Entertainment, i.e. the big casino and resort operator.

        3. And she’s got a great smile. She’s in great shape and has a great shape. *chuckle* Not bad lookin’ at all. A man would be quite fortunate to stand side by side with her.

          Yes, I can see folks being intimidated. That’s fine. One could use that as a filter, to weed out the ones not worth your time. It’d take a man with the courage to stand in the same fire that’s being thrown at her now, too. Lot of folks are just fine when the going’s easy. Not too many have the stones to keep going when life gives you a solid right to the shnoz and keeps hitting.

    3. She was also in Deadpool, to be fair. And playing against/fighting a CGIed Colussus, for those who doubt her acting ability. It’s actually REALLY hard for “real” fighter types like her to convincingly portray a fight on screen—everything has to be choreographed, pacing and angles and realistic-looking speed and power. She makes it look easy.

  32. Gina Carano’s (big and clear) mirror held up to the Trump-hating left has made this something very much like a Teachable Moment — not that I believe for an instant the True Left would or could allow it to be an actual Teaching Moment — but paradoxically it’s such a big and clear one it won’t likely be as effective as it deserves to be. (And the analysis here of all that, is as clear and perceptive as any I’ve seen or heard yet.)

    Because once you get down below the gaslighting half-truths and outright lies, below the rational, conscious fear of “saying the wrong thing” the massive overreaction (costly to the Commie Mouse in ways both instant and long-term or irreparable) is designed to both poke and amplify, below the steady echoing drumbeat of indoctrination so many of us have heard… lies a deep and not very conscious fear of ingrown and massive denial, collapsing.

    Which is to say, the utterly horrible and literally terrible (and thus forbidden in a way many of “us” will never understand) Unthinkable Thought that begins, if it ever does, somewhere around “… but what if I’ve been wrong?” and ends, once it’s run its course, “Oh My Dear Lord, what have I done, what have I become?”

    The gaslit relative, the manipulated and “used” spouse, the abused child, each carefully and cruelly “groomed” as the Left has tried to do to so many for so long, usually still has the capacity to see things clearly… but can do it only at an ever-increasing cost in seeing both the world and the abuse, and even their own (abused and self-abusing) complicity — truly.

    So very hard, so very ugly, so very expensive, not to look away.

    The Hard Left is pretty much lost, beyond epiphany if not outright miracle. (So deeply buried, that reviled and abused but ever-truthful part of themselves.)

    The Mere Followers, at least some of them, might look and understand. Even if it’s only in the privacy of their own heads, “Die Gedanken sind Frei.”

    The It Can’t Happen Here crowd need to remember how many Germans said the same thing, back in the day that Gina Carano mentions. For a while.

    Their “Resistance” might have been a cartoon dress-up parody of any such true thing; but their displaced anger and loathing and ever-mounting guilt — is not likely, if and when it’s ever released on “legitimate” un-person targets, to be so very much unlike the Nazi or Stalinist or Maoist evil-tides at all.

    And their Inquisition, embyronic as it is now, has so many versions of its own “Malleus Maleficarum” flying around already. (And trials; look to DC.)

    If these Mad Morons are so insistently determined to turn the United States of America into the Next Rwanda… uh, guys, do remember how that ended.

    For them as started it.

    And don’t forget either, we’re not Rwandans. We’re still Americans.

    1. The left always goes too far. They don’t seem to be able to stop themselves. It’s one of the main reasons for the pendulum swinging between the Republicans and Democrats. The Dems beat the Repubs on rhetoric and owning the institutions of communication and controlling the rhetoric. But they always screw up actual governance.

      What is known about the Disney backlash? I canceled my account. Has there been a huge surge?

      1. There’ll be a lag – any wave of cancellations will not show up until at least another quarter.

        The latest on numbers is Disney+ passing announcing getting to 95m subs by January 2: https://nypost.com/2021/02/11/disney-hits-95-million-subscribers/

        From the DIS executive suite viewpoint, Disney+ is saving the company at this point, and KK-faction idiots in the Lucasfilm org are hacking away at the top drawing Disney+ show with axes in broad daylight in front of news crews.

        1. It’s amazing the damage that one real idiot (KK) can do to a company. I’ve seen it before on a smaller scale. TPTB don’t want to take the necessary steps because reasons, and think they can wait the damage-causer out, and before they know it the company is so fubar it would take a miracle to undo the damage.

      2. I look forward to the 2024 campaign when the Democrats assure us that this election’s GOP presidential nominee is really, truly, literally, this time we mean it, make no mistake, Hitler.
        ~

    2. Six months on the inside.Two years on the outside. What comes after is literally unimaginable where we are, because most of our structures are corrupt and useless, and the people who constitute them won’t be around one way or another.
      I don’t know what comes after. For politics, good chance of a constitutional republic. For everything else from teacher certification, librarian organizations, doctor organizations, lawyer certification, professional preparation, LITERALLY everything that hems modern life in place? NO IDEA. I think colleges as we know them are about to be rolled up and thrown away, for one. Their buying into “equity” is a foreshock of that.

      1. I’d say if there are obvious shenannigans during the 2022 elections, that will be the final straw.

        Not least because it’s the last chance to take back enough of the House to derail the Party of Cheats.

        Vote for gridlock. It’s what the system was designed to do.

        2. If this election’s shenanigans weren’t the last straw, why would the 2022 elections be it?

          1. Because for many people, this is the first time they’ve seen such blatant cheating, and they still think it might be a one-off. Or they’re in denial, because they don’t want it to be true. Similarly blatant cheating in 2022 (if we make it that far) would show a lot of those people that it’s not a one-off, it’s true, and the ballot box is no longer an option for taking our country back from the communists.

            1. This. People are telling themselves that the shenanigans were just due to COVID and massive mail-in balloting but by next year, they won’t need that.

              Which is why the vaccination campaign is having such issues, and we will have to continue to wear masks through the next year or so. We won’t be “clear and safe” from COVID until AFTER the 2022 elections.

            3. The amount of people in denial is mindboggling. I think there are more people in denial than genuine, committed leftists.

        3. I’m on the internet talking to people because I went off task after learning that they are going to be doubling down on last summer’s terrorism this coming summer.

          That’s thinking that the HJ and BND will save their asses from Patton’s army.

          These people have strategically messed up, are unaware of it, and are increasingly desperate. They are not operating on any intelligent time table of escalation or mass murder. They’ve been living on fantasy to get to this point, and their thinking is now unlimited by reality.

          Getting to late 2022 is unlikely.

          But thinking about this is enraging and stressful, so I need to take a break from caring about the timing.

        4. All of the scenarios must take into account the actions that foreign adversaries will take in order to 1) stoke and 2) take advantage of, such civil strife here.

      2. “I think colleges as we know them are about to be rolled up and thrown away, for one.” This. A lot of colleges are going to go under because of the covidiocy. And this last year has made it obvious to half the country that what you get at college is indoctrination, not education. So I’m guessing we’re going to see even more of a reduction in routine enrollment in colleges.

        My two older sons are already graduated and they definitely got indoctrinated to some degree (I’m no longer convinced that there’s anything good about people of that age going “away” to college. Better to keep them home where you can argue against the bullshit.) The youngest would never have finished college anyway, but knowing what we know now, I will make a pretty strong effort to protect him if he takes community college courses. Which we’re really only interested in order to have him meet other young people.

        I do think that we need to come up with places and institutions to replace some of that “college experience” with more healthy ways to get college-age young people involved with each other.

        1. We need to go back to colleges being places where you do advanced training and science, things that you really do need labs and training for (and research libraries, but I’m a historian, and Strange.) Not indoctrination mills, not social clubs, but training and real Higher Education centers. Will that mean that companies will take over, and turn civil engineering or industrial chemistry into apprenticeships with “fees for not working off your training?” I know some aviation companies that work on that basis, and as long as everyone is up front about things, all is well.

          I wish there was some way to get a paper that says “this person can teach your kids about $SUBJECT$ and is worth paying for” the way accreditation works for private schools and all colleges. Not an ed degree, but a certificate of quality.

        2. I used to be in favor of going “away” to college on the grounds that then you could do stupid adolescent things without having everybody in your home town point and giggle. But the price in both tuition and indoctrination has gotten way too high for that kind of frivolity.

          1. Yeah, my dad gave me that as a reason for leaving. I was not allowed to apply to colleges within San Diego county. He said that college is where you get to test out the adult thing while still having a good safety net. I’ve favored that approach ever since. But now, given how much “teaching” has become indoctrination I’m moving away from that approach.

          2. I wish to Heaven my brother HAD gone away to college. He has lived in my parents’ (now his) house his entire life.

        3. The instant that college became an “experience” rather than a place to learn what you needed to know to do advanced professions like doctor, lawyer, and teacher, was the beginning of the end for them.

          Because everyone’s impressions of “the college experience” was formed by the college farce movies of the 70s and 80s.

        4. Unfortunately, any significant student-loan waiver will give the deeply dysfunctional and corrupt higher-ed system a new lease on life.

          It will also absolutely infuriate people who did not got to college (or at least did not take out big loans to do so), but *did* take out loans to start businesses….for which they will still be on the hook.

          1. It will also absolutely infuriate people who did not got to college (or at least did not take out big loans to do so)

            —
            Infuriate people who took out loans and f* paid them back. ($10k sounds so little now. Back when we were paying it off, earning $2.35/hour (which was actually huge for 1979, entry level, fresh out of college), $30/month, for the next 10 years. His loan we paid $19/quarter for 7 years, by the time we were married; don’t remember the total amount, if I ever knew. Full disclosure. Full 10 years to pay the loans off because by the time we could afford to just pay them off, standard interest rates were double or triple (his), loan rates. Later was compound interest, where as the loans were simple interest.

            Then when it was time for our child to go away to local state college (tuition, books, fees, room/board) said child, granted with our help, paid his own way. Five years worth (18 quarters to be exact, with summer sessions; scheduling). Without taking out any loans. It wasn’t easy. But we’d were not not signing student plus loans.

            The only way I’d be in favor of student loan forgiven? Is if the schools where the loans were paid are the ones who have make good on them. Whether the student graduated or not. The student? Has to be some sort of consequence too. They were adults when the loans were taken out. Don’t know what. Because anything I can think of is essentially slavery and … I can’t go there. One of the reasons, though you rarely hear of the option anymore, I agree with the:

            * Enlist (not officer) for every X years see X amount paid by Uncle Sam.
            * Serve in disadvantaged inner cities. Be it doctor, teacher, or other public service.
            * Ditto #2 remote areas or under served reservations (heard of this one with a neighbor’s step-son who got loan but had to serve as pharmacists for minimum 10 years in remote Alaskan Village OR ***)

            Key to the above is when taking the loan initially, these are optional routes they can take …

            OR

            *** pay the freaking loan off.

            Infuriate? Surely you jest. Infuriate does not even come close!

            1. In my considered opinion two things need to happen.
              First, the school where a student loan will be spent must agree to co-sign that loan.
              Second, the borrower must be able to write off their responsibility for that loan through some form of bankruptcy.
              Never gonna happen of course. That would require educational institutions to accept responsibility for the quality of the product they offer for sale.

              1. First, the school where a student loan will be spent must agree to co-sign that loan.

                –
                Why co-sign? How about the school/institute Issue the loan, and the loan can not be sold? Bonus of not allowing programs or accepting students who never will be able to pay back the loan.

                Second, the borrower must be able to write off their responsibility for that loan through some form of bankruptcy.

                –
                Agree.

                Never gonna happen of course. That would require educational institutions to accept responsibility for the quality of the product they offer for sale.

                –
                Agree.

              2. It would also enable sociopaths to declare bankruptcy right after having received a valuable education and before they accumulate assets.

                2. That’s why student loans are currently not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Originally they were dischargable, and then enough people gamed the system to provoke the change.

                  The current situation is a mess and there there are no good solutions, only a choice of bad ones.

                  I’m also inclined to lay less blame on the borrowers than many others here. TradCons are always complaining about young people not listening to their elders, but in this case the young people DID listen. They were told by their ‘wise’ elders that they must get a college degree at all costs or else they would be miserable worthless losers for the rest of their lives, that taking out student loans for a zillion dollars would be totally totally worth it, and that having that precious golden college degree would guarantee them Good Jobs For Life and would make it easy-peasy to pay off those loans. TOTALLY worth it.

                  And the young people listened to their elders. Then, in the words of Animal House, they were told “You (YAY!)ed up. You TRUSTED us!”

                  1. No. You’re right. Young people are not to blame. I know some universities are still affordable. Utah, for some reason. But most state universities are now too expensive for the kids to pay for with work AND play dirty pool with requirements.
                    I have a son still finishing a bachelors because of various “transcript issues.” And while he kept his debt to a minimum, there’s still debt.
                    And older son, well…. let’s say he’s a debt slave until he makes real money, which is not yet. We helped as much as we could, but we’re not rich.
                    I disagree with you about not making loans dischargeable in bankruptcy. That was an obama thing to indenture people to the state.

                    1. Making student loans nondischargable in bankruptcy was part of the 2005 bankruptcy act, signed by President Bush. Before then there were various laws and regulations that limited when and how student loans could be discharged, apparently starting in 1976 and growing ever tighter in a classic case of “Our reforms aren’t working! Therefore we must do them harder!”

                      https://www.cappex.com/articles/money/history-of-bankrupty-dischange-for-student-loans

                      Now the 2005 changes would have started biting people during the Obama administration, and I’m sure he was pleased to use it to indenture people to the state, but he didn’t originate the flustercluck.

                  2. When the heck did that happen?

                    I was told that I was a failure, and worthless, and a traitor to my sex for not going to college– but not that I’d get success from it, or that the loans would be easy.

                    I was told if I was not completely worthless I could get scholarships, but that’s rather different…..

                    Graduated ’01.

      3. “Ready for the ‘jump’?”
        “What jump?”
        “Through the looking glass.”
        “Looking glass?”
        “Metaphorical. But we’re all going – and it’s a one way trip. Trouble is, we don’t know what is on the other side.”
        “Then how the hell can anyone be ready?!”
        “Be ready for anything. Be alert. Be flexible. Be imaginative. And plan on nothing making sense for a while.”
        Muttered something that might have been “brown acid.”

      4. I’ve been saying for a while that the NFA would be gone within 25 years. I wonder if I should change that to 5 years.

        Could work out very well: by the time I’m ready to have that .357sig franken-mp5 built it might be possible to have it in full-auto as it ought to be.

            1. They did go to 10mm, as I recall. I know zero details other than that. But I don’t think they still use 10mm, so maybe that’s all we need to know? Full-auto in a large caliber will produce some stresses well beyond what we see in 9mm parabellum. Witness the Thompson is a beefy piece of iron.

              1. An MP5 is actually kind of silly given AR pattern rifles the size of sub guns.

                The issue discussed internationally by LE a few years back proximate to the MP5 and successor subguns was tangos wearing body armor – you need more than pistol class power to punch through armor that is widely available.

                I believe the requirement for suppressed subsonic power in the AR pattern drove the development of 300 blackout subsonic loads.

              2. Counter: the grease gun, which is no beefier than the sten. .45ACP might have a heavier bullet, but far lower pressure. The Thompson’s weight has more to do with being a first generation submachinegun.

                The end of 10mm probably has more to do with the general rejection of anything over 9mm in pistol calibers for lack of sufficient difference when using normal ammunition. Combine that with short barrel assault rifles taking over the submachinegun role (oh look! exactly what the original intention of the AK-47 was!).

                1. The Grease Gun and the Sten Gun were designed to be made by monkeys out of pieces of pipe. Longevity and accuracy were not part of the brief. “We want a million pieces RIGHT NOW and we don’t care if they break after a thousand rounds.” The Thompson was designed after WWI as a high quality piece of kit for private sale, if I recall my history properly. It was more an heirloom gun than a disposable POS built for a price.

                  The Sten and the Grease Gun are both over-built for the purpose, IMHO. These days they’d use aluminum instead of steel tube, like the Feather AT-9. A lot of the Feather is made of plastic.

                    1. I’ve always liked .45. A hefty recoil but not a -punishing- one. 10mm is very sharp for recoil, a high impulse compared to the .45. That’s probably why the Fibbers went to the less-gnarly .40S&W. The ladies with smaller bones can’t really shoot 100 rounds of 10mm on a training day. Angelina Jolie looks hot dual-wielding her twin-.45s, but those are blanks.

                      There is also the issue of over-penetration with the 10MM, it will go through things that the .45 and 9mm won’t. That’s the whole point of it, they panicked after the Miami Shootout and went to the 10mm for extra punch. Because it will go through a car, where a WunderNine won’t. For personal defense that’s less of an issue, but for American police forces its huge legal exposure.

              3. Iirc they (FIB) did for a few years, but since the agents were not handling well they transitioned/comissioned to the 40 Smith. Not sur what currently carry although I want one of those 10mm smiths.

            2. Then they (fibby agents et all) got sceered by the 10mm and wanted it downpowered, then if one is going to downpower, “why not resize it to fit a 9mm pistol” (.40S&W) then “hey, now it’s not a whole lot better than the new 9mm ammo with modern tech? Why Bother?” and 9mm is easier to get anyhow. so I doubt the 10mm HundKs got much use before being replaced by a 9mm version again.
              but more 10mm was showing up in full power loads again, until The Great Ammo Shortage

              1. And 40sw has the worst of both worlds. 9mm snap and 45 push. I carry one but mostly because I wanted to reload 10mm with it years ago. Got 9mm barrel and mag for it for training as well since interchangeable

                1. only .40 I’ve fired was a Beretta 92 in DAO with a horrid 13.5lb trigger (Shelby County Sheriff deputy’s issue arm. Memphis police had a moron with a Glock have an AD because he couldn’t keep the booger hook off the bang switch while crawling after a perp, so everyone got stuck with that). I think fighting the stupid trigger kept my mind off everything else.
                  If you recall the nut who tried to drive her car up to President Bush (claimed she had the baby Jesus in the car with her)? Well, the deputy told me he was 12 pounds into the trigger when the car finally stopped and someone got in his field of fire., so she is lucky he had such a rotten trigger to deal with. His nightmares were pulling on a baddy and not being able to pull the trigger.

            1. Remember the Kriss Vector .45 carbine? Stress cracks in the receiver were common in the original issue, or so I’m told. It’s a longevity problem when you change the caliber without scaling up the rest of the design. That’s why the AR-15 has a different receiver than the AR-10. Higher stress from 7.62.

              Like putting a V-8 in a Chevy Vega. ~:D Sure it’ll -go-, but will it stop?

                1. Well, if everything is illegal, that means one might as well build that ~interesting~ stuff.*

                  * No, I am not talking about mere full-auto powder-cartridge devices.

      5. For colleges it has already started – https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2021/02/higher-ed-lost-650000-jobs-last-year-13-of-the-workforce.html. I think the rest of the education system will follow relatively quickly; one of the few good byproducts of the Wuflu. Parents are discovering what they have been ignoring about the education system and withdrawing from it.

        I wish I shared your optimism about a good chance of a constitutional republic in politics. Almost half the population has abandoned it; it isn’t returning soon. It might regrow out of succession but that will take a while.

          1. I agree that the left (I personally prefer the Enemies of Freedom) are about a quarter at most. The problem / challenge to a relatively quick return to a constitutional republic are the next quarter; the Karens / Kens who have been convinced to fear freedom. I don’t think they are quickly recoverable. I hope I’m wrong.

            1. I fear you’re right about the Karens/Kens. I trip over a lot of them here in Austin and they are very good at not exposing themselves to any socially unacceptable whackjob ideas about things like liberty.

            2. Their nature is as you say fear.

              You need to work the problem a little further: what will a Karen’s reaction be to seeing politicians on the overpass, and then seeing the side that did it win?

  33. Do right. Take care of what you can. Believe the evil you see in front of you.

    Kill without hesitation or guilt.

        1. Same.

          Never mind the legal issues. Doesn’t matter if you shoot gun out of hands its still deadly force and are risks with trick shots.

    2. Funny, I just wrote a scene about that. . . He helps her escape. She comes back, with A Leetle Friend, and finishes what needed to be done.

  34. For my woketard relatives and friends who are only friends if we don’t talk about anything instead of ‘here’s your sign’ it’s ‘here’s your mirror’.

    1. Oh yes. I look forward to putting on an innocent air and saying, “But isn’t that what you voted for?” when they start to complain about the results of certain policies.

      1. I’m already having to restrain myself on Twitter when the anti-Trump, “Trump lost and he’s just a sore loser. The fact he couldn’t bully the courts into overthrowing the results shows our institutions are strong,” sort begins complaining about what the new Administration is doing. I so want to say, “You asked for it. You got down on your knees and BEGGED for it. And now we all have to lie in the bed you helped make.”
        I don’t because the worst enemy you can have is the one you didn’t have to make. But I want to.

      2. Sig line for one of my email accounts:

        They expect, when they find themselves
        in a world of bloody ruins and concentration
        camps, to escape moral responsibility by wailing:

        “But I didn’t mean this!”

        –Ayn Rand

        And like the typical abuser, there will be more than a few cases of “You made us do this!”

  36. that they’re somehow more perceptive than every other human, ever

    That mindset is the very basis of claiming others suffer from “false consciousness” and “internal oppression”.

    What is amazing is the same people who demand you respect the lived experience of others condemn any lived experience that doesn’t validate their beliefs.

    1. And I see from those photos that everybody is nicely double-masked. Yeah. Ain’t happening here.

      I did manage to scare a woman who was walking about 100 ft in front of me today…outside. She looked back at me while we were standing at the light (at that point, I was about 10 ft back) got a panicked look on her face and walked a little faster as we crossed the street. She looked back again a couple minutes later. She even put out a hand as if to block me from passing her. At that point, I crossed the street to the other side (10 lane parkway) because I figured that someone who was that panicked at the sight of me was highly likely to do something stupid. She was more worried about me than the homeless guy who passed us who I’ve seen around and know has at least verbally, if not physically, assaulted people in the broader neighborhood. He’s one of those feral ones Sarah has mentioned.

      1. It has been for most of 2020. As I understand it they finish a batch of a 2-300 thousand 9mm and it is gone in 5-10 minutes on a regular basis

        1. Makes sense. Most places are bare of ammo even in weird calibers these days. Not even gonna mention the primer void.

          Investing in firearms and ammo companies might just be a good short-medium term risk these days. I predict second and third shifts stepping up soon, if they haven’t already.

          1. I predict second and third shifts stepping up soon, if they haven’t already.

            The ammo companies have been for about a year. The bottleneck is primers.

  40. I’m sorry, Sarah, but of all you millions of words on this page, these might be your finest:

    (Of communism/socialism)

    It’s survivable. Not for everyone, but it’s survivable.

    If we could only get that posted to every University, we might improve our chances.

  41. “Leave all that you know and believe. Become as I am, believe as I do, or be utterly condemned.” It’s forcible conversion to wokism. All those people who are going along to get along? Conversos.

        1. Skip Texas this week. It’s been 38 years since we’ve been this cold. I am soooooo not looking forward to going to work on Tuesday and Wednesday. I just hope we keep power and water.

      2. There are two reasons this is happening in Oklahoma.

        One, there are a lot of conservative base in Oklahoma, in addition to all the establishment Republicans. (Obama’s level of popularity with Oklahoma Democrats was such that an imprisoned felon did fairly well against him in one of the primaries.)

        Two, there is not a great range of economic activity within Oklahoma, and Oklahomans know it. Agriculture, oil, and defense are a pretty big chunk of it. Oklahomans actually have a pretty good understanding of the oilfield, and of the extent to which AWG is garbage. Definitely, a lot of Oklahoma state politicians are beholden to oilfield interests. Which has downsides, when T. Boone Pickens went into the renewable energy scam, he was able to buy official support.

        Biden can retaliate by shutting down Tinker AFB and Fort Sill. There are also a lot of lunatic Democrats in Oklahoma. Oklahoma may well get ugly early, and things might go down across the US faster than the relocation timescale.

        1. Thankfully it won’t show up in this year’s taxes but I need to review all my tax records. Since they gonna have revenue issues in future probably get audited for 3rd time since 2015

  44. Midnight snow run… Sooo gorgeous. Snow day tomorrow!!! Log Horizon binge watch! Drawing marathon!

    Whatever garbage the Bidenreich sends us tomorrow and the days to come, laugh and be glad at what virtue comes your way.

    It makes their shorts itch.

  45. Hetero-normative [Adj] — acknowledgement of the fact that most men are attracted to women, and most women are attracted to men, an imperative which is baked into our DNA and reinforced by 500 million years of natural selection.

    Some idiots do not believe this. Their DNA is unlikely to be passed on to the next generation. For which we should all be thankful.
    ———————————
    Facts do not depend on opinions. Unfortunately, for far too many people, opinions do not depend on facts, either.

    1. I dunno…. seems kind of bigoted. Of course we know that men like to oppress women, but women being attracted to men? Impossible!

      Have you checked? This sounds like something the badwrongs would have supported.

  46. I think Sarah hit the nail on the head here. I’ll add that the left will attempt to minimize what they’re doing before admitting they think you deserve it, though. You know that narcissist’s prayer that floats around on the Internet? If you haven’t, here it is:

    “That didn’t happen.
    And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
    And if it was, that’s not a big deal.
    And if it is, that’s not my fault.
    And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
    And if I did, you deserved it.”

    The left seems to run on a version of this, sometimes with the fourth and fifth lines skipped. Cancel culture/hatred of non-leftists/censorship/whatever doesn’t happen, and if it does, it’s only occasional, and if it’s more than occasional, then it’s still not that bad, and if it is that bad, well, you deserved it.

    They’ll pull the same trick for racism/sexism/whateverism during the endless victimhood status fights that happen in social justice, and not just against straight white men. See, for instance, how they treat Asians: anti-Asian prejudice isn’t real*, and if it is it’s not that common, and if it’s common it’s not that bad compared to what happened to blacks, and if it’s common, well, Asians were upholding white supremacy anyway.

    * Except when the social justice types need to pump up their numbers. Then they cast the widest net possible, so of course Asians are a fellow oppressed minority.

    1. I don’t know about their omitting the fourth line; they are rather consistent on blaming anyone but themselves for pretty much everything

      1. Yeah, you’re right, but usually in the context of trying to explain why their “good” intentions didn’t bring about Paradise. Not so much when they’re trying to minimize/justify whatever horrible things they want to do or say to their enemy du jour.

        1. I wrote that in a story:

          “I don’t think it’s even possible to create a perfect world, when it has to be full of imperfect people. I don’t think I’d want to live in a perfect world anyway. What would there be left to do? If the world was perfect, any change would by definition make it imperfect. Nobody could be allowed to introduce anything new, or retire anything old. I think after a while such eternal sameness would have to become a fair imitation of Hell.”

          “But for the ones that want to create a perfect world…no cost is too high, no sacrifice too great, no atrocity too horrendous. Their goal is so noble and lofty that it justifies anything — like changing all those imperfect people that won’t fit in their perfect world. And if they won’t change, if they can’t be made to fit — dispose of them. We’ve seen that, over and over. When you start to learn about this planet’s history, you’re not going to like a lot of it.”

    2. See, for instance, how they treat Asians: anti-Asian prejudice isn’t real*, and if it is it’s not that common, and if it’s common it’s not that bad compared to what happened to blacks, and if it’s common, well, Asians were upholding white supremacy anyway.

      I have to wonder if they saw the Roof Korean response to the L.A. festivities and carry a grudge for it.

      2. Oh, probably. But more I think it’s that Asians are a big, fat, obvious contradiction of the left’s theories* about why black America is in the terrible state it’s in. And this, of course, cannot be permitted to stand.

        * I hesitate to use the plural here. “Evil white people did it!” is really just one theory.

          1. Yep. Anyone guilty of WrongThink is a vile blasphemer and corrupter and betrayer of their utopia. It’s how you get internalized oppression as a thing, or Uncle Toms, or black people who are suddenly white supremacists (i.e. Candace Owens after Social Autopsy), or female Americans born in another country who suddenly become White Male Mormons.

            The more I saw it over the years the more obvious- and stupid- it got. If you can explain all the bad things that happened to you, ever, by blaming your opponents… Suddenly either your opponents begin to look frighteningly competent or you are a liar.

  47. Just found out 2 things:

    Don’t-minion and Smart(Not)Matic have sued Fox for $2.7 billion for reporting about the role their vote stealing machines played in 2020 election fraud.

    Lou Dobbs has been canned from the highest-rated show on Fox.

    Lou Dobbs was named personally in the lawsuit, as was Jeanine Pirro. Let’s see if she gets sacked too.

    We can dream that Fox will show some backbone and go EPIC on discovery. As the defendants, they can demand that EVERY dirty little secret be dragged out and strung up in public. If not, maybe Lou and Jeanine will.

  48. Mike Vanderboegh The founder of the Threepercenter militia movement was so effective because he was a Maoist who became an anti communist.
    Having lived inside the Marxist beast you are more insightful than I have any hope of being any time soon if at all.
    Please keep up the good work.

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