Rains of Spiders and Women Birthing Snakes

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Or perhaps this should be called “They rejected our reality and substituted their own.”

Nah, I’ll stand by my title.

My grandmother, who was sane as a brick, became curiously credulous in her old age, that is after the grandchildren had married and moved out of the village and her house was no longer the nerve center of the family.

There was nothing wrong with her brain. Her brain worked as well as it ever had. If you told her a girl down the street had given birth to a snake, she’d first laugh at you, then march down the street, knock at the girl’s door, and tell her what was being said.

But she believed the most absurd tales from… well…. tabloids, which she fell into reading because they appeared in the grocery store and she was bored. And at that, by the way, her old, faithfully subscribed Catholic newsrag wasn’t any better, though it ran to the “more believable to a lady who had never consciously encountered anyone so exotic as an atheist.”

So when I came to tea, she’d tell me how some girl in Lisbon had given birth to snakes. And how an atheist who was giving birth demanded the cross be removed from over the hospital bed, because she didn’t want her baby to see it. And then her baby was born blind.

Now if you’d asked grandma if G-d was the kind of being to strike a baby blind because his/her mom was an atheist, she’d be horrified at the notion. And if one of her grandkids had declared him or herself an atheist (I’m fairly sure my brother was close to, back then. I haven’t inquired of the state of his soul) she would have been chagrined, and tut tutted and prayed for him or her. But she would not for a minute wish that said grandchild have blind children.

The problem was that these things in the newspapers came with a dual nature: First, they were not quite real, because they weren’t about people she knew. How was she to say what some heathen in Lisbon did? Or whether such strange creatures, hundreds of miles away, could or did give birth to snakes? And obviously atheists in foreign parts wouldn’t be like our atheists, even if we had any, which she had no direct knowledge of.

Second, surely they wouldn’t print it in the paper if it weren’t true.

So I shut up, and drank tea with her, and nodded at her stories, then turned the conversation to the cats and the dog, and what she was doing in the garden. She’d also tell me about neighbors whose names I could never remember. (Seriously, if I met you at a con, it takes three times of telling me you name for me to remember your face with the name. Half the time I remember the name and have a pleasant association, but can’t remember the name. Speaking of, would the lady who gave me the knit minion cup owners email me? I’d like to send you something, because those have brought us so much joy.) In those opinions she was, again, sane as a brick, and it all made sense.

I find myself, now, going the same dance with my mother, though I’ll note only since the Covidiocy. Having been locked up and deprived of her network of continuous reality check, she fell headlong for Fauci’s folly. There is no point even arguing with her that there was never a need for all the crazy measures, much less than that the measures were countraproductive. It’s all “but you’re the only one saying that” and “what makes you think you’re smarter than the experts?” and such. This from the woman who withstood full on socialist propaganda and laughed at it.

But these expert opinions come from America, where modernity and medicine came from. And the only person she has to reality-check is my brother, who has believed every technocratic piece of bull excreta to come his way since he fell headlong for Al Gore’s Earth in the ballance, or whatever his book was. (And worse, he thought that Al Gore was so “smart” mostly because the book was beautiful written. The translator must have been amazing it’s all I have to say.)

And this is the problem. In our society, no one can actually go out and see what’s happening everywhere for themselves. They might be sane as bricks, but they don’t know any of those Trump voters, and lord only knows they might all be demon-worshiping white nationalists, even the ones that are black.

That’s why I was dismayed yesterday when reading the New Neo’s dispirited post about how leftists make Trump voters into horrible “things”.

Some of the comments on her post were about national divorce, but frankly, that’s stupid as rocks and I apologize to rocks. The national interests aren’t neatly divided along lines that make any sense on the map. Apologists for this loopy idea will say “I know it will be difficult.” Really, do you? Because I bet you that you don’t.

Not only aren’t the left concentrated on any particular region, (and no, we don’t even know about the big cities, because the margin of fraud is huge there) but it’s mostly confined to people who watch and believe TV. Or NPR. Or whatever the heck used to be “respectable modes of information,” up to and including the New York Times.

Now, my parents are in another country, because I moved away, but I’m sure most of you aren’t exactly eager to split the sheets and send the 80 year olds to live in foreign parts, right? Or, and I have a number of friends like this, they only get their info from quick TV summaries, in between doing whatever they’re obsessive about doing for a living.

And the real left, as such, is at most 10% of the nation. And frankly most of them have issues. Are you really going to give them half the land? HOW? And WHY?

The problem is not the people. The problem is that we’re at this awkward mental space, where — because the left not only used to dominate discourse, but has been cancelling people financially and professionally for decades — a certain percentage of the country, many of them, but not all old, are listening exclusively to news that might as well come from a parallel universe.

I used to know, because when they’re all around you, it’s important to know, the left’s means of taking over a country and it always started with “control mass media.” Which they did by the thirties or so, in the US.

It wasn’t even that they were exclusively US left at the time, but that at the time all parties in the US were “progressives.” It started before FDR, even if FDR made it permanent on the left, and proved very adept at corrupting all our institutions. But all the journalists, and every “educated” person was progressive for the same reason Heinlein was progressive initially. Because they equated centralized, top down government with “progress” — i.e. with having flush toilets, and real medical care, the same reason that Britishers are very fond of their health service. It came in at the same time as modern medicine, so the “progress was visible.”

And from there — because the visions of the future being sold in schools tilted more and more left — we ended up with news wholly dominated by Marxism.

Which means the reporters can’t even SEE the truth, much less report it. So what they’re reporting is all about those weird Trump voters — of which they don’t know any, because no Trump voter in their midst dares admit it on penalty of never working in journalism again — and the snakes they give birth to.

That ultimately is the big problem. They made us go silent, are no sure we don’t exist, and spend their time making up outrageous lies about us.

I have friends who fall into the “too busy to get anything but the news at ten” or whatever, and they of course think that Russia put Trump in power, etc. etc. etc. And that we’re doing great under Drooling Joe. While there might be some cognitive dissonance with groceries and gas prices, they really are too busy to pay much attention, and the short term explanations distract them.

They know I keep this blog. If they thought about it for a minute, or even dared read this blog (they don’t, because it’s obviously crazy. Or as a former friend so charmingly put it “She’s gone peculiar these last few years.” Yes, she’s British.) they’d know I’m one of those people who supposedly give birth to snakes.

I’ve told them to their faces that I voted for Trump (the first time under severe protest, but it was better than the alternative, as we’re seeing.) I have told them Marxism is a crazy cult, and that the sky and the stars will pass away before a comma in the founding documents becomes irrelevant. And I swear they forget it the minute they walk away. I mean, I’m their friend, they know I’m not stupid, so I can’t possibly give birth to snakes, like those people they hear about on the news. (I guess it’s easier if you were a casual con friend to just think I’ve gone peculiar.)

We don’t need a national divorce. We already have that. We’re a separated couple, sharing the same house, avoiding each other at every chance and interpreting the noises we hear as being something exciting like rains of spiders or giving birth to snakes, when really the ex just slipped on a pool of cat vomit, and is now thudding around the house in a cast.

Now, this is not complete, of course, because we know what they do. It’s more like they avoid seeing us, but keep dancing up and down the stairs naked where we can’t avoid seeing them. So we know they didn’t give birth to snakes. OTOH we assume there’s a lot more of them than there is, because they holler about snakes so much. (Yes, I DO know the images I’m putting in your head. You will surely deal.)

Meanwhile, we’re limping around with our cast, and they’re going “Ahah, I knew it. They’re giving birth to white nationalist snakes” and they have all these words they’re phobic about without having any clue what they mean. Like “nationalist” which means you must be fascist, because well…. national socialists. And you want to shake them till their teeth come out and say “DUDE I’m a patriotic Libertarian. No socialism here.”

And in a way, of course that’s what they need. Only the ones who do it first, who cross over the house, and shake their cast in the crazy person’s face and say “What the hell are you gibbering about you political nudist? I’m one of those people you’re so terrified of, and you’re a non-fracking idiot, you mental reject” are going to pay an immense price, as we’ve been paying for generations.

Because the full force of demonization is brought to bear on those that refuse to be written out of existence. The left can’t help do it. They need to keep their worldview intact, because it’s become the center of their being.

So the first few who tell them who they are make it stick, are going to be painted with the “gives birth to snakes” brush. We’ve seen it happen.

Which makes it a perilous endeavor for those of us in overtaken fields, who want to make a living.

The problem — for the left — being that they have created this …. ersatz cone of silence, where they can pretend we don’t exist. And therefore they think we’re few, rare and old. And they’re safe.

But breaking the fire alarm doesn’t mean you won’t have a house fire. What they’re doing to the economy is the equivalent of running around with a can of gasoline and a box of matches.

People can’t ignore the fact they’re having trouble feeding the family. They might not say anything, but the anger and the number of restive “against the people in power” people keeps growing.

Growing well beyond what I expected because the number of people who — in the face of unprecedented propaganda, and despite some doubts over his endorsing lockdowns — hunched their shoulders and went and voted for Trump so much that the left had to cheat at the last minute, in front of G-d and everybody, way beyond their already massive planned cheating, was astonishing even to me.

And there probably are more ready to do it now.

Which is very like what led to the Romanian Christmas gift. Quietly, behind the backs of officialdom, people had come to hate the regime like ravening fire. It just wasn’t worth their lives to say it, before they realized EVERYONE hated the regime. Not only weren’t they alone, almost everyone was with them.

There will be a moment like that here. Perhaps very soon. We can almost see it coming.

Heck, at this point we can almost smell it.

But they can’t. We’re still, to them, those weird people that give birth to snakes.

In the end we win, they lose. Pray G-d, if you believe in Him that when the time comes we have the fortitude not to beat them to death with our cast while screaming “Does it look to you like we give birth to snakes, you dumb f*ck.”

And pray really hard that a lot of them wake before that moment. Because quite a few are dear friends or even relatives, and not into the evil so much, as hypnotized into thinking evil is good. And anyway, Trump voters are those people far away who give birth to snakes.

They’re not stupid, and they’re not evil, even if they’re acting as both. Pray G-d they have a Road to Damascus moment and wake up, before it’s too late.

Heck, pray even if you don’t believe. Because at this point it’s our only hope, our only barrier on the way to having to do things that will damage us for the rest of our days, and scar the republic possibly more than ACW did.

Let’s hope Bismark was right and “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.”

Because the alternative is very very ugly. And it might be needed. May G-d have mercy on our souls.

244 thoughts on “Rains of Spiders and Women Birthing Snakes”

  1. At this point, I don’t think we’re headed for a second Civil War. More like a second American Revolution.

    Because our enemies can’t stop their ‘progress’. They have to keep swarming to the left, even though they’ve already gone so far they’re in another dimension. They can’t admit to themselves that they’ve been wrong, that all the evil they’ve done has been in service of one spoiled rich boy’s delusions.
    ———————————
    Ma Lemming: “If all your friends jumped off a cliff into the sea would you…oh…um…nevermind.”

      1. There are indeed a whole lot of graves that deserve to be equipped with urinals, but that worthless fuck Karl Marx bears most of the direct guilt.
        ———————————
        Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

        1. Even with the fence the cemetery put around it, people keep vandalizing his grave. And not with “he was such a great man!” flowers and stuffed animals and the like.

    2. My book “The Master Code” (spoiler alert) ends with the “Second Shot Heard Round the World.” The book illustrates how the book’s elite have violated the United States, man, nature, and God. They have violated the genetic code by changing life itself and are lost without moral compasses.

    3. A very dangerous time. Apparently, it’s an old African proverb that, “When brothers fight to the death, a stranger inherits their father’s estate.”

      Red China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and any number of other nations would love to watch the U.S. have another civil war. While they grab off more pieces of the world for themselves, in not pieces of our own country.

      1. I agree that the Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” applies very much these days. Most of those other countries mentioned are already free or are trying to set themselves free from the “Elite-Banking-Globalist” cabal. A few years back when they put trade restrictions on Russia, it forced Russia to domestically source many items previously supplied by the west. They (and China) really don’t need us anymore. They really have no fear of the west’s Ukraine proxy war and are winning as we are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian with our fake dollars. Biggest problem here will be who will control the BUTTON or FOOTBALL if a civil war starts Wouldn’t surprise me if FLORIDA and TEXAS start glowing…

        1. Here’s the problem – China is trivially easy to kill. Mine the Straits of Hormuz and wait 3 weeks.

          1. A thousand pounds of tungsten at terminal velocity on a certain dam would also work. I dare not speculate which is more humane.

            1. Well, the amusing bit is that Iran regularly threatens to close the Straits. I say that next time, we tell them to go for it.

              1. Glenn Reynolds has frequently written that once upon a time the US needed to make sure we could keep the Strait open; now all we need to do is make sure we can close it.

                1. I would so love the sight of Iran getting pissy and doing it, then watching China collapse and the US being confirmed as the global hegemon.

                  It’d be serious popcorn time.

            2. The Reader thinks the possibility of ‘something’ happening to that dam is one of the major restraints on China invading Taiwan. The Reader personally believes that if China attempted an all out invasion both that dam and Shanghai would disappear in bright flashes.

        2. If we could confine the glow to a few neighborhoods, I don’t think a lot of the rest of either state would get overly upset. Get even, yes, but if, oh certain Austin city council members (past and present) and some of their hangers-on disappeared overnight, well . . . (Not that I wish harm on them, but their politics have caused a lot of misery for other people who didn’t necessarily agree with them.)

        3. Most of Russia’s import substitution is a con game. Instead of buying direct from $GERMAN_COMPANY, they buy from $RUSSIAN_COMPANY who either buys or smuggles from $GERMAN_COMPANY and files off the serial numbers.

          Given current sanctions and a reasonable attempt to stop smuggling, Russia will run out of foreign supplies in a year or so.

          1. Depends on what type of supplies.

            They currently have fuel, food and metal which puts them ahead of much of Europe for the winter. It’s the key high tech like gas turbines, electronics, specific farm equipment, etc, which makes it a struggle. Some stuff can be smuggled or bought through third-parties, but the markup is 300% or higher.

            Rural parts of Russia are actually trying to be more self sufficient. There is a trend to import factory machinery from China to kick-start more local manufacturing.

            As far as Europe goes, they are screwed since they let Russia and the Greens control too much of their energy policy. German leadership laughed at Trump, but now their citizens are already scrounging firewood for winter.

            WEF is rubbing their hands with glee at the chaos and already counting the mega-deaths. This is stupid because New Zealand doesn’t seem to be a great refuge for the elite anymore since a good chunk of the population there unstuck their heads from the sand about the Covid restrictions and vax side effects. People seem to be waking up.

          2. Remember the old saying “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. If the deep state liberals – elites – democrat and rhinos are our enemies, who is our best friend? Who is their enemy? Russia seems to be their lightning rod and maybe China is next on their list. Hence the “ save the NWO” war in Ukraine etc. At least Russia is largely a Christian and devout orthodox nation that is increasingly conservative. Food for thought. The Russians fought hitler and won and sacrificed 25% of their population in a fight to the death. Napoleon lost too. History lesson: don’t play with bears!

            1. Rolls eyes. No. It’s all a game with Russia. They’re still their friends. It’s 1984 sh*t, probably on both sides. Gin up an enmity for the proles. Note that Putin is arbitrating Buck Joe Fiden’s deal with Iran.
              At any rate, the enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more, no less.
              Putin is an old KGB hand, so far steeped in blood he can’t see or do anything else. An old vampire.
              And he dreams of resurrecting the USSR.

              1. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy. Sometimes they’re just a co-belligerent.

                Russia is a psychotic bully nation and always has been. And apparently while individual Russians of the westernized liberal bent can be perfectly fine, civilized people, apparently most of the population is fully down with the fascism (and the revanchism). And I strongly suspect the “devout Orthodoxy” is pretty skin deep and pushed to the West for PR purposes.

                The Ukraine war is a chance for the US to damage one of our two hostile geopolitical adversaries — seriously and for decades if not fatally — for what amounts to a rounding error in our economy. And by the time a couple more decades have passed, demographically-collapsing Russia won’t have the population to be threatening any more.

                Yeah, I know FJB is the one presiding over our response to the Ukraine War. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. If anything, he should be sending even more and better weapons to Ukraine as fast as possible.

                I saw this on one of the Twitter feeds I’ve been following for Ukraine news:

                1. Liberals called me names on the Internet
                2. Liberals are in favor of supporting Ukraine
                3. Therefore, Ukraine should be conquered and genocided

                .
                Don’t be that guy.

                  1. Yep, “the libs are dumdums so I will let them control me by doing exactly the opposite of whatever they loudly support” is just PAINFUL!

                2. Mind you, I don’t think FJB is quite as mad at russia as they sound. They’re trying to make it a game. And they still get money from Russia. (personally)
                  BUT Ukraine is like the guy caught in the middle.

            2. You might want to go read up on the history of that phrase…

              Where it’s ancient, it’s pointing to tactical advantage– basically, “before you go in to destroy this guy, make sure the guy on the other side has support so that he’s fighting a two-front war”– and where it’s modern, it was part of the general philosophy of Europe that gave us two world wars.

              Maybe you think that’s great, but to me the only way you could call that a glowing endorsement is after you nuked it to the moon.

        4. While I have no doubt that the cabal controlling *resident Biden would gladly push the button, and would make sure that they had the right generals and colonels in place to confirm, that’s as far as I’m willing to assume their competence. And it only takes one USAian NCO in one room to break the chain.

  2. Yes. I pray for sister, and all her kids, and other sister’s kids. Well one has finally had an “Ahhhh” moment. But then she and her husband are both over 30.

    I am having problems too with those who believe President Trump has had his time and won’t vote for him again. My response? “Against the probable field of likely democrats, yes you will. You won’t abstain. You won’t vote 3rd party. If you do you are handing them their stupid agenda they are spouting now. Trump may be an Ass, but he is our Ass. He isn’t a globalist Idiot Ass. Don’t be a rock hiding in the sand.” My opinion. I don’t get to tell them how to vote. But I do get to say what I believe. Whether they listen? IDK

    1. He is a man who made his money with AMERICAN construction, who deals with the Internationals (countries, corporations, individuals) without losing his shirt. And, with him, if he finds that a deal has turned to be NOT in his favor, calls everyone back to the bargaining table. For him there is no such thing as a bad deal he has to just suck up and live with.

  3. Interesting post. The purported elites are always the last to know and that is usually because the feedback mechanism via information available to them is screwed up.

    2. Really, “giving birth to snakes” is just one remove from “serpent people”, with a “can be identified young” limitation.

      I’ve met a few people who went into politics which resemble that remark.

  5. Sorry to disagree, but in a country where the political divide is approximately 50-50, and the levers of education, culture, education and government [ Thanks Gramsci] are predominately [to say the least] in the hands of one of those halves, I don’t see any alternative BUT a dissolution, unless you want to fight that Civil War you mention as a frequent throwaway. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t want to live with those people. and I’m pretty sure they don’t want to live with me.
    We have a government neither willing, nor able to govern, composed [theoretically] of two opposing governing philosophies. The rule of law is gone, and the party currently in power, breaks it openly, with no consequence. And a large percentage of “our side” doesn’t really care, as long as the get to dip their beak. We’ve gone from”E Pluribus Unum” to “Cui Bono?”
    SO, if we can work out an amicable split, I’m all for it. If not, we’ll have to look at other options.

    2. Is it actually divided 50-50?

      Or it is a small percentage that control the News Media, other institutions and the Democratic Party?

      Sarah believes that the second is true and for our nation’s sake, I hope she is correct.

      1. 50-50?

        I’d say the true believers are maybe 2% at the most. However they are followed by perhaps 20% coattail riders that don’t buy it but are quite willing to sell it for their own profit (I made 473 dollars and hour being a shill for the left and you can too, even a barmaid with an occasional cortex can do it! Simply fill out this form to run as a democrat congress critter!). Then there are very many going along to get along, OK by simple definition 49.999% have a sub-average IQ. Say a fair fraction of those swallow the party line, hook and sinker.

        When sush comes to phove, I’d hesitate to say where the actual dividing line is.

        1. Is it 50-50? Darned if I know. Where you fall seems VERY much class based, combined with location based. For example here in Massachusetts and surrounding states the overall view is very much Trump is/was the Devil (odd view for a bunch of dyed in the wool atheists). This is certainly true of the “educated” classes (i.e. you have a Bachelors or similar do knowledge based work, used to be called white collar). This is 95%+ of my co-workers, I’m clearly way underground, a sixth column say 🙂 .Where you fall is not universally class driven, there are other factors. Evangelicals and observant Catholics lean the other way (hey they’ve gotten the hint that the Tranzi’s want us gone). Those of a libertarian or classically liberal bent may not be pro Trump but they find the Tranzi lawlessness far more disturbing and their distaste for the constitution appalling. Go to my various blue collar cousins and the males are Solidly pro Trump. Those that were wavering got pushed over the edge by a combination of afghanistan last year and the 10K student loan forgiveness this year. Females were wishy washy but tended to the Tranzi side buying into the “evil Republicans hate the poor innocent illegal aliens and are RACISSSS” propoganda.

          One new thing is that the student loan thing seems to be changing some of that. These are folks that do non degree (for the ladies nurses aide, various retail, a smattering of other bits and bobs, for the men trades and some manufacturing) work. I think that in trying to consolidate/activate the younger voters the Turnip has pissed off the younger blue collar demographic (who say wait where is my $10K). I think the Turnip may have done something to try to solidify his base and in the process lit a fire under the opposition making their dislike far more visceral.

            1. There are probably 5-10% diehards. But then there are another 25% who are Hereditary Democrats — their parents voted Democrat, probably their grandparents voted Democrat, and they’ve always voted Democrat because that’s what their family does: vote Democrat. They would no more consider voting Republican than they would consider converting to a different church. It’s just Not Done.

              My former in-laws were like that. They were shocked when they found out I voted Republican.

              There are Hereditary Republicans, too, but not nearly as many.

        3. And, a LOT of those “True Believers” are gonna suddenly become meek, when they find out that their cushy government/government-funded jobs are going bye-bye. An economy that is contracting will not have the patience to continue putting up with make-work jobs. And, for the record, that is a SUBSTANTIAL percentage of the pro-Left female contingent – all those Diversity, teacher-but-not-really-teaching, HR, PR, and figurehead jobs.
          Gone.
          That’ll shut them up.

      2. I’d say more like 30-40-30 for Left, Middle-undecided, Right.
        And I’d estimate it’s only about 1/3 of the Left, and 1/3rd of the Right that are anyway really active, the other 2/3rds of each group being more or less silent supporters.

        1. At least on the right is the remains of the 2nd amendment. Elite liberals and Rhinos don’t know how to shoot. They let others do it for them, but methinks that the others might turn around and fire behind them this time at the “armchair Generals”.

          1. Plenty of left/liberals own and use guns. I know quite a few. That sort of misunderstanding fertilizes some unwise beliefs.

            Soapbox time

            Exactly where do hard-core communists disdain and avoid firearms?

            A whole bunch of progressives are well armed, and trained/practiced, and willing.

            The vew that only one side can and will fight is not based on reality.

            1. Point taken. However, the liberals are most likely city folk and never used a long gun hunting squirrels as a kid….Most of the Flyover states(Red) have citizens who know long guns, versus the Blue city folk who might be lucky enough to have a pistol… It’s the old rock/paper/scissors analogy… long gun beats pistol. Also, I think SAH is right in that WE vastly outnumber the few percent causing this mess to unfold.

              1. Long guns work best at medium to long range in open areas. You generally want a shorter weapon for indoor, close-in situations. e.g. you can use a knife where you can’t swing a sword.

                  1. Agreed. Urban warfare is different than rural. However the rural has all the food, most of the long guns also known as those AR thingies and lots of Vets like u and quite a few pistols whereas the urban will likely have few pistols, not much tactical knowledge (except for the gangs) and many targets. Ammo is the important thing. They can be starved out with a blockade of the highways and rails but unfortunately but that also affect the innocents.

              2. Again, I have met plenty of political liberals who hunt, build ARs, compete with guns, served in the military, “prep”, practice martial arts, grew up “country”, etc.

                Many simply don’t contradict their conservative peers . Social camo.

                If, heaven forbid, things devolve to armed conflict, a bunch of folks are going to die surprised. Don’t be one.

                Know yourself and the opponents, and you need not fear any battle. If you -dont- know the opposition….

                Step one. Don’t equate nonargument with agreement.

                2. Well it’s important to know your neighbors for sure. In subdivision and city I used to live in, I made a map of all the houses and looked up their public voter registration and party affiliations. So you know who you are dealing with.

        2. That’s wildly high.

          Even at the TEA Party rallies, the number of people wanting to limit the federal government to only the eight powers granted in the Constitution was minuscule.
          The other extreme isn’t more numerous, just better at enforcing conformity.

      3. So do I also hope – a small percentage of the committed, who control the media (news and entertainment) education and the rancid heights of the Dem party, and maybe a larger percentage of the gullible, who are about to be brutally wakened by reality.

      4. Whatever the ratio, when reality vets their theories, the ratio with change. Quickly, and dramatically. You don’t get reality wrong and thrive.

    4. Dissolution isn’t possible. This isn’t a “North vs. South” thing. It’s a much messier divide. You can’t just cut the country in half this time.

      And in any case, no one quite knows where the population stands right now. Over at Ace’s blog, Dave in Florida (who pays attention to this stuff) has a post up today talking about why the announced “Red Wave” is in reality a political realignment. Voting blocs are breaking up, and people are switching their voter affiliations. Dave bases this not off of polls, or other similar suspect data. Instead, he’s looking at things like the surge in Hispanics who voted in the Arizona Republican primaries this year.

      And the other side is well aware of this hemorrhage, given that Soros-affiliates have suddenly started buying up Spanish-language radio stations.

      1. I think we’re looking at a stage 4 cancer in the American body politic. The disease has metastasized throughout the body. We can’t cut it out, because it’s not localized. Our only solution is chemo and whole body radiation to kill all the cancer cells before the entire body dies. Doesn’t mean I can’t hope for a miracle cure with some kind of gene therapy equivalent (but the government COVID treatment doesn’t make that terribly likely.)

      2. ACW, in my view, was a strategically insane plan because an unnegotiated exit was automatically war, trying for a negotiated exit for the sake of a hissy is a recipe for calming down and deciding to remain, and once the war got really actively started, as a practical matter it is possible that only the Union could have delivered on a peace after the war, and then only if it won a serious victory.

        The people pushing this do not have an answer that satisfies me as to how the peace happens after the war, or how they avoid a war when separating if the status quo is truly intolerable.

        IMOAO opinion, the proposers haven’t done a good job of thinking the problem out, or they are glowies trying to eke out a win for the left.

        1. Bob, all I’m going to say is that after the ACW the two sides still lived in the same country and culture.

          Now? The Left doesn’t even share the same REALITY we do, let alone a culture, and the country is only shared in purely physical terms.

          This is why i PRAY that Sarah has the numbers right, because the only way we survive is if the core Leftists DON’T.

    5. Actually, I have a feeling it won’t be a civil war, but more likely a full-on societal collapse to anarchy unfortunately. At least in a civil war, there are sides you can see, but in anarchy, its everyone for themselves. And then China can walk right in an restore order after we run out of bullets against each other. Sun Tsu would be proud of their long-view strategy! Let the enemy destroy themselves from within.

        1. Maybe.
          With Malthus as Nehemiah Scudder, Rachel Carson, Al Gore, Michael Mann as modern day preachers of his religion. Fauci as a venal follower whose overreaches prompts many believers to start doubting their faith.
          As Germans freeze and many in the world go hungry the faith of man-made Environmental Catastrophe will implode, and reason based on actual evidence will start making a comeback.

          1. Reason only works if a populace has the capacity to think. Given the education systems goal of educating at the lowest common level only, thinking has been reduced to memorization of facts or, these days, fake facts. The philosophers of antiquity would cringe at the critical thinking skills of 99% of adults in this country

      4. You would probably have to personally know someone who was murdered by violence, and officially reported as a suicide in order for there to be enough communists/murderers to start a societal collapse.

        1. Although a few million killers of communists wouldn’t necessarily be bad thing right about now.

    6. Noting part of the obvious:

      The populations are intermixed.

      The (predominately) blue power centers are reliant on the surrounding (predominately) red regions. We are not willing to sell our countrymen into bondage. They are not willing to surrender necessities of a functioning city-state.

      If some sort of segregation could forcibly be achieved along rational lines, (which is not an assumption I’m willing to grant), economic and political realities would force a war within years, if not months.
      The Left’s policies are parasitic. They require helots, and an enemy to demonize when their plans inevitably fail.
      Also, they explicitly reject Westphalian notions like borders and sovereignty.

      They mean to crush us. “You will own nothing” is a direct quote. Any number of their representatives have openly proclaimed their intent to oppress us. Some of them openly fantasize about committing genocide against us. Ceding them territory strengthens them, and weakened us.
      They want this. They are not retrenching, but advancing, with all they can muster. The only question is the degree and nature of the resistance they encounter.
      I’m hopeful bloodshed can be avoided, but I’m not at all optimistic.

      I could go on.

    7. I think a lot of the people calling for national divorce do so because they believe that you are correct and want to avoid ACW2.

      Sarah believes that they are wrong.

      Prayer is the best action for most of us. The Holy Spirit acts in people’s hearts even when we can’t see it happening.

    8. What percentage in the US is dead certain that Trump won in 2020 and got frauded out? I have to suspect that the percentage is smaller than I’d like to believe, because I’m one of them.

      What percentage in the US is dead certain that Biden legitimately won – or if not, that Trump is such an existential danger that frauding him out was an act of ‘pious perjury’ that saved us all? There are at least enough to make a lot of noise.

      I know there’s a lot of preference falsification, that the psephological center of the American electorate is where Trump and Sarah Palin sit, and that “Democratic Party operatives with bylines” have given us a ~15% shift in the vote. But I still worry that there are more on the Left and fewer on the anti-Left than I’d prefer to believe.

      “A small fringe minority with unacceptable views” is a piece of Leftist stupidity. I don’t want to be stupid in the other direction, even when I do want leftist views unacceptable and want them defenestrated from the Overton Window.

  6. “…The translator must have been amazing it’s all I have to say.)”

    True words in general, a skill that, in my opinion, doesn’t receive the respect it deserves. Two of my most favorite authors, Umberto Eco, and Haruki Murakami. As my linguistic skills are limited to finding food and bathrooms, or getting into bar fights in five languages, I’ve only read them in translation. To be able to take a complex story, including mood, local idioms, etc. and present it satisfactorily in a different language deserves applause.

    1. Yes. I will happily translate academic writing, especially history and archaeology, because I know the fields and the language, and preserving the idioms and “color” of the writing is far less important than conveying the information clearly and completely. Literature, and especially poetry? No. I know a bad translation when I read it, but I can’t translate those types of things myself.

      1. Good translations of poetry always impress me. Even more impressive is translation of music lyrics that still holds the original meaning. In music the new words must match the meter and also get the syllable accents on the correct beat to match the music. That it is EVER managed at all is amazing.

        1. I’ve only ever read Asterix in German, because that’s what AesopSpouse brought home from his mission.
          They are hysterical auf Deutsch.

          1. I’ve read them in Portuguese first (starting at about 8) then in French, then in English. I’ve NEVER read them in Latin, which is now rusty as heck.
            I will try to brush up the Latin when we unpack and I bring out my Oxford Latin course (with CDs which I now have no idea how to play :-P) Then maybe I’ll buy them.
            I wonder if new state has that weird benefit that over 50 you can audit classes for a nominal fee.
            It would be useful for art and latin, though art might be full of the kind of idiot kids I want to kill.

  7. Sarah, check out the third party candidate running for governor of New Mexico, Karen Bedonie bedonietough.com. She is a different breed of cat, a Navajo in fact. Running a VERY different sort of campaign.

    1. I’m in New Mexico so I will check on that. I hadn’t heard of her. It would be very good if she could pull votes from the Democrats. And Libertarians have won here before. Gary Johnson was very popular as Governor.

  8. I guess it depends on what you mean by “give birth to snakes”. If it means, give birth to someone who marries a person who would gladly turn their folks in for Wrong Think and see them cancelled, unable to make a living and possibly imprisoned, well that kind of snake, yes.

    Or give birth to the kind of snake who really and truly believes that the Erf is dying and everyone that isn’t a Marxist, vegan tree hugger is evil and should be shunned.

    There are snakes, and there are snakes. Lefty’s don’t seem to recognize actual snakes even when they are biting them in the butt.

    1. Inn this case, I think it’s a literal, “Woman gives birth to 5-foot boa constrictor!” sort of snake.

      1. /emote shakes head
        Reminds me of a scene from one of Phillip Jose Farmer’s stories. I can’t remember whether it was “Image of the Beast”, or “Blown”. One of the characters was an alien woman and her friend who reincarnated as a chimeric organism where her was a snake-like phallic organ that lived inside her.
        eeewwwwwww.

    2. This is the News of the World type “Cat with Wings Born in Guatemala! Joan Collins Faked her Death and is Living in New Jersey!” type stuff.

      (With apologies to Blue Oyster Cult.)

  9. Gerard Vanderleun has a relevant true story today about the day the flamingoes had just had it.

      1. O heavens that is fricking hilarious. Not one bird there of which I’m fond. Canada geese are massive assholes, peacocks call like 200 lb housecats (MEOW!!!!) all hours of the day and night, Flamingoes have got to be some of the worst smelling birds in the universe, and Swans, hellbirds is far to nice a term for them, Deathbirds is more like it. To paraphrase from Henry Kissinger “Can’t they all lose?”

      3. Made me laugh. Worse. I can visualize what happened.

        Too bad the big losers, the Koi, they did lose their feeding pellets, or at least the extra tourist paid ones, didn’t have options for payback.

      4. Going to American digest comes up with a page not found. But found story by just putting the-great-flamingo-uprising. Funny story.

  10. Names… I spent time a couple of summers helping a friend with his shop at a big Renaissance Fair. I could recognize one bleeping lot of people across a crowded field or street, but of names I could have told you… half a dozen?

  11. As to the ‘Trump people are THINGS!’ idiocy, spent a while arguing about some of this with a lady who insisted “Trump is HORRIBLE!”, and pointing out “I don’t have to love Trump to point out that ‘X’ point is bullshit”, which led to “How can you support someone who says things about women that he does?”

    “Really? How about Biden’s habit of not being able to keep his hands to himself around women and underage girls? How about at least one credible rape accusation? Or don’t those count?”
    Apparently they didn’t count. It was amazing. People will sometimes ignore- or believe- really nasty things to justify how they vote.

    2. I swear to G-d, anyone who freaked out about the “Grab them by the p-” recording has never once met any normal men when no women are around.

      And they always seem to forget that the sentence was “They let you grab them…” Talking about what women will consent to, not what he does.

      1. If they overheard the average Infantry having slack-time conversation in the field, they would drop dead of shock.

        1. Hell if they heard the average engineering school dorm discussion from when ratios were 7:1 male to female they head straight for a fainting couch.

        1. I’ve tried to argue this. I get the guppy look. “But he said he grabbed women by the pussy, REEEEEEEE.” I’ve been tempted to rip their pussy hats and beat them to death with them.
          Yes, I know it would take a long time. You think that’s a downside?

      3. My wife said “You should hear the girls talk when the guys aren’t around and the wine is flowing…”

        1. In one of Barbara Hambly’s fantasy novels, she had a tough Mercenary Captain (somewhat crude) overhearing some women joking around.

          He told his “girlfriend” that even he wouldn’t make those jokes. [Crazy Grin]

      4. Ammo Grrrll made this same point in 2016, right after the election.
        https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/11/thoughts-from-the-ammo-line-140.php
        “Trump did not run a perfect campaign. He made several early unforced errors – among which I do not count the purloined tape of silly, decade-old green room boy-talk. I hear ten times more graphic talk every Tuesday at poker and the women give as good as we get. It’s fun. We are semi-grownups who drink, compete for double entendres and play cards. If those evenings were taped, not a one of us could ever run for office.”

    3. Rumors of predation by Trump are punishable by death.
      Actual predation by Biden is never admitted, much less punished.
      Welcome to Democrat politics, 20222.

  12. Also, to our friends we’re “different.” We’re not like “those people,” they see described in the news because they came to know us personally.

    1. Or, they have imaginary arguments with us, and break off a friendship in sorrow.

      It was weird, I spent a year deliberately refusing to rise to the bait.

  13. I have found myself thinking that, with all the people I see running around talking about how the student loan forgiveness thing is such a smart vote buying scheme, and how the conservatives are being dumb for dying on that hill.

    The left has ripped out all the fire alarms. How would they know what people actually think?

        1. It’s not meant to stand. It’s meant to bolster the party for the election, when it gets shot down (a process that will likely take well past the election) it will be blamed on “Evil Rightwingers and UltraMAGA” sorts blocking the will of the people, but will have served their needs (they hope)

          1. Or “unelected judges ZOMG!” conveniently forgetting all the time they got a compliant Hawaiian judge to block something much more obviously legal.

    2. Just more of the same destruction of the American economy. You know they’re doing another round of “stimulus payments”, at taxpayer expense. They’re trying to wipe out student loan debt at taxpayer expense. And now they’re trying to wipe out IRS penalties for certain filers (Democrats and hope-to-become-Democrats?), also at taxpayer expense. All of this equates to that “national income” con job system they kept trying to foist off on us where everyone gets something like $1000 a month regardless of any other employment.

      1. $1000 a month might not be so bad if they used it to replace welfare. It’d probably be a lot less expensive than our current system.

        😛

        But you know that will never happen.

        1. $1000/month to every American is FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS EVERY YEAR.

          2022 “mandatory” federal expenditure is $4.6 trillion, so Congress would have to repeal 86% of every kind of welfare, social security, corporate subsidies, blah blah blah ad infinitum blah to make it come out even.

          Chances of that are effectively zero, so it would just be another economy-killing boondoggle.

          2. It’s definitely a “in place of all” the other stuff, not 86% but all, and those paying taxes pretty much just pay themselves. The idea behind paying everyone is to eliminate any sort of administrative load (or government employees).
            But it’s impossible. One hard case and there’d have to be exceptions made and an administrator to administrate it all and then someone would complain that the UBI wasn’t enough for people’s dignity because a person would need to have a room mate to make rent.
            And that would be that.

      2. So that’s the thing, $10k doesn’t do anything for the people who are in trouble with student loan debt. $10k is a used car. Most people, even working for very little, can service that kind of debt.

        The ones who are in trouble are the ones who are pushing six figures. For them 10k is a drop in the bucket. This is pure vote-buying.

    3. There are some House Democrats and at least on Senator (up for reelection) who are saying, “It’s got problems, and it doesn’t fix the big problem. And it’s not fair.”

      1. I’ll bet they’re in purple districts and trying to not get lynched by their constituents. Whereas I am certain Liawatha and AOC are probably screaming its not enough.

          1. Not sure if that’s the Devil or even a devil. Even Screwtape had more sense than that creature. More like comic relief demon or village idiot (although by saying that I offend village idiots). Maybe Female Twit of the year award winner 6 years running?

            1. Wait. Apologizing to the Village Idiots and not apologizing to the Female Twits? Shame. Shame. Not that any would notice, but still. I mean really. 🙂

              1. Male or female would should never apologize to the upper class twits unlike the village idiots who have that position through no fault of their own the twits are self made men and women (although severe inbreeding probably doesn’t help 🙂 )

    4. Not only does the idea of forgiving student loans piss off all the people who never went to college, it pisses off the people who did go to college, spent their time wisely, and got a job that let them pay off the loans. The only people who like this plan are the ones who took a degree in Aggrieved Persons Studies, or dropped out halfway to “follow their bliss”, and are now working for a pittance and barely paying the interest on their debts. Not people that anyone else sympathizes with; but really useful as footsoldiers for the socialist revolution.

        1. Actually, my Twitter timeline is pretty solidly honked off by it.
          Of course, Larry Correia is on my timeline.

  14. There truly is a division between the ‘left progressives’ and… well. the other side. The mostly Marxist control of media and communications has created the impression of a fairly equal split but from experience and some research, I think it is more likely a 70/30 split but we (the 70 side) don’t know that as (see above) the media and popular communication avenues are mostly controlled by the 30% side. I could be wrong but it’s a point I start from. I also think there will be a ‘divide’ too between the two sides.

    Push comes to shove and little kids are starving, the house is cold and the power is off and you have to boil water over the charcoal grill – the narrative falls apart. The 30% quickly gets cut in half or more and the actual population is an unhappy 85+% of America. There is no geo or physical difference – just philosophical and practical. when it tears apart, it’s Romania in the US and there will be firing squads. Funny, Christmas sounds about right for the timing.

    Sure there are ‘blue’ centers but they are Urban city locations that implode when services stop. The vast amount of counties across the US are ‘red’ and that is where the 70% (soon to be 85%) will reside and work together. Cities burn, small towns and spread out communities survive and become filled with Libertarians. The ‘elite’ Marxist folks will be in denial and won’t be able to understand how the Unicorn isn’t really there and farts power nothing. So, yes – pray and do all you can to mitigate the bad but realize there will be some.

    Or… an asteroid hits and we again have dinosaurs and Neanderthal man that will run what’s left. Your millage may vary and I’m no smarter (or much dumber) than most folks with a keyboard.

    1. Going by counties gives you a false sense of whats happening. Its interesting but the red counties are often far less populous than the coastal blue ones. So looking at physical coverage makes the red far larger than the blue. All that saves us from total bread and circuses is that the founding fathers knew history well enough to know that all the historical pure democracies were soon swirling around the bowl so they put in breakers.and fuses to protect against that. Unfortunately the Tranzis are bound and determined to wedge pennies in the fuses instead of trying to actually address the reason the fuse is blowing.

      1. In New York Governor Wicked Witch (Hochul) actually called for Republicans to leave the state – https://nypost.com/2022/08/25/kathy-hochuls-call-for-5-4m-republicans-to-leave-new-york-is-dangerous/

        In Florida Charlie Crist, who is running against DeSantis and used to be a (RINO) Republican, told DeSantis voters he didn’t want their votes – https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/crist-slams-desantis-voters-after-winning-florida-gubernatorial-nomination-i-dont-want-your-vote/ar-AA113Mnf

        The Reader sees these as straws in the wind. He wonders if the Democrats have decided to push sorting red from blue to facilitate a separation. If a few more Democratic blue state governors chime in, we may have a trend. Many of the commentators here are or know people who have already self selected by moving. Thoughts?

        1. It won’t work. Not because the Reds won’t leave (many will/have) but because the distribution of jobs selection tends to put certain critical jobs more commonly in the Red than in the Blue (Why this is so is a serious nurture vs nature kind of issue and is almost as easily solved). If those 54 Million distasteful New Yorkers up and moved to Red (or even redder) states New York (City and state) would be far more diysfunctional than it is as getting a plumber (or a truck driver or an HVAC person or a sanitation engineer…) would start to become VERY difficult. And it still wouldn’t solve her issue, as where there are three or more humans (and sometimes only 2) there is politics.
          But Yes Hochul and Crist have shown they are both Idiots to rival AOC. Florida will tell Crist to pound sand. sadly NY will just keep trudging along with an idiot for a governor.

  15. Stupid question:

    “And the real left, as such, is at most 10% of the nation. And frankly most of them have issues. Are you really going to give them half the land? HOW? And WHY?”

    I recall you used to peg it at ~25% What caused the downward revisioon?

    1. The 10% crazy left got crazier enough that the 15% loonie left with them seem quaint and merely annoying?

    2. I’d guess the way they act, and where they’re caught cheating– and still lose– with a partial for how crazy they’re getting on what they’ll allow as really on the Left.

    3. Late regime crazy finds people that hadn’t been broken enough by the early regime to comply, but who were not visibly distinguishable early.

      There’s also the possibility that Sarah has gone nuts, instead of being more reliable in a lot of ways than I am. 😛

  16. My mother knows very well that while I am not a hate-fueled white supremist who is one cold fry away from pulling out my gun and shooting everyone, all of those other Trump voters are.

    I can see how that happens. I graduated in 1985, to give you an idea of the era I grew up in, and while I knew that my Dad and Adopted Uncles were fine, upstanding gentlemen (even Uncle Joe who taught me to serve beer with a Playboy Bunny Dip when I wasn’t yet 5), everyone else who served in Viet Nam was a damaged, violent drug user. When John Kerry ran for President and I started reading about him I felt the need to apologize to every single ‘Nam vet I had ever met for having had that initial opinion. But that was what The Media was telling us about ‘Nam vets.

    1. I’ve seen too many dead people to want to add to their numbers for any reason.

      Doesn’t mean I won’t put Ol’ Yeller down if and when I need to.

  17. I had to post a comment on Neo’s site after reading the article.

    I don’t know which is more disturbing, the original article, or the comments that accompanied it.

    What I am convinced of is that the average Democrat, or average liberal (but I repeat myself); really has no idea what the average Republican or average conservative (there I go, repeating myself again), really wants or supports.

    Speaking for myself, as a white, late middle age, heterosexual, married, father, raised Catholic, votes Republican, Bible-reading, gun owning conservative; I have no fear, bias, hatred, or desire to remake the U.S. as white, Christian and conservative, since it already is predominantly white-ish, Christian, and conservative. The true biases are in the statistical sampling methods that show lack of Christian and conservative influence. The latter being a pronounced tendency to avoid being counted or surveyed in the first place.

    The fact that most of the Left suffer from the aptly named Trump Derangement Syndrome means they are incapable of understanding that his behaviors in office and afterwards are in very little way criminal, and certainly the ones claiming that he’s a criminal are in fact far more guilty of that than he could ever be. Nor is Mr. Mr. Trump particularly prone to lying; but rather he’s a verbal brainstormer, throwing out all kinds of ideas, crazy or otherwise, to see which ones stick. Which is a greater benefit than liberal ideas with secular religiosity masquerading as “science”, that have little basis in reality, and even less in fiscal responsibility.

    Trump has NEVER been against immigrants. He has been, like most intelligent people who actually consider actions and consequences, against ILLEGAL immigration. The Black Lives Matter movement has never been able black lives; since blacks kill blacks with such abandon, and no publicity, by a factor of at least 10 to 1 compared to blacks killed by anyone else. And that’s without factoring in black abortion rates.

    Fully 2/3rds of the population of the United States will admit that the 2020 election was fraudulent, at least in confidence. It barely requires anyone to have more than an elementary school appreciation of statistics to come to that conclusion. Although it does require a consider amount of personal blindness to refuse to see it.

    CRT and the 1619 revision of history are not about reality either. Rather, they are inherently racist themselves. They are an attempt by racist grifters to induce unwarranted guilt in white people in order to extort money and other forms of wealth from them. And worse, CRT belies any hope for the ability for people to overcome any possible biases they might have while labeling rational discrimination as criminal.

    Non-standard sexuality is detrimental to any society as a whole. Yes, that includes everyone in, and supporting, the entire LGBTQ+ (and ultra-feminist) related populations. We are only able to ‘tolerate’ it due to our extreme wealth as a society; and that at the requirement that we import foreign born people to bolster our crashing population levels. None of us want to return to the days where it was permissible to assault, rob, or kill gays. We prefer that they have equal treatment before the law, employment, housing, healthcare, inheritance, and association. We don’t agree that a civil union is a marriage; one being secular, the other religious. Nor do we agree that children in the process of development should be mentally and physically maimed for life by those pushing the mental illness of transgenderism on the entire population.

    Finally, the concepts freedom, liberty, and fair play for all people, under which this nation was founded, even though at the time considered only for property owning males, IS the character of this nation. Immigration, legal and illegal, at levels that exceed our ability for immigrants to assimilate our culture, is destructive of that character. And that character is what made America great in the first place. Which is exactly why we conservatives oppose the actions of the Left. Not that we hate non-whiles. Not that we hate non-Christians. And not that we hate immigrants.

    1. I must point out that when C and I got married, back in 2016, we used the lines in the Book of Common Prayer, with all the God stuff taken out; that is, it was pointedly not a religious ceremony. In our view the marriage consisted in the meeting of two minds. Registering it with the state was administratively convenient but not constitutive. In your view of the matter, does that make us not married?

      1. I apologize if I caused offense. I assume from your comment that you and C are in a same-sex union. A legal right under the 1st Amendment. And I hope that you’re both happy, or at least comfortable together.

        I find it interesting that you kept the form of the prayer, but removed God from it.

        I consider you a couple in the eyes of the law. It seems to me that you’re not married in the eyes of God.

        I don’t claim to be a religious scholar. But my takeaway from Comparative Religions course, and reading of various religious books, is that most religions historically supported only heterosexual couples because they were the best means of increasing the membership of those religions; same sex coupling not producing children.

        And yes, I know of some same sex couples (under a dozen) that have children by artificial means, or previous heterosexual relationships, or by adoption. Those appear to be in the minority. As are the number of children that come out of those families without some rather skewed ideas about interpersonal relationships, romantic or otherwise.

        It’s been my observation that the result of legally defining civil unions to be the same thing as marriage opened up a nasty means for the continued assault on organized religion by the LGBTQ+ group. And redefinitionism has been a continual weapon by the Left. While it might be a benefit to you personally, I think that it’s not beneficial to the whole of society.

        Call me odd, but while I don’t approve of same sex couples, I’ll be the first to try to save you and your house if some hateful nutjob tries to burn you out. And I’ll be trying to hunt down the perps afterwards too. And the two of you are welcome to come to the BBQ to fund raise to fix your place up. I’ll supply the beer.

        1. What? No. I am male; C is female. From birth, in each case. Your concerns about not considering same-sex unions to be marriages aren’t at issue here. I’m simply asking if you consider a meeting of minds to be either sufficient or necessary for a marriage to exist, within the relevant boundary conditions (one of each sex, of sufficient age to consent, and of sound mind)?

          I should say, too, that you did not give offense in any way. I’m simply exploring the structure of your beliefs by offering a test case.

          1. Just a gentle reminder that theology is a hot-potato topic. Let’s keep this between Mike and William, please.

            Thanks, and I now return you to the regularly-scheduled thread digression now in progress. 😉

      2. As long as one of you is male and the other female it is indeed a marriage. We don’t need to acknowledge God in order to conform to reality. And marriage is the culmination of the binary nature of human sexuality.

        1. I would note that the reason we settled on the Book of Common Prayer is that virtually everything it says is “I commit to doing so and so.” That’s something that’s under volitional control. I looked at a bunch of more recent ceremonies, and they were all full of “I will feel such and such toward you.” And on one hand, you cannot make yourself feel anything by force of will; and on the other, it leaves the question open of what happens if your feelings change. It all seemed sentimentalized, and as James Joyce said, “The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for the thing done.”

          A lot of weddings seem to be done on the idea of “We’re going to have a big party and be the center of attention.” We liked the idea of “We’re adults entering into a legal commitment and we want witnesses.”

          (Our officiant was a close friend who is genuinely devout. She told us that she was able to officiate because we were having a civil ceremony; had it been a religious ceremony she would have said no, because, as she put it, “I am a woman under orders”—and those orders did not allow her to conduct religious weddings.)

          1. THIS> THIS THIS THIS, on the recent ceremonies. “write your own vows” amounts to “I promise to laugh at your funny moments.” There’s nothing real there.

          2. “We’re adults entering into a legal commitment and we want witnesses.”
            Hear, hear! That’s the philosophy with which we entered marriage (church wedding, her denomination), and since it’s held strong (with occasional potholes and bumps) for going on 58 years I suspect we did it right. And all the best to you and “C”. 🙂

            1. Thank you. We had some small worries, as we got married on the 31st anniversary of our moving in together, and we didn’t know if that would change the dynamics. But there were compelling issues of financial security. And actually, so far, it seems to have gotten better.

      3. I’m not Mike, but I have serious questions as to what business the government has and should have in the relationship between two consenting adults beyond simple contract enforcement during breach of said contract.

        There are many things which are no business of the government at all. Any time you allow them to intrude on private things, the only result is an increase in power by the government over your private life to no benefit to you, the individual.

        No laws regarding who can and cannot marry beyond they be consenting and adult. No income tax. Every law is enforced with lethal force. Therefore, the fewer laws, regulations, and rules burdening the individual, the better, excepting the very few powers delegated from the individual to the State, or to the Country itself.

        1. I’m not Mike, but I have serious questions as to what business the government has and should have in the relationship between two consenting adults beyond simple contract enforcement during breach of said contract.

          Originally, it registered those private unions which produce new citizens, thus giving an assurance of their rights being recognized and protected, with some secondary protections for good-faith members of that union.

          That’s it.

          Nothing stopped anybody else from getting married, it was a really simple “old enough? One male, one female? It’s registered, bye.”

          The government didn’t give a squirt about the “relationship” and there was no requirement to register any flavor of relationship, although some states do have “common law marriage” which, again, recognized and protected the rights of those new citizens, with some secondary protections for good-faith members of that union.

          I grew up knowing couples who were privately married, no gov’t record. I know there’s people who comment here who know or knew poly-marriages, again, not gov’t recorded.

          1. A number of elderly, rather than remarrying, are entering “Commitments”. Because remarrying equates to one or the other, or both losing benefits, no one wants to lose. Whether real or perceived. Often both keeping separate residences, but not necessarily living separately. (IDK how it works. Just what I’m told they are doing.) OTOH at least one individual it has backfired on. Her partner is deep into dementia, and his kids have cut her off from him. Since not married, she has no rights. There are some other things happening, but state of Alaska put a stop to that (one of their two state residences), last I heard.

            1. That issue of “kids cutting them off” (or for younger people, “parents/siblings cutting them off”) was the strongest argument I could see for letting same-sex couples MARRY. Family and organizations such as hospitals and even officials might treat a civil union as just a piece of paper, but being legally married confers some important rights.

              1. In California, civil unions had all of the exact same legal rights and privileges as a married couple. Literally the only differences were the name, and who could get them.

                The state court used that to declare that they were horribly discriminatory, and overturned the anti-SSM measure that voters had passed overwhelmingly back in the 90s.

                1. I don’t have the story at hand, but I seem to recall reading an account of an elderly male/male couple where those legal rights and privileges were blatantly disregarded.

                  In an ideally libertarian world, I would say that what everyone had was a civil union, registered as a contract. If you wanted a marriage, you would go to your preferred religious body, and the rules of your marriage would be whatever it said they were (up to the point where they amounted to criminal abuse): divorce or no divorce, same-sex or no same-sex. But that would have no legal standing; the greatest penalty a religious body could impose would be excommunication or the equivalent. But we aren’t in that world. And sometimes to protect rights you need to nail them down good and hard.

                  1. VERY weirdly that’s how it is in Portugal. It protects both the civil liberties and the religious liberty. The church can tell anyone “We won’t marry you, because you’re not in compliance. Period.”

                  2. Unless you can confirm the date and details on that story, I’m not inclined to pay any attention to it. Or if someone did try and pull that, then the attorneys were salivating.

                    Remember that the domestic partnership (which is what civil unions are called in California) law created various legal rights for same sex couples, and opposite sex couples over the age of 62 (that last bit has since been removed). If a person or organization violated those rights, they would be opening themselves up to various legal repercussions – both civil and criminal, depending on the exact circumstances.

                    Now the Feds don’t recognize domestic partnerships, or any sort of civil union at all. But that’s generally not a problem except when determining how you want to file your taxes.

                    1. seem to recall reading an account of an elderly male/male couple where those legal rights and privileges were blatantly disregarded.

                      Unless you can confirm the date and details on that story, I’m not inclined to pay any attention to it. Or if someone did try and pull that, then the attorneys were salivating.

                      I’d agree with the second, now, in most states. I don’t think all have passed domestic partnership options for single gender marriages. But I took the first as something that happened before the partnership/marriage options came along. Wouldn’t surprise me given what can happen without a legal document to elderly partners (regardless of gender mix) that have “Commitment” pledges that don’t have the force of marriage.

                    2. And then the lawyers get into the act arguing that they have the effect of marriage on whatever the couples were protecting themselves from losing.

            2. Great uncle in the 80s had a “girlfriend” like that– the couples had been strong friends before their spouses died.

              I think it kept them alive a least two decades longer than they would’ve lasted otherwise.

              Sorry to hear about the fellow who’s in dementia; there are caretaker legal mechanisms, but I’d guess that he never thought his kids would treat his friend like that. They usually don’t.

              1. I know about the legal hoops available. Had a co-worker who had that legal document between him and his partner, regarding him, her, and her underage children (she was a widow). He said the document replacing a single recognized marriage certificate, was 3″ thick.

                Regarding the acquaintance in Alaska. I don’t know the details but know enough that both parties were roughly equivalent financially, with her having better than a slight edge, which is why Alaska was able to stomp in on her behalf and threaten his kids about their shenanigans. But I don’t know how long they’d been together.

                We have another friend who married, whose spouse is now living with her child in Idaho. We know her too. They’d been married for almost 10 years. He didn’t go through the same legal problems (mostly because he was the financially stable one and couldn’t be “accused of taking advantage of her”). By the time the dementia was clearly evident, looking back, she probably wasn’t competent to get married when they did, or probably divorced. (But did ex hubby come to take her back? Um. Hard No. Trust me, the divorce wasn’t a surprise. The marriage was. He needed his head examined … ) He, her mother, sister, her kids, and medical, got together to decide what was best for her. When it first happened we did hear how she was doing, but he has dropped off the radar, so now we don’t.

                1. Kids make it very complicated.
                  (And different states also complicate matters, because being married is not the same in all states, and in Oregon my sister ran into some things that would’ve been easier paperwork if she hadn’t been married to her son’s father.)

                  1. Kids make it very complicated. Oregon my sister ran into some things that would’ve been easier paperwork if she hadn’t been married to her son’s father.

                    –
                    Tell me about it. I have 2 sets of cousins, one set of nieces, and one great niece with stories. Except for great niece all the below are now adults. All Oregon.

                    Cousins: One set the father left the states, went home. Never paid a lick of child support. Stepdad, raised not only his six children with no child support from his ex, but raised cousin’s two (they don’t even remember bio-sperm). Yet, stepdad could not adopt the two cousins. Each on their 18th birthdays took mom and stepdad down to the court and legally changed their name to their stepdad’s. “Dad” was stealing from his kids. Stepdad didn’t need the money to raise them. It’d been their money.

                    Other set of (step) cousins, their dad never sent a lick of child support. I think had some visitations, but came with a court requirement. Dad had to send the prepaid airline tickets. Stepdad let them know that an open ticket home was available if needed. Don’t think it was ever needed, but it was there. Also, they only went once or twice. Again, offer to adopt, but dad, despite not paying child support, never signed off. Uncle’s take? Again “dad” was “stealing” from the kids. Uncle didn’t need the money to raise them. It’d been their money.

                    Nieces. SIL never saw a lick of child support. Tickets required before girls went to dad. Return tickets required to be open dates. They went once. Unlike uncle above, SIL didn’t have the money to provide the emergency backup (neither did we or her other siblings, not then).

                    Great niece. Niece was never married to bio-sperm. The guy is in prison. Any of his parental rights were severed by the courts, when she was an infant, < 6 months old. Yet he has to sign off for stepdad to adopt her. Supposedly in the process. IDK what is hanging it up.

                    What is weird is when we were looking into the adoption options, we were repeatably told that non-married bio-fathers had no rights to biological children. Good idea, but not required. Not in Oregon. Granted that was over 30 years ago, and a good 20 years before great niece was born. But …

                    OTOH. Have a step great nephew. Dad and bio-mom have never been married. They share 50/50 custody from the day he was born. Despite him being in the service at the time. When it was his time for custody and he was deployed, baby was with his mother. When he and niece got serious, the child was with her or his mother. He has severed now from the service (8 years). Custody still 50/50. No child support either side. No courts involved. Still Oregon.

      4. Marriage is a sacrament. Literally “to make sacred”.
        Government by its nature, is profane.

        The State has many powers, but bestowing divine sanction isn’t one.

        People can make binding contracts of reciprocal dependence with each other, and the State can recognize them.

        But it can’t regulate away bad weather, nor can it bestow God’s blessing.

        1. In the eyes of the State and the law, all “marriages” are civil unions. Otherwise you wouldn’t have to fill out a marriage license and have it be witnessed if your religion didn’t require such.

          Traditionally, we have allowed religious figures to preside over the signing and witnessing of the document, but that doesn’t mean the State gives a damn (nor should it) about the forms and spiritual meanings of the religious ceremony that preceded it. And note that a JP is a purely civil figure, not a religious one, but has the authority to preside over signing and witnessing in the total absence of a religious ceremony. Also note that most if not all states no longer require the officiant to be a religious figure in any way, even if the pre-signing event has the forms and traditions of a pseudo-religious ceremony.

          1. The Catholic Church knows that civil marriage and sacramental marriage are two separate things. If you get a divorce, you do not automatically get granted an annulment. (Also note that an annulment acknowledges that the sacramental marriage never took place due to an impediment—which usually only allows one of the couple to get a sacramental marriage later, as “impediments” include abuse, drugs, or refusal to consider children—but it does not make any children of the marriage “illegitimate.”)

            1. The Catholic idea (in the West) is that a civil marriage, atheist marriage, pagan marriage, etc. is a valid “natural marriage” as long as it adheres to natural law (one man, one woman; not too young; not under duress; and a couple other things). This would be a marriage in the eyes of God and man, but not a sacrament.

              Sacramental marriage is a higher bar, although also pretty easy (two baptized persons and a couple more things, mostly add-ons to natural marriage). And a natural marriage can be upgraded into a sacramental marriage (convalidated).

            2. The main reason why governments, churches, etc. have registered or regulated marriage is the protection of the rights of those inside and outside the marriage.

              Skulduggery prevention, basically. Bigamy. Fake marriage just to have sex. Spousal abandonment. Rejection of kids. Murder. Theft of estates. Replacing original heir with your unrelated kid. False identities. Fun stuff like that.

              It does not do everything to stop crime, but it raises the difficulty.

  19. Like “nationalist” which means you must be fascist,

    As I have said in response to various “antifa” threads here and there: “If you call someone who advocates for smaller, less intrusive government and more individual liberty a ‘fascist’, you might be a special kind of stupid.”

    2. To a believing Communist, that which opposes Communism is Fascism.

      Explains the so-called ” antifascists” quite well.

    3. They’re anti-fascist because one thing a totalitarian hates more than someone who advocates freedom is a competing totalitarian philosophy.

      1. As per Frodo’s assessment of the orcs of Mordor, I would venture to say the totalitarian hates a competing totalitarian only slightly less than someone who advocates freedom. But sometimes it looks like a pretty close second.

        1. The hatred for a heretic or apostate often exceeds that given to the overt enemy.

          Examples abound.

        1. That’s a great episode of the Virtue Signal. A consistently interesting podcast.

          Loved Whittle’s expression when Zo quoted the scripture about the goats going to the left side of Christ and being sent down to Hell. 😃

          1. Alfonzo Rachel and Bill Whittle make some good points about the deaths by communism not being publicized like the deaths by the Nazis; and that most of the people in this country who advocate communism and socialism don’t understand that those deaths go hand in hand with the goals and policies of communism and socialism.

            I enjoyed the part where Alfonzo says his favorite uncle was gay, and died of aids. That he didn’t agree with his lifestyle, but that didn’t change that he was still his favorite uncle.

            Collectivist vs Individualist; the Communists, the Nazi’s, the Socialists, and the Democrat Party are all collectivists. And the end results are always the same for all of them. American Individualism is the only “new” political-governmental system, and it’s the one system that brings the highest level of happiness and freedom.

            America: Invented by geniuses. Run by idiots.

            Gotta love it.

            1. Anthropologist Sergei Kan, born in the USSR and now at Dartmouth, pointed out on the “Uncommon Knowledge” podcast the other day that the gulags started up immediately after the Bolsheviks took power. They weren’t an evil innovation of Stalin; they were baked into the system from the beginning.

            2. Even more genius was that the system design was expected to be run by idiots and still function and preserve the liberties of the people. What the founders didn’t foresee is that all the branches of government would be complicit in gaming the system and fudging the rules.

            3. Pretty much every country is run by idiots. The primary exceptions are some brand new countries that are still under the control of their first ruler.

              Occasionally a country will get a non-idiot later on. But by and large it’s the exception, and not the rule. And even the best ruler is still surrounded by idiots.

  21. Re: marriage.
    Legally, registering / liscensing a “marriage” with the State is the registering of a civil union, a personal services contract with legally included definitions of some terms and conditions, in a form acceptable to the State.
    To me, Marriage, without quotes, is the acceptance by the parties of mutual obligations of the soul to each other, beyond the understanding of civil law and government, and in contribution to a shared future, whether or not the marriage contributes to the future of Civilization by providing children to carry the tenets of Civilization forward in time and place.
    On “civil war”, the Progs have so thoroughly disrupted the meanings of once-common terms that their use is counter-productive.
    We are on the brink of severe societal disruption, some of which is built in by long-standing policies such as the Balfour Declaration which cut up the MidEast into ungovernable agglomerations of hostile tribes, or in the US, by the capture of our government by the regulatory/commercial/industrial interests, and the purchase of the regulators by the interests who have bought our “elected” government agents.
    The Progs leaders are pushing for social disruption in the expectation that it will be like the last Civil War, with clearly defined sides and set-piece battles, and that they will be able to force the people into their preferred form in a second Reconstruction. Bullshit.
    There no longer is a geographic political divide, except in the increasingly master-slave/social dependent populations of the major cities. The rest of the country is politically mixed.
    Other commenters are correct that China and their employed agents in our government and businesses has been working hard to have us at each others’ throats in an effort to “lets you and him fight” for their benefit, but those efforts do not minimize the fragility of our major economic structures.
    Our major structures may / will break, and the dependent populations / grasshoppers will likely die off in the coming Winter, but we, and people like us, will muddle through, especially on a local basis.
    As our host says, be not afraid. Be cautious, and prepare yourselves as you can, but do not let fear paralyze you.
    John in Indy

  22. I was inspired to comment by your reference to name retention, as if it were ancillary to your tale. (sorry, I’ll refrain in future if asked)

    I suspect the difficulty with remembering names (which I share), is a byproduct of how one discerns the truth. If someone asserts a number to be the product of two other numbers, if it’s easy, you can simply do the math yourself, and know the truth of it differently than the assertion. If it’s not easy, you might be inclined to take the speaker’s word for it, which I argue involves trust in authority. The problem is that the depth and breadth of human inquiry ensures we will eventually encounter arguments outside our depth, requiring that we at least accept the assertion for the sake of argument, in order to continue hearing the argument. Even this is a degree of trust, and can lead to subconscious leaps of faith. (it is the subconscious part that concerns me, in pursuit of truth)

    In a recent article I read breaking down a Salon article [ https://foundingquestions.wordpress.com/2022/08/15/monday-miscellania/ ], I note that it appears Salon is arguing that the main difference between right-leaning and left-leaning media, is that the right calls on audience participation (thinking for yourself), whereas the left calls for trust in authority. (they argue thinking for yourself is the problem)

    Thinking for yourself is hard work, and you can make mistakes. Since you are responsible for ensuring your beliefs are not self-contradictory, you must vet everything you learn against everything you already hold to be true. This process causes everything you know to be cross-linked and associated with everything else you know (at least moreso than not vetting). To a large degree, much of what is known, can be derived multiple ways from other things known, a degree of cross-checking.

    For those not up to this effort, either because of inclination or ability, or other limitations, a trust in authority may be all that’s available. All of us will eventually encounter an argument for which this is the case. When this method of “knowing” becomes predominate, learning becomes largely rote memorization from trusted sources (authority). Effectively, you are proxying the “vetting” to the authorities.

    A side effect of knowing things by working them out for yourself, is that arbitrary data (information that cannot easily be crosslinked to things you already know) becomes difficult to retain, since since it cannot pass the vetting process to make the leap to long term storage. So names, dates, what you had for lunch, who you’re supposed to meet when and where, need to be written down, as they cannot be derived from what you already know. If you know things by memorizing only, all data is effectively arbitrary as you are not vetting it, so names are as easy to remember as anything else.

    Of course, in the long run, everything is vetted by reality. Trusting authority will not protect you from reality when authority is wrong.

  23. Women of Lancre not rpt not in habit bearing snakes stop children born this month William Weaver Constance Thatcher Catastrophe Carter all plus arms legs minus snakes fangs

    — A clacks message sent by King Verence II of Lancre in response to a tabloid news story, quoted from Terry Pratchett’s The Truth.

      1. You think? I had thought of it as a parody of the kind of tabloid papers that were (and probably still are?) sold at supermarket checkout lines in the US.

        1. Pratchett was English, and probably didn’t encounter the National Enquirer on line in his shopping expeditions. Almost certainly there is a British equivalent, but I don’t know their media well enough to name it.

          1. in the seventies there were a million tiny ones in Portugal. Convenient because in a country the size of a shoebox, you could have the birth of snakes always be a few counties away.

          2. To my understanding the UK has plenty of its own tabloids. It also has allegedly serious papers that skate close to the edge (I’m looking at YOU Grauniad) although of late the Gaurdian has had far more trustworthy news of the US than any of the “major” US papers such as the NY Times, the Washington Post or similar outlets.

            1. I don’t think that sort of “news” is distinctively British, or distinctively European, though; I think we have the same kind of thing in the US.

  24. Very perceptive piece. Yes, we might have to do the unthinkable. Yeah, we rag on about it on the social media posts, but we might have to actually, fight back, and that might mean, for some of us, actually killing a person. I’ve prayed that I won’t have to. I’ve thought a lot about it. That was the subject, sort-of, of my book, Crossing Over. We might have to kill one or several of the people who think we have two heads and give birth to snakes, and need to be killed. I never believed in two-headed people when I was a child. Now I know they exist. Not only do they exist, but they play banjo, tap dance, and sing in two-part harmony on the internet. And there is real danger in our times. Even though I’ve written ‘novels’ about it, I know it’s out there, and getting more aggressive.

    Anyway, a nice perceptive piece on the state of our disunion.

  25. The requirement that one may not even speak to the Bad People and that no one may have interests apart from their political orientation (because identity is political and wanting politics out means you want certain people dead) means that we do get that living divorced in the same house while not speaking thing going on which means that there are no moderating forces allowed. There can be no…”this reasonable person disagrees with me, and that’s fine.” Because it’s never fine and someone who disagrees is never reasonable.

    So we don’t get the moderating effects. The left-sorts who “can’t even” and refuse to talk or associate with you or I are completely abdicating any possible moderating influence they might have on people around them. Why? Why give that up? Is it just because conservatives and libertarian sorts would also have a moderating influence in return and allowing it would require admitting that they’re not Hitler?

  27. Many people..most people, I fear in my darker hours…live in a bath of communication–news, opinion, and ‘information’..which is curated and all points in the same direction. It is hardly possible to over-rate the importance of this fact.

    Years ago, a wise executive said to me: When you’re running a large organization, you aren’t seeing reality. It’s like you are watching a movie where you get to see maybe every thousandth frame, and from that you have to figure out what’s going on.

    If this is true of running organizations…and I think it largely is….it’s even more true of a voter in a country of any size, who cannot possibly have direct experience of most factors that should be relevant to his opinions and votes. So the people who choose what frames he sees will have enormous power.

    Yes, it’s still possible to evade the Narratives and look directly for information, but people are busy, people have other interests, and too many will remain in their warm information bath.

    See also my related post You Better Go to Raw Data:

    https://ricochet.com/946310/you-better-go-to-raw-data/

      1. A useful analysis! It would also be useful to see the data broken down by job type rather than by industry…even within the same industry..within the same company or other organization..one is likely to big differences between the political outlooks of the engineers, the manufacturing people, the lawyers, the salespeople, the headquarters marketing people, and the finance people. Can’t get this from the standard political reporting data, would need a sample survey.

  28. I have a couple proto essays that this lines up with.

    I concur.

    Will not add any more, because I already used more spoons commenting than I thought I had left today.

    Later all.

  29. I keep seeing this as a repeat of the 1970’s.

    I wasn’t around (in a thinking sense) in terms of history for the 1970’s, but I could read and see how people thought of things.

    A lot of these problems were not new things under the Sun. The Democrats tended to be in charge, the Republicans for the longest time were split between the country-club set and the John Birchers (if you think our current breed of Truther and Never Trumpers was bad, you haven’t seen a Bircher in action), America’s best days were behind us, foreign imports were kicking our ass, especially in big-ticket items and entertainment, and people didn’t complain too much because the “prevailing culture” was what the entertainment industry in New York and Hollywood said they were.

    Then, the times changed and oh how did they change! And how suddenly and how forcefully they did when it happened.

    It wasn’t a fun time in the late 1970s to early 1980s. Exciting and interesting, in a whole Chinese curse sort of way and maybe even fun, if you liked that kind of thing.

    I suspect that the snap-back is starting come, and it’ll be soon. With the massive restructuring and dumping of excess weight at Warner Brothers, it’s only a matter of time before places like Disney and Paramount/VIACOM and similar either get rid of the vipers in their midst or die. My current betting pool is that Disney will get very close to the edge and pull back, while Paramount/VIACOM has to die.

    (When people at CNN are complaining because they guy in charge of WB is saying “we’re either going to have to appeal to Middle America or we won’t have a network at this rate,” you know the pain is going to be bad, and quickly.)

    The worst thing you can do is fall into despair. Smile, and make the bastards wonder what you’re doing.

    2. “Smile, and make the bastards wonder what you’re doing.”
      And when they ask, just smile wider. 🙂

        2. Or “work literally to rule”; that’s even better since it drives them nuts that you did what they said and it all went sideways. 🙂

  30. Sarah darlin, this blog post sums up quite eloquently my reasons for no longer paying dues to American Mensa. I got fed up attending meetings where every time I expressed my well thought out position on just about every issue I got swarmed by good friends mensasplaiining* (totally a real word!) how I was both wrong and foolish.
    *Mensasplaining: “Your position is stupid. I’m a genius so you simply MUST

    1. change your mind and believe what I know is the real truth!”
      This from folks, admittedly genius level IQ who outside their own narrow field had no concept of how much of anything really works.

    3. I could probably qualify for Mensa membership if I tried. However, the more I heard about it, the less I wanted to try. You recruit for its nonmembership quite well.

      1. Oh, anyone who thinks they might qualify should check existing test scores and if they are high enough join for a year. Membership is prima facia evidence that you are in fact a genius by certain definitions of that term. And if you travel extensively it does ensure you some social contacts just about anywhere.
        I served as Locsec, local group president, in one area and newsletter editor in another over the course of many years and gained a number of good friends during that time. But the rather consistent skewing ever further left finally got to me.
        In truth most people do join for a single year for bragging rights. It is the perfect rejoinder for “you think you’re so smart!” comments.

        1. Oh, I don’t need Mensa for that. All I have to do is go look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and verify that they still don’t know some things I do about the intersection of Modal Logic and Multi-Valued Logic, and my intellectual arrogance is refreshed.

  31. The Reader sincerely hopes that there is no national divorce – having experienced a personal one long ago his head hurts at the thought of that experience scaling. That said, the Reader is beginning to wonder if the Leftists / Democrats are going to push for a further ‘separation’ next. Two straws in the wind; Governor Wicked Witch Hochul just called for Republicans to leave New York (https://nypost.com/2022/08/25/kathy-hochuls-call-for-5-4m-republicans-to-leave-new-york-is-dangerous/) and Charlie Crist, who is running against DeSantis in Florida (and is a former RINO Republican) told Florida he didn’t want the votes of DeSantis supporters (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/crist-slams-desantis-voters-after-winning-florida-gubernatorial-nomination-i-dont-want-your-vote/ar-AA113Mnf). If we see more of this say from Newsom or some other Democratic governors we will have an indication that a ‘hard’ separation leading to divorce is their next push.

  35. I assume you know your commenters and l am but a lurker, but the shotgun popsicle comment concerns me.

  36. By the way, news from the left-wing media does not come from a parallel universe, but one skewed at very weird angles, some of them non-Euclidean. Imagine news reports from an Escher universe with laws written by Franz Kafka.
    ———————————
    “Ehh, on second thought let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.”

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