Just This One Simple Trick

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Hi. I am your friendly neighborhood storyteller, and I’m here to remind you of one very important thing: STORIES AREN’T REAL.

Understand I’m not throwing stones here. To an extent, because storytelling and belief in stories is an evolutionary selected for trait, (because if the story teaches you that tigers bite, you don’t go near the tiger and live to have descendants — particularly important in a pre-literate society.) humans have always had trouble confusing story and reality.

The trouble comes with the fact that we are living in a society hyper-saturated in story, from “the news” to the narratives fed to us in education, to stories in songs, to movies, to novels. (Movies are particularly pernicious because they bypass our brain’s “this isn’t real” filter. It is literally “what are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?” The lying eyes win every time. People have done experiments in which things watched in movies get incorporated as real memories.

The trouble is compounded that for the last several decades, the storytelling in all those fields has come exclusively from one side of the political spectrum, and to make things worse that is the side that actually doesn’t know how things and/or people work.

What it means is that in places for things like “what causes a revolution”or “what the future holds” or various other relevant check points, what we have in our head is a complete fabrication.

There are outright lies fostered under “Those who win shape history”. This article is interesting in that sense, he has pierced the lies surrounding early smallpox/polio vaccines, but he still believes the people heading to the cities in the industrial revolution were “economic slaves” and that they lived in appalling conditions compared to the countryside. Because that’s the narrative we’ve all been fed. In fact, we’ve seen industrialization in real time in my lifetime in third world countries, and no, people don’t have to be forced to move to the cities, and no their living conditions in the cities aren’t worse than in the countryside. In fact, if you read stories written at the time of the industrial revolution, all the lords and ladies in the British countryside complained of their servants and tenants escaping them for the greater freedom and better living in the cities.

Now were those conditions wretched compared to ours? Sure. But so were the conditions of kings. And part of what made the spread of disease rampant was that they simply didn’t know what caused it. Having grown up in a society that hadn’t fully integrated the germ theory of disease, I can tell you sometimes the things they assumed made you sick — frequent baths, say — was the diametrical opposite of reality.

So, in the early 21st century, it’s not just that we’re completely soaked in story from waking to going to bed. It’s that so much of it is so absolutely and bizarrely true.

And that’s a danger both ways.

One of the things that had my jaw dropping was all the people going “well, Canada is lost. Game over, man.”

The same people tend to draw an A to B to C line on our own demise. It goes something like “The left does a thing to get martial law. They go door to door and confiscate guns/put people in camps. They control everything forever.”

It makes me want to scream and then line people up so I can slap them all at once. (I need bigger hands.)

That’s not reality. That’s a movie.

That kind of thing works well in movies, because then the credits roll and you know it’s bad forever. “Game over, man, game over.”

It also works well in movies because the filmmakers are steeped in the “ways things work” in movies (but not in reality.) Oh, and because Americans and probably Canadians, have no idea how vast their own country is, or how different from the countries in which this sort of thing has worked.

The only country as vast and complicated as ours (or close to) that has managed unending tyranny is China, and right here I want to put down two caveats. Caveat number one is that we THINK so. From the outside. It’s impossible to know how complete the tyranny is on the door-to-door level. And I’d bet you money it’s far less than we (or Winnie the Xi) think(s). Second, China is a radically different and from our perspective highly weird culture. (I’m sure we’re the same to them, though they might not know it.)

I do firmly believe that if Zhou Bai-den wanted to he could round up every liberal middle class and above urban person in the US, take their guns and put them in camps.

The problem the Junta faces is that those are not the people who they want to do that to. And there are places in flyover country I not only wouldn’t encourage them to invade, I wouldn’t encourage them to look at sideways while considering invading. Because if they go into these nice, bucolic places, nothing will come out, except perhaps deep regrets. And I doubt even that.

They don’t realize that, of course. After all all those people in the hinterlands are stupid. And if they haven’t fired yet, they’ll never fire. Except everyone fights when it comes for them. But that’s not a movie thing, it’s just a people thing.

Movie thing is people being rounded up, by the numbers.

Honestly? WHERE WOULD THEY GET THE MANPOWER NEEDED EVEN? If you think they have enough or they can use random illegals, you’re out of your mind. They don’t begin to have enough people. And they’ll have even less after the first wave disappears. Worse, once people realize what the idiot liberals tried to do, they’ll chase them all over the country and beat them to death with their “in this house we believe” signs.

The left doesn’t realize that, because in their heads is the simplified mind shot of conservatives being rounded up.

And the right doesn’t realize that because in their heads is what happened in Nazi Germany. Only conservatives in this country are a majority. They are also armed to the teeth. In the places where Jews were armed, they put up a fight that had to be beaten back at enormous cost. Here we are armed, thank you so much. The cost if Zhou Bai den wants us in camps will be everything the left has. And in the end we win.

I’ve also been surrounded by people assuring me they’ll “die” in he first wave, when the squads come for them. First of all, are you out of your mind? Second, why would they come for you?

Remember, we’re the majority. They know it, we know it. (Yes, they know it, hence the barbed wire around DC for months.) They can’t and wouldn’t be able to round up everyone who has ever run his mouth on line. Or bought a gun. Or talked about buying a gun. Or joined the NRA. Or– whatever.

Yes, we’re all on lists. So are another 300 million citizens. Excepting babies and toddlers. And those might be on lists because someone misspelled a name. If you’re not on a list, you’re probably on a list for weirdos that aren’t on lists. You really should watch the German Movie The Lives of Others. The DDR with far less data collecting capabilities had data on everyone and everything. What they didn’t have is a way to correlate it. And the first of you that says “computers” gets hit with a carp. Because computers aren’t magic. And AI for that kind of thing sucks. See, for instance the non-malicious errors that Facebook makes. “I might have to kill you for being so sick” counts as “coordinating harm” to an AI that doesn’t get humans.

Like self driving trucks, an AI that can sort these things properly looks simple, and is always around the corner, but might actually be impossible

The best that they can do is gaslight you into believing they can reach and and kill you/stop you because they “know everything.” In fact like most totalitarians they know nothing. And the more data they collect the less they know.

For instance, the Facebook algorithm considers me politically “moderate.” They’re actually right, of course, if the spectrum is conservative to libertarian. But I don’t think that’s what they mean.

In fact, having lived through this before, I assure you that most people who dissent from the regime won’t be bothered. Most people who dissent but are very visible probably won’t be bothered. Even the USSR kept around dissidents “for show”. They kept an eye on them, and of course they didn’t get any perks, but you know, they weren’t killed. (I might be big enough for that, maybe, thanks to instapundit.)

It’s the people in the middle: the small blogger, the little guy like Joe the Plumber who shoots his mouth in front of the cameras (or smiles, embarrassed, like the Covington kids) who get publicly destroyed, with the hope this will keep the rest of the dissidents from going feral. (And these examples aren’t really working very well for the left. Sure, the Jan 6 political prisoners, but they are simultaneously displaying them and hiding them, and mostly pissing everyone off. But they lost the Covington battle. And the Kyle Rittenhouse one, and–)

Most of you will be perfectly safe and live to fight another day.

“But they’ll freeze our bank accounts.” Yeah, that’s a funny once trick that communists like to do. Again, the middle is in greater danger. But here’s the thing: even that is not “game over.” It requires inventiveness and ingenuity, and you might not be wealthy, but there are ways to get around it. (I can think of three that apply in my case, and heck I’m not divulging them, since they’re highly specialized.) Make your own lists. Now might be a good time to figure out how to get fake ID. I bet there’s a way even with “Real ID” TM. (You know, fake birth certificates aren’t even vaguely hard, and you can always claim to have lost your ID in a fire. Or a move. No, really. “I had it packed. It just never arrived. But here, I have my birth certificate.” Now there’s better ways to do this, that they can’t even track, but again, no not laying them out.) Here’s the thing: our government, even when it really tries, can’t prevent illegal immigrants from working. They can’t prevent porn from being paid for.

The only ones they can prevent or incapacitate are the extremely law abiding. So? Don’t be extremely law abiding. if your government goes rogue against you, go fluid.

The left has it in their head that if they just find “this one simple trick” we’ll all obey.

And they’re getting ignored and subverted. And if they continue making us mad, they’re going to get their asses kicked.

And that’s because reality is not a movie. You can’t script it perfectly and write the end.

The other side gets a vote. And our side is just starting to vote in the culture wars.

Hold on tight. It’s going to be a wild ride.

And don’t fall for cheap tricks that solve everything. This one is going to be won in the day to day and the details. In reality. Which is dirty, slow, painful, but has the advantage of existing.

Be not afraid. I doubt even Canada is “Done” (if you believe their polls or don’t remember they got Dominion machines before we did, you’ll only make me snort giggle. Everyone came out to support the truckers. Every Canadian just about. I know. I saw the pictures, and I counted (Joke, but yeah. A lot of them.))

Stop thinking in the stories the left tells, and definitely be not afraid.

In the end we win, they lose.

477 thoughts on “Just This One Simple Trick”

  2. In the places where Jews were armed, they put up a fight that had to be beaten back at enormous cost.

    Story you say? Here’s a story. Nazi Germany, even Poland and a number of other captured territories were one thing. Belorussia was another thing:

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034303/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

    As for me, at a certain point (not there yet, and I’m not sure exactly where the line on the ground is, but I can see the mountaintops from here) it stops being about trying to live my life as best I can and becomes “how big an honor guard I can take with me to Valhalla”. In the tradition I follow, that’s not a metaphor. And I’m far from alone. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

      2. The reaction of the the German commander on first moving into the Warsaw ghetto and getting his butt handed to him by a ragtag group of about 750 Jews with “a handful of pistols, 17 rifles and Molotov cocktails”? “Mein Gott! Die Juden haben waffen!”! “My God, the Jews have guns!” Imagine the reaction of the group moving into a small “flyover” farming town of a few thousand, with more active resisters and they ALL “haben waffen”

        1. AND in this case, seriously? Most of the army would say “Kindly go F*ck yourself.” So who? UN “peacekeepers” — laughs in “Oh, that will be a fun season.”
          Again, in Hitler’s Germany it was the majority going after the minority. THIS WAY? IT DON’T WORK.

          1. >> ‘Most of the army would say “Kindly go F*ck yourself.”’

            Well, that depends on how thoroughly the military’s been hollowed out and replaced with bad guys. I admit I’m not sure where we stand on that front.

            That said, I don’t expect said replacements to perform very well. So I guess it doesn’t work out too badly for us either way.

            1. The “hollowing out” has been mostly in the officer corp, with a minscule percentage of NCOs (Command Sgt Majors, mostly, again). There’s an interesting verb that entered American English during the Vietnam war: “frag”.

              The rest is left as an exercise for the student.

              1. >> “The “hollowing out” has been mostly in the officer corp”

                Weren’t a good number of rank-and-file types discharged for refusing the vaxx, though?

          3. Especially if the usual suspects in the ‘peace keepers’ try their usual tricks on some folk from Bugscuffle Any-midwest-state. No one will see who shot them 47 times on main street in broad daylight with an impressive variety of calibers.

            1. “No one will see who else shot them 47 times on main street in broad daylight with an impressive variety of calibers.”

              FIFY

        2. When things got spicy after St. George died in 2020, I spent a bit of time thinking about how one would protect $TINY_TOWN, and also some time over Greater Flyover City. $TT was attacked by a couple of (semi-skilled) arsonists, with no major results, but ordinary fire season habits stopped that one in time. I suspect further attempts were either aborted or came to an abrupt, un-publicized end.

          For $TINY_TOWN, about a dozen people could stop a small contingent of miscreants. GFC would need larger amounts, though how many and how successful would depend on [redacted].

          The point is to increase the cost/benefit ratio enough to make it a good idea to stay away.

          1. For your tiny town, all you really have to do is block one highway to stop them from coming in. Can you hear them going “We have tanks, we’ll go around! We have helicopters, we’ll go over!” Exactly how far are they going to get going through them pines? Over extruded lava? Even slopes without trees and brush, them hills are difficult to climb on foot (remembering the route between Bend through Burns to Ontario). Helicopters. Where are you going to land? Granted sagebrush country, a bit easier, but … Note, same way outside of the Willamette Valley. There is a reason we quit hunting western Oregon units. I’ve worked in that brush. There were units where your feet never touched the ground thanks to rhododendron, salal, vine maple, snow brush, etc., and now the invasive scotch broom is making it worse. This isn’t counting the black berries, salmon berries, devils club, etc. What are they going to do? Burn it out first? We know how that ends. Justifiable retaliation, for those that survive.

            1. As usual, it’s more complicated than that. 🙂 One highway for the obvious route from Blue Oregon, but other means of access are there. If TPTB really wanted to take over (or do a salted-earth attempt), they could. If they decided we’re low value (I think we would be considered such, unless [redacted]), the likely official group to defend from would be a platoon or squad of Poor Bloody Infantry. We could achieve the “Poor” and “Bloody” parts if that’s all they sent.

              We did have an attempted burn-out in the September 2020 Antifa Tantrum that was caught early enough. Still, I think a dozen people could take care of the likely threats. Lots more would be likely to volunteer.

              For Flyover City, it’s really more complicated. Medium-high value target, and the result would be dependent on what certain entities decided. The butcher’s bill would be high, but conflict would be either out of town or right in the city. If the latter, picture Warsaw with considerably more arms in the hands of the residents.

            3. Besides, real estate be damned, at this point I’m convinced they would burn it all down to rule over the ashes.

              In 2020 they brought down the economy and are rapidly kicking the US into a second-world nation – on the fast track to third world – for what?

              I’m rereading Peralandra: evil’s greatest advantage is that normal people just can’t conceive that anyone would go to such insane lengths for such paltry goals.

              1. This. They really would cut off their own noses to spite their faces, if it occurred to them. They’d certainly do much worse to everyone else.

                And people have no idea how many sadists are out there. Seeing people in pain is the whole point.

            4. Hell, the means are the ends. They want to deploy violence. They want it so bad it’s driving them crazy. Fidel Jr. probably had his first unaided erection in years when he got to unleash the jackboots on the truckers.

          2. Drop bombs on what? The roadblock? Making the rebuilt roadblock even more effective? Bombing insurgents does. not. work.

        4. If someone were to leave my house in a small Texas town, from the cul-de-sac to the main road (1/2ish mile), I know they would have to drive by 10 houses with at least 3 to 6 rifles and likely 15 to 20 handguns. Then they’re going past the rest of the 18,980 people who live here. I don’t want to even think about the rest of the armaments potentially involved.

          Soldiers wouldn’t be overly impressed, but for the people who think an AR-15 sounds like death and destruction, taking fire from 7mm or 300 Winchester magnum hunting rifles will truly be life-changing. These people usually own high powered scopes, many with night vision, and they hit what they aim at.

          1. they hit what they aim at

            –
            First off, their practice targets are targets that when they miss their families might be going hungry. Targets that move a whole lot sneaker, faster ,and evasive than any two legged targets.

      3. It’s worth noting that a number of Jews survived the Ghetto uprising, and subsequently fought in the general Warsaw Uprising in late summer of 1944. And then managed to slip away from that when the Polish fpartisans realized that the general uprising was doomed, and did their best to evade and escape the city.

    3. The thing that the opposition sons of nutjobbery fails to realize, is that we /know/ about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

      We know it cost Stroop men putting it down.

      We’ve all discussed how many Jews, before and after the uprising, were taken to death camps run by the Nazis and located in Poland, and murdered there.

      We’ve all expressed the sentiment that more uprisings, better armed, with more support, and more commitment, could have cost the NSDAP a lot more.

      America has an official history, and an unofficial folk history, the oral histories passed down outside of the schools.

      The official written histories are curated by Academia, who thinks that because they talk about things formerly folk history only, like the atrocities of Segregation, that they have control of the American historical narrative. Furthermore, Marxist Academics have a bias towards believing that the Holocaust only matters to Jews.

      WWII had a lasting psychological impact on every American male of those cohorts. They had been warned by their forefathers that government would become evil, and an enemy with whom peace is not possible. Kipling’s The Dykes is a discussion of the failing’s of one’s own society. A great many American men were “Walking along the wreck of the dykes, watching the work of the seas” with regard to the self-inflicted damage of the Axis powers, and their cohort fellows who did not, paid very close attention to what they had to say.

      Those cohorts have almost entirely left us, and have little that they can physical add in person. Their stories live on. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is part of American culture, gentiles and Jews alike.

      The Communists in America have been waging war against us diligently. In their usual lying manipulative thoroughly vile, uncivilized barbarizing way. They have two weaknesses that are relevant this summary. One, they live in theory, and have no awareness of human personalities that are /not/ oriented to theory, do not understand the stuff communists pull in ‘ideological’ terms. Such as an American who wants to take care of their family, work at getting the job done correctly, and isn’t interested in politics. Two, they think they are good at trying to hurt us without letting on about their malevolence.

      The malevolence leaks out, even when they have themselves fooled.

      They’ve been collecting fighters, and waging war on us in this way for decades.

      We’ve fought back. Because of the fights going on with ideology, our theorists and political junkies got called up early. Some of these units were basically ‘destroyed in action’, and some of the ‘survivors’ are quite demoralized.

      When this goes hot, our intellectuals, pseudo-intellectuals and anti-intellectuals are only a small part of our fighting force. We also have everyone who does not want to be murdered in camps.

      1. And some of us, either history junkies or looking for story fodder, have delved deep into the history of many, many attempts to resist tyranny throughout the ages. And we keep finding more.

        Know what I ran across watching Kingmaker: The Change of Destiny?

        The end years of the Joseon Dynasty were such a mess, politics and authoritarian-wise, that there were significant numbers of Koreans who fled into Russia.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Koreans_in_the_Soviet_Union#Background

        You’ve got to do some serious thinking about how bad things must have been to flee into the Russian Empire.

        …Yes, looking at the current mess in Canada and here makes me think of this.

    4. You could also argue that the continued existence of the modern nation of Israel is a testament to the power of armed Jews.

  3. I’m looking forward to a glorious battle with the forces of evil, but having worked in DC, it’s a dump….Better to isolate it and concentrate on places that matter….Particularly after we have head faked them into concentrating their goons in DC….

  4. Sarah, your premise seems to be that the laws can’t be enforced, such as “Here’s the thing: our government, even when it really tries, can’t prevent illegal immigrants from working”.

    Have they ever really tried that? EVER, in the last 50 years? In the last 100? Yes, Yes, I know what the law books say, but have the Ruling Class ever really gone without servants because they didn’t have illegal immigrants available?

    And that’s just an example of the overarching premise: Whatever the laws and regulations on the books SAY, all that matters is which ones are enforced, and how, and against whom. Gun laws aren’t enforced against gangs. Campaign finance laws are enforced on the Dinesh D’Souzas, not the Obama campaign donors. It’s the whole premise behind “Three felonies a day”.

    Is that series of events just a “story”? Are you saying these people made it all up? My “lying eyes” say they didn’t.

    PS: And there are no tricks that solve everything, let alone cheap ones. There may be some tricks that can help determine the timing of the collapse, and who’s inside the tower when it collapses.

    2. …yes, you are absolutely right: it doesn’t matter what laws are on the books, except to the extent people believe in them. (That belief has taken a shelling lately.) And also that enforcement on any sort of universal scale is absolutely, completely, and altogether impossible, even BEFORE you get into situations where every party to the “crime” is invested in the government not discovering. There’s a reason most of what you see in the police blotter is the criminals being really stupid about how they do their crime, or else being big enough to get the Full Attention.

      Sucks to be the one found out and nailed down, don’t get me wrong. Sucks even more to be a bystander in a land where belief in the rule of law has crumbled; there’s an awful lot we take for granted from that. None of this gives the police, or even the Stasi, magic powers to detect where Unpersons are doing business, particularly when they’ve declared most of the country Un.

      Gonna be some touch-and-go in the learning phase, but there’s a reason they haven’t managed to keep pop songs out of North Korea; there’s a stark limit to what can actually be looked at, and a great deal depends on the cooperation of the participants.

    3. The fact that to be effective a law must have the overwhelming support of the population isn’t news. It’s what the sane wing of the libertarians have been trying to get through everyone else’s heads for decades.

      1. Effective for what? Our laws have all been very effective as a selectively enforced tool of repression, which is what the Ruling Class wanted.

            1. er, I forgot to connect it to what I was responding to…..

              Effective for what?

              Effective for stopping people who don’t care about violating the law.

              Your constant attempts to prove that everyone will fall over themselves to bend the knee are sliding into “if everyone you meet is an asshole” territory. Keep the Yes Sir, Please Sir, May I have Another in the bedroom where it belongs.

              1. Everyone won’t, and I’ve never said otherwise, sorry. The question is whether “enough” will to keep the “elites” in power, or at least enough to keep things functioning rather than a catastrophic failure. I will maintain that the second option would be desirable, and the real question is whether our elites can do enough damage in their flailing and failing to keep it from happening before they are deposed.

                1. They won’t. How do I know? Because Brandeau had to make the ratification vote on the Emergency Powers a confidence vote. He had to threaten members of his own coalition with facing the voters immediately when their party brands polled somewhere between halitosis and Pol Pot in order to keep them on-side. And the very next day they announce that the emergency is over and the powers are no longer needed. The ploy is clear, they’re giving the electorate the maximum time to get over the outrage (and to ingest government propaganda) before facing the voters. And these are Canadians we’re talking about.

                  If the regime starts LARPing the bad guys in Schindler’s List their support among the American people is going to evaporate. If the polls are anywhere close to accurate that’s pretty much already happened, the only thing keeping FICUS in power right now is the fact that Americans still largely believe that they’ll be able to stop the carnage in November.

  5. The only ones they can prevent or incapacitate are the extremely law abiding.

    What this will do also is red pill the law abiding. The people who have been taught to be good and who obey the laws because they’ve been taught that laws are there for good reasons. They also think that if you break any law you are ipso facto a bad person because breaking the law is just bad and wrong. There are a lot of these people. When they realize that they can’t obey the laws and survive they are going to feel betrayed because they believe that governments are good and their implied contract with their governments is that if they obey the laws they won’t be in trouble.

    I don’t know precisely how they will react but it seems clear that they will no longer blindly obey the authorities or assist the police or the taxmen or others. In fact they are likely to consider these authorities to be “bad people” to be explicitly resisted. We are I think already seeing this to a degree with the various parental groups complaining about their children’s schools

    1. The Great Experiment, ie prohibition, was in force for a mere 13 years, from 1920 to 1933, but turned a majority of Americans into scofflaws and also became the impetus and revenue source for much of the organized crime that still exists today.
      My own grandfather, a German immigrant, God fearing and law abiding as he most certainly was, used to tell me how he and his friends managed to endure the absence of beer during those trying times with the help of a bit of home brewed dandelion wine.

      1. And upon being called “scofflaws” this was the, oh-so American reaction:

        Scofflaw Cocktail

        2 ounces bourbon or rye whiskey
        1 ounce dry vermouth
        1/4 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed
        1 to 2 dashes grenadine
        1 dash orange bitters

        Shake with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass.

        It still tastes good, btw. Even if the middle-finger waving has to be transmitted nearly a century back in time.

        1. The only problem I have with that is that it dilutes the whiskey. Drink it straight and give ’em both middle fingers. And then both barrels, if you have to. That’s the American way. 😀

          1. Heard it said from ceertain experts on the subject that many popular mixed drinks were either created or received much greater interest as means to mask the bad taste of bad liquor. Rich folks could still “import” the good stuff, but lots of poor who would buy whatever was available from their friendly local bootlegger.
            Bathtub gin and prime sipping whisky are barely in the same universe of beverages.

            1. That’s largely a myth. The cocktail (originally a specific drink) dates back to the mid-19th century and the golden age of cocktails was around the 1880’s.

        1. Yeah, I saw something about that a couple months ago. Ingenious. I do remember reading somewhere that many people who were teetotalers started making bathtub gin on the principle of the idea that government had no business getting into personal choices.

      3. impetus and revenue source for much of the organized crime

        Bullshit. Yeah, that is the pop historical narrative.

        Alcohol retail was fairly organized crime adjacent /before/ national prohibition.

        There were state and local dry laws enforced for decades after prohibition.

        The wet/dry feuding predated Prohibition by decades.

        The actual history is not so simple as “LOL, we didn’t have organized crime, and then after Prohibition we did.”

        For most of the period of serious wet/dry dispute, we had a widespread criminal conspiracy in the form of Segregation. With bank/train/coach robbers salting away funds in preparation for a second attempt at succession. There are reasons to tie the Wets to the Segregationists, politically. Sure, some of the places that were ‘dry’ after prohibition were also places of prolonged political support for segregation.

        There’s also the extent of the confounding factor of Wilson and FDR putting in national polices forces, that identified as fighting organized crime. J. Edgar Hoover may well have been leading a criminal conspiracy, in support of a tyrannical Democrat political objective, and was in a position to profoundly shape the narrative around organized crime.

        For a properly historical context on this stuff, you have to go back before the ACW, and may have to go back before the American Revolutionary War.

        Having mixed cultures is hugely confusing when it comes to questions of ‘lawful’, ‘unlawful’, etc. Because law without cultural backing is only force. Where you have distantly different codes of human behavior, and you don’t have fighting that is an active ‘hot civil war’, the conflict that does occur can be classified as organized crime. Rotherham can be seen this way. Our current situation is also this way.

        1. ARRGHH! I can’t take it any more!

          ‘Succession’ is the process by which a replacement takes over an official position if the current functionary dies or becomes incapacitated. See the many royal succession wars in Europe when not everybody agreed on the order of succession.

          ‘Secession’ is when some political entities break away from a larger entity.

          I know, I know, it’s a pet peeve, but ’tis mine own.

          3. Dayton, Ohio had at least fifteen breweries before Prohibition, mostly delivering to their neighborhoods and run by German Catholics. (Probably some Lutheran ones, too.)

            They were not even vaguely “organized crime-adjacent.” If they had been, they wouldn’t have been closed so easily by Temperance laws.

            1. /Retail/

              The Saloons.

              This stuff has a lot of testimony recorded, even if there is an argument that the testimony was not truthful, or if there is an argument that the testimony was not representative.

              Even fi the stuff written in the papers at the time was mostly lies, and stuff taken out of context and twisted, people at the time were making such claims.

              Saloons all supplied from a single brewery.

              Those breweries, distributing to their own neighborhoods, would have had incentive to keep their saloons/pubs/beer gardens clean to community acceptable standards. They were not shitting where they drank.

              With the rails, breweries could support saloons that were shitting in communities that were /not/ where the breweries were operating.

              Normally, you are meticulous. When you are tracking down information that supports your preconceptions, or which you think is cool.

              This neither supports your preconceptions, nor is it something that you think is cool. So I do /not/ have grounds to wonder if you are being deliberately obtuse here.

              If you had ever started data collection on this /first/ from a part of the country that wasn’t predominantly Catholic, you would see why a different pattern might ‘jump out’ at people.

              This was very early on in a relatively successful attempt at operating a society where Catholics and Protestants were living side by side, and mostly not making a serious attempt to exterminate each other. There were a lot of things that they weren’t aware of then, that are more available now, and we have more results of how to make relatively mixed neighborhoods work.

              The Catholic Church then was much more heavily shaped by working in majority catholic countries, and had a lot less information about sucessfully handling public policy disputes in majority protestant country. And the protestant clergy, even in America only denominations, likewise had too much of their institutional history of interacting with public policy in an environment without a large Catholic majority. In particular, carrying forward the (flawed) relationship between revivalism and public policy into wet/dry politics was probably not a good deed.

              Back then, it was more reasonable for the Catholic Church to pay no attention to mostly Protestant areas, and in particular to ignore all of the indian reservations that they did not have missions to. It was also maybe reasonable for them to conclude that the Protestant hearsay from Protestant areas was over hyped, and was a result of disordered Protestant theology, and not anything really wrong with the drinking associated behavior.

              The Protestant denominations were expecting some go along to get along from the Catholic clergy in America. That was an entirely unreasonable expectation. They were likewise not really listening to Catholic clergy comfort levels with the drinking in the communities served.

              If you start your data collection from the correct places, you will notice why it might have looked like the Catholic clergy were being obstinate in ignoring what appeared to be a real issue. The indian tribes had their own police forces, the tribal constabularies. There is information about capital sentences carried out for alcohol related murders. Members of /tribal constabularies/ were executed for murders committed while drunk. The indians did not have the enzymes to successfully borrow from European drinking culture habits, they did not have an ancestral drinking culture that could cope with the then supply of alcohol, and killing the indians slowly by inches might well have been one of the purposes of the reservations. Being close to the reservations, or seeing someone with enough of the indian genes for alcohol, might have legitimately been a little freaky.

              Catholic Clergy serving Southern European drinking culture communities, with mostly European alcohol genes, may have legitimately struck the Protestants as being “I’ve got mine.”

              That Catholic neighborhoods selling internally did not have a problem with the resulting drinking behavior proves nothing.

              A frontier culture, when Appalachia was the frontier, produced their own whiskey, and didn’t have much issue with their own fighting mores, drunk or sober. Just about every other culture in America /did/ have issue, and the wider frontier area eventually brought in enough soft people objecting to said fighting to settle things down a fair amount.

              If a Catholic neighborhood, supplied from an outside brewery, has an objection with prostitution, drugged drinks, and robbery at a Saloon, but those events were blown way out of proportion by insane Protestant crusaders, and the Catholic Clergy would have been fine left to their own devices, the newspaper reports of such events may still have been truthful.

              (There were definitely issues in heavily Protestant resource extraction towns in extreme early stages of becoming civilized. The people complaining about those were perhaps effete Easterners, with unreasonable expectations for civil peace.)

              1. I think you’re overlooking the extent to which urban elites’ revulsion of German beer garden culture played a part in Prohibition. Wherever Germans settled in large numbers, beer halls and beer gardens sprung up, and after church on Sunday they’d go to them. The only difference between Germanic Lutherans and Catholics on this front tended to be which particular beer garden or beer hall they visited. Many of elites detested this custom, and in various cities tried various measures to stomp it out, such as banning Sunday alcohol sales*. The Anti-Saloon League and the WCTU finally gave them the necessary clout to do so through Prohibition. And as soon as Prohibition ended, it came back, if not as strongly, until the postwar exodus to the suburbans upended that, as it did so many other things.

                * Often with carve outs for selling glasses of wine with meals – afterall, the elites wouldn’t want to be kept from their alcohol!

                1. Maybe.

                  We definitely know some things wrt Wilson. That stuff would fit very well with what you describe.

                  At this point in historical analysis, stand alone “oh it was those bigoty bigots” models probably deserve extra scrutiny.

      4. I will neither confirm nor deny that a relative got his basement dug out during Prohibition by paying the workers in beer.

        1. I can’t confirm that my grandfather was a rumrunner- but he told me the key to successful smuggling was to draw a foot less draft then the coast guard chase boats and know which sand bars you cleared by 6 inches.

          1. My grandfather worked a part time job with a veterinarian when he was a kid; and since he could drive, he also went and picked up liquor from out in God’s Country for the veterinarian. Great-grandpa was not aware of this until Grandpa told us the story!

      5. My great grandfather used to make moonshine, and bootlegged Canadian whiskey across the border with my little grandfather by his side when he wasn’t farming. Minot was known as Little Chicago for awhile because it was so “lawless.”

    2. It’s been my observation that people who believed in a system that ends up betraying them, go totally 120% against that system; but only if they don’t just roll over and accept their lot. And there doesn’t seem to be many in-betweeners.

    3. They go feral. That’s how they react. One of the aspects of being extremely law abiding is it’s an internal drive to follow rules and order. If someone takes that from you, it is the death of your old identity. You need a new one after that, and vengeance on those that removed your hope of justice.

      Think of it as the difference between an agnostic, and someone who is at war with God. Except it’s not a god, just the state.

      And then realize, we have a country full of people who will count their aluminum can turn-ins if it’s required for their tax returns.

      1. I don’t think for a significant minority of american residents, including most of the ones under arms there is a difference between god and state

      2. Agreed. It’s the whole premise of a social contract in the first place. “I agree to do X, and not do Y, and in return you leave me alone otherwise.”

        …The power-hungry can never leave people alone.

    4. When I lived in the midwest I was an absolute law-follower, and felt like you described. California is what changed me. I was shocked at the way people – extreme left-wingers – found dishonest ways to get around all of the regulations, the union rules, the laws, etc., while still publicly supporting them. A common phrase in LA: you have to do what’s right for you.

      “Now might be a good time to figure out how to get fake ID.”

      I know people, previously infected with Covid, who were afraid of the vaccines, but rolled up their sleeves for it so they could go to college or keep their job. None of them wanted to make a fake vaccine card, because that would make them immoral.

      Everyone needs to get over this. I don’t like a society like this, but for now it’s necessary.

      1. Don’t know anything about pharmacy techs taking money to expend the jab into the shrubbery or a handy fruit and recoding it as going into a person in return for monetary compensation. And if I did, I certainly wouldn’t talk about it.

      2. It’s been my experience generally that the ones who scream loudest about making sure to follow the rules are also the ones who spend the most time and energy figuring out how to get around them.

      3. I’m reminded of a story out of Cali from, oh, maybe the 90s? Cali upped the taxes on “big” cars / trucks just about the time the Hummer H1 was getting really popular. So people started buying them and registering them as “work trucks” for their little one-person business that also just was created and registered when they bought the truck.

        And it came out the salespeople at the dealerships were in on the scam and helping people create and register said business.

        So Cali did what Cali does and passed MORE laws to try to prevent that work-around.

        In a similar vein, Cali was NOT happy with Steve Jobs and his car trick. He’d buy a new car, then sell it a couple months later and buy another to avoid both having to register it and get plates on it. Pretty sure Cali closed that work-around too…

        1. Has California figured out how to stop this.

          History. California and surrounding states with sales tax and licensing property tax laws, people were buying expensive RV’s, in Oregon and registering them in Oregon. Easy enough to catch. The states wanting their money just noted the Oregon plate cars parked in non-Oregon residents. Then went after both their registration money (with interest and penalties) and the Oregon dealerships helping. NOW, what some do, is they still buy and register in Oregon, but they store them in Oregon, flying into Oregon when they want to use them. They do this for a few years, then, when the RV is considered “used”, then take it home (if they ever do). Still end up paying a “Use Tax” on the RV, but much less amount than they would have new. Makes it difficult to find RV storage locally for locals.

    5. I did a long deep dive research project more than 20 years ago, into discovering the various fates of my Uncle James Menaul’s fellow B-17 crew members. (he was killed in the last fifteen minutes of meaningful flight that their bird had, after the Black Thursday, in 1943.)Their B-17 was shot down and crashed in France, on their return from bombing the ball-bearing factories – but half of the crew survived a parachute jump into Occupied France. One luckless guy was captured and spent the war as a POW, but the other four were collected by the French Resistance, who had an active ring in the neighborhood where they landed … and smuggled out to Switzerland. One of the survivors, whom I interviewed by phone had a tale of being on a French passenger train with another American evader, equipped with false papers and French clothes, escorted by a pair of Resistance couriers. The Germans came through the train, checking everyone’s papers … and he said that almost instantly, everyone in that carriage began to do … stuff. Talking loudly. Getting out of their seats. Getting something out of their luggage and handbags. Anything to distract the Germans checking papers. My interviewee was absolutely certain that everyone in that train carriage suspected something about the pair of American evaders – and spontaneously did everything possible to distract attention from them.
      I thought this was a rather telling insight – even if you can’t be an active Resistant, you can pretend that you see nothing suspicious or strange. You can turn away and pretend that you just don’t see anything odd … and refrain from mentioning it to the authorities.
      I did use this in one of my books, so the insight didn’t go to waste.

  6. I can just see the Woke salivating over the opportunity to cut off the bank accounts of a large number of people they disagree with, while not understanding how much close they would be to flipping The Switch in a larger percentage of the nation.

    And there are a lot more people that are red-pilled than they realize. Observe the number of people not buying the “Wag the Dog” attempt going with Ukraine and “Russia, Russia, Russia!”. (Doesn’t help that we are not allowed to defend our southern border…)

    1. Of course online is a small and skewed sample, but I’m seeing a lot of, “You people care more about Ukraine’s border security than our own. Do something about our border if you care so much.” That’s not going to go away.
      I admit I’m concerned the PTB are hoping to gin up an excuse/distraction involving “white nationalists,” to try and take people’s attention off their failures. But I’m more worried about “black swan event from somewhere/someone we’re not paying attention to just now.”

    2. Take my wealth.
      Go ahead.
      Give me nothing to lose except my life and sacred honor (such as it is.)
      Yeah, governments and their corporate sponsors who do that are setting themselves up for massive retaliation.

      1. Take my love, take my land
        Take me where I cannot stand
        I don’t care, I’m still free
        You can’t take the sky from me.

        Take me out to the black
        Tell them I ain’t comin’ back
        Burn the land and boil the sea
        You can’t take the sky from me.

        Leave the men where they lay
        They’ll never see another day
        Lost my soul, lost my dream
        You can’t take the sky from me.

        I feel the black reaching out
        I hear its song without a doubt
        I still hear and I still see
        That you can’t take the sky from me.

        Lost my love, lost my land
        Lost the last place I could stand
        There’s no place I can be
        Since I’ve found Serenity

        And you can’t take the sky from me.

        source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/fireflylyrics.html

        1. Amazing how well Whedon was able to write stories that tell the truth, even while he believes lies. It reinforces my theory that all good storytelling is essentially conservative and moral.

            1. Because he’s one of the arrogant ones who thinks he can work around everything and he probably gets a thrill from thinking he’s “defying” the powers. From everything that’s come out about him recently (e.g. Charisma Carpenter’s story) I think he’s an arrogant narcissist. He doesn’t follow the creed he based Firefly on…he just knows it sells stories.

          2. >> “Amazing how well Whedon was able to write stories that tell the truth”

            I can’t remember the name, but haven’t people here said that someone else did most of the actual writing for Firefly?

    3. “No money for me, so no fuel for me, so no delivery for you, so no food/fuel for you.”

      It won’t be nice, but I know who’ll be starving and freezing in the dark first. Hint: Not the backwoods folks. The “elites” MIGHT slightly outlast the suburbanites – assuming the starving, freezing suburbanites don’t rightly lynch the bastages first.

      1. And the time-proven way to set the starving urban ferals on the bastages is to point out that $leftard_elite is hoarding $scarce_thing.

  7. I suspect that we’re at the crisis point and the left knows they’re losing, hence the thrashing about. I’m not at all afraid any more. Wary, concerned, alert, oh yes, but afraid, no. Transitions are messy and we’re seeing history, in a Hegelian sense, come back with a bang. But the main reason I’m not afraid is that should they try to destroy my life with their mean girls passive aggressive BS, well, then I would have nothing left to lose and better be hanged for a sheep than a lamb.

    Meanwhile, I’m going to avoid any really futile and stupid gestures. Trust in God and keep my powder dry.

    1. I suspect that we’re at the crisis point and the left knows they’re losing, hence the thrashing about.

      Revitilization movement. Back in college in Cultural Anthropology (hey, I needed six credits of “social science” to get my physics degree) they talked about revitilization movements wherein a culture under stress, often dying, basically doubles down on its fundamental beliefs in an effort to restore what it believes was former glory.

        2. Not often. It’s usually the last gasp of a dying culture. There are notable exceptions–the lead up to the American War of Independence being one, but they are rare. What might be interesting is seeing two competing “revitilization movements” that are diametrically opposed to each other. Liberty minded folk who believe in America’s founding ideals is a culture that’s been “under stress” for a long time. The Left is feeling the pinch now. Interesting times ahead.

          1. I suppose the question becomes what causes the stress, and which culture is really dying?

            The thing is, things were really good under Trump and improving rapidly. It wasn’t until the lock downs that things really went bad.

            Overall, it seems like the cultural stressor is the imploding of the blue centralized control model and the failure of their various woke religions to be a functional basis for any sort of society.

            2. And also “what is the nature of the thing that is dying?”.

              If the thing that is dying is worth preserving it is far more likely to survive than something destructive would.

          2. Oh. I’d like to point out that America isn’t dying. Not even a little. That impression is fostered by bullshit news/culture/etc.
            America is largely fine (SERIOUSLY. Despite everything.)
            THE LEFT IS DYING GLOBALLY. And they are trying a revitalization movement. But they can’t succeed because they were broken by tech/time

          3. >> “There are notable exceptions–the lead up to the American War of Independence being one, but they are rare.”

            Worth noting that America didn’t reform the British Empire. We broke away from it instead. What’s the ratio of reformations to separations among the successful attempts?

    2. Read a very interesting and harrowing article by a former “trans,” young woman. According to her, there is a totally toxic young girls’ (as in, pre-teen and teen) culture on sites like Tumblr, which utterly personify just about every crazy social trope we’re seeing now. It’s as if the Mean Girls grew up and headed for the boardrooms. (And if there are adults in the sites taking these lonely, confused girls and inoculating them with SWJ/hierarchy of oppression/trans ideology I hope their deeds catch up to them).
      This girl/woman had to suffer horribly, but she did achieve that classic point – How could I have been so stupid?”- before the testosterone did permanent damage. And she said she’s not the only one who’s had the realization. So that mania may also be subject to change.

            1. You can also just copy-paste the address directly. If it’s an image or video link making the address its own paragraph will even display what you’re linking to.

      2. See also the book “Irreversible Damage” and lectures by the author (too lazy to go look up).

  8. There is no such thing as the end of history. I recall when that catch-phrase was tossed around by the press. I thought it was about the most imbecilic thing I had ever heard. The end of history (for humans) will come when the last one gives his last gasp. The world of humans may convulse, and we may lose a couple of billion along the way here and there but We will endure and survive. Remember how Wilson curtailed civil rights during the War?
    Me neither! I’d be 140 years old!
    Things come and go. If we like monks in a monastery must guard a flicker of freedom until the fire spreads once again, well, I’m game.

          1. When I was in Uni, I dated a girl who was obsessed with Hegel. She was Welsh and an absolutely stunning redhead. I was punching way over my not inconsiderable weight. Then I remembered my father’s advice about not dating, not his word, crazy.

    2. Of course there’s an end of history. One end, the beginning, ends in the present. The other end is lost in the distance about 14 billion years ago. Humans aren’t even an ink blot in that vast immensity.

      1. Marx took it from Hegel and yeah it’s a bullshit concept, like all the rest of Hegel. Essentially Marx is Hegel with poorly understood economic data and better rhetoric. Seriously, Marx was a much better writer than Hegel, which says a great deal.

        1. Only after Engels re-wrote 95% of it. I’ve heard Marx was a shit writer, even in the original German. Which still leaves room to be better than Hegel.
          ———————————
          The one thing we need more of from the government is LESS!!

          1. Have you read Hegel? Seriously. Better doesn’t mean good and Marx was better. In both cases it’s a feature not a bug because had they written clearly no one would have bought the BS they were selling.

            1. The story goes that German grad students read Hegel in English because his German is too impenetrable. At least that’s what my (German-speaking PhD) professor told us when we complained about how hard it was to read Hegel in English.

              1. I tried Hegel in German. Even Marx and Mr.-Little-Mustache are easier to follow in German. Hegel needed to get out of his own head more often.

                1. Unfortunately, Immanuel Kant set a fashion for German philosophers to write abominably, and when nobody could understand their books, to blame it on the universal stupidity of their readers. Hegel was one of many who cashed in on that fashion.

              2. Which brings us to the more pertinent question: Why read Hegel, Marx or Rousseau at all? You’ll just wind up stupider afterward.
                ———————————
                Count Vordarian: “What? You’re a Betan! You can’t do—“

                1. They say that Kant wrote in a terrible hurry. Hegel didn’t have that excuse.

                  The antidote to a Hegel and Marx and Schelling and that idiot Fichte for that matter is reading them. What you have to understand is that they don’t actually mean anything and all that BS is just BS. Not deeply meaningful BS, just BS.

                  German scholars read Hegel in English translation because the translators had found some meaning. They found that themselves,if they actually found anything, which I doubt, they certainly didn’t find it in Hegel.

    4. I think it was a Federalist or Anti-Federalist paper (for or against the Constitution, I cannot recall) that suggested we could have an “end to history” — and pointed to Switzerland, who managed to create an environment where they really didn’t have a “history”.

      To be sure, though, I have to observe a handful of things:

      First, the idea behind the phrase used there was that most history occurred with things like transitions to power, civil and foreign war, and what-not. The idea behind “an end to history” was to re-create Switzerland’s minor squabbles of power where everyone is satisfied in the end in America.

      Second, since that time (we’re talking about the ratification of the Constitution, after all), Switzerland hadn’t been completely “history-free”, even by these standards. Napolean successfully conquered them, for example, and in 1848 they had a little revolution where they went from monarchy-ish to republic-ish, and in WWII they resisted Hitler’s attempts to conquer them (Hitler tried to appeal to the German-speaking Swiss the same way Napoleon appealed to the French speakers to divide the Swiss — but in the end, even the French speakers despised what had happened to them, and the Swiss had a long memory, so Hitler couldn’t appeal to anyone there). Not a bad track record, I suppose, for the above definition of “an end to history”.

      Third, the way the phrase is used by Marxist types, it has a certain “We have to make history to end it” flare, and while they have a very strong track record of creating it, they have a very poor track record of ending it. In much the same way that they say “True Communism has never been tried” because they could never figure out how to get from the “Overthrow everything and establish a bloody, oppressive Dictatorship” step to the “Let’s whither away and create an anarcho-capitalist-but-without-the-private-property Stateless State” step. They can never seem to figure out that any plans that go from quasi-anarcho-capitalism and end at allegedly-property-free-anarcho-capitalism probably shouldn’t include an “overthrow-the-capitalism-and-establish-a-total-controlling-dictatorship” step ….

  9. We have our stories too. How about Snow Treasure. One of my all time favorites. A Norwegian village’s children evaded the Nazis all winter smuggling out the country’s gold on skis and sleds.

    They used a fake measles epidemic to keep the kids out of school and a very great amount of heroism from even young children.

    And this occurred right under the noses of the Nazis with the coordination of a goodly number of people in the village. Not all, of course, which is why you have to pick your cohort very carefully.

    No doubt my coworkers and most neighbors would be extremely shocked that an introverted nerd such as myself would even think to toss sand in the gears. If they gave me any thoughts at all. I’ve spent my life avoiding notice. My close friends, however, would be supplying the sand.

    I believe that the more they tighten their grip, the more star systems will slip through their fingers.

    1. Oh all this. I have two copies of “Snow Treasure” in my library. We read it out loud to the kids when they were the right age to absorb the lesson. And to understand that heroes can come in any size or age.

            2. Well, one of my officers stopped by a girl doing just that one night. She asked him to turn around so she could finish urinating. He refused and took her jail.

      3. Or just plain dirt. I’m reminded of the American POW at the Hanoi Hilton who pretended to be a moron (in the technical meaning of the term)… and took advantage of the guards’ laxity around him to slip a small amount of dirt every day into the gas tanks of each of the trucks in the yard he swept daily. One of his superiors in the wing noticed what he was doing, and marveled at how effective this “compliant moron” (he wasn’t, really) was in sabotaging the Vietnamese trucks without a bit of suspicion falling on him.

        1. Pete, the problem with bleach is that unlike sugar everyone in the area knows you have it if the container leaks.

          1. Depends on circumstances. I’d rather think of ways to make a procedure work than to assume something would go wrong in a specific way. (I’d rather have a bottle of bleach near a laundry than a pound of sugar. Vice versa near a bakery.)

    3. I hadn’t remembered this story till now. It was one of my favorites growing up. I loved it.
      One reason I loved it is because it’s so authentic. It’s what people really do.

  10. There is a corresponding blindness on our side, based on the images of people being passively rounded up. Americans don’t grok how small and dense Europe is.

    We’ve heard about the famous Black Forest and the Ardennes, and wonder why those weren’t a place of refuge and guerrilla resistance. Then we shrug, figure it’s something about human nature being inclined to lick boots, and continue with our lives.

    1. I’d say no question that people want to live in peace. A lot of times they put up with a lot from the gov’t for the privilege. That makes them easy to pick off. Also, particularly for city-dwellers it is a dirty little secret that humans can’t live in the forest. There’s nothing to eat save when the nuts fall which is only for a few weeks in autumn. Sure, there may be deer, but not all that many and if you start talking about masses of people, well, it would make the locust look sane.
      Not calling you a city dweller or any other type of dig, by the way.

        1. And carcass for carcass, deer are only about half as efficient for meat production as domestic livestock. Here’s an interesting analysis:

          https://www.deeranddeerhunting.com/content/blogs/dan-schmidt-deer-blog-whitetail-wisdom/how-much-meat-is-on-1-deer

          Venison also has, pound for pound, far fewer calories of beef (around 125 per 4oz vs 330 per 4 oz.)

          So a person in a situation of having to hunt deer to feed themselves, using perhaps 2500 calories per day, needs to consume an awful lot of deer meat.

          Now, multiply that times however many people are suddenly thrust into the wilderness….

          1. Yeah, and again, this is where your tech maintenance / continuity of government / whatever break down.

            Leslie Fish and I have had this discussion. Somehow, bringing about the libertarian / anarchist paradise in so many of her songs and stories requires a 95%+ die off of the human race first.

            1. Yeah, methinks at bottom Leslie is a weird sort of idealist.

              But come to it, I’d rather share a foxhole with her than with any leftist.

              1. Dude, she’s a Wobbly, as in IWW….. which is why I laughed like a loon (and so did she) when she started getting called a “right-wing shill” on FecesBook because she didn’t buy the official line on WuFlu.

                  1. Yep. But particularly bad in brains. So avoid long pig if at all possible. And if not, try for the muscle tissue. Good advice for any critter, really.

      3. Deer, fish, rabbit, squirrel, mushrooms, pine nuts, berries, camas (shrug) I grew up in a time and place when most of the state’s population supplemented their diets with those. (And there were a lot of less pleasant edible things that people didn’t. Like cattails or stinging nettle.)
        And everyone had stashes of seeds. (Not to mention it being the Cold War, and there being a lot of things sown in fertile but inaccessible spots “just in case”.)
        So I freely admit my perspective is skewed. (Shrug) I live in Midwestern suburbia now, and the thought of a large chunk of society being ready to go feral is almost laughable. But I remember.
        (And even here, living as a renegade and stealing soybeans damnsure beats a boxcar.)

    2. conversely the leftoids of our cities think in EU terms as well, and can’t fathom what it is like outside their big cities (leave aside how those over there think of us or Russia on size scales) even if they’ve seen it out the plane window.

    3. Sherwood forest. Norwegian forest village.

      Yes.

      We have vast forests. We have Everglades.
      We have swamps. We have large deserts. We have Badlands.

      We have quite large tracts of land across the country where “revenuers” would be unwelcome. We have a very large and growing larger (thanks to the plandemic) group of people who know how to fend for themselves. So if they cause a massive bank run by seizing accounts, well, the rural people and even many suburban people know how to feed themselves.

      2. Once two strangers climbed old Rocky Top, lookin’ for a moonshine still; strangers ain’t come down from Rocky Top, reckon they never will…

        Rocky Top is a real place, just a little ways from where I’m sitting right now. Trust me, if things get fancy they won’t go nearly how the elites imagine…

        1. When I first encountered the 3S phrase, I was told it was the $TINY_TOWN motto. One of the local perps did the first two out of three, but either she or the ‘dozer operator blabbed. It was another case where the perp pleaded insanity and got a long term vacation at the state loony bin. OTOH, the victim was popular, so the perp would have seen gone through all three of the Esses upon release, if she returned to $TT.

          FWIW, the state OSHA/Health Authority people did the mask-karen raids in Flyover City. A visit to the handful of businesses in our area would not have been pleasant, even if they returned from here.

          1. There’s a famous true crime case where a notorious nogoodnik, who had done a lot of very bad things to almost everyone in some small Missouri town, apparently effed around in the middle of town on a nice day and found out. And despite dozens of people around, there were absolutely no witnesses to what happened to this guy or where he went.

            Everyone’s pretty sure he’s thoroughly dead, though.

            1. Happened in the Southeast while I was there. No one in the county knew a thing about how the deceased committed suicide by rifle. Talent, apparently.

            2. A few years ago (that long? How time flies) a couple of drunks were using up Independence Day fireworks on Bastille day. In a dry grassy field. A couple thousand acres and a few dozen homes later, the fire was out. I figured they left town. Got assurance much later that they did, but not under their own power.

              The Really Big ™ fire we had last summer occurred a couple weeks after a lightning storm, but TPTB assured us that it was a smolder in duff. Possible, and I’ve encountered one that took a few months to surface, but I have my doubts.

      3. South Jersey has its Pineys -families back in the Pine Barrens whose family trees allegedly do not fork. Given the Pine Barrens are so monotonous you can be hopelessly lost 10 feet off the trail – the revenooers do well to go in in groups.

          1. We had an SCA event in a campground in the Barrens many years ago. The Chief Scout got out of sight of the trail….and had to be rescued. Embarrassing. I had already learned how eerily easy it was to get lost (I was also a scout) but had managed to keep a grip on where the trail was by basically staying right by it.
            South Jersey, outside Camden, is very different from the rest of the state.

            1. South Jersey inside Camden is among the worst places on Earth. A friend of mine was a priest assigned to a parish there. They had a deal with the gangs to respect the church as sanctuary.

        2. Told my kids stories about the Jackson Whites we used to tell in Scout camp in North Jersey. My wife called BS when the kids, as they often did, asked if I was telling tall tales again. Had to google them to show her they really do exist. They’re known for having extra fingers and toes, and often webbed feet.

          1. I was trying to remember what they were called. Number two son had an interesting experience with one who was the resident ranger at a Boy Scout camp up there.— yawpaw. They’re supposed to be the descendants of Hessian deserters and Indians. When I was a Boy Scout we used to go to one of the contiguous camps (Tamarack, now closed) but I was a city kid so all the north Jersey people seemed strange to me and the Jackson whites wouldn’t seem very different 😜

            1. Camp Yaw Paw was- and likely still is- a great place to camp. We dipped our cups into the streams and drank without worry.

      1. Yep, we’ve got forests and empty areas the size of whole European countries.

        It’s farther from San Francisco to Noo Yawk than from Lisbon to Moscow.
        ———————————
        Man does not live by bread alone, but he won’t live long without it.

        1. Seriously. My mom is supposed to live “out in the country.” There is ONE direction I can look in that has no sky scrapers. I’ve lived in cities that had NO sky scrapers, and right now my yard is the size of mom’s neighborhood. (And I must go rake leaves, but I’m suffering from post-viral syndrome, d*mn it.)

          1. I have a similar malady; Leaf rakes make me break out into a sweat. I must be allergic.
            Or something.

          2. I left the rake behind in Denver. So, I bought a cordless leaf blower – what a great invention! The battery lasts about 10 minutes. I’ll buy a rake next fall.

            1. We have a leaf blower. Not gas. Not cordless either. We have very long very heavy duty extension options.

        2. SoCal Combined Major Metro area is about the same size as all of England.

          In my state, which is only a little larger than Germany, I can travel 200 miles lengthwise, on state or federal highways, without seeing a gas station. (And maybe not another vehicle, either.)

          How’s it go?
          In Europe they think 200 miles is a Long Ways.
          In America they think 200 years is a Long Time.

          1. Here’s something to chew on.

            Even the best parts of Russia tend to be spread out like the US, but with even worse roads. During World War 2, the urban area known as Stalingrad swallowed up more Axis troops than are currently in the entirety of the active-duty US Army. Note that doesn’t include the NG or Reserve.

          2. “Dude, Europe’s about the size of the Eastwood Mall, we get a courier’s flight to England, then we can walk to Germany!”
            “England’s an island.”
            “Ok so we’ll swim to Germany, no big deal.”

        3. Phil Hansen was an outstanding football player for NDSU in the Div II days. After getting drafted by the Bills he drove from Fargo, ND to Buffalo, NY, a bit over 1100 miles. After he retired from the NFL he came back to the Fargo area and traveled with media guys when they went to the University of Montana just before they moved up to Div I-FCS. ND and MT are neighboring states, but Fargo to Missoula is only a bit under 1000 miles. The US is huge compared to most countries. ND is the geographical center of the North American continent. We’re a thousand miles from everywhere, with more miles to go to get to the ocean.

          1. [looks] Rugby ND is the center of the continent?!

            I was hatched down the road in Devils Lake.

            It could be worse. My mom is from Hansboro.

      2. Flying east out of southern California, you spend almost two hours flying over hundreds of miles of dull brown hills. That’s it. Dull brown empty hills as far as you can see from 30,000 feet. Every 20 minutes or so you see one isolated town or city.

        I rode a motorcycle across west Texas for most of a day without seeing much of anything. There was one place the road curved about 20 degrees to the left, with CURVE AHEAD signs for miles before it. Guess they didn’t want anybody to miss the only curve in the county. Same for Montana, minus the curve.
        ———————————
        I heard tell that back in the early 1900’s there were two cars and one intersection in Ohio, and they had an accident there.

        1. We do things the other way round here in the Treasure State. We have signs that read “Pavement Ends” … and yep, it does, right there!

        2. Or drive the 5 from LA to the Bay Area. It’s basically rural the entire way, with a small community next to the highway every hour or so.

        3. Lakeview, Oregon to Winnemucca, Nevada is over 200 miles, with the occasional ranch, one gas station nominally open to the public (maybe. sometimes), and another with card access only (ranch fuel). If your phone doesn’t talk to a satellite, it doesn’t talk. There is an impressive stretche, if you consider steep, twisty grades fun.

          1. Or Winnemucca to Lone Pine via Hawthorne. If you need fuel every couple hundred miles, you gotta plan that trip and stop every time you see GAS on the horizon. And Fallon rolls up the whole town at dusk, so don’t count on it either..

            That station at McDermott finally got pay-at-the-pump what, about 15 years back? Back a bit before that someone I knew had to go down there from Boise in the middle of the night, and had to wait til they opened in the morning to fuel for the return trip. Going to Lakeview looks a whole lot more lonely.

          2. “Occasional Ranch”, with exits/on ramps to the freeway system, that is ONLY for one ranch. Will state “Exit for Ranch Name, No Services”

            1. This is OR/NV 140. Side roads, maybe with buildings a half mile from the highway. The towns are Adel (card access farm fuel only) and Denio Junction (gas station, not sure if it’s really in business). There might be more services on US 95, but 140? You need a reliable vehicle, and it’s a really good idea to gas up in Winnemucca or Lakeview. And don’t think about it between October 1st and March 31st.

              1. Oregon 20/22/26, east of Bend. See it on freeways too, but in Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, which was our route this last fall for: Eugene to Rocky NP, Little Big Horn NM, Yellowstone, Tetons, and then home.

                Lack of fuel services, we were more conscious of it with the RV combination. Especially the route between Bend, Burns, and Ontario. Bend to Baker isn’t a slouch on that issue either. Sure more options, where there are options, kind of. For non RVs, lots of options. For RV’s? Can you: Get in? Or get out? Of the fuel stops available? The fun ones were Yes, then No/barely, oops. (When you know you are down to your last two gallons, and getting, if lucky, 9 MPG during the prior stretch … I swear the locals watch and make odds.)

                The other side of the coin, is the lack of, um, relief areas. There is one pit toilet rest area between Bend and Burns we end up stopping at every time, both going and coming! That is after taking advantage options when fueling. An area where “well we can always pull off …”. Could when we had an RV, we don’t have an RV now. Not for the more modest of us. The sage/bitterbrush hide nothing. Oh the route above, the sections between Rocky NP and Red Lodge are the worse. Lots of “Truck Rest Areas”/”Break Check”, Without Facilities of Any kind. Just a place for truckers to pull off and sleep, in their trucks. Canada Hwy 1 west out of Banff is just as bad, if not worse.

                1. FWIW, the entity (USDA or state, not sure) in charge of the Sno-Park on OR 140 near Lake of the Woods removed the concrete-vault toilets. They were present in July, ’21, but gone in January. It was the only pit stop between Medford and Klamath Falls on that highway. Might be a gas station/store 10 miles east. I turn off beforehand, so am not sure.

                  I’m assuming it has something to do with Covidiocy. Those were reasonably well built structures, though most (or all?) were boarded up during the worst part. They were in operation in July. Go figure.

                  1. We aren’t likely to take OR 140 unless we need OR 97 south and get warning that comes down to can’t wherever from OR 58. Interestingly enough there aren’t a lot of rest areas off OR 97 either, and a lot of places, if not a customer (can’t blame them), or wrong hours … At least OR 97 there are tree options and the ground isn’t as likely to be a drop off, or cliff, off the highway (unlike 126 or 58 west of their passes).

        4. Highway hypnosis does happen. They have one on I40 in Midwest city, all lit up with lights, arrows and everything

        5. Yeah, I’ve driven through Nevada … there’s nothing there. And there’s a reason 90 percent of Utah’s population lives on the Wasatch front.

    5. A few years back I went to the Red Star Museum in Antwerp, Belgium. Red Star was the shipping line that was sister to White Star (to which Titanic belonged). The museum was mostly covering the immigration from Europe to the US. Europeans, mostly from Eastern Europe, arriving in Antwerp were put through an entire process including delousing, getting their clothing sterilized, shuffled around in groups to be medically examined with no privacy…my co-advisor (we were there with students) who is a history prof, looked at me and whispered “No wonder the initial rounding up of Jewish groups worked as easily as it did. They’d heard stories about what it was like to get to America, so this was no different at first.”

  11. Years ago we watched “Wall-E”, a Disney movie about how humans abandoned Earth because it was filled with garbage.

    Then we took a trip to the Wind Rivers in Wyoming, to camp and fish. After hours of driving across the prairie towards the mountains, with not a single sign of human habitation for mile after mile, my youngest son sighed, and then spoke up.

    “Those Wall-E guys are idiots.”

    1. Of course they are. They wrote their own narrative. Same thing with the anti-nuke crowd opposing sequestration of waste in Yucca Mountain. Place is out in the middle of no where. Even if they did have an earthquake, or seepage-caused- leaks; it would take thousands of years before reaching human settlements (other than the workforce community at the site itself.)

          1. Smelt cause droughts because they make evil Californian politicians turn off the taps, so you end up with the Wall-E wasteland.

        1. Unless you have a solution in mind for a *real* population issue, you might want to re-think that. And no matter what, NO DAMN WATCHMAKERS!!! 😉

      3. Which is, amusingly enough, what happens in a post-apocalyptic game I’ve got. Your mining sites are the long-since-leveled remains of former buildings.

        1. Which game is this?

          And yeah, it’s occurred to me that one advantage a recovering post-apoc society would have is that they wouldn’t need to mine for ore for a LONG time; all the metal they needed could be acquired by scavenging.

          1. Many ancient ruins (e.g. theaters in Greek cities) were “mined” for the iron used to tie the stone blocks together. You can see holes chiseled into the joints between the blocks. The (Roman-retrofitted) theater in Miletius is notorious for this, but I saw some of it in the upper levels of the Roman Flavian Amphitheater (the “Colosseum”).

            1. Ever seen what’s left of Hadrian’s Wall? Within a decade of being abandoned 80+% of it was ‘repurposed’ into building material for local land owners.

              Humans can and will scavenge with the best of them, and if you don’t keep an eye on it, someone’s liable to come along and make off with it. Heck, in England they still post guards at night on old buildings with lead or copper roofs, to keep folks from climbing up and stealing it in the dark.

              1. “Spolia” is the fancy academic term for “there’s Roman stuff in this church/palace/wall over here.” I play “spot the Roman carvings” when I’m in Pannonia, Norcium, and south of the Limes.

          2. Surviving the Aftermath. It’s a game published by Paradox (by the same dev team that did Surviving Mars, I think) about building a colony in a post-apocalyptic environment.

            Resources mined include concrete, plastic, metal, and rare earth metals. I’m a bit skeptical about the latter, largely due to the wide variety of rare earth metals and their somewhat specialized individual uses. But it’s a video game, and not real life.

            1. Isn’t plastic also difficult or impossible to recycle?

              And thanks for the name. I’ll look it up later.

              1. There is recycled plastic. But iirc, each of the different kinds must be treated differently. And there are a *lot* of different kinds of plastic.

          3. S.M. Stirling’s Emberverse series (starts with “Dies the Fire”), mining the cities is exactly what the survivors do. Not just for metals either.

            1. Now that I think about it, didn’t that happen on a planetary scale in the Foundation series as well? IIRC, the capital of the old government was a planet that had been almost completely covered in man-made structures, so after that empire fell…

              1. Don’t remember. It has been a very, very, long time since I’ve read Foundation series. Haven’t reread. Didn’t pickup the more recent-ish continuation. Besides, given the premise of “Dies the Fire” I’m sure older characters have quipped (off screen) a quote from Foundation series regarding the civilization remains salvage. Stirling does this, frequently.

              2. In theory. But the population density would be rather low.

                (And they always have ships arriving with food as if oxygen would not be more pressing. In reality, you would have large parks if you maintained the pretense it was all city.)

                  1. And, of course, food plants have the advantage that you don’t use up all the oxygen letting them rot.

                    Wood works, too. And linen. But I suspect they would have a lot of salad to maximize the amount of carbon sent back by breathing.

  12. Speaking of seizing bank accounts, has the Canadian government frozen any of the “foreign money” that supposedly drove the trucker protests, or are they still too busy stealing the money from little old ladies who donated $50?

    Oh, and isn’t Trudeau’s rhetoric about sinister foreign influences undermining Canada sound a bit . . . familiar? But I guess since the brave Nazi-punchers aren’t worried, I guess we shouldn’t be either.

      1. Apparently everybody in Canada without a frozen account must have gone to the bank and withdrawn a substantial amount of money, because Trudeau unfroze the accounts.

        Possibly the banks finally told the government where to go, or called in their favors. Or maybe there was no longer enough bank money to pay the government payroll.

        1. I wonder about the payroll. Given how fast the bank websites went down, and how fast ATMs got stripped (just the ones I’ve heard of), there may have been a lot of other people who suddenly decided that they needed a little extra weekend cash.

    2. Seems today (Wed, 2-23) Trudork ‘gave up’ emergency powers and banks have begun un-freezing accounts.

      Too late, Jaques-boots.

  13. Canada is not lost. Not yet. It;’s just that Nell and Dudley Do-right still are being patient and not fully P****d Off and unwilling to put up with any more nonsense from Justine Quisling.

    *tick*..*tick*..*tick*..

    1. Yeah I think the average time between “everything is fine” and hitting the Correia Switch (Kill them all and let G*d sort it out) is longer than that of your average American in flyover country. How much longer? Beats me but I don’t think that much longer, and the longer you delay/ repress it the worse the breakout is. Treaudescu and his buddies are playing catch with a grenade with the pin out and can count almost as well as King Arthur in Holy Grail…

      1. One thing I haven’t seen in pictures of Larry’s Moose Mountain Freehold is his stash of supplies. I suppose as a good Mormon that he has his family’s year+ supply stored safely away. But then good preppers don’t show or acknowledge such supplies as that would tag them for attempted confiscation.

  14. There is a real vulnerability in this bank scheme though. Say somebody doesn’t like you. They work at who knows where in Gov. The DMV? They drop a dime, your bank account is frozen. Well, you say, I can live off my small plot of veg and some chickens. Then the mortgage comes due. or the taxes. well, you say, I’ll just have my employer cut me a paper pay check and i’ll cash it. Oh no you won’t! Your name is on the list! Access Denied. Ok, So I’ll have my pay from the boss in cash. Ha. Ha Ha Ha…
    Paid in Bitcoin? Fat chance. (I really expect crypto to be destroyed by the feds very soon.)
    So you can’t pay the mortgage, you get foreclosed on and lose your little plot and the chickens leave for a better roost. They squeeze and squeeze, then offer a path to redemption: Like that chick in Canada said, You get unfrozen if you stop protesting. Also, A public confession of guilt and promising to be good and love big brother. Some will cave and take it. A small number won’t, and the goons can focus on that minority, single them out, kill them or send to the camps.
    Ghandi’s resistance worked because he could keep his coalition together. BB knows this very well and aims to not make that mistake again.

    1. Of course, you (and your right-minded friends & neighbors & whatevers) can ALSO give anonymous tips to strangle all the local officials, er, collaborators.

      1. And I’m sure they’ll be handled with equal promptness and enforcement. /sarc

        No, what they’ll do is filter the complaints against the list of Deplorables and classify as a false report any that aren’t against people on that list. The query will take under a minute, and then they will backtrace the “anonymous” complainer.

          1. No, I’m not forgetting volume; I’m just not going to assume that people who can’t keep their home PCs patched are going to suddenly become uber-hackers that can hide their tracks.

            As it is, there are many hosting companies who simply block out the IPs assigned to VPN providers as a matter of course; try to go to the site from behind one and it either fails to load or disables much of the functionality.

            Cyberpunk dystopias where the shadowrunners hide effortlessly are also fictional.

        2. You are forgetting that once they have that kind of power, they will start eating their own.

          So of course false accusations against their own will be looked into. And of course the Utopia hasn’t arrived, and actually everything has gotten worse, so there must be ‘secret’ conservatives ruining everything.

          A very few, and fewer as the cash runs out, will have protection. But those average guy lefties that think they will be a beloved overseer of the state. Jokes on you. Up against the wall.

        3. Used to be there were phone booths all around the country where you could anonymously send in a report. People don’t seem to understand that it is impossible to be anonymous with their cell phones, short of using a burner phone and destroying it immediately after use.

          1. Bullshit. Have you heard of the word of our lord and savior “Burner phone” Not to mention phone spoofs.
            PFUI. Your lack of knowledge doesn’t mean it fails to exist.

            2. Again, Sarah, what portion of the population can do phone spoofs? I would have to research it; it isn’t something that’s been on my radar. Can YOU do phone spoofs?

              1. Given the number of boiler-room spoofers that ping the alert at RedQuarters, I’d guess there are more people who know how to spoof numbers than there seems. Now, granted, not all of them are in the US. [Dear Sir, your accent is so thick as to be unintelligible, especially with the background noise. I do not think that you are “John Smith” with {LocalCharity}.)

                1. Of course, you can’t assume that each one did his own. There are mass apps that are written for call centers, government offices, etc. that “spoof” for every phone on that node.

                2. Here in Canada, anti-spoofing measures recently became compulsory for all telephone carriers. Your caller ID still shows the phony number, but it also shows an icon indicating that it is phony.

                  This will, of course, lead to an arms race between spoofers and telcos, but in the meanwhile, you can pretty much rest assured that your existing methods will soon stop working. It’s always trickier to keep up with a moving target.

                  1. Hmm, wonder if that applies to hotels, hospitals, universities, government agencies, etc.?

                    Nearly every large corporation or public entity around here has just a small handful of numbers, sometimes only one, that show on caller ID. 9-1-1 calls usually end up with the PSAP contacting the entity to find out where said call originated from if the caller didn’t divulge it.

                    1. Hotels, hospitals, universities, government agencies, etc., are not actually spoofing when they show their main switchboard number on caller ID. The number is genuinely theirs and the system is set up that way intentionally; I believe it’s always been usual on PBX systems.

                    2. The technology displays whatever number is entered into it to display, whether “legal” or not.

                      When evaluating things like this, I’m amazed at how many people assume we have a legal system that is more than whim, and that, like Gibson Guitars during Obama, paying the baksheesh determines who gets busted.

                      Look at capability without consideration for “legal” to get reality.

                    5. Yes, it may be a number belonging to the entity. But it’s not the number of the phone that is calling.

                      Spoofing is when a caller deliberately falsifies the information transmitted to your caller ID display to disguise their identity. -FCC

                      Changing the number called from meets that definition, regardless of whether the entity also owns that number. That the politicians write bad laws that they won’t enforce doesn’t excuse them.

                    6. kamas716, I suspect you need to read the whole law. It’s not a question of the law not being enforced, or being enforced selectively. It’s that the law doesn’t say what you think it does. Multi-line customers have always received different treatment by the telcos from single-line residential (or commercial) customers.

                      The original purpose of caller ID (back before there were phones that would display it) was to identify the accounts responsible for long-distance calls and see that they were charged accordingly. This was done manually by operators for many years. There was absolutely no benefit to knowing which particular line from a large business account made the call; you had to know the main switchboard number, because that was the number tied to the account being billed. The laws about falsifying caller ID have reflected that from the beginning.

                1. That’s a good question. One or two developers; the issues will be distribution, and installation / setup. That last one is where the image of my parents’ vcr / DVD players blinking 12:00 over the years comes in.

                1. And a mask! Everybody should wear masks for public health, right?

                  I swear, this virus hysteria has gotten so bad, they want ventriloquists to put masks on the dummies.

        4. We already have wokeists in Canada screaming to high heaven that they got hit through mixups. The No Fly List is infamously bad to whacking random people, and that one at least has the fig leaf of an attempt to be accurate.

          Maybe the apparatchiks are on the do-not-freeze list. But what about Karen across the street?

          1. From what I saw on NextDoor during the pandemic, they’ll be totally accepting of the inconvenience…. or so they claim.

            There’s a reason for that old saying “The way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it on everyone.” Which is why they avoid it like the plague.

              1. Yep, but since each one had to provide enough info to determine what “neighborhood” they belonged to, it was a great source for intel on where the real lunatics lived.

                1. Did I mention that they provide a map of the “neighborhoods” each one was in? Even without exact addresses it wasn’t hard to find the person with that name in a neighborhood consisting of a single subdivision via other means.

                2. Sarah, I don’t know which version of NextDoor you saw; the one I saw had “neighborhood outlines” imposed over actual street maps of Plano. They were “real” at least in that sense.

                  1. I’m on NextDoor. But then I limit it to a very narrow scope and area. Lost Pets is one. Cougar sightings in neighborhoods along the river, near the HS son went to, along the train tracks, etc., FYI, all a bit close given we aren’t near a “Natural Area”, and in an actual neighborhood …

    2. Ghandi’s resistance worked because the Brit’s had a conscience. Pure passive resistance against true nasties (SS, S.M. Stirlings Draka, the Mongol Hordes) will end with a lot of dead protesters. Are the Tranzi/SJW types in that group. They certainly talk the talk, and in Canada they’re starting to walk the walk. Not sure where this goes, but I fear it gets ugly. As our Hostess has noted Controlling the US in that fashion is somewhere between incredibly hard and impossible. The armed forces don’t have the manpower, and if things started to get ugly much of the actual force is from the regions that would be in rebellion and might just fade away and go home, or go over to the rebellion wholesale. The Elites have no clue how precarious the cities and bedroom towns are. If they did they wouldn’t be whacking the mules that deliver the goods with a 2 by 4…

      1. Two triggers: (1) things start getting nasty, (2a) the internet suddenly goes down so you can’t see the nastiness, or (2b) the internet suddenly starts blocking/censoring all sorts of sites and e-mail so you can’t easily see the nastiness. That’s the point where you know the State has initiated their pogrom against you.

    3. There certainly are risks with the banking sector.

      I will say this, though, as someone who works in anti-money-laundering investigations: the systems used to track account activity aren’t very smart, and they are geared toward specific types of markers. Easiest example is structuring. Yes, if you put in or take out more than $10K in cash, the bank has to fill out a Currency Transaction Report. But if, when you’re at the bank, you act normal and casual and have a simple answer why you’re making the transaction (buying a motorcycle on Craigslist, got a small inheritance from a relative) that will fly below the radar. Get defensive, ask about how much it takes to get a government report, or going to multiple banks and ATMs over a short amount of time to transact amounts over $10K — that will get you an investigation. There aren’t enough people doing my job to look into every large transaction that didn’t make the teller nervous.

      And once you have cash, buy Visa gift cards with it for transactions you don’t want traced to you. There isn’t a way to track where the cash came from (why do you think they’re always trying to ban cash?) and the gift cards have no relationship to you.

      Another “get lost in the weeds” tip: peer-to-peer transactions are easily tracked, and high amounts of activity set off alerts. But Zelle is so popular with Hispanics who create “tendas” (informal savings and loan clubs among close friends and family) that when we see a bunch of Zelle transactions among Hispanic names and “tenda” in the memo field, we don’t investigate further.

      (Using a variation on my name to reduce search bot functionality.)

      1. It also helps to live where you know the tellers. And the clerks of court. And the DMV ladies.
        The secretaries in the town offices. Etc. Always be super nice to them. Be friendly and kind. They will be helpful too.

        When my brother-in-law had his accounts frozen by the IRS during a tax mix-up some years ago he was “saved” more than once by the ladies at the bank. But that’s because they all knew him and the family and had received help from him in the past. It was eventually straightened out and months of stress were involved but it could have been worse. He didn’t lose his home or business thanks to friends and family.

      3. Note, though, that staying below the limits might not help. There was a case a while ago that a small business owner kept depositing the day’s cash income and triggered an IRS seizure because his business took in roughly $9500/day. The IRS claimed that he was intentionally avoiding the $10,000 threshold and therefore must be laundering money.

        1. That’s what I mean. It’s better to go over the limit and get the CTR, because that only gets investigated if the teller makes a note that you were acting suspiciously. Transactions between $9K and $10K set off alarms and get someone like me looking at it. And of course, sometimes I have to say “It’s a bloody Food Lion; of course they’re going to have lots of incoming checks and large cash deposits every business day.” But all it takes is someone who can’t find the store’s website, or think the business looks like shady on Google Maps Street View, or some other lack of thinking to get Suspicious Activity Reports filed and sent to law enforcement.

          As Sarah says, they already know so much about you, but the problem is that there’s too much data and not enough people to properly analyze it. So long as you fall outside the patterns the AI is trained to look for, they’ll have all the information about you and no reason to analyze it.

            1. That reminds me: Sarah, I have a sample .rtf file to send you via Discord. It’s just a test to make sure I CAN send you files that way and to see if I can embed images. If it works I’ll write that guest post you asked for.

              Two questions:

              1) Are you “Tazmanian Writer” over there?

              2) How DO I privately send a file to someone on Discord?

                1. Oh, for fuck’s sake. It’s demanding I give it an e-mail address and claim my account before it will let me send messages, but when I try it also says my e-mail is already registered. And it’s acknowledging me as DGM so it clearly knows who I am.

      5. I’m sure we were on the report 6 times Fall 2020. We sold a pickup, RV travel trailer, a car, and a boat, within 30 days. Boat wouldn’t have triggered anything, not anywhere near $10k. But the other 3 were over $10k checks. Two personal checks, so took 10 days to “clear” (over $5500). The other was a certified bank check. So the deposits triggered a report, one each. But then once the checks cleared, regardless of timing, the money was transferred to our co-investment account. Nobody has come to ask us “where the money came from”. Well we see the truck everyday (neighbor bought it). The people who bought the trailer are now friends on FB 🙂 The car was sold to one of hubby’s golf buddies (so was the boat). Besides the DMV has records (supposedly) of the registrations. Which brings up another point. Anytime we’d have a reason to buy something for $10k or more, there will be two “reports”, probably three. 1) Credit Card charge (if possible). 2) Transfer from an Investment Account (because we do not keep that kind of money in checking/savings). 3) Payment from checking/savings.

        1. “Nobody has come to ask us “where the money came from”.”

          Join any protest</strike "insurrection" and that just might change. As long as you shut up, comply, and pay taxes, they don't care what you type here.

            1. I hear ya’. The other day I apologized to my first hour students after getting two very similar terms bass-akward again, “Sorry, too much blood in the caffeine stream.”

    4. There are ways around this, honesty. THERE REALLY ARE.
      My parents had a mega mortgage and paid. It involves things like “Find someone you trust to hold the funds.” “Have funds under other names (do you know how hard it is to track that?) Etc.”
      GET CREATIVE NOW.

      1. That’s the way a few Catholic families in Ireland managed to hold onto their land through the penal days. A trusted Protestant friend would hold legal title. The trust was almost never betrayed.

        2. IIRC, there were at least a few Japanese-Americans that did this with trusted neighbors during World War 2.

          1. Ex-boyfriend’s grandparents kept their farm in California that way. “Sold” it to the neighbors for a pittance and the neighbors’ boys moved in to work the farm until grandparents came back from Manzanar.

  15. Yep the olden day stories/fairytales were often, you hadn’t otta do that, cautionary life lessons; careful crossing bridges, never know what’s under them, always look a gift apple in the mouth, don’t build huff puff blowable down houses!

    Modern day fairytales; anything coming from the media, ivory towers, government, lessons therein; don’t trust banks, avoid crowds, backup backups, expect stupid, tribe up, look for alternatives ….!

  16. One thing that did finally calm me down about the mess in Canada is recalling the hostess’ observation that countries under stress revert to their foundational myths.

    Canada’s foundational myth is they are the ones who didn’t revolt against King George. So, this is actually perfectly normal for them.

    And the US’ foundational myth is, we’re the ones who didn’t…

    I suspect in the end, we are going to end up importing the Canadian Truckers, and Canada will end up importing Antifa and their rainbow brigades.

    I’m ok with that outcome.

    1. Consider also the impact of Canadian propaganda. Virtually every Canadian I’ve encountered who gets their news from the Canadian MSM was anti-trucker, even if they normally espouse fairly conservative views or are actively anti-Woke. They often cite a small number of highly-publicized negative scenes, which likely were false flags, for why they are against the truckers. Virtually every one who gets their news from alternate sources was pro-trucker.

        1. There’s no ‘wide’ in Canada. The media, including Internet service, are in the hands of about four major corporations that all spout the official line. A few people keep trying to start up alternative outlets, and just as quickly keep getting shut down either by lawfare or by the five big Canadian banks (that’s all there are) conveniently shutting them off from access to money.

        2. There’s a quite significant proportion of the Boomers and GenX that still believe in the MSM, even if they’re nominally conservative. They haven’t fully realized just how corrupted things have gotten.

          1. I think the proportion believing has dropped faster than the proportion watching. I hear them make excuses for why they still watch: “But the experts they have on can still be trusted, they’re experts, even if the talking heads are lying morons!” and “I know they suck, but I can’t go watching those crazies on FOX.”

            My “favorite” type of comment “But who can trust X? They dispute Y!” where X is any non-MSM news source and Y is some aspect of the narrative. They realize the MSM is lying to them about a lot, but believe enough of the narrative that they dismiss any source that disputes the parts they still believe. I just have to shake my head sadly when they say that.

      2. I noticed that even while the Canadian PM was decrying “swastika wavers” (while acting like one), that even the news reports that were clearly not pro-trucker couldn’t seem to find any images of truckers waving swastikas for their stories.

        1. I saw a couple of photos; One, the flag* seemed to be fresh out of the box, and the second, the flag-carrier was taking it into the same hotel the (in)famous RCMP Musical Ride horsethugs were staying.

          Isn’t it amazing how poor the opsec is when they think all media is on their side?

          (*) That one might have been a Stars and Bars flag.

      3. Well, we all know the penalty for stupidity. The universe doesn’t care if it’s not their fault they’re stupid.
        ———————————
        Candidate Joe Biden, August 2020: “We have assembled the most extensive, comprehensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”

        Biden, minutes later: “What do you mean, I wasn’t supposed to say that?”

      4. The CBC is state-funded. Naturally it parrots the state propaganda.

        From a friend on the spot:
        ===
        https://anonfiles.com/327164J8x1/Law_Enforcement_Targeting_Indigenous_Convoy_Supporters_mp4

        Dunno how accurate it is but someone’s taking all the incidents of police violence from the past few days that were apparently against Indians and compiling them. Rumor has it some Mohawks are rather angry due to this and are intending to have a protest of their own.

        When they have protests, they usually bring guns.
        ===

        .

        1. I hate to say it; but how many white Canadian cops would mistake a indigenous person for a foreigner, and think they could get away with mistreating them? (Even more than they are mistreating others.)

          1. More likely mistook ’em for whites — most look just like every other white Canadian, or at most exotic, one o’ them weird folks from Quebec.

            1. The Mohawk lady who got trampled looked Indian, had an Indian accent, etc. (Besides the whole thing with the disability scooter.) Tamara Lich is a blonde Metis woman, not that it matters… But yeah, a fair number of Canadian truckers are First Nations, Sikhs, or other minorities.

              2. My turn to air a pet peeve. It’s a rolling walker! (I happen to have the same type, mercifully no longer needed.)

            2. The RCMP can tell indigenes from immigrants, believe me. They have a very long history of blatant racism against natives, and nothing meaningful has ever been done to curb it.

              They would be more likely to beat up a ‘dot Indian’ by mistake because they mistook him for a ‘feather Indian’.

        2. There are some indigenous peoples you just don’t piss off. Maoris, Ghurkas, certainly others. At least in the old days the Mohawks fell into that class. Many of the men used to be high steel workers, Nothing really terrified or phased them. Trampling their female elders is NOT going to make them your friends. You’d think with all the first nations hoopla in Canada the RCMP would have a clue although these days the Mohawks are so intermarried with the French Canadian and English Canadian populaces that you’re going to be hard pressed to tell them from regular blue collar Canadians unless they’re intentionally doing something to show their first nation status.

      1. Are you referring to Dieppe, the small scale Allied amphibious landing during WW2 that was something of debacle, but helped refine planning and doctrine for the eventual Normandy invasion? Or the French town itself?

        1. The event was allegedly one of several military events that shaped the actual Canadian national culture.

          Forty million people who do not plaster their own internal understanding all over the American pop cultural landscape.

  17. The peaceful protests give legitimacy to the movement for freedom. But if they don’t work. The fact that they happened and were refused dialog, gives moral authority to armed resistance.

    The left keeps forgetting that voting is a way to avoid armed conflict over differences, the reason there are so many laws to maintain a transparent vote, is to maintain legitimacy.

    The left always mistakes the symbol for the reality. Their policies reflect this at every level. Look at college degrees, there used to be a correlation between having a degree and success, (Same was true with high school diplomas before high school became compulsory) so the left said, ‘give everyone a degree and everyone will be successful’. The missed the point that the degree was filtering for people from wealthy families with connections, or self starter bootstrapers who persisted through the classes on there own. The diploma was not magic, just a symbol of getting through the filtering system.

    For some reason, I think owner operators of big rigs are probably more filtered than college grads today…

    2. This 100 times this. The left always mistakes the map for the territory. I wonder if it isn’t because they’ve bought into the all truth is relative horse hockey so deeply they can’t actually see truth any more from their story of the truth. It’s like an old joke from my DEC days.
      Q: What is the difference between a computer salesman and a car salesman
      A: The Car salesman knows when they are lying
      90%+ of left no longer (if it ever) knows when its lying the other 10% are like O’Brien in 1984. They know they’re lying but through doublethink they pretend otherwise as they like the world they get from the lies

  18. thanx for the post, Sarah. Hope we can still avoid testing out how this could go.
    Just as an aside, your post has made me ralize that the way the history industrial revolution has been rewritten by the “sensibilities” and standards of our own times is very much what is being done to the history of the U.S. now. False narratives need to be opposed, or the unwashed (and programmed) masses will know no better.
    Orwell’s 1984 thought centralized government was all that was needed. He didn’t envision Big Tech and the MSM.

  19. Orvan beat me to it… And yes, fly over country IS a bird of a different color. Flyover country is also the bread and meat basket of America, whether or not the left realizes is. I firmly believe most of the cities are 3-5 days from anarchy when the food deliveries stop. What will the left do then? We hopefully won’t have to fight, because they will destroy each other.

    1. Old NFO Said
      I firmly believe most of the cities are 3-5 days from anarchy when the food deliveries stop

      Heck Boston goes insane chasing Milk, Bread and other necessities every time we get the threat of 1′ + of snow (a 2-3 times a season thing in these parts). That’s primarily trauma because of Blizzard of ’78 (3′ + in much of MA) where all deliveries stopped for 3-4 days. Most people chasing the assorted foodstuffs weren’t even alive the last time this happened, this lore has been passed down. If things really start to disappear (and not just in weird fits and starts) it’ll get ugly fast, 48 hours tops. Out here in the burbs folks shop 1-2 times a week, often less. The city folks tend to get 1-2 days food at a time as without a car moving large quantities of groceries is a pain.

        1. But…how do you make a Zombie Werewolf Slushie without the 2,000 horsepower snow-blower truck?
          ———————————
          Sheridan: “Give me everything you’ve got!”
          Lennier: “If I were holding anything back, I would tell you.”

        2. Not so. My family had a snow blower, an Allis Chalmers that was a brute to start. On CT shoreline we got a mere 18-20″. My dad was working overnight (3rd shift) and I cleared our driveway and then looked at the unplowed hill (45′ vertical rise over about 600′ of road). I cleared several cuts with the snow blower down to rt 1 (which was plowed, kind of). My dad got home with our beastly Saab 99 and was so happy he could come up the hill he was almost in tears. Best thing is week before I’d gotten X country skies. I went EVERYWHERE on those things for nearly a week

          1. Well, we didn’t have one, my da was a great believer in manual labor, by me.

            If I remember correctly, the first storm was a doozy but the one a couple of days later is what really did the damage because there was nowhere to put the snow. We ended up with about 3-4 feet total.

            1. I think we only had one because we had two driveways (garage was a separate outbuilding) and one rather asthmatic weakling child (that’d be me 🙂 ). Garage was at the end of like a 120′ driveway. If we’d shoveled by hand the garage would have been useless in the winter.

              1. Okanogan County in Washington they put plows on their pickups for the winter for their driveways. Probably have snow plows too, for walkways.

              2. Mine was 152′ long, two cars wide the first 50 feet from the barn. Hand shoveling built character. And one of the first purchases when I bought my first house was a snowthrower.

      2. Or as my beloved puts it, “This weather forecast brought to you by Purity Dairy and Sunbeam Bread.” (They do the panic thing in the South, too).

        2. Yeah, well, a lot of the southern states don’t have that many sand trucks and watching a semi jack knife itself on the freeway and the trail just keep going does motivate one not to be out there…

          1. ’78 was a nightmare in CT where I lived. Snowed 18-20″, then rained on that for an hour or two then snapped super cold. If you didn’t get the snow cleared before the freeze you were white fish product (schrod) as it turned into snow colored concrete. City of New Haven hadn’t cleared much of its streets due to issues of having enough money for the plow guys Much of the center of New Haven has LOTS of little twisty 1 way streets (similar to North End in Boston). They had to get bucket loaders in. On top of that the parking ban had not gone out in time so everybody was parked on the street. Rt 1 along the coast had been clear some, but the chnage to rain and freeze caught them off guard and ultimately it took 2-3 days to get V plows in on deuce and a quarters from upstate NY to clear the 6-8″ of frozen slush that were rt1 from New Haven to New London

            1. That sounds fun…

              So far we haven’t really had it that bad here. The most ‘fun’ was the year we got a nice dousing of freezing rain. That morning I came out and discovered my car had about a half inch of clear ice coating all of it…

              I called my boss and told him I wasn’t going to be able to make it in that day, because I couldn’t get into my car. Was just as well. The whole area was an ice rink until it thawed a few days later.

              1. Yeah it was a unique storm system. Its ferocity caught all but the most hoary old meteorologists off guard. On the CT shoreline 90+% of the time a storm coming from the south almost always ends with rain as it passes by off to north east. If it doesn’t end with rain then the storm turned east early and MASS/NH get little or only coastal areas get hit. Blizzard of ’78 took a very traditional path but got stalled up against a cold front out of canada, so it pounded MA/CT/RI/NH and ME for hours as it had LOTS of moisture. As it broke free the tail hit CT with rain and then the cold high (like 10’s/single digits) came roaring down from the north. There were some storms close in nastiness in 2015, but modern modeling and radar meant we knew they were coming.

                  1. I don’t recall any additional snow days that year, but it was below freezing for six weeks, below zero for two weeks, and the Missouri, Niobrara, and Elkhorn Rivers froze.

                  2. I went to a private High school (day school not boarding) in Madison CT we had folks from Old Lyme to New Haven. We ended up with a week off, as New Haven could get its stuff together for 4 days. Then a week of classes then winter break. Private schools did NOT have to comply with the 180 day rule so we didn’t have to extend the school year. Many public schools went WAY into June when they usually got out 2nd week of June, couple tagged July (although that was rare as teacher contracts usually ran September to June in those days).

              2. U of Redacted would have 2 or 3 ice storms per winter, until my senior year. First semester finals were to end Dec 23 or 24, but a day before the last of finals week, we had a foot of snow. In an area that’s not used to snow.

                I had an intersession job elsewhere after New Years, so I had to dig the car out. The super couldn’t do our parking and wouldn’t lend the snow-blower, so I had to shovel. An old MG with 5″ of ground clearance made for an interesting ride in the alley once I got the path clear to get out. Got back to school with a used VW Bug–a bit better in snow. Sadly, I lost the ice-driving skills after a few years in California. Regained them here.

                They had to do the final-day finals just before second semester. I finished the day the storm started, whew.

            2. We had 18″ worth of snow between Christmas and New Years. It froze well, then we had a half inch of gentle rain, at which point it froze again. Shady spots around our place still have 4 inches of ice-reinforced snow.

      3. I am too young to remember it personally, but my parents remember it well and have talked about it, because it was their first winter back in the Northeast after moving from Florida. Quite the greeting!

      4. Jan ’69 and Willamette Valley, in particular Eugene (I was 12) had a week of 48″ of snow. TPTB barely kept I-5 clear, let alone the mountain passes, and forget the Hwy 99, River Road, or any of the neighborhoods or neighborhood stores. I don’t remember there being a supply problem. But then our “supply”, other than fresh milk, was the freezer (trout, salmon, venison, elk, mutton), and home canned goods. Even milk wasn’t lacking for all the whining from us kids about the powdered milk.

        We’d still be this way should snow be that deep again. TPTB do not plow the neighborhoods. Once out of the neighborhood, the arterial streets are plowed (48″ again, probably not, but the max 18″ we’ve gotten since then, yes) but given enough snow or ice, getting to the first arterial street can be dicey. The last snow, at Christmas 2021, there was a debate (on NextDoor) about the fact that few locally cleared sidewalks … general response was “that is a thing?” We don’t get snow often enough!!!

  20. The Government is the natural enemy of the People. They don’t always start out that way, but over time the Government comes to prioritize its own power and authority over every other consideration. This sucks, because there are certain functions the Government has to perform — law enforcement, national defense, honest and impartial courts, a limited amount of disaster relief.

    Unfortunately, the Government’s officials, elected and unelected, become so obsessed with pursuing their own power and authority that they fail to perform those necessary functions. When People point this out, they become threats to the Government, which have to be put down. The more they resist, the more the Government reaches for bigger hammers to whack them with.

    And so you wind up with the Government re-installing the bars and razor wire around the Capitol building because they fear the People they are supposed to serve. I wonder if they’ll put in the guard towers and mine fields this time?
    ———————————
    The Capitol building is OUR house. Congresscritters are just the help.

    1. To paraphrase the great President Ronald Reagan: “Mr. Biden, tear down this wall!” (And relocate it to the southern border.)

  21. And if they haven’t fired yet, they’ll never fire.

    Another mistake (albeit a quibble)—They’ve fired lots of rounds, me bucko; it’s just all been at game animals and targets.

    1. Recall a fellow who was drafted in the Vietnam era who wound up “guarding the border between Germany” and his tale of calibrating tank guns. One shot, partway to a tree. A second short, closer to the tree. So the third shot would hit the tree, right? Nope. Calibration was done. Third shot hit the target. And that was the early 1970’s at the most recent. Today..?

      So they’ve been getting closer to the tree… doesn’t mean they’re gonna hit the tree.

    2. I euthanize my own dogs, with my own hands. D’ya really think that come to it, I couldn’t do the same for some jackbooted thug who I certainly don’t care about and who is trying to kill me?

  22. Has anyone else noticed just how shrill the regime is over Putin? I mean the whole Davos man regime. The UK Defence secretary is talking about how they kicked Russia’s butt in the Crimea, the Charge of the Light Brigade and Florence Nightingale Crimea, and they’ve started to wave the flag and play the patriotism card here, not to speak of Putin causing the price of oil to go up last year by actions he’s taken today. This is not the sign of a confident regime. Their hysteria is palpable Their private polls must be awesome.

    I do wonder just how much dirt Ukraine has on all the Davos men and under what circumstance they might release it. Not just the politicians, the senior bureaucrats too.

    1. I have. The CBS piece blaming supply chain disruptions, high gas prices and inflation on Ukraine, Russian invasion of, was….say what?

      1. To be fair to the Leftist tools at CBS, Putin has been loudly proclaiming that America would pay for its sanctions on Russia with less gas sales and thus higher American gas prices. The Biden* Regime has been blaming Russia for the high prices. CBS has spent a half century parroting Leftist lies coming out of Moscow and DC so this is just more of the same. Appalling, but not surprising.

    2. They’ve been using Russia Russia Russia as the base of their propaganda for at least six years now.
      And people aren’t buying it.

      Worse, it’s actively backfiring. The constant drumbeat has inadvertently cast him as “the plucky underdog”.

      Eh. Putin is a monster. Putin is a nationalist and wants what is best for his country. Putin could be a valuable ally against the globalists. All these are true. All worry TPTB.

    3. I’ve seen a lot of odd stuff from the commentator right about Ukraine. Okay, fine, a lot of people don’t want to send troops over there. But I’ve seen a *lot* of posts in the comments at Ace’s blog by people insisting that President Zelensky – the current president of the Ukraine – was put into power by the “color revolution” that took place back when Obama was in office. And then the commenter notes that the color revolution was apparently orchestrated by Brennan, meaning that Zelensky was put into power by Brennan. With all of the potential links to our own corruption that suggests.

      But the bit about Zelensky is wrong. In 2019, he beat the guy the color revolution installed (and the former president is now facing corruption charges). But commenters keep pushing this bit about Zelensky over and over again. It makes me wonder if it’s intentional meddling as a way to try and shape views on the right.

  23. https://monsterhunternation.com/2022/02/22/who-needs-high-school-english-when-you-can-have-social-justice-instead/

    Larry is a leftist, a betrayer who wants us to lose, because he doesn’t really f&cking hate The Great Gatsby.

    IIRC, I looked up number of teachers, and it was two or four million. Obviously, they have not all been murdered yet.

    Time to segue into the doomer/glowie talking point of how the lack of organized systemic teacher murder means that we have completely lost, and forever, and can never win, for lack of a theoretical model of how to win.

    I’ve long been really angry about the schools, for lack of a theoretical model of how to win. While I was raving from this angry at Larry’s, I figured out a theoretical model.

    I have a political proposal for school reform. The Teacher’s union gets to vote, on a district by district basis, whether to be a civil service bureaucracy or a union.

    If they pick Union, then the school board gets sole control over funding, and State Government, and Federal Government, cannot add more funding or more bureaucratic oversight.

    If they pick Civil Service, they are no longer union employees, contract restrains them from activism, and for example, they can be paid a much tinier amount, with the extra income between that and livable coming from purely voluntary endorsements by students.

    1. It may interest on and all to know that once again, Bob is making sense. [Knock it off, Bob, you’re freaking me out.]

      Under the radar and certainly unreported is the -explosive- growth of home schooling in places like posh districts of Toronto and Oakville Ont. where the schools all went full-retard with masks, social distancing, and #CRT #BLM #CallThisNumberToRatOutYourRacistParents. (Everybody knows you -never- go full-retard.)

      What happened is interesting. Little groups of parents formed and would hire a tutor. They’d all meet at each others houses for school time. This has been going on for two years now. Be it noted that this is Canada, where everybody lines up politely and does what they’re supposed to do.

      I estimate that the Lefties have managed to set back public schooling in Canada to about pre-World War 1 level of public participation.

      Glowies never understand that you don’t need to get violent to get around stupid government crap, you just stop doing what they tell you. What are they going to do, stamp their feet?

    3. Yeah, and the school district mentioned is where most of my nieces and nephews live. I sent Larry’s blog to my sister and her husband but I’m not expecting anything since they are normies.

    4. >> “I have a political proposal for school reform. The Teacher’s union gets to vote, on a district by district basis, whether to be a civil service bureaucracy or a union.”

      I’ll take door number three: get the government out of children’s education and privatize it altogether. Other than wards of the state and those in custody, forbid the government from funding or providing a child’s education. And the only educational requirement the law can impose is that you be able to read the constitution unaided, before witnesses, before you’re allowed to vote or take a government job.

  24. Fidelito is revolting the emergency powers act. I have to wonder if he had the votes in the senate. That would be fascinating if true.

    I read earlier that he had suspended the theft of bank accounts, but hmmm. All the world wonders.

            1. Thanks. I’d forgotten that, but now that you mention it, I remember the attention called to the contrast between Justine running and hiding, and Queen Elizabeth staying on the job.

            2. The variety and creativity of nicknames for the tyrant in the north has been a small glimmer of sunshine in these trying times.

        1. Have you seen the fascists go
          Panicked stares Justin Trudeau
          If you sniff then you will know
          Stinkin up the rinks.

          Fear is said to be the mind killer
          Makes you look a lot like Bette Midler
          Shriller killer

          So when you see the fascists go
          Back and forth with Trudea
          Hold your nose or you will know
          Stinkin up the rinks.

      1. I wonder if the City of Ottawa is still going after the donations to cover “policing costs”. That one hasn’t been covered anywhere since they announced they were doing it.

      2. I thought the Emergency Powers Act granted legal immunity? I think I recall Fox mentioning that part, anyway.

    3. As Sarah predicted, he blinked.

      But the precedent has been set. The good news, a lot of Canadians just got a wakeup call.

      1. He had to. All of his options were bad options. The Emergency Powers and the bank freezing was just the poisoned frosting on the foetid, excrement and vomitus filled cake.

        Doesn’t mean he wouldn’t rather have the power of a tyrant in his sweaty little hands. But, as I suspect Bob would tell you, he doesn’t have enough jackbooted thugs to get the job done. Canada is not early 20th century Germany. It shares practically nothing on the strategic and geographic scale. Don’t think of it as Mme. Trudeșesceau thinking “maybe I went a bit too far.” Think of it instead as the petty authoritarian flatworm as thinking “not yet…”.

        There have been good signs, I will grant. But liberty is never more than a single generation away from annihilation, if that. Just as there will always be poor, there will always be would-be tyrants. I count it as a blessing that there have been so many goodly folk about to stand against tyranny.

        It doesn’t take much, sometimes. Others it takes everything you’ve got and asks for more. And at other times, it takes bouncy castles.

        I’ll take bouncy castles over civil war any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

        1. You know what I haven’t seen: an official announcement from the provincial acting chief that they won’t be “investigating” anyone they caught on camera. And I wouldn’t believe him, if he did. As Gibson Guitars and the founder of TrueTheVote found out, all they have to do is enforce ALL the laws and regulations against you.

          “Three felonies a day” and “the process is the punishment” are always in play.

    4. Yes, the Shiny Pony has blinked. It is speculated (widely) that the Senate was, for the first time since about 1867, going to decline to pass his resolution. So he backed out to avoid the loss of face being defeated by the rubber stamp brigade would mean.

      1. I’ve seen people suggest that. But the more likely one imo was that the banks saw that a run was starting, and started to make some phone calls.

        1. It also could have been a combo. Especially if some of the phone calls were being made to the senators.

      2. Our Senate is appointed, not elected, and the sitting prime minister has final say over the appointments, which used to be conducted on straight party lines. So it sometimes happened that a new Conservative government couldn’t get a bill past all the old Liberals in the Senate, and once or twice the other way round.

        A few years ago, the Senate changed its rules, and senators are no longer required to be members of a political party to form a caucus. About the same time, the PM set up a quasi-independent commission to appoint new senators, allegedly on merit, instead of the old practice of appointing senior party bagmen. The largest group in the Canadian Senate now is the ‘Independent Senators Group’, which owes nothing to Trudeau’s Liberals and does not seem to particularly like them. So this kind of thing can now occur, and the Senate can actually begin to exercise its constitutional function as a ‘house of sober second thought’ instead of a mere partisan rubber stamp.

      3. That he didn’t have the votes in the senate is what I’ve been hearing. Failure would likely cause the government to fail and elections be called. It was widely reported that having to fight an election with the likely loss of their phony baloney jobs was the primary reason it passed the Commons in the first place. b-stards.

        As my mother would have said, what an utterly inconsequential man.

        1. Sundance has his take on it, specifically the freezes would undermine the Digital ID leash that the Canadian Banking Assn and the World Economic Forum want to inflict on everybody. (Freezes turn you into an unperson with the Digital ID, and retaliation might be rather fierce.

          I skimmed the article; see the link.

          The link: https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/02/23/boom-trudeau-reversal-motive-surfaces-canadian-banking-association-was-approved-by-world-economic-forum-to-lead-the-digital-id-creation/

        2. Losing a vote in the Senate cannot cause the government to fall in Canada. Only the House of Commons can do that.

          The invocation of the Emergencies Act was supported by the Liberal MPs because they have to vote in lockstep with the leader or be kicked out of the party, at which point their chance of re-election is zero. The NDP, our hard-left party, has similarly drastic control over its caucus, and voted ‘yea’ to keep the Liberals in power – as the probable alternative would be a Conservative win in a general election, which the NDP fear more than death itself.

          The Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois generally voted to rescind the emergency powers. This despite the fact that the Conservative Party has no leader at present and is in no position to fight an election. Evidently they think they can beat Trudeau at the polls without even having a candidate of their own for Prime Minister.

    5. >> “Fidelito is revolting the emergency powers act. I have to wonder if he had the votes in the senate.”

      Razorfist claimed on Twitter that he didn’t, so you’re not alone.

  27. Looks as though the invasion of Ukraine has started. They’re saying they’ll be able to get enough drugs into Biden so he can make a statement tomorrow morning. Let’s hope that not too many people die and that Biden sticks to sending nasty notes.

    If you’re in the markets then look out below, gonna be wild tomorrow.

    1. I saw a reposted Twit Tweet (reposted on Gab) by a Canadian diplomat. a) It’s Trump’s fault [yawn], b) and it’s the trucker’s fault [what *are* you smoking?] and c) We must go to war now! [Oh, I see. Put down the crack pipe and look around you, twit]

      Part B is almost as amusing as CBS’s claim that the inflation is all due to the last two weeks of the Ukraine issues.

    2. “What the heck is going on today?” was my response to the morning system check. The financial markets are BUSY. Record setting load, but systems are holding up. A bit of a myopic perspective, but that is my job, after all.

  28. Well, Trudeau appears to have gone and proven you right, Sarah. So many people were incensed about the Emergency Act, and saying so to pollsters, that he knew he was politically doomed if he didn’t withdraw it. He’s probably still politically doomed, but his sudden about-face proves just how bad the polls must have been that he was looking at.

      1. I’d like to think that some of the adults in the room did with Trudeau what the Republicans did with Nixon-there was no way that they could support him past this point, and he could either get out or he’d be removed.

        1. We’re talking about the Liberal Party of Canada here. There are no adults in the room. The party leader has to personally approve every candidate for Parliament, and those who might say no to him at any time are never approved. It’s a party of lickspittles.

  29. The thing that I keep seeing as the Big Leftist Thing (TM) is what I call the “Les Mis Moment.” That everything will finally reach the third act, the Evil Bad Guy (TM) (and it’s almost always a guy in charge, with a woman that is maybe his Dragon) gets thrown down, the walls are stormed, and there’s the whole kissing and the cast singing in harmony about their great victory. Credits roll, and everybody lives happily ever after.

    They want their Les Mis Moment, and they want it so hard and so bad it isn’t even funny. They thought they were going to get it with the end of Trump, the BLM riots, the Woke purges, everything…was leading up to that third act and the flag being flown over the barricades.

    But, the difference between a story and life? A story has an ending and a meaning, built right into it.

    We have to make our lives mean something. And, it ends when we die, not one step earlier.

    …this is not going to be a good two years. Even if everything goes right, we are not going to enjoy this time.

    1. There will be moments of joy. Well, as long as you don’t suffer from extreme psychopathy, there will be joy. Those moments keep a healthy psyche in balance, especially when under stress. And that’s a pretty good word for the coming days. Stress.

      The economy is for sure stressed. Have you bought gas lately? Or groceries? Remember what things used to cost a little over a year ago? Yeah. California not only murdered the golden goose, they declined to even cook it for Christmas dinner, so they lost even that thin benefit. Texas would likely be happy enough *not* to have those liberal ex-pats stealthily and not-so-stealthily swelling the population of Austin/Houston. Because let’s face it, they’re not moving to rural Texas in great numbers.

      The people are stressed. Money troubles, sure. We’ve all got them now. Covidiocy pulling down the festival masks has been an eye opener for many. It’s a handy visual indicator on who is and isn’t thoroughly bonkers at times. The lies about the coof and all have awakened normies in numbers I’ve not seen before in my lifetime. They’re not “woke,” they’re just more aware of political realities than they’ve ever been. Probably in their whole lives. And they’re *not* happy about it.

      The D party has run this playbook so many times the thing looks like a puppy’s chew toy. It’s hard to give a damn about foreign adventures when you’re struggling to feed your kids. Well, that, and the unforced errors of the drooling idiot at the top. Or maybe instead say, thugs of the world recognizing an easy mark, and taking advantage of his inevitable stupidity. Folks are failing to fall for it again in record numbers.

      Can they still be hurt by the lashing out of a failing regime? Of course they can. Us too. This is why we need to prepare, have contingency plans, and keep a weather eye out. If terrible atrocity passes us by, we’ll have taco night with our stored up rice and beans. Picnic in the park with emergency supplies, maybe.

      If the other side were smart, they’d be looking for ways to put the normies back to sleep with normalcy. But they can’t. They can’t do that because their own crazies would kill them and eat their livers with fava beans. They can’t do that because their own cult members would tear them down and feast on them. Those liberals wanting to cut mask mandates and the common D party voters that are decrying any de-masking show this in vivid detail.

      So we prepare. We do our jobs, we sock away a few granola bars and some bags of white rice and dried beans. We analyze the news and sift it for truth. We keep our chins up. We talk amongst each other and keep each other from drowning in despair or anger. And we watch out for things that are coming our way.

      I have suspicions about the US trucker convoy. Still mulling those over. Not that there isn’t honest and righteous indignation, that there aren’t good people in it. More about their destination, the capitol police/Outer DC precincts, optics, false flags, glowies, and pretexts. But dang if I don’t want them to succeed, too.

      1. The Ukraine faux war (I BET YOU it was cooked up between Brandon and Putin. I must do a post about it tomorrow. BUT Putin is incapable of playing fair and Brandon is stupid, so….) is designed to put in controls that are failing due to covidiocy and to FINALLY silence people like me, by syaing I’m working for Russia. Maybe even have an excuse to arrest us.
        THAT’s all this is.

        1. I don’t think they cooked it up together. I think they genuinely despise Putin and think they are very clever. Putin called their bluff. At the end of the day it’s all magic to them.

          1. I’m absolutely sure they cooked it up together. If you don’t remember that Putin declared support for Biden, Id o.
            Also there’s a pact between RUssia and China, and this will allow China to get frisky.
            Putin is a KGB agent. This smells of KGB.

            1. OK, but I always take incompetence before malice and I think incompetence and hubris is more likely. This was supposed to be a great diplomatic victory so Biden would have something to talk about at the SOU. Putin called their bluff.

              Don’t know which side, malice or incompetence, it would support, but the key word when sleepy Joe mumbles later today is SWIFT. No swift sanctions then it’s all BS.

                1. Um? Why not all of the above? Putin planned, Biden & Co went along, traitor that they are, all with malice and forethought, hubris, and incompetence? (Did I miss some?)

                  1. My wife had just asked me the same question. Yes, it could be that they cooked it up together and then Putin smoked them. I want to believe it was just hubris, but it could well be both.

                  2. Putin is classic, old-school Bad Russian Patriarch-which is to say that he’s a greedy little oligarchical princeling that thinks that he is the smartest man in the room and he will make everybody dance to his tune. And, he can screw you over and make you like it, because what are you going to do?

                    And, you can bet your bottom dollar that the people that have their hand firmly up Biden’s Muppet ass think that they’re the smartest people in the room and that they had made a good deal with Putin to make sure that The Great Reset would come off on schedule…because they have things so leveraged that if they don’t, they’ll be dancing from the ends of ropes.

                    I’m starting to see them try to step back from the worst of the Crow Flu requirements. I can go to most stores around here and not have to wear a mask. The problem is, if they step back too quickly, people are going to ask questions. If they don’t step back quickly enough, they will be asking even worse questions.

                    Too many people are paying attention to the man behind the curtain. And they’re realizing that he doesn’t have a clue.

                    4. Which is the reason why I’m spending as little time as possible anywhere near the big cities as I can. (That, and San Francisco has hit this level of grime that is feeling very third-world.) Making sure to avoid having anything with obvious logos on it, having good shoes on, always having two spare bottles of water, that kind of thing.

        2. Here’s a partial timeline:

          April 2014: Devon Archer ‘hired’ by Burisma
          May 2014: Hunter Biden ‘hired’ by Burisma at $1 million a year
          May 2014: Poroshenko installed by Obama-Biden regime in ‘color revolution’
          March 2016: Biden threatens to withhold $1 billion, gets Viktor Shokin fired
          January 2017: Donald Trump inaugurated as President
          March 2017: Hunter Biden’s pay from Burisma cut in half
          April 2019: Hunter Biden ‘resigned’ from Burisma
          May 2019: Zelenskyy elected president of Ukraine
          December 2019: Corruption and treason investigation of Poroshenko begins

          So I can see why Democrats might be upset enough with Zelenskyy to welcome Putin’s invasion. Creating a distraction from their domestic implosion is just a bonus.

          2. Could it be that what happened in March 2017 was, they lost their last hope that a coup might unseat OrangeManBad? After all, that’s what would happen in THEIR countries…

            Lots of folks around the world were SHOCKED when we didn’t have a civil war in 2000. They would have.

      2. I’m just hoping that we’ll make it through this time with a minimum of bloodshed. Because if we get something close to what happened in Canada here…it could be that tipping point to a lot of people just deciding that “might as well go down as a lion than a lamb.”

  30. And the stupid continues. Putin’s motivation is to “rebuild Christendom”.

    He’s in league with the “Christian Dominionists”!!!! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

    https://unherd.com/2022/02/putins-spiritual-destiny

    “He was born in Leningrad — a city that has reclaimed its original saint’s name ”

    GAH. Tsar Peter the Great would like a word…..

          2. The HRE tended to be “Pay your taxes on time, don’t fight with each other, and come to me if you have a disagreement you can’t sort out on your own.” No, it wasn’t perfect, but it served a purpose. Institutions don’t last 800+ years without people finding something of value in them.*

            *Looking from the Ottonians and Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation to the dissolution before Napoleon could claim the title.

  31. I sure hope the cabal who “fortified” the senile Puppet into office are happy because I guarantee you nobody else but Putin is right now.

    1. They think they are. As I said, this was all cooked up with Putin in advance. Putin gets some stuff, and the chance to strut as a victor for his country (He is in trouble, otherwise.) and clamp down harder on dissent.
      Biden gets rid of evidence of his malfeasance, and a chance to put in the war act and finally silence us.
      The tech Lords, etc. think this will make them rulers forever.
      Except Putin is duplicitous, Biden Junta is dumb as rocks, and the Americans aren’t going to go along with that shit.
      But yeah. They think everything is going on greased skids.

  32. The movie I have in my head is Farewell to Manzanar*

    Only it’s the “unvaxxed” rather than the Issei and nissei.

    Maybe this covidiocy, maybe the next. “It’s just a temporary measure, for everyone’s safety” and it is not everyone, just some. “Keep your head down, comrade citizen!”
    But by the time you get back your business is gone and your home is repossessed.

    Here in Washington, Tyrant Inslee (in the grand Roman tradition), got his senators to amend the RCW such that there is no longer any judicial or legislative review of his emergency powers. States of emergency are defined, begin, and end when he says so.

    Bonus! It is now a state felony to “cause a disturbance” under a state of emergency.

    So be it.

    In the end, as some wise Latina said, (J-lo?), we win, they lose.

    Got a lot more stories in my head about that one.

    (*It’s a book. Yes )

  33. *Movies are particularly pernicious because they bypass our brain’s “this isn’t real” filter. * THAT line hit such a note with me- my late wife, her four year old nephew and myself, went to see a Star Wars movie, many years ago and during a mildly spooky scene in a dark swamp, he grabbed her hand tightly and said in a small shaky voice, Auntie Lynn, is this part real? He was truly frightened and she had to reassure him that no, it was make believe. I never made that connection until you wrote those words. May God have mercy on us all.

    On Wed, Feb 23, 2022 at 5:53 AM According To Hoyt wrote:

    > accordingtohoyt posted: ” Hi. I am your friendly neighborhood storyteller, > and I’m here to remind you of one very important thing: STORIES AREN’T > REAL. Understand I’m not throwing stones here. To an extent, because > storytelling and belief in stories is an evolutionary sel” >

    1. *snort*
      Back when my daughter was maybe about six or seven, the base theater had a special matinee — a big-screen showing of The Wizard of Oz – yes, the 1939 version with Judy Garland and all.
      And when the Wicked Witch appeared in a puff of orange smoke, I swear that just about all the kids were scared out of their ever-loving minds! (My daughter was!) An old movie with basic 1930s special effects, shown to kids in the late 1980s.
      After that, I could well-believe the story about how so many seats in the big New York theater house had to be reupholstered after the premiere Wizard of Oz showing because so many children in the audience wet their pants out of fright…

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