Stunning Brave

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Yes, of course we make fun when someone starts being hailed as “Stunning Brave” by the left. Because you know, some things are inevitable.

One of them is people who are hailed as stunning, brave! by the left are doing things that have almost zero chance of bringing any backlash, let along a higher price.

So mostly we sit around in shock at the stunning bravery of claiming some kind of heroism for, oh, being a climate alarmist — something already taught to every kid in school 20 years ago — or for “coming out” as gay, tolerance for which has also been taught in schools for 30 years, or for — say — saying that you think women are superior to men (which has been the unstated push of every school for decades — or for making fun of Christianity, which, yes, deeply offends the majority of this country (and large swathes of Europe) but which is so extremely unlikely to bring revenge down on your head as for that to be almost impossible.

Look, I’m not saying that iconoclastic defiance can’t be beneficial to a society. In a way, if art challenges the status-quo, we get the possibility of the culture correcting itself when it goes down some extreme insanity (oh, say, the covidiocy) without a big bloody revolution.

We know what super-compliant cultures are, from China, and we don’t want it. How many times have they burned it all down, then burned the books, and started over, in the same blinkered authoritarian way?

That’s not conducive to a future that’s better than the past (As G-d and Heinlein intended.)

What I’m saying is that what we’re seeing is not iconoclastic defiance. It’s in fact people pretending to be defiant, and to be in some kind of danger of backlash, while echoing the words that those power say, and the ideas they push on us.

What all the #sostunningbrave women (and men, but it’s mostly women) are doing is the equivalent of standing up in the middle of the class and telling teacher “Look, I know you might punish me for it, but I have to tell you that dress is beautiful, and it makes you look stunning. Also, you’re the best teacher I’ve ever had, so profoundly knowledgeable and caring.”

You can say you expect backlash, but you KNOW you’re going to get praised and rewarded. It is in fact why you’re doing that. Because you want the applause, but want to make it sound like you’re not a total suck up. which you are, of course.

You know what things take bravery to say?

Well, it’s become a joke among gay conservatives that coming out as gay was easy, it’s coming out as conservative that risks getting you fired or even physically attacked, if you work in certain fields and places.

But it doesn’t take that much. When you have a supreme court nominee afraid to — in any way — define a woman, you know the fear is real, the cancellations are real, and saying the simplest things like “women give birth” can get you expunged from the world of respectable people.

And yet, you know, reality goes on. Yes, body dismorphia is real, but if you’re born a biological female, you can give birth, if you’re not you cannot. And no amount of wishing will make it so.

Which means the rest of us need to be stunning brave for real, and stand up and proclaim the truth: inequality is just a symptom of freedom. The only way to have a society be completely equalitarian is to be a brutal, totalitarian repressive regime. (And even then, the ones at the top get perks. Biologically there are men and there are women. Yeah, you might feel like something else, and we are more or less — most of the time — decent human beings, so we’re not going to stop you living like you want to, or doing to yourself whatever you want to do to yourself, but stop denying that biological sex exists and has a meaning. And stop pushing this on children too young to know there is such a thing as sex, much less which they “feel” like. Because as of right now, people can’t actually change sexes. They can just take a lot of drugs and have surgery to make it seem like they did. But the side effects include a 4 times higher risk of cancer and sterilization. And if you’re an adult, you have the right to choose that for yourself, but kids don’t.

Other things. So many things you can say, including that no, in fact going against imaginary unbreakable rules of the imaginary 1950s by oh, wearing daring clothing, or swearing isn’t stunning brave. It’s just …. reinforcing the current rules.

In fact these days you can get attacked, cancelled or destroyed for saying “Good morning” or something equally innocuous. You don’t have to go against heir big, flamboyant precepts to get attacked or destroyed.

Sometimes it’s just what you are. Say, male, or worse male and white.

And sometimes it’s that you say something that was accepted until this morning, but the party has changed the line, and now 2 + 2 =43 and math is racist.

Look, society can’t go on like that. It is a mark of true evil that it takes everything apart and creates chaos.

Telling the truth can destroy you, but sometimes you have to do it. Let’s start with those of us who have less to lose — like me, like the rest of us who are on the lee-side of 50 and 60 — and maybe we’ll make it safe for the new generation to make a different future.

One based on actual reality.

194 thoughts on “Stunning Brave”

  1. You know one thing that take stunning bravery to say?

    “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”

      1. There’s another more recent case also highly political which was decided with a false premise so everything after was incorrect. And since I don’t read the opinions often, that likely applies to multiple cases. Inventing rights is not good.

      3. Eh, the smokescreen of ‘govt shouldn’t be involved in two party medical decisions’ is valid and something that shouldn’t be tossed aside like we have (covid meds, the inclusion of gen pop in trans therapy, etc). The issue here and in the case of minor transitions is the direct effect on a third party who cannot legally understand or consent.

        But the best answer is state by state vs an edict from district one.

      4. Will to Power.
        Undermining and destabilizing religious and familial bonds.

        1. Yep. They expressly call for destroying traditional families because they view them as part and parcel of western civilization and the functioning of “capitalist society”. If people have familial bonds with each other, they will not be wholly devoted to the Almighty State and will not be fully committed to serving “the collective”.

          Families are antithetical to Marxist rule.

    2. When I was in law school, even supporters of the result admitted that the opinion was highly defective..Roe had already given birth, making the case moot, so the Court invented a new excuse to take it…And abortion was obviously not protected by the Constitution, since every State had laws criminalizing it in 1790..So Blackmun invented a bunch of mumbo jumbo about privacy and “science”–(the Court never gets science right)–to come up with the result…which was to stir up political chaos…The draft correctly sends the issue back to the individual States, where it belongs…

    3. I’ve been saying from the time it was decided (when I was in High School and still believed the “pro-choicers” really wanted it legal but rare) that as a legal decision it was terrible. There’s no Constitutional authority for it. It was the Court enforcing a political compromise that may have been acceptable to a majority at the time – but it wasn’t (and isn’t) the Court’s place to make political compromises.

  2. Small quibble. Have to say that an ability to give birth is perhaps not the best fit. It’s more basic than that. Little girls are little girls from their own births to puberty. Older women are still women after menopause or a hysterectomy. Technically a female is simply a human in possession of two X chromosomes while lacking a Y component. Similarly a dude is a dude so long as that Y chromosome remains present in their body no matter what “corrective” surgeries are performed.
    On a somewhat related note, about this whole trans kerfuffle. Appears to me there are two (perhaps three, possibly four) distinct varieties of trans. You have transvestites who receive some degree of gratification, either sexual or emotional, from appearing as the opposite gender. Key word is appearing. Then you have the transsexuals who truly wish to be the other gender. Two separate distinct categories that could arguably be four if you differentiate between M to F and F to M.
    Point I’m trying to make is that gender dismorphia and playing dress up are two distinctly different topics for discussion.

    1. We’ve seen how the left turned on gay men before. And women (TERF’s and otherwise). Like as not the wheel will turn again on the trans. What are they “transitioning” to? Who would truly want to be a man or a woman, when both are now seen as bad?

      If “trans men” are men, then aren’t they just as bad as real men? Same, women?

      The left always turns to eat its own. Always.

    3. I keep thinking, “How do you KNOW you feel like a woman in a man’s body (or vice versa)? You have never lived in that sort of body, with a woman’s genes and hormonal balance, never mind the cultural impress. You cannot feel like a human of one sex in the body of another. It’s impossible.”
      And also wanting to ask why they can’t accept the full spectrum of masculinity/femininity and be comfortable in their own skin.
      Though I suppose you could go all in for reincarnation and claim Whoever misassigned you this time around, but I suspect even that won’t work.

      1. The internal contradictions in their various positions boggles the mind. 1) There is no real difference between the sexes, it’s all cultural. 2) A person can just “know” what gender they are and we all must join in pretending (usually of a very stereotyped gender role).

        It’s like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, who practices believing impossible things before breakfast.

              1. I thought it was satire. I really did. As far as flattering, we are referencing an old politician, not an actress. If she’s 15 pounds too heavy, it won’t affect her job. Or bribes. Or anything but the fit of the dress. Which makes her look 3 months pregnant.

                Note, if you reverse search that image… it doesn’t come up with the article. Although searching the headline brings it up. Must be MinTru allies at work, eh?

                    1. That is a very low bar.
                      Right now the trend in dresses and skirts is tiered ruffles which brings to mind a description in one of Heyer’s books of the effect of a frosted cake when on a short person. i

              3. Given what she’s been photographed in for I don’t know how long, that’s probably one of the nicest things that she’s worn in the last couple of decades. It’s somewhat surprising, actually.

        2. You forgot “3) Women are downtrodden even though there is no such thing”.

      2. Indeed – why can’t someone considering the (statistically) remote possibility that they might be trans – just admit to themselves that they might be a bit odd, not quite conforming to the accepted norm for male and female and just take pride and pleasure in the strengths and skills that they have? There is no greener grass on the other side of that gender fence. Acknowledge that, and accept yourself.

      3. That tying of stereotypes to gender seems to be the thing of it. Like power tools? You just be a boy! Like pink? You must be a girl!

        It’s as though every girl must be a carbon copy of every other girl that every lived, and every boy must be an identical clone of every other boy, otherwise they can’t possibly be a boy or a girl, and must be something else.

        Mix in the “joy” that is puberty (remember that body you had? Well, it’s going to dismantle itself and you’re going to be miserable for the next few years), and some really hideous ideas of what it is to be male and female (they don’t call it pornosexual for nothing) and I’m not at all surprised that teenagers are just saying “screw it, I’m clearly not any of those” and getting sucked into the meat grinder.

        And once you’ve done something like that to yourself, the only options are to justify it, or accept you’ve destroyed your future.

        1. And once you’ve done something like that to yourself, the only options are to justify it, or accept you’ve destroyed your future.

          Amazing how many of the Progressive ideas end up in that zone, isn’t it?
          Especially when you add in a lack of forgiveness for even minor “sins.” (Such as singing rap songs when you were a teen while being the wrong color.)

          1. Their racial and ethnic roles are also rather constrained as well.

            I suspect they can’t treat people as interchangeable widgets if they aren’t all drop-in identical, can they?

        3. My mother was a tomboy, and one of the rare girls with dyslexia. The words and letter would not hold still on the page for her until after puberty started. She always had a soft spot for Reader’s Digest magazine because she found one by the side of the road one summer and it was the first time she was actually able to read something.

          She loved tools and gadgets, and the best thing to gift her was an unassembled item. She had as much fun reading the instructions and assembling things as she did from using the finished pieces.

        4. The Arbiters of Everything are now enforcing rigid gender stereotypes with joyless viciousness. They are the new Inquisition, strangling creativity and punishing free thinkers, cutting off the corners of the human soul to make everyone fit as they deem necessary.

          Be a Dangerous Thinker.

      4. The defensive accusation on that one is that a man who believes he should be a woman, and is currently presenting as a woman, is a better woman than a born woman– because he chose to be female, and learned it, and is thus more authentic.

        There’s a couple of somewhat famous “trans women” who made this argument, at least one did so in print, and it’s one of the things that had me face-palming since it was entirely predictable from the same guys who have spent decades telling women what to think in order to be allowed to be recognized as “really” women.

      5. “And also wanting to ask why they can’t accept the full spectrum of masculinity/femininity and be comfortable in their own skin.”
        THIS.
        I spent some time reading definitions of what the stuff after LGBT stands for and it is mostly “I don’t think I fit social expectations for this or that related to sex or gender.” And they have an incredibly narrow idea of sex and gender, so they come up with genders for ‘not interested in sex’, ‘I like stuff that used to be considered boyish in the 50’s’, ‘turned on more easily by fiction than real people’. These people have no idea of normal variations between men and women, so they make up a letter for everything.
        It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. So you’re a woman because you like pink? You’re a boy because menstruation is icky?

      6. Someone (possibly Crowder) asked a couple of trans this very question on air during a discussion on a stream hosted and moderated by a third party (I’d like to say Rogan, but I’m not sure). And unsurprisingly, they couldn’t answer it. It’s impossible for them to answer, because the very logic that they espouse insists on blurring the lines between men and women to make those lines irrelevant.

    4. Point I’m trying to make is that gender dismorphia and playing dress up are two distinctly different topics for discussion.

      Not according to the trans activists. If you dare, look up the term “eggs” in relation to trans identity.

      But, nope, common variety cross dressers have gone the way of women, replaced by “transwomen” in both cases.

    5. Beautifully and scientifically put, sir.
      It is mere possession of a Y, or the absence of one, that divides male from female.
      Many of the ambiguous-to-appearance people (those that NATURALLY may seem to be the other sex) deserve our respect, and forebearance. Missing/malformed male genitalia, production of hormones that cause a misleading sexual appearance, and other such occurrences should entitle that person to be permitted some cultural slack. In such cases, a person might be given the respect of a scientifically inaccurate legally ficticious gender assignment, and permitted to call themselves what they chose. Such an assignment almost exclusively affect genetic males. The so-called “women without a vagina” are men who have malformed male parts. Queen Elizabeth I may have been one such. Although lacking the structures to enable him to be considered the male heir, he also lacked the parts to allow him to function as a women. He became bald (long before post-menopausal women develop thinning hair), had a coarse complexion that was masked with heavy makeup, was quite tall for a ‘woman’, and was very slim and without much in the way of breasts or roundedness of figure.

  3. My nephew was going on about the bravery of one of his professors. I quipped that a brave prof would mentor the college republicans. Silence. Golden.

  4. And an even worse example, I think, than the cheapening of the word CHARITY is the new newspaper cheapening of the word COURAGE.

    Any man living in complete luxury and security who chooses to write a play or a novel which causes a flutter and exchange of compliments in Chelsea and Chiswick and a faint thrill in Streatham and Surbiton, is described as “daring,” though nobody on earth knows what danger it is that he dares. I speak, of course, of terrestrial dangers; or the only sort of dangers he believes in. To be extravagantly flattered by everybody he considers enlightened, and rather feebly rebuked by everybody he considers dated and dead, does not seem so appalling a peril that a man should be stared at as a heroic warrior and militant martyr because he has had the strength to endure it.
    ― G.K. Chesterton

    1. Alas, I have heard the response to this kind of quote too often, and can recite it by heart, if not verbatim, at least in paraphrase:

      ‘Dead white man bad. Too long, didn’t read. Sentence gots too many words. Ha ha, me smart, you dumb.’

        1. The Hulk at his lowest intellectual level would be a raving genius compared to many of the SJW/Tranzi types. Hulk smash you say that again!

      2. Eh, some people can’t be reached.

        To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.- Thomas Paine

    2. We have far too many Tomlinsons among us.

      “And back they came with the tattered Thing, as children after play,
      And they said: “The soul that he got from God he has bartered clean away.
      We have threshed a stook of print and book, and winnowed a chattering wind
      And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot find:
      We have handled him, we have dandled him, we have seared him to the bone,
      And sure if tooth and nail show truth he has no soul of his own.”

        1. Boats an’ tanks and planes, it’s your game
          Kings an’ queens an’ generals learn your name
          I see all the innocents, the human sacrifice
          And if death comes so cheap
          Then the same goes for life!

          Joe Strummer, The Clash off Give Them Enough Rope,

  5. On truth and lies and risk besides..

    Have y’all caught the latest kerfluffle? Striking down Roe and Casey, given the current political climate is a significant event.

    And given the presence of those thin metal fence “barriers” that spontaneously sprouted around the Supreme Court building, at least someone has seen that spotlight against the clouds. There will be fiestyness and fiery fury awakened from this, mark my words.

    But that should be no surprise to any of you who read this.

    I am no legal scholar, folks. But my humble opinion is that this was nor released by one of the activist justices. Not if it could have been leaked by a law clerk attending one of those justices.

    That would keep the censure from the justices themselves, preventing another case of impeaching a sitting justice. Yes, it has happened before. But as the SCOTUSblog stated yesterday, the loss of trust among justices and the staff this has caused will be massive.

    It will be some time yet before the Supreme Court finalizes the decision. Time for external pressure to be applied. And it will be.

    Who is the one who actually shows bravery here? Is it the law clerk who trashes decades of trust and faith? Or is it the justice that refuses to be swayed from what they believe, despite the very real threat to not only themselves but their families? That latter is a threat that can break strong men in an instant.

    The law clerk will have cover for their actions from the media and the democrats. They’ll be invited on talk shows. Sell books. That person’s future is not likely one of threat, but of promise, judging from past experience.

    “I will bravely accept the burden of eating the cake with chocolate frosting!” Says the activist leftist. “Is my taking on the burden of a vacation in the Bahamas stunning? Of course it is!”

    Corrupt use of language remains wrong, no matter how prettily they dress it up. Bravery only need exist when real threats exist. An occurrence now so commonplace one can set their watch by it lacks the impact of an event that could be called “stunning.”

    Men are not women, nor the reverse. Children are not to be sexualized, that is perversion. Life is worth protecting in the womb and the murder of children is always wrong. Race does not exist, save in the minds of fools and the credulous. And trust, once broken, takes at minimum one order of magnitude more effort to rebuild than what it took to build it in the first place- and that, with the best intention and good will in the world.

    I believe we’ve seen the first salvo here in the left’s fight to save their seats in the coming election. It won’t be the last.

    1. Will the violent leftists who try to storm the Supreme Court building and attack the justices be declared insurrectionists by the same Democrats who declared the J6 protestors to be insurrectionists? Of course not. No matter how violent leftists are they are declared to be “mostly peaceful” and all of their violence is declared to be justified.

      The primary purpose of the leak in my opinion was to create a pretext for Democrats to eliminate the Senate filibuster and pack the Court so they can ram through the Green Leap Forward, National Fraud by Mail, and Mao’s Cultural Revolution Redux, before the November elections. This is intended particularly through their federalization of elections to create universal mail voting without ID so they can commit massive fraud and seize absolute power so they can rule CCP style in what they believe will be perpetuity.

      A reminder that leftists/Democrats only care about institutions to the extent that they serve their will to power, as they seek absolute totalitarian power “by any means necessary”.

      1. A standard screwdriver used continually as a pry bar to open paint cans and separate items eventually fails to turn a standard screw.

        I think the Democrats who think this will word run the risk of finding their screwdriver no longer turns screws.

      2. Of course they want to do that but so far have been unable, and the time when their revolution can be actually put into place is passing swiftly. Thanks to a couple of Democrats who, when the chips were down, stood fast for the Republic, I think we will survive this attempted coup.

    2. Evil will oft doth evil mar. This was a discussion document and didn’t necessarily mean there was a majority in favor of it. Wobbly Roberts now has to face up to the fact that he would be seen, publicly, to have buckled to political pressure. He won’t want to do that, so this might actually increase the probability of repeal.

      Another point is that it’s unclear that this is an issue that resonates with any but the already militant dem voters, quite the contrary, perhaps. This could be the issue that causes social conservative black voters to question what, exactly, they have in common with militant atheist rich white women from NYC and SF. If the black vote doesn’t go 95% Dem, they’ve lost, forever. Splitting the black vote greatly reduces the margin of fraud too.

      I do wonder just what actually existing black people think about having rich kids coming in and burning their neighborhoods down.

      1. Easy solution. If one flips, Roberts and the investigation makes some scapegoat from Alito or Thomas’s clerk. Forges evidence they submitted to politico and says it was trying to gin up support for Alitos “firebrand, religious tirade” Probably Thomas since he’s already in congress crosshairs and media will lap it up like a cat with cream.

      2. The left’s fanaticism on social issues also drives away Hispanic voters, especially immigrants who are generally much more religiously conservative than the Democratic Party elites who are pushing the fanaticism. It also again highlights the absurd hypocrisy of Democrats:

        1. What a hilarious hole they’ve dug for themselves. Let’s see if they keep shovelling.

      3. I’m… not so sure about that. When 40% of urban Black pregnancies end in abortions, that is a large-ish constituency of users.

        1. 40% of New York pregnancies; black women are 36% (usually phrased as “nearly 40%”) of abortions, roughly double what you’d expect demographically. Between one in four and one in five black pregnancies end in induced abortion. What they don’t like to mention about that statistic is that the “women” in those cases are actually girls, while the father is mom’s boyfriend, often much older boyfriend. Systematic concealment of statutory rape. Which is why Veritas had such an easy time finding someone to teach them how to coach under-aged girls into hiding their age.

          1. (Note: the stats are collected by people who have motivation to overstate how common it is, and history with making up stats, and the mostly-gov’t collected stats are geographically limited but include California and New York.)

            1. The homogeneity of black and Hispanic voters is greatly overstated.

              In the back of my mind is Boris Johnson’s piercing the red wall in the last election by actually going through with Brexit. Many Labour Party voters voted Tory for the first time in generations, probably the first time their families had ever voted Tory. Labour was no longer a working man’s party but rather the party of rich, Oxbridge educated luvvies from Islington.

              That’s why Trump had to go, he was popular with a lot of black people and that would never do. If black people stop voting as a block the dems are done.

              1. One of the things Trump did– and I’m pretty sure I mentioned on this very blog that I thought he was absolutely not faking it, BEFORE he won– was talk about having been pro-abortion before, and changing his mind. Because he finally actually HELD a baby, and … well, the humanity of the child hit him.

                That, I believe was genuine.

                1. Trump strikes me as a normal human being who reacts to things the way normal humans do, not like the DC, Hollywood, SF, NYC crowd who are just a bunch of mentally ill people and psychopaths.

                  Availability bias has us all convinced, at least in part, that this is the way it has to be. It doesn’t, it wasn’t always, and has to stop being so.

              2. If black people stop voting as a block the dems are done.

                Not if they get to count the votes and cheat like it’s 2020 again.

                1. Black pill much?

                  Note that 2020 needed five counties in swing states to do the dirty. (Er, going from memory on the metro areas: Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, [forget] , and Maricopa County in AZ.)

                  For congress, it’s going to take a bit more work. (435 congresscritters, 33ish senators) I don’t know if they can do it, but “just like 2020” isn’t part of the process.

                  1. https://www.theepochtimes.com/subpoenas-issued-in-georgia-ballot-trafficking-investigation_4440986.html

                    “An investigative team from TTV used cell phone tracking, geo-fencing, and video footage to show that 242 mules collected thousands of absentee ballots from voters and made 5,668 stops at drop boxes in the metro Atlanta area in late 2020.

                    The data is supplemented by statements from a whistleblower who also shed light on a number of NGOs orchestrating and funding the unlawful effort.

                    Ballot harvesting was outlawed in Georgia in 2019.

                    The evidence provided by TTV is the basis of Dinesh D’Dsouza’s new movie “2000 Mules”, which is scheduled to debut the first week of May at theaters nationwide and on streaming services.”

                    “She voiced her displeasure with the incumbent Republicans seeking reelection that are presiding over the upcoming midterm elections in Georgia, including Kemp, Raffensperger, and Attorney General Chris Carr.

                    “They have publicly torched our data. They have done whatever they could to delegitimize our work,” alleged Engelbrecht.

                    “A state official has tried to intimidate our contractors by warning them that there may be no more state contracts,” she said.

                    “It’s either fix 2020 or we have no hope for 2022,” she added.”

                    True The Vote has been investigating bad elections for a while. Read the whole thing. And then realize that a lot of those holes are unplugged.

        2. It’s also possible that most of the mothers in those statistics are frequent fliers. The actual numbers might not be as high as you expect.

          1. Yep, I knew a few who had multiple. One group of women, each had at least one abortion, with the multiples yearly or so.

        4. “When 40% of urban Black pregnancies end in abortions genocide, that is a large-ish constituency of users.” Plus how many post delivery? Again, genocide by any other name.

          FIFY

          1. Planned Parenthood has a much better PR firm than Hitler did. He was left in the dust, body-count-wise, quite some time ago. They’re closing in on Stalin.

      4. “political pressure. ”

        Political? Only in the sense that “war is politics via other means”.

    3. I wouldnt read too much into the barricades. If the park police, court security didn’t have sufficient crowd barriers and such on site and a rapid deployment plan it would be a massive dereliction. As soon as that popped up on politico any competent security should have recognized that they were going to have high energy demonstrations at the least. I wouldn’t be surprised at an assassination attempt tbh.

      And yes, this assumes lack of intentional incompetence as likely on J6.

      1. Well, the Chief Justice is taking the Leak very seriously so there might be something going on.

      2. Then what good are they?

        We’ve spent about a half century fighting for a coherent legal philosophy that promises to end this atrocity.

        If they don’t keep faith, the system is too corrupt to be saved.
        Raze it.
        Burn it.
        Salt the earth.

    5. Via Insty, this great question is asked about how the FBI will respond/not respond to the leak:

      2. I expect them to raid Alito’s house to search for evidence he leaked it.

        Then again, I expect “mostly peaceful” riots at the home of the five GOP-appointed justices who aren’t proven to have evolved on the bench with at least one peaceful arson attempt.

  6. Get ready for another fiery, but mostly peaceful summer, folks.

      1. The problem is that the parts that burn aren’t the Georgetown townhouses or Kalorama mansions where the folks instigating all this live but that of lower class folks.

      2. DC could use a good prescribed burn. I recommend keeping the burning going until all the politicians, bureaucrats, and lobbyist are ashes.

      3. Won’t even have to ask the British to assist. Just hope they avoid the Smithsonian, and the Archives . . .

      1. It’s never insurrection when the left does it; after all the Democrats support the people throwing bombs at government buildings while chanting “no borders, no walls, no USA at all”.

        The revolution they want and have wanted is a Marxist revolution, and they are quite open about it at this point.

        2. Not when the professors and admins are gving out course credits and excused absences for attending.

  7. “Stunningly brave” is the little girl who comes home from school crying that she’s a racist simply because of the color of her skin, and gets up and goes back to school anyway.

    Stunningly brave is the man who is asked to lead a CRT training for his work and tells the manager that he’s going to use facts.

    Stunningly brave is the trans individual who turns her back on the “agenda” and stands up for children who are being victimized in her name.

    There are many people in this society who are brave. They are routinely laughed at, mocked and cancelled.

    1. ““Stunningly brave” is the little girl who comes home from school crying that she’s a racist simply because of the color of her skin, and gets up and goes back to school anyway.”
      THIS
      Brought a tear to my eye.

      1. From 1984: “‘You’re a traitor!’ yelled the boy. ‘You’re a thought criminal! You’re a Eurasian spy! I’ll shoot you, I’ll vaporize you, I’ll send you to the salt mines!’ Suddenly they were both leaping around him, shouting ‘Traitor!’ and ‘Thought-criminal!’, the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gamboling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters.””

        This is what the modern school system seeks to turn children into. Those who expose it and challenge it are the brave ones.

  8. Are they willing to die for their perverted agenda? Are any on the left so “stunning, brave” as to stare down the barrel of a loaded pistol and say, “Do your worst. My soul is prepared!”

    Naw, didn’t think so. When things go kinetic they will scatter like cockroaches as the kitchen light is flipped on. And I can’t even blame them. Defending pedophilia is hardly the hill to die on, especially if you know deep inside that it is an abomination.

    1. There are always some ideologues that are willing to die for it. Typically they don’t move past the foot soldier stage. While they’re busy standing up to the man out on the street, their more cynical associates spend their own time playing politics within their organizations, and moving up in the ranks.

  9. I’m tired… With the vax, the courts, masks, BLM, Russia, war, famine, etc. and on forever it seems.

    At this point it is “stunningly Brave” to simply get up each morning and go on with life. All around us we hear of doom and despair yet we fix breakfast and go out into the world to work or do what ever it is we do in spite of all the awful things in the world – now that’s brave! Those of us ‘here’ making comments are an example. I don’t put on any armor but I do grab the .38, billfold, keys and a hat and it’s off I go!

    1. My going through life every day isn’t bravery. It’s an act of faith and I’m not sure in a positive way.

      Every day I wake up disappointed that I’m here to wake up. Still, suicide is a mortal sin so I’m here until some other authority decides otherwise. If I have to be here I have to do the bare minimum to survive: eat, work, take meds when I remember. But I do it out of belief in God and his moral order which says I’m obligated to at least do the bare minimum.

      Is that enough for Him to look in my heart and see I have accepted his forgiveness? Don’t know, but I know the alternative is a lot less likely to reach that outcome.

        1. Fortitude. The traditional name for the virtue covers a lot, and this is towards the center of even the usual meaning.

          In herbn’s case it sounds like there’s some Prudence and even Faith added in. But mostly Fortitude.

      2. I really hope this doesn’t come across as twee. It’s not intended that way.

        BUT I used to be in a church group with a young woman, a recent Christian who had Done (and Suffered) Some Shit. Every time that she mentioned being in any sort of pain, she’d follow it up with “and I know I deserve it”. Broke my heart. My response, when the words came, was to tell her about the time my toddler fell into the pond. As I fished her out, I wasn’t thinking “oh, she deserves to be scared and wet and coughing”, I was thinking “MY BABY IS SAFE”.

        He sees your heart, and he knows His baby is safe. For the rest, I truly hope you find something here-and-now that’s worth waking up for.

        …I will now slink off in embarassment for getting more personal than my wont. 🙂

        1. I know he sees. I also know I’m good enough at self-deception that I don’t see what he sees, I’m just not sure if on the good days I see myself as having faith I don’t or if on bad days I see myself as not having faith I have.

          So, I recite the Creed and the Jesus Prayer, do enough to survive every day, and on the days I feel better than surviving do a little more.

          As for deserving it, I’ll admit to being a bit of the Dave Ramsey school of “better than I deserve” everyday. If I it wasn’t, I would be needing God’s Grace.

        2. Don’t be embarrassed, be joyful that you are so superior morally to those rioting at the USSC for the ability to rid themselves of “inconvenient burdens” that they they can’t even see you in the James Webb Telescope. Your post was one of the best, and most uplifting, I’ve seen in the past month.THANK YOU!

  10. Going on 18 years ago now, I began a trip from where I was living in central Nebraska toward “Somewhere East”. Since I didn’t have a reliable car, I took a backpack and a pair of shoes and I was going to walk it. I still don’t know whether that was stunning brave, foolhardy, or desperate. It wasn’t something I would recommend for anyone else, but for me at the time it seemed necessary. It turned out well enough,,,not as well as I had hoped, not as badly as some feared.
    One of my goals was to see if the country really was in as bad a shape as the media portrayed it. I came out convinced that it is not. Even yet. Yes, we have our problems, but good news doesn’t make the headlines, and there is a lot of it.
    As long as we have differences between the old and the young, the sick and the healthy, not to mention all the other myriad differences of personality, ability, and desire, we will always have rich and the poor and NEVER have complete and exact equality of circumstances and stations in life.
    It is rank folly to pretend that all injustice can be redressed by force of law or even social opinion. What I have observed in life is that most often, the more zealous you are in striving to correct one evil in society, the more likely it is that you are committing another, and sometimes a worse one. As far as I know, only God has sufficient perspective to view us all impartially (all flesh is grass, from that perspective) and the farther we get from paying attention to what God has seen fit to tell us, the more likely it is that we are following the blind into a ditch.

    2. I hope you wore a little more than a backpack and a pair of shoes… 😀

      Whence cometh this conviction that The Almighty Government can create a Perfect World? It’s been tried, and tried, and always collapses in tyranny, gulags and mass graves. It’s like they forget that The Government is made up of people, and being in The Government doesn’t make them better than everybody else. In reality, The Government seems to be composed of people worse than average.

      How can imperfect people create a Perfect World?

      How could imperfect people live in a Perfect World?
      ———————————
      ‘Progressives’ believe everybody else is even stupider than they are. This explains a lot.

      1. The unmentionabIes I didn’t mention were in the backpack, thank you very much, That’s why I took it at all. I thought I kept myself respectably well dressed, for a vagrant. 😎

        1. Most of today’s vagrants are better dressed than 99% of people from all of pre-industrial history. The whiners don’t have a clue how good we’ve got it in the modern world, so they’re hell-bent on tearing it all down. I could hope for them to get everything they wish for — if only the rest of us wouldn’t be stuck with their demented wishes too.
          ———————————
          The government can mandate stupidity, but they can’t make it not be stupid.

          1. The problem is that the useful idiots believe they can undo the industrial revolution and still keep their i-phones.

          2. To use a 20th century call with a 19th century touch, it would be:

            SAVE THE WHALES! BURN KEROSENE!

            Now, if things were sane we’d have something like:

            PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT: USE NUCLEAR ELECTRICITY

  11. I’m trying to build a great final season of life by telling the truth.
    It’s a particular challenge right now.
    I’m part of a business mentoring program at modernsoapmaking.com. I need the business mentoring, and that part of it is good. However, the owner/teacher is a Marxist social justice men are bad let’s tear down the entire capitalist system in America commie. And she bleats about misogyny and racism in virtually every lesson. It’s tiresome, and distracting because it makes me want to hate her like I hate communists.

    1. How on earth can a Marxist teach anyone anything useful about business? As soon ask a pyromaniac to teach fire safety.

      1. I’ve asked myself that same question at least a dozen times as I work through the course material.
        I’m committed, so I’m going to suck every useful idea or experience from that Marxist head, use it to become wildly wealthy, and turn every person I know away from her and the site.

        Having said that, if I encounter any more of it, which is a guarantee, I may broach the subject of quitting the course. And I’ll explain exactly why.

        So, we’ll see. It wasn’t until yesterday’s “blow it all up” comment that I started having deep misgivings.

      2. Silicon Valley is full of billionaire marxists, much as the Paris brothels were filled with devout Catholics.

        1. The brothels and Catholics both were more honest, and more clueful, than any Marxist anywhere.

      3. Some communists are remarkably business savvy. Gillette started selling razor blades to help fund the Revolution.

        If you approach business as a corrupt game of power imbalances, you might have a significant advantage over someone looking to trade honest fair value for fair value.

        1. Great thoughts, and reasonable, too.
          This is a good test for me. It’s the first time I’ve wanted the knowledge badly enough to not quit and go somewhere else. I still have to learn how not to be disgusted and resentful.
          So, in the end it will be win win.

        1. And/or “I want to look decent, and I can’t see my butt. Is this flattering, a horrifically bad idea, or fine?”

          We’ve all seen someone where you’re standing there, wondering why on earth nobody told them that an outfit choice looks terrible.

          The wrong clothing can absolutely make someone of normal, healthy weight– or even who seriously needs to eat a burger or three, stat– look unpleasantly heavy.

          1. “We’ve all seen someone where you’re standing there, wondering why on earth nobody told them that an outfit choice looks terrible.”

            Rhymes with Nichelle Mobaba. Seriously. I happen to know we were the same size, and even her favorite designer had so much more flattering stuff. (I bought it, a year later, on ebay, so. Not not hers, but the designers’ creations that actually looked decent.)
            But there she went, dressed as some kind of circus exhibit. I always wondered who in her staff hated her guts.

            1. Seriously. I /saw/ her wearing clothes & hairstyles that made her look gorgeous. But for some reason, the media only seemed to gush over the outfits/hairstyles that absolutely didn’t flatter her. 😕

              1. In my misspent period of middle age, immediately after I retired from the military, I put in some time working at an upscale retail outlet of fine and relatively conservative women’s clothing in a very upscale mall in San Antonio. (Talbot’s, if you must know.) One of the tactful answers that I learned, when asked by any customer what I thought of an outfit – and many of the customers were serial shoppers who would try on half the garments in the store – was to say, “I think the other/previous/specific other outfit flatters you more.”
                I hand this tactful answer on to anyone who might have need of it. “I think that (something else) flatters you more.”
                The other tack that I learned, when faced with a gentleman shopping for his wife/other who didn’t know the size (and this happened A LOT) was to ask if he saw any woman in the store, customer or staff, who was about the same size and height as his wife. Easy-peasy – just ask the chosen example what size she wore.
                I did once assist a gentleman shopping for his wife who had her size in everything, and all of her measurements and preferred colors written on a little card in his wallet. I introduced him to the management and duty cashier as the Husband Of The Year. It was such a pleasure, helping a guy pick out a nice present of a coordinated outfit for his wife, as he had already put in the necessary groundwork as it were.

                1. Talbots has been the recipient of a large amount of my money over the years. They’re smart and put in a comfortable chair for me to sit in While the wife browses

                  1. cackle A bead shop I frequent has The Men’s Corner, stocked with magazines, a TV, and a couple of sprawly sofas.

              2. I have to call out “gorgeous” in reference to that creature. Not.Ever.

            2. If you think Michelle was bad, look at Jill Biden. My goodness, where does she find those flower-printed shower curtains to turn into dresses?

              2. Well she is trying to wear stuff that will hide Senile Joe’s drool and spittle stains as she walks him around for his daily puppet show appearances.

            3. I always wondered if someone told her that it was better to play up, um, that part of the anatomy that Latin Americans and African-Americans supposedly most admire. Probably something about being “stunning and brave to show her natural curves,” or something.

              Or as Sarah says, sabotage.

          2. “Are the flowers on this where I fear they are?”

            Honest friend. “Yes, they are. Not a good design choice.” Two cabbage roses on the behind side of the skirt. Right. There.

          3. Me: “Are the flowers on this print too large?”

            Honest friend: “Too large, and poorly located.” [cabbage roses on the back of the skirt. In an unflattering location.]

        2. My wife never asked me this, which is why I will actually tell her if something isn’t flattering.

          1. I ask hubby, “What do you think of this outfit?”
            Then he can tell me whether he likes it or not.
            I presume he doesn’t want me to go around looking fat. I also presume he doesn’t want to tell me if I DO look fat. He can certainly see if something makes me look worse than usual.

            So a neutral question about the outfit seems to work for getting an opinion on general suitability of the outfit in question while avoiding hurt feelings.

    2. As bas as thast might seem,. it’s NOTHING compared to, “No, all that excess weight does that. What you wear only amplifies or masks that.” (And yes, ox know, ox need to reduce tonnage hisownself).

    3. “It’s not the dress.”

      Be sure your escape route is clear FIRST. 😮

      1. Too many women use questions like that as a cute game they can’t lose…if you say ‘no’ you’re lying to them and if you say ‘yes’ you’re mean.

        Don’t play or dial it up to 11 when you answer it does. Better year, if she tries it before marriage use asking the question as a filter.

        1. Also, the “if you REALLY loved me, you’d…” game.

          Run far.
          Run fast.

        2. I could never figure out, and neither could my wife, how saying that something makes her look worse could possibly be insulting. It’s the same as saying, “You look good; why would you want to wear something that hides that?”. We’ve gotten along for 56+ years of marriage without those stupid games insecure people play.

    4. She: “Does this dress make me look fat?”
      Me: “I told you when we started dating I didn’t play those ‘you always lose and thus owe me something’ games. So, the only answer will ever get is ‘you look like a cow regardless'”.

    5. > “Does this dress make me look fat?”

      “Does this face make me look stupid?”

      That question is a trap. Men throughout the ages have fallen into it, and some were never heard from again.

  13. Most of em think it’s a cunning stunt…or are cunning stunts. I get confused.

  14. “inequality is just a symptom of freedom”

    I hadn’t heard that before. Pithy and thought-provoking, Sarah!

    1. I’ll add: only the dead are truly equal, and society should not aspire to become a graveyard.

        1. As long as they peacefully vote Democrat.

          Two or three times in each election.

  15. But it doesn’t take that much. When you have a supreme court nominee afraid to — in any way — define a woman, you know the fear is real, the cancellations are real, and saying the simplest things like “women give birth” can get you expunged from the world of respectable people.

    “Women” again have a well known definition as the left needs them to bludgeon the SCUS.

    1. Respectable people? I hope to take great pains to never be that respectable. Y;know, the people I happen to respect have a bit more osseous matter than Lumbricus terrestris and don’t trade in their moral common sense for political convenience like Aladdin’s wife: “New Lamps for old!”

  16. but if you’re born a biological female, you can give birth, if you’re not you cannot. And no amount of wishing will make it so.

    Not according to the UK midwife training about handling pregnancy for males in transition and how to handle the penis.

    Yes, I thought they mean the created penis of a transman, but some of the text indicates otherwise. In all seriousness I’m going with badly written/stuck with confusing language, but still…

      1. Like every other word include “is”, “and”, and “the” the definition is whatever the Party needs it to be right here, right now.

  17. I remember the last election when pundits were all about the norms. “We must restore the fundamental norms!” they said, which was why Trump had to be cheated out of office. Now that he has been, where are these precious norms? Supreme Court information getting leaked? Americans being held as political prisoners? Teachers demanding the right to tell your preschooler about sex?

    But of course, it was never about the norms to the Democrats. It’s not about female/gay/black/whatever rights. It’s about power. Now that they have it, they use it as they please.

    1. DING DING DING we have a winner!!! Slowly but surely as the various bits and pieces of the Democrat coalition realize they’re getting nothing for their fealty they’re starting to leave the plantation.

    2. “The norms,” are what the Never Trump or “true conservatives,” care about. So we get, “We’re better than that,” or, “That’s not who we are,” or, “We won’t stoop to their level,” or whatever. Ringo has them well and truly pegged.

    3. That’s the norm they want to preserve.
      Them having the power.
      And trying to make us lick their boots.

    1. I thought some choir members were going to hurt themselves back during the last drought. Someone grumbled, “What can we do to get it to rain?”

      A dear, ferocious old lady (who had a Jewish “boyfriend”) looked over her glasses and said, “Well, first we need to find a hundred or so priests of Baal. And then . . .” [eyebrow lift]

      Those of us who got it were trying very, very hard not to cackle out loud. Or at least not loud enough to have other people ask what the joke was.

      1. I laughed out loud when I read Luke’s comment. It’s the first thing I thought of.
        “Well, get Elijah, then a bunch of priests. Wood. Water….”

      1. I’m sure that our Religious Jewish Huns would say that he shows up for every Passover. 😉

        Slightly more serious, I read a short story about the Angel Of Death attempting to claim a Jewish Housewife just as she was preparing for the Passover Feast. She was so busy that he couldn’t claim her and during the Feast Elijah arrived. Elijah gave the Angel Of Death a very disapproving look.

        Oh, the Angel Of Death never claimed the Housewife and would never again attempt to claim a Jewish Housewife at the time of Passover. 😀

  21. And just like that, the Democrats have stopped using the term “birthing persons”.

  22. Oh, now they want you to take horse medication . . .

  23. I’m being careful about getting my hopes up here, but I really hope Roe is about to be overturned. Not only is there the abortion thing (which never should have become a federal issue), but there’s also the fact that there are some significant cases that use Roe as their foundation. Those are going to need to be redecided. As I said elsewhere earlier this year, it’s going to hurt if Roe gets reversed. But better to rip the band-aid off now and deal with the result than to wait a few more decades before doing it.

  25. A long time ago, three Jewish boys in Babylon told a powerful and arrogant king they would not worship a statue of him, regardless of the consequences. The fourth man in the fire helped them survive without so much as the.smell of smoke, though the guards who threw them into the fire died from the heat.

    We do not, any of us, have a guarantee of a long, happy, healthy life in our current earthsuit; but we will enjoy what we have if we stay true to what we believe.

    May God bless us all to see the best path.

  26. Look, I hate to pee in the punch, but “Conservatives” brought a lot of this on themselves. Once “Conservatives” learned to love using government power to enforce morality and social contract laws (like federal wage guidelines) instead of letting nature and local communities deal with peoples’ faults, then it was only a matter of time before the hypocracy and stupidity of these laws caught up to them; so now we have the worst of both worlds with people accepting the government’s right to (broadly) determine what’s “best” for us and supporting an ever-growing useless class of expensive, protected parasites to define and enforce it. Until we dramatically pare back the federal government and reduce its power over state governments, we’re fighting a losing battle.

    1. The fight is not exactly between conservatives and liberals, both much abused terms. It’s between individualists and progressives. For much of the 20th century BOTH SIDES were progressives.
      The difference, like with socialism, was between national and internationsal.
      You’re not peeing in the punch bowl, just stirring in MORE confusion.

      1. As with so many things, Heinlein had it nailed: “Political tags – such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth – are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”— Robert A. Heinlein

        Put me firmly in the second group; all the various flavors of socialist/communist are in the first. Along with almost all members of almost all current governments.

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