Going Backwards

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

There is at this moment a road, once as familiar to me as my own hand, which I shall never walk again. There are faces I’ll never see again, voices I’ll never hear again in person. There are people alive and theoretically accessible to me in the world right now, that I will never see in person again, no matter how much I want to. And one of those might very well be the first person I remember being aware of loving.

Some of that is normal and natural, a consequence not only of our being ephemeral creatures, but of our being ephemeral creatures who move about a lot. I knew when moving to the US there would come a time grandma would go without my seeing her again. That almost for sure the last time I saw her would be without being aware it was the last. That it was entirely possible — and it happened — that at some point that most familiar of paths would be closed to me: into the little iron gate, through the tenants’ patio and the washing tank area, past the wood gate grandad made, and the grove of the orange tree, over the little bridge besides the workshop and into the big patio with calla lilies at the end, up the patio and into the open kitchen door.

It doesn’t really matter that I’d give a limb or years of life to take that path again and have tea with grandma just once more. And I knew that it wouldn’t last forever since that dream when I was eight, when I followed the path and went into the kitchen, and called, and grandma was gone and would never be coming back. It was a dream then, but I was smart enough to realize it would be true one day.

We can rail about the human condition — I do, most humans do — but it is what it is.

The problem is right now we’re experiencing that sort of splitting and closing off for no good reason. At the whim of people who are bent on destruction of everything that’s civilized, everything that’s human, and if given their head, probably everything that lives.

At the beginning of the fauxdemic — though later she became convinced, being elderly and having a TV in every room of the house — mom said “It seems we’re going backward for a time.”

We aren’t so much going backward as being shoved backward. Every place in the world is in ferment and revolt (you’re not alone. The media just isn’t reporting it) because the self-proclaimed elites, having seized power are carrying on a program of isolating, starving and killing those they have power over.

I’m not exaggerating, and there is no sane reason for this. It’s an insensate fury composed of anger at not getting the utopia they thought they were promised and not being worshiped as the godlings they think they are.

Generations were brought up being told that utopia was possible in this earth, and that they were the brightest, best educated, etc. ever to walk the Earth. Then they have to face they’re not. In the past most people realized they were not in elementary school, or when pitched against something really difficult. But these last few generations of the “elite” (these are almost all rich kids. The others hit their nose on reality sooner or later) have had everything catering to them, and their self -esteem burnished willingly by those hoping to profit from their largess or afraid of their litigious parents. And the media, which the left controlled, went on, calling them brilliant, wonderful, beautiful (remember when they tried to convince us Michelle Obama is beautiful, or Occasional Cortex is brilliant) and with the monopoly on the media, everyone went along. They were never told no. Ever.

As a result, they’re spoiled kids — even those who are in their ninth decade — and like all spoiled kids, they are unsatisfied, unhappy, purposeless and frustrated. They keep trying to distinguish themselves, thinking they’ll love their lives more, if only they can have privileges not allowed to everyone else. And not like flying first class while the serfs fly coach, no. They want to fly while the serfs aren’t even allowed to drive. They want to eat juicy steaks while the serfs have to eat bugs.

That was what the whole covidiocy (singularly ineffective at controlling ANY virus, but great to establish status) and the climate scam are about. None of it makes any sense otherwise. Eating bugs is not good for the environment (it’s not good for humans, either) because they eat more pound per pound than cows. Solar and wind energy are not only worse for the environment, they can’t subsist without oil (Seriously, how do you transport the panels, etc?)) And the batteries are way more toxic and polluting than even mid 20th century oil motors (which are not what we use. We’ve come a long way, baby.)

However, if you have to live in the dark, use candles, can’t drive, and have to shower in cold water, the “elite” will know they’re special. And maybe then they’ll be happy?

Spoiler, they won’t be happy. Right now there is still a branch that keeps thinking of more and more stuff to humiliate us, partly because we’re not obeying. Think of the rich, spoiled kid when kids on the playground ignore her, and you have their measure.

But the others are starting to realize not only don’t we obey them, but if we did it wouldn’t make them happy. Humiliating us won’t fix what’s broken in them. Eating steak in front of starving people won’t make them feel better.

So they’ve moved into “We just want you to die.” Almost everything now is designed to kill off vast amounts of humans. Their excuse of course is “population explosion” but most people know there’s no such thing.

They’re trying to do to us what PETA does to animals it claims to protect: kill them, because that’s the only protection. And because who wants those animals around, anyway.

They hate everything that loves man, even cats and dogs. And every domestic animal grown for man or in partnership with man.

They’re declaring off limits any source of energy that works, including hydroelectric and nuclear, because that enables people to live with a modicum of hygiene and dignity.

And part of what they’re doing is isolating us physically. Yes, I probably could go to Europe one last time. It’s still being debated, over here. Except I’m not ready to conform to nonsensical airplane mask rules (I have asthma. It’s very non-bueno.) And because I’m aware of the fragility of the whole edifice, I’m afraid of being stranded there. It’s part of the reason we’re driving everywhere.

The fragility of the whole edifice is because we’ve started ignoring/fighting back against the rich, spoiled toddlers who think they’re in charge. It’s more fraught than you can imagine. And could come down any minute. Will almost certainly come down, worldwide, once the scarcity of Fall and Winter hits, and that’s before they try to fraud elections here.

They can’t win. But as we plunge into whatever this is, as we go backwards for a time, I feel like people are still not aware of the intensity with which these elitists hate us. Us, the west. Us, all of humanity. Us, all of mammals. Us, every living thing.

They are unhappy and can’t figure out why, and so they turn their hatred outwards, and it must be the fault of everyone and everything that failed to be perfect and love them unconditionally. That is, everything.

Most of them aren’t even fully aware that is what they want, but they reveal it, suddenly, in looks of malice and glee when they are told of mass deaths, or losses of agriculture.

We need to be aware of it, because they must not be allowed to spread their poison or make it sound like they “care so much.”

Point out the inconsistencies in their practices. Rip the masks all the way off.

In whatever is to come (and yes, I’m still praying it passes us) we need to see clearly.

No more lies now.

493 thoughts on “Going Backwards”

  1. Glad you’re still fighting over there. I’m guessing the elites are losing since they are being so loud. You would think they’d get tired of being mean. But no they are ramping up Agenda 2030. Thanks for shining a light.

        1. I have noticed a year-by-year increase in the number of “liberals” who label conservatives as “Nazis” and “racists”, and especially those who are critical of Joe Biden.

          1. The Progressive Establishment desperately needs to keep people from realizing that THEY resemble the Cult. Of The Despicable Austrian more than anything else. Just as they shout “Racist!” to distract from their own systemic racism.

            1. They’re going to have a difficult time backing off from that lunacy: After what they have said, and the evil policies they have supported, why should anyone trust them ever again?

              1. One of the things that has me seriously weirded is their push for more and more abortions, more abortions now, as their empire collapses around them.
                They say that Hitler in the bunker was still madly trying to kill more and more Jews.
                This has that feel.

                1. The “green gaia” cult: Even back in the 1960’s I was seeing claims that there were far too many humans and the global population would have to greatly shrink to “save the Earth”. Not sure after all these years about calls for “final solutions” but they were implicit in the dire language that was used.
                  Abortions and sterilizations are two ways to cut the birth rate. Trans indoctrination in grade school is another way, as it will produce young adults who are either physically unable to make babies or are too psychologically damaged to want to.
                  Come to think of it, wasn’t there a 60’s sf novel in which the population was limited by such means?

                2. It’s a death cult, any way you look at it…And the clear lesson of history is that we can’t submit to a death cult…At the very worst, and I’m not that pessimistic at all, we must go down fighting like true Americans, like those incredibly brave 16 and 17 year olds who died fighting the British while hungry, sometimes shoeless, and with barely clothes on their backs…..

                    3. Okay, this is odd. The Satan press conference video I just posted got nuked on the first try, just like the guillotine song earlier. The only common factor I see is that both first attempts were just the video link by itself, whereas I had other text in the second attempts that went through.

                      I don’t know why WP would freak out over that, but here we are.

                4. It reminds me of C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy and, especially, the final book, That Hideous Strength. The Left hates humanity and all that is good and seeks its destruction. It’s the tantrum of a spoiled child against their Heavenly Father.

                5. Jews, heck, he was after Germans.

                  If the war is lost, the people will be lost also. It is not necessary to worry about what the German people will need for elemental survival. On the contrary, it is best for us to destroy even these things. For the nation has proved to be the weaker, and the future belongs solely to the stronger eastern nations. In any case, only those who are inferior will remain after this struggle, for the good have already been killed.

              2. Because lots and lots of people don’t want to believe that any of this is real.
                They’d give almost anything to go back to sleep.

          2. “When a leftists calls you ‘racist’ it means they are losing the argument.”

            Really, ‘Nazi’ and ‘racist’ (without SOLID examples) simply means they are failing and are desperately trying to play the [GET OUT OF THINKING FREE] card.

  2. I have been wondering for years now when “the Saxon would begin to hate” and the elites would suddenly find themselves confronted with millions of people that had learned to hate them as much as they hate us. But now I’m wondering if it will ever happen. It’s sort of happening now, I guess, with Biden’s approval ratings in the toilet and similar things, but at what point will the so-called “silent majority” go Dutch farmer and loudly and publicly let the Powers That Be know, hands off, no more? The frustration is at a simmer, and it’s real, but doesn’t seem to be going any higher than that. And unfortunately I think it may have to blow the lid off the pot before anything actually changes.

    I’d like to think we can still vote our way out of this, but I’m really not sure any more. I’m not black-pilled because I do think we win in the end, I’m just not nearly as sanguine about doing it in a peaceful manner as I used to be.

    1. Of course it will happen. The Dutch farmers you mentioned are proof of that. Two years ago, you likely would have laughed at the thought of Dutch farmers upending their country.

      And yet, here we are.

      Part of the cause of the black pill, I think, is that people keep trying to predict what will set the country off. The fact is that you and I can’t know that. It will happen if things continue on as they are. But there’s no telling when, or what the specific flashpoint will be. It could be ranchers upset over a land-use regulation. Or it could be a riot in Los Angeles that ends with George Gascon fleeing for his life (if he’s lucky).

      We don’t know, and we can’t know. It’s the way that such things work.

        1. Waiter in DC getting into a bickering match with some low level leftwing politician who tries to throw their weight around, and things spiral out of control until half of the Eastern Seaboard is on fire?

          2. Or the kind of overreach employed by such as Oregon’s Despicable Kate Brown, who not only threw the book at a non-shutdown beauty parlor operator, but also tried to sic Child Services on her. If one of her thugs got an unwelcome reception (up to and including 3S), I could see the overreaction sending the balloon up.

          3. “I said medium WELL! Light an actual fire next time!”

            “Have it your way…”

        2. Looking back at history, it’s very possible it’ll be something that would beforehand seem absurd and trivial. But that makes sense if you think about it. How trivial is the straw that breaks the camel’s back, or the snowflake that collapses the roof of a sturdy building?

          2. The big things the experienced heads of state see coming and can do the full court press to head off.

            It’s the micro-crack happening out of the normal path that no-one notices, and if the entire structure is one giant egg-shell, once that crack gets going, by the time the Great Experts even know it’s happening, it’s already propagating at near the speed of sound as the entire structure unzips itself. See the Tu-144…

              1. And that’s the point. Who, before Ceausescu’s speech on 21 Dec 89, could have predicted that he’d be dead 4 days later? It happens when it happens.

                And I’d note that, like our own wannabe dictators and their adherents in the mobs and Congress, he also referred to the protestors as “fascists”.

              4. Okay, I’m not yet ‘in’ enough to get all the lingo, and Bing search isn’t giving me anything useful, so I’ll ask:

                What exactly is a Romanian Christmas gift?

                3. It’s a reference to the demise of the Communist leader of Romania in 1989 on Christmas Day.

        3. Yup. The important thing is that everyone’s feeling cranky and on edge at just the wrong moment. And then something – which could be as trivial as you can imagine – provides the puff of air to push it all just over the line. It’s entirely possible that the trigger will be a homeless, brain-addled drug addict who violently freaks out at just the wrong moment. Or, Mrs. O’Leary’s cow could kick over another bucket.

          The problem is that no one knows where the line is, or how close to it we are to it. We know the line is there. There’s a general sense that we’re drifting toward it. But we can’t predict when we might reach it. And, ironically, the uncertainty likely puts people even more on edge, which makes the situation even worse than it would otherwise be.

          And, of course, too many among our elites are trying to encourage unrest that they think they can contain.

        1. There’s a farmer in Canada who posts videos on YouTube under the name: QuickDickMcDick. He’s done one about the fertilizer situation that explains how utterly ridiculous Turdoo’s plans are.

        2. Sure, why not? It totally failed and led to the collapse of Sri Lanka, but surely if they try it enough times it has to work, right?

          1. Interesting that the next two targets (Netherlands and Canada) after Sri Lanka are extremely productive farming regions important to the region (Netherlands) and the world (Canada). Almost as if the Chinese flu didn’t kill enough people.

            BTW, does anyone have any idea how the less fertilizer means less greenhouse gases (oops, that should be plant food) notion started. The Reader tries to follow the crazy stuff to be prepared. The Sri Lanka thing looked like 3rd world idiocy aggravated by the UN but where did the ‘cut fertilizer use 30% now’ come from in the Netherlands and Canada.

            1. I gather it’s algae bloom caused by nitrogeneous waste runoff that’s the primary concern. When the algae whose growth has been artificially enhanced dies, the decay takes too much of the oxygen dissolved in water, doing damage to aquatic animal life. The process has very little to do with greenhouse gases, but worries environmentalists anyway.

              1. But at the same time, they want algae growth for some things, and don’t want it for other things, and…..

                Algae gets eaten by krill, which gets eaten by seafood, which becomes our food. The ocean food supply has apparently been rebounding in a wonderful way, and fisheries are doing great, especially salmon, which is why I keep getting salmon ads. But the greenies hate it.

                1. Then the krill aren’t doing their job well enough or fast enough. Maybe they aren’t in the right place at the right time. I don’t know how abundant they are in the Gulf of St. Lawrence or the North Sea. But I though we were supposed to be eating the algae directly instead having the nutrients come up through the food chain. How to get people to do this is one of those pesky social engineering details to be worked out later. Fire! Aim, Ready.

        3. > “The fertilizer idiocy has now come to Canada.”

          I saw that story. I wondered “Is Trudeau so dedicated to hurting his own citizens that he’s WILLING to be exiled or killed for it, or is he really dumb enough to not realize he’s signing his own death warrant even after what just happened in Sri Lanka?”

      3. Are the Dutch farmers still in the uncivil disobedience stage, or have things gotten real yet?

    2. I think it is beginning to happen, Moose. I’ll do a post about it later this week, but there was a story which appeared for a couple of days about a small town in North Carolina where the entire full-time police department with their chief of police, and a couple of other town employees walked out in a body, protesting the new town manager: a woman of color, and reading between the lines, a resentful and racist woke warrior. They cited the hostile work environment which she had created. She was apparently unemployed for two years, and had lost a suit against the employer before that. Why such a toxic person got hired in the first place, but all respect to the people who quit immediately, instead of prolonging an untenable situation. The only way to win is not to play at all, when an employer begins to play wokist games. Call it a hostile work environment and walk.
      There may be a lot more people doing this – some of them quietly, some of them not so quietly.

      1. My best friend from high school who is a registered nurse took early retirement from her job last year rather than play the woke reindeer games her new office manager was setting up.

        She is happily babysitting for her granddaughter instead. Not as big as a whole department at once but she said that, one by one, almost the whole nursing staff has left for greener pastures since then. They even had a doctor in the practice retire and they can’t get enough nurses for a replacement. Word gets around it’s a toxic place to work and, wouldn’t you know it… No applicants.

        1. And from what I read today, military recruiting is 40% below requirements for the year. Worst part may be that the largest drop is among traditional multi-generation military families, where most of the long-term enlisted come from; the number I saw was 13% of total enlistments, which IIRC was down from somewhere around 60%.

          But hey, they’re all being “trained” to use the correct pronouns… 😦

          1. Shortly after the election, I told a friend that one of the biggest indicators for which way the country was going would be whether the armed services hit their recruiting numbers this year (2021-22). If they were more or less normal among the population segment that has historically served in such disproportionate numbers, it would show that such people still fundamentally trusted our national institutions, and the “system” in general. If recruitment numbers collapsed, that would show that they had lost faith and were checking out.

            I am not pleased that it is the second of those, but neither am I surprised.

                1. A Venn diagram of “intellectuals” and “blind fools” will be nearly a single circle.

                  1. No. It’s the hard workers who have faith in America but don’t have time or energy (or motivation) to look around and realize that “doesn’t happen in America” is something that has to guarded, and is close to needing to be fought for.

                    I expect a lot of fraud in November. I just don’t know if it will be so blantant that it can’t be ignored.

                    1. Point. I guess I should have said that “intellectuals” are a subset of “blind fools”.

          2. > “And from what I read today, military recruiting is 40% below requirements for the year.”

            And on top of recruitment problems, they’re apparently dismissing huge numbers of people they already have for not taking the shot. A week or two ago Instapundit mentioned that the army was kicking out tens of thousands of reservists.

            How many troops have they fired so far? Who do our glorious leaders think will be left to actually DEFEND them against an armed revolt?

              1. Right. People who have no respect for the government’s laws and are just here for the handouts will turn into skilled, disciplined soldiers willing to give their lives for Uncle Sam, just like that.

                Well, at least it’ll be easier for us to defeat the military if it becomes necessary. Silver linings, and all that.

      2. I recently read a comment by someone who was asked her pronouns, by a Customer Service Representative and replied, “If you can’t tell by inspection, you’re too stupid for me to talk to” and walked off. “Yo, ho, yo ho, the pirate’s life for me”. Well, even if it was Artificially Imposed Stupidity by the CSR’s boss or bosses, that just means organizational or corporate stupidity rather than individual. Now, there’s a pandemic for you.

        1. On questionnaires (usually in medical offices, who should know better) on the line “Gender assigned at birth”, I always cross off “assigned” and write in “observed”. I’m waiting for an objection; none yet. 😉

          1. I was filling out a form at a new doctor yesterday, and near the top of the sheet was the line for Race. I left it blank through filling out the rest of the form, it was eating at me a bit. I know the answer they wanted from me, damned if I was gonna give it to them. Leaving it blank didn’t sit right either. “Human” seemed too pedantic.

            Settled on Slavic/Celtic, let ’em stick that in their ar… Excel Spreadsheet.

            1. Well, “human” would have been (pedantically) correct, but I like your answer; it follows from the current division mania on the Left, a perfect example of the maxim, “to beat any system, turn the handle in the direction intended, but twice as far as expected”. Maybe on my next one, assuming it’s not just checkboxes, I’ll select “Other” and write in CFPGI (“Corsican-French-Polish-German-Irish”). 🙂

                  1. AAGGHHH!!! The government wants to paintchip us!

                    Oh, wait… Never mind. Color me embarrassed; totally an oppressed minority these days. 🙂

        2. Puts on sunglasses while random things explode in the background “Thug Life!”

          That said, my own answer (should I have the guts to give it properly) would be a wryly cocked eyebrow, slight smirk, and “Her Imperial Majesty, long may she reign.” (Or similar.)

          If they’re offering, why not have a little fun with it? It might also work as a way of separating the wheat from the weeds, i.e. the people who say it because their workplace requires it and they’re not quite ready/able to pull up roots and leave, as opposed to those who actually mean it. The former may share a quiet laugh with you before sending you on about your business. The latter will probably scream something about something-ism or immediately begin lecturing. At which point I would turn around and leave. (The more martially inclined/righteously ticked off are free to engage in verbal warfare however they please.)

        4. My wife tells me it would be wrong for me to suddenly decide that I will only use Samuel L. Jackson pronouns on everyone all the time. >:D

        1. They were apparently going to have an emergency council meeting late last week – but it hasn’t popped up in the news again. For various reasons, I don’t see anyone concerned wanting to air their linen – dirty or clean – in public. They seem to be pretty discreet, all the way around.

        2. Not yet. The town council held a closed-door meeting last night. The town manager who was the alleged cause of all the resignations (all five full-time police officers plus two town clerks) came and left without comment. The town, by the way, is Kenly, North Carolina, in Johnston County near Raleigh. Population 1300ish.

      4. She probably got hired because someone, maybe a state employee, went to the city council and told them they needed to be more diverse and inclusive if they wanted to get state and Federal funds. And also, to fight stereotypes of “the racist South.” And perhaps that helpful person added, ” I know a Black woman who has training as a city manager, and I’m sure (wink wink, nudge, nudge) she’d be perfect for the job.”

      6. I left before the university I was teaching at could go full woke warrior on my a$$. They’d been heading toward it and I could see it coming. Now I write books and am having so much more fun and so much less stress.

    3. It is happening everywhere, but people have still hope in the election, also Americans are a mercantile people, slow to anger. But it’s getting…. bad.

      1. It took me a long time to realize that most of the non Anglosphere world does not think war is another means for trade. When the elites make trade impossible the anglosphere will react, possibly just with black markets.

        1. The CCP posted tanks outside their State Banks because of protests in a country where it is forbidden to protest… The left always overdoes it.

          1. The protests were already ongoing, and have been in some regions for months now. And they’ve also tried less blatant methods of shutting down the protests, such as arbitrarily giving all depositors at the banks in question a red COVID pass (mandatory stay inside and/or quarantine if your pass turns red). I think at this point they’re actively worried about scared depositors trying to loot the banks to get their funds (the inability to get funds is why the protests started in the first place)..

            You’ve got to admit that tanks will cause all but the most determined bank looters to reconsider their options.

              1. And you might be surprised how willing that tank driver is to take the capitalist road….

              2. If I were the bank, I’d be more worried about no one ever trusting me with their money again.

                I mean, why would you?

        2. Alas, I’m no longer sure the rest of the anglosphere exists. Unless we’re willing to spend blood to liberate them.
          The egg that England laid might be all there is to that great cultural force now.

          1. We’ve liberated Europe twice now, and then spent half a century standing as a vanguard against the very same totalitarianism that the continent seems to be eagerly embracing.

            I see no real need or point in spilling American blood to save them from themselves a third time.

            1. Yes. ^^ This ^^. Forget moving bases from states that don’t appreciate US personnel stationed there. Send families home. Remove everything removable. Raze them down. Pull out. Period. End of Discussion. Not one red cent to any country. Not one red cent to the UN. The CCP can go hang themselves with their loans, for repayment of what they’ve nationalized out of American hands over the decades. Collect war reparations for all the money and items frozen from Iraq/Iran, etc. About the ONLY state entities I’m good with backing are Israel, Canada, and British Isles. Canada, because neighbor, and British Isles because of the tie to Canada, maybe Australia and New Zealand, but none of them need our money. Just our backing JIC.

            2. When people bitch about the US being “late to the party” in the two World Wars, I usually point out that we shouldhn’t have had to get involved at all. They were Europe’s problem to solve rather than relying on us to bail them out.

              1. Word, dude in black. I have my own sub-take on the great European self-lobotomy: After over a millennium of fear and hatred driving recurrent unwillingness to accept a relatively small Jewish population just about anywhere on the continent, culminating in killing 2/3 of us … well … the nations of Western Europe learned exactly the bass-ackwards lesson from what they might have learned … and now have the religious minority that they wanted and welcomed. Just my private, particularly nasty perspective.

                1. Agreed, and they deserve to get it, as Mencken said, “good and hard”, but I do not want to see Kratman’s “Caliphate” become current events.

            3. Note that I’m the mother of male children, have ductape-adopted male grandchildren, and might have physical ones.
              NOT ONE DROP OF AMERICAN BLOOD for their insanity. Not one.

            4. If we don’t liberate them, we might not be able to free ourselves.

              And because willfully starving a third of the world’s population is a monstrous million-deaths-is-a-statistic sin.

              War would be the worst of all possible ways to do it. It might also be the only way.

              Maybe the first step is to force a beakup of the EU.

              2. I don’t want it to happen either, but since they seem hell-bent on doing it to themselves, I don’t see how we can stop it.

                As far as forcing a breakup of the EU, the EU seems to be doing a fine job of self-destructing all by itself. Witness Brexit. And the Germans and other northern/western European residents are, from what I understand, getting sick and tired of having to live under austerity measures because their governments need to bail out southern/eastern member states’ economies.

                Maybe will get lucky and the only casualties will be the EU leaders and bureaucrats who get strung up and/or eaten.

              3. > “And because willfully starving a third of the world’s population is a monstrous million-deaths-is-a-statistic sin.”

                It’s not OUR sin unless we’re the ones causing it. I don’t like the idea of millions starving either, but you think it’s our responsibility to sacrifice Americans to save other countries from themselves I may have to start quoting Ayn Rand at you.

          2. Yes. Australia put non-vaxxed folks into concentration camps. New Zealand is none too free, either. England is becoming a caliphate. Canada has a Castrophile in the driver’s seat. Only a diminished America exists.

            America has always been the nation that carries Freedom’s Torch. Others may disagree; but I think it’s because we were founded, at one time, to spread the Gospel. While that direction is seemingly obscured, I don’t think it would be possible to restore it and the freedom that “philosophy” allows.

            No other religion allows non-believers to coexist in peace (People will argue about Israel). Look at how communists (i.e., those who worship the State), Muslims (think Saudi Arabia or Iran), and, to a lesser extent, Buddhists or Hindus permit other religions to proselytize where they control a nation. For example, the Chinese Communists kill members of Falun Gong, put Uighurs into concentration camps, starve Christians, and so on. And Muslims around the globe murder family members who leave Islam for any other religion.

            New Zealand argues freedom is overrated: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/462745/how-protesters-demanding-freedom-ignore-realities-of-liberty

            1. People will only argue about Israel when they don’t know anything about actual conditions there. Judaism is privileged about to the same extent that Christianity was privileged in these United States until the mid-20th century — arguably the best time to be an American (with reservation, if you were black).

            2. Canada has a Castrophile in the driver’s seat.

              –
              I find the arguments that Turd-O is Castro’s bastard to be quite persuasive. Certainly bears a much greater resemblance to 30-something Castro than to ‘Papa’ Trudeau.

              Could the bushy beard and cigars be next?
              ———————————
              When police arrest violent criminals to protect innocent people, they are Jackbooted Fascist Stormtroopers.

              When police arrest innocent people at the behest of corrupt politicians, they are National Heroes.

              1. Unlikely, but only because I doubt Fidelito has enough testosterone in his system to even grow a little bit of fuzz.

                  1. Ah. I stand corrected. Now if you will excuse me, I am off to find a crowbar. I seem to have stuck my foot rather firmly into my mouth.

          3. And for those who think that our hostess is being a bit overreacting toward the UK…

            Podcast of the Lotus Eaters –

            Posie Parker had the cops stop by to inform of that one of her broadcasts committed a hate crime against pedophiles.

      2. The only hope I have for the election is that it will blow the scam wide open and all but the most deluded will see the left-wing elitists for what they are. Failing that, if the fraud gets swept under the carpet again (that carpet is beginning to resemble Olympus Mons at this point) it will merely mark another click of the ratchet.

        They can’t stop without admitting how wrong they’ve been for the last 150 years. They’d rather burn down the whole world.
        ———————————
        ‘Progressives’ suppress free speech because they don’t have the means to suppress free thought.

        Yet.

    4. I think it was here I read someone saying that violence on the left is like a knob TPBT think they can turn up and down at will, and they think the right operates the same, where instead, the right is more like a switch that goes from OFF to 11 in one go.

      It’s a stiff switch, takes a fair bit of pressure to get it to flip, but once it does…

      1. Larry Correia. He also states if the switch ever flips, a lot of peop,e are going to be very sorry.

        2. Sorry on both sides. ILOH has made it very clear that he thinks the switch flipping will be a disaster for pretty much everyone, everywhere in the world. That’s not to say that he doesn’t think the switch flip might not be justified. But it’ll badly hurt everyone, everywhere.

          IMO, people who think otherwise are best compared with the picnicers who thought they’d go watch the American Civil War get resolved over the afternoon at a little place called Bull Run.

          2. As has often been pointed out, a civil war is ALWAYS an ugly thing. If, heaven forfend, ACW2 (or 3, depending on how you count as Mike Houst pointed out) kicks off, it’s in some ways going to be much, much worse than ACW, because it won’t be on state lines, but more likely rural / city lines.

            And while there might be governments in other places in the world rooting for an ACW, I would expect in short order they’d start feeling significant pain from one.
            US Military keeping lids on hot spots? Gone
            US economy no longer buying their cheaply-manufactured goods? Gone, watch your economy crumble
            US foreign aid goes away? How many countries have that as a 2nd or 3rd biggest source of income?

            As gets said many times here, keep your clothes and your weapons where you can find them in the dark, with the addendum of “pray you don’t ever need them in a hurry.”

            1. US keeping a lid on regional conflicts. Gone. India says, “Right. You claim the headwaters of the Indus and Ganges and say you’re going to divert them into the Taklamakan? Divert THIS!”

                  1. Oh, what a shame! For values of “shame” equivalent to “Heh, heh, heh…”

                  2. Not likely, I suspect. There are some very tall mountains in the way. Or so I’ve been led to understand.

                    1. You have heard of nukes which aren’t delivered by either missiles or aircraft, right?

                    2. I’m talking about a hypothetical drift of fallout into China. I’m not sure what that has to do with the delivery system.

                    3. My error; I read it as “can’t get the nukes over the mountains”, although, re-reading it, it’s clear what you meant. Brain fart.

              2. > “Divert THIS!”

                Gandhi says “Our words are backed with nuclear weapons:”

                  1. The Civilization version was originally due to a bug – arguably the most hilarious underflow error in history, I’d say – but yes, treating Gahndi as a massive threat is a joke I’ve seen from time to time.

                    I wanted to link the Celebrity Deathmatch version of this but apparently the video is age-restricted. So I guess this will have to do:

        1. I knew it was one of the blogs I read, just couldn’t think for sure of which.

        2. Larry specifically said he was quoting a friend of his, but since the friend wasn’t named I think of it as “The Correia Switch.”

    5. I don’t hate them. Hate is too damaging to the hater.
      What I feel is anger and sadness.
      Because I don’t think they’re going to learn before they make an irrevocable mistake.
      A mistake that will force us to choose to either accept the damage, injuries, and deaths they cause, or act to remove them from ever causing harm again.
      I’ve never had to pull the trigger to end anyone’s life before, but I share the responsibility of having caused the deaths of hundreds or thousands who attempted to cause harm to our country, as well as hundreds or thousands of innocents who had no choice in the matter. That’s reality when nations go to war against each other.
      People generally never consider the fact that America actually experienced 2 civil wars. The first being our Revolution against Great Britain. We were English, violently rebelling against the Crown and Parliament because of the tyrannies we were being unfairly subjected to. America won that one. The second, because the South violently rebelled against the Union for the right to determine how they chose to live, against the tyranny of the majority; never mind that the majority found slavery to be abhorrent, and a crime against humanity. They lost that one, and while they were right about self determination, they were indeed wrong that people were property.
      Today we face the cultural-political descendants of those who believe people to be property, supported by their unthinking foot soldiers who live intermingled among us. And we may need to do to them what we did to the Tories post-Revolution: not divide our country, but to drive them from the boundaries of our country.
      Or bury them.
      Write, call, e-mail. or visit your representatives. Entreat them to step back from the precipice they seem intent on leaping over. And pray to God or whatever Higher Power you hold dear that we not be forced to make that choice.

      You know, I stared at this for nearly 20 minutes trying to decide whether to post it or not. Somehow I wonder if it’s the thunder and the rain outside making me despondent or not.

        1. Like I’ve said before, I already KNOW I’m on at least one of their watch lists.
          /laugh
          Think of me keeping someone in law enforcement gainfully employed. My only regret is I might be keeping them from going after real criminals.

          1. Hey, we’re all one their watch lists because they know their gig is up! As for slavery, they’ve substituted one form of bondage for another (to the tax man, the lawyers, bankers, and puppet masters). They use their blackmail files with impunity as their targets know they all will be under their control or dead of they defy their Masters.

            1. Yeah, but not all of us here have had the dubious pleasure of having an office clear across the country contact the local federal Marshalls to come give them an “interview” for comments made on a news site blog.

      2. Yep. Worse, the group that thinks it “owns,” people, or groups of people, also think they’re the good guys.

        1. They still haven’t forgiven the Republicans for setting their slaves free.
          ———————————
          “Why do you adhere to the political party that enslaved your people, and hate the party that set them free?”

      3. I try not to hate, I really do. But like you, I’m having a bit of a black dog day due to Circumstances (plus I am, by nature, a pessimistic Eeyore under treatment for major depressive disorder) so today is more of a cold rage than a hot hate. But the cold rage is there. I’m watching my livelihood threatened by the Great Replacement in my industry, my safety threatened by people who hate me because I’m “wypipo,” my society coming apart at the seams driven by the most insane, stupid, counterproductive ideas known to man, and people I thought were my friends thinking I’m a racist sexist homophobic bigot for having the same opinions that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton did twenty years ago (and most everybody else did for, oh, a couple thousand years before that). And I honestly wonder why more people haven’t snapped and gone postal. I’m thankful to God for that, but I am a little surprised.

        I lived in Richmond, VA for several years on two separate occasions. I used to drive down Monument Avenue and see the statues in the perfectly manicured median, the statues of Confederate legends…Matthew Maury (greatest oceanographer of the 19th Century and only ever served the CSA as Inspector of Ports), Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and J.E.B. Stuart. And I always thought that if somebody ever tried to mess with those statues, all hell would break loose to the point of a bunch of good ol’ boys deciding it was 1864 in Cold Harbor all over again.

        They’re all gone now, even Maury, without a single peep of protest. (How many of those protesters even knew who Matthew Maury was or why that statue was there?) Only Arthur Ashe remains. Davis’s statue is now being exhibited in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts…horizontal, lying on the floor broken, with the profane graffiti still painted on it.

        That unstoppable downhill avalanche of the silent majority come to take back sanity is proving a hell of a lot harder to start rolling than we thought.

        And now I have a fluffy black cat crawling all over me and licking my beard so I can’t stay angry. Or type.

        1. And Richmond has gone with it. The Reader lives a bit west of Richmond. It was common a few years ago for folks in the suburbs and even the nearer rural areas to go downtown for an evening or a weekend. All that is gone now and it isn’t coming back. The more successful restaurants are moving to the suburbs and no one goes into Richmond at night any more. The Reader is sorry to see it happen.

          2. Same with Philly and one reason why we left. Not many people coming in from the ‘burbs anymore. I kinda wonder what will happen with all the theaters and the orchestra. But, then Philly did persevere from the 70s through to the early oughts. shrug Who knows? I’m just glad we’re not there anymore.

        2. I grew up in Richmond. I took my beloved to see Monument Avenue before this crazy happened. Words might express what I feel about it now…might.

        3. Having done some work on designing the proposed next round of naval oceanographic research ships, I know Maury very well, and am gratified that they haven’t come after his namesake, USNS Maury. Yet.

        4. They’re too pathetic to hate.

          Think about it.
          They’re deformed cogs in a broken machine. Left alone, they’ll do more damage to their cause than removing them would.
          And the cogs that would replace them are also deformed, so it’s not like you can throw out one bad apple and save the barrel.

          Years ago, I said that Obama nominating Biden as his running mate was the best possible insurance against assassination.
          I guess Kamala proves me wrong.

        5. I feel much the same, and I’m pretty sure my last comment on Instapundit will finally get me kicked out. I’m so tired of having homosexuality shoved in my face that I’ve just lost all tolerance. Not for individuals, but for the great push to shove it in my face all the time.

          Cats know, and I’m glad you’ve got one tending to you.

          Hang on. Just hang on.

          1. Sorry, I have gay characters, but they are not preachy or really any cause. I mean one of them doesn’t want death penalty for homosexuality enough to use his cache to prevent it. that’s it.

            1. See? Exactly THIS. I have gay friends, have no issues with them. Zero. But as soon as I push back against the flood of HOMOSEXUALITY MUST BE EMBRACED, I get kicked.

              1. Well, I don’t want my friends shunned or punished. They are some of them MORE conservative than I am.
                I have no problem with them. But the indoctrination in schools must stop. And the “activists” need to be crucified.

            2. Sorry to yell and stuff. Frustrating morning. And your writing is wonderful.

              1. Yelling and stuff happens these days. Don’t worry. But it’s exactly what the push push push will bring about. People will say “no more. Shut the door on everything.”

                1. Thanks, Sarah. I don’t want to become what I hate.
                  I really am grateful for this place you have here.

                2. My best friend as a teenager was a gay guy. Brian. Ice skater of Olympic caliber till he broke his back (in Sun Valley, Idaho as it turns out).
                  He did the long suicide that so many gay guys did when AIDS erupted-lived a promiscuous lifestyle until he finally died of AIDS complications at 43.
                  Not sure why I wrote that. I felt compelled?

      4. I don’t want to know what it would take for me to hate. I agree with you regarding the real danger of hatred being pointed in the wrong direction – I think I read somewhere that hating someone was ‘like drinking poison and hoping it hurt someone else.’ Should circumstances ever arise to drive me towards that, I hope my reaction would be to say ‘I forgive you’ every morning when I woke up and every evening before I went to bed until emotion matched intent. (One can choose to intend forgiveness and not hate, while being aware that one’s emotions just aren’t in line with that yet.)

        I’m rather isolated from the craziness, and glad of it – homeschooled all my life, thank you, God and my parents. The news I get is from parents, Instapundit, Not The Bee, and this blog. My reaction generally to the worst of the madness is to laugh – sometimes more bitterly than others. It really is just so absurd.

        I’m mildly concerned that I ought to be concerned about how that affects my Christian love of neighbor and empathy towards others. I do pray/hope that all of them come to/are brought to their senses and repent.

        But I’m probably going to choose to laugh every time, because it hurts less than crying or trying to understand/empathize with that level of insanity.

        1. We don’t have to hate our enemies, but much of what they’ve done should never be forgiven.

          Lots of Leftroids are on my Shit List, and most of them are never getting off it. If they stay out of my way, I wouldn’t take the trouble to think about them, much less go after them.

          i wouldn’t set them on fire, but I wouldn’t piss on them to put them out, either.
          ———————————
          You can have a civilized society, or you can have mob rule. You can’t have both.

          1. I can definitely see your point, here. My perspective on such matters is largely (at the moment) ‘Forgive, but never forget.’

            Forgive being about half ‘I will not hate, because hatred is not useful and makes me stupid.’ (I’m saying absolutely nothing about righteous anger, here, because the two are not the same thing.) The other half is ‘In the extent to which you’ve harmed me (and thus I have the right to forgive/not forgive), I will (A) answer with forgiveness should you ever come to your senses and genuinely apologize, (B) not act out of cruelty or malice towards you, and (C) ALL OF THE ABOVE BEING SAID – do whatever I can to prevent you from hurting me and others ever again.’

            This is my ideal, as best as I’m currently able to express it.

          2. We don’t have to hate our enemies, but much of what they’ve done should never be forgiven.

            You don’t hate a mad dog. You do the three S’s and say a prayer for them afterwards.

            Circumstances have gone too far for forgiveness. Between the election fraud and the mass murder of caused by Covid/faux not to mention ongoing world-wide Homodor measures, the world needs a good spring cleaning of so called “leadership” attempting to destroy most of the population.

            I think it might get medieval, Timur-style.

          3. i wouldn’t set them on fire, but I wouldn’t piss on them to put them out, either.

            And now I think of some cartoon. A bucket labeled PETROL. A character on fire. Another character, “P-E-T-R-O-L. That’s a funny way to spell WATER!” TOSS FWOOMP

        2. I’m at the point where I hope for the full wrath of God to fall on the unrepentant wicked.

        3. Blind, unreasoning hatred isn’t healthy, but neither is unearned forgiveness. And the bare minimum you have to do to earn it is admit you did something wrong. There are people I’ve gotten over hating – or being righteously angry at, in your words – but I’ll probably go to my grave without ever forgiving them. Because they never even asked for it, never mind tried to atone in any way.

      5. It took guts to post the above, Mr. Houst! I’d like to dispute one point with you, though: The South was not simply defending its own chosen way of life, but also was actively seeking to expand the slave power through the new territories. Some even harbored wild-ass ambitions of spreading down into South America, taking advantage of local chaos and revolution to colonize. Power does that, crazy as it seems in retrospect. (Amazing parallels to the American attempt to spread Woke culture to Western Asia, right?)

        1. Please consider this the end of this sub-thread. Discussing the causes and goals of the ACW leads into an area that has caused a LOT of heat in the past. The American Civil War is one of those topics we try to avoid for that reason.

          Consider this a friendly reminder that, like .45 vs. .9mm and Mac vs. PC, the ACW is one of the “please do not debate” topics. Using it as an example, or for comparison purposes is fine. Beyond that point, things tend to get fraught and tempers fray.

          Thanks, and we now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion and thread-drift. 🙂

          1. Not aimed at you, Thewerewife, just as a general public service announcement before things get hotter than a red onion slice on a Palacios, Texas blacktop parking lot in August.

            2. Oh, understood, and no offense taken at all. It does take a little while to acclimate to a new hangout (i.e., now that I’m retired I can actually hang out here instead of just the occasional quickie-post). I appreciate all help from the trusty native guides!

          2. .9mm

            Every time someone misplaces that decimal place JMB kills an aspiring gun designer.

            Besides we all know the correct cartridge is .357sig.

            1. The correct cartridge is .50 BMG. But until that becomes available in a 1911, .45ACP will just have to do. 😉

                  1. It’s just a joke.

                    At least, I’m pretty sure it’s a joke.

                    Surely there’s nobody crazy enough to actually build such a monsrosity, right?

                    Right?

                    1. The Reader does believe that it is a bit of redneck gunsmithing. That said, he is pretty sure about the wrist hurting if he were crazy enough to test the result of said gunsmithing. Actually the Reader believes the design needs some work. The barrel is a little short…

                    3. Some idiot (company) thought it a “good idea” (TM) to make a slightly strengthened clone of a Taurus Judge (.45 Long Colt / .410) in .45/70
                      An idiot buyer compounded the “good idea” by loading it with Buffalo Bore hunting rounds (+P equivalent), then firing it, at which time it grenaded.
                      No serious injuries. Saint JMB must have been feeling generous that day.
                      John in Indy

                  2. I laughed, I cried, I stole.

                    Damn it, why AREN’T there Kender meme-stealing memes?

                1. Though in fairness the ought six is considered the minimum for Elk, Moose, and Brown Bear.
                  And Alaskan guides seem to favor the old Marlin guide gun in .45-70 for backup on bear hunts. Worth noting it was the first model to be reissued by Ruger after acquiring that division in the Remington breakup.

        3. While I am indeed sympathetic to attempts to limit federal overreach, l find that looking back to the ACW for inspiration is problematic, for reasons I have recently set forth on my own blog. https://sapiencekb.com/wp/?p=1283. If Sarah will forgive the self-promotion this once, the ACW is not off topic over at my place.Here is another matter.

      6. I very much don’t want to hate them. Hate is not a good emotion. Still, I hate them. I hate the very ground they walk on. I had managed to suppress this for years, but now I hate them. They want to kill billions and enslave the rest. What do they think will happen if they stop using fertilizer? hell, one of their leading lights wants to ban farming. They’re crazy. Before I despised them but now I fear what they might do and hate comes from fear.

        Sorry, but that’s how I see it.

        1. Yeah. Two more reasons to try not to…
          One, at least some of these people truly don’t know what they’re doing. They honestly believe in their cause and haven’t a clue what the real consequences will be. They will be as horrified as anyone else if they get what they think is their way.
          Second, we don’t know if one or more modern versions of Saul of Tarsus are in the mix, waiting for the trigger that turns them into effective fighters for our side…

      7. I’ve been there for 20 years. It’s a horrible thing, to realize that a huge number of people you’ve called friends are simply not trustable, and therefore too dangerous to have around family.

        And they didn’t get there by reason, so they won’t recover by any argument you can muster.

      8. I’ve started thinking in terms of war of succession vs civil war. The former you typically have one side wanting to leave, the other wanting to retain them. They tend to more closely resemble wars of conquest with front lines, armies, etc. Civil wars where both sides effectively want to rule the other on the other hand are more mixed and more akin to the various ethnic and religious conflicts. These tend toward the terror and devastation as we saw in Balkan. And with the current intermixing will regrettably potentially see here.

    6. It’s happening. More and more people are realizing that the leaders of the Left regard the rest of us as serfs…or slaves. The idea is starting to get mainstream exposure.

      I’m old enough to recognize similarities between the present and the 1970s. The same sort of arrogant Leftists in power, the same fetish for felons in Leftist circles, the same wrath building in the electorate. But this time, there’s no Watergate scandal to help the Left stave off annihilation.

        1. Indeed they don’t. And as Alex Kilgour in the “Sten” books would say, “Dinna it be wunnerful?” 🙂

      2. The Left are trying to turn J6 into Watergate but all they’ve managed to do is induce yawning save from the most hardcore of their supporters and a few demented NeverTrumpers. And even Watergate shouldn’t have been a scandal – the FBI had been spying on Nixon and Goldwater, and had been passing info on the Goldwater campaign to LBJ.

          1. True. And add yet another political prisoner into the mix, after a political show trial. What the Left’s J6 antics haven’t done is cause some massive groundswell of anti-Trump/anti-Republican/pro-Biden*/pro-Democrat shifts in public opinions.

  3. “it must be the fault of everyone and everything that failed to be perfect

    That sounds like the progressive movement writ large. Things are perfectly equal, so it must be someone else’s fault.

      1. And if everything magically became perfectly equal, they’d be even more unhappy; some animals are meant to be more equal than others, you know.

      2. Actually, you were correct; actual equality, as contrasted with the Wokie sort, really is anathema to them, and must be someone’s fault.

    2. Eh, it’s the whole Cluster B personality disorder mess. “Things are horrible! But I am perfect. Therefore, things being horrible are always someone else’s fault – I just need to find who to hurt enough to make them fix it for me.”

  4. Our “elites” are the Mommy Dearest set. They’re angry that the world won’t meet their ideal of perfection, and are now going into full “Joan Crawford night raid” mode.

    1. I would probably call it the ‘Dolores Umbridge’ mode, but they may have surpassed even her.

      I believe C.S. Lewis said something to the effect that “The worst of all tyrannies is that which is imposed for its subjects’ own good. A selfish tyrant will ignore those who aren’t useful, but the moral crusader won’t ever stop until everyone has been converted.”

      1. I’m not sure that’s true anymore. I’ve seen the damage moral busy bodies do, but people who are honestly trying to do good can sometimes be persuaded that what they are doing isn’t.

        Then there are the Saddam boys and their eyeball collection. I don’t think the people who live for that can ever be satisfied.

  5. Yep, yep yep.

    Also everything is going digital; our communication, our dollars, our records and history, even our transportation, chip failure or chip supply bottleneck and your car/train/plane won’t run or new ones can’t be built. Those controlling the net, the cloud, essentially control the world.

    I’ve long been ranting about the tried and true, the few good, need bond together and create alternatives; shadow economies, shadow governments, alternative communication systems, etc. hopefully these are being created now. I don’t see such happening but that may be because, I hope it’s simply because, I am rather isolated up here on top of the world.

    Keep what you need where you can find it and be ready to protect it, yourself and those you care about.

  6. I presume there is going to be a lot less travel of any sort in the fairly near future. Partly that’s because the covidiocy has made it clear that video-conferencing is comparable to most business travel (not all, it is worse for casual sidebar communications but it is also sometimes superior for collaboration so in general it is a wash) but it isn’t the only reason. The cost of oil and other essentials – plus all the airlines having fired people they now want to hire back – mean that air travel in particular is a lot more expensive and inconvenient. And politically things are a lot less stable than they used to be

    That means there are any number of places where the first paragraph applies. I’d love to go back to Hong Kong, and that’s not going to happen short of the Chicoms being overthrown. Ditto visiting anywhere in Russia again. And well Africa, India and other exotic spots, while not impossible are going to be much harder and less safe. Heck I’ve wanted to show my bride Northern England, Wales and Scotland in the summer – this may not turn out to be feasible / affordable.

    Not that this is entirely new: my cousin who died a couple of months ago traveled overland from Singapore? to Dover with her fiance in the early 1970s in order to get back to the UK and get married. At the funeral we discussed how that trip is now effectively impossible and has been so for decades.

    On the other hand some new roads are becoming possible. I might be able to go to space, which is less than 100 miles away but still a challenge to get to even though Branson, Bezos and particularly Musk are cutting the cost so that it because a lot more possible than seemed likely 20 years ago

    1. I was very, very fortunate to hit a sweet window for air travel in early and mid June. Canada had a moment of sanity re. the coof, at least for non-Canadians, and all my flights made. Fuel in the UK was expensive but no more so than usual, and there were no limits on travel. People were happy to see visitors, and the dollar to Pound ratio was the best it’s been since I started traveling.

      1. I went to Canada on a business tip in late June. Flew Air Canada…and regretted it.

        1. It says something that the best way for me to get myself, a fellow in Illinois, and a guy in Winnipeg to Vancouver, years ago (pre-9/11 even!) was.. of all things, AmTrak! It made more sense for me to drive to Illinois, pick up someone, drive to Winnipeg, pick up someone, and drive to an AMTRAK station than anything else. And I know full well that is Utterly Insane. And yet…

          And then I got to do whole dang thing in reverse.

    2. I’ve been reluctant to visit Illinois due to recent developments here. Or leave Texas for that matter.

      1. I recently traveled through IL. I made a point of buying NOTHING there save a couple desperately need gallons of gasoline (and even then, just a couple – I found a station that had ONLY 87 octane and the vehicle wanted high-test…) I did stop several times… for.. relief. So.. overall, my opinion of IL politics & politicos got expressed many times there.

          1. It would be Seriously Weird for you to have a sexy Minotaur dream. Metaphysical might be strange, but not NEARLY as weird.

            Heck, I don’t have sexy mino dreams (dagnabbit). The last dream I remember involved a “witch” was more witch than “witch”, my not-sister (WTH?) and a candle that was cross between a volcano and a (possessed?) steam engine.

            And sometimes I have weird dreams, too. Why, I once even had a dream where James Earl Carter was more than minimally competent!

            1. Well, I mention it because I think the minotaur was you and you were telling me there was a way out of the labyrinth but I had to find it. Each person has to find his/her own way.
              Then I asked if you ate people and you said no, the labyrinth eats their minds if they can’t get out. And then you told me stories of people who got out and people who didn’t.

              1. “…and then there was little, frail, Melantha. Suspect everyone thought she was doomed. But Mel wasn’t stupid, no. She sat down a while, thought a while, and had an idea. It took her a day or so, but she walked out, no fuss at all. Figure her return to the Outside World shocked some.”

          2. [raised eyebrow]

            A metaphysical minotaur?

            Have you been playing Dungeons and Discourse?

  7. When people like Brian Deese of the National Economic Council can talk about the future of the liberal world order when asked about high gas prices, it’s clear that they are living in its penthouse. Meanwhile, some of us here in the basement are talking “not sustainable” and can see the cracks in the walls, hear the creaking noises and see the swaying when the wind blows. I don’t have any better Idea that anyone else what’s going to crack first and bring the whole thing down in a cascade of failure or what day or month it will happen, but there are those with an eye on the weather who can see a storm coming that will stress this vaunted liberal world order…whatever it is…beyond design capacity.

    1. The “liberal world order” of Wilson and FDR was always crap, and its “successes” were lies.
      Dan and I are just BEYOND GRATEFUL that we both work from home. What gas we use is on trips to see kids or friends, or so far looks like 3 cons this year. Those are bad expenses, but endurable. Most of the time we drive half an hour to the grocery store, at most. And that’s like once a week.

      1. Anyone remember Yertle the Turtle? I suspect he’s been cancelled … but we need him. In schools. On walls, hiding the Post No bills. Everywhere.

      1. Well if FB does try to block it, you’ll have company. I shared on my FB page too (I post very, very, little), Public (which I do even less)! Not the full song, just a snip, but still 😉

  9. We’ve got their measure, but fear they’ve got ours, or they think they do: some of it might be sloth or cowardice, but a lot of it is simply that those on the right fear chaos and tend towards going along with authority if it has even a patina of legitimacy, even as the water slowly boils. This despite all the winks and nods the left can’t help but telegraph – they always let slip the mask, just a little, so you feel your complicity. Stalin couldn’t help lighting his pipe behind that curtain.

    1. Conservatives have a much clearer view of the costs of civil war than the Left.

      1. The left thinks we will go to the reeducation camps peacefully. Just like RED China. That is why they hate guns and militia.

    2. No. We haven’t hit the point Europe has. Our relief valve was moving. I have never had so many friends move across the country in a year. The directions were many but always blue-to-red.
      And it is better in Free America. Not perfect, but better. I expect we’ll weather the scarcity better. But in the cities, it’s about to get very, very bad.

      1. I think part of the reason we haven’t hit the point Europe has is we have the escape valve of the “Red” states and the areas outside the cities and their immediate suburbs. Even in Bluest New England you can very quickly get away from much of the irrationality by driving to the exurbs where the predominant viewpoints are far more live and let live then the city cousins. I suspect the ultimate flashpoint is going to be some citified politician deciding to force their views on the exurbs. Right now they mostly just laugh at the city types but push them too much harder and they’re going to go from ornery to mean in a nanosecond. Most likely somewhere like Illinois where the Big city is really WAY out of sync with the country types, here in New England the exurbs have experienced some contamination ny the SJW/Karen types so the variance is smaller here, of course doesn’t mean it won’t touch off here…

        2. The worst part is the urban/progressive “elites” think that the way they live should be duplicated by everyone else in the state. Just because they can walk to the corner market/restaurant/Starbucks, I should SUFFER! because I drive 40 miles to get my groceries, and so forth.

          1. I don’t think they understand two things. First they have no concept of physical scale. Having grown up in strongly urban areas they don’t realize how far things can be. Even in New England there are places in ME, VT and NH where a 1/2 hour drive at highway speeds is required to get you to ANY commerce (these days usually the ubiquitous Super Walmart) . Had a buddy from college that was from Wyoming. He talked of a 3 hr drive (each way) to go do the back to school shopping at the end of summer. I imagine the Internet and AMAZON/WalMart etc online have improved SOME of that, but they may have also killed some of the local Department Stores in some of the larger towns downtowns. Second is I don’t think they understand that there are folks (myself for example) that don’t enjoy the city. There are features of it I enjoy. Stepping out of work into Bostons North End had all sorts of advantages, food and coffee of every sort, The festival of St Anthony at the end of August, Hop on a train and you’re at one of several museums or other venues (Boston Garden, Fenway park, universities) in 20 minutes. But the times I’ve gone in for a holiday in the city I always feel squashed, I always feel kind of aprehensive. Maybe I’m just a country mouse, but I don’t think I’m alone. So even if I could live like the elites in a 5-7k/month penthouse, I probably wouldn’t enjoy it as much as I do my suburban home with .5 acre of land. And even here sometimes I long for more like I grew up with with acres of unmanaged land to roam and enjoy. I imagine the City Mice feel just as stressed if they do go out to the suburbs and have to use a car to get anywhere worthwhile.

            1. My ideal would be rural, but with a significant (not necessarily “major”) city within 45 min to an hour drive. Unfortunately, that’s not in the cards for the forseeable future.

              1. Sounds like my Idea too. Boston makes a nice city (although of late it is being more screwed up than usual which is saying something). I think ultimately we will head from the Suburbs to the Exurbs, but not quite yet.

      3. We uprooted ourselves from northern Virginia late last year and moved, young children in tow, to Texas. Our oldest, best friends are moving from Seattle to be near us, as are another family they’ve grown close with in their time there. We’re getting to know our neighbors here and finding them people of character. In community there is strength.

        1. It also matters where in Texas. Location makes a difference, e.g., Austin vs. Round Rock vs. Elgin vs. Giddings. (Relatives in each.)

      4. What I can think of, that I have, scares ME. What I might think of if desperate…

        They do NOT desire that. It’s… Not Good.

        And, I know full well I can’t even begin to imagine what those giving Serious Thought and with Serious Ability can do.

        But I fear that they cannot be sensible to leave ‘sleeping monsters’ lie, as it were. [Hint, if I am holding an axe, you are LUCKY. You can outrun an axe. It’s when I throw the axe aside and get SERIOUS ABOUT IT… and if you think ‘gun control’ stops anything, your teachers have failed you 17-THOUSAND ways from Sunday. What I think of – by accident – contravenes some international treaties. And, guess what, I did NOT a damn ONE of them! I do, however, have INHERENT RIGHT TO DEFEND MYSELF AND MINE.]

  10. I recently heard a YouTuber describe the mindset succinctly: this is the generation raised to believe THEY would stand in judgment of history, not that history would judge THEM.

      1. Before the Boomers.

        There’s a bunch of older vampires that seem to be pushing this agenda along and want it to climax before they descend.

  11. We’ve been doing flights to, from, and around Europe this month.

    So far, no required masks on planes (BA, American) or at airports (LHR, DUB, CDG). Of course, Things Can Change.

    1. No test requirements either, going or coming. That could change, but … Both sisters and respective BIL’s are the ones jetting around (not as couples, each with individual trips). Right now one set is in Greece, getting on a cruise Wednesday. Another set has a rental on the eastern shore for his extend family, but they’ve also been to Europe this year. As has mom.

      They’ve all said the tourist industry, i.e. who they book through, has an unofficial list. Do you know how many people have allergies, therefore don’t have to test for clotflu while on cruise or tour? If you test positive then you get kicked off said tour or cruise essentially getting stranded, wherever. At least if you get sick at the end, and have to test just before boarding your plane home, not as likely to be stuck in the middle of nowhere.

      We aren’t going to Europe, flying anywhere, taking a tour or cruise, anytime soon, or ever, regardless of the idiots in Washington DC, and others PTB.

  12. I think there is another factor that many people are overlooking: The world works the way it does because after WWII, American bribed it (with free access to American markets) to join the anti-Soviet alliance. It caused massive trade deficits and much employment pain, but it worked. Now, America is still paying the price of being global policeman, but not getting much benefit out of it. One only needs so many cheap countertop appliances, after all (although the Star Wars toasters are neat).

    When we finally pull the plug, and its halfway out of the socket, now, what happens to the rest of the world? America will be fine. Not only are we food and energy self-sufficient, but its our navy: We can police the things we find worth policing. The rest of the world, not so fine and the leaders realize this. They’re trying to hold on to the existing order and shape, delay, or deny the transition as long as possible. This leads to really stupid-appearing decisions.

    Not least among them is the attempt to cripple American so we join the rest of the world in misery. It will not work, but we need America First leadership to minimize the pain.

    And then there are demographics. There are no young people in the major powers – except the millennials. Even if America keeps the shipping lanes open, who is going to buy exports? We have a big economy, but we cannot support the all the exports of the entire rest of the world. Where will they go? Demographically old countries are doomed and they know it. It’s another source of trying to hold on to power insane appearing decisions. (Japan is a big exception; they’re living through this, first, and dealing with it rather well, all things considered. Having the second most powerful navy in the world is handy for a country that imports basically everything.)

    1. Somebody else has been reading Peter Zeihan. 🙂

      He’s said in replies to comments that he’s not a historian and can’t comment on how his predictions fit into the Fourth Turning hypothesis, but isn’t it interesting that the Pax Americana shows signs of ending after right around 80 years?

    2. The problem is, it’s NOT our Navy. The Chinese are engaged in the biggest naval buildup since the Second World War. Three aircraft carriers in the water, a fourth under construction. Destroyers being built in bulk.

      I highly recommend reading CDR Salamander’s blog on a daily basis. He’s been sounding the alarm for the last twenty years. We’ve been living off the Reagan-era DOD assets for three decades…and those assets are used up.

        1. I’d like to think our Navy would be using room/temperature or smoking/crater as the preferred pronouns for our enemies should things get chippy.

          Alas, I fear they are being taught something more fluffy and cuddly.

      3. Don’t worry about it. Their “naval buildup” like everything else about CHina is a paper tiger.
        They should apologize to Russia for appropriating potemkin.

          1. It should try shooting for Island Chain Dominance as a more realistic goal. They would at least be a barely measurable fraction of the way there instead of “LOL”.

            1. Even island chain dominance doesn’t really matter if they can’t bring either Japan or Taiwan over to their side. Those islands act as natural barriers to block Chinese maritime expansion.

        2. I’m not saying that every alleged analyst claiming China’s ascendance is on the CCCP payroll. I’m just saying some people are too stupid to at least get paid for their lying.

          1. And some are scared and blackpilled, but they’re relying on trolls on the CCP payroll.
            These days the Russian trolls are meeting with a lot more LOL, but I remembered when they were treated with this kind of credulity.

            1. I sometimes get the feeling that the current war in Ukraine has given at least a few of the smarter Russia trolls a new lease on life.

        3. China will do what China does.
          But so will everyone else.

          China owns the Panama Canal now, but they’re dreaming if they think they can close it.
          Likewise, they’ve been trying to buy Mexico’s loyalty for a quarter century or more. Mexico has been quite happy to take their money. But they’ve seen the Zimmermann telegram before.
          Most of Africa is deep in debt to China. Do you really believe anyone in Africa cares?

          I got tired of waiting for the shoe to drop two decades ago.
          On paper, China is a Tiger.

        4. While I agree that the Chinese navy won’t be nearly as dangerous as advertised, let’s not forget that our own military is being pushed into paper tiger status as well. We’re not as well-protected as I’d like us to be.

      4. The third Chinese carrier is still under construction. It’s been launched, but it’s not commissioned yet. This is a very important distinction. It means that the systems (other than basic propulsion) haven’t been installed yet. There’s a reason why the new, experimental EM catapults on the Fujiang had tents over them in the videos. It’s because they’re not ready for use.

        It’s also still not as capable as a Nimitz-class, even if it works as advertised. The fourth carrier is the one they hope will compete with an American super carrier.

        1. The major issue of carrier operations is trust. You really can’t do modern CATO carrier operations in a low trust environment, because it has so many complex moving parts and so little margin for error. The Russian carriers all ended up being ski-jump carriers because pilots could not trust the deck crew to launch their planes.

          The proof will be what happens when the People’s Liberation Army Navy starts actively cycling aircraft from the decks. Are they going to be able to consistently run catapult/arrest cycles without mishap, or are they going to see catapult and landing gear problems ground their Navy?

          I suspect being a Face oriented society instead of a guilt oriented one does not help that either. Face keeping tends to motivate people to stay in their lane, rather than risk being seen not to know something, while guilt based social structures tend to push the opposite way.

          Even, or especially in, large surface warships, that has cascading impacts. The IJN lost warships the USN would not have, in part because damage control tended to be very rigid in the IJN. Meanwhile the USN held ships the IJN would have lost because individuals, who had no direct responsibility to do so, stood up on the spot and acted to save their shop even at great personal risk because they saw it as the right thing to do.

          1. I wonder how Russian carriers recovered aircraft; because landing on a carrier deck is supposed to be placing even more trust in the people guiding you down to a safe landing.

            1. You can land without a LSO, and if the cable fails, you just bolter. You can even land without the ball, it’s just harder. But a cold cat you cannot recover from through personal skill; best case you’re swimming home.

              That said, I do wonder what the Russian Navy’s accident rate is like.

              1. According to Wikipedia, during the 2016 campaign in Syria the Kuznetsov had issues with the arresting gear system that were serious enough that the entire air wing was transferred to a base on land while the issues were resolved. Prior to this, they lost one fighter when it ran out of fuel while waiting for the okay to land. The fighter should have been diverted to a nearby airbase, but the crew thought that it could fix the problems with the arrestor system.

                The crew was wrong.

                Fortunately, the pilot was able to safely eject.

              2. That density of specific terminology, a.k.a. professional jargon, is impressive. (And makes it obvious that you do indeed know what you’re talking about, as that kind of thing is extremely difficult to fake; also please note that I’m not using “jargon” as a negative description). As someone whose closest contact with aircraft carriers was watching the “C-17 lands on an aircraft carrier” video a few times, I still managed to figure out some of the terms (like “cold cat”) without DDG, but please let me know if there are any I’ve misunderstood:

                LSO = I had to DDG this one to be certain. I figured the “O” was officer and the “L” was landing, but wasn’t certain of the S. Turns out this is the Landing Signals Officer, the guy who stands on the deck with bright-orange “paddles” to signal the incoming aircraft and give them landing instructions (with a method that will still work even if there’s a radio failure).
                cable = the cable (usually multiple cables, as I understand it) that the aircraft’s tail hook will catch on, at which point the aircraft gets rapidly, and safely, slowed down.
                bolter = I had to DDG this one too. To “bolter” is to accelerate at full throttle after a failed landing attempt so that by the time you go off the end of the carrier’s (short) runway, you’re above stall speed and can climb and come around for another attempt.
                ball = another one I had to DDG, this is the electronic guidance system that helps you know you’re on the correct approach path to hit the cables with your hook.
                cold cat = I assume this is a catapult that fails to accelerate the aircraft, so that by the time it’s off the end of the runway it has only achieved the speeds that its own engines could give. Which means that it’s still below stall speeds and is going to go into the drink. The aircraft is lost, and the best-case scenario is that the pilot will be able to get out of the aircraft and survive (and the carrier will send a boat to pick him up; I assume that would be the method rather than turning the whole carrier around).

                I have a question about that last one, actually. I know that ejection seats are a little dangerous to the pilot, because the force needed to accelerate the pilot’s chair so that he will clear the aircraft (that might be moving at hundreds of knots at the time the pilot pulls the handle) can result in spinal injuries. For the situation where the catapult fails and the aircraft goes into the drink, is there a handle that will blow the canopy but not trigger the ejection-seat mechanism? I’m picturing a procedure where the pilot unbuckles his safety harness, blows the canopy, and then once water has stopped rushing in, swims upwards away from the sinking aircraft. But perhaps that’s not practical or safe for reasons I don’t know. So what’s the procedure for the pilot to get out of the aircraft if the catapult fails? Is it just the standard ejection-seat handle, pulled before the plane hits the water? Or is there a different procedure for that scenario?

                1. “The aircraft is lost, and the best-case scenario is that the pilot will be able to get out of the aircraft and survive (and the carrier will send a boat to pick him up; I assume that would be the method rather than turning the whole carrier around).”

                  If the carrier is underway when a plane goes over the bow, there’s a good chance that there’s not going to be any point in sending a rescue boat.

                  If you catch my drift.

                  Though a failed launch off of the angled flight deck might not have that same problem.

                  1. Hmm, that’s a good reason to use the ejection seat. If it’s a “zero-zero” ejection seat, meaning it can be used at zero altitude and zero velocity, then it throws the pilot (and his chair) high enough for the parachute to fully deploy before hitting the ground again. In which case you’re most likely to splash down behind, or to the side of, the carrier that has continued forward while the parachute was opening. (And I suppose there’s a non-zero chance of landing on the carrier deck after ejecting, though you’d never want to actually count on that).

                  2. (1) The plane isn’t going over the bow unless the carrier is underway. (2) It doesn’t take much lateral displacement for the CV to miss the aircraft/crew, and the forward cats are angled slightly to port. (3) Primary recovery asset will be the plane guard helo; secondary recovery asset will be the plane guard destroyer.

                  3. I believe there’s typically a helo and swimmer either airborne or ready during ops.

                    Fun fact. The location of the residents oil windshield speech was the destination of the ship whose loss Jumpstarted the uscg swimmers.

                2. If the pilot has to get out in a hurry, it’s normal to just use the ejection seat. Yes, we train to escape from an airplane that has hit the water (and turned over, as they usually do), but the seat is safer. They’ve gotten quite sophisticated, and there’s a decent chance of getting disoriented if you are escaping otherwise.

                  1. The disorientation issue is one I know about from reading Dave Freer’s blog posts at Mad Genius Club, about how when you’re underwater, you can barely feel the tug of gravity and so it’s entirely possible that you’ll swim down (or sideways) when you think you’re swimming up. Especially if your point of reference, in this case the aircraft you’re escaping from, is upside-down.

                    And the little bit of reading I did on ejection seats just now, where I learned about zero-zero ejection seats, had informed me that they are gentler (NOT “gentle”, but gentler) on the spine than the older versions were. So yeah, I can see good reasons for training pilots on one, just ONE, standard procedure for bailing out. Because if there are two or more different procedures, then in an emergency situation where your rational thought processes are shutting down, you’re GOING to make a mistake, probably a fatal one. But with just one process drilled into you, you’ll be able to do it even when all that’s running through your conscious mind is “stercus, stercus, stercus, moriturus sum!” (Or, you know, the equivalent phrase in your own native language).

                    1. The seats are quite a feat of engineering in their own right…as is the survival gear. When an aviator pulls the handle, there’s an initial explosive charge (black powder, FWIW) that gets the seat out of the airplane, a sustainer rocket that gets it to a safe altitude even on the ground, another black powder charge that blows the chute out of the seat and inflates it (there’s a barometric altimeter…at high altitude, the seat deploys a drogue and you ride it down at high speed to about 8,000 ft) – and kicks the aviator out for good measure. When he hits the water, the life preserver automatically inflates and the radio beacon starts squawking.

                    2. So… should that be in the nominative or vocative case? I mean, with the word “stercus,” it’s the same spelling either way, but I’m not sure how Latin would handle that.

                      Merda is the synonym that seems to have persisted through camp Latin and into modern Romance languages. But the nominative and vocative cases are the same with merda, too.

                    3. I don’t know, I just stole the line from Terry Pratchett. Whose use of Latin always followed the rule that accuracy came second, and humor came first. (Hence lines like “Fabricati diem, punc” as the City Watch motto). So I don’t know how accurate he was trying to be.

                      But if you asked me, I’d say it’s not going to be the vocative case. Because in the modern version of the phrase, we don’t write it as “O sh*t”, but as “Oh sh*t”. So whatever it should be, I don’t think vocative is the right answer.

                    6. I saw an interesting discussion online where the military types were explaining that in the armed forces, you obey your immediate superior, and his superior orders him to give you an order, and that is necessary in times of great confusion and stress.

                      (So, yes, the movie scene consisting of three men where the highest ranking gave the second one order who did nothing but give that same order to the third man was accurate, even if it seemed pointless and time wasting. They were following chain of command.)

                    7. Reminds me of the anecdote I heard ages ago, don’t remember where. An officer candidate was going through a training exercise. He was given a squad of enlisted men and told to put up a flagpole. He started to give them detailed orders: “Johnson, you take this end of the flagpole. Smith, you take that end. Franklin, grab a shovel and start digging over here.” He was then interrupted by the instructor who told him, “Son, you’re doing it wrong. Look, Lieutenant Jones over here will show you how to do it right.”

                      Instructor: “Jones, put up that flagpole.”
                      Jones: “Sergeant Brown, put up that flagpole.”
                      Sergeant Brown: “Johnson, you take this end of the flagpole. Smith, you take that end. Franklin, grab a shovel and start digging over here.”

                      And the officer candidate was enlightened.

                    8. The point being, of course, that if the lieutenant is spending all his time worrying about details, he’s not thinking about what happens next. When the squad finishes putting up the flagpole and the sergeant asks the officer, “What now, sir?”, he should have an answer ready. If he’s been spending all his time thinking about the details of the flagpole, he’s not thinking about whether they need to set up a cooking fire next, or whether the next step is to dig latrines, so when he gets asked that question he’s going to have to stop and think about it. A few minutes wasted isn’t a big deal when it’s just setting up camp, but it can be a VERY big deal in a combat situation. The lieutenant shouldn’t be assigning men to individual tasks, he should be thinking about which task has the highest priority, and which one will be next, and let his non-com(s) figure out the details of how to accomplish each task.

                    9. Half the point. The other half is that if a private hears the colonel say “Hold this position!” and by the time the order reaches him the sergeant is saying, “Five rounds rapid and fall back to this trench” you do not want the private thinking about how falling back helps hold the position or anything except obeying the sergeant’s orders. Combat is fun enough without worrying about those things.

                    10. > “in the armed forces, you obey your immediate superior, and his superior orders him to give you an order, and that is necessary in times of great confusion and stress.”

                      I have to assume that’s ignored in emergencies, though. You don’t have time for that sort of thing when you’re under fire.

                    11. It’s exactly in emergencies when it’s the greatest. Because the officers are elaborating the plan all the way down, and what reaches you may have no recognizable relationship to what the higher-up ordered, at least in the timeframe you have to think about it.

                    12. There’s also the detail that the command relationship is with the immediate superiors (including the NCO). If the Colonel orders a squad to do something, they’ll of course follow orders. But if the Sergeant orders a squad to do something, they’ll likely be more motivated.

                      Also, I’m going to note that Jones got the flagpole instructions wrong. The correct instructions are, “Sergeant, get this flagpole up. I’m heading into town to get everyone Cokes for when they’re done.”

                      Motivates the men to get the job done, and gets the officer out of the NCO’s hair.

                      😛

                    13. If every officer could be that smart, we’d have ZERO retention problems.

                  2. When DadRed was serving with the Marines, he found a location and said, “Sergeant, aid tent 1 here,” then found the next location. “Sergeant, aid tent 2 here.” And so on. Then he started buying cokes for the group that got their medical tent set up properly and ready to function the soonest. Not long after, the unit was winning awards for “fastest to be ready to handle casualties.” DadRed freely admits that he learned from very patient NCOs.

                    1. And if the sergeant gives you a certain look, take him aside and let him tell you what you’re doing wrong. 😛

                      At the very least, take the advice seriously.
                      ———————————
                      Always, always have a Plan O — for Oh Shit!

                3. Ah, I’m sorry about that. My other (first) obsession is aircraft, so didn’t even occur to me that it was a wall of jargon.

                  A lot of ejection seat equipped planes do have the ability to eject the canopy without also ejecting. In a failed catapult launch, you probably wouldn’t use it, though.

                  First part is, even though it’s not fast enough to get airborn, you could easily be going anywhere from 50-100mph. Second, the deck on modern carriers is 50+ feet in the air. Combined that means you’re looking at less of a water landing than you are smashing into a cement wall at freeway speeds without airbags. Really bad news.

                  Also, ejection sequences take a second or two to do the thing once you’ve set them off, so if there is even the chance that the plane might roll or flip upside down, you pull it as soon as you can. There have been pilots and crew killed because the plane was pointing the wrong way by the time the sequence got to their seat. Having a plane start sliding on the deck is extremely dangerous.

                  I actually have no idea what they do if the catapult just fails to go off. I think they would probably just disconnect the steam lines to the one that didn’t work, and unhook the plane. I haven’t really studied those mechanisms, but I don’t think they have a way to have energy get stuck in them, so as long as their not connected to the steam spurce, there shouldn’t be a way for one to go off on its own.

                  1. Don’t worry about it; as I said, I’m not using the term jargon in a negative way. I was actually pleased to see so much of it, because it gave me confidence that this information, at least, is coming from someone who definitely knows what he’s talking about. 🙂

        2. True…but it’s an indication that the PLAN is moving toward fielding a peer force. Compared to just about anything short of the Nimitz-class ships, the Fujiang will be quite capable.

          2. On paper. We’ll see how capable it is once it gets wet.

            The Soviets had a powerful navy, too. On paper. At sea, it was a different story. When the ships could get out of port in the first place. They were chronically short on fuel, ammunition and spare parts. Maintenance? Vhat is, maintenance? Ve know not dis verd.

            They lost a lot of nuclear submarines. The Kursk was just one of the few they couldn’t cover up.
            ———————————
            People can make stupid mistakes, but only the government can force everybody to make the SAME stupid mistakes.

          3. [citation needed]

            I’ll consider the possibility that they are any sort of real threat to anyone if they manage to run a combat mission without turning the deck into a pile of burning wreckage.

            If they work all out putting 100% of their resources into learning how to use carriers they might have a glimmer of knowledge right about the time they don’t have any people to run them. Assuming of course the miracle of the CCP still existing at that point.

      5. Everything you’ve seen about fake equipment and non-existent logistics by the Russians also applies to the PLA. The one saving grace is that the Russians went first and so, almost certainly, the PRC is not going to try and invade Taiwan this year because they need to have a large number of prior reports regarding the existence of Ro-ro ferries and the like validated.

        Which is not to say that either the USN or other Navies (the RN for ex) are not in less than perfect shape, but the PLA, PLAN and PLAAF are almost certainly almost as paper tigerish as the Russian ones

        1. There’s a video, taken on a smartphone by someone who happened to be on-site, of a Chinese PLAAF pilot who ejected from his fighter jet when it had a failure of some sort while flying over Central China.

          The video also shows the other fellow who ejected from the plane: the Russian trainer who was in the backseat.

          For very understandable reasons, this footage has people asking questions – such as, why is a Russian providing in-cockpit flight training for a PLAAF pilot? Even assuming that the plane in question was a Russian design, the last Russian fighter the Chinese copied was the SU-27 (redesignated the J-11). And they started building those back in 1998. It’s not as if the Chinese should need Russians to help familiarize the Chinese with the plane (which is built with Chinese guts these days, anyway). That assumes that it was a J-11BS that crew ejected from, and not something entirely different.

          So, there are a lot of questions regarding this very unexpected incident.

          On another note, both crew members appeared to be fine in the video, though neither one stood up from where they’d landed in the footage I saw.

    3. The problem with “pulling the plug” is Nature abhors a vacuum. Sure, we can pull ourselves out of the muck of being the world police, a quarter of the world’s breadbasket. But something else will come to fill the hole we leave unless we put something else in its place. And whatever fills that hole without us, we might not like the results.

      1. This, too. The Peloponnesian War had its roots in Sparta’s abdication of their traditional position as the war leaders of the Greeks in the face of the Persian invasion. Athens had to stand up and take charge…and after the Persians were beaten back, took charge of much of the Greek world.

      2. And the question is: do we care?

        As long as the toddlers stay clear and know not to piss off the US, there is a real possibility that we don’t.

        1. Unfortunately, we can’t rely on that. bin Ladin thought he could poke the big dog, and nothing would happen. It’s true that he claimed that the US forces in Saudi Arabia were the real cause of his attack on the US. But the truth of the matter is that he would have found an excuse to go after the US no matter what. The US was the big dog, and he was gambling that he could poke it and get away with it. That would then result in a massive boost of prestige for him, bringing in new donations and recruits.

          We can turn away from the world. But the world won’t necessarily return the favor.

          1. But the world won’t necessarily return the favor.

            Seems to me that less stinginess with the nukes would get the point across.

            1. Once again I get the image of someone, normally of exceeding patience, who at long, long last has simply Had E-freaking-nough and switches to FULL-ON BERZEKER and DEVASTATES the troublemakers, asks, “Anyone ELSE feeling like being a FREAKING IDIOT TODAY? NO? GOOD!”… and then comes down, shrugs or such, and sits at the diner table and kindly asks the waiter/waitress for another cup of coffee as if nothing of interest had happened.

              1. A couple of my characters are of this type. Calm, polite, and easy to get along with – unless you somehow manage to push them just that one crucial inch too far.

                Of the two I’ve got in mind right now, one will take up the nearest weapon – be it a claymore sword as tall as he is or the shoestrings from his boots – and kill you to death without flinching. He will then paint messages on the wall in your blood as a warning, before going back to his daily business.

                The other one won’t show any immediate reaction, but in his mind your designation changes from “Potentially Useful Idiot” to “Useless.” At which point he will arrange for everything you’ve ever built to crumble and everything you’ve ever loved to fall. You will stand amid the ashes and ruin of your life, wondering where it all went wrong. And then the one person you never thought could possibly be a threat (be it your patsy, slave, or abused wife) will smite your ruin upon the mountainside.

            2. Yeah, great.

              In response to the Twin Towers going down, you nuked a couple of training camps out in the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan, and Kabul.

              Meanwhile, the thousands of dead in the US are still dead. And you can’t even be sure that you got the person responsible for the disaster.

              1. ……………………….

                You realize the towers came down and all the people are still dead in our universe, right?

                You are making my joke proposal look comparatively good.

                1. Yes, they did. But the reason I’m using it is because it’s a real world example of things that happen even with our engagement. If we weren’t engaged, I have every confidence that there would be a lot more such events. You can’t just pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist. It does exist. And it will intrude in the worst possible way at the worst possible time. At least if you’re engaged with the rest of the world, you have a chance to head such events off beforehand. If the US goes full isolationist again, we lose that chance.

                  Isolationism was possible when the two massive oceans on each side of the US were effective barriers against outsiders. But advances in technology means that we no longer have that luxury.

    1. }}} Intent is clear; https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/07/lew-rockwell/the-covid-vaccine-plot/

      Mrrr. haven’t read the piece, but Rockwell is great when he sticks to economics, but he can be an unhinged nut job when politics is the case — and no, I strongly suspect the left cheated to get biden into office, and yes, the merdia lies all the time (i can prove at least two examples readily), and no, 911 was not a demolition job.

      This is from my own experience of him, where he talked (ca. 2005) about how we were an “occupying army” in Iraq, and that we had zero business there. When I called attention to polls in Iraq that said they wanted us there, knowing that if we left, things were going to fall apart, his reply was that they were all taken by goose-stepping goons terrifying the populace into giving “the correct answer”. He didn’t suspect, worry about, or have concerns that the results were biased, he was ADAMANT about them being biased and worthless.

      Because… hrm… the assertion that things would collapse to chaos when we left was the self-evident truth and the Iraqis could not possibly realize that for themselves….

      Anywho — I personally recommend you take Lew with a strong grain of salt. Feel free to disregard this.

      1. The left did cheat. You can’t be vaguely mathematically aware without knowing that. And it was massive, in your face cheating. And even so they only got in at the last minute, with much obvious cheating.

      3. Also, there’s no need for any particular plan when simple self-interest will suffice. Apparently during the 80s drug companies were given wide ranging immunity from legal prosecution for bad vaccines. At the time there was concern that the anti-vax movement would basically halt any development of any vaccines with perpetual lawfare, and that was seen as a solution to stop that.

        40 years is about what it takes to completely replace the technical leads with people who grew up in the post liability era. And we’d been seeing more and more cases of the companies in question pushing faulty and even hazardous products because that was the best way to get paid. I think this, with the massive amounts of money that were sloshing around, this became the ultimate form of that.

        It seems like a lot of super expensive government crash programs end up like that.

      4. I strongly suspect the left cheated to get biden into office

        …..
        And now they have buyer’s remorse. Telling them “we told you” is as worthless as flinging water into the wind, you’ll just get wet. Because they are responding: “You did not!”.

        1. Their first goal was get Trump out, at all costs. Of their crop, Bern was looking like all too much a possibility, and they knew they did not have a margin of fraud they could cover with him as nominee so they did some trickery to make sure he’d not get the delegates needed early enough to get any momentum. Joe was their least able, but most steerable (they thought) so they went all in on him as no one looked to be close, and really he wasn’t close, and why anyone with a touch of math looks and goes ?????!!!!!!!!!!!!
          Then he opened his trap about VP selections and we get an admin that makes all others look brilliant in comparison because they had trouble finding anyone who would suffice.

  14. I worked with a man whose first and only choice for getting his way in the office was force. His idea was that he knew best, and even if he didn’t know best he was in charge. You either did what he demanded or you were forced to do it. Or fired, as was the case with me.
    I’ll leave it to you all to uncover how old that man was. I don’t want to imply that he was typical.
    Looking evil in the eye is a good awakening; you realize they are serious, and the death of millions makes them giggle.

      1. He was a retail bank manager for Umpqua Bank.
        My sissy works for said bank. I should ask her how the gentleman fares

  15. I’m so sad about a friend who is completely consumed with anger at me. I guess I’d call him a former friend, sigh. He hates the fact that I’m unvaccinated, and that I am one of those Jesus-loving Trump supporters. Why did the winter of disease and death miss all of us rebels? And why won’t I wear a mask? Ultimately the question he won’t ask of me, or maybe of himself, is: “Why isn’t she dead yet?”

    1. The Left just can’t seem to differentiate between a Trump supporter, and a cultist Trump lover. They just can’t seem to figure that people support his policies, but wouldn’t necessarily invite him over for dinner.

        1. Shrug. The 45th POTUS is the kind of man who ends up as a folkloric figure. That isn’t necessarily a good thing. (look, if there actually was a Robin Hood, he was probably no nicer a person than Jesse James & friends.) I don’t mean it as a compliment to anything but 45’s PR abilities (and his studies in anthropology?) to say that people will be debating his folk-hero/folk-villain status long after the historical situation that brought him to the White House is forgotten.

          1. I loved referring to Trump as GEOTUS (God-Emperor of the United States), not because I thought he was a god (obviously he’s not), nor because I want us to be ruled by an emperor (I don’t), but because it was the most reliable way to get liberal’s heads to explode, or at least thrashing around on the ground and foaming at the mouth.

            1. YES. The first time I visited TheDonald I laughed so hard I hurt myself. GEOTUS. Plus, Milo was still in the mix, and it sounds like something he’d say. Though he did call POTUS Trump “Daddy” most of the time.

              Prog’s heads exploded every time, even after you told them it was a big fat joke on ourselves.

          2. In fact, in the oldest ballads, Robin Hood’s distinctly nasty. News of his coming has everyone fleeing, even those who can only hobble away.

        2. That does seem to be the mindset. I wonder if they have any idea how stupid they sound…?

            1. …and any evidence to the contrary is willfully ignored. I’m afraid you’re right; at least everything seems to point that way. What I don’t see is how to fix it without the streets running red, and I do not want that; it almost never ends well.

      2. They seem to forget that lots of people supported Trump only reluctantly because Mrs. Clinton was so much worse. There was also a highly orchestrated character-assassination program beginning the day after election day, but “He lost, didn’t he? So that’s alright”.

          1. Like the Scots lords said in the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320: If the Bruce changes to supporting the English, we’ll replace him with a king who stays on our side.

          2. I’m available. 🙂 And prepared to be very hard-nosed…and even harder-handed.

      2. Kind of like when I see the “suggestion” that if people would start shooting NRA members, or NRA headquarters, or an NRA convention or, well, you get the point, then we’d see “gun control” (whatever they mean by that term this week provided they’re not taking the mask off and calling for absolute prohibition) real quick.

        Never occurs to them that maybe there’s a reason those people/events aren’t being shot up in wholesale numbers.

        2. There has never been a ‘mass shooting’ at a gun show. Ever.

          I don’t need to check any statistics or news reports to know that. If there had ever, ever been a shooting at a gun show, it would have been the left-wing media event of the century. They would still be going on about it for the next fifty years. Not a single person on the planet could have avoided having every detail shoved in their faces.

          How can that be? There are hundreds of gun shows every year, all across the country. Thousands of crazed gun nuts around millions of guns and billions of rounds of ammunition, why, they should have shot up half the country in a weekend!

          But they didn’t. They’ve never shot anybody. Statistically, an American gun show is one of the safest places in the world.

          Why, one might begin to suspect those left-wing anti-gun zealots don’t have a clue what they’re yammering about…
          ———————————
          The Democrats trust violent criminals and terrorists with guns more than they trust you.

          1. I went to a gun show three weeks after Newtown. Half mile line to get to the entrance. Standing room only. Over the course of three or so hours looking around, I had one person bump into my shoulder, who immediately apologized.

            Politest crowd I’ve ever been in.

            1. …and instead of being impatient and pissed off, most of the folks waiting in line were busy hobnobbing about guns, right? Then the conversations branch out into other topics.
              ———————————
              If you call 9-1-1 and tell them that somebody with a gun is breaking into your house, they will send two cops in 10 or 15 minutes. If you tell them that somebody is breaking into your house and YOU have a gun, they will send 10 or 15 cops in two minutes.

      3. And some people would rather die than admit they were wrong. Meanwhile, one of my personal hopes for the afterlife is to know the truth of all things which will presumably include a long, long, long list of everything I was wrong about.

        1. A lot of the leftist elites would rather we die rather then admit they were wrong. With nobody to remind them of the truth, they’d have much better feelz.

  17. People tend to talk in terms of the Great Civil War, and I honestly don’t think that’s going to be the way this plays out. What I’m seeing is a replay of the 1970s. I lived through that era…the Great Inflation, the collapse of American self-confidence, an implosion of common morals and decency. Many people were anticipating civil unrest…if not an all-out nuclear exchange with the Soviets.

    Then Reagan was elected President and the Republicans took the Senate. And all of a sudden, things started to turn around. It wasn’t instant – it took three years to staunch the bleeding and start the healing – but it worked.

    What I’m anticipating is:
    1. The GOP will take Congress in the midterms. They will stop the bleeding at the Federal level.
    2. Just as importantly, they will take control of several state legislatures. This will help with the implementation of anti-fraud legislation. The vote fraud of 2020 will never happen again.
    3. The GOP will take the Presidency in 2024, expand their margin in the Senate.
    4. Leftist groups will go into full-bore tantrum mode starting 20 Jan 2025.
    5. By the spring of 2025, the counterstroke will begin.

    1. I would like this scenario, except I think your timeline is way off and out of order. I expect #4 to happen November 9, 2022: [leftist groups to go stark raving kumquat if the Democrats lose Congress {you thought you heard screaming in 2016? Piffle} and before we ever get to #3, blatantly unconstitutional preemptive measures attempted within the year while the Democrat party still controls the executive branch.

      1. The Democrats are already pushing blatantly unconstitutional measures across the executive branch. A plain reading of what has been published since West VA vs EPA makes it clear that they plan on attempting nullification by generating so many executive orders / actions that the courts can’t keep up especially since they can ‘district shop’ in the lower courts to some extent. And we are only one vote (assassination) away from the Supreme Court backing down. Getting the Senate back will only help if there is the spine to reject all of the administration’s judicial nominees. The Reader thinks it is going to be bouncy pretty soon.

        1. Assassinating a SCOTUS Justice would be one way the situation could go high-end kinetic. Because the obvious counter-move is a retaliatory assassination. Or several. Not necessarily symmetrical.

          1. The fool who uses a gun will soon learn what bombs can do. NOT a recommendation, nor a suggestion. A simple Historical Observation.

            The radicalism of the 1960’s didn’t begin to end until.. what, the 1970 bombing of the UW-Madison Mathematics building, maybe?

            1. People forget about the LARGE number of bombings by Puerto Rican terrorists during the 1970’s, as well as all the other bombings by other groups. There were more than 2500 bombings in the US between 1971 and 1972, and they kept going throughout the 1970’s. A lot of airplane hijackings and assassinations were subsets of bombings and bomb threats. The Unabomber never stopped until he was caught. (Although, to be fair, he apparently was a victim of MK Ultra, so arguably that is government-created radicalism.)

              So nope, the radicalism of the 1960’s didn’t end. It just petered out sometime in the 1980’s, and started up again as soon as it could.

            2. We had printed instructions for what to do in case a bomb threat got called in, up through about 10 year ago, at [university]. (Allegedly it was a popular way for idiots who hadn’t studied to get their finals cancelled.)

              In fact, I still have one in my desk. It’s a whole checklist to do, of questions to ask the caller, of how the caller sounded, what background noises there were, whether the caller was well-spoken or not.

              It’s probably 20 years old judging by the university logo on it.

    2. I think they’re going to cheat, while everyone is starving. And then I think it’s on like donkey kong.
      And no, it’s not ACW. It’s Bosnia or Yugoslavia. Two sides fighting each other and identifying the enemy in strange ways.

      2. If we are lucky, in a few years or a decade or so, we will be demanding that New Zealand hand over the core that fled. (Or else we wake up the volcanoes…)

        If we are unlucky, they will pull a USS Liberty or a Sampson Option on the lower 48…

      3. I think they’ll TRY to cheat. It won’t work nearly as well as they think. I’ll stipulate that the Democrats rely on a 2-4% margin of fraud (Pat Caddell, Jimmy Carter’s campaign manager in 1976, said that in 2016). And the engines of fraud are the big-city political machines. 2020 offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use the panic-demic to double those fraud rates.

        But it was a one-shot weapon. Too many people are aware of what went on, and countermeasures are being put in place. Kindly note that Youngkin was able to flood Virginia with poll watchers…we KNOW how to block most of the cheating. Not to mention that the midterms are largely about House races. The urban political machines can’t steal elections in districts they don’t control.

        1. Counter-countermeasures are also being put in place. Look how they’re trying to impose H.R.1 by executive order. They’re putting in unconstitutional procedures faster than the few honest courts can knock them down.

          And even after the courts rule against them, they just go ahead and do it anyway.
          ———————————
          Grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

          1. “…they just go ahead and do it anyway.” And quite a few recognize that those EOs and bureaucratic decrees are illegal.

            1. And their response to that recognition boils down to “What are you gonna do about it? We’re not stopping.”

              They won’t succeed. I’ve never said they would. But they will try, and the ruin they have and will cause will simply be in addition to the damage of the war to stop them. Ah, well.

              “The saddest words of tongue or pen
              are these three words: Might Have Been.”

              2. > “What are you gonna do about it? We’re not stopping.”

                And then you clear your throat, straighten your tie and casually mention Sri Lanka…

                  1. I’m not old, I’m not really white, I’m definitely not a guy, and I’m not bluffing. I might fight only by taking their crummy excuses apart, (was never in great shape, otherwise) but I’ve made it my life mission to fight Marxism in all its forms until I can go and piss on Marx’s grave and no one will protest it.

                    1. Sarah, there’s Reality, and then there’s Left Reality….. and it’s populated by those who have to piss on the electric fence for themselves.

        2. I’m skeptical.

          I cannot shake the suspicion that the Dems have been frauding their way in for a while, with significant percentages.

          Otherwise, the behaviors of the politicians, and the behaviors of the pollsters are a bit too weird.

          1. I suspect the fraud rate needs AT LEAST the same multiplier as the inflation rate to get anywhere close to a truthful measure. So, around x 3… if we’re lucky.

          2. THIS. As I said, unless 2/3 of the Denver population had miraculously forgotten they’d already early-voted in 2008? The fraud goes all the way down.

          3. It’s why they felt confident having a WHOLLY imaginary campaign and a candidate like Biden. The fix was in. And then it failed, and they had to fraud in front of G-d and everybody.

        3. The margin of fraud in the VA election last year appears to have been approximately 8%. At one point during the evening, with returns having come in at some level around the state, he was up by just over 10%. Then NVA dumped a mass of votes at one time and the margin ended up at 1.9%. The cynical among us concluded that turnout in the red areas of VA swamped the margin of fraud that had been planned for. In those areas, turnout was higher than in most presidential elections. The Reader hopes that the Attorney General has spent the last year getting ready for more election crap from NVA.

          1. Another possibility, and based on events in the only other state having an election, NJ, was in play, is that someone realized that isolated elections get more scrutiny compared to all 50 states, and decided to conserve ammo.

            That’s why in the NJ race the Speaker who lost to a trucker with no money was talking about “12,000 uncounted ballots”…. and then went dead silent about two days later. In VA, MacAuliffe wasn’t real popular with the young Democrats who provide the bodies, either.

          2. “…NVA dumped a mass of votes…”

            That was doubletake time. As a Vietnam vet, when I see “NVA” it means the North Vietnamese Army – “Say WHAT?!?” 🙂

              1. Try this again (stupid hotkeys…): It would indeed. I’m just glad I got out when I retired in ’06, before they went completely insane. But to be fair, if Baltimore and the Montgomery/PG counties DC Annex were removed it would be a nice place; the rest of the state is pretty conservative, sort of like VA.

                And no need to be sorry; it just threw me for a bit. 🙂

                  1. Ok, I guess Howard and Charles became additional “bedroom communities” for DC, and Baltimore County for Baltimore City. Damned shame… 😦

        4. You are a sweet and very nice man, but by 2008, observed by me, at the polls, they were up to a 2/3 margin of fraud. I don’t think there have been Democrat victories since Clinton.

          1. And that doesn’t count the fraud not measurable in direct votes. Exhibit A: Barak Obama (and other Democrats) disabling the standard verification check for credit cards to enable Hamas to hold fund raisers. Also in 2008 (and 2012).

            2. AND Obama was plausible as a winner. They kept his true personality hidden enough my more optimistic friends on the right voted for him as a “uniter.” IF they had to fraud like that for him? They haven’t won a single honest election since early voting became a free for all.

  18. Another factor could be how many self-appointed elites have been living in fear. Claremont Institute writer was reviewing a book by a writer for the Atlantic and the review was, “the book is junk, but the look at the mindset is useful.”
    The Atlantic author spent 2020 more or less in his apartment, only going out in Nov. to vote. He spent most of his time online, marinating in (left-wing) Twitter. Now, he’s unhinged, in the usual, “Trumpist cult…danger to Our Democracy….white racist…” sort of way.
    And most importantly, he honestly believes in Our Democracy. Our Democracy is fine, it works well, these bigots will ruin everything….what he doesn’t realize is the system works well for him. Not for those awful people he sees as interiors. And so he rants because not only is he a wannabe aristocrat, he’s warped by fear and doesn’t even know it.

  19. So I just read something like the following and realized I am really unimaginative as regard insults. I suppose that’s probably good. My wife doesn’t approve of being good at invective:

    And there’s no visual respite available on [pronoun]. There’s no ocular refuge where you can safely rest your focus and say, “Well this part of [pronoun] isn’t so bad, I’ll just post up here for a spell.” [pronoun] face looks like what would happen if your skull could catch scoliosis. Anywhere you look on this brokedown [expletive] [expletive], your eyes get kicked in their eye-faces by a boot covered in chickenleather skin, invasive dandruff, and distressing facial angles.

    .

    I really much prefer Mel Ferrer’s Cyrano for eloquence; but the bit quoted above is really rather good, in a bad way.

      1. Indeed. Such command of the language is awesome, and inspiring.
        I much enjoyed a similar monologue in V for Vendetta

        Voilà!
        In View, a humble Vaudevillian Veteran, cast Vicariously as both Victim and Villain by the Vicissitudes of fate.
        This Visage, no mere Veneer of Vanity, is a Vestige of the Vox populi, now Vacant, Vanished.
        However, this Valorous Visitation of a bygone Vexation stands Vivified, and has Vowed to Vanquish these Venal and Virulent Vermin Vanguarding Vice and Vouchsafing the Violently Vicious and Voracious Violation of Volition.

        The only Verdict is Vengeance;
        a Vendetta held as a Votive, not in Vain, for the Value and Veracity of such shall one day Vindicate the Vigilant and the Virtuous.

        [laughter]

        Verily, this Vichyssoise of Verbiage Veers most Verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me
        V

        1. I am both bemused and in awe. Dear stars above, how many takes did they run through for Hugo Weaving to get that tongue twister said properly? It’s incredible!

          1. And you know damn well the character rehearsed that and was just waiting for the excuse. 😛

    3. Nothing will ever match Mel in that version of Cyrano. His insults to himself were pure genius.

  20. “Part of the cause of the black pill, I think, is that people keep trying to predict what will set the country off. The fact is that you and I can’t know that. It will happen if things continue on as they are.
    …
    We don’t know, and we can’t know. It’s the way that such things work.”

    I’ve begun to think of this as a variation of the Stockdale (?) Paradox. iirc Admiral S was held in prison in North Vietnam and said something to the effect that men who expected to be out by Christmas, or Easter, or some other specific date were far more likely to break down and even die if the “deadline” came and went and they were still not free. I see a lot of people now saying “if THIS (latest insanity) doesn’t set us off then NOTHING will!”. I think our current status is much better than the conditions where Bad Things usually kick off, but I also fear the psychos are indeed pushing much harder now to get to those conditions.

  21. When I was a kid, my family had a little “camping property”. It was about an acre in North Carolina, somewhat near the coast. One end faced a brackish canal in which lived catfish, perch, bluegills, and other fish. You could drop a bare hook in that canal and pull in dinner. Dead searious. The fish were that eager to bite. The other end had road access. The “street half” of the property was wooded, the other half field.

    Some of the happiest times of my childhood were spent campinng out there. Not really “roughing it” so much. We had Coleman stoves and lanterns, a catalytic heater for the “Apache” tent-trailer. But we were out there int he woods playing and fishing. Lots of fishing. The name of the place was “Cape Colony.”

    Well, Cape Colony still exists. I can even see the canal on maps. But now, it’s a housing development. A big part of my childhood has been swallowed up by suburban sprawl–it’s a housing development next to an airport.

    2. I lived in rural areas in 4 different states as a youngster.

      Not one of my little personal areas of refuge from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in any area I lived still exists. There isn’t a tree anywhere that I climbed as a child that still lives.

      My grandparent’s dairy farm, gone. Ditto, my husband’s family farm.

      I know there aren’t too many people, but there is certainly too much destruction.

      1. Definitely true where hubby grew up. Lemon Grove CA isn’t a separate from San Diego. Not anymore.

        Now where my dad and grandmother grew up, the old homesteads as they existed 100 years ago, are mostly intact (not that family has owned any for decades now). But surprising where housing is going up in the little towns. Can honestly say “not farm land”.

      2. The land across from where I grew up was once owned by my Great Granny, who, gave it to the city for what ever reason but stipulated it never be cleared. There was a white pine that was huge, and I climbed it once up to where it was 4 or so inches in diameter.
        I don’t know the full story but they pulled some rigmarole and leased it to someone who leased it to someone who clear cut and leveled the area. Not a tree was left (guy who lives in our old house saw heating bills go up as he lost a wind break). Later the county put a small garage on one corner of it and some Poplars(quaking aspen) sprouted up. makes me mad every time I drive past.

      3. No, there are too many people. This is what happens when you start with a nation of 220 million, then import 50-60 million legal immigrants and another 25 million illegals. They have to go somewhere.

        1. There aren’t too many people. Drive across the country. There’s miles and miles of miles and miles.
          What there is is urbanization, or why many towns in the interior offer money for people to move there. PFUI. Stop believing the “too many people” lefty lie. We’re barely replacing. The left knows this, which is part of the reason for the panic border open. They don’t know people aren’t widgets, so they think any people will do.

  22. And meanwhile, the covidiocy endures: we have to present a negative Covid test, from a medical facility, to get into Pennsic since we aren’t vaccinated. Home test not good enough, we have to have the equivalent of a doctor’s note. And wear a mask to check in, but that’s at least slightly understandable. They do their best to cram as many people as possible under the troll tent (six feet my keister, you’re lucky to be six inches from the next guy) because it’s usually hot.
    We have friends we haven’t seen in two years, which is the main reason we’re putting up with it, but if the War has gone woke we may not last the whole two weeks.

    1. LA County’s mask order goes back into effect on either the 29th or 30th (I can’t remember which).

      /sigh

    2. Later in the week, ask for Priscilla the Hun at the top of E-10. I probably won’t be there. In Florida trying to sell the boat. 😦
      John in Indy

      1. Best two times for a boat owner …

        /1 When buying the boat.
        /2 When sold the boat.

        /* Former Boat Owner … Granted never wanted the thing in the first place … I get motion sickness on the dock, let alone in the boat. But we had one … Still have the boat carrier for the old pickup so we could still tow the RV trailer (didn’t say it was a Big Boat).

        Good luck.

  23. The Progressive Establishment is losing power, and they fear. They fear that as they lose their positions atop society they will be exposed as inconsequential nobodies instead of ‘experts’. And they should; most of their Causes are corrupt to the core, and the vast majority of their ‘solutions’ are counterproductive at best, and downright deranged more often than not. They remember the way they demonized the previous Elites – the Aristocrats they called chinless wonders, and the Industrialists they labeled Robber Barons – and know that it will be their turn, soon.

    1. They fear that as they lose their positions atop society they will be exposed as inconsequential nobodies instead of ‘experts’.

      “Inconsequential nobodies”. What a funny way to spell “criminals and traitors.”

                  1. The Reader believes that the choice should be made on the relative success of conveying the message ‘Do You Get It Yet?’ to those still living. Relative cost is a secondary consideration. The Reader however will refrain from making a recommendation.

                  2. Once the head rots to the point it’s no longer recognizable, leaving it on the pike serves no purpose and the pike can be made available to harvest more heads. Plus, pikes are more effective than ropes for dealing with uncooperative enemies.
                    ———————————
                    He’s a lumberjack, and he’s OK.

              2. The old ways are best.

                Lobbing flaming body parts as high as can be managed with a trebuchet has always been a crowd favorite.

                And I have heard using a tactic your followers enjoy is a good idea.

              1. Gonna be a loooong wait for a train when there’s no fuel.

                I say we bring Madame Guillotine back from her long retirement. Simple and efficient. If we build them out of recycled materials, even the Leftroids should be happy!
                ———————————
                Candidate Joe Biden, August 2020: “We have assembled the most extensive, comprehensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”

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

                3. Interesting… I tried to link the “It’s Time for Guillotines” song and the comment completely evaporated. The only other times I’ve had that happen here is when I try to link to The Blogger Who Shall Not Be Named. I’ll try one more time in a response to this:

                    1. Okay, it worked that time. For a moment I thought WP was actually censoring the song, but maybe I just screwed up posting it somehow.

                    1. I know. Even if it had gone into moderation I still would have received an email copy; my comments only vanish completely when WP itself decides to censor me.

                      I think I just messed up posting somehow.

        3. After taking a few moments to converse with my dark side, I think my own verdict if/when I get angry enough to start demanding death would be the following:

          Kill as quickly and efficiently as possible. Slow and torturous demises are cruel, messy, and above all, tacky.

          Should deterrence become an issue given the above, start building dining halls out of their bones and invite your enemies to formal banquets.

      1. Besides, candles give off light which attracts criminals as surely as it does moths, and then you go and shoot the hapless fellows.

  29. Something that occurred to me recently: Western society generally has been protective of women and children. And what groups are the wokists threatening the most lately?

    Yeah.

    1. Foxfier pointed out something like that a while back: our enemies want to hurt men, and one of the best ways to do that is to target women and children.

      Which is evil on multiple levels.

  30. They can’t win, and we know this. They know this.

    But, like Hitler in his bunker in 1945, if the world is going to end…why shouldn’t he destroy it first?

    The snap-back is going to be “interesting” for all of those horrible values of the term. I’m just glad that I don’t need to be anywhere near a big city any time in the near future.

    1. Which right there would be the flashing neon light, warning sign, with spotlights that proclaims, “We’re lying our socks off!”

      Or I’d be tempted to look at her over the top of my glasses and inquire in the coolest, most acidic tones known to senior faculty, “Oh really? You posses perfect knowledge of all things at all times? How delightful it must be to be a deity.”

      1. ‘Truth’? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

        I know it doesn’t mean what you’re trying to make it mean.

  32. TPTB are definitely afraid that they are going to be found out. It’s why they’re getting so shrill. They floated monkeypox to see if they could scare everybody again and that failed. But their media water-carriers are still going strong with the pox. I’m much less worried now than I was when we lived in Philly. I still see a number of stories every day about how Trump is going to lead “another coup.” It is to laugh. They are so wrapped up in Trump that they can’t see anything else. I mean they can’t see anything at all. Nothing. They have no idea what they have wrought. And it is going to turn and bite them hard.

    Flying to CA over Labor Day. I’m looking at it as a sort of experiment. I’ll let you know how that goes. Interestingly, out of all my in-laws and my family, the only ones not vaxxed are us, and my peace-love-and-granola-Trump-hating-far-left mother-in-law. She didn’t do it for the same reasons we didn’t – very low trust in institutions. She’ll never vote R, but she may sit out the next election. I dunno.

    Next summer I (and hopefully husband) will be going to Ireland to visit brother. I am determined. There is the slight worry about getting back into the country, so it may only be me.

  33. Okay, I hit the end of the thread and I’m amazed no one’s mentioned the TIE/sk x1 fighter coming down the tunnel in the picture Sarah chose for this post.

    2. I recognized it as TIE variant but wasn’t interested enough to comment upon it and try to figure out which variant it was. Thanks for ID.

  35. Pingback: Quote Of The Day – Splendid Isolation
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  37. The whole Progressive Movement meets the Old Time adage that Will Rogers and others said in the Past.

    It’s not what ya know, it’s what ya know that just ain’t so…

  39. Psalm 57:6

    They have prepared a net for my steps;
    My soul is bowed down;
    They dug a pit before me;
    They themselves have fallen into the midst of it. Selah.

  40. “So they’ve moved into “We just want you to die.” Almost everything now is designed to kill off vast amounts of humans. Their excuse of course is “population explosion” but most people know there’s no such thing.” OKaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, but YOU go FIRST!!

  41. shrug Bassett and I BOTH said almost 20 yrs ago bloodshed was coming. That a civil war was inevitable and would be better of happening sooner as opposed to later. Some agreed, others didnt want to hear it. We both seriously expected it to pop during g Obama’s reign. If it had? A McMinn County War across the nation? We might just have turned the ship back on course. Now? Now its too late. Oh we can and should fight as we can…but I fully expect afuckton of people are going to die in the end. What kind of nation, if any, comes out the other side of this? What the International outlook is? I don’t know. I don’t expect anything good. I’m A pessimistic son of a bitch.

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