Through The Perilous Night

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

A couple of nights ago, I got in a weird confluence of ideas.

I have found out recently that when my phone got spoofed, and my email hacked, back in April of 2021, it was part of an effort that involved a lot of people on our side getting that happening to them at the same time. The email was then used to send insulting emails to those people they thought were monetary supporters. At the same time, the emails were rifled for “incriminating” messages, used to bring legal charges against these people, or to discredit them with the community at large.

It did a number on my mind for various reasons. Note I’m not saying who was behind the hacking because I don’t know. But the fact that legal charges were brought in some cases makes you think… well, you know, the Stasi is real even though it goes under other names.

For the record, the attempted hack was curtailed earlier (and there are now measures in place), by pure luck. I happened to be up really late for me, through being too tired to go to bed. (It’s a thing.)

Also for the record, the shenanigans attempted didn’t land, because their ideas of who I am appear to be pure leftist projection. While I have monetary backers — Hi, y’all — for this blog, they’re not political monetary backers, and they don’t send me emails encouraging messages or slants. In other words, there is no journolist on the right, and there is no equivalent of Soros directing our efforts.

Most of what my email contains are actual personal things. Messages from friends and family. Kids and cats pictures. The occasional editor email, though now that I’m not doing comics, not even that. Links to blogs that hope I’ll link them, or links a friend found interesting. Discussions of how a book did with a friend.

So most of the insulting, (highly racist slurs, btw) emails were sent to friends telling me how much their book had made, and one to my comics editor. None of them “landed” because the reaction were immediate texts saying “Sarah, you’ve been hacked.” First, because I don’t use that language, and second because the messages made no sense since these weren’t political backers but friends. (Even the comics editor became that.) And because it was curtailed early, there was no time for fake emails advising violence, or fake posts on facebook to be made.

It didn’t worry me so much for their doing it again. The emails through which things like FB are secured now are not that one, but far less public (and one outright secret) one, and there have been measures put in place to prevent phone jacking. Not that the phone jacking would get them much. Most of my logins now require dongle.

However, under the “bothersome” the attempts at breaking into my email are now up to several times an hour — and yes, it is that particular email. The one for the book promo is better disseminated but no one tries to break into it. And my other emails with various degrees of being out in the open, but not used with my political blogger friends, are not bothered at all. Usually I get one or two brute force hacking attempts a day, but now it’s up to several times an hour. (I need to remember to send the screen shots of that to my internet security friend. ADD is a harsh mistress.)

The other thing I found out at the same time, through incidental comments in a chat, is that the next attempt was to tap into people’s internet to capture the stream. Doing that on ours is bizarre, but yes, we do have proof that was actually done to us just before we left Colorado. The only reply to that is “Dudes, wait and get it when I post it on the blog or publish it.” Because there is nothing, literally, in either my email or my internet signal that couldn’t be made public tomorrow because most of it is. Oh, some of my correspondents would hate to have their emails made public because they are in the political closet, but they’re not political operators. They’re professors or scientists or members of the Armed Forces (not high up.) Knowing they associate with me at all might bring questions, but then again most of them use pseudonyms, and the emails themselves are blameless. “Hey, have you read this?” and “Look at the cute face my cat made” comprise 99% of it, the rest being maybe more personal and less political than that.

However, the fact that so much effort was made made me queasy. Particularly because I know some of the other people to whom this was done, and they’re much bigger. My claim to “bigness” is posting over at instapundit, (which is yuge) but other than that, I’m medium-small and I’m just a science fiction writer with a nasty politics problem. Ce ci n’est pas mon metier.

Of course, you can count on my fans to make my psychological spin worse. When I posted this confusion of feelings on a chat with a bunch of you, one reminded me of an almost forgotten “story. ” What I Saw At The Coup.” I’d read it at Free Republic way back. (Under my now long dead nom de blog, I was a Freeper way back, and remember the heady days of the Memo.) And told me that being a nexus of “I know someone” I would almost certainly have been one of the two thousand who disappeared in the first wave.

The story, when it came out seemed completely unlikely to me. I went and found it and re-read it. And holy d*mn. Suddenly things lined up. Without the super-brazen first act, it’s like they’re trying to run the scheme in the story. Their Jan 6th false flag was their attempt at capturing the 2000. And guys, I remember the months leading up to it and most of the comments of one-shotters coming through telling me I had to be there, and they’d pay my way weren’t even ever approved. But there were a lot, and some I approved. And the main reason I didn’t go? I didn’t see a point in it. I didn’t think anything could be done that late. The color revolution had to be fought earlier or not at all. The other reason honestly is that I despise traveling. It’s an enormous effort, a disruption of my life, and I’d rather not at all. And I had my fill of big, uncontrollable demonstrations long before I became an American. Being shot at twice and menaced once is enough for a lifetime, thank you. But a trap never occurred to me.

And then, if you read that story you’ll find the next attempt was disrupting and playing hob with people’s internet access (which also happened to us, beyond the spying on.)

To an extent it’s almost like they read the story, but thought that they could run this without getting retribution, if only they were sneakier.

Well, they gave me the final push to leave Colorado — for which I thank them, given that my health would have been better if I’d moved six or seven years ago and was in a state of complete collapse by the time I moved, but I might not have without that final heave-ho — and a very unpleasant night fixing all my accounts.

However, none of it is working, or not very well. Partly because one wonders at their targeting, but mostly because they are leftists and think like leftists. Their model of the world is broken. They can’t imagine that any of us are doing what we’re doing because we love America and the ideals of individual liberty, and not because — as on their side — it’s a scheme for being paid or for increased power. So the attacks they try only land in a very few instances.

It’s like their starting #metoo to “get Trump” (which it obviously was) and instead snagging a lot of leftist males. (Though it does make me wonder what they thought they knew about Babbit and Boyland. Doesn’t it you? Not to mention that retired carpenter in Utah. I think they’re jumping at shadows and there is no pattern. They only think there is.)

Yeah, the fact that they’re trying this, and view me as an obstacle to their crazy-cakes grabs for power is disquieting. But not new. Head-tiltingly-confusing because I’m not that big, but then again, they have no truck with reality.

In the same way, and bizarrely, their attempt at starting world war III to cover up destroying internal opposition is not working. Russia proved to be a paper mouse, and despite the left tying Trump to Russia in their own minds, this has failed with most of the right. (Though a vast number of bots in comments of other blogs would have you think otherwise.) While we might be exasperated at the money ostensibly flowing to Ukraine (most of it getting sucked into corruption on the way there) none of us thinks Russia is either blameless or a place to support. And so their hopes of suppressing us under “war powers” and accusing us of supporting the enemy have been dashed.

Mind you, they’re still giving a lot of money to Iran, and trying to let in as many potential terrorists as possible, so they’re not done, but I expect that too will go sour on them, because they’re not working from reality.

Which brings me to the second thing that made me think and worry.

Someone on American Greatness not only agree with me, but trace it to exactly the inflection point:

Since 1933 and the rise to prominence of FDR, America has been an occupied country, governed by a ruling class that hates the nation’s older way of life and wants to see America on the side of the global revolutionary Left. This is why FDR’s administration was filled with communists and the American government gave $300 billion to the USSR in its existential war of survival against the fascists. America did not remain neutral in that conflict because the American ruling class was explicitly on the side of the communists.

I mean, he’s not wrong insofar as our country being in the grip of communist sympathizers from way back, but he’s wrong about a few things:

First, this started under Wilson, which paved the way to FDR. Second, well, being on the side of the Nazis wouldn’t have improved anything. Frankly, they were as disgusting an evil. And staying out of the war might not have been possible. Plus I’m not sure we’d like the world if we had. Then again it might have looked much like the EU anyway. On still the third hand, I might have grown up speaking German, an idea that makes the blood run cold. Or I might have ended up exterminated because of my ancestry. So, I’m grateful America fought the Nazis. I’m not grateful America supported the USSR. For the record my favorite solution would be for us to defeat the Nazis and then defeat the USSR. As we now know, they really had nothing.

And the thing is not only did we aid the USSR in war, but we continued aiding it. There was humanitarian aid. There was, more importantly, turning a blind eye while Russia swallowed and despoiled half of Africa and South America. It was when that help was removed and pressured added by Reagan that it collapsed. But it was barely surviving before. Communist countries can’t survive without aid. Or without raiding other more productive societies for stuff to feed their masses. And if you consider the relatively small USSR population, and the level of life they managed (below lowest US level) while sucking half the world dry of goods and people and resources, it will be patently clear the US could not go full Communist and survive for more than a few months. No one can even feed us.

He’s also right absolutely that all of our upper echelons of everything, even those that are supposed to be on the side of the right and the good are corrupt and if not explicitly communist are implicitly so: this is true of everything from grocery chains to churches and yes, the army too.

This was accomplished by corrupting the universities way back in the early 20th century. Communists were seen as not just the wave of the future, but also “just” and “fair” and wanting the best for others. What it meant in practical terms is that universities which run on virtue signaling and are ever willing to embrace of virtue that requires no sacrifice went into it with both feet. Being a commie became “just smart”. There was a brief period of confusion, because the USSR fell. For about a blink they didn’t know what to do or why. And then they realized their networks were still in place and they could do what they’d always done.

BTW more or less the same happened in Russia, only it couldn’t get its vassals back without active US help. It’s been trying to ever since. They want the USSR back. And if you say “Oh, but they’re nationalists” I’ll tell you they always were. The “international” in socialism was a ruse. It was always Russian Nationalism Everywhere. Just every other country was supposed to bow to Russia. Seriously, if you were in one of the countries it was doing its best to swallow this was painfully — literally — obvious. Russia swallowed communism as a vehicle for its expansion. The idiot US commies swallowed communism as “Russia is our model.” Bah.

Anyway, after the collapse of the USSR they scrambled back to their normal positions, and their normal fight to destroy the US which they view as the only obstacle to world communism.

My generation, heck, my parents’ generation, my kids generation, and what would be my grandkids — if we’d spawned at a normal time, and our kids too — have now been indoctrinated in communism.

They brought all they had to bear. Their recruited all their cardres for all the prominent positions from those who got the highest marks from their political officers, not to the best or brightest. Oh, they might think they’re that too, since they confuse “compliant” with “smart.”

What have they accomplished?

Not much.

No, wait, seriously, not much. They have corrupted education, science, entertainment, the arts, and commerce. The management of all the corporations is insane, and while thinking they’re making things “just right” or “healing past wrongs”or whatever, what they’re doing is running their own vehicles of power into the ground. The leftists in government are either old, crazy or unbelievably, jaw-droppingly dumb. Or all three, of course. Most of us who are religious roll our eyes at the heads of our churches, and pray for their conversion to the denominations they technically head.

Most of us were leftist, or at least wobbly coming out of college, particularly those of us who had it inflicted in extra-long mode, in the form of graduate school. But most of us — a good 3/4 of them by gut feel and how hard the left has to fraud — got better. We dropped the stupidity, and started believing our lying eyes.

The fact that as tied up in fraud as we were we managed to defeat their hand-picked inheritor to Obama, Hilary Clinton, is a sign of how few inroads they’ve really made.

The fact that they needed to lock us up, scare us, use massive fraud and then at last fraud in front of G-d and everyone in 2020 means that all their “hold on society” is illusory.

And the grand way in which their schemes bite them in the *ss is even better. After all the lock ups, what have they achieved, but destroying the cities that are the center of their power (and their investment), losing a lot of kids to homeschooling, sending a lot of women home to mind their own kids, lowering college enrollment, and generally shooting themselves in the foot, with a really big gun.

This is because even relatively smart people, if they are communists, if they — this late in the day — buy the ideology hook line and sinker, they have to have such defects in their thinking that they can’t perceive reality or other people as they really are, and must see them through the received shibboleths of Marxism.

By definition, this means that they will neither see the unwanted results of their actions, and that their actions will have results they can’t even possibly guess at.

My friend Bill Reader (on whom I need to check. It’s been a few months) is fond of saying we’re doing all right for an occupied nation.

He’s not wrong, but we’re doing more than all right.

They’ve thrown everything they can at us for near on 100 years, and we’re still unbowed, unconvinced, unbeaten. And we’re finally fighting back. Oh, not kinetically, but in a million ways.

We’re making it clear we will not obey, we will not shut up, we will not go quietly into the not so good night they wish on us.

We are not broken. We are not beaten. And they’re losing more real ground by the day.

Sure, it’s going to get nastier. The result of their breaking our economy and institutions and our very physical borders is that things will break down. And some of those things we actually need.

There is something very bad headed our way. A lot of us feel it. And as my grandmother would say, it’s plain enough we’ll have to eat the bread the devil kneaded, for a while at least.

Be not afraid. Keep fighting. Those who seed despondency are enemy agents or have fallen under the sway of enemy agents.

Though the bombs and rockets keep exploding, and its’ dark and scary and loud out, though many of us are walking wounded and on our last shred of hope, every peek over the ramparts shows our flag is still there.

And will continue to be. It is just our turn to hold it up high and make sure that future generations can see it wave as they come out into the light of dawn.

233 thoughts on “Through The Perilous Night”

  2. They target you because your very existence repudiates their bullcrap. That you are an -effective- advocate for Liberty, female and melaninish, self-made success, simply dials their hate to 11.

    You go girl!

    You are not alone.

    You would not go alone.

  5. You are so right. I’ve a number of friends who formerly lived under Communism. They are so anti-socialist it’s sometimes cringe worthy. From the original STASI bastion and from Ungarn. Don’t even think of asking them to just go along to get along. After I’ve visited with them, the air seems a little fresher, a little cleaner.

  6. They really don’t care how much pain they cause, or how many people die. It’s not THEIR people, after all. Anyone outside their tribe isn’t human. Livestock, at best.

    2. They are also, though they (and sometimes many of us) don’t realize it, pretty badly outnumbered. Just because our side of things isn’t big on rioting and setting things on fire at the least provocation doesn’t mean we’re on their side. But they don’t seem to grasp that. After all, in their world, “silence is agreement” (though usually they’re trying to apply it to many of the various ‘isms’)

        1. I have four little hands
          Folded snuggly and tight
          My wings aren’t grown in
          But my fangs work just right.

          During all the long hours
          Till night-time is through
          You’ll never see me
          Till I come after you.

          Guess the tune! 😄 My sister freaked out when I taught this to her kids.

      3. “in their world, ‘silence is agreement'”.

        That is a thought that haunts me a lot. A few days ago I visited a blog called Wirepoints that is mainly devoted to all things wrong with the state of Illinois. There are commenters there who insist that ANYONE who continues to live in this state — regardless of the reason — is, ipso facto, endorsing the far-left policies of its government and “deserves what they get” in terms of crime, economic misery, etc. So by the mere fact that I didn’t pack up and move out yesterday –regardless of how I have voted all my adult life — I am endorsing, and am morally culpable for and deserve to be punished for, unlimited abortion, transing kids, allowing kids to check out porn in schools, confiscating guns, letting criminals run loose in the streets, etc. etc.

        Sometimes I find myself believing that and hating myself for every choice I ever made in my life that has backed me into this corner where I cannot practically move elsewhere. However, there is another commenter at that site who points out that all the “you have no choice but to move and if you don’t you deserve what you get” comments serve no purpose but to demoralize the opposition and are very likely coming from people with an interest in quashing said opposition. Perhaps they are the modern culture war equivalent of the WWII propagandists like Axis Sally and Lord Haw Haw, whose goal was to persuade the Allies that they were losing and the fight wasn’t worth it. I wonder also if people who visit conservative blogs and post comments along the lines of “the Republicans are just as bad as the Democrats and there’s no use in voting because it’s all rigged”, or “we have no choice but to head for the hills and start arming up and shooting your neighbors” aren’t doing the same thing.

        1. Yeah, those people who spout that crap–if you don’t leave the Bad State RIGHT NOW THIS INSTANT, you are supporting the left–are just about as out of touch with reality as the lefites. Most of us can’t afford to pack up and move instantly, or even anytime soon–not only is the money thing an issue, but there are family, health, and other considerations that likely prevent it. If you’ve got kids still at home, for example. Or, like 80% or more of Americans, you’re stuck living paycheck to paycheck and can often manage only a little bit of savings (if at all, and which are inevitably drained at the next flat tire/emergency health issue/house repair need) moving overnight for anything other than “your life is in danger right this instant” is pretty much impossible.

          1. At the same time, you are objectively supporting the state financially. Under duress of course, but if the decent and normal people who keep the lights on and businesses running left, that shithole would collapse within a year and we could rebuild it into a real American state. Communist places like Illinois only survive as long as they do by sucking off other people’s lifework like vampires, by staying and giving them tax dollars to feed on it is a form of support and extending the suffering and decay. The USSR only lasted as long as they did because America fed them, and Illinois is only still here because people keep feeding it money. If you can’t afford to leave, that’s just how it is and I feel terrible for you, but if you can flee anywhere else you absolutely should.

          2. Oh, yeah, we were lucky that one son had moved and the other one could move with us and was willing. Otherwise we’d be there.
            When we visited, we visited friends who will never move, because their grandkids are there, and son in law is a doctor, so he can’t really move.

            1. “son in law is a doctor, so he can’t really move.”

              I’d have thought that doctor would be one of the more mobile professions.

              1. It’s complicated. They’re held slaves by a mountain of debt, and if they’re paying back by working for a “rural” area (Why is Colorado Springs a rural area for these purposes? Ah, good question. No one knows) for ten years, they can’t move.

          3. “if you don’t leave the Bad State RIGHT NOW THIS INSTANT, you are supporting the left”

            It’s a two-fer if the same people then start complaining about how the damn out-of-state locusts are driving up local real-estate prices and making everything to expensive for the locals.

            1. Oh yeah, I also see comments claiming that no one from ANY blue state should EVER be allowed to move to a red state because if they haven’t already left they’re just RINOs or commies in disguise and can’t be trusted. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

              1. Like I said: that ilk is about as far out of touch with reality as their lefty counterparts. (And HOW, precisely, do they think they’re gonna prevent people from moving–or not moving–wherever they like…? See also: closing the state borders during COVID. Ain’t happening! Yes, I hate it when lefties infect an area with the same disease they just fled from, but…they’re as free to move around as I am. Thankfully, where I live right now, the weather sucks so badly very few of them want to come here. And the ones that do often try to pet the Yeet Cows (buffalo))

                1. Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about:. This is concerning the state’s awarding of tax credits and other incentives for a battery plant that has strong connections to the Chinese Communist Party:

                  https://wirepoints.org/demand-answers-from-illinois-officials-on-gotions-links-to-chinese-communist-party-and-its-grossly-over-subsidized-manteno-project-wirepoints/#respond

                  “How can a moral person continue to live in Illinois? Answer: they can’t…. Remaining in Illinois because you benefit financially is like selling your soul to the devil.” But because you didn’t leave sooner, you see, you’re a loser or stupid at best, and an evil person at worst, and not worthy of welcome in any red state.

                  Yes, I know intellectually that these people are out of touch with reality and probably just wanting to preen about how smart and virtuous they were to have moved years ago. But I still can’t help but wonder whether they’re right.

                  1. Let me put it into perspective for you by flipping the script:

                    ” has passed a law that says children under the age of 18 may not be given hormone treatments or gender reassignment surgery! How can a moral person continue to live in ?!? Answer: they can’t! Because to do so means they are contributing to violence against the transgender community!”

                    It is the EXACT same crap as the lefties spout. Same authoritarian garbage, just coming ’round from the other direction. Telling people they are stupid and evil and bad if they don’t fight that fight exactly how YOU (“you” as in people who write articles like the one you cited) think they should is no different than a rainbow-haired soyboi telling people who refuse to agree that abortion up to or past the point of birth is a fine and shiny idea, or who disagree that children should be sterilized and mutilated that they hate women, or hate LBTQ people, or are supporting white supremacy and so on and so forth, ad eternum ad nauseum.

                    So any time you hear someone ostensibly on “our” side of things spewing that sewage I recommend mentally substituting whatever they are freaking out about with whatever cause du jour the left is throwing a tantrum about–it will be easier to see it for what it really is: just more Alinksy crap from people who claim to be conservative/right-leaning but who, like too many of those on the left, are really after the power to control the “little people’s” lives. They don’t get to tell you you are bad and wrong for not doing what they want you to do. THAT is what is evil and morally wrong. You have free will. You can live where you like, and think how you like, and do what you like. Sure, there may be consequences you don’t like (police raid your house because the school board didn’t like what you said to them), the state you live in may be rushing headlong into leftist “utopia” hell–but if it’s a place you love or where people you love live and you don’t want to leave (setting aside even the “can’t leave” reasons) YOU DON’T HAVE TO AND THEY DON’T GET TO TELL YOU THAT YOU ARE EVIL FOR CHOOSING NOT TO. THEY are not the boss of you. No one is the boss of you except you and (if you are a believer) God.

                    ahem /end rant 😀

                    2. Hey, they call me a traitor or stupid because I think we should vote. As if not voting would do anything but solidify the left’s narrative.
                      As is, we can make them forge 600k votes for comrade numbnuts. And then it will be obvious

                    2. But the problem with a “target rich environment” is that NOT quite everything in that environment is truly a (deserving) target. Target discrimination is a Good Thing: Only hit that which requires being hit.

                    3. Which is why the Left substituted skin color for class. In Europe, Marx could tell class by clothing, not so much here.

                    5. Well, and we’ve got our share (small, though, I think) of authoritarians pretending they’re Odds Like Us. However, I don’t think they’re aware of how badly they’re starting to stick out…

        3. “there’s no use in voting because it’s all rigged”

          So you believe Biden got 81 million votes in 2020?

          As some of us have been pointing out for quite a while, our elections are a fraud riddled mess. 2020 ripped off the covers and made it obvious.

          Once you admit that, you as a voter have exactly 3 legal choices:
          1. Pack up and leave.
          2. Try a lawsuit to un-rig the system. Of course, even if you win there’s no guarantee that the decision will be obeyed at the next election since the corrupt overseers will still be in the picture, and fraud by mail all but guarantees ballot box stuffing etc.
          3. Stay and accept it.

          Pick one.

          1. “So you believe Biden got 81 million votes”

            NO! Absolutely NOT! Though I think he COULD have gotten 75 million or so votes from people who were convinced that Trump was the instigator of all the turmoil of the previous 4 years and that Biden would restore “normalcy”. But I digress.

            Nor am I denying that vote fraud exists or denying that it was a factor in the 2020 outcome. What I am saying is that the notion that there is NO USE voting at all, or that the Republicans are “just as bad” as the Democrats or that we should never vote for a “lesser evil” candidate, does nothing except play right into the hands of the far left and allow them to win without a fight.

              1. “Most people knew Trump had done well”

                If they were conservative political junkies who sought out alternative news sources and didn’t rely on the MSM, social media and word of mouth, that is. Unfortunately, many, probably most, people don’t fit that description. If you DID rely on the MSM and social media to form your political opinions it would have been very easy to believe, in 2020, that Trump started all the trouble and that Biden couldn’t possibly be any worse. That said, the “Biden couldn’t be any worse” argument probably won’t fly this time around.

                  1. I wouldn’t take Trump’s 2020 vote totals at face value, any more than Biden’s. Universal mail voting with no safeguards made ballot harvesting and other frauds too easy for me to believe only Democrats did it.

                    2. Yeah. it wasn’t Trump. This is fargin stupid.
                      It’s easy to see who cheats: they oppose cleaning voter roles, love them machines from venezuela and generally act like the thieves they are.
                      The country isn’t evenly divided. Judging from the 2020 campaign, there’s 90% on the right and 10% cheating a lot on the left.
                      Look, it’s the only thing that explains running a vegetable in a potemkin campaign.

                    4. I wouldn’t take Trump’s 2020 vote totals at face value

                      –
                      Well, no, but not the way you mean. One insidious aspect of the 2020 election fraud was flipping Trump votes to Biden votes. They even screwed up and showed it happening election night, live on CNN. Trump’s vote total dropped by something like 37,000 votes and Biden’s increased by the exact same number at the same time.

                      If the Demokrats don’t have anything to hide, WHY are they so desperate to hide it?

                    7. ^ This. You never see a race where the Dem is in the lead and somehow miraculously overnight the Republican candidate overtakes that lead and wins by the next morning.

                      Do NOT buy into the “Well, the other side does it too!” lie. Because no. They aren’t. If some Republican “activists” out there tried ballot stuffing or anything else, you’d know about it, it would be screamed to the skies by all the media and Dems. (Case in point: Lauren Boebert. If she had been a democrat, her acting like a twit in a theater would have either been ignored entirely, or brushed off as “look at the mean Republicans pouncing”–which is precisely what they are doing with the Dem candidate WHO PERFORMED LIVE SEX ACTS ON THE INTERNET FOR MONEY and is throwing a temper tantrum because her opponent pointed it out as maybe not a great look. Because how absolute DARE the Republicans violate her privacy (?!) and denigrate her for being a (checks notes) woman.

                      So yeah. Our side doesn’t do it. Couldn’t do it, even in the unlikely event they wanted to.

                      (Also note: historically, the infamous political machines? I can’t think of a single one that wasn’t Democrat. It’s not their opponents who want to rig the votes.)

                    13. Yeah. And it’s sad, and cynical, but I can’t help but think the only reason that NJ Democrat senator is being indicted on corruption charges is so they can go “See? No two-tiered justice system! No stop looking at the White House and move along!”

                    15. I do like that Merrick got asked why that dude only got a misdemeanor, while grannies who just walked through the capitol are getting hard time…

                      Of course, for all these congressional investigations, nothing ever seems to happen to the weasels…

                    17. I know, but given how much has come out in the last 6-8 years and how STILL nothing has been done….I’m losing hope on that front. (Not elsewhere, just that front. Until the so-called Republican congresscritters ACTUALLY get it to the point of removing these guys, hope is faint. And clearly, we need a better way to bring criminal charges against the DOJ/FBI/Whatever without it being “we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong”)

                    18. I know, but given how much has come out in the last 6-8 years and how STILL nothing has been done….I’m losing hope on that front. (Not elsewhere, just that front. Until the so-called Republican congresscritters ACTUALLY get it to the point of removing these guys, hope is faint. And clearly, we need a better way to bring criminal charges against the DOJ/FBI/Whatever without it being “we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong”)

                    22. Further than that, I’ll guarantee it. (Like I said above, I can’t think of a single historically notorious political machine that wasn’t Democrat…)

                    23. OK, let me be clear. I’m NOT saying that the Republicans cheated nearly as much as the Democrats. I’m as suspicious as any of you about the late night vote drops and last minute turnarounds. But the mail-ins made cheating so much easier than it’s ever been that even Republicans could do some of it without being caught.

                      It’s hard for me to believe that Trump legitimately got 11 million MORE votes in 2020 than in 2016. I know a lot of people who voted for Clinton, and not one of them was even close to changing their mind about Trump four years later. Between the relentless media attacks, Trump Derangement Syndrome on the left, and Trump Disappointment Syndrome on the right, I thought he’d get fewer votes the second time around.

                    24. I know folks who voted for Clinton the first time, and Trump the second.

                      Are your Clinton voters in an area where they could publicly state they’d changed and not get attacked?

                    26. Yeah, there’s some cases that got trotted out to “prove” that “both sides” did it… it was local races.

                      Yeah, THAT really equals at all….

                    27. And at least one here in TX disappeared fast because the “Republican” vote volunteer turned out to be volunteering for two other Democrat campaigns too.

                    29. Not for me. A LOT of the people who didn’t vote for him in 16 because unknown quantity came out in 2020. And didn’t change party affiliation. (A lot had changed to vote in democrat primaries, thinking they were the only ones that mattered.)
                      Also, beware our completely corrupt voter rolls.

              2. That’s helpful! FOIA is a pain in the butt. Though I do have to say in very, VERY minor defense–as someone who works in fedgov–part of the headaches with FOIA is that while there IS more than a fair amount of red tape and malicious intent where the higher levels are involved…the folks who get the unhappy job of wading through badly-kept files looking for the info aren’t being malicious, they just hate doing it (being shorthanded, overworked, underpaid–we ain’t here for the paycheck, it’s really just for the medical insurance and the fact that it pays a little better than retail–but still expected to put out the same amount of work as when we were full staffed.) But it’s not about hiding the info. It’s just that the last person who dealt with whatever-file-it-is apparently couldn’t figure out the basics of filing…

                That being said, though…if you submit a FOIA, make sure you are very, VERY broad in your request. Otherwise it’s far too easy for the FOIA officer to go “Nah, nope, nothing that specifically matches what you’re asking for here, no go.” (Even if asking for pretty much everything will make us low-grade folks cry :D)

                I do wonder, though, what became of that FOIA we got earlier this year asking for information about Bigfoot. I didn’t have anything to look for, since so far as any of us know, Bigfoot has never applied for a right-of-way across federal lands. Or if he did, it was under some other name! (I’m not even joking we literally got a FOIA for that back in February or March. It was hilarious.)

                2. “FOIA is a pain in the butt”

                  I’m the FOIA officer for my own state agency (in case you were wondering whether I’m goofing off on the taxpayer’s dime, we’re not in the office this week while major renovations are being completed). We don’t get all that many FOIA requests, and those we do get that are reasonable and easy to understand, I respond to as quickly as possible (state law gives us 5 business days). However, many of our FOIA requests come from prison inmates who are on fishing expeditions for legal material, and will ask, for example, for copies of every Public Act (state law) passed in the last 5 years, not realizing that those run to thousands of pages. Or they will have nearly illegible handwriting or garbled citations that make it impossible to figure out what they’re requesting. So I have to write back to them and ask them to clarify, and go back and forth. Yes, I find those requests rather annoying but unless they fall under an exemption in the state FOIA statute I do my best to respond to them promptly.

        4. I would still be in CO if the altitude didn’t hate me, and they hadn’t got awfully focused in their attacks.
          Loving your place is not treason. Silence is NOT consent, despite what dunderheads both sides of the isle think.

        5. As a Californian, I see that kind of opinion all the time. I like to remind those kinds of people that without individuals such as myself, California would be even worse. I also point out that conservatives moving out of California hasn’t stopped progs from also doing the same into the beloved red states of people who post that kind of thing.

          1. Exactly. Probably best solution is to fight back at the local level: stop treating national elections as the be-all, end-all and focus on the local ones. Your town. Your school boards (holy hell, ESPECIALLY your school boards, particularly if you have kids). It’s a slog, which is why no one (including me, I confess–I hate politics) wants to fight that way, but honestly it’s probably the only way to root out the infection. That, and finding ways to hold the people that DO get elected or are otherwise in positions of power fully accountable for their actions.

            1. This^^^Start at the local level and listen in on public meetings so they know you are watching. Say hello to your FBI agents 😉

          2. And wasn’t it GOP voters in California who elected the Congresscritters that ultimately tilted the House into GOP control?

            1. Dunno. But outside of politics, I also know you can fight back just by talking to people. Friends, family, neighbors. Point out the inconsistencies, the lies. Don’t fight with them about it, just point it out. If they are capable of thinking for themselves, they won’t be able to un-see it, and it may start them doubting…

                1. Yeah, I don’t bother with my much loved but hopelessly leftist Laramie friends. I think (or hope) that they’d get redpilled should it come to the left actively trying to kill republicans. But short of that, they don’t want to hear it or see it.

            2. Elaine,

              This was a 2016 story on an incident in Darryl Issa’s district. Sure, he won…. but only because they got caught and pulled back. Next election? They didn’t get caught.

              http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/11/03/voter-fraud-california-man-finds-dozens-ballots-stacked-outside-home.html

              “The 83 ballots, each unused, were addressed to different people, all supposedly living in his elderly neighbor’s two-bedroom apartment.

              “I think this is spooky,” Mosna said. “All the different names, none we recognize, all at one address.””

              1. We had some number I no longer remember, but close to that supposedly living in our house in downtown Col Springs. I confess, if it were now, I’d not report it. I’d vote them all.
                Note when they’ve done this to me, I imagine there’s a lot of others at this point.
                Hence “let’s make them fraud 600 million votes for the bastage.”

              2. Yes, I meant 600 million, not 600k in the comment before. They’ve done that and more already. I just have too much blood in the caffeine stream. About to remediate that.

      4. “pretty badly outnumbered.”

        And that’s why they’ve allowed so many scores of millions of invaders in. The majority of children in the territory of the USA are now foreigners.

        Demography is destiny. The future belongs to those who show up.

        1. It won’t work. Already in NYC tribe is fighting against tribe.
          You see they have a hole where Race sits. They think that anyone who can tan is a) a natural communist b) in solidarity with every person who tans.
          This will bite them in the ass. But the clean up is going to hurt, and frankly? My kids and I tan, and so do those of a lot of people on this site. It’s going to be bad.

          1. “They think that anyone who can tan is a) a natural communist b) in solidarity with every person who tans. This will bite them in the ass.”

            And which group did they pick for accelerated processing yesterday? Venezuelans. Who have seen the end result of socialism up close. People from that background tend to be the most anti-socialism of all.

            1. Yeah, but I’m working on today’s post. These people are hard core communists being recruited. This really is an invasion. Of world communists.
              …. we’re going to need bigger helicopters.

    3. It’s not even that. They’re so stuck on the ideology that everything else falls by the wayside.

      I haven’t seen it, but The Death of Stalin apparently has an interesting scene that’s rooted in historical events. Molotov’s wife was historically convicted and sentenced to the camps. After Stalin’s death, Beria visit’s Molotov, and the discussion turns to Molotov’s wife. Despite the fact that he deeply loves her, Molotov condemns her in his conversation with Beria, and praises her sentencing and imprisonment.

      What Molotov doesn’t know is that in an attempt to curry favor with Molotov, Beria has had her released, and she’s waiting (and listening) in the next room…

  7. China’s on the verge of collapse. North Korea is a failed state. Vietnam and Laos (which is in Vietnam’s sphere of influence) don’t appear to be on the verge of collapse. But then again, neither has ever had much to lose by modern standards.

  8. I read the linked short story and enjoyed it so very, very much. That reminds me of back in the dreadful time of the first lockdowns, when we were worried that borders would be closed between states.

    My friend who shall remain nameless laughed out loud at that one. He imagined a scenario where 287 at the wooded border crossing between Wyoming and Colorado keeps getting abandoned. The agents assigned to watch the border disappear and are never seen again. No matter how many agents they send, same result. Then the tales begin about Sasquatches. And the polished, white skulls start to appear, set a few yards apart by the roadside.

    1. Hell, just given the winter we had last year? They’d have been buried completely and not found until spring, even if they didn’t leave the post! And this winter is slated to be even worse…

      And mind you, that particular crossing via 287 is less wooded and more “extremely rugged with trees on the really craggy bits–it’s a very pretty drive, and brutal in the winter. The one I use, via 230, to get from where I live to Laramie and other points south and which dips into Colorado and back up again IS very wooded. But the idea of a “border crossing station” at any of those points (or the dozens-to-hundreds or so more tiny little county roads, oil and gas roads, ranch roads, and plain ol’ two tracks that cross over the state line) is incredibly laughable.

      1. Trying that on a state like PA or VA, with a gazillion little backcountry road links, and overlapping urban areas?

        No way.

        Just slowing down the trucks for a hasty check would lead to food riots in a week.

        Not stopping the trucks makes for a rather leaky blockade.

        And let’s not even get started on the impact of malicious compliance options.

        And the brownshirt count required is prohibitive. Especially once folks start expressing themselves.

        Nope.

        1. I mean…given the nature of the United States, its size, and the fact that the majority of the landmass is STILL rural or outright uninhabited (despite what the blue idiots on the coasts–or even people in the rest of the world who have only seen tv/movies about the US–think)…even the bluest states it would be impossible to close borders. Even if they were doing what they ought to at our national borders, there would still be little bitty roads (albeit not so many, and it would be a FAR more limited area, given how relatively-small the end bits of Texas and Cali are at the Mexico border–so please don’t think I’m advocating for open national borders just because it would be impossible to 100% plug them. Actually, I suspect Canada would be a good deal harder to shut out, given the length of THAT border. But funnily enough, it’s not so big an issue. Can’t decide if its because its harder to get into Canada itself, or if the climate/terrain up that way is so miserable to deal with if you haven’t got a sturdy reliable vehicle that it’s just not very popular)

          I spent most of a year in California (was, at that time, a nice place to visit but still not to live) with my best friend before she and her family finally gave it up as a lost cause and even there–less than an hour from the heart of Silicon Valley–you didn’t have to drive very far to be in rural areas. So even in the bluest of blue states…there is a LOT of countryside, there are always little bitty farm roads or two tracks, and trapping people would be absolutely impossible unless they allow you to. And that will last only as long as they choose to allow it. Unfortunately, there are too many out there who will–look at the poor souls in Maui who complied with the police blockades and died, while those who disobeyed and drove around them, many survived. But there are a great, GREAT many who will not, or who are even now having their eyes opened (by things like Maui)

          (Speaking of Maui…interesting how it has almost totally vanished from the news cycle, isn’t it?)

          1. In California, there are border checkpoints on the interstates, specifically for produce. The intent (which I agree with, BTW) is to attempt to keep certain pests out of the agriculture, which can be unknowingly transported in fruit or vegetation.

            However, this is only effective as a way of keeping the innocent and unknowing travelers from accidentally bringing in the next Japanese beetle or planarians. Anyone who wanted to circumvent the checkpoint could do it through hundreds of little roadways. I mean, the one on I-80 is in Truckee, with entry and exit ramps on both sides of the checkpoint. That’s not even trying for a bottleneck.

    2. I have to admit, I did think it would be nice to close the state borders, especially when out-of-state plates from people coming over to enjoy our free state (and complain about us, who lived in the free state, not wearing masks) from their lockdown state.

      Alas…

      1. hm.. missing a clause there: especially when out-of-state plates started out-numbering in-state ones.

    3. Heck, the covid checkpoints in NY targeting Floridians & the later ones in Florida targeting New Yorkers were only effective in delaying travel of the easily cowed, and rerouting trips of those slightly more stubborn.
      We travelled from FL to upstate NY in 2020 while the NY checkpoints were in effect – we just went through PA instead of NYC.

      And in a not very surprising partisan wrinkle, Google has memory-holed the NY checkpoints – but not the FL ones.

  9. These fools of which you speak – good essay by the way – just do not understand. While the “rot” and corruption is indeed rampant in official/formal entertainment, education and other social elements, TPTB have missed the very big clue that there is a huge and growing number of people who don’t buy it and won’t go along. The labs for their demonstration of how everything they think & do is so right – you know, the “blue” cities like say… Chicago – are only turning more away from them and the idiocies they are selling.

    I was an odd type (imagine that!) and did a “traditional” year of college, dropped out and worked for a few years and eventually went back to get the magic paper called a degree. Even did grad school and got an MS while I was at it. The types I hung out with were vets trying to get ahead, serious folks also just trying to get the degree box checked and we were not interested in social or political parts of school. When the cheerleader types or the “come to our political meeting and maybe get some weed” types approached me or those I was friends of got the brush off. If they didn’t take a polite no, go away – there were offers to help them use their school health plan. We got left alone and I got through college with only a few mental scars and a tiny bit of PTSD.

    Now, a retired old fart – I look back and can now see how it started back then and how it went. I also (wisdom of being old) now see how it does not and will not work. We will experience tough times ahead sure and the mental defectives still trying to make the social magic work will hurt us and everything but they won’t win. Let’s go ahead and keep making they crazy and do what we do. Thanks to one and all as well!

    1. I walked pretty much the same path, two years at U of F before dropping out. A lot of the guys I’d hung out with were Korean War vets and our Bull S____ sessions were quite educational.

      I did get my BS sheepskin some 25 years later (My daughter was having trouble with calculus so I told her I’d race her to see who graduated first.).

      So I’m also now a ROF (a acronym for Responsible Objective Fellow?) but I’m not as sure we’ll win in the end (Not sure, nor do I think it’s even particularly likely that, we won’t.), but I am sure we’ll give it our best shot.

      Meanwhile doing my best to be prepared, & to assure my family and friends are prepared for whatever and whenever.

    2. Apparently, a DA in Sacramento just filed a lawsuit against the city for their refusal to deal with the homeless issue beyond “camp wherever you want, but you can’t camp at city hall during the day”…

      Naturally, the city is claiming he’s all the ists/isms and is “just trying to score political points.” Which would be true, if he were one of theirs. And heck, he may BE one of theirs, but still has a working brain and is fed up with the shenanigans.

      1. I’ll have to see where the ADA lawsuit (about homeless blocking sidewalk access, particularly under overpasses) went. I was very pleased about that one.

        I can have compassion for the homeless and still be annoyed at the ones trashing the places they inhabit. I once saw a tent in the middle of a field, out of direct view of the roadways, with a neater camp than I’ve seen many regular campers do. I applauded that person. They may have been homeless, but they had some dignity to it.

  10. They see the world through the ‘Rose Colored Glasses of Communism’ glasses which quickly turn into blinders, lest they let you see too much. But now after Biden, the lenses are cracked and fading and their $5,000 a pair frames are cracking and won’t stay on. You can’t go to Ray Ban to replace them, because they closed because of the crime. Besides the sidewalks are full of homeless drug addicts. You dare not order anything on line, it attracts home invasions not to mention porch pirates. You have to carpool with friends to the grocery store 40 minutes away because some crackhead shot and killed the corner grocer. And they just announced the power grid with have rolling brownouts this winter. You also haven’t heard from your twelve year old daughter in three weeks, the teacher at her school transitioned her into a boy without your knowledge and ran away with her. Other than that it is just fine in the Liberal Cities of America. Isn’t Communism wonderful.

    1. In the back ground you start to hear a growing voice.
      “We’re not going to take it”
      Slowly getting louder.
      All over the globe the voice’s are getting louder and louder.
      “We’re Not Going To Take It”
      Those in power start feeling their necks, they see nooses and madame blade in their waking hours now.

      May you live in interesting times, Ya, got that in spades dudes.

  11. I suppose that’s what they get for letting every nonconformist, disgruntled, dare to dream of a better life person who could possibly get here, settle and raise families of like minded people for the last couple of centuries.

    Oh Hell NO! is in our national DNA.

    We’ve had it pretty great in this country for a long while so the majority don’t want to upset the apple cart. So far. But things are unraveling to the point that mischief will be considered to turf the wreckers out.

    People haven’t really been listening to the mouth pieces lately. Hollywood is striking? Ho hum. (Notice the so-called news organizations were exempt. How odd, right?) Their numbers are in the toilet and nothing they do is getting the folks behind them. The opposite is occurring. The more they tighten their grip, the more star systems slip through their fingers. So to speak.

    They plan on whittling the numbers of humans down to a very small number but said humans may have something to say about that. They think that they can control the people with technology to silence them.

    I bet they are wrong about that.

    There’s always a new “printing press” waiting to be discovered and we are just the species to discover it.

    1. Then there’s the border between Wyoming and South Dakota in the Black Hills. The border between Wyoming and Montana at Yellowstone. (Those hot geysers and springs full of lime would be perfect for disposing of the ones who weren’t “torn apart” by grizzlies.) Then there’s Idaho and Montana. Mountain lions and grizzlies there too.

      I bet the south would be pretty safe though. I’m sure the good old boys would be plenty hospitable to the Rich Men North of Richmond. They have to be over that silly War of Aggression by now, right?

      Maine and New Hampshire are super nice to er, revenuers, as well I’ll bet.

        1. What! You’re telling me that the Jersey Devil won’t welcome visitors? 😈

      5. In the South we have alligators and hogs. Lots of swamps and the Gulf of Mexico as well. Florida now has invasive snakes that can get to be 25 to 30 feet long. We will serve as necessary.

  12. One note re: “…money ostensibly flowing to Ukraine”

    While there is a large bunch of actual cash money aid flowing to Ukraine, and their endemic corruption (and ours as well: Does anyone really think there’s only one “big guy” in the US Senate, where poorly paid elected public servants become millionaires through magical means, getting their 10%?) is feeding freely from that stream, I am continuously seeing our Cold War surplus used up crap being valued out at wildly inflated replacement cost or similar and then conflated in reporting with the cash.

    Everyone involved on our side knew this stuff, even the “war reserve” vehicles kept in theater, were destined for scrapping out, and it was treated with profitable neglect as such. Case in point: After all the crowing about formerly-Red-Army tires rotted in place on combat vehicles captured during the attempt on Kiev, the story about US vehicles, artillery, and other equipment found to have exactly the same maintenance problem when pulled from “forward reserve” “war stocks” in Kuwait, requiring major maintenance at depots in Germany before it could go to Ukraine, was never really widely reported. Same about how much work was needed to bring the M1 tanks into anything like usable condition.

    So valuation of all that surplus ready-for-scrapping crap is wildly optimistic. They should really be totaled out and reported separately, and heavily skeptically, from the cash.

    And frankly, give all of that surplus crap to Ukraine. Keeping it here just feeds the bloated bureaucracy that is parasitically bleeding our defense budget dry. Ship it all out and close those “war reserve depots”.

    1. No, I know that. But there is cash money too, and that’s ending up in the pockets of various big guys.
      What I heard is a lot of the equipment is diverted to be sold elsewhere, and very little GETS there.

      1. It is a quagmire of corruption. Ukraine is having a hard time of it not just because the weapons aren’t getting there. The people see the corruption and aren’t willing to fight for that corruption. They’re more likely to fight against it, and we are supporting much of that corruption which doesn’t make us look too good. Russia has the same problem with corruption and manpower which is why they are using Iranian drones and foreign fighters. Meanwhile Joe is so preoccupied with keeping Ukraine happy, and not releasing any of their blackmail on him, he has lost track of the rest of the world. Interesting times indeed.

      2. It’s fairly clear what happens with all that money flowing around. Cash is fungible and all, so whether it’s “consulting fees” or “hiring” a relative or buying actual needed new stuff at vastly marked up prices and splitting the difference, it still lines pockets.

        My point was mainly it’s not just “Ukrainian Corruption” – the corruption driven by the piles of cash aid is endemic in DC (and the European capitols) and is lining (ok, filling) US and European pockets as well.

        And valuing the broken down old crap we’re sending high is part of that corruption.

        –
        On the maintaining old crap scam, here are links to two of the very few stories on the Inspectors General investigation on the unmaintained prepositioned war stock stuff at a US depot in Kuwait – the mil folks were “not adequately supervision” the contractors who were supposed to be doing the work, and the contractors were getting paid no matter how little they did:

        https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/2023-06-01/army-ukraine-howitzer-humvee-kuwait-10302759.html

        https://www.defensenews.com/land/2023/05/31/equipment-for-ukraine-drawn-from-kuwait-wasnt-combat-ready-ig-says/

        The story hit a very few industry sources back in June, but coverage faded quickly and it was not reported more widely.

        The even older 105mm gunned M1 Abrams tanks all were “really old reserve stock” that basically had to go through factory remanufacture to replace all the rotted hoses and belts and seals and wiring and such to be even partway useful. I am sure if it got so bad we had to use those, the enemy would give us all that time to get them ready…

        Like the planes in the boneyard at Davis Monthan AFB in Arizona, if it ever gets so bad that stuff is useful we won’t have the time or the resources to fix it up to use it.

        As I said above, give all of it to them. If they can use it, great. Give it all away, close those depots, and cancel all those contracts.

        1. Dude, it’s Kuwait….. the folks who imported Bangladeshis and had them clearing the minefields Saddam left with those trash pickup sticks with the nail on the end.

          I worked with Air Force 1998-2005; multiple eyewitness accounts.

          1. Check out the Defense News story, or the linked IG report. US Army base, US Army HMMWVs and M777 artillery which was pencil whipped as “mission ready”, supposedly being maintained by US contractor (HQ in Chantilly, VA). The Kuwait rep from the Army Material Command sent up a flare and got a Tank and Armaments Command mobile repair team, and even after their work all the stuff needed more work once it got to Poland before they could hand it over to Ukraine.

            And this is equipment in-theater that is supposed to be issue-to-arriving-US-troops ready for war. The crap in deep storage in the deserts in the US is without any doubt much, much worse. And we’re all paying to “maintain” it.

      3. I’ve seen complaints about the aid (not mil bits, just humanitarian aid) and the folks on the ground know it is wondering off somewhere between the Govt warehouses and them. They know those at the top are sending it, so someone in the middle is taking stuff and selling it off somewhere (it doesn’t stay in country it seems) and those in need are not even able to get much via black market.

    2. There’s a reason almost nobody in Dizzy City wants a public investigation into Biden’s flagrant corruption.
      They’re also corrupt, and fear they’ll be exposed in turn.

      I used to think it was an exaggeration when Assange said that if we knew what was really going on, we’d hang 98% of our federal politicians.
      Over the past several years, they’ve convinced me he was right.

  14. I’d hesitate to call it a nasty problem. It’s just a, “politics,” problem.

    The main problem with Politics is that if you don’t have an interest in it and actively make decisions therein…Politics will take an interest in you- and it never turns out good whether you’re talking the US with the Trail of Tears (My heritage on the receiving end of that…) the Nazis in Germany, or whatever else you care to mention.

    1. I have a friend who is a direct descendant of Rich Joe Vann (whose house is now a state park in Georgia) and I think it’s safe to say that Andrew Jackson is his least favorite president.

      (For those who don’t know, quite a few Cherokee decided that assimilating into white culture would save them from reservations. They were, unfortunately, proven wrong. And unsurprisingly, it was someone selling them out that was the tipping point for the Trail of Tears.)

  15. Conspiracy Theory # Elevenityhundred and Twelve;

    To get Biden out of the Race and Destroy Maga, they assassinate Hunter in court. Blame it on Ray Epps, Ray Epps is assassinated by Peter Strockz. Biden goes apeshit and losses it completely. They 25th amendment now totally insane Biden. The Harpies on the View and in the rest of the Media have cows blaming Trump and Maga. Cameltoe appoints Nancy Pelosi as Vice President. Cameltoe then is shot in a driveby at an Italian restaurant. Hillary is made Vice President.

      1. Agree. Whomever is anointed with this task will get caught and squeal quickly and loudly. After all they have all the Arkancide examples they should know that no matter what they are dead walking and they might as well sink the ship drowning as many as they can.

  16. For myself, I have always wondered if the fight that the Biden admin and their lackeys appear to want to pick with Russia is to facilitate a crackdown on domestic political opposition. Goad Russia into a shooting war, charge conservatives with sedition and treason because of our reluctance to go along. It would be just to convenient, as Mr. Bracken outlined in his story.

    1. Right now, the Democrats are starting to realize that they can’t fraud enough for FICUS or Kamala. That’s why there are increasing rumors about drafting Moochelle.

      However, I suspect that Kamala won’t go quietly.

      1. Gavin Mooochelle, Moochele Gavin, I really don’t think it makes a difference at this point. The Democrat star is so tarnished even their normally stout defenders on the left are sounding more and more desperate.

      3. Neither will “Dr.” Jill – she will be dragged out of the private quarters at the White House, kicking, screaming, and clinging to every door jamb on the way.

      4. No, I think the same group that tried to foist Kamela on us (before Gabbard and the second debate) are trying to push Newsome on us.

        But as others have already pointed out, there’s no way that Harris or Dr. Jill would willingly go along with that.

        1. I wouldn’t say planned between them. More like independently. Biden made his comment about the U.S. not responding to a “limited” incursion, and Putin took that to be a green light to complete the invasion he started under Obama but backed off from during the Trump administration. (You might say that it was because Biden wanted a war, and while that’s possible, I think Biden’s mental state was already too far gone to be able to plan on that level. I think it was a classic Biden gaffe.)

          Thing is, if Putin thought Biden was giving him the green light, Biden’s subsequent full-throated push for defending Ukraine must have caught him by surprise. Putin has now learned that he can’t trust Biden to keep his promises.

          And that’s one of the reasons I don’t think this was carefully planned out. Too many factors that immediately went awry. I would expect, if Putin and Biden planned it out between them, for there to be at least a few months before Biden read the winds of popular opinion and turned against the invasion. Instead, it was a week or two.

          1. After a lot of puzzling over why the West went all in on Ukraine after giving Putin a ‘green light’, the Reader thinks that it is possible that several countries in Eastern Europe issued a quiet ultimatum – NATO and the EU support Ukraine or we will fracture both organizations and go all in with Ukraine. The ‘United Europe’ has been a project of the globalists since WW II and the Eastern European countries regard Russia as an existential threat, only marginally lessened by its demonstrated military incompetence in Ukraine. The opportunity for skimming and graft sealed the deal.

            1. Or, alternately, Biden and others only found out that Zelensky knows where all of the bodies are buried after Putin crossed the border.

              1. Which might explain why various Ukranians “individually” bribed Hunter Biden. You can be reasonably certain that various folks in the Intel game have hard evidence.

            3. Lloyd Austin.

              My contention since early on in the regime, is that the Bidenistas are representative of several factions of Biden backers, and that there is little central unity of command. Lloyd Austin in this calculation is a combination of a woke idiot, with a dude who represents the go along to get alongs in defense contracting. He was woke enough for the Bidenista cause, and at the same time had the connections to ram it through inside the DoD. Or seemed to.

              My contention since very near the start of the war is that Biden originally wanted Putin to win, but then Lloyd Austin realized the contracting opportunities. This stuff was sitting there, decaying, and eventually needing replacement, but if we sat on it, we would not necessarily have the legislative politics for replacements of the same number. But, if we sent it to Ukraine, we could cut an extremely expansive deal for replacement funding, etc.

              So Lloyd Austin jumped on it, to pay back his go along to get along constituency.

              Biden was not capable enough to maintain control over Austin, and the US never had complete control over the NATO powers, who were of course a bit freaked out.

              NATO basically behaved as Americans intended it to operate; IE in absence of command find some enemy and fight with them.

              The ever so insane Russians analyzed events, and are absolutely sure that the US President must always have complete positive control over every politician in NATO country, and so the whole thing must be an absolute master plan very carefully controlled. Also, they seem to take US IC bragging at face value.

              1. “Also, they seem to take US IC bragging at face value.”

                Why are you surprised, when they have to take their own IC / TLAs at face value to cow the populace. If they call the US IC incompetent, then someone might ask why they couldn’t beat them in the Cold War.

              2. Maybe. But the Reader and friends of the Reader who are closer to the current mess in the 5 sided puzzle palace don’t think Austin is anywhere near smart enough to come up with that on his own. However, there are folks at Raytheon, where Austin interned as a director, who are.

                1. I don’t think anyone involved had a plan, just opportunistic grabs.

                  Biden wanted to look statesman like and anti-Trump so he went soft where Trump went hard.

                  Putin saw a weak Biden and thought he could exploit the opportunity to the hilt. It was just a quick victorious war, right?

                  When it went south hard, the US contractors saw all the equipment being chewed up and saw an opportunity to sell lots of hardware, and displace their EU competitors (sending Leopards and back filling them with US M1 Abrams makes the M1 the incumbent without a competition==$$).

                  Everyone is just grabbing their piece of the pie with no regard for wider consequences.

                  1. The contractors may have outsmarted themselves. In 5 years the dominant supplier of military hardware to Eastern Europe may well be South Korea if they perform well on the current orders Poland has placed with them for tanks (1000!) artillery, aircraft and other items. South Korea has the tech base to make all but the highest tech military items without using US components, which means the US cannot block the sales by using ITAR regulations on the US suppliers (yeah, the US does that a lot).

                    1. Hadn’t heard South Korea was moving in. That’s actually kind of funny, especially because part of the reason Rhienmetal was so vulnerable to the US disruption was because they don’t have the actual capacity to replace the equipment at the rate it is being consumed.

                    3. And in 5 years with the purchases from South Korea and the US (Apache helicopters, F35s and other stuff) and the growth of manning of their armed forces and reserves by 50%, they will be the predominant conventional military power in Europe. Food for thought.

          2. I’m actually not SURE it wasn’t between them. Remember at the same time Putin was serving as our go between with Iran. You think of that and your head kind of CLICKS.

          3. Putin’s been planning this since Bush made him give Georgia (country) back in ’08. What Putin didn’t count on was the fact that the military has been lying for years about their readiness. He didn’t expect the invasion to take more than a week or two. Roll across the country and done. The difference is Georgia was supplied out of old Russian stuff that was too busted even for the Russians to hide. Ukraine’s been trying to actually modernize and has been objectively improving their equipment. (And the guys who were supposed to stop that process pocketed the bribe money. IIRC at least a few of them have tragically suffered 9mm brain hemorrhages of various flavors.)

      2. They both can be bad, one is just worse. Russia. And what we done to Ukraine in the name of greed and just plain ineptitude is itself a crime. Does anyone truly believe Putin wouldn’t have invaded had not Biden so screwed up Afghanistan? And in all truth this stems back to when Obama let Putin have the Crimea. Once that was done the rest of this is just out right stupidity and more than likely inevitable.(Opinion) Ukraine can’t stand alone, and the whole world is getting tired of footing the bill, and then having weapons from Ukraine show up in their own countries. It is a mess.

      3. Ukraine does not at all have to be good for the Russians to be a higher priority for extermination.

        Your ‘cross pacific common interests’ theory or narrative was always bunk.

        Putin is clearly a Russian Hillary Clinton. A psychopath who lives to terrorize even their own minions.

        Even leaving the cultural issues aside, there is no way that a Russian foreign policy establishment that grew up under Putin is capable of delivering on some sort of peace deal that requires them to see the US as not deliberately and willfully causing injury to Russia.

        At that point in the analysis, we look at our previous wars with the Russians, class them as similar to the pre-reservation Comanche, and select our strategies only from the ones that do not require that the Russians willingly choose to live in peace with us.

        The more that people try to lie to us that peace is possible with Russians, if only Americans choose peace, the more the rational strategy for an American is to always default to ‘exterminate the Russians’.

        No matter how bad the Ukrainians are, that only ever takes the calculus to ‘help the Ukrainians fight, and bleed both countries, then murder the survivors’.

        I don’t think ‘bleed both countries’ is the right strategy, and that is precisely one of the reasons I do not trust the Biden regime to execute on supporting Ukraine.

        Supposing that the Ukrainians could ever be bad enough to really favor not supporting them is basically evidence that the person so claiming is out of their mind.

        Absolutely, it is a travesty that the Biden regime is in no way shape or form equipped to exploit this war in any of the ways most profitable for the United States of America.

        Again, the worst case for Ukraine’s merits is that they are early in line for the strategy of exterminating all foreign populations, which strategy is basically implied as the only practical way to address climate change and AGW. Pretty much every country in the world is on board with addressing climate change, with the exceptions being either dysfunctional or dangerously insane. Climate change policy is evil enough in promoting internal mass murder and poverty that, if you hold those populations responsible for the wrong doing, then there is basically no population on earth that is innocent enough to deserve to live. The credible crimes Ukrainians are accused of fall short of that measure. The credible claims were accompanied by so many and so wide a range of incredible accusations that even the physically possible crimes by Ukrainians are suspect.

        1. Absolutely, it is a travesty that the Biden regime is in no way shape or form equipped to exploit this war in any of the ways most profitable for the United States of America.

          –
          Of course not. They are far too busy exploiting the war for their own profit.

          ‘Climate Change’ is a ruse to subjugate the proles. Look what they’re doing in Kalifornia to make everybody 100% dependent on electricity — which they can cut off at a whim. Not to mention, thar ain’t enough electricity to go around NOW.

          They forced PGE to decommission San Onofre after spending billions on upgrades. Unit 2 was ready to go, Unit 3 could have operated at reduced power while Mitsubishi built a replacement heat exchanger to replace the one they dropped. But no, the government announced ’30 days to address concerns of the community’ which meant any Nervous Nellie crying that living 40 miles from a ‘Nukyular Reeacter’ made them ‘Feel Unsafe’ would start another ’30 days to address…’ blah blah blah until PGE finally threw in the towel. Sort of like ’10 days to flatten the curve’.
          ———————————
          There is nothing so simple the government can’t f*k it up.
          There is nothing so f*ked up the government can’t make it worse.

    4. HRC would never, ever accept “second fiddle”. “It’s Her turn!” after all.

      Pelosi would never, ever allow herself to be one missing heartbeat between HRC and the Oval Office. No way. Not one chance.

      1. Pelosi would never, ever allow herself to be one missing heartbeat between HRC and the Oval Office. No way. Not one chance.
        ………

        What? WTH? Does this mean while Pelosi makes idiots, morons, and drunks, look and sound intelligent, she’s still has a brain cell that isn’t soused and suicidal? Who’d have thunk it?

        JIC /sarcasm off

        1. The Reader thinks that even a flatworm has the instincts to be afraid of Hillary.

  17. And of course the ones who aren’t true believers in communism are often on the CCP payroll and thus act the same way as the true believers do.

  18. Democrats already actively at work to rig 2024. In the name of “protecting democracy”, PA’s Democratic Party tyrant bypassed the state legislature, which is responsible for enacting election laws, to impose by dictatorial fiat automatic voter registration:

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/09/19/heres-how-the-democrats-will-steal-pennsylvania-in-2024-n1728337

    Every time they issue a decree and proclaim they are “protecting democracy”, what they really mean is they are pursuing single party totalitarian rule by the Democratic Party

    2. Why are you surprised? Remember the AL redistricting case earlier this year. SCOTUS ignored the plain language of the Constitution to say that the legislature was NOT the final arbiter.

      That case was decided by Kavanaugh and Barrett, after mobs and assassins outside the houses where they and their families lived. PA just waited until the coast was clear.

    3. There is nothing democratic about the Democrat party.

      Look what they’re doing to RFK Jr. He could get 100% of the vote in every state primary and the Democrat party STILL would not nominate him.

    4. It doesn’t matter how We The People vote; the Democrats know how we should vote, so it’s their duty to ‘rectify’ the elections and produce the ‘correct’ result.

      Fortunately for them, there are a finite number of actual, breathing U.S. citizens eligible to vote, while Democrat operatives can gin up fake votes in unlimited numbers.

      The only remaining reason for voting is to force them into fraud so massive it can’t be hidden. Little things, like counting 2.6 million mail-in votes in Pennsylvania even though they only sent out 1.8 million.
      ———————————
      Grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

  19. Um, about that “Someone on American Greatness”… three points kind of argue against their thesis:

    1) The US was giving aid to Great Britain against Nazi Germany in the form of Lend-Lease long before FDR started sending any aid to Stalin.

    2) it really was critical to keep the USSR fighting, and the aid sent by the US via Murmansk and Vladivostok really was critical in accomplishing that. Against only the Western Allies, Germany might well have won, or at least managed a stalemate and negotiated peace. In a two-front war, Germany’s defeat was assured.

    3) FDR didn’t declare war on Germany until after Hitler declared war on the USA. FDR’s famous “Day of Infamy” speech on December 8th, 1941, only asked for a declaration of war against Japan. Hitler, insane fool that he was, declared war on the US on December 10th, in support of his Japanese allies. Congress returned the favor the next day.

    1. As I pointed out, I don’t have a problem with any of that. I have a problem with how heavily we helped Russia and continued helping them and letting them run roughshod over the world after the end of WWII. we should have turned around and finished THAT business.

      2. In an ideal world, we would have turned around and finished that business. Unfortunately, in this world several points made it effectively impossible, starting with the fact that depending on which numbers you believe, the Soviet Army in May 1945 was anywhere from two to five times as big as the US and British forces in Europe combined. On top of that, the Eastern Front was an exceptionally brutal kind of warfare, with both Jerry and Ivan committing indescribable atrocities as a matter of routine. The Soviet forces would have brought that same brutality to bear on an American attacker. Large-scale combat between Allied and Soviet forces could only have ended in a Soviet victory.

        1. Large-scale combat between Allied and Soviet forces could only have ended in a Soviet victory.

          Not a chance in hell.

          I’m sorry to be so blunt, but– nope.

          Yes, they were brutal.

          That’s part of why we should have fought them.

          They were also propped up by American supplies, which is part of why we couldn’t recognize that we needed to destroy Stalin.

            1. That’s before the Local Effect.

              It’s telling that populations who survived the Soviets, and who survived the Nazis, prefer the genocidal psychopaths.

    3. I’ve often wondered what would have happened if Hitler hadn’t declared war on the US. I’d love to see someone (Harry Turtledove, if he hasn’t already written so many WW2 variations that he’s sick of it) write an alternate history based on that premise.

  22. It’s really frustrating the way Leftroids make up some delusion inside their heads and from then on, it’s their reality. Nothing that contradicts it makes any impression on them. They pretend Trump is a ‘Russian asset’ and to them, he is. They pretend Biden is an innocent victim of ‘Ultra-Maga Extremists!’ No amount of proof can break through their false convictions. They live in a different universe from the rest of us.
    ———————————
    Count Vordarian: “What? You’re a Betan! You can’t do—“

  24. I’m medium-small and I’m just a science fiction writer with a nasty politics problem.

    I’m sorry, but you’re showing you don’t fully grok how the left “thinks”.

    They don’t understand how ideas, logic, and persuasion work. They really believe that everything is a “mind virus”.

    Which is why originators of the most dangerous mind viruses must be smeared and destroyed and removed from the history books. Seriously, Ayn Rand died in 1982, and they still can’t stop trying to smear her, because she promoted BadThink and was wildly successful despite them getting controlled opposition CIA agent William F. Buckley to kick her out of the “respectable” part of the “conservative movement” in the 1960s. The most recent round was “ZOMG, did you know that Rand worshipped a serial killer!?@!?!?!?!?11eleventy!!?!??” and the next one will be even more silly, I’m sure.

    Somewhere back around 2000 (give or take five years) Tim Robbins directed (and maybe wrote) a play that got performed in front of an audience of tens that showed the vast right wing neo-con conspiracy as robed cultists who would punctuate chants and recitations with group shouts of “All hail Leo Strauss!!!” (Pause here to laugh at the left targeting its own, given how utterly sterling the integrity of neo-cons like Bill Kristol has proven to be.)

    (To his credit, Robbins has more recently evinced a modicum of independent, critical thinking. I hope he keeps it up.)

    So, why you? You’re female. You’re foreign. You sneaked in successfully (the Mythopoeic nomination is proof of that). You do not bow. You do not kneel. You do not compromise.

    You are, in every way that they can comprehend, a living refutation of their beliefs. If anyone reads you and thinks, the mind virus you could unleash would be…. well, they’re terrified, because, not being able to think, they’re not able to figure out a way to project what the consequences might be. But they would definitely be Very Bad Indeed.

  25. I don’t suppose it has occurred to you that you were targeted because of Sad Puppies? You and Larry ripped the sheets off a major Lefty scam there (corruption of -all- book awards, laid bare to the public.) Now we all know why there’s nothing to read. You did that.

    Also, and this is the really dangerous part, Larry and Sad Puppies finally figured out how to herd the cats. How do you get a bunch of rugged individualist “Get Off My Lawn” types moving in the same direction? Sad Puppies. You make it a joke!

    Real world example near and dear to my heart, do you know what the real cover was for invoking the Emergencies Act in Canada during the Freedom Convoy demonstration? And I know you’re not going to believe me, but this what they said in the legislature:

    Diagolon.

    Yep. The joke “Red State” country that stretches from Alaska to Florida across Alberta and Saskatchewan. That was blown up to be an immanent insurrection, and that’s why they invoked the Emergencies Act, that’s why they froze all those bank accounts. Couple days ago the RCMP, after a year long “investigation” which included arresting the guy who literally made the thing up on his phone for a meme, finally admitted it was a joke and Diagolon doesn’t exist. There’s no “real” Diagolon nation of armed and dangerous Right Wing insurrectionists.

    Doesn’t that sound so extremely familiar? There are Diagolon bumper stickers and gear patches (and you can go to jail in the Canadian Forces for wearing one) but it’s a joke. Same as MHI stickers and patches. Same as Sad Puppies.

    So that’s a -real- reason they might go after you. You’re herding the cats. You don’t even know it. But is there anything worse for them than an unorganized confluence of leaderless, pissed off cats? No! That’s their worst possible nightmare.

    They don’t deal in individuals like we do. They only do herds.

    1. “They don’t deal in individuals like we do. They only do herds.”

      This. And it is a severe weakness for them. They believe that if they can just get the “leaders” the “followers” will wander away and lose heart.

      As in the excellent story that was linked in the post, they sadly misunderestimate how real life in the USA works. They think that because they are a top-down run show that every show is like that. Because the Feebs need to literally guide their targeted groups and provide everything for the “plots” they are instigating and ever so heroically stopping, they believe that if the “leaders” are gone they win.

      Fool Around and Find Out happened to the Red Coats marching in formation back in the day. Their formation will find out too I’d suppose.

        1. Right? And, hilariously, Trump isn’t even the leader. We don’t even like him. People vote for Trump because he’s running against the media a-holes we all hate. He’s the ONLY GUY that tells Barbara Walters and Katie Couric that they’re lying when they lie.

          But does he -lead- the Right? No. Because there’s nothing there to lead. No structure, no “party”, nothing. Just a huge number of pissed off cats with a bone to pick with Uncle Sugar. Without Trump, nothing really changes. The cats won’t go away.

          2. Trump is what they got when they fooled around with the Tea Party.

            What they will get after Trump will be worse, as they will find out.

            1. Have you seen what’s been happening Canada wide the last couple of days? There was a “Million March for Kids” put on by religious groups and concerned parents in all the major cities yesterday, Wednesday the 20th.

              TL/DR, the Normies finally woke up and smelled the CRT/gender-blender in public education. Libs of TikTok for the win.

              On the evening of the 19th, there were Canadian Armed Forces armored vehicles rolling in Toronto.

              Of particular interest is we got to see the sausage being made this time, the Ontario Federation of Labour had their counter-protest organizing meeting on Zoom.

              Basically the government of Canada rolled tanks on parents objecting to their kids being groomed by perverts, AND organized the entire “counter protest” through labor cutouts.

              That’s what they’re doing now.

              Oh, also accusing India of assassinating some guy at a gurudwara in BC, just in time for India to expel our diplomats and not-buy our wheat harvest this year. Ottawa call that two birds with one stone, because A) it completely screws the Western farmers who don’t vote Liberal, and B) now nobody is talking about China. Win win.

          3. “the cats won’t go away”

            Which is why DeSantis is getting no traction. And they don’t know why. He should be everything the rubes want. Conservative, younger, energetic, unafraid and good at governing.

            The cats are past the good at governing part. They want it all torn down and no governing by these people.

            1. I agree. The number of people who are done with Big Government as a concept is growing. Pretty much -all- the problems people have these days can be traced directly to taxation, too much regulation, and conversely regulations being selectively ignored.

              Once you take that red pill, the evidence starts to pile up too fast to ignore. You see it everywhere from county all the way up. The country is being crushed by governance.

            2. The Reader thanks you for you insight. It explains why DeSantis can’t get to 20% in the polls. We’ll see what the actual ratio of ‘tear it down’ vs ‘good governing’ Republicans is when the primaries actually start.

            3. ?

              DeSantis has done a great job of exposing Disney. He and his staff have also had numerous call-outs of the press on social media. But since he’s in Florida and I’m not, the only place I ever see them mentioned is over at Insty.

              1. I think its more that the people of Florida have done a great job of exposing Disney, and DeSantis is riding along on their coat tails.

                That’s the vibe I get from him, anyway. The guy who shows up and takes credit for everybody else’s work.

                1. Uh… what? An awful lot has been happening in Florida over the last few years, and it’s happened while DeSantis was governor. During all of this, he hasn’t been skulking in the background. He’s been front and center, drawing fire to himself from the press and DC. I’m not sure why you think he’s not really doing anything.

      2. The fundamental misunderstanding of the Left is that they think “groups” exist. They do not (and can’t) understand that human beings make their decisions as individuals based on their own self-interest. Statistics do not reveal the truth, they are a map. The map, as they say, is not the territory.

        1. Yes, and no. Mob mentality is a real thing. And studies have indicated that people do tend to get stupid while part of a mob.

          But mobs are not always the same as a big group of people.

          1. There is no such thing as a group. What you’re talking about is a number of -individuals- who all decided to do the same thing at the same time. That’s the objective truth of the matter, when you look at it with a telescope from five miles up.

            A mob is a formation made out of individual humans, each one physically and mentally independent from all the others. And so is a church, or a business, or a nation. Some last longer than others, because some are more beneficial to the individuals in them than others.

            Political operators talk about groups because its easier that way, and because they’re too stupid to understand that group isn’t a real thing. Its statistical short-hand for what’s actually happening.

            1. “Mob mentality” exists. To claim otherwise is to ignore a well-documented fact. For whatever reason, if a large collection of people form an actual mob, the individuals within that mob have their decisions influenced by the mob, and often end up doing things that they likely wouldn’t do otherwise.

              1. Sure it does. Humans react to each other. Chimps do this too. But they’re not -connected- like a beehive or an ant hill. They’re still individuals acting voluntarily. There’s no neuro/chemical forcing, if you like.

                The Left acts like a mob is a -thing- in and of itself, the way an ant colony is a thing. The mob/group is the smallest human unit to them. Individuals are slaves to the group like ants are to the hive. Which is so stupid it isn’t even wrong.

              1. …. where?

                They act like water.

                The first mob I met was near flood conditions in Kansas.

                Mom found a corner and started dragging weak folks out of the stream.
                Folks who want to evil, will. That’s not mobs. That’s folks.

  26. Note I’m not saying who was behind the hacking because I don’t know. But the fact that legal charges were brought in some cases makes you think… well, you know, the Stasi is real even though it goes under other names.

    There have been comments to the effect that ‘when we learn the truth, it will be far worse than we ever suspected’ referring to the hmm, alleged criminal activity of the so-called elites. I’ve begun to wonder if this could also refer to the level of Stasi BS the feralgov and/or ‘outside assets’ have been pulling.

  27. Day late and a dollar short, but:
    “Second, well, being on the side of the Nazis wouldn’t have improved anything. Frankly, they were as disgusting an evil. And staying out of the war might not have been possible. Plus I’m not sure we’d like the world if we had. Then again it might have looked much like the EU anyway. ”

    Fun fact: The EU, as of course everyone of a certain age knows, was once called the European Economic Community. One day while reading about German propaganda during the war, I found that Goebbels used that exact term, EEC. So, maybe your last sentence there is more right than you know.

  28. First time commenter. (Bear with me, I have a point.)

    One reason I like SH’s writing is that she has higher level of immunity than just about any other observer/commenter on the Right.

    I do not think anything quite like “What I Saw at the Coup” is active; I think something much more nefarious is. Go back to the 2004 speech Sean Treglia gave about Pew pushing the Campaign Finance reform bill. (Hard to find on internet, but there are traces if you search hard enough.) In it he lets out that they astroturfed key politicians to make them think the public demanded the law which few people cared about. Their program was funded by the usual suspects, it worked, and when has the Left ever abandoned a working strategy?

    That was 20 years ago with a tiny fraction of the capabilities now available to monitor and control the information space of key individuals. Google has automated this in order to figure out what billions of users want to buy, and to control their opinions. My fear, since reading the Treglia speech, is that there are groups (who? Google? Feds? WEF? yes, yes, and yes) with lists of key people who must be controlled. The algorithms do the blunt work but there is a lot of personal and direct involvement by humans to polish the result and react to any anomalies in their information space. This also tells them who must be destroyed.

    How many? I don’t know but I suspect every state and federal politician, anyone in media, celebrities, businessmen, … maybe 20,000. Maybe more.

    I read a bit about the Ukraine war from various sources and it seems both sides (“Russia must be destroyed,” and “NATO provoked them”) have been marinated in propaganda. People I respect state nonsense that is easily refuted and sounds straight out of one side or the other’s disinformation mills. Among the commenters on the blogs I read (Insty, and a few others) neither side is winning that battle but it scares me how effective both sides are at getting out the BS.

    That war is highly contentious but now think of the issues that most people have been warned off discussing – AGW, open borders, zero carbon, 2020 “election,” etc. Why are so many people — especially the politicians who are dead set against the wishes of their constituency — so wrong on these issues and so afraid to even mention them? And it is not because they are afraid of being demonetized on youtube.

    And this is why I like SH — she seems immune to the firehose of BS coming at us from all directions every time we pick up the phone or walk down the street. Not just on one or two subjects like a few other Right Side commenters, but on most issues. God bless you Sarah.
    – a fan.

    One more thing:
    Re above – you wrote: ” I’ll tell you they always were. The “international” in socialism was a ruse. It was always Russian Nationalism Everywhere.”

    YES! And the “Socialism” bit is another ruse. It was always and still is always about Seizing Centralizing Power Everywhere.

    1. For a moment I was alarmed at “higher level of immunity” — I was going to say that in fact they hit me harder, because they think by rights I belong in their plantation. Then I saw what you mean.
      My brain is wired funny. When I was little a circus came to the village. It was a ridiculous little circus, but they had one really good act: the magician. Why, in the act, he had a woman levitate, with nothing under her.
      Except she was actually lying down on a little table with many very thin legs. I knew because I noticed it in the beginning, and wondered what it was for. so his patter didn’t work.
      It’s not that I can’t get fooled. Usually in the other direction. Sometimes I panic. But I tend not to look where other people are looking. Both a blessing and a curse, I guess.
      I still say both Biden and Putin needed the war to put down internal dissension. And Putin thought he could also swallow Ukraine. And that’s what started all this.

  29. Oh good grief.
    Dear moderator — If possible delete identifying name from comment I just posted.
    Initials are ok. Don’t know how that autofilled without me catching it.

    1. Fixed. In future, send me an email to my two initials last name at hotmail, so I know what your real name is. You forced me to search for your email in all the comments! It’s okay. It just took me a minute to devise that strategy, because there’s way too much blood in my caffeine stream.

Comments are closed.