How Bizarre

236 thoughts on “How Bizarre”

1. Oh, I’ve always been the odd one out, or one of the odd ones. The only girl, or one of two or three girls in the Honors and AE classes, in high school. Off to join the military when it was almost anathema after the wreckage that was Vietnam. Single parent in the military. Blogging when it was a rarity, Tea Party early on … I’m used to being an outlier – it’s comfortable for me, since it seems to be my natural state.

   1. I’ve always been weird. Immigrating was easier than trying to fit in where I was planted. THAT weird. So, I’m fine. 😉

   2. Yeah, I was a woman who joined the military (through AFROTC) soon after the end of the Vietnam War, too. I was part of the first year that had ROTC students wear their uniforms on campus again after it became dangerous during the anti-war protests. The upperclassmen had all brought / kept their uniforms at the Field House and changed there, so the the students wouldn’t be provoked by ROTC uniforms.

      I’ve always been the “border” person — the woman in the military; the IT person between admin and engineering; the NASA person who believed in commercial space instead of the NASA way. So not so much the “pink monkey” as the “missing link.”

      1. For a while I was the only woman in our college apartment who WASN’T ROTC. The girl who joined us didn’t do ROTC – she enlisted after graduation.

         1. Didn’t stay in an apartment because I lived in the foreign language dorm as an upperclassman. Physics and Russian major. It was a fantastic place to live. Everyone there was either from a foreign country or had lived in one. Female ROTC was just another variation on weird. I was practically normal.

   3. I make the joke that I should have been born three parallel universes down.

      1. So I’m not the only one who’s spent most of their life feeling as if I should be someone else in another place and time. (One of those things I learned not to talk about, because Adult Authority viewed it as having theological implications).

         1. Well, be careful about what you wish for.

            I read (years ago) a short story about a guy who was Absolutely Sure that he should have been born elsewhere.

            Then some people showed up telling him that he should have been born elsewhere and their job was to take him to where he should have been born.

            The guy then finds himself a serf elsewhere with the memories of our world. 😈

            No, I’m not sure that I want to “go where I should have been born into”. 😉

            1. Back when spiritualism was a thing, a number of skeptics commented on how many women with memories of past lives in Ancient Egypt were princesses and priestesses. Nobody was a slave or peasant.

               1. Read another story where two authors were talking.

                  One was wishing that he could have lived in Elizabethan England.

                  Then both of them found themselves in the bodies & minds of Elizabethan peasants. 😈

                  Oh, they both returned to their proper bodies & time. 😉

                  1. If you’re going to wish to live in another place and time, why wish for the much less pleasant past?

                     If I could choose, I’d take a future where both statism and the aging process have been conquered. Or at least I’d like to live long enough to reach that future the slow way.

                     1. The problem is that some people have an idealized picture of certain periods of the past.

                        The character of that story saw the Elizabethan period in terms of Shakespeare and London without seeing any of the flaws that existed in Shakespeare’s London.

                        1. I had a college English professor ask the class (somewhat rhetorically) why the Globe was on the other side of the Thames, and who was stunned (and derailed from his speech) when I presented the answer—that London considered players connected with plague, so theatres were away from the city core so they could be shut down easily when they had flare-ups. (I mean, you go to the theatre and spend several hours in close contact with potentially infectious people, so it’s kind of right…)

               2. Best argument against reincarnation I can think of is the fact that everyone who says they’ve lived past lives lived interesting ones. Great shortage of starving people who died young. Even the ones who say they suffered, suffered in interesting ways, interesting to us today of course.

                  1. I did love how in the Grimnoir Chronicles, Edison’s ghost phone worked, but it got burried because it pretty much could only randomly contract the boring part of hell.

               3. Chesterton poked fun at the preference for Egypt. He rattled off a bunch of alternatives from an Ancient Chinaman to an Ancient European.

               4. Pfft. Posers. I was a cat back then. Near godhood.

            2. In my case, it’s most definitely a technological world. One of the earliest moments of Having that Sense involved a roller-coaster. A big, fast one, like at a theme park.

            3. Whenever anyone asks me what fictional world I want to live in I start asking questions about when and where.

               1. Chuckle Chuckle

                  The most interesting times to read about aren’t the Best Times to be living in. 😉

                  1. And how many of even the most innocuous worlds don’t have an unpleasant corner or two?

                     I also ask whether I would be naturalized. I would rather be one of my D&D characters in a D&D world than myself.

                     1. Nod.

                        Interesting places to read about may have pleasant places to live nearby. Of course, Manticore in the Honorverse during the Haven Wars may still be a pleasant place to live. Since most of the fighting was not within the Star Kingdom.

                        As for what I’d be in a fictional universe, Dragons can live unnoticed most anywhere. 😉

                        1. Just ask Management from Correia’s MHI setting.

               2. It’s the game of How F*d Are You?

                  I mean, if you assume basic immunities, the language, and an instinctive grasp of the customs and mores, how badly are you off when dropped into each book’s fantasy world? Most of them, even with those givens, end with “you die pretty quickly.” Some of them follow that with “and then it gets worse.”

                  Of course, with Valdemar, you might end up with a magical talking pony with shiny silver hooves, but that still can end with “and then you die horribly.” 😀

2. Need to figure out how one makes 3D printer filiment. I assume it’s possible. Probably some sort of extrusion system? Or a giant squisher like white drawing, just with plastic?

   Especially if it could be adapted to wax or other really cheap base medium. That way you can do lost wax casting of things without more expensive plastics.

   1. It might be easier to print a master now which you use to create one or more molds from latex or other material to make wax versions for lost wax casting.

   2. If you can get the raw materials, this may help:

      https://www.instructables.com/Build-your-own-3d-printing-filament-factory-Filame/

      1. Ah. Very interesting. I will very much dig into that.

      2. That is extremely cool. Bookmarked and sent to a friend who runs a maker space.

3. It would be kind of nice for a change not to have to try to be a normie to get through the day.

   I have been trying to “pass” less and less every day at work. People are getting to the point they aren’t actually buying the current narrative but they don’t know what to think if they aren’t told. After being scared out of their wits for 2 years by the COVID fear mongering they are tired and don’t seem to be up for WWIII. But they see the propaganda on the news and are “feeling” it is inevitable. It is kind of sad how very amazed they are to hear that there is someone else who also isn’t buying the narrative. Everyone is starting to think things are “off” in some way they can’t quite put a finger on and they are surprised to hear that it isn’t just them.

   Being a cheerleader is not my usual modus operandi but I find myself being the voice of hope and good cheer in the face of uncertainty and fear.

   And that dear people and occasional dragons is about as weird as it gets.

4. The left seems to love them some conformist non-conformists. Gays and lesbians, but only as long as they vote Democrat and never bring up those uncomfortable things like grooming of children. Making pedophiles and human traffickers sexy and accepted seems to be their newest craze. There’s a reason sane people don’t want sex-ed taught to pre-pubescent kids.

   I surmise that the defining trait of the left is an inability to think logically. Another trait is selfishness, especially when they can twist it into being “caring” and “helpful” regardless of what actually happens (and has been widely observed to happen whenever such a thing has been done in the past).

   Not just cognitive dissonance, but the ability to observe a situation and see that if A happens, B happens almost every time, which leads to C happening most of the time as well. And then seeing A happen to someone and conclude there’s a good chance it’s going to lead to C, and I don’t like C happening to me, so I’m not going to do A nor am I going to warn this other person that C is probably going to happen to them as well.

   1. The left only likes gays and such as long as they can be used to make their supposed enemies uncomfortable. They don’t love their nonconformists, they hate any not of their herd, and somehow think their nonconformists are a weapon.

      1. Yep, gay men, especially white gay men, are no longer counted as marginalized or even gay because of privilege.

      2. I remember when a lifestyle-Submissive blogger who was very much into the BDSM lifestyle and her husband got more or less tossed out on their ear because, well, he was the dominant and she was submissive and that wasn’t “really” non-vanilla. They weren’t transgressive in the proper transgressive sort of way. SIGH.

         1. Who was that (given even odds I know of her if not know her)?

            1. She went by Kayla, if memory serves. It was back when FetLife was having collective vapors over not-alternative-enough lifestyles.

            2. I’m trying to remember. I can see her blog header in my mind’s eye. I think she went by Kayla, and it came up because she was blogging about problems on FetLife or something similar.

               1. Kayla Lords from the Loving BDSM podcast?

                  I know of her but don’t know her. Should suggest Z go on podcasts to promote SJW after this year.

                  1. I don’t know. This was a plain blog. I dropped away from that corner of the internet not long after that, and haven’t kept up.

         2. And right now, I can’t think of any sexual path more legally dangerous than being a straight male left-sider (Sir, Master, Dominant, Top, name your title). Being any kind of top is risky, but in the current environment of retroactive consent removal being normalized for women, it’s just foolish.

   2. Some of them seem to just need a Cause, so they can be cool like their predecessors in the civil rights movement. They want to be praised and venerated, but it’s getting harder and harder to find a Cause.
      Plus sticking it to the squares, of course.

      1. Yeah, there’s no one more ignorant of the world than those rubes in flyove…wait a minute

         1. Yeah…I get a good laugh at that one. I live in Deep Southern Maryland, two hours from a city with commercial air services. The outer fringe of exurbia. A real hayseed…

            I’ve been to more than half the states. Twelve countries. Four continents.

            The automobile and airplane have completely transformed the definition of “provincial” and “worldly”.

            1. Turned it upside down, I’d say. The most provincial, narrow-minded people on this planet (outside a few third-world countries) are found in “cosmopolitan” cities.

               1. Having grown up in NYC I can confirm the truth of that. We were very parochial, literally parochial in fact.

               2. I know all about insert ethnicity here my friend knows this great restaurant

            2. “A thousand miles seems pretty far
               But they’ve got planes and trains and cars – “Hey There Delilah”

      2. It kills me how even people in our own country don’t understand just how big it is, and how much traveling you have to do just to get to a normal event. When I was high school the speed limit was still 55. The closest school in our division was a two hour bus ride there, and another two hours back. We have to travel a lot just to do what big city folk take for granted sometimes. And then have them complain about going to something on the other side of town, 10 miles away, as if it’s a hardship. smh

         1. And the difference between commute times in Seattle vs Coeur d’Alene? Good night. People here turn down jobs if the commute is 10 minutes, and I used to sit on a bus for two hours one way.
            This is the biggest, most beautiful country on God’s Green Earth. 🙂

            1. Coeur d’Alene? Very pretty place. Ten minutes, though? That’s one heck of a limiter when you could be living out of town on a small road.

         2. Depending on traffic, 10 miles across town can be a hardship. 😮

            1. Used to commute 30+ miles and it took me the same amount of time as someone who lived in the city-area (four cities smooshed together) and he was boggled that it didn’t take me longer. But he seemed to his every light at red, and Mr. Slow was in front of him no matter what time he started out. His drive was one frustration and anger and stress. Me? I got on “the slab” and went. I had to deal with one, count it, one whole traffic light. My stress was I might see deer.

               1. When I was still driving to work 40 miles away through the city (in my defense, it was only 15 miles away when I started working for them), I had two routes I could take to get home. If I’d dropped my kids off at my parents’, I’d go the highway route and hit the carpool lane. If I didn’t have kids, I’d go the suburban and country road route, which took longer because of the speed limits. But it was so much less stressful, because instead of sitting in traffic, I was driving the pretty way.

                  This is the job that finally figured out the telecommuting 100%, so I’m working for them again, usually on the computer 40 miles away simultaneously with my computer at home (two monitors, one per.) It’s lovely.

            2. Welcome to Atlanta. 60 minutes per mile

5. Cool song. Just added a couple new bands to a Pandora channel.

   Eh, It’s not so much that I’m weird, so much as other people being pretty incomprehensible. Just when you think you’ve got them figured out, the school shifts.

6. And the herd, ladies and gentlemen and the occasional dragon, is most of humanity. They might not be like us, but they’re our kith and kin, and as such we should value them. And it’s not good when the innocent starve.

   Maybe, but are they innocents.

   The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence, that individual effort is futile, that an individual conscience is a useless luxury, that there is no individual mind or character or achievement, that everything is achieved collectively, and that it’s masses that count, not men.

   The man in Roomette 7, Car No. 2, was a journalist who wrote that it is proper and moral to use compulsion “for a good cause,” who believed that he had the right to unleash physical force upon others—to wreck lives, throttle ambitions, strangle desires, violate convictions, to imprison, to despoil, to murder—for the sake of whatever he chose to consider as his own idea of “a good cause,” which did not even have to be an idea, since he had never defined what he regarded as the good, but had merely stated that he went by “a feeling”—a feeling unrestrained by any knowledge, since he considered emotion superior to knowledge and relied solely on his own “good intentions” and on the power of a gun.

   The woman in Roomette 10, Car No. 3, was an elderly schoolteacher who had spent her life turning class after class of helpless children into miserable cowards, by teaching them that the will of the majority is the only standard of good and evil, that a majority may do anything it pleases, that they must not assert their own personalities, but must do as others were doing.

   The man in Drawing Room B, Car No, 4, was a newspaper publisher who believed that men are evil by nature and unfit for freedom, that their basic instincts, if left unchecked, are to lie, to rob and to murder one another—and, therefore, men must be ruled by means of lies, robbery and murder, which must be made the exclusive privilege of the rulers, for the purpose of forcing men to work, teaching them to be moral and keeping them within the bounds of order and justice.

   The man in Bedroom H, Car No. 5, was a businessman who had acquired his business, an ore mine, with the help of a government loan, under the Equalization of Opportunity Bill.

   The man in Drawing Room A, Car No. 6, was a financier who had made a fortune by buying “frozen” railroad bonds and getting his friends in Washington to “defreeze” them.

   The man in Seat 5, Car No, 7, was a worker who believed that he had “a right” to a job, whether his employer wanted him or not.

   The woman in Roomette 6, Car No. 8, was a lecturer who believed that, as a consumer, she had “a right” to transportation, whether the railroad people wished to provide it or not.

   The man in Roomette 2, Car No. 9, was a professor of economics who advocated the abolition of private property, explaining that intelligence plays no part in industrial production, that man’s mind is conditioned by
   material tools, that anybody can run a factory or a railroad and it’s only a matter of seizing the machinery.

   The woman in Bedroom D, Car No. 10, was a mother who had put her two children to sleep in the berth above her, carefully tucking them in, protecting them from drafts and jolts; a mother whose husband held a
   government job enforcing directives, which she defended by saying, “I don’t care, it’s only the rich that they hurt. After all, I must think of my children.”

   The man in Roomette 3, Car No. 11, was a sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities to the effect that all businessmen were scoundrels.

   The woman in Roomette 9, Car No. 12, was a housewife who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge.

   The man in Bedroom F, Car No. 13, was a lawyer who had said, “Me? I’ll find a way to get along under any political system.”

   The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 14, was a professor of philosophy who taught that there is no mind—how do you know that the tunnel is dangerous?—-no reality—how can you prove that the tunnel exists?—
   no logic—why do you claim that trains cannot move without motive power?—no principles—why should you be bound by the law of cause and-effect?—no rights—why shouldn’t you attach men to their jobs by force?—no morality—what’s moral about running a railroad?—no absolutes—what difference does it make to you
   whether you live or die, anyway? He taught that we know nothing—why oppose the orders of your superiors?—that we can never be certain of anything—how do you know you’re right?—that we must act on the expediency of the moment—you don’t want to risk your job, do you?

   The man in Drawing Room B, Car No. 15, was an heir who had inherited his fortune, and who had kept repeating, “Why should Rearden be the only one permitted to manufacture Rearden Metal?”

   The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 16, was a humanitarian who had said, “The men of ability? I do not care what or if they are made to suffer. They must be penalized in order to support the incompetent. Frankly, I do not care whether this is just or not. I take pride in not caring to grant any justice to the able, where mercy to the needy is concerned.”

   These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the train went into the tunnel, the flame of Wyatt’s Torch was the last thing they saw on earth.

   When Whittaker Chambers reviewed Atlas Shrugged for National Review he claimed, based on this passage, Rand was saying “To a gas chamber—go!”. He used it to damn the novel.

   I long agreed, especially given the children of the woman in Bedroom D, car 10. Now, except for the reservations about those children and possible others on the train, I’ve come to agree with Rand.

   We are now treated to the spectacle of the Left fighting for the right to teach 5 year old about sex in graphic and very niche ways at the same time we’re finding more and more people in power seem to like younger partners, perhaps not children but teens.”These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas. ” And in sharing those ideas they deserved to be damned among men.

   1. If she meant “go”, she was wrong. But from where I stand, they’re going there on their own anyway. Maybe that is all it meant–they are headed to Hell, and the judgment in the end is real. It is important not to let them make it Hell on Earth first.

   2. A gentler version of this is Eustace Scrubbs drinking from the water supply of the Dawn Treader. He was spoiled and selfish and cruel. He was turned into a dragon and learned through suffering to be a better person.

      There are many people who are going to suffer in the coming turbulence, and many of them are dragons, embracing victimhood, acting out in selfish and cruel ways. I pray for them to learn from their suffering, and learn like Eustace did.

      1. I don’t think Rand would’ve been a big Narnia fan.

         1. Rand didn’t seem to really believe in redemption.

   3. It has been a long time since I read Atlas Shrugged but, IIRC, that incident was collateral damage from an oil field fire. Maybe I missed the point.

      1. It was not. It was raw stupidity for ignoring the safety rules around the Taggart tunnel combined with the decline of infrastructure due to driving off the competent then allowing the incompetent to do things as though they were competent.

         Summary of the events: https://www.conservapedia.com/Taggart_Tunnel

         1. I stand corrected.

      2. The point is that it was their own ideas being put into practice that led to their deaths.

         That was one of the two scenes in Atlas Shrugged that really got me on a philosophical level and made me read a bunch of Rand’s non-fiction.

   4. I was once terribly offended by Psalm 137:9, but looking at it in context it’s quite a natural sentiment.

      By the same measure I once disliked that passage, then I came to understand what humans could really be like. Particularly in the last few years.

      When you see lefties excusing rioters and murderers and condemning anyone who tries to defend themselves and seeking to disarm the population, it’s hard to muster and compassion when they get mugged and their own homes get burned down.

      And my memory is more than a few months old. I remember there were plenty of “good,” (well, nice)
      ordinary people who were just fine about turning their own countrymen and women into second-class citizens for their refusal to submit to experimental medical procedures. Great or small, they all participated in evil. Think I’ll shed a tear if I hear any of them ever face even a little bit of the consequences?

      1. And they have certainly fulfilled 137:3, demanding not only we bend to their will but that we do so joyously.

   5. Just noting that a lot of those ideas aren’t universally bad.
      And some of them are downright fine.

      A businessman took a loan?
      A housewife thought elected officials should answer to the citizenry? That there are things the government should prevent a business from doing?
      The horror. The horror.

      1. The businessman took a loan backed by cash at gunpoint to buy a business at gunpoint (if you haven’t read the book that may have jumped out).

         As for things the government should prevent a business from doing? Like what, competing with others (The Dog Eat Dog Rule) or having better sales than other businesses in the same industry (the various Equalization Bills where, for example, all income from foundries were pooled and then distributed based on proportion of hearths a foundry had regardless of steel output), or refusing to hire incompetent workers?

         As for the housewife, did you read the description in its whole or just cherry pick? “who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge.”

         Emphasis is my own to highlight the parts of the description that are key to Rand’s thesis: man’s unique evolutionary advantage is thought. The housewife doesn’t think about things, but demands the right to be a decider about things where she has no knowledge. It isn’t she “wants elected officials to answer to the citizenry”. She wants to, nay demands she get to, absolve herself of the need to think and just send others to do it for her.

         Perhaps you want that world. Go for it.

         1. Something like that is going in a story I’m working on:

            “You demand immediate perfect solutions to problems you don’t begin to understand. You are either too lazy or too stupid to learn about the technological and economic realities which must be accommodated in order for any practical solution to be achieved. You do not contribute in any way to actually solving the problems you squall about, yet you blame everyone except yourselves for the lack of solutions.”

            1. A story about the current administration, perhaps? Or just a general treatise on the Democrat Party?;-)

   6. When I first read that passage from “Atlas Shrugged” years ago, I understood Rand’s point but thought that it was unduly harsh. Now… when I read about rampant crime, out-of-control homelessness, and double-digit inflation, all I think is, “Y’all voted for this.”

      1. As much as she was more prescient than Orwell, she wrote with a sledgehammer and battleax.

         1. She lived under communism. Her critics didn’t. I’d listen to her, not them.

         2. “she wrote with a sledgehammer and battleax.”

            I can see why many would consider her writing to be too heavy-handed, but I didn’t mind.

            Then again, I do have a tendency to miss the subtle stuff so maybe I just NEED a certain level of bluntness:

            

7. They want to “Stick It To The Man” but are the Man (in control).

   They talk about Being The Resistance but are the Oppressor.

   They talk about Being the Revolution but are the People In Power.

   Note, they may not actually the “People In Power” but sure aren’t the People Who Fight The Ones In Power.

   1. They screamed “Power to the People” then oppress the people once they’ve got power.
      They shouted anti-war slogans in the 60’s and 00’s but want the US to start a war with Russia now.

      1. And don’t forget those with the “Question Authority” bumper stickers who freaked out when they achieved a modicum of power and we questioned them.

         1. My personal peeve is the “Coexist,” stickers. Because if they weren’t living in a culture of coexistence, someone would slash their tires because they had the wrong religious symbol. If they were lucky.

            1. Yep. More likely kill them.
               Like my neighbor with the “my dog bites racists” t-shirt. What even is the point of that?

               1. Dog-bite Victim pre-blaming?

            2. All Coexist stickers are not created equal….

               

      2. Those aren’t the People.

         I have literally seen a discussion where one person flipped from “In a Communist state, everyone will be fed, sheltered, and safe” to “Counterrevolutionaries will be executed, as they should be,” in three comments, and defend it as “I care more about real people than business owners.”

         1. And there you have leftist philosophy in three easy lessons.

   2. Well, they are entirely welcome to stick it to themselves! 😛

8. Build under, build over, build around, and get ready. Because when it all crumbles, we’re the ones who have to not let the herd go over the cliff.

   They’ll still hate us, it’s a given. But in the middle of it, we might be able to bite a few butts. And we’ll make sure there’s still a herd and a pasture, when it’s all done.

   Why? Why not let them go over the cliff and rebuild without them with a pasture free of those who despise us? Why rebuild for those who, as RAH put it, are “right-thinking” people who still expect those they despise to support them? Why not let them suffer “bad luck” and then create “good luck” without them?

   1. I don’t know if there’s a general answer, but I seem incapable of ignoring the herd for my own benefit. Roll my eyes at them, laugh at them, whatever, but I can’t ignore suffering when I can do something about it. If they choose to go over the cliff anyway, I can’t stop it, but I have to try. Yes, it might and probably will make my life harder later on. The herd never likes visible reminders of their foolish mistakes.

   2. To which I pose one simple question:
      Do these seem like the type of people to lead from the front?

      In this metaphor, we’re left standing on a cliff edge with a bunch of vicious murderers. That doesn’t sound like a happy ending.

      1. We have our own vicious murderers, too, though.

         In fact, we probably have a disproportionate amount.

         1. Vicious murderers? Not sure I’d put it that way, but that’s probably only because I’ve just about reached the point where I don’t think killing leftists would be murder.

            1. It’s rapidly approaching self-defense.

               1. “You could just let me go.”

                  “To ambush me later? I think not. I’m afraid it has become a matter of future self-defense.” — Dilvish, The Damned

   3. Because they will take us over the cliff with them.
      In fact the mRNA vax could be an attempt to kill off the herd while leaving most of us.

   4. The crush of the crowd will take many with it that don’t want to be there.

   5. Because history teaches that the result of collapse is not the rise of a libertarian utopia, but a Leftist dystopia. If you’re lucky, it gets overthrown by an authoritarian regime…otherwise you and your children get to enjoy the gulags.

      1. I have no illusion that we have crossed the line to where our best case is an American Franco. Having burned things down I don’t see why they should get a pass on the consequences.

         1. AHAHAHAHAHAH. Not even close, Herb. Not even in the same universe.
            American born people are HILARIOUS.
            You really have no clue how different the culture is here, do you?

            1. That’s odd. You used to agree the best case of a US civil war was an American Franco.

               What changed?

               1. Maybe she’s saying this isn’t going to be a literal civil war? Or maybe — and this is something I fully believe — that Americans would never put up with a Franco or Pinochet long enough for that kind of outcome to happen. The Che Guevara scenario is more likely; would-be lords of everything whose careers come to a sticky, very abrupt end.

                  1. Oh, I can see us going St. Augusto of the Whirling blades, heaven help us.

               2. Yes. His name will be Donald Trump.
                  Actually I expect that if he’s elected again.
                  What changed: NOTHING. But when you talk of Franco, you think fascist dictator. (Which he actually was.) That was clear from the exchange.
                  I think temporary dictator, who gives power back.

                  1. Franco was not a fascist by any reasonable definition of fascism. Even the Flange felt sold out by Franco. Franco lacked the key attribute defining fascism and other socialist dictators, he acknowledge the existence of sources of power external to the state. Also, a fascist would not have groomed a monarch as a successor.
                     No, I mean an American Rightwing dictator with strong ties to, among others, religious institutions, although evangelical not Catholic, and the military. My bet of currently public know figures to be the American Franco is General Flynn. He could rarely the hard core Trumpist part of the right as his initial cadre.
                     A Trump second term would be more a civilian DeGaulle in my estimation.

                     We do disagree about temporary dictator for a couple of reasons:

                     Franco was not, that is more Pinochet.
                     The Spanish courts and British government has insured no right of center dictator will voluntarily step down for at least 50 years.

                     1. Um…. He had bits.
                        Trust me. Grew up next door. He was more axis than Salazar, who gets tarred as fascist up and down the block and WAS — by virtue of being FDR.
                        No. I think Trump has learned. I’m not sure he’d step down short of death.
                        I’m not sure he SHOULD.

                        1. I know he had bits, but so did FDR and I doubt you would seriously call him a fascist. He certainly used the FALANGE (or however it is spelling) because they had some overlap in ideas, but in the end he was much more Spanish nationalist and aristocrat.

                           A good place to see the contrast is his relationship with the Church compared to Mussolini. Sure, El Douche used the Church and got their approval in exchange for Vatican City becoming independent, but he did not use the Church to routinely give his government legitimacy nor did he include Church advisors.

                           Also, I’m not sure “more Axis” than Salazar is a good measure. Was Petain a fascist? What about Bardossy, Antonescu, or Filov? All four were more Axis than Franco and in key ways aided specific fascist/Nazi causes such as the Holocaust. I know there is debate on Antonescu being fascist. I’m in the no camp seeing him as similar to Franco but more invested in a German victory as opposed Franco’s wait and see who wins attitude.

                           I’ll even go so far as to argue what Axis there was in Franco was always ties of convenience due to they were the only help he could find.

                           By contrast, Franco used the Church for legitimacy for years. His late 50s economic reforms that moved away from a fascist light corporatism (probably close to what FDR hoped to achieve with the NRA in the US) were driven by, above others, Opus Dei members in his cabinet.

                           As for Trump stepping down. I don’t know. I’m somewhat amazed he is still alive and think the odds are low he’ll live to be the nominee in 2024. His age alone weighs against him and I can see him getting “help” across the threshold.

                           Although if he is helped and it isn’t covered up completely that would probably kick off the fighting right there. There are leftists smart enough to know better, but I’m not sure Obama and his clique (my assumption of who is pulling Biden’s strings) include any of them. Bill is smarter than that, but I doubt Hillary is if it is their faction. Maybe Rahm too, although his mayorship in Chicago makes me wonder.

                           A final issue about Franco, Pinochet, and others being called fascist. I think this is the intersection of two things: the success of Leftists in denying the socialist part of fascism, its principle part, and the reality that other parts of fascism that separate it from communism are “right-wing”*, particular the emphasis on nationalism and, I’d argue as odd as it is, children  traditional roles for women. The suppression of fascism’s socialism and emphasis on it’s “right-wing” pieces leads/encourages/allows academics and other leftists to tar all right of center politics as fascist because the distinguishing characteristics are hidden.

                           Yet even with that, Franco is generally assessed as not fascist or not “core fascist” (whatever that means) but most academics.

                           Note, Xi is a traditional Emperor in all but name and has preceded over not only an end to one child, but an attempt to push 2-3 children per family. At the same time China has moved clearly into the fascist camp regardless of what they call it.

                           A big part of the problem is using left-right, whose origins are in the seating of the first National Assembly in France after the Revolution. That one dimension is enough is folly but to use designations alien to American tradition is just nuts…at the very least it should be a Y.

                           1. I DO call FDR a Fascist. He was.

                           2. If you call FDR a Fascist you are reducing the word to the definition cited by Orwell before the Second World War was even over, “something not desirable”. In doing so, ironically, you validate all the leftist who call you and me fascists because that’s all they really mean.

                              To quote Orwell, “But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make.”

                              Why are those groups not willing to embrace a clear definition (I prefer Paxton indicators)? Because they overlap with fascism. Why? Because they are political systems designed by humans. Of course any two are likely to have some overlap. That we are afraid of overlapping with fascism at all is just giving into the efforts since Hitler invaded the Soviet Union by leftists to set up Fascism as the One True Ring of politics instead of one of many horrific ideologies that reigned in the 20th century.

                              FDR was a socialist of the corporatist stripe, as most technocrats are. Fascism also embraced that ideal. The single biggest lack FDR had, and had in common with Franco, is Mussolini’s “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”. Continuing with Paxton’s taxonomy FDR and Franco both lack “the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint”. I think this is a key reason Franco set out WW2 while Italy jumped in and bit off things it couldn’t chew multiple times. The need to restore Italy to Roman glory was inherent in Italian Fascism, but not Franco’s ideology.

                              FDR also lacked “the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will” (I’m unsure of Franco on this). Oddly he rejected one of Paxton’s characteristics, “the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason” because he embraced abstract and universal reason in its technocratic form to justify one fascist identifier he did embrace, “the need for authority by natural chiefs”.

                              So, no, FDR was not a fascist by any definition more than “bad person”. I am not a leftist and on this one I strongly resist playing their game of “anyone I don’t like is Hitler”. FFS, we should at least make the comparison to Stalin or Mao if we’re going to play the game.

                              In fact, more and more I see that statement as the defining idea separating fascism and communism from garden variety socialists*

                              Note: Arguments that all socialism ends there have some merit, although the handful of functioning communal societies are multi-polar with the poles in alignment where spheres overlap. All socialism does end in authoritarianism, however, if allowed to continue to its logical end point.

                           3. Note what I said when all this began. People generally call Salazar “Fascist” and he was as close a copy of FDR as he could make himself, given different countries.
                              He even CRIBBED SPEECHES.
                              If he was a fascist, so was FDR. QED.
                              As for Franco, he was FOR REAL fascist, including heavy suppression and murder used in defense of his rule. AND extreme restrictions on speech. AND control of who could and could not engage in business and enterprise, which is the standard definition of fascism.
                              Now, was he a better alternative than the communists? Well, the Spaniards thought so.
                              However, I hope, and expect that the bestb case scenario for the US is not even more crony capitalism (which is bog standard definition of fascism) because we’ve had that these last 20 years. And it’s what’s pushed us to the brink.
                              Again, go back tot he absolute definition: Government controlling business and economic activity. Was FDR Fascist?
                              Oh, hell yes. With bells on.
                              The fact he hated Germans for personal reasons is the ONLY reason we joined the war against Germany and not with Germany.

                           4. Ok, now I’m curious – what were his personal reasons for hating Germans?

                              I mean, I know his personal racism was even greater than Hitler’s in some respects (even Hitler shook Jesse Owens’ hand), but I’m not familiar with him outside officialdom.

                           5. I don’t actually KNOW. All his biographies just say he hated Germans for personal reasons. If you find it out, please share.

                           6. “However, I hope, and expect that the bestb case scenario for the US is not even more crony capitalism (which is bog standard definition of fascism) because we’ve had that these last 20 years. And it’s what’s pushed us to the brink.”

                              Unfortunately, when “private” enterprise (hint: if it requires government licenses to exist or to perform essential functions, like prescribing any and all drugs, then BY DEFINITION it isn’t “private”) is weaponized to deny you basic goods and services like medical care and banking, there has to be a mechanism to disarm it.

                           7. Salazar cribbed speeches from FDR, FDR cribbed speeches from Mussolini…where does it end?

                        2. Oh, and I guess I’m back to commenting on the blog.

                           1. Yeah. Today it’s letting me see comments, suddenly.

                           2. And I’m happy to see you back.

                           3. I’m also happy to see you back.

                           4. Back bencher waving that I’m glad, too!

                           5. Welcome back.

                  2. If anything, when I think “American Franco” I think what McArthur could have become in the 1952 election if he wanted more than anything.

                  3. Yes, same here. In fact, I’m almost looking forward to seeing certain people make the drop (shouldn’t wish for it, but I am a horrible person). I just don’t think that whoever occupies that role is going to be dictator-for-life like Franco and Pinochet. He’ll get either get voted out or violently ejected at some point measured in years, not decades. I don’t think an unaccountable dictator is something Americans will put up with for very long.

                  4. I think Sarah is hoping to wake up to green acres in a few years…

      2. More like feudalism.

         1. I had in mind France. Monarchy to democracy to Leftist murder-ocracy to authoritarian regime…and ultimately back to monarchy. It wasn’t until the Third Republic that France managed to produce a semi-stable democratic government. Eighty years worth of experimentation.

            1. France wasn’t aiming for a democratic government and they’re not stable. They won’t be stable until they have their king back.
               BUT history is an uncertain guide.
               A) it was never democracy, it was “representative monarchy” they wanted, kind of, and hten crazy murdercracy was proto-communism
               NO ONE believes that shit anymore, not even the ones spouting it. They have already figured out it doesn’t work. And our “communists” don’t believe in reason or the future man who is not into possessions.
               They believe in power. And they’re in power. They’re a pseudo aristocracy and completely out of touch.
               The sides are not interchangeable. If we go on a murder spree, it will be brief and horrible.
               But still, we’ll have to rebuild the structures for the world to continue. There needs to be some organization.
               IF there isn’t, there will be feudalism. (There will also be very few humans left.)
               No communism. The more I research,t he soviet union only survived because we fed them.

         2. Fuedalism is always what this group has wanted. They want serfs and feudal lords. And they want to be the Lords with Droit du Seigneur (lets not try to figure out if it ever existed) and without Noblesse Oblige. What they don’t remember is what happens to the Lords and Ladies when all hell breaks loose.

            1. Yeah, but it will ONLY work if it’s only a tiny population left.

               1. Well, they do keep telling us how overpopulated the world is…

                  If, as seems likely from the stats, the mRNA vax is far more likely to kill you than the bug, never mind other … interesting … potential long term consequences, would that be why they’ve been pushing it so hard? Of course, they are far more likely to kill off their sheep since we goats are contrary and less likely to be vaxxed. But then they never do think more than a step ahead.

               2. But do they know that? It feels like they want a large city (say Chicago) to be their Duchy (or county or baronetcy or whatever). What fun is there in it for them being Holder of High and Low justice for a few hundred or even a thousand people. Heck their desire for control and power probably outstrips that of even your most hard core Eddorian. It’s like they’ve caught some mental illness that strips their minds of reason and any need but power. Like you woo woo stuff makes me squirm but some days I really wonder if the Father of Lies IS really driving them as all rational possibilities seem to fail Occam’s Razor.

                  1. Same.

                  2. Thing is, the drives that result in sex were always less straightforward than the ‘born gay’ narrative.

                     There is absolutely learning involved, adn there is absolutely brain function relating to perception.

                     And this stuff can get cross wired into social drives that aren’t sexual. The “performer’s high” is possibly an extension of normal social stuff.

                     Furthermore, whenever you have technical and economic breakthroughs with chemical technology, you have behavioral consequences later. Because customs had adjusted the earlier availability of chemical intoxicants to a behavioral level that people were willing to tolerate. The current eighty year old cohort may have unusual behavior in rare cases that is a result of the 1960s drug experiments. The folks who did too much LSD, mostly dead or functioning at a low level, and not very influential.

                     Magical practice is something that we can understand as potentially being very bad for mental health according to purely secular theory. Non-alcohol recreational use is frequent enough in lower than eighty cohorts, that it too could be an explanation for an unusual rate of disorder.

                     And, the freaks given to us as examples of the broader population are very deliberately picked not to be representative.

                     So, there are non-secular models that fit the behavior. Very definitely there are.

                     But, there are a bunch of secular models that can also explain the evidence we have.

   6. For Christians, “and do good unto those who despite fully use you and abuse you,” is part of the job description. One of the harder parts.

9. Globalism and globalists are the ultimate evil, and the numbers on the Georgia Guide Stones are probably a fair approximation of their goals…Most of the sheep are going willingly to the slaughter, but we are not sheep so we have a good chance to upend their monstrous plan, and some of us, hopefully most of us, will survive…

   1. A reminder that 1984’s Oceania was a system created out of “oligarchical collectivism”, a term that is rather fitting for the globalist “build back better, great reset” crowd, given that oligarchical collectivism is pretty much exactly the system they are pursuing.

      They are literally in a race to see who becomes Oceania the fastest.

      1. None of them does. THe economic system of the world breaks WAY before that.

10. Just watched the video OMG OMG OMG OMG I’M SO GEEKING OUT! I’VE BEEN THERE! Port Issac in Cornwall, UK is the site of the set of the “Doc Martin” TV Series. Wife & co, watched it and thought that the setting was so beautiful, and cute that we wanted to see it live. We took my Mom, Wife’s Mom. Daughter plus Fyancee to London, Cornwall and Dublin in 2016, before the bottom dropped out. It really is a charming place, once you get over the fact that it is on a cliff and all the roads that go ‘up’ do so at about a 60 degree angle. We also spent a night at a castle near Tintagel which was filled with what (to us) were obviously Russian Vampires, But that is a story for another time! 😉

    1. So many great threads, did not know here to put any response. These guys from Port Issac appear in my regular Stan Rogers rotation on Pandora. Love the music and their story s quite cool, including a movie.

       As far as the post, I have been an odd forever. Walking on rails, I read it someplace for every esoteric fact, contrary opinions, never feeling a real part of the group. All that said we may very well have an obligation to the innocent certainly, not so certain about the willfully ignorant. It has been observed that many of us may get pushed off the cliff with the crowd. That is possible, and I think that it behooves all of us to do everything possible to keep that from happening. We need to make certain that civilization can be rebuilt. That survival is imperative not just for our own sake.

11. Pingback: Symmetry? | Dio's Workshop

12. The left is an amalgam of power crazed psychopaths, malignant narcissists, and neurotic wrecks. Once you realize they’re all mentally ill, their actions become explainable, crazy is an explanation.

    1. They also have no sense of humor and the only thing they hate more than mockery aimed at leftist ideology is having it pointed out that they have no sense of humor with regard to that mockery:

       https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2022/03/22/twitter-suspends-babylon-bee-editor-in-chief-for-mocking-sites-censorship/

       Yes, Twitter has not only banned the Bee, they have banned its editor in chief for mocking Twitter over its censorship of non-leftists.

       1. They think they’re funny, they really do. They also think they’re smart, witty, clever, and other things that aren’t true. Crazy is as crazy does, More and more I feel like I’m living through the left’s nervous breakdown and I’m just hoping their collapse doesn’t take me down with them.

13. I couldn’t fit in if I tried. And I’ve tried. I kept trying and people refused to talk to me.

    I’m hoping for a world in which I fit instead of always being the lonely odd man out.

    1. waves hand

       Come sit down. The waiter will be by in a while to take our order. In the meantime, we have cookies!

       1. No rush then. I brought my thermos.

14. As I walk through my neighborhood, I celebrate the ones with children (including my next door neighbor who is due any day now) even if they’re card carrying indoctrinees of the Gospel According to Marx as reinterpreted by Marcuse. I believe in applying John Carter’s defiant cry to all of humanity, “Yet, I live!”

    1. That has been my biggest disappointment in finally renting a house back in 2014.

       There are effectively no children here. Next door they have one daughter we’ve watched go from 11 to getting ready for college, but that’s it.

       Despite my general hatred of everything, I wish I had kids to come to play on my law. Big front lawns lined up next to each other without games of tag or football or baseball or whatever, even association rules overacting  football, is just wrong. Hell, come play on my lawn and as long as you don’t terrorize the cats I’ll make you lemonade and cookies. It’s bad enough it was never my kids playing in my yard, but I don’t even get the neighbor’s kids doing it.

       1. We’re getting more and more families in the area around RedQuarters. This is good! Occasionally nerve-wracking when a toddler gets ball-fixation and darts out of the yard before mom/dad/sibling can intervene, but good.

          1. I’d rather get my brakes done more often than live somewhere without children outside playing.

             Too often that is not an option. Even when there are children they are not allowed outside to play in the streets and yards of the neighborhood as we were.

             1. When I worked in Key West and lived up-Key, rainy season was really fun.
                The streets flooded, and there was one street that you had to get up a head of steam and race through the flood otherwise you wouldn’t make it (I drove a Mazda RX-7, old style).
                So, we’d line up, and the kids would wait on the wooden porch next to the flood. We’d wave and launch the car. The kids would brace themselves.
                The wave of water pushed the kids up, across the wooden sidewalk, into the building, and would suck them out into a huge-ass wave that flooded the street and carried them a block away if you had a good speed going and a big vehicle.
                We’d go for hours, cars lining up to make a big wave and a dozen kids at a time on the sidewalk, being flooded and pushed by the wave down the street.
                Damned fun.

                1. That is most likely going to be the best thing I read today and get journaled as the best thing that happened today…thank you.

                   1. I wish I could communicate the look on the kids’ faces right before you took off for the water. Straight, flat out, wide-eyed joy.

                2. The street I have traveled many years to work, has one block that, when it rains, the storm drain drains into the street. Not so bad as you describe, but it was fun when I drove a VW bug with a hole in the floorboard.

                   1. Yes! And almost as much fun is forgetting there is a hole in the floorboard.

       2. I suspect we’ll start seeing an increase in births fairly soon. Good demographic and biological reasons for it. We’re in the middle of a mini baby bust following the echo baby boom but that should reverse soon. Will it rise to replacement levels? Don’t know, but the child bearing age cohorts accelerate out to 2031 or so, absolute declines in the cohorts don’t start till after 2040.

          1. Unless the experimental retrovirus treatments have sterilized 100 million people.

             Don’t tell me the Leftroids wouldn’t celebrate in secret if they did.

             1. Wouldn’t be secret, wouldn’t last long.

             2. This keeps reminding me of an SG1 storyline with an alternate future where some alien race comes and offers us the cure for all ills. It’s only a decade or so later it’s discovered that those cures have also rendered 90+% of the population infertile.

                1. The Aschen. Nasty little bastards

       3. Between screen time and stranger danger, I hardly ever see kids in the yard. About ten years ago there was a decent network of elementary kids where we lived in a downtown mill town, but we moved a few miles away and the only people I see outdoors are adults doing yardwork. My biological father (insufficiently late and lamented) asked me repeatedly why I wasn’t letting Kid play with the neighborhood munchkins and could never quite wrap his head around there not being any…

    2. When we moved to our house in ’88 we were expecting our first (and only). One of our regrets is there wasn’t a lot of homes with young children on our street. We live within sight of the front of the grade school! Then double disappointing when the school grounds weren’t the gathering spot for pickup basketball and baseball. Or that we couldn’t with good conscious state “just be home by dinner”. Latter we both grew up under. The former, the grade school I attended wasn’t neighborhood central (busy business corner), but that is what hubby remembers. The one we are should have been, and should be. Now we have a lot of families moving in as the heirs are selling homes of my parents generation. But still the grade school playground isn’t the spontaneous gather place. Not even during last two years when at least one or both parents were home. It is one thing to know your child is roaming and playing with a group of children. It is different to turn that same child loose alone. Interestingly enough the new neighbors across the street, with 6 children, bought the house because the children had outside basket hoops to play at the school, instead of playing in the street in front of the house. Guess where they play? Our street is a side street, and except for school start/let-out, isn’t very busy. But still …

15. ” If most of your friends — your friends! — say you’re strange. If your opinion tends to be not only different from mainstream, but sideways and upside down so that the conventional thinkers can’t figure out if you agree/disagree/are completely insane: stand up.”
    This is why I love your blog. It gets tiring when I realize that as I am leading the group off in a new direction only to realize the group has stopped and is staring in aghast fascination. The most consistent thing all my friends over the years have called me is weird. I get itchy if the crowd’s opinion and mine align to closely. My poor wife (who is not an odd) has never fully understood that streak within me.

    1. I get itchy if the crowd’s opinion and mine align to[o] closely.

       You are NOT alone.

       1. Yep.

       2. Nope. On the rare occasions when I find that I’m in agreement with the majority I think, “Whoa! What am I doing wrong?”. The good occasions are the ones in which I find that I misunderstood what the majority actually thought…

          1. Ummm…I should clarify that my “Nope” meant “No, you are not alone”, and thus meant the same thing as Sarah’s “Yep”.

16. Be free! As we direct.
    Rebel! As we direct.
    Dissent! As we direct.
    Be uniquely you! As we direct.
    Do as you will! As we direct.

    1. <smiles.
       How ’bout no.

       1. How ’bout “Not only no, but hell no!”…followed by “Look! Squirrel!” and a “phttt” sound and the clatter of the bolt going home…

    2. It’s like the old joke about being different by being all the same aimed at goths.

       The best answer also fits our hostess’s observation about Odds:

       We already feel different. We are trying to be the same.

       1. Or the gaggle of punks I saw lounging on the steps of the cathedral in Mainz, Germany. Obviously punks, and obviously being aggressively different without saying a word or causing trouble.

    3. They say I can’t be a nonconformist because I’m not like the other nonconformists.

       1. The most rigidly conformist people I’ve ever interacted with were self-anointed nonconformists. There was only one way not to conform, and you had better conform to Their Way, or else.

       2. Steve Martin’s Nonconformist Oath

          1. I wanted to be non-conformist, but they didn’t have uniforms in my size.

             1. What about multiforms?

          2. And keep a live chicken in your underwear!!

             1. Or worse!

                https://worldnewsdailyreport.com/indiana-egg-farmer-transported-to-hopsital-with-a-live-adult-chicken-stuck-in-his-rectal-cavity/

                1. er…. what?

                   1. Last time I encountered something like that in anything approaching real life, it involved a lover’s quarrel and a gray squirrel… which “was alive when it went in” according to the ER nurse on duty….

                      1. BLINK.

                         1. The mother of a guy I went to HS with was the nurse. Gay lover’s triangle, which wasn’t the norm for Montgomery AL.

                         2. Never. Ever. Ask ER nurses for stories. Ever.

                            1. I had a son who was an ER scribe for two years. We got the stories….

                            2. Poor dude….

                               How is he doing, anyway? He’s doing his residency now, IIRC?

                            3. yeah

                      2. I was going to say “Steve, are you kink shaming?” but instead I’m going for the truth “Steve, do you want me to stop sleeping?”

                         1. I never kink shame; I don’t care unless proven coercion is involved. However, it was an early indication that same-sex marriage wasn’t going to be any less fraught than the usual, all claims to the contrary.

                            1. Apparently the worst for assault and battery are lesbian couples. Which makes sense. WHen women fight, there’s no boundaries.

                            2. I suspect that a great deal of coercion was employed upon the squirrel… 😮

                            3. Poor squirrel.
                               Let’s hold a minute of silence for Nutty the Squirrel.

                            4. For the record, in the other one, that chicken probably had ptsd for life.

                            5. it was an early indication that same-sex marriage wasn’t going to be any less fraught than the usual, all claims to the contrary.

                               –
                               The first report of a same sex marriage trying to get a divorce was hilarious, I thought. Provision to get married. No provision to get divorced … oops. Worse case of child neglect I’ve ever seen was regarding a single sex cohabitation couple.

                               Not really in a position to experience a lot of abuse or neglect situations, so not really a data point that means anything.

                            6. In the early days when they admitted they wanted marriage, many of them offered as the main reason that they had as much right as straights to use the courts to split up.

                            7. Having seen middle aged guys dumped and left with nothing after a life time of being “housewives” that actually makes perfect sense.

17. Metallica’s “Eye of the Beholder” certainly comes to mind. Often.

18. I don’t know why I never tried to be like everyone else. I’m not dyslexic, autistic, or challenged. I have no excuses. I WAS crazy as a child, throwing irrational tantrums on occasion, seemingly just for the hell of it. My father held me under a cold shower once for 5 minutes, and my mother swore she could literally see the steam coming off me. After about 4th grade something changed in me so that now most of my friends have one story, “about that time that Frank got mad,” since those occasions are so rare. Something about Christ just sunk in eventually. I never felt like I had to “accept Christ into my heart,” as the Protestants like to say. It was more like the disciples’ “To whom shall we go?”

    Many of you have heard me say, “To say I was raised by wolves is an insult to the parenting skills of wolves.” Despite frequently working literally 1,000 yards from where my parents are interred, I have never visited their final resting place. I never seem to walk the same way everybody else does. Yet, to my surprise, I’ve found that many people have liked and even admired me for going my own way. I may walk alone, but I never felt shunned. Their attitude seemed to always be a sort of mystified, “There’s Frank, standing alone on the hill, staring into the sunset again. Wonder what he sees.”

    I’ve been finally watching “The Expanse” and find myself identifying with the James Holden character. Nobody’s hero, certainly not to himself, just somebody trying to do the right thing as much as he can.

    1. I don’t know when you grew up or experienced childhood or whatever the least lousy term is, but is it any surprise at least some of those told “It’s OK to do your own thing” go and… do their own thing?

       1. Well I was born in 1951, so “Do your own thing,” didn’t become a thing until I was about 16, so I was a child of Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and the Donna Reed show for whatever that’s worth.

19. Sarah, you sent me down the rabbit hole. Listening to new music.

    Thank you.

20. Fortunately, we’re nothing if not unusual. As Kate Paulk is likely to say “Think outside the box? What box? I can’t find the box.”

    The box is a lie. I’m with Kate and the rest of y’all on this one. I think the box everyone is supposed to think their way out of is just a myth.

21. I know where the box is! It’s just in from the cellar, full of potatoes, and I had to stop the cat from shredding it already.

    Wrong box? Well, it’s the one I’ve got, so it’ll have to do.

    1. The Wrong Box? Lucky you. Slip it in the DVD player and hit PLAY.

22. c4c

23. Putin’s close personal “advisor” and oft-mouthpiece is on record as saying that if Putin loses that “the end of Putin will be the end of the world”. When asked if that means Putin would cause a nuclear holocaust, he said yet.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/03/21/putins-brain-calls-russian-war-in-ukraine-fight-against-american-hegemony-warns-world-will-end-if-russia-defeated/

    Seems clear that Putin has gone completely insane. Perhaps the rumors of him having Parkinsons, which is known to cause delusions, are true.

    1. Could be pure bluff.

    2. OR projecting that is useful to him.

       1. Well, if he’s still really an atheist, the world does end when he dies. For him, anyway, he thinks.

          1. I’m an atheist too, and I have no desire to nuke the world regardless of what happens to me.

    3. It would take more than just Putin to nuke the world. There is a chain of command.

       Want a wildcard? How ‘bout China pushing up toward Vladivostok rather than Taiwan. Chinese Irredentism goes way beyond an island. China’s territorial claims are … vast.

       Oh, BTW Evergrande cannot file its Q1 financials and banks have seized $2 billion US in cash. Several other property forms are delaying filing since their auditors are refusing to certify the numbers. Property prices are down 50% in many areas, Property is conservatively 27% of GDP. The need for short victorious wars to take the people’s mind off their problems isn’t limited to Vlad the Invader. Just sayin.

       1. Xi has no need to do that; by making Russia so economically dependent on the CCP, he is turning Russia into a vassal state.,

          1. Xi has bigger problems of his own. Things are bad in China, really, really bad. Social contract is middle class get rich leave politics to CCP, if the middle class stops getting rich? Almost all Chinese wealth is in property and property is in trouble. Did I mention that the regional Chinese government get all their revenue from property sales and there’s no social safety net?

             I don’t think it’s likely, but if I were a Chinese general up on the border that’s been contested, sometimes violently, for a long time with all those natural resources just sitting there — China claims most of Siberia. I might fancy my chances.

             1. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. China has a long tradition of the rise of contesting warlords when the central government begins to fail, and I doubt the fact that the current government is nominally Communist would change that.

             2. I have been thinking that things must be bad in China since they started locking down for Covid again the other week. Since we know from our experience in the U.S. that Covid isn’t that deadly and lockdowns don’t work anyway, I figured the lockdowns were for something else. Maybe locking down restless dissidents, or the populace at large is getting too restless?

                1. Yep. Governments only lockdown because they fear the people. ALWAYS.

                2. Well, it certainly would hit a bunch of malnourished, lung-damaged people significantly harder than healthy North Americans.

                3. Evergrande defaulted on another payment today. US Dollar Bond holders have begun to sue to force evergrande into liquidation, as is customary under HK law, which is where the bonds are issued. China will have to, again, suspend the law or face disorderly liquidation of most of its property sector. I mean, who does Xi think he is to suspend the rule of law, Joe Biden?

                   Everyone seems to think that China can do all this with impunity, but behind the bully facade is a very weak, damaged economy with really big problems. Xi is the public face of the crackdown on leverage. He owns this and the crackdown on Chinese tech. He did all this as an attack on his primary rival, Liu He. All his rivals, and Liu He in particular, want only an opportunity and Xi will go join his ancestors.

                   Also, every time China suspends the markets for short term advantage they raise the cost of capital in China. The most recent insanity has it that the local authorities will bail out property, which ignores the fact that the local authorities get all their money from property. No property speculation, no revenue. At the end of the day, tyrannies fall because the flow of information fails. Xi, essentially, just commanded the tide to stop.

                   1. I’m tired of living in interesting times. (Not as interesting as what I’m teaching now, and please G-d may it not get that interesting, but too interesting for my personal tastes.)

                      1. Sunac, the third largest property developer in China has just requested a delay in their $625mm payment due 1 April. They had said as late as yesterday that they had the cash in hand to pay it. They will also miss filing their year end reports since their auditor resigned. Several other property firm’s auditors have also resigned. If they miss the reporting date, they’ll be delisted from the Hang Seng.

                         In US news, the 5/7/10 year yield curve continues to be inverted and the benchmark 10/2 has dropped to a level that has been followed by recession every time it’s occurred. The financial press responded with its usual gravitas by asking “why should we be concerned about this squiggly line?”

                         Congress is introducing legislation to provide a $100 per month bonus to every American to cover the higher oil prices that are the result of the money printing and supply suppression legislated by that very same Congress, cause and effect is for peasants don’t you know? Biden may not be interested in Milton Friedman, but Milton Friedman is very interested in Joe Biden.

                         The cure for high prices is high prices, the cure comes by way of demand destruction, which is just the current euphemism for recession, which I turn is the euphemism for economic depression.

                         And for Sarah’s mood, house sales have been declining sharply as the high prices and rising interest rates drive affordability levels too high.

                         Buckle up boys and girls.

                         1. Absolutely none of those are good signs on their own. Put them all together and things start looking very, very ugly.

                      2. TXRed said “I’m tired of living in interesting times.”. You and me both I may look like a Rigellian but at heart I’m a Hobbit. I just want my nice quiet life, I hate adventures… What are you teaching on now?

                         1. The inter-war years (1920s-late 30s) in one class and the Time of Troubles/Thirty Years War/Swedish Deluge in another. Waaaaay too many interesting times there!

                            1. 1920-1930s lots of complexity although it starts well 4/10 I should prefer not to. Thirty years war, there are some seriously ugly times especially in the various principalities of Germany 1/10 do not want.

          2. So he’s got the US and Russia

       2. BGE Said “Want a wildcard? How ‘bout China pushing up toward Vladivostok rather than Taiwan. Chinese Irredentism goes way beyond an island. China’s territorial claims are … vast.”
          Yeah when Russia started hauling troops out of the East and playing footsie with China I was wondering if China didn’t think the game was “Drop the Soap”. Taiwan looks to be a tough nut to crack. With the level of competence the Russia military has shown in Ukraine I wonder if Xi is getting tempted at what appears a softer target. Although as noted by others China has LOTS of other issues, and their forces have not shown themselves to be top notch either in facing off vs India in recent history. LOTS and Lots of uncertainty this is feeling like some of the hairiest times since I was a kid.

          1. Xi could argue that he’s just “reclaiming” Manchuria (and additional bits) and since there was a Mongol dynasty well, all of Mongolia should be Chinese because it once was. Right? (Ignoring a lot of other history, of course . . .)

             1. History not written or known in ther Middle Kingdom is not per se history 🙂

24. Cheer up! Do you want to “fit in”? To be “average”? Greatness does NOT “fit in”. By definition. So go do great things! Lieutenant Heinlein expects you to make your names to shine.

    1. I don’t want to shine. Shiny things attract attention. I want to be matte, and quiet, and stealthily make lots and lots of money from happy readers, and hear the lamentations of the Lit’rary Dahlings as they wail in the dust.

       1. Stealthy is good! I liked Mauldin’s “Willie and Joe” cartoon, in which they’re watching a tank, and one says, “Nah, not for me. A movin’ foxhole tends to attrack the eye.” 🙂

25. I’ve long ago come to the conclusion that I don’t want to be normal.

    I’ve seen what normal people like, what normal people want and it’s just so banal and grey and boring.

    But…these people that want to shock, just to shock the “normal” people? The “activist” that is a part of the “never ending struggle?” The people that think because they are above everyone, they should rule us all?

    I would prefer to be with the sheep than to be with these “wolves.”

    1. “I’ve seen what normal people like, what normal people want and it’s just so banal and grey and boring.”

       This seems somewhat appropriate:

       1. They don’t find it banal.

          1. Doesn’t mean it isn’t anyway.

             1. Since “banal” is defined by the reaction of the viewer, it can’t be objectively stated.

    2. But…these people that want to shock, just to shock the “normal” people? The “activist” that is a part of the “never ending struggle?” The people that think because they are above everyone, they should rule us all?

       I’m a career goth, which puts me adjacent to a number of outré subcultures, and I’ve never had a problem with any of them.* But the people whose entire ethos is épater le bourgeois are just tiresome.

       (* Okay, the bdsm people who started doing a scene at the goth club? They were a problem.)

       1. (*Okay, the bdsm people who started doing a scene at the goth club? They were a problem.)

          And, they should have ceased to be a problem by being thrown out (as a kink scene might get the club in trouble with the authorities).

          I’m tired of these shit-flinging idiot children.

          1. Oh, they were. And what’s even better? The girl was underage.

             Yeah, being 86ed was too kind.

             1. …no, what should have happened is that a bouncer should have sit on them until the cops came and the…lovers…escorted quietly out a back door. I’m sorry, if the girl was underage and the guy knew, they needed to be busted.

26. c4c

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