Wrecking Ball

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Wrecking what’s there is not necessarily bad. It just depends on what you’re wrecking or how.

I remember when I was fifteen or so, going by a house that was being demolished and being a bit sad, because the room exposed was a nursery, with a beautiful forest scene painted on it, with all sorts of cute animals. It was something that was sad to destroy, but I realized that the structure of the house was probably no longer really habitable. I mean, Portugal is littered with these: beautiful little urban palaces, which CAN work, if you have an army of servants but really don’t anymore. And which don’t have a bathroom, or what we’d consider a kitchen.

I still want to take them all, and fix them all.

This morning, in the Huns group, we got in a discussion that made me a wee bit uncomfortable, because it was “this has to go.” And “this has to be destroyed.”

It made me think of the left who thinks if they wrecking ball everything, then paradise happens. And that’s not the way it is. That’s not the way any of that works.

However…. However… part of what we were talking about were the deeply dysfunctional beliefs that have crept in over the last 100 years. Like “Smart women don’t raise their own kids” and “smart women don’t have kids” and…..

How do you wrecking ball assumptions?

Well, not by destroying the people or the institutions (though a lot of institutions need to be changed, yes.)

We destroy these assumptions and the institutions they are built on, by creating new and functional ones.

Leave the indiscriminate wrecking ball to them. Go and live our contrary assumptions.

Go and build.

Let them be the destroyers. Destroying never wins, particularly when it’s based on fantasy, not reality.

Go and build.

In the end we win, they lose.

132 thoughts on “Wrecking Ball”

  1. The problem with your suggestion is that, if you leave their institutions intact, they will immediately take a wrecking ball to yours (e.g. Parler).

    2. https://thehill.com/policy/3626323-parler-app-available-again-in-google-play-store/

      The social media platform Parler is available again for users to download from the Google Play Store a year and a half after the app was removed, the company said Friday.
      …
      Apple let Parler back in its app store last May.

      And from another story, no link to avoid moderation:
      February 15, 20214:32 PM ET
      …
      SkySilk, a Web infrastructure company based outside of Los Angeles, is now hosting Parler, SkySilk’s chief executive, Kevin Matossian, confirmed to NPR in an interview.

      “SkySilk is well aware that Parler has received an aggressive response from those who believe their platform has been used as a safe haven for some bad actors,” Matossian said in a statement. “Let me be clear, Skysilk does not advocate nor condone hate, rather, it advocates the right to private judgment and rejects the role of being the judge, jury, and executioner.”

  2. I just want to know why it is, taht when feckin’ Miley Cyrus takes a sledgehammer and destroys a bunch of stuff in her feckin’ underwear, it’s bloody art, but when I do it, the cops are called and I’m banned from Home Depot…. O_o

  4. When dealing with invasive plants like stilt grass, oriental bittersweet, autumn olive, porcelain berry, Japanese barberry (I could go on), it’s important to have something ready to replace it so it doesn’t come back. After you pull it, scatter aster or goldenrod seeds. Plant a viburnum. Heck, I’m seeding clearweed and three-seeded mercury to hold the stilt grass at bay.

    1. makes careful note concerning invasive plants in the back yard of Chez Hayes … thoughtfully eyes multiple packets of Texas wildflower seeds.

    2. Be warned that you may find yourself trying to weed it out of your planted seeds.

      But yes, putting what you want in does help.

      1. Oh, I know. The seed bank for stilt grass can take five years to deplete. I’m still pulling it from the packera aurea (golden ragwort) here and there, and that filled in beautifully.

  5. I still want to see the FBI disbanded, their buildings razed, and the ground sown with salt.

    Likewise, the Federal Reserve needs to go the way of The Bank of the United States. For the same bloody reasons.

            1. Bah. wrap a chain around the handcuffs, and loop the chain over the trailer hitch on your 4×4, and take a run through the desert. Preferably somewhere with lots of cacti.

  6. The Reader agrees that building functional replacements is the best way to ‘destroy’ non functioning existing assumptions and the institutions they are built on. He also believes a small amount of cultural C4 placed strategically will make clearing the ground easier.

    2. C4 is the most fun thing ever to blow things up with. Molds just like really stiff Play-Doh. Add a few det cords and Bob’s Your Uncle.

        3. Luckily, I am an engineer who doesn’t believe in exploding things. Last time I exploded anything was as teenager destroying my model tank collection with firecrackers. A Sherman, Panzer, or T-34 all are the same. In real life, they have humans inside and its a shame that the Elites, Powers That Be, and Bankers don’t care for them at all as they wreck the world to “Build a Better” place.

          1. None of them have ever built a world, or even a small part of a world, and yet they believe they can wreck the world we have and build a Perfect World from the ruins.

            I’d like to see a proof of concept first. Make them build something — anything — that is even as good as the flawed world we have now. Bet they can’t.
            ———————————
            There is no shortage of people convinced they can create the perfect world. They just have to eliminate all those imperfect people who don’t fit in it.

      2. The Reader is mildly curious as to whether your knowledge and enthusiasm for the topic comes from personal experience. Only mildly though, actually blowing things up is something that was always a bad thing in the Reader’s career.

        1. Very limited and delightful experience, yep!
          Officer’s Advance Course at Fort Bragg includes many fun things like blowing a round out of a great fat M60A2 tank, and blowing things up with C4. The ground shook, debris rained down atop our position. Booyah!
          It’s not a hobby or anything, though. 🙂

          1. “It’s not a hobby or anything, though.”

            At least, not for now. Who know what will happen, if we continue down the road we’re going?

              1. I just invented a character from the South Carolina low country who stands in a field and says to his partner “The lord called me to blow up that man’s house, he surely did.”

            2. At some point, says my imagination, we’re all going to sit at a long picnic table and talk about all the things we joked about that came truer than we would have liked.

              1. Hubby golfs with someone locally who does the commercial evening celebratory Air Pyrotechnics too. He can also receive not-legal air pyrotechnic products seized by law enforcement. He puts on a invitation only end or the year show at his property acreage out between Cheshire and Monroe Oregon. Shoots off the illegal confiscated stuff, and adds to it. The volunteer fire departments are included as invited (not all on duty) with fire trucks. Big potluck before it gets dark. Puts on a good show. Money donation is collected for volunteer fire departments and next years show.

      3. I don’t know Nitrogen Triodide is also fun, though a bit on the dicey side when dry (makes Nitroglycerine look friendly). Never gotten to play with C4.

        2. Roommate in college flunked the Chem lab when they saw him making NI3. OTOH, compared to the cheerful terrorists at U of Wisconsin (circa 1970), it was a popgun. On the gripping hand, he’s lucky he didn’t spend a year in the graybar hotel.

          My TA caught me making an air trap for a batch of mead. He made me a better one. 🙂

            1. I can’t recall where I read it, though I can say none of my more, er, “interesting” relatives have used the phrase in my presence.

        3. I’ve heard that a moonbeam can set it off, I know one can blow on it hard enough to cause a detonation.

          & no, it wasn’t me that sprinkled it while still in the safe liquid mixture on the floor where it dried at the sock hop.

          3. Yup land mines for caterpillars… once dry allegedly abrupt changes in air pressure can set it off. And it gives a satisfying cloud of purple/mauve smoke. If you make it in greater than gram quantities you’re an idiot, I suspect >100g quantities might qualify you for a Darwin award.

            1. I’ve always played with well less than a gram.

              On the other hand I can think of situations, constructive as well as destructive, were 100 gram + quantities could be quite useful as it’s stable until dry.

              1. Big issue probably would be how evenly it dried. If part of your 100g+ explosive dried out and got set off by a fly landing or similar it would at a minimum blow the rest of charge apart. That is probably why it serves no useful purposes, mostly just amuses teenage boys (and girls of the right personality 🙂 ).

        4. I’d never heard of such till your comment. It sounds like something I’d let the EOD sort out before I got anywhere close.
          (And then I’d want to go blow something up with it. But that’s just me.)

          1. We used to call it “touch powder” as in touch it and it goes boom.
            In small quantities it’s no worse than firecrackers, the little ones, not M80 level.
            Don’t even want to think about large quantities, there are far more stable ways to break rocks.

            1. Heinlein had Hugh Farnham use it in the Freehold novel. Large quantities, and he used a rifle to set it off. One wonders if the properly outfitted nuclear-grade bomb shelter should have a small quantity of dynamite on hand. Not as interesting for plotting, but…

            2. Someone could design a variation of the old cap gun. We used to have such fun with the long cap rolls, pounding them on the sidewalk rather than actually use them for their intended purpose. If you got a big enough rock you could nail most of it at one time.

          2. I suspect any EOD personnel would just set it off from a distance. Not even sure getting near a large quantity to place a charge to set it off is wise. It is just too hairy. Its a low explosive (I think) like black powder, but even enough low explosive will really ruin your day.

      4. Speaking of explosives philosophically rather than philosophical explosions, some other good suggestions here but I favor Astrolite; two stable solutions until mixed, twice as powerful as TNT, detonation velocity of around 28,000 ft/s, and if you have a failed detonation the solution breaks down, becomes non-explosive in about a week, if I remember correctly.

        1. This is so great, this is another compound I’d not heard of till now. My question now is, how accessible are the components? Not just in this case, but in the case of the others as well.
          There are legit uses for big booms, and it’s always good to have this sort of knowledge right at hand if you need it.

          1. It’s a mix of ammonium nitrate and hydrazine. NH₄NO₃ readily available, N₂H₄ not quite so easy to find.

            It is a wonderful product though. At one time it was shipped up here (Pipeline construction days.) in a box including a plastic cone that, when mixed in the box, above the cone, created a shaped charge that would blow a hole eight inches in diameter, six foot deep through permafrost.

            1. As a fan and collector of old chemistry books, let me make an observation I have found. It seems the “recipes” for such things were always edited out of the high school/college level books after a war. For example, prior to the civil war, there were recipes for gunpowder, picric acid, etc. Afterward, this is gone from the books. Prior to World War 1, poison gas recipes are found for things like phosgene. Gone afterward. Prior to World War 2, the books had a lot of information on radioactive materials. Gone….

            1. Yeah, saw some screenshot on Twitter noting that if there is silly putty and asking what serious putty was. Answer: C-4.

    4. I think Jordan Peterson is so strongly opposed by the Left is he threatens them with an alternative way of thinking to the failed Marxism infesting dominant culture.

  7. To get rid of one BAD habit, you have to replace it with a GOOD habit.

    Or the bad one comes back in times of stress.

    Same with patterns of thinking. Exactly the same. Build GOOD mental habits. Live them.

      1. My MIL. I did not know she ever had smoked. Neither did hubby. She quit years before he was born. In the nursing home, hooked up to oxygen, she asks for cigarettes! She hadn’t smoked for 45+ years by then!

      2. Glad I never picked that bad habit up. Mine is to go searching for a Donut or a Cadbury Fruit and Nut bar (like the 8 oz one). Probably be better for me to take up smoking 🙂 .

      3. I haven’t smoked for…twenty-five years. I am STARTING TO WANT CIGARETTES again. Because I’m feeling helpless.

        So I’m trying to make cleaning a habit instead.

          1. Brother has COPD, emphysema, and will probably never leave the nursing home. Quitting in time is a really good idea.

      4. Quit some time in 1983, and a whiff of cigarette smoke (or pipe smoke if I’m lucky(?) ) resurrects what TXRed calls the Need Monster. Had to give up drinking 20+ years ago. There are times I’d really like a shot of beer or a mug of Jim Beam (not a typo–there are Those Days), but I recall the warfarin warnings.

        1. You’d think growing up with a father who smoked I could tolerate cigarette and pipe smoke. Nope. I can’t stand even a slight residual. Forest fire not as bad. Pipe tobacco a little worse that forest fire. Cigarette smoke? Forget it.

          That was a huge problem back when there were still smoking areas allowed inside. Especially when we played bridge. Like having non-smoking rounds were going to make a difference from the smoking rounds. Half an hour in, I could barely think, and I was just learning how to play. OTOH when I fill in with mom’s group now, as rare as I play, they think I am a bridge genius (not even close).

    2. @ hollychism > “To get rid of one BAD habit, you have to replace it with a GOOD habit. Or the bad one comes back in times of stress.”

      Luke 11:24 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. 25 And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. 26 Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.

      My take-away is along the lines you recommend: that you should sweep your house clean of evil, but don’t leave it empty afterward.

  8. Ma’am! Do you have to be so danged pessimistically optimistic?
    What’s the poor-boy-born-with-a-black-dog-by-his-side supposed to do with this?
    Stop being so damned cheerful!
    Also: Destroying things takes time. And energy. Like those houses, it’s simpler to walk away and build new things. Look at all those buildings they demolish because it’s cheaper than refurb. The pueblos have been abandoned for centuries. As has Petra.
    When you build it, they will come. Maybe grudgingly, but come they shall.

          1. You’re right, though. I’ve been wondering what will have to be done to replace the public school system. How can it be torn down? Answer: No action required. The Left already did that. All that is necessary is to build something new.

    4. There’s always the Sstripping it down to foundations, fumigation and rebuilding, so the solid parts aren’t lost.

      Remember Burge’s Laws.

      And Codex’s codicil: They try to sell you on it was always rotten.

  9. Yes, this. When you build new institutions, or create new social/cultural assumptions, the old ones will die from neglect. Thus eliminating themselves without the need for anybody to actively destroy them. The new things are stronger that way because they do not carry the burden of active destruction of the past.

    1. Like the way that manure carts pretty much died out in cities when horses were traded in for autos? Unfortunately, it seems they might be required again, but not for horses this time… 😦

  10. You can’t really wrecking-ball assumptions. The folks that have them are too committed to them, having built their lives around those assumptions. Wrecking them would involve wrecking their lives.

    We need to publicize our own assumptions, so the folks that haven’t committed themselves yet can compare the assumptions, look at the lives built around each set, and decide which ones are a better fit for the real world. The bad assumptions will fail of their own contradictions and the good ones will be reinforced by success.

    1. I’m…only sort-of seeing the downside. Because I know those people and a lot of them don’t deserve their lives being wrecked…but a lot (a fairly large minority, nearly parity even) really, really do deserve it.

      1. I was unclear, I think. I was trying to say that assumptions can’t be changed from without. The person making the assumptions has to be willing to examine them and correct them where necessary. And a lot of people aren’t willing to do that examination because they’ve built too much of the assumptions into themselves. Questioning the assumption would be self-destructive.

        Reality, of course, doesn’t care and will eventually break the things that are built on false assumptions. For a lot of people, though, that breakage won’t break the assumptions. They will just believe that something bad got tangled up with their lives, and if they can just remove the bad thing then the assumption will be shown to be correct.

  11. And those new institutions are already being created. PublicSQ. MyStore (part of MyPillow, Mike Lindell). Many others that I don’t know about.
    God bless Americans.

    1. Yeah we’d still have MySpace if it wasn’t for those meddling kids at Facebook.

      We just have to build a better mousetrap and the mice will follow.

  12. We had a “public” school system, with the schoolmasters directly paid by parents, that produced smart, independent and learned people a century back…Then we replaced it with mandatory public education designed to produce conforming factory workers…Woodrow Wilson observing that the elites would always send their kids to private schools to get a real education..Now public ed has outright collapsed in many cities…I think a wrecking ball will be necessary to reconstitute American education…
    Incidentally, I have taught a little to home schooling groups, and the kids are eager and having fun…

  16. A lot of alphabet agencies and other government positions need to be flat out destroyed, because they’re fake jobs for lazy bureaucrats and sap money and freedom away from the entire country. Maybe think of it like pruning a tree rather than destruction, with all the suckers and dead limbs cleared the tree will be stonger and healthier.

    1. I still say, take a chainsaw and prune off about 95% of the federal government.

      Then decide which bits of what’s left are worth keeping.

      Like the Supreme Court, permanently fixed at 9 Justices. The War Department. Something that serves the proper purpose of the State Department but isn’t stuffed with commies and corrupted from top to bottom by foreign governments.
      ———————————
      Today, every child in America is born $91,000 in debt.

      1. …and I’m annoyed because the clip had a stupid Trump thing. I need to review these things before I post them I guess. sigh

  18. One of the shills talked about how the government should just take StarLink. I wait for Musk to deorbit all those sats on those grifters.

    1. He won’t. He would spend the rest of his life behind bars even if he wasn’t killed for a stunt like that. Plus, aren’t those satellites too smal to survive re-entry anyway?

      But he CAN do something much worse: he can take his people and walk away, letting StarLink fail on the government’s watch. The government can’t force him to support StarLink after they seize it without having one hell of a 13th amendment case on their hands and Musk has the resources to fight that.

  19. Leave the indiscriminate wrecking ball to them. Go and live our contrary assumptions.

    Go and build.

    Spoilsport. 😉

  20. ” I mean, Portugal is littered with these: beautiful little urban palaces, which CAN work, if you have an army of servants but really don’t anymore. And which don’t have a bathroom, or what we’d consider a kitchen.”

    Yeah, reading some naval fiction set in Napoleonic times. When the characters talk about houses (manors really), they always mention the number of bedrooms. Nothing about kitchen, or dining rooms or bathrooms. I suspect because the kitchen was still in a separate lightly built building out back, so when (not if) it burned down they could built it again.

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