But The Lizard Will Surely Die

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Yeah, okay, so we’re back to Rango.

You see, when I was sitting here (minding my own (or at least my characters’) business), what caught my attention FIRST was the owls saying “But the lizard will certainly die” as the poor domesticated chameleon is running through the desert facing a million perils.

There is something…. awfully familiar about those owls.

Oh, yeah, okay, Greek Chorus — though I’ll note those didn’t always predict misfortune, sometimes they predicted great honor, which is I guess next door to it, as far as ancient Greeks were concerned — look, I grew up with the classical forms, to the point that when I first wrote a novel I couldn’t remember any of the novels I’d read, not structure wise, but I remembered the tri-part structure, how scenes were defined, how acts were defined. Oh, and that I needed catharsis. To be fair, I still think you should have catharsis in a book. I’m forever amused by people who tell me their books shouldn’t have feelings. Or the ones who complain of “internal monologue” in first person. Yeah? You think you don’t have internal monologue going on 24/7? What do you think that voice behind the eyes is. Being ADD (AF) all I try to do is prevent my characters thought stream from interrupting itself. Sometimes not particularly successfully. (True story: Copy editor: you can’t end a thought with a dash. The character wasn’t interrupted. There’s no one else there. Me: The heck. You’ve never interrupted yourself?… I guess it should have been an indication I wasn’t QUITE normal.)

Anyway, beyond the Greek choir, it was familiar because — honestly — I’m getting sick and tired of the “Abandon all hope” stream. No, seriously. If I wanted that, I’d be hanging out at Zero Hedge or other sites known to be Russian dizinformazia.

(Gee, I wonder why Russia — or China — would want us to give up, buckle under and just give in to the current invaders’ demands and/or kill ourselves in despair. Either or– I mean the insanity of the left was being capable of believing that Russia would back someone who wanted to “Make America Great Again.” HOW fricking stupid do you have to be about how nations work, and history to believe that shit?)

Even people who know better write long articles about how China is going to win and be the big hegemon forever, world without end. And now that the left stole — remember, they HAD to cheat — their way into power, we’re going to turn into China, and woe, woe, woe.

No matter how often I tell them — and I’m not alone, and frankly like looking at the Diamond Princess numbers when the “pandemic” started, this is only sense — that yes, that’s what China thinks. It might be what the left thinks too (the dumber ones, at least. The smarter/not crazy/not stoned our of their minds ones are just trying to get rich and run out the clock and not get a la lanterned). But their thinking it doesn’t MAKE it so. Yes, that’s what their moves trend to. BUT have you seen their idea of reality and how far it is from, you know, real reality? What makes you think that what they think is the perfect move is in fact a perfect move? They’re not playing 3 dimmensional chess. They’re playing 3 dimmentsional tiddly winks on an invisible chess board that exists only in their minds, while using live frogs as tiddly wink pieces.

Sure, China is going to be the world hegemon forever…. In defiance of their very long history of in point of fact not having a clue other cultures EXIST or that other people are different from them. An history that, back when they were the most advanced people in the world meant they often turned tail and isolated themselves, rather than deal with those icky, icky foreign devils who were so utterly irrational.

But let’s go with that. Tell me, oh, wise ones, how does China feed her people, once they take down the US? Because without us buying their (mostly crap, TBH) products, out of our abundance of wealth, and feeding them with our cheap agricultural produce out of our abundance of production, China can’t in point of fact support itself. It collapses very fast and goes into of their warring states periods.

Can that happen? Yeah, sure it can because Chinese blind spots mean they don’t understand they can’t stop the wheel of the world’s production and innovation and go on their merry way. They’re the Middle Kingdom. They need no barbarian power, and life would be much better without the barbarian power.

So yes, China will try to grind our bones to make their bread.

But my guess is LONG before they get to the point we’re there, they collapse. However, that’s neither here nor there. The truth is if they try to do that, they collapse.

And what are we doing then, under their heel? Sitting with our thumbs up our butts? Because why? We suffered a paralytic stroke? For one, once the left stops getting loads of Chinese monopoly money, THEY collapse. And probably run away, though you know what, I wouldn’t put it past them trying to rule from a bunker. They almost are right now.

This is the same with “It’s 1984, and the left will rule us forever.” What? Like all the other great totalitarian regimes in history, which within years couldn’t feed themselves? Sure, they’ll rule us forever, because we’re going to live on air and unicorn farts.

Also I’ll remind you that we’re bigger in landmass than Germany, bigger in population than Russia, and that even there the resistance in the form of a black market and various f*ck-f*ck games not only existed but arguably were the only thing that functions.

I mentioned that I’d watched Le Roi Danse, in French for the love of heaven — though not precisely true. I watched various parts of it — and part of what struck me was that the insane man — he invented bureaucracy, you know? — was trying to build the model of the industrial totalitarian state. Except things weren’t to where he could yet. And now they’re well past it.

The 1930s were the ideal world for 1984. Since then? Not so much.

Yes, sure, But spying devices, they know everything about us, and reeeeeeee.

I know, I know, running around with your head on fire is great fun isn’t it? And believing things are hopeless absolves you from trying to do anything.

But if those spying devices/ubiquitous data gathering were so d*mn effective, they wouldn’t have NEEDED to fraud at the last minute, in plain view.

One thing the left can never process is that other people lie to them. It’s part of their conceit of themselves that they are the smartest people in any room, so they know they can lie to us, but us? Effectively lie to them? That’s not possible.

The other thing that none of the people running around with their heads on fire get is that no tech, none can process the masses of information these ass clowns are gathering.

Information gathering ALWAYS exceeds the ability to process it. Sure, they can process more now, but they can gather exponentially more. I recommend you watch The Lives of Others to understand this discrepancy.

This is why, ultimately, totalitarian states are ineffective and starve. Because their terror is ultimately always arbitrary which personally scares the crap out of me, but it doesn’t mean it scares the crap out of me HISTORICALLY. Sure, their random bullshit could kill me and mine. Meh. We all die sometime. But America will come back and go on. ALMOST for sure.

Look, we’re in a pickle and no mistake, and the bullshit we’re letting these idiots get away with is going to make my great grandkids (if I ever have any eh) work ten times as hard to have a decent life, and innovate.

But you know what? We don’t have an America to bail us out and enable us in our stupidity. By our sheer size, and the fact we’ve been the engine of the world for so long, if we fall nothing replaces us. Which is good, because it means we can’t go on playing at socialism while someone else grows the wheat and sends it over to feed us.

In the end, America will have to unf*ck itself, because there’s no America to come bail us out.

Or, you know, we go down into the stonnnnnnne ageeeeee forever. REEEEEE.

Except that’s never happened. Ever. Correction: It’s absolutely possible, if you’re a small tribe, and your place gets covered with a volcano. But with a world-wide civilization?

Bah.

The Lizard will surely die, yeah.

Just like it was surely going to die when the “hammer” of the Soviet Union fell. Except because the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, its might was mostly smoke and mirrors, and could only persist so long as people like Jimmah carter enabled them because they were so scared of this “vaunted might.” And the fact the Soviet Union would “inevitably” eventually win.

I grew up with this shit. No one who lived through it can imagine how all the serious people stroked their chins and told us about the great efficiency of the soviet union, and how they were going to win the cold war, or send the whole world into the stone age.

And then Reagan stood up to it. And told them “We win, you lose” and the whole thing crumbled, like the rotten illusion it was.

So, having been there? This whole “China will ruuuuuuuule us foreeeeeever” is awfully familiar.

Look, the lizard in the Diamond Princess is sunning itself on deck and laughing, while you run around screaming of doom. Just as they were back a year ago. AND YEAH I TOLD YOU SO.

But yeah, we’re in trouble and no mistake, with a Junta having taken over and hating us with a burning passion.

And? It’s not even the stupidest thing we’ve ever done. Tell me another country who ever banned alcohol ALCOHOL for the love of Bob. And another government who went around poisoning alcohol.

FDR was a greater menace than these assholes. His every instinct was totalitarian and thanks to mass media, he was not even suspected of the shit he puled and thanks to the perilous knowledge/control of history he fooled a good 85% of the people. And those he didn’t fool thought they were alone.

Yes, yes, yes, I know. The Lizard will SURELY die. But not today. Probably tomorrow, by slipping in the shower. Maybe.
But you know what? Yeah, every human civilization is mortal.

But we’re not ready to be eaten by a hawk, or even a blinkered dragon yet. And we won’t be.

Unless, of course, the lizard convinces itself to lie down and die.

In which case, China still won’t win and certainly not forever. The left won’t win and certainly not forever.

But we can CHOOSE to lose.

The question is: WHY WOULD YOU?

F*ck that noise.

To quote President Reagan: In the end we win, they lose.

Be not afraid.

248 thoughts on “But The Lizard Will Surely Die”

  1. Death is certain for all – it is whether there will be a resurrection that would seem to be the question.
    ~

    1. That is why Jesus promise “I go to prepare a place for you…” is so important, as is our hostess rainbow bridge dream. The question i ask is :Do you know where you are going?” Promises.

      God delights in using adversity. Today is the day the devil thought he won. God was dead. Yet this strange day is “good” Friday.! We know Sunday is comin. They didn’t.

      Had an example of adversity bringing divine appointments. We can now travel for the job. Got a motel reservation, only to get an admin phone call, erroneously saying the price was too high. Inadvertently I got into a short conversation about Easter with the guy. Later, he called back to admit they were mistaken. He thanked me for the earlier conversation, said he needed it. Without the mistake, the blessing would not have happened.

      I look at our world today, we now know more of how deep the rot extends. To solve a problem, first you must know there is a problem. The uniparty has lost a lot of Republican members. The purge is not complete.

      Just got a lot of free time with baseball joining my enemies list. Don’t fly Delta, or drink coke.

      2. Saw a photo of the CEO of Delta. The guy looks like a wreck. Don’t know if it’s worry about the airline or what, but why do so many folks taking the Party line look so unhealthy?

        1. the CEO of Delta. The guy looks like a wreck.

          It’s been a hard year for businesspeople in general, as many here know too well, and corporate executives more specifically, as they have thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of people who’ll be suddenly desperate if they run out of money before the government announces that it’s safe to get their people back to profitable work. Working from home is all very well for the back office and executive suite, but doesn’t make an airline any money.

        2. Take a look at a time-series of Jeff Bezos photos over the last four years. He went from “buff” to “old guy”. Seeing patterns which aren’t really there is a hazard of being human, so I don’t put too much stock in this sort of Kremlinology. That said, it’s very odd that so many of the Masters of the Universe started looking their age so quickly.

      3. Since Coke thinks I’m too white and Pepsi is almost as woke, I’ve switched to that good old Southern standby RC Cola. Too bad I can’t find Moon Pies in my corner of Missouri . . .

  2. Between their demographic problem, their real estate bubble, and dumping money into 3rd World kleptocracies thinking that’ll it’ll give them leverage, the Chinese probably aren’t that far from their next Warring States period.

  3. > Tell me another country who ever banned alcohol ALCOHOL for the love of Bob

    Besides Canada, and various Muslim countries?

    1. Muslim countries make it stick even less than we do. And that’s not “country.” It’s religion.
      And are you fucking kidding me that Canada had prohibition? That’s a hole in my knowledge.
      I guess as America’s hat, sometimes they have to go along.

      1. Everything we try they try, stick with, and are even worse about.

        There is a reason why Canada never escapes its own irrelevancy.

      2. Wiki says it was tried in localities, metastized to provinces and was national circa 1918-20. Generally repealed at the province level in the ’20s, though at least PEI (1901-48) kept it going.

        OTOH, smuggling booze over the river to Detroit was one of the ways the local gangsters made their money. (Ontario repealed in 1927.)

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_Canada

      3. Canada had it on a per county level which worked as well as you would expect.
        On the other hand one of the most famous US distilleries is located in a county that as far as i know is still bone dry.

        1. I grew up in a dry town (founded by Quakers around 1885), To nobody’s surprise, a good sized liquor store was located across the street from the town limits.

        2. If you mean Jack Daniels, yes, the county is still dry. The population dropped below the minimum number of resident voters and they’ve never adjusted it.

    2. TRX, Muslim countries may have banned alcohol, but it is readily available in most of them. You just have to know how and whom to ask.

          1. During the prohibition. They put DELIBERATELY poisoned alcohol into the black market, so people would be afraid of drinking. I came across the article somewhere yesterday.

            1. It’s also covered in Deborah Blum’s “The Poisoner’s Handbook.” IIRC, the federal idiot who came up with the idea was also the one who pushed to discontinue it, after he eventually realized that rather than deter drinking it was killing people.

              2. There was a lot of accidentally poisoned stuff in the supply too. Methanol, chiefly, but there’s a moonshiner’s proverb “‘Lead burns red and makes you dead.” — but yellow is also dangerous.

            5. They’ve done it to cigarettes in our own day. All those anti-fire, auto-extinguishing chemicals are worse than the tobacco. Done ostensibly because of house fires — all 900 of them a year. I looked into it. The 900 house fires are “unexplained,” and therefore a convenient avenue for assuming they burned because as Dick Van Dyke said, they smolder for *hours,* like votive candles, in your couch. But here’s the fun part: The patent on the anti-fire auto-extinguishing chemical impregnated cigarette paper is owned by [drumroll] PHILLIP MORRIS. Those brilliant grifters found a way to make a profit off every cigarette smoked in America whether they made it or not. And all the *best* people helped, dontcha know. There, I just lit another Kool in their honor. Here’s to you, Phil …

            6. Modern narcotic painkillers are blended with acetaminophen. Take more than they want you to take, and you trash your liver.

              Docs often won’t write scrips for the straight stuff because the DEA assumes they are for abuse. Abusers of those blended pills die of liver damage. So do people in chronic severe pain, because the body adapts to the narcotic and it doesn’t work unless you take more.

              Think about that.

              1. Which is one reason they cut the amount of acetaminophen from 500 mg to 325 mg per tablet a few years back.

          2. They still do. Sold as “denatured alcohol.” Adding the poisons is required to avoid taxes.

            1. I know the denatured bit, but from context, it sounded like poison being added to alcohol intended for drinking which is different, morally, and is new information to me.

          3. They started during Prohibition, and kept it up following. Several distilleries wanted to make hand sanitizer during the early stages of COVIDocy, but were stopped by DEA and/or FDA and/or BATFE because it wasn’t “denatured” (i.e. poisoned), and it would have cost huge amounts of money to make their systems capable of making drinkable alcohol later.

            1. That was yet another example of beaurocracy making it difficult to impossible to quickly solve a problem. Was pretty mad about that at the time. And these people want .gov to do more. Grrrrr.

        2. Nope, they just have extremely harsh penalties for getting caught smuggling — but they still have serious black markets in both booze and pork. A while back a smuggling ring in Saudi Arabia got busted for several thousand hams smuggled inside shipping containers that had legitimate merchandise wrapped around the haram meat, with the idea that the inspectors would just open the doors, see the legit merch, and be satisfied.

          1. Pork.

            I mean I like some good ham as much as the next guy and more than some next guys, but I could certainly live without it. It’s not like there’s a real shortage of other kinds of meat. . . .

            1. I suspect that for the Saudis Pork is “strongly flavored” with the taste of the “forbidden fruit”. 😉

            2. Bacon OTOH. Especially Pepper Bacon. But could live without it.

              I’ve thought of a wonderful place to re-home as many feral hogs, pigs, that can be caught and relocated …

            3. I believe in Israel pork is marketed as “white meat.” But you’re probably out of luck shopping for “country style pale pink meat,” or “black forest blush.”

            4. Old joke.
              Priest and a Rabbi found themselves seated next to each other on a redeye flight. Neither could sleep so the naturally talked some shop and compared notes.
              Rabbi confessed that he had at some point had a taste of pork.
              Priest allowed as before taking his vows he had experienced carnal knowledge of a female.
              Punch line: sure as hell beats a ham sandwich doesn’t it?

          3. Being caught smuggling in many countries is primarily a consequence of failure to grease the proper palms.
            ~

          4. I’ve been told by a couple of veterans of Aramco that the commissary sells pressure cookers, copper tubing and the necessary fittings to make a crude still. Not sure if it’s packaged as a kit, but it was noted that it was an extremely bad idea to get caught DUI, but hangovers were fairly common.

      2. Not exactly a distinguishing trait from Prohibition.

        My grandfather had no trouble with keeping in booze the duration as he had large boots, and was the meter reader in a small town on the Canadian border. Went in to read the meter every month. A bottle per boot, and he was all set for real cheap.

        1. Grampa Pete told of getting the basement dug out in his house during prohibition. He paid in beer. Once the basement was complete, the home brewery moved there.

            2. Well, it was Chicago. Scandinavian neighborhood. As best as I can tell, the Germanic respect for authority disappeared north of the Danish border (where ever *that* was at the time).

        2. My great-great grandfather did quite well for himself during Prohibition. He was a pharmacist who has married into an orchard, and had himself a nice little sideline selling “preserved cherries”.

          Because The Author has a cracked sense of humor, in the early 1990s we had a water line project held up for over a year, the Antiquities Act invoked, and archeologists crawling all over because of his moonshining shack.
          It was way off the normal roads, and made of local materials, so it *must* have been built by one of the earliest settlers in the region. I heard there was a dissertation about what the elevated levels of copper in the soil signified that was a real hoot, but I never tried to track it down.

          1. My own grandfather had the usual German respect and obedience to authority. Grandma never forgave him for turning in all their gold to FDR. But he did like him the occasional sip of something with a bit of a kick.
            He would occasionally mention that he somehow managed to survive the 13 years of prohibition with the help of some home made dandy lion wine. Sadly, he never passed me the recipe.
            He was a baker during both world wars and the depression. Never admitted to it, but heard tell he may have taken some advantage from his access to large amounts of yeast, sugar, and other baking staples during those lean times of government mandated quotas.

            1. > Grandma never forgave him for turning in all their gold to FDR.

              Of all the hare-brained policies of the Raw Deal, that one has to be near the top of the list… and then decoupling the dollar from gold allowed them to fire up the presses and print as many devalued dollars as they wanted. Which they’re still doing, lickety-split.

      1. Heck, I’m already long dead from the Cold War going hot because Reagan is a crazy Cowboy for not being submissive to Moscow; dead from the advancing glaciers of the inevitable next ice age; dead from the environmental apocalypse because of acid rain; dead from the environmental apocalypse in 11 years after 1990; dead from that crazy cowboy GWB actually attacking the Islamic terrorists after 9/11 instead of just sending some cruise missiles into empty desert as was traditional; then dead again from climate change in 11 years after 2008, and I probably missed a few things I’m long dead from.

        What’s another one on the pile?

        2. You’re probably dead from the Bad Orange Man’s “mishandling,” of Covid-19, otherwise known by a variety of aliases.After all, it’s killed 200 million Americans according to Biden.

    2. Heck the Millerites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millerism) mostly gave up after one fail (although many flailed about in some odd ways). Our current Democrat leaders (those that know who and where they are) keep violating that chicken trying to immanentize the eschaton and their followers keep lapping it up. Even a paramecium turns after banging into something immovable a couple times.

      1. IIRC, The failure of Miller’s predictions — know as the “Great Disappointment” — led to the creation of a number of splinter sects. Most faded into history but The Seventh Day Adventists and the Christadelphians persevered. The Seventh Day Adventists have split a few times since then, too. Perhaps the most famous splinter sects to come out of that was the Davidian Seventh Day Adventists which itself split off the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventists.

      2. Most of the Millerites set a date (failed), adjusted and set a second date (failed), then quit setting dates until they figured out what was going wrong. Which was mostly setting the dates in the first place. (Descendant of some of the Millerites here.)

    3. I read something a year or two ago that really stuck with me, which is that people in general tend to *believe* apocalypse scale crises more. If it’s just a normal, middle of the road crisis, meh. They might shrug and ignore it. But make it OMG WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE, and for some bizarre reason of human behavior, we tend to believe it.

      Which is why politics is always full of apocalypse scale crises. Unfortunately.

      1. Because at tribal level, sometimes you really need to get everybody to run uphill from the floodwaters and leave everything behind, or throw everything you have at the attacking predator.

        OTOH, if you claim apocalypse at the tribal level and it turns out it was a lie, probably people express their displeasure with great immediacy.

      2. I once talked for about an hour to some Jehovah’s Witnesses (just for fun). They started with, “Do you know the end of the world is coming soon?” I replied, “No, but I know I’m going to die.” The wife likes to say, it only matters about the length of the line waiting for St. Peter.

        1. Hmm, you do have to factor in that you need some future discount in your good works. Death cuts off the future chances to do them, but the end of the world will cut off the future consequences of your works.

  5. Now is the time Americans begin to rise up. The rest of the world doesn’t get America so they don’t get what we do when we’re invaded.

    Want some H.O.P.E.? Watch this. 28 minutes of pure, blue meth gold. It’s a doctor who’s really a doctor and says with pure doctor-eze “F what you’re hearing. It’s a lie. Here’s the truth.” From slave muzzles, to ivermectin…..

    It’s a joy to watch. JOY. And you realize there a bunch of brave, brave people doing brave, brave things.

    We’re America. We show the rest of the world what works.

    1. And you realize there a bunch of brave, brave people doing brave, brave things.

      –
      Most of which boil down to ‘find out the truth, and tell it’. WHY does that require such great courage, and sacrifice?

      Telling LIES should be hazardous, not telling the truth!
      ———————————
      A politician is worse than a toilet. They’re both full of shit — but at least you can flush the toilet.

    1. Kathy, that video was bracing. I knew everything in the video, and we’re Vitamin D takers in our family for many years, but to see all the facts and figures put forth in such a calm, intelligent fashion — wonderful. Let’s see more of this, everywhere across the country!

      1. Give it less than 2 days before Google bans the video and anyone who posts it.

        1. Bitchute, GabTV, and CloudHub (what Lara Trump used to repost her interview with POTUS).

          There’s more than one way to defur a feline. If the most commonly used method is widely recognized as a crock-o-shit, it won’t stay the most commonly used method for long. See AOL.

      2. And the gubmints want people to stay inside, so our bodies produces less Vitamin D.

        1. Charlie Martin recommended I take a jungle dose 50thousand units of D if I start getting sick. Take one of those very 8 hours, for a day.
          So far it has worked.

    2. Ever since I watched the video I’ve wanted to run around outside screaming for joy.

      –
      Between 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM. 😛

      I knew some of that, but it’s even worse than I thought. This whole ‘deadly pandemic’ really WAS the common cold. A few simple measures would have stopped it dead, AND OUR GOVERNMENT ACTIVELY PREVENTED THOSE MEASURES FROM BEING TAKEN, OR EVEN PUBLICIZED!!

      Between what our ‘Publick Health Authoriteez’ knew, and didn’t tell us, and the lies they did tell us, why the hell aren’t they all decorating lamp-posts? Or pikes. Heads on pikes is a tradition long overdue for a resurgence.
      ———————————
      People can make stupid mistakes, but only the government can force everybody to make the SAME stupid mistakes.

      1. When Dr. Cold said “… blood on their hands…” twice, that cold anger rose up again.

    3. Thank you for posting that video! I have been looking for someone like him!

  7. China is going to be the world hegemon forever….

    …because remember that time when China conquered …anyone. Yeah, sorry, Tibet does not count.

    Remember when the PLA was fought to an absolute standstill by…Vietnam.

    Remember further back when mass human wave attacks of the Chinese were able to…not win any additional territory in Korea.

    Remember even further back when they managed to expand the Middle Kingdom…exactly only as far as the prior Emperor’s Mongol negotiated borders.

    Their entire civilizational experience is one of multiple civil wars installing a new emperor, interspersed with losing to invaders.

    If Ghengis descendants were making these noises I’d perhaps have more worries. The internally rotting middle kingdom? Not so much.

    Frankly, I’m more concerned that the Ukrainians and the Russians are getting set for a full-up go. That rhymes more closely with Otto Von Bismark’s prophetic “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans” than anything from 内部腐烂的中国.

    1. China, in many ways, is a tragedy. It’s a country that should be one of the world’s great powers. But, for a huge number of reasons (infrastructure, society, geography, general supplies and resources, etc, etc, etc), China may reach second-rate status (i.e. Brazil, Australia), but it can never quite get up to first rate status. It just can’t-not for very long, and not for any real ability to do things. I’m just surprised there hasn’t been the start of warlords breaking out in the mainland, especially after the Crow Flu.

      And, the Balkans have always been a problem, and they often are the trigger point of a European war. We’ve been overdue for one of those for at least 20-30 years.

    2. The “human wave attacks” were sloppy reporting. They were actually incredibly risky infiltration attempts, followed by an assault by the infiltrated troops. If properly posted and observant sentries could catch the infiltrators in the act, then the attack would end in a bloodbath for the Chinese. This did happen against certain units. But the majority of the UN forces had gotten complacent and careless.

    3. “If Ghengis descendants were making these noises I’d perhaps have more worries.”

      Is this a cue to link to another video of The Hu doing heavy metal Mongolian throat singing?

    4. That was also back when the US actually opposed Communist China rather than aiding and abetting them.

    5. Consider the ongoing(?) border conflict with India and the video showing a busload of Chinese soldiers weeping like little girl children on a bus to the front.
      I do wonder if that was a movie clip or something, but would the PRC tolerate a movie that made fun of the PLA? Even as a psyop?

      1. One could likely conclude that the PLAs’ cream-of-the-crop units are not those sent to the top of the Himalayas to execute well-thought-out border provocations like moving the border markers a few hundred yards overnight and hoping the Indians don’t come over and beat you up with sticks before they move it back. Again.

        1. Also stories of how, since the one-child policy resulted in a lot of only sons, the boys have been spoiled and overprotected.

            1. India banned prenatal ultrasounds, at least for a while, because so many girls were being aborted. Better to pay the cost of the abortion than a hundred times that for a dowry, or so the thinking went. Some districts were turning up with almost 120:100 male to female live births. Ditto parts of China. That leads to a lot of social and political instability.

              1. I’ve always been confused by the concept of Dowry. Surely the man, who works and must demonstrate his economic fitness, should be paying the brides family? Surely with wombs being far more valuable than testes, the transfer of wealth should favor the womb-haver (whether the woman herself, or the parents who invested in raising that womb even though it’s bearer wasn’t as capable of manual labor as a son would be). Considering it is also sons whom inherit in many cultures, it just seems like dowries are the exact opposite of how things should be.

                I understand that Bride-price exists too, but dowries seem to be a fairly common fixture in the world, and I legitimately can’t understand it. And really, shit like this is part of the reason why. Why in the hell would a society disincentive having daughters like this? Perhaps there is some other cultural factor that balanced it out in the past (Perhaps prestige was given to the parents of a particularly fertile women?), but it’s clearly not there now, otherwise you wouldn’t have mass female abortions.

                1. Used to be, in properly functioning societies that women got their dowry back if they were widowed
                  BUT in the end?
                  Women are a drain in those societies, because work is mostly physical and requires strength. So….

                2. It’s her inheritance.

                  Besides, your daughter’s LIFE may depend on her household’s prosperity.

            2. Interesting stories about that – lots of child-shuffling as common practice, which covered lots of “Oh, she’s a cousins from the country, no, you wouldn’t know that village” right after a family female had to go away to “get an abortion”, and if the family was not on the block-commissar’s shit list, the local Party wouldn’t bother to check anything out, so there are more female adults of that age group than would be expected given the official internal Party reporting.

              The “too much work, don’t bother to check anything out” stuff is still a thing: The young US citizen fellow who happily made YT vids about riding motorcycles (in a city where riding motorcycles has been outlawed, and without a “reporters license”) from China was under the radar until he wasn’t and had to jet, first escaping to Hong Kong and then when his Chinese citizen wife and daughter got out, to the US. He says that his videos, albeit technically rulebreaking, were down in the “too much trouble to do anything” category for local internal security until the PLA took notice, and then he got a text screenshot with his name On A List, so his wife told him to get out now and she would follow.

            3. And let us remember, that the Chinese are only about four generations removed from bonafide open ancestor worship.
              Which puts an interesting spin on the whole “little emperors” phenomenon.
              Imagine, you’re spoiled rotten, but if you die without issue, you’re a failure who will be ceaselessly tormented by hungry ghosts.
              Anything but mindless compliance to the CCP is risking death.
              Factor that in with the amazing racism the Han have towards everyone else, so the traditional solution of “conquering a neighbor and taking their women” has very limited applicability.
              Also, invasion is dangerous to the invaders. You might gain a wife that’s little better than an animal, but you also might die and be tormented.

              I would not want to be a single woman in Hong Kong right now.
              Or one young enough to be widowed.

              1. Since I have been in Japan (not China) I know about ancestor worship and hungry ghosts. So I can understand the horror you are talking about.

    6. Don’t forget while PAVN was fighting the PLA to a standstill, they were also fighting an insurgency in Cambodia. The reason for the invasion was to get Vietnam to leave China’s buddies the Khmer Rouge alone.

      1. Interestingly enough, that war might have had a very positive, though completely unexpected, outcome. In his book “On China”, Kissinger noted that the war was fought just after the Soviets had signed a treaty of support with the Vietnamese. The Soviets weren’t interested in going to war with China, though. So when the Chinese attacked Vietnam, the Soviets didn’t honor their side of the agreement. Countries that are looking for powerful allies tend to take note of such things.

        Not long afterwards, the Soviet client government in Afghanistan started coming under attack…

        In short, it’s entirely possible that the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was because the Soviets wanted to demonstrate to potential allies that their promises of support weren’t worthless, and felt that they needed to do so after leaving Vietnam to its own devices against China.

    7. Ghengis’ descendants are probably too few in number compared to their neighbors, these days. Sure, things could change. But for the time being, they’re busy trying to modernize. Also, they’re pretty friendly people who seem to be very much in favor of freedom (and had probably the most peaceful transfer power of any nation from the communists to representative government).

      1. I’m not sure what you mean by “Genghis descendants”, but I’ve read that .5% (1 in 200) of the entire world is directly descended from Genghis Khan. So I wouldn’t exactly say they’re few in number.

        1. I’m sure he “Genghis’ descendants” refers to his cultural descendents, not those in whom his blood is badly diluted and runs like water.

          I seem to recall having read that his hordes were not, at the time, all that numerous and probably consisted of significantly fewer people than the Chines (and other) populations Genghis conquered. Of course, the Mongol “tip-to-tail” ratio was far superior to their targets’ and their use of maneuver made them seem greater in number. There was also their use of psychological warfare to encourage their targets’ taking counsel of their fears.
          ~

  8. Our Hostess said:
    “I mean the insanity of the left was being capable of believing that Russia would back someone who wanted to “Make America Great Again.” HOW fricking stupid do you have to be about how nations work, and history to believe that shit?)”

    May I present to you all of AOC’s crew, 98+% of the “journalists”, most of the Democrat members of the Congress (as well as some Rinos, including one ex governor of Massachusetts) and nearly all of the folks who voted (actually or virtually) for the Ficus in Chief. Our local G*d of the Copybook Headings RAH noted that Stupidity has its own penalty and that is death, but Could it please work a bit more quickly?

    1. Those goobers probably wanted the Hobbit films with Smaug to be R rated due to the smoke issuing from his nostrils. How soon until they cancel or edit Casablanca for smoking, anyone want to start a pool.

      2. We have a small dragon (puppet) we use at church. One of the running gags is he wants to be a fire-breathing dragon when he grows up (or a knight in shining armor- he can’t make up his mind), but his mother won’t let him smoke.

      3. There was an article last week about Smoking In Casablanca being DoubleplusUnGood. So, if the pool’s not closed already, the sign’s going up.

        (The Benedict Cumberbach Sherlock series had him overdoing nicotine patches. Somewhere between funny and SMH.)

    2. Rango is a parody of, and homage to, and an example of, the Western genre.

      It’s surprisingly good.
      It’s earnestly tongue-in-cheek.
      The visuals, setup, and execution of each Western trope are humorous and over the top. And it plays them completely straight.
      It’s worth a couple hours of your time. Especially if you like Westerns.
      It’s the good kind of deconstruction, where you get to the heart of the matter.

  10. But we can CHOOSE to lose.

    The question is: WHY WOULD YOU?

    In the meantime recent dives have confirmed the resting place of the USS Johnston.

    Seems relevant.

    1. Saw that yesterday. The individual who posted the info had to clarify that the timing of the announcement was purely a coincidence.

  11. “But we’re not ready to be eaten by a hawk, or even a blinkered dragon yet. And we won’t be.”

    Am I the only one who immediately thought of the “NEVER GIVE UP” poster of the frog choking the bird trying to eat it?

    Can we commit national suicide? Sure, we can try, but “American” has too many adherents in too many hidey holes. We’d be back before the so-called Victor’s.

    1. I think of a print at a con lo these many years ago I wish I’d bought. It shows a mob of little aliens fleeing in panic from a swarm of flying monsters…except for one, his back to the viewer, who is standing on a small hill, middle finger held high. The title was something like, “One Great Gesture of Defiance.”

    1. A satellite picture could show what is in your hands while you are “standing on the corner” I’ve heard that the pictures are clearer than your cell phone.

        1. In the old days they considered open carry honest, and concealed carry sneaky. Now the aristos consider open carry a threat, and concealed carry a threat.

          In reality, open carry is just target self-designation for the bad guys.

          And in the 9th circuit we have official circular reasoning in a sequence of rulings that go “Oh, you don’t need concealed carry other than at the whim of the local political sheriff – open carry is legal so that satisfies the requirements of the unfortunate 2nd amendment” followed by “Outlawing open carry is totes legal because we said so, peon” and now “Just because both open carry and concealed carry are not available doesn’t mean the 2nd is involved – ‘keep and bear’ only applies in the home – the supremes said so!”

          Only in the home! Just like freedom of speech and religion! Clearly all the things the .gov wants to do but is specifically prevented from doing by the Constitution are REALLY only prohibited in the home.

        1. I’m sorry but you are not thinking of how exact and how pinpoint the pictures are. When I left the Navy in 1994 (and contracting) you wouldn’t believe what they could see. Now? I’m sure they can see what is in your pockets.

          1. Yes, they can see almost anything. However, there are only a few thousand actual analysts. As good as the automated analysis is, if a human does not look at it, it doesn’t matter what the overhead captured.

          3. I think he be pointing out “sure, you can see inside of a dude’s pockets on the street corner, but which corner do you target, and if you do too many, how do sort it into anything actionable?”

            1. There’s optics physics in the way of perfect magnification – unless you get foldable optically correct reflectors you can only launch something with a mirror that is slightly less wide as the available fairing. This aperture limit is a hard stop on resolution unless you are able to electronically combine arrays of sats looking at the same observation target. They are trying this now on the commercial earth-observation sats.

              And the daytime atmosphere is all wiggly in complex ways that are impossible to predict. When looking through the atmosphere in the other direction (i.e. astronomy) they shoot a laser up through the atmosphere right now, and look at the distortions right now, and apply that correction right now to the captured images. Plus astronomy is normally done at night.

              There’s no reason why this active correction technique could not also be done from orbit – put an IR spot onto the ground and correct the image to make it the right shape – but if detected it would give away targets of particular interest, which would probably also trigger complaints of laser-equipped battle station sats. Plus a few well placed IR retroreflectors might cause a spy sat so equipped to blind itself.

              There’s also persistence – a 300km to 400km-ish orbit limits your dwell time over targets of interest, and the higher you go to get more time-over-target, the worse your resolution.

              A stealth long-duration UAV would likely be a much better, and cheaper, way to watch the chess pieces on a board of interest.

  13. “Information gathering ALWAYS exceeds the ability to process it. Sure, they can process more now, but they can gather exponentially more.”

    If you read the book “The Puzzle Palace” from James Bamford, you’ll realize that the government has been gathering the information for a very long time. Plus the info is so massive they have to use programs that alarm on certain words. The information gathering is massive. The ability to analyse the info is not as massive– better but still not massive. Plus those “blurred” pictures they sometimes give out– is a lie. The technology and esp. the picture technology has been sharp and very clear since the 80s.

    1. …and if you create bread crumb trails of keywords, then it overloads the humans who are tasked with investigating such things.

      2. There were .signature files on Usenet that had a bunch of keywords in them with the stated purpose of doing what you describe.

  14. I find that those around me are much happier when I keep my monologues internal.

    And yeah, we all die. And if I can’t die at an old age of …over exertion…in bed, then on a pile a brass behind a wall of the bodies of the enemy works too.

    Don’t focus on what the enemy is planning for us, rather focus on what we can do to them. (Axes flash, broadsword swing…)

      1. “Fight till you’re no longer sane.” Those who start out insane could then stop immediately. Not sure what should be the point at which you stop fighting though. “Never give up, never surrender.”

            1. There’s a reason I just had to find a way to work the Winged Hussars into a story. Or rather, they wrote themselves in, and I had to find a plot to go with them. The Great Editor has a strange sense of humor, some days. (Yes, I know. Platypus. ‘Nuff said.)

            2. Then there is Aníbal Milhais, from the mythical land of Portugal.

              Aníbal Augusto Milhais (July 9, 1895 – June 3, 1970), nicknamed “Soldier Millions”, was the most decorated Portuguese soldier of World War I and the only Portuguese soldier awarded the highest national honour, the Military Order of the Tower and of the Sword, of Valour, Loyalty and Merit on the battlefield instead of the usual public ceremony in Lisbon.

              On April 9, 1918,[1][2] Milhais took part in the battle known in Portugal as “The Battle of La Lys” – the first day of Ludendorff’s Lys Offensive, otherwise known as “Operation Georgette”, and as the “Battle of Estaires” in official British history.[3] He found himself in the midst of the battle, in the field of Isberg, covering the withdrawal of Portuguese and Scots soldiers. Within a few hours, 1,938 men had been killed, 5,198 wounded and about 7,000 taken prisoner.

              Milhais was in charge of a Lewis gun on April 9, 1918. During Operation Georgette, when the German Army attacked his division, Milhais laid down intensive fire against assaults by two German regiments, causing many German casualties. He managed to cover the retreat of Portuguese and Scots alike, despite coming under heavy attack himself. He fired in all directions and stayed at his post until he ran out of ammunition. Finally, the Germans decided to go around his position, and Milhais found himself alone in the rear of the enemy lines for three days.

              On the third day, Milhais, still carrying his Lewis gun, rescued a Scottish major from a swamp, and the two reached Allied lines. Milhais was warmly welcomed, but being a modest man he did not say anything about his experiences. However, the officer he had helped reported his actions to the British headquarters and several other testimonies also made his deeds known.
              ~

          1. Well, then, the dead should stop voting, else they’ll have to fight just like the defenders of Fort Zinderneuf.
            ~

            1. The dead don’t actually vote. Most of them can’t even hold a pen. So, the Democrats have people who know exactly what the dead want, to vote for them. Just like all those illegal aliens that can’t read a word of English, and are illiterate in their own language, need a little ‘help’ voting.

              That’s why they’ve made the schools so bad. They want everybody to be illiterate and need ‘help’ with voting.
              ———————————
              “Madam Mayor, your dead voters have risen from the grave! They want a few words with you, and…they are not pleased.”

        4. From the follow on song to the one Sara quoted “My comrades they did never yield, for courage knows no bounds”

      3. For some reason that set off my thought processes, always dangerous:
        Reason like a Vulcan
        Scheme like a Romulan
        Negotiate like a Ferengi
        Fight like a Klingon

  15. As I have been asserting for years, it is extremely likely Iran already has nuclear weapons. The below piece makes a strong case for their having them already:

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/iran-probably-already-has-the-bomb-heres-what-to-do-about-it/

    Although its National Review, their arguments as to Iran having the bomb make sense. North Korea has them and Iran has been financing North Korea’s bomb program. It is hard to imagine that Iran would not have assured itself of getting working nuclear bombs out of the arrangement.

    Don’t be surprised if you wake up in the morning to find that Iran has nuked Tel Aviv, that Israel has retaliated and the political establishment reacts with the “shocked that their is gambling going on Rick’s Cafe” and then blames Israel for being nuked and for retaliating.

    (via Insty)

    1. Will they nuke Tel Aviv, or go for Frankfurt or Berlin or Paris? Yes, they all wanted to trade with Iran but they’re still infidels.
      Or maybe Riyadh, instead. That could get messy.

      1. Very messy, because it was a branch of ISIS that talked about taking over Mecca and destroying the kabbah because it wasn’t Islamic enough. That comment had a lot of analyst-types wondering what the spokes-critter had been smoking/drinking/sniffing.

        1. Actually, there may be some prophetic information that would seem to fit Iran nuking Mecca.

    2. Uranium enriched to 20% is “weapons possible” grade. Hugely inefficient due to the large critical mass, but it will go critical and kaboom.

      Iran has been making 20-ish% for a while.

      And it is not too terribly hard to make weapons-grade plutonium with time, money, and know-how.

      What impresses me is how badly North Korea and Iran have done. Epic screw-ups and epic fails.

      South Africa, on a shoestring budget, made a handful of quite useable “little boy” nukes. (Same as the one that zorched Hiroshima)

      1. China, OTOH, is likely to discourage Iranian as it is destabilizing in a region upon which China depends for oil.

        That, at any rate, seems to be the State Department’s view, so you can be confident it is wrong.
        ~

        1. Nope, you can’t even count on that. Just as a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut, and a stopped clock is right twice a day, not even the U.S. State Department can be consistently wrong about everything.

  17. Random bit of strange, possibly insane dialog that was stuck in my head after waking up with 3AM insomnia last week. Might be a story seed:

    “Does evil win in the end? Of *course* evil wins in the end.”
    “Wow, that’s not very hopeful.”
    “It’s a causal statement, almost a tautology. If the good guys win, things don’t come to an end. Endings are what an evil of some sort *does*.”
    “That implies some sort of half life, given enough chances it’ll happen eventually.”
    “Not necessarily, think it through. Also, don’t lose. Needless to say, that which cannot go on does not go on, but a multi-billion-year run is pretty good.”

    ….

    My other dreams were about running from zombies. Very fast freaky zombies. : – /

  18. Your crimes against Conservatism have simply gone too far.

    Not only do you refuse to to accept that everything is, always has been*, and always will be lost. But, as if that were a very little thing, you refuse to obey when the enemy clearly states what you are to believe.

    Your Conservative Card has been revoked, and a team will arrive shortly to take you to National Review HQ. There you will be treated for your clear mental aberrations that lead to these crimes so that you may once more become a productive member of society in solidarity with the masses.

    * except of course for the Golden Age when all was perfect.

      1. It depends entirely upon what one is conserving, doesn’t it?

        In pundit and government circles, they’re most interested in conserving their paycheck
        But actual conservativism does exist, and its adherents greatly outnumber the charlatans.
        The problem is the frauds are concentrated in locales of power, and the real thing is diffuse

      2. ‘Of course,’ he added, as Mathis started to expostulate, ‘patriotism comes along and makes it seem fairly all right, but this country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date. Today we are fighting communism. Okay. If I’d been alive fifty years ago, the brand of conservatism we have today would have been damn near called communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.’

        –Ian Fleming, Casino Royale, 1953

  19. See Peter Zeihan’s books about China’s imminent collapse. The WuFlu was just prolonging the inevitable. Demography and geography doom them, Russia, and much of Europe. Just a matter of time.

  20. “I needed catharsis.”

    Not that I anticipate, at my age, accepting another cat into my household, but if I do I shall be greatly tempted to name it Harsis.
    ~

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  23. “The heck. You’ve never interrupted yourself?”

    Shouldn’t that be, “The heck. You’ve never interrupted your – Look! Squirrel!”
    ~

    1. Arguing with yourself is best done in the privacy of your own head.
      People tend to react poorly.
      And sometimes, I even notice.

      1. The fun part is when it’s a three-way fight in your own mind … and all three of you lose. 😈

        1. There’s a chart for performance ratings that’s been around for decades. Under, “Communications Skills,” it runs:
          Outstanding- Talks to God
          Highly Successful- Talks to the Angels
          Fully Successful- Talks to himself
          Needs Improvement- Argues with himself
          Unsuccessful- Loses arguments with himself

  24. “… believing that Russia would back someone who wanted to “Make America Great Again.” HOW fricking stupid do you have to be …”

    Stupid enough to believe that a president spending four trillion dollars might “Build Back Better.”
    ~

  25. “… none can process the masses of information these ass clowns are gathering.”

    What is often obscured by the reporting, the FBI profiling, the televised talking heads, and TV’s Police Procedurals is that nearly all of this law enforcement data-crunching occurs after the fact. When they’ve got somebody like the Atlanta Spa Killer in hand, or the California Super-Market Shooter or even today’s Barricade Crasher it is relatively simple to search the data banks for cherry-picked evidence supporting guilt. Heck, it even works pretty well for a Richard Jewell — but that doesn’t enable them to prevent a single damn crime.

    The Chinese are extremely good at suppressing large groups of people but their Justice system has little to do with guilt or innocence. Because they’ve got a fire hose of information flooding them and can only effectively employ it in order to frame somebody (and if they frame the guilty party, well, so much the better. But it isn’t really important to them.)
    ~

    1. These days, *our* justice system has little to do with guilt or innocence. It’s all about who you voted for, what your skin color and (claimed) gender is and what the political narrative demands of you.

    2. The Chinese intel fire hose is part of the reason they hired those US companies to architect their social credit system, where much is determined algorithmically.

      When you are policing 8 billion subjects, especially in eth cities that have grown so incredibly rapidly over the past 20 years, your internal security folks are very much in the “So many to detain, so little time” category.

      1. I don’t know, is it possible that they don’t have to police them that much? Yeah I know they’re commies. But I wonder how much there is an actual crime rate in China. Drunks and bike thieves and murderers and stuff, not dissidents and shakedownees.

        1. er…. are you for real?
          There’s a ton of what could be described as Mob Activity. Though most of them are in league with the CCP.
          For the record, though, they’re probably easier to police than Americans. (just about anything is, including rabid rats. We’re right down proud of that.)

          1. I beg your pardon. My meaning is that in America I would associate Chinese people with probity. I believe I’ve left things behind in Chinatown, like a wallet or a phone, and got them back. I have been offered credit by Chinese restos/shopkeepers, totally unique in my experience.

            (As for Americans and policing. Depends how you cut your cake. We’re big believers in law, or were. We’d go to the cops for legal matters rather than taking them into our own hands. Snitches-type talk is mostly for ghettoized peoples here. Or was, because maybe we we’re fools to trust, but we certainly did once trust, even if we were fools then.)

            So maybe that’s Chinese in America or Chinese-Americans, but my point was, if you have half the crime, or 1/10, you by rights have half the policing, and even doubling it or 10Xing it with political policing only brings you up to par with a heavily policed society.

            2. “As for Americans and policing …”

              I have often contemplated the fact that the emphasis on “police racism” exacerbates relations between police and Blacks, making such interactions more prone to conflict and misunderstanding. Simply phrased, the reason Black and Police interactions are likely to result in conflict is that both parties expect conflict.
              ~

  26. I mean the insanity of the left was being capable of believing that Russia would back someone who wanted to “Make America Great Again.” HOW fricking stupid do you have to be about how nations work, and history to believe that shit?

    Simple. They thought he was lying. They though the MAGA slogan was cover for his real intentions, whatever they might be. That he might be telling the truth with his campaign slogan never even entered their heads, because nobody they know would act like that. So the illogic of accusing him of partnering with Russia never occurred to them, because that requires “he’s telling the truth” as a premise, and they rejected that premise without a second thought.

    1. They believed his purpose was to take power and impose his agenda, just the way they would (and are).
      Just like Pelosi blithely told the media that Tea Party protests were just “astroturf,” because that’s the way they do it.

    2. Like out State Department saying that the Iranian talk about the End Times and bringing about the return of the Mahdi and the 12th Imam was just internal propaganda, because none of the folks in Foggy Bottom would believe that part of Christianity, so why should the Imams believe that part of Islam? “We know better what you really believe than you do,” was the strong implication I got reading some articles. *Facepaw*

      1. Nod.

        There was a guy on Baen’s Bar (years ago) who was sure that talk about Iran nuking Israel was created by Iran’s enemies.

        IE The Iranians CAN NOT BE THAT INSANE. 😆

        1. As you well know, it is… unwise.. to bet against human insanity. And stupidity. And intelligence (oddly enough). And enginuity. Mighty damned confusing species, that lot.

          1. Nod.

            Of course, the idea that it “Made Sense” to the Iranian Government was Not In His Liberal World View.

            Mind you, he wasn’t a bad person, just wrong. Most of the more conservative Bar-Flies enjoyed debating him (and they were real debates).

            But one jerk went out-of-his-way to start a Bar-Fight with him so both him and the jerk got banned.

            Too bad for him (IMO) but the jerk deserved worse. 😦

  27. Yes, they thought he was lying. Just like the Dim party is lying about global warming as an excuse to print ten trillion dollars for their friends. RRRRRREEEE……

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  29. his real intentions, whatever they might be.

    …which they assumed were exactly the same as theirs, but oriented to him and his instead of to them and theirs. I had to listen to it from the mouths of corporate executive Republicans I otherwise really admire who voted against The Donald twice because he is just like the Democrat but nasty to women and saying those lies on top of it.

  30. Boy, did I need to hear this. The thing that always gets me in reading all those “sky is falling” articles is that they almost always define the problem, but never — I repeat —never offer even one solution to counter it. Thus-and-so is our current problem. Tomorrow might be a different one. How do we solve it? And there’s nothing. Nothing except a lot of hand wringing. It’s as if these hand wringers can’t figure out a way around it, or over it, or under it. Or how to sabotage it. In the end, that’s what I always want to know: what do I do about it? Rolling over and dying isn’t an answer.

    1. Oh, the solution is always “work together” and “collective effort” and “redirect resources” and “give up freedoms for the common good” and all the other inevitable arrow of history socialist standards.

      You will never, not ever, see “The problem is X, the only solution is more freedom and deregulation of markets.”

    1. I’m not normally one for online personality tests, but on a lark I decided to take this one. Apparently I’m a snake, so everyone lower your opinion of me accordingly..

      1. I would… for the “crime” of taking those on-line tests serious. 😆

        1. Heh. I don’t take it seriously, and I don’t see myself as particularly snake-like.

          But on a completely unrelated note, you and your lady-friend there look hungry. Here, have an apple… 😉

  32. It does occur to me that the director might just have taken The Writer’s Journey to heart and insisted on having the Refusal of the Call in there somewhere. (The book does suggest that if your hero doesn’t refuse, you can put that “energy” in another character.)

  33. Or, you know, we go down into the stonnnnnnne ageeeeee forever. REEEEEE.

    –
    Like the Stone World, from Dr. Stone? 😛

    Even there, though, Senku immediately starts upgrading the Stone World village. It’s a lot of work at first, but soon they’re getting more productivity for less labor. As well as medicine to cure one character’s chronic pneumonia.

    It’s amazing how much people can get done when they’re not held back by the ones that believe they should be telling everybody else what to do, because they’re useless for any other purpose.
    ———————————
    Governments can’t create prosperity; at best, they can refrain from destroying it.

    1. Democrats have long fetishized “racial purity” although I cannot personally see any benefits to it. Hybrid vigor is of much greater value.
      ~

      1. Mutts always last longer and are healthier than purebreds.

        So as to dogs, so as to civilizations.

        1. Ages ago, I got a kick on the ankle from my mother for observing at the family dinner table, to my grandmother (who was a woman of the late 19th century British Empire) that biologically speaking, miscegenation was a sound practice. Not that I was wrong – as Mom and Dad were both biologists … but I was being rude to my grandmother in pointing that out.

          1. Oh, nonsense – I see from the latest Historical Documents that, in a fact suppressed up to until now, Dr. Watson was a posh Englishman Lacking Pallor:

            The Irregulars on Netflix

            3. Here Watson is shown consulting with Holmes, who is clearly a direct ancestor of TehTwits CEO:

              2. …and it’s equally clear the bloodline has devolved considerably since then. 😛

            4. So how did he tan?

              “He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. “

  35. A quibble. Some of us don’t have this “internal monologue.” Instead, it’s a stew of high-level abstractions, visual perceptions, and primitive emotions with a sprinkling of neurobiological what-all. I remember being gobsmacked upon learning very late in life that an apparently substantial majority of people continually “talk” to themselves. They literally have a “voice” in their heads. What, seriously? O_o

    Anyways. I can’t find the original Quora thread with lots of interesting back-and-forth on the topic. You might have better luck. The words “inner monologue” and “Quora” do pop up some threads other than the very long one I’ve in mind.

      1. From his own attestation, JMS of Babylon 5 fame got he muse inputs auditorially, with G’kar and Londo Mollari dictating dialog to JMS in full accent while he was in the shower.

        2. I remember JMS providing commentary on a (then) new episode at Comic-Con. In the pre-credits bit, G’Kar sat in front of his book holding a pen. Somebody interrupted him, he raised the pen and said, “Wait! My Muse is speaking to me.” at the exact time Straczynski’s name appeared on the screen.

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  39. Speaking of inner dialog, every time I ask this I get a fascinating variety of responses:

    When you speak to yourself, what POV do you use, and how do you refer to yourself?

    For ex:

    Do you speak in first person? “I really need to get the laundry done.”

    Do you speak in second person? “Wow, you really screwed that up.”

    If you refer to yourself by name, rather than the implied ‘you’, do you use your first name, your last name, a nick name?

    Do you use just one or some mixture of the above, something else entirely?

    This is just for curiosity. I’m totally not researching for potential future narrator voices for stories….

    2. Once in a Blue Moon, I’ll refer to myself as “Paul Stephen Howard”. IE I’m really annoyed at myself.

      Oh, yes from time to time Mom would call me that when I really really annoyed her. 😀

    3. Usually, it’s like I’m talking to some invisible presence in the room. Or the cats. Although talking to the cats gets no more results than talking to something that doesn’t exist. They just look at me funny, if they take any notice at all.

      Sometimes I talk to whatever thing I’m working on, especially if it’s pissing me off. “Oh yeah? Be that way. I got a hammer, right here. Take that!” or “Stop cross-threading on me, dammit! Get in there!” or “Why the hell did they put this damn bolt there, of all places?”

      Putting things into words just seems to help me think.

    4. By name indicates that I’m seriously depressed and is fortunately uncommon. Second person for imperatives like “You have to get up now.”

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