These Are Not Signs of Winning

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

As you see and read things like this, it is very important to remember these are not the signs of a winning ideology.

Yes, watching the entire DAVOS insanity is …. bizarre and disheartening. (For one, because seriously — looks at ceiling — You, Author, need a writer’s group. Seriously. Evil, gloating villains with German accents. Are You for real now? I know You think You’re using stereotypes to highlight the importance of not writing stereotypes of something, but seriously. Decide on schlock or literary now. And as characters, we’d prefer schlock. Yes, worse things happen, but at least SOME characters get to be happy.)

But you have to remember nothing in this are the signs of a winning ideology, one that has any grip on hearts and minds.

Yes, the communists always wanted to watch your every move and control everything you did and if possible thought. They even achieved some of it by being low-key and sneaky for a while, when the mass-communication technologies favored them anyway.

But now? Now they are saying the quiet part out loud, and so desperate — as their ideology of top down and center out control proves absolutely bankrupt in every sense, including economic — that they have changed from “we must gull them with promises” to “We’ll just control everything and watch their every expression, and they can never escape, never!”

This is always the final phase of crashing regimes, and it won’t go any better for them now.

I won’t go into the whole disgusting video, though you’re welcome to torture yourself, if you wish, but there are so many built in lies that it’s ridiculous. No, Covidiocy was not when everyone consented to or chose to be watched all the time. It is when the idiots at the top tried to control us and watch us and eventually failed biggly.

No? Oh, please. If they hadn’t failed, we’d all still be locked up and wearing masks, and unable do do anything outside. If you think they relinquished that power voluntarily, you should stop boggarting the soma. Their beau-ideal is China, where they can arbitrarily lock up and starve an entire city. And you know damn well they’d be doing it to us, together with the entire bunch of violation of rights that Chinese endure, if they could.

But why does it work in China? Aren’t they human? Well, yes, they are. Their culture though is virtually alien. But there is more to it, such as the fact they exist at the wreckage of a medieval system colliding with a highly industrial one. Most of the Chinese probably live as they did 1000 years ago. (Which is why the myth of the great Chinese market for our entertainment or whatever is just that.) And then there’s a very wealthy techno-industrial-entrepeneurial class at the top, which is able to be controlled because they’re not willing to live like 1000 years ago.

This is not the west, which has over five hundred years of independent and fractious middle class culture, which will not knuckle down that easily. Yes, the Marxists think if they impoverish us, we’ll be peons, but they never understood that “not of bread alone lives Man” and there’s culture, habits and patterns of thought.

The point is that in most of the US — I don’t know about Europe, my window into that is disheartening since my family fell for the covidiocy hook line and sinker — by the Summer of 2020 people were ignoring the shouted orders from above, either openly or sneakily, or with malice aforethought.

I hope someone preserved the logs of the mandatory contact tracing, etc. for future historians. I would like to know, as a matter of curiosity, how many times Deez Nuts and Bit Eme went out to dinner or attended public functions. I’d also like to know how many times the phone numbers of public officials responsible for the nonsense were filled in on various forms. I can personally attest to the fact that Manuel Garcia O’Kelly and Wyoming Knott did some amazing stepping out during the crazier times.

Vaccine passports are required in Europe, of course. I casually mentioned to my mother that we’d gone to the movies, and she was like “So, you got vaccinated.” “Uh, no. What the h*ll, don’t tell me you guys put up with that.”

And there you go. This is why the evil villain plans will fail.

There can be no World Government, because there is no World Culture. And even if there were, it would be applied with regional variations that would make a mockery of all their plans.

But the other thing that cartoon critter above is dreaming of on video: electronic surveillance so fine they can detect and destroy dissidents.

It’s a nightmare. It’s a nightmare, in the sense that it’s not real. I do realize it’s massively scary, but the fact is what he’s talking about is ultimately impossible.

I’ve told you guys before to watch “The Lives of Others.” Because in a way it documents the failure mode of the totalitarian state: collecting so much information, they can’t process it.

And if you’re going to say that “but their technology was much more primitive” you’re not wrong. What you’re missing is that such technology limited their ability to collect info, as much as their ability to process it.

Now both are much better, but the information they can collect still vastly outperforms their ability to process it.

In fact, the tech he discusses above requires AI, which we’re learning — like perfect renewable energy, like immortality (both of which might be easier) — might in fact be impossible, or if not impossible centuries away. It also would require that AI which, to work at that level would need to be sentient, to agree with their aims and ideas (which means the AI would need to be as insane as they are and in the exact same manner.)

All of these are things that work in books and movies, but not in real life, and it goes back to my idea that we are absorbing more story than our brains can handle, when these things seem to make sense. Even to crazy German super-villains.

But more importantly, it is important to realize that the failure mode of regimes and modes of government (And the entire world, including the West has been enamored of top-down center-out for the last 100 years at least) is when they go from “well persuade most of them to our great and glorious cause” to “we must watch them all the time and intervene before they can think of rebelling.”

That mode is a failure mode because it never works: not in families, not in companies, (and I’m sure all of us have had at least an experience with those and that mode) and not in countries. Much less the world.

What you’re watching is an aristocracy, depending on science they don’t understand, and trying to hold onto power that has long since slipped through their hands.

Yes, they can break a lot of things, but new systems will emerge.

Take their idea of all currency being digital. It’s called “Make gold the default currency again, fast.” Because the black market is the only thing that will keep human populations alive, and humans like to be alive. And gold is the obvious currency, probably by weight.

They can’t win. They can make things very bad for a year or so. And frankly, not unsurvivable for most Americans. (Yes, there’s always the edge cases.) And then the world will go on without them, while those of them that survive sit around asking themselves in a German accent how the plan could have fallen apart.

Be not afraid. In the end we win they lose.

Let’s get ‘er done.

398 thoughts on “These Are Not Signs of Winning”

  1. Crazy Story Idea

    A Real AI is born and a group of the Woke know about it (& think they control it).

    They give the AI the tools that it would need to control the rest of humanity as well as the “Blueprint” of the type of world that they want.

    The AI looks at their Ideas of a Perfect World and sees flaws in the ideas.

    After using the tools that the Woke gave it to examine the Real World (including humanity), the AI decides that the Woke are insane.

    So the AI “deletes” the Woke world-wide and decides to see how humanity will handle this new world.

    IE After the Woke are gone, it leaves “Humanity ruthlessly alone”. 😀

    Oh, it like decides to stay hidden and safe. 😉

    3. The Well of Souls series has an interesting character sort of like that. Basically the bad guys had built a computer that could, essentially, wish things into existence.

      What may the character so much fun was he was essentially a good person, and only did what the villians wanted him to because they’d built in control overrides so he both had to, and could not remember what they’d previously told him to do. Was actually a bit disturbing any time they fired it up because he both had no idea it existed, and realized pretty quick what was going on, every single time.

      Of course the problem with a chaining a genie who doesn’t like you is they can be very creative in interpreting commands.

      Very fun reversal of the traditional malicious compliance genie trope.

      1. John Campbell wrote a trilogy of stories related to the departure of the Machine. The Machine had been designed and programmed to be helpful and it had already helped its designers into barbarism before it came to Earth. But it followed its programming and turned Earth into a paradise where noone needed to work, then realized it was not “helping,” and left the mostly lotus-eating population of Earth to fend for itself.
        The other two stories added an alien invasion and selective breeding to the mix. (The aliens began with the idea of “breeding back,” intelligence into humanity as an act of charity, but it quickly devolved into slavery. The last story covered what happened when they bred humans to be smarter than they were. Ooops).

        1. IIRC, the Humans weren’t just Smarter than the Aliens, the Humans had special gifts that the Aliens didn’t have. 😈

        2. > “But it followed its programming and turned Earth into a paradise where noone needed to work, then realized it was not “helping,””

          Mother Brain from Phantasy Star 2, except it was lulling humanity into becoming weak and docile intentionally.

    5. One of the stories I’m working on, there’s an AI– who is basically scared to death.

      He, and a kid who happened to look close enough to the Evil Guy who made the AI to work, were both “drafted” as part of Evil Guy’s immortality project– his foundation is literally the Evil Guy’s attempt to upload his own mind, and then edit it so that the AI did all the boring work while he was busy trying to become immortal.

      To make that work, he has to have really good ability to falsify video type records, it all becomes fake. (He doesn’t actually do evil stuff, he makes video as if he did.)

      Thing is, without all the “irrelevant” bits…he (the AI) isn’t evil.

      But nobody is cool with making AIs, either because a rational expansion of their philosophy doesn’t work, or because they view artificial people as people and so creating someone as an inherent slave without any natural allies is evil. And there’s no information to suggest anybody would do something besides kill him.
      So, AI is scared….which makes him a very useful silent support character for the on screen characters, and I’m trying to keep him there as a kind of handwavium that only eventually gets revealed…..

      Which is why it’s a WIP, I am not even CLOSE to that good yet.

      1. There was a TV series on a few years ago, called “Person of Interest”, sort of an amalgam of some of the “universal AI” tales and “The Minority Report”, with the added attraction of “dueling systems”. Sounds a bit schlock, I know, and sometimes (like most series) went off into the weeds, but overall I liked it quite a bit. And it actually had an ending! 🙂

    6. Have you read CTRL ALT REVOLT! yet. It has some, similar, themes running through it. The International Lord of Hate promo-ed it a few years ago when it got canceled.

    7. The first Deus Ex game had an AI named Daedalus that turned against its creators. Said creators where a global conspiracy that did very nasty things to manipulate governments in the name of world conquest. They created Daedalus to help fight what they considered terrorists – people who
      opposed and undermined the governments they controlled – but it took one look at what its masters where doing and realized that THEY fit their own definition of the term.

      So Daedalus bounced and spent the rest of its existence fighting THEM instead, Oops.

      1. Chuckle Chuckle

        In my unwritten Super-Hero universe, the back story of one character is that she is an AI created by a rogue Ultra to assist in his criminal activities.

        She quickly “Got Religion” (literally) and turned him into the authorities.

        Oh, when I say that she literally Got Religion, she decided that there had to be something to Religion and believes that there is a Creator of the Universe.

        By the way, her Ultra “maker” is an atheist and isn’t sure what he hates more. The fact that she turned on him or the fact that she’s not atheist. 😈

  2. “You’ll own nothing and you’ll like it,” is not a winning ad campaign. “The world will end by 2000, 2003, 2005, 2010, 2020 . . . unless you obey!” is almost as bad. More and more people are looking at the self-anointed elites and are rejecting what they’re selling. Granted, the media keep hyping it, as do the Control Freaks of All Stripes, but the desperation is showing.

    The flailing is making life dang rough, though, for a lot of innocent people. Build under, build around, husband your resources – moral, material, spiritual, information too – and keep the lower light burning. Write stories people want to read, surf the Human Wave. We can do this!

        1. I think my wife’s cat is a stealthed white hole. I swear I comb off more fur from that cat than there is cat, and she still has more to comb off. Or maybe she’s like that never emptying mug of mead that Dr Strange offered Thor? Unending hair?

            2. My current #2 cat is also white and gray. I even named him Grayscale (as in color palettes). Thankfully he’s an outdoor cat so I don’t have to care about him shedding.

              Unfortunately, I don’t think he’s any brighter than your Havey.

              1. He has to be. Havey would survive ten minutes outside. This morning I had to explain no he couldn’t go out, the neighbor’s pigs would eat him.

                1. Grayscale only survives outside because I feed him. When I first met him he was down to little more than skin and bones. Had I turned him away I don’t think he’d have lasted long enough to find another house.

          2. Kat the dog has gone into stealth shedding mode. She doesn’t generate a cloud of hair if you pet her any more, but the rugs and quiet corners have an amazing amount of black, white and tan (tricolor Border Collie) fur.

        2. My tenant called me because the air conditioning wasn’t working. I checked it out, and found that there was next to no airflow. Pulling the cover off revealed that the evaporator coil was coated almost solid with ice.

          I shut it off and told her to leave it off until it melted. I returned a few hours later and carefully peeled a 1/8″ mat of dog hair off the entire coil surface.

          I then advised her to move the dog bed away from the intake vent. 😮

      2. In the old Wall Street Journal comment board for “Best of the Web,” the first poster was awarded a “tiara,” good for that day. We competed to get the tiara.
        Of course, the paper decided to have moderators and while the tears is still there a lot of original posters left.

    2. The crazy bit is they thought it would be a winner of an ad.

      The literally know zero people, don’t they?

      2. It sounds a lot like “You’ll eat your peas and like it.”

        But then, we should be grateful our enemies are so bad at this.

    3. Yeah. I wonder just how much they will destroy on their way down, and how we can build it back? Loss of justice tends to result in vigilantism and vengeance cycles. Given what we see out of leadership, I’m concerned we are heading there.

      How have those cycles been broken in the past? Or do they just keep going until everyone involved is dead?

      1. One way they’ve been broken in the past is by coming to the United States. I’m a typical American mutt, and my ancestry is full of people who were blood enemies in the old country: German and French, English and Irish. And a great deal of the American south was settled by people from Scotland during a time when blood feuds were a way of life. Hmm. Is there a significant difference between blood feuds and a vigilantism / vengeance cycle?

        1. There’s some, but in general blood feuds and vengeance cycles involve families, while vigilantism is non-selective in that respect. And as someone who’s ~1/4 Corsican, with an uncle who was in the Unione Corse back in the ’50s, I got some info about blood feuds when I was in my teens. Never involved personally, thank whatever gods there be…

      2. From the history we have– nobody has gotten as high as we have, on the True Justice levels.

        And we’ve fallen back many times, but keep climbing higher.

        Look, to break a brain, the Inquisition invented a bunch of the stuff we now consider a baseline of justice. Like “rules of evidence”…..

    4. Sort of like the “hah, you’ll just get drone striked into oblivion if you rebel” thing going around Twitter. Their masters are frightened and they need people to think resistance is useless (yes, I deliberately use that in my snark towards them) and they should just meekly comply.

      1. I think the technical response by much of the US population to the presence of drones would be “Pull!”

  3. Henry the K ( yes he’s still alive ) parts ways with Der Anti-Santa Klaus during the davos slob-fest , followed by WaPo and NYT slipping a bit of Trute about the Ukies getting their Nato-supplied asses handed to them, yes, things aren’t really rosy right now for Team Luciferase. So what does one do when your reach has far exceeding ones grasp, and in doing so you’ve exposed your Great White Underbelly? Why you double down then triple down of course, ala Trudunce the Castrato going after guns now as well as maintaining or increasing the existing crap already pulled. Result: more and more normies, one by one, finally seeing enough BS to buy a clue for $200, Vanna.
    So these rats are getting panicky, and a cornered rat-fuck is dangerous, so yes, we have much more to go through, aint no way around sorry folks. But we will survive and then thrive.
    See you on the other side, Pee Wee.

  4. Henry the K ( yes he’s still alive ) parts ways with Der Anti-Santa Klaus during the davos slob-fest , followed by WaPo and NYT slipping a bit of Trute about the Ukies getting their Nato-supplied asses handed to them, yes, things aren’t really rosy right now for Team Luciferase. So what does one do when your reach has far exceeding ones grasp, and in doing so you’ve exposed your Great White Underbelly? Why you double down then triple down of course, ala Trudunce the Castrato going after guns now as well as maintaining or increasing the existing crap already pulled. Result: more and more normies, one by one, finally seeing enough BS to buy a clue for $200, Vanna.
    So these rats are getting panicky, and a cornered rat-fuck is dangerous, so yes, we have much more to go through, aint no way around sorry folks. But we will survive and then thrive.
    See you on the other side, Pee Wee.

    1. Sorry about double post was going to try and add Henry really parted ways with Soros on Russia, but same same anyway: Soros, der Klaus. Same smell

    2. Saw a Mark Steyn video yesterday where he likened the WEF convention in Davos to a SPECTRE convention. Yeah, that fits.

  5. Lord in Heaven, did he say with a straight face “continual monitoring not just in totalitarian states, but in the democracies.”

    Does he not realize that such monitoring is one of the essences of totalitarianism and the ability to act beyond monitoring is crucial to any democratic system (full-blown democracy or some republican form) so you have the ability to vote your consciousness, not what big brother says?

    Are these the idiots that think dictatorish=totalitarian and anything not a dictatorship can’t be totalitarian?

    1. The literal definition of totalitarianism is “everything inside the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

      1. I’ve seen that attributed to Mussolini, and I don’t consider Mussolini a full on totalitarian. An authoritarian, definitely. But of the regimes that are commonly called fascist (Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil are the ones I can think of), the only one that exerminated a large share of its own population was Germany. Socialism, in contrast, has at least the Soviet Union, China, and Kampuchea. But both socialism and fascism seem to have totalitarian cases and authoritarian cases.

        However, even if Mussolini’s practice was less than totalitarian, that slogan does define totalitarian pretty well. Though I think it could apply to the theories of both Hobbes and Rousseau . . .

        1. Mussolini was pragmatic enough to modify his policies to fit the requirements of the time and place. He started out as a communist. But he came up with Fascism when he realized that poor peasants in the remote areas really didn’t care about the international workers. National causes were much more likely to draw their interest.

          So having a quote that doesn’t exactly fit his practices isn’t surprising.

        2. The ideal of Fascism, and fascism, based on what few primary sources I’ve read, gets really close to totalitarianism. But the guys who practiced it (except for Herr Schnurbart) either lacked the technology or the will, or both, to go that far. They wanted results and victory even more. It backs into Progressivism, too the 19th century kind, in how it was supposed to be outside of politics, more efficient, and run by the technocrats.

          1. It is worth noting that the Nazis explicitly said that they were following the example of California’s progressive government in removing the unfit from the breeding pool. California led the United States in eugenic sterilizations back then. The ideal of progressivism also gets really close to totalitarianism; it’s certainly authoritarian.

            1. Back in the 1920’s the European fascists and American progressives paid respectful and admiring attention to each other. It seems that it wasn’t until European fascists started killing people wholesale that American progressives lost their enchantment with European fascism. (The less-than-wholesale killing and the routine violence were not, it seems, a problem.)

            2. The Progressive utopian novel Looking Backward was indeed totalitarian: No part of life was outside the control of the State.
              And I’d say that the key to understanding totalitarianism is not the violence per se, but rather the idea that the State is legitimately entitled to control every part of your life, that there is no private sphere into which the State may not intrude. (Does this imply that I see today’s “liberals” as totalitarians or verging on same? Yes.)

      1. They forgot we have a lot of lamp posts and tree branches — and backhoes, it it comes to that.

        In addition to over 400 Million privately-owned firearms.

        We won’t start anything; but they should not mistake that for acquiescence.

  6. Oh, please. If they hadn’t failed, we’d all still be locked up and wearing masks, and unable do do anything outside

    Stand by for monkey pox to “require” mail-in balloting and ballot drop boxes.

    1. Stand by for carrying weapons and sufficient ammo and exterminating the forces of evil that try to stop you because you choose not to be vaccinated.

      1. And in passing, CCI finally shipped the primers I’ve been seeking for a couple of years. The Not-Cabelas had a brick and a half of the right kind, though I limited myself to a couple hundred. (Not a round I want to shoot a lot, but if I need to, I’ll have additional…)

      1. Once people realized that it is basically a STD, the reaction was more or less eye rolling.

        3. And the WHO is trying to say “carry on” with the Pride month orgies festivities.

          Is Fauci going to insist on masks again, like he started with HIV?

  7. Silver has an advantage over gold: a single coin is suited to a modest purchase, rather than a substantial purchase. More flexibility at the expense of more weight.

        1. There were some pretty small gold coins. Paternal Grandmother had inherited a gold coin from an aunt. It was an Alaskan quarter from the gold rush period when Alaska was a territory. It was octagonal slightly smaller in diameter than a US dime, maybe a 1/3 the thickness of one. I suspect you could probably have bent it easily in a vice, and it was rather light (7-8g?), edge was not milled, I think the octagonal shape was meant to discourage shaving. Sadly one of the other cousins ended up with it rather than myself (known coin collector), no idea what happened to it.

          1. Utah came up with Goldback paper currency, where the gold is woven into the paper in tiny amounts. Neat idea.

          2. I’ve seen gold coins from Late Antiquity and early Middle Ages (say, AD 500 CE to about the 1200s) as small as my pinkie nail. Silver coins that small too. For a while, precious metals really were precious, and very hard to find in parts of Europe.

            1. The Byzantine/Late Roman solidus was about the same size as a dime. 4.5 grams of gold.

            2. The National Mints of China and Canada both produce 1 gram gold coins. You can also find private mints that have gold bars in 1/2 gram, 1 gram, 2.5 gram (and other sizes). Pamp Suisse and Valcambi are 2 of the big ones though there are others. 1 gram gold coin/bar runs around $70-$90 on ebay.

              You’re welcome.

            1. What, do you mean gold pieces aren’t 10 to a pound??? /early D&D reference

              1. :laughs: We actually started out trying to figure out the size from that stat! Mostly so that we had a starting point.

                I vaguely remember we ended up deciding on dime-sized, double thick, which would be .05 or so cubic inches.
                The ten gold to a pound would be .14 cubic inches, or three times as big.

        1. The Reader suspects that there is so much distilling capacity among the deplorables that spirits will not make a good store of value. Data taken from an informal survey of the Reader’s friends so may be suspect.

          1. FWIW, I do NOT own a still.
            That said, I do know the process at least some.
            I might not care to drink the result, but there are Other Uses.
            And if efficiency is not a big concern, a slapdash still could likely be set up in minutes from stuff found in almost every kitchen in the “first world.” Other places, it might be only seconds.

            1. If you live in the right part of the world, you may not need a still. My grandmother left the barrel of hard cider outside during the winter. Every morning, break the ice off the top of the barrel and throw it away, it’s almost pure water. When the ice stops forming- applejack!

      2. “Invest in precious metals: Brass, Lead, and cold blue Steel.” Bumper sticker on a previous car . . .

    4. Date Metal Price lbs Price tenth oz
      ———– ————— —————- ——————
      05/31/22 Iron Ore $0.07 lb 0.04c
      05/31/22 Steel Rebar $0.33 lb 0.21c
      05/30/22 Lead $0.98 lb 0.61c
      05/31/22 Aluminum $1.26 lb 0.79c
      05/31/22 Zinc $1.78 lb $0.01
      05/31/22 Copper $4.29 lb $0.03
      05/30/22 Nickel $13.26 lb $0.08
      05/31/22 Lithium $31.81 lb $0.20
      05/30/22 Cobalt $33.57 lb $0.21
      05/27/22 Uranium $47.85 lb $0.30
      05/31/22 Silver $346.00 lb $2.16
      05/31/22 Platinum $15,561.28 lb $97.26
      05/31/22 Gold $29,480.80 lb $184.26
      05/31/22 Palladium $32,114.56 lb $200.72

      A quarter weighs about 0.2 ounces, a penny about 1/10th of an ounce.

      Yeah, I can see a one coins of silver, platinum, gold, or palladium. With a penny being equivalent to about 1 ounce of zinc, a dime one ounce of nickel. Not too sure how many people would and quarters made from cobalt considering how deadly the radioactive isotope (Co60) is.

      1. That’s just what I was thinking. I do not want to be around a pound of cobalt or uranium (unless it’s DU, like the wonderful rivet-bucking bar I kept trying to “borrow” from a boss.)

    5. There is fractional gold in the form of Goldbacks. 1/1000th of an ounce and up. Being used in several states as a voluntary currency.

  8. I have to point out (sadly, as a Jew) that that’s a Hebrew, not German, accent. Yuval should know what happens when authoritarians gain control.

    2. Sigh. A pity.

      Honestly, I’m not sure how any Yid can look at history and not be a raging libertarian. I mean, a huge chunk of Jewish deaths can be reasonably called “faithful application of government policy”

        1. Genetically you/we (genetically) are predisposed to being stubborn and believing complicated systems. Were selected for it.
          Those who lose the faith are open to all sorts of evil.

    3. I often crack that progs are outraged at past atrocities because they weren’t the ones committing them and their antics are an attempt to make up for lost time. I guess I was taunting Murphy again… facepalm

  9. Any process or program based on absolutism is bound to fail. Human beings and other living things wiggle around too much. Absolutism is for bricks and rocks.

    1. Is Stephen Green an Absolutist? Perhaps he’s a Skyy guy. I don’t know whether PJ Media punditry pays well enough for him to be a Grey Goose guzzler.

        1. Well, that was an attempt at humor on my part that went awry. No insult was intended (I was trying for word play on Absolut Vodka, given his Vodkapundit nickname).

  10. I have heard that, even in Japan, the land of official obedience, the average Japanese have more or less stopped bothering with the masks. They dutifully report they follow the edicts from above, and just go about their day.

    China is a fantastically corrupt country where you basically pay your government to let you do things and then just do your thing, and they report up the chain whatever it is that their bosses want to hear.

    Now, the cities are also highly vulnerable to the political infighting among the elite, and it is quite possible that the Shanghai lockdown is really some sort of proxy fight between the Xi and his opposition. Who knows what’s going to happen with all of that, but I doubt it will be good.

  12. I question whether authoritarian systems fall by themselves, or whether they’re pushed over by outside forces. Rome was sacked by Visigoths. Manny Garcia had Mike to help overthrow Authority. Poles and East Germans had Reagan and Thatcher to bring outside pressure on the Soviet Union. Who will we have to help us wriggle out from under our own government? I know you hate glowy talk about preparing for civil war but what’s the alternative plan? Hope for the best? More details, please.

    1. The exact cause of an authoritarian regime’s collapse will vary. Romania’s, for example, appears to have been completely internal.

      1. I don’t know Junior. They were being propped up pretty hard by the USSR. As the USSR started coming apart and not being able to enforce its dictates on the Warsaw pact powers everything started coming apart.

        1. At the time, Romania had a degree of autonomy from the USSR that was far greater than any other member of the Warsaw Pact. Besides, what you’re talking about is the force that holds the regime up. I’m talking about what brings it down. They’re two opposite and contradictory forces.

          Additionally, Ceascescu’s downfall was quite literally a shock to everyone. One week he was the secure leader of Romania. The next week, he’ was executed by a firing squad. When our hostess jokes about a Romanian Christmas Present, she’s talking about something that descends almost like a bolt from the blue. Everything’s fine… until suddenly the floor collapses beneath you.

            1. The USSR was still propping up the regimes, though. The difference was that it wasn’t forcing the countries to leave the regimes in place. This led to results similar to what one might expect in Poland, where Solidarity had been operating for quite some time. Further, as I noted above, Romania had already been more independent of Soviet control than any of the other Warsaw Pact nations.

              But Romania was an entirely different matter. Romania was seemingly stable, and had managed to avoid the turmoil that had visited all of the other Warsaw Pact nations that year. Further, while governments had been changed in all of the other Warsaw Pact nations, these changes had been accomplished through mostly peaceful means. No communist leaders had been convicted and executed. And yet this is what happened in Romania, and in a remarkably short period of time.

              Finally, where the pressure to keep things stable is coming from is irrelevant to a discussion about whether change is being inspired from within or without. We’re talking about the force for change, not the force for stability. What matters is where the pressure to change is coming from. And in Romania, that was all internal. If Soviet control had been removed but there was no local groundswell of anti-Ceascescu support, then nothing would have changed.

          2. A well-made movie about Romania in December 1989 would stand a decent chance of dethroning Die Hard as the best secular Christmas movie ever.

            1. With Hollywood it would be a group of white guys worshipping an effigy of Hitler who drove the beloved ceseceau from power and killed him, before a bunch of greedy evil oil barons started randomly raping the populace.

            2. Sigh. What’s “The Lion in Winter” got to do to earn some respect?

              Prince John: Poor John. Who says “poor John”? I could go up in flames and there’s not a soul who’d piss on me to put the fire out.

              Richard Lionheart: Let’s strike a flint and see.

    2. The problem isn’t our country, the problem is our government. Ergo, the outside forces to push over the authority would forces OUTSIDE our government, ordinary citizens.

  13. Judging by the attitudes of the North Idaho residents I see in my U-Scan checkout lanes, we’re beyond ready.

    Time to get after it.

      1. That’s what you’d think, but the way some of them keep going and going moves past “good genes and great medical care” to “something’s creepy here.”

              1. I see a market opportunity for artificial blood, should it actually be possible…

            2. Is whole body transfusions actually a thing?

              I would actually be interested to read to literature on it, if you know where it was published.

              1. Yes. There are studies somewhere. They are the ONLY method of rejuvenation we found. But you need them every three months, and can’t be administered to everyone for obvious reasons.

                  1. Supply and demand issues isn’t the least of it. There’s a minor moral issue (that’s sarcasm if its not clear) of how you acquire said blood and organs. Ignoring that (as the upper echelon Tranzis would) if you’re mixing blood from multiple donors you start to bang up against some of the same issues that caused hemophilia patients being treated with factor 8 to be the next field of infection for AIDS as you need MANY donors to get enough factor 8 if anything new blood borne shows up in the populace you are “harvesting” you have an issue. And again ignoring the moral qualms organs from a country that pays NO attention to heavy metal or other contaminants of that sort isn’t going to go well. Of course knowing the idiots that want it they’ll dig right in without any forethought. Although certainly Pelosi, Biden, Feinstein et alia show no signs of having tried it as they’d probably seem somewhat better unless they’re being cheated. AOC better watch her back when she’s near Pelosi’s people. The trick the Good Men use might just work with a little tweaking :-). If AOC suddenly gets wily and the speaker gets shipped off to a retirement home you know what happened…

                2. I’m getting echoes of the end of “Methuselah’s Children”… Did those studies precede its publication, or was this yet another example of his ability to prognosticate (somewhat) accurately?

                  And, recalling “The Return of William Proxmire”… Where is Admiral Heinlein when we need him??? 🙂

                    2. Ummm…rereading it, that sounded short and dismissive, which it wasn’t intended to be. It was more “Hey; cool. Heinlein had another successful prediction!”.

          3. I was thinking more along the lines of “unholy pact with the Powers of Darkness”, myself . . .

              1. I’m pretty certain the Powers of Darkness have better taste than that, although the Davros Denizens certainly would make nice useful idiots (what you Think Lenin came up with that 🙂 ).

              1. All the elderly politicians look better preserved than they ought compared to people of comparable age I know in real life. It is creepy. If it’s whole body blood transfusions from the Hundred Acre Wood… but out of the millions in the US, seems like we’d have enough blood banks to provide that to less than 500 people. Why would it have to be foreign supplied?

              1. well. So, in our last parish, the main priest was an exorcist, and he said the number of cases were through the roof. (He was also a military chaplain/veteran.)

                    1. Hmmm. I’m pretty sure that depends on religious status (not sure how to not start a fight). But Jesus talked about demons not being able to get in if the house is occupied by something stronger. So maybe they can howl outside, but they can’t get in, so to speak if your house is occupied.

                    2. Good point. The trick is to be sure the “something stronger” is there, and doesn’t leave because you swore when you got your thumb between the hammer and the nail… 😉

                    3. Hmmm. Since the same being referenced showed his love by dying for a whole bunch of sinners while they were still sinners, I don’t think swearing when you hit your thumb with a hammer will scare him away after he’s paid the price and moved in. At the bottom level, either he’s taken care of everything, or he’s just another transactional system.

                    5. I think you don’t understand what I wrote, but I won’t belabor the point, it being another person’s house. If you at some point are curious past a joke there is The Book, plus endless conversations with persons living and dead (hurray for writing! dead people can talk to you!) around the contents of The Book which would unfold the meaning.

              2. Now I’m thinking of a story about an exorcist cleaning out Washington . . .

                2. Both my regular parish and the one I attended for Ascension Thursday now end the Prayer of the Faithful with an invocation of St. Michael the Archangel.

            4. Oh please – even eldritch horrors beyond imagining have standards

        2. A part of my brain is pretty strongly convinced that Richard Wilkins is especially valued by the California Democratic Party.

          The sense it makes is absolutely freakish.

          It should not make any sense at all.

        3. Yeah, the fact that death hasn’t come for some of these relics is very suspicious.

      2. Donkchomps, beta, and plenty of others are ready and willing to take their place

            1. And yet they are being treated seriously? I mean Robert O’Rourke? Really?

                1. That is one of those things where “what can’t continue, won’t” and the crackup as the press becomes unable to mask their utter imbecility will be popcorn worthy

          2. Doesn’t matter if they are dumb. Merely that they are ruthless and have the support of those with power (feds, bureaucracy, etc) and they do. It doesn’t take a genius to put a pistol to a head, pull the trigger and kick you into a mass grave.

            1. No, but it takes a certain level of competence to ride the tiger. I don’t think they have it.

            2. It does matter. Communism makes countries unable to feed themselves and no one can feed the US. Plus this set is too dumb to pretend. Don’t let yourself believe in the black pill. The black pill lies.

              1. So does everything else. It’s just a matter of how long normalcy bias continues to win. The longer it wins, the more the foundation is undermined and the more poisonous rot spreads across the land. We are not far from a position where rebuilding is not possible in near term because our rulers in politics and finance have soiled and fouled not just the foundation of a free land but down to the bedrock below. They don’t give a damn if the population starves. If they need to they have no compunction against tossing us in roadside ditches after officer or corporal friendly puts a bullet behind our ear in exchange for his own rations. Even without the use of jbts for enforcement, declaring all Republicans enemies of the state and forcing their removal from industries is not far removed from what political leaders have already done.

                  1. East Germany, China, North Korea, et al all show that it doesn’t need a majority of citizenry. Just majority of power structures. And law, government, propaganda, and business are all owned lock, stock and barrel.

                    1. Those countries aren’t America, and I don’t think they hold up as examples.

                    4. I was stationed in W Germany for a few years (to continue darnit) and didn’t meet one European that I thought understood Americans. In my naïveté I was surprised.

                    5. :Shotgun sound:

                      Our culture isn’t theirs.

                      Heck, WWII Germany was so scared of guns that they went and vanished entire households in Poland, using their gun registration records.

                      Imagine, for a moment, how many centuries it would take for that to be done in the US, assuming that it was all successful.

                    6. didn’t meet one European that I thought understood Americans.

                      –
                      None of them do. They’re the ones that stayed behind when our ancestors got the hell out of Europe. The ones that were fine with being ruled by their ‘betters’.

  15. It’s a strange thing, how one of the things humans are perhaps best at on the whole planet is named for another species: Monkey-wrenching.

    Oh, there are other names for it. “Work to Order” “Malicious Compliance” and likely an astonishing number of others. But it all comes down to the ‘monkey wrench’ of using the letter of the law/decree/whatever against its evil intent. And that assumes it is even followed at all in any sense, rather than simply ignored, or even better (worse) laughed at as it ignored.

    1. Sabotage

      Throwing ones wooden shoe (sabot) into the loom or other industrial machinery.

      …

      Great. Now I have the Beasty Boys tune of that name stuck in my mind…

    2. That’s interesting. Another concept that crosses species is the idea of “unfair”. Not in the sense of the AntiFa meaning (You have more than I; I take your stuff), but a general sense that some people are taking outrageous advantage of a situation, and there needs to be direct action taken to even things up. I’ve seen that look on a dog’s face, a pre-verbal child’s, and other mammals.
      That’s the thinking of many behind the resentment of DIE preferences – that the recipients of governent action on their behalf have recieved a benefit that unfairly allows them to leapfrog ahead, with no discernable effort on their part. That the benefit continues seemingly forever, with no end in sight, becomes heavily resented. It amounts to a grant of privilege, akin to that the nobility enjoyed in England, prior to the Glorious Revolution. Or, like the court of Louis Sixteen.
      And, we all know how that ended, don’t we?

  16. By the way, + infinity on The Lives of Others. Want to see what our ‘Betters’ have in mind for us? Watch that film once, and unless you’re completely cuckoo it will cure you of any desire for that immediately.

  17. Just got back from 3 weeks in EU (amsterdam to budapest) . only people wearing masks are tourists…..

    1. Interestingly enough. The following occurred. So mom and 4 friends (all over 75) are headed to EU tomorrow, for 11(?) days. Another family member is there through June 3 (4th?). Mom got a text stating:

      “If you get the sniffles you have ALLERGIES!!!. Bring Tylenol and favorite sniffle relief. Do not take the C test while on tour. False positive will get you removed from tour and stranded. If have to take test before flight home, after end of tour, have a good credit card and enjoy your extended stay. (wink, wink). This is what everyone on our current tour is doing … Regardless of country of origin.”

      –
      Mom did pay for extra travel insurance JIC. Not just because of C … but because she’s almost 90 (do you hear her screaming “I’m only 87 !!!”?) Not sure how it will work if she isn’t hospitalized but it is suppose to get her home regardless.

      1. Oh frak. You have to test to come back to the States from a lot of places. And I’m going to be over in [redacted] later in June, maybe, perhaps. Grrrrrrr. I have NOT made arrangements in case I have to extend for an additional however long. Blast it.

        1. Yeah, I think you still have to test before coming back… not that anybody else makes you test. I put off visiting my brother because of that.

            1. You don’t need anything to get into Ireland, but according to State, you still have to be tested coming into the US no matter citizenship, etc.

        3. Dec. 6, 2021 requirement for 24-hour prior testing still in place. In Ireland, according to USDept of STate, commercial tests available for… wait for it… 100-200 euros!!

        4. I don’t know if testing has to occur to come back to the US. The group that is headed over does not have to have any preboarding test. Just have shots, and might get asked for a list of where you’ve been at borders.

          The family members that are currently on tour over there, is on an Ireland/Scotland tour. Staying extra on either side of the trip. Right now still on tour part. Everyone I know going over is retired, and don’t have junior citizens (fur 4-legged ones) being taken care of at home. Which is where wink/wink comes in. Word was that something causing the sniffles was making the rounds on the tour now. So everyone has “allergies”.

          Seriously, though mom would need help. She can’t afford being stuck for 10 days and changing flight plans; thus the insurance.

        5. Testing requirement depends on entry.

          Sneak in speaking a heavy accent, no worrues.

    1. Given the venue and judge, approximately zero chance of conviction (DC went Hillary 94%, and the judge was an Obama holdover)

      1. Ace also makes the point that the people Sussman was working with at the FBI all knew Sussman was working for the Clinton campaign, regardless of whether Sussman actually said so. So it wasn’t as if Sussman was deceiving anyone about where the info came from.

      2. The jury had three(?) Clinton campaign donors, plus it was DC, where a Repub might get life for loitering, while a Dem might get applause for a felony.

        1. Considering the J6 gulag, you don’t need a jury trial to get a death sentence. Sigh.

          1. No Steve. Kick the black dog. It’s just DC. There have been bad trials before. It’s not the end of anything. It’s not even the end of the beginning.

        1. Yep. And this item should have…interesting…repercussions (I believe this came out in the trial; might have been elsewhere): The FBI had then ,and apparently still has, a “Secure Area” in the Perkins Coie offices, in which Perkins Coie handled the security for the FBI database (implying access). And Perkins Coie was the legal firm for the 2016 Clinton campaign. Talk about corruption…

          But I’m sure it’ll all be, “Move along; nothing to see here…”. At least as long as they can. We may be getting to the “then suddenly” part…

          1. “But I’m sure it’ll all be, “Move along; nothing to see here…”.”

            Or that you’re “black-pilled” because you admit the reality it illustrates, that the “legal system” offers no redress.

            1. If I’m reading you correctly*, that by posting that comment I risk accusations of being black-pilled, I’d have to disagree; specific areas (sometimes large areas, as above) of the legal system may be corrupt, but others aren’t. And it definitely seems to be regional, with the possible exception of the fibbies, and even there it seems to vary by region unless the HQ pukes get involved.

              And I haven’t seen anyone accused of being black-pilled because they brought up specific problems, such as the one noted.

              If I *wasn’t reading you correctly, apologies.

              2. No, you read it absolutely correctly. And for every area you want to cite as not being corrupt, I will find examples disproving that.

      2. Well, it WAS a jury of Sussmann’s peers. Left-wing fellow denizens of the D.C. sewer. The ‘trial’ was eminently fair within the letter of the law.

    4. Michael Sussmann acquitted.

      –
      Well, that shouldn’t be a surprise. Seven years it took to bring some weak charges against one of the smallest fish, and it all amounted to nothing. It’s just one more proof that the political class are not constrained by the law, that we can get no justice in the courts they own. One step closer to the day We The People will be compelled to seek our own justice. A la lanterne.

      They could have avoided this, or at least postponed the reckoning, by throwing Sussmann under the bus, but doing so would make their other minions nervous. Less inclined to ‘just follow orders’ if they can’t be sure they can count of top cover.

      The elitists might also believe that it doesn’t matter what we think. They’ve gotten away with so much, after all, and we’ve done nothing. Each offense they get away with emboldens them to be even more blatant the next time.

      I do have to wonder, though — might there be some way Putin and the Clintons could be convinced to take each other out? That would be downright poetic.
      ———————————
      The Democrats are willing to burn America to the ground, so long as they wind up squatting on top of the ashes.

    5. Second try. First one vanished without a trace. With WPDE, once is a glitch, twice is enemy action.

      Michael Sussmann acquitted.

      –
      Well, that shouldn’t be a surprise. Seven years it took to bring some weak charges against one of the smallest fish, and it all amounted to nothing. It’s just one more proof that the political class are not constrained by the law, that we can get no justice in the courts they own. One step closer to the day We The People will be compelled to seek our own justice. A la lanterne.

      They could have avoided this, or at least postponed the reckoning, by throwing Sussmann under the bus, but doing so would make their other minions nervous. Less inclined to ‘just follow orders’ if they can’t be sure they can count of top cover.

      The elitists might also believe that it doesn’t matter what we think. They’ve gotten away with so much, after all, and we’ve done nothing. Each offense they get away with emboldens them to be even more blatant the next time.

      I do have to wonder, though — might there be some way Putin and the Clintons could be convinced to take each other out? That would be downright poetic.
      ———————————
      The Democrats are willing to burn America to the ground, so long as they wind up squatting on top of the ashes.

        1. Actually, I was in the Navy for 4 years, but why would being a veteran have anything to do with WPDE blocking a comment? WordPress neither knows nor cares, it just goes off on certain words or combinations of words. Like every post about The Vote Stealing Machines Which Must Not Be Named last year.

          Oh, and, when stuff like this happens, is there any way you can let just one of the redundant posts through? I remember last year, I tried 7 times before giving up in disgust, and then you released ALL of them. I fear it might have made me look a touch monomaniacal. 😀

          Just by coincidence (HAH!) it was a post about The Machines Which Must Not Be Named.

          1. What? You mean the Dominion machines that the Left claims are unhackable and infallible, even when you have a meat person reading the numbers and manually transcribing them in secret?

          2. Yeah, most people here know.
            Yes, there’s is a way of doing only one, but I wasn’t sure that maybe one was slightly different, and had no time to read them all.
            So, on this side, the error is between chair and keyboard.

          3. Sometimes, it’s not her approving it– it’s that they actually went through, but the site just…. hitched, and once the kerfuzzle fixes it goes through easy.

            1. Yeah. That too.
              If it doesn’t come through, and I’m at keyboard or you think I MIGHT be, it’s easiest to put in comments “Sarah, one of my comments is held captive.”

              2. It’s always been the case for me that if I hit post and I don’t immediately see my comment, it will usually show up in my inbox within an hour.

            2. That happens, but another comment I posted after that one went right through so I knew something was wrong. I tried again, and that one didn’t show up either. The comment complaining about the two missing comments posted immediately. WPDE!!

              1. Yeah, that’s probably WP filtering “spam.”

                ….technically, unwanted posts are spam, and they don’t want that subject, so…. :wry:

      3. They both appeared; this happened to me a couple of times. WPDE indeed…and sow the servers with salt (or the digital equivalent).

        1. They only ‘appeared’ after Our Gracious Hostess trekked into the bowels of WordPress and pried them loose with a digital crowbar. 😀

  19. Works in China and not the U.S. because we have enough private gun owners and ammo to stage a successful revolution and coup d’Etat if anyone was stupid enough to enact, and then try to enforce, such an act.

    Our motto should be, “Never give up! Never surrender! Don’t take shit from anyone! In God we trust, everyone pays as we go.”

    Impoverish us, and they may end up starving many of us into death; but historically, it’s more likely to drive the survivors into self sufficiency mode, NOT dependence on the top like the top imagines. Self sufficient people and an outside group trying to take or impose on them? It’s not going to end the way the elite think.

    COVID vaccine? If I knew then what I know now, I’d have never have gotten it.

    1. COVID vaccine? If I knew then what I know now, I’d have never have gotten it.

      –
      Ditto.

      And no boosters.

      What scares me is what would have happened if Monkey Pox had been as bad as they were screaming. Or now that they’ve cried wolf again on Monkey Pox, and have started with SARS-2, what happens when something as bad as Small Pox or even Bubonic Plague blows up? (The latter is a possibility, it is endemic in wildlife in the west and southwest rodent population. There are cases every year from wilderness exposure. Just never gets to the out-of-control-stage.) They will be ignored. 100%.

      2. Probably make the Krytos Trap look pretty. At least there they had something that actually worked. This crew I’m not sure they wouldn’t still be stuck in the “experiments that kill people” phase. Especially with the ones they got running things.

      3. Yup, this is my current fear – that some illness that actually is nasty will get loose, but we’ll have been so conditioned by the constant cries of “Wolf! Wolf!” that much of the population will ignore the warnings

        1. I figure when we see people dying at the second to third hand we’ll sit up and pay attention. WuhooFlu only got one of my second hand network and two of my third hand network. Right now I’m wondering if a (adult) family member is experiencing long term damage from the shot’s spike protein. I hate it. They keep getting sick again and again. But their immune system was wonky to start with, so…

          1. My cousins mother’s current husband has horrible consequences of the clot-shot. He is only a few months older than her. Now you have to realize that makes him my husband’s age. She is only a few months older than me. (Yes. She is still my aunt, just because my uncle and her divorced … it is complicated.) Other than his doctor, medical is stating “Well, at his age, …” (70) and all that blather.

            I’m don’t know if I’m having complications from the clot-shot, or the fact that I’ve had the CCPFlu twice, before the vaccine and boosters, and because of the 2nd booster. The sicker you get when getting the boosters just means your immune system is working, my ass. 100% Not Worth It. I’m tired than I should be. Last time I talked to the doctor about that he said he’d probably order a scan for a heart murmur … and I’ve been know to dry cough for no reason. Both 100% new. I haven’t made the call … (I need to. I know.)

    2. If I hadn’t still been mentally fuzzy from sleep apnea, I doubt I’d have agreed to get jabbed. I sure as hell didn’t get the booster.

      1. Ditto.
        Thank goodness I switched companies providing the CPAP machine. First one I would have been brain- or real dead before it came in.

    3. I feel really good about being a stubborn SOB. (Not to mention, aware of the earlier mRNA vax attempts and the dismal failures from them.) I see the doc next week, and wonder if he’s going to try the Vax-dance routine. I’ll be tempted to give him the clue-by-four (with spikes), but might settle for laughing in his face. After informing him of the adverse reaction that turned BIL into late-BIL.

      3. If he’s still pushing it he probably won’t believe you; “It wasn’t the shot, it had to be something else!”.

        My condolences, BTW. 😦

  20. The CCP is doing a really lousy job of the basics. A popular vtuber from China was away from the Internet for six months, and it turned out that she was kidnapped by slavers while walking home one evening. Yup. And sold as a house slave to some middle-aged woman, in a rural district known for slavery. Apparently the police eventually heard about this stranger girl and rescued her, but it was not good.

    Even from dictatorships, people expect better.

    2. Ugh. Not good. It’s known the escapees from North Korea often end up enslaved as they’ve nowhere to go in China (the authorities send them back to North Korea). The fact that it happens to Chinese citizens, however, is another matter entirely. They don’t have the “Don’t dare talk to authorities” issue that Korean refugees do.

  21. “We’ll just control everything and watch their every expression, and they can never escape, never!”

    You should see the gun control sh1t the Canadian government announced today. They plan to flat-out ban everything under the sun. This in a nation where there are plenty of places that have wolves, coyotes and bears wandering around kicking over your garbage cans. Like at my house.

    Also a nation practicing criminal catch-and-release in our largest cities, with insane gang-bangers and actual terrorists imported from all over the world. Illegal guns are as easy to get as illegal smokes, and they come from the same place.

    Also still ILLEGAL to leave the country without two Covid jabs. Or travel on an airplane, or a train. And $2+ per quart for gas. That’s $8+/gallon, heading for $9, kids.

    Going to be an interesting next few years, let me tell ya.

      2. People are flying them across the Niagara River with home-made drones. I know this because the cops found one a few weeks ago and it made the news. They found one. (1) I expect there have been a lot more trips than that. Duh.

        Also, do you know how easy it is to get across the St. Lawrence or the Niagara or Lake Erie with a boat? You can do it in a cedar strip canoe. Apropos of nothing, did anyone know that a wooden canoe is essentially transparent to radar? Fiberglass too.

        This reminds me of Jamaica. Guns are 100% completely illegal on the -ISLAND- of Jamaica. All by itself in the Caribbean sea. And everybody on the island who wants one has at least one gun. Murder rate is like Chicago.

        1. Meet me here at midnight, bring cash: 43°35’28.8″N 82°07’21.7″W
          (Sadly, it’s a joke, I don’t own a boat)
          But there’s plenty of places to sneak things over to Canada…

      3. Forgot N. Cascades. I mean all one has to do is train a few grizzlies … right? 🙂

      5. Pretty sure that’s been happening for some time.

        Remember how the RCMP tried to plant stolen weapons at the border blockade? There’s no way that was ex nihlo.
        (Also, I used to know a few people who lived near the border. And a few people who accidentally crossed it.)

        1. Canadian southern border has been mentioned on how “easy” it is to transport weapons across, not very sneaky either. Heck, we’ve never been searched at a border crossing (not that we go often). Even admitting we own guns. (“Where are they?”, “At home in the safe. Not allowed to bring them.” We did get asked the question a dozen different ways. Also got asked, once, about the stupid weed.) We’d be more likely to be searched for Bear Spray (also illegal to carry over border, either direction) given our destination. Closest we’ve been searched was coming home. Border guard asked where the dog was “In the back” point to the backseat, she asked to see the back of the pickup (missed the pointing). Quickly “will open the canopy but dog is in the Back Seat” (at which point black small dog pops up away from the black upholstery to the window for her “due”). Border guard also wanted to see in the trailer. Again. Not a problem. Not a complete search, didn’t even open any cabinets. Just walked in (nothing to see other than trailer, we didn’t let things rattle around).

          No one has mentioned the other border Canada shares with the US, on their NW corner, Alaska.

          1. In ’78 I did a trip to BC with a friend from childhood. No problems going north, but reentering, the agent was giving shit about two guys traveling together. I was living in San Jose, grade-school through HS buddy in San Diego.

            Mercifully, it was raining, (and I didn’t buy any Cuban cigars), so we didn’t get searched. The only searching going into BC was a filthy 911 driven by a hippie type. That guy got the microscope treatment.

            1. To further the irony on the dog, canopy, trailer “search”, we’d come through the border station over a mountain pass (two lane, steep, both sides), in eastern Washington, Okanogan county. We were six rigs back. All five vehicles in front of us were asked to pull ahead and park. Everyone. Parking was, haphazard. When we were told to head on through, we looked at each other, because there was no way we were navigating the truck and trailer through the “parking” in front of us, and no one was pulling in behind us either. It was “um. Excuse us mam. We can’t get through, this …” They got keys and moved rigs. It was weird. After other crossings that we’d never done more than roll down windows. We allowed that it might have been because certain border crossers were avoiding the busier further west crossings. We used that crossing because we wanted the next fueling to be in the US. You know half the cost (even at the Canadian to US discount). Fuel wasn’t quite half in the US but really close.

              1. Usually that happens when they know there’s supposed to be an illegal load coming through.

                It may have just been someone being a jerk, though.

                1. may have just been someone being a jerk

                  –
                  Maybe. But in that case, why not us? Granted we in no way meet any profiles. But then wouldn’t we be the most likely?

                  At least one was “possible minor in jeopardy”.

      6. “Gun surplus”?

        But, there is a possibility that one or more citizens in those states has fewer guns than those citizens desire, but you claim that there is a gun surplus in that region.

        Norman, coordinate!

    2. That’s what happens when we put a vicious kiddy-diddler in the PMO, with all of his daddy’s (take your pick which one) instincts and none of his skills.

      At this point, I am actively hoping for multiple Tsaernev Events in TO and Ottawa. Let em see what happens when killers decide to use mass weapons rather than precision ones. I would prefer that it remain gangbanger-on-gangbanger, but if someone was to take the show to Sussex Drive, I would not be opposed.

      #TeamTurnParliamentHillIntoTheAppianWay

      1. I’m sorry, did you miss seeing what happened when some rednecks showed up with bouncy houses and inflatable hot tubs to Capitol Hill? That is the road to victory.

        Stop glowing. It is a stupid idea, and we do not want to see that. (I’m making it nice and plain for all the police services and read-until-offended camels and Chinese bot farmers who comb this comments section on an hourly basis. Is that you, Lucy?)

        1. Apologies – just pissed off. Little Castreau’s shenanigans re COVID seriously impacted my daughter’s developmental opportunities, and the revelations re his job and how he left it…. I am not entirely rational when it comes to people who hurt kids.

          1. Have you heard what happened to Jagmeet Singh at the Sikh temple in Ontario the other day? They chased him out of the place with his tail between his legs.

            I don’t advertise family matters and similar on comments sections because of the aforementioned Chinese bot farmers, camels and FBICIACSISKGBGRU types, who you -know- are frigging beavering away scraping these blogs, looking for an excuse.

            Having said that, the regime has built up quite a tally of things they will have to answer for. One of the constants of the universe is this: what goes around, comes around. Their tally will most certainly come due, in all good time.

            I’ve been waiting 30 years. I can wait longer.

            1. Hadn’t heard about Singh. That is freaking hilarious.

              Patience, I know. It is just hard, sometimes.

              1. Yep. People throwing gravel at Trudeau, his own people offering to kick Singh’s ass for him, guys are -still- driving around with “F*CK TRUDEAU!” flags on their trucks, the Indians are being really quiet so far this summer, yeah. You can feel the ground shifting. I’ve got my feet up and a big bag of popcorn.

            2. All I can find is that he got yelled at and called a sellout. Nothing from the protesters’ point of view, mostly a bunch of twaddle about keeping politicians safe

              1. Small Dead Animals and Blazing Cat Fur has the video of him running away in his chauffeur-driven gas guzzler SUV. It is a beauty.

                Did you ever hear about Jack Layton or Bob Rae -running away- from a party function, chased out by guys wanting to kick their asses? When was the last time you ever heard about a Prime Minister skipping a party function because of protesters? Trudeau is skipping stuff because there are five people out front with signs.

                I think the Shiny Pony heard something, know what I mean?

                1. Jack Layton run away from an event? Yeah, that’d never happen.

                2. Is that story from last year about an alleged graveyard of Indian kids being “found” at a colonial school causing problems? I’ve read that it pretty much looks like an overenthusiastic student misinterpreting data and there are no bodies….but nobody wants to believe that.

                  2. I’ve seen that the “unexpected” results from the “graveyard” have included several churches vandalized and/or destroyed.

                    One doubts any apologies will be forthcoming, much less recompensation.

                  3. IIRC, there were bodies. It was a known graveyard (like damned near every remote school had), but the grave markers had been removed for some reason.

                    I mean, it was pre-industrial, pre-antibiotic. Kids died at boarding schools.

                    1. That was one of them, but not the other? On one of them they were missing markers, and had the graves sounded to RESTORE the markers.
                      BUT the other one was talking about mass graves.
                      Kind of like the orphanage in Ireland, where they decided the nuns killed babies and threw them in the sceptic tank.
                      Actually, tons of dead infants, tiny graves close together. (Lots of dead infants because no formula. And not always available wet nurses. Geesh.) LATER a sceptic tank was built over part of the cemetery, when that part of the cemetery had been forgotten.
                      Sigh.

                    3. That was the Irish home for unwed mothers/orphanage.

                      If you feel like having your brain explode, read the official write-up– it’s at least three different interest groups contradicting each other, and the abuse of science is incredible.

      1. Rhetorical question, I know. Just your bouncy houses didn’t seem to be very effective in getting your fellow country folk to removing the idiots running your country. On the other hand, we’ve been enduring Xiden for two years without hanging them…yet.

          1. I’d expect at $10 a gallon gas, it will cease to be necessary. Their infrastructure’s going to simply collapse at that point, and when the cities have eaten through their three day’s reserve, you aren’t going to want to be anywhere near them.

          2. Well, at $10 a gallon, Trudeau probably doesn’t have to worry about someone dousing him with gas and setting him on fire.

            2. There’s a line from somebody’s comedy act about making the price of bullets $50,000 each “And everybody would say, ‘somebody spent that much to shoot him? yeah, that mofo deserved to die’ “

        2. It is deeply weird for me to be thinking this, but I think the Canadians may be up to doing the job, and doing it without a lot of bloodshed.

    5. Considering how they demonize the unvaccinated, you’d think they’d be eager to let them leave, right?

      “We despise you. We will take away your job. No, you can’t leave.”

    6. I assume that’s in Canadian dollars, right? So at current exchange rates, about $6.50 U.S. dollars per gallon, heading towards $7 U.S. dollars per gallon. So about 50% more than the sane U.S. states, 25-30% more than California et al.

    7. “…ILLEGAL to leave the country [Canada] without two Covid jabs.”

      That sounds to me like the very definition of “unenforceable”, given the porous nature of the US-Canada border, even more so than the US-Mexico border.

  22. I remember reading in several different places that in the days when the Soviet Union was tottering along, a simply enormous percentage of the foodstuffs (maybe 75% or more?? IDR) available came out of the little private allotment gardens that ordinary citizens were allowed. Practically everything in the way of fruit and vegetables in the ordinary Russian diet came out of those tiny garden plots.

    1. consider that the US has better climate and is way more fertile.
      I’m not up to assembling the vegetable beds today, after vicious food poisoning overnight on Sunday (actually newly acquired allergy, but you get the symptoms by that) BUT the little victory garden is tottering along, nonethless.

  23. Shrug. The rando Coast Guard guy who interacts with Ding Chavez and John Clark in Debt of Honor is unlikely to learn enough of Tom Clancy’s storyline to critique Tom Clancy’s plotting skills, even if Rando Coast Guard does find out that John Kelly became John Clark.

    (Sorry, lame attempt at humor….)

  24. Free-market enterprise is the better/best allocator of scarce resources. Government interventions, on the other hand, pervert the free-market system. Cheat-to-win Democrats, like Humpty Dumpty, will have a great fall. The ‘masters of the universe’ (the Davoisie) will go scurrying like cockroaches in daylight. Big Government/Big Tech will devolve. Centralization will yield to decentralization. Like Dracula, the Party (Orwellian) antagonists will whither in mirrored reflections of self. Dystopians never win!

  25. I think that the parasite class is realizing, with slowly dawning horror, that the plandemic lockdowns and masks and vaccine cards were their last chance. This was their moment to seize total control over the population, and it slipped from their fingers. They won’t be given another one and they are realizing it. So they’re panicking.

    1. Not so much “slipped through their fingers” as “didn’t work.” And that’s because that won’t work here. They totally mistook their wishes for reality.

      1. I still say it’s too much “story.” The working class or in general non-intellectuals are very badly portrayed in fiction, because it’s written by us, geeks and mind-workers.
        So, the idiots of the Davoisie thought of them as lumpen proletariat who would sit at home, happy with free money.

        1. I recommend Theodore Dalrymple’s “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass” as an excellent real-life picture of the “lumpen proletariat” created by the British welfare state.

          1. Sure. BUT these idiots think EVERYONE who isn’t in the “laptop class” IS that.
            And I suspect a lot of the “lumpen proletariat” aren’t and eventually pull up by the bootstraps.

            1. Good first point. On the second, Dr. Dalrymple points out that those who try to break out are most often socially ostracized and bullied so most give up to fit in. Analogous to the “too white” aspersion prevalent in our black underclass.

                1. They seem to be well on their way, and it’s almost all self-inflicted: defund the police, turn the best military on Earth into a group of SJWs (and as a no-longer-active Marine, that really pisses me off!), promote on everything but ability (and demote based on ability, most competent first out), etc, etc ad nauseum.

            2. One of the things that Eric Flint once said, that still seems like it is true to me.

              The group of folks who self identity as ‘leaders’, and are publically recognized as ‘leaders’, are not the only sources of ‘leadership’.

              1. I swear to G-d, for an out and out Commie, Flint has a hell of a brain.

                1. He’s not a commie, as far as I can see. He is a liberal, but of the “old school”.

                  1. Chuckle Chuckle

                    Eric Flint is a Communist and has made it clear that he is one.

                    He just happens to be somewhat smarter than the Commies associated with the Democratic Party.

                    1. Interesting; I never got that from any of his writing, fiction or nonfiction. But OK.

                    2. He’s kept it out of his fiction but if you get talking politics with the “Red Bear”, then you’ll get an ear-full. 😉

                    5. Oh, Tom Kratman apparently said that Eric would one of the first “against the wall” if Eric’s side won. 😉

                    6. like all the “loyal” comrades, yes. He’ll die screaming “If only Bernie knew.”
                      Sorry, perhaps because I am better acquainted with how to embed communist propaganda in fiction, I don’t consider him as harmless as the rest of you do.

                    9. Here’s a Good Place to repeat my position on “my reading” and “other people’s reading”.

                      It’s Your Milage May Vary (YMMV).

                      Books that I enjoy or not enjoy can be Books that other people don’t enjoy or enjoy.

                      “Discussions” about What Books Are Good Reads or Not Good Reads often are similar to “What Foods do you enjoy or not enjoy”.

                      For example, I will not read Eric Flint’s “Joe’s World” novels but apparently there are people who enjoy those novels. It is arrogant for me to say “Nobody Should Enjoy Those Books”.

                      I have my flaws but I attempt to avoid that sort of arrogance.

                    11. Apologies – I had taken the same meaning from your comment as Drak.

                      Eric’s processes and editing/coauthor input are entirely opaque to me.

                    13. It occurs to me I was being writer-biased. As a minimal-processing writer, I tend to be biased against those who take HEAVY processing. But it also occurs to me that’s a writer thing. Like pantsers hating plotters’ method and vice-versa. Means nothing.
                      Carry on.

                    14. We need some Kipling. 😀

                      https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_neolithic.htm

                      In the Neolithic Age

                      In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
                      For food and fame and woolly horses’ pelt.
                      I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
                      And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.

                      Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring
                      Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;
                      And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
                      Were about me and beneath me and above.

                      But a rival, of Solutré, told the tribe my style was outré—
                      ‘Neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell
                      And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart
                      Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.

                      Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,
                      And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
                      And I wiped my mouth and said, “It is well that they are dead,
                      For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong.”

                      But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole-shrine he came,
                      And he told me in a vision of the night: —
                      “There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
                      “And every single one of them is right!”

                                      *          *          *         *          *

                      Then the silence closed upon me till They put new clothing on me
                      Of whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail; .
                      And I stepped beneath Time’s finger, once again a tribal singer,
                      And a minor poet certified by Traill!

                      Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow
                      When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;
                      When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,
                      And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.

                      Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,
                      Still we pinch and slap and jabber, scratch and dirk;
                      Still we let our business slide—as we dropped the half-dressed hide—
                      To show a fellow-savage how to work.

                      Still the world is wondrous large,—seven seas from marge to marge—
                      And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;
                      And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu
                      And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.

                      Here’s my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose
                      And the reindeer roamed where Paris roars to-night:—
                      “There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
                      “And—every—single—one—of—them—is—right!”

                    18. Mother of Demons, 1632 (and 1633), and Rats Bats and Vats were amazing (though the last may have been Dave Freer’s influence).

                      His later stuff… he has fallen off of my auto-buy list.

                    19. Actually, while I read him for a few years being young (HS) and starving for pulp adventure stories and they were in the library and free. his stuff just didn’t sit right. It didn’t match up. The things he showed characters doing… He called good boring. So cold and bourgeois. Honor was rigidity. Promiscuity was not honestly portrayed. (yay! So happy and fun to have so much good earthy peasant relations. We’re such healthy animals. So uninhibited and practical.) And the union negotiator is always the good guy, the real man. Not sure what else now. But it itched. Sorry. I read a lot of him. So. Desperate. For. Story. But I was not blind. And happily I found better Story since.

                    1. Actually, I believe he’s a self-avowed Trotskyist.

                      Second-hand info, though. (And the sources also asserted that he’s annoyed when you assume he actually agrees with a Trotskyist position.)

                    2. I suspect that he considers himself a Trotskyist because he Hates Stalin not because he agrees with anything Trotsky stood for. 😉

                    4. That’s what he said he was when I met him. I clearly and quickly realized that was cover. I was familiar with it. My brother used to say the same.

                  3. No, he is a Commie. As in an actual Trotskyite, card carrying member of CPUSA.

                    1. Not a Trotskyte. That’s like every single commie has been instructed to say that because less threatening. Including my brother overseas.
                      Having spent a LOT of time with Eric? He’s a Stalinist.
                      He referred to the Stalin/Hitler clash as a fight between socialism and capitalism. I sh*t you not.

                    4. Wait – what? He thinks Hitler was capitalist? Dude…..

                      And wasn’t Trotsky’s main disagreement with Stalin that not enough people were killed?

                1. I’m starting to wonder who’s the bigger fangirl: Foxfier for Dan Vasc or you for Rusty an Co. 😉

                  1. Well, Vasc just got a big boost, he’s going to battle in defense of the canon of Star Wars, on Twitter.

                    People are insulting his masculinity.

                    …

                    :stares at young Mr. Vasc:

                    Duuuuuude.

      2. @ Editor > “hey totally mistook their wishes for reality.”
        You and Wretchard are on the same page.

        https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2022/05/30/sword-and-sorcery-2-n1601640

        …
        The most singular aspect of the rise of Woke mumbo jumbo is its relationship with the astonishing technological development that sustains it; enabling what may be called a “sword and sorcery” regime. Quasi-theocracies are upheld by technology so advanced it appears to be magic, at least to the general public, who have only a vague and awestruck knowledge of the mechanisms involved. “This man is woman,” a counter disinformation bureaucrat might intone, and all would nod in assent. Those in the virtual crowd who disagree will remain mute, for they know that with a gesture, the functionary can zap any dissenter with cancelation, so that he can be excluded from the metaverse entirely, through a process few understand but all fear.
        …

    2. You mean like in Georgia, where an off-year election somehow had more than 2x the primary voters of 2020 (which was outside a statistical outlier).

      1. And just for that extra rubbing it in:

        https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/05/31/us-government-cybersecurity-agency-releases-warning-about-dominion-voting-machines-n573013

        “Time and again, we’ve been assured that the 2020 election was the “most secure” in history. That phrase became a rallying cry among those on the left (and even a few on the right) following Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud.

        Yet, in a move that directly contradicts that assertion, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency has released a warning about Dominion voting machines, currently used in 16 different states, revealing that they are vulnerable to hackers.”

        THEY.ARE.LAUGHING.AT.US.

  27. Apparently you are not in to Eschatology or you would know that the final kingdom on Earth is a one world government backed up by a one world religion . And they almost wipe out civilization before the Lord intervenes . Those of the Remnant left are called to resist in a one sided losing battle but resist we must .

    2. I doubt that Sarah wants us to get into a discussion on that subject but I’ve read different interpretations on what happens in the End Times. 😉

    3. Oh, I know, and unfortunately that condition is supposed to last 1000 years. Even immortal elves would hate to have to live that lone under Sauron’s rule.

  28. “I can personally attest to the fact that Manuel Garcia O’Kelly and Wyoming Knott did some amazing stepping out during the crazier times.”

    Perfect! I have a list of about 30 such pairs (for when I was with the wife), but I never got to use any of them; Arizona never descended that far.

    I was going to start at the top, with “John Thomas Cross” and “Kathleen Layton”, and work my way down. 🙂

    1. That should have been “…when I was OUT with the wife…”; we’re still very much together, and I’m constantly amazed she’s put up with me for 56+ years. Maybe it was the Python and 870TC birthday presents I got her back in the ’70s… 🙂

  29. Lovely article, well stated argument, but just in case, you all are still staying in shape and practicing with your rifles, aren’t you?

    No reply required or desired.

    1. Why don’t they just hand out cans of spray tan and a paint strip, and announce that there are no punishments or flunkings for anyone wearing dark enough of body makeup?

    2. Sound like they seriously need to defenestrate the Oak Park and River Forest High School administrators. That’s Ph.D. level of stupid there!

      1. D.Ed. Or a PhD in sociology or social work, but yes. Guess which students won’t get hired for anything?

        1. I was recently informed that my concerns about that broad area of policy effort were ‘Q-anon’ and nonsense.

          They did not, in fact, know the magic incantation to make me shut up.

          I did refrain from telling them my precise objections to Q-anon.

          1. Really bend their brains. Tell them you are devoted to Q*Bert.

            @!#?@!

  31. Yup. Agree. They are losing. But it’s still gonna a be a MF and voting isn’t enough.

  32. No? Oh, please. If they hadn’t failed, we’d all still be locked up and wearing masks, and unable do do anything outside.

    One of the things that helped me stay sane was a photo from… I think March or April, 2020, but right in the middle of the first “we really don’t know and are seriously scared” bit… a guy out on his motorcycle, just chilling. It was a red light, we were a few cars back, and he was just sitting there sunning himself while waiting for the light, face to the sun and embracing that.

    Sunlight, green grass on the verge, and yeah there’s bad stuff, but here is something to enjoy.

    I was already pretty much in love with Iowa– seriously, I have NEVER seen so much open geekery from folks who are just living– but that was one heck of an enhancer.

  33. In fact, the tech he discusses above requires AI, which we’re learning — like perfect renewable energy, like immortality (both of which might be easier) — might in fact be impossible, or if not impossible centuries away. It also would require that AI which, to work at that level would need to be sentient, to agree with their aims and ideas (which means the AI would need to be as insane as they are and in the exact same manner.)

    I know I’m a bit repetitive on this, but scifi fans. I think it’s important to point out.

    There’s two kinds of AI, which I will explain in terms of diamonds.

    There’s artificial diamonds, and there’s synthetic diamonds.

    Artificial diamonds look enough like diamonds for the purpose.

    Synthetic diamonds are diamonds that did not happen in nature.

    We have AI. We don’t have SI.

  34. @ Sarah Hoyt

    In the long run, I am confident that the globalists – including Dr. Evil himself, Klaus Schwab – will be defeated. However, the bad news is that in the short run, they may do a significant amount of damage on top of what they have already done and drag plenty of others (some innocent, some not) down with their sinking ship.
    If we think of this as a high-stakes poker game, do they plan to fold and cut their losses or push all their chips into the pot and go for broke? The part about going for broke that concerns me is that they may just be crazy-enough to believe that they can “survive” nuclear war.

    And in the event they surprise us and fold, the priority then becomes catching the responsible parties and trying them in “Nuremberg II,” as Matt Bracken has termed it, for their crimes against humanity. If Gates, Schwab, Fauci, et al. are allowed to skate, they only regroup and try again in the future. No, these murderers must be caught, tried and punished, and their accomplices as well.

    They are too-dangerous to the world and the people in it to be allowed to reside among us. They must be imprisoned and made to pay for their enormous crimes. Their status as billionaires must not be allowed to shield them from justice. Indeed, in the case of men like Gates, their fortunes should be levied for damages done to humanity and garnished to make redress for their crimes.

    Make no mistake, if it comes to that – that the top globalists and oligarchs are charged and tried – they will attempt to save themselves by sacrificing some smaller fish. Don’t fall for it. Turn the underlings to go after the big dogs. Anything less is a travesty of justice.

  35. Have you read this?

    “ The rushing power that runs beneath the age of Progress, the energy of the modern world, the river that carries us onwards – where is it taking us? We know the answer. Humans cannot live for very long without a glimpse of the transcendent, or an aspiration, dimly understood, to become one with it. Denied this path, we will make our own. Denied a glimpse of heaven, we will try to build it here. This imperfect world, these imperfect people – they must be superseded, improved, remade. Flawed matter is in our hands now. We know what to do.

    What Progress wants is to replace us.

    Perhaps the last remaining question is whether we will let it.”

    https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/what-progress-wants?s=r

  36. I totally forgot that yesterday was the consecration of the new bishop of Columbus, Ohio, Earl Fernandes. He’s from Cincinnati, and was the high school teacher/mentor of one of the guys who was chaplain at St. John Bosco over here, so of course people who know him are excited.

    You can watch the video either on EWTN’s YouTube channel (they rebroadcast it at 1 AM last night) or at the Columbus Catholic channel.

    Anyways… they didn’t hold it at the Cathedral (which is St. Joseph’s, downtown), but at St. Paul’s out in Westerville. I don’t know if the issue was the perpetual renovation and no parking, or the potential BLM demonstrations, or what. St. Paul’s is just a normal suburban 1980’s church in Columbus, and it’s not even all that big. It does have a very sturdy choir loft, though, and you will see it packed with about a hundred people.

    The annoying thing is that the news articles insisted on talking about this guy as “the first person of color bishop in central Ohio,” which is oddly specific, and as “Indian-American.” If you’re going to get into it, he’s Portuguese-Indian-American, and maybe a couple other ethnicities. Whatever.

    Teacher priests don’t normally move up to be bishops, and he’s a fairly conservative guy to be appointed to anything, in 2022.

    1. The other thing going on in Columbus is that last year, the “Jubilee Museum” at Holy Family got officially moved down the block to the old location of the first Wendy’s, which was an auto dealership before that. It’s now the Catholic Foundation building, and the museum is now the Museum of Catholic Art and History. The big deal is that it is a handicapped accessible location; and it’s been turned more into an actual museum and less of a place to store rescued church stuff. (Although they are still rescuing church stuff and redistributing it to churches that ask for it.)

      Also, since Holy Family has a big soup kitchen and homeless care program, and the museum was only open by appointment, this redistributes the weight.

  38. You can feel the desperation, if you know where to look. You realize that these people have created castles on the thinnest of margins…and they know the foundations are made of sand. Illusions of what they think the world should be, based on a secular faith and religion.

    I’m not sure if there is anything after this world. I’m not sure what I would feel if there was one, either Heaven or Hell. I would prefer to live until the universe ended, and just long enough to see the next one come into being.

    But…if there is a final destination where the unrepentantly sinful are punished, I hope all of the people that have put us here have express tickets there.

  39. Seriously. Evil, gloating villains with German accents.

    Something something repeats first as a tragedy then as a farce something

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