The Limits Of History

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’m a fan of history. As in, it’s been one of my favorite reading genres since I was ten or so and found mom’s old history schoolbooks.

I like that people in the past aren’t forgotten, and also to see how things happened, and how they were done, way back in the past.

I still buy so many history books that for a while there — back in the dark ages, when you had to order from History Book Club for the stuff your bookstore wouldn’t even carry — I could have made my paycheck over to the History Book Club.

I think I was in my thirties before I realized the books weren’t history. They were “agreed upon interpretation of history.”

The agreed upon was important for me at the time, because I was mostly writing historical stuff, and the agreed upon version is the safe one, if you don’t want to keep forever defending it.

There are limits, of course. I wouldn’t change Sword and Blood to follow the latest movies on the musketeers (at the time.) No, Porthos was never a pirate. No, Athos won’t reconcile with Mylady. No she’s not just misunderstood. And no, for the love of fargin Bob, I will not use the names of the “real musketeers.” (So, the idea is that there was a book that Dumas based his stories on and those are the “the real musketeers.” Meh. The source material is NOT the story. In that source, all the musketeers were cousins and all Gascons. So, you know, no. Also in the book, the only one ever named is Aramis. (Would you believe Rene?))

However if everyone insists Anne Boleyn was an evil seductress, you might as well go with it, or not write about her. The push back will be next level.

And I did tell you — didn’t I? — about the editor who refused my Red Baron time travel story, because he was a villain and shot Snoopy? Sometimes, you can’t win the battle. What everybody knows (at least in Traditional publishing) is too strong. So the book was shelved.

But it took me much longer to realize how much the history that everybody knows and what really happened differ. And it took me till 2020 to want to hit heads over it.

You know that meme that went around on with the founding fathers and “Me and my buddies would already be stacking bodies?” That’s the image of the founding fathers in movies, and heavily influenced by the seventies “they were revolutionaries” thing.

They were actually farmers, cobblers, businessmen, lawyers, accountants, husbands, fathers, sons and brothers.

What does that mean? Well, that the only ones who were raving about “stacking bodies” were people like Tom Payne, who later went to join the French revolution on the side of the revolutionaries. There was something broken in that man, no matter that he was on the side of good for a little while.

The rest of them? A lot, until the last minute, until they signed the declaration of independence, thought a reconciliation with England was possible, and waffled on the daily over whether such a thing as separation was needed.

This while already actively fighting Englishmen and knowing d*mn well they were all on kill lists.

And if you go back and actually read the horrors the Englishmen perpetrated… Take the political prisoners in DC now and the stolen election and multiply by a hundred.

But the founding fathers still hoped everything could be smoothed over and made whole.

Think of any revolt against an overpowering tyrant, and you are thinking of the movie version, or the slightly longer and still way sped up book version. Yes, even the goatgaggers on history pretty it up, simplify it and make it seem much more rational and coherent.

Real revolts take time, and the most resolute of revolutionaries, unless infused with the cult-like fervor of Marxism (which tends to attract psychopaths, anyway) back off, hesitate, hem and haw.

Most of you, if the Founding Fathers (PARTICULARLY FRANKLIN) were blogging today would call them weak sisters, appeasers, and people who just wanted things to go back to “normal.”

And yet the revolution happened and here we are.

And I’m fairly sure the abuses and insanity will not go on.

Thing is, I can’t point you to direct history, because history books and what we know as history are not what happened. (And that’s part of what’s leading you astray.)

Look, reality is not a story. It isn’t even made of stories. It is the raw material from which you can extract stories that you can then tell people.

Because reality is messy. Take if you will, if I should become of interest to history (Heaven forfend) how would yesterday be characterized? Well…. I wrote a blog. I sure did, and historically speaking, nothing else. Of course, I met with a friend, read his stuff. Talked to younger son and worked on his move stuff. Talked to a repairman, got dryer fixed and parts ordered for the dishwasher. Washed way too many dishes by hand. Watered the garden.

Are those things I did? Yes. And a lot of them are things that matter — for instance, the dishwasher. Having it fixed saves me having to waste three hours a day on dishes — but they’re not part of the story. Heck, if the story is “fiction writing” I did NOTHING yesterday.

Now multiply that by the population of a country, even when the population was six million or so.

History is messy, convoluted and complicated. The “history” we extract from it is simplified, didactic and often …. like translation, so changed so you can “get” it that it’s actually flat wrong, while retaining a shadow of a shade of what really happened.

So, what really happened in the revolutionary war?

They endured far more than we’ve even started to endure, until it reached critical mass. A lot of their striking back was wrong. A lot of the founding fathers seemed to be on both sides at once. A lot of them were on one side, then changed. A lot of the people on the other side, who ran away or learned to be quiet weren’t evil villains. They didn’t support the horrors the English inflicted on the colonies. They’d just not processed them, or thought there must be an explanation, or perhaps knew of the bad things the revolutionaries had done. Or were afraid of being targeted for their religion, in some of the friskier colonies.

So, when you come here and you say “We haven’t rebelled. We’ll never rebel.” you’re talking from the movie in your head, where everyone is fully aware and on the same page you are and everyone understands the constitutional implications of every little thing, and everyone — as one — rises up and–

Can you hear the music swelling? It’s never happened that way.

And now you’re going to come back and say it’s all like what happened in Cuba, or Venuzuela, or heaven forbid, China or — our resident troll, yesterday apropos nothing — some tribal war in Africa.

That’s cute. That’s lovely. You know what’s left out of that?

Culture. You’re falling into the same trap as the globalists who think every culture is the same, and so, we’re all at heart compliant Chinese peasants. (Even they aren’t that compliant, it’s just that the control on information is next level and entire areas in revolt get written out of history there.

Cultures aren’t widgets and humans aren’t widgets. And Americans are chaos incarnate, compared to most countries, which is what frustrates the statists when they try their cr*p here.

We haven’t revolted, but we’re already rebelling. What do you think “let’s go Brandon” or the instant support for the Kenosha kid were all about? Why do you think they’re so scared they’re doing all the stupid things? By the way, their real poll numbers, the ones they see, not the ones they push, must be next level. And their megaphone is broken. People mostly make fun of the news, except for shuttins and the dullest of our compatriots.

Will we revolt? I don’t know. Will it be violent? I don’t know.

I know that through my anger, I’m still praying we can turn this without violence.

But I do know that what they’re doing — unlike the raid on Mar-a-largo, which isn’t – is hitting people IMMEDIATELY and comprehensively.

You can argue on constitutional rights; you can’t argue on “I’m having trouble meeting expenses, and Christmas might not happen for my kids.”

Note that the first signs of widespread revolt we’ve seen have come with what the schools are doing to kids. Because it’s immediate and it hits hard.

A cold winter with food being hard to get and expensive will hit most people.

What can’t go on, won’t.

If it tips into revolution, it will be sudden, unpredictable, and horrible. Even if we agree with the goals, a lot of us will sit here going “I’m not sure THAT incident was right” and the whole thing will proceed, through failure and win and mixed feelings, till it concludes.

Nothing is cut and dry or picture perfect, although future historians will try to make it so.

Right now, they’re deploying the things they control to try to get us to do something we regret. I think they’re being stupid, because frankly, at this point, if it starts, I don’t think they can put it down. It’s like those “controlled burns” that go out of control.

But sooner or later, controlled burn or not, if a forest has a lot of dead branches and the weather is hot, the fire will happen. Can I predict where it will start? Or when? No. And driving through the forest in those conditions is nerve-wracking, let alone live there. And we might hope the fire doesn’t happen at all, but know what it would take to keep it tamped down is more or less eternal snows. And that’s not acceptable.

Heed the real lessons of history: Each country is different, and until mass-media controlled us somewhat, the US was like a bunch of cats in a sac. From day to day observation, we more or less still are. We’re not a people well suited to being controlled. Like fooling people, it can be achieved for a time, in a place. But not forever and all over.

The forest is very high on tinder, indeed. It’s up to the knees of the casual walker. And they’re running through with flame throwers.

You can hope someone would grab them, use the flame throwers on them, and starts clearing. I do.

But most people aren’t even aware of how bad it is, or how bad it will get. And metaphorically speaking, we won’t get out of this without losing a lot of the trees, some of them small and green and hopeful.

It is what it is. Real life is like that. You can prepare, you can make sure you and yours are somewhat safe.

And you can pray the fire isn’t as bad as you expect.

But you can’t do a thing to either stop it or hurry it up.

Real life is messy and confusing.

All is not lost. We haven’t even started to fight, and in historical time we’re not close to enough time to start to fight.

This too shall pass, and us with it.

While we’re here, let’s make the most of every day. And make it count towards the future, freedom and a restored republic.

The rest will take care of itself.

430 thoughts on “The Limits Of History”

  1. Remember when history ends, it also begins. The history of what WAS America will end and the history of America TO BE begins. The coming “civil revolution” will lay the foundation for what will be. I just hope enough intelligence is left to follow the original playbook (e.g. the Constitution). Throw out most other law after that and start over….especially “The Treasury shall issue coins as money” (not a Private Bank FED).

      1. That’s the sneaky thing about the American spirit and patriotism. For generations it was the background culture that nigh everyone, sans elites and the crushingly poor in inner cities (and even some of them), lived in and grew up in. Being loud about it, bragging about it, outside of 4 July, Veterans’ Day, etc you don’t hear about it much. It’s just not done.

      2. Yes, amazing how fiction can become reality in clown world. We USaians lurk in the shadows waiting to turn the spotlights of liberty back on. Let’s find all those cockroaches who were hiding in the dark and step on them when it becomes necessary. My book The Master Code ends on July 4th for a reason!

        1. Stuart Verney’s “American Built” on Fox-Business on Monday nights. It’s amazing what we accomplish, especially when other people say, “Are you kidding me?!? There’s no way you can build that!” Like Mt. Rushmore, the Alaska oil pipelines, Fenway Park, and so on.

  2. Thank you. I needed this point reinforced in my head after I got a bit too black-pillish yesterday. All history is necessarily the summary Cliff’s Notes version, especially when you’re talking 330+ million people. So we can’t and don’t see what’s going on at the micro level, we only see the macro level after the fact. And even with social media and a 24-hour news cycle, we may not see something large and momentous until it suddenly breaks the surface with no warning.

    The black dog is still my constant companion, but today, not so much about society. Today he’s a big friendly Rottweiler and he’s letting me pet and comb him. May be different tomorrow. 🙂

    1. Well, your black pill honesty makes me feel as if I can share my heart as well, so I thank you for that.

    2. Some of the colonies began simmering in 1763. The communications networks between colonists didn’t really get going until George Whitfield’s news and mission network formed in the 1750s-early 1760s, and lasted past his time in the colonies. 1763-1775 is a LONG time.

        1. Hmmm…so if our first skirmishes started in 2016 and history does indeed have a strong rhyme to it, we’ve got 4 years, or maybe 14, before freedom-minded folks reach the point where they have no choice but to band together and start shooting. Or you could look at it glass half-full, as time in which to keep it from becoming a necessity.

          A lot can happen in a year, two, or four. Probably not as much as we’d like — although communication moves a lot faster these days, public sentiment is still a sluggish sea. A lot of people are going to have to abandon cherished beliefs (illusions) for that sea change to happen, and nobody wants to do that.

          My wife, for instance, sees some of the contradictions in the “progressive” agenda (e.g., the push for massive nitrogen fertilizer reduction, which we were talking about last night) and has taken the lead in preparing us for food shortages, but can’t bring herself to face the fact that it’s the people she’s trusted and voted for since the 1980s — those warm-and-fuzzy protectors of the poor and downtrodden — that are doing the damage. They’re being guided by scientists who know things we can’t…there must be a way in which what they’re doing makes sense…after all, their intentions are good…maybe it’ll work out okay, maybe it’s actually good for us… It’s a frustrating situation for both of us (she thinks I’ve gone all extreme), but she’s only beginning to see the cracks that I was always at least vaguely aware of, even when I considered myself a liberal and voted for Democrats. And it took me years to get from there to where I am now.

          So…have patience and keep working at it (personally and big-picturely), I guess? History is a tangled skein, not an arrow, because it’s made of people. And people, nations, societies, and cultures are tangled, intractable things that don’t easily change direction.

          1. I’d actually put it at least six years earlier, with the TEA Party movement of 2010, and the hateful lies, rhetoric, and invective thrown at them, not all of it from the Democrats.

              1. Indeed. History doesn’t necessarily repeat, but if I may be permitted some rough analogies, if the 2010 TEA Party movement was perhaps roughly analogous to the 1765 Stamp Act Congress, was the 2016 election of President Donald J. Trump the riot over HMS Romney’s impressment activities and seizure of Hancock’s sloop Liberty, or the Boston Tea Party? Perhaps I should just remember the old adage “history does not repeat itself” and not attempt to map recent events to those leading up the Revolution – or the Civil War. I would say the resemblance to the former appears closer than to the latter. I guess we’ll see, and just pray for restoration of liberty and freedom with as little bloodshed as possible.

    3. This post helped me a lot, too, since I shared a lot of your worries, plus others from other sources.

  3. Feeling somewhat deservedly chastised.

    Also it’s unfortunate that future generations (if there are such) might not get the real story about how everything got so messed up.

    Ah well, back to work.

    1. Or they might, if we’re still around.
      Keep in mind though that how full of story we are is an experiment that’s never been done. And it’s messing up the other side too.

      1. The American Folklore I and my parents grew up on isn’t presented much anymore. I seem to have lost the book of “tall tales” my Dad had growing up, which is quite sad because now my daughter has no clue who Pecos Bill, John Henry, etc. are. I’ve failed as a father in that dept.

                1. Hathitrust has full view of Charles E. Brown’s folklore collections. One is about Brimstone Bill, one of Paul’s assistants in Wisconsin, who had once been a schoolteacher and thus was educated enough to invent most of the world’s cusswords. His family was devout, which was why his cussing used so many Bible names. When he died, Paul buried him in the crater of Kilauea, which is why it erupts.

                  So yeah, not all of folklore is for kids, heh!

                  There are tons of other books by Brown on Hathitrust: Paul Bunyan Tales; a different 1937 volume of Paul Bunyan stuff; Hermits: Tales of Some Wisconsin Hermits and Misers; Bluenose Brainerd Stories; Wigwam Tales; Ghost Stories; Bear Tales; Gypsy Lore; Old Man River; Whiskey Jack Yarns; and a lot more. It’s college age books, apparently, but in a time when college books for mixed audiences were supposed to not be super-explicit.

                  1. Some of those books aren’t full view… I got a little carried away. But I bet a lot of them are still in college libraries within reach, even if they are in state depositories most of the year.

                    1. Oh, and he did do a Pecos Bill volume. And it’s full view. And there’s a bunch of books by him about other folktale characters I’ve never heard of, some from outside Wisconsin.

        2. Holy crud. Pecos Bill was an outlaw before he was a cowboy. And he had an entire private burying ground of people who ran afoul of his guns, and a standing order for gravestones.

          Disney did not tell me the whole story.

            1. Johnny Appleseed was a shrewd businessman who was raising apple trees to make hard apple cider. He was also a highly religious (and eccentric) man.

    2. The Reader is certain that future generations never the real story about how everything got so messed up. Heck, the Reader can’t adequately explain the 60’s to his son and knows he didn’t get the real story about the Depression from his parents and grandparents.

      1. I’ve been here for it since 1966 and I STILL don’t know how it got so messed up, so don’t feel bad.

        Actually, thinking about it, it’s probably been this messed up for longer than we think, it’s just that now the loonies have social media to amplify their message (coughTwittercough).

        1. WP is eating my comments today. I don’t think a proper accounting of how we got to where we are now has yet been written. I’ve been working on one, but it’s a slow slog.

          1. Don’t take it personal; WPDE sporadically blocks everybody’s comments based on some internal mechanism none of us have been able to characterize. You can never predict which of your posts it will cast into Limbo, where they will languish until our intrepid Space Princess notices their sad plight and pries them loose with her digital crowbar.

            If your comment does not appear, and one you post after it does, it’s stuck in the bowels of WPDE and will have to be freed.
            ———————————
            Franz: “Ja, ja, zat is vhat I thought. Zis ist der kvick fuse.”

            Everybody: “The quick fuse! AAAAAAHHH!!”

            1. Even those of us who have other WordPress blogs get kicked off of this one, or sent into moderation at random moments. “Forget it, Confutus. This is WordPress.”

              1. Or randomly get given author edit permissions on other people’s replies, on other blogs than your own. Or get blog posts dropped into the void that look like they posted on your end, yet no one ever sees them. Or random WP updates break your pages, so you have to rebuild them from saved backups. Or WP suddenly remembers that they put a post into moderation for you, from a regular commenter, and don’t tell you about it until days or weeks later.

                When it works, it’s okay. It’s all the other times that cause frustration.

                1. The “don’t tell you about it” drives me nuts. I’ve had regulars thinking I was mad at them and not letting their comments through. One of which almost broke a decades long rl friendship over it.
                  I HAD NO IDEA. Had been to busy to go look at trash an spam.

                  1. The thing that kills me is I KNOW I checked the spam/trash folders. And three whole days later I see that there’s a comment stuck there, with a time stamp that says it is three days old, that never even showed up on my end.

                    WP is trying to make me paranoid. I have enough paranoia in my life already, thank you.

            2. Yes 100%. There are times I don’t know if mine posted, until someone (if) responds to one. I won’t repeat a post for that reason. Either the post works it’s way through or it doesn’t.

      2. My youngest got “history of the ‘60s” in school last year.
        I thought the version I got back in the 80’s was whitewashed propaganda, but this was in a different level entirely. (Not to mention they spent over a month on it, but spent less than three days on WWII.) And this is in a solidly red state.

        It certainly played a role in why we’re making another run at homeschooling this year.

        1. I get to spend two days on it (world version), and I make sure to include the violence and chaos along with the peace, love, and tie-dye.

          1. And this was before mandatory minimum sentences. Some of those happy little terrorists went in with felonies and skipped right out in a handful of years or even months, then went right back out and did it again.

            I don’t think the importance of mandatory minimum sentences is really appreciated these days. The 90s could have been a lot worse, bad as they were, crime-wise.

      3. Well, I think I got the real story about the Depression, and the War (although not the full story of the day to day). But that was the story of a Kansas farm / small town family – and of an Army division that was shipped over four months after D-Day. There are millions of other stories of just that blink in time – all of them very different. (Such as my Father’s college classmate, who spent the war years as a “draft dodger” in Franco’s Spain – but was actually an OCS agent.)

  4. In my heart I know there will be much blood. That we need to atone for 65+ Million babies legally murdered. That America in the whole rejwcted God and he has taken away hHis protection.

    But I don’t want to see it, think about it, act on it.

    Like when I was re overing from my second cancer surgery, after they removed the trach tube, and the area had to be cleaned every day and the bandage replaced.

    I looked at the wound in the mirror one day and I literally could not focus my eyes on the wound. My brain refused to acknowledge a huge gap in my neck that had to be left to heal on its own.

    May God have mercy on us all.

    1. america in the whole has NOT rejected G-d. Compared to what?
      You fail to understand what rejection of G-d really is. It’s not us. It’s nto even ALL of Europe.
      You’re judging FAR too harshly, and it is not your job. It’s His.

      1. I apologize if you think I’m judging harshly. 65+ Million innocents killed, at least one of which I influenced in my younger days, is a rather harsh situation. Read what Jeremiah told Judah about the sacrifices to the Baals (19:5) and Molech (32:35).

        How can we deal with who we (as a nation) have become? Individually. We must all approach God on our own. And the share the way (Matthew 28:18-20).

        I hope we have time; but I guess I’ve let the last 30 years or so wear me down.

        1. Sure, but it’s not universal. Why would you condemn everyone who has been trying to stop it. Is that how G-d judges?
          Also, except for the wholesale nature (we’re even better at sin) G-d would condemn EVERY HUMAN SOCIETY. Abortion happened in every society. Probably in the same proportion.
          It would be like saying “Look how many people are murdered. G-d will condemn us all”
          And yet, he sent his only son.
          Our society is not worse than the rest, and might be better.
          Better? Well, as a friend put it “Abortion has already lost. It will take a little while to be wholly illegal, except maybe before people are even sure they’re pregnant. What did it? 3-D ultrasounds. THAT’s it.”
          And that is our achievement.

          1. But I’m not condemning anyone. I’m just fearing the blood and looking at 1860s as a pattern. Your later blog about The Puppet Masters is very well done. I already work in that office…

            Individually is the way we all approach God. And Nations rise and fall at a different rate. There are always innocents caught up in the transition. And my lack of clarity and eloquence is gonna get me beat up far sooner than my lack of ability to tell a joke.

    2. No, God has not entirely withdrawn his protection. There are many millions who have not yet bowed the knee to Baal, to use an OT metaphor. That doesn’t mean we won’t be chastised, How severely depends mostly on whether we are willing to recognize and accept the correction and mend our ways.

      1. On the Winter Solstice every year, I sit quietly and listen to “I heard the bells on Christmas Day.” I never fail to weep, and to be filled with joy. God bless. Stay strong.

        I heard the bells on Christmas day
        Their old familiar carols play;
        In music sweet the tones repeat,
        “There’s peace on earth, good will to men.”

        I thought how, as the day had come,
        The belfries of all Christendom
        Had rolled along th’ unbroken song
        Of peace on earth, good will to men.

        And in despair I bowed my head:
        “There is no peace on earth,” I said,
        “For hate is strong, and mocks the song
        Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

        Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
        “God is not dead, nor does He sleep,
        For Christ is here; His Spirit near
        Brings peace on earth, good will to men.”

    3. Have Americans sinned? Yes. Has America sinned? Yes. We are all totally unworthy of grace and mercy…you can’t get any worse than totally unworthy. But mercy rejoices against judgment. Will the Lord bring fiery wrath on America? I don’t know. I pray for mercy. He did give us a potential reprieve from Roe v Wade, but we have to do something with it. He used and is using Trump as a lightning rod to bring leftists real nature out in the open.

      What I know is that the Lord will bring the perfect combination of justice, mercy, and grace to America, because that is what He did for humanity in Christ. A good part of it we won’t like, may be horrified by, but in the end you trust the Lord because He is good. He brought the USSR down without nukes flying. I trust Him to bring the progs down as well.

      May we be like the men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel ought to do.

      May

    4. Setnaffa, I am so sorry you have had to deal with this but so grateful that God is still in your corner.
      But your mighty struggle gives some insight into all those perfectly reasonable people we knew back in the day who suddenly became completely blind to the evil that has risen in our midst.
      And they may be made blind for a reason. Jesus spoke in parables to the crowds and did not explain Himself. “Let those who have ears, hear, and those who have eyes, see.”

      1. Going back to Isaiah’s terrible commission to God to speak to people who would refuse to see and hear him, so that they would be less likely to repent. Brrr. I hope that’s not me and mine. I pray that’s not. But a lot of people seem determined not to see and hear, and turn and be saved.

  5. Captain Richard Pearson, Serapis, “Has your ship struck?”
    Commodore John Paul Jones, Bonhomme Richard, “I have not yet begun to fight!”

      1. That is the perfect analogy for America, not just for sheer No Effs Given, but also the complete disaster the whole operation was yet pulled out a win.

      1. I fear they have awoken a giant and filled it with terrible resolve.

        If you strike at the king you’d better kill him.

        What? Me worry?

  6. Disconnect from the wokies as much as you can. Keep your head down and your piece on you. Keep grinding, for your family and your friends and your local community whether virtual or meatspace. Be ungovernable.

    It occurs to me that “living well is the best revenge” isn’t an inaccurate statement. In fact, to the “you vill eet ze boogz” crowd, us living at all is good revenge.

    1. Wing: ”Have you ever heard the phrase, Living well is the best revenge?”

      Miles: “Where I come from, someone’s head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge.”

        1. Living well worked for Sulla. Until he died of natural causes/liver disease/ulcers/worms.

          But he had a really good time in dictator retirement, until then.

      2. I expect his mother would disagree. As I recall, the head in a bag was a mere side effect of her mission to retrieve him in one piece.

        Owner of said head had thought is a good idea to interfere with her objective. It was not a good idea.

        1. Owner of said head misunderestimated how much the Betan pacifist had acculturated to Barrayar. Also how far a mother was willing go to in defense of her child. Two mothers.

        3. Owner of said head misunderestimated how much the Betan pacifist had acculturated to savage Barayar. Also how far a mother would go to protect her child. Two mothers.

          1. I don’t think acculturation to Barrayar had much to do with it. Was she ever a pacifist? Remember Ges Vorrutyer? I know, Sergeant Bothari actually did it — both times — but Cordelia didn’t shrink from what needed to be done.

            Cordelia: “Thank you, Sergeant. That was a very…knightly deed.”

            Remember how she half-drowned that Betan therapist in a fish tank and escaped from the planet?

            Cordelia: “Sergeant. Kill me this man.”
            Vordarian: “What? You’re a Betan! You can’t do—”

            Piotr: “Woman! Where have you been?”
            Cordelia: “Shopping. Want to see what I bought?”

            Never savage, never barbaric, she just decided logically when somebody needed to die and saw to it.

            1. I tried posting that four times before it got through. If WP finally does let the others through, the duplicates can be safely deleted.

            2. (Radio station jingle singing)

              “Double-you Pee Dee Eeeeee! The sound ……of silen…….”

    2. The character of the average leftist is such that they cannot abide us simply being happy. No, we are wrong, and ebul, and we must be made to recognize our sins in the eyes of the cult of leftism.

      For if our families are happy, healthy, and strong then it makes a mockery of all the left holds dear. For without (fake) diversity, inclusivity (of horrible things and people), and equity (of ourcome), if we are content with our lot and proud of who and what we are, then the very comparison that they cannot help but make leaves their whole ethos hollow and sad.

      Our joy and enthusiasm for life makes their crude distortions of faith, family, and culture appear as they are: corrupt and fragile things fueled by envy, hate, and greed. And that, they cannot abide. Best all people be frightened, cowardly souls that fear the lash and shiver before their threats. For when others fear, they feel powerful.

      Be not afraid. It makes the b*stards nuts. Instead, find joy in faith, family, and friendships.

      All things that they do not truly have, cannot have, but envy nonetheless.

      1. …if we are content with our lot and proud of who and what we are…

        That’s also why they seem to hate Christians so much. Their understanding of what Christianity is has been corrupted.

          1. That, and the rational fear that if they give any alternate ideology, philosophy, or belief system a chance, they might be persuaded to take it seriously. They might be changed away from being leftists, and in with the in crowd. They think there is no worse fate, even though what they have (other than materially, maybe) is about as bad a hell on earth as it gets.

            1. Kinda like the Scandinavian black metal band that (according to what I read on line) started studying Catholicism so they could be even more blasphemous, and ended up converting! Truly the Lord works in mysterious, and entertaining, ways.

              2. God is like a real good pool player, who likes a challenge. Off the lamp in the corner, hitting the corner of the window, brushing the cat, bouncing off the cake dish, not disturbing the cake. 5 ball in the left corner pocket. When you have played as many tournaments as He has, you like someone who makes you work.

                The roadrunner and the acme dependent coyote are a model of God and the devil. Just when the devil thinks he’s won. Blam. But the weird part is that the Author, like the roadrunner, is not malicious. I picture God going beep beep.

                I have a very weird image of God. As a Charismatic Calvinist redneck from Berkeley, I enjoy being surprised by what comes out. My mind has been stretched and broken. He prefers broken pots.

                One of the 307 paradoxes, practice intimacy and awe. Both are infinite. All the good stuff is infinite. Rejoice.

          2. It’s not that irrational, from their POV. After all, if people try to be good, and some succeed, then that means – you’re not just a product of your circumstances! You have agency! You ought to work for what you want!

            …They’re allergic to effort.

              1. I haven’t seen the ep, but when I picture the left bearing down on the rest of us, thinking we’re the ones outnumbered, this bit of quotes from “Angel” comes to mind….

                Illyria: You’re fading. You’ll last ten minutes at best.
                Gunn: Then let’s make ’em memorable.
                Spike: And in terms of a plan?
                Angel: We fight.
                Spike: Bit more specific?
                Angel: Well, personally, I kinda want to slay the dragon….

      2. They put some truth into H. L. Mencken’s canard about:”Puritanism – the haunting fear that someone, somewhere might be happy.”

      3. This is a little silly, but you know what gave me joy Monday night? After the junta raided Mar a Lago, it took about a half hour for hundreds of people to drive, run, carpool, or otherwise assemble outside Mar a Lago and start yelling and singing for POTUS Trump. FJB signs, MAGA, Trump 2024. Within 30 minutes.
        I was so happy (and upset with cold anger) I cried for joy.

        1. What? No flames? No burning small businesses? No looting and destruction?

          Worst mostly peaceful protest ever.

        2. That’s the good people of the Free State of Florida for you! Holding up the banner of Liberty since 2020! A land where Trump flag pickups and boat parades abound!

          1. I am so stinking jealous of your boat parades, let me tell you. And to know they make the lefties go insane is just icing on the cake.

            1. Well its hard to have a boat parade in Idaho! Try some land yachts instead! (LOL) I’ve seen such parades off the Carolina coast also, but I like better the Christmas boat parades as they have more spiritual meaning and gives hope.

              1. Trust me, a parade of Americans celebrating America has plenty of spiritual meaning and is a beacon to the world.
                Different things. The other one doesn’t need a parade. In fact, it should be done in the heart, most seriously.

                1. I felt so energized watching the crowd gathering for the parade in Custer, SD Independence Day weekend. I got to watch a parade in Indiana on the 4th itself. It was awesome. Aside from the pro-choice activists in red handmaid costumes – but they got met with a mix of silence, a few boos, and a smaller number of cheers, so…

                    1. LOL. So true.

                      By way of comparison, the two Pro-Life groups were cheered, the local (mostly Republican) politicians got a moderately positive reaction, and the county Democrat Party got zero cheers and a bunch of boos. Probably not overwhelming boos only because of the strong “if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all” tendency.

          3. The poor deluded bastiches are clawing and scrambling for anything that might turn the red tide sweeping down on them come November and again two years hence. And scared in their souls that a fair and honest administration must might have a few pertinent questions they want answered about some, shall we say, highly suspect actions. The Biden and Pelosi families activities are only the tip of a vary corrupt iceberg.

            1. The Left fears being treated as they treat their opponents. And they strongly signal this.

              They do not object to an oppressive and pervasive police state, because they have no intention of allowing anyone else to control it, and they believe it will only be used against “those bad people who deserve it”. And they are firmly in the “ends justify means” zone.

              Ask them.

              1. It’s the aristo mentality coming out. Rules are for other people to follow. They make the rules, they don’t have to follow them.

                1. Oddly enough one way to run headlong into the reality of this mindset is to study the Little Ice Age and its monarchies. I’m still reading through the sample of Global Crisis: War, Climate Change, & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. It has a frightening;y substantial bit on the “king is absolute” mindset of the time, and the fact that a lot of wars got started because when a new guy started his reign he was expected to go to war with somebody. Anybody. No matter how much it cost.

      1. That’s a good point. And kind of interesting because working in Woke Corporate America, I still have to be somewhat circumspect about things. My employer is SO proud of their DIE efforts and they love to proclaim them far and wide. They even left the rainbow company logo on their intranet up for two extra weeks after pride month. Fortunately I work from home now but when I was in the office I had to be very careful about what audiobooks I was seen listening to (mostly historical) in case some wokie or diversity hire looked over my shoulder and saw my phone, and misinterpreted a history of the Nazi camp system as approval of it. (Lots of Max Hastings, Ian Kershaw, and Prit Buttar on my Audible still.) I had to be careful about things I said or what I rolled my eyes at. You never know, especially since my boss for a lot of it was a transplanted Southern California liberal. Nice lady, but clearly liberal.

        1. In the past eight years my employer has gone Woke and jumped on the DIE and ESG bandwagon. Alas, so have their competitors. And virtually all the major corporations, if I wanted to change industries. There’s less demand for my work outside the majors. Sigh.

      3. @ Ian > “We started winning when we stopped cowering in terror of how they might respond.”

        Seems to me that works for the Founders as well.

  7. I have a major advantage over most people. We own real books, thousands of history books written over 170 years. So I am dangerous. I see what they don’t want you to see. A book of political cartoons from 1912. It takes you to that year in a way no history book could. The 1930 World Almanac, published in October 1929, just as the crash hits, a time capsule. Samuel E. Morrison’s History of the U.S. Navy in WWII. (14 volumes, missing #15 the list of all the ships) He was there.

    I have come to realize that Trump is impossible. How can you be a New York developer, involved in New Jersey, and not get glued to the mob? He has had more people looking for things, and all they can come up with are lies. This must be what drives the left crazy. We are all corrupt, why can’t we find his corruption? We just have to look harder.

    So this exposes the left, and those who are Rinos. Because the left wants everyone to shift with the wind. When Hitler invaded Russia, the left was whipsawed when the “word” went out that war was good now. The left has never had real history, only whatever suits the current “story”. They can’t know true history, so they can never learn from it.

    1. Trump is nothing short of a miracle. Note I’m not saying he’s a nice man. But who he is and the state of clean? it’s a miracle.
      If we’re still getting miracles, we’re not forsaken.

      1. Trump is who we needed at the time. The reason I was able to overlook his many personal downsides was because unlike almost everyone else in the Republican Party, he wasn’t afraid to stand up and fight. For decades Republican politicians, for the most part, just rolled over and showed their bellies at the slightest growl from the Left. They still do. Then Trump came along and he gave no f’s. He didn’t need to. He’d made his fortune, he was already a celebrity, he had nothing to lose. And he went out there and punched the leftoids full in the mouth, and they went bananas.

        Was he perfect? No, there’s only ever been one perfect man and they hung Him off a cross. In the end he was let down by his inability to pick good subordinates and by the machinations of a Deep State that’s finally had to expose itself. But just for the fact that he had the cojones to stand up to the monstrous Left, and gave a lot of us the cojones to do the same, yeah, he’s a miracle.

          1. And Mitch McConnell and company acted as gatekeepers for any position requiring “advice and consent.” Moreover, not a single senator objected to keeping a pro forma session going, so there was no formal recess, hence no opportunity for recess appointments. Never forget the Senate Republicans were largely complicit.

          2. You’re the only person that gets this. Or, you’re the only person I’ve seen that’s written it down or said it.

            1. I KNOW because I’ve seen people trying to start non-left wing magazines or publishers. They always get infiltrated because the hiring pool is lefty graduates. The ones with the great resumes are ALL marxist.

          3. He would have had a better chance of getting people who were both qualified and not corrupted by picking them randomly out of the phone book.

                  1. Internal Affairs bureau. The objective is to fire yourself. For lack of work.

                    Unfortunately, you have to hunt down and fire all the other superfluous, corrupt, and lazy ones before you get to do that.

              2. Over at Ace’s blog, I once suggested that he could do worse than picking commenters over at Ace’s blog as department picks during his second term.

              1. Press Secretary sounds like a nice job! No resume or even qualifications was even required in the fake Biden administration, so you will be a shoo-in for the job in the Trump 46 admin. (Biden is NOT president).

        2. I confess that, for me, POTUS Trump doesn’t have any downsides. I worked for a fellow that reminds me almost exactly of him, and he was the best boss a girl could ever have.
          I love him. And I rely on others to be objective about him, I can’t be, not entirely.

          1. Yes, there’s a stripe of businessman and boss who is like Trump. And they’re disconcerting, but they are great bosses if you are willing to work hard and be honest.

            1. @ suburbanbanshee > “if you are willing to work hard and be honest.”

              No wonder President Trump had problems finding staff in Washington.

      3. Trump personifies this, from “Screwtape Proposes a Toast”:

        “The great and toothsome sinners are made out of the very same material as those horrible phenomena, the great saints.”

        ” The great sinners seem easier to catch . But then they are incalculable. After you have played them for seventy years, the Enemy may snatch them from your claws in the seventy-first. They are capable, you see,
        of real repentance. They are conscious of real guilt. They are, if things take the wrong turn, as ready to defy the social pressures around them for the Enemy’s sake as they were to defy them for ours. It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss.”

    3. King David, Prince Eugen von Savoy, George S. Patton, and a few other people weren’t nice. Alfred the Great wasn’t nice. But they did what needed to be done to stem the tide of chaos and evil. They were good people, but not nice.

      Like Aslan: very good, but never safe.

    4. “We own real books, thousands of history books written over 170 years.” – Awesome. Do everything you can to keep that collection intact. Someone once said that paper books are like sharks – they are very good at what they do, so the form doesn’t need to change much. Old books, especially old history and lore, are treasure troves; they let you look into somewhen else.

      (Yes, I want to read it too….)

      1. @ crossovercreativechaos > “Someone once said that paper books are like sharks – they are very good at what they do, so the form doesn’t need to change much”

        Excellent analogy.
        And if you aren’t careful with some books, they will bite.
        “Screwtape” for one.
        AesopSpouse and I were talking just today about culling our 8000+ books, a good many of them history and basic science, and decided to be conservative about tossing the old ones. Sure you can get everything off the internet (just don’t trust Wikipedia’s “agreed upon interpretation of history” for far too many instances), but when the deluge comes, the power is off, and the webz are down, all you really need is a candle.

      2. The problem: In our paradoxic marriage, I am the one who saves “everything”, my wife would throw everything out. So if I go before her, there may be a book burning. She likes library books that have to go “home.”

        She doesn’t read science fiction, so has no need for 5,000 science fiction paperbacks. Seeing the real book triggers my memory. Just looking at them, I see inside. Living in Mordor West, these are dangerous books..

        I turn behind, see “Mission of Gravity” 40c. Without opening the book, I see Barlennan sail over a world of high gravity on a sea of liquid methane. (Pyramid edition 1962). Another shelf, multiple copies of Heinlein. Friday, betrayed. Mike the computer – Moon is a Harsh mistress. Starship Troopers. Niven and Pournelle, their Mote, Lucifer’s Hammer, Escape from hell. John Ringo and his aliens, viruses, and Kildar. So many books. Learned to read at 4, haven’t stopped since. Real books. Books that bite.

  8. I I smiled at the chosen people who were a little startled by King Cyrus “A Persian!?!” Being the one to rebuild the Temple. “What the actual heck!?!”. Didn’t they trust that The Author knew what his was doing? Many did not, stayed in their comfortable chains and, behold, their descendants paid the price.

    I haven’t chuckled about that since Trump rode down the escalator.

    Trump!?! Rebuilding the Republic?!? Pull the other one it has bells on.

    And yet. Here we are. Do we trust our own lying eyes about who actually loves our country and wants to rebuild it or not?

    1. Entirely possible (and I’m going by memory here, so maybe not) that Cyrus was also the son or grandson of Queen Esther. Which would have driven the purists absolutely nuts.

        4. HA!

          I love seeing all the photos of the untouched “plant-based” “meats” on grocery shelves when everything else is picked bare…. not to mention imagining the wailing and gnashing of teeth of our “betters” when they see the same.

          1. Beef is plant based. Cows eat grass. Grass is plants. Therefore my steak is based in plants. After all, there is no meat without vegetables for meat to eat.

                    4. Well, we are a mutinous lot, after all. You’ve taught us well, oh Beautiful But Evil Space Princess…

              1. Chickens is the only way I will ever eat bugs. Processed bugs, grown into chicken meat. And eggs.

                Cocao beans are my preferred beans, too. Sugar cane is also a plant…

            3. And in fact my cats look at me when I eat salad or veggies and say “Daddy, Why you eat what food eats?”. In my youth I would have agreed with them but these days I accept a bit of roughage to help my digestion as I get older, though it does irk me.

                  1. I did put a smile at the end. Should I have put 3? Turned off sarcasm? Never mind. I know. Didn’t come across within the type … Cats were eating grass as I type it.

                    Our 3, of 4, are not allowed out unattended … yet. It is coming. Probably this weekend we’ll open up an upstairs window to see how it goes. Note, 4th goes next door to the used to be jungle for very short periods.

          3. My parents tried TVP (Textured Vegetable Protein) back in the early 1970s—big family, broken career— and gave it up when none of us would eat the stuff. I don’t believe it has improved much since.

            2. These things work best when they don’t pretend to be something they’re not. I had a magnificent bean “patty” that fell apart too much to be a decent burger, but it was super-tasty and should have been served in a method other than a bun.

              1. Supertasty this stuff definitely wasn’t. I think Mom tried to use it as an extender for other things, but that didn’t work well either.

  9. The old saw, history is written by the winners. The new hokum, history must be re-written or destroyed by losers.

    Reading history is, of course, far easier than living it, knowing when to hunker down and when to pledge one’s life, fortune and sacred honor, always was and always will be a tough call.

    DamnifIknow but we all got through yesterday, with a bit of luck, preparation and planning, we just might make it through today, and thoroughly enjoy doing so!

    1. I get so tired of that saw. History is not written by the winners. It is written by those who write it (before writing, by those who pass it on). The winners who don’t write or pass it on don’t write the history. The losers who do pass it on write it. They don’t even need to survive to pass it on. They simply have to pass it on.

      1. The Jews lost a lot.

        Their written history is epic.

        Particularly the bits where they lost big.

        1. That’s because they were writing didactic history, a large-scale Just So Story cobbled together from legends, dimly-remembered events, and internally-inconsistent king lists, with the object of explaining “how the hell did we end up in Babylon when we were so righteous?”

          1. Israel’s king lists are pretty darned good, and downright easy to follow when compared to other, wealthier, contemporary cultures’ king lists.

            Seriously, you don’t know how good you’ve got it with the Bible, until you try to study anybody else’s Middle Eastern cultural ancient histories.

      2. What do we have from Meospotamia? Bureaucratic inventory, bureaucratic hymns, law books, some religious stuff. Nothing about “Ashurnasirpal is a fink,” or “Yeah, the battle didn’t go as planned. How were we to know that there were lions near the horse-pickets?”

  10. Seems worth reprinting here:

    ” Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

    We’re still in the ‘disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable’ part of the situation. With the hope that perhaps they will be righted before they are pushed to the point of ‘abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.’ I know I personally am hopeful that we won’t be pushed to that point.

  11. My own take on this is: “How often does the Good Guy (or the Bad Guy, for that matter) in a story have to go into the bathroom and take a crap?” We all do it once a day or so. Every one of us. But that’s never In There. Nor is the fact that we have to work for a living. And have a salary, which limits our actions — we can’t just get on a plane tomorrow and Fly To Egypt because we think it’ll solve a problem. And if we do really really need to do that, then we certainly are not going to be able to hop on a plane 10d later and fly to Beijing. No one Ever Has To Pay The Bills in fiction. No one does the laundry, the dishes, and rarely do they Cook The Food.If they own a business, they don’t Meet The Accountant, or The Lawyer, or have to arrange for the plumber to come and clear out the sewer lines.

    Because fiction is generally about the high points, the Eventful Things… not The Eternal Mundanities of actual life.

    And the same is kinda-sorta true of Non Fiction History — it’s about the high points, not The Eternal Mundanities.No reality impingements need apply.

    1. And even if your character is rich — independently wealthy — because that way they don’t need to worry about Paying The Bills (convenient!!), that does not free them from “work”. Because, though few grasp it, money does not just sit there. Being rich is NOTHING like Scrooge McDuck and his Money Bin.

      If you have a lot of money, you have to work to keep it, because some con-man (Let’s call him “Bernie Madhoff”) will happily steal it from you. And you also have to work to make it make more money for you, to replace whatever you’re spending.

      So — yeah, that is actual work. Maybe not 40h 9-5 grunt labor, but it’s still time consuming… but wait, I don’t have time for that, I have to hare off to Egypt today!! 😀

        1. Only in some of the more modern stuff. I think most people think Bill Gates actually has a money bin where he keeps his 50-100 billion, and if only they could GET AT IT, they could give it to everyone!!

        2. And yes, SCROOGE knows this, but most people don’t really think of Scrooge as earning every dime of his wealth himself. He just has it and wallows in the Bin like it was a giant pool. That he worked for every dime of it, skillfully trading, busting his ass, and generally being an entrepreneur over and over again, is not a Part of The Job, as most see it. They only see the end result, and think that is how the wealthy live, and how they evilly just keep all that money to themselves, “instead of sharing it for the benefit of all”. >:-/

      2. Scrooge’s bin o’ money was his memories. The dollars and coins etc, were mementoes of his life and his goal for being richest. (comics Scrooge, not the Ducktales Scrooge) He said it wasn’t so much having the gold, as finding the gold.

        1. But you have to realize, one of Scrooge’s best qualities is his Wisdom. He may be cheap, but he does understand the importance of life’s lessons. And that is why he isn’t freer with his money with Donald, or the Triplets. Donald foolishly resents this, because he is fairly foolish like many. But H,D, & L are wise beyond their years, and understand all of this. They are Scrooge when young, having an innate wisdom about the world.

          1. And of course he’s McDuck because thats a Scottish Name 🙂 and Scots are thrifty (pardon me cheap). Someday Scrooge McDuck will join Song of The South in the never to be let out again bin. Ok, who am I kidding, he won’t be banned Scottish people are white Europeans and we CAN make fun of them.

    2. And even if your character is rich — independently wealthy — because that way they don’t need to worry about Paying The Bills (convenient!!), that does not free them from “work”. Because, though few grasp it, money does not just sit there. Being rich is NOTHING like Scrooge McDuck and his Money Bin.

      If you have a lot of money, you have to work to keep it, because some con-man (Let’s call him “Bernie Madhoff”) will happily steal it from you. And you also have to work to make it make more money for you, to replace whatever you’re spending.

      So — yeah, that is actual work. Maybe not 40h 9-5 grunt labor, but it’s still time consuming… but wait, I don’t have time for that, I have to hare off to Egypt today!! 😀

      1. The joy of “independent” wealth is that you’re never truly independent. You’re as much a prisoner of the wealth as you are of poverty. Just the jailers are different.

        And occasionally the food is better.

        1. Jesus story of the rich young ruler. He could “follow” all the rules, because his wealth let him hire people. Asks Jesus if he has missed any rules. Jesus tells this guy. “Go sell all you have, give it to the poor…. and follow me.”

          This guy is a slave to his wealth. He is one of the few who come to Jesus and go away sorrowful. He has golden chains, owned by his wealth. Jesus instruction is not a rule. It is a way out of slavery. Yet people insist on adding it to the long list of “rules” to follow. The real question for all of us:. What owns you?

          1. Humans at some level LIKE rules. If I do this and this and this I get that ( get to heaven or be in the “bosom of Abraham” for example). The parable/pericope of the Good Samaritan comes from a religious expert asking “What must I do to inherit eteranl life?” Jesus replies “Love[ the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself”. The expert wanting to clarify/ define this (and perhaps being a bit snarky) asks “And who is my neighbor?” and we get the parable (Luke 10 25-37 ). We LOVE to control things AND we like to be able to lord it over others. Not a pretty picture.

    3. The weird part is that sometimes you do get to get on the plane. Saw announcement of conference. Felt I was supposed to go. My response. “I don’t have $500 to fly…” The Author seemed insistent. “I’ve told you what to do, now you need to get out of the boat.” Sent off acceptance.

      Miraculous exact amount I said I didn’t have became available. Exact amount. Went. Flew 10 days after telling the Author what I didn’t have. Sometimes we get to fly to “Egypt”.

      1. Yeah, but you have to at least be ready to make the flight.

        Much easier to wallow in the shit and piss and moan about how life is soooooo unfair. That way you don’t have to work, and it’s still not your fault you “failed”. 😉

        1. I call them Divine appointments. God invites me, or as Sarah H has pointed out, sends an angel with a prod.

          We just have to learn to listen. The crazy part is He invites us to join His plan. “Start a blog. They will come.”

  12. while we always agree on the basic direction, we often disagree about the smaller things. (Think Jefferson and Adams) This is, I believe the first article on the subject in at least three months that I can find absolutely NOTHING to disagree with. Bravo, Perfection.

  13. A good portion of those who should be calling for a controlled burn are out there with signs screaming and waving lit matches at those who say it is needed.

  14. We are coming to a head. I don’t know how it goes, but here I take my stand. I can do no other. Be ready. BTW, I know I’m on their list, but I don’t care anymore.

    1. I’ll make the stand with you when necessary my friend or perhaps if we lose, see you on the train to FEMA Camp Bravo! I’m not sure we will lose (for now) because the blue islands will drown when surrounded by swiftly rising a sea of red. Big question is what happens afterward (e.g. does the rest of world decide to take sides or (China) invades to pick up and own the pieces that are left).

        1. I hope its more like Hogan’s Heroes than any actual happy fun camp they have planned.

          1. Stalag Luft 3 was the basis for the book and movie “The Great Escape.” An escape proof prison. ROFL

            1. I actually knew someone who escaped from a POW camp. He was in the 82 Airborne and captured outside of Bastonge. He told me he had to escape because he was down to 80 pounds and was starving to death. He managed to escape but the Russians almost killed him because they thought he was a German.
              They
              I knew another person who was a POW.and he spoke about how bad it got at the end that if someone died, two of them would hold them up in the ration line as.to split the food.

              1. A neighbor, many years ago, was a survivor of Bataan. He said a lot of city boys perished, because they could not/would not eat the offered ‘food’. Rural upbringing made those prisoners less squeamish.

      2. I would worry more about nukes than invasion. As noted by a meme out there, China may have the world’s largest official army at 3 million men, but the USA has an unofficial army of 70m. And even if only 10% of those show up to the fight, that’s still >2x what China has.

        😉

        I personally doubt if anyone wants to invade us.

  15. For the record, I only brought up Rwanda because I was correcting a misstatement of yours.

    Someone said that we were approaching a Weimar x Rwanda situation. While I’m not entirely sure what that means, the Rwanda part is referring to the 1994 mass murder of the Tutsis there by the Hutus.

    You stated that this situation today is different because that back then, the USSR was fully functional.

    I corrected you, pointing out that the USSR had ceased to exist two years before. This is not a matter of political opinion, it is simply a fact.

    I also stated that Hitler was not supported in his rise to power by the USSR. Are you under the impression that he was?

    1. I’m very much sure NO ONE knows what that means.
      Correcting a misstatement of mine my sorry butt.
      I was pointing out that when you guys go on about “flee all is lost’ you’re counting on another big power to be there to sink us.
      Weimar was an adversarial situation. The Germans did NOT get there on their own. And african tribal warfare has bloody nothing to do with anything, except maybe the feces in your head.
      You’re an idiot. Be gone.

  16. Another thing is that the USA is so big that like an elephant it can be bleeding from multiple wounds and still stagger around, but if a critical area is wounded, it can just suddenly collapse.

        1. The trick is to make sure they can never say,”But your arms are off!”.

          Like heck they are. Molon Labe.

    2. Ah, but ‘AMERICA’ not AN elephant. It’s a HERD. And, so far, there might be a few minor rumbles about things, but (to badly mix metaphors) the ‘magnetic alignment’ hasn’t happened. tickticktick…

      1. Exactly! And we’re not a herd of elephants, though they can be dangerous. We’re a giant group of rage monkeys with a thin veneer of civilization. Anything sets this group off, there’s no containing it.

  17. The “arrow of history” is that the Earth will eventually be consumed by the sun as it turns into a red giant. Any other alleged “arrow of history” is BS. History does not have arrows, except for those that are used in bows and crossbows.

    1. Ah yeah, history does NOT fly like an arrow. History staggers, under the influence of.. itself. Sometime it lurches this way, sometimes that, sometimes stumbling, and occasionally even tries to sleep it off – and fails, as it cannot sober up from itself. If were are lucky, we can nudge history into a beneficial direction. But too oft there are others figuring it’d be more fun or immediately profitable (in money or power or..) to themselves to screw things up. And such ratfinks ALL have this cover story about some arrow… $ARGLEBARGLEGARGLE-ISM IS DA FUTURE!

      1. Depends on the arrow. Now if I made and fletcher the arrow, there’s no telling where it would go. Don’t stand behind the shooter.

      2. History may not fly like an arrow, but time does fly like an arrow. And fruit flies like a banana.

        Sorry, I just had to, it’s one of my favorite jokes.

        4. That joke “Time does fly like an arrow. And fruit flies like a banana.” is an examplar in AI and language recognition for how darned hard it is to make sense of ANY language (let alone English…”

          1. “The liquor is good but the meat is rotten.”

            (Something like that was, supposedly, the result of an early English –> Russian –> English automated translation attempt. Original English: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”)

            1. I have heard the same though it may be apocryphal. Anything involving properly handling natural language needs SOME “background” about the environment which is why it skates into AI a bit. My schooling on AI (what little I had) is 30+ years out of date. There are amazing specific case AI’s (Chess & go playing programs, IBM’s Watson) but almost all I’ve heard of are very task specific. Much of why they are so astounding is the number of searches/ tests they can perform has gone up several orders of magnitude since the 80’s. There has been SOME additional refinement of techniques (e.g. Deep Blue) but its yields are far more limited and almost always very field specific. I do not think we will see Mycroft, Hal, Holly. Deep Thought or GlaDOS any time soon, which is a good thing 🙂 .

            2. Similar story from the IBM pavilion at the 1963-64 NY World’s Fair; supposedly ‘out of sight, out of mind’ through Chinese back to English returned ‘invisible idiot’.

              Maybe that wasn’t a mistake.

      3. “History does not repeat itself. Sometimes it screams, “Why don’t you LISTEN to me?” And lets fly with a club.”

            1. Don’t people realize how amazing .. SLOW… stellar fusion really is? You need to start things off CENTURIES ahead of time, and I might be overly optimistic about speed.

              1. That’s not just a bunch of bull. 😀

                A cubic meter of the Sun’s core contains more than 160 tons of hydrogen and helium at 15 million Kelvin, and produces just a few watts of fusion power. The Sun has a whole lot of cubic meters, though, so it adds up.

  19. However if everyone insists Anne Boleyn was an evil seductress, you might as well go with it, or not write about her. The push back will be next level.

    Sadly, in a decade you’ll have to go along with her being black.

      1. I know the BBC had a black actress play her so now she can never be white, but I didn’t know the actress was trans.

        Black-trans Rose in Dr. Who is all I know of.

        1. I was unclear, I was anticipating the inevitable next step. It’s like every story needs to be retold with a chick, then a dude who thinks he’s a chick.

          1. Every single BBC show made in the last 15-20 years has a gay character or characters. Usually it’s the only traditional waspish White male in the show.
            As for Dr. Who, it became unwatchable in recent years. Some of the David Tenant stuff was horrible at the end, it got better with Peter Capaldi. But they should have cancelled the show rather than turning into a woke lecturing drivel fest

            I prefer watching the old BBC stuff from before 1990, but then again I feel the same with American television.

      2. That at least would accord with slander of the time. Okay, they didn’t say she was a dude. They said she was a hermaphrodite, and so was her daughter.
        I can’t wait for the new Anne Boleyn series: all about transphobia

      1. Already started. Batgirl, Poor Yvonne Craig, my first major crush, must be rolling over in her grave. They replaced her with a pretty enough girl of politically acceptable melanin, but then dressed that girl in a Telogreika like some Russian babushka in the wintertime. What exactly were they thinking?

        I suppose That’s what lefties do, they leave smoking ruins behind them whilst being very well paid to do s.

        1. They can’t be create, all they can do is twist what others have created. Hence the whole, “Dark Brandon,” thing.

        2. Now you notice that Catwoman went from two white chicks to Eartha Kitt, and nobody complained. At all.

          But see, a great actress/performer takes the role over, and makes people believe in her. So at that point, belief is suspended and nobody cares.

          Also, Catwoman was a villain character that could potentially be “inherited” like the Dread Pirate Roberts, and there was nobody rubbing the audience’s nose in any improbabilities that were left over.

          If they had picked a cute spunky stylish young lady, and given her cute spunky stylish things to do and say and wear, I expect that Batgirl would have worked out. Heck, the Batwoman series could have worked out, as stupid as it was, if it hadn’t been actively trying to give a heroine (both versions) the life of a degenerate psycho villainess.

          Knowing what is possible, and doing a version of it that is desirable to the audience, requires taste and judgment. Today’s Hollywood has none.

  20. I feel like what the FBI did at Mar-a-Lago was “a” tipping point. Since it happened I have read a lot of comments from people on the right saying in effect, “I wanted someone else to run in 2024, but now I want Trump all the way.” Myself, I was in the wait-and-see crowd, I would vote for him if he was the nominee, but I wouldn’t be sad to have seen someone else (DeSantis) as the nominee. Now, yeah, if they hate and fear Trump that much, then I think we should give him to them good and hard.

    I don’t have much hope for the restoration of the Republic that our forefathers created, but I am not completely black pilled. I do see signs of hope and occasional wins; Trump’s election in 2016 was one such win. I didn’t vote for him in 2016 but his election and the left’s reaction to it made me laugh for weeks. Heck, remembering the incredulous reactions of the news readers on election night can still cause me to chuckle.

    I also see occasional signs of “something” happening behind the scenes, below the surface as it were. Such as the bombing of the Georgia Guidestones, which happened, the media briefly reported on, and then ignored. Apparently the investigation into who did it is making no progress. I find that fascinating. I don’t know if it means anything, but… it sort of feels like someone wanted to make a statement.

    1. Team HarrisBiden is hoping it leads to riots, as they issued a pronouncement “asking” Trump supporters to remain peaceful and not to engage in violence. As usual the left is projecting as they are the ones who routinely use violence against political opponents.

      It also proves yet again that the entire purpose of the raid was for Democratic Party political gain and as a weapon against political opposition.

      1. Trump missed a killer comeback in the 2020 debates when Biden demanded that Trump keep his supporters from ‘taking to the streets’ after the election. He should have said:

        “Hold it., Wait just a minute there. Whose supporters have been rioting in our cities for the last six months? They’re not mine. That’s not my circus. So, whose are they?”

        And then — nearly impossible for Trump, I know — SHUT THE F UP and let Biden flounder. That would have been a popcorn moment, right there.

        1. He has had a number of moments where if he had just kept his mouth shut and let the Democrats keep talking, he could have really crushed them in the view of the public except for the leftist true believers, and he couldn’t do it. He forgot that you never get in the way of someone destroying themself.

    3. The Georgia Guidestones probably did get secretly demolished by the county. Which was dumb, and insulting to the local monument company. But when times are weird, a lot of people don’t want to deal with weird tourists. Maybe there were undisclosed reasons, like the place being a focus of drug crime or sex crime.

      Shrug. Apparently public art is a crime these days. I don’t approve, even though I think the Guidestones’ message is stupid and (partly) wicked. If people want to waste money on something that will last, the county ought to have let the monument stand.

      1. They sure were in a hurry to knock down what was left, weren’t they? Not a good way to preserve evidence and figure out what happened and whodunit.

      2. That area of Georgia is a big granite quarry and I’m sure they use lots of explosives there. With that said, it wouldn’t surprise me if the elites destroyed it themselves, so that there is no inconvenient “historical evidence” of their planned war crimes against humanity…e.g. the Covid vax kill shot/mass sterilization device and intentional destruction/instigation of global collapse…

    4. What I find curious is the Georgia Guidestones were taken out with an RPG from the shadows, outside view of the cameras. No person was recorded emplacing explosives. The blast pattern is completely consistent with RPG. Which is why they were immediately demolished and nothing was said about it being an RPG strike.

  21. You actually said this in the “Plots” piece on the 9th, but that already has 450 comments, and if I wrote this there it would be lost. The point is relevant anywhere, so, I’m advancing it forwards to a place where it is more likely to get read:

    And they never realized that’s not, in any world or place the definition of “smart.”

    We often do this, use the word “smart”, when the word “wise” would be far far more appropriate.

    The relevance of this is, I assert, that what PostModern Liberals (and that is what 95% of all self-identified Liberals are, today, as opposed to “Classical” Liberals) truly fail at is not intelligence, it’s wisdom.

    If there were a “WQ” test to match the IQ test, then Liberals (PMLs) would scream to hellangone about it, because they would consistently test into the bottom 1/3 tail of the Normal Curve it would wind up matching.

    They are rarely stupid: Too many have gotten through college back when college was still really legit, and not the mutual backpatting RightThink society it has morphed slowly into. What they are not is WISE — they don’t learn from experience, so they do not process mistakes properly.

    Their poster boy for this case is Noam Chomsky… He’s pretty clearly brilliant, in his own field. But take him three baby steps outside his field, to, say, economics, and he’s a blithering buffoon. And a lack of capacity to learn from experience — mistakes — is obviously what it takes to be a fan of Marxism after so many bad examples and complete failures.

    I assert to you — think in those terms, and suddenly a lot of the behavior of the Left “makes more sense” — in terms of HOW it fails. They are not wise, no matter how smart they are.

    1. I’m not impressed with Chomskyan linguistics. His approach to deriving the universals of grammar was to think REALLY HARD about the grammar of English, come up with a mathematical model for them, and assert that it was a model for all other grammars as well. And his model required the human mind to do elaborate abstract derivations to turn “deep structure” into “surface structure”—derivations that, supposedly, very young children and very unintelligent people can do perfectly well, even though college students sometimes struggle to master them. This makes me think of Socrates arguing that an illiterate slave whom he coached through a geometric proof with leading questions must have already known geometry by learning it in a prenatal existence.

      Philosophers divide into Platonists and Aristotelians; American linguistics into Chomskyans and Greenbergians. Chomsky, like Plato, thinks of knowledge in terms of mathematics (it’s not for nothing that he used to talk about “Cartesian linguistics); Greenberg, like Aristotle, in terms of natural history. I prefer the second approach.

      1. I made it half-way through The Anti-Chomsky Reader.” Far enough to grasp that even his most basic theory of sentence structure has huge flaws in it. What he and his followers did to historical linguistics . . . Grrrrrrrrrrrr

        1. It’s worse than that. Chomsky thinks of knowledge in terms of shoving mathematics-like symbols around, not in terms of actual mathematics. His “transformational grammar” never worked; linguists kept adding special cases and exceptions and new formal rules until the whole, complex, top-heavy structure was equivalent to a Turing machine. At that point the argument that the nature of the structure implies anything at all about the nature of human language fails, because you can write a Turing machine to generate ANY set of strings. All sentences in a given language. All the sentences in a given edition of the New York Times. Everything your baby babbled in the last three days.

          2. That kind of makes sense, in that most of Chomsky’s body of work only seems of value with respect to computer languages, and not to natural languages. And even there most of Chomsky’s work was either synthesis or popularization of good work done by others years prior.

            2. He claimed to have invented a formal way of describing natural languages. Transformational grammar. It doesn’t work, but linguists kept trying to make it work for, oh, forty years. They were permanently stuck in the “if I just add one more bell or whistle it’ll magically work” mode. Kind of like climate modelers.

              I went to grad school at the beginning of the Chomsky period and promptly looked around for a sub-specialty that would keep me away from the transformational grammar crowd. It didn’t quite work, but doing field work in East Africa and refusing to come back until I’d spent every cent of my one-year fellowship bought me two wonderful years of peace.

                1. Me too. The Chomsky nonsense made it sooo easy to flee academia for a job where insisting on “solutions” that didn’t work got you fired.

                  1. Alas, nowadays in the corporate world you can insist on lots of ESG and DIE “solutions” that don’t work and not get fired. Other types of solutions that don’t work might get you fired, though getting a new job on the basis of having managed Project X or Effort Y before they crash down seems more common.

                2. I enjoyed my anthropological linguistics class and would have like to take more, but they’d just disbanded the major/minor program about a year before I started, and most of the classes were no longer offered. Linguistics had been an interdepartmental field at my college, and apparently because of a combination of lack of interest and retirement of key faculty, the departments involved weren’t hiring people to teach more than what was strictly relevant to their own department. The anthropology department didn’t offer more than the one intro class, and the remaining classes in other departments had so many prerequisites that I just went “Heck, no.”

                  1. I got into linguistics via an undergraduate course in historical linguistics, which was then untainted by Chomsky, and the existence of a scholarship that would provide enough to live on if I studied Swahili. Up to then languages had been a guilty pleasure, so the idea of actually being paid to learn one charmed me.

        2. I hated him with a burning passion. Then son took linguistics and came to me “Is the Chompy Gnome as insane as he sounds” Me– The?
          “Think about it, it will come to you.”
          And then I couldn’t stop laughing.

      2. Another example of what I said the other day: It’s a mistake to get too mathematical with human behavior., be it linguistics, economics, psychology, poetry, or politics. That way lies gibberish.

        1. Chomsky managed to end Skinner, which was a good thing. The rest, number one son who is ABD in Linguistics can go on and on and on about not only the damage Chomsky did to the field but how he hollowed out the students until US linguistics was nothing but his epigones. Lefties tend to leave smoking ruins behind them and Chomsky is no exception.

          Chomsky is a rationalist, like Marx, whatever he thinks is so is so nothing more needed.

      1. Chomsky, like many college credentialed leftists, is skilled at the dialect of an intellectual without having the actual practical intelligence to back it up. It is… not difficult to sound like one is intelligent.

        Perhaps it is like the British accent. To some, it signals cultured and smart, rather than simply having grown up in a certain locale. Posh Brit, not the muddied British English spoken by… Well, pretty much everybody else on the island that wasn’t in that specific culture.

        You use certain turns of phrase, diction, and phraseology, make it nigh impenetrable to read, I mean really obfuscate the stuffing out of it. Most of us have read the type.

        The purpose of language is to communicate. What the intellectual dialect- cant, maybe? It’s that obscure at times. Anyway, the dialect itself, all it really does is tell you “this person is smart.” And then it pushes a bunch of random noise at you centered around a few rather boringly stupid topics- the -isms, the climate nonsense, discredited philosophy and questionable (at best) history, a bunch of feelz stuff in there somewhere, and the ravings of madmen.

        Chomsky’s wild ravings are not “intelligent,” per se. They suck. He takes the way language and language learning actually works and tries to do nearly the exact opposite. It fails on nearly every level. It is anti-thinking such that if you really think about it, it makes you dumber.

        I have come to the conclusion of late that many of these intellectual sounding leftists are not, in fact, as intelligent as they seem. There may be the capacity for intelligence in them. Probably is, humans being human. They are educated in a particular way, though, such that they can sound like they are.

            1. Also, there’s some Kennedy crud going on there, where he idolized his stupidest relatives who had the coolest planes and cars and boats and floozies. Same thing with Prince Andrew.

              Adrenaline, yes. Idiocy and criminality, no.

        3. My mother’s accent made the Queen sound like a cockney. You could cut glass with it. On the other hand, I talk like a baritone bugs bunny,

          1. My natural accent is thick as molasses and slow as the day is long. Old school mountain Southern. I had to be trained to talk like a normal human being. It took me a while to learn how to understand people that spoke in other accents.

            It seems like strong accents are disappearing, though. Used to, you could tell where someone was raised by the way they spoke. Midwestern, Northern urban, Northern rural (yeah, they were a bit different), posh Southern, rural Southern, and so on. You just don’t hear the way the vowels drag or the consonants pop, the cadence and tempo that used to be there.

            1. My mother grew up in a family that spoke pure East Texas and somehow, by efforts I can only imagine, managed to wipe out all trace of her native accent and talk almost like a BBC radio speaker. I’ve spent a non-trivial portion of my adult life countering “But you don’t sound like a southerner,” with trivial comments because I don’t particularly care to tell my family history to people I’ve just met.

            2. My natural accent is Piedmont Southern. Unfortunately it only exists in my head, though if you catch me writing something in my natural mode, it comes through in the rhythms.
              What comes out of my mouth puzzles me more than it does anyone else.

              1. Your reading voice has always seemed Southern to me. Makes me wonder though, how much our speaking voice comes through in text sometimes. You can just see the college educated yankee in some people’s writing. Others, to me, sound pretty much like home.

  22. I guess I have a different take on this. People keep saying stuff like, “This is America. God and justice will prevail.” Blah-blah-blah. I don’t buy it. Man has free will.

    Most civilizations were not just and the few that were eventually became unjust. Triumph of the good is not inevitable and, for most of human history, good mostly lost. For a time, America was a glorious exception to that general rule and showed us that it is possible to rise above the dirt and seek the stars. However, the American government and culture have been overrun by the most irrational, insane, and evil people imaginable. I cannot see this ending peaceably and happily when one quarter or more of the populous cheer the evil on.

    1. Yes, free will. But I also believe in a God of miracles who has sworn by his own life that abominations shall not reign. It may feel like we are occupied and overrun by evil and we are certainly threatened, but so far it’s still mostly threats, and the appropriate response is “Fear not”. It’s only in the last few years that the evil and folly has fully unmasked, and the resistance is still mobilizing. And, as Benjamin Franklin said, “God helps those who help themselves.”

  23. Another site noted (without supporting docs) that the “classified documents” that the DOJ / FBI seized had been declassified by Trump while he was President, and that they mostly represented criminal actions by the FBI / DOJ involving Hillary and the Russian Dossier.
    I don’t know about that, but this was an entirely political act, done because Trump was so successful in the R primaries, and all of their distraction acts have failed.

    1. Found a more comprehensive look at the FBI raid and the docs sought at the Conservative Treehouse, including a copy of Trumps’ order declassifying documents.
      That article also noted that the FBI wanted the security cams turned off, and refused to deliver a copy of the warrant to Trumps’ attorney, or allow ger to read it. They also ordered her off the property while they searched.
      People who face giving up power do not do things like this, for fear that it will, in turn, be done to them.
      These creatures mean to rule over the ashes if the Republic, forever.
      How’d that work for you, Ozymandias?

    2. It looks like Donald Trump may have realized what our legal system has been for the last 20 years:

      ““I once asked,” he wrote, “if you’re innocent why are you taking the Fifth Amendment? Now I know the answer to that question. When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become targets of an unfounded, politically motivated Witch Hunt … you have no choice.””

      https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2022/08/10/donald-trump-punches-back-with-witch-hunt-videos-and-a-huge-announcement-n1619856

  24. T. H. Breen’s book The Will of the People is about all the steps needed before the ordinary people of the colonies became 1) self organizing, 2) self-governing at the very local level, 3) determined that change had to happen, and 4) ready to fight. It took a decade, and was a complicated, messy process at the ground level. I highly recommend the book, but you will need to read it carefully and chew a bit, because in this book Breen is a bit more abstract than his earlier work was.

        2. I need uranium. Depleted, Enriched, Neither… I’m not picky… alright, I’d like to KNOW… they need different.. treatment. For one, depleted can be aggregated with less issue.

      3. The power to tax is the power to destroy.

        Thus the Constitutional ban on income taxes, until proggies persuaded the US to change that wise prohibition.

      1. And since when has the irs served search warrants, helped with arrests, and been in life threatening situations? My guess is that hiring manager took them at their word and put in the ad exactly what his boss said they wanted.

        1. I think they were Instalaunched, actually.

          I was just able to reach it by going to the job opening on USAJobs (the PJ archive is to one of the pages describing different jobs at the IRS, and the link to USAJobs on that doesn’t function, but the website itself does)

          https://www.usajobs.gov/job/634575800

          Go here, click on the link that says “For more information on each phase of the Special Agent assessment process, please visit the IRS Careers website at IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent | IRS Careers”, and it opens the page.

          veeeeerrrrryyyy slooooooowlllllyyyyy…….

          The whole Jobs dot IRS dot Gov is barely functioning.

      3. You’d think someone realized “Do you know how badly this is pissing people off? You know how many Congressmen are asking why the hell IRS auditors need guns and ‘to be willing to kill people’? Get that out of the ad, NOW!

    3. Wombat-socho over at The Other McCain, “https://theothermccain.com/2022/08/09/watching-the-herd-stampede/” who claims some knowledge of the IRS, predicts that the effect will be to make the IRS yet more bloated; not more mobile and frisky. He sounds like he knows what he is talking about.

    6. :looks at archived page at news article:

      That’s… not a job listing.

      It’s a description of the section of the agency that does criminal investigations.

      That’s why it’s got a link to USAJobs at the bottom.

      THIS is a job listing– the only one for CIA and Criminal Investor:
      https://www.usajobs.gov/job/634575800

      Opened in Feb, there’s 300 listings, apparently folks don’t leap at the chance to work 50 hours a week, on call 24/7, with travel, starting at about 50k/year.

    7. That’s nothing new though.

      And to be fair to the Revenooers, nearly everyone of all political stripes would be happy to shoot them, even though they are apparently the nicest people you could ever be indebted to.

  27. we’re all at heart compliant Chinese peasants. (Even they aren’t that compliant, it’s just that the control on information is next level

    I don’t know any Chinese peasants, but I’ve read that contrary to “common knowledge”, Chinese peasants are actually extremely unruly and individualistic (and entrepreneurial). So the Emperor throughout history has had to control information next level, including the myth of continuous dynasties, in order to get ten thousand villages to be governable at all.

    1. I worked with a Chinese engineer for a few months on a project years back. To the point where we’d take him out for dinner, etc since he was all alone in town. We had some interesting conversations about the realities of life in China, how people really didn’t follow the govt line that much, lots of fudging and appearance of compliance while really being very independent and entrepreneurial as you suggested. That was before the electronic devices and social credit, it may be harder now. My impression was they saw the oppressive government for what it was and were always looking to not stick up and get noticed but to find work arounds and live their lives as much as they could. One data point.

      2. Gennady Andreev’s book Bitter Waters suggests the same thing was true in Soviet Russia. Much of the book is about how he and others learned to sneak around the regulations to get things done.

        1. This is one thing that 1984 got wrong. The Thought Police aren’t really watching your ever move. True, they could be. You hear only about those that were watched because bragging of when you weren’t could be one of the times you were. But they saw a lot less, though they probably implied more.

          1. “We can read your mind.”
            “No. You can’t.”
            “What makes you think so?”
            “If you could, you’d have come YEARS AGO. That is, IF you would not have gone insane trying to make sense of things.”

  28. I think it was in David Drake’s book ‘Patriots’, at the start he has a piece about how history is taught ‘as if A went to B to do C, when it reality he was on his way to B, got detoured to E, and then wound up doing C.’

    His example was Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys taking Fort Ticonderoga. Which involved no shots fired, because the British troops at the fort didn’t even know hostilities had begun.

  30. Yep. I gotta say, more and more, I tend to assume that the Narrative on anything historical is baloney.

  31. Democratic Party has unleashed the FBI as a weapon of war against its political opponents, as it now tries to interfere in the Pennsylvania state elections as well:

    https://www.pennlive.com/news/2022/08/fbi-delivers-subpoenas-to-several-pa-republican-lawmakers-sources-say.html

    They have made it clear that their goal is completely eliminating all political opposition to create single party rule prior to the 2024 election, by trying to ensure that they control Congress after 2022’s, enabling them to pack the Supreme Court and effectively end the Constitution as the governing instrument of the nation.

    1. They’re trying to persecute prosecute members of Congress for following the procedures laid down in the Constitution to contest a questionable election. For doing their plain duty as the People’s representatives.

      The 2020 election was more than questionable. The fraud was epic in scale and blatant in character. Only the willfully blind and stupid could fail to see it.
      ———————————
      Grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

  32. Professional historians are mostly such obligate specialists that getting a coherent summary, especially of the last century, is next to impossible. Given the dominance of the Left in academia, more recent accounts are likely to be biased and censored in its favor. In the absence of an accessible reference, since any two authors will put such as different spin on events that it’s dizzying, I’ve been trying my own reconstruction of world history, but it’s a slow slog.

  33. I suspect that you are rght. Highly likely that if the country enters an armed conflict, that things would quickly spiral to the point that no matter how the government reacted, they would lose control of the situation.
    If the idea is to gin up a revolt of some kind, in order to crack down on The Deplorables it’s about as moronic an idea as could be. However considering the Katzan Jammer kids we have running the current government, it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s exactly their plan.

    1. Warren Said :
      “If the idea is to gin up a revolt of some kind, in order to crack down on The Deplorables it’s about as moronic an idea as could be”
      The Katzen Jammer kids would be a step up. The Turnip in Chief seems to be one of their more intellectual members. The various Congressional delegations are a mess.

    2. Absolutely would not surprise me at all, that this is someone’s plan. It’s fairly clear to me also that there is no one really in charge in the Brandon White House – just a lot of barely competent egotists playing their own separate and uncoordinated games, without the least understanding of what could happen, other than – we’ll provoke the Deplorables into violent resistance and then we shall crush them, ha-ha!

      1. Agreed. There are factions trying to influence the puppet in chief, that much seems obvious from where I stand. At least one of them is deluded or dumb enough to think that they can create a situation that they can exploit to do just that. They’ve done it before, after all. Recently.

  34. By the way.
    Martin Armstrong was on with Greg Hunter at USA Watching Rumble channel and he said that his review of the analytics has Biden’s actual approval rate at 12%.

    1. 12% would still paint a depressing picture of modern America. Home of the feeble, land of the brain-dead.

      Biden’s approval rating should be a negative number!
      ———————————
      If everybody is thinking the same thing, most of them are not thinking.

      2. Isn’t the “Bigfoot is Elvis and an alien” percent on surveys between five and ten percent?

        IE, folks just screwing with the pollsters.

  35. @ Christopher > “I tend to assume that the Narrative on everything is baloney.”

    Just a little edit for General Use.
    Are you sure you don’t mean “malarkey”? 😉

  38. Strongly reminded me of a vignette my mother (born in the 1920s) recounted from her childhood. She grew up in piney east Texas. Once she brought her schoolbooks with her to her grandfather’s house. He had been a young man by the end of the Civil War. He asked to look at her American history book; having perused it for a bit for the period of history through which he had lived, he returned it to her and commented, “Didn’t happen like that at all.”

  39. Back in high school, in the late ’60s, my English teacher assigned the class to go to the library and find a Christmas story, and do a review of it. I ran across Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, which I had never read, and decided to do so.

    Mind you, at the time, “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol” was at the height of its popularity, and it was really the only exposure to the Dickens story I had had, so I was surprised at the differences. My review was a comparison between the Mr. Magoo version (which was and is excellent, but not nearly as dark as the original) and its source material, which had fewer songs in it.

    My English teacher told me to go back to the library and pick a different story, because everyone knew what was in “A Christmas Carol”, because everyone had seen it on TV.

    2. Back in the day – long ago and far away (1980) I was a High School teacher for a couple of years. I was lucky in that I got the advanced placement kids for American History and was allowed to run with it.

      I did a segment with them over the year that was looking at “key” American events and then reporting on what happened. I had sourced a company that provided kits that were reproductions of ‘source material’ such as letters, newspaper stories, diary excerpts, and participant narratives from logs and records etc. One item was about Truman deciding to use the atom bomb on Japan. The report out was not the popular theories then in vogue but the kids nailed it from the dual perspective of end the war and scare the USSR. What they came up with was compelling and well done. I got lucky with that one!

      I got out of teaching as it was not paying the bills and wound up (after a sales gig) going into “Training” and never looked back. When asked about teaching I was, back then, of the opinion it wasn’t worth it and was going to get very political and messy. It got much worse than I ever expected.

  40. Apparently, the source for this was:

    “U.S. archivist David Ferriero told Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, that there were classified materials discovered in boxes of records that were transferred from Trump’s residence to the National Archives in January.”

    Which is kind of stupid of this Ferriero person since he should have known that the President is the ultimate declassification authority, and what he took was covered.

    1. See, what that says to me is “The archivist is a Dem who planted documents (which shouldn’t have gone to Trump, for whatever reason) in the stuff given to Trump, and then reported it to another Dem who can may hay out of it.”

  41. Being a bit egotistical, this feels somewhat directed at me. I really don’t see “anything” happening, where “anything” is something dramatic, and to be fair, Hollywood-esque.

    Thinking about it, “nothing happens” really is the best case. We have elections that matter, congresscritters do what they’ve been elected to do, the swamp is slowly (I agree, these things take time) drained, and constitutional norms are restored.

    Dramatic, Hollywood-esque things may be emotionally satisfying, but they won’t accomplish much real (or at least desired) change. I’m sure the Whiskey Rebellion folks all felt good, but it accomplished nothing (related to their goals).

    Various dramatic things (e.g. cities rioting from hunger or an Iranian nuke at the State of the Union) would almost certainly make things worse, not better. Automated turrets that only turn off when they scan a warrant probably wouldn’t have made anything better at Mar-A-Lago (who names his house?).

    So, while I still believe “nothing will happen”, by which I mean nothing dramatic and emotionally satisfying, I’ve decided that is a good thing. Now to read the (almost 300) comments – I violated my rule of “read first, then comment”.

    1. The Democrats are far too scared and stupid to let ‘nothing happen’. They ‘know’ that if their enemies take power, they will use that power to utterly destroy all opposition. That’s what the Leftroids do.

      So they will continue to attack their political opponents with any government force under their control. They will arrest any candidate likely to beat a Democrat on false charges and fabricated evidence. Those 87,000 new IRS goons need something to keep them occupied, after all. They will commit election fraud on a scale to make their previous fraud look weak.

      Any attempt to push back through completely legal means will be labeled ‘Right-Wing Extremism!!’ and ‘Domestic Terrorism!!’ and ‘INSURRECTION!!!‘.
      ———————————
      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?”

      1. The question then becomes: What to do?

        I think we need to at least try the legitimate options, first. That means that this all simmers until Nov 2024. We even get a congressional “preview” from 2022 until 2024 to see how many of the “fascists” elected in 2022 actually behave as desired, which gives us the option of getting rid of the liars in 2024.

        What’s the alternative? Timothy McVeigh the FBI building? As long as it doesn’t contain a day-care center, I doubt many would shed a tear, nonetheless the “prosecute him” crowd would FAR outnumber the “give him a medal” crowd. “Lone wolves” sniping congresscritters? Leaving aside anything else, barricading all one’s representatives behind “impenetrable” security cordons is not going help to get them out of their bubbles and make them more responsive to the voters. The dramatic acts just don’t accomplish anything useful.

        Destruction for the sake of destruction or making some point is easy. Using it to accomplish one’s goals is much, much harder. This is one reason I heartily approved of “take out two countries for taking out two buildings” but vehemently disagreed with trying to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into modern states. Guns and bombs really can’t do that. Just demolish them to make the point, then leave. The “then leave” part is a bit tricky when it’s one’s own country.

        I think a good – and legal – strategy would be to bankrupt the media. However, it’s impossible (although I do not understand why). For an obvious example, the PJMedia universe is constantly linking to the enemy, which only supports them. If PJMedia cannot stop feeding Twitter and the New York Times, I don’t see how they can possibly be starved. Heck, Twitchy only exists because of Twitter. “I hate you, here are eyeballs to drive your ad revenue” is obviously a losing strategy, yet it persists. They don’t even bother to strip the tracking data out of the URLs.

  42. I remain hopeful because we have guns.

    Seriously, when it reaches a breaking point the majority (plurality? Minority of young strong men?) need the tools to reset the balance of power. I think most people are willing to let it go farther than it should and see it in hindsight. When they do they have to have the means to reverse the direction.

    2. This is why they keep trying to take them away from us. Also, remember this plan was cooked up by Obama, who is not and never was culturally American. they have no idea how vast this land is, and how intractable.

  43. Wait… an actual editor “refused my Red Baron time travel story, because he was a villain and shot Snoopy”?!? WTactualF was he/she? A third-grade dropout? A crackhead? A complete moron? D) All of the above? The mind boggles…

      1. If she did, it still says bad things about her. People tend to project: many intelligent people tend to think that everyone is equally intelligent, and can try to engage people in conversations on subjects the other person really is not interested in. But midwits tend to think that everyone is at their level of intelligence, and if they don’t like something, neither will anyone else. An intelligent editor would have said “Well, some people might not like it because of their memory of Peanuits, but there’ll be enough people who can look past that that it should find a market niche”. The only kind of editor who would think “I can’t get past the Red Baron’s role in Peanuts, therefore neither could anyone else” is a classic midwit type, and a particularly stupid exemplar of the type to boot.

        1. If she did, it still says bad things about her.

          Amen.

          I hadn’t notice the projecting thing before, I’m more familiar with the “sure, WE are smart, but OUR CUSTOMERS are clearly morons” aspect, but you make a solid point and they work well together; folks assume The Average Person is roughly like them, so you add on contempt because Gosh I’m Really Smart…..

  44. Two statements which should be pounded into various heads with a singlejack hammer:
    “history books and what we know as history are not what happened”
    “reality is messy”

  45. I’ve read a lot of American history, some of it actually based on known facts. After looking into pivotal points, I have to say that the British made their biggest mistake when they pi$$ed the Scotch-Irish off. Shortly before the Battle of Kings Mountain, there was an infamous order given out – that there would be No Quarter. What that means is that any Rebel found would be killed. Didn’t matter whether he/she was trying to surrender, wounded, or begging for his life.
    Dead. All.
    Well, the Hillbillies of the North/South Carolina border areas are – even now – heavily descended from the Scotch-Irish immigrants of the British Isles. They are classic mountain folk, and take an offense against one of them as a mortal offense to ALL of them.
    And, they are, by nature and family upbringing, inclined to kill any MoFo that ‘messes with my kin’.
    So, when they returned the fight at Kings Mountain, they equalled the savagery that the British had started. In spades.
    That was the end of the fight for the British. Oh, they had a few more little scuffles, but that was the fight that broke their back.
    The Americans in the mountain area?
    I expect that they went back to work again, right after, butchering hogs and raising hell in their spare time. I doubt that many ever wasted a moment thinking of their actions on that mountain, other than to declare, “They had it coming.”
    We have a LOT of people in the USA who are descended, philosophically or genetically, from those hard-faced, unforgiving Sons-a-Beechwood. The Elite better watch their backs, ‘cuz retribution is a B.

    1. You forgot to mention a lot of the Scots in question were often forced transferred after Culloden, the years afterwards as the British cleaned out the highlands, or during the many famines following. While they were forced to pledge allegiance to the crown on penalty of their and their families lives, the time leading up to the war imprinted on them that any forced allegiance had no value. I’m sure the Irish had similar insights. The Scots-Irish had no love of the British. At best by the time of Kings Mountain, they were willing to have a “leave me and mine alone”. When that became obvious that wasn’t happening, well … British reaped what they sowed.

    2. There was Only 1 “Brit” at Kings Mtn.in SC/NC the commanding officer. The remainder were Colonial Loyalists. The Revolutionary War in the South had a Major Civil War aspect to it. Before the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, NC which sent Cornwallis and his RedCoats eventually to his surrender at Yorktown, VA., the British Loyalists had to be eliminated as a fighting force. Kings Mtn. did that. Lessons might be gleaned for our current situation, the Feral FIB and other assorted Ferals being the current RedCoats.
      Of course the Ferals will probably turn to Sherman’s southern CW campaign as their model. Speaking of the CW, IF a Bull Run occurs again, please do not dalley, go on and occupy DC, end it before it really gets started. All the Best.

        1. Speaking as one, on my dad’s side at least, in actual American usage it is in fact “Scotch-Irish”.

          “Scotch is a drink” applies to Scotsmen from Scotland, not American backwoods people.

  46. Pingback: Patience, My Brothers | NC Renegades
  48. Pingback: The Limits of History | nebraskaenergyobserver
  49. Pingback: Strange Daze: Lost in the Crazyzone Again

Comments are closed.