Turn On The Light

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’m not going to blow smoke at you. Things are going to get bad. Probably very bad. But not that bad. Not what you’re imagining.

The problem with “a boot stomping on a human face forever” is that the boot can only stomp on an imaginary human face. Real humans bite. And kick, and stab. The scale of that might take a long time depending on culture, and cultures long broken to tyranny will take a very, very long time. But eventually the kick comes, and even in China the bastards lose the mandate of heaven.

We’re not Chinese ((culture, not race) thank heavens.) Even people of Chinese ethnicity in US are Americans. And Americans are a fractious lot. We can be told. It just won’t have much difference.

And before you bring up the long painful saga of the Covidiocy, let me reassure you: you’re not taking factors into account. Also, you’re indulging in thinking of reality as all those movies you’ve seen. Reality is not movies.

Look, I’m by nature not only a chronic depressive, but a pessimist. So I have to continuously check my view of reality. And even I fell for the “the people will rise up.”

I expected it May last year, not May this year.

This is because I was partly suffering from narrative. In narrative, be it books about the American revolution, or much worse movies, it’s always all very linear. “The people were oppressed, and the people rose up.”

But each culture is different, and the circumstances of place and time influence this too.

How do I put this: we are just now coming out of an era when our institutions and the media were thoroughly captured by statism and frankly Marxism. Sure, Statism and Marxism failed, but the media and entertainment would not only not report it, but would pile on it as fast and deep as they could, to make it be forgotten or be perceived as the opposite. And when that failed, they then went to work on the history books, to reverse things. (Which is why 90% of the eductated-into-stupidity people believe “the parties switched sides” even though if they popped their heads out of movies for a minute they’d know that was impossible.)

Now that has been changing since the 80s. CHANGING VERY SLOWLY. Reagan not only exploded the USSR. He stuck a big sharp pin in communism and by definition in statism.

Possibly the most significant thing he did was explode “we’re from the government and we’re here to help you.”

The “We won world war II and went to the moon” generation viewed government as a force for good. Not because there hadn’t been absurd waste and ridiculous management during those — there always is when the government is involved. Government efficiency is best described as performing brain surgery on a dirty kitchen table, using a wooden spoon — but because it was never divulged. And it was afterwards covered in glory and beauty by historians who had long since been seduced by the idea of the “efficiency” of scientific government and central control.

Even abject failures like the New Deal and the Great Society were painted as great achievements, even if they had to paint with the colors of what was intended and not what was.

But Reagan, (with an assist from Jimmah Carter being the most incompetent and idiotic president we had till Obama.) made it all a joke, with a few well-placed jabs.

Oh, the media covered up. And called Reagan names in retrospect. And tried to convince new generations that the State was the be all end all.

But it hasn’t taken. Not really. Around the edges, the “respect” for government has continued to erode. No matter how much they tell us this gilded turd is wonderful, anyone who has to work with government or comes up against them at any level has a different experience, and this continues multiplying through the population. So…

So, by and large, the population would not have believed any other scare. Even a ginned up war wouldn’t have worked (partly because the left has undermined every single justified war effort. They only believe in unjustified war.) But disease…

The population does not remember the racist and ridiculous syphilis experiments, or all the other blunders, including Fauci’s fuckup of AIDS. Most of the public health efforts are in the past enough or restricted enough that the population in general thinks they were successful.

Plus, the staggering enormity of taking the entire country to rack and ruin to replace the president is not something that would occur to a normal brain. Or that a normal brain can believe in.

I mean, the left only got that desperate because their narrative only works if they fully control it. And they no longer have full control. Regardless of what you chose to believe, if they had full control, Obama would have been the “new FDR” and we’d have meekly picked his chosen successor, instead of plastering egg all over their faces.

If they had full control, they wouldn’t have had to perform last minute clumsy fraud that even Guatemalans saw.

They don’t have full control, and they’re in a blind panic. Having said so, their ginning up of a panic over “very dangerous form of the common cold” (waggles hand) and then shutting down the entire country except for chosen allies, controlling the social media with an iron fist, AND telling everyone to wear the completely stupid masks, etc etc was a level of evil that no normal American could believe, unless it were really necessary.

Reasonable people whom I admire, assumed it was necessary, because why would anyone do that, otherwise?

(My theory is that this bullshit was suggested by China, whose understanding of Americans is like a cows understanding of architecture, with my apologies to cows. And whose present leadership has been perpetrating monstruous deeds on their own people that would make Hitler say “Whoa, that’s going too far.”)

But now we have their range. Now we know the depravity they’re capable of. Which is why people are sticking their feet on the ground and yelling at government “no, you move.”

This will only continue. And accelerate. (First slow, then very fast.)

Does it mean there will be no blood? Um…. I’m starting to have hopes of that, as everyone treats the Fraudisent with something between contempt and hilarity and the media is reduced to screaming into empty air how great the Fraudisent and Empty Head Commie La Whorish are.

But I wouldn’t give it very high odds. If we manage to break the left without blood, it will be a miracle. Then again American history is an history of miracles.

On the third hand, there will be some blood, because these cutting edge incrementalized assholes who have seized control of our institutions from the White House on down, are very stupid. So stupid that flatworms with the capacity to edge away from heat laugh at them. Which means that, ultimately, they’ll continue pushing. And pushing in the most stupid way, because they’ve been indocrinated into believing that if they shout loud enough, they’ll obey.

So there will be blood, here and there. And open fighting here and there. But when even here, in the slave states, people have gone “Take your slave muzzle and eat it” regardless of posted signs or screaming officials, the people have had enough.

The left carried the Covidiocy by going so outrageously evil that normal, non diseased human brains had trouble believing it.

They still don’t realize that in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress parlance that’s a “funny only once.” and “Try it again and it makes you a half wit.”

They still don’t realize we are pissed. Really pissed. And shouting and punitive measures will only make it worse.

Keep making them uncomfortable.

They have “seized power” in the only way they know: by seizing control of the institutions. They don’t seem to understand that Americans tolerate institutions as long as they can and then subvert them. And if it continues being crazy, then overthrow them.

Totalitarian regimes have a relatively short shelf life, because they have an information problem. Unless the culture itself is of a certain kind (and even then!) they never control quite as much as they think.

Sure, 1984 is not an instruction manual. But neither is it a documentary. In fact, the only way to make it work in one’s head is to imagine all these people were part of a small and tightly controlled group that gave big brother the impression he was controlling everything, and that outside that group Irish democracy prevailed.

My joke about 1984 has been “Imagine dropping a Heinlein character into it.” But hell, you don’t even need that. Imagine dropping me into it. It would not survive. And btw, in any society there are several of those people.

The only way Totalitarianism Forever works is if a) every person in it is an NPC. b)the leaders are preternaturally competent. And even then, it needs a free country that is feeding that country and from whom that country can steal ideas and technology.

Totalitarianism is possibly the most stupid of human forms of government, and the bigger the country is, the more stupid it becomes. And it can’t last.

Now imagine totalitarianism being implemented by 4th generation red diaper babies, which is what we have here from Obama downward. Commie La Whorish and Occasional Cortex are representative of this. They’ve been told they’re very very smart, even if they can’t carry a thought in a bucket. Because “Smart” has become “parrots the Marxist line back at us” and at this point the only young people who stay in the ideology are the next thing to brain damaged. Otherwise by thirty they see through the ideology. (And I’m not going to make guesses about Obama’s mental competence, except to say that families attracted to communism are usually “smartish” but not that smart, and envious of those who are really smart. And that even if he had been a genius, his upbringing and the substances he used would have damaged him. And I doubt he was a genius to begin with.)

Fourth generation red diaper babies think that people are NPCs. They’ve drank so much Marxism they don’t even know how much their thinking is polluted by it. Even the smart ones can’t find their way out of that trap.

And those are the ones trying to implement the reign of a thousand years here.

That is not going to end well…. for them. And it’s going to suck like a hoover for us, as we fight our way out of the destruction they’ve already caused, and what’s to come.

But this is not the end of America. America is only mostly dead. And we’ll come back. Yes, it will take a miracle, but we’re a miraculous people.

Be not afraid. The fourth is almost upon us. Buy patriotic clothing and fly the flag, and deck your home in bunting. It makes the crazy left break out in sweats, and the angrier and more scared they are, the more they will misstep, until even the blind can see the asshats for what they are.

Be not afraid. Open the window and see the light of liberty.

In the end we win, they lose. There is no other outcome.

Hearts on high. Go work.

405 thoughts on “Turn On The Light”

  1. > And called Reagan names in retrospect.

    Heck, they’re still blaming “Reagan” for the homeless problem in California.

    Reagan hasn’t been Governor of California in nearly 50 years.

    > They still don’t realize we are pissed. Really pissed.

    The smarter ones are starting to realize it, I think, hence the massive overreaction to the non-insurrection on January 6. That scared them. Pelosi’s office had been taken over at least two previous times in Trump’s first term alone (once by Code Pink, once by a group associated with the jumped-up bartender), but only this one freaked them out.

    1. MaligNancy has also openly supported takeovers of government buildings by leftists; including the 3000+ union members and activists who stormed the Wisconsin legislature and forced the legislators voting on a bill to restrict union use of members dues for political causes without member permission, which building storming she declared to be “democracy in action”. She has also supported the Antifa thugs firebombing Federal buildings.

      The reason they made up stories about violence by the January 6 protestors is 1) that is how their own side acts, with violence and 2) they couldn’t believe that so many people could enter the Capitol building and walk through it peaceably while protesting.

    2. They called it an “insurrection” so they could invoke the 14th amendment on anyone who participated (Thumper included) and prevent the “insurrectionists” from gaining public office. Just say they were disqualified because they had participated and/or aided an insurrection. Classic lib redefinition of terms.

      I think they haven’t tried it because some of the smartest have figured out it would backfire badly.

      1. On the other hand, Chris Wray (former FBI director, bigtime deep stater) is saying that to combat “domestic terrorism” we have to go after “command and control” elements, including “people sitting in Congress right now.”

        https://notthebee.com/article/former-fbi-assistant-director-and-nbc-contributor-says-in-order-to-attack-domestic-terrorism-we-have-to-go-after-command-and-control-elements-including-people-sitting-in-congress-right-now

        (NTB is, for the record, an offshoot of Babylon Bee that covers stupid [excrement] that sounds like a BB satirical article but is real.)

    3. Reagan hasn’t been Governor of California in nearly 50 years.

      Part of the problem is that a LOT of them framed their idea of “right now”, about 50 years ago.

      IE, they’re late 60s ish.

      Same way that my brain says that 1980 is “20 years ago,” not 40 years ago.

  2. There will be a tipping point – a ‘firing on Ft. Sumpter’ type event: my daughter and I have discussed this several times. We can’t tell when, where, or how soon – but it will happen. Probably over something stupid and minor, in one of the defiant red states: Texas, Florida, North Dakota – one of them. Someone or some entity within one of those defiant red states will openly defy a federal dictate … and someone in the DC power structure will decide that an example must be made, to encourage cooperation among the others. Heavily armed federal agents will descent, a la Bundy Ranch – FBI, federal marshals, who knows … but the state governor, legislature, ordinary citizens and state/local law enforcement will side with the defiant entity … and then the fur will well and truly fly.

    1. a-la A State of Disobedience by Tom Kratman.

      It’s been a while since I’ve read that particuarly work, but IIRC things got really dicey in that book before they got better. I hope and pray things don’t get half that bad in the real world.

      3. Better “State of Disobedience” than the pre story of “Caliphate”. Col. Kratman has a tendency to write really excellent stories that wander towards the dark side of things quickly.

        1. I rather enjoyed “Term Limits” by Vince Flynn. Instead of going into civil war, they slaughtered politicians until they were ready to say ‘uncle’ and do what they are supposed to do, follow the !#%@#$%^ Constitution.

          1. I guess I can hope for that over open civil war. What’s the saying? Kill all they send then kill the men who sent them.

            1. If I gave the response I want to give to this, I’d have to change my name to outrightbarbarian. Not that that doesn’t have a certain appeal. . .

              1. Crush your enemies!
                See them driven before you!
                Hear the lamentations of their female-identifying persons of nonspecific biological traits!

            2. To do that we would have to ignore the lock downs and masks from last year, we’d have to ignore the strangely well organized and funded antifa/blm riots, we’d have to ignore what looks like massive voter fraud, we’d have to ignore left-wing DAs letting people go, we’d have to ignore the ‘cabal that bragged about protecting democracy from behind the scenes’, and a host of other things.

              You might be right, this might be the grandest display of malicious incompetence in history. With this much smoke? It seems highly unlikely. I expected things to deteriorate at some point, but this has been more of an implosion of normalcy.

      4. > a-la A State of Disobedience by Tom Kratman

        Haven’t read that one yet…took a look over on Amazon and the Kindle version is currently a free download:

        https://amzn.to/3xj6SMY

        (As if I don’t have enough reading material piled up already. 🙂 )

    2. And those of us in adjoining states will come to help, with arms if needed.

    3. Oregon is going to be a rough state. Despicable Kate Brown is clinging to power with emergency declarations, with the Dems in the legislature siding with her.

      OTOH, respect for the state people is poor, and dropping like a rock. About the only places I see that make a big deal over face diapers are the doctor’s and physical therapy places, though mine has been known to slip when I start doing some serious work.

      TPTB is trying the carrot approach, encouraging not-vaccinations and some balderdash about creating a “vaccine-equity” program for Approved Oppressed Groups so they can be more at risk protected from Bad Things. Our portion of the state usually has counties in the “naughty” column, unless the counts are so low the state can’t claim problems.

    4. I am more and more of the opinion that you are correct about this. Partly because I can see the dim outlines of an actual threat to…well, I don’t know what to call them. “The Cabal” sounds so conspiratorial. “The Party” probably has the correct connotations, but it has the flavor of normal politics–and from what I’ve seen (and run the h3ll away from) this is NOT normal politics.

      When it happens, the big question will be what blue-area people do. I don’t think that’s as cut-and-dried as it might seem. If The Party’s casus belli has a whiff of injustice about it, things may not go the way they want. I’ve pretty much been holed up in Texas the last few years, but I’m going to have to venture out and visit with blue-area family this summer. I’m not entirely sure what their attitude is at this point.

      I think that the election audit in Arizona is threatening to become an audit of many states. Enough states to change the balance of power for good. Power is not just a career for The Party, it’s literally their life-blood. If they lose power, they don’t just retire ignominiously with a fat bank account–some of them will die, many of them will be imprisoned (which is as good as a death sentence for some), some of them will confront very unhappy clients who do not regard failure lightly.

      The fear engendered by such consequences is plenty of motivation to override all caution, and cause people to take chances that they should not.

        1. For some values of “rushing”. So far, it’s just talk. But there’s still time for Sarah’s June crisis to happen…

            1. Ignore the signs and walk in with the face God gave you.

              We have to normalize this before cold and flu season gets up again. Forcing people *back into mask* is a deal breaker.

              And before the Vaxx passports get going.

              1. The Oregon powers are trying to prevent demasking and are promoting the Vax Papiere scheme. So far, the pushback is mild, since political control is solidly held by the Dems (amazing what vote-fraud by mail can accomplish–we’ve had it since 1998 with the usual results. Emergency declarations keep getting governor renewals without objections from the Dem supermajorities.), but mask enforcement is getting a bit more hands-off east of the Cascades, and the passport system seems to be getting slow-walked. I don’t have any first hand experience west side since last December. At that point, mask enforcement/capacity limits at Trader Joe’s and such places were still ongoing without pushback.

                The state courts won’t help on any of these issues, since Despicable Kate Brown has made enough judicial appointments to ensure her whims will be considered “legal”. OTOH, the idea that making individual businesses responsible for enforcing the passport system has generated a huge Hell No. That might tank the system. (And, as usual, Kate’s “science” excludes the possibility that someone who already had the Kung Flu might just possibly be immune. It’s like there’s another agenda going on. Hmm.)

                1. I walk in just about everywhere barefaced – and have pretty much all the time. I am also part of a FB group working on protesting all the VXpassports, etc., simply by going in with a free face. There’s plenty of places that turn a blind eye – unfortunately the two woodworking stores I am at aren’t part of that – so now I’m trying to decide do merely order off LeeValley, and the web, or go in….

    5. I’d actually look at Iowa, because they (I live here, but I’m not “we” yet) are seen as soft. Rules-followers.

      But they rule-followed in defiance of the kung flu.

      And they keep being roughly accurate for the nation, not the fraud.

      The real state sports fandom seems to be politics, and I don’t think the progtards can resist cheating.

      Which offends even the Democrats, here. Well, the not-currently-elected folks, I don’t even try to guess on the elected sorts.

  3. Here, here!

    Me? I’ve been all, “No, YOU move!” for decades now. Was getting tired of the effort there but there’s more and more doing it which bolsters my resolve and initiative.

  4. My prediction is that President Trump will be arrested by the FBI at Mar A Lago on the Fourth of July. It’s as deliberate a finger to the American people as they can think of. He will be housed in a cell right next to the horned-helmet guy that has been in solitary confinement for months and he will receive no bail hearing.

    Then they wait for us to do something that will allow them to declare martial law.

    I remember Sarah writing months ago that Trump should get out of the country. I hope he is. I hope his whole family is somewhere safe, and out of the reach f the fascist jackboots of the FBI.

    1. Part of me wants to say that there’s no way they’re that stupid. But part of me is afraid you’re right. And the paranoid part of me thinks that that’s why all the big social media platforms banned Trump again, this time for at least two years: so he can’t get the truth about what goes down to his supporters.

      Or maybe somebody gets trigger-happy (or maybe not, and this is the plan from the word ‘go’) and Trump gets killed “resisting arrest.” And then things go from zero to widespread “mostly peaceful protesting” in very short order.

      Either way, God help us.

      2. They are that stupid.

        The other day, there was a former bigwig in the FBI talking -on live TV – about the need to arrest even members of Congress who enabled the “Insurrection”.

    2. I think they’re dumb enough to do the SWAT raid on Mar a Lago, too.

      When people who have never done anything, and who don’t know how to do anything, decide to play SWAT LARP, it’s not going to go well. And this is just the idea that the LARPers will love.

      It will “finish Trump and those MAGAs once and for all…”

      1. How many bets that if they do decide to do that, they manage to not tell the Secret Service about it either.

        I mean, I still remember that time the BATF almost got themselves into a shootout with the Houston Police, and the Houston PD were actually the voice of reason and moderation..

        (This was back when the HPD had a reputation for carrying two guns. One to shoot you with and one to plant on you after they shot you. Problem was, the BATF was doing midnight no-knock inspections of liquor stores in the middle of a spree of liquor store murder-robberies. So, when a bunch of heavily armed men started beating on the doors, the teller, reasonably, assumed this was it, and hit the panic button. Problem was, the BATF agents were not showing badges and in unmarked cars, and weren’t identifying themselves. So, yeah, they almost ended up in a shootout with the police. Wacko was not a surprise…)

        1. Of course they won’t tell the Secret Service. Can’t take the risk that somebody (esp. on EvilOrangeMan’s Protection Detail) might feel enough loyalty towards EvilOrangeMan to warn him about the impending assault.

          1. Trump has always had excellent private security as well as SS…which is why he has survived numerous assassination plots…And I have to think there would be leaks before a raid on Trump, he’s too well connected…

        2. Actually, that reminds me of a story I heard from a former lawman. No way to verify it’s veracity but…

          Anywho, story goes that the local sheriff’s department (for whom the former lawman worked) got credible intel that there was a cell of antigovernment white supremacists operating in the county and plotting some kind of violence. Sheriff’s department sends a deputy undercover to infiltrate the group. Turns out intel is dead-on: the group is indeed planning some sort of attack and is in the process of acquiring weapons and explosives to pull it off. Undercover deputy spends a few months collecting evidence, and the department decides they have enough for a conviction and the plotted attack is imminent, so they decide to take the group down.

          Two days before the scheduled takedown, the cell’s leader calls an emergency meeting. No sooner is the meeting called to order than unmarked vans pull up to the location and guys in black tactical gear with no identifying markings jump out and swarm the cell’s hideout. So the county tactical team decides to hit the building. They roll up just as another group of unmarked vans pull up and dump out an FBI SWAT TEAM.

          After a three-way standoff between the various groups, everyone eventually discovers that the “cell” was actually an ATF sting operation targeting “domestic terrorists” and the first tactical team to hit the building was ATF, and that every single member of the cell was actually undercover law enforcement: ATF, DEA, FBI, State Police, and the County Sheriff, and I think one or two others. There wasn’t a single actual white supremacist or domestic terrorist in the group. Because of course the ATF, in its in infinite wisdom, hadn’t actually bothered to inform any of the other agencies that they were running this little sting operation.

          1. Whichever one of the Wayans brothers had his own show for a while (can’t remember which one off the top of my head) had an episode like this. Except it was a drug investigation, and all three of the people involved in it were undercover from different LE groups.

          2. This is why any raid on Mar a Lago will use either the ATF SWAT guys or maybe the Department of the Interior SWAT – i.e. the places where those rejected by the feebs and Marshals Service and Secret Service go get hired. See the 1D10T nominated to head ATF. You know, morons.

            And with recognizing that President Trump has private security staffed by retired Secret Service and US Marshalls and ex-Navy SEALs and such, my prediction is there will be someone in either the current protection detail or those retired guys working on his private detail who has a buddy in an agency that’s in on the raid with a burner cell so his combined detail will manage for him and his family to be just slightly elsewhere.

            So, pretty much a standard ATF fustercluck.

            And when THAT gets out…

          3. Sounds like the operation was designed to create a media event of “white supremacists captured just prior to launching massive terrorist attack” headline so that the Democratic Party narrative could be advanced along further. After all, it would not be much different than the Obama/Holder “fast and furious” provide guns to the drug cartels operation in order to push for gun control laws scam that they pulled.

          4. Because of course the ATF, in its in infinite wisdom, hadn’t actually bothered to inform any of the other agencies that they were running this little sting operation.

            I’ve heard variations of this in several different places– and there’s some funky variations that make it more interesting but less funny.

            One, the folks who were left out were known to be, um, associated with stuff “leaking;” two, at least one of the known-leaky folks hadn’t told anyone they had put out bait to find (whatever they were trying to catch) that actually started the cell; three, there weren’t any NON-SOURCE people there during the raid once you got through folks who’d been turned by different agencies; four, only uncovered much later, there WERE real (whatevers) there, but part of the deal for them turning was that they “weren’t there.”

            And those are just the stories I’ve heard.

        3. In which case the Secret Service would have absolutely no impediment to shooting back.

          From what I heard from the preparation for Trump’s speech at the NC GOP conference, they’re still being thorough.

      2. Yeah, I forgot, these are the same morons who think Dave “The Waco Kid” Chipman belongs in any sort of leadership capacity.

        They thought it was a great idea to showboat at Ruby Ridge and Waco. They’ll think it’ll be a great idea to showboat at Mar-a-Largo too. And things will go bad in Florida just like they went bad in Idaho and Texas.

        1. That’s not all that surprising. After 9/11 I read a few articles that were puff pieces for the FBI and why they needed the Patriot Act and how great a job they were doing stopping terrorist. The problem was, when you dug into those stories, it was an FBI agent inserting himself into a group of losers talking crap and then handing them ‘terrorist plot in a box’, where the agent would walk them through the planning and acquisition of required materials. Left to their own devices, it’s highly unlikely they ever would have started the planning phase without the assistance of the FBI.

          There was also an article that detailed something like 50 or 100 white supremacist crimes. The problem was, that when you went through the list of crimes, there were only one or 2 that had a racial motive or anything racist. The rest were just ‘normal’ crimes committed by people with a white supremacist ideology.

          1. Hell, there was that case down in Texas when the FBI nabbed a Jordanian National, Hosam Smadi” after he attempted to bomb the Fountain Place skyscraper in downtown Dallas.

            Only Smadi had started out as an angry teenager (he was 19 at the time) who’d been identified and radicalized by the FBI, who helped him plan the “operation” (read: they gave him step-by-step instructions on what to do) and freaking gave him the (fake) pickup-truck bomb!

            And they don’t even try to cover it up! They’re proud of it! They even let the case be featured in one of those “FBI Takedown!” documentary series to show how awesome the agency is.

            1. I don’t remember that specific case, but yah, that was the majority I read through. FFS, these people weren’t terrorist, you turned them into terrorist so you could justify enhanced surveillance and expanding policing powers and ‘show’ the public the FBI was effectively fighting terrorist. Then they have foreign governments tell them about actual terrorists and potential attacks and don’t do anything about them until after the attack.

              2. Hosam Smadi? This gentleman: https://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=297612.

                The problem is that the FBI, who I strongly agree are not doing their job well with the really bad guys, find the little ones like Mr. Smadi when they start showing up on the proto-jihadi seduction sites manned by groomers from Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and so forth, and are sidetracked by their new best friend FBI informants before they hook up with nastier friends on the jihadi payroll. This is why there has been a steady stream of low-intelligence losers since shortly after 9/11 who end up arrested upon accepting from their BFFs guns that don’t shoot or bombs that don’t explode. The alternative is the steady stream of idiots picking up kitchen knives and going after passersby that Europe has been enjoying for the same period.

                And the European security services are not any better than the FBI at stopping the big plots by the professional jihadis. At least after 9/11 a lot of the worst jihadis fled America rather than be registered — a thing President George W. Bush did get right — whereas Europe opened their borders in 2015 and welcomed those who walked or sailed in, over a million of them.

                1. Thank you for saving me the time to say roughly the same thing.

                  A lot of folks are getting their information from what boils down to “what the defense attorney said,” without any conflicting information.

                  I’m not sure if the various sites push this stuff because fear sells or because of the appeal of blackpill or they get funding from various nasty groups it serves or what, but it gets really, really tiring.

                  I’m all for listening to what the defense attorney says, but for heaven’s sake, if a site pushes the claims of the defense as facts and there’s no evidence to support it, think twice!

            2. While this sort of sting is crooked and stupid and needs to stop, it also occurs to me that this kid could have been radicalized and equipped for real by, say, some operative from the Muslim Brotherhood mouthing the very same sentiments. Because fertile ground doesn’t care who plows it.

              You’d think that when “radicalization prospects” are identified, it would be better for national security to encourage ’em to think as far away from “radical” as possible instead of priming ’em for violence, but I suppose this is how FBI agents finagle promotions.

              1. Traditionally, the Secret Service usually have tried to scare people that need scaring, arrest people that need jail, and get help and friendship for the lonely people who are just talking big or crazy. I don’t know if this is still the case; but it used to be a normal way to handle people, so they didn’t get dangerous for real.

              2. Promotions and budget increases. That and “we helped de-radicalize this young man” isn’t as sexy and doesn’t generate nearly as many headlines as “we successfully foiled another terrorist attack! (uh, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!).”

          2. “The problem was, when you dug into those stories, it was an FBI agent inserting himself into a group of losers talking crap and then handing them ‘terrorist plot in a box’, where the agent would walk them through the planning and acquisition of required materials.”

            To be fair, a competent law enforcement agency would let this be the public narrative, so the *real* bad guys would assume they were home free. … OK, I’m not buying it either. But it might be a cure twist in an action thriller!

            2. It could work. You send them to prison but they’re also actually agents and work to embed themselves into the terrorist organization. If nothing else they can bring together a plan worked on by the best and brightest at the FBI!

          3. The problem was, when you dug into those stories, it was an FBI agent inserting himself into a group of losers talking crap and then handing them ‘terrorist plot in a box’, where the agent would walk them through the planning and acquisition of required materials.

            Ever looked at what the real terror recruiters do?

            I’ll spoil it for you:
            the difference is, their bombs explode.

        3. Could be an all-out firefight, with Trump’s people being battle hardened pros…If there isn’t a leak in time..

      3. Swat raid on Mat a Largo?

        I’m more worried about “President Trump, his family, and all those in close association with them, didn’t kill themselves!” becoming a catch phrase.

        2. They did! It was a suicide pact with his cult of followers! That’s why we had such a drastic population reduction!

    3. Out of the country, there are not millions of armed patriots ready to come to Trump’s defense, but there would be no problem getting an assassin close enough.

      Nope, Trump and family are safest right here in the U.S. of A.

    4. Well, we know they have no taste: people out there praising Jill Biden’s taste in clothes and what a relief it is to have a First Lady who dresses with restraint, not like that awful Melania.
      Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

      2. To be fair, Jill has to spend so much time dressing Joe every day that she has to keep her clothing simple.

      3. Wait, people say that? I mean, I’m… a very technical person… and I had no difficulty in observing that Mrs. Trump is far and away the most elegant dresser among currently-living female public figures.

        1. Yes, that was some talking head (female). Remember, Michelle Obama was the epitome of refined taste and the media managed to do not one article on fashion covering a First Lady who was an actual former model.

          1. I think the subtext is that you are suggesting that they are Mean Girls, saying that an outsider of typical weight and mass distribution ‘is fat’, while praising slightly chubby insiders as ‘thin’.

          2. The thing I couldn’t get was it seemed to be the worst outfits for Michelle Obama that got the most praise, not the ones that actually made her look good. (And those did exist)

            1. They made her out to be the most beautiful woman who ever lived, she isn’t. they made her husband out to be the most intelligent man who ever lived, he isn’t. They are both quite average. I suppose the press were channeling Disraeli that when dealing with royalty you spread the flattery with a trowel. State media, which is what we have, tends to do that.

              1. Michelle Obama *does* have a lovely smile.

                As I have double-X chromosomes, I am allowed to comment what a *shame* it was that photos of Michelle Robinson Obama smiling were so very rare.

                1. When they had that photo spread for People of her family photos, when her book came out, it was noticeable that the wide, open smiles stopped at approximately the time she met Obama. It was also noticeable how little we’d heard about her side of the family, the whole time she’d been First Lady.

                  1. Interesting point. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a word about her family. — Just went and looked up pics and Duck showed me a bunch of old ones, and yeah, she used to smile with everything she had and it quite transformed her face; I’d never have recognized her. Something definitely went sour since then.

                    I did note that the hair styles and fashion choices became unflattering about the same time the smiles went dim.

                    2. Makes me wonder just *what* their relationship was like. Red diaper narcissists are not known to be good for their mates, after all.

            2. Yeah. She may be a rawboned homely woman, but that’s no reason to dress like a fence post. Sometimes she did show up in something flattering, and I’d think — there, now she looks good, so what’s with whoever dresses her the rest of the time?? (I have no idea what any talking heads thought, having paid no attention to ’em.)

            3. Banshee had a really good article that went over the outfits that were flattering, and the Burn It With Fire NO (and why) outfits.

              I seriously don’t get it, most of the bad ones were so bad taht even I could see it.

    5. Martial law DOESN’T work the way you think it does. Period. End of story. And it triggers a thing that they don’t want. Each and every person on that crackdown would be guilty of an act explicitly described in Article III- it’d be open season on all of them as Traitors get what they have coming…and that’s Levying War on that note.

      1. So, honest question (cuz I don’t know), how DOES it work? what could we expect?

        1. There’s more than one theory.

          The theory held by morons with too much power is that what the morons want, happens.

          Lincoln during the civil war did do some things, but under a theory that claimed to believe that civil (as opposed to military) courts would be inadequate to remedy the problems.

          The thing about martial law, is that it has to be implemented via military units. Which basically means that the USMJ is controlling. For the UCMJ not to be in force, the military units would need to be set up without using cadre that were in Federal service. (Good luck getting Americans organized in a good fighting unit without experienced cadre.) UCMJ is a specific document with known content. Add in that there have probably been staff studies on martial law, and also Posse Comitatus… The plan for implementing probably comes with a bunch of formalities that would be annoying to deal with. Federal LEOs probably have fewer strings, even if a lot lower manpower.

          Military law is implemented by military units, and there probably is not enough manpower to do very much. Occupation is a boots on the ground task, and the high tech toys are not good enough to make up the difference.

          Bob’s crazy theory is that citizen units without Federal cadre could work for trying the scumbags, and could avoid the constraints of the UCMJ by citing prior military codes. This is probably on par with the theory of the morons at the start.

    6. That would be a trigger. Thing is, resistance would not be unified; so the government would have to consider multiple targets. We have many who would work together as an organized army to fight, that would be ideal for government putdown and a massive media event. However, I also suspect that the other part of the resistance would be made up of complete independents; either single “lone wolves” or at most 2 or 3 close partners working together. This is a nightmare situation for the government organizations. But I don’t think the elites of the Left consider them at all. The Bloomberg’s, Pelosi’s, etc. can’t conceive of being threatened by mere individuals; either because they have “security” to protect them, or can’t visualize them being on the receiving side of violence. Which might partially explain their overreaction to January 6th. They were preprogrammed to expect a much higher level of violence comparable to the arson attacks of the past summer. Instead, they got Tea Party afternoon tea.

    7. Quite honestly, I’m surprised that this didn’t happen as the capstone to their “first hundred days of shock and awe”.

      At that point, they still had momentum and narrative control.

    8. OTOH…Trump being made a martyr could be very useful to the cause of freedom….Even some Dems will object to going full Banana Republic and arresting the last President..

      1. The ones who do object will stay silent out of fear of being the next target of the leftist mob. For all their talk about “bipartisanship”, etc., when push comes to shove, they vote and act in total lockstep with what party leadership demands like the good communist party apparatchiks they are.

        1. <rolls eyes. TAKE NO COUNSEL OF YOUR FEARS.
          The leftist mob is a paper tiger, unless you're in DEEP blue territory. And even there, they only go where they know no one will defend.

          1. True dat! OR-OSHA hit the businesses in Flyover Falls last year, but there was no signs of any nosies around $TINY_TOWN. BLM tried a march/riot last June for Fentanyl Floyd, but the business people in the city brought arms and friends with arms to prevent the riot. The “peaceful protesters” went home, disappointed, while the west-side newsies were horrified that people might actually take up arms to prevent a riot

            As things go on, even the city is getting to be a less permissive environment for the state enforcers. The tactic last year was the arson wildfires, but direct mob action seems to be largely in the NW corner. IMHO, the arson attacks will decrease in effectiveness as people are more aware and considerably more pissed.

            1. IMHO, the arson attacks will decrease in effectiveness as people are more aware and considerably more pissed.

              –
              They tried to cut off east from west and failed. Now those won’t burn again, anytime soon. Hwy 58 arsonist must have gotten lost. Also, less traveled but missed the South Umpqua, Rogue River, and Sweet Home, access highways. Hwy 126 they’d been better to hit the pass but that burned in 2003 and hasn’t regrown enough (stupid rocky soil) to burn, to the intensity needed, yet. Guess they could try to cutoff the coast from the interior (why?). There are areas that would be better suited to scaring TPTB than the pass highways, coast or cascades. OTOH less likely to survive the attempt too (not listing them on the off chance there be infiltrators lurking).

              1. As best as I can tell, the fires down here were an attempt at cutting off NS travel on US 97, in an attempt to cut off Klamath Falls. Mercifully, they did a piss-poor job at planning and/or execution; OR 140 had no big fires, leaving the route from Lakeview to Medford open. If the arson attempt on $TINY_TOWN had succeeded, it would would have been little more than a speed-bump to one of the truck routes, but if successful, it would also have done wonders for Antifa/Tribal relations. (Sorry about the dripping sarcasm.) As it stands, I suspect any arsonist caught at the scene would be left as charcoal. Sequence of events would be up to the catchers.

                Thinks of alternative uses for ranch gateway arches. We don’t have lamp-posts, but….

                  1. The eastern high desert has lots of skinny Lodge Pole Pines, and short scrubby Juniper. There are areas where Ponderosa grow and would work. But mostly just a lot of the former two which just won’t substitute for the Ranch gateways or missing lamp posts.

                    OTOH maybe utilize the wild horses? No, do not want to traumatize the horses, that’d be inhumane … I like horses.

                    Tell them if they can get across *that* pasture, they are free to go? *That* pasture is the one where the Bull is kept …

                    1. We’re not desert, not quite. No wild horses*, and plenty of Juniper and Ponderosa. I know there are stands of Lodgepole around; I see logging trucks carrying power-poles on the hoof. Our property has a lot of Pondo, but we got rid of the mature Juniper. OTOH, I’ll get seedlings next to existing trees since the local birds love them some juniper berries.

                      I’d not care for the bull/pasture bit. Too sporting, and cattle are in short supply after the tribes won the latest court battle over water rights.

                      (*) OTOH, we have plenty of wild horsemen and other locals with a quirky sense of meting out justice. The two idiots who started a 2000 acre fire with leftover fireworks “left town” (so rumor has), leaving no forwarding address.

                    2. Aw, come on. Spoil Sport.

                      But I guess you are correct. Any chance to survive is too sporting … sigh.

                2. That is the problem with the Ranchers. They are too subtle. Not using decorations, instead they are using the Triple S solution instead. Might be using the SASS alternative. Either in the vastness of land, do not leave traces.

                  1. “SASS”? My search-engine-fu is not sufficient to tease out an expansion that makes sense.

                    1. Triple S – Shoot, Shovel, Shut-up -> used for predators one isn’t allowed to remove unless actually attacking stock.

                      SASS – Shoot, Ashes (cremate), Shovel, Shut-up -> leaves less behind to find. Harder to do …

                    2. Thanks! That resolves tonight’s dinner conversation. (We know SSS, also known as “The $TINY_TOWN Mottoe”, but the latter was new.

                      If things go as far sideways as could happen (and I hope not), decorations are likely to be in vogue. Not a good idea for Blue to be in Red areas, *and* vice versa.

          2. I was referring to Congresscritters, not the general mob. I stand by my statement with regards to their voting in lockstep when push comes to shove.

  5. We either have an equitable split, or we’ll tear ourselves apart. I have faith that a lot of Americans are still Americans, in the spirit of what we were to carve a nation out, all the while trying to be better people. I don’t have faith that this core is enough to pull us back. The left have controlled education too long. Even many people I would call conservative ape the Marxist lines, support higher minimum wages, believe ‘some gun control is necessary’, and think Biden probably won fair and square. Oh, and some are still wearing masks, in their cars, alone.

    Yeah, I’m just not as optimistic as you are.

    1. My natural optimism gets destroyed daily because I live in the Greater Seattle area. Most are still fully muzzled outdoors, indoors, in their cars alone, and just muzzled most of the time.

      It feels worldwide, even though I know it’s not.

      1. Sorry Kathy, but Seattle, Portland, and those places like them are no longer truly America. They have been suborned successfully and will likely remain so until they are forcibly returned to the control of real Americans.

      2. Kathy, we need to figure out a way for you to get the hell out of there. Even PA is better than that! In fact our legislature got two constitutional amendments passed that curtail the governor’s emergency powers, and yesterday passed a bill that ends our current “state of emergency”.

        1. Right? So crazy that WA is darker than PA? Who’d have thought that could happen?

          I need to move. I am working on the beginning of that process while waiting for Mom to die in hospice. That heavy grief makes regular life impossible for right now. I’m sleeping a lot and making progress when I can.

          Thanks for the thought. It helps when other people go “Hey! That’s shite right there!”

      3. A Seattle friend of mine (male, straight, 40-something, non-rabid progressive-ish) posted this on FB the other day:

        “I had a nightmare in which the us fully reopened and no one was wearing a mask. That’s it, that’s the entire dream”

        All the comments were along the lines “I know, right?” I wonder just how few people looked at that and wondered “what the fuck is wrong with you?”

        2. In contrast, last week I ended up shopping on Sunday.

          I was really tired, kinda fuzzy-headed because Reasons, but I felt wonderful at the store and couldn’t figure out why.

          After doing my usual “walk every aisle at least once, and half of them twice” thing, I was at checkout– Sum Dood walked in, with a rather nasty looking blue surgical mask that he wasn’t even wearing right.

          …nobody else was masked.

          It felt … right. And normal.

        3. I had a similar experience, Balzacq, when I read the comments on an article about the masks or some such.

          Every comment was “I’m never taking this off they are lying to me it’s dangerous everyone must wear masks all the time.”

          1. Very well then.

            The Clockwork Orange scene, but skip the brainwashing and holding the eyes open and all that. Just tie them down without a mask on.

      4. Right there with you. People who don’t live in the Pacific Northwest can’t understand the next rest stop after here is Heaven. I had trouble with the masked too. I had even more trouble with the double-masked. Then I thought, “Who am I to care if they drop off the Space Needle from self-asphyxiation? It’ll just leave more space for the Indian Colonists and the Chinese Colonists to fight it out.”

        God gave us Mask Fear so we could identify our true friends and allies. Sadly, I’ve lost many friends. Happily, I’ve met many allies in the most unexpected places.

        1. Funny how that works. Thirty plus years ago, a common reference as to how to identify “the enemy” was “look at their magazine; if it’s curved, they’re the bad guys”. No longer true as AKMs became so popular with many Americans. I suspect it will soon return to what was traditional for hundreds of years: if they’re wearing masks, they’re the bad guys.

          Think about it. Two years ago, if one walked into a bank wearing a mask, they’d call the police. Now a mask is required. (Well, OK, that’s beginning to fall away all ready.)

          1. IF you can walk into a bank in the first place. The branch nearest to my house has been ATM only for more than a year. They have even closed the night deposit ‘until further notice’. Why? How many germs are they afraid of getting through the night deposit?

            99% of the sheeple are still putting on the useless face diapers. So conditioned they don’t even question any more.

        2. “People who don’t live in the Pacific Northwest can’t understand the next rest stop after here is Heaven.”

          Anywhere else feels like a downgrade, and that’s counterproductive to actually moving. 🙂

      5. It was inspiring to me this morning, in Southern AZ, to see that 90% of the customers in a major store are no longer wearing masks…But people in Arizona never fully bought into the Narrative, and we have been pretty much wide open for more than a year, though with some mask requirements except in restaurants.

        1. I got to live in Sierra Vista twice and really enjoyed that part of the state.

      6. Just 20 minutes from you *everyone* I saw eschewed the face diaper. You are in a hive of scum and villany.

        You wanna meet for coffee? Hit me up at the protonmail with my username.

        1. The view from the rim of the bucket is open and free, then.

          “You wanna meet for coffee? Hit me up at the protonmail with my username.” YES. Look for my mail, and thank you so much.

    2. There will be no ‘equitable split’.

      Thinking such is possible is very much like taking the theory the Confederacy had of winning the war at face value. You can make someone accept a ceasefire, temporarily, in a civil war without a victorious faction. But you cannot force peace with a divided territory after letting the genii of civil war out of the bottle.

      There will be no tearing ourselves apart. We have a small minority of communists, who are simply incompatible with civilized peace. We are losing the excess wealth that made it affordable to tolerate them alive and free.

      1. You are right. Who, I mean ANYONE, Could be the Robert E. Lee and tell all the fighters to stop and go home, that the War was over and have almost all the fighters DO JUST THAT!!!!

        I cannot see anyone even possibly that could fill that role.
        If any leaders do emerge, they will be quickly jailed for something.
        If this comes to a fight on the Constitutional Side it is going to be a cluster (&*((&%^#, because there will be no one in charge, very little ability to communicate and because of a lack of trust a LOT of people going with people they ABSOLUTLY TRUST. They will pick their targets and hit them. That will be one of the worst problems, NO CONTROL over who or what is targeted.

        Someone is going to have to be IT. They are going to have to be vocal about talking about WHO and WHAT would be VALID GOOD Targets if it Starts. They will have to say it in that way “IF IT STARTS”, “DON’T START IT”, let the OTHERS “Start IT”, We will “FINISH IT”. A Governor or Senator, For a Senator he MUST say it on the Senate Floor because said there he cannot be arrested for it. The only one who MIGHT do it and do it right, might be Ted Cruz. Or someone like him. Get the word out, define the Rules of Engagement, Targets selection, etc. but all the time insisting that this must only be reactive and With the Constitution. The Whole thing based on the Declaration of Independence. The ENTIRE GOAL must be the restoration of Constitutional Government and Law.

        Whoever does this WILL be placing themselves in the Cross Hairs. Their chances will be slim and their success will never be measured because it will not be 100%. There WILL be people who ignore them and create atrocities, as always in Civil War. Their success will hopefully be that there will be FEWER.

        Where can such a person be found?? I don’t have a clue and I am NOT hopeful that anyone will STEP UP for a thankless job that they will NEVER KNOW if it was worth it.

        1. “For a Senator he MUST say it on the Senate Floor because said there he cannot be arrested for it.”

          Sure he can. Schmuckie Schumer has the Capitol Police and detention sells in the basement.

          1. That it would be flagrantly illegal to arrest said Senator means absolutely nothing.

            It is flagrantly illegal to rig an election.

            It is flagrantly illegal to arrest people who were peaceably petitioning their government for a redress of grievances.
            Deny them effective council.
            Deny them bail.
            Not allow them to see evidence against them.
            Keep them in solitary confinement with beatings administered by prison guards.
            Deny them a speedy trial.

            Stop pretending the law means anything.
            Because it no longer does.

            1. Which is why getting through this without bloodshed is over optimistic at best.

    3. I don’t know any conservatives who support any gun control. At all. Hell, most of the people I know don’t even call themselves conservative, and they still don’t support it.

      1. Sure, gun control is necessary. You need a good firm grip on your bangstick when your booger hook hits the bang switch. Not too firm, not too loose. Good solid grip. Only way you’re going to get rounds on target.

        …Or did you mean something else? That’s the only proper form of gun control, so whatever else it is must be wrong.

    4. I don’t see how we could separate. Much of this is being driven by trans national corporations. We would have to build entirely separate Internets, banking systems, distribution networks and cut off broadcast media. This is, fundamentally, and ideology incompatibility, and it will continue until one or the other is gone.

    5. The mask wearers, Mark, aren’t because they’re afraid…it’s to keep them from licking the windows inside their cars…

    6. believe ‘some gun control is necessary’

      Get out of Fuddistan. Your report is like someone living in Seattle looking around and thinking the entire country is wokeist.

      Meanwhile here in America we are busy wondering how much longer we have to put up with the NFA.

      1. Or, when some hoplophobe bleats if that means people can own tanks, simply answer:

        “Yes.”

        Sometimes with that meme side-profile image of the bearded blonde guy. 🙂

        1. Automatic rifles. Tanks. Warships. Cannon. Fighter jets. I think we might need some control on NBC stuff though. Nuclear-Biological-Chemical weapons, not the media arm of the D party.

          1. Nukes and chem I am not too worried about (they sound way scarier than they are), but bio is a potential world ender, so yeah on that

        2. There’s also, “Do you have any clue how much a tank COSTS? Or how much fuel they burn? How much maintenance they require?”

          A few people own tanks NOW. None of them have ever gone on a ‘tank rampage’, because they’re not that stupid. They spent a lot of money and time on those tanks, and they’re not going to just throw it all away. Along with their lives.

          There was ONE ‘tank rampage’ 25 years ago. Lots of property damage before he was shot by the police. The tank was stolen from the California National Guard. Obviously, the government can’t be trusted with tanks.
          ———————————
          There is nothing so simple that the government can’t fuck it up.

          1. Do homebrews count? I mean, I think Killdozer fails the technical definition by not having guns, but I really think he earns an honorable mention anyway…

  6. I think there will be blood, and that said blood will be shed between neighbors, friends, and in some cases (and it pains me to say this), family. We have become far too polarized, far too divided as a nation for what’s coming (whatever you want to call it) to happen cleanly.

      2. ‘Malicious content’ == whatever Teh Authoriteez say it is.
        ———————————
        There is but one sin greater than being right when those in power are wrong — proving it.

  7. > Imagine dropping me into it.

    “Sir, we have a problem.”

    “*You* have a problem. Tell me about it.”

    “Goldstein’s ‘The Theory and Practice of Olicarchical Collectivism.” We’ve been turning up new copies of it.”

    “Yes, that’s why we print and disseminate them. What’s your point?”

    “They’re not ours. Someone’s been *changing* them. And printing more. They’re all over the place, and more keep showing up…”

    [Writers. It’s what they *do*…]

  8. Thought on “Turn On The Light”.

    Remember those old Hammer Vampire Files where Dracula is hit by sunlight?

    Maybe the Left will act like him. 😈

    3. If they’re just going to lock themselves in the castle, I’m inclined to let them.
      There’s not much difference between a castle and a prison.

      1. But… but… I have this holocaust cloak and a wheelbarrow.

        I just need someone tall with a deep and intimidating voice…

        1. Andre the Giant was a bit more than “tall”…..

          (Wilt Chamberlain, for those going “Aaaaah what was that guy’s name?!?!” Basketball player.)

          1. Fine, you monday friday machine!
            https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=bATVNMTZ&id=9883B515B3FAD8194ABD2FD739609952C3B274FD&thid=OIP.bATVNMTZtLygP3l5k1hZAgHaJU&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FMdhLwyny9FU__1AuYd3esBgdTFGp4Zth2xGpseZHVxc.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp&s=d4fe18f1cf1579bf7c8e00e975bfed5167c1fba9&cdnurl=https%3A%2F%2Fth.bing.com%2Fth%2Fid%2FR6c04d534c4d9b4bca03f797993585902%3Frik%3D%2FXSyw1KZYDnXLw&pid=ImgRaw&exph=1551&expw=1232&q=Andre+the+Giant+Holding+Arnold&simid=608029225895335082&ck=C1751A917720BB37F79FFFE254ABA957&selectedindex=1&form=EX0023&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0&adlt=demote&shtp=GetUrl&shid=cea33dd9-615f-463d-af31-94d527f668bb&shtk=QW5kcmUgdGhlIEdpYW50LCBXaWx0IENoYW1iZXJsYWluIGFuZCBBcm5vbGQgLi4u&shdk=Rm91bmQgb24gQmluZyBmcm9tIHd3dy5yZWRkaXQuY29t&shhk=7YDf2DuKvUzi8fw5SdZMcEKICW0CgW8J5pOR1s740fs%3D&shth=OSH.aTMJVgTW%252BuNW6hJWwHoMyg

      2. It could be the castle of Giant Despair from Pilgrim’s Progess, where the door is not locked but you have to have the energy (hope, faith) to turn the knob.

  10. > But this is not the end of America.

    Yes, it is. And good riddance.

    I don’t want their “America.” I want the one we were promised, based on the Constitution, with rule of law. We never *had* that America, not in my lifetime… but that doesn’t mean we can’t build it as it was meant to be.

    1. That’s what she’s talking to. It’s the end of THEIR America…just not the one I was born into and grew up in. You can do what you like, but if you’re not careful, you’ll get worse with the take YOU have right now. That’s what the hell they want OUT of you.

      1. No, the Articles were a terrible way to govern a nation.

        I would prefer a couple of Constitutional amendments:

        1. The Commerce Clause, We Really Mean It This Time
        2. Necessary and Proper, You Keep Using Those Words, I Do Not Think They Mean What You Think They Mean

  11. Status is mild headache, and some mental fog.

    Concur.

    Nothing to add.

  12. In my Live Free or Die State our city (it borders the People’s Republic of Taxachussetts) has fireworks banned.
    Nobody ever pays the least bit of attention to that, because of course we don’t.
    Last year the Dem mayor cancelled the traditional Independence Day fireworks at the local stadium because Mah COVID.
    I have never seen the city sky as lit up by pyrotechnic middle fingers as it was that night.
    My expectation is that this coming Fourth will make that display look like an image of North Korea from space.

    1. Yep, last year that happened everywhere that had “banned” fireworks for the 4th. Los Angeles (banned) was lit up from horizon to horizon. Here it wasn’t banned but just from my house, in addition to at least two, maybe 3 official shows, I counted something like 12 private shows in sight, including my neighbor down the road. Big-ass middle fingers even where they weren’t necessary.

        2. Oh, they happen. But they don’t get out of control. The ones that go into houses do (which wouldn’t bug me if they were the houses of the folk with illegal fireworks, but all too often it’s one of their neighbors.)

          There are plenty of legal fireworks (not airborne), and given the tinder-dry state of the state right now, from late spring, I really sympathize more with the banning than not. Because I don’t want another four months of smoky skies like we got last year.

          1. Actually… the more illegal the fireworks were, the more careful the utilization was, last year. It was really amazing how careful people were, and the large amounts of fireworks they managed to get into the air safely.

            Of course, we live in a military town, so maybe people have some professional knowledge too.

      1. Whatever did happen with the, “Sturgis as super-spreader event,” narrative? I think they tried, but it was all, “we estimate X thousand cases,” not heartbreaking stories of how John Smith went to Sturgis for the first time and died horribly of WuFlu.

        1. Sturgis turned out to have a lower-than-expected-from-demographics death index for all causes.

          Which makes sense, if most deaths are from folks who are very nearly dead right now.

          1. Figured. One of the many infuriating things over the past year has been the obvious, sadistic wish by various Democratic/progressive people that people like us would die like flies as a punishment for not “believing the science.”

  13. So for today’s dose of nightmare fuel, you all been hearing about the Blackrock thing? Basically the Blackrock hedge fund is using the Discount Window (aka the infinite money spigot) to leverage themselves to the moon buying up houses from anyone who will sell at absurd markups.

    It just hit me, if we’ve heard about one hedge fund doing that, how many are doing that that we haven’t heard of?

    Inflation is going to be insane…

    1. The article I read about that mentioned that plenty of others are doing it. Blackrock is merely the biggest (because they’re an industry heavyweight).

      The important thing, though, is that it’s affecting the housing market, and driving up prices for home buyers. Someone noted elsewhere that might be enough to get the regulators involved. Home ownership is pretty much unique in how its importance is viewed in the US. Remember that the 2008 crash happened in part because the Dems relaxed lending rules to make it easier for people to buy their own home.

      1. They forced lenders to issue loans to people who nobody in their right minds would have given money to, as a condition for staying in business. Then the lenders sold those loans off at a discount, and they got passed around in an industry-wide game of “hot potato” before the borrowers defaulted. This was done in the name of “equity”.

        1. Don’t forget that was Clinton’s ‘update’ of the ‘Community Reinvestment Act’.

        2. Thanks for the reminder. I’m making a ticky-box list of legit Black claims of general wrong-doing viz the U.S.A. (As in fedgov and state gov colluded or turned a blind eye.

          You just checked Red Lining.

          Right now it’s looking good for a clean ledger (or even Black Americans owing the U.S.A.) but there’s still the blood debt for Mrs. Sanger’s genocide.

      2. The thing is, that just housing. How many entities are tapping the fever money spigot to hoard everything?

        If reasonable investors can expect the value of the dollar to crash, and have access to as many dollars as they want for free, would it be irrational to leverage oneself to buy everything?

      3. The ones I’ve read are, “The banks are buying all the houses and turning them into rentals so people can never gain wealth by buying and paying off a house! This is the Great Reset, people! Gloom, doom, death, destruction and despair!”
        I remember Poul Anderson’s comment that he couldn’t believe in the cabal of bankers in Geneva running the world because they can’t even run their banks.

        1. I could easily see them thinking that’s what they’re going to do. But I’m expecting it to be more like a giant bubble that goes kaboom all over everyone.

        2. They said the exact same thing in the housing bubble. (Maybe not “eternal rentals owned by banks” so much as the Gloom, Doom, Death and Destruction. Oh, and “permanently high plateau.”) Nobody has a working memory of more than a year or two, it seems.

    2. No it isn’t, once we get past the base month issues and supply shortages, there’s not going to be any inflation, quite the contrary. Wages are flat, inflation expectations in the Bond market are flat and interest rates are declining. there’s no spigot, there’s no printer, there’s no helicopter, there’s no bazooka. Why? Because bank reserves are not money. The Fed hasn’t printed any money, they’ve only swapped assets with the banks. Could it become money? Maybe, but even then you’ve only swapped one asset for another so no new money has been created. Changing the name of a thing doesn’t change the thing. it’s all hocus pocus. they desperately want you to believe there’s inflation so you’ll go out and spend in anticipation of higher prices, which would allow them to kick the can down the road again.

      I’m not going to defend Blackrock since they’re even more,plugged into the lefty regime than Goldman but do ask yourself why Blackrock is buying pools of illiquid assets that have a high carry cost and don’t throw off a dividend at elevated prices. Then ask yourself who is telling you this and why. Then look at who else is doing the same and why. What you’ll find is that behind all of this are pension funds looking at their actuaries’ reports and going Oh sh-t! The pension funds are the primary customer of hedge funds by a large margin — they don’t tell you that but it’s true. With 10y US treasuries and the yield on the S&P being below 1.5% pension math becomes terrifying. There’s a massive search for any investment that might produce a return.

      1. That was also mentioned in the Gloom, Doom, Death, Destruction and Despair article. As in, pension funds are part of the scheme!

        1. Public pensions are broken. Even with relatively favorable US demographics, the required returns are just not there. If you look closely you’ll see that the vast majority of what’s been done has been done to try and shore up the public pensions.

          On the happy side, if you have any cash when the market does finally crash, you’ll be able,to pick up all sorts of good assets at good prices. You just need to be ready and have a plan.

          1. Snider is the guy., he publishes daily at Alhambra Investments and has a regular podcast if that’s your thing. John Hussman is another. Ben Hunt a third. All three are investment guys not professional economists. It’s one of those things that’s actually easier to understand if you don’t have to unlearn everything they taught you in ECON 301 Money and Banking. The Fed is a clearinghouse and not a bank. They don’t create money, the banks create money by making loans. What the Fed does is try to unleash Keynes’s “animal spirits” so The Fed! becomes a reason that doesn’t require any explanation.

            They’ve gotten away with it because the combination of productivity and demographic growth has raised all boats so they could say their actions were effective since things did get better. post hoc ergo propter hoc. Now, the demographics are turning sour, which is one reason we’ve been stuck in what’s essentially a depression for the last 12-13 years. They’ve done 6 separate QE programs in the US, though only 4 are so named, more or less continuous QE in Europe since 2012 and in Japan since 2000. It’s a mess, they don’t know what they’re doing and are actually much less powerful than they seem to be.

            Ask yourself why if the government manages to be completely ineffective at just about everything they should suddenly become omnipotent, omniscient, and infallible when it comes to money and whether you should listen to what they say or what the bond market does. The bond market is not infallible, but it is the largest, most reliable indicator available to us and the bond market isn’t believing inflation.

            1. Ask yourself why if the government manages to be completely ineffective at just about everything they should suddenly become omnipotent, omniscient, and infallible when it comes to money

              That is easy: the contention isn’t that they are good at what they say they are good at, quite the opposite; that they are doing continuous damage and may blow up the whole thing.

              And unintentional destruction is something that that governments excel at beyond all other contenders.

        2. Money, pensions, or Blackrock? I can do any of them if you think it would be interesting. I can’t guarantee there won’t be math.

          1. Your expaniner above was pretty good. Down here in Nashville the hedgies are buying at the 95% level for some time. My son is in wholesale real estate and is having difficulties finding properties to move to their customers.
            I would find great value in what you could write on these subjects. I am personally struggling to figure out what to do with our ‘nest egg’ Not big but what we have and will have to do. Now faced with the prospects of imminent doom, what to do? Liquidate? Use to buy property with cash now as a bug out compound? Just do not know the moves to make and the decision tree has too many branches right now. Very little clarity.

            1. Please keep in mind that I’m not giving investment advice and I’m not an investment advisor. I’m just the modern equivalent of some guy you met down the pub. I can only tell you what I think is going on and what I’m doing. My facts and circumstances are not the same as yours. That said, doom is probably too strong and if it is doom then nothing you do in the markets will matter anyway so don’t worry about your investments under doom, they’ll be the least of your problems. For the rest, there are no good answers I’m afraid. The easy money is gone.

              Going on from there, do you need prices to go up or are you looking to maintain the value of what you have? if the former, you need to rethink. The stock market is very expensive now, higher than in 1929 and not far off from 2000. You shouldn’t expect historical return levels at these prices and they could well be negative for a long time. What we don’t know is when it will break, it could go up more like Japan’s did ca., 1990. Of course, Japan still hasn’t gotten back to that level in 30+ years.

              Bonds look very expensive, especially if we get the inflation they’re all talking about. I don’t think we’ll get it, quite the contrary, but I’m certainly not infallible. That’s said, I’m not sure that bonds are that expensive. I’m looking at the relationship between demographics, growth, inflation, and bond prices. Only the US has positive demographics and US bonds are cheaper than the others. both Japan and Germany have negative interest rates. The risk is inflation, which you can hedge to some extent by a small position in Gold, physical or paper through an ETF. If you need more yield, then corporate bonds are something you could think about, though they are relatively more expensive now because everyone is looking for yield so anything that produces it is expensive.

              Real estate is always interesting but it is illiquid and can have a high carrying cost. if you wanted something more liquid, you could look at REIT’s. I don’t do much there so can’t help,much.

              On the cover of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are the words Don’t Panic and always bring a towel. Don’t worry about doom in your investments, take care of the rest of your life. Owe no debt and remember that if money dies, potatoes are worth more than gold.

              The world is probably heading for a period of economic decline. Nothing to be done about that. The stock market as a whole is very expensive and you should be expecting below average, possibly negative, returns for a long time. That said, quality companies do exist and, unless there’s doom q.v., will continue to produce a stream of dividends. In the same way, bonds look expensive but even if we do have the period of economic decline will produce a stream of bond payments with positive real returns. So a basic portfolio of high quality stocks, corporate bonds, treasuries a bit of gold, and maybe a REIT etf is still about the best you can do.

              Again, you need to do what your comfortable with. I’m not an investment advisor, I would say that liquidation is probably not a good choice and you should make sure you understand what you’re buying before you buy it.

              1. That is actually extremely helpful. Thank you. We are seeing some inflationary pressure especially with commodity pricing and building materials. Most of which look fairly local. Biggest thing was using last years closing of my store as impetus to get out from behind enemy lines in Chicago and get moved to Tennessee.
                Highly recommend folks getting to sane states if possible. I do think it will get pretty salty and am somewhat surprised that we have shown soooo much restraint.

        1. Bingo. Blackrock is doing what hedgies do–taking money from people who are desperate for a decent return, and investing it with the trend. The trend is toward the ‘burbs. Read your history of the late Roman Empire, who coined the term “suburb”.

      4. The Treasury Secretary has been predicting inflation as high as 3%. Sure, that’s not pre-Reagan double-digit inflation. But it’s something that the Feds have studiously pretended doesn’t exist for the last 12 years, and I would think would make the bond and treasury markets more attractive to investors.

        1. The treasury secretary used to be the head of the FED hence she is one of the architects of this mess. the last treasury secretary from the FED was turbo tax Timmy.

          1. And?

            She says that there will likely be 3% inflation Conventional wisdom, however, is that the members of the administration generally understate what the level of inflation will be in an attempt to make things look better for their boss. Ergo, I would say that there is an excellent chance that there will be *at least* 3% inflation, if not more.

            Given that, I would think that the outlook on the bond market is improving.

            1. She’s been wrong about everything for many years and how would she know what inflation will run. Why would anyone listen to any of them? Economics are all about managing expectations, you know, lying. Best thing to do is not listen to what any of them say and look directly at what’s going on. What’s going on is stagnant wages, a 56% increase in the price of gas since oil was negative last May, remember? And supply issues caused by the residual effects of the shutdowns along with political idiots (e.g., lumber)

      5. Bingo. The “discount window” has nothing to do with it. The Fed is withdrawing liquidity as fast as they can to counteract the trillions of COVID stimulus. Blackrock may very well be crooked, and this may very well make the man on the street worse off, but it’s not because they’re getting free money from the Fed.

        At least, not at first remove.

      6. “do ask yourself why Blackrock is buying pools of illiquid assets that have a high carry cost and don’t throw off a dividend at elevated prices”….why do you say they don’t throw off a dividend?…Presumably they will *rent* the houses until such time as they decide to sell them.

        1. “Presumably they will *rent* the houses until such time as they decide to sell them.”

          In case you weren’t aware, renters have more rights than landlords in a lot of places…. and renters that get evicted tend to leave ruin in their wake.

          1. “In case you weren’t aware, renters have more rights than landlords in a lot of places…. and renters that get evicted tend to leave ruin in their wake.” Well aware of that…real-estate investing should include analysis of local & state government policies when selecting areas of focus.

            Invitation Homes (INVH) is one of the largest publicly-traded companies in the single-family rental business. Their 1Q2021 earnings release indicates that rental collections for that quarter were approximately 98% of the company’s average collection rate. So, in the INVH geographies at least, there aren’t a lot of people remaining resident without paying their rent. If you’re trying to rent out properties in NYC or California, your mileage may differ.

            Also, it’s not a good idea to leave houses vacant for any substantial period of time, bad things tend to happen.

        2. Yes, of course they’ll either buy them or rent them. There’s an awful lot of overhead though and it can be very illiquid and hard to value. if you look at financial history you’ll see that concentrations of illiquid, hard to value investments tend to accumulate in the later stages of a financial cycle and are usually what blows up. This makes it very risky. Thus, they’re buying RE because everything else is stupid expensive.

      7. If I’m not mistaken, Blackrock runs the TSP funds for federal employees, as well. My TSP funds are in an S&P 500 index fund and a smallcap (I believe Barclay’s) index fund, but non-TSP institutional pension funds are going to be searching for stability.

        1. Blackrock runs a lot of ETF’s including all the old Barclays stuff. I’m pretty sure they’re the biggest. Nothing wrong with them but I prefer to avoid them when I can. I like Vanguard, going back to when Bogle was in charge. They’re almost always the best value. You don’t get to choose who does your TSP, which is a really good reason to self direct, just sayin. The expense ratio for SPY is 9bp while Vanguard VOO, which is the same thing — S&P 500 ETF, only charges 3 bp. Over time it adds up.

  14. Winston Smith, in ‘1984’, was not bolstered by any kind of religious or spiritual faith. Neither were any of his neighbors. There was nothing to give him reason to “live free or die” or value liberty or freedom of conscience more than life. For all his distrust of “Big Brother”, he was morally hollow. That’s why the Party was able to isolate and crush him. Here and now and in reality, there are too many who quietly oppose the Ivy League mandarins and aristos and their philosophies and who regard dominant figures in the major media and Twitterverse as a claque, for Orwell’s nightmare to come true.

    1. It’s been a while since I read 1984, but IIRC they pretty much left the proles alone. It was the (very large) Outer Party, with their middle-class pretensions to respectability and “good jobs”, that was vulnerable to the Inner Party’s social control.

      1. Yes. Orwell was writing about people like himself. The proles just got bread and circuses as had always been. The standard account always gets this wrong because middle class people don’t want to admit the truth about themselves

    2. That…makes sense.

      He tried to fight with reason alone– 2+2=4 — and it wasn’t quite enough.

      Like the story of someone being pulled out of hell by the rosary, but it breaks at the last moment.

      You need that little extra oomph.

  15. “Government efficiency is best described as performing brain surgery on a dirty kitchen table, using a wooden spoon —”

    -Done by a toddler with ADD, with advice from the cat. I have worked with, and had dealings with, governmental agencies from tiny and local to federal. Look up “open fields doctrine” sometime if you feel your blood pressure getting a little low. Or heck, look at NASA in the last thirty years. Military procurement. The IRS. Take a gander at any state capitol’s minutes during any particularly testy session (at least thrice a week, by my count). There are damn few things that can’t be made simpler, clearer, and more efficient by subtracting existing government intrusion.

    Governing bodies constantly seek to expand their power. It’s in their nature- human nature, that is. The problem is, that pesky Constitution our forefathers ginned up prevents a lot of that. “All other powers reserved to the States, and the People.” This doesn’t mean that there *isn’t* overreach, bloat, and out-and-out abuse going on. And people (especially in government) *will* continue to try and reach for ever more control over things they are forbidden from getting their grubby mitts on.

    Sorting this mess is going to take a long, long, loooooong time. Some of us will die before it’s hardly begun, let alone done. The lessons of liberty need to be lived, respected, and passed on with reverence and respect to the next generation. Like the tale of when the Berlin Wall fell, or when the empire of the Soviet Union collapsed, I hope one day to tell the tale of how a group of social, political, and media elites conspired to steal a country through lies, fraud, and intimidation- and ultimately lost it all. With the lessons learned from his first term, I think Trump will do even greater and more significant things in his second. Drain the Swamp indeed!

      1. My sister-in-law the cat lady, would beg to differ. In her observation, cats ain’t that smart. They’re just aristocratic.

  17. I hope you’re right Sarah. One thing that troubles me is it isn’t just the US, the mass hysteria is planet wide.

    None the less, sitting up here atop the world, I/we can be pretty self sufficient no matter what.

    Hum, wonder if I can grow coffee there in Alaska….

      2. As a former pipe smoker, the better it smells the worse it tastes and vice versa. I smoked a heavy Latakia blend and it was delicious, smell, pretty bad

  19. America is only mostly dead.

    …and mostly dead is slightly alive! 😀

    1. America is not mostly dead. It’s just mostly silent, in shear disbelief over the last year+. And it’s not as quiet as it used to be. If there are large issues with fraud in the midterms . . . _that’s_ when it’ll get messy.

    3. I do feel like the left is digging around our pockets for loose change though.

  20. I too had thought there would be an uprising in May of last year, first slowly then all at once. We got an uprising, just not the one I thought. My analysis failed because I underestimated both the depravity of our opponents and the basic law abidingness of Americans. We respect the law and institutions more than I thought. Still, the truth is dripping out and what I’m looking toward now is a slower, cold not hot, preference cascade much like the one that occurred in Ireland as the church sex scandals broke, one after the other, over a period of years — as bad as the US scandals were the church here has never been the force it was in Ireland. Even those who will not look will see.

    China is the obvious first loser and, if the photocopied ballots are true and they almost certainly are, the big institutions are next. I hope it doesn’t end in violence since you never actually know who’ll win, but it may. So be it. sic semper tyrannis.

    A “tell” perhaps. I was out with the wife and the number of free faces was higher than masked for the first time. Those of you in the free states may scoff, but this is NJ. Now, I was in the conservative part of NJ where Trump actually won by a fair margin but it was Trader Joe’s which, here anyway, tends to be a left wing bastion. There was an old guy with a cane making fun of the masked Karen’s. Priceless. And the wife threw me out of Talbot’s for making fun of the lady washing the pens so maybe I can spend less time there. Everything is good.

    1. We went to do a grocery run at our favorite HEB today – and noted that the ratio of masks to unmasked was about fifty-fifty. This is huge, as far as we are concerned. Better yet, many of the HEB staff had also gone unmasked. It’s not an absolute requirement for employees, it would seem. Now it appears to be left up to the individual. The cashier where we checked out was unmasked, as was the bagger.
      The mask panic is over, I think – and we thought that it would be, as soon as it got bloody hot in Texas. The Daughter Unit and I feel like such rebels, as we began going maskless in March, which made trips into the HEB somewhat fraught, expecting to be lectured at any moment by a censorious Karen. (We used to get a smile and a thumbs-up from other maskless rebels.)

      1. I was at the only McDs in the area that has an open dining room the other day. There was a managers meeting while I was there, and at the end of the meeting it was declared that the workers didn’t have to wear masks unless they wanted to. About three quarters of the workers took them off.

      2. Oregon OSHA (I think their motto is: Dislike federal OSHA? Hold my nocaf-halfsoy-latte!) tells all employees they have to be masked up, *and* they have to insist the customers mask up. The latter requirement is largely ignored, and at least one major store in town has about half of its employees unmasked. Hell, that was the first place I saw a sequin sieve-mask–on an employee.

        More places are doing Irish Democracy, at least in our region. Not sure about Medford west of us, and the People’s Republic of Ashland is getting too weird for me to want to go there.

      3. Various places which have mask signs up… you can find a lot of people not wearing masks inside and there doesn’t appear to be any complaints from anyone about it. My apartment manager’s office has one and I stopped by about a half hour to go and no one was wearing masks, though one of the staff put one on and I restrained myself from asking what the point was since no one else (even her coworkers) was wearing a mask.

        I’ve also been “forgetting” to put it on in some places and not getting any flack from people. Which is interesting since Houston is a “blue” area, so there should be more Karens running about. Ah well.

        2. “Which is interesting since Houston is a “blue” area, so there should be more Karens running about. Ah well.”

          Since Abbott stopped even local mask mandates, the Karens can’t call the cops…. and that removes a LOT of motivation.

        3. The hospital/clinic complex insists on masks because of Oregon regulations. The orthopedic surgeons’ office nixed shields, though that’s been OK in some other places.

          One business I use asked me to wear a mask; small supply chain, and like every other small business here, they blame the governor for the idiocy. OTOH, she can and has caused trouble for places that get known for causing trouble. On the gripping hand, strictly local businesses are quite casual about the requirement.

          I haven’t heard of any state busybodies nosing around since around a year ago. They might have been encouraged to leave our county alone. I’d almost pity any state inspector who tried to hassle the store in our tiny town. Almost.

        4. I walked into a Walmart in Houston without a mask in the last few weeks, and nobody said a word. A Walmart.

        5. Oddly, I went to the Houston Renaissance Festival, November of last year.
          Maybe 30% were wearing masks, (including steampunk and plague doctor masks).
          Everyone wore them going in through the doors, and all the employees had them.
          But the folks enjoying the festival once they were inside? Nope, most took them off.
          I realize the majority of them were probably not from Houston itself, but it still made me feel better.

      5. They were not easily moved
        They were icy–willing to wait.
        Till every count should be proved
        When the German-Americans began to hate.

        They have no idea what they’ve loosed.

        1. The Portuguese-Americans but really just Americans, and the Anglo-Irish-Americans, but really just Americans, sitting in this living room RIGHT NOW ain’t particularly happy either.

          1. Chalk another few up for the Americans of mutt ancestry (everything but the kitchen sink, we think- seriously, I have cousins that could pass for ethnic Chinese, Sub-Saharan African, anywhere in the Middle East, and Scandanavian in the same family. And throwbacks like me, that look a little like our parents but a *lot* like our great grandparents). The righteous anger is there. Even the family lefty quit the mask parade back in March. A “history of repeated injuries and usurpations” we have got. In spades.

            1. Dan, your comment reminds me of my mother’s comment on our genetic background. “Heinz” she said.

              Her maiden name was McLeod.

            2. Well, 23 chalks me in for Ireland, France, England, Italy, Greece, Congo England, and some bits of thisandthat. Including Norway.
              So “Portuguese” is just another name for “Stew with much stuff.”

              1. Reminds me of my days as an anthropology student. Well, student and tutor years. I remember a discussion on human phenotype classes (“race” by a more practical and scientifically observable method), and the mixing that was ongoing. There are very few “pure” populations anymore, pure being defined as closed to outsiders and of distinct physical traits. The question was, what was going to be the next bottleneck that created a new class?

                Answers among the students varied, from regression due to nuclear war (older student) to plague stress causing certain mutations to become more advantageous (e.g. sickle cell, but physically observable- this one didn’t get much traction because “mutants!”). My answer to them was “space. The first generation born, raised, and living the majority of their lives outside Earth’s atmosphere.”

                I still think that’s going to be the case, my admitted bias (lifelong fan of sci-fi) aside. Space is going to stress the human body in a drastically different way than terrestrial life will. And the crusty old physical anthropologist in me can’t wait to see how that’s going to work out. *grin*

              2. The Irish bit may be circular since there was trade going back and forth for thousands of years. The celts in Ireland came from Galicia after all, or so the legends and DNA say.

                2. And my people are from the portion of Portugal that was Galicia.
                  Dan’s Grandma was first generation Irish. And my boys are ridiculously fond of Irish ballads (singing and listening to.) It’s odd.

          2. I know–I wasn’t trying to claim any particular priority for Germans. It’s just that when you get out in the rural areas, most of the people in the central parts of the U.S. will be of German extraction. I don’t think they’ve really turned on the elites so far–they’ll complain, of course, but no more–but once they do it will be unstoppable.

            1. To be fair, the German-Americans are WAY more law abiding than anyone of Latin culture/upbringing/extraction no matter how diluted. Look, those of us who have acculturated will TRY to be law abiding, but I was at “Spit on hands and hoist the pirate flag” a year ago.

              2. Yeah, it’s a cultural thing. And partly that they tend to be the sort of folks that build prosperity in small, inexorable steps. They have a lot to lose. That’s also why I’m watching that particular chunk of humanity very closely–it’s one thing for the Scots-Irish to drive around with Trump flags on their pickup trucks, but the German-heritage families are starting to talk openly about getting Ivermectin from the vet (just in case). If they start to talk openly about stolen elections, there’s no getting that allegience back.

        2. Though arguably apparently the mostly Anglo-Irish but for sure Amerindian too has about 25% German. Which he had no clue where it came from, but I knew because his mom had told me.
          I guess it explains older son’s LOVE of chemistry. (No, seriously, we went to the awards, and all the other names were German. It was weird.)

          1. That *is* weird. Certainly doesn’t run in my family–but it may have something to do with which tranche of immigration was involved.

        3. I’ve read a few of the bits involving Manchin on Redstate. Folks I read on Redstate seem to be quiet, or have their head in the sand where the chances of civil war are concerned.

          Manchin may be a sign of Dems getting ‘cold feet’, seeing the failure in the Pelosi-Biden push for supreme power, hence being unwilling to back the doubling down.

          If this isn’t purely wishful thinking, some of the Democrats may have a hundredth of a clue.

    2. I too had thought there would be an uprising in May of last year

      I predicted riots by July. They pre-empted our riots with their riots.

    3. We go to TJs and Wegman’s in Cherry Hill and the unmasked far outnumbered the masked this past week. I was sooo happy! Today we went out to King of Prussia mall and it was about 50-50. PA legislature passed a bill just yesterday to cancel the gov’s emergency declarations.

  21. “My joke about 1984 has been ‘Imagine dropping a Heinlein character into it.'”

    If they dropped a naked dude with 7 different gender identities into 1984 Big Brother would have made it King. Or Queen? I’m… not sure. I probably just committed a grave sin against The Narrative. I shall thoroughly berate myself at the next two-minutes hate.

    1. No: 1984 took place after the need for subversion. But if he/she was in the Party, he/she would be liquidated. Among the proles? As long as he/she didn’t make any trouble, he/she would be tolerated as a distraction. Yet more bread and circuses. If he/she caused any meaningful disruption, then liquidation.

    2. Blink? Why do you think Heinlein’s character would be naked or have 7 different gender identities? What??????
      My characters are more likely to be naked.

        1. So? Thought experiments.
          I even read Time Enough For Love and enjoyed it.
          But that’s not the definition of an Heinlein character. The definition of a Heinlein character is “hyper competent and refuses to be told.” Again, mine are naked more often with less excuse. People who flinch from vaguely described nudity might also have other problems..
          And I never heard of an Heinlein character “identifying as 7 genders” this is right-bullshit-for-why-writer-I-never-read-must-be-bad.” Just like the left bullshit for why Heinlein is bad is that he is mysoginist. Also without reading him.
          PFUI. It’s infantile, and I’m not at home for infantile.

          1. Heinlein characters don’t have genders because they are not pronouns. (They may in some translations. I can only speak for English grammar and that not particularly well.)

        1. Sure. Look, there is a plot reason and it works. It’s also not sexual in any way, shape or form.
          I tend to have my characters naked because I forget to dress them. I didn’t realize how often I did it till my then 19 year old read my books….

          1. Wait, what?

            If that means what it sounds like, how does it come out “naked”, and not “clothed, type unspecified”?

            Movies don’t show the goto airport, plane takes off, plane flies, plane lands in foreign airport sequence anymore. Because we can understand “traveled to other city” without those cues.

              1. One could justify shapeshifters with a resistance to hypothermia, and a lack of awareness of breezes.

                They would seem likely to have some other issues with awareness of surroundings.

    3. Totalitarian states generally have little use for what they openly view as “degenerates” and “filth”. As an example, look at what happened to Ernst Rohm. Sure, Hitler had other reasons for getting rid of him. But Rohm’s homosexuality guaranteed that Hitler would have had him killed sooner or later.

        1. But Rohm was killed only after Hitler got all the use out of that particular tool he could. Today’s Black Lies Matter / ANTIFA / LGTBWTFBBQ cadres should really be paying attention to that precedent . . . for as soon as it’s convenient, there’ll be a Night of the Long Knives for them too.

          1. Biden and Harris are pretty degenerate. So, if someone does liquidate the LGBT SA, it will be the hypothetical third holder of the tyranny, who has been theorized as the real danger. Issue is, I’m not sure the third holder exists. Back some time, I think last year, there was speculation that the competent ruthless future Stalin or Mao was currently hiding in obscurity. With the current track record, I’m not at all certain that there is enough competence there for a competent would be hidden master. Of course, I have been pushing the alternative ‘gu jar of idiots’ model.

            Regardless, it is feeling like the scheme may unravel before it reaches the level of success for a ‘night of long knives’.

            1. Biden and Harris aren’t smart enough to be pulling strings. The question is who is pulling theirs’.

              1. Yeah, there are clearly some background schemers somewhere.

                Recent events have been truly bizarre. It seems possible that if the background schemers/hidden masters had the political infighting ability to pull this off, they would not now be playing with a such a weak hand. It very much feels like those with ability at scheming and at infighting have a really bad understanding of the United States, and of Americans. Fundamentally overconfident in Federal power, or having a deeply incorrect understanding of censorship effectiveness in the US, or profoundly mistaken about the thinking of American individuals.

                To pull this off, a person would need to understand that the force distribution requires near total reliance on the information game, understand that Americans do not strictly think according to reduced order models, and understand more about information operations against Americans than /most Americans/. Most of the possibilities for information operation planners would have a small bottleneck of information about how Americans think. Big Tech would be relying on AI, US politicians are surrounded by yes-men, and foreigners are deeply crippled.

                Fundamentally, you would need some sort of intelligence bureaucracy, focusing on collection and analysis of Americans, in on the planning, reliably loyal, able to argue different perspectives internally, and able to adjust the plans if they do not work. Such a bureaucracy would need the dedication of cathedral builders, and the ability to think long term about when conditions are favorable, unfavorable, or use it or lose it desperate. The fundamental timing of this stuff speaks either to Chinese desperation, or to a specific American politician who is desperate to pull things off before they die. So, there is a strong inference that the magical bureaucracy in question does not exist.

                The pattern speaks to at least two acts of desperation and overconfidence. Hillary lost, when they could have frauded subtly, or even as blatantly as 2020 had they a better idea of what was going on. So, they decided that this time, rather than let things fail, they needed to have fail obvious fraud. And that it was so urgent that they capitalize effectively on the lockdown fraud, that they had to eat the cost of so blatantly cheating.

                If the Deep State was securely corrupt, then eight years of Bush, or four years of Trump, would be an acceptable hardship for pulling the wool over the eyes of Americans. Why would eight years of Trump be so bad for them that the current issues are a good trade off?

                Anyone who could use the Deep State to pull their tyrannical rears out of the fire now might have been able to use the Deep State to neutralize a second Trump term.

                1. Well, Soros is certainly one of the more effective background schemers, funding the elections of those DAs who won’t prosecute rioters (of the “correct” beliefs) & Secretaries of State who collude with the progressives via consent degrees to settle friendly lawsuits, subverting the laws on the books.
                  The question is whether he is pulling strings as well or playing his hand independently.

                2. Trump was making inroads. They were small inroads, but he was making them. For example, the Abraham Accords essentially upset the way that the bureaucracy insisted that things were done in the Middle East. Yes, the disruption was only temporary. But given another four years, Trump might have been able to make it much more difficult to “repair” the “damage”. Trump completely reshaped the judiciary, filling the open slots at a rate unheard of (note that earlier presidents could have *tried* to do this, but didn’t; and Obama certainly doesn’t have an excuse, as Reid got rid of the filibuster while Obama was in the White House). He was winning a trade war with China. He was taking active steps that appeared to be working to curb illegal immigration. We had freaking FULL EMPLOYMENT right before the Wuhan Flu struck. Blacks and other minorities were participating in the work force in record numbers, and had unusually high approval ratings of the president. The DoD has admitted that it played shell games to fool Trump regarding how many troops were still in Syria, since Trump wanted to pull out.

                  I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

                  Eight years of Reagan was a disaster for the left. Eight years of Trump likely would have done the same.

              3. I’m sticking with my Random Idiots theory.

                The world is being run by a bunch of Random Idiots that managed to lie their way into power and have not a clue how to actually Rule The World. What we’re seeing as an Unfathomable Master Plan being carried out by the Global Overlords is really nothing more than the chaotic collisions of their various idiocies.

                They’re greedy idiots, too.

                I just re-read Michael Z. Williamson’s ‘The Weapon’ and the dreary Hell On Earth he paints is the future they’re blundering towards. We’ve already got it in the big Democrat cities where robbery, looting, assault and rape are just shrugged off. A bank robber in New York was arrested, released, and robbed another bank the next day. How can they not see how insane they are?
                ———————————
                Major Strasser has been shot! Round up the usual suspects!

                  1. Don’t ascribe to competent malice what can be plainly explained by incompetent malice.

              4. What if there *isn’t* anybody pulling strings, but it’s just a bunch of people too stupid to live, being propped up by a bunch of other people who think they’re doing the right thing, with no particular plan in mind?

                Malice we can fight. Distributed dumb is a lot harder to counter.

                  1. This. It *is* tempting to ascribe malice, but the reality is that much, much more of it is simple ignorance (and laziness). For a great many they really just don’t know any better. Their parents are soft lefties. Their friends are soft lefties. The media is rather harder lefty, but they don’t pay attention to it- its mostly just there as a background hum of “left is good, right is evil.”

                    They had no chance to see what we’re really like. None. An entire lifetime of brain-dead education and social reinforcement prevents even the smallest bit of outside information in. It takes a serious shock to get them to realize what’s going on. When that happens, well, they tend to get p*ssed. And rightfully so.

                    In a way, the dissatisfaction that led up to the rioting, going way back almost twenty years gone, was *because* the millennials realized they’d been had. Social Security that they were just starting to pay into had been stolen. The economy was trashed due to leftist diddling with it. There were no jobs. Then there was the Occupy Wallstreet bit, which was originally not just a bunch of Socialists marching around with banners during the day and camping out at night. There were Libertarians (and little L’s too) and even conservatives. Sort of like the early TEA parties were.

                    Late coming exits from the D party came from that. Tim Pool and Brandon Straka emerged from that. Later, Candace Owens and Jordan Peterson- not from the Occupy people, but from the same social/political/economic miasma that existed then.

                    Y’all remember the 2008 years, right? At the time, the D party was riding high, convinced that this was the dawning of a New Era- their Age, and everything was going to be beautiful. They were finally going to get their way on *everything* and they’d stay in power- just, benevolent power, they told us (and some even believed it). And they took a mighty stab at “fundamentally transforming” America. They had the tools for it. Education. The media. Now the government was under their full control, save a few pesky states lesser positions, but nevermind those.

                    Then 2016 happened and we got to see what shock looks like on a truly massive scale. They were supposed to win, don’t you see? They were the heroes! How could the heroes *lose*!?

                    The vast majority of the right is in the territory of “unknown unknowns” right now, for them. It frightens them. They panicked, and the whole 2020 election cycle showed just how badly they panicked. There was enough fraud to *ahem* “win,” but there was too much to cover up. They had to fraud in Georgia for Bub’s sake. There is no universe in which 2020 Trump wins Florida, but loses Georgia. And it wasn’t *just* Georgia…

                    Ignorance lost them the 2016 election. Stupidity showed their hand in 2020, though there was malice in the intent. For the vast majority of the left, though, *despite* 2016, there hasn’t been a big enough shock for them to realize, well, reality yet. The mask-erade mess has been a slow burn. The economy slump at the same time as runaway inflation, that’s even more stress on top of it. And stress is at least multiplicative, if nor logarithmic. It is beginning to show.

                    Conservatives are being awoken of this. Enough shock to wake the dead is happening right now. What can’t go on… won’t. Be not afraid. Troubled times are ahead. Out of those troubles we will emerge stronger.

                2. There’s definitely also malice, and insanity. Some of these politicians are not well, and not nice.

                  Thing about the dumb, it is generated systemically. It is not distributed. Generation one goes through corrupted schooling, shakes it off mostly, because of contact with the real world unshaped by central bureaucracy. Generation two, goes through corrupted schooling, and many also shake it off, even influenced by partly fooled generation one. Generation three, corrupted schooling, and now their influences include a larger portion of fooled prior cohorts, and the larger bureaucracies made by the fooled portions of the cohorts, but they still shake it off. Generation four, ibidem. Generation five, maybe has been pretty steeped in disinformation, and too accustomed to accepting large bureaucracies.

                  However, the immediate supervisors of their disinformation are generation four, and generations of selecting for the fraction of the cohort stupid enough to buy the lies of the previous generation, and to value the previous generation’s liars as smart, mean that the generation four liars are too stupid to succeed at lying by any means but social pressure.

                  Okay, a great deal of social pressure is brought to bear. But, survival will trump programming for a lot of people. Also, right now the social pressure is saying “you should feel bad for being white, and you should feel bad for not being hard left”. Thing is, we saw with Trump that this had already resulted in “fine, I will not listen to you about race or politics” among the white blue collar workers who were formerly labor union supporters. At least for younger generation cohorts, I know at least a couple people about in their seventies who like unions, and to my knowledge are still taking the propaganda at face value.

                  Thing to keep in mind here, about general society estimates, is that your background means that you are deeply invested in a very large semi-functional bureaucracy. One where most of the people involved believe in the overall mission, and understand that deterrence is partly served by our enemies failing to realize how deeply dysfunctional the organization is. These qualities are a little bit unusual for bureaucracies, and so you may have an underdeveloped cynicism where the failures of other bureaucracies are concerned.

                  They are running disinformation, managing the bubbles, through organizations. And big tech seems to have some fairly profound dysfunction at high and low levels. Far more is technically achievable than Big Tech organizations are able to achieve.

                  Most people are able to understand that when a big tech organization introduces an unnecessary new feature, and has it turned on by default, the big tech organization has done a stupid thing. They have a framework for understanding a very common organizational mistake. This is not an understanding that the old liars have thought to inoculate the rubes against. The people running the large organizations can’t simply stop making the ‘simple’ ‘obvious’ mistakes they are making, or they would have already. The current rate of mistakes is more than enough to make the double down gamble that the left is trying a sure bet to lose, because the disinformation plan is too complex, relies too much on things going expected ways.

          2. The trigger point might be when the wanna-PTBs look at population declines and panic. When they go all Augustus and want women to have lots of babies, guy guys are not an asset.

  22. We got this and we will prevail. I am seeing more and more unmasked here in PA and in NJ. I’m in Philly — very very blue, but also very aware (with a few notable exceptions) of the deep corruption of our city government. That plays a huge part. We’re still trying to get the hell out. God willing it will happen soon.

  24. I’m trying to remember (I was busy at the time): back in the AIDS days, did Fauci push lifestyle changes the way he did last year with Wuhan 2019A?

      1. It doesn’t matter anyway. Nobody remembers Fauci’s involvement with AIDS, that debacle is entirely blamed on Reagan.

        1. Except the gay community, from what I’ve heard. I keep hearing that there are many among that community who were alive at the time who hate him.

      1. I wonder, sometimes, if his kink is making sure that people are alone and afraid when they die. His actions would seem to support that

    3. Dude, with WuFlu he pushed “lifestyle changes” for normal people, but explicitly not including random hookups.

        1. Makes me go :NONONO WANT TO KNOW ALL IMPORTANT INFORMATION THERE DO NOT TELL ME:, actually, but I think we’re basically on the same page.

  26. Does it mean there will be no blood?

    Not if we want changes to stick. Not if we want 10 generations to remember not to pull this sh!t.

    If it’s just “loss of power” they’ll be back before the grandchildren I’ll never have grown up.

    These are people who, as Michael Malice put it, if we built guillotines they’d make jokes about how we’re so stupid the blades are dull. They will only learn by direct, and permanent, instruction.

  29. When I bother caring about the future, my fear isn’t that they win. It is that they destroy the West.

    The West that brought about freedom is a miracle, in the sense that similar conditions occurred more than once, but only once all together and in the right proportions to create the West. Not only are they determined to destroy the product, but the inputs that led to its creation.

    They won’t rule in the dark, but that does not mean the darkness will be replaced by light.

  30. What may be the trigger for widespread anger and pushback at the leftist insanity may not be the CRT nonsense and the other stuff, but rather the rampant rise in day to day street crime; the murders, rapes, robberies, carjackings, thefts, etc., down to the rampant “petty theft” that cumulatively bankrupts businesses and individuals, along with the Democratic Party’s “get out of jail free” policy that applies in those rare instances they bother to try and catch the perps.

    https://nypost.com/2021/06/11/nycs-spike-in-grand-larcenies-is-a-sign-crime-will-rise/

    This is one of many examples in NYC, and all the other Democratic run places are just as bad if not worse.

    1. In California, it’s going to be the homeless. They’re everywhere, and very very visible right now. “Spot the camps” as I drive up the freeway is depressingly easy.

      Note: my urban hike the other day took me to a trail I hadn’t explored before. It goes in between a creek (dry right now) and its overflow area (very dry.) There was someone camped in the overflow area, and it was the neatest homeless location I’ve ever seen. One tent. One cardboard box with a few things in it. One plastic bag of maybe trash on top of the box. One tarp covering something, could have been a bike. That was it. I’ve seen actual campsites messier than that. I think if the homeless folk were all living like that, people wouldn’t be angry. Instead, it’s mostly trash heaps with tents.

      1. It’s the biggest reason why I don’t want to go into the East Bay or SF if I can help it. Even in the nominally “good” spots of both areas, the encampments are thick and solid. And, let’s be fair-I don’t know how many of them are stuck in this place of “working, but can’t afford anywhere in the Bay Area” (when you’re looking at studios and one bedrooms at $1600+/month in somewhat crappy areas, and they landlords can pretty much insist upon proof of three times rent…). Or the ever popular “should be in some kind of care facility, but it’s easier to keep them on the streets and blame Regan for his act of stupid.”

        Police won’t roust them, because nobody wants to deal with the lawsuits.

        At least we aren’t as fundamentally stupid as Oregon…which is a low bar to cross, I admit.

        1. At least we aren’t as fundamentally stupid as Oregon…which is a low bar to cross, I admit.

          –
          Hey. Not all of Oregon. Don’t judge Oregon by Portland. Even Eugene has finally gotten wiser. They’ve identified abandoned properties (now owned by Eugene or County) where homeless are going to be allowed to tent and park beyond the “Official Safe Communities”. Just been announced and listed. Unofficial camps at various parks and spots are going to be, at first, encouraged to relocate to these areas. We’ll see how it goes if they have to resort to more stronger measures. They will resort to “firmer” measures.

          I noticed most of these locations are not near hotels, Franklin, or MLK Blvd. Are especially clearing out camps along major access ways into town, from Freeway and Airport, and downtown … Olympic USA Field & Track Trials … are coming to town … Homeless hotel vouchers have dried up too, but that hasn’t officially announced, yet.

        2. And there’s Sarah’s comment re covid: if it’s a genuine “plague,” why weren’t the encampments decimated?

          1. I’ve commented on this before-where were the heart-jerking stories of massive rows of towed campers and cars, with people going in to try and find some information on who owned them, so they can notify the next of kin?

      2. You don’t see the people living like that because they stay out of sight and never go in camps. The camps and the sheltered camping sites attract the druggies and the scum and no one wants to be around them.

      4. Interestingly, Sheriff Villaneuva in LA County is taking at least some steps. He’s currently working on clearing out the homeless encampment in Venice Beach. I don’t know what he plans to do with the homeless afterwards. And he’s probably primarily doing it because he’s in political trouble, and wants to shore up support among the voters. But it’s a step in the right direction. And it’s pissing off at least one of the homelessness apologists in the County Board of Supervisors, iirc, which is always a positive development.

        1. he’s in political trouble, and wants to shore up support among the voters

          –
          Either a “Hail Mary”. or, In trouble? Well I’m gone anyway …

  32. Re: 1984 and common criticisms of the novel. The critics forget two things.

    1) it was only members of the Party that were so minutely controlled, sort of like how the left scrupulously polices their own.

    2) It’s revealed that Winston was an experiment. The Party was watching him the whole time to better learn the patterns and inclinations of a rebellious individual in order to recognize those patterns of suspicious behavior.

    Remember: 1984 was told from the point of view of a Party member. Imagine what it would be like if told from the point of view of a prole.

    Then take a look around.

    Then shudder.

    1. Pfui.
      Dude, I read the book. I actually never read any criticism of it.
      It’s just that what held at 14 didn’t hold at any other time.
      That “only members of the party bullshit” is busllshit. EVERYONE was a party member in the novel. Just like in the USSR. Started with the young pioneers.
      No. Orwell was a socialist who never got over “everyone are NPCs and will respond exactly as planned.”
      The novel as terrifying at 14, hilarious in my forties, more hilarious now.
      PFUI.

      2. No, I’m pretty sure the majority of the population were proles, and proles weren’t party members.

        I’ve read it multiple times – well, listened to it via Frank Muller’s brilliant narration (a real tragedy, what happened to him) in fact I think it might do for a re-read.

    2. From the various quotes when I double-checked, being “a member of the party” just meant that he had theoretical power enough to do anything.

      The proles were under the same control, but didn’t have any power to lose.

  33. Re the Greatest Generation: The actual Combat GIs and Marines had pretty universally a very low opinion of centralized planning because they were stuck in the PTO with winter boots, or digging in at the Bulge with summer weather coats and no actual picks or shovels (wouldn’t have done them any good – they had to learn the trick of shooting holes into the frozen ground with 30-06 AP rounds then blowing fighting holes with sticks of dynamite shoved into those holes) – and why in every theater of operations, every functioning combat unit had one or more designated “scroungers” in charge of finding and stealing what they needed to advance, and why a smart general didn’t much pursue the rampant and massive “theft” of materials very diligently as long as the lines advanced and they didn’t “scrounge” the general’s jeep.

    Now the guys who did that log planning, and who made the logistics ships and trucks go, and who drove the ships and trucks and planes – they had a much higher opinion of their work. And given the tooth-to-tail ratio, there were a lot more of them than the pointy end guys.

    But all of the WWII vets I ever talked to had a very poor opinion of any sort of “expert” central planned enterprise.

    1. And it’s important to remember that the US logistical system in World War 2 was the envy of the world at that time. Yeah, a lot of it sucked for the guys at the front. But EVERYONE ELSE was in much worse shape.

    2. Yes, thank you. I wanted to say this.

      Sarah, our sister in spirit, did not grow up in close proximity to the many Ulysses she has heard about. I knew some of them–a couple of them did things that, as near as I can tell, if I figured out their war histories somebody would show up to kill me. I despise Tom Brokaw–while they all viewed their cause as just, the closer in proximity to the real action, the less their propensity to view anyone as “great”.

  34. “…[E]ven if they had to paint with the colors of what was intended and not what was.”

    One of my favorite songs on that subtopic.

  35. I get great joy from pissing off some of my leftist neighbors! My flag is a constant flyer on my front porch….and I usually try to buy a a new replacement every 2 years as the weather does take it’s toll…My sister, who is 80 yrs. old, protects her “Trump for President” sign in her front yard like it was her own grandchild. Her neighbors just try to ignore it. That’s the synopsis of life in a small rural Illinois town. We fight on with smiles………that really pisses the leftists off!

  36. One of the things I’ve noticed in reading up on the American Revolution is just how long the build to the Declaration of Independence was. It’s something that seems to get brushed over in history classes, because I have no recollection of studying the many efforts the colonists made to resolve matters without a breach. OTOH, probably diplomacy just doesn’t hold the attention of teens and tweens as well as action like the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere’s ride, etc.

    But reading about all these efforts really underlines how patient Americans, and quite honestly all the English-speaking people, really are. We put up with a great deal, right up to the point where it becomes too much to bear, and the switch flips. Which may be why we’re also a very restrained people — because we know that when we do let go of that restraint, we’re capable of terrible things. Unfortunately, there are a lot of cultures on this green Earth who mistake that restraint for weakness, and keep pushing. And then wonder what happened when that switch flips.

    So I guess it’s not that surprising that things are going slowly, and people are putting up with so much nonsense. However, that suggests that, when it does go kinetic, it will be both sudden and explosive.

    1. The problem is two-fold. The first is that the attempts at diplomacy don’t get talked about. The only reason I know about them is that my high school US history teacher talked briefly about coordination between colonial representatives, and the opposition party in the United Kingdom. People aren’t generally aware that there were attempts to avoid the coming mess.

      Second, as the saying goes, events happen slowly, and then all at once. And no one knows exactly when the all at once point will arrive. The amateur historian is primarily interested in the events themselves. It’s only the professionals who are analyzing the whole thing who are willing to take the time to sift through the earlier “happen slowly” phase. So the contributory stuff gets glossed over by most, and then forgotten about when later generations try to compare themselves to what their ancestors did.

      1. Slowly is very much a relative term, when the delays in communication are evaluated between then and now.

  38. If there’s a fond hope for me, it’s this-we’ll hopefully get over this terrible rerun of the 1970’s faster, because more sane people are talking with each other a lot more quickly. And, Facebook and such are going to reach this cleft fork of “we can ban them-and lose our source of money, or we can let them talk and get in trouble with all our friends in the cocktail circuit.”

    Not going to be fun, but I suspect that Bidenstein and Kamalamadingdong Harris will be a single term presidency. And, the Republican response is going to roar in like a lion, the same way that Regan did.

    Of course, I thought that a lot of things were going to happen that weren’t true, which is why I’m looking at… (ugh) Texas.

      1. Could be the heat? Didn’t bother me much, as it was as hot but drier than I came from. Austin was weird, didn’t pass through Houston, San Antonio was alright, Canyon Lake/New Brunfels area was just right. Nice folks, good to work with. If ever I have to leave my beloved Appalachians for any reason, Texas is high on the list of places to go.

        1. I was freezing in suburban NYC. I then spent 5 years in Montgomery, AL. I find Dallas ideal because a) it’s in the South, warm both physically and politically. b) it reminds me of the best parts of my childhood. Dallas is a financial city like NY was when I was a sprout. Dallas even has a branch of the Fed. c) It’s a big city. I’m a city girl at heart.

          Author in charge there are jobs available in the Dallas area. Lots of companies have moved their headquarters to the Metroplex, especially Plano. Apartments and cars can be found. Depending on your skills + experience you might find a nicely remunerative job in the area. There are a bunch of Huns and Hoydens living within driving distance. Dallas is far away enough from Austin to not be in its orbit. I would recommend the suburbs. Dallas county is kind of blue and Austin weird, but the suburbs, who are large cities in their own right, are red. Plano has over 285,000 inhabitants.

      2. Weather, mostly. Too hot on a regular basis for me, and tornadoes.

        I’d also have to find a job there that would let me more-or-less turnkey into a reasonable apartment with AC, and getting a new car in the next few years.

        I’m also trying to find that sweet spot of not Too Far in terms of keeping idiots from being idiots, but avoiding Not Far Enough. Texas is in the range of Not Far Enough, more often than not. Austin is going into the range of Too Far because of all the imports from California and Oregon.

        2. Odd thing is: While the heat and humidity is bad, I haven’t actually had any tornadoes near where I live here in Houston. Hurricanes and tropical storms have affected me more often, though that might be a minus sign for your consideration.

  39. You don’t have to imagine a Heinlein hero in 1984. Read “Sam Hall.”

    Poul Anderson, being an engineer, thought surveillance through more than Orwell did, and they still lost.

  40. Dear Mr. Bob the Registered Fool,

    Is your registry taking applicants? Can I be like the highly magnified (H.M.) or the thoroughly educated (T.E.), and append R.F. to my nom de internets? As I was reading Mrs Hoyt’s post I came to

    Around the edges, the “respect” for government has continued to erode.

    And I had an Admiral Akbar moment.

    And I thought: Respect for churches (pedoville, wokeness, money-changing, self-righteousness) began to erode… And now the churches are no longer a bulwark against the PTB.

    And I thought: Black lives matter vs. all the anti-cop people. Normie-cons reflexively back the blue and the dirty little secret in proggie-ville is that black grannies fight tooth and nail for more neighborhood policing and arrests even if at any given moment one of her relatives is performing for the cameras viz said police because a ghetto lottery prize is in offing. (“First thing we do…”) But bit by bit… We’re all getting more anti-cop now.

    But I guarantee you wherever you stand on the cop abuses, there will ALWAYS be a palace guard. Defund them, demonize them… All you can do is get rid of the one who might serve a greater good. If you can convince *everyone* including your decent neighborhood people who might have gone for a police job ..

    What if you can convince everyone that The Church / The Cops / The gummint is no good? That it cannot be good?

    And here is the thing: America is our people, our places and our institutions. Not our big idea (though those institutions were shaped by great big honking ones) but our churches, our schools, our military, and yes our governments. Plural.

    If you have been part of a good American government you’ve crowed as your guys tag-teamed with neighbors employed by the state and the county to thwart both behemoths and got what the home town folks wanted. In 2020 in California of all places, towns flipped “red”.

    There are more of us than there are of them. And we are well-armed. Unless they co-opt us. Because who is “they” anyway?

    My husband likes to say that the devil loves to get people fighting to the death over Coke vs. Pepsi, so that when the handful wake up, they go on a self-limiting crusade for fruit-juices or milk or against high fructose corn syrup, so the devil can go on merrily poisoning our tap water.

    1. You have to remember that the cops are here not to protect us from the bad guys so much as to protect the bad guys from us. Mob justice is no justice at all. It’s blood feuds and tribal wars.

      1. These days, it seems important to clarify–
        to protect THE ACCUSED.

        Because a hella lot of the accused aren’t bad guys, they’re just easy targets…..

        1. true. but when it’s vigilante justice, there really isn’t anyone around to distinguish if the accused is actually responsible, so he ends up dead anyway.

          1. Yep.

            Just a lot of folks don’t realize that “the bad guy” is so often actually a bad guy when the police are involved because the habit of “you look guilty, so we’ll punish you” has been trained out of the population.

            False accusations make you look bad. 😀

      2. the cops are here not to protect us from the bad guys so much as to protect the bad guys from us

        –
        I quoted this on either a FB private group, or NextDoor App, discussion. Got “What does this even mean?” as a response. The person could not conceive that if no justice is forthcoming from authorities, then the likelihood of the victim or victims taking redress into their own hands increases exponentially as the unfairness is made clear. They are making the unfairness extremely clear.

  41. “It’s-a comin’.” What, exactly, “it” is remains to be seen. But, it’s comin’.

    I had the benefit, and the disadvantage, of being a Native Washingtonian (that’s “D.C.”). Back in the days when I “came of age” (early and mid- ’60s) there was no question D.C. was controlled by Congress; Congress appointed 3 Commissioners to run the joint, and since the city was >70% black (around 1980, IIRC, the official number was 78%) and both local and federal governments were largely white as a result of the people who came to D.C. for WWII work and were not due to start retiring for a few years, Upper and Middle Tiers were white, Lower Tiers black. In the early ’70s that started changing, and later in the ’70s D.C. got the fabled Home Rule gift from Congress and all the tiers began a rapid shift to black.

    Up until that point you did not have to know what Irish Democracy was to experience it; if you were white and middle class everything involving government contact below a certain level contained a lot of friction, as did an increasing number of private sector business transactions; order 2 rolls of blue ribbon, you’d get 1 blue and 1 yellow. The time cost of getting the yellow replaced wasn’t worth the hassle, so you just accepted it and bought a second roll of blue.

    I have several volumes of horror stories about the annual vehicle “safety” inspection required to renew your tags, too long to go into here, but my BMW motorcycle never made it through on the first try and I got the coveted red “rejected” sticker on my car several times for very minor technical issues (one was “headlights too bright, don’t meet standards” despite the federal DOT approval number molded into the glass headlamp lenses).

    Whites learned to not expect, and especially, not demand, much; the poorer whites were lergely treated like blacks, the rich whites had enough pull to Make The System Work or go around it, the ones in the middle slowly evacuated to the suburbs or gentrified neighborhoods into Social Enclaves.

    I worked in D.C. for several years after college, which I won’t describe, but in a position that provided a very generous and highly detailed educational experience in governmental dealings, both federal and local. I don’t live anywhere near D.C. anymore, not even in the same time zone, in fact, but still have friends in the area and life today in D.C. is largely expensive and high friction for everything no matter who you are.

    I’m waiting to see what happens when an entire country of 330 million people spread over 3.8 million square miles becomes “high friction.” Thanks to Covid, Fauci and, now, President K̶l̶a̶i̶n̶ Biden, we’re seeing the beginnings of it.

    That’ll last for a while, and I fully expect some limited kinetic events; the people will resist, the TPTB will push back, the people will resist some more, and it will be “game on.” How widespread that becomes I have no idea, but expect it because it’s coming. I doubt we’ll be able to resurrect our country without some of that because without at least a little of it we won’t be taken seriously.

  42. “Even people of Chinese ethnicity in US are Americans.”

    Being an “American” is really a state of mind, there are “Americans” in every country. Being a “United States Citizen” is a matter of geography. We have a lot of “US Citizens” but not that many “Americans”. The differences in the two are important, the more “Americans” you have the less likely that totalitarianism will arise because “Americans” are fiercely independent while “Citizens” are compliant.

    “Americans” also tend to be more motivated than the average “Citizen” and are now largely ridiculed as being chumps for following the rules and doing the right things to get ahead. Marxism/Socialism is really just a “get rich quick” or “Ponzi” scheme for the unmotivated, uninterested, under-achieving masses who want the benefits without doing the work. Socialism fails because the over-achievers finally figure out that they’re chumps and go Galt. The country then runs out of other peoples’ money.

    Socialism is based on the repudiation of the Pareto principle. The Socialists look at 80% of the tax revenue coming from 20% of the people as unfair and destroy the 20% who are generating the revenue. A glorious future then unfolds as the unmotivated, uninterested, under-achieving masses remain unmotivated, uninterested and under-achieving.

    Competent politicians would celebrate the successful and set policy to encourage the highest common denominator. Our politicians celebrate failure and set policy to encourage the lowest common denominator. The leading causes of poverty are drug use and crime. The best and brightest are advocating more drug use and more crime. Presumably, they think they can escape the consequences; so far, they’ve been right but Ponzi schemes always collapse.

    1. To promote “What I Saw In America” yet again, GK Chesterton nailed it with his observation that we are a nation whose essence is idea. “And in something of the same spirit the American[Pg 9] may exclude a polygamist, precisely because he cannot exclude a Turk.”
      (in commenting on the very direct, earnest questions before entering the country)

  44. I suppose the America could be likened to the scrub oak forests of the San Gabriel Mountains. Every once in a while, a fire completely burns out some portion of it, and the pearl-clutching Sierra Clubbers wail about how awful it was. Then the rains come and even the burned stumps start sprouting a new scrub oak forest. While it’s regrowing, grass has sprouted and meadows are forming; the animals move back in.

  45. Clownfish TV had an on-the-spot look at the dealers’ room at Steel City Con (that’s a Pittsburgh suburb’s comics convention), on Friday night. Looked pretty lively. Not everybody was unmasked, but quite a lot were.

  46. I have a very low tolerance for totalitarian/dystopian fiction.

    The strings to make it “work” are too obvious.

    1. Hit strong emotional points, but still obvious if you start ignoring the flourish and look for what the magician is doing while he flourishes.

      1. That’s where the angry dislike comes in.

        I got manipulated– my folks knew enough to point out the strings.

        I am now looking for the strings, and PISSED ABOUT IT.

        1. I seriously wonder if dystopia authors know any actual humans. They certainly have no idea re economics or history.

          1. A number are wish fulfillment fantasies where the enemy is as evil as you dream.

            I remember a lot of talk about the TV Handmaiden’s Tale and how she got away with so much without mentioning that following the logic would burst bubbles.

      2. Most dystopian fiction I read/see falls apart on the “Humans don’t act like that, you moron!”

  47. They seem to be getting dumber. In California they can’t keep the lights on all year, but they at least have imagination enough to envision that in five years there will be an amazing battery invention that lets everything be powered by wind and solar 24/7. (I wish they would say the name of the company about to roll them out because it will be worth billions, but they keep that hidden).

    Now they having trouble supplying enough running water, but they don’t even have the ability to come up with a fantasy solution that will solve things in five years. They declare an emergency, and raise water rates, but honestly seem paralyzed about the whole situation.

    2. Water is a hard limit physical commodity. If you have 1 more person than you have water supply for, people start dying, and nothing can stop it.

  48. You all are overlooking one obvious fact. When you say that it’s impossible for a totalitarian state to survive long, you forget that one has lasted 72 years already, over a much larger population than the US. They have had mass starvation. It didn’t even cause any known rebellion.

    Yeah, I know we Americans are different. We won’t take that shit. I’m sure all those white collar tough guys from the Frank Luntz focus groups will get right on that revolution.

    1. ….did you just try to invoke China?

      The gateway drug for “wait… all these places their stupid stuff seems to work, it goes by what they say for like a year or three and then goes back to roughly what they were doing before, but with new bosses”?

      1. And it’s not really totalitarian. Authoritarian, yes, very, but not actually totalitarian. There IS a difference. All totalitarian states are authoritarian, but not all authoritarian states are totalitarian. China…China trends fascist, honestly.

    3. China had just come off the tail end of World War 2 and the Civil War, both of which (particularly the former) were horrific events for the citizens of the country. And the year before the famine started, things apparently looked *really* good to the people (which perhaps isn’t all that surprising given how bad things had been just a little while earlier). And then the Cultural Revolution started not long after, which involved a *lot* of going after those in power during the famine (except for the man at the top, of course) by the younger generation.

    4. Well, gosh. I guess you’d better go crawl to your masters and beg them to not beat you up as much. *eyeroll*

    5. You guys don’t have an America to send you a crapton of food aid when agriculture goes south, nor an American economy to parasite off of.

  49. For those who do not fly a flag daily, this Monday, June 14, is Flag Day. (Even the Ficus has proclaimed it.) I will have mine out there.

    On Memorial Day, out of 31 houses on our block 7 had flags. I hope Monday there are more flying.

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