View From Normal Street

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

First, housekeeping: I didn’t mean to skip posting today. I figured Dan was having surgery, not me. I could wait in the waiting room and do blog posting.

The best laid plans of Sarah, etc. So, the hospital is basically a farraday cage. Not for everyone, because people next to me were on their phones, but for our phones and service. Neither Dan nor I could get service on our phones. Which since my plan was to pair the laptop with the phone, meant I couldn’t post till I got out.

And while the surgery — went fine, thank you, and no, not knees yet, just double hernias — was only two hours, we were there from 7 am to 3:30 pm.

Then I had to go out and get his pain meds, and also stuff he will eat while not feeling great. (Soft stuff, since he was intubated.)

Anyway, all this to say I’m not doing a fundraising post or even a real regular post today. Just this one. I’ll just run the fundraiser through the 6th instead of the fifteenth.

And now… As happens being in the waiting room forever, unable to use my laptop for posting means I listened to real people.

Guys, I keep telling you we’re not normal. Most people are aware things are grossly wrong, but not how wrong, nor of the malice and evil behind it.

I was listening to a large extended family from one of the small towns around here, salt of the Earth type people, obviously on the right and not stupid and… oh dear.

  • Fox news is about the only source of news they know that is not outright leftist, so they’re trusting a lot of it.
  • One of the men is more adventurous on it, and was citing other sources, probably to be fair online. Maybe pjm.
  • They are aware there’s a lot of things they don’t know/don’t get told, and it’s making them uncomfortable. They’re starting to think they’re not getting an answer on the cocaine in the white house and they remember they don’t know who leaked the supreme court decision striking down roe v wade, and they’re trying not to be angry, but there’s an element of panic behind the voices.
  • They are REALLY REALLY REALLY upset at the Bidens not owning the seventh grandchild. To me, in the list of their malfeasance this is tiny, minor, irrelevant. To them this is horrendous and really bad.
  • They are very very upset not over funding Ukraine, but the fact that Ukraine is not actually getting what we’re supposedly sending her. (Which I know but some of you might not) and they want an audit.
  • They were very disturbed by the reports that Biden is mean and abusive in private. And “Surely not, unless it’s dementia poor man.”
  • They are very upset at all the Biden gaffes and not sure what to make of it.

I’ll point out this is when I lost it and pointed out that before he was old, he was rock bottom stupid, and that he’s always been a malicious, angry, evil man. Poor things. I don’t know if the worst part was hearing the unspeakable said boldly, or if it was hearing it said boldly in the Helga accent that manifests when speaking in public to strangers.

However, what I got was the image of people who know something is wrong and despite themselves keep running into things they can’t explain away. But they don’t know what to make of it. And they’re utterly terrified of admitting how far wrong things are.

Part of it is the sort of blind confidence that people in high position can’t be COMPLETE SH*THEELS and that somehow someone in charge must be keeping us from the worst.

May G-d have mercy on their souls. There is to their talk the feel that they know. They know. They just refuse to admit what they know.

We are in fact, in the situation that leads to a Romanian Surprise. Everyone knows. They just don’t admit it, particularly to themselves. And everyone is furious, but still saying loudly “It’s a wonderful day” lest people end up in the cornfield.

This could turn on a dime tomorrow. Or five years from now. I don’t think longer than that, because the situation is too tense for that. And there’s a limit how long you can lalalalalala while the people in power are trying to actively destroy you.

Or we could, if we are terribly lucky and a miracle occurs, turn the ship around without a sudden catastrophic explosion.

But that’s not the way I’d bet. Blundering willfully blind around a warehouse filled with dynamite is going to end up in tears. Or shards.

177 thoughts on “View From Normal Street”

  1. They are good people. They simply can’t believe (most) people aren’t as basically good as they are. There must be some other explanation. MUST be.

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    2. Thank you. You encapsulated what I was trying to grope for. People keep saying the problem is people are no longer moral. The problem is rather people are so moral they don’t see/understand the sheer evil and corruption of these people.

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      1. I believe that is both the most unfathomable blessing and irritating blind spot that most law abiding Americans have. Blessing, because it is the thing that makes so much of what is American just work where it doesn’t anywhere else.

        And irritating because evil men can and will abuse that faith until it breaks.

        I also don’t think that those who haven’t experienced evil can truly understand that it exists. No one would cause such trouble when they’d put themselves in it as well, right? No one would be so foolish to kill the golden goose, then not even cook and eat it, right? No one would be so vile as to seduce children into sexual perversions, make them into spies on their parents, and convince them to permanently scar themselves for life… right?

        Orwell tried to tell us. So did many others.

        When the rot becomes so suffocating that the normies cannot ignore it any more… Bad things. The Gods of the Copybook Headings ain’t no joke. “Terror and slaughter” is an apt description.

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        1. In the weird upside– part of what happens IRL, but not so much in books, is that the faith does break.

          AND PEOPLE DO STAND UP. IE, the little towns that suddenly had a lot of hunters hanging out in store when AntiFa/BLM was scheduled to “protest.”

          The folks at protests who grabbed the jerks throwing frozen water bottles at cops and hauled them over to said police to be arrested. (Weird how that one didn’t get much news, it kept happening.)

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          1. Plus the oikophobia of the media – people standing up or opposing the protesters are so – ick!- NORMAL! Ooh! Ick! We can’t be like those people! Quick, praise the protesters!

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          2. People are standing up in less pleasant ways too:

            My mother told me of a recent multiple murder in the neighboring town.

            From what she said there were two families living in a duplex: one family was grandpa, Mom, and two teenage boys, one who had just graduated from high school.

            The other family was a man and his wife and kids including at least one daughter.

            Apparently, the just-graduated teen from family 1 decided it was a good idea to stand naked at the window and masturbate to family 2’s daughter who was in the yard.

            Family 2’s father objected to this. I think he talked to the police (who either didn’t or couldn’t do anything) but I’m not sure. He did talk family 1’s mom and grandpa who didn’t think their teenager’s behavior was a problem, so he went and got his gun and shot all four of family 1.

            Then called the police and told his wife to tell the kids he protected them.

            So… yeah. That’s going to start being a thing.

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        2. You can understand it without experiencing it, but you need to run it down another way. Reading Shirer’s chapter about the Holocaust in “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” is one possible way. You either come away with a much better understanding of just how evil some people can be, or you shake your head and say to yourself, “He must be making some of it up!” People have an intellectual understanding of the Holocaust, for the most part. But they don’t really understand until they start getting down into the weeds and reading about how the skins of Jews with interesting tattoos were used to make lampshades. People can read about the Rape of Nanjing, and know that terrible things happened there. But they instinctively turn away from anything more than a factoid understanding of it.

          I suspect two things are at play here. The first is a basic unwillingness to recognize just how far and how fast people can fall (I was going to say into depravity, but that doesn’t really seem like the right word here). The other is that once you recognize just how evil some men can be toward their fellow men, you’re compelled to try and figure out why they can be like that. People seem to have an unwillingness to recognize the “why?” even as they themselves are treading down that exact same path.

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          1. Yeah; the Nazi regime’s hatred of the Jews was so strong that it worked against their self-interest. They diverted valuable railroad cars, as one example, that were needed for other things to transport Jews to the camps. They did try, usually, get some out of their prisoners (ie, work them to death) and the non-death camp ones too; but that also worked against their war effort when the prisoners found out they were making, say, fuzes or ammunition the prisoners would sabotage the product. I think Corey ten Boom mentioned that in “The Hiding Place,” and I recently came across something on the internet where the Allied (RAF?) aircraft were hit with 20mm cannon shells without the explosive filler, just a note that said this all that could be done to help.

            Hope our hostess’ dear husband feels better soon.

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          2. Heinlein once wrote that Americans (in particular) understood naughty, but had a very hard time comprehending evil.

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      2. They also are deprived of information that would enable them to see the true scope of the malicious intent and fecklessness of the regime. There is a reason why the expose on how many feds were in the crowd on J6 and how the feds and local police and their operatives were the instigators of violence.

        While in their gut they know something is really wrong, the combination of their own good nature and the deprivation of the evidence that would overcome the tendency towards disbelief is what leads to the “it really can’t be that bad, can it” attitude.

        Even in the Soviet Union, people arrested and subjected to torture would proclaim “if only Stalin knew”.

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      3. It’s one of the reasons people stay in abusive relationships, both male and female.
        You just cannot believe that the other person can really be that intentionally evil, it must be either a temporary glitch or maybe it really is partly your fault.
        Thing is that when the mike drops and you realize the cesspit you wake up to find yourself in it no longer matters how painful, violent, and grief filled it will have to become in order to fight your way free.
        Let’s get real. They absolutely know who the coke belonged to, whether Hunter or some senior staffer worthy of protection. Had that powder been anthrax we’d know the answer in a New York minute. And in modern America who doesn’t have some kid floating around in the family who came in through the back door. That father and gramps continue to pretend that little girl simply does not exist is typical of the sort of trash you would never trust with anything important to you let alone our poor country.

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    3. Also, vincible ignorance is much more comfortable than knowledge, because it requires nothing.

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    4. Rueful This explains the result of a lot of my desperate attempts to tell people Things Were Wrong with my family, too.

      “Oh no, we’d know if something was wrong!”

      Nope. No you won’t if you won’t look at the evidence.

      The mood on the street keeps getting worse and worse, but no one will Look.

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    6. This is me. I know that there are evil (or just supremely selfish) people in the world, but I don’t feel it. I’m very lucky that I’ve only met a few of them – maybe four in my entire life.

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  2. Yes – as one of the commenters to my latest Chicagoboyz posts noted – there is a point where you can’t unsee the rust and the missing rivets.
    I don’t THINK that things will get too bad in Texas, and other mostly red states… but places dominated by large urban cores where the woke have been running rampant will not have a nice time of it, and that’s putting it mildly.

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    1. Large urban woke cores, those who can get, are getting out. See California. The problem for the destinations is will those fleeing bring the blight politics with them?

      Glad Dan’s surgery went good. May the recovery proceed quickly.

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    2. When I’m in buildings in a city, cell service can be spotty. I don’t think jamming is legal (barring some creative/dire need that convinces TPTB), but there can be a lot of structure and/or equipment between a phone and the relevant cell tower. (One hotel in Medford had a poor signal in some rooms, but was fine on the other side of the building. My current favorite doesn’t have that issue. So far.)

      I was somewhat surprised to get an unsolicited political comment at Home Depot. (Was finishing up business in the loo [protip: if you are using the stalls, CHECK FOR TOILET PAPER! Latrine maintenance seems to be optional right now. I did check and switched, cocking a snoot at Murphy.]) A gentleman about my age said without provocation “everything is out of control, especially politics”. Then he commented (more crudely) that it’s not just cream that rises to the top. It was a bathroom, after all. :)

      OTOH, we’re in one of the many red counties in a state dominated by the Portland-Salem Deep Blue Permanent Junta, so there’s less of a feeling that what’s going on at the federal level is a surprise. LGB and FJB signs are common, and though Governor Tina the Wannabe Tyrant isn’t quite as disliked as Despicable Kate Brown, it’s largely a matter of time…

      I’ve seen the resentment, but spontaneous comments like that have been rare. I’ll be curious to see what it’s like Westside. I have my annual retina check later this week. Medford isn’t Salem, but it is further left than we are.

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    3. Texas could get awful. Look at what is happening in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin. And the most recent/current legislature. Scary.

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      1. I’ve been noticing a lot of Texas plates in Des Moines lately. I thought they might be political, but then one of the guys driving like he’s from Texas, in a big blue rolling shrine to All Things TExas (including bad judgement insult stickers and metal gonads hanging from the hitch, since apparently he really is compensating for a personal lack) …

        Had brand new, shiny Iowa plates. New that month, even.

        I’d figured folks were taking extended vacations to avoid the border stuff, but…..

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        1. I know of some people who left because Gov. Abbot was “too much of a dictator” during Covid (when he allowed the state health people to allow municipal mask-mandates if the rate of infection was greater than X). No idea if that’s still going on.

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          1. No, and hasn’t been for quite a while (at least a year) even in Dallas, which was one of the few places in the DFW area that tried. Certain places, mostly (all?) healthcare related, still claim to require them, but I haven’t encountered them being seriously enforced.

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          2. Possible they’ve headed here, but I didn’t notice the plates before.

            (Texas plates are the inverse of one of the Iowa custom plates, and I collect amusing license plates, so I am trained to look for the custom plates.)

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  3. Stay on your husband about lifting restrictions. I had hernia surgery almost exactly three weeks ago. After the first week I was feeling pretty good and went to move something out of my way. Sudden, jolting pain let me know that was A Bad Thing To Do. I wasn’t meaning to violate the doctor’s instructions, I just wasn’t thinking.

    It is possible to be a rock bottom stupid, angry, vicious, evil, AND have dementia.

    People are often shocked when confronted with a truth they have been evading.

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  4. Hopes for a speedy recovery.

    My sense (as a newbie in greater Philly) is of a rising tide of frustration at the lawlessness, gaslighting, etc. I wouldn’t be all THAT surprised if some of the cities, er, take care of things themselves.

    It’s what happens post-spasm that worries me…

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    2. ABInBev is refusing to recognize that one little straw is NOT just ‘one little straw’ but the LAST ONE. For better or worse, Bud Light -had- the market lead. It might have been slipping, but not badly. Then that ONE LITTLE STRAW and they were second place FAST… and, if one believe the reports, it might have even dropped out of the top TEN now. And this people being peaceful and simply changing how they vote with their dollars.

      Could they recover? By now, I suspect it’s too late. They goofed and denied anything was amiss AND then made the Big Mistake: Blame the customer. And then, when THEIR failure caused plant closures, tried to blame & shame the customer AGAIN. Gee, who is making all those new cans & bottles for the other guys? Seems the market hasn’t shrunk, just one group’s market share. That they could have kept, or at least minimized the loss, had they a “lick of sense.”

      The Miller Lite thing was a glitch – but it was SO over the top, it likely got treated (and maybe even was intended to be treated?) as being like a(n old) Saturday Night Live fake commercial.

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      1. “Gee, who is making all those new cans & bottles for the other guys?”

        Depending on the contract clauses, anyone EXCEPT Bud Light’s current supplier. Which means those layoffs can’t be offset without workers relocating.

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          1. Yep. But that’s how they can point and say “see, job losses” when their other related business practices kick in to make the damage worse.

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      2. Ben and Jerry’s are reportedly “having issues,” Too. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.

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        2. Ben and Jerry’s is owned by Unilever,, so Ben and Jerry can say whatever they want with no consequences to them.

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  5. What also spooks me are the people who have decided that since X% of the “conspiracy theories” have proven to be true, most of the others are too. I work really, really hard not to do the “wave garlic, back away slowly, then flee” because they are good, decent folks who I do business with or work with.

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    1. Yeah. Whether I like what I hear about Bill Gates or not, I really don’t think he had mind-control nanobots inserted into covid vaccines, or that everyone who was vaccinated will be dead in two years. (Two wild threads from Twitter).

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      1. One that gets me is the “Biden body double” hypothesis. So, the deep state replaced Biden with an actor, only to tell the actor to pretend he’s just as much of a frail, rotting vegetable as the real thing? Or they replaced him with an actor who’s really just as bad?

        I know the deep staters are stupid, but they’d still need to believe there was something in that for them.

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      2. I read a fascinating little piece tracing how that “nanobots/chips in vaccine” came about, and it was a combination of the Gates Foundation’s anti-malaria vaccine push, Gates talking about “the Singularity” and brain chips, and a few companies that asked people to get chip implants for security and badgeless access.

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      3. Only because we don’t have the technology to make mind control nanobots, not because Billzebub doesn’t want to do it.
        ———————————
        ‘Progressives’ suppress free speech because they don’t have the means to suppress free thought.

        Yet.

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  6. Hope Dan’s surgery and recovery go as well as mine did.

    I had poly patches put in for dual inguinal hernias about 10 years ago. They were able to do one endoscopically, but for the other they ran into adhesion issues from my appendectomy and had to open me up to install the patch on that side. Morphine via pump was my friend at home for the next week. The swelling and bruising of the family jewels was pretty spectacular, so don’t be overly alarmed. (I hope Dan has a good sense of humor; you can kid him about his “Skittles” colors of the rainbow next week.)

    Starting to see more articles about just how far-gone Joseph Robinette Biden is when it comes to his day-to-day behavior at the White House. It’s pure textbook Alzheimer’s/dementia, far end of the middle of the portion of that spiral down. Folks, Joe will NOT make it through another 4-year term, assuming they reinstall him, he’ll be dead before then.

    While I don’t object very strongly to a “Romanian Surprise”, the targets of such an action needs to be the members of the current cabinet, most of the SES installed by this Administration, everyone in the DoJ above the level of field agent, and at least half the Democrat Party reps in D.C.

    Then I’d take the “Your FIRED” stick to the entire Departments of Housing, Health and Human Services, Education, the CDC, FDA, CMS, Agriculture, Transportation, and most of the general officers of the military.

    Frankly, I think we need to do a version of the Jewish Year of Jubilee; but in our case, throw out the entire federal register and all federal regulations, restarting with the bare Constitution. And for that matter, we are 4 Jubilees in the hole.

    DIRCs, AKA RINOs should be purged from the GOP.

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    1. Firing is a nice dream. I want it to happen. A LOT.

      I’d also really like to break up the entirety of DC. Move the departments out into the hinterlands of BFE. Treat them like monks. No frills. Tell ’em it’s for security purposes. Whatever works. But scatter the machinery of government, to the winds, and from thence prune aggressively.

      Once they are physically separated, start hunting. Is this job necessary? Prove it. With references. Not enough proof? Poof. Gone. And everyone beneath that person. Back to the private sector with you. Have fun storming the capitalism!

      Get it going good and early, and ram it through. They’ll try and filibuster and whine. They’ll try and sue. They’ll get a Hawaiian judge to rule against it. Be ready for the swamp beasts to fight back, because even cornered rats will bite.

      This is more of a two term problem, so it’d be best to lay the groundwork early. Get judges in the right places. Get court cases won so precedent exists, especially on things like election law. Because they will cheat. And the fraud will be like nothing ever seen before, once they see what’s coming.

      That might take us into open conflict. Cities rebelling, not just pawns rioting.

      Maybe it won’t work out that way at all. Maybe a return to sense and normalcy will come. I would welcome such.

      But for wee little folk like us… Best we prepare for disaster. Food, meds, ammo, cash, and what necessary supplies will keep. Weather eye to the world, and the other on kith and kin.

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      1. I’m an advocate for Federal Government dispersal…and I spent 40 years working for DOD.

        That being said, it won’t be easy, and it won’t be cheap. Mostly because we need places to move TO…and there will be moving expenses.

        Pro tip: Look for duplication of effort. Example – As a nation, we have decided that “No child will go to school hungry”. So we provide Little Johnny Poorboy with a School Lunch Program. But his family also gets Food Stamps. And Aid to Families With Dependent Children. And Women, Infants, and Children. Little Johnny Poorboy is shaped like a meatball – because he’s getting FOUR lunches. I suspect he can get by with three lunches…and know damned well he can do with one bureaucracy to feed them to him.

        Second pro tip: Never link pay to number of people supervised. This encourages staff bloat.

        Third pro tip: Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy affects the Federal Government above all other factors. Go deep into organizations. Look for the technical experts who are dead-ended (like I was). PUT THEM IN CHARGE! Hand them a mandate for real reform and they will deliver, with cheer in their hearts and a song on their lips.

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        2. Don’t send DC to Dallas! I like it the way it is! If we could reinstate the border I’d be very, very happy!

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      2. Dan Lane wrote: “Once they are physically separated, start hunting. Is this job necessary? Prove it. With references. Not enough proof? Poof. Gone. And everyone beneath that person. Back to the private sector with you. Have fun storming the capitalism!”

        Generally a good idea. But watch out for the governmental equivalent of https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dependency.png

        Some — perhaps even many(?) — of those bloated bureaucracies started out with “that one guy” (usually worker, not manager) doing something worthy and maybe even necessary. And some fraction of what those “one guys” are doing is stuff that’s constitutional, too. It’d be a pity to fire/lose too many of them. Totaly agree for the vast bulk, though.

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    2. The Reader would make that ALL of the general officers in the military based on what he has heard from retired colonels and Lt colonels he knew from his time at the Great Big Defense Contractor.

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      1. Talked to a young 1LT and asked when Trump is reelected should he fire all the 3 and 4 stars, or all flag officers. All of them was the answer. The newly promoted flags should be rapidly evaluated on whether or not they’re doing their job- making the military deadly and efficient. If they start talking DEI instead of best and brightest- fire them.

        Bring back every single officer or enlisted who refused the covid vaccine. And promote them a few pay grades right off the bat. They showed more sense and moral courage then anyone else- and they’re all pissed. They’d be a great aid in cleaning things up.

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  7. A reckoning is coming, everyone knows it, they just pray it’s not as bad as they think it will be. I could easily see a second French Revolution type where a whole lot of liberals are burned alive and hung. The first people hung or burned will be the press, it gets really ugly after that. Hope I am wrong.

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  8. What, me worry? Well, yes. Sometimes. And then I remember John 16:33—and the many times things impossibly “sorted themselves” (i.e., the last part of that verse).

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  9. Hopes for a speedy and complete recovery for Dan, Great Aunt.

    Anyways, most of the world has been dealing with nearly forty years of gaslighting. The entertainment industry puts out movies that nobody watches…but they keep putting them out and they become a background noise of the world. Most people don’t watch TV, but it’s on in most places like doctor’s offices and such. Nobody quite believes the news, but people can’t think what is wrong.

    It’s going to be…interesting when it breaks and I think it’s going to break bad.

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    1. Just for S&G I took a look at the 2023 fall TV lineup. Maybe five or six shows I’ll bother to watch and at least three cancellations that torque me off. None of the new stuff has much of an appeal for me.
      Also, everyone knows I suppose that Fox News is doing a reshuffle to fill the gaping hole they made with the “release” of Tucker Carlson. Who by the way has taken up residence at Twitter looking I think to become the new Rush Limbaugh.

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      1. Most of the market for Network TV is…well, old people and people that don’t have cable TV, so their show marketing is going to be different than most of us here.

        Having said that, I’m trying to think of any network or basic cable show that I was enthusiastic about pre-Crow Flu. It’s all about the streaming and premium channels these days…

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        1. Indeed – I was trying to think of the last time that the Daughter Unit and myself watched a broadcast TV show … and it was some years ago, on a trip to see a client in Brownsville, who paid to put us up in a Staybridge Suites hotel.
          It was horrible, trying to watch episodes of a certain TV series (Castle, if memory serves), after we had gotten used to streaming video, or for recording and speeding through commercials. It was purely awful, having the plot interrupted every ten minutes for a minute or more of commercials.
          I do wonder now – exactly which audience are broadcast TV commercials aimed at – those commercials who feature more than 50% or more black/minority actors? Is their audience those who are too poor for cable, or internet?

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          1. Too poor for cable or the Internet, don’t like cable or the Internet, and is highly dependent on ad revenue, so they have to sell to those audiences (you suddenly have >50% black on a show in an area you know is extremely white-bred…).

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  10. I’ve dealt with a different cross-section of people lately. These people see what I see, from a lot of the same sources of information. They are angry, and at the correct people and institutions. Their moods run from cynical to corrosively contemptuous.

    And they do … nothing. They just take it. They don’t draw a line; they don’t take a stand. They keep giving money to people who hate them/us. They still buy Bud Light, for Ra’s sake!

    (I don’t drink, so I didn’t face that. Still, I’ve given up more things over the last several years out of conviction and cussedness (largely the latter) than I would have imagined in, say, 2015. A few of them have been like lying on an operating table and taking out small organs. One was like cutting off an arm.)

    My assumption is that they don’t do anything because they don’t feel like there’s anything they can do, anything that will matter. They button up, hunker down, just try to get through things, and erode a little more each day. It’s quietly horrible. Maybe none of the things I do matter in the larger sense, either. In the smaller sense of holding my soul together — if there is one in there — maybe it does.

    Things need to change soon. For the sake of those who cannot admit how far awry the world has gone; for the sake of those who know it and are helpless before it.

    Take care of your man, Sarah. A double hernia has to be nasty, but there is worse, and he will get through it.

    Oh, wait, forgot my modified Cato. It is my further opinion that the Republic must be restored.

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  11. I remember a discussion, I’m not sure if it was here or on one of the other word press blogs I frequent, that grandkids can make much forgiven. And, it is the mark of a cruel character that they won’t at least make nice for the little ones.

    I think once one has dealt with politicians for long enough, one gets accustomed to the knowledge they are all basically lizard people, so we are not surprised when they do lizard people things.

    I think it’s like those nature videos that do the circuit freaking people out. When you’ve spent time actually studying or just being exposed to how animals work, your not at all surprised when the tiger cub grabs the rabbit, even though someone in the audience is going full fire alarm.

    What bothers me more about most normal people isn’t that they do not know, but rather, the ones who don’t see any reason to have a more solid compass than whatever their ‘group’ tells them to have.

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  12. This is evidence of the ‘if only Stalin/the King/Fearless Leader knew about this …’ syndrome. This can’t possibly be deliberate, some underlings must be Getting Things Wrong, and Benevolent X would fix it all, if only he knew!
    Firm belief in the goodness of men – look around us, -we- would not do those Bad Things! – tries to cancel the recognition that some Leaders are not, in fact, benevolent.

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  13. You forget that being COMPLETE SH*THEELS is what got them into those high positions in the first place.

    Because the entrenched corruptocrats dare not induct anybody less corrupt than themselves into the club. MORE corrupt is fine. So it can only get worse.

    Then of course there’s the incompetence and stupidity…
    ———————————
    If you always expect the government to do the stupidest things you can imagine, you will rarely be disappointed. Indeed, from time to time the government will exceed your expectations by doing something unimaginably stupid.

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      1. I think that not knowing is what enables people to keep going. Also they don’t have the time or inclination to keep tabs on what is going on.

        Liked by 1 person

  15. That they trust Fox News after FN fired Tucker for actual reporting is a bit terrifying.

    And I should have written the damned zombie apocalypse novel where the zammie is happening, but the media and government and most of the people just ignore it and hope it goes away. Too late, now, it seems.

    Liked by 1 person

      2. The best part, though is going to be the looks on their faces when Trump sweeps the primaries, the economy craters, and his impending victory won’t be able to be lied away even by them.

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        1. Are you sure Trump won’t be frauded out of office again? Dear God, I’d love to see Trump in office, but I’m not sure it’ll happen.

          Liked by 2 people

                1. It takes a surprisingly small number to commit the kind of massive voter “cheating” that took place in 2020. And they don’t have to conspire together, though a few did. The only other choice is to believe that 81 million of our fellow citizens are STUPID.

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                    1. Why not? There are a finite number of legally registered voters, but fraudulent votes can be churned out in unlimited numbers. If they run short, gin up some more, like they did during Election Night in 2020. They believe they got away with the election frauds of 2020 and 2022, why would they ever stop?
                      ———————————
                      Grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

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                    2. Because their fraud machine is not everywhere, it’s extremely localized, and because past the actual number of people in the nation, even most ideologues won’t go along with the lie.

                      And I did not say they would not TRY, I said they would not SUCCEED.

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                    3. But the DID succeed. I saw it myself, on a small scale, and have seen ample evidence of sufficient “pockets” to have thrown the election. I simply do not believe this corrupt old fool got 81 million REAL votes.

                      Like

                    4. Of course he didn’t. And they did succeed last time.

                      Next time, it won’t be possible. They’ll hit a tipping point of false votes, such that even people who watch MSNBC won’t be able to buy it.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    5. Remember the old P.T. Barnum quote? “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

                      And enough people said they would have changed their vote if they had heard about the laptop. Our elections depend on an informed electorate and we don’t have that.

                      Like

                    7. What I think is that my being smarter than everyone else, even if true, doesn’t win elections. Right now there is a huge percent of voters who say they can NEVER vote for Trump, even against Biden. That doesn’t make the landslide there OUGHT to be in any sane, well-informed world.

                      Like

                    9. THIS. And SCOTUS has already said that if they get away with it until Inauguration Day, it doesn’t matter what we can prove, and SCOTUS won’t even look at ruling otherwise before then.

                      Like

        1. They’re both heavily on the “distrust” end of the scale. So even if one is less bad than the other… they’re still both bad. If Biden gets primaried and, oh, say, Kennedy Junior gets the nod I will not then like Junior any better than I do now.

          Fox has made their play. They are on the opposite side now. The Really Red (Trust me coz!) Republicans that are still Totally Anti Trump for conswerving conservative conseratism are not, and have never been our friends and allies.

          They’re democrats that run in/do business in Red States. They’re there to Con the rubes. It’s all part of the game. They are just doing a job, saying their lines to get elected/get advertising money. It is, and for a long time has been, fake.

          Rush got it. He peeled back the layers of the disguise when the “I’m a lifelong Republican BUT…” callers came on. The Fox nooz, the Lindsay Grahams, the Mitch McConnells are like that. They’re playing a role, but for pay. They are actors, not representatives, or newsmen.

          The internet changed things. Now, we know we’re not alone. Now, it becomes easier to see how broken the Narrative has become. The lies are easier to spot, and the more they think they’ve won, the less they try to pretty it up.

          Be nice if they could all lose and things go back to normal. But Real Life doesn’t work that way. It requires work. Effort, on our part. Got to spend the time to really see what’s going on. Find out who is screwing us over, and spread the word.

          The nice part? We face a conspiracy/prospiracy of DUMB. Look at who “leads” them. Look at what they’re doing.

          That’s also the bad part. They are creating problems that will be non-trivial to fix. Which means more work. More suffering, in the main. What else can one do, but stand against that?

          Liked by 2 people

      1. I grant, I wouldn’t expect them to know, unless they saw the Russell Brand interview. But from that, it’s completely obvious that his J6 reporting was the reason (even though he claims not to know).

        Liked by 1 person

      1. Yes, well, my actual inspiration was Luis Bunuel’s film “That Obscure Object Of Desire”, in which there are revolutionaries trying to overthrow the government, and nobody ever talks about them, even as the revolutionaries are carjacking them.

        Like

  16. We are still in the Golden age. You can go to the doctor and have your eye jabbed to stop the blindness of macular degeneration. You can go in for outpatient surgery for cataracts, or hernias.

    The problem is that we no longer know who to trust. We are blessed because we know who not to trust.
    Corruption is the danger. It crashes buildings when contractors find it is cheaper to pay off the building inspector. See SF building tilting because they didn’t put down supports to bedrock.

    When the Golden age ends, the crash will be terrible. We will go from a world able to feed everyone to one where there is only enough food for 3 billion. Medicine will vanish. No one can know how bad it will get, because there are too many single points of failure, and no one knows who the strongmen will be, and what happens when a city of 10 million goes off in search of food within walking distance, when the electricity dies..

    So be grateful for each day the crash does not happen. Pray. In 2016, I was sure that evil Hill had won, the supreme court would be Venezuela. I saw the hand of God. We were offered reprieve. We are not done yet. Be not afraid. They still have to hide what they do. He does not promise it will be easy.

    Liked by 1 person

  17. History is full of evil. Scripture is full of evil. The whole system we know as civilization is built on the assumption that mankind can and will choose evil if unrestrained.

    I know I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, probably more than I should, because I know that my own inclination is to believe the absolute worst of everybody. I’m usually wrong. But when someone does show that side of their character, I’m not surprised.

    I know evil exists. I’ve brushed against it in passing a few times. It leaves an impression.

    I think what we may be facing here is a group of people who have been taken in by a con man. When faced with the evidence that the person they trusted with their money has swindled them, they loudly proclaim his innocence and look for any other explanation. Not because s/he is infallible, but because it means they fell for it. It affects their image of themselves as infallible, therefore it must be denied.

    This con has been going on for generations, which makes it that much harder.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. the assumption that mankind can and will choose evil if unrestrained.

      –
      If that were the case, civilization would be established by the evil, for the evil, and we would be living in a Hell on Earth such as you could never imagine. The only way we could arrive at the world we have today, flaws and all, is because the overwhelming majority of people endorse good social values. Problem is, the most evil among us are driven to seek power, and our modern society provides opportunities to obtain unprecedented levels of power.

      Still, the evil ones remain but a tiny minority, as they are finding out. Even in places where they have all but eliminated the penalties for crime, only a few take advantage — mostly the same ones that were already committing crimes in spite of the penalties.

      We have laws because the great majority of people support those laws. How many people would favor an actual public policy legalizing murder? Besides extreme left-wing politicians, that is? Most of the worst violent criminals would call that insane.

      Any society that fails to protect its children has no future. This has always been true. The fact that we are here is proof that even our proto-human and pre-human ancestors successfully protected their children over the last five million years or so. The ones that didn’t died out.
      ———————————
      You can have a civilized society, or you can have mob rule. You can’t have both.

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      1. The thing with good and evil is that they are not commensurate. In fact, it’s like a ladder. A good ladder has all good steps. One bad step can lead to disaster, and very few can make the ladder all but unusable.

        Most people in a society have to be doing the good to keep it going.

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  18. I’ve had one hernia repair, when I was very young. Two at my age would not be fun. (Back then, a friend of the family was my floor nurse; I got just as much ice cream as I could manage to eat. Well, it is soft, right? Also a large package of colored pencils and paper – I drew quite a few Oz book covers. (Where that artistic bent went off to, I don’t know…))

    Tell Dan to take care, and follow instructions. It takes time to heal, and, unfortunately, modern suturing seems to be more cosmetically advanced, but not quite as strong.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It is indeed soft provided you get some without any chunks in it.

      (I still remember getting my wisdom teeth out. Lost 10 pounds, briefly)

      Liked by 1 person

  19. (Tune: White Christmas)

    I’m dreaming
    Of a Romanian Christmas
    Just like when they shot Ceausescu
    Taking crooked Dems out
    For a short trial
    And then, a dose of well-earned lead

    I’m dreaming
    Of a Romanian Christmas
    One that cleans our system out
    Of crooks and liars
    Of Commies and traitors
    And all sorts of other scum

    I’m dreaming
    Of a Romanian Christmas
    One that will end our nightmare
    No more Leftist tyrants
    Just honest governance
    And a world fit for our children…

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The Reader guesses he won’t find this in a Hallmark Christmas in July movie.

      Like

      1. Well, they don’t do musicals. But “Romance Amidst The Revolution” might make for a decent plot line.

        Like

        1. I mean, it’s been done with the French Revolution in ballet, so why not? Clearly let’s fall in love and die horribly is a popular trope, and a revolution is a very convenient way to die horribly.

          Like

          1. We’re talking about a Hallmark rom-com, so the hero and heroine live Happily Ever After. Besides, I’m a fan of happy endings.

            But you could do a pretty decent story about Plucky Pretty Resistance Heroine and Handsome Heroic Resistance Hero meeting and falling in love. Interspersed with shooting Gestapo agents, rescuing Allied pilots who have been shot down, and so forth.

            (Damn, this might just work…)

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes. A bit light on the romance side, and the guy’s an undercover British agent, but published in 1942.

              Like

  20. There is none so blind as he who will not see. And what people will not see is that many people we have trusted with our governance and the philosophies that guide them are evil. Not just wrongheaded, not just mistaken, but evil.

    Like

  21. My husband had double hernia surgery years ago, and after the operation I listened to him in the recovery room in the back, making all the nurses giggle at his jokes. I wasn’t allowed to go back there until he “recovered.” Bah. The nurses all just wanted more time with my hunky, adorable husband.

    At home, I got him a Dairy Queen Blizzard every day, liquified so there were no chunky spots. The cool ice cream soothed his throat. I also refilled his ice bags every time he needed them. I honestly had a fine time taking care of him and making him better. Strong men brought low by injury and needing to be nursed back to health is so… romantic. Isn’t it?

    We’re in perilous times, but love shines.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. I honestly had a fine time taking care of him and making him better. Strong men brought low by injury and needing to be nursed back to health is so… romantic. Isn’t it? We’re in perilous times, but love shines.
      ……………..

      Hubby, twice. Hip replacements. Didn’t need the throat soothing, that was fine because of how long he was in the hospital (4 nights after surgery day, so essentially 5 full days). Now that would be part of the care needed as hip replacements are now out patient at the clinic.

      Liked by 1 person

  22. +1 on CHICOM Joe’s stupidity, dishonesty, and general nastiness. He’s always had a reputation for it…well earned. I have a friend who was on the Capitol building staff. There were decent Democrats, but Biden was NOT one of them.

    Like

  23. There is a rage out there. The National divorce is already happening. Bud Light, Target, the Flash bombing, Indy 5 bombing, the normies are finally saying enough of this shit.

    Just wait til they start taking kids from parents in order to mutilate them. That’ll be the crossrip.

    God is leaving the clues. The mainstream media is openly saying a movie about stopping child sec trafficing is bad. They’re in the open, they’re coming for the kids and the normies are getting ready to file the National divorce papers.

    Liked by 1 person

  24. There is a rage out there. The National divorce is already happening. Bud Light, Target, the Flash bombing, Indy 5 bombing, the normies are finally saying enough of this shit.

    Just wait til they start taking kids from parents in order to mutilate them. That’ll be the crossrip.

    God is leaving the clues. The mainstream media is openly saying a movie about stopping child sec trafficing is bad. They’re in the open, they’re coming for the kids and the normies are getting ready to file the National divorce papers.

    Like

  25. em>…the sort of blind confidence that people in high position can’t be COMPLETE SH*THEELS and that somehow someone in charge must be keeping us from the worst.

    I’m seeing this from the person who told me what Kamala Harris was like as a prosecutor and attorney general in California — a history that shows her to be a vile, vicious person — and yet this same person keeps making excuses for all of it and seems to have actually forgotten prior knowledge. Or at least, subordinated it to hatred of Trump. It’s very sad; this is a person who isn’t stupid and whom I value very much.

    The sad truth is that ALL the people in the current junta are both corrupt and utterly incompetent. The case is little better for government as a whole, where it’s only most of them that are corrupt and incompetent. Shitheels everywhere.

    It’s a frightening thought, but the only thing really keeping us from the worst…is us.

    Liked by 1 person

  26. I actually had the opposite of your conversation today. I was at the Y, doing laps in the pool, and when not doing the backstroke, listening to the lifeguard and the lady in the next lane chatting when they started on politics, and that guy from New York and went on to January 6th, and how the governed should have shot them all, because they killed that guy and beat up those other cops. I did stop long enough to say that he wasn’t killed by Jan. 6th, he died days later of a stroke, but that was enough to shut them up. I’ve been pissed off about it all day. When people have drunk the kool-aid that deeply, it’s pointless to even try. But yeah, if he ever tries to talk to me again, I will have some pointed words to say.

    Liked by 1 person

  27. I was at a John Williams concert at the Hollywood Bowl the other night. Williams mentioned that he’d recently done the soundtrack for the new Indiana Jones movie. He talked about how great Harrison Ford is.

    Loud cheers.

    He then talked about how great Phoebe Waller is.

    Much, much less cheering.

    And keep in mind that this was in LA County, at a concert with the LA Philharmonic (a type of entertainment not seen as quite so low-brow, and thus more favored by the progs).

    People are noticing.

    I also just watched a YouTube video that talks about how big of a disaster the new “High Republic” setting for Star Wars has been. The first book sold a little over 100,000 copies. One of the more recent books barely reached 8,000 sales (and subsequent ones may have sold even less; I don’t recall).

    Apparently only five new Star Wars novels have sold more than 100,000 copies since the EU was dumped into the “Legends” bin. That first High Republic novel was one of them. The Chuck Wendig novel was a second.

    And the other three were all written by Timothy Zahn.

    A video game trailer was released a while back for a game set in the High Republic (no release date, last I’d heard). It was a “we’re not really going to show you what this game is about, but here’s an alien drum circle” sort of affair. I’m expecting it to fail badly.

    And the ridiculous thing is, it really wouldn’t be that hard to turn the franchise around and make an insane amount of money with it once again. But you’d need to turn it over to people who aren’t scared stiff of Luke Skywalker being heroic.

    Liked by 1 person

  29. I was listening to a podcast that was new to me, and about 4 minutes in, the guest stated the lie that all 60 lawsuits that Trump or his team filed were decided against him, and I was done. If people won’t take the time to figure out what happened, there’s no help for them. They believe that J6 was actually an insurrection too, even though most people were just your upset next door neighbor, and no one was armed. When the sh+t really hits the fan, boy are they gonna be surprised!

    Liked by 1 person

  30. I hope you get Dan home and out of the hospital asap. Nursing care by the over burdened or uncaring can become a shit show with amazing speed, as I am finding out.

    Like

  31. My father was in the hospital for three weeks for an unexpected pacemaker installation and recovery from the induced coma they placed him in.

    The most terrifying thing to me is there were signs asking everyone to wear masks everywhere. But only one person out of 20 was complying. We are talking hospital staff not just visitors. I suppose it is good in a way, people are not going along with bullshit, but the signs remained up. So the accuracy of information from authority is now constantly in doubt. They should take the signs down.

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  32. Reminds me of CBD’s quote from Yeates in the morning at Ace of Spades:

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    https://ace.mu.nu/archives/405237.php

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  33. “One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.”

    Thomas Sowell

    My final tipping point into complete disbelief was Invading Iraq on suspicion that they had the bomb and finding out how flimsy that suspicion was.

    Obama was when I realized that they were actually inimical to me and mine.

    WuFlu turned it into blazing hatred.

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    1. True…but nobody suspected that Saddam Hussein had nukes. Nobody claimed it.

      There were suspicions that he had stockpiles of chemical weapons. We knew that he HAD had them, for he had used chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War. What we found was partly bluff, partly breakout capability – an awful lot of chemical bombs and shells ready to be filled.

      Like

      1. Nobody. Try just about everybody. This has been hashed out repeatedly and i considered including it in the note but it doesn’t fit as a blurb. I’m not talking about what the military knew, I’m talking about how the war was sold to us.

        They said WMD. wink wink. That meant nukes without saying so. We never had this debate here, but they did have it in the UK. Much like the WuFlu you have to go back to what was known when.. They said WMD, the press and ALL the commentators said nukes, and they never, ever came out and said Chemical weapons until they didn’t find the nukes.

        He’d had chemical weapons for years that was known and no one really cared. They could t convince anyone to go to war for chemical weapons. Remember, they leaked that they had reports that he had nukes and we went to war over those reports. . I assumed that some US, British or Aussie special forces badass had confirmed them or that Israel had, or …. something. What it actually was was hearsay reports from a rather dodgy political opponent of Sadaam, which turned out to be false.

        This isn’t a slur on the people who fought there. One can honor the soldier without honoring the war. It’s also not Bush lied and people died. I don’t think Bush lied, I think he was weak and stupid, I’d almost rather he’d lied. I do think that an awful lot of people In DC were dreaming imperial dreams.

        I’ll never forget having the realization that they were all incompetent. I should have known better, but that’s growing up for you.

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        1. Formally, the peace was contingent on him proving some lack of capabilities, as I understood it.

          The context comes down to whether the federal government can so terrorize the American people, that the American people will tolerate being treated by foreigners they way that they would not tolerate being treated by the indians.

          In absence of federal tyranny sufficient to change the American culture, Americans are going to expect the feds to work to change the behavior of or eliminate any foreign population that behaves towards Americans the way that the indians did.

          American oral history reflects an extremely fortunate set of circumstances wrt to security. Old World is planted pretty thickly with people, even now. We cannot have the degree of advantage versus the foreign devils we neighbor now that we did over the Great Plains Indians, etc. Putting the other nations/continents into reservations is not anywhere near as practical an option.

          Foreign oral histories mostly do not prepare them for being neighbors with Americans. They may include successes of past imperial activities, but they are not grokking the deal that Americans think is in place.

          So, Bin Laden calculated his strong horse stuff, and acted.

          Americans were pissed, and were going through the early stages of that same trajectory traveled with the indians, and with the Empire of Japan.

          In hindsight, Bush did not care about the security of the American people. The hypothesis that he did is falsified by his betrayal of them, via his proxy Laura, on the Mexico situation and more directly with the security concerns caused by Democrat actions.

          He did care that Americans were demanding to have their security concerns addressed.

          Security concerns in part driven by the fact of other cultures than American existing, and by the effective decrease in distance caused by faster travel.

          Bush had a calculus to do in terms of convincing the American people that their concerns were addressed, regardless of whether they were.

          Security is adequately covered by domestic focusing federal security apparatus. This obviously was not so, and arguing that it was purely sabotage by Democrats ran the risk that the Americans would then require no more Democrat presidents.
          Security could be adequately provided in cooperation with friendly non-tyrannical regimes. Issue, non-friendly tyrannical regimes are clearly sufficient, and outside of the focus of domestic security organization in USA and our ‘allies’.
          Foreign focusing security organizations would be adequate, even if hostile governments are throwing efforts into thwarting. This runs into explaining 9/11 without Democrat sabotage.
          Security can be providing by changing some foreign govenrments, and coercing others.

          Bush picked #4 as what he was going to try to sell to the American people.

          Even if chemical weapons are relatively useless, NBCs is still a relevant category to take special actions about, without it necessarily involving nukes. The artificial hypothesis for Wuhan is basically an example of whether we can practically coexist with certain alien cultures and hostile regimes, with widespread biotech/techniques for biological weapons. And, chemical weapons proved much more effective than previously understood after the war. The Syrians (IIRC) engineered an actually decent method of distributing them. We do not know about the unrealized potential with these weapons systems, that could be realized if evil men are given the governmental funding and support to work on further development. The drum of chemicals on a drone was a cheap method, that was way out of consideration by previous US DoD programs. Partly because we gave up on chemicals before the drone tech was available, and partly because a lot of our weapons development funding is more about relatively sane and ethical doctrine. We definitely haven’t fully explored the design space, and we definitely could not sell Americans on trusting the good will and integrity of foreign governments.

          Bush basically had a choice of addressing the security concerns of the American people by mass murder over seas, or by domestically pursuing a final solution to the Democrat problem. He picked a third way, of going through the motions of intimidating and coercing foreign governments. Iraq was the logical next part of that.

          Then he let the Democrats cheat their way back into power again, and the Democrats screwed that mess up entirely.

          So now we are at the point where all of our foreign policy concerns reduce to ‘but first we kill the Democrats’. It does not really matter what foreign populations exist, what their cultures are like, and what technologies they have, because the Democrat influence on American politics is a more pressing danger to the American population, and a serious obstacle to implementing any sort of sane and sensible security policy or foreign policy.

          We are too upset over the lockdown, etc., to calm down and understand what a sane and sensibel foreign policy would even be.

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          1. They never could have convinced the public to support a war in Iraq without nukes. Hence the lie, by omission perhaps, but still a lie.

            Like

        2. Attempts to research nukes, yes. But I never read the WMD claims to mean actual nukes on hand (which would have required a test detonation of one in any case; you have to detonate one to confirm that your scientists actually figured it out). I remember a great deal of talk about secret chemical and biological weapons labs, and the nukes were secondary to that because the former were believed to actually exist (and some evidence was found of that) while the latter was something that the Iraqis might be working on.

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          1. Let’s see. A known sociopath says he is going to nuke everybody, and has already wantonly used terrible chemical weapons on his own people. He routinely tortures people seemingly at random. Is there some reason we should NOT take his word that he has these weapons and intends to use them? What’s the old saw about what to do with a rabid dog?

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Yep.

              He wanted us to believe that he was insanely dangerous so why shouldn’t we take him seriously?

              Like

          2. Thank you Junior.

            I had written out a longer (lot longer) reply to BGE stating the same, but not posting (deleted it). Because I knew it was not succinct enough. Granted my circle isn’t very big (way bigger back then between work, scouts, and kid’s classmates and sports parents), but I can’t think of anyone who believe the war was about WMD = Nukes. Even some of the standard supposedly “I’m smart” with their heads currently deeply buried in the sand (same ones who believe the reports of “nothing was found”).

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            1. I’m sorry, I must be the wrong sort of nerd because WMD = Nukes, not chemical, possibly biological. We were told he had WMD. Otherwise, why exactly did we go in and destroy the place?. Without nukes or WMD or whatever he was no threat to anyone but his own and we managed to get an awful lot of them killed too. I remember “watching the war” on Fox and all they talked about was WMD. Including the generals.

              Then again, I’m from NYC and our heads were firmly buried in the sand to keep away the stench of the smoke from WTC. Afghanistan, sure, that’s where Bin Ladin was. Iraq?

              No. Bush was a fool and an idiot and his advisors were evil men trying to rebuild the world in their image. the only difference between them and the current bunch trying to rebuild the world in their image is who and whom.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. “I’m sorry, I must be the wrong sort of nerd because WMD = Nukes,”

                There were a number of studies done during the Cold War, because the Russians were expected to use chemical weapons instead of nukes. Part of the reason was to take advantage of your thinking.

                What they found out was that a typical tac nuke exchange of 50 weapons would cause less long term damage and be easier to recover from than a chemical attack. Persistent agents linger everywhere for weeks, especially on areas shielded from rain and sunlight, as the vapor clouds drift.

                Just for starters, they poison the soil micro-organisms required for agriculture, like nitrogen fixing bacteria.

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                1. There are places still tainted by WWI until they are unfit for human life from chemicals.

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              2. You have your view of what happened. I have mine. Just don’t happen to agree on this. Also glad I’m not the only one, in this forum.

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              3. I’m sorry, I must be the wrong sort of nerd because WMD = Nukes, not chemical, possibly biological.

                …Did you sleep through the part where Saddam gassed the Marsh Arabs?

                That was a WMD attack.

                If YOU chose to listen to, and believe, the Democrats after the fact– when they were trying to pretend that no really WMD means a working nuke– that’s on you.

                The actual paperwork, which was really not secret at all at the time, made it VERY VERY CLEAR that the chem weapons Saddam was supposed to allow people to inspect, and then didn’t let them, and that were not where they were supposed to be, were WMDs.

                We have folks who managed to survive some of those WMDs that were turned into IEDs.

                Like

                2. This. Chemical weapons are nasty stuff…and any nation with a reasonably modern chemical industry can make them in quantity.

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              4. WMD = NBC triad. That’s Nuclear/Biological/Chemical

                This is well-known, and it doesn’t take much digging to turn it up. Further, since the US doesn’t (officially, afaak) maintain stocks of chemical or biological weapons (for VERY good reasons because the things are much less controllable once unleashed than a nuke is), the official US policy is that anyone who uses biological or chemical weapons against us is treated as if they used nuclear weapons against us.

                I’ve never heard anyone complain about not finding “nukes” in Iraq. It’s always complaints about not finding “WMDs” (we actually did, though…). And that suggests to me that individuals with your view of it are in a very small minority.

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          3. At one point, Iraq was believed to have a breakout capability for nukes (anyone remember Osiriak? Tel Aviv remembers), and there was some indication that Saddam was putting the effort into enriching the necessary uranium again. Remember Valerie Plame, and her hubby who blew off doing the actual looking into whether Saddam was importing uranium from Nigeria? Who knew if it was real, or smoke and mirrors? And who wanted to wait and find out, especially when we had an actual casus belli in Saddam’s Gulf War cease-fire violations?

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      2. IIRC we suspected that he was attempting to get Nukes and yes we knew that he had & used chemical weapons.

        There were a few big problems.

        First, Saddam Hussein was playing games with the inspectors. Hiding stuff in different places while delaying inspections, and so forth.

        Second, the News Media were stupid (possibly deliberately) and pushing the “President said Saddam Hussein had nukes but where are the Nukes?” line.

        Third, too many of our European “allies” (especially France) wanted Saddam’s oil more than they wanted Saddam Hussein to live up to the agreement.

        Mind you, at the time I thought the News Media was more stupid than evil but based on the recent garbage, I’m thinking that they are both evil and stupid.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I don’t think the news media actually exists as an independent entity. They are creatures of the power and do exactly what they’re told to do. Barking seals, They’re actually rather pitiable. Not that I pity them, I loath and despise them. Wormtongue’s the lot of them.

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  35. Hope both patient and caregiver are doing well. Sending prayers.

    Probably should add a couple for our nation as well although I am afraid it’s too late.

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    3. Prayers are never wasted. They may require more of you than you think you can give, as Himself is oft want to use mortal hands to effect what needs doing. But prayers, let me say again, are not ever a waste of your time and effort.

      Himself answers prayers. I make none for myself anymore. But for others? For our great nation, filled with such hope, so many good folks, and so much unlooked for grace, charity, and opportunity?

      There are far, far more foolish things to say a prayer for.

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  36. I fear we are heading for an explosion, and when it occurs, we on the side of the Constitution must prevail at all costs and by any means necessary, otherwise freedom is dead in the USA. Rest assured our opposition will take the same stance. Major PITA.

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  37. I fear we are heading for an explosion, and when it occurs, we on the side of the Constitution must prevail at all costs and by any means necessary, otherwise freedom is dead in the USA. Rest assured our opposition will take the same stance. Major PITA.

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  38. Anyone who thinks “nation building” is done by the US Armed Forces is a frakkin idiot.

    Our armed forces destroy nations. They kill people. They break their stuff. Once the enemy surrender and beg for peace, we might show magnanimity and send the Peace Corps hippies to build things.

    -Maybe- if they ask real nice.

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    2. “Our armed forces destroy nations. They kill people. They break their stuff..”

      The first step in any kind of building is always demolition and leveling the site.

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  39. Not owning the seventh grandchild is to scotch Irish culture the very worst thing, there are a multitude of crimes that might be understandable in some circumstances, or can be explained by stupidity, or loyalty to something or someone else, but to not acknowledge a grandchild is terrible, speaking of a lack of loyalty to those most precious. Many parents mess up with their children then try to do better with the grandchildren.

    For some reason I thought about this post a lot today.

    Liked by 1 person

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